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Comment Re:Free money! (Score 1) 106

Names of bills don't mean shit, they never have. Trying to tie anything to what politicians *name* a bill is pointless and childish. (Hello "Patriot Act").

Inflation hasn't gone down because people are still spending, raised prices or not. Talk is cheap, actions are what matter. People bitch up a storm that fast food prices (for example) are thru the roof (they are), but they're doing it while buying enough fast food the companies are making record profits.

And it isn't just essentials that are absolutely required, but everything. Prices will go back down when people start taking more action and stop spending.

Comment Re:Question (Score 1) 106

It doesn't work that way. Everything works because people follow the basic rules -- the Constitution itself. Amending the Constitution itself isn't a simple vote of Congress, much less something signed by a President into law. There's an explicit process.

Your question is akin in seriousness to "what if EVERYONE just stopped paying taxes".

Comment Re:Only to investors, right? (Score 2) 28

Technically speaking the crime of fraud has three elements: (1) A materially false statement; (2) an intent to deceive the recipient; (3) a reliance upon the false statement by the recipient.

So, if you want to lie to people and want to avoid being charged with fraud, it's actually quite simple. You lie by omission. You distract. You prevaricate (dance around the facts). You encourage people to jump on the bandwagon; you lead them to spurious conclusions. It's so easy to lie without making any materially false statements that anyone who does lie that way when people are going to check up on him is a fool.

Not only is this way of lying *legal*, it happens every time a lawyer makes an closing statement to a jury. It's not a problem because there's an opposing counsel who's professionally trained to spot omissions and lapses of logic and to point them out. But if a lawyer introduces a *false statement of fact* to a trial that's a very serious offense, in fact grounds for disbarrment because that can't be fixed by having an alert opponent.

We have similar standards of truthfullness for advertising and politics because in theory there's competition that's supposed to make up for your dishonesty. In practice that doesn't work very well because there is *nobody* involved (like a judge) who cares about people making sound judgments. But still, any brand that relies on materially false statements is a brand you want to avoid because they don't even measure up to the laxest imaginable standards of honesty.

Now investors have lots of money, so they receive a somehat better class of legal protections than consumers or voters do. There are expectations of dilligence and duties to disclose certain things etc. that can get someone selling investments into trouble. But that's still not as bad as committing *fraud*, which is stupid and therefore gets extra severe punishment.

Comment Don't Upgrade, Old Farts (Score 2) 63

They always rant about Wayland, systemd, Pulse/Pipewire, devops, dkms, quic, zfs, etc.

I used to wonder why they don't just not upgrade their os, but then I realized they are lazy and want somebody else to maintain their old system for them.

I mean, even compiling gentoo with the right use set is too hard for these bellyachers.

Yet the humility never occurs to them that the non-lazy people who actually build distros are embracing the newer technology.

Instead the Old Farts case aspersions and ad-hominems at these hard workers. It's pathetic.

I'm done with their BS and won't help them understand anymore - the arguments are almost universally in bad faith.

Because otherwise they would just not upgrade. I have some Infomagic Slackware CD's from 1993 they might be interested in. Yeah, my first Linux box was over 30 years ago and I competently run all those technologies now. I don't fear change even though understanding new tech takes work and I can't just rest on my laurels.

Comment Yes and no. But mostly yes. (Score 1) 303

For the last 40 years, china has been at work destroying manufacturing foreign nations (which is a big part of why they are the world's worst polluter of all times).
They are somewhat copying Japan's and S. Korea's approach to their build-ups. Basically, high tariffs, heavy subsidies, then once up to par or better then others, heavy exports after dropping subsidies. The difference is that when China gets to the last part, they continue to subsidize, and the government makes heavy use of controlling the companies exports, manufacturing capabilities, etc. which are then dumped so as to destroy foreign, esp. western, industries. Steel is just one of many.

What is needed is for nations to say enough is enough and to raise strong tariffs or even block ALL imported items from China that are being dumped. For example, nations really should block ALL metals that China is trying to import directly or indirectly. Likewise, I was surprised that Biden was stupid enough to relax the PV imports from Chinese companies that simply moved to Viet Nam and other Asian nations on moderate terms with China. All of that needs to be 100% blocked.
Likewise, the batteries need a growing tariff, and to block them from manufacturing in the west, if not other nations esp with their dirty/corrupt supplies ( most of the child labor issues and low pay comes from Chinese-owned mines; this is why China and Russia are pushing coups in Africa ).

Comment Re: 20% survival is pretty good (Score 1) 57

If I understand your argument properly, you're suggesting that things will be OK with the reefs because "survival of the fittest" will produce a population of corals better adapted to warmer conditions.

Let me first point out is that this isn't really an argument, it's a hypothesis. In fact this is the very question that actual *reef scientists* are raising -- the ability of reefs to survive as an ecosystem under survival pressure. There's no reason to believe reefs will surivive just because fitter organisms will *tend* to reproduce more, populations perish all the time. When it's a keystone species in an ecosystem, that ecosystem collapses. There is no invisible hand here steering things to any preordained conclusion.

So arguing over terminology here is really just an attempt to distract (name calling even more so) from your weak position on whether reefs will survive or not.

However, returning to that irrelevant terminology argument, you are undoubtedly making an evolutionary argument. You may be thinking that natural selection won't produce a new taxonomic *species* for thousands of generations, and you'd be right. However it will produce a new *clade*. When a better-adapted clade emerges due to survival pressures, that is evolution by natural selection. Whether we call that new clade a "species" is purely a human convention adopted and managed to facilitate scientific communication.

You don't have to take my word for any of this. Put it to any working biologist you know.

Comment Re:Oppose any new laws (Score 1) 54

This is why we need to pass a SIMPLE amendment:
We, the Citizens of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, shall have the right to amend the constitution directly, by having a simple majority of voters of three fourths of the states OR two thirds of voters in two thirds of the states, within a 10 year period of the first state passing the amendment.

A simple amendment like that would allow us to fix a large number of issues that CONgress will not do. Why will they not do it? Because they are controlled by 2 horribly corrupt parties that are controlled by rich ppl, businesses, and even foreign governments. We need to take back our government.

Comment Re:mostly fascist (Score 1) 54

????
WTF does your second url have to do with ANY of this? 2 criminals were illegally stopped, but not due to any information from above.

Fusion centers? Are you talking about information moving from local LEOs up to the FBI and DNI??
Personally, I would prefer that information to go to DNI et. al, and not FBI, but that is for judges to decide. Even if the information flows downwards, I am good with that, AS LONG as it was legally obtained and is applicable to the situation. For example, NSA did NOT tap into to Trump's calls. OTOH, they DO tap various Russian calls, of which obviously a number of trump calls BEFORE he made president was done (this is why NSA objected to giving him, his family, and certain members of his admin access to intel, but esp. to Russian intel). If NSA had learned that Trump was getting marching orders from putin to sell fentanyl on the street, that should not be allowed to be sent down. Why not? Because this is not about terrorism/spying, it is about a criminal charge, which is where NSA is NOT concerned. However, I do not know if such information IS flowing downwards. I would hope not.

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