mkempe

Natch.

nit: "pore over"

What a sad spectacle: the delirious lashing out at modern machines, the sarcastic capitals, the unhinged cries of "religion". Next time I chat with Richard we'll have a laugh as I mention how his name is invoked as a shibboleth by rabid Luddites.

Sounds like you want to smash capitalism! more than you want to destroy Google and Facebook.

I did notice you're not explicitly opposed to reusable rockets; although you seem to have a special place in hell reserved for Elon Musk. Oversight?

Kudos!

If you have a chance to visit their building [edit: in Colorado, near Boulder], and even to take a class with them, it's impressive and great fun.

Please get a grip on reality. The average American has access to vastly better products, services, and health care than past kings couldn't even have dreamt of. Even the amazingly wealthy Rockefeller did not have access to the modern bounty that the average American can easily buy and use today, the bounty that is being created by entrepreneurs and people in the corporations you apparently envy so much.

Your diatribe is a complete distortion of economic history and facts, best crystallized by your use of "concentrated wealth" when what we have witnessed is an enormous creation of wealth.

Search engines, social networks, mobile phones, high-speed Internet, same- and next-day e-commerce, interactive maps, video streaming, 24/7 access to world-wide news and commentary, electric cars, cloud services, solar panels, wind farms, fracking, online banking, fitness monitors, 4K tvs, retina displays, tablets, e-book readers, voice-activated assistants, cleaning robots, advanced medical devices, tailored drugs, reusable rockets, etc. etc. are all created and those who create and finance the creation of these products and services deserve a) our accolades and admiration and b) reaping the rewards of their actions.

Mueller appears to be a modern Torquemada. Should every politician be hounded by a nemesis of their own?

In the spirit of "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" -- politicians should be under constant surveillance and at risk of removal and punishment lest they always behave like angels. Isn't this the new standard in Western countries? In China, I have been told Confucian legal scholars recommended the threat of capital punishment for corrupt administrators.

If you are interested in the truth, how many of their Democrat colleagues have been shadow banned?

Answer: none. But according to you it "certainly doesn't seem to be based on political affiliation".

So, a group of notorious Republican congressmen are trolls and scammers? that's how you believe Twitter makes decisions?

Make it a high karma cost. E.g. you must have been upvoted 10 times to be able to downvote once. That cost can climb up for people who generally don't significantly upvote more than they downvote.

[added] I've noticed that sometimes in a deep conversation between only two commenters -- where they cannot downvote each other -- one of them gets their comments downvoted within a minute of posting or so, suggesting that there are parallel accounts used to downvote as a method of intimidation or retaliation.

You are claiming that, in response to a news story, the intent to remove a shadow ban applied to notorious Republicans but not to any Democrats is "favoring" Republicans. [added: And you've been upvoted]. Natch.

Ok, what do the shadow-banned Republican representatives Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, and Devin Nunes have in common?

I'd like to understand what reasoning one goes through to embark on such an illiberal path.

(Note: not arguing that they can't legally do it, obviously a private business is free to promote or hinder various messages on its own platform. I'm wondering about internal justifications, and logical consequences. Ethics and morals, in other words.)

US government subsidies to airports and highways haven't stopped. They dwarf public subsidies to railroads.

Have you inquired into why they became unprofitable? Have you considered the massive government investments into and subsidies for the two other modes of transportation following WW II?

Nope. I'm saying that Americans are unfortunately missing out on what is elsewhere a great, modern transportation system. If the federal government hadn't used massive war-driven budgets to replace rail with highways, and continued to massively subsidize highways, you'd be there, too.

Indeed, I've travelled from NY to SF in both directions by road, rail, and air. The only experience that was much worse than my travels in Europe and Japan was by rail (namely Amtrak).

There are more people in Europe, there is more land in Europe, etc. Stop with the fake excuses.

Europeans enjoy all of it: cars, trains, and airplanes. The simple fact is that North America is lame and deficient in passenger rail transportation compared to Europe and East Asia, and the comparison keeps getting worse.

For our American friends who constantly claim that the USA is unique because of its size, or because of lower population density (whether the subject is Internet connectivity or railroads) -- Europe is 33% larger than the USA (contiguous 48); Finland has 16 people/km2, Sweden 23/km2, USA 33/km2, California 97/km2; Sweden is slightly larger than California, Finland is slightly smaller.

No excuses.

You are deeply wrong and need to look at proper maps.

Europe is 33% larger than the USA (contiguous 48).

[added] Note sure why this fact would be down-voted. We don't include Greenland or e.g. French Polynesian dependencies in the European total. Sweden is slightly larger than California, with 1/4 the population. Et caetera. Really, you should look at maps, population facts, as well as the extent and quality of railroads.

And quit pretending that there is no rail connection across Europe. [1] America is failing when it comes to 21st century pubic transportation. Angrily lagging behind European, Japanese [2], or Chinese [3] railroads is not a healthy path.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Europe

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China

Down here we'd do it with geology, up there it will be done with selenology.

Great to have access to that information.

- Empire Builder near Minneapolis: 10h late.

- Empire Builder near Kalispell: 6h late.

Passenger train service in America needs to be returned to the private sector, without any interference by Congress. [added] Or you can watch the government fuck-up and quickly cast blame on the private sector. Private passenger services would have different, satisfying contracts with the rail owners; this is what companies do in the private sector some people apparently hate so much. There was a time when privately operated railroads were reliable in this country.

Freight currently has deleterious right of way because this is what bureaucrats have agreed to. Imagine these bureaucrats did something similar on the highways you all love so much, making passenger vehicles wait on the side to let trucks move a little faster.

Natch.

Looks dead. Last updated 4 years ago.

You're providing a textbook example of pragmatism -- the rejection of principles in the name of arguing about minutiae and acting on the range of the moment, refusing to consider first principles in the name of expediency.

When Trump idiotically threatens tariffs on Canada and Germany, it should not be an opportunity to debate how much, on what products, or if there are easier ways to destroy free trade -- the proper question is: is that a legitimate power of the executive? (hint: it is not)

False alternative.

Maybe it is none of the city government's business whether a corporation provides on-premise food to their employees, regardless of what you may imagine consequences might or might not be to the aspirations of other people and corporations.

However, if the standard is "internalize externalities" then anything goes. There would be no limits to interference by local government.

In the US zoning laws are an early-20th-century creation, initially ruled unconstitutional but eventually unleashed by the Supreme Court in 1926 under the cover of police power. [1] However police power was not conceived so broadly at the time the first 13 States consented to the US Constitution (zoning regulation would have been seen as covertly taking one's property without compensation).

As for elections, they are not unusual; the crux is what kind of powers are properly delegated by the electoral body to people in this local/city government? unlimited use of zoning laws for any purpose?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_of_Euclid_v._Ambler_Re....

Instead of quibbling about the choice of means in social engineering, maybe the first question to consider is whether such interference is a legitimate power of government.

What are the effective limits on these local tyrants?

I've heard many people watch movies at home instead of going to the theaters. Surely these home screens could be eliminated with some clever zoning restrictions.