In my experience, only the minority of professors reply to such emails. Perhaps you’ve had better luck than I.

The shape of my body.

My friend, Elon is not fighting for free speech. It’s not just him, but because he owns that company, it looks extra bad when he shows his own hypocrisy. Many Washington Democrats and Republicans wish they could censor anyone they disagree with. They only pretend to support the First Amendment when it’s something that backs their agenda.

Also, for someone like him, being hypocritical is a virtue. He’s signaling to potential allies that he’s willing to ignore the rules if they would inconvenience him and his friends.

Is it any less reliable than other state-affiliated news agency? Maybe. Depends on your perspective.

If that was is trying to minimize deaths, we’re totally incompetent. But I don’t think we’re that incompetent…

Many of us realized that the simplistic labels don’t apply. We have views on issues, some of those views are quite clear and others less so, but you can’t capture our positions in a few words.

Honestly, you just become more protective of your stuff and things you consider yours as you get older.

Isn’t that plainly false? When I was in college, and just after that, I had almost no money, so I was incredibly protective of my stuff and things I considered mine. Later my income went up, so I didn’t need to worry about it as much. Surely many other people have had similar experiences.

You’re bringing up a good point. People who say we’ll become more “conservative” are usually equivocating on the meaning of the word. It’s not like we’re going to wake up tomorrow and decide that global warming is a hoax, or that we should stop eating cats and dogs. Of course we’ll keep doing those things.

That means you’re not down with OOP.

I think his ego is at least as much of a factor. Even before he bought Twitter, it was well known that he was probably going to lose money, because the value was inflated. But his ego made him go through with it, and of course he’s lost a lot of money there.

Similarly, when users are moving to other social media, I don’t think he’s looking at the associated price tag. After all, he knows how to increase advertising revenue on Twitter. All he needs to do is get rid of the neo-nazis and the racists, and some of his former large advertisers might come back. But he won’t do it because he doesn’t want to be pushed around, and he also probably likes the neo-nazis and the racists.

There are many quiet ultra rich people who are mostly aiming at getting a lot of money and keeping it, and then there are vocal for rich people who want to show off their power along with their money. Our boy here is in the latter category.

For the most part? That’s an empirical claim. Any evidence? My gut disagrees with you, but my gut also has no evidence.

I might help people because it makes me feel good, sure. But I might also do it because those are my values, long since established, and I try to live by said values. So it’s about what following a self-imposed expectation, not about getting something. For some people, some of the time.

Similarly, the argument that “being selfless is selfish” is not useful and provably false. Just go ask people, and they’ll tell you why they did things and how they felt. Then you have to argue that many of them are either lying or mistaken, which doesn’t seem like a winnable argument.

I’m not a professional code monkey although I’ve done a fair amount of coding, and every time I tried to do parsing myself, I later regretted it.

But telling people that they’re doing it wrong is rarely met with positivity. :-)

I think there’s an element of responsibility that some people feel when they respond. If you’re asking for a very niche solution that is likely to create other problems in the future, should anyone else look at your code or refactor it or rely on it, or should you forget how it works, perhaps people are going to be less inclined in helping you craft it.

If you still want to craft it, that’s okay, but you have to expect that some real percent of the answers are going to be those folk who know what the tried and true solution is, often because they’ve lived through the reality that you’re attempting to create and they’ve dealt with the aftermath of doing it special and different.

I feel like you’re ignoring a lot of background, but let’s run with your argument. Let’s assume that we have to have some elected politicians and some appointed or elected bureaucrats, and either we should try to have a capitalist system or a communist system of some kind.

Let’s try to keep things as equal as possible, knowing that we really can’t, but just for the sake of argument. Which system is more likely to be corrupted? Remember, the express goal of capitalism is to throw wealth at the capitalists. If the regular person gets screwed, that’s not corruption, that’s a feature of the system… Oh, wait a second, I guess we already have an answer to our hypothetical, don’t we.

But you did raise a good point. Any government, if it’s to function somewhat reasonably, needs to be one that has a lot of transparency, oversight, and accountability. If you don’t have those, it doesn’t matter how you start off because it’s going to end badly. So I agree with you, we shouldn’t be trusting politicians.

Disneyland is so creepy and depressing.

The filibuster was the Democrats’ excuse. They used that excuse many times, and it was never legitimate.

If minority Republicans can use it to block everything, then minority Democrats can too … except that’s not how it played out … and that’s how we know that the corporate Dems were just pandering to big pharma et al.

Ah, something better that you … checks notes … didn’t bother to describe.

I can think of an improvement: national health care. Is that what you mean? … Certainly Trump doesn’t want that, but what about you?

Because honesty and integrity matter for society. We’re trying to create a better world, not replace the Republicans with Democrats who behave just as badly but have a different name.

That’s a straw man here. The ACA didn’t require individuals to buy insurance. They’re getting it because they value it, not because their money was already taken.