Really? You enjoying that health insurance? How about that 40 hour work week? Overtime? Safe working conditions? Not having to work as a child? You know all those things came because of unions... Just sayin' Maybe don't be so hasty to condemn unions so broadly.

Unions are not inherently good or bad. Like most things they can be co-opted to bad ends but unions often serve as a very valuable check against abusive corporate practices and can make their members and even those who aren't members better off without negatively impacting the companies they work within. They certainly can and have protected some people who otherwise would have had very little protection from some pretty nasty management practices. Sure some unions have become a problem and a burden. But to pretend they serve no useful function anymore is to deny reality. I don't think you'd actually very much like to live in a world without them entirely.

Well I own an EV. The first scheduled maintenance aside from tire rotations and cabin air filter replacements is a coolant/transmission fluid change at 150,000 miles. I have around 20K miles on mine and I have spent precisely $0.00 on maintenance for it. If I had an ICE vehicle I would have had at least one oil change in that interval and likely more. It has no gasoline, no oil, no pistons, no cams, no spark plugs, no valves, no belts, no rocker arms, no muffler, no catalytic converter, no exhaust pipes, no mechanical throttle, no fuel injectors, etc. The transmission has a single gear and the motor is integrated with the transmission and diff. No big driveshaft. It also has regen braking so I can drive the entire distance to work and not have to touch the brake pedal much if at all so brakes aren't going to wear out very quickly either with reasonable driving.

So yeah, rather a lot less labor and maintenance for EVs. Honestly I have no idea why anyone would prefer an ICE vehicle as a daily driver if they have a choice.

"No handouts" to the rich? Are you f***** serious? The rich pay LESS in taxes as a percent than the middle class does. Guys like Jeff Bezos pay the substantially lower capital gains rates which are 15 or 20% and the companies they own often pay nothing at all. And the rich pay the most in INCOME tax but that's far from the only tax. They don't pay the most for Medicare or Social Security which together account for over half the federal budget. The deficit is absolutely a handhout to the rich because they aren't being asked to shoulder the same level of pain as the rest of us. And let's not pretend that a lot of those tax breaks don't disproportionately benefit the rich. Tax breaks don't help you much if you don't have much to be taxed to begin with.

Quite correct. I would add that any discussion of reducing taxation that does not also involve substantial reductions in defense, medicare, medicaid or social security is pure uncut political bullshit not worth listening to. Really we need to raise taxes to a level proportionate to our spending. Right now we are literally borrowing the entire defense budget every single year. That cannot go on indefinitely.

In some areas it might. Probably not so much in dense urban areas with solid wired connections and copious cell towers. Homes that live in dead zones or which aren't reached by high speed internet are a real thing and hardly uncommon.

I'll certainly take a look at it should it come to full operation. Right now my only realistic options for internet are Comcast or LTE wireless. Both are fairly expensive and problematic as you might guess. I'm not likely to get a second competitive wired option where I live any time soon and relying on AT&T for a wireless connection carries problems too.

A shocking number of Americans do or at least they vote that way and they tend to correlate strongly with Trump voters. They are concerned with hating government (and democrats) even when doing so makes no logical sense. The republicans have found a winning message with a lot of people in the (ridiculous) claim that all taxes and regulations are bad. (even though that makes no logical or factual sense) There is a lot of hating anything that the democrats favor. And for a lot of them anything that they perceive as reducing company profits must be evil. Ironic since this didn't used to be a partisan issue. Now somehow insisting on clean water and that companies don't dump toxic shit is somehow political.

The river right by my house has PFAS contamination and I don't live in a rural area. Can't eat the fish from there despite it being a popular fishing spot. This sort of regulatory rollback screws everyone, not just rural and economically disadvantaged folks.

Generally not that bad. Despite the river near me being contaminated my well at my house isn't. (Yes I've had it tested) Our aquifer doesn't draw from the river and the people that do have city water have their water treated at a local plant and tested regularly at schools and similar places. I also use a reverse osmosis system which cleans out a lot of problems. That said I wouldn't go to my local river and take a big drink or eat the fish which is unfortunate.

Yes you can. It's a complete waste of time because there is absolutely zero chance of a third party candidate getting elected president. Our voting system ensures that. Effectively you are abstaining from the vote which is in effect handing your vote to someone else. It's your right to do it but I don't think it's a great idea.

I don't have a particularly strong opinion about UBI. I'm dubious but I'll follow where the data lead on that. The data I've seen so far seems to indicate it's a well intentioned but flawed idea that doesn't really work but I'm open to being proven wrong.

BUT I've listened to Yang speak and his entire argument for UBI is based on a false premise and false narrative, namely that automation is coming to take all our jobs. He argued that we've lost huge numbers of jobs in the US to automation in manufacturing which is to be blunt, mostly false. The manufacturing jobs that left the US left because they were for labor intensive work and US labor rates were too high to be competitive. Automation is actually what has kept US manufacturing jobs. The US has a thriving manufacturing sector (about $3 Trillion/year) but not in products that requires rock bottom labor prices like those in China or similar. Automation is not going to make most of these jobs disappear any time soon purely because the economics of automation don't work like he claims. And even when it does displace workers from one role it simply frees up labor to do work that wasn't previously possible. We no longer need huge secretarial pools at large companies and yet somehow we still find employment for all the women who used to do that work.

Automation does constrain labor costs but labor also constrains automation. And there are various conditions that are required for automation to make economic sense. Here are some key ones though not an exhaustive list:
1) Relatively high labor rates and/or low labor content
2) Sufficient product volume or high enough cost to justify the capital equipment and/or engineering overhead
3) Predictable product demand for a consistent product
4) Dangerous work where involving humans directly is a bad idea

Products with high labor content or significant product variation or low volumes tend to be un-economical to automate. Despite all their flaws, people are incredibly flexible, smart, trainable and (frequently) cheap. We are in no danger of developing machines that will make people economically nonviable. Don't believe the hype. Automation will affect the jobs we have and it will create ones we have trouble even imagining today. Most of you reading this are doing jobs that literally would not exist if it weren't for automation. (what do you think computers do after all?)

ANYTIME you see a politician arguing that they are "going to bring back good paying manufacturing jobs", they are talking out their ass. It means they either don't know what they are talking about or they are lying. To bring back those jobs would require dropping US labor pay rates to something like $2-3/hour. That sound like a good idea to anyone you know?

Now I'm sure some of you are thinking "what about drivers or white collar jobs or...?" Same arguments apply. Automation will supplement, augment, and sometimes replace work that isn't value added any more. But it isn't going to cause some sort of jobs apocalypse. Yes some people will get displaced just like they always have but we know how to deal with that problem. We probably don't really want people driving - it's dangerous and frankly a waste of a perfectly good brain. Accountants didn't lose their jobs because they got clever computer programs that took over the bulk of the calculation work. Secretaries are still needed despite the typewriter being replaced by computers. Doctors aren't in any danger of being replaced by computers. Lawyers actually desperately need computers to help them go through all the documents they deal with. Etc. And despite what you have heard, manufacturing still employs vast numbers of people and that is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Fair point. I agree the probability of incompetence and/or corruption is very high though I suppose there technically is a non-zero chance of a competent appointee. But you are right that incompetence is the most likely outcome.

That's how high level officials are fired. The are "asked" for their resignation but make no mistake that it is the same thing as being fired. It's just the polite way to do it.

What are you talking about? His administration has used plenty of force, is still involved in active conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. In 2018 we dropped more munitions on Afghanistan than any year since this idiotic conflict started. He's currently agitating to start a war with Iran and has withdrawn from multiple weapons ban treaties. The man is a threat to our security.

And diplomacy? Is that what you are calling it? The man hasn't worked out a single significant deal with any foreign power but has screwed several of them up, has started a trade war with one of our biggest allies, has insulted most of our allies, been bizarrely warm with dictators in countries not friendly to the US. I have no idea what you are talking about when you say he's favoring diplomacy because if this is what he thinks diplomacy is then he's terrible at it.

A) I've seen little evidence to convince me that Bolton is particularly competent or thoughtful
B) Since we don't know who would replace him, judging their competence seems premature
C) It seems unlikely he would be replaced with someone more inclined towards conflict given Bolton's approach
D) I have approximately zero faith in the competence or integrity of anyone willing to serve in the current administration
E) Anyone who isn't a Trump sycophant isn't going to last very long anyway.

I'm certainly about as nerdy/geeky as they come and have the engineering degrees to prove it. But I also was a D1 college athlete. Not all of us here on slashdot are the proverbial 98lb weakling. Being interested in the sort of topics discussed here doesn't automatically mean a lack of physical prowess. I think you'll find that a lot of slashdot readers are not quite so pathetic as one might imagine.

Given comparable training the men will mostly come out ahead in such competitions but that is irrelevant. Comparing someone who is training for a marathon to someone who isn't is a useless comparison and certainly has no relevance to fighting prowess where weight and size and strength become dominant considerations. I don't care how much training she has had - you take a 50kg woman and put her in a fight with a 100kg man and I can tell you with very high probability how that fight is probably going to turn out no matter how much training she has had. Training isn't magic that renders the laws of physics irrelevant.

I can show you a video of Adeline Gray who is the reigning world champion in freestyle wrestling in the largest women's weight class competed at the Olympics (76kg) wrestling a former men's NCAA champion heavyweight (120kg). She can't even move him meaningfully and he's not even seriously trying and she is literally the best in the world among women in that specific sport. In fighting there comes a point where no amount of training can overcome a size difference without involving literal weapons and the difference is far smaller than you probably think it is.

Not when it comes to physical dominance it is not. I work with high level women athletes and I'm married to one. Not one of them is going to pretend that they would be favored in a contest of physical strength (especially a fight) against any but the weakest of men. Sure there will be men they can defeat but you don't have to look very far to find the limits of that. Size and strength matter A LOT when you get into fighting. That's why they have weight classes in combat sports. It only takes 3-5kg of difference in weight to make a very big difference even if everything else is equal. And between men and women it is not otherwise equal. Men of the same body weight generally will have substantially more muscle because of body composition. And the effects of this difference are profound in their effect. Adeline Gray is basically the same weight class as Jordan Burroughs. Both are world champions but even if you know nothing about the sport of wrestling you would only have to look at their relative physiques to know exactly how a match between them would go. (spoiler: no contest)

You have no idea what you are talking about. I currently coach a college women's team. I've coached some of the best and most highly trained women in the world directly in an actual combat sport. Let me give you some perspective. An adult Olympic level female wrestler is about as good as a very good (but not elite) high school boy wrestler of similar weight. The difference is not in their technique which is functionally comparable to the men. The difference is that women after puberty cannot generate anywhere close to the amount of power that men of similar weight can. And in general men tend to be quite a lot larger than women magnifying the effect further. If you think your eleven year old girl would come out ahead in a physical confrontation with a typical adult man then you simply don't know what you are talking about.

Not as a general proposition they cannot. They are on average significantly weaker and smaller, particularly in upper body strength. This isn't debatable. Some women can match most men in specific athletic feats. Pretty much no women can match all men. And on average there is a substantial difference in both size and strength.

I'm a wrestling coach of a college women's wrestling team and I've participated in and coached combat sports for close to 40 years (wrestling, kempo, boxing, taekwondo, judo, MMA, plus some others). The number of women who fit your description is a tiny minority and their physical superiority in those specific endeavors seldom translates far outside of those specific activities. Being a fast runner or a good boxer is not merely a matter of training - there is a strong genetic component. Being a fast runner doesn't mean you have the upper body strength to win a fist fight. Being a good wrestler or boxer requires much more than merely lots of time in the gym - size and strength matter greatly. That's why those sports have weight classes. Size and strength make a HUGE difference. Olympic level women athletes can and have been overpowered by comparatively average men of sufficient size. No amount of training will equalize this. Men have a genetic advantage in strength and size that is generally insurmountable.

And even if none of that were true it still doesn't excuse harassing someone in the workplace.

Of course changing it earlier than recommended certainly won't hurt but odds are I'll never have to do it while I own the vehicle if I don't want to bother. According to GM it's a "lifetime" of the vehicle fluid. (if you don't entirely believe GM on that claim I understand) It's only got one gear so the metal shavings and much of the contamination you usually see in such fluid comes from changing gears. It's a clever system. Here is another overview of it.