shaftoe

There's always "that guy".

Your description of drifting apart from friends resonates with me. I've felt the same thing, where it's increasingly forced to care about people I no longer can connect with.

I'm married and my wife has gone through a similar transformation. We're also fairly introverted, in the sense that social situations leave us feeling tired afterwards. The funny thing is that time together is like being alone: it isn't exhausting.

The world doesn't exist for anyone's personal comfort, nor should it. This is the argument of luddites, nobility, and the lazy.

The slave metaphor makes no sense: slaves have a master who cares for his investment. Free people have none and must care for and provide for themselves. To assume they cannot is degrading.

Where do they work that still has a strict dress code?

Maybe I'm just in the tech industry bubble, but this seems extraordinarily strange for interns, who likely weren't external sales or consultants or one of the few holdovers where suits and sport coats are still a thing.

I'll be that guy. Forcing a person to do an action against their will is morally repulsive. Even if that action is to be a decent person.

"In 2016, he was the victim of a crime, but feared calling police to his home. What was he afraid they would see?" :)

To a certain extent, we have to live our lives and damn the consequences.

I have to admit that I clicked this expecting to read about a fictional Los Angeles detective.

With April 15 coming, it wouldn't be hard to convince me that there's no reason to fund THAT broken organization either.

Read other sources on the history of the sack of Benin. This article romanticizes a city with human sacrifices and slave trade.

From Wikipedia's article on the Benin Massacre:

But the way Benin treated its slaves and the public display of large quantities of human remains hardened British attitudes towards Benin's rulers. The trader James Pinnock wrote that he saw 'a large number of men all handcuffed and chained' there, with 'their ears cut off with a razor'. T.B Auchterlonie described the approach to the capital through an avenue of trees hung with decomposing human remains. After the 'lane of horrors' came a grass common 'thickly stewn with the skulls and bones of sacrificed human beings.'

No state power is unlimited and all state powers end where individual rights begin.

Any state that cannot be trusted to be responsible should be disbanded. See the US Declaration of Independence.

He also ignores that cows were domesticated from Aurochs before the Bronze Age. Aurochs were as wild as American Bison and (depending on the variant) were the same size or larger.

Hillary, illegally, maintained a private email server for official correspondence and transmitted classified materials over it. The email server was hacked and the contents stolen and later published.

She is currently under investigation by the FBI for this.

The profits go to the owner, whatever that is. The employees chose the company (and implicitly the ownership structure) when they began employment. It's not like citizenship where one is born into the situation and the contract is mythical; they had to sign one.

Do you not believe in the sanctity of property rights?

Because I can't walk up to a stranger, do something (for them or otherwise), and demand payment.

Why does anyone else?

And without the production of the individuals and businesses that exist in a society, the state would have no ability to skim off the top and spend that money.

I believe that the state (which isn't "society", it is the governing body of a region of land), has no right to a share of anything that is not voluntarily granted or contractually agreed upon. Believing in a higher entity with more rights than any individual is verging on something akin to feudalism.

Maybe this is a telling indication on myself, but the pictures in your first link look significantly stranger and off than the picture in the onion article, text aside.

Formal wear has basically evolved into a costume that is used for specific events (weddings, funerals, and the like). It's hard to imagine someone dressing like that every day, with the complicated layers of nonfunctional and expensive items. Maybe that was the point.

Casual wear has largely evolved into clothing easier to mass produce and fit close-enough off a shelf. Paired with a general decrease in cost and clothing is less of an investment than it once was.

"Check your privilege" is also a concise way of telling someone that, based upon factors of which they have little or no control, whatever opinion they are expressing has little or no value because they do not or cannot understand viewpoints from a different set of experiences.

Anotherwords, it's passive-aggressive bullying and belongs in the same category as telling a woman to stop worrying her pretty little head about such issues.

Does Canada have no protections for freedom of speech?

As an American, the idea of muzzling a scientist is strange. I had thought Canada was more free than this.

So, instead of increasing demand we decrease supply by having people work and thus produce less?

Simplifying that, we will gain more by producing less?

The only reason anyone owns anything is because of government regulations?

That's an interesting take on the philosophy behind private property rights.

Mine don't understand why live TV cannot be paused or fast forwarded.

The first time they encountered a commercial, they became very frustrated as to why their show was no longer playing and they couldn't do anything about it.

So, you have the right to tell someone what they're allowed to charge for access to their own property?

Neal Stephenson covered this in The Diamond Age. People formed a massively parallel computer that performed computations in their blood stream with nanites and shared data between hosts via "fluid transfers."

You generally can't do that and cook in a home.

This entire article seems to carry the premise that lifestyle decisions are a thing to adjust with social policy, as if people are children of the bureaucracy.

Design considerations for handguns include:

* Firing with the opposite hand

* Firing with hands slick with fluid (blood, sweat, mud, whatever).

* Reloading and firing with a single hand available.

* Firing with broken or missing digits.

The world of gunfighting is a great deal messier than fingerprint scanners can handle.

I have kids and guns and I don't trust this technology to work when it needs to work, both in a defensive scenario and with my kids. Keep-It-Simple-Stupid.

Basic gun safety dictates that a gun is always loaded, even if your fingerprints don't match.

There's a theory behind handguns like Glocks that manual safety switches are too complicated when you're experiencing the intense response of a defensive shooting. Taking gloves and jewelry off, adjusting your grip, or the nightmare of having to screw with electronics is just asking for problems.

While he's lambasting a caricature, it is a caricature that exists for a reason. For example, when is the last time anyone saw a street protest and took anything about it seriously?

Politics is mostly trench warfare and startups are cavalry raids.

I imagine it's not arbitrary. They're charging what they can get for renting their property.

I think you miss the point. Of course someone with a stick against the NKVD is at a serious disadvantage. Of course Stalin didn't hesitate to murder millions.

The point is the bitter shame at having gone quietly and meekly to the camps. The regret at having not fought to defend oneself.

The counter example would be the Warsaw ghetto.