Last names as a way to determine ethnic diversity, lost me there.

Cool though, that makes my sister latin american.

Too bad I am stuck with a name thats probably German in origin.

Diversity is fine. It was the tolerance of the society to entertain the notion that feeding a bunch of good for nothing intellectuals was a noble idea that made a golden age possible. Also the possibility to travel and communicate, the spread of information was helpful. Language barriers came down. That tolerance ended around 1250. Muslim lands were still ethnically diverse after that, but no more tolerance for science.

So tolerance of different ideas, customs, religions, foreigners and races seems more important than attempting to induce diversity artificially.

Tolerance naturally leads to diversity - you can see this in areas like scientific teams, hi-tech companies, or top sports teams. If you want the best people you arrive at not evaluating their race, but their abilities. That is if the society around you lets you do that.

My friends son just spent 6 months working in a chemical lab in Sweden. Met few Swedes, mostly worked with people from all over the world. So he helped with a Swedish project, he can now go back to work on his own project and he knows all these people from around the world who work on similar stuff. No one gives a damn about what ethnicity any of the people involved are or if the lab was "diverse". They all concentrate on the project. If a commision goes in and starts counting how many Laplandian scientists are filling a quota the scientists would show the (imaginary) commision their collective middle finger or just leave.

So i would argue that ethnically diverse scientific teams are not more succesful because they are diverse, they are more successful because they are open and tolerant (and that has led to their diversity).

Forcing diversity will not bring the same result.

Long? Sorry.

Newt, you don't know the half of it. The reason they need a bail-out? Two words, my friend: stock buybacks.

Back in '16, good ol' AA was ~$20 BILLION in debt. Yes, their DEBT was larger than the GDP of some nations. Bad situation, right? What to do, what to do -- HEY! I got it! Let's spend NINE FUCKING BILLION on stock buybacks. In doing so, they turned $5b in reserve cash into $550 million. Trump himself couldn't have fucked this up worse if he tried.

It gets worse. Here, I will quote from Forbes:

"The numbers boggle the mind. American Airlines spent nearly three times its current value on stock buybacks over the last six years."

It gets even worse from there.

Over the last ten years, AA spent ~$13b on stock buybacks. You know what their free cash flow was over the same 10-year period?

-$7,935 million.

That's not a typo. Their free cash flow, unique among all major airlines, is NEGATIVE. The number on their -negative- cash flow is greater than the -positive- cash flows of Jet Blue and Alaska combined.

Guess where that money went?

Shareholders? Nope.
Employees? Nope.
Improvements to the business as a whole? Nuh-uh.

If you guessed "The CEO's pocket", you win a $4 Snickers bar. If you also suspect that any bailout will end up in the same place, I'm throwing in a free Baby Ruth or an Abbazabba (your choice).

That's right: your tax-paying American ass is going to bail out these cocksuckers not to save jobs -- no fucking chance in Hell that's going to happen -- but to make Doug fucking Parker, an asshole of utterly legendary proportions who made $11.5 MILLION in 2019 thanks to those buybacks, even fucking richer.

There's not enough Prep-H in the world to compensate for that level of ass-fucking. And you WILL smile when you're getting raped, otherwise it's getting stuffed in your mouth afterwards.

(BTW: when they started this financial cocksuckery, AA was ~$60 a share. On Friday, it closed just below $13. Dough Parker still made money. The funds, including pension funds, who invested in AA @ $60? Not so much.)

He clearly suggested something totally illegal, you call it playing the media.
Again, subverting democracy doesn't cross your line if it triggers some liberals. Unbelievably unpatriotic, antidemocratic, and anti American.

It's not a flaw if they catch them all, which is easy since everyone has a personal serial number for mail in or in person, checked before the ballot counts. Trying to vote a second time is a felony, no matter your reason.

He did say vote twice. Mail it in, then go check if they counted it yet, and if not vote again. That's a felony, I think it's a felony to tell people to do it. He's hoping to invalidate the election, or at least set up an excuse in case he loses. Massive fraud. No matter that it's by his direction.

If you're going to in person polls anyway, why would anyone try to mail in too except to try to vote twice....there's no reason besides to attempt fraud, no matter what you say.

It could lead to cheating, but not successfully. Because your mail in vote hasn't been scanned yet doesn't mean it's not delivered. When the massively understaffed polls have time to scan all the ballots, which may take days or more if the post office can't handle the load, as long as they're postmarked before the deadline they count. They'll catch the double voters that tried to cheat the system as he's suggesting. Getting caught doesn't make it a non crime. Don't play stupid.
If I steal your wallet but you catch me and get it back, I still stole it, didn't I. I'm sure you agree if hundreds of my friends and I mob rob a store and get caught, we still stole, right? Saying we were just checking their security isn't an excuse, is it? Looters are just checking the security levels in their areas so it's fine, right?
No?!?
Same goes for double voting. If two ballots reach the county office for counting votes that one person cast, they're a felon in most states, just an unpatriotic enemy of democracy and a criminal in a few. I'm just checking to see if it's possible to get away with isn't an excuse for crimes.

I only hope that anyone caught R or D not only gets prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, but loses both votes not just one, and their right to vote. That only seems proper, wouldn't you agree? They're criminals, felons trying to subvert democracy. At least Trump is stupid enough to spill the beans on this scheme in time to put extra safeguards in place. I hope that includes tent prisons to house you all.

Testing the security of an election as a private citizen in any way that ends in casting your vote twice is illegal everywhere.

Of course, the FEC is intentionally understaffed so even if this obvious, open ploy to cheat by Trump leads to massive voter fraud as a campaign feature, they're powerless to even determine it's criminal much less charge anyone, it's been that way Trump's entire term, intentionally. He hasn't tried to fill the empty seats. He needs them toothless so he can safely cheat and steal.

When I was about 13ish living in NJ, my friend and I decided to head down to the railroad near the Delaware river.

To get there we decided to go down the steel steps that ran down the hillside in our town. There are two flat platforms along the way and when we reached the first one we spotted a boy who, we knew from the area, coming up the steps in our direction.

His name was Ken. Ken had a mental disability but he was harmless. A friendly and defenseless kid that was about the same age as us and about a head taller. As he was coming up the steps I wondered what he would do if I punched him in the gut. A total sucker punch that he wouldn't see coming.

I knew he wouldn't retaliate so I decided I would do it.

As he got within range, without warning, I punched him right in the gut hard.

How he reacted and the painful look on his face instantly brought regret that, to this day, I still live with. Many years later I made an effort to find Ken and tell him how sorry I was for my violent, unprovoked actions that day. How much of an asshole I was and hope he might forgive me. I found out he had died just a couple of years back.

I think about how that punch may have changed him forever. How it may have destroyed his trust in people and planted a fear within him that I was responsible for.

Sometime later, when I was alone, I cried that day with that vision I saw on his face and I can still see it now and feel it in my gut as I write this.

That day had changed my life forever at his expense.

I love 84!

I had some friends into exotic cars and we'd take 84 over to the coast now and again, mostly because we had a shit-ton of money and a shit-ton of spare time to kill -- the Dot-Com fucking rocked!

There's a bend in the road just outside La Honda on the coastal side that's a 15mph hairpin with a tree at the apex. It's a lovely goddamn thing, especially when you forget it's there. So here we all come, lane-trading and exercising general assholery in cars that cost what a nice single-family home does.

Oh FUCK, the turn!!

My friend in the 911 does this beautiful trail-brake and swings through the curve. Elise follows suit, complete with smoking tires. Next up is Countach. He BARELY holds it together, but gets through without any real drama.

Now it's my turn.

Did I mention I was driving a '97 Camaro Z-28? Yeah, Camaros of that year are good at exactly one thing: driving very fast in very straight lines. Corners? Yeah, not so much. I realize I'm in trouble and I'm coming into the turn WAY too fast. I grab the shifter and get ready. My plan is that I'm going to slam it into first, let the rev limiter do its thing to save the engine, pull the e-brake and swing the tail, then punch it and swing the ass-end around and launch out of the curve with smoking Z-rated tires and all!

And HERE WE GO -- grab the shifter, yank it all the way down and...

That's when California emissions standards fucked me.

You see, when you buy a Camaro Z-28 in California, you don't actually get first gear. You get what's called a California First, which is actually SECOND gear, because if you were actually able to use FIRST gear, the goddamn car would belch enough emissions to make a farting Brontosaurus blush. And second gear ain't exactly gonna work for my little plan.

tl;dr is that I hit the no-lock brakes hard enough to get my speed down and was able to bring the ass around with the little e-brake trick. I wasn't out of the woods because I over-corrected on the way out and spun. The same God that I spite and don't believe in actually saved my ass and I didn't end up going off the road. Apparently, he loves fools and Z-28 Camaros.

I honestly had more fun in that car than the law allows: sometimes literally, like when I got clocked at 110 coming onto the straight at King City. Good times, man, good times.

Are you for real, Ant?

That was added like 10 years ago, my friend.

Safe playgrounds are the reason why my friends and I would walk on railroad tracks and railroad bridges, build tree houses, get lost in the woods, play with matches and kiss girls.

Below is google translated of the videos description...

I am very happy to be able to write to you and to be still alive at the moment after having avoided a few crazy bikers by a few centimeters! What do you think ? How would you have reacted? I specify that the biker on the ground is fine, he is doing with his broken arm - He caught the back of the black car that we can see just before. It is not the biker on my right on the ground but the biker we can see right after who is correctly in his lane. Must say that my friend was right behind me at the time! We were very lucky! A frontal at this speed ... Nobody lives ...! V Piston

Frightening times, my friends.

Eh don't worry my friend, most vegans hate PETA, just like most non-rapists hate 3rd wave radical feminists. In either case it's not about being in a club, but doing good for the sake of it (or in these cases, not doing harm, which is a lot easier than putting in effort to do something good).

[author flagged as a spammer - redacted]

Reminds me of Sunday mornings at my friend Paul's house back in high school. Only it was his mom with the broom handle. Same attitude from us kids.

True story.

I like Darren. He is my friend. I like you and him.

And he likes me.

And I like him.

He likes you, I HOOOOOPE!

I like his autograph. It is a nice picture.

HE. IS. NIIIIIIICE!