"13. Global thermonuclear war."

Would you like to play a nice game of Chess?

" exactly like the people voted for!"

The people didn't vote FOR anything, IMO. Way too many voted against something.

People didn't like Biden *OR* Harris. They held their nose and voted AGAINST Trump. Unsuccessfully

Many Trump voters likewise didn't like Trump, but voted AGAINST Harris.

Both parties are providing crap candidates.

"Yep, so much Californian money goes to supporting the inefficient red states. It's little wonder."

Seriously? That's your "go to"?

Just... wow.

CA is exhausted as being the 5th largest economy in the world if it were it's own country, yet we have the highest taxes in virtually every single catagory, among the highest unemployment, poverty, homelessness, lowest ranked student performance (most high schools in CA are opting out of the federal standard tests now) -- virtually every category such a "wealthy" state should do well.

Shall we talk about how CA went from bragging about surpluses to huge deficits at the drop of a hat? While bringing in record breaking state revenue? All these problems are NOT due to federal taxes but California's poor management and apathetic electorate. And, "oh". Federal taxes are collected from the people of CA -- not what CA deigns to provide to the fed.

BTW, I'm not a republican -- and I'm a "never trumper" (proud to have had the opportunity to *NOT* vote for him 6 times (3 primaries and 3 national elections).

Jeez...

One of the only areas our elected officials do excel.

That's been going on for ages. Used to be able to hit some of the sketchy parks and buy $100 worth of food stamps for $40. Buyer gets a huge savings on this weeks groceries and the addict gets another 2ish weeks of feeding their addiction.

EBT ATM cards kind of killed that market. Now they get full value on wasting their benefits.

Here's your citation:

https://slashdot.org/comments....

I'm an authority.

"The federal government is the least efficient method for dispersing the funds."

California is far more inefficient in dispersing funds.

No, it's not. It is legal to go to a port of entry and request asylum, not to enter the country without permission.

"It is legal and correct to enter the country and then apply for asylum."

There is a "clause" that allows someone who did enter the country illegally to request asylum after an illegal entry -- providing they requested the asylum in a timely manner -- then they would get no penalty for the illegal crossing. It most certainly isn't "legal and correct" in the sense you imply.

The "streamlining" that was done by the previous administrator clearly overwhelmed the system. I would argue that it was by designed to do that by the sheer volume streaming across the boarder and the administration's protests that everything was fine and dandy. Another clue that the policy was piss-poor is to look at how many asylum seekers were granted asylum -- often well below half over the last 10 years (fluctuates between less than 20% to less than half).

Lets look at the numbers:

4 years before Trump, there were something like 8 million border encounters (mostly on the southern border). About 5 million were "paroled" for entry to apply for asylum. Of those, only about 1 million have applied. Of that 1 million, anywhere between 20% and less than half will be granted. And, that doesn't account for "got aways", which are around 1-2 million. And these are conservative estimates.

So, of just the numbers of encounters during those 4 years, only 1 million submitted paperwork for asylum. Remember that "timely manner" bit?

Allowing a flood of humans in to our country is a horrible practice that no other country allows to the extent that the US does. We're 3x (per capita) the number of illegal/undocumented immigrants than Europe BEFORE Biden.

"Tom and his ICE are deporting only about twice as many people as his predecessors -"

They and this administration have also turned down the flood of illegal border crossings that the previous administration refused to acknowledge for 3 years. And then the only "solution" that came out of that administration and it's congress' was to try make what they were doing legal and demanded the opposition accept it.

Note: I'm a never Trumper. I'm proud to say I didn't vote for Trump in 6 elections (3 primaries and 3 national elections), but he's right on immigration and border crossings. Implementation has had problems that need correcting, but we need to enforce our laws with regards to immigration and work permissions. I also married someone who came to the US legally at age 19 with her family from Syria. She became a citizen in her mid 20s. It can be done legally.

Trying to paint this as some racist/facist action that's only targeting "brown people" is just an outright lie. Most people in the US without status are Hispanic and a great plurality are from Mexico.

"In exchange for this you will get access to substantially more money than if you didn't go to college."

No you don't. You have a CHANCE to access that.

The problem is there are much more college graduates than jobs that warrant that "substantially more money".

The hardest hit are those with certain arts or humanities jobs -- at least as far as pay. a BA/BS just isn't going to win you that 6-figure pay to allow someone to pay off their student loans unless you planned your major very well.

To be fair, some of the blame goes to employers. They want experience and real world skills -- which virtually NOBODY has right out of college. Its like they are hunting unicorns instead of training horses.

"Perhaps if it had adequate funding"

LAUSD has about half the number of students they had 20 years ago. They have more than double the number of administrators and about 20 more teachers over that same time scale -- and the budget of LAUSD is over $18 billion -- up from $8 billion 20 years ago. The number of students in that time also went from closer to 800,000 to about 400,000 now.

What this doesn't include are the various city, county and state bond initiatives that added additional funding (which came at increased per dollar spent due to interest on the loans).

The amount of money we're spending is not justified based on the student population. The number of administrators is not justified by student population.

And "oh". Student performance have continued drop.

It's not a funding problem. It's a gross mismanagement problem along wtih turning LAUSD jobs in to "rewards" for both union employees and political supporters.

Awesome! Professional puzzle solvers wont be collecting unemployment in the short term. The bad news is that unemployment will likely be broke when toasters can solve puzzles 5 or 10 years later...

" I watched some old episodes from the 70s recently and they were pushing feminism back then but it was never the focus of the show."

THIS! Very much THIS!

Which has been a problem for the last several years. It's focus!

Seriously, Joy to the World would have been a decent Christmas show but again, even in TINY areas, the focus is obvious, annoying and can take you out of the moment. In the train exchange when the Doctor is asking "Ham and Cheese on toast with a pumpkin latte" to a lone woman in the 1950-60s train car" Later in the show while doing the Drs victory lap the woman on the train car indicates clearly she's going to break up with her girl friend. She makes a strong point of it! To a stranger at a time when it was something people didn't talk about.

Why? I'm sorry, but it's forced and it's constant. Very annoying. In my daily, every day life I've don't encounter people who either are vocal about being gay (or straight) or are clearly in a relationship with someone of the same sex (or different sex) as often as the Doctor seems to lately. It's a distraction when it's in pretty much every episode and it's NOTICABLE. It's like seeing a boom mic in the corner of the screen, or catching a misplaced prop where it shouldn't be -- only worse -- because it's deliberate.

Don't even care that 15 was gay -- or black. Didn't matter. It shouldn't be the showcase of the show. The writing was horrible most of the time (Boom was good and there were maybe 2 OK episodes) and this constant redirecting everything to "Oh, look -- a gay couple!" or "I need to break up with my lesbian lover" or SOMETHING.

Besides, before River Song, the Doctor really had no "romantic life". And that arc did not dominate the the show or get mentioned in some way or another in every episode, yet the Doctor in just a single episode met and apparently fell head over heels with a a guy who was a space bounty hunter. That had never happened before and was out of character.

I watched every single episode of Dr Who since Pertwee and all the episodes that predate him that still exist. What's happening now started "full speed ahead" with 13 -- enough that they brought back Dr12 for a short run as Dr14. Looks like pushing the "gay focus" "over-drive" button on Dr15 didn't help the ratings at all -- and now we got Doctor-Rose for 16 to pull another "save" attempt after just 17.5 episodes of Dr 15!! 2 short seasons, the last 20 mins of Dr.14 bi-regenerating to 15 and 1 xmas episode). Haven't seen that short a run since Dr. 9.

The Disney deal was hoping to get Disney dollar$ to cover the production costs now that BBC is totally changing their "business model". That plan was for 2 seasons and 1 Whoniverse mini-series (about to air). I've heard nothing about anything beyond that from Disney so far so far... so I'm thinking Disney is out of the picture now and Doctor Who will, if we're lucky, still have an occasional Xmas special (hopefully with Moffet writing without any RTD influence). And this had nothing to do with Disney -- this was ENTIRELY RTD.

Look! AI has reproduced the Slashdot effect! Something that's been mostly unheard of for at least a decade!

Awe... all the good feels of days gone by. What old is new again.

"you got me bud."

You "got" yourself. Sigh...