I have no idea on the first question, but the second question was answered in the story. The French police are being paid by the UK government to stop the immigrant boats.

Yes, clearly not all boomers did this. My dad didn’t go to college and is the trades. He isn’t making any rules about people needing college.

I hated every minute of reading it, but I’m glad I read Gravity’s Rainbow. I’m still not entirely sure I know what happened through most of the book, nor the point of the book, but my overall feeling of the book is positive.

I enjoyed reading Confederacy of Dunces until I just couldn’t read anymore so I stopped mid-book. The main character was so unlikeable (on purpose) and story so disjointed with no apparent plot, that while I started out enjoying it as a fun story, I eventually became disinterested and hated the book without finishing it.

I absolutely loved Name of the Wind when I read it 63 years ago and told so many people about it. I could overlook its pretty glaring faults because I just loved the way it was written and the world that was created. I kinda hate the book now because A) the follow up book was mostly awful with some great parts mixed in, and B) the author doesn’t seem to be interested in finishing the series and is an asshole to the fans who want the series finished.

So when boomers came into the workforce they did not need college degrees to get ahead. After they had gotten ahead and were in charge, new employees started needing college degrees to get ahead.

And you think they didn’t set it up themselves? If they didn’t, who did?

No shit. It’s called exaggeration.

This is an interesting one. The old law allowed ANY challenge to delay building construction, as long as it had a basis in environmental protection. It was primarily used by NIMBYs to block apartment buildings near houses, or by businesses to protect their service area from competition. It would cause builders years of paperwork headaches just to get where they would have been at the beginning. It isn’t even setting rules for what studies need to be done to protect the environment, just that if someone challenges your project based on environmental rules then a judge has to put a hold on it while studies are done to show things are fine.

Ultra-orthodox anything is going to be filled with nutjobs like this. They feel anything that slightly inconveniences their chosen brand of religion is an attack on religion itself. They want to have their stupidly large families but don’t want to pay for it themselves, either through work to wash dishes or through the tiny tax on their plastic forks. Same shit happens with Christians here in the US.

That’s awesome. Good for you!

I hate when companies throw away good employees just to chase a slightly higher profit margin, so it’s nice when it works out better for the people they treated badly.

This is the likely scenario. They are predicting an incredibly unpredictable consumer market in the next 4-8 years but a very predictable defense industry market in that time.

Only if they speak two languages. Healthcare requires patient interaction, so knowing the local language is essential. Even if all the doctors speak English and all the schools teach in English in France, they will have to treat a person who only speaks French.

The difference between a layoff and a RIF is that a layoff means they can’t afford to pay for specific positions right now and that if they can in the future then they will reopen those jobs, while a RIF means they are changing the structure of the company and all those jobs are going away permanently.

There are so many levels of fucked up in this story.

First off, the other police rammed a dude and pinned him to a wall with a car because they thought he was a criminal. A) Who the fuck thinks treating a suspect that way is OK? B) Why would you continue working with the people who think that is OK?

Secondly, four cops beat a man nearly to death because they thought he was a suspect in a crime. Same two questions as before. How can they think it’s totally cool to beat a man nearly to death simply because he MIGHT have committed a crime?

Nothing says, “we’re definitely not corrupt” like hiding all the communications of your elected officials.

It’s not time in traffic. It’s time NOT in traffic. Traffic is slow and not often deadly. Driving for an hour at 70mph is much more dangerous than an hour at 25mph.

And blue states often have bigger cities with slower traffic and shorter commute distances.

From the linked source, #1 is miles driven. You can keep copy/pasting the same thing in response to people hypothesizing miles driven is the biggest cause, but it won’t change the fact that you are wrong.

Massholes were particularly bad drivers, but I think the speeds are typically lower and the quality of car higher than some poorer and more wide open states.

14 missing states, including South/North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Nebraska, Alaska, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Delaware, Rhode Island, Hawaii, and West Virginia. Most of those states barely have 100,000 people.

Look closer at the ranking of states. This isn’t about weather or external causes. Wisconsin and Minnesota have much worse weather in the winter and are almost as dark in the winter as Washington with similar death rates, but their rates are much lower than Mississippi and Alabama who have no snow and more sunlight in winter. The three are lower even than Arizona, which is usually sunny and rarely has snow.

External things like how many miles are driven on average by the people in the state is huge. Also things like speeding culture, average car safety (poor states have shittier cars or old trucks), and road maintenance are all big impacts, too.

What does race mixing have to do with this story?

I grew up in the suburbs of a midwestern city, where we could run into the woods to play army or ride bikes in a closed neighborhood (not gated, just no through traffic) or walk from yard to yard with no fences except for houses with pools or walk to the next neighborhood over. We were free to explore as long as we didn’t cross certain streets and came home by dark. We walked to the bus stop to go to school.

Contrast that to where I live now in a major metropolitan city where kids never see “the woods”, can’t safely ride bikes anywhere but bike paths, have tall privacy fences blocking both socializing but also blocking multi-yard sports areas, have no “neighborhoods,” and have to be driven by parents in a car directly to school (where they have to wait in a line of 100 cars to pick up kids everyday). How can kids ever become self sufficient? They have to be parented every minute of their lives until they are 16. It’s wild.

But that is in the US. When I visit Europe there are kids by themselves on the subway going wherever a 10 year old needs to go.