It is. Only to distract the masses.

It was distracting it was so impressive. Like another being attached to her head

the laugh track is pretty distracting...

They, and other news organizations (so probably not Fox) are back on it today, since Flynn plead guilty to lying to the fbi about colluding with Russian diplomats, specifically his repeatedly "secretly" (so he thought) violating the Logan act, at the direct direction of and reporting back to the campaign/transition leader(s)...which means Trump himself.

Maybe they're hoping this will distract from the failed secret attempt at making abortion illegal with their tax bill which would have codified fetal personhood, a huge step towards making any abortion murder, on top of raising taxes on anyone making under $75k by up to 30% and lowering taxes for millionaires. Good thing they're so incompetent that the tax bill was illegal, or abortion could be ended today by a scam and a lie.
https://www.snopes.com/gop-tax-bill-fetal-personhood-legislation/
Underhanded sneaky lying traitors, those are your people.

Not sure if this is irony or not, but where I live, I find the giant "DISTRACTED DRIVING LAWS ARE IN EFFECT" highway signs very distracting.

Was just watching the old Mythbusters where they took an actual driving road test while intoxicated or talking on a cell phone. But, being actual driving, they legally had to stay under the .08 BAC limit even though it was on a closed course.

Really cool to see this place, where they can test things at mild/moderate/high levels of impairment, other types of intoxication, etc.

However, I did have one minor complaint, sort of the same as in the Mythbusters episode: it would be nice to see additional tests where the driver isn't ever expected to look at a video camera and/or respond correctly to questions. Ie., what if you're talking to somebody on the phone hands free, or talking to a passenger in the car, but you're not expected to devote a lot of attention to that ALL the time. In a real scenario, you can keep your eyes on the road and pay attention to driving while also listening to someone or even talking to them a little bit. If you see something in the road that requires your full attention, it seems like your brain should be able to do a reasonable job of prioritizing the driving (more important) over paying attention to the conversation (less important).

I'd wager that on average, people in that sort of scenario are slightly impaired compared to drivers putting 100% of their attention on driving, but not by a big margin. Probably lower than a lot of other distractions, some of which we deem acceptable (hard to legislate things like "driving while preoccupied" angry/sad/whatever).

I take the view of SDGundamX that it's intended to be contextual based on the speaker but trying to force this kind of nuance into public discourse is a losing battle.

I also think the tack of shunning people / getting them fired for use the word hatefully is the wrong tack. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, just publicly and repeatedly call them an asshole.

Language arguments distract from the real driver of racism, income inequality. I suspect outright racial hatred - notions of racial inferiority/subjugation while still obviously present, are in decline.

I would instead guess the rate of police deaths, employment discrimination and many other biases are linked to the assumption that poorer means 'more likely to be a criminal'.

Why don't you just concentrate on driving your fucking car instead of being that distracted in traffic?
That kind of video can be recorded in a living room, ya know?

Hmm. I disagree with your description text, @ChaosEngine.

I've never shot something fully-automatic. I have shot an AR-15 semi-automatic, and I know where you're coming from when you say that hitting a target on full auto would be difficult, especially for a relatively untrained person (recoil control).

However, I think Vox and others are basically correct when they say that this modification (bump stock) contributed to the Las Vegas shooting being so deadly. Specifically in that sort of scenario.

The dude wasn't picking targets and sniping, going for accuracy. He picked an ideal shooting location (elevation with clear LOS) and sprayed into a crowd. He'd have been more accurate by keeping the weapon on semi-auto and actually aiming carefully, and certainly would have gotten more hits per bullet fired, but on the other hand the rate of fire difference would have so different that people would have had more time between shots to scramble for cover, etc.

He had position, an abundance of bullets, and lots and lots of time. Given those givens, having a rate of fire approximately equal to fully-automatic means a much higher body count than if he'd have been limited to traditional semi-auto.


The NRA is being more cunning than I figured they would, and has come out in favor of banning bump stocks. I agree with you that they see that mostly as a pointless concession, and a distraction from additional / better stuff that needs to happen.

But it isn't a pointless concession. If banning fully-automatic firearms in 1986 (minus the ones grandfathered in) was the right thing to do, extending that to include bump stocks is also the right thing to do. For the same reasons.

@newtboy is correct to note that technically, a rifle with a bump stock isn't a fully-automatic "machine gun". The user's finger still pulls the trigger once for every bullet that comes out -- semi-automatic.

However, I think that the "spirit" of the distinction is that with semi-automatic firing you have to think and consciously decide to pull the trigger each time you want to shoot a bullet, whereas with fully-automatic you consciously decide when you want to start and stop shooting. By the letter of the law, weapons with bump stocks are semi-automatic. But by that definition of the "spirit" of the law, they are fully-automatic. Pull the grip/barrel forward to start shooting, pull it back to stop.

It's a pretty frequent occurrence for technology to outpace the law. The definitions of semi vs fully automatic include the word "trigger" because they didn't anticipate this kind of conversion that makes the trigger sort of one step removed from the conscious decision to fire. The law would have similar hiccups if a weapon was developed that used a button or switch to fire, rather than a traditional trigger.

When those hiccups happen, the solution is to clarify the intent of the law and expand or clarify definitions as necessary. I'm pleasantly surprised that many legislators seem willing to do that with bump stocks, and that the NRA seems like it won't stand in the way. Mission accomplished, situation resolved? No. But a step in the right direction.

In open warfare of govt vs people, drones don't matter, just like jets don't matter. I already covered this above.



Nowhere is an oppressive dictatorship - until it is.
[redacted]
I feel like people are too distracted with instagram and other B.S. to bother learning about how the world works.
History is long. The current peace is an anomaly. When things go bad, there is little warning. If you're lucky, a year or so of build up. If you're not lucky, weeks or days. Shit likes to spiral.
In bad times, you have only what you have on hand.


Most western countries with [regardless of gun ownership] don't have a population that's F'd in the head.
Nothing stops a German gun owner from taking his AR15 and shooting up a concert.
Storing his guns in a safe that he can open doesn't mean anything.
Paying for a new license card for every few guns doesn't alter the guns.

Gun laws, as proposed, are fluff. Nothing that makes people safer, nothing that prevents ownership, but plenty to crap on collectors.
* 10 round limit = 2 second pause to reload
* Gun show loophole is a misnomer.
* (re. above) Only private sales (gun show or not) don't require checks - but you still end up in court if the buyer does something bad.
* Assault weapons ban only bans pistol grips and threaded barrels. Cosmetics. Just google "California compliant AR15" (they already have a de-facto AWB).
* There's already laws against straw purchase.
* There's already laws against crazy people buying (already part of the background check)
* Registration is pointless as gun control. Doesn't alter the guns or who has them (background check already tells gov who, when, and where bought a gun).

(I'd sooner vote for mandatory roll cage and 6 point harness in every car. Could eliminate 90+% of car fatalities in one rule - if people cared enough.)


By the way, gun owners hate people like the Vegas shooter even more than anti-gunners hate people like him.
Precisely because assholes like that shooter make anti-gunners turn on their frustration on innocent gun owners.

The call to "do something" is the phrase that perfectly describes the sentiments that led to actions, that in turn became described by either "famous last words" or "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".





We had shit health insurance before Obama. We had shit insurance during Obama (only you're required by law to buy it, even if it's not a good value), we continue to have shit health insurance during Trump, and no matter what trump does, it will still be shit.
Problem is that the insurance company lobbyists draft the language of the law (no matter the party in charge), and it's not for our benefit.





Re. Minorities, most are living normal lives. The white eutopia that the few vocal people complain about, doesn't exist. At least I have yet to see it. Don't let a few thousand people in a nation of millions guide your thoughts about overall social norms.

I'm happy to see them protest. Frankly, I wish white people had the same solidarity that black people have. When a black gets shot by a cop, they come together. When a white is shot by a cop, other whites say "he probably deserved it". I wish the black community good luck and success.





Yes, I wish we weren't jailing more people than anywhere else on the planet, over things that harm nobody.
I wish we had the drug laws of Portugal (decriminalization)
I wish we had the legal system of Sweden (no jail before conviction).

Know how I said that most countries don't have as many people that are F'd in the head? Same applies for people in government.
None of this shit will get fixes.
Republicans are bible thumping retards that funnel money to defense contractors and campaign donors.
Democrats are buck-passing censors that funnel money to insurance companies and campaign donors.
And people just pick a team and bark at the other team, while each gets fleeced by their very own side.

-scheherazade

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.

So, @bobknight33 is this how you're distracting yourself from all the winning America's been doing lately?

Planning to vote Trump again next election?

I got distracted by all the blinking lights. Where is he... the Death Star control room? Frankly, I'm mildly jealous that my work place does not look as awesome as that.

As to the test itself, it's way too basic. I would expect any beginning programmer to be able to write that with only a few hours training. You could make it slightly more challenging by adding some arbitrary restrictions like "don't use a for loop" (i.e. use recursion) but those are pointless academic wankery.

I actually wrote tests and hired a coder earlier this year. This test wouldn't have got you an interview, never mind a job.

You want to impress me? Start out by writing a test that verifies the output. I don't care if it works, I want to know you can PROVE it works. While you're at it, if I see a console.log or a printf or a cout or any kind of output in your algorithm (unless it's just there for debugging)... instant fail. Learn to separate presentation from logic.

Finally, if you REALLY want to impress me, make it scale. 100 numbers? Meaningless. 1 million? 194ms on my machine.
Write me a version that can do several billion and take advantage of whatever threads/cores are available,

No NHS in the states. Personally, I think that'd be the way to do it. And I think it kind of needs to be a long and difficult road, to make sure that drastic option is necessary and won't be regretted later.

It's a bit hard for me to accept it, because I tend to think of it like that episode of South Park. Kyle can't actually become a tall black kid, and his dad can't actually become a dolphin.

But even though I think that is true -- you can't really become something you aren't -- I recognize that gender reassignment surgeries can be life saving / massively beneficial to quality of life in many cases.


To take a stab at answering your other questions:

I believe that Trump is saying that the military is instituting a blanket ban on transgender people from serving in the military. If / how the military elects to enforce that remains to be seen. I don't know the full timeline on that sort of stuff, but back in the 60's one (considered extreme at the time) way for young men to get out of being drafted to go to Vietnam was to take photos of themselves naked with another man (implying they were gay) or wearing women's clothing (implying they were trans). The mere implication that you might be either was enough to disqualify you from military service.

More recently, during Don't Ask Don't Tell you could be gay or trans in the military, but couldn't reveal that you were. That ended only 5-6 years ago. The military definitely wouldn't have paid for trans-related medical treatments prior to that, and didn't for quite a while after until Obama OK'd it.

Again, I don't really think that the military should be required / expected to pay for those kinds of treatments for soldiers, BUT I'd be 100% OK with something like the NHS making it available to any citizen, as in the UK. For one thing, I wouldn't want trans people to see the military as the only way to get those treatments (short of paying out of pocket), and having that be a major part of their motivation to join.

And I 100% agree that this is a basically a political distraction that sets back the rights and acceptance of an already marginalized group that in no way deserves it.

So

I don't know how it is in the states, but in this country if you want to go through gender reassignment you will get it for free on the NHS. Its a long road, it isn't easy, they make it hard etc, but like anything else that poses a risk to somebodies health it is paid for by the state. I feel like a lot of people consider reassignment a sort of frivolous sex thing but being unable to escape the body in which you are born is, you know, desperately depressing. I don't think I am exaggerating when I say that surgery and hormone treatment are potentially lifesaving, and certainly greatly improve the quality of life in most cases.

Couple of things I don't understand - Is this the military saying they will no longer pay for treatments associated with gender reassignment, or is this a blanket ban on transgender men and women from serving in the military? One wonders why the military can't spend even a fraction of the amount is spends on toys on its servicemen/women...

Anyhoo. It's a distraction. Not trying to suggest that it is a minor thing for those affected, but I really think this is to divert the left and win back support from the right. It sucks dreadfully that a minority group is again used as target for political maneuvering and it is worthy of resistance but I can't help but feel we are playing into their hand by doing so.

@bobknight33 I pity you.