Yep.

It's not just blue vs green bubbles, it's green bubbles that don't adhere to Apple's own accessibility color-contrast guidelines so it's deliberately harder to read.

That someone severely injured has to consider the potentially life-changing implications of accepting emergency conveyance to the hospital is yet another damning indictment of the American "health care" system...

This is just a proposed bill.

California is the only state that has real network neutrality and extremely strong online privacy laws.

You cite a very recent (march 2019) "study" from Trump's USDA which (surprise surprise) claims to REVERSE well-established data connecting global warming with climate change! What a shocker!

But wait. The Union of Concerned Scientists believe that Trump's USDA is run by a bunch of agribusiness hacks and note that

in its first year, the Trump administration's USDA has sidelined science, undermined key public health and safety protections, and prioritized the interests of large agribusiness companies over the public interest. In doing so, the administration has betrayed farmers, consumers, and rural communities.

Kailee Tkacz, a former lobbyist for the Corn Refiners Association and Snack Food Association, was appointed to advise the USDA on federal dietary guidelinesâ"a job for which she needed (and got) a White House waiver to sidestep ethics rules. Tkacz has no training in science, public health, or nutrition.

[Trump's Secretary of Agriculture] Perdue has also supported the appointment of people clearly unqualified for the jobâ"like Sam Clovis, a talk radio host and Trump campaign national co-chair who was nominated for the USDA's undersecretary for research, education, and economics, despite having none of the scientific training or experience that the law requires for this position.

Meanwhile, from this week's non-Guardian headlines:

New York Times:

The worldâ(TM)s food system is responsible for about one-quarter of the planet-warming greenhouse gases that humans generate each year.

Meat and dairy, particularly from cows, have an outsize impact, with livestock accounting for around 14.5 percent of the worldâ(TM)s greenhouse gases each year. Thatâ(TM)s roughly the same amount as the emissions from all the cars, trucks, airplanes and ships combined in the world today.

The article includes data from the United Nations, Science magazine and more.

But go on believing agribusiness executives and ignore scientists. I mean, global warming is a hoax anyway, right?

Not too many.

From Time Magazine

Livestock production may have a bigger impact on the planet than anything else. A new study shows how the effects vary from country to country -- and points the way toward a more sustainable future

From The Guardian:

Avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet, according to the scientists behind the most comprehensive analysis to date of the damage farming does to the planet.

"A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use," said Joseph Poore, at the University of Oxford, UK, who led the research. "It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car," he said, as these only cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Imagine for a second that a second, smaller town is built parallel to, but separate from, the regular cities in America. Lets call this the SafeTown. The SafeTown, which does not allow anonymous citizens, is not intended for general purpose life like watching movies, playing football, or socializing with friends. Rather, it is a safer, more policed community that you access through a front registration gate when wanting to use money or visit a doctor or calling friends or when you don't trust a regular town.

For example, if you're buying a home outside SafeTown for your family, you'd drive to SafeTown and fill out a form or two-- not from your current home, but from SafeTown. SafeTown requires every citizen to have a government Photo-ID-- you can't visit SafeTown without it.

The SafeTown authorities know who you are, where you are, and you can't wear disguises or pretend to be anyone but yourself. SafeTown also has a police force that can be alerted if you are robbed, tricked or scammed in any way. Would an alternative city -- a smaller, separate parallel community -- like this reduce crime? Again, you wouldn't visit SafeTown for everyday crap like ordering pizza, buying movie tickets, or arguing over something at a bar. SafeTown would be used in situations where you are concerned that criminals or other malevolent agents could get hold of your personal data, steal money from you, impersonate you, or snoop into your confidential communications. Other reasons to visit would include letting minors communicate with each other in a controlled fashion without exposing them to the big bad world itself. Basically, in many situations where you deem performing a task in the "regular world" as risky or dangerous, you could perform that task in SafeTown instead. Shouldn't an "alternative community" like this exist in some form by now?

Exactly. Most countries you just send in a postcard or file taxes online with the tax agency. Only in America do we have lobbyists of unnecessary expensive software to give you "choice" to pay through the nose to support their obsolete industry. Years ago there was an attempt to provide a free service for low-income households, the threshhold was raised in the GWB years. Now Intuit is going for the kill.

We need a free IRS "public option" at the very least, which of course everyone would use, but this law would undo it.

What the hell is Lewis thinking sponsoring this BS?

Doing your taxes doesn't have to be a pain. In many countries around the world, filing taxes is so easy and painless, "tax day" isn't even a thing.

Back in 2005, a little group of California tax experts were talking shop and they figured, we could do that here in the U.S. A lot of people in California get all of their income from their paychecks, and taxes are already withheld from those paychecks. In those cases, California could just fill out the W-2 for the taxpayers, who could check for errors and just send them back in. Easy as 1-2-3. (That was the slogan the state came up with). They named it: ReadyReturn.

--- Here's the podcast episode. Hit play and enjoy. (I say "enjoy" as in get boiling mad.)

there is no network access, no hardware expansion port, and the 30 games cannot be changed.

If you can find one in stock, the ESP32 costs about $9, is the size of a quarter, and also runs a NES emulator and has wifi and bluetooth and a lot more.

I'm (sorta) joking, especially as you'll need more hardware like a screen, controllers, etc. but the video is still pretty cool.

Tor Browser is a good start.

So is Tails.

Finally, try to keep your facebooking to under 15 minutes.

Ted Cruz is wrong about how free speech is censored on the Internet

--some non-American who wouldn't know what he was talking about.

NPR's Planet Money economics podcast did an episode on this very issue.

I can't find the original full podcast episode, but here's the shorter All Tech Considered version.

W

Hah! Look at us losers! We BARELY missed four digits! ;)

If only I hadn't spent those first few months lurking without an account...