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The EpiPen and What's Wrong with American Healthcare

Babymech says...

America! Love it or experience difficulty breathing, tightness in the throat or feeling like the throat or airways are closing, hoarseness or trouble speaking, wheezing, nasal stuffiness or coughing, nausea, abdominal pain, or vomiting, fast heartbeat or pulse, skin itching, tingling, redness, or swelling!

1 Scientifically Proven Thing Actually Makes People Happier

How Americans got stuck with endless drug commercials

How Americans got stuck with endless drug commercials

Babymech says...

...followed by a commercial for legal advice when you're the target of frivolous lawsuits, followed by a spot for a prescription drug to combat the stress of being counter-sued, followed by an ad for a class action lawsuit against fraudulent medical advertising, followed by Trump being president for ever and ever and ever and ever.

poolcleaner said:

I've seen back to back prescription drug commercials, followed by commercials for lawsuits resulting from people dying from prescription drugs! F'd up.

Should We Build a Dyson Sphere?

1796 Pound Cakes!

Mackeeper suing 14 year old

Babymech says...

...maybe I'm reading you wrong but it sounds like you got it backwards? It's a Norwegian kid being sued by a US company, threatening to go to court in the kid's home territory. Of course it's not actually going to go to court there, because it's Norway, but still.

newtboy said:

Not until they actually file a case. Until then, a lawyer is a waste of money....and maybe even after then as well.
They have no case....at least in America where he did what they complain about (and where it's perfectly legal and not actionable if it's opinion or true, which is the best, and an absolute defense to a libel suit), and I think a civil judgement in Norway is not transferable to other countries, so means nothing outside Norway as far as I know.
Also....you can't get a civil judgement against a minor in America, at least not one worth the paper it's printed on.
He needs to wait to be served, then go on YouTube and beg for a decent pro-bono lawyer in Norway to defend him, I'm sure there's plenty of them out there, unemployed, that would love to take this case and counter sue the company for all it's worth for their 1/3 of the judgement.

No, Pokémon Go Can't Read Your Email

Babymech says...

I love the fact that Pokemon Go was literally created by Niantic whose CEO (John Hanke) is a CIA agent, whose funding comes from CIA's venture capital arm (In-Q-Tel), and is linked to the CIA-funded Keyhole program (now Google Earth) which dealt with mass satellite surveillance, and which accidentally turned on all kinds of surveillance permissions in its app.

I don't believe that this is any kind of surveillance conspiracy, but it's a beautiful conspiracy theory foundation. So much better than chemtrails.

The Remarkable Way We Eat Pizza - Numberphile

What's Really Going on in Oregon! Taking Back the Narrative

Off To Defend His Thesis Like A Boss

Babymech says...

Unbearable* man films child being unbearable on his way to mundane task.

Note: It's ok to be unbearable when you're a dad filming your son. It's kind of required.

I guess the risk of failing to defend your thesis at Stanford is higher than what I've seen, but still - every Ph D defense I've participated in, even the very antagonistic ones, has been a fairly mild affair. The hard work is done before presenting your thesis. You do the research, you do the analysis, your work it out with your supervisor, sometimes you work it out with your opponent - you do the prep or you just don't present, has been my experience.

Obviously this wasn't the case in, let's say, 18th century Wittenburg, and maybe it isn't the case in Stanford Math - maybe it's still a truly harrowing tradition and experience. Anybody know?

How To Go To Space (with XKCD!)

You have no right to remain silent in Henrico County.

You have no right to remain silent in Henrico County.

Babymech says...

Yeah, I'm a little disappointed by the unnecessary misquotes and 'making up arguments' myself, sort of kills the debate. I never made excuses for the cops, and I always agreed they were in the wrong. I never said Hammond was a threat to anyone, or that I felt threatened by filming.

What I have been saying, again and again, is that he can be a tool for intentionally trying to provoke this reaction, even if the cops are completely wrong. It's not a discussion about whether or not his action was legal, but you keep on bringing up the cops reaction as though that is relevant. Which makes it sound as though your argument is: "as long as what he did was legal, he can't be a tool for doing it." Which I disagree with; see also 'open carry' protests etc.

As for what effect the first amendment audits will have on legislation, I imagine it'll be a similar scenario as when corporations exploit tax loopholes. Once somebody comes up with a clever way to remain within their legal rights but still act like an asshole, the system tries to evolve to close those loopholes. I'm all for trying to steer the system in the right direction, but I'm not going to applaud those exploiting loopholes to act like assholes.

As for the strange argument about the watch list, I don't know what you're trying to say - I already told you he's on the list and that I don't think that necessarily means anything. What more did you want to say about that?

Are you going to get back to, again, the fact that the cops were in the wrong? I think we haven't explored that angle yet, let's try going over it three or four times more.

newtboy said:

No one said anything resembling that.
I said that protecting your right to not self incriminate requires people doing things like this, legally and reasonably. Quite a different thing from the straw man red herring you bring up, that support for this single action is equitable to saying 'anything legal is good' and 'anything illegal is bad' EDIT: or that if you think this specific kind of thing is 'good', you support fighting "every single battle I possibly can". I feel that if you must hyper-exaggerate what the other side in a debate said in order to rebut it, it indicates you have no answer for what was actually said.

If people like him didn't do things like this, the remaining states wouldn't need to adopt any restrictions, because they'll simply implement those restrictions without adopting them, as the cops in this instance (illegally) did. Without people like him, you've LOST those rights already. He's not the reason they're disappearing, he's the reason they still exist anywhere.

If this gets the cops fired, it helps stop police abuse. If it gets them seriously reprimanded, it helps stop abuse. If it just shames them for being idiots, it helps stop abuse.

Again, quietly filming is NOT being a threat. If you are threatened by being filmed, boy howdy are you living in the wrong century.

Again, IF he is on the watch list, it's just another example of why the watch list is useless, because anyone the police or fed or technician doesn't LIKE ends up on it, not suspected terrorists. (EDIT:it's been found that many of those that work directly with the 'terrorist watch list' have abused it by adding ex-wives and other personal enemies to it, making it an 'enemies list' of random people's personal enemies...and a few people being watched as terrorists...which is why so many of those committing terrorist acts are found to be on the list, but are not being watched)

@lucky760 , The DA seemed to indicate he had no obligation to produce ID in that state by dropping the charges, as did the judge that got involved. Not proof, but a good indicator.

You have no right to remain silent in Henrico County.

Babymech says...

Well then we're back to the original discussion - if you think that every behavior on the wrong side of the law is 'bad' and every behavior on the right side of the law is 'good,' then you have an astounding amount of faith in the quality of the laws. I'm arrogant (and I'm legally trained) so I believe that I have an obligation to break certain laws, and an obligation to not exercise certain rights that I technically have, because I'd just make society worse.

I don't believe that these kinds of audits, or the open carry demonstrations, are good ways to reduce police abuse. Quite the opposite - by 2013 almost half the states had stop and identify statutes, and people like this, who are intentionally pretending to be threats in order to provoke poor reactions, are pushing the remaining states to adopt similar restrictions on citizen freedom. This makes society more fearful, not freer.

(I don't know why he's on the watch list. They might think he's a Sovereign Citizen, another group of hero assholes, who happen to be classified as a domestic terror group (of heroes). I doubt he is, but I have no illusions about the effectiveness of the watch lists)



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