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> but he's let the states experiment with legalization

Not really. Under Obama the federal government raided hundreds (if not thousands) of legal dispensaries and grow operations, and spent hundreds of millions in doing so.

3 minutes is just enough time to stand up, walk around a bit, rest your eyes, stretch, and get a drink of water. That's probably what I would do.

Obama mentioned that he wants an internet "curating function" for determining truthful information. Watch about 5 minutes of this talk starting at 58:00 to get the full context:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BikQFWNYct4&t=3480s

I refuse to believe that he's not smart enough to know how problematic that is. It's not totally clear from his speech (does he just want a central repository of trusted information, or does he want to actually remove certain information from the internet?) but it's a perfect example of Obama couching dangerous ideas in soft, pragmatic language.

The Statfor hack showed that the USG has contracted out the development of "persona management software".

It is bizarre. GP is, as you said, "either grossly misinformed or purposefully misleading readers". There is plainly illegal activity in those emails, and massive evidence of electoral fraud.

But whatever, it was the blue team that did it, so they get a pass. This is why it's actually good that Trump was elected. Now suddenly everyone cares again about mass deportation, war crimes, lobbying, etc. Now that we have an out-of-the-closet fascist as president, legislation like the 2012 NDAA doesn't seem like such a good idea anymore does it blue team?

It's actually more likely to happen than ever:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...

But, ditching the electoral college is only a small part of the solution to the core problems in US politics.

The guy you're laughing at is about 65 years old. I know nothing about Dennis Cooper, but people of that age are sometimes just not tech savvy. And based on what I've seen of his response to the situation, he never responded in the way you mischaracterized him above. Why is your first response to "laugh your ass off" when something unfortunate happens to someone else, even if that misfortune was brought about by their own ignorance?

Take a look here, his response is actually very thoughtful:

https://www.pixartprinting.co.uk/blog/dennis-cooper-erased-b...

I would still rather have sex with real women, 18 hours a day. I'm sure VR porn will be big, but I don't think it will be possible to perfectly replicate sex without somehow directly intercepting signals to the brain. Standing there with a VR headset and some vibrating thing wrapped around my genitals will never compare to the real thing.

> propaganda (e.g. Zunzuneo)

Here's a more recent example of the US government creating propaganda abroad and covertly embedding it into the local media:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/us-government-pentag...

> I like to believe that there's a lot of savvy and affluent couples out there who are buying either moissanites instead of diamonds and choosing not to tell their friends or family about it to avoid the social stigma.

This is so foreign to me. Why do people care? It's just a way to signal wealth and really not much different than a bride price (a cultural practice that American expats are quick to criticize in an Asian culture, for reference). My girlfriend / future-wife and I will get matching steel rings or something similar, like my parents have. She's not American so she was thrilled by that idea. I already told her I won't wear it most of the time because rings are annoying, and again that was no problem at all.

I would run the other way if someone is resolute about buying a diamond, after everything that is known about the diamond industry. It means either that person is totally ignorant of the world around them, or doesn't care about making a positive impact with their lifestyle choices.

Oi... wrong about that it looks like. I could swear I read something a long time ago about this that said it was at least part of an internal investigation, but maybe not. He was a veteran of the USAF and a military policemen at the time, and one of the higher officers asked him to do the drill apparently.

One of the most disturbing stories that I don't hear mentioned is of Sean Baker, who was working undercover for the USAF as part of an attempt to gauge the abuses at Guantanamo. Baker was beaten by the guards so badly that he got a serious brain injury.

"In January 2003, Baker was ordered by an officer at Guantanamo to play the role of a prisoner in a training drill. [...] The soldiers in the reaction force were operating under the impression that he was a genuine detainee that had assaulted a sergeant. [...] Although Baker shouted out the safeword ("red") he had been given to stop the exercise and stated that he was a U.S. soldier, the soldier continued beating Baker's head against the floor and choking him. Only after he ripped his prison jumpsuit in the struggle, revealing that he was wearing a battle dress uniform and government-issue boots underneath, did the beating stop."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Baker_(soldier)

In the short term I'd recommend doing relaxed dynamic stretching on your wrist and fingers every few hours, massage your forearms by hand or with a roam roller, and consider wearing wrist bands if that's where some of your pain is. It's also helpful to readjust the height you sit at, or try standing. When you do start typing again, buy a timer or get a digital one and take regular breaks.

I've had this problem too after spending a lot of time on the computer, even to the point of buying a pair of wrist braces that I wore at night. Some kind of compression with a brace, band, or tape is usually helpful for injuries involving smaller muscles, ligaments and tendons. More importantly though, I'd recommend not getting to the point I was at. I read about many people who injured themselves far worse, requiring surgery and major lifestyle and work-related changes. The complete answer is much more holistic, but sleep and rest will help you the most.

Have you worked in education?

By self-directed, I don't mean let the kids roam the streets. For example the teacher and student would decide on a project individually or in a small group, then pick any resources the student might need ahead of time and limit them to those resources in a quiet room. This should include access to a Linux laptop with educational websites and online apps whitelisted. Being self-directed is an important skill to have in life, and I'm surprised that so many people here are mystified as to why kids and adults alike don't have it -- because most school systems don't teach it!

I agree completely. I did reread GP's post later and notice he probably didn't imply what I thought he did.

There are few things more vital than education, and that will pay back to society at a higher rate, so by all means spend a ton on teachers and schools (there's a pretty obvious candidate for reallocation of funds in US discretionary spending).

But, I think the approach to education that I glossed over earlier affords its own distinct cost-cutting opportunities, for instance the textbook mafias being rendered obsolete by digitized, open-source equivalents. And teachers will have some of their time freed up too by letting problem kids like me find my own educational pursuits, because I did that naturally as a kid. I also intensely hated sitting in desk 7 hours a day, frequently reprimanded for caving to my compulsion to talk to all the other kids around me. And then there are the many American kids with serious problems at home, who would've benefited moreso from just talking more casually with a teacher and watching Youtube videos all day, rather than pushing them into a classroom. Watch behavioral problems in general improve if you have kids exercising and socializing more, freeing up more time for teachers to work in small groups or individually. And you really don't need experts for anything below 10-12 year old kids.

Whereas your guy didn't say what he was going to do, and it was ugly regardless.

I said already that I've worked for a year in a school! I worked full-time as a reading tutor in an elementary school, and taught summer school. I've also taught abroad, classrooms with 30+ students. I taught tennis to groups of teenagers for like 6 summers!

Sure, and I'd love to pay teachers better too! But why does what I'm envisioning even necessitate an increased number of teachers? The teachers should tend toward being generalists, and part of the school's hiring process would be to attain a mixture of teachers whose skills cover the greatest breadth of subjects possible, but otherwise I don't see any major obstacles to implementing this sort of system. It would be simpler than the convoluted mess that exists now.

Agreed! I'd like to see a wide variety of ever-improving open source curricula, and students given minimal structure in their day -- maybe two hours max of formal lecture in core subjects, three hours for socializing / lunch / exercise / play, and most importantly three plus hours of self-directed learning time. Teachers would act more as supervisors and check in frequently to give feedback and gauge their student's progress.

Unfortunately American schools are moving in the opposite direction, with massive emphasis on teacher evaluations, discipline, standardized testing, and about 20 minutes daily of highly supervised and sanitized recess (source: twelve years attending public schools and one year more recently working in one).

Thanks, clarification appreciated!

> History has a historically thin line between "these people are bad" and "these people are bad and we should round them up and kill them". When people actively use the rhetoric of the latter, I listen and grow concerned...

This makes sense. Sorry for being overly confrontational in my last post. I do agree that the language and tactics used by the far-left (which I'm very much a part of) can be silly or even slimy at times. I certainly took issue with the language that liberals used to describe conservatives in this most recent election.

Overall though, knowing quite a few people from college who are stereotypical SJWs, they are mostly harmless. A lot of them really do have a rough past, and aren't the privileged "special snowflakes" that the alt-right makes them out to be. Many people like the idea of a trigger warning, for example, because they really did experience something deeply traumatic, but you'll never discover that about them by hurling insults. And also many of these people tend to be socially awkward, and when I see people lashing out online about "tumblrinas" or whatever, it just feels like a continuation of the bullying that these people probably faced in childhood.

The Ars article discusses Playpen / Operation Pacifier in the first sentence. But you're saying that these 23 other sites only displayed an error message and distributed malware? Ok, but still, the FBI did in at least one instance distribute child porn, and that was mentioned in the article at hand, so I don't see why my analogy is out of place in this discussion.

True, but 1) I question heavily whether this operation will actually prevent a greater amount of future viewing, and 2) would anybody accept that sort of means-justify-ends approach in the context of my initial analogy of continuing to operate a child prostitution ring?

> If no one ever used heroin, we wouldn't criminalize it (as indeed we don't criminalize selling other random chemicals).

In a way [0], the US does preemptively ban chemicals, regardless of whether that chemical has even been synthesized or used recreationally yet.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Analogue_Act

Source? This Reason article says differently:

"Operation Pacifier is reminiscent of reverse drug stings in which cops pose as dealers to catch retail buyers, except that in this case the FBI actually disseminated contraband. It did not merely pose as a distributor of child pornography; it was a distributor of child pornography. During the two weeks the FBI was running The Playpen, about 100,000 people visited the site, accessing at least 48,000 photos, 200 videos, and 13,000 links. In fact, the FBI seems to have made The Playpen a lot more popular by making it faster and more accessible."

http://reason.com/blog/2016/08/31/the-fbi-distributes-child-...

Sorry, I should have been clearer. If you accept the idea that a child is re-victimized by the viewing of child pornography (which, as I understand it, is one of the justifications for the criminalization of viewing child pornography), then I don't see how what the FBI did can be considered acceptable.

Here's mine...

The FBI discovers a child prostitution ring and infiltrates it, but keeps running it and forces the children to have sex for a month to ensnare more customers.

If one accepts the idea of re-victimization, then I'm not sure how what the FBI did here can be considered acceptable, or any different than the analogy above.

> hardware rendering to work with cinnamon

I had this exact same problem with an Asus and a Lenovo while running Cinnamon. Try a different GUI and I think you'll be satisfied. Cinnamon is nice, but it still uses far more resources than most other popular Linux GUIs and doesn't run well on certain systems.

> The exact opposite of not being politically engaged and having the few times you've seen the term be in a positive usage...

Not sure what you're trying to say here.

I honestly don't care that much about any of this. I know that there are people like you who hate "SJWs", but really what a weird thing to get riled up over. My political engagement has been entirely contrary to the war-profiteering, plundering, pro-corporate elites that run the world, but by all means you keep going after those evil college kids and feminists!

> Anyone who actually spends any amount of time in the political sphere where SJW run rampant is aware of this.

I have been reading up on politics or engaged in political discussion online for maybe ~4 hours daily for the past two years. I have never seen "SJW" used non-pejoratively, and I've never seen anyone own the term and apply it to themselves. Not saying you're wrong, but it's not nearly as common as you're pretending.