Hah, turns out feminists are saying this nail polish actually promotes rape culture. From ThinkProgress: "Now, remembering to put on anti-rape nail polish and discretely slip a finger into each drink might be added to that ever-growing checklist - something that actually reinforces a pervasive rape culture in our society."

Bet you didn't see that coming. It's not merely everything a man ever does that promotes rape culture in this new world, you see, it's also every step a woman might take to reduce the likelihood of rape.

Solar doesn't really "peak during peak energy usage" for homes. Most people aren't even home during early afternoon on most days. Peak home use is in the evening (later in places where heating is the dominant energy use, but they tend to suck for solar anyhow).

Americans won't vote to build infrastructure, but they will buy it themselves if it gives advantage. A magic battery that could (safely!) store a day's home power would is necessary for solar to be practical. Also necessary: solar panels that don't require rare materials to build.

Solar is the only thing that will scale to eventual human energy needs. To get 11 billion humans consuming at current US rates, only solar works (unless the fusion pipedream somehow happens). But significant technical obstacles remain, starting IMO with viable home power storage.

And I said according to whose figures? The official Chinese figures? Including the millions in work camps? Or do those die off fast enough to keep the count low.

What's needed is a layer of editorial fact checking. Today, the broadcast media instead checks for compatibility with their political party, instead. Many blogs many do the same, of course, but there are already a few that at least view favorable stories with suspicion, at least do a cursory google search first, ask around for technical experts on technical topics, and often update stories with retractions. None of which ever happens in the mainstream press.

If you're entirely oblivious to American politics (fair enough if you're not from here) then some facts: The Republicans are the pro-gun side. The Democrats are the anti-gun side. Public schools in the US are profoundly dominated by the Left (or was passes here for the Left).

Also, the left here is pro-"that religion that cuts girls clitorises off", the right is anti-that-religion. (But I thought that was true in most of Europe too?)

Please inform your future hate-filled rants with these simple facts.

Just making shit up doesn't help your argument any. I can only guess you're talking about the incident where we heard the gunship crew radio that they saw a group of hostiles (true) and a guy with a tube-like device on his shoulder (true) and requested permission to engage. They were given permission to engage. There was no laughing. There was no evidence they knew there was a reporter embedded with the enemy troops. (There's also no such thing as a 50mm gun.)

"good old boys"? If you think that anyone with a southern accent is a bad person, you are simply a bigot.

Based on what? The official numbers published by China? China executes so many of it's people that they need custom-built execution vans for logistical convenience. America is a China-wannabe when it comes to human rights violations. We try (Delaware apparently bought 1 execution van in 1986), but we always fall short. Write a story about violence in Tiananmen Square and see what happens.

But that doesn't change the fact that the US has gone absolutely fucking insane about both guns and drugs in schools. When you punish a student for eating a Pop-Tart in such a way that it briefly looks like a gun, it's time to back slowly away from the levers of power and let someone sober, sane, and rational take over. And at least that incident has prompted a couple of state legislatures to take action in defense of sanity, but clearly not in South Carolina.

Through all of history, every place with a remotely hospitable climate was eventually governed by a nation with a strong military. If on government didn't have that, it would be conquered by one that did. There's no evidence that it's even possible to not have a strong central military for a long time (unless you live someplace where the environment is so hostile it's not worth anyone's effort to conquer, but sometimes even then).
 

There's no better decision you can make, IMO, than to walk away from broadcast media, and newspapers, and all those centrally-controlled outlets for news. If you have a deep distrust of blogs, that can work for you. Find a blog or two of interest; look for ones that routinely correct stories when commenters point out flaws, avoid those that instead ban the commenters. As long as you keep your distrust of blogs, that's a good way to keep your head out of the sand.

The only way to learn anything about current events is the combination of a hard-to-censor channel, a willingness to correct mistakes, and your own distrust of everything on that channel.

And how would subscriptions work? And why wouldn't everything be a subscription? A VAT can be made to work, but this is so game-able.

Plus, you're missing the key fact about government: they never give up a tax. Any tax you propose will be in addition to existing taxes, not in place of them.

Again with the "express". No, let's stay on the topic of "should a university provide students with the ability to read up on controversial political topics?" Of course they fucking should, or what's the point of a university? If a university doesn't exist for the very purpose of providing open access to all the information that there is without any for of censorship, what good is it? Such an institution should receive no accreditation, and no public funds.
 

But this isn't about publishing. This is about web access. What was your point again?

The man is a freaking icon of free speech. Only hateful, harmful, ugly, disagreeable speech needs any protection in the first place. I can't think of a living speaker who offends my more than that guy has. If you don't support his right to free speech, you're simply unclear on the concept.