yehi

Sure, that's what's great about democracy, we can vote for what the majority wants. I was responding to what cbanek wrote, as it seemed to me that cbanek did not correctly understand some of the pro-lifers viewpoints.

A lot of pro life people feel that actively killing sometime (they consider a fetus alive) is very bad and should be stopped. Where as keeping another person alive (not passively killing them) and happy is the individuals responsibility.

Think about the trolley problem. In one case you passively kill 4 people and in the other case you actively kill 1. Pro life people would probably choose to passively kill 4 while pro choice would probably choose to actively kill 1.

the benefit of languages with cases is that you can switch the order of the sentence without changing the meaning. In those languages I can say "the dog bit the person" and "the (accusative) person bit the (nominative) dog" and it would not change the meaning of the sentence but it would allow me to emphasize one object more.

Does anyone have thoughts on XMPP? If I understand correctly it is a group / private chat protocol similar to email in that there is a protocol that can allow you to communicate to each other. Similar to email there are many companies that offer software that can communicate with any other software using that protocol.

Since it is simply an open protocol if one app gets compromised, users can easily switch to another without having to worry about loosing touch with their contacts.

seeing as most Semitic languages are written without vowels, I would assume that almost all of them have heteronyms

One thing that Google really should do is allow a feature to temporarily give permissions or fake giving permissions. For example, I want to send my location on Whatsapp then I would want it to ask for permissions every time. Similar to how certain websites cannot access my microphone just because I let them do it once, neither should apps.

I can't find that much online in English, but here is a picture of one page of a list of words used during sermons.

https://i.stack.imgur.com/itgeU.jpg

This reminds me of a Rabbi who I forgot his name. There are Jewish communities that like to speak in Yiddish and others where the members do not know Yiddish. There was a Rabbi who wanted to appease to a greater audience by giving his sermons in Yiddish. The only problem was that he didn't speak Yiddish, nor did a lot of people who wanted to hear him. So, he made a list of about 300 Yiddish words and small section about grammar. It was meant for people who knew Hebrew and English (Yiddish is basically German + Hebrew + Russian + Eastern European languages). He then learned how to use all of those words.

The idea was that the Rabbi would only use the 300 words on the list (plus Hebrew, English, and Aramaic for quotes) during his sermon. That way, it wouldn't be to hard for a non-native Yiddish speaker to understand his sermons.

Just renouncing US citizenship costs several thousand dollars in legal fees and could take up to 5 years. What you are suggesting is similar to telling someone who is complaining about rent prices to just buy a house.

I am a citizen of a foreign country, I have a job in that country, I store my money in that country, I buy practically all of my products in that country. Why should the fact that when I was a baby, the US government decided to give me citizenship cause me to pay more taxes (or at least pay more to file) than my neighbor who is not a US citizen?

you're confusing 2 things. before passover, Jews make a declaration claiming that all crumbs and other hametz not found should be like dust.

if however someone had something valuable, like a bottle of whiskey, then they sell it.

I have to disagree. Apart from maybe post WW2 in America, the average person has always had to work much harder than the elite. There were sweatshops, Kings, slavery, and colonialism. If we look at American now, even with all of its issues, it is much better for the middle and lower class than it was 100 years ago.

I think that's because other cultures don't mind telling others that they are busy /s

I'm not from the US but don't IDs require proof of citizenship? I mean, if an illegal immigrant were to try to get a driver license wouldn't they have to prove that they were legally in the US? Or can anyone from any country take a driving test and get a legal American drivers license?

If the later, then I can understand why people are against requiring such an arbitrary form of identification.

Is that a rhetorical question? The reason given for requiring voter IDs (while possibly not the primary one) is to prevent voter fraud. Are you asking if there has every been a case of voter fraud? If so, here is one example [1].

[1] https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/oagnews/release.php?id=...

Before 1940 there are many documents, records, and letters from Jews in Europe. After that there were much less. No country received a huge influx of Jews. Where did they all go?

It seams like they are trying so hard to blame Trump

> he and others suspect the cause is President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric during the campaign and his election,

But then they say things that counter the title

> engineering applications overall are up 3%

and then offer a different more logical theory that can explain it

> international students at public universities pay tuition rates that are much higher than for in-state students.

I wounder when applications have to be sent in, because Trumps temporary ban on 7 countries only happened in January. Is there enough data from then until now to make any sort of correlation between the ban and the amount of applicants? During the campaign he was given an estimate of 0.1% chance of winning. Also, the article wrote that in a school that specifies in oil, only 9% of the foreign applicants are from those Arab countries.

As someone not living in the US, planing on studying for a masters degree, I barely even considered the US. Only the top schools offer funding that makes tuition be next to nothing. Other than those, the unrealistic costs and other issues that have been around with the US for more than one month make studying in Europe much more appealing.

I don't know how many people fall in to the category, but some of the millions of American citizens living abroad may. While it is rare to be prosecuted, legally the fines can quickly pile up if while you are living abroad, you forget to report every cent that you own or partially own abroad.

> Bruce Bueno de Mesquita [...] has made some impressively accurate political forecasts

In stories like these I always like to know how many incorrect predictions they made as well. I mean, if a squid can predict the results of a sports game, how impressive is what Bruce Bueno de Mesquita did?

As an expat let me tell you how screwed I am.

1) Some banks to want to deal with the liabilities of American clients (even dual citizens). There have been many cases were they simply said that all Americans must withdraw all of their money in a month and that they are no longer welcome to open an account [1]

2) I must report ALL of my money located abroad (since I am worth more than $10,000). That includes; bank account, pension fund, joint bank accounts (even with a non-American spouse), tax account after working at least once as a contractor, etc. No free tax software deals with all of that, so I must pay an American tax accountant located in my country a yearly I-am-an-American fee. If there is any mistake I could be fined up to half of everything that I own in America and in my country. [2]

3) Since I am lucky enough to have another citizenship, if I want to get rid of my American one, I will have to pay several thousand dollars to do that. [3] And there have been several cases were it has been more difficult for those people to receive visas to visit America.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/deborahljacobs/2012/07/31/most-f...

[2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2012/06/04/fbar-penal...

[3] http://nomadcapitalist.com/2015/11/16/renounce-fee-relinquis...

Every country is different. You will have to specify what country you are a citizen to, and where you plan on going.

I know that being an American citizen can make it very difficult to live abroad. I am an accidental American and I have to report all of my money that I earn and keep abroad. That means if I have a job and earn a salary, keep a pension fund, have investments, work as a contractor for 1 job and have my spouse's bank account under both our names, I have to report all of that. Seeing as no free software offers a way to do all that I have to pay a yearly I-am-an-American "tax" to an accountant to make sure that everything is filed properly. If any mistake is made I could be fined up to half of the money that I own (not the money that I have in America, but all of the money that I own). If I want to open a bank account, I better hope that my bank in my country decides to bother with all of the liability involved with having an American customer. If not, they can (and some have) simply close my account and tell me to withdraw everything. If I want to start investing through a company such as Schwab, I must declare exactly how I earned all of the money, be limited in the funds that I can buy, and receive less perks.

If anyone else is an American living abroad or who wants to live abroad, feel free to contact me. On the bright side, we still are allowed to vote. That means that I periodically call my representative and let them know that I don't care whether they are Democrat / Republican, Pro-Life / Pro-Choice, like Trump / hate Trump, if they want to repeal these laws preventing Americans living abroad from living a normal life, I will vote for them.

If you are and American who is interested in leaving America or if you already have, feel free to read more here: https://aaro.org/position-papers-2015/taxation-and-financial...

I don't have any stats to back this up, but could it be that immigrants are more law abiding because they have to pass the long and difficult process that verifies them? If the system were to change in such a way that more people can immigrate to the US it seems very likely that a lot of the people who would not be granted citizenship would be the type of people who Americans would not want.

If we look at France or Sweden, two countries who excepted a lot of migrants, we can see that the results are not so good. Sweden is now ranked as the country with the most reported rapes [1] and France has areas where the police are afraid to enter [2] .

Think about immigrations like drugs (medical ones). There are many drugs that can save many peoples lives but are not able to pass the FDA for whatever reason (eg. lack of money). While it is sad that people will die because of that, if most drugs were allowed to be marketed by doctors, many more people could die. Similarly with immigration, currently a lot of people who have the potential of adding a lot of value to America are not allowed in. However, if most people were allowed in, it could cause a lot more damage to America.

[1] https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/pics/large/932.jpg [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-go_area#France

You probably aren't the only one, but I can try to explain the other side.

When you live and work in (let's say) America, you are paying taxes and following the law. If suddenly, anyone could come to America, America would probably experience a huge population increase from Africa and Asia. While some of them may be productive people, there will definitely be a lot of them who will not necessarily follow the law or find useful jobs. In addition, if it was so easy to enter America, what's stopping them from entering, committing a huge crime, and then leaving?

Another reason to be against what you are proposing is because it is in a nation's interest to make sure that the people living there aren't poor or starving. If an American doesn't have that many skills and can only work in a specific field, by allowing anyone in the world to compete with them increases the likelihood that they will be out of a job.

> I wonder why Twitter is so popular.

I don't have an account but it is very useful if I want to see is a program updated to a new version, how a politician feels about a recent event (or wants us to think they feel), or live updates to current events. All that may be possible with Facebook, but since I don't want to always be logged on, I have a huge pop up and annoying captcha