exclusiv

My point is that if you're an expert that people are supposed to trust - you shouldn't make statements about things you don't know yet.

You seem to be ok glossing over that because you want to talk about the current admin when I'm not even talking about that. I agree with the culpability there.

Fauci - In March he said "there's no reason to be walking around with a mask" [1] The CDC and WHO were doing the same.

Also regarding the lie, "“We were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and public face head of the federal government’s coronavirus response, told The Street in an interview this week." [2]

You can go utilitarian if you want and say that's cool. Maybe you are ok with them lying to you because you believe them and think that was their only option. My point stands that there's enough distrust of the government. I don't believe they should do that, connect a lie to experts we are supposed to trust, and I don't believe that was their only option to prevent a shortage.

A lot of incompetence.

#1 not having enough masks in the first place, replenishing our supply

#2 talking about things they don't know and

#3 because they were incorrectly claiming cloth masks weren't useful for the public, they ended up parlaying that into a lie to try and prevent a shortage.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23hvLiA2akE

[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/dr-fauci-admits-feds-initi...

You have a good counter. To add to "don't wear masks" though - WHO, CDC, Fauci all had poor and inaccurate guidance as well. It's like none of these experts have sane defaults when they don't know about something. Kind of hard to believe, really.

Then when they're wrong - they say "oh yeah we lied, we didn't want a run on masks for health workers". Such BS. They didn't know non-surgical/non-(k)n95 masks could be useful.

It's ok to admit when you're wrong. Better than saying you lied. Especially when there's enough distrust of government.

The US administration is culpable. But so are the experts. People need to be able to trust their experts.

Separately - I find it ridiculous we have people that are all about science, except when their agenda conflicts.

We end up with exceptions for religion. Exceptions for protests. Exceptions for filming movies. Whatever. If you have enough influence or can cause enough outrage about something you can get your way.

Nobody has the balls to take hard stances. They create these illogical plans based on who is influencing them.

Is there any official who was consistent and pragmatic with their pandemic plan?

I love this feature. It's great knowledge. Some people want to censor the morons but that would remove the amount of morons you could readily identify.

What you mentioned is just a side-effect bonus if you want to call it that.

> That’s because western leaders were more than happy to let China manufacture things ‘over there’ so we could wash our hands clean of the environmental damage

Just saying that's not the driver. Not even close. Demand for cheap goods was the driver for the West and the fact that Chinese policies teed up super cheap supply via their policies is the story.

So I don't think your comment isn't accurate. But it would be accurate if you said our western leaders were more than happy to keep the flow of cheap goods going because it was a favorable arrangement and it had a nice side effect of not having to deal with environmental cleanup or pushback.

If the cost of goods was the same in the west, the west would surely deal with environmental issues in exchange for the jobs and tax revenue.

Agreed. Off the coast of LA, I just learned that companies were dumping thousands of DDT barrels for decades.

"Landfills could hold only so much, and people were concerned about burning toxics into the air — but the Pacific Ocean seemed a good alternative. Explosives, oil refinery waste, trash and rotting meats all went into the ocean, along with beryllium, various acid sludges, even cyanide." [1]

Companies were dumping and putting out of site. Much harder to burn it and avoid getting caught.

Third world countries are also taking first world trash and then dumping massive amounts into rivers and the ocean.

Cleaning up the ocean is a hell of a lot harder than cleaning up the air or the ground.

[1] https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-coast-ddt-dumping-ground...

You're overthinking this. It's more like consumers love cheap goods. Chinese policies enable the supply.

Property taxes already work quite well. Well except for CA where a lot of homeowners have arbitrarily locked in low property taxes.

I'm reusing an old Sony 4k handycam with an hdmi to usb c capture card and it looks way better than most. The larger sensor helps a ton.

Some trees are way better than others with fire.

In the western part of the country we have Jeffrey Pines [1].

They have branches that start really high up and their bark is super thick so they are considered fire resistant trees - highly fire resistant as adults.

"Jeffrey pine's ability to shed burning bark scales as a means to reduce fire damage has received mention in the literature, and firefighters have reported observing fires extinguished by shedding bark scales" [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinus_jeffreyi

[2] https://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/tree/pinjef/all.h...

Definitely irresponsible. These homeowners should know about defensible space. [1]

I agree with you - I think a lot of these areas aren't proactively managing this due to the blowback.

[1] https://www.readyforwildfire.org/prepare-for-wildfire/get-re...

I think so. Many sites have some sort of sensitive user data that could be exploited. If you work in ecommerce, you likely have access to the payment gateway as well.

> It's just a way of bullying people into adopting the political views that you want them to, and it shouldn't be tolerated in a society that values democratic freedoms.

> You have no right to demand that somebody make the same decisions in this respect as you do. It is absurd, it is hostile to the notion of free democracy, and it is a standard that no living person could ever meet.

Well said. It's sad that activists are anti-liberty in this way. It undermines their campaigns.

I had a professor in college tell an entire class the first day - "nobody really cares about you except your family and maybe some friends". You could see the shock to a lot of the students who had been coddled and told how awesome they were their whole life. Once you accept that concept, you can learn to be more effective in communication and not expect things from others.

Most of these activists have no tact.

Neil deGrasse Tyson says in his MasterClass that his father taught him that it's not enough to be right. You must be effective.

The world would be a much better place if everyone followed that.

From what I read, the 64 GB should be sufficient for most - about 40 apps/games.

I preordered the 64gb and got the extended battery (going to try coding on immersedvr.com), although it looks like you may be better off with an external battery pack and just the elite strap.

Having extra power built in is more convenient but it is $80 more than the base elite headset. I could probably power it all day with my Omnicharge pack.

Seriously. And you're lucky if you get an actual journalist too.

Seriously. From what I've seen, OOP haters either write shit code in general or they're working on something where FP makes sense and they don't actually mention that when they shit on OOP.

Lot's of FP "fans" just writing procedural code with a terrible mess of functions and no architecture as well. Quite the mixed bag. But they're very passionate and believe in talking about FP as the one true way. I suppose most things go through a phase like that though.

But if you've been around long enough, you don't get too jazzed about any one thing.

Yeah I saw some dumb laws in Colorado when visiting. I think it was just the grocery stores with the 3% stuff. So ridiculous. Looks like Colorado allowed > 3.2% in grocery stores starting in 2019. [1] Not too long ago you couldn't buy beer in Indiana on Sunday. Archaic.

[1] https://www.5280.com/2019/10/are-grocery-store-beer-sales-ki...

Walmart's actual return policy has always been better though. I've taken stuff there that I don't even know was purchased there and got a credit. This was some time ago so not sure if it changed, but they used to give you a few receiptless returns per year.

That's way better than most states. New Mexico is probably the best though - anonymous LLCs. $50

In order to protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, you have to address those that infringe upon it.

Every country has different rules for their citizens versus those for foreign entities.

A lot of factors but Zoom is superior to Meet in video quality from my experience. Meet looks grainy. Zoom has various native clients.

It's gotten better but the video quality is definitely lacking.

> I mean, evidence suggests this is not true because of the small-donor revolution

You're trying to make a case based on just a handful of candidates.

You missed the whole point on Bernie - which was that the party showed clear bias.

What about the model legislation I linked to? Special interests and corporations creating thousands of bills.

People also forget the huge network of Catholics who contribute their own personal time for the benefit of the local communities (and also the non-Catholics they activate with their local events).

It would be hard to quantify, but in the analysis you posted that's not included.

Yeah it's crazy but I think the short answer is - they aren't giving up their money.

Precisely. Big donors provide money to get a return. In fact, its one of the best investments you can make.

"Corporations Lobbying Government Reap 76,000% Return On Investment. Between 2007 and 2012, 200 of America’s most politically active corporations spent a combined $5.8 billion on federal lobbying and campaign contributions." [1]

"How The Fortune 100 Turned $2 Billion in Lobbying Spend Into $400 Billion of Taxpayer Cash" [2]

[1] https://www.mintpressnews.com/corporations-lobbying-governme...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2019/05/14/how...

I'll just disagree because I think your statement is highly inaccurate.

Regarding who gets on the ballot - yes there are a special interests that fund their candidate. We generally get whomever has a larger budget, not who the best candidate might be. Special interests also drive the ballot measures too.

> In the US the parties don't really exist, there are just people.

This makes no sense. Just recently (2016) the Dems showed clear bias against Bernie in the leaks. The Chair resigned. The party always has a platform, a brand, an agenda and big budgets. Also third parties have almost zero shot because the 2 major parties conspire to keep them out. It's not just "people". The Ds have their consistent supporters and the Rs have theirs. That includes corporations, special interest groups and more.

You have non-citizens driving these politicians. Big donors, some unions (like police), special interest groups. Health care, gun lobbyists, etc.

"Analyst James A. Thurber estimated that the actual number of working lobbyists was close to 100,000 and that the industry brings in $9 billion annually.[6] Wall Street spent a record $2 billion trying to influence the 2016 United States presidential election." [1]

"Who got special deals in the stimulus and why they got them. In the $2 trillion package, senators took care of their home state industries and pet projects." [2]

Casinos and airlines, among others, flexed their clout in that stimulus.

From the homepage today: "AP: Catholic Church lobbied for taxpayer funds, got $1.4B" [4]

Even more damning:

"We looked for legislation that was written by special interests. We found it in all 50 states. When legislators propose new laws, they don’t always write the bills themselves. Corporations, interest groups or their lobbyists often write fill-in-the-blank documents then shop them to state lawmakers."

"These copy-and-paste bills are commonly known as model legislation. More than 2,100 of these bills have been signed into law in the last eight years." [3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States

[2] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/26/stimulus-coronaviru...

[3] https://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/asbestos-sharia-...

[4] https://apnews.com/dab8261c68c93f24c0bfc1876518b3f6

From my perspective, I would simply restate it as such:

"It's quite a damning indictment of US-style democracy that people distrust a larger pool of democratically elected officials over a small cabal of unelected lifetime appointees without any meaningful oversight"

You're framing it like Congress is elected by the people and are thus more worthy of their trust and the fact that doesn't happen is the damning part. But that's one-sided.

In reality there's a TON of special interests driving who gets in front of the population to even be elected to Congress and then what the agenda is for them after being elected. That erodes the public's trust, not to mention all the Congressional scandals over the years and the cutthroat tactics politicians will do to simply get re-elected.

So I see the same conclusion as you but in reverse.

Yeah police shootings doesn't say anything about guilt. Seems ok from that angle.

Although I don't read clearly that the police were the ones that pulled the trigger. And "police involved shootings" doesn't say anything other than there was a shooting and an officer was involved. So the media does dance around the details.

Maybe it's cop-speak, maybe it's liability protection, maybe it's to get the readers to be curious on the details or a combination of all. I don't know.

"Officer was shot" or "officer-initiated shooting" is more clear.

True. I just see projects fail more often than not due to time/budget and/or shit code. Rarely do I see it fail because what was built didn't meet the business needs.

Although if you're in start-ups, they plan and then build terrible products all the time so the attention to upfront planning and the business needs is way more important in that realm.