I dunno. China is a "market socialist" system -- which is a contradiction in terms. If China is socialist, then for practical purposes Norway and Sweden have to be even *more* socialist because they have a comprehensive public welfare system which China lacks. And those Nordic countries are rated quite high on global measures of political and personal freedom, and very low on corruption. In general they outperform the US on most of those measures, although the US is better on measures of business deregulation.

It makes no sense to claim Chinese courts have a lot of power, although it may seem that way â" itâ(TM)s supposed to seem that way. One of the foundational principles of Chinese jurisprudence is party supremacy. Every judge is supervised by a PLC â" party legal committee â" which oversees budgets, discipline and assignments in the judiciary. They consult with the judges in sensitive trials to ensure a politically acceptable outcome.

So it would be more accurate to characterize the courts as an instrument of party power rather than an independent power center.

From time to time Chinese court decisions become politically inconvenient, either through the supervisors in the PLC missing something or through changing circumstances. In those cases there is no formal process for the party to make the courts revisit the decision. Instead the normal procedure is for the inconvenient decision to quietly disappear from the legal databases, as if it never happened. When there is party supremacy, the party can simply rewrite judicial history to its current needs.

An independent judiciary seems like such a minor point; and frankly it is often an impediment to common sense. But without an independent judiciary you canâ(TM)t have rule of law, just rule by law.

Hereâ(TM)s the problem with that scenario: court rulings donâ(TM)t mean much in a state ruled by one party. China has plenty of progressive looking laws that donâ(TM)t get enforced if it is inconvenient to the party. There are emission standards for trucks and cars that should help with their pollution problems, but there are no enforcement mechanisms and officials have no interest in creating any if it would interfere with their economic targets or their private interests.

China is a country of strict rules and lax enforcement, which suits authoritarian rulers very well. It means laws are flouted routinely by virtually everyone, which gives the party leverage. Displease the party, and they have plenty of material to punish you, under color of enforcing laws. It sounds so benign, at least theyâ(TM)re enforcing the law part of the time, right? Wrong. Laws selectively enforced donâ(TM)t serve any public purpose; theyâ(TM)re just instruments of personal power.

Americans often donâ(TM)t seem to understand the difference between rule of law and rule *by* law. Itâ(TM)s ironic because the American Revolution and constitution were historically important in establishing the practicality of rule of law, in which political leaders were not only expected to obey the laws themselves, but had a duty to enforce the law impartially regardless of their personal opinions or interests.

Rule *by* law isnâ(TM)t a Chinese innovation, it was the operating principle for every government before 1789. A government that rules *by* law is only as good as the men wielding power, and since power corrupts, itâ(TM)s never very good for long.

That's interesting and all, but since this isn't a criminal case it's not exactly on topic. If we're involved in a traffic accident and you are found at fault, you will be liable for the damages. If you crashed into me intentionally you would probably face criminal charges, but if you didn't display any sign of intent, the laws related to using a vehicle as a deadly weapon would be irrelevant to our case.

They're being sued for being complicit in the wrongful death of a teenager. They're not being taken to criminal court for failing to uphold their duty as a mandatory reporter.

If I watch you drown and do nothing, even though I'm a capable swimmer standing next to a bunch of flotation devices, and all of this is caught on camera, your family could probably sue me for causing your death even though I'm not a lifeguard and do not own the pool.

Class 1 and 2 e-bikes limit assist to 20 mph, not 15. You can ride them faster than that, but you have to provide the power. 20 mph is well above what most recreational cyclists can maintain on a flat course, so if these classes arenâ(TM)t fast enough to be safe, neither is a regular bike. The performance is well within what is possible for a fit cyclist for short times , so their performance envelope is suitable for sharing bike and mixed use infrastructure like rail trails.

Class 3 bikes can assist riders to 28 mph. This is elite rider territory. There is no regulatory requirement ti equip the bike to handle those speeds safely, eg hydraulic brakes with adequate size rotors. E-bikes in this class are far more likely to pose injury risks to others. I think it makes a lot of sense to treat them as mopeds, requiring a drivers license for example.

Would treating them as mopeds be so bad?

What weâ(TM)re looking at is exactly what happened when gasoline cars started to become popular and created problems with deaths, injuries, and property damage. The answer to managing those problems and providing accountability was to make the vehicles display registration plates, require licensing of drivers, and enforcing minimum safety standards on cars. Iâ(TM)m not necessarily suggesting all these things should be done to e-bikes, but I donâ(TM)t see why they shouldnâ(TM)t be on the table.

I am a lifelong cyclist , over fifty years now, and in general I welcome e-bikes getting more people into light two wheel vehicles. But I see serious danger to both e-bike riders and the people around them. There are regulatory classes which limit the performance envelope of the vehicle, but class 3, allowing assist up to 28 mph, is far too powerful for a novice cyclist. Only the most athletic cyclists, like professional tour racers, can sustain speeds like that, but they have advanced bike handling skills and theyâ(TM)re doing it on bikes that weigh 1/5 of what complete novice novice e-bike riders are on. Plus the pros are on the best bikes money can buy. If you pay $1500 for an e-bike, youâ(TM)re getting about $1200 of battery and motor bolted onto $300 of bike.

Whatâ(TM)s worse, many e-bikes which have e-bike class stickers can be configured to ignore class performance restrictions, and you can have someone with no bike handling skills riding what in effect is an electric motorcycle with terrible brakes.

E-bike classification notwithstanding, thereâ(TM)s a continuum from electrified bicycles with performance roughly what is achievable by a casi recreational rider on one end, running all the way up to electric motorcycles. If there were only such a thing as a class 1 e-bike thereâ(TM)d be little need to build a regulatory system with registration and operator licensing. But you canâ(TM)t tell by glancing at a two wheel electric vehicle exactly where on the bike to motorcycle spectrum it falls; that depends on the motor specification and software settings. So as these things become more popular, I donâ(TM)t see any alternative to having a registration and inspection system for all of them, with regulatory categories and restrictions based on the weight and hardware performance limitations of the vehicle. Otherwise youâ(TM)ll have more of the worst case weâ(TM)re already seeing: preteen kids riding what are essentially electric motorcycles that weigh as much as they do because the parents think those things are âoebikesâ and therefore appropriate toys.

That is the story, although there are some conflicting stories so it's not really clear whether "a patchy server" came before or after using the Apache name.

Either way, as far as Native American references go, I find the use by the Apache Foundation to be relatively benign.

While all the reactionaries in this thread (like the first post) are completely ridiculous with how quickly they pulled out their soapboxes to decry cultural sensitivity as "anti-white" while demonizing liberal white women, there is a small kernel of truth in their complaints that we can be a little too sensitive at times. Backlash against the "Apache" name is an example of that. Unfortunately, they take that small kernel of truth and turn it into a mountain of racism.

Damn you're a pussy. How come all the dudes who pine for "masculine" content are such whiny little bitches?

There are all sorts of action movies with white people on Netflix for you to jack off to. If you're watching the type of juvenile ass movies where casting takes things like race into account to get the perfect racial bingo scorecard, you only have yourself to blame for watching stories created for idiots.

I do not see how your post makes sense as a response to mine, but unlike the poster I was responding to you at least made an argument that was on topic and made sense.

However, I think your post largely misses the point of the complaints against the voucher system. The problem is that it takes money away from public schools to fund schools that have to adhere to less strict academic standards, do not pay teachers well, and often teach religion. Not all private/charter schools are worse than public schools, but if you are able to send your kid to one that is better than public schools you are wealthy enough that you do not need that public money. Nice private schools are not built in low-income neighborhoods.

Your concerns about public schools are also quite the over-generalization. My children attend a neighboring school district because we did not like the cultural fit of our local school district (probably for the opposite reasons of your complaints). Public school districts often reflect the culture and mores of the local community, and if they do not it is very easy to win school board races if your values are more aligned with the community. Where I live pretty much all of the rural school boards are run by conservatives and the urban ones by democrats. Maybe that introduces its own set of problems, but it demonstrates that choice exists without the voucher and charter school systems. Taking public money and giving it to non-public schools might provide even more choices, but those are low-quality choices that function as an anchor weighing down the existing public school system. Who really benefits from vouchers? Those looking to prop up low quality schools for personal profit, religious schools, and private schools that are geographically out of reach for low income students.

A quick search shows that some disgruntled former employee is suing Redhat/IBM for "anti-white, anti-male" discrimination. His legal counsel is "America First Legal."

The guy got laid off and is trying to claim it was because he was white because in the past Red Hat had discussed a desire to add more diversity to the workforce, although there doesn't appear to be any actual evidence that one had anything to do with the other.

Won't someone please think of the poor, disadvantaged, disenfranchised white man!?!

I contend that you were aware of how stupid you post is, but for political reasons you want other people to believe this stupid bullshit, so you posted as AC.

You don't even try to make sense. You just structured nonsense as if it were a zinger. Do you think anyone here is stupid enough to think that you just made a real point?

Unfortunately very few projects did that.

That's the press doing its usual lousy job of communicating science.

The predictions aren't absolute, they are sets of scenarios for which probabilities are calculated. The longer we drag our feet, the more the set of plausible outcomes narrows. Take Syria -- Syria was a wheat exporter in 1990, but since 2008 or so has been unable to grow enough wheat to feed itself because of climate change when it had become dependent upon imports from Russia and Ukraine. This was early enough that likely we could not have prevented it even if we heeded early warnings in the 1990s when the current scientific picture solidified. We're not going to lose the entire planet in one go, it's going to be one vulnerable population after another.

It may seem like the climate crisis has completely fizzled to you, living in a large, wealthy, and heretofore politically stable country, but it is catastrophic for the people who have got caught. That's how the climate crisis is going to unfold: the rich and comfortable will be able to adapt to the continually changing status quo by moving their financial assets and supply chains out of the way, although you may be paying more for coffee.

At this point it's a matter of degree; we can't avoid problems now like countries being destabilized by climate change and generating millions of refugees. The question is how fast and how big a problem we'll have.