I would argue the news was once interesting because tech companies were doing interesting things. Now everyone's just clocking in until they can vest, after which they'll go start their new venture, because they've always been an /entrepreneur/, not a worker. Things were different 30 years ago.

Imagine what a person of this intellect could have created!

If. Like. You know. He hadn't MURDERED HIS WIFE.

But seriously, wtf cares about this guy anymore? There's a reason we have a Dustbin of History.

Slepping, either, it seems.

Yes. God fucking forbid we get (let me see here) "affordable health care for everyone", "no college debt", "people not being fired or killed for who they love", and "a cleaner environment."

Totally the Spanish Inquisition there.

Thanks for pushing a "both sides are bad" narrative that bears no resemblance to reality.

That can't possibly be what that guy was talking about. I mean, quoting from section 1.4:

"Prejudicial discrimination on the basis of [...] gender identity, [...] sex, sexual orientation, or any other inappropriate factor is an explicit violation of the Code. Harassment, including sexual harassment, bullying, and other abuses of power and authority, is a form of discrimination that, amongst other harms, limits fair access to the virtual and physical spaces where such harassment takes place."

This seems to be exactly the kind of thing that the "Power Hungry Parasites" would use to prevent some jerk from misgendering someone because he's so "enlightened."

You just used it twice, Captain Smrt.

Yes, obviously everyone is an idiot for wanting {let me re-read this for accuracy} "the level of air pollution as low as possible."

This year, while looking for something to read at the bookstore, I picked up book one of the Wayfarers series (which won this year's Hugo for best series).

Halfway through, I ordered the remaining two books, and pre-ordered the fourth. It is so much better than any scifi I've read in years that there's no competition. Humans in space, with other space races, dealing with each other in a sane fashion, given how wasteful war is in space. The characters have personalities, and I ended up caring about all of them before finishing. It feels new and fresh, and not just the same grumpy "murder the space bugs" that always seemed to be popular.

If this is the kind of unfair playing field men can't compete with, perhaps they should simply leave scifi to the superior women writers.

Unless, you know, you are the target of it. Then it's probably exactly as bad of a situation as this story claims.

If the entire office thinks "she doesn't belong," then it doesn't matter what happens, because the gossip is just going to continue to be "she doesn't belong."

Side note: fuck you for dismissing this. You are not helping.

Because god fucking forbid I take a ride in a car and don't have to worry that the driver is a rapist or murderer.

Or that I stay in a place that isn't a fire prone death trap.

Or that people make a living wage doing what they're doing, so they don't have to starve in the damn street or die of a preventable illness.

Fucking government, making rules and shit to protect people, even though most people aren't violently killed by the very things they're trying to prevent.

Really? "Fags and abortions"? This is the reality you live in? This is acceptable language?

This isn't "being PC". This isn't "the liberal agenda".

This is having decency to accept people for who they are, and not denigrating people for what their life is.

At what point did the right decide that some people were worth helping, and the rest could be consigned to hell? At what point did people decide that humanity was just a quaint concept, and we could regroup around a few sacred signs, and reassure that "the enemy" would be devoured?

Fuck you, and fuck everyone who has spread a message of hatred and isolation.

if ($USA == "good") {
  ASSERT($WORLD == $USA);
}
If ($WORLD != $USA) {
  foreach $country (%world) {
      if ($cool_friend{$country}) {
          invite_friend_to_be_cool($country,\%world, $USA);
          suggest_taco_truck($country,$USA,"where i live, it's not super far");
      }
}

I'll admit that the 21 is probably unsupportable. I'll also agree that legislating via route A instead of unconstitutional route B is sub-optimal. The question then becomes, "why is route A valid, but route B not?" I don't know that answer, because I'm not a constitutional lawyer.

In any case, forcing all laws to be supported by some set of reproducible research would solve many problems. If this law doesn't improve outcomes in some fashion, it's not useful, and shouldn't be added. I guess "quality" is what I would hope the government would strive for.

Am I correct that your concern is the corruption of Congress, as they are the ones who write the laws? I'm trying to understand, and be sure you're not claiming that all government employees are corrupt. Since members of Congress are elected locally, I'm unclear how this would be helped. Campaign finance seems to be the most obvious place where such issues would take place. Would you agree that having an organized election system, where each candidate presents a set of views, and have that funded equally to ensure fairness would eliminate the appearance of corruption that exists now? Alternatively, do you believe that unrestricted campaigns would be better?

I also don't see where you read me as being against self-determination. People are free to do what they want. That's the point of equality of opportunity. Affirmative action attempts to provide that on a racial basis, under the assumption that college acceptance is biased. That was clearly the case in the past, and has improved over time. Should it be permanent? Of course not, but where making a cereal commercial with an interracial couple causes outrage (as was the case last year) suggests that racism is still a problem.

I will now gloss over the rest of that paragraph, as I can't see a common theme. Yes, human rights are universal. Yes, they should therefore be applied universally. I don't see where I claimed otherwise. Just because I support the current administration doesn't mean that they're without flaws.

Continuing: research. Figure out the solution beforehand. The world is not a series of unforeseeable random attacks. You can figure out how things will work before you try them. It's convenient that you bring up the ACA, as this is an example of attempting to solve a problem (uninsured citizens) by doing something (everyone needs insurance now) and then offsetting problems (insurance companies get new members, but can no longer discriminate. Some people are too poor to afford insurance, so use the tax breaks and existing medicaid system to cover them at lower cost). It's already doing exactly as it was designed to do: get more coverage to more people. People no longer have to go without preventative treatment because they're afraid of what they might find. Isn't this a good thing?

The NSA spying story is something where my actual response was, "didn't we already know this?" Is it ideal? No, but I also don't see this as the beginning of internment camps for everyone. Why? Because it's impractical. Step A: everyone goes into camps. Step B: ? Why? The government doesn't really benefit from that. The evil corporations don't benefit from that. Banksters don't benefit. So, if no one benefits (except some hypothetical God-King that has decreed this), then why assume it'll happen? What to do about it? Shut it down, and if it were a perfect world, send people to jail. Is this the greatest concern right now? Not when Congress wants to cut SNAP funding by $5e9. That will hurt people now. Although your concerns on the NSA are justified, they are not hurting people now, and do not justify hurting more people in the name of "freedom."

For your final list, how do you fix that? Do you try to elect new members of Congress that are not beholden to external interests, and more interested in governing than voting 40+ times to stop a single program that might help people, or do you claim that the whole system is broken, and must be burned down to the ground and destroyed? When your car runs out of gas or gets a flat tire, do you push it off the road and set it ablaze? Besides, why not talk about government programs that work? Hurricane relief, the interstate road system, college grants, the head start program ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... ), NASA, Social Security, the TVA, NIH, etc.

Where did I say "we can't trust the stupid people"? Do you take a poll of your neighbors to see how to rewire your house, or do you call an electrician? You call an expert because they've studied the field, and know how it works. I don't see any way that this is "the modern left." It's common sense. If you have a problem about X, you find an X-ologist to tell you more about it. If you don't think this is the obvious way to do things, then I'm sorry, but you're simply wrong.

A complex system can be sorted out to find a decent optimum. I'm not going to claim that the Hessian of the entire political and economic world is beautifully negative semidefinite, so there's a unique best solution. However, I will claim that there must be a better solution, because poverty exists, because not all children have satisfactory nutrition, because unemployment is high, and because I have eyes and can see the problems that exist. Therefore, if these issues were mitigated, then the system is in a better state. I claim that doing something that moves closer to that better state is better than not doing that thing. It seems morally obvious. What objection do you have to this? Is it simply that you may need to pay more in taxes than you do now? Is it that you've somehow lost some intangible concept of "freedom"?

I cannot see that the current government is somehow a scheming bastion of corruption and totalitarianism. This is not Middle Earth, you are not Aragorn, The Government is not Sauron. Setting things up in such tones makes it impossible to have actual discussions on how to improve things.

Is the government perfectly efficient? No. Because it's made of people, and people make mistakes.

I would like any evidence that the first paragraph is correct. State governments are not magically immune to the influence of lobbyists. See the governors of VA, NJ, (ex-)IL for examples of this. Corruption and mismanagement are problems, but claiming that the way to defeat government corruption is to break the government into so many pieces it'd be impossible to corrupt them all sounds too much like King Solomon's solution.

As for local values, I would argue that allowing that to define laws is insanity. Are people citizens of the same country? If so, then they all should be dealt with identically, regardless of who they are, what they believe, or even more so, who their neighbors are and what they believe. Things like gay marriage seem to obviously fall into an equal-protection concept that personal religious beliefs shouldn't influence. Marijuana is different, in that the laws prohibiting it are based on questionable science from nearly a hundred years ago. Research the issue, determine the health risks, and then legalize/tax/whatever as necessary.

On competition, what do you propose to do with states that find a bad solution? A state that must repair roads yearly because they don't work as planned, or a state that has terrible educational outcomes, or a state with persistent poverty. Are they to be doomed forever because of this failing? Do you point out that they should have done better fifty years ago, but you're sorry that you can't prop them up anymore? Are the citizens there to move to another state, further depressing the economic base and resources until the state is empty?

There's no reason to "pray and hope" for a good outcome from some disconnected ruling class. You fund government agencies with tasks. "Figure out how to make better roads", "see if this plant really is dangerous to people", "put that man onto that moon, then bring him back so I can shake his hand". You then hire experts in the field to solve the tasks, and then they write up how to do it. Then, you fold that knowledge into the system. Finally, the trickiest bit of all: you don't stop. "Figure out how to make the roads better still", "see if that other plant is dangerous to people", "put that man onto that Mars, then bring him back so I can shake his hand". Things won't always work perfectly, but I can't possibly imagine how having a large entity spending money to solve problems is a bad idea.

Urban sprawl is a product of many things, and having interstates that promoted easy travel to city cores from suburbs is part of that, but the benefits of interstates definitely outweigh the problems. Although urban planning could have had better leaders than Robert Moses, the concept of urban planning is not a problem.

The government does have to obey economics, but the economics of the world's largest economy are not the same as the economics of your family, your city, or your state. Attempting to fit it with those economics is incorrect, and constrains the options unnecessarily. I also fail to see how non-obvious problems is something you should fear in this way. All choices have effects, and you can only try to minimize them based on the knowledge you have. Pushing the problem to the state level brings me back to my questions of how to deal with failures.