The short version is that it was about the transfer of power from hereditary nobility to a different elite consisting of wealthy merchants and “gentlemen” farmers. This transfer was already happening anyway throughout the British Empire, the Americans just wanted to speed it up and codify it.

Several things can be true at once. We don’t have to be all-in on one side or the other of the Snowden affair. I’ve never understood why people seem so eager to pick a team on this issue.

WTF are you talking about? I see zero evidence that this is what OP is doing. It can’t be the case that every time someone asks a question that you don’t like, they must be doing so in bad faith. That’s a fallacy.

Oh, look at John fucking Von Neumann over here!

Either a square knot or a “granny” knot will work. A lot of people don’t know the difference, but it’s actually a pretty important distinction in different types of rigging because a square knot is so much stronger and more secure.

It’s how the other great apes do it too, which as far as I’m concerned is pretty much the end of the issue. It really is one of those things where there’s a right and wrong way to do it.

Double Nickels on the Dime, Minutemen. Also probably the best power trio record ever made. Granted, they only made one more record before D Boon died, but as legendary as he is, Mike Watt has still never done anything as good since.

I don’t think Lemmy is ready to hear that kind of thing.

True, but not for the reasons that most people think.

Ok, the fact that you honestly believe this is how legitimate newsrooms work is both deeply disheartening and an indication of how little the average person knows about the news business.

Editors decide what gets published, not the editorial board which is an entirely different and unrelated body that traditionally has zero contact with the content side of things. In the business we say that there is a “firewall” between the editorial board and actual news content. The NYT or WaPo would have mass resignations of their reporters if either of their editorial boards tried to influence content.

Ownership is a bit different and obviously --as we know from the Murdoch empire-- can influence content, but in traditional operations they’ve always been very hands-off. It’s a fact, for example, that Jeff Bezos doesn’t care what the WaPo publishes and has no interest in it beyond as a business concern.

Editors do have control over content, but overwhelmingly they are concerned with doing a good job and furthering their careers and professional reputations. You’re completely misunderstanding the incentive structure in mainstream news media. Outside of the extremist advocacy journalism ecosystems --mostly but not only on the far right-- no one has any incentive to push an agenda and risk ruining their career by getting something important wrong.

Unfortunately advocacy journalism is very much a legitimate type of journalism, just ask Glen Greenwald, who I fuckin’ hate.

It’s more of a cause or a movement than an organization. I guess I don’t know why that should be difficult to understand.

Oh so now you are arguing that deadheads were an organization too? Really? In what universe?

Infamous is the word you’re looking for.

Yeah that’s bullshit. There isn’t some secret cabal that’s in charge of US journalism anymore than there is in the UK. What really happens is that because the old news-media business models have been utterly destroyed by the Internet, there’s a giant and never-ending competition for audience and everyone knows that sensationalism sells.

You have a similar problem in the UK but it’s not as pronounced because the BBC is government funded and even though it’s far from perfect, it does set a kind of baseline. Your other big news organizations are just as bad as in the US though. Your tabloids are actually a lot worse than ours, which is saying something.

While I understand what you are getting at, for the record that’s not what linguistics is about at all.

You obviously know nothing about linguistics.

I believe you are the one who is confused and making unwarranted assumptions here.

I don’t know how it is for you, but when I look back at 24-year-old me, I am not impressed. I guess what I’m saying is that there are a lot of us who definitely don’t have their shit together when they’re 24. They say your prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed until 25 at the earliest, but I feel like it was closer to 30 for me. Granted, I’m kind of a dummy anyway, so this probably doesn’t apply to everyone.

Same. Mine is a regular watch with hour and minute hands and a digital read-out in the background that I can turn on and off. It’s nothing fancy, but I wear it with a fat black leather wrist-band which is pleasing to my easily-entertained soul.

I am a simple man in many ways.