See, that's the problem. There is disagreement among large numbers of people on exactly what the definition of "fit parent" is, who gets to decide what that definition is, and how it is interpreted/implemented/enforced, and if government even has the power under the Constitution to be involved at all.

Strat

It is worth noting that in an airplane, parachutes are largely useless since the passengers are not trained in how to use them.

When it comes to protecting Earth, everyone doesn't need training, just those who will do something about it.

The risk to Earth, in our lifetimes, is very, very low. The risk over the next 50,000 years is much higher.

The thing is, we don't know when it will happen again. So should we do nothing?

"Please buy me! Won't someone please buy me?" How FUBAR is TWC that they're so ready to sell to someone, anyone? Either a) they had this in the pipeline before the Comcast deal fell through, in which case how many other deals are on standby?, or b) they brokered a major corporate sell deal entirely within the last month, presumably under immense pressure.

In my opinion, TWC is desperate to sell because there's an internal house of cards that's about to fall over. Someone needs to unload it quickly so that a pending spectacular failure will be on someone else's watch.

There's no such thing as air tight walls, even if you seal the joists, shoot insulting foam and sheets of loaded vinyl in between.

Some are just better built than others. And every country in the world, even Sweden, has shady inspectors. If it wasn't this, like you said, it would be sipping through the windows from downstairs. You're breathing it wether you like it or not.

The one thing you may not have as much of, is asshole neighbors.

And you think Canada's climate is nicer than Sweden? :)

I don't know about this case, but on this side of the world, it wasn't that simple.

These Uber and Lyfts didn't go and bully themselves in the taxi industry. They originally operated differently: You never needed a medallion to run a car service. -You needed a medallion to pick up people hailing you in the street.-

That is very different. What these new startups did, was use technology to remove the need to hail a cab. I could always just go and call a non-taxi car service with a phone. No one needed a medallion to pick me up after i called them.

Since hailing a cab is now obsolete, medallions are obsolete.

If your engineer needed to pay 100k to do work that isn't pre-arranged.....blah, the analogy falls apart so hard I can't even fix it.

There's filters in between. If you're in a modern and well maintained building, that's okay (you'll get the smell though, but you won't get smoke or contact highs, lol)

Unfortunately, modern and well maintained buildings aren't the norm in a large part of the world. I lived in a "super luxury" 3 years old building right on the steps of MIT for a few years and they had to make the building smoke-free because of the way the heat loop had been built (there was filters for the A/C and air in-take, but for the heat, things were connected).

The actual air that was being pushed around was filtered and purified, but weed smoke would go through the system backward when they were off.

And even if you're not talking about that, only the most well built places are completely sealed from each other. Walls often don't have sealed joists, and in warmer areas won't have insulation in between (aside for noise insulation), so air and smell will slowly go through, if strong enough.

Its also a pretty big problem in older wood properties in cities where bribing the inspector is common.

How did you think forced air central system worked in multi-hundred unit buildings? The kind that doesn't have 1 duct-less per unit (like hotels often have).

They're not the most common thing in the world, don't get me wrong, but I've seen them in Canada, in the US, France, UK, Japan and Hong Kong.

Which leads me to think you can find linked loop systems everywhere.

I think it is quite important - as a diversion tactic. He doesn't want people to catch on to the fact that the Conservatives are selling off public assets as part of a larger, ideologically motivated strategy. I won't deny that they and the Liberal Democrats have done a reasonable job of handling the crisis, in as much as they have done at least part of what had to be done, but they have moved on from the pragmatic running of the country, to a targeted implementation of ideology, and that will inevitably hurt society. This is not because Conservative ideology is worse than the others, but because ideology tends to ignore reality.

The Conservatives have this romantic notion of 'Big Society', which in their minds means that charities, voluntary work etc should cover for more and more things, and the state should not - something I find rather disturbing; presumably if you fall through the 'Big Society' safety net, you are free to go and sell your body to scientific experiments? Another one that sounds a bit hollow is their being the party for 'Working People' - not 'The Working Class', note - which one suspects may mean they are in favour exclusively of people being in work, so you are not on benefits. Thus, changing the benefit system so people are forced to take shitty jobs far below their abilities, because there simply isn't anything else, will be 'For Working People', right?

"Why should there even be a "solution"?"

Because we're a progressive world, where we successfully freed women from the oppresion of having a nice household, a partner who takes cares of them, and pursuing the ultimate biological goal of reproduction. Now they can enjoy being forced into being competitive just as men are. Remember girls, now you have to earn the right to use your womb now, better get working because you'll need the money in case you decide to unfreeze your eggs and have a baby a couple of years before your retirement.

So better get into engineering even if you don't like it because babies are fucking expensive now! Uh? you don't like it? well that's because your internalized patriarchy doesn't let you think straight you silly girl.

Obviously the only real solution is to force all children to be taken at birth to be raised and educated in government-run facilities until the age of majority, safe from bad parenting decisions and dangerous political/ideological ideas. /s

I felt the need for the '/s' sarc tag, as there are actually a number of people, some in positions of power, who would take the above as a given, that children belong to the State first and parents second.

Strat

Thank God, Gotham City is safe!

From the article:

It looks like you might be right.

Two questions for you:

1: What have you been smoking?
2: Can I have some?

I think 'competent' and 'CTO' in the same sentence probably constitutes a contradiction in terms.

You seem to focus exclusively on the inconvenience caused by things clogging pipes, but that really is the least of the problem. I'm not suffering from the 'natural is good' delusion; all I'm saying is, natural substances have been around for a long time, so nature has had time to adjust to them. Plastics, on the other hand have exploded onto the scene in the last century; no doubt, if given enough time, something will evolve to take advantage of the abundant, new energy source, but it is likely to take something like millions of years - or certainly a lot longer than our lifetimes. Whatever harm plastic may cause, we are not liekly to have a good defence against it; we should have thought about that before we just let it out in the world around us, but we didn't.

I would suggest that this might be an issue that David Cameron used for the elections and for politics and that it isn't a core issue that he'll defend against such pushback.