Yes. The Constitution, which gives the federal government its powers says that things that the feds can't do, the states can. Interesting how the article mentions that it's an Oregonian law that is mandating masks....hmmm.

Additionally, state governments have, for decades, mandated that you must wear shirts, shoes, pants, in stores/restaurants . They also, typically, mandate that you must cover your genitals anywhere in public. The shirts/shoes/pants are mandated for public health reasons. The genital coverings are for public decency reasons. NONE of that is mentioned in the constitution, and yet they are still perfectly valid mandates.

If the state and local governments can mandate you wear a piece of cloth over your ass then they can mandate that you wear a piece of cloth over your face. Again, all for public health reasons.

From AWS Customer Agreement:

...

I bolded the relevant sections. This could be interpreted as: We can suspend your account because you and/or your end users "poses a (physical) security risk to ... any third party". And then... "we may also terminate your account immediately because we were able to suspend your account and we wanted to".

Additionally, folks agree to the Acceptable Use Policy which states

A lawyer could probably argue that by Parler having their completely hands off moderation policies, there were "facilitating" using AWS Services for content that is illegal and/or harmful. Basically, allowing posts where users can talk about performing illegal actions (like overthrowing the government) without those posts being moderated was facilitating those posts.

Right. Twitter is a publicly accessible website. However, users are still required to register, and agree to the Terms of Service, and Acceptable Use Policies when they sign up. This makes their website registration private. They are free to issue, deny, and/or revoke that registration at any time...

Twitter is not a publishing service. Twitter is an "Interactive Computer Service". 47 U.S. Code 230 states that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." Twitter doesn't publish anything.

Trump has as much right to say something on the Twitter as he has a right to say something on https://democrats.org/ or publish an article on msnbc.com

Donald Trump, The President, already has a place on the internet he can go to where he is free to say whatever he wants. You can find it at https://www.whitehouse.gov/

Donald Trump, the US Citizen, already has a place on the internet he can go to where he is free to say whatever he wants. You can find it at https://www.donaldjtrump.com/

Donald Trump can go to the White House press room and say anything at all...Hell, he can even stand on the sidewalk outside of the White House and scream to the world anything his heart desires.

If Donald Trump were to show up at my house demanding to give my family a speech in my living room...my property...I am free to tell him to get off my lawn.

If Donald Trump wants to use the Twitter Website, which is Twitter's property, to give a speech (or say anything at all), then Twitter is also free to tell him to get off their lawn. Even if they're already invited him in...they can ask him to leave, get out, delete anything, censor anything, all for any reason or no reason at all. It's their property. They can run it as they see fit.

Donald Trump can certainly exercise his first amendment rights to his hearts content on his own property or on public property.

4 year/50k is the "bumper-to-bumper" warranty. The battery and drive train still get 8 years/100k miles or 120k miles, depending on model.

It's pretty in-line with most manufacturers. Last time I was shopping, which was a couple years ago, most manufacturers were doing a 3/36k bumper-to-bumper, and then a longer power train...usually around 6 or 8 years, and 80k-100k miles....but powertrain widely varied

Bending the curve absolutely changes the number of people under it. There are many people who, without extraordinary medical assistance, would die from COVID. Things like ventilators, oxygen treatment, various drugs and doctors to prescribe them.

You can break down the number of COVID cases in to 3 categories:

1) Those who will survive and not need medical care to survive
2) Those who will die without extra ordinary medical care but will survive if they receive the medical care
3) Those who will die despite the extra ordinary medical care.

People in group #1...doesn't matter how many of those there are. All at once, or spread out...pretty little difference.
People in group #2 and #3 will both end up in the hospital receiving extraordinary medical care. You can't really know who will live and who will die until it's all done.

Now, we only have a limited number of people who can be receiving that extraordinary care at any given time. We only have a finite number of hospital beds, ventilators, oxygen tanks, doses of drugs, etc... If the number of people in groups 2 and 3 at any given time exceed the number of hospital beds, or ventilators, or oxygen, etc...then some people in groups 2 and 3 won't receive the care. Now, for the people in group 3, it wouldn't have changed the outcome.

But for people in group 2....
Roughly 20-25% of people who are hospitalized for COVID die from it. So, for every 4 people who are hospitalized, 3 live...If those 3 people wouldn't have survived without the hospitalization...then the number of COVID mortalities goes up by nearly 4 times! i.e...instead of 1 person dying...4 people die.

Now the numbers are probably a bit off due to the fact that not everyone who isn't hospitalized but should be would actually die. But that's likely offset some by people who didn't go to the hospital but would've lived if they had. It is a guess, but it a good guess

In short, without flattening the curve, the number of people who REQUIRE hospitalization in order to survive will exceed the number of people we can hospitalize. We came damned close to hitting our limits based on the amount of lock down we've done. We've increased our capacity for care for COVID patients. But a TEN FOLD increase in the number of people who require hospitalizations will VERY quickly overwhelm the system and a LOT of people who require medical care to survive won't have it available to them at all.

It's a computer. They are free to distribute the app via their own website. Users can download it and install it. No Mac App Store required.

The only plausible argument is that users will have to delete the version they have downloaded from the app store and do a brand new "full install" of the game from outside of the app store...but there is absolutely nothing preventing Epic from doing so.

You get to watch it for as long as you subscribe. From https://www.theverge.com/2020/...

So...it behaves sort of like a purchase...you can watch it as much as you want as often as you want for as long as you keep paying for the Disney Plus subscription. Yeah, this isn't really a purchase...you can't resell it and you have to keep subscribing to keep watching... but it doesn't have a definite time limit

So, depending on your perspective it's not a bad deal. Movie tickets for a family of 4 would be $30+ by themselves, plus you can pay at-home prices for the popcorn, sodas, candy, etc. On top of that, you can watch it as much as you want for as long as you're subscribed to Disney Plus and can avoid having to buy the blu-ray or digital versions, saving $20 or so later. For a family, it's a very good value when compared to a night out at the movies...and many families will just always be subscribed to Disney Plus for the next couple of years or couple of decades because of their kids.

If you're a couple out on a date-night it becomes less of an obvious value...$30 would be about the cost of two movie tickets, but depending on the couple they may prefer a night out vs. a night in...some people prefer the theater experience of the large screen, impressive sound, etc.

If you're just a single person wanting to watch the movie on a Saturday afternoon with nothing else better to do, it's not a great value...$6-$8 for a matinee ticket (depending on where you live) vs. $30...and you'd only likely want to watch the movie once anyway or are perfectly content with waiting to watch it again until it comes to one of the streaming services under their normal offerings...or are fine with the $5 on-demand pay per view to watch it one time.

There are some groups like my self who make movies more of a social outing...we all go out and watch the latest Marvel, Star Wars, DC, etc. Blockbuster hits as a late afternoon matinee outing. We socialize lightly before the movie and then go to dinner someplace after the movie and discuss the movie and/or whatever...The movie is an excuse to go out and hang out with friends....For us, we likely wouldn't get the $30 streaming movie because it doesn't fit how we consume movies.

Some people would want to watch the movie immediately when it's released and want to AVOID the movie theaters...full theaters, sticky floors, obnoxious feet on the back of your seat, people using their phones, overpriced bad food...for them, the extra cost, effectively double price of a movie ticket, to avoid those annoyances/hassles may be worth it to them.

Ultimately, it comes down to a value judgement. What something is worth is going to be unique and individual to each person...ESPECIALLY for intangible goods or services...like movies. It seems that Disney is throwing another offering on the pile of ways to consume their content. So long as they continue to offer the old ways, it can only add value and options to the world.

Disney is merely reacting to the changing market. Another change in how the world lives due to technology. I think this was going to happen eventually anyway...where movies are initially streamed for a premium at launch and then lowering in price as time goes on. Very similar to video games...$60 at launch, then $40 a month or two later...then $20 6 months or so later...then Steam sale for $10.

Initial reports from the general opening seem to simply be more of the same...crowds very very limited.

I wasn't there, so i'm only going based on what I saw reported and videos/live streams, etc. Only time I would say I saw a crowd was on the very first day at the Magic Kingdom there was a lone of folks outside the park to talk to Guest Relations. Most likely those are folks whose park reservations were messed up in some way. The only reason there were "crowds" is that Disney didn't have the social distancing markers at the Guest Relations window going back far enough and people are terrible at estimating distances. My guess is that got fixed overnight.

But I can agree, as someone who goes to Disney World 3 or 4 times a year, staying at on-site hotels, during many different times of year: I have NEVER seen it as uncrowded as this EXCEPT at their VERY limited attendance events. I'm not talking about the Halloween or Christmas parties, but the Disney After Hours or Moonlight Magic events...

How about the fact that there isn't enough face mask production in the US to actually accomplish this? 3M has DOUBLED their production of face mask production to 100 million face masks per month. They plan to hit annual production of 2 billion (approximately double again) within 12 months. There are 3 leading manufacturers of face masks in the US. Honeywell, 3M, and Kimberley-Clark. Currently, combined, they can manufacture about 300 million face masks per month after pushing their manufacturing capacity to its limits...a total of 3.6 billion face masks per year.

There are 300+ million people in the US. You want everyone to get a new face mask every day? Okay...we need manufacturing capacity for 110 billion. Our ability to actually accomplish this falls short by two orders of magnitude. You cannot just call up a face mask manufacturer and say "give me 110 billion masks" and ship them to everyone in the country.

Lets say we DO somehow magically pull 110 billion face masks to send to everyone. How do you propose we actually GET these face masks to people? Amazon shipped 3.5 billion packages in 2019. You want to ship a box to each of the 125+ million US households each week? You've just created a shipping/logistics operation that is 21 times the size of all of Amazon.

Yes they are. The current "Premium" plan (4 screens, 4k, HDR) is being renamed to "Ultra" and having its price increased from $13.99 to $16.99.

They are then creating a new plan (2 screens, 4k, no HDR) calling it "Premium" and pricing it at $13.99. ...Well, at least in theory. They are testing this new pricing in a few select markets.

Actually, that's exactly how lawsuits are won. https://www.law.cornell.edu/we...

I mean, the same thing is true for VCs who invest in new/start up businesses. They are also the ones holding their dicks as they have no return on their investment.

Again...think of crowd funding like doing a VC investment, in terms of risk...It has a high-likelihood of failure.

However, unlike doing a VC investment...the rewards are often pretty low...you simply get the product you paid for. Not the large pay outs or ownership interest of a company that could be worth a lot of money.

I'm not the OP you were responding to, but I am currently anti-death penalty.

Currently, my only two issues with the death penalty are:

1) It must be done humanely. If there is a method of execution that is fast and completely painless. I currently believe that the only method of execution that satisfies this issue is Nitrogen gas. People who have survived high-nitrogen gas environments said they didn't feel any pain. Just blacked out and woke up later...maybe had a headache after waking. I don't know of any known instances of someone saying that it was a painful experience. I may be wrong on this though...I haven't fully researched it.

2) You must have 100% concrete evidence that this person actually committed the crime that they are accused of. I consider this to be even higher than the legal standard of proof in the US called "Beyond reasonable doubt". You need another legal standard of proof that I don't believe exists. I would call it "Beyond Possible Doubt". Basically this would mean that if the defense can come up with a possible explanation of the evidence presented that suggested he didn't do the crime, then it's up to the prosecution to prove that is explanation didn't happen...If you can prove the crime "beyond a reasonable doubt" then it's life in prison...if you can prove it "beyond possible doubt" then it's the death penalty.

I think there are very few situations that would actually satisfy my 2nd requirement...you would need multiple videos of the crime, at least one of them must completely clearly show the defendant's face, multiple independent video analysis services verify that the video wasn't altered/doctored/etc., the video shows DNA evidence of the defendant being left at the scene, the video continuously shows that the evidence wasn't tampered with, full video of the chain-of-custody from collection to analysis, and that DNA evidence is matched with an exceptionally high level of certainty (multiple independent labs, and the defense is entitled to their own testing).

And then assuming you can meet both of those criteria, you then start a 10-year waiting period where all evidence must be fully preserved. When there is 1-year left in that waiting period, the defendant is essentially entitled to an almost-second trial, using new/more sophisticated techniques and knowledge to refute the evidence that was present at the trial. Burden of proof on the prosecution isn't as high...you aren't re litigating the entire trial. Just the admissibility and reliability of the evidence. If new/better DNA and video analysis techniques can suggest that the evidence wasn't as reliable/irrefutable as originally thought, then the sentence is turned to life-in-prison. If the new techniques of analyzing the evidence suggests innocence (reasonable doubt), then you're entitled to a new trial.

I understand that this is an exceptionally high prosecutorial burden. It would have to be largely reserved for the most egregious of offenders. But, as others have said...if you kill someone, you can't make them whole....you can't even try to make them whole...You can never bring them back to life. If you simply send someone to prison you can attempt to make them whole (give them triple the average salary in their state, per year for each year they were in prison...put out full-page ads in the top 2 news papers in all locations in a 200-mile radius from their home and the top news paper in the top 20 markets in the US that proclaim their innocence...and a pension that is equal to the average salary in their home state.)

It's a basic principle of osmosis. Basically, osmosis means that if you have two different solutions (chemistry definition) that pass by each other with a semi-permeable membrane in between, that the parts of the solutions that can pass through the membrane will tend to equalize in concentration on both sides of the membrane.

When you breathe, there are two solutions (your blood and the air) that are separated by a semi-permeable membrane (your lungs). The air is mostly nitrogen (78%) and about about 21% oxygen in it. Your blood has oxygen and CO2 in it. The membrane in your lungs allows oxygen and CO2 to pass through it.

In the normal case, the amount of oxygen in your blood is less than the amount of oxygen in the air. The amount of CO2 in your blood is also higher than the amount of CO2 in the air. Your body takes the Oxygen out of your blood, converts it in to CO2 through metabolism, and puts the CO2 back in to your blood.

Since the concentration of oxygen in your blood is lower than the concentration of oxygen in your lungs, oxygen will move from the air in your lungs in to your blood until the two concentrations equalize. Same for CO2...The higher concentration of CO2 in your blood will move to the air in your lungs until the two concentrations equalize. Then you exhale the low-oxygen/high-CO2 air in your lungs and inhale fresh air...repeat.

In order for the above process to work, the membrane in your lungs has to be a two-way street. Oxygen needs to come in, CO2 needs to go out. The membrane is bidirectional.

The way a Nitrogen chamber works is that the gas in the nitrogen chamber is very close to 100% nitrogen. The percentage of both oxygen and CO2 in the air is nearly zero. You now breath this new solution in and osmosis works the same way. The oxygen and CO2 concentrations between the two solutions equalizes.

So you have blood returning to your lungs that has a high-concentration of CO2 and a low-concentration of Oxygen. The solution on the other side of the membrane in your lungs is pretty much 0% oxygen and 0% CO2. Since the concentrations want to equalize, this means that both CO2 AND oxygen from your blood is moving to the air in your lungs. Which you then exhale. This effectively causes oxygen to leave your body.

If the concentration of Oxygen in the blood returning to your lungs is at 16%, then when the oxygen in your blood equalizes with the 0% oxygen gas in your lungs, it causes you to now have 8% oxygen in your blood and 8% oxygen in your lungs. You now exhale causing that oxygen that was in your blood and now in your lungs to leave your body, inhaling a "fresh breath" of nearly 100% nitrogen...8% oxygen in your blood and 0% oxygen in your lungs will equalize at 4%...etc.

Holding your breath means the air in your lungs still has oxygen in it. 20% oxygen in your lungs (normal air), 16% oxygen in your blood. They will both equalize at 18%. Now when the blood comes around again, you've got 12% oxygen in your blood and 18% oxygen in your lungs...it equalizes at 15%...etc.

The rate at which the oxygen level in your blood lowers when you hold your breath is much less than the rate it lowers when you breath 100% nitrogen air.

Holding your breath does have the downside of also not exhaling the CO2 in your blood. It's the high concentrations of CO2 in your blood that cause the suffocation feeling. Holding your breath won't let the CO2 out of your lungs and blood. Breathing in Nitrogen causes the CO2 to respirate out of your body normally. This is why you don't feel like you're suffocating when you breath 100% nitrogen air. They say that your vision quickly fades, you shortly afterwards pass out, and then shortly after that die.