You still have spending wars. Politicians are bought and sold every day, and any large company probably donates to politicians of multiple parties.

I don’t see the problem originating from Congress necessarily being polarized. I think the problem is that corporate and big money interests are too strong, and they fund politicians that will try to divide the people on social issues so that they can distract the people from badness happening on the economic front. In other words, I think we’re seeing a problem with corruption that’s expressing itself as polarization.

Even the term “polarization” can also be used as a trap, because it tends to be used in a way that frames politics as a linear spectrum, and your views are somewhere between these two end points. In reality everything is far more complicated. People have highly nuanced views on many different subjects with good reason, and there’s no way you can easily capture it on one single sliding scale.

Nothing. Discovered mine long before.

I know. And many of the comments are coming from the US, so I’m trying to help American readers see what US law would dictate in a similar situation, because they might have instincts that are inconsistent with US law.

In the US, the 4th Amendment says that’s unconstitutional. Fortunately. Too many dirty pigs out there.

In the US, the cops need RAS to handcuff you. The standard was never and is not “until they know what’s going on”. And RAS depends on the current cop knowledge. Even if they had legal grounds to break into your place, what they see in the next ten seconds is still relevant. For example, if someone said you attacked them with a knife, when the cops see no victim, knife, or blood, their legal authority ceases.

Of course it’s all highly dependent on specific details.

(On traffic stops, often they already have RAS. That’s why they pulled you over. So don’t be fooled by other comments about that topic.)

In the US, property records are public records. Easy to find someone’s address online if you know their full name and the county they own property in.

Go try it!

The legal standard in the U.S. is if there’s exigent circumstances. Detailed 911 calls are typically sufficient to meet that standard. Not always.

Right now, we cannot tell if the officers did anything unlawful. Need the call recording or call logs, plus the body cameras.

(I think the exigent circumstances standard is BS, easily abused, but that is the current law of the land.)

My company will let me purchase software, but it won’t let me donate to FOSS. Budgeting says it’s “unnecessary”. So screwed up. (A tiny amount money on my end, but still, it would be nice to help out a little.)

It’s not “all of a sudden”. And it’s not “the world”. And it’s not even “America”. Rather, you’re now consuming media that’s exposing you to thoughts that have always been around, often on the fringes.

Remember, bigots have always existed, and polite bigots toe the line as much as they’re forced to. They aren’t going to disappear, ever. (That being said, we can make them less relevant and powerful.)

If you really are so hopeless with computers that you can’t figure out a modern popular Linux distribution, then you should not build your own computer, because that’s much more complicated.

Who is “we”, my friend? This all depends on your research and expectations. IMO Linux works great, but you should consider it before you buy a machine. Make sure your graphics card and other hardware is going to work. When in doubt, buy from a reliable shop that preinstalls Linux for you.

I find that the default settings and programs of Debian (or whatever major distro) do 95% of what I expect and want, and maybe 5% involve some customization. In other words, it’s much simpler than getting Windows or Apple and then purchasing or downloading all the extra programs. But this depends on what you wanna do.

I think that’s what they were asking for.

The article itself proves you wrong on this one, my friend. The situation is less simple and more subtle than you’re claiming.

Of course ego is a factor. That’s true for every organization in the world. But there are many other highly relevant factors in play here.

What kind of jobs are you talking about? People speculating in real estate are doing so for passive income, not for employment. I just don’t see this job loss concern being legitimate.

Maybe some property management folk would have to change to slightly different aspects of the service industry, that could happen, but it’s just not large scale. In comparison, we hear stories everyday of people who can’t pay their mortgage or can’t pay rent, then they become homeless, and then they lose their job as a result.

Which is to say, I don’t think politicians believe for a second that high housing prices are keeping unemployment low. Also, you mentioned economic statistics, but for some reason you feel that homelessness isn’t included in them. That’s a peculiar choice.

Your question is wrong. Few if any people need constant validation. The question is what frequency people desire it, and how, and that varies greatly by person.

Your final claim is the one that’s in question. You think it’s true, but maybe it’s totally false. For example, I think Al Gore and Hillary Clinton got the results they got because of their spinelessness, in part.

To some degree, the principle that I’m talking about is quite clear. In a situation where a large percent of the population doesn’t vote at all, it’s the candidates job to get people excited enough to cast their vote. One way of doing that is to have a firm position, to show that you have integrity, to show that your values mean something. Of course when people get elected then they might have to cut deals in order to pass legislation, and we all understand that, but if you throw your values out the window before the election even happens, I’m not going to vote for you.

There are reasons to be strategically quiet, but it’s plainly incorrect to say that being quiet during a campaign makes little difference, because a lot of things are happening in the world before the election. People’s lives are changing in many ways now, next week, next month, and not only because of what happens in November.

Even if it is a deadend job, usually a year doesn’t hurt. Unless the work or pay suck, but that’s true everywhere.

I’m subscribed to over 50 RSS feeds and never once have I wanted to subscribe to a site and they didn’t have a feed.