I'll just leave this here... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

There is, on average,18M metric tons of CO2 emitted per day. I've looked into carbon recapture schemes before, but I've never seen anything that scales massively enough to be able to handle not only our massive ongoing emissions, but to even begin to reduce the CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

You paint a nice picture where Industry realized the damage they were doing with their sulphur emissions and voluntarily made changes to mitigate the damage, but this is extremely disingenuous. In reality, industry only complied with emission controls after being forced to by government regulations (as is the case for pretty much any scenario that requires money to be spent mitigating negative externalities).

That said, I agree with your conclusion. Industry won't make any changes until it clearly affects their bottom line. However, there are ways to force their hand... instead of waiting until environmental conditions are so bad that industry suffers, it is the duty of government to implement and enforce policies that steer industry to a more sustainable path, putting people first and capital second. Only problem these days is finding the political will to do this...

I'm aware of those SCOTUS decisions. But just because society generally follows the decisions SCOTUS puts out, that doesn't make them infallible. Historically, SCOTUS at least generally had some internal consistency and respect for precedent. These days, members of the court are originalists at some times, textualists at other times, and something else entirely whenever it suits them... essentially whatever framework it takes to construct a plausible sounding legal argument to support their personal position on the issue.

This unmooring from legal norms is partly the reason why SCOTUS's reputation is in tatters, both amongst the general public, but perhaps more importantly amongst other members of the legal profession. It is also why many of the SCOTUS's opinions in the Robert's court era are and will continue to be damaging to the US as a country.

Now, based on SCOTUS's own behavior, I see no reason to believe their recent 2nd Amendment rulings are the final say on the matter. After all, they've demonstrated that any future court is free to come in and completely revise precedent if it suits the majority, so unfortunately no, those rulings don't clear up any of my 'confusion' on the 2nd Amendment.

Ugh, yeah US Bank's website and app are the worst. Always have been too... I don't understand how such a big company can consistently have such horrible UI design.

Sure, if you want to use Bluetooth to unlock the bike with one touch, then yes, you need to have a signed in app on your phone. However, there's another way to unlock the bike intended for exactly this type of situation (phone is dead, don't have your phone, server goes away), and thats to enter a user-defined 4 digit code on the bike to unlock it.

Where do you get that notion? In the language used at the time of the constitution, 'people' was generally used as a collective noun (as in 'the people of the United States'), whereas persons was used to denote numerous individuals. The 2nd Amendment clearly uses the former word and doesn't seem to make any references to individuals.

Ah yeah, the TV-as-cabinet trend definitely needs to make a comeback.

Or even more old school -- cover it with lots of electrical tape.

The best part is that having been nowhere else, you feel able draw inferences about how life is elsewhere from the most minor details and still conclude that things are best where you are. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. Reminds me of the Victorian children's book author who wrote about how horrible people were in other countries, even though she had never left her village in England. Guess some things don't change...

Dude, you need to get out more. You seem constantly amazed at anything that isn't the exact same as the little bubble you live in.

You said it yourself though... the right of the people to bear arms in 2nd amendment is related to 'a well regulated militia'. If the 2nd amendment was meant to confer a broad right for any person to have arms, why would the phrase 'a well regulated militia' be included? Its there for a reason.

A militia is well defined, especially in the context of when the 2nd amendment was written -- it was an armed force meant to be raised for the general defense of the country. You mention a standing army... for most of the history of the US, there was no standing army for all intents and purposes. It really wasn't until after WWII that a permanent, large standing army became a thing.

I would say the other rights are as conditional as they appear to be. Using your example, th free press isn't conditional to having a printing license because there is no subclause in the 1st amendment mentioning that (it reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.") Now if the 1st amendment read, in part, "...a printing license, being necessary to the operation of a free State, the freedom of the press shall not be infringed," then I would agree that there would be conditions on the free press.

I like how certain people pretend the amendment isn't written with a purpose in mind. They just choose to ignore half of the amendment which says in whole "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." To me, when the sentence begins with a phrase about a 'well regulated Militia', it would seem that this is a core tenet of the amendment. Unfortunately, recent politically-driven jurisprudence has decided to just completely jettison this part of the amendment.

Are you living in the same country as I am? Not sure where you've been in the last 50 years, but the people in the US absolutely do not hold any power. In fact, I don't know if that was ever true in the history of the US, but its a nice bit of propaganda to believe to make yourself feel better.

When politicians in power can alter districts as they wish to pre-determine the outcome of votes; when politicians are bought and paid for by moneyed interests; when justices on the Supreme Court feel empowered to cozy up to oligarchs and feel no shame about conflicts of interest; when congress is a dysfunctional mess; all of these things are pretty much the opposite of having the 'power' in the hands of the people.

The big bang... duh! /s