I thought our national health insurance system was supposed to have solved all problems of this nature by now.

Why the fuck, in 2015, are Americans still relying on private insurance companies for health care? So much sigh.

Except the "giant lasers" plan. That just requires us to make much bigger lasers, and probably also bigger sharks.

Hahaha that's a good one. I had to use an alternate SSN with the CA DMV for a while because someone was pretending to be me... a much shorter, more Mexican version of a Mexican. He had a driver's license and apparent right to work. You think the taxi companies, who don't give a fuck about you because they don't have to because they have a monopoly, are going to do their due diligence? No, they're going to do the absolute bare minimum because they think you're just another asshole who needs ferrying, like everyone else, and protecting you is last on their list of things to do.

Lobbying doesn't immediately mean evil, you sophomoric children. Lobbying is how laws are changed, so it's what you do whether your goals are positive or negative.

Uber isn't a philanthropic organization, but nonetheless we should cheer them on, because how the Uber situation falls out helps determine what you are allowed to do with your car. You are being told that you are not permitted to use your car as you see fit, to make money, in a capitalist system in which it is essentially illegal to be out of money.

If you're cheering for the entrenched taxi services, you should know that taxi licenses do not protect you from any of the problems you think Uber causes. Taxis will come very late, even take other fares while "on their way" to you, or simply not come at all, and there is no recourse against them whatsoever when that happens. Taxi drivers regularly rape and/or assault passengers. Taxi drivers regularly take the worst possible routes, especially at times of day when it's difficult to get another fare, so as to run up your meter. Taxis are dirty and they smell bad. Taxis are often very poorly maintained, and I've often heard alarming thunks and rattles from beneath them that, had I heard them under my vehicle, would have kept me at home with a wrench in my hand.

Can anyone name one reason why "traditional" government monopoly-licensed taxis are superior to Uber? One reason which is not complete bullshit? Because so far, nobody has come up with even one.

There is something that is pretty important for you to understand if you want to criticize my comment: I'm not black. But even if I were, fuck you. The unwillingness to place blame where it lies and then follow up on it is why we can't have nice things. Of course, the general response to my comment details the problem: you morons still think that the fight is between blacks and whites. It's between rich and poor. The blacks just get hit hardest, because they can be, because we let it happen. Are you content to just let it happen? It will happen to you next. Shush, only tears now.

You said it, but you were a big idiot at the time, so you talked shit.

There is only one typical computing task which stresses the home PC, and that is gaming — where memory bandwidth is absolutely relevant. And guess what this conversation is about? Yeah, if you look at the page title there, you might see that it's about gaming, you fucking ignoranus.

Not just that, but the new Cummins V8. They're getting absolutely bananas output out of relatively small motors these days. They actually can get semi-tractor class output out of this five liter, so it should be roughly bulletproof in the Titan.

I do have to say, the inline four Nissan KA motor was a peach. 155/155 to 165/165 (depending on year) is pretty great for a classically injected 2.4 liter four banger.

Took me about 4 hours:
http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html

I think if you read the whole thing, you'll find he's a pretty equal opportunity offender, sexual libertarians got a good hundred paragraphs against their lifestyle as well.

I ragged on them for using inadequately tested components. Part of their secret sauce is their test program. It's not saucy enough.

That doesn't mean the ol' Musketeer won't experience some setbacks on his path to Mars. What they're trying to do is also difficult. I think it's also more worthwhile. Time should tell.

Right, you've almost got it. Very very close.

Look, where did hip-hop come from? It came from the music programs getting shut down which affected black students before it affected white ones because there was more money to wring out of parents and communities in white neighborhoods — due to the weight of history, and public policy. So "that's not music!" came from being too cheap to have decent education in the poorest neighborhoods. But moreover, the majority of advertising which is targeted at anyone is designed to make them unhappy. The companies that spend the most to make people feel good are car companies, which also spend a lot of money to make people unhappy — but about half of their advertising actually targets their current customers, and is intended to make them feel good about their past purchases that they're living with today, in the hope of avoiding a negative association.

So yeah, actually, you make money by making people feel bad. By tricking them into buying your shit. Anything they actually need sells itself; these days there's google, these days there's siri, these days there's amazon and ebay and etsy, barring someone trying to trick them into buying something they don't want, they'll find you if you take the least effort to make yourself available. Most advertising is designed to make people feel inadequate if they don't have a product.

When hip-hop was new, they didn't have their own labels. Today a black artist can make music on a black label and sell it to black and white people alike without any trouble; back then, virtually all the labels were owned by old wrinkly white men who pocketed all the money. But moreover, it was these old white guys decided which black artists were going to get a record contract. It wasn't [necessarily] based on what would scientifically sell, it was based on white prejudice — which artists were signed, how much money was spent promoting them. More money was spent promoting gangsta rap than socially conscious music. But that's a relatively minor way in which racial prejudice influenced black culture. The influence of the news media is far larger. And even they had massive influence on black music; do you think there's more evening news eyeballs for KRS-One talking about social progress, or for 2 Live Crew rapping about S&M, and/or eating ass? And do you think the nightly news gives a shit about reporting the spectrum of what is newsworthy, or just about attracting eyeballs?

Luckily, television is fading away, albeit slowwwwwly. We'll be getting more news from the internet, and so there's more chances for less-entrenched media to capture eyeballs as long as people are in the habit of going to search engines for their information. The proliferation of mobile internet use has surely driven this trend forward, through voice interaction going to keyword searches.

Hey, I'd be happy if you had to report facts in order to be called news.

Anyway, nowhere have I alleged some unified conspiracy to "keep down the darkie", etc. It's just about not enough substantive effort to check the momentum of the past. It's a big job; racism didn't begin in America. Slavery didn't begin in America, although we clearly did maintain the institution well beyond the limits of good taste. But now (ha ha, "now", like it's not damned late) it's [past] time to take substantive action to correct the institutional racism which constitutes ongoing unfair abuse of humans along racial lines. If most of the money is still in white hands, and the money buys the laws, and controls the cops, and the laws and the cops are still unfair to black people, who do you blame? The black people who don't have enough money to buy their own laws?

Is that a new series from Piers Anthony? No, wait, you didn't say pre-teen androids

Or we could even come up with a system that works the way ours works without even understanding that this is how our system works as well... and maybe apply that information and learn something about ourselves. I was hoping that sentence would be a lot more coherent, but I'm not going to edit it now. First espresso in a while.

You mean, program your sex robot in bytecode?

There's nothing subtle or immeasurable about blacks being more highly targeted by law enforcement, courts, and the penal system than whites, and this leading to a general downward spiral in their quality of life; or in how blacks were property, and then were effectively prohibited from owning property, for a massive slice of the duration of the history of the nation. (Hence this proclamation of agitation? In b4 masturbation.) This leads to being penalized in any capitalist society. When capital controls the means of production, and whites control the capital, then blacks will suffer and nobody should be surprised. You can follow the money, that's the one good thing about capitalism. You can figure out who to burn and impale on pitchforks.

The F-Series is the world's second most popular vehicle, and the world's most popular truck, both historically as well as right now. Chevy trucks are well-reputed both far and wide. Now Dodge... I don't know what they're going to do now that Nissan is getting Cummins diesels. That was kind of the last reason to buy a Dodge Ram. But in general, the US light truck strategy has been highly successful.