...so? Presidents and other national leaders attend a huge variety of functions, and aren't going to want to do a run-through for every single one of them. A brief overview of his role on a note card seems a very pragmatic solution. I do want to point out that it doesn't tell him what to say - the President's staff expects he'll be able to improvise something serviceable. Because he's an intelligent, capable adult human being.

Oh, and that clip of him saying something about "dropped dead unexpectedly" - that looks like stuttering to me. He seemed to be trying to say something else, and just couldn't get it out. His backup word choice was inelegant at best. Stuttering is something Biden's known to have struggled with for most of his life, and generally he handles it very well. Sometimes though he seems to still stumble on something, and this might've been a case of that. Maybe not - maybe he had a total brain fart / senior moment and we should be concerned... but it certainly didn't seem like a noteworthy incident to me.

Meanwhile, in actual important news: the J6 hearings have demonstrated the former President clearly made numerous efforts to remain in power despite having definitely lost in a fair election. (Well, fair in terms of having been run competently and without demonstrable fraud. Trump still had what I consider a significant unfair advantage in that Republicans have an inherent edge via the Electoral College. He just lost the popular vote by MORE this time around, leading to a loss of the EC as well.)

Have had LEDs quit within that time frame also. Most vexing is having to replace one LED w/another while the fluorescents in the neighboring sockets are still burning. Quite honestly, in another house, the fluorescents (save a couple) have been running since they were put in >5+ yrs ago.

Also, remember the hub-bub of folks demanding incandescent over those new swirly ice-cream blubs (ire and desire trumps pragmatism). Hearing this, and 'those' people, knew the new bulb types were definitely going to be better.

Having high ceilings, lousy knees and a fear of heights - changing blubs every few years is a luxury.

Thanks for the good questions.

a) yes
b) yes
c) no
d) yes
e) n/a

If you exclude suicide, the USA doesn't have a staggering rate of gun deaths. It is high compared to some other western countries, but on a world rate it is still very low.

When looking at public health (which is the reason for reducing gun violence) you need to be pragmatic. What will actually give a good outcome for public health? In this case there are about a half a dozen things that kill and maim US citizens at much higher rates than firearms do.

E.g. you are much more likely to be killed in a car crash than murdered by someone with a firearm. Cars by accident kill more people in the USA each year than firearms do on purpose. That's some scary shit right there. Think about that for a second, cars are more dangerous than firearms and people are not even trying to kill themselves or someone else with one. So as an example, you'd be better off trying to fix this first.

Or fix the suicide rate in the US. People aren't in a happy place there.

Obesity kills more people. Doctor malpractice kills more people. Etc. But these are hard issues to tackle that will cost billions or trillions. The low hanging fruit is firearms.

Free health care and mental health care, a better social security system, and various other means would all have magnificent outcomes on everyday life in the USA. But again, they cost a lot and require a paradigm shift.

Have you ever encountered interpersonal violence against you (i.e. had someone attack you)? Or have you maybe worked in a job where you often come into contact with people who have been attacked? I find people change their mind after they realize that they were only ever one wrong turn away from some crazy bastard who wanted to hurt them badly.

It would be nice if such existed and we had access to it. Fortunately, science-based pragmatism and democratic polling of deeply-held values offer a way to approach it.

I actually agree with you mostly, but you're not gonna like it.

One thing I will point out though - "I just don't connect gun regulations as an effective solution to mass murder."

We have data on this. Take Australia. In the 21 years leading up to Port Arthur and that massacre itself, which triggered the nation into heavily regulating guns, there were 16 mass murders of four or more people, totaling 137 murders. Since then, there have been 12, with a total of 76 murders. This despite there being population growth.

Violent crime rate has dropped from 1996 to now, mainly from reductions in robbery and a small drop in homicide rates.

There is very clear evidence that if most guns are removed from circulation, there are very real and likely benefits when it comes to reducing violent crime in general and murder.

I'm a political moderate and pragmatic. I go with what works. Don't care how liberal or conservative the solution is. I'm never in favor of regulation that is ineffective at solving problems.

And to that end, I'm against most gun control measures. I'm on board with banning assault weapons, fully automatic weapons, armor piercing bullets, but most gun control things like psychiatric evaluations, universal background checks? No.
Why? Because societal models we know that provided real progress on problems seemed to suggest one thing - it's the prevalence of guns that is the problem. If you make it marginally harder to buy guns by things like...

Three day waiting periods
Universal background checks
Psychiatric evaluations

They don't work. Banning guns works, though. It's worked time and time again. Australia, Britain, over and over and over, if guns lose prevalence, violence, murder, etc. decrease significantly.

At some point, society has to decide that giving up guns is worth it. But until that time, "common sense" gun control is a waste of time, and I quite frankly think it might do real effective gun control measures harm because when nothing gets better from these mild measures, they're going to point that out.

Heck, an armed populace is harder to oppress is really all I was ever suggesting on the count of common ground. One point of commonality.

On Rwanda, the genocidal former government of Rwanda kept their arms and just retreated into the Congo jungle. They've basically kept their "freedom" in the process and subsequently no small reason the DRC has been plagued with horrific violent crimes against humanity the last couple decades.

On Kagame I suppose it depends who you ask about being a tyrant or not. Perhaps pragmatic dictator would be the closest a majority of dissenting experts might agree on? That said, make no mistake that supporters of the former regime weren't allowed to remain armed where Kagame had the ability. Because of the genocide the world largely disregarded it, Kagames forces made large numbers of 'violations' of DRC borders raiding for former genocidairres.

Why not take two steps in the right direction?

Taking the texting while drunk driving analogy - you'd ban both wouldn't you?. To simply ban the texting is surely tacit approval of the DUI.

I understand the sort of pragmatic approach and I'm not even sure I'd be against it... I just think you have to be careful not to imagine it as a step in the right direction because, frankly, it's not a step at all. To me it is closer to addressing a loophole in the preexisting law and it doesn't really facilitate or encourage further gun regulation. If banning bumpstocks is your end goal then great, but if you want more then I think you need to be asking for more, even (or perhaps especially?) if it means fighting for it.

First piece of advice. "Clever" code is usually bad code. If I saw that line of code in a code review, I would have to have words with the programmer.

More seriously, it depends where you are. There area lot of jobs right now. If by no professional experience you mean no internship experience, that can make things harder but isn't a huge obstacle at all (the experience itself doesn't often count for much, it's really more of a "why didn't you get an internship?" sort of thing). A good way to start in that case is to look for contract-to-hire positions, possibly through a recruiting/placement agency (look for ones that specialize in engineers). They generally know what they are doing, and will work hard to find a good place for you and they are genuinely on your side. We like to use these where I work because you can hire someone on a three month or whatever contract, and if it doesn't work out, it's a relatively painless separation for everyone (ie, you weren't "fired" you just finished the term of your contract). It's easier to get your foot in the door through a CTH, and then you just have to diligently and prove yourself.

As for preparing for real work (the actual coding part), that's harder. Since you really don't know what you'll be doing, it's not easy to prepare for it. You really have to learn software engineering on the job, and companies hiring entry level talent know that. That said, if you have a particular field in mind, looking for *good* open source projects along the lines of what you want to do and studying the source is good idea. Exposure to real-world, non-academic code is very useful. Getting involved and maybe becoming a contributor is a great idea (and looks good on a resume and gives you something to talk about in an interview). Working on personal hobby projects is a good thing too (though not as good as working on larger projects with other people), which again, gives you something to talk about in an interview. Keep your hand in. Have something to talk about at your interviews.

There are some good books. "The Pragmatic Programmer" by Hunt/Thomas is an excellent general-purpose programming practices book (more about mindset and approach and good patterns than technical details), and I can't recommend it enough. There are some others, but they escape me at the moment. Google is probably your friend here. If you can find a second hand set of Knuth for a reasonable price, buy it up. It's not even remotely worth actually reading, but it looks good on a shelf.

Good luck and don't sweat it. You have a degree that makes you very employable. You'll find something that you like without a doubt. If you're lucky it will be your first job, if not, no big deal--move on to the next thing.

I never talked about the nomination, only about liberals pointing out that Sanders would stand a much better shot at winning against Trump.

Yet Sanders not winning the Democratic nomination is sort of the point. The DNC and the talking heads had their mind set on a candidate from amongst their midst, and put their combined weight behind her. They went with a candidate who was vulnerable on just about every angle to attacks from Trump, due to her being a continuation of previous policies. That's not picking the candidate who stands the highest chance of winning the Presidential Election, that's picking someone who represents their own interests. Which is fair enough. But then don't blame the purist liberals for pointing out the dangers of this strategy.

Thing is, we know the DNC colluded with the Clinton campaign. Even more details of this are coming in bit by bit through discovery during the class-action lawsuit filed against the DNC. To call the Hillary Victory Fund a money-laundering operation for the Clinton campaign might even be too kind by now.

We also know that they actively pushed for Trump to be the nominee, thinking the election would be a cakewalk then. Brilliant strategists, the lot of them.

And the same people are running „the Resistence“ now, doubling down on what they did before. How is that for learning a lesson. Instead, they play the blame game. And Maher, in this clip, jumped in and blamed „purist liberals“. Not the DNC, not Clinton for running a campaign based on platitudes, clichés, and everything except policy substance.

If you want to blame the purist liberals for anything, blame them for not having campaigned hard enough, for not having put enough pressure to either get their candidate nominated or to get Clinton to at least pretend to be willing to do something about the suffering of the lower class. Blame the liberals for being content with a few improvements in social policies while swallowing economic policies that cause a continuous degredation of the standard of living of the lower class.

Still, purist liberals kept saying that the antidote against right-wing populism is left-wing populism. Sanders was not vulnerable on policy issues. In fact, this 187 year old bloke with bad posture is nigh untouchable on policy issues. When even Trump voters in West Virginia admit that a guy from the Northeast is a better advocate of theirs than local Republicans, you know his policies are not open to attack from right-wing populists.

As for purity vs pragmatism: pragmatism is a label for the policies that led to the current state of affairs. It's the policies that led to large-scale devastation across the country. It's not pragmatic to vote for more of the same if it means a continuation of policies that led you into despair. Purity is the label talking heads apply to a principled stance when they don't agree with it, plain and simple. Both labels allow them to distract from discussions about policy substance.

@enoch, I'm going to be blunt about this. I don't support the US swinging its dick around the world, and may Hillary would be worse than Trump, but at least she's less likely to go to war because a foreign leader said something mean in a tweet.

But honestly, (and it is fucking depressing that we've come to this) that is no longer my primary concern.

Yeah, wars suck and the apparent glee with which the US enters them is frankly, abhorrent.

Let's say we can perfectly predict the future. If elected, Hillary will start a few wars, probably cosy up to wall street, and do some other generally sketchy shit.

I'd still choose her over Trump who in his first 100 days, has almost started a war, cosied up to wall street and done some insanely sketchy shit.

But at least Hillary wouldn't actively roll back the few fucking paltry steps the US has taken towards lowering its climate footprint.

And @radx, yeah.... the whole election sucked. But Bernie lost.... even without all the DNC bullshit, he was never going to win the Democratic nomination.

Doesn't absolve each and every eligible voter in the US who either didn't vote or voted Trump.

It has nothing to do with purity and everything to do with pragmatism. Not that the US is anything resembling a democracy these days anyway....

Very good points.

My "cultural momentum" argument isn't so much an attempt to justify this stuff as a pragmatic take on who good counter arguments like yours (and the video itself) need to be directed at. "If all the tradition were stripped away" is easy for us "internet observers"; perhaps less so for the people that actually go to these events. But your approach is still a very good and persuasive one; much better than screaming PETA-like protests and confrontation that I think are more likely to just entrench the tendency to cling to tradition.


Your "having to realize that parents and grandparents were assholes" comment is apropos and truly is a very difficult thing to do. But I think the next step is ever harder -- realizing that our kids and grandkids will look back on things that we do and take for granted as normal behavior today, and come to the same conclusion about us that we have with regards to our parents and grandparents...

Trump is doing what Democrats do best. Democrats don't back down. Democrats are exceedingly great at this. Republicans cave at every turn.

Trump will win by a land slide. Not because is conservative but because people are fed up politics as usual and Hillary clearly embodies the corruption of politicians

People like me did not cause Trump to be nominated. The political system is so corrupt and distrusted that any nationally known outsider would have done good. Steve Forbes? Trump does know how to sell himself, no doubt. It gives him the outsiders edge.

Why would I support him? I have to say I have seen so much Clinton scandals over the last 40 years and how they get away every time. Not this time. So I am a never Hillary voter. It will be a protest vote.

AS for you being a pragmatic moderate is saying I want to be able to morally sin. Your are a fence sitter. Grow a pair and pick a side.

I'm not a liberal, nor a conservative. I'm a pragmatic moderate.

Of course, ANYONE to the left of you is a "shit liberal". There are more of you every day because the electorate is being polarized.

Unfortunately for you, there's WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more "shit liberals" everyday than people of your "ilk". Also, there's WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more people who aren't of your ilk than are, and you keep pushing everyone who isn't as irrationally conservative as you away to the Democratic Party.

Remember, people like you caused Trump to get nominated instead of Kasich or Bush, and you might have won with either of them vs Clinton. But no, you're a man of principle! And those principles led you to Donald Trump, the candidate who could never be elected, even with all the political winds from circumstance at his back. Even against the second most disliked major party nominee, only to Trump himself!

I don't expect you to bow down. I expect you to drive yourself crazy as you'll continue to fight the insane fight while you lose election after election, and destroy the Republican Party as you keep it hostage under the threat of primarying any rational members they have left, handing election after election to Democrats until conservatives and the Republican Party become irrelevant and powerless.

That's what you can do. You keep that fight up! Never give up, never surrender! No matter how far you feel yourself sinking in the quicksand, between millennials completely rejecting your ideology, growing populations of minorities who reject you, demographics that show that eventually large electoral vote rich states like Texas will become competitive and will flip and turn blue. Nevermind the GOP has managed to win the popular vote one time in the last six elections, soon to be a seventh. Next time, keep thinking going down this path will work!

But don't you stop fighting! Keep struggling! I expect nothing less! This isn't about this election anymore. It's about wreaking havoc against your own side for decades to come! Nominate Trump in 2020 again! Primary the traitor Paul Ryan!

Mwa ha ha ha ha ha!

MWA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Good point.

I don't dispute racism exists, and its effects are amplified by power and reach. There is a difference between quality and quantity when it comes to racism. Western racism seems of a low quality, but it generates a high quantity due to pragmatic reasons. Strangely, perhaps, I find this less reprehensible than high quality of racism that is mitigated by distance or political clout. That's definitely a bias I have.

EDIT:
I think the above video and my response to it demonstrate some of the problems in that stance. Akala confidently lists a collection of events that he clearly considers egregious. A subset of those I've addressed in my criticism, to varying extents. If detecting racism in our culture is disagreeing about how effective a foreign navy should be in it's coast guard duties on a foreign shore, perhaps we're disappearing down the rabbit hole. If detecting racism in our culture means finding a sub 1% discrepancy in prison death rates in a small sample size, then it could be we're missing the forest for the trees.
It isn't to say that there aren't still problems in western culture, but we are teaching ourselves to cry wolf constantly, and we know where that leads.

I'm far enough away from these issues to admit that I don't have anything like concrete knowledge on the subject, but I feel like I should mention some of the more obvious counterpoints to some of the things he's said in this video. Otherwise I'd get that dirty echo chamber feeling, and no amount of showering seems to wash that away. Could be I'm just a masochist, though, who enjoys arguing.

I think there's racism in every culture. I think it's often much more subtle than described in the video, often even subconscious. I also think that modern western culture is among the least racist cultures to have ever existed, despite our many complaints.

I guess I'll talk about Libya first. The west (the white people he was talking about) is continuously demonized for supporting tyrants and the like. Yet when they participate in overthrowing a clear example of a extravagant super villain tyrant, they are demonized for that. I'm not saying they didn't have other motives, I'm just saying that it's an example of a tautology. No matter which choice they make they are labeled racist.

Now, when beleaguered folk make a desperate attempt to dangerously cross a sea, well knowing the risks they are incurring, it is again the fault of the Italians for not rescuing then with sufficient alacrity. Yes, many of them are coming from countries the west had a hand in destabilizing. But it would be pretty racist for you to demand that the Italian navy take full moral responsibility for the actions of other western nations, simply because they are white too. Also, if the only number you pay attention to is the number that drown, your bias is showing.

Next the issue of the Commonwealth. It seems absurd to expect the UK to treat former colonies populated by citizens that had moved there the same as former conquests that have since shrugged off the yoke of empire. The justifications for this discrimination would seem to be a combination of racism, cultural chauvinism and sober pragmatism. The latter two factors clearly scale with the gap between the culture of the colony in question and the home country, and probably ought to in some sense.

The incarceration thing is tougher to poke holes in, and clearly a much more touchy subject. Once could argue all sorts of justifications for why more members of ethnic minorities are apprehended, but it's nebulous and smells of bias and chauvinism, at best ending in a chicken vs egg conundrum. But once you're in police custody, I think can agree on demanding a higher level of equality of outcome. So I checked out a charity called Inquest who had compiled pretty comprehensive stats on police custody deaths since 1990. Here's a link: http://www.inquest.org.uk/statistics/bame-deaths-in-police-custody
To summarise, since 1990, ethnic minorities have made up a total of 153 out of 1557 deaths in police custody, or roughly 10%. Given that they currently make up 13% of the population, that seems to be well within an acceptable range of results, so I was confused at first. Then I thought maybe he had misspoken and had meant to say state custody, or inmate deaths. So again I looked for some numbers, and again Inquest had the most comprehensive data, broken down by year and ethnicity etc. Again here's a link: http://www.inquest.org.uk/statistics/deaths-in-prison
It shows 453 out of 3963 prison deaths are suffered by ethnic minorities. This seems almost perfectly in line with the 13% population of said minorities. So again, I'm a bit confused by the point he's making.

All of that said, I think I agree with the sentiment of his presentation, which perhaps confuses me even more.