I'm sure there are all sorts of mitigating circumstances that will be cited, etc. but I've just never had the urge to harass female colleagues. Usually, I'm too busy doing work at work to even think about it.

Me neither, but I also would like to add that I haven't exactly had a lot of opportunities to harass female colleagues. For instance, where I'm currently employed, there's only two female "colleagues" I could harass if I wanted to. One is the office secretary (who isn't much to look at), who I almost never talk to, and the other is the janitor (who's even less to look at), who I say "hi" to when she empties my trash can.

I kinda wonder if some men in this profession, growing up with almost no women around in school and later in work, develop poor attitudes about women largely because there just aren't any around. When you spend your entire adult life almost completely isolated from the opposite sex, how are you supposed to develop good social skills for dealing with them? Yes, some men have female relatives, some might be social enough to actually date outside of work and have female friends or lovers, but this profession is rather infamous for having a lot of men who aren't very social.

You're forgetting Redbox. Plus, there's Amazon's own video-on-demand service.

There's nothing stupid about abandoning local video stores. What kind of moron would pay $5 to rent a movie, plus ridiculous late fees? With Netflix at $8/month for all-you-can-view online, or maybe double that for online + 1 DVD checkout, it's a no-brainer. Or you can go to Redbox.

I'm not sure routers are sold as firewalls. We call them that out of utilitt and some routers have firewalls built into them. But i think it is us not them.

Making a sword or shield? What if it breaks in battle? Making a wagon wheel? What if it breaks down in the middle of nowhere? Making a horse harness? What if it fails pulling a carriage uphill? Making a chair? What if it fails when some person sits on it? Making a steak? What if it has a sharp bone sliver in it? Writing a control system? What if you miss something? THEN YOU FIX IT, that's all. Be as careful as you can of those things you can think of; ask for help so you have a chance to get more than a narrow view. But when something goes wrong, the "I should be totally safe, and I'm gunna sue ya" thing is a sickness, not a feature of a well functioning society.

All this "total safety, all the time" hysteria is really wearing. It's hurting us more than it's helping us.

A well lived life will entail risk, and probably lots of it. Not to mention non-optimum choices made for reasons you'll look back upon with utter confusion later. Or, you can live in a pillow-sided room eating only gruel that was sterilized by gamma rays. I know what I choose. Do your best, learn from your mistakes, remediate any that you can, and move on. If some crap you bought breaks, throw it out and replace it. If you got hurt, try to heal. End of story. The ethics are obvious. The smothering is insidious. But I think it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. There's far too much money in finger pointing. And we're just too stupid, collectively, to do anything about it.
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An African or European Volkswagen Beetle?

Sorry, I should have been clearer. I just meant viruses or bacteria in general. Not anything passed from the urine.

If you mean that they're Progressive In Name Only because many of their policies are objectively the same policies championed by conservatives two decades ago, then you are certainly correct.

What specific policy positions taken by the current Democratic Party do you feel are "radical left"? Real stuff, not "I heard Breitbart and Fox speculating about internment camps for white people".

People like me? Where did I spew any Libertarian ideology lately?

If it makes you feel any better, the idea would never happen anyway because the government would seriously oppose it with all force. The labor unions are gone and the only reason there are professional engineering and medical organizations is because people acknowledge the value of well-built bridges and experienced surgeons but no one really cares about bad code.

It's always this, isn't it? "Be realistic, it's a tough world, you can't get by being honest!" I'm not judging people who do what they have to do to survive. But if you are faced with a choice between a $10k job that is honest and a $20k one that involves taking advantage of the poor and the weak and the less intelligent, and you choose the latter, you can't complain that the world is a tough place. You're the one making it a tough place. You are directly responsible, in part, for all the bad shit that happens in the world.

Yeah, the "bitter" part kinda covers that.

Yes, we could do that, but we never do. Why is that, I wonder? Probably because those brutal dictators aren't sitting on lots of oil.

Besides, even if you take out a brutal dictator and his minions, that'll just leave a power vacuum and someone else just as bad will probably fill it. I wouldn't let that stop me if I were a (benevolent) dictator and had drones at my disposal, but with democratic national governments sensitive to political scandals, they probably avoid stuff like that unless they have some really good reason to do it (like lobbyists wanting them to).

Not helicopters. They are too expensive. Quadcopter drones possibly. Or areostats. Or blimps. There are lots of choices, each has its advantages and disadvantages. But a robot eye-in-the-sky doesn't need to be very big or support a lot of weight...or be very expensive.

I don't like it, but expect it to happen.

No, I don't think they'd be that blatant. I don't think even the next Republican would be that blatant. Give it two or three more terms.