American fascism

Fascism, huh? So, where are the gas-chambers?

no socialism [...] that was fascism with a tiny bit of communism-appearence thrown in.

Hair-splitting... Both are Collectivist ideologies valuing the Collective over the Individual. Eastern Europe — under Soviet domination — simply went (was taken rather) further down that road banning all private ownership of the means of production, whereas the countries you listed retained some measure of private enterprises.

I know it sounds vain but it does also have practical applications for people with muscular deficiencies owing to immobility. From what I've gathered, no one really knows what happens, precisely, to cause muscles to "grow". Sure, there's a hundred different theories tossed around on body building forums, but a lot of sounds more like pseudo-biological nonsense rather than real science. There's precious little experiment in the field and my lay understanding is that it is because the only method of looking at muscles is biopsy.

Will Comcast catch up to Verizon?

Wow, I wonder, if my fellow citizens of the command-and-control persuasion still think, the government mandating the higher speeds would've been more effective in delivering the bandwidth to consumers...

There are as many liars in Washington DC as there are in Moscow.

Except American media is, decidedly, not controlled by American government. DC's liars may be lying to us and each other, but other liars stand ready to catch them at it.

Not in Moscow — where anti-government speech is non-existent.

Programming has no fuzzy, no irony, no humor.

That is only true, when you are programming (today's) machines

When you are giving instructions to (programming) a human — or anything/anyone else with intelligence (artificial or otherwise) — humor may become available as a construct both for the instructions of the programmer and messages from programmed.

My argument was and remains: algorithms are the most important part of programming. Before you need to put in writing (or even verbalize it), you need to consider all (or most) of the possibilities. Block schemes are language agnostic...

Before you can start formulating them — in any language, even in a spoken one — you need to think through the decision-trees and handling of exceptions and errors.

A "Hello world" program — in any programming language (except, maybe, the assembly) — is vastly simpler than a list of errands you may get from your spouse on a weekend. Heck, a single errand of shopping may be more complex:

• Buy two pounds of X, if it is fresh, otherwise buy only 1 pound and another pound of Y.
• Honey, what if they are all out of Y — should I get two pounds of X regardless of freshness or not buy it at all?
• Reboot...

'Rachel From Cardholder Services,' was a large robocall scam the agency took out in 2012

Sure, the "Rachel" didn't kill anyone. Probably. But with the number of calls placed, the overall damage — even if spread among millions of people — certainly exceeded that of a serious bodily injury or even death of one person.

Was any of the scammers sent to prison? I mean, I'd recommend impalement, but prison would've been good enough. Did it happen?

By appealing and not agreeing to "settle" with the prosecution — in fact, I did not even want to "talk to them" other than during a hearing and in judge's presence. This made it necessary for the actual officer, who (supposedly) reviewed the ticket before it was issued, to appear in court — which he didn't do. Maybe, I was just "lucky" at that and, maybe, Chicago would've allowed the prosecution to avoid presenting the officer for testimony, but...

The automatic cameras allow for issuing a massive number of tickets — because human police don't need to do much work. If more people appealed — thus necessitating the human policemen's presence in court for each such ticket, maybe, they wouldn't be such a valuable proposition for the local authorities.

That Russia's officialdom is lying is a given. What is truly troublesome is that the vast majority of citizenry not only accept these lies, but are passionately spreading them around. Decades ago this phenomenon was blamed on the "Iron Curtain" — which no longer exists. Though Russian ISPs are blocking certain sites, most of the Internet is perfectly accessible to Russians. But they choose to believe the TV instead — and independent TV-channels no longer broadcast in Russian Federation.

It would seem, neither the Iron Curtain nor even the Great Firewall are necessary — as long as the government controls the media, whatever foreigner enemies, spies, and subversives may say on the Internet will be derided and discarded.

I follow the data. In numerous other countries, this is not the case.

Could you share a link to the data, so I can follow it too? Do those countries have a better number of female Grandmasters? Nope...

Otherwise -- buying into the idea of female inferiority with no data to support your assertion

You've already conceded, that men are stronger: "testosterone helps". Why would not they also be, no, not smarter — able to concentrate deeper on a single problem, for example?

buying into the idea of female inferiority with no data to support your assertion

I do have the data — merely 1% of Grandmasters are women — and not for lack of trying for there is a large number holding the title of Women Grandmasters. But most of them can't match the males. You are trying to dismiss this 1:99 discrepancy with "prejudice" — and that's nonsense. Nothing prevents girls from takin up chess. No large investment is required to keep practicing — even the poorest can do it.

If it were mostly due to prejudice, the countries with more such prejudice would have fewer prominent female players — but the opposite it true. Most of these ladies come from former USSR and China, where the prejudices are, if anything, worse — but the girls do learn the game, and do get fairly good at it. Just not as good as males.

I don't know, why that is. Women are from Venus. Some researchers have suggested, evolution made females develop better handling of many small and tedious tasks (gathering foods while avoiding snakes, numerous chores of child-rearing), whereas men got better at solving a single problem (killing the mammoth). Again, I don't know. But the "data", which you profess to follow, is irrefutable.