That's retarded. People have unprotected sex because it's better. Way better. Even, I would say *especially* people in long-term, monogamous, trusting relationships, who still happen to not want kids at the moment.

While annoying that the default isn't sorting chronologically (I agree completely that this is the only sort that is actually useful), and that you have to re-sort every time you visit the page for a new place, it *is* only a single extra click, next to the default "yelp sort", the "date" link.

Yes. I'd be all in favor of his "conditional" approval. The *problem* with both of these companies is that already, neither of them has much/any competition. If the merger goes through, they still don't. If the merger *doesn't* go through, they *also* still don't.

Much of this lack of competition is legislated. If part of the deal for them to be approved to merge is that they are *forced* to stop blocking any competition, either public or private, from existing, then yes, I'm all for it. What we really need is some actual competition, I don't care who by. I have an amazingly cheap phone bill from a company with amazingly good service, because that market actually has decent competition.

I just read it as, the oldest twin was previously found, and they haven't yet lost him yet. (He "remains found".)

Alternatively, just don't be an idiot, put it all in (diversified) investments, then live pretty much indefinitely off the dividends, even if you live moderately lavishly. I don't understand how people *don't* understand this. (But yes, it does seem like the biggest mistake people have is not realizing that if you give out jillions of dollars to hundreds of your "friends", your money will disappear hundreds of times more quickly. The key there is just don't have friends.)

Betteridge's Law indicates that the answer is "no", when of course, the answer is actually "duh".

At this point, it's pretty much conclusively determined that pretty much everything except for literal poison is both good for you in some way, and bad for you in some other way. And that's probably not even wrong - everything probably really *is* both good and bad for you. So screw it, eat what you like. (Unless it's literal poison.)

I'm reading a great near-future series from the 90s right now (so it actually takes place in what was then the future, the mid-2000s) that hypothesizes that NASA is never going to be the powerhouse it once was, and that if we ever want to really get space travel going, what we need is an eccentric bajillionaire who *really* wants space travel to succeed. Sadly, Elon Musk is a bit too much of a dabbler compared to the extremely-driven Mariesa of the book's world (I wish we had a Mariesa), but he's what we have, so I wish him luck.

He should read the series I'm reading now, though; might motivate him. ;)

> Whom do you trust with your data?
Me.

And who really owns it?
Me.

What about in 3-6 years from now?
Still me.

How should I make sure that I retain access to today's data 20 years from now?
Keep it on a backup. When your primary starts to die, get a new primary. When your backup starts to die, get a new backup.

Is storing things locally even a reasonable option for most people?
Why not?

Also, if you do still have data in floppies (which, why, they were a great transport medium at the time, but never a particularly great long-term storage medium), you could pick up a usb floppy reader for basically nothing. 3-second google found one for 12 bucks, and I'm sure you could find one for cheaper if you spent more than 3 seconds looking.

Well, there might be *some* airports underwater... I can think of a couple airports that are pretty much at water level. Just flew out of VCE a few months ago, for instance, and it's right on the water. Wikipedia says it's about 2 meters, that's not super high off the ground. Of course if you want to cheat, there's always Amsterdam (Europe's 4th busiest, according wikipedia!)

LA-style traffic jams in Nebraska's hard to swallow, though. What crowd of people would be crazy enough to be living in Nebraska to cause them?

Prohibition of (most) drugs: yes. Prohibition of crazy machine guns, child slavery (or any kind of slavery, really), murder-for-hire, etc... not so much. I'm all for a better, safer drug market, but the way to go is working to lift prohibitions on drugs that shouldn't be illegal, not this.

Your site is amazing. Thanks for linking - just too bad you apparently haven't done anything with it since 2013?

I don't see what's wrong with it. Yes, they may have called, they may also have emailed. Perhaps they wrote a letter, or sent someone down there to talk to them in person. Maybe they did all of those. Does it matter which one they did? No? Then why not have a verb that specifies that they got in touch, but doesn't care how?

It *is* nonviolent. I'd obviously rather not have my cards stolen at all, but if given the choice, I'd rather my cards be stolen by pickpocketing than by mugging, and I'd definitely rather they be stolen by pickpocketing than by someone blowing up an ATM while I might be standing nearby.

"I'm sure society would be better if everyone drove just as fast as they want."
Nope.

"those speed limit rules were made up just to create revenue."

Generally: yes.

Speed limits *in the abstract* are a good idea. However, the vast majority of specific speed limit *numbers* are way lower than they should be, if the purpose was entirely for safety, rather than for revenue. Hence why everyone drives generally between 5-20 mph (depending on location) higher than the posted speed limit if they can get away with it: because they're driving the speed it's actually safe to drive. I'm 100% not for removing all speed limits - that's a great straw-man argument. I'm just for raising them to a more reasonable speed, at which point I would be entirely in favor of actually policing them strongly, which I'm not at all in favor of under their current implementation. That guy going 110mph in a 65 zone absolutely deserves a huge fine at *least*. The guy going 75, though, totally doesn't (under most circumstances).