The Root has a pretty good article on implicit bias. There is a real problem here and the most damning thing is this quote from a woman who visits that Starbucks every day.

"She said a Starbucks employee told the gentlemen that if they didn’t purchase anything, they would have to leave, but DePino said that there were people in the store who said they hadn’t purchased anything for hours and had no issue."

https://www.theroot.com/starbucks-witness-implicit-bias-exists-and-white-peopl-1825274101

I don't use Fecesbook. It knows nothing about me on computers. All of my computers always block facebook.com/*.facebook.com/other facebook domains.
On mobile it's a different matter, but my phones are not rooted so there's not much i can do about it.

As for google/youtube, I opted out of personalized ads but I'm fine with other data they have about me and I do take advantage of it.

@PlayhousePals

Heh, I'm just getting old is all. I am rooting for them, and good on them for turning the tables and shaming the adults. When I joined the Sift many years ago I would've absolutely have been optimistic about their chances of effecting change. But in the past decade, I have learned from first-hand experience how the world works, and seen too much happen in the world to give them more than a snowball's chance in hell.

I mean, shame only works on people that feel shame and the United States government has proven time and again in the past decade that it, like the current President, is absolutely shameless. The only way to make politicians understand is to actually threaten their re-election, but with lobbyist money skewing politics how do individual voters even do that? I just don't see enough of a grassroots campaign forming that actually gives the NRA and gun industry a run for their money.

Of course, I would be more than happy to be proven wrong. I didn't think I'd see the day gay marriage was legalized in the U.S. either and figured it wouldn't happen until I was a senior citizen if at all. Hopefully my pessimism is just grumpy old man talk.

Normally I'd agree but something about the boldness of these kids this weekend sparked a visceral ray of hope deep within me [like the gut feeling I had that Trump WOULD win the moment he was declared the nominee]. They made me sit up and take notice ... I'm choosing to root for and support them. They are the future and I'm so weary of the current state of disarray.

Argument: The roots of this issue in the US go deeper than partisan "Dems vs. Reps" politics.

"I gave it 2 minutes..."

Let me know when you finish the talk. Please listen with an open mind. I think you'll like what he has to say, though some what he says may be things you have heard by now. Do bear in mind that this talk by Lessig is a few years old now.

"[I] didn't watch the Ted talk, sorry. Too long to make a point for me."

Then you missed the entire argument.

Everything you said is moot in the face of Lawrence Lessig's talk.

This kind of thinking: "Granted, neither choice is usually good, but one is definitely less bad....and far more sane and rational."Is completely missing the point.

If you are continuing to see this this as a partisan problem, you do not grok this issue.

You should not be choosing between "terrible and slightly less terrible." You should be choosing between "good and better."

I reiterate: The roots of this issue in the US go deeper than partisan "Dems vs. Reps" politics. This issue is money in politics.

"I want you to take hold, to grab the issue you care the most about. Climate change is mine, but it might be financial reform or a simpler tax system or inequality. Grab that issue, sit it down in front of you, look straight in its eyes, and tell it there is no Christmas this year. There will never be a Christmas. We will never get your issue solved until we fix this issue first."

Here's a video referencing a Princeton study that backs up Lessig's arguments pretty well.



As an aside, Lawrence Lessig tried to run for president last year...

The roots of this issue in the US go deeper than partisan "Dems vs. Reps" politics.

By the time any normal voter (including the "ignorant people") get to cast a ballot, the "Funders" (from "the big club" George describes) have already had their way with the candidates.

Turd Sandwich or Giant Douch, Kang or Kodos, the "Funders" choose who is on the ballot. The Ignorant People only get to pick which one will be the least bad for them, but neither choice will ever work on their behalf. Both candidates are beholden to the Funders.

Larry can explain in greater detail....

That was seriously fucked up.

A friend son works at University and went through something similar. The vent hood was not working correctly and the fumes ( odorless) built up over time. He started losing his mind. His dad noticed this and took him to the hospital. They finally found the root cause but it took about 6 months for this to clear his body.
*promote

Slashdot had a post about an upcoming (about 1 year out) phone that can run pretty standard Linux distros. I took interest because I'm very annoyed about how UNconfigurable android is.

I have a Samsung Galaxy S2, very old by now, but hardware wise it still works fine. Software wise, it is shit. Android apps are massively bloated compared to when the phone was new, so the "system" partition of the phone is too small to install anything other than like 1-2 apps. From what I can tell, rooting might not help because there are still standard partitioning requirements? I dunno. Anyway, it is a big mess compared to a desktop, where I can partition things any way I want (which works great if you know what you are doing).

Anyway, I don't want to shill for Purism, the company that will be making the phone in the Slashdot article (for one thing, the phone is still a year or so away from final production), but they seem to be doing things right. They DO have some laptops on the market now, which apparently include a relevant feature mentioned in the write-up about their upcoming phone: hardware kill switches for the microphone, camera, and WiFi/Bluetooth.

If you read the ToS (hah! as if) for things like Facebook's app or the phones / OS themselves, you might see that you are "agreeing" to this kind of data collectionspying. If that sets the bar for "good" behavior, imagine what the bad guys (NSA, other agencies, state actors, unscrupulous advertisers, malware producers, etc.) can and will do. That's why any software solution is dubious. That's why electrical tape over your webcam is better than assuming that the record light is trustworthy. That's why a hardware kill switch is a good feature if you're concerned about this (like me).

Here's links to:
an article about the hardware kill switches in Purism's laptops, and
an article about their upcoming phone the Librem 5

I don't own any of their hardware. I don't like paid shills. That being said, I'm interested in what they are doing.

Pakistan are 95%+ Muslime They follow a higher power..
371 murder cases, 28 cases of gang murder, nine of abduction for ransom, 4 terrorism incidents were registered in 2015,
not quite as violent as America.

Then look at who is doing the shooting?
Lone nuts--- insignificant
Pissed off spouses -- insignificant
Inner city gang bangers -- root cause of American gun violence

Inner cities have excessive gun violence. Why is that?
No jobs?
No respect for life?
No desire to educate oneself to get out of the situation?
No real deterrent for gun use?

Would a strict gun free zone in such high gun use are be an OK solution that carries the strictest punishment for those that commit crimes with guns ( as apposed to guns being used to defend)? Ho about a 1 year of PSA on the local media before it goes into effect? then strictly enforced?


Until you can get people to respect life and or use the strictest punishment -- I think this will continue.

Better mental health links to ATF where friends and worker can nark to the ATF? This also might help send a flag to re investigate and or to investigate even more on the background check.

Longer waiting period to give ATF more time to do more thorough background check.



What would you propose?

Good and interesting stuff in there.

I think Sharpe is right that this escalation happened for a pretty silly reason (known blowhard and mouth-runner Trump runs his mouth, news at 11), and the NFL vs Trump skirmish detracts from the root issue that Kaepernick was trying to bring attention to a year ago.

On the other hand, I kinda agree with the other guy that maybe bringing attention to that skirmish will also bring attention to the original issue, so maybe it is a net good thing.

Yeah, the owners aren't going to give a fuck until shit lands on their doorstep. Yeah, calling people a "son of a bitch" rates at about a 2 on the "Trump just said what?!" scale. Sharpe's cynicism about how we got here makes a lot of sense.

I didn't care about Kaepernick sitting for the anthem a year ago enough to pay attention. I wasn't against it. I didn't think the was trying to "disrespect" the flag / soldiers / country / whatever, but I wouldn't have really cared if he was. Aren't people allowed to be anti-war? Opposed to mindless nationalism?


Fast forward to today. The billionaires that Sharpe mentioned who donated big sums to Trump's campaign finally get upset when his shit lands on their door. His (comparably tame) "Twitter attacks" on the NFL kick off a dog-and-pony show that may possibly have been cunningly intended to distract from the much more weighty stuff that Kaepernick was trying to draw attention to in the first place, but I seriously doubt that Trump is that clever.

However, something good did come of it: I went from "meh" to paying attention. I went back and listened to Kaepernick's interview about why he was sitting for the anthem from a year ago (embed below), which I didn't watch at the time. I heard a rational, honest, and eloquent young man calmly and clearly explain what he was doing and why he was doing it.

He saw injustice, and wanted to do something about it. He had access to a soapbox that very very few of the people on the receiving end of that injustice have. So, he made up his own mind to do something to try to get conversations started. He was surprised and confused that anyone would see his actions as disrespectful towards soldiers / military, and was later persuaded (by a Navy SEAL) to kneel as opposed to sit for the anthem in an effort to make that more clear.

He seemed aware that he can only control what he does -- not how people will try to spin it, and not how people may react to it. And he also clearly accepted that his actions could have consequences, and that he didn't want to rope anybody else in to acting with him unless they were prepared to accept those consequences also.

So, yeah. Some good came of this recent escalation, even if it came for the wrong reasons. Because some of the people that get drawn in to the dog-and-pony show might decide that they care enough to go back and take a deeper look at it, like I did. And when they look deeper, they're going to see Trump's standard, everyday twitter nonsense on one side compared to a lot of more rational stuff like, say, perhaps actually listening to words of the person that got the ball rolling on the other side (Kaepernick, and others). I like the way that scale balances out.

What in the world is that kind of turf? The only grass I'm familiar with that -might- form a dense enough root mass to do that would be zoysia. And you wouldn't want to be walking around on that in bare feet.

What drugs do these people get?
I rode my bicycle home after getting my wisdom teeth out, and drove home after root canals. I've never been offered the good stuff...I feel ripped off.

To me, this is just rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. I understand why some Christians and Christian organizations are trying to fight these culture wars, but it is completely futile. What difference does it make which flag is flying when the culture has basically completely rejected biblical Christianity. The moral decline that is happening is the bad fruit that comes out of that. If you chop off the fruit and branches, they will just grow back because you haven't dealt with the root system.

Supposedly you can get a good high off of the root of sassafras (precursor to MDMA). And damn, that's a nice looking bowl.