treehau5

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.

I noticed this as well.

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.

Yes, secede, thank you, funny typo though. You are right about that.

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.

> the EU is the biggest economy in the world

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.

So much free software does as well: see facebook.

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.

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.

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.

> 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"

> You live in a democracy

> 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.

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.