They certainly were, until FDR and later LBJ wanted to turn the Democrats into the civil rights party, and distanced the party from the racist southern democrats, after which Nixon decided that the Republicans should appeal to those southern former-democrats in order to gain more votes, and the parties basically switched position on this issue.

Not all dating sites are scammy, though admittedly some of them definitely are.

In fact, it seems to be the most lucrative market for dating sites, considering how many cater specifically for that market.

It's the opposite: you need to be smart to be part of the group. And somehow people like being part of a group.

I believe someone did some research in Eindhoven, which, being the home town of tech company Philips as as major tech university, has a high ratio of engineers. Turns out there was also a higher rate of autism in kids. It's possible they also looked at genetics. I forgot the details.

Has that been corrected for cultural differences?

You mean, like a dating service? Seems to me the smartest thing to do is to use the best tool for the job.

Exactly. An IQ test tries to measure something we're not sure of what it is or even what we mean by it. As a result, different IQ tests measure slightly different things with different weights. Mostly, IQ tests measure your ability to do IQ tests. That IQ value does correlate strongly with all sorts of stuff, like doing well in school, university and work, but it's no guarantee.

There are motorcycle groups within Mensa. How's that for snobbery?

Exactly. I don't know much about Mensa, because I've never felt the need to join. I'm pretty sure most of the people around me would qualify, but that also means that we already have plenty of smart people to have intellectual discussions with. My sister, however, studied sports, got surrounded by other sporty people, and eventually started to miss contact with other smart people, so she joined Mensa, and now she talks about all the game events and motorcycle trips they have and all the interesting people she meets there. It fills a need for her that for me is already filled in other ways.

Steam may be DRM, but it does provide some advantages in other areas that might balance things out.

Looks like Ubisoft is again providing pritates with a great opportunity to deliver a superior product. This seems to be Ubisoft's thing. They probably love pirates, that they're being so nice them.

They're doing a lousy job of it. The US has become significantly less free over the past decade and a half. Keeping your country requires taking an interest in how your own country is run, rather than messing with how other countries are run.

You pay for the cable box? I get mine for free with the digital TV subscription. Well, I pay for the subscription of course, but if that included $10 for the box, there wouldn't be much else left for them.

I'm definitely surprised at how stupid many modern TVs are. It's trivial to include a computer in the TV. In fact, they do exactly that to create that awful menu system. Why not make it nicer and include a recorder and a standardized plugin system that your cable provider can put his cable decoding software in?