Wow, I forgot how much Bubble Sort sucks.

Thanks.
Yeah, now you're talking. They would certainly need practice to lay in sheets 10 feet long without a bubble forming, but that would look awesome.

re: Internet/totalitarianism/control of information, every single government tries to control information, the media, public opinion, and uses the internet as a tool for that goal (just like tv, radio, print, etc). The internet/access to information in and of itself does not guarantee greater accuracy/truth of that information, and unless the population is educated, respectful, and capable of critical thinking it can easily become little bubbles of echo chambers and a playground for griefers. What good did widespread internet availability do for the last US election? has the internet made americans more free, or more easily monitored and controlled? what good is it for cuba for cubans to have access to world of warcraft, so they can neglect their children who starve to death while they grind up to the next level? has the internet prevented mainstream media from fabricating news / pushing their agendas, or has it given more people a platform for fabricating news, anonymously? yeah, im not saying the internet is all bad, of course there are other very useful applications for it, but its not a magic "improve society" wand.

final thing i want to say, I have several friends who studied in cuba as exchange students in the late 90s, early 00s and yes, they had to make treks to specific places for access but they were able to send emails and such, so this piece is not factually accurate. If the cuban govt was so dead set on stopping people from communicating, im pretty sure they would identify network cables hanging in the middle of the street and easily follow them back to your apartment, not to mention detect wifi networks setup all over their tiny island.

Um, do you realize that you are advocating retreating into a safe space bubble where ideas that don't reinforce your preconceptions are simply ignored rather than considered? I feel like that's becoming a significant factor in the downfall of civility and reason.

I would ask you...ARE you boring? If not, you must admit that the preconception you expect from others is in error, and I hope you might think it through to see your preconceptions about them may be erroneous as well.
I still talk to strangers all the time, because I already know what people in my bubble think....just hearing my own thoughts and assumptions repeated with no critical analysis...now THAT'S boring.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Ironic that it's blocked for me here in Australia. I must be outside the bubble, or in a different bubble. But at least I've got the ABC live feed. http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/abc-live-stream/IV1512H001S00

(Not that ABC, you American heathens!)

(edit)

If you are *blocked http://www.globaltv.com/saturdaynightlive/video/clips/the-bubble/video.html?v=813642819985

I find it... grotesque, that many of the "disenfranchised" men voted for Trump, even though he is only going to line the pockets of the few. That is what Trump does, he is only in this for himself and/or people like him; he is a cult of personality & a greedy businessman completely disconnected from reality. How he actually connected with such a vast ocean of morons is mind-blowing - 1) Fuck the two party system 2) Fuck the Electoral College.

I like that Chomsky points out that these people don't like being talked down to. But, if they would have opened their fucking ears - they would have heard Sanders talking about the MIDDLE CLASS, over and over and over again. Sanders actually wanted to do something for the majority ---- along with these IDIOTS --- that voted in Trump. Whom, yes, is going to get them temporary coal jobs and natural gas jobs...

Is that what they really want? Some shitty job that will ruin the environment so badly that their children will be living in a glass bubble with Amazon teleporting breakfast, lunch & dinner as they look out across black skies, thinking the images of the world they see on Google are a fantasy?

Blame presumes guilt. There's no guilt in voting for your interests, even if others don't understand them.

Reasons for those voting decisions are interesting, but also very hard to get since the media ignores everything between the coasts, and even the diverse internet is so full of filter bubbles that you're basically funneled straight into echo chambers. At least on my end, the Silicon Valley/Hollywood culture is drowning out everything else -- and I'm a commie outsider who doesn't give a shit about celebrities or "save zones".

That said, the election is just the most recent culmination of an ongoing, decades-long development. But that's beyond the point, so...

Populism trumps business as usual if business as usual leads to Detroit, Cleveland and Camden. Or the rural areas on the coast of Louisiana, which were hit much harder than New Orleans and still look worse than Chernobyl, 11 years after the fact.

So the question is: did you a) fail to provide an alternative, b) fail to make a convincing case for that alternative, c) decide against trying to convince those that think differently, or d) not even realize that not everybody shares your perception of reality.

Given the tone of the reactions, the collective damnation of Trump voters as (insert any insult in the book), I'm thinking that d) is a much bigger issue than anyone is willing to admit.

In short, I blame George R. R. Martin. If he had published The Winds of Winter by now, all would be well.

Quite refreshing to see him acknowledge the concerns of Trump voters instead of throwing feces at them like lots of pundits and media figures have done since the election.

No chance of gaining any insights into their motivation if you demonize them from the get-go, no chance of gaining some impressions from outside your own bubble...

Nina Turner pretty much nailed it: "We should have been speaking to peoples' hearts and not trying to shame and boss grown folks around"

Too early, too early. We go fetal today, tomorrow we laugh at all the hacks within the bubble like Operative K who have lost touch with reality.

Seventeen separate US intelligence agencies have flat-out said it was the Russians who did the hacking.

If you haven't heard of that, then you're living in an alt-right bubble.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

The 0g cello bubbles were pretty cool.

Ohhhh, so you just reassert your point about Democrats never backing down, but Republicans do without any factual basis whatsoever! What a novel losing debate strategy!

Obamacare isn't perfect and needs to be fixed or replaced with something better. Not the Trumpian "something great" if it should be replaced, but something that is well thought out and addresses what Obamacare couldn't accomplish if the entire premise is systemically not going to work.

Did you see what I did there? I *gasp* recognize that sometimes things don't work! OMG! IT'S AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I also didn't say it's a "fucking disaster", because it isn't. If it were that, explain how the uninsured rate has dropped very significantly. It was never going to achieve 100% insurance rate. The only way that happens is with single payer.

Here's how stupid you are. You don't seem to understand that if Obamacare isn't the answer, you're just making single payer universal health care more likely to be enacted. The American people are not going to go back to being denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition. They're just not gonna. Obamacare is the least left policy you could possibly enact that would help control costs and decrease the number of people who are uninsured.

You can scream to the top of your lungs, but Obamacare was enacted to remedy real problems. I'm even sympathetic to the argument that those were real problems, but Obamacare isn't the answer, but if you're going to make that argument, you have to propose something that has historical precedent and rationale to solve those problems. And you simply don't have one.

So again, keep struggling in the quicksand until it swallows you whole, and single payer is enacted.

Your evidence about health insurance premiums is anecdotal, and quite frankly, you don't seem to understand that your numbers and description of what happened to her is absolutely ridiculous. You don't get on medicaid because your insurance premiums go up under Obamacare. You qualify for Medicaid because of a lack of income.

Secondly, the claim is absolutely ridiculous that her premiums went up that much. For data we have available, *unsubsidized* premiums for the lowest cost silver plans for data we have in the Obamacare exchanges was $257 a month for a single person.

http://kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/analysis-of-2017-premium-changes-and-insurer-participation-in-the-affordable-care-acts-health-insurance-marke
tplaces/

If she qualifies for Medicaid, then surely she could go on a silver plan in the Obamacare exchanges and come out likely paying less. Oh, and, on top of that, she would EASILY qualify for federal subsidies if she qualified for medicaid.

Oh, and btw, without Obamacare, if health care companies decided to raise those premiums just to price gouge, what protection would she have? Not much. Obamacare insures that you can only take in so much that isn't spent on health care.

Your story is completely utterly full of crap on so many levels, it's clear you made it up.

I'm dismissing all your numbers are being unsubstantiated bullshit. Have premiums gone up? Sure have. Were they going up before Obamacare? Yep! There's a healthy debate about how much Obamacare is contributing to premium increases. Obamacare isn't perfect. I'm happy to discuss rationally what could be done to improve Obamacare, or another plausible alternative. But not with you, since you pull numbers out of your ass that easily are completely debunked.

BTW, FYI, Obamacare was not intended to lower premiums nor to completely eliminate the number of uninsured. It was to control costs in all forms and reduce the amount of uninsured, as well as reform the health care system to eliminate problems like being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, people having to declare bankruptcy due to medical bills, etc.

Some of its goals it succeeded in, and some not so much. That's a fair assessment at this point. Medical related bankruptcies have not declined. Being denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition has been eliminated. Premiums have gone up, but we simply don't have enough data to determine if they've slowed or accelerated since Obamacare was implemented. If you go by the immediate years after Obamacare was fully implemented, they slowed.

http://healthaffairs.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/Adler_Exhibit1.png

More recently, they've accelerated. It's important to note that health care costs are not solely determined by premiums alone. It's interesting you cherry picked premiums only to prove costs haven't been controlled because premiums are your best case to make that point. Copays, coinsurance, deductibles, prescription drugs, all those play a role. IE, if the average American pays more in premiums but less everywhere else, it's possible the net average is lower for total costs paid for health care.

These are complex topics that have no room for bringing in rose colored ideologically tinted lenses to force the outcome to be "a fucking disaster", where you'll bring in anecdotal evidence, some of which is completely utterly made up.

Just how far are you willing to make stuff up? Hillary Clinton, according to you, has never in the last 40 years done anything substantially positive.

REALLY?! Look, I understand not necessarily wanting her to be President. OK, fine. But that claim is absolutely ridiculous. Over $2 billion has been raised by the Clinton Foundation, and over 90% of that has gone to charitable work according to independent studies. Before you go down the path of "paid access", blah blah blah, even if that were true, the reality is $1.8 billion went to charitable works around the world through the Clinton Foundation Hillary Clinton helped to create and run.

That's not substantial?!?!

Dude, just stop. The only people who believe that BS are people within your bubble. You're not convincing anyone else who didn't already think Hillary Clinton personally killed Vince Foster. You're just making people like me think you're a complete loon.

It must suck that the only people who agree with you are people already in your bubble.

I hope by now people know me well enough to know I am far from a Trump supporter.

But we would be missing out on a huge opportunity here if we didn't highlight that 99% of what politicians say is different looking, but equally foul bullshit.

I'm not joking. If you actually look into the 'facts' and 'statistics' that are used to push and promote the different policies, they are all based in falsehood or manipulation of meaning, a few off the very top of my head:
- Austerity - based on a study that was discredited not long after it was used to strip assets and cut funding for those who need it most
- Immigration caps - Theresa May talks big about reducing immigration now, saying what a problem it has become but she was *home secretary*, responsible for handling immigration policy
- Benefit caps - for years they have painted benefits cheats as the great drain on the British welfare system with TV shows and press releases, but the majority of the benefits bills go towards subsidising low pay (working tax credits, people in full time work that doesn't pay enough to live on) and paying rent to private landlords (rents which are unregulated, landlords who are already privately rich).
- Greater autonomy for local government - sounds great, we get a better say about things that affect us locally, except when we say that we don't want fracking in Lancashire, they over rule us and say we WILL have fracking in Lancashire. Greater autonomy only meant "we're not giving you any more money."

I'm barely getting started. You can go on and on - tax policy when it comes to big multi nationals who don't pay their fair share, but we let them haggle and pay a tokenistic amount - but the reason we don't have enough money is because of the burden of benefits cheats and immigrants??? We paid for the damage done by the financial crash, but the same people are still in charge and now they're taking billions in bonuses too - why don't we get any of it back!??

I can turn on the news at any time and within 30 seconds find something that is skirting with the truth or outright pulling the wool over our eyes.

The entire political system is fucked up in America and in the UK, it's not just Donald Trump. Donald Trump is like a huge fist sized bubble in a strip of freshly laid wallpaper. We don't just need to fix the big obvious bubble; we need to change the way we put wallpaper up because when you look at the rest of the wall, there are thousands of smaller bubbles that amount to the exact same problem of a fucked up wall.

Donald Trump is the dead canary in the coal mine. He's the clear and obvious indicator that something is horribly, horribly wrong. Getting rid of the canary's corpse does not solve the fucking problem.

The blowback from the alt-right, these vicious people spouting nationalism and racism and sexism. AND the constantly bickering and clamouring SJW lefties who want to dominate free thought and free speech. Both these sets of people have been pitted against each other intentionally so that they don't turn on the people at the top. It is the oldest trick in the book - don't blame the guys in charge, blame each other, it gives us longer to get away with it. Divide and conquer. Spread hate, spread war, spread fear, spread anger and people gravitate to the extremes... they are easier to control at the extremes.

...rant over i guess

TLDR
If you found this boring, if you didn't want to look into it, you're part of the problem. You're contributing to the environment in which Trump can flourish.

There is no scrutiny, there is no being held to account. There is only the court of Rupert Murdoch and the Barclay brothers.