mikeash

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241.
by mikeash 7y ago
I like getting interest on my savings as much as anyone, but it is kind of weird how we just expect the price of storing money to be negative. No other storage service works this way. I can’t put a bunch of furniture in a warehouse and not
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by mikeash 7y ago
“...a 160-foot surveillance tower capable of continuously monitoring every person and vehicle within a radius of up to 7.5 miles.” Sounds like it’s surveilling the reservation to me. The stated purpose is to monitor border crossings, but th
243.
by mikeash 7y ago
None of this was necessary, but it’s all perfectly reasonable.
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by mikeash 7y ago
That’s a specific way of asking, “why bring the employer into it?” And the answer is, because their resources were used to commit the alleged crime.
245.
by mikeash 7y ago
Aside from Trump’s continuing insanity, it’s a pretty slow news day, and obviously they can’t lead with that.
246.
by mikeash 7y ago
She was using government property at her workplace to do these things. If I was using my work computer and network to do improper things online, I’d expect my employer to be contacted about it. The difference here is that she was basically
247.
by mikeash 7y ago
If Comcast can tell you which customer had a given IP address at a given time, I’m sure NASA can figure out that a given IP address was the one used for ISS traffic.
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by mikeash 7y ago
I stayed up, well, all night watching it with my father. Amazing experience. Sometime around then, we also got a computer modem, and one of the first things we did with it was find some NASA BBS where you could download images from Voyager
249.
by mikeash 7y ago
If (and it’s still a substantial “if”) SpaceX’s BFR flies and comes close to living up to its promises, I’m hoping we’ll see a renaissance in space probes. With this combination of heavy lift and low cost, probes could be built much larger
250.
by mikeash 7y ago
When an omniscient and omnipotent entity is on your side, yes.
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by mikeash 7y ago
Source is available here: http://p99.gforge.inria.fr/
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by mikeash 7y ago
I can never understand why religious people can be so insecure about their religion. If you believe that the all-powerful creator of the universe is on your side, why would you care in the slightest about some movie?
253.
by mikeash 7y ago
What does “denial” have to do with anything? My complaint is about undermining the peaceful transition of power that is fundamental to the idea of democracy.
254.
by mikeash 7y ago
Why derail the conversation and start talking about Hillary Clinton’s relationship with some professor when the original topic was Donald Trump and his attacks on the legitimacy of the 2016 election? You’re right, they’re not even in this c
255.
by mikeash 7y ago
“It’s bad to question the legitimacy when you win” was meant to implicitly have the same “without evidence” qualifier as the previous statement. I must disagree with your last paragraph in the most strenuous possible way. The peaceful and o
256.
by mikeash 7y ago
So what? It’s not like the only two possibilities were “delegitimize the election he won after saying he would accept the results” or “accept the results of the election he won after saying he wouldn’t accept the results if he lost.” He cou
257.
by mikeash 7y ago
Where am I saying it’s worse? He did a bunch of bad stuff related to questioning the legitimacy of the 2016 election and I’m not attempting to rank them.
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by mikeash 7y ago
That quote is directly connected to the bit you’re responding to. He said he’d accept the election if he won. He ended up repeatedly questioning its legitimacy despite winning. It’s bad to question (without evidence) the legitimacy of an el
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by mikeash 7y ago
“I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election — if I win.” Consistency is not one of Trump’s strong points.
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by mikeash 7y ago
“I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election — if I win.” Doesn’t take more than one small layer of perfectly reasonable interpretation.
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by mikeash 7y ago
He outright said he wouldn’t accept the outcome if he lost. It’s not like this was some imagined scenario. He barely accepted the actual outcome! Despite winning, he couldn’t resist calling it rigged and saying millions of illegal votes wer
262.
by mikeash 7y ago
No more than the local grocery store running out of watermelon after advertising them in their weekly flyer.
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by mikeash 7y ago
Their single-minded pursuit of self-reliance has led to enormous suffering and, ironically, a strong dependence on a few other countries to keep them afloat. The extreme economic hardships mean they have a tough time deterring aggression (a
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by mikeash 7y ago
They have crazy priorities, which they pursue in a calculated and intelligent fashion.
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by mikeash 7y ago
Right now, no. Next time the Democrats have control of both chambers, though, it seems possible. In any case, my point is just that a constitutional amendment isn’t required and this is totally above-board. The odds of an amendment being ra
266.
by mikeash 7y ago
What makes it a hack, but amending the Constitution isn’t? I agree it feels like one, but it is entirely above board. I’m sure the authors of the Constitution didn’t anticipate states choosing to allocate their votes this way, but they didn
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by mikeash 7y ago
Oh, I thought you were saying this was the mechanism for deciding how to change the rules. At any rate, people may well feel bypassed and marginalized, but hopefully the ones outside of swing states will come around once they realize that t
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by mikeash 7y ago
It turns out that there’s another mechanism to accomplish this: a collection of states adding up to a majority of electoral votes can agree to cast all of their votes to the winner of the national popular vote. Hence the subject of the arti
269.
by mikeash 7y ago
The EC never fulfilled that function. Faithless electors have never changed the outcome of an election. The notion that the EC exists to ensure that popular sentiment doesn’t elect someone deeply unfit for the office was definitely disprove
270.
by mikeash 7y ago
We currently have minority rule at the federal level. Is that better?

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