You can say that again. Prime example of the moment being Blender, a massive, popular open source graphics app with hundreds of icons, no less. They are re-designing their icons in black and white designs for their major new version that is expected to make a big splash on this market segment, and it's caused pretty big arguments...

https://blenderartists.org/t/n...

It's even worse than how you described it. They just used their hands and feet, no ropes. 15 seconds from standing on the ground to going over the top. With huge "backpacks" (more like blocks) on their backs. Good grief. 77 billion dollars to slow people down for 15 seconds.

I don't know about Germany, but Norway is not really a capitalist economy with social programs the way you are trying to represent it, at least not in the way that people in the English-speaking world usually understand as "capitalist economy". The Nordic countries in general, for instance, have vast state ownership of the enterprises and almost complete union representation, in stark contrast with the US. Read this article for more information: http://mattbruenig.com/2017/07...

Wait, are you really saying that your school had a two-to-one ratio of students to administrators by the time you left? I would love to see a citation for that. I'm not saying it's not true, but it sounds outrageous. I work at a large state university (which happens to be very affordable), and our ratio last time I looked was closer to 8 to 1 students to admins. If it was really 2 to 1 at your school, that's insane. Were they literally chaperoning every other individual student through their classes?

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the TannhÃuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

You appear to be misinformed on this, or your claim was unclear. If you're speaking of manufacturing textile cloth, i'm pretty sure that is extensively automated. But (nearly?) all clothes that we buy today are still sewn by human hands.

Here are a couple of sources (from last year, couldn't find anything newer on a quick search):
https://www.economist.com/scie...
https://www.fastcompany.com/30...

No problem, thanks for the additional information anyway. I did some brief digging and found an article that says that AAC was not the only county with an appointed board but it was one of the last ones, implying that this was not uncommon: https://conduitstreet.mdcounti...

Perhaps it is just some kind of historic legacy, rather than anything specific.

Thanks for providing concrete examples, rather than hypotheticals or totally unrelated "what abouts". Your first point about the county split sounds like a case of gerrymandering, which is out of scope of what I was talking about since it's not about individual voter disenfranchisement. I realize that it disenfranchises voters collectively, but it's (unfortunately) an old, bipartisan practice in the US. This is a real "they all do it!" situation.

I was talking about things that either block or discourage individuals from voting, like what is being described in the article at hand. That's the situation that I said some claim "they all do it!" despite most evidence appearing to contradict that.

Regarding the school board situation, I would need to know more before making a judgement. It seems unlikely that they would take away the ability to elect a school board without providing some reason for doing it. Were there misdeeds by the previous schoolboards or in their elections?

In case you haven't been following the news on this, at the same time that some cable networks have been folding in the last couple of years, new over the air broadcast networks and channels have been appearing.

Sure, it varies by local broadcast market, but look for this to accelerate and expand as ATSC 3.0 rolls out. The growth of streaming will also accelerate with the roll out of 5G.

Expect major changes in the TV industry over the next 5 years.

I don't usually reply to ACs, but you had a reasoned analysis in your response. Thanks for writing it.

I think democrats often tend to err on the opposite end of republicans, and thereby appearing too spineless to fight (Obama being a classic example). There's a happy medium, where one can stand up and fight hard, but clean.

Personally, requiring ID to vote would be perfectly fine with me if it would be effortless for every citizen to get ID. Essentially, if you could get a valid, accepted ID card at any government office, including post offices, police stations, fire departments, etc. Also, obtaining the documentation required to get such ID card should also be just as effortless.

As long as there are significant barriers to getting IDs for a significant number of citizens, IDs should not be required to vote.

As far as registration, it should happen automatically with pretty much every interaction you have with the government, and perhaps even some private entities:
Get a driver's license? Automatically registered (or updated) to vote.
Register for college? Automatically registered (or updated) to vote.
Get a credit card? Automatically registered (or updated) to vote.
Sign up to receive electricity at your new place? Automatically registered (or updated) to vote.

I get what you're claiming and there may be some truth to it (but I don't think much) in some respects, but I don't think it does in this case. If there were frequent cases of democrat governors or secretaries of state disenfranchising or in any other way screwing over voters in conservative areas we would surely hear about it.

For one, that would be relatively big news and any reporters breaking such news would raise their profile. For another, there are conservative media outlets, commentators, column writers, etc. They would surely scream from the tops of the mountains about these cases. Except that you never hear about it. This leads me to conclude that this is a lot more common in republican administrations than in democratic administrations.

Voter disenfranchisement seems to flow in one direction only, as far as I can tell.

I understand that "they all do it!!!1!one!" is a popular sentiment with a lot of people, but why is it that whenever you hear of a politician or public administrator disenfranchising or otherwise outright fucking voters over it's virtually always a republican?

I presume that it's a cultural problem, in that many people with the personality type that favors "conservative values" don't see a problem with fighting dirty. To those people, the ends really justify the means. Besides, voter disenfranchisement usually benefits republicans, so that compounds the problem.

Thanks. I meant more the part about body language for interviews, but I suppose some of it is interchangeable.