Yeah, Biden has attempted to claim he was against the war on multiple occasions, and been factchecked on it multiple times (one example: https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/06... )

Back in March, Biden stated that he voted in favor of the iraq war to put pressure on Saddam, despite the fact that Biden didn't believe there were any WMDs. Biden stated "I didn’t believe he had those nuclear weapons. I didn’t believe he had those weapons of mass destruction."

However, in October 2002, in a senate debate Biden stated "the reason [Hussein] poses a growing danger to the United States and its allies is that he possesses chemical and biological weapons and is seeking nuclear weapons, with the $2 billion a year he illegally skims from the U.N. oil-for-food program. For four years now, he has prevented United Nations inspectors from uncovering those weapons and verifying Iraq's disarmament, and he is in violation of the terms he agreed to allowing him to stay in power."

The day before invasion, Biden said "By refusing to disarm, a defiant Saddam has made the fateful choice between war and peace. Let us make sure that in winning the war, we also win the peace."

Finally, in may 2003, after the invasion, when no WMDs were found, Biden went on Meet The Press, and said "I do think we'll find weapons of mass destruction."

In short, either Biden was in favor of the Iraq war and believed there were WMDs, and is now a liar, OR he didn't believe there were WMDs, but was deliberately lying to the public to get America into the war.

Finally, the internet leadership we have been waiting for

https://twitter.com/strongbada...

People used to be worried that their Ring doorbells would call the police department. Now they're worried they'll call the fire department.

English has used 'less' for countable nouns for as long as it existed. The idea that there must be a rigid 'less' vs 'fewer' distinction originates in a letter Roger Baker wrote in 1770 about his personal preference under some circumstances, which was then misinterpreted as a hard rule for all circumstances. English has used 'less' for countable nouns even as far back as Old English (over a millennia before Baker was born).

In other words, to use a computer security analogy, insisting on a hard 'less' vs 'fewer' rule is much like insisting that every hard drive *needs* to be wiped with a 35-pass Gutmann method (and saying that anything less than 35 passes is sloppy); it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of both history and practical usage.

All politicans should play Among Us on stream. It'll be useful for voters to hear their 'I am lying to you' voice.

Quibi?

More like Quiti!

There are all sorts of ways that people have historically tried to launder racism through 'not technically based on race' criteria, as a way of giving themselves plausible deniability. Machine learning has been used in the same way - take your biased history of decisions, train a computer to replicate those decisions, and then claim you're following the computer's advice now, so now your policies are totally independent of race.

Ultimately if your decision criteria treats black people worse, it doesn't matter if 'technically' it isn't judging on race, it's judging on hair frizziness, or whether they live in a predominantly black neighborhood or whether their grandparents were free men able to vote or what a black box algorithm says. Machine learning is just a more efficient way of finding arbitrary rules that get the result you want.

Beyond that, setting policy to follow a set of rules which no human understands, and obeying those rules unquestioningly, is a horrifically poor decision as well. Whoever proposes that should be out of a job; it's an amazing dereliction of duty.

> And, just like the US voting system, that sort of cheating simply doesn't happen enough to justify condemning it. Overall, for 99.9999% of people, even rich people, the system is solid.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/m...

The WSJ found ultra-wealthy schools where 30% of students were getting extra time

https://abcnews.go.com/Nightli...

ABC found rates as high as 46%.

The national rate of learning disabilities is around 2%.

When schools have thirty to forty percent of these ultra rich students cheating, that's pretty darn common.

> Here are the things that I absolutely can't do anything about with money: improve my kids SAT score if s/he happens to be lazy or a moron.

You can pay to have them take the test multiple times, and take the best score for each section.

That has a significant enough cost in time and money to be far more accessible to rich parents, but gives the student the ability to roll the dice repeatedly. Even if we ignore the significant benefits from having previous experience taking the SAT, being able to take the test repeatedly means that you have a much higher expected value. The logistical burden of getting your kid to/from the test site, and the $70ish dollar cost of taking the test is fairly accessible to most families, but is a large burden for people on minimum wage.

If you want want to spend $5k, you can buy your kid extra time on the SAT. Just fake a learning disability diagnosis.

https://www.hollywoodreporter....

https://www.wsj.com/articles/m...

In addition, of course, if you're rich enough you can go beyond buying a fake diagnosis or spamming retests, and just outright cheat. For example, you can spend $75k and hire a 'proctor', who will go through and correct any wrong answers as your student is taking the test.

https://www.usatoday.com/story...

The way things have been going recently, I'd say it's more Futurama than Survivor.

"Surprise news" is an... interesting way to put it.

people were complaining about the clickbait headline, but you submit the same article with a different headline and then people are STILL upset

Canada's official contact tracing app works like this:

1) Each phone with the app broadcasts a random number a few times a minute on bluetooth
2) Phones log both their own random numbers, and the ones they hear.
3) If a user is infected, that user can click a button and upload a list of the numbers that their phone sent into a public repo
4) Other users can then compare the numbers their phones heard with the numbers in the public repo, and know if they were exposed.

This methodology is pretty straightforward, and protects the privacy of everyone involved.

>It's one of these things I find online, especially talking to Americans, is this desire to believe in any wild conspiracy theory that crosses their mind.
Last time Cali had unexplained blackouts it actually was a conspiracy cooked up by the Enron guys to make money.