Considering how many doctors used to inoculate for smallpox, a lot. There's probably envelopes containing spores in old collections. Hope they're dead.

Yeah. That flag pretty much no longer flies over the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Last time I went into a court house, I was required to remove my belt. Somehow, the US made it through a foreign invasion, a Civil War, WWI, WWII, the Cold War, and absolutely massive social upheaval without requiring people to remove clothing to enter into courts of law. But a few jackasses drive airplanes into some buildings and it's goodbye liberty, hello 'safety'. This 100% safe nonsense is destroying the Republic. We are less safe than ever and we have done it to ourselves. Government is the problem with our security, not to the solution to it

"I don't know why it's important for physical sports to have gender segregation, but they do it and people recognize them as legitimate! If we segregate by gender, maybe that's what will make people recognize us as legitimate!"

Just like in programming, this line of thinking clearly translates down to "I have no idea what I'm doing, and I have no idea what the consequences of these choices are, but I'm just going to bang at things until something works or everything breaks."

(Spoiler alert: usually, everything breaks.)

Yeah, that's not really true. H-1B workers routinely get paid less than their American counterparts, and once hired, seldom get raises and never talk back.

At a big corporation with dozens of lawyers on staff or retainer, the costs of bringing on an H-1B are minimal.

A long time ago, when managing some government service contracts, I had someone from the BLM walk in and essentially say, "It's the end of the fiscal year and we need to spend some money left in our budget, what's the most expensive PCs and multiple monitor setups you can find to sell us to replace all our current machines with?"

I doubt Lois Lerner, a Director managing a group with 900 employees, was making due with old obsolete hardware like the guys in the trenches do. She managed a $90M+ budget, so I'm sure they could find some cash to keep her PC up to date.

Yeah, I liked that manga too.

No.

Humans poisoned the crap out of it with absolutely complete regard for the future of the species. Passenger Pigeons were regarded as a menace by early settlers, like locust. And like locust, they were eliminated. Yes, Passenger Pigeons were hunted, and yes, the last few thousand were likely killed by hunters. But the first 100,000,000 million were poisoned or had their trees cut down.

Burning the bridges the trolls live under? Patent reform? Thorough review of ALL patents to see if they make sense? Force Microsoft to disclose ALL patents they feel might be infringed?

All of this would require a MASSIVE amount of lobbying to accomplish, and therefore a MASSIVE amount of money.

How do you currently get massive amounts of money?

Therefore, what incentive do people who currently have massive amount of money have, to make the changes you propose?

And massively high cortisol stress levels, which - when combined with the food desert - will muck up people's metabolism in short order.

You know, I watched my wife work all day gettin' thirty tinfoil sheets together for you ungrateful sons of bitches, and all I hear is criticize, criticize, criticize!

> But the real problem is this, and this is what most people don't get: Many nerds do not step in and stop their fellow nerds if they are creating a hostile environment, or otherwise make it clear to the few that certain behaviours are unacceptable, and most nerds are oblivious to what women and other minorities face in the community from the actions of the few.

Because when we do, we're accused (by that woman) of "White Knighting". And sometimes legitimately - there's a LOT of false signalling going on when the stakes are this high (and when reproduction AND pack dynamics are involved, the stakes are ALWAYS high).

There's a LOT of misogynistic jerks out there. But there's also a LOT of role-confusion and conflicting signals about what we're supposed to do about it.

The tumbler Social Justice Warriors have some damn good, highly valid points - but they're expressing them in pretty toxic and unhelpful ways.

The MRA movement also has a few damn good, highly valid points - but they're expressing them in pretty toxic and unhelpful ways.

And the narcissistic sociopaths stand in the middle, egging both sides on, because chaos is fun, and tears are delicious.

And each time one side presents a toxic, unhelpful argument, it makes the other side that less capable of presenting their side in non-toxic and helpful ways - because coalition politics are buried pretty deeply inside our monkey-brains.

Actually, there's a term for that: It's called "Poe's Law".

The unusualness of your job pales in comparison to high school.

Imagine a building that is constructed along the lines of a prison. Students are routinely padded down, put through metal detectors, and practice going into lockdown. There is no freedom of thought or speech.

Deviation from social norms is treated with torment by fellow inmates or punishment from the building staff. The ostensible goal of the institution, education, is secondary to social and athletic considerations.

No one wants to be there. Ungodly sums of money are spent on this program, yet the results are worse than most of the rest of the developed world.

And the nerds program computers on their own time because the teachers will not give them a relevant education. That is without a doubt the most unusual place any of us has programmed.

Cruel and unusual.

Business skills are not actually applicable in business. Sure, like recognizes like, but that mostly applies in golf, accounting, and working on Cisco routers. Three completely separate skill sets. Once you are pigeon-holed as IT, there you will stay.

You can move to marketing and run reports and websites. But don't try to be creative, because you are IT.
Senior Management won't want you around, because IT are nerds.
HR? Well, that's a career for paid liars, so maybe you could work there.
Accounting? Get your CPA.
Sales? No, because you are IT.

Get it? Good. Now get a golf club and start making friends.

We all know robots aren't competent. They are consistently being defeated by John Connor, the Doctor, and Starbuck.