justadeveloper2

I don't think, in general, that self-respecting white Americans are going to fall for this attempt to connect Trump to white nationalists. I also don't think white people need to feel ashamed because it's just another angle of attack by followers of a dead ideology who can't seem to offer any new or better ideas. It's just "racist racist racist" and you know what? I don't care what names you call me anymore. I don't give a shit--about name calling, about identity politics, civil war statues, or any of it.

You either support civilization and building a future for everyone, or you don't and what I see here is an attempt at shutting out whites in some misguided "turnabout is fair play." Maybe that works in South Africa, but it won't work in the United States.

Racism is a bullshit accusation put out by people whose only goal is some kind of very cynical "get Trump at all costs" type of agenda. Instead of realizing what the American middle class is trying to tell DC, they dug in their heels and commenced fighting for their piece of the pie. But what the entrenched politicos in DC don't seem to get yet is that their cushy style of politics as usual is over. Marxist progressivism is over as well, because regular people are not only fed up with how high taxes are, they can't afford the high cost of living anyways, so it's over! It's not as though the country can just dispose of Trump and everything will return to 'normal'--the norm that was Obama's America is unsustainable and failing before our eyes. That path is simply over and you can see the puzzlement in the eyes of certain Senators and Congressmen and government functionaries who can't come to terms with it and are doing their best to gaslight anyone who tells them the truth.

Leftism is America is about to get flushed because Americans woke up to how bankrupt and empty-headed the whole thing was. Identity politics sucks--it is a cynical attempt at dividing and conquering and filtering all the wealth to the top, which is exactly what the Clintons did all these years, they aided and abetted the fleecing of America top to bottom and finally, finally, a decent enough voting bloc got their heads out of their asses and said 'enough of this!' and sent a clear message to DC that this behavior will no longer be tolerated on their backs, and yet all we get now is more divisiveness, more cognitive dissonance, and more stupidity!

It bugs me that engineers spent countless hours perfecting these killing machines and yet we still don't have a cure for most forms of cancer. It's ludicrous.

True, but I feel that lately Apple is cutting corners with parts. I'm using the new MBP to type this and the keyboard stinks and lately my spacebar has been sticky. The "need a dongle for everything" situation is a nightmare, too.

I'm feeling backed into a corner--Microsoft sucks, Apple sucks, Google has become untrustworthy and thus sucks. It's like all these tech companies are breaking it off you know where and we have no choice but to accept that.

We got rid of cable tv years ago and tv watching dropped off sharply after that. These days we barely turn it on, although the kids play XBox here and there. The iPads they have are a nuisance, though. We excised the worst demon, but Youtube has some pretty vapid crap, too. It's a process. I don't want to entirely cut them off because they do learn from it here and there. It's a tool, not a drug.

Technology does not care about human values.

China.

Which is just another example of how government expands its scope and rarely ever contracts.

That is what terrifies me--people who are ostensibly conservative but then are all pro-military and pro-big-government and you find out all they want is some tax break or other stupid consideration that benefits them personally. Democrats are not immune to this behavior, either--I have met few who disfavor big government and think they can somehow control the beast. They can't.

I guess those conservatives who have military backgrounds felt that Snowden betrayed them and put them in greater jeopardy. The problem with that is, it's hard to prove the value of what Snowden did. Harm may well have been done in the small, but at the same time there was great justice in the large. Being a whistleblower was the ethical choice; if you look the other way, you're no better than the prison guards at the concentration camps who weren't full-on members of the Nazi Party.

It's an ugly, ugly exercise of power.

I have the odd tie in of having lived near an airport in NC where the CIA was operating small jets to conduct those "renditions" (read: kidnappings) overseas during the Bush II years.

The other place in the US that is weird: The base known as "The Farm" right next to Colonial Williamsburg which is neither fish nor fowl--a lot of people and things get moved in and out of the US from there with zero accountability.

We badly need to get the US government back under control because the things done in our names are simply evil.

Psychology--people will try to remain close to places and people they know. There are many examples such behavior especially during natural disasters when they are commanded or know they should flee but don't.

Look at how much gets taken out of a grant for "overhead," too! Stunning.

So you don't think the financialization of higher education has played a significant role?

Having also worked in higher ed for quite a long time (I've been out since 2004) I always quipped that young people really just want "lifestyle camps" or "lifestyle towns" where they can have the experience they want without all the pesky classes and studying getting in the way. Go there for a couple years, party down, then maybe move on in life. It would save a lot of people a lot of hardship and pain.

If that is the case then something is out of whack.

Is cc theft lumped in with "identity" theft? I have had my cc stolen numerous times, but nobody has assumed my identity in order to obtain lines of credit or travel with a passport in my name. My information was in the massive US Personnel Office data breach, but as far as I know, my SSN isn't being used by anyone [yet].

Stupid .gov with their lousy data handling practices.

Maybe they could install bicycle cranks so the pilot and passengers can all pedal their way through the air.

Catapults don't save energy--they shorten runway. The jet is at full throttle on takeoff and military aircraft are not exactly fuel misers.

Man, I just see massive heartache and disappointment for them at some point in the future.

This is crap--someone is always warning about a downturn coming. The game is as the game has always been--scare the rubes into doing something stupid with their money so the people who know the play can keep making big bucks off the uninitiated.

All that extra tech is unnecessary junk, though. I like the backup cameras, but just recently had an near-incident where that didn't help either. It's up to you what you want in a new car, but I'll tell you from experience, all those extras are just going to break and have problems and cost big bucks to fix (or you'll have a Christmas tree of warning lights on the dash while you ignore this or that malfunctioning feature).

Smart people are often the easiest to scam because they believe they can't be scammed.

I had an uncle who used to "carry money" for numbers rackets in NY which I think means he was involved in racketeering. I don't claim to understand how it worked, but I know the winning numbers were related to the winners of certain horse races. The state lottery pretty much put an end to it.

We're still in the "attract as many rubes as possible phase" which is always followed by the "slam the trap shut phase"

I'm glad to hear skepticism--I always considered these e-coins to be the perfect scam to attract Millenial technocrats and then fleece them.

Small, localized governance. True representative government (no career politicians like the sleaze John McCain and Nancy Pelosi). Strong adherence to property rights. Government not picking winners and losers. Government not accepting bribes (campaign contributions via big-money lobbyists). No corporate welfare--if a bank fucks up, they go out of business and shitbirds like Jamie Dimon get to live under a bridge the rest of their lives and (hopefully) die drunk while OD'ing on heroin.

ETA: End to the drug war, non-interventionist foreign policy.

I still mind paying taxes and always will--anyone who doesn't is a doormat. It's just that I also no that a certain amount of expropriation is going to happen no matter what. I still don't support in collectivism or collectivist solutions, though. I think those things are the big lie told to people--that no other system can do what government does. The US government is mainly involved in theft from the middle class via taxation and inflation.

Why the downvote? Do you have any experience with the RV world? I'm telling you--most of the fun is in driving the thing and self-driving takes even that away. People imagine they can hop in some self-driving motorhome and read books and nap until they get to their destination and I'm here to tell you that that is a highly unlikely thing to come to be for all kinds of reasons.

That's just where you are. Out west, RVs are the thing for traveling the vast distances and there are tons of RV parks. It's a weird subculture.

That, and all the mechanical issues that go along with them! The RV I'm familiar with has three different heating systems, a generator, a huge battery bank, miles of wiring, and no way to get at anything to work on it. It's worse than a sailboat.

I'm skeptical. Class A motorcoaches are already very complex beasts and the people who operate them are in no particular rush to get anywhere from my experiences in Montana and Idaho the last couple of weeks. They're mostly retired people and they wander from RV park to RV park without much care. It's a nice life in some ways. It would drive me batty to live in campgrounds after awhile, but that's me.

My elderly parents bought a 38' Bluebird years ago. They used it some in the first couple of years, but then their health problems began preventing them from going anywhere and now it just sits. The thing is a monster, especially when flat-towing a car behind it. Its huge size has gotten them into all kinds of misadventures because it's like driving a semi around, you have to be careful about bridges, grades, road width, parking, where you're going to turn around, and on and on.

I keep trying to get them to sell it, but they are holding on to a dream that will never be. The punchline is that they could have flown anywhere in the world multiple times and stayed in 4-star hotels for what that stupid RV cost and they would have had a much better time.

Anyhow, I just don't see a lot of people relying on self-driving RVs, sorry.