It really should matter. If we can just decide the text means whatever we want it to mean, what's the point in writing it down?

Yes! This is the way. Unfortunately, our system is so dysfunctional we can't even pass normal laws now, much less enact and ratify constitutional amendments.

Surely not that. That would be dumb. And awful. And utterly corrupt.

Sigh.

In America, laws are made by paying the politicians under the table. That's common knowledge. It's how the DMCA got passed, for example. But it's also made by having financially valuable information information, particularly that which permits politicians to have insider information that they can sell for votes/influence or use to make a killing on the stock market.

(You notice anything odd about oil price fluctuations recently?)

Musk had access to money, some of the largest databases the USG had, and the ability to fire civil servants who might have been inconvenient to Congress.

He was in government for how many years? If he wanted the statute of limitations altered, then surely that would have been the time to do it.

It would seem to me that he didn't care about the statute of limitations until AFTER other people started getting rich and he didn't.

I was under the impression that an appeal against a not guilty verdict was not permitted in the US, and was only permissible in the UK in the event of murder when overwhelming evidence showed wilful interference of the trial or exceptional new evidence.

All configuration options are under control of system administrator. Yet somehow there are still plenty of security issues caused by bad configuration.

To err is human.

If Ebola catches on and goes viral globally it will be a very serious problem. A true pandemic. The current death toll for Ebola infections is around 50%. We're talking Resident Evil/28 days later/I am Legend type shit.

I never quite got all the noise and hysteria about vaccinations going during CoViD 19 on either side and I always said we should - either way - be glad that it's just CoViD 19 and not Ebola 19.

If we now actually have global Ebola 26/27 on the menu, the fecal matter is going to hit the rotary air impeller at levels that will make SARS v2 / CoViD 19 look like a laid-back undressed rehersal during a beach vacation. I sure do effing hope this does _not_ happen.

Either way, I already got my Goggles, professional filter masks, water-filter, cooking gear and gas, etc. when the last reports about a SARS variant came around last Winter. I'm sure as eff not getting caught in some apocalyptic level pandemic without being (somewhat) prepared. That much I learned from CoViD. And everyone else should've too. It would be quite dumb to die an unpreventable death just because you where to cheap to drop 150 Euros on some basic survival gear.

Will it catch the president, who has been on a rampant insider trading and market manipulation spree for his whole second term?

What about congress?

What will the SEC do when it flags top politicians? I think all of us know the answer to that question.

The international left may have nothing in common with the values of the regime, but it reflexively defends the IRGC because it represents their largest source of funding.

I partially agree with you, but would like to bring something to your attention. I would say about five countries in the Middle East have been formenting a great deal of trouble for the others, along with a number of terrorist organisations. There is no particular reason to assume that the Middle East will deal with one problem and not the others. Yes, Iran has infuriated a great many countries, none of which (individually) can do much but could collectively act.

We could well see a genuine Middle East Union of nations that simple says enough is enough and clears the deck of all warring parties in the region -- and may well tell the US government that it needs to calm the F down or face a few reprisals of its own. Of course, if it does, then the subcontinent will likely join in - India and Pakistan are closely tied to Iran, and I shouldn't need to tell you both are armed with nuclear weapons. This is something the US also needs to consider, if it tries to invade Iran - you don't need missiles to attack a nation that's on the same landmass you're in, you just need trucks and an unsecured route.

Equally, this is a war that has been going on for the past 4,000-5,000 years now without showing much sign of anyone coming to their senses. This might not be enough to push everyone else over the edge. Precisely because several nations with a vested interest are indeed nuclear armed, there may well be a realpolitik view that kicking the collective arses of all of the power abusers in the region carries unacceptable escallation risks.

My hope is that the current wars being fought, all of which are mindboggingly expensive and stupid beyond all possible definitions of sanity, have a similar result as WW1 and WW2 - to push the world governments into saying that they will not tolerate this continued juvenile delinquency, but this time decide to do something effective about it.

The world has become vastly more destabilised with the wars since the 1990s, and I think there's just a glimmer of realisation amongst some of the politicians that they might well have pushed their luck too far.

Exams are a waste.

Rather, you want continuous practice that is also continuous assessment.

But US methods of teaching are also pretty 18th and 19th century. They are not sensible methods and result in students who are more advanced than the material being penalised. The US obsession with standardising is a recipe for subnormalising.

... that this sort of problem you're describing is one where having a monotheic revelation cult like Christianity, Judaeism or Islam as a your cultural foundation can actually make sense and come with quite a few benefits. Having the universe humbling you does seem easier if you humanize it with a stern god that punishes hedonism and misbehavior in a world of abundance. One of the countless benefits such a cult does bring along.

Is it? What crimes, exactly? They might be defeating some copy protection, but the entity that owned the software is defunct, so no one has standing to sue.

"It doesn't make difference what you use: a pot with hermetic lid - or a strainer. Because it's water and water's wet."

Remember the old times when kernel modules were considered a security risk, thus disabled altogether?

When OpenBSD was boasting its monolithic kernel as a security features?

IIRC, some commercial *nix OSs didn't had modules for reasons of being archaic fossils. But then more recently, couple decades later, also rebranded it into a safety and a security feature.