gotthemwmds

WA's current Gov. Jay Inslee's opponent in this fall's election is running a great ad of him sitting in a car, stuck in traffic on what looks like the eastside of Seattle (aka Bellevue), promising that get "gets it" and that he will end gridlock, without offering a single solution.

He is against ST-3.

I chuckle every time it comes on.

I thought I could do that but s/AT&T/TMobile. 3 TMobile retail stores have refused to unlock my phone. It's still unopened in a box. I paid full retail price for it and have never had a TMobile account, which is where they get confused.

I just want a phone that works. All of those words are confusing.

Seriously though I showed up at Apple with a credit card and a SIM card 48 hours ago and they were not able to sell me a phone. To make it even weirder, I had the (unopened) phone I wanted in a bag, but it is a "locked" one from TMobile. I thought that was ancient history.

One day Apple will want my money!

Can you please go with me to the Seattle or Bellevue Apple Store and help me make this transaction? I went to both over the weekend and things did not go well. They didn't seem to understand the basic process you outlined above.

I use all of Apple's cloud services and am perfectly happy. Can you elaborate? I'm curious.

My only problem with Apple right now is they won't sell me an unlocked iPhone7 Plus. Every single person I talk to at Apple gives me a different story on how to buy one, but if I show up at the store with money, they won't sell it to me, or even reserve it. I even offered the store to just hold on to my credit card for a week or whatever and mail it back to me. They thought I was crazy! ;)

that's why mine is next to a tv that sits on broadcast tv all day -- confuse em

Interesting website with the potential to present a lot of information nicely, but I do not see the "simple" part of it. Everything about the UI and even the stat displays seems confusing to me. Why do I have a 0% compatibility rating with all of my local representatives, who I actually sort of like? I am sure I am misinterpreting these things, but there is no context. Mouse-over explanations for every single datum? Simple to me means about 1/3 as complicated as the site currently is.

Another problem is bill names tells us nothing about what is actually in the bill. How about sorting them based on who sponsored and voted for them? Then we can see highly partisan bills and bills that actually cross the aisle a little. That'd be interesting.

Anyway, I hope some of that is useful. Overall though it is a great "Show HN" site.

I hope no one is wondering why the DEA made the unconscionable act of not re-classifying marijuana as a Schedule II drug.

There are so many tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people whose livelihood is tried up in arresting people for drug crimes that shouldn't be illegal in the first place. Think about all those DEA agents making $100k a year plus their pensions, all those judges and public defenders, all those private prisons full of people doing possession charges. All those local cops employed to keep an eye on them during probation.

It's absolutely disgusting and ruins peoples' lives on a daily basis, but totally expected behavior in a society that only cares about money (aka capitalism).

I am sort of surprised there isn't a lot more backlash against the DEA for this horrible move last week, but then again, the pro-pot legalization movement isn't all that impressive either. The most annoying thing about marijuana is fucking idiot stoners representing the brand.

edit: and don't even get me started on the huge amount of needless deaths in northern Mexico directly caused by the War on Drugs. Go read 2666 if you want a sliver of an idea of how bad it is there. But hey, to the average American, they are brown people so they don't care. Disgusting.

It's long been known by people who play the drug game that the authorities only care about lining their own pockets.

This is an anecdotal story, but could be "New Yorker level" vetted if someone tried.

About 20 years ago my friend John was living in Salt Lake City, Utah -- where he grew up -- and had rented a house in CA for the sole purpose of growing pot in. He spent almost 5 years bringing about 50-100lbs of high potency pot into Utah in his Prius 2-3 times per month, making countless trips back and forth, before his first contact with the authorities.

They pulled him over about a block away from his house and told him they had been watching him and knew what he had in the car -- about 50lbs of pot in duffel bags. He was arrested and charged with... wait for it... failing to pay taxes on the marijuana. He was out of jail within 6 hours.

His lawyer told him he had three choices: pay the taxes, to the tune of about $350k, or fight it, or plead guilty. He wrote a check for $350k and never heard from the authorities again. He continued to do this for another 10 years and was never bothered again. Strictly pot.

You may wonder how he was able to write that check without raising eyebrows. A few of his clients were business owners who had him on the payroll (taxes and all) to pay for their regular supply of pot. Plus he was "an independent artist" and filed 1099-Ts every quarter via his accountant. Through these methods he made plenty of money on paper, and obviously lived very cheaply (in an apartment). He has still never had a real job and retired at 35, with no record what so ever.