I recently decided to stop giving them blood, however, because I was actually reading the fine print for once, and apparently they send your blood off for use in research at universities and you cannot opt out.
I am giving you my blood to help people not for your side channel research efforts. If a university wants to use my blood for testing and research they may do so at my discretion, not in spite of it. Also, I would like to be able to review the privacy policy of that particular university and know if they have any attempts to turn a profit with a pharmaceutical company. Again, blood is very sensitive and very personally identifiable. I want the least amount of people possible (who don't actually need it to survive) to have it. I have no idea what the future holds in terms of genetic testing, genetic discrimination, and most importantly, how this particular research university handles data storage and information about my blood and I.
Anyways, long story short, I will be using my local blood organizations from now on, or just going directly to the hospital to donate.
Yes, the EU, or otherwise known as that giant land mass consisting of 28 different countries with unique economies.
Ironically, trying to treat each member state as some homogeneous member is what is leading to the fracturing and growing nationalism. UK won't be the last to try and break off.
The EU in many ways acts like one big economy due to its customs union, freedom of movement of workers, capital, goods and services, extensive harmonised regulations, partially harmonised taxation, wealth transfers between members, a common currency to a substantial part of it, etc. It is a lot more tightly integrated than some mere 28 member free trade area would be, although still not as tightly integrated as say the 50 states of the US are. (And the 50 US states all have distinct economies from each other, with sectors that are big in one state being small or even non-existent in another.)
And still the obvious fact remains: 1 country versus 28 separate countries.
The UK voted to break off. France came dangerously close to heading down that path with Le Pen. Greece's government might not want to, but the people would be on board for the same. Potentially Germany when they get tired of carrying the rest of the EU (especially after UK) on it's back can all leave whenever they want -- they just need to vote on it.
However, If California, for example, tries to succeed, it would be illegal.
America's states and the EU its countries are very comparable, speaking in terms of economic size. Why do Americans always feel so attacked and start to bring contorted justifications when they aren't #1 in something..?
While everything you said is true, I think the gap in homogeny of economies between the EU and the states of the US is much much larger than you make it sound.
States can't leave the USA countries can leave the EU, which is a massive difference. NAFTA and EU are not countries they are an agreement between countries.
States can leave the US with the consent of Congress. Congress has never given its consent, and it is hard to predict how it would behave if such a request was seriously made today. Congress did reject the demand of the Confederate states to secede, but there was a strong moral argument against allowing their secession–their primary reason for secession were to continue to evil practice of slavery. If a state wanted to secede today, I doubt there would be such a strong argument against allowing them to do so.
EU member states have only been able to unilaterally leave the EU since the Treaty of Lisbon came into force in December 2009. Prior to that, there was no legal provision for a member state to leave without a treaty amendment. So the situations between the EU and the US are not as dissimilar as you suggest.
Well, it is definitely possible by constitutional amendment, which normally means a two-thirds majority of Congress and 75% of the state legislatures. (Or the convention process...)
But, I don't think we can definitely say that a constitutional amendment is necessary. Suppose that a state requested to secede, and the request for secession was approved by both popular vote and by the state legislature; and that Congress then passed ordinary legislation approving the secession. Would the Supreme Court rule that legislation unconstitutional? I don't think anyone can really predict how the Supreme Court would act, but I don't think it is certain that they would rule it unconstitutional. But if it is possible that they might not rule it unconstitutional, it is possible that secession with Congressional consent is constitutional. Certainly it would be easy for the Supreme Court to distinguish this scenario from the Civil War scenario of attempted secession against the will of Congress, if a majority on the Supreme Court felt so inclined. If the majority of Congress, and the President, was in favour of permitting the attempt at secession, the Supreme Court might not be inclined to overrule them.
What counts is not what the document literally says, what counts is how it is interpreted in practice. And when dealing with hypotheticals, no one can really know how it will be interpreted in practice unless and until that hypothetical becomes an actuality.
> States can leave the US with the consent of Congress.
No, they can't. The Constitution only provides for rules on forming new states and forming states from parts of other states. There is no text on what happen should a state decide it wants to live. In the Civil War, some states argued that the Constitution was a voluntary compact of sovereign states, such that a state could unilaterally leave if it so desired (no need to get consent of Congress). SCOTUS later held that these declarations of secession never held validity.
Start paying for software then. (Not just directed towards you, but also towards anyone who has these thoughts. That's the only way we get off this model, by showing other models are profitable as well)
I found a lot of this advice, coincidentally, in the book "Respawn" over at game quitters (I had a horrible video game addiction that I decided I needed to break) -- that is the advice to apply the same psychological principles that get people hooked to video games to other things in life. This is the ultimate life hack for me and something I am still working on.
Could you say more about this? I was just talking with somebody about video game addictions, and I'd love to have more resources to offer people struggling with it.
Well depends on what angle I could talk all day -- it's cathartic!
In any case, video game addiction is real, it is an addiction, and it fits the bill just like any other type of addiction. Granted it is without the heavy consequences sometimes faced by substance addictions, but nonetheless, it can have real direct consequenses on your health.
To me the signs were clear:
1. At the point where the instant you get bored and have free time, you automatically think to play video games
2. Thinking about video games or wishing to play while doing other activities
3. Other important areas in life suffer as a result of your video game addiction, such as neglecting a spouse or significant other, or falling behind in work, or showing up to work late all the time because you stayed up all night playing video games. Starting to lie about your problem or how much you actually play ("oh I don't really play that much" when really you recorded 20k hours of Counterstrike or you have played 1,000+ games in S7 to try and hit Platinum for the first time in League of Legends), lieing to your friends and family about your free time and missing out on important events "oh I am busy, sorry I can't come" but then you just go play video games.
4. Physical symptoms -- sleep deprivation due to playing video games, getting out of shape from sitting in a computer chair hours on end, eating junk food and takeout because cooking takes too much time and it cuts into your game time, posture being affected, eye sight affected, constant headaches, wrist pain, etc.
5. The most important sign to me -- the feeling of regret that you aren't accomplishing the things you wish to accomplish. Video games give you that false sense of accomplishment, but deep down inside, you wish you could do that side project, you wish you could hang out more with friends, or even get out more to make friends, you wish you could go to the gym and eat healthier to be in shape, etc. But even if it's not in this list, the most important thing is you wish you weren't playing video games because you want to be doing other things, but it's just so enticing. That's why this article is good advice -- you have to take those same reasons it's addicting (provides the sense of accomplishment, it's social, it's fun) and apply it to other areas in life, almost like a replacement strategy.
a tl;dr is he outlines 4 major reasons people play games:
1. They are a temporary escape
2. They are social
3. They provide a challenge
4. They provide constant measurable growth
Understanding these help you overcome it.
Finally, the most difficult challenge I think in overcoming video game addiction is that no one takes video gaming addiction seriously, therefore it is hard to find support. It is a real addiction, and people are really struggling with it, it is really damaging lives.
P.S: If you read this post and are struggling with video game addiction, I would love to help and talk about it.
Personally, I avoid most video games because I recognize how addictive they are for me. But I definitely know people who struggle with this, and for them it's hard to even recognize that this could be a problem.
Yet GOT will last generations upon generations. There will be many reboots, rewrites, and scripts all based upon the work he has done long after he is gone. That is to say sometimes the best things in life take time. Most of our software projects won't make it past one year.
At the end of one of his books the author notes that the reader might be asking "Where is Tyrion?" The entire book had not contained my favorite character of the Game of Thrones series: Tyrion. The author continues, and I paraphrase "The story has a lot of plot lines and I decided to separate them into two books. No worries the next book will come out in a few months."
Those are the parts that roll up into this thing we call "music" but that is not what music is nor what it is about. Your air conditioner, for example, has a rhythm and a pitch to it's sound, but no one would ever call it music. Your cooking timer, another example. Jonathan Peters defines music as "the universal language of emotions communicated through intelligently ordered sounds consisting of rhythm and pitch" so to answer what music is about: It's about conveying emotion.
Wait,what? So who is Jonathan Peters (a dj, re-mixer, and producer) to tell us what music is? Excuse me, but I happen to think my air conditioner is making a kind of music. The dude works with Mac Quale (American Horror Story) , and Quale seems to think sounds and textures are music. Also- can we please move beyond this "universal language" thing? What is universal about sounds and contexts? For example, the 12 tone scale is western, while other cultures enjoy microtones but these sounds sound "out of tune" to the average westerner. Steve Reich thought the utterances of a victimof race riots was music as evidenced by his piece "Come Out". John Cage showed that chance ambient sound is music with the famous 4'33"... and well, there are hundres ofexamples. Why can't we reach for a more culturally and intellectually and conceptually expansive defenition of an artform here on Hacker News? What "emotion" was John Cage going for in his prepared piano pieces? What about Richard Serra, the sculptor? I read stuff like this time and again by truly intellectual people on HN and I am always surprised at how behind the developments in artistic thinking are here.And really, it is 2017-- how can anyone think "music" is a universal language. As a composer myself, this defenition of music shoves me into a time machine and thrusts me back to old Vienna where I'm having tea with Brahms and Clara Schuman! Please! I need my modern brain, modern concept of the history of music and art, and my ability to redefine the parameters of my artform! How would you like program in COBOL all day for the rest of your life, denying the existence of modern coding languages? By the way, do yourself a favor and listen to "come out"---- drop in at some middle or later point innthat composition or even anywhere in Reich's "clapping Music" and tell me what emotion one is meant to feel... get back to us on that please.
I'm just going to weigh in here and say ... your comment could be taken the wrong way.
I am a noise musician, among other things. It's an entire career. And whether music is about conveying emotion ... I don't know if that covers all the edge cases.
My favorite definition of music is "sound arranged over time."
However, I totally agree with what you are getting at. Learning music is really about learning conventions and common language, which allow you to communicate emotions and mental states, especially at the beginning.
And the way you convey emotion is to learn how to play music so you can use the features of music, rhythm, harmonies, melodies. Thats at least how I have been doing it the +30 years I have been playing, composing and performing.
> People pretending they are morally superior or lead better lives through ignorance never cease to amaze me.
First of all, we don't have a direct democracy. This concept that everyone has to be 100% engaged (or even 90, or 80, or whatever subjective figure in your head that qualifies good enough is, which is another issue, your concept of being engaged enough doesn't match another) need not apply. Just enough people have to be engaged, which historically speaking has happened.
Second of all, I don't think anyone is claiming a moral high ground here, and if they are you are correct to say shame on them.
Third of all, people who place the same onus of keeping up with whatever the hell is going on in the world as some moral duty never cease to amaze me because it is so easy to flip the script on you and say you don't know enough. There is an endless amount of information out there. "News" as a concept is not even a fraction as old as the concept of government and democracy. We face information overload. How can you blame people for just wanting to live their lives? What if I never signed up for this system? Most people care more about their issues locally (which is in line with human psychology, we weren't meant for these large social networks) but people who sit here and cast stones at people who aren't keeping up with what happens with the Mueller investigation, for example, (which something happens every 2.5 seconds) is what never ceases to amaze me.
This isn't an argument against being informed, it's a pointless debate over semantics. You and anyone reasonable understood what GP meant, they meant democracy as a "national built on foundations of democratic values, such as freedom of press, freedom of speech (to varying extents), right to assemble, etc" in contrast to "authoritarian regime where those values are not enshrined in the government legislature or cultural values".
> There is an endless amount of information out there. "News" as a concept is not even a fraction as old as the concept of government and democracy. We face information overload
The concept of modern news may not have been a invented at the same time, yet it remains a fundamental core part of many democratic-leaning nation's values.
> How can you blame people for just wanting to live their lives? What if I never signed up for this system?
You're probably free to move to an authoritarian regime if you cared to. No one chose to be born into a government system, but to claim no responsibility in a system that you've benefited from since you were born is passing the buck.
> You're probably free to move to an authoritarian regime if you cared to. No one chose to be born into a government system, but to claim no responsibility in a system that you've benefited from since you were born is passing the buck.
Ah yes, the "if you don't like it, you can go back to where you came from" argument, in different clothing of course. This is just never a good rhetorical device. What a person did or did not benefit for is up for debate -- even North Korea provides basics -- but that's not what is being argued here. If I was born into an environment I had no say in building, and I find it incompatible with my way of life (imagine being a white boy from the south on a plantation and against slavery, then shoved into the Civil war), I am, by definition now oppressed -- I am forced to be subservient to a system I had no say in building. I brought this up not to argue it but as a counter example to the person who just says "I am fine just living my life"
>Ah yes, the "if you don't like it, you can go back to where you came from" argument, in different clothing of course.
I really don't think that is a fair analogy to what he was saying. He's saying if you grow up in a particular system you can't just ride it out and claim willful ignorance.
Go back to where you came from is different, that would be saying you chose to come here and therefore why are you trying to change it.
I don't necessarily agree with either argument, but they are definitely significantly different ones.
> Most people care more about their issues locally (which is in line with human psychology, we weren't meant for these large social networks) but people who sit here and cast stones at people who aren't keeping up with what happens with the Mueller investigation, for example, (which something happens every 2.5 seconds)
The actual context here is someone talking about how they pay zero attention, while mocking people who talk about "the apocalypse" or anything, really. So clearly not people worrying about their local issues.
We live in a democracy is a completely and fully accurate statement. Being pedantic that it's not a direct democracy may be accurate but doesn't invalidate the statement. A representational democracy or a republic is a democracy.
Additionally, many states have several elements of direct democracy. For instance many states have direct referendums.
As to your second point, I will concede the first person did not claim to be morally superior, but they are included in the second category included in the sentence. The individual, like many others I've met, spoken with, and who broadcast their opinions loudly, claim to lead better lives by ignoring politics nearly completely.
Voting is a fundamental responsibility of living in a democracy. Like paying taxes, serving jury duty, etc. Yes, I consider it a moral imperative to fulfill your obligations as a citizen. And part of your obligations of voting should be for the voter to try to be informed on the matters they are voting on.
I don't need people to be policy wonks, but I do need people to know what the person they are voting for plans to do. Instead we have a situation where a sizable percentage of people are confused about whether Obamacare and the ACA are the same thing. (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/upshot/one-third-dont-kno...)
How can I blame people for just wanting to live their lives? Easy. When they either vote for something abhorrent without knowing or don't show up to vote against something abhorrent because they're just wanting to live their lives. Especially when either group then complains about the something abhorrent.
My problem isn't with people who are ignorant, it's with those who put a high value on ignorance. Yes, we have limited time. Yes, we have limited attention. But reading a few headlines and articles once a week isn't going break anyone. Oh, and if someone has new bit of information about something you don't know and wants to talk about, don't claim they should avoid reading news.
Since this is hackernews, I think we can move the discussion from politics to something like programming. I don't expect a programmer to know everything about all of the latest frameworks, but I do expect them to be familiar with current trends in programming and have spent at least a little time evaluating the impact of those trends and events to their work. Imagine hiring a full-stack developer who doesn't even know about React nor that it has some potentially troubling patent-litigation language in the license?
>But reading a few headlines and articles once a week isn't going break anyone.
Mightn't this be a worst of both worlds scenario? If you totally ignore politics and abstain then you have a neutral impact. If you only "read a few headlines" as you suggest, and base your actions off those then you're highly susceptible to fake news and easy manipulation (while having a false sense of satisfaction for "participating").
What follows is that, only those who steep themselves in the minutia of each issue should have strong opinions, which actually seems about right.
I'd argue that we're more an oligarchy than a democracy. Yea we technically allow for a democracy but the reality is that someone with good ideas and no money is going to lose vs someone with bad ideas but a lot of money.
Especially with our first past the post voting system and the two parties ignoring the plebs whenever they decide on a candidate, ala the DNC pushing Hilary over Bernie. Trump getting picked when the Republican establishment didny want was probably the most democratic part of the previous election, but it wouldn't have happened if he was not independently wealthy
Is reddit even in the black yet? At the end of it the day, we have to make money for our software. All of that infrastructure and developers aren't free or cheap. Let's be honest with ourselves, people are never going to pay for software again like they used to in the 90s and 00s. Kind of in a way, I miss that. I wish you could pop in a CD of "reddit" with your subscription and that would be it.
> the government is subsidizing commuters to drive themselves to work instead of carpooling or taking mass transit or walking or biking or working from home.
I would imagine in the majority of scenarios this is a false choice. There simply is no reasonable alternative. Our city planning was piss poor and thought it was a good idea to emulate Atlanta when it comes to road building (i.e. build them wherever the hell, with no rhyme or reason). Biking: not an option. Working from home? If I were to be so lucky.
Second, not much thought was given to the economic impact of those commuters.
I recently decided to stop giving them blood, however, because I was actually reading the fine print for once, and apparently they send your blood off for use in research at universities and you cannot opt out.