Lurker > charmander6000

Outside of shelving Obamacare with the rhetoric of "we need the right people in power to get this done" I don't see how McConnell will come out of this.
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No one will die? That's blatantly false

I mean, if it was true then why would anyone have insurance?
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LordoftheMorons posted...

charmander6000 posted...

Here are the NAFTA Objectives the US will argue for

https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/files/Press/Releases/NAFTAObjectives.pdf

Can't get the site to load on my phone; is there a tl;dr?

http://www.macleans.ca/politics/u-s-releases-nafta-objectives/

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has released its goals for a new North American Free Trade Agreement: it’s a list of broad themes, with some hints of irritants ahead.

The U.S. says it wants better access for its exports of agriculture — including dairy products, wine and grain. It also wants freer trade in telecommunications, and online purchases; new rules on currency manipulation; and an overhaul of the dispute-settlement system.

“President Trump continues to fulfill his promise to renegotiate NAFTA to get a much better deal for all Americans,” U.S. trade czar Robert Lighthizer said in a statement.

“Too many Americans have been hurt by closed factories, exported jobs, and broken political promises. Under President Trump’s leadership, (our office) will negotiate a fair deal… President Trump is reclaiming American prosperity and making our country great again.”

The demand on online purchases could pit Canadian consumers versus bricks-and-mortar retailers: the U.S. wants to increase, by 40 times, the amount Canadians can shop online without paying an import tax.

Canada has one of the least permissive duty systems in the world and will be urged to increase its duty-free limit to $800 from the current $20, according to the document released Monday by the U.S. trade czar.

The 16-page list contains some elements that might appear contradictory or confusing.

It says the U.S. will demand more opportunities for American suppliers for government procurement abroad, but at the same time insist on preserving Buy American rules that limit opportunities to foreigners.

It also calls for the elimination of the dispute-settlement system that has ruled in favour of Canada on softwood lumber. But it’s unclear how it would want to replace Chapter 19 — which was a make-or-break issue for Canada in original trade talks.

Canadian negotiators walked away from the table over that dispute-settlement issue, and later, on the final evening of the negotiations, then-prime minister Brian Mulroney informed the U.S. there would be no deal unless it agreed to an international arbitration system.

Monday’s release came as no surprise to the Canadian government.

The Prime Minister’s Office was in touch with the White House — sources say it was given a heads-up in advance of the release. Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said she was prepared to start negotiating.

“We welcome the opportunity to modernize NAFTA to reflect new realities — and to integrate progressive, free, and fair approaches to trade and investment,” she said in a statement.

“When negotiations begin, we will be ready to work with our partners to modernize NAFTA, while defending Canada’s national interest and standing up for our values. Canada is the top customer of the United States. Canada buys more goods from the U.S. than China, Japan, and the United Kingdom combined.”

NAFTA talks are expected to begin on or around Aug. 16.

The Canadian government will not produce a similar public list. It’s not a requirement under Canadian law, as it is in the U.S.

Now U.S. lawmakers will have a say. They must be consulted throughout the negotiating process, and will ultimately have to vote on any deal.

Tuesday could provide an early test of the mood on Capitol Hill, when the House of Representatives holds a hearing on NAFTA.
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Hey, I took Robotnik out of that four-pack when most people went with Kuja.
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News sites haven't reported much outside of "it was just released"

After a quick skim through it is mostly filled with vague statements. They also want to bring labor and the environment into the main part of the agreement and they want NAFTA to actually enforce its laws.
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Here are the NAFTA Objectives the US will argue for

https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/files/Press/Releases/NAFTAObjectives.pdf
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The villains also had the Ruin division (Diablo/Ridley was extensively debated) and Robotnik/Sin
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Does Federer have what it takes to retake number 1 in the world?

He will move up to third place in the rankings and between now and the end of the season he has no points to defend due to his injury last season so unless someone wins the US Open and a bunch of Masters it's doable IMO.
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red sox 777 posted...

I will say, gerrymandering is a little dangerous. Right now, it's set up so that the GOP can lose the national popular vote for Congress by a little with little effect to their house seats (by creating a lot of districts that lean Republican fairly safely but not by huge margins and packing Dems into deep deep blue districts). But if the tide is majorly in favor of Democrats, the gerrymandering can backfire as there are fewer super safe deep red districts.

I think the Senate ought to be naturally in the GOP's favor in the long term as the trend is for small states to get redder and big states to get bluer.

Pretty much, a supermajority would in theory be easier for the Democrats
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RIP Mario
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One more for Federer!
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Wikipedia would make less money by running ads because everyone has ad blocker.
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It was the Ghostbusters of the 90s

>_>

<_<
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2002, but I didn't become a full time member until 2003
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SmartMuffin posted...

Peace___Frog posted...

LordoftheMorons posted...

I'm sure those people would love the alternate reality without an adequate supply of scientists, engineers, and doctors

... do you not realize that the USA is already severely understaffed when it comes to doctors

Another thing that would be impossible if a free market were in place.

Are you suggesting that the government is holding back people from becoming doctors or that in a free market someone can just open a clinic and call themselves a doctor?
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That sounds like poor planning. I know RNG manipulation is quite difficult (even the best can get it wrong a few times in a row) among the DS Pokemon games, but that’s something that should have been prepared.
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Raonic in the quarterfinals
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Yeah, I’m not surprised that popular games do well in this type of voting system.

I watched the last hour of Final Fantasy VII and I thought the commentary was pretty good, though I’d imagine very few people actually watched the entire thing live.

I didn’t watch Pokemon, but for those that did, if you ignored the RNG manipulation screw-up was the run at least enjoyable?
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On the speedrun reddit they have asked people to vote for their favourite speedrun, here's the top 20.

1. LoZ: Link to the Past (All Dungeons, Swordless)
2. Super Panga World
3. Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
4. Super Mario 64 (120 Star)
5. Super Mario Series Warpless Relay Race
6. Final Fantasy VII (Any%, No Slots)
7. LoZ: Majora’s Mask (All Masks)
8. Portal 2 (Solo Coop)
9. Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix (Any%, Critical Mode)
10. I Am Bread
11. NieR: Automata (Ending A Normal, 1-handed)
12. Dark Souls III (All Bosses w/ DLC1)
13. Dark Souls (Any%, Kiln Skip)
14. Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix (LV1 Data Org RTA)
15. Ratchet & Clank (All Gold Bolts)
16. Half-Life
17: Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction (Any%, Normal Assassin)
18. Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver
19. Halo: Combat Evolved (Legendary)
20. Banjo-Kazooie (100%)
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Honestly until people (outside of blue states) vote against Trump then this is nothing, but hot air.
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I'd hope a Switch game would look better than a WiiU game.
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Since I missed most of the games what are the must watch games?
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Very nice SM64, just over 2 minutes behind WR and would have placed 6th overall on the leaderboard.
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I like long speedruns, but I understand why they are rarely included at AGDQ/SGDQ. You only have so many hours in your event. This is why we rarely see games that take longer than 2 hours to run and the ones that do are very popular. Assuming no game goes over its time limit 9 games will have taken over 2 hours to complete and outside of Earthbound Final Fantasy VII took at least twice as much time to complete than all of the other games.

Personally I would love if they did a second stream for long games (it doesn't have to be continuously playing), but I doubt it will ever happen.
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Each game has its own community which through mods regulate submissions. Most places don’t have time standards (Super Mario 64 120 Stars has someone with a time of over 16 hours, the WR is under 1:40) though some places do have arbitrary rules like all new submissions must only be behind by 20% of the world record’s time.

Personally I would accept any run as long as the person is actively trying to complete the objective. If it’s clear they are screwing around (like in SM64 they collect stars they already have) or they leave for a long period of time without justification and leave the clock running then I won’t accept them.
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Lopen posted...

Basically the gist of the reptile argument to me, without a ton of research into the topic, seems to boil down to a long time ago some old scientists called alligators, crocodiles, and dinosaurs reptiles due to observed similarities with stuff like lizards, snakes, etc such as scales and being cold blooded.

Then eventually it was found that birds share a lot of traits with alligators, crocodiles, and dinosaurs, and are actually closer to them than lizards/snakes are. So rather than say "we were wrong to say alligators and dinosaurs were reptiles" and reclassifying those as something different, they instead broaden the definition of reptile to one that happens to catch birds as collateral damage, despite birds not really appearing very reptile like to what people on casual observation would call a reptile, and having a decent amount of traits that most 'other' reptiles don't.

So to me it looks like it's all about being stubborn and which hill is chosen to die on.

Pretty much. I have no issue of calling Crocodiles et al. something else, but if people are stubborn enough to still call them reptiles then you'd have to call birds reptiles too.

The same can be said of calling sharks fish. If they're fish, we are too.
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I’m not sure how basic income would be paid for if a large portion of the workforce stopped working, either through not wanting to work or being replaced through automation.
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foolm0r0n posted...

Why not just keep calling reptiles "everything under reptilia except birds" which is very simple and uncontroversial?

Because excluding birds is arbitrary. Anyone who has studied crocodiles knows they have more in common with birds than lizards
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Anyway going with the topic on hand there are only a couple of scenarios where birds would not be classified as reptiles.

The first would be the argument that some classifications don’t need to be monophyletic. The downside is of course that it’s arbitrary to say things like feathers=not reptiles.

The other would be to reclassify what we would consider to be reptiles. Basically everything we now call reptiles except Crocodiles/Alligators (and maybe Turtles, depending who you ask) would now be a reptile.


On the same vein fish is also something that needs to be reclassified because using the same argument about birds being reptiles we would also be fish. Teleost fish will likely be the new fish while things like Sharks, lampreys, lungfish etc would be called something else.
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If the point is to find the smallest groups, then why does "reptiles" start ABOVE archosaurs/lepidosaurs? Why can't "reptiles" be lepidosaurs and archosaurs be something else? And how can birds be = reptiles, but crocodiles can't be = birds if they're both under "reptiles?"

Because archosaurs can be split into smaller groups where one are crocodiles and the other are birds. It would be like saying why aren’t oranges considered to be apples when they are all fruit.
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They may use cloth napkins and reuse them (maybe after washing)
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MariaTaylor posted...

StealThisSheen posted...

I really don't think that's the main or only distinguishing characteristic between birds and other reptiles.

it's not. classes are huge. think of the difference between a human and a horse. those are both in class mammalia. you could reasonably expect them to be very different.

that being said birds = reptiles is not a decided fact anyway

it is a relatively new (20ish year) debate that still has no clear consensus in the scientific community

To be fair that's because we've only been doing substantial genetic testing for that long. The evidence is quite strong that birds are closer related to crocodiles than crocodiles are to other reptiles.

The only issue I've heard is if whether or not it is okay to have classifications for non-monophyletic groups.
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The biggest difference is that CNN isn't a person and wasn't "killed" in that gif.

There are different degrees of violence and it isn't hard to understand that Kathy "crossed the line" for more people than Donald.
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EndOfDiscOne posted...

Why is sex non-binary?

Incorrect meiosis, defective genes, etc...
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By that logic, why not list the day's weather and what color shoes the doctor was wearing?

Well the birth certificate (at least in BC) use to also list our religion

The government probably uses sex for some sort of demographic data analysis. I couldn't say what its used for or if it's necessary, tho

That's what the census does. The birth certificate is just a piece of ID.
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The father's occupation was once added to a child's birth certificate. Does it really matter if sex is listed?

From a medical point of view doctors aren't looking at a patients birth certificate anyway.

I would have an issue if parents attempted to classify a biologically male child a female.
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XIII_rocks posted...

Oxbridge posted...

lol wawrinka

he was never comparable to the top 4, but now even those who only follow the grand slams have caught on to it;.

It's pretty crazy that he's won as many slams as Murray though.

Also it looked to me like he was kind of injured

To be fair is Murray really on the same level as the Big 3?
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ImTheMacheteGuy posted...

Personally, I'd like to read for myself exactly what he said to determine whether or not it is common sense, but I have no access to the quote, as nothing has been provided except a Twitter link, and I do not click on twitter links, especially on my phone.

North Korea has just launched another missile. Does this guy have anything better to do with his life? Hard to believe that South Korea.....
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I suspect Nintendo fans would rather play Metroid so there might be some SFF. It also doesn't help that Ubisoft is the one making the game.
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Is Adele, Taylor Swift/Justin Bieber big?

I know she's popular, but I thought she was a step below them like Katy Perry or Selena Gomez
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BowserCuffs posted...

Kenri posted...

BowserCuffs posted...

*exceptions including teenagers who, in many places, aren't required to be paid minimum wage anyways

I didn't know this, that's hella gross.

Agreed

When I was in high school my province had that policy. Basically a student with less than 500 hours of work experience could be paid $6/hr. After that they had to be paid at least the minimum wage ($8/hr).

Sadly what a lot of businesses would do was hire a person and then fire them when they were approaching the 500 hour mark.
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To be fair on a per capita basis we have the same rate of family reunification as the US.

It's just that our excess immigrants (per capita, relative to the US) must fulfill the requirements. It would be like if the US decided to increase immigration by 2 million people per year, but only "brought in the best."
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Canada’s Ruthlessly Smart Immigration Policy

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/28/opinion/canada-immigration-policy-trump.html

Given the xenophobia now sweeping the rest of the West, Canadians’ openness might seem bizarrely magnanimous. In fact, it’s a reasonable attitude rooted in national interest. Canada’s foreign-born population is more educated than that of any other country on earth. Immigrants to Canada work harder, create more businesses and typically use fewer welfare dollars than do their native-born compatriots.

But Canada’s hospitable attitude is not innate; it is, rather, the product of very hardheaded government policies. Ever since the mid-1960s, the majority of immigrants to the country (about 65 percent in 2015) have been admitted on purely economic grounds, having been evaluated under a nine-point rubric that ignores their race, religion and ethnicity and instead looks at their age, education, job skills, language ability and other attributes that define their potential contribution to the national work force.

No wonder this approach appeals to President Trump. He’s right to complain that America’s system makes no sense. The majority (about two-thirds in 2015) of immigrants to the United States are admitted under a program known as family reunification — in other words, their fate depends on whether they already have relatives in the country. Family reunification sounds nice on an emotional level (who doesn’t want to unite families?). But it’s a lousy basis for government policy, since it lets dumb luck — that is, whether some relative of yours had the good fortune to get here before you — shape the immigrant population.

For example, about half of all Canadian immigrants arrive with a college degree, while the figure in the United States is just 27 percent. Immigrant children in Canadian schools read at the same level as the native born, while the gap is huge in the United States. Canadian immigrants are almost 20 percent more likely to own their own homes and 7 percent less likely to live in poverty than their American equivalents.
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Is there a rule banning you from running again if you've been impeached?
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Didn't Trump threaten to go get Democrat support should the Republicans fail to agree on fixing the ACA?
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The issue is that a lot of people liked ACA, while many hated Obamacare meaning a full repeal will likely give them as much backlash among their constituents that voted for them as not touching it. Basically they've placed themselves into a corner and must decide which group to piss off.

It's much easier to be the opposition than it is to govern.
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What does it mean? I always took it as something negative
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Okay maybe Yoshi's Island isn't a must have, but I'd expect it to be part of the collection in a 15-20 game set.
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Anagram posted...

N64 classics:
Paper Mario
SM64
OoT
MM
Pokémon Snap
SSB
SF64
DK64
BK
Goldeneye
Any other must plays?

Mario Kart 64, Pokemon Stadium (probably wouldn't work in this scenario), Diddy Kong Racing, Wave Race 64, Yoshi's Story, Mario Party 2/3, Perfect Dark, Mario Tennis, Kirby 64, F-Zero X
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