muhfuhkuh

A travel card that uses Visa Infinite is your best bet here. I have the Capital One Venture X and one of my prime use cases for it (aside from travel upgrades and points transfer) is electronics purchases.

But it does mean "better than the current guy", though. So, he is better. Better than the man before (who started the wars in the ME, but in the countries who didn't plan and execute 9/11 oddly), and better than the man after (who pals around and holds globes together with the country where 80% of the 9/11 terrorists were born).

A pharma company was the largest donor to an anti-marijuana legalization movement in AZ.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/03/big-pharma-m...

But if we cut military, they'd then be much more fiscally responsible and not have to admit that they'd "lost" trillions of dollars that they can't account for every, oh, decade or so.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/us-army-audit-account...

Oh, you mean in America? Oh, that ingenuity gets you arrested as a youth on the National Mall.

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-06-2...

Ironically, the head of the Dept. of Ed. invested over a hundred million dollars in a debt collection agency that tacks on these usurious fees and rates.

It's like people don't remember that there was a president that called a press conference, spoke to the people, put on a jacket, got in a helicopter, and flew away from the White House forever.

>who uses Snapchat?

You're kidding, right? It passed 300 million monthly users almost a year ago.

We're all tech fuddy-duddies here, still stuck on linkedin and email FWDs, we don't know nuttin' bout dat snap.

> 200000 household income.

You realize the median household income is 50000, right? So, in a small city you have to make 4x the national median to just survive?

Wow, I know the West Coastians live in a well-protected self-imagined bubble, but this comment really brings it to light.

"If someone broke the law trying to get their next meal they would be prosecuted."

Yet, you can't arrest an obese person for possession of Big Macs. You can't bust them eating a rasher of bacon mid-bite and throw them in a cage.

So, addiction to drugs _is_ a criminal issue. They are not treated in the same way. That needs to change.

I live in the Triangle, and driven to such far-flung locales in NC as Advance, Roxboro, and Eden. The people I've interacted with (however limited) are ardently political in the conservative direction for reasons other than fiscal.

Many are hunters, or serve(d) or have family in the armed forces, or just grew up around guns. They remember, before the big-box stores came along, when the town hardware and general stores sold shotguns, rifles, and ammo. They see the liberals in SF Chicago and NYC wanting to stop their multi-generationally deep and rich tradition in hunting and defending and baring arms. If there is one rail that should never be touched, one single-issue that will move that type of voter, it is preserving the 2nd amendment. I mean, sure, you don't have to worship it and Hillary won't have to sit there holding an AKM-74 with 100-round drum mag to pander for votes, but just don't go after it with such vigor and I can bet dollars to donuts that you can win over at least 40% of the voters 1 hour outside the Triangle.

They vote republican not for their non-existent tax breaks or wait in bated breath for their drip of the trickle-down. They're savvy enough that that junk has been tried all over the country and has mostly failed (in the case of Kansas, utterly and miserably with negative job growth). They just don't want you to mess with their traditions.

I mean, these folks don't even care to fight over marriage equality, either. You don't see much gay-bashing in these areas. They simply don't care. Ditto abortion. Sure, there are ardent bible-thumpers, but on the whole, they are nuanced enough to know that we don't want a nation filled with unwanted children.

So, really, don't mess with THEIR rights (guns), and they won't vote against their own interests. I can't get why a lot of democrats (both politicians and voters) can't see that. I _know_ that democrats and liberals are about as far from single-issue voters as you can get, so they'll be kinda-sorta bummed that guns aren't the big focus for legislation, but it would certainly NOT be the end of the world.

>In a free market, education would be cheaper (you think the government subsidies, grants, scholarships, etc are doing anything but raise the price of tuition?)

Government subsidies, grants and scholarships were absolutely available in massive supply even 20 years ago, when annual college tuition for in-state public schools averaged about 10k (including room & board and books). The student loans didn't make it more expensive; the influx of students did. It's not the kids fault they were sold a bill of goods by their boomer parents, the media, and even employers about college being the only way to avoid fast food or ditch digging as a career.

>I truly believe that America's economic situation would be improved by those two things: increased transparency, and more freedom in the market.

Then, why is life-saving medicine that USED to be relatively cheap so needlessly expensive? That wasn't government regulation. Turing pharma with Daraprim, KV pharma with Makena, then doxycycline, etc., the list goes on. I think this is one place the government should have (and could have, actually) stepped in but didn't. The invisible hand is so darn arbitrary. Makes computers and flat-screens so dern cheap, but something that can save our life? Nah. Go figure!

Another example. I don't recall diamonds being anything but compressed coal. I don't think it's regulated much if at all (I don't recall the GIA being a government agency). There is no regulated market for it like there is gold and other precious metals. Yet, I'll be damned if it isn't expensive as hell. Why?

And, that's the routine setup. Some games require you to crack it using a separate application. Others require you to disable networking during the install process to make sure it doesn't phone home. Then others disallow multiplayer because it requires logging into the game servers, which authenticate for legit copies. The pirate group reroutes multiplayer servers to a pirate server to play.

And, this was like 5 years ago before I joined Steam. It was a convoluted mess.

I find it interesting the amount of sudden vitriol by some of the formerly "free market" supporters that thought that the terrible job market for non-STEM majors would never, ever hit the technology industry. Those that decry artistry and creative industry jobs as beneath them and their money, those that felt working class people were just too lazy to find "good" jobs, and generally feeling apathy if not schadenfreude for those suffering from the corporate recovery of 2010-present.

Those same free marketers also agreed with the destruction of unions and protections like minimum wage. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, look at the comments. "H1-Bs are depressing prices" have replaced "why should I pay for music and movies" and "any industry that relies on ads should die".

Well, now with the tables turned, why should working class Americans and artists and content creators give one shit that the technology industry is suffering from "depressed salaries". Suffer with the rest of America.

It's just another one of the pile of vitriol against electric vehicles. Day after day, whenever someone mentions Tesla or Prius Plug-ins or the Nissan Leaf or whatever, it seems to kick in a auto-response of "what is the ROI of electric vehicles? You'll have to drive a million miles to get your investment back!" (as if buying a new non-exotic car is any kind of financial instrument). They also always talk about how many fossil fuels it takes to manufacture (or even charge) the electric vehicle, ignoring the fact that it not only takes the same amount to make the ICE car but it still has to run _directly_ on fossil fuels. When all of these arguments are refuted, the last argument is always about how cars sound better with gas engines and the rumble and other appeals to manliness or whatever rubbish.

There is a very large contingent that wants the status quo and either hires astroturfers outright to spread FUD, or influences opposition via media/ad buys. The rest opposed to electric are just old-school fuddy-duddies and the kids they've managed to influence. And, I've seen these arguments play out on everywhere from car specialist forums, YouTube comment sections on Teslas racing ICE cars, to right here on Hacker News when talking about electric cars.

This is never brought up with any kind of seriousness, and the lack of discussion baffles me. I don't understand how we talk about salaries when the top 5% usually do not draw a major salary. They live off capital gains from selling stocks and bonds. It just seems to be a 3rd rail that is untouchable, neither here nor in conservative or liberal blogosphere. It's always about that progressive 1040 taxation.

That, or perhaps, instituting a 3% transaction tax for every damn unit of debt or equity sold. Whether its a broker or bot, tax it.

But, of course, most of the ruling class wants to talk about "skin in the game" and advocating regressive sales or property tax.

He was the oracle of sound writing practice. I studied the example page[1] from his book with his hand-written edits like it was ancient cuneiform. Always the consummate perfectionist in the professional sense of the word, Zinsser was part of the reason I was a technical writer for nearly 15 of my professional years.

1. http://i.imgur.com/UGWP4vi.jpg

>the government and everyone else demand people have residences

Haha, got me. Nice one. Trolololol.

Homelessness is a basic physiological necessity, like food, water, and others in the Maslow's Hierarchy.

So, yes, it's more important than the industrial complex or "autism" (what the hell does that even mean? What about "autism"?)

>and are homeless because of their vices and inability or distaste for adapting to society

I knew when you said that you were just a troll. Most homeless have mental problems and many are veterans with shellshock.

>I was unemployed and this poor for almost 2 years

How about born this poor? How about 2 generations of this poor? How about "there are no bootstraps" poor? That is 24% of Alabama and 20% of West Virginia (I always preemptively point those two out to be fair to both major American races, so that no "it's all the Black folks fault they're poor" shenanigans come out here as they do in other discussions about poverty, as West Virginia is nearly 95% white).

>While this won't work if you have absolutely no money and no job

In other words, the very definition of poverty.

So, be born with nothing, with a single mother that works 3 jobs, never sees you for more than 2 of your waking hours as you get tossed from one strange neighbor in the trailer park/projects to another, you can't concentrate on studies because teachers don't care that you're hungry at home (not at school, I know they have free lunch programs) because they get paid nothing, you share textbooks in class and can't take them home, you hear gunshots or people fighting next door or carousing all night so you can't sleep, and now you're supposed to graduate, get into college, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and get that juicy Android dev ops manager job in Silicon Valley? Or, as JoeAltmaier says, walk to a better life with rosy opportunities?

Is that how they're supposed to do it?

What kind of talk is that? "Just walk away"? To what, exactly? Homelessness? So, now you're poor, no job, AND homeless. That's not "the kind of thinking" that's needed, either.

Let's all agree that education is the key here, right? Bootstraps and "teaching them to fish", right? Well, how are you going to get anyone to teach in the poor areas when it's losing people to "hitchhike to someplace better"? So, the key to improving the shitty and fraud-filled situation in, say, West Virginia or Alabama, where poverty is like a 1 out of 4 situation, is to leave by foot?

If you've ever been poor (I don't mean "I can't afford the new iPhone" poor, but rather "I have to light candles or not flush the toilet until the 15th when I get my check" poor), then you'd know you can't move if you don't have money. Where would you move to? With what capital to move out? What about breaking your lease (which obviously you pay rent because poor people don't own anythign, you're too poor), and the financial ramifications therof? Now you're "sent to collections" and "final notice red envelope" poor, on top of everything else.

That poor.

You'd better check if you have enough flooz, though.

Ooh, that's right. Stupid Ask toolbar in the Java updates.

Holy moly. Quite possibly the greatest content company I'd never heard of. A lot of those sites I have pleasantly visited at one time or another. Brilliant mix of reference and entertainment and clearly presented with no fluff, scrolling images, multi-click pages or other tricks and BS. I mean, yeah, they've got ads, but how else would they make money?

At my last job, we sat around in the support bullpen trying to outdo each other with our desktops. The more 3D and "Matrix-y" the better. There was so much green phosphor text you'd think you were in a room full of old IBM 3270 CICS terminals.

There are some _single_ financial firms with a trillion under management. Blackrock comes to mind. So it's not a stretch that there are industries in that range.

You know, it unnerves me how forceful and imperative you are about it. In the authors opinion, hedge funds do serve a social purpose: To regulate volatile markets via arbitrage, preventing bubbles on the high end and undervaluation on the low end.

You can't just enforce an arbitrary rule on something as subjective as semantics.

Agreed. However, having gone down that rabbit hole too often, the arguments devolve. One particularly puzzling exchange devolved from my position of "Japan and Korea has ultra high speed Internet, why doesn't the US?" to "population density" on the other side, then to this same argument about Sweden's density, then to "cultural homogeneity" on the other.

That made me pause. "Cultural homogeneity?" I asked. And, the debate devolved into how there are too many minorities in the US and because of that, no one in any position of power wanted to allow everyone universal access because minorities (which I assumed to be Blacks, Mexicans, Asians, etc.) would need too many handouts to get the same speed, which no one would want to pay for. But if it were all-white like Sweden or all-Japanese, etc. it would be fine because it's "for the good of the people".

I just kinda tuned out after that argument. That debate did make strike a nerve, though. I wonder how much "cultural heterogeneity" actually _does_ come into play rather than the tired "population density" argument.

That's so strange, because to hear free-marketers and political armchair warriors speak of it, they placed the blame squarely on dumb homebuyers who couldn't afford their house, President Clinton, Barney Frank, and Fannie&Freddie.

All the talk of the Financial Sector, Credit Default Swaps insured by AIG London advised by Blackstone, and 30:1 leveraging of Mortgage Backed Securities deepening the crisis is met with yawns and allegations of being a socialist hippie who hates business.

Nope, it was the poor people who were too stupid and lazy to afford mortgages who were at fault. They were blamed for the 2008 crisis, and they'll be blamed for this bubble too. Oh, and the Communist Chinese too for good, Xenophobic measure.