ItendToDisagree

Or they have given up on voting for a shit sandwich vs a dirty douche. Either way you vote you lose.

This covers a vast group of people in the united states.

As George Carlin (loosely) said: If you voted for the people in power, you have no right to complain when they do things you dont like. You voted them in. I on the other hand... Did not vote for them and have every right to complain about the mess you made and I had nothing to do with.

Ok lets call it a fad like Video Phones in the late 80s and early 90s? This demo was literally "Skype on your face with cartoons". Where was the innovation? Pretty (pre-recorded) backgrounds?

uh... We're easily on 3rd-4th gen hardware at this point.

1st gen: Those VR stations that used to be in malls 2nd gen: Shitty headsets you could attach to a genesis/snes 3rd gen: Occulus (you may be considering this first gen?) 4th gen: vive/fove/[Sony/Samsung/Google]VR

Think again!!! http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4311234/ Alcohol is incredibly bad for your body dose by dose compared to marijuana.

Sidenote (not from this study): Mushrooms are supposedly the least harmful to the human body... Who'da thought?

Queues are a regular thing in private healthcare also... Your anecdotal evidence is just that... Anecdotal.

Creditors also get their power from the ability to jail those who do not pay debts (threat of force). These debts are often unknown to the debtors. This is becoming an increasingly large problem in the United States.

It in fact does not require their labor. It requires effective taxation of land and distribution of said taxation effectively.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism "... revenues from a land value tax (LVT) can reduce or eliminate existing taxes on labor and investment that are unfair and inefficient. Some Georgists also advocate for the return of surplus public revenue back to the people through a basic income or citizen's dividend."

We are all Prussians!

Fairly sure that most Americans of Japanese ancestry consider themselves both Japanese and American. Same goes for most other ethnicity. Does that make them any LESS American?

Many Puerto Ricans consider themselves both Puerto Rican AND American. This is especially interesting given Puerto Rico is an American territory yet it is considered a different cultural group.

Germans of Turkish descent are in fact still Turkish regardless of generation. Similarly Germans of Chinese descent are still Chinese while also being German.

Your final sentence is the nut. The rest of it is just discrimination (small d) of people into cultural groups.

(Edit: As an aside... Is Doner German culture? Or is it Turkish?)

So your motto is "Fuck you. Got mine." right? Should get a bumpersticker printed up!

Yes. I'm sure all of the Germans of Turkish familial origin would agree... They aren't Germans. Even though they were born in Germany and speak German.

You can be non-Caucasian and still be German. That is what you were getting at right?

As pointed out... The difference being that, in the largest majority of cases, said middle aged (any aged) people were not involved in the atrocious act they are lampooning.

As George Carlin said "anything can be funny" (even rape). But its going to be incredibly hard for a convicted rapist to come up with a joke, about the rape he committed, that is funny, doesn't offend basically everyone, or make him come off as a total insensitive twat.

Do you see the difference?

Agreed they are just people. The difference in this case being that they are being insensitive (even celebrating) about something they did which had negative nation wide (world wide) implications. Which is slightly different than the average person's drunken antics at a party.

For a different (arguably larger) example, if someone is making light of (or celebrating) genocide/slavery/some atrocity (that they or their compatriots caused) and it comes out, that is very different than pictures of Obama/Zuckerberg/Guy down the street being blackout drunk or even doing drugs at a party.

I get that feeling as well. There seem to be a lot of people responding to these types of articles who have 'stars in their eyes' and think that they'll be able to join the 'old boys club' if they just work hard enough, or get lucky enough (though some also seem to deny that luck has anything to do with success which baffles me).

The reverence for the wealthy in America really is a whole other weird thing. America doesn't have the history (in time span) to really have many historical heros other than those who were wealthy enough to 'do things' so we have to make due with what we've got.

That is not to say that a great deal of any given place's heros of the past were not also wealthy in their time though.

Identifying the problem is actually pretty easy and you mention it in your first sentence in the parent. It has been going on since at least the Romans.

Money begets power, power protects money.

There really doesn't seem to be much you can do about it... If you 'throw the bums out' you get a whole new set of bums. Its a terrible thing but also a possible fact of life.

One thing I would like to see though... Those who get caught actually getting punished... Even if it is just for 'revenge among kings' purposes. The fact that no one really gets in any serious trouble, for doing the sorts of things you mentioned, shows the system is really broken, rather than the things happening (because they will regardless).

To some extent I agree... but this seems wrong:

It's a testament to the strength of our ideals that government agents can tap your phone and hear you say how much you hate them, and yet still not lift a finger against you

Parallel Construction is widely abused (or so it has been reported). So while it may not be about, 'government haters', and they may not be publicly abusing the information collected from wiretapping, it is being abused none the less.

Honestly you frequently pay 'more' when you decline services. In my area Comcast at one point was charging more for just internet than it was for Internet+Cable+phone. It seemed that they were just looking to make sure that you were 'locked in' to all of their services.

I remember around the the start of the consumer DSL era this being a thing. At some point the Telcos just started undercutting all the competition and/or deprioritizing installs for non-telco purchasers.

This is pretty crazy impressive! The performance gain particularly. Is that much of a gain expected?

For fun replace 'psychology' with 'quantum physics'. Is it also not science?

1. Contradicts some natural laws

2. Is not explained by the natural world except in reference to itself (often due to changes beyond a certain scale)

3. Not necessarily testable against the empirical world (yet)

4. Always up for debate (so good there) as is psychology.

5. Falsifiable or not depending on your stance, in a similar way to psychology, in that there is a lack of complete understanding. The swan example in the wiki article could not be applied for instance because all of the facts and observations are not available (again... yet.)

As for Kahneman (and many other psychologists), if you believe that he starts with the conclusion and refuses to change it regardless of the evidence developed during the course of the investigation, you may have skipped some very important parts of Thinking Fast and Slow. The book in question goes over many examples where the outcomes do not fit what is expected and lead to discovery.

Not arguing exclusively against what you are saying, just pointing out that there are fields that utilize the scientific method, which by their very nature are not entirely beholden to the current 'laws of science' often because their laws have not been fully laid down or explored yet.

Medical science moved past simply treating based on symptoms due to a great deal of work. Who's to say psychology can not do the same? There is still much to learn.

Why all the name calling? The issue may not be all about corp hating hippy helicopter moms but something more important to everyone.

The issue (to me) really seems to be that a company is using images they do not own, that depict people's children (who cannot legally consent to their pictures being used or any other contract), for their own profit.

Regardless of if this is Facebook or anyone else it seems like there is an issue with the company claiming the right to use other peoples images for advertisements.

I seem to remember a big flap about Instagram claiming they own the rights to peoples photos in the recent past. In this case it seems like there is the additional issue of the photos picturing people's children.

Edit: I understand putting the text "so and so Likes this company" next to something if they actually 'liked' it. But the article implies that they are using the person's image in a custom advertisement in the feed.

I'm not sure if they do ask that. Would be a good work around for them I guess.

Question:

IANAL but isn't it illegal (grounds for a lawsuit at least) to use the image of someone, who is too young to provide legal consent, in an advertisement without their legal guardian's express written consent?

I could have swore that was a thing on a higher than state level but maybe I'm wrong? Like I didn't think you could make a 'settlement' and then legally avoid this sort of thing in the future.

Isn't this quote all sorts of legally indefensible? When did non-adults ever have the ability to 'represent' anything in the absence of their guardian?

any user under 18 “represents” that her parent agrees to let Facebook use her image in ads.

The public gets to vote on these policies? Where and when?

And no "the person you vote for does", or any other wording of such, is not a decent response to this for a multitude of reasons.

Totally agreed! With the exception of The Founders there isn't much competition out there besides The Q. But the Federation needs to have LARPers to LARP with the rest of the civs right? :D

Oh agreed on all counts. Was just pointing out you need to have at least a like minded set of people to 'do battle' with the other LARPers!

Also I thought the Klingons were part of the Federation at one point during DS9 era? Or perhaps that was just an alliance...

Sometimes the crappiest job is being part of Engineering. It could be super fascinating at times... At others you just work the transporter.

Google the Chief O'Brien At Work comic series for a laugh.

Bringing up Section 31 is a good pull!

There are many enemies in the universe so Star Fleet is important. To name a few there are The Borg, The Makers, The Cardassians, The Romulans, And even the Klingons who are federation members.

War-like cultures would still exist even if the Federation believes they themselves have moved beyond that type of thing.

If there is some day in the future where wars/battles are fought because the people involved were doing what they love which is LARPing... I'd be a very happy and amused person.

That is a beautiful, beautiful thought and plot device for a Sci-Fi book. Thank you for placing that into my mind.

Great link!

One thing that always bothered me about The Federation was how they treated certain worlds and members.

Recall the TNG episode Journey's End where the Enterprise is sent to remove what amounted to some 'Space Native Americans' from a planet the Federation had given to Cardassians in a treaty. The inhabitants in question were members of the Federation (with all the rights that was supposed to confer) but they were (going to be) forced off the planet. The only way they could stay on their planet was to give in to the treaty and make themselves inhabitants of what was then a Cardassian planet (and arguably Cardassian property).

Then there is the TNG movie Insurrection. Where a group of settlers who are not Federation citizens were going to be transported off of their planet against their will. But Picard decides that they deserve to stay on the planet so the Enterprise destroys the Federation/alien ships that were sent to do the relocation (among other things and aliens).

So why is it the Federation wont fight for actual Federation members, but they will fight for some random civilization because of 'reasons'?

Ok I'm done with my Star Trek rant and feel like a terrible nerd now. Thank you for letting me vent and for the link. Nerd gland expressed.

Edit: For a laugh Google the Red Letter Media Harry Plinket review of Insurrection which goes deeper into this.