I'm a day late, but Happy New Year to all.

Hoping that 2018 will be a good year for everyone.

It's easy to look back and criticize, but I wonder what would have happened if they hadn't zoned those areas for housing. There might have been a lot more homeless people, and there might have been more pressure to allow people to build homes there, knowing that a catastrophe could happen but also knowing that in order to avoid one big catastrophe, a lot of people would be homeless on a daily basis for years.

Affordable housing is rarely located in the most desirable locations.

Amygdala is, to my understanding, not only about feeling fear but also about conditioning it. My bet for applications would be about allowing people to better deal with phobias or PTSD.

I don't know enough about it either, but I know that fear is a necessary response. Without fear, people would do a lot of crazy and dangerous things.

Let's say, for discussion sake, that the neuron firing technique could control excess fear. But then we'd have to discuss what is excess fear. Many people who have PTSD have gotten it as a result of going to war. It's not excessive fear to have fear of a place where you're killing people and your life is in danger all the time. Should that be removed from people? It doesn't seem like a maladaptive response. It may be that it's not working when the person is no longer at war. But there's also the possibility that if enough people had that response, more people would speak up about going to war. Taking that away may not make society better.

Another example. The opioid crisis in the US. People are taking opioids in massive quantities to alleviate their physical and emotional pain of dealing with lives that don't match what society is telling them. If the neuron technique worked, maybe people would lose this pain. But should they? Maybe the crisis is a big red flag to an issue in society that needs to be fixed, not a sign that people need to be fixed to accept things that aren't acceptable.

But that's how most drugs and medications work already.

Yes, and to the extent that it does, it might not be such a great thing.

For some people, medication is a necessity. They have issues that need to be controlled. That's not the issue in this case.

But just like opiods, some of the medications are overused for the wrong purposes. The reason more people don't take them is because they generally wear off after a while for a lot of people and because of the side effects.

If the neuron technique does away with these issues, then even more people would rely on these methods. I'm not convinced that's such a good thing.

It may be the case that humans have complicated brain wiring for a reason. Bypassing that wiring might seem advantageous on an individual basis but might pose more problems on a more societal level.

I tend to think that when people feel pain, it's not easily dismissed. If it can be eliminated through the use of an easy technique, it might not be better for the person in the long run.

Interesting video, as usual! Thanks for sharing it.

I felt that it was very technical in the parts about how the science of it worked. I would need more science background to follow the thoughts and understand the implications. When it got to the part about the implications, the information got more vague. For instance, there was the part about how the technique could be used to control the fear center of the brain. In what ways? How would that help people?

The title itself brings up a lot of ethical considerations that just got a shrug in the whole piece. If this technology could be used to control someone's brain in ways that would change their behavior, should this technology be pursued? What are the safeguards that it won't be used for the wrong thing? What are the right things that it will be used for?

If the wrong things it can be used for outweigh the good things it can be used for, should scientists consider the ethical implications of pursuing the technology?

PBS interview with Kuttner, the author of this article. They try to explain why Bannon called him. Someone who has been covering him says that it sounds very much in character.

I'm going to piggyback off kantos. I thought I was the only one missing something to the story.

I hope that gets sorted if it needs sorting. My apologies if I missed the piece of the story.

If you have your own plans that don't involve your father's plans, I'm happy for you. I hope they work out for you. If you're spiting your father's plans because they aren't your own, he may one day not be around to care, but you might be.

If it's frustration about something else, I hope you find some peace about it.

Colbert has been hyping this for a few days. I've been looking forward to it.

Seth Meyers made a quick joke about Scaramucci's CNN interview with George Stephanopolous this weekend at 11:55 in this video.

The whole CNN interview was a hot mess. Then Scaramucci took questions on Facebook.

I copy pasted the title.. because it was so good. Did you notice the lacking 'i' .. not mindful enough ;

I may not be mindful enough either, but that YES in your post title is not in the header that it looks like you copied. That YES is what is misleading given what the article says.

For those who are not clicking on the article, here's what I saw:

The header: "Is Mindfulness Meditaton BS?"

The title: "Going Up

Is mindfulness meditation a capitalist tool or a path to enlightenment? Yes"

The article on the question in the header:

"All of which raises a question: Is mindfulness meditation, as it’s practiced by millions of Westerners, bullshit? Not bullshit in the sense of being worthless. Even Adam Grant admits that meditation has benefits and that, for some people, it’s the best way to get them. But has meditation practice strayed so far from its Buddhist roots that we might as well just call it a therapy or a hobby?"

While I may agree with your point to an extent, that's doesn't seem to be the basic point of this article.

I tried mindfulness meditation for a couple years. It didn't work for me for a number of reasons. Everyone kept telling me that I wasn't doing it right or that I needed to give it more time. It was annoying. For a while, I wasn't a big proponent of it. I'm still not its biggest fan, or more accurately, I'm not a fan of its biggest fans. The hype for it has gone over the top.

That said, I'm considering trying it again. In some ways, it's just a different way of looking at things.

There was a discussion on Reddit about this that you might have seen. In case you haven't, I'll link it here.

It's a philosophy discussion based on a professor using the discussion to teach the limits of knowledge.

Is This a Sandwich?

Teaching the Platonic Dialogues through sandwiches, by Dr. M. Ritchey, PhD

At the end of the article, there's a link to a crowdsourced discussion on the definition. It requires an e-mail address, so I haven't checked it out.

No, not really. I'm not seeing the point of it.

I am my hands, they are within the ven diagram of me. I'm accountable for their good behavior and health an maintenance. I'm more than my hands but I'm certainly not not my hands. My hands might screw me with their clumsiness or betray my nervousness, sometimes they might even be too weak for the task which I am asking them to perform, but they are my hands. Same damn thing with my brain. I do my best to nudge it toward flexibility, objectivity and just compassion but I sometimes fail. It's still my brain.

You're conflating brain and thoughts. One is tangible, the other is not. It's trivially true to say that you own your body parts. It would be different to say that you own your thoughts. Until thoughtcrime is illegal, you're not responsible for every stray thought that flashes through your mind. People are responsible for their actions, including communicating their thoughts, but they're not responsible solely for their thoughts.

That's like saying that you own a book, so you're responsible for taking care of the book. But that's different from owning every idea and concept within the pages of the book.

You seem to imply these ideas are scams. They are if you paid for them. But these ideas about meditation and witnessing thoughts are as old as Buddhism.

I've never read Eckhart Tolle. I've watched a couple youtube videos he was on. He did give me a slimy feeling, telling people not to worry about money as he sat there making millions from his books. But he sure didn't originate these concepts.

Thanks for your response. I do agree with you that the blog posts are overly simplistic. However, I don't agree they're completely without meaning.

To what degree do you thing perception and reality have no relation?

Well, that's sort of the point. One can't know that. I can make a percentage that I believe, but that's about it. It would be just a thought about my belief. No one can actually know.

On the one extreme, we could all be in The Matrix, having a shared experience not based on reality. (Fair disclosure: I haven't actually watched the Matrix. It's just often the example given.) On the other extreme, a single individual could be having a certain experience not shared with anyone else that they are certain is reality, if they were say, a paranoid schizophrenic or having some other type of hallucination or delusion. From their perspective, they can't know how much reality and perception are correlated.

As a practical matter, people generally agree that our perceptions through our senses are real, even if the interpretation is not always accurate.

Many things that we pretend are objective are very subjective. it's an area where perception and reality must often part ways, but to say they have no relation is silly.

My bad for using an example that led so far away from the context of the article. The context of the article was within the bounds of when someone is feeling emotional pain. When someone is feeling emotional pain, {almost} all thoughts that lead to the emotional pain are subjective. That's where moving more to the absolute has some meaning.

When people are in emotional pain, their thoughts on it are largely subjective. In that context, perception (of the reasons for the emotional pain) and the reality (of the situation) are often (or maybe always) not (necessarily) related.

One could argue, as many have, that the same event can cause some people to feel emotional pain and others to feel emotional joy, so the relationship between the event (reality) and their perception of it is not necessarily correlated.

Here's why it matters. If you believe that the event (reality) caused the emotional pain, then you have no power to change the pain you're in since you can't change the event. If you believe that your perception causes your emotional pain, then you can change your perception (belief about how you're interpreting it), regardless of the event. If perception and reality were the same, you'd be stuck with the emotional pain.

Not being your thoughts must be great self help advice, it's flies off the shelf. Seems like a bunch of mystic double talk self victimization rationalizing to me. Comforting but I suspect that it's of dubious practical value.

When people say 'you are not your thoughts', it's generally shorthand for you don't control every thought that goes through your mind. At the same time, you do have responsibility for the actions you take with those thoughts.

Saying that you are not your thoughts and you have responsibility for your actions together simultaneously is not conflicting.

As for its practical value, it probably has more value for those people who have reached the end of their ability to will themselves to change or it was taken from them. It's been said, if you can't change your reality, you have to change your beliefs. If one thinks that their beliefs and their reality are the same, and they can't change their reality, that can leave them in a bad situation.

You might do this intuitively.

For example, if someone was a pro athlete and believed that their only source of success and value is from being a pro athlete, if they somehow became paralyzed, they'd have to change their belief. If they had the persistent thought that their only value was from being a pro athlete, despite being unable to do it anymore, it might be practical for them to know that they are not that thought.

He [Krishnamurti] was diametrically opposed to the don't think and it's not your brain crowd. If I've said anything absolutist it's only in that I totally oppose the "you are not you mind, you are not your thoughts," absolutist.

I tried looking for some quotes to see if I could verify this. I found this quote, which goes in the other direction.

Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong, but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching, you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Being able to be aware of every thought and not "be" every thought says that you are not your thoughts. There has to be a you who is the observer. Is that the same guy?

A world where perception has no relation to reality is one where your self improvement post has no truth or purpose what so ever.

While I agree that the perception statement may be written too absolutely, I agree with the statement to a degree.

As an example, if 5 people see an accident, there are likely to be 5 different accounts of the event. If perception and reality were correlated 100%, then there would either have to be 5 different realities or the accounts would have to match 100% every single time.

What people perceive can become their reality as they see it, but it's not necessarily objective reality as others see it.

have fun living in a world of inexplicable valueless nothing where you have no agency over your own mind.

Here you're creating an absolute where one may not have existed in the earlier piece. Being able to watch one's thoughts doesn't mean that people have NO control over their thoughts. But it also doesn't mean they have 100% control over their thoughts.

Here's an experiment if you feel you have 100% control over your thoughts.

Don't think of this video ever again. Mana mana. You might not even need to click on it. But if you do, mana mana, definitely don't think of this video ever again.

Also, if you have total control over your thoughts, you'd be able to eliminate any negative thoughts, worries or thoughts that bring any emotional pain since that wouldn't be very useful.

I'd be dubious if you claimed you had complete control over your thoughts. Even Jesus and Buddha didn't claim that.

You seem to be answering a different question, although the OP seems to agree with you, so now I'm confused about his concept.

The YOU that you're discussing is the sense of self that's in contrast with other people, particularly in society.

My question to the OP was about the YOU in context with his concept of YOU noticing one's MIND. The examples you gave wouldn't apply to the YOU that is distinct from your MIND. Your MIND wouldn't be telling you that you're an extrovert while YOU say you're an introvert.

Fundamental, outward facing beliefs that are about the self that projects to society are generally consistent between YOU and your MIND because if they weren't, you just wouldn't project that belief.

From what I gather, the answer to the nature of "you" lives in the crossing of genetic characteristics (what is entirely innate to us) and the patterns we've absorbed throughout our lives (what is learned into us).

From what I gather, that's the description of MIND in the article. If that's the description of YOU, then I'll turn the question around and ask, what is MIND?

Could I ask that you read the article in the OP? I've been down a rabbit trail with you before where you're talking about something that's not in the article. There's no mention of a human soul in the article that I saw. It's not a religious piece unless he's tracing mindfulness back to Buddhism. Even then, not all Buddhists believe in the concept of a human soul.

Some background. When people talk about mindfulness, they're generally talking about observing one's thoughts. The thoughts are generally depicted as MIND. But then there must be an observer of these thoughts, generally depicted as YOU. Who is this observer?

The reason the question matters is because there's a sense that YOU who are watching these thoughts is the knowing observer, particularly in western culture. To my understanding, in eastern cultures, the idea of a knowing YOU is ego. Ego is comprised of things like labels, status, other outward manifestations of competing with others. Ego is generally considered to be associated with MIND in eastern thought.

If YOU is not the outward self that is presented to others but is the observer of MIND, what/who are YOU?

Nice post!

It leads to the existential question, if you're not your mind, who are YOU?

If YOU are in the driver's seat and not your mind, who are the YOU that decides and how do YOU decide what to notice and disregard in your mind?

I enjoyed this talk by Jon Kabat-Zinn at a Google talk on mindfulness where he touched on the topic towards the end. Warning: if you're looking for the answer here, you won't find it.

Adding to your list of acronyms, I've been hearing a lot about DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy) as well.

Edit: Your post has an interesting mix of eastern and western philosophies. I'm wondering how they harmonize and if there any points at which they clash.

Friendly reminder: you can golf-clap with handcuffs on.

But can you golf?

I take it you don't mean legal freedom of speech. There's no government entity involved in this.

As for colloquial freedom of speech on the internet, that opens up a whole can of worms.

In a general sense, anyone has the power to out anyone else. The platform that it's on has the power to broadcast that information as widely, if not more widely, than a cable news network.

Will there be rules on anyone outing anyone else?

Will news organizations be held to a higher standard of NOT investigating people's backgrounds? Will CNN be held to a different standard than even the rest of the other journalists?

Then there's the line between investigative reporting and outing. Where does that get drawn? I remember the case where someone posted on their Facebook account a picture of them holding up a dead cat with an arrow in its head. People found out her workplace and had her fired within a couple days. Her name and personal details were printed. Should news organizations have printed her personal information?

In this particular case, CNN declined to post personal details. When some people saw the reservation to print personal details as blackmail, CNN clarified that it meant that the reservation wasn't contingent on the apology, but that the statement that personal details wouldn't be printed wasn't a blanket statement. From the comments I've seen, very few people took that at face value.

On the other side, CNN's staffer's were outed with personal details of their families. That it was done got press attention as well. That seems to be getting a lot less censure, or maybe the censure is assumed.

For the most part, I don't see people who criticize Trump who are also trolling with views they don't really hold. Most of them seem sincere in their criticism. And many of them are getting punished for their views. Like the woman who worked in a bank that a republican congressman told the owner of the bank that this woman was against him. She lost/left her job.

In these very divisive times, there's lots of condemnation to go around.

Besides being ineffective, condemning CNN is inconsistent to me.

I reserve the right to condemn CNN at a later time If I don't like what they do, though.

From the little I know of Buddhism, I think the reason that the monks pick the direct route of pushing the fat man is intention.

In Buddhism, there's a story of a man who killed the captain of a ship because the captain was leading the ship into danger that would kill all the men. As long as the man's intention was to save the crew, then killing the captain wasn't seen as bad.

Using the switch to divert the trolley would be deception, which is not a pure intention.

The idea is that if you're going to do a wrong thing, then don't disguise it by trying to deceive others you did it because that's not a pure intention.

My question would be whether you can program intention, and more importantly, whether that would be a good thing. Perhaps not, because humans having a pure intention is a good thing because it's clear who is taking responsibility. If the car is doing the killing, is it the car (or the owner of the car) that takes responsibility?

I'm torn on this one too.

I've seen people argue that this could happen to anyone, so it's a threat to everyone. But could it? If you decided to troll reddit, would you give enough identifying information in your post history to allow people to narrow you down to one person?

This is how CNN found him.

The apology came after CNN's KFile identified the man behind "HanAholeSolo." Using identifying information that "HanAholeSolo" posted on Reddit, KFile was able to determine key biographical details, to find the man's name using a Facebook search and ultimately corroborate details he had made available on Reddit.

I'm not sold that most people who troll Reddit leave that many identifying clues about themselves in their post history.

People are really focusing in on the idea that CNN reserves the right to publish the person's details. While I can see why it comes across poorly in hindsight, after the apology was made, CNN didn't know that part when they wrote it.

What if the troll was emboldened by the claim that CNN wouldn't publish the troll's information and started a campaign against them? CNN might not want to be held to the statement that they're not going to reveal the troll's identity if the troll led a campaign to publish all of the personal information of CNN staff.

The campaign against CNN was started by someone anyway.

Within hours, personal information for multiple CNN staffers and their family members -- alongside images and gifs of individuals with CNN superimposed over their faces being shot in the head -- appeared in the comments of the posting.

Looking back at another instance of outing on Reddit, when violentacrez was outed, I remember wondering about the difference between doxing and investigative journalism. People seemed to feel that the outing was ok with voilentacrez since it was investigative journalism in that case. In this case, there seem to be other factors in play.

From my understanding, neither troll had done anything illegal, but the hate from the Reddit community was much bigger for one than the other.

Both the troll and CNN got caught up in the spider's web that Trump threw. Coming out of that unscathed is just a matter of luck and timing.

My instant reaction was, ooh, I like that.

I like how the colors blend together. It has a bit of the feel of the middle of a storm and/or a fire, but at the same time has those feathery strokes that give it a softer feel.

Just my instant reaction on it.

So yeah, if retail does fucking die, the workers are screwed. Not only because they'll be out of a job, but because this country has almost zero fucking chance of ever letting something like Basic Universal Income happen. This country voted for Trump. This country can't get its health care together.

I don't have a crystal ball, but I have seen a couple things that make me question your predictions.

First, the state of Hawaii is already investigating universal basic income because of their dependence on service industries.

His interest in the idea, he said, is motivated by a concern that automation will make good jobs rarer, particularly in a service industry-dependent state like Hawaii

Lee's resolution, HCR 89, was supported by major unions and the Chamber of Commerce, and sets up a working group to study the idea of implementing a basic income. Its text cites these concerns, and positively mentions basic income as a potential means of addressing them:

Will it happen now? Maybe doubtful, but the idea that people are looking at it right now and considering legislation says to me that the trend is in that direction.

On the national level, people are too busy playing political games, but more progressives have universal basic income on their agenda.

As for single payer health insurance, Charles Krauthammer, a conservative pundit on Fox News predicts that the US will have single payer within the next 7 years. There are a lot of reasons, but if the system crashes, everyone will be affected. At the point everyone is negatively affected, people will be more inclined to do something about it. If a conservative pundit on Fox News is predicting it, that's an indication things might be moving in that direction. I've seen at least one other republican commentator say the same.

In the states, Nevada just had their medicaid for all bill vetoed by the governor (although he said it was a good idea that needed more details to be ironed out) and California's single payer bill is still in process.

The coach companies that died, died because either they became something else or because they refused to transition, but more jobs came about.

Yes, it's true that the industrial revolution brought about a boom due to the increased need of labor. The current technological change is different because the labor is being replaced by the technology itself. The prediction is for less jobs overall because of this change.

The analogy part was just to show that as technology changes, some industries die out in the process.

Sears and Amazon

When Amazon came about, someone at Sears should have said "Hot tits, these guys are on to something. We have the institutional knowledge through our catalog division to follow Amazon's example and do it fucking better.

If Sears tried to become Amazon back then, it would have done what it's doing now -- closing down its retail outlets and laying off its employees. The difference between the Amazon model and the Sears model is that Amazon doesn't have the high cost of overhead from paying for retail stores and paying for employees to work in those stores. That's why Amazon was able to undercut prices. Amazon didn't have to pay for employees or retail outlets.

In some ways, Amazon got a free ride off retail outlets like Sears. People would go into retail outlets, look at the product, get all the details at the store, then order it at a lower price on Amazon. But Amazon didn't have to pay for the overhead of showing those products. Sears did. If most of the major retail outlets close down, it will be interesting to see if people will start to buy everything sight unseen.

Sears couldn't become Amazon back then. I'm not even sure Amazon could have become Amazon without retail outlets like Sears.

Other Models

Maybe, instead of big retail trying to fucking hire people at minimum fucking wage to push products fast, which is fucking miserable for everyone involved, they hire knowledgeable people who are passionate about what they're selling and are paid fucking well for the advice and the services they can offer.

This is the opposite model of the Amazon model. Amazon's model undercuts prices by offering no service. This model relies on being able to charge customers more for a small selection of products and quality service.

The Sears model is in the middle of these. Sears carried huge quantities of products, which it priced competitively but offered only minimal service on them. In order for this alternative model to work, Sears would only be able to offer a small selection of products or would have to dissect its workforce into experts in each product field and offer way less products in each field.

From what I've seen, retail is headed more in that direction. The number of items for each retail outlet is getting scaled way down with more experts in the field to show those products. It's more of a boutique model.

Could Sears have competed that way? I don't know, but I would be doubtful. It would have required it to have increased its prices and changed its image to a more upscale boutique place. I think it has tried and is probably trying that. As a brand though, I don't think of Sears as an upscale boutique place.

Can you imagine if larger companies, say, Kohl's, The Gap, and JCPenny all got together and tried to form a retailer's coopertive? FUCK. Their buying power would be FUCKING SICK. Shit, that's half the reason companies try to buy each other in the first fucking place. I'd half be willing to bet, this method would be a lot less risky and a lot less controversial than trying to fucking form fucking monopolies.

I'm not seeing the difference between the conglomeration of many major retail outlets to form one big outlet as different from a monopoly. If enough major retailers got together that they were able to control distribution of some products to the point where they could command any price they chose to sell certain products, wouldn't that be monopolistic pricing?

At this point in time, the market might still be fragmented enough for consolidation to happen, but at the point where it would be advantageous to smash the competition is the point where monopolistic pricing can happen.

Fucking Study Other Companies

I don't see the connection between those other industries and retail. Some industries doing well might not impact other industries doing well. When the computer industry was doing well, the car industry might have been doing poorly and vice versa. I'm not sure that the industries are enough alike to make any comparisons.

As a note, you've used the f word or one of its derivations 33 times in this one post. Since I haven't seen you doing that in most other notes, they stood out.

That responsibility lies in the hands of the people running these companies and if a tag like #retailhell is any indication, they're fucking failing.

Not necessarily. Sometimes industries die out due to a change in technology. I don't think that people are pointing to a shift in consumer demands or changes in technology as a way to shift blame.

Just as a quick, hopefully illustrative example, there was a time when horse drawn carriages were really popular. The car was invented. It took a while for the car to get widespread. In that time, people who made the carriages and who made horse shoes and who changed horse shoes got fewer and fewer jobs with fewer and fewer hours. I'm sure they weren't happy about it. But at some point, the horse drawn carriage companies couldn't compete with the car companies. If twitter existed, there may have been a #carriagehell or #hooferhell.

It may not be a perfect analogy, but brick and mortar retail is dying. The fact that everyone knows what Amazon is, and most people have ordered something online shows that. Technology has changed the industry. Sears doesn't have the power to change that. It tried online retailing, but that's not their emphasis. Just like the horse drawn carriage industry shrunk and died out over time, the same is happening to the brick and mortar retail industry.

In that process, workers are displaced. There's no way around it. Giving some people more hours and great benefits means laying off others. If it was an expanding industry, and the companies were treating workers poorly, that's one thing. (I realize this is what Amazon is doing) But Sears is shutting down retail outlets. They're not doing that to mess with people while business is booming.

Some people are speculating that robotics will do that with many existing industries. The difference between this change in technology and the industrial revolution is that there was a place where workers could shift. They shifted to working in factories.

In this shift of technology, there are less productive shifts where workers can go. That's the reason that many people are arguing for universal basic income from their governments. At the point where technology displaces a majority of the paid productive work in the economy, there will need to be a solution.

As big as they are, corporations don't always have the power to innovate a solution big enough to change shifts in technology and consumer demand.

People are getting laid off, hours are getting cut, everyone is losing their healthcare, wages are going down, stores are closing, and it's all because these companies are worried about short term profits and short term share values and they don't give two shits about the lives that get ruined over in the process.

As much as I share your dismay about how workers are getting treated, and as much as I don't like how large companies have gained so much power to treat workers so poorly, I don't think the problem is centralized with these two companies or even retail companies in general.

Some of it has to do with the shifting trends of consumers to order online instead of going into brick and mortar retail outlets. People still generally go to grocery stores to get food, but for other things, many people have shifted to online ordering. I guess you could say that's Amazon's fault since they started the trend, but if they didn't someone else would have.

On the other side, the other way to make money is to overcharge customers. That's what Whole Foods was charged with doing. Both NYC and CA brought claims of overcharging.

The co-CEOs admitted it. It wasn't much of an admission, but the same happened in CA, so it probably happened in other places.

People say that the Whole Foods model died because it was too ethical or too local focused. I don't buy it. It failed because they overcharged customers, which made it easy for other chains to undercut their prices. Whole Foods excelled when they had the monopoly on organic and vegetarian/vegan food. When other chains could bring in the same items much cheaper, Whole Foods lost a lot of their customer base.

As for the acquisition, I'll be curious to see how it goes. On the face of it, it seems like an odd matching. Whole Foods has the reputation of overpricing. Amazon has the reputation of undercutting prices. Will they try to keep the Whole Foods branding or just use the stores and create their own branding?

I also noticed an article that Aldi's is planning on opening 900 stores in the next 5 years. I'm wondering how that will impact the market.

I just saw this video on the acquisition, so I thought I'd toss it in the mix. It's an analyst from Yahoo on CBS news talking about the acquisition.

There are now 3 of these emoluments clause lawsuits. With all the people talking about the issue, I was wondering why this was the first lawsuit to be filed on the issue.

Apparently, it wasn't.

There was one filed back in January "on behalf of an ethics watchdog and Trump’s business competitors"

Then after this one was filed, the democrats in congress filed another one. I had heard about the planning for one of these lawsuits way back in February from watching a town hall meeting by a democrat.

When this one was filed, I wondered about the reason for the timing.

I love his answer to the question "is there a social system that redistributes wealth fairly and promotes social cohesion?" He said, "Yea, it's called paying your taxes. And corporations and rich people aren't doing it."

I feel like I'm missing something here. I apologize if I'm walking in in the middle of a bigger discussion.

I cursorily watched the video. I felt like I wasted my time when he did the mic drop at the end.

It seems a bit obvious that we're screwed. It has seemed obvious for a while now. But giving the problem in such a long, drawn out fashion without a solution seems a bit fruitless.

The wealth distribution problem has been the main platform for Bernie Sanders for a while now. And places like r/latestagecapitalism on reddit has the wealth distribution problem as their main issue.

It's more about what can be done about it now that the problem has become so clear.

Again, sorry if I'm missing something obvious here.

To clarify, I hate moral quandries when people expect me to have some kind of answer to the quandrie and the stubbornness to stick to it to instead of the flexibility to change my mind or appreciate the fact that there's no easy answer.

A moral quandry is uncertain by definition. They don't have definite answers. People expecting you to have answers are not understanding what a moral quandry is.

So, I'm having fun, but not in the way some people would want me to have fun I think.

Glad you're having fun.

Maybe these people who are supervising your method of fun can be given a different role in your life? Unless you're hurting someone, you get to enjoy what you enjoy.

I'm pretty sure there are entire forums where people analyze and criticize the inconsistencies in the Star Trek shows by episode, by series and across series.

Everyone knows what Quark wants and what he's gonna do, so it's all about how they navigate around him.

As the series goes on, Quark gets a bit more 3 dimensional with a bit of back history. A few of the other characters have some interesting back history as well.

I apologize for assuming that you missed the part about Sisko being complicit. I thought that your conclusion would have been different had you taken that into account. I shouldn't have assumed that.

I really hate moral quandries

Maybe this series isn't your cup of tea? Since I like moral quandries, the writing seems fine to me. In fact, for me, it's better than most since most series don't even try to contain any moral ambiguity.

I don't think the whole DS9 crew would be willing to take that risk.

I do think the whole crew would be willing to take that risk. I base that on other episodes where the whole crew go on a mission, risking everyone's lives for one person's project or experiment or even their mistake.

I pondered whether that was realistic or not while I was watching it. I think there are a couple factors that make it more believable, after thinking about it. This group of people are self-selected to be interested in exploration. They're willing to risk their lives for what they find. Banding together to protect everyone equally is also a survival technique. They're more powerful as a group than individually. If that means defending a bone-headed mistake of one crew member, it's still the guiding principle. Also, while life is still fragile, medical technology is so advanced that dying is less likely. That makes risk-taking slightly less risky.

An episode from TNG had me thinking about the mindset of the crew a lot. In that episode, the crew found several people in cryogenic stasis. One person revived them through one of those bone-headed errors by a crew member, then the rest of the crew had to deal with it. After the doctor fixed all their medical maladies, she said something about them that stayed with me.

"Too afraid to live, too scared to die." or words to that effect.

To me, it meant that the people on the starship had decided what they were willing to die for. It gave them purpose and meaning. They were willing to risk their lives for what they believed in, and that included each other.

It seemed odd to me for two reasons. One, O’Brien is a military man. The military has a chain of command and its instilled in its members that the chain of command shouldn’t be broken for a whole slew of reasons

You missed a piece in this. When O'Brien went in for his dressing down with Sisko, O'Brien wondered out loud why the transporter wasn't shut down and isolated to O'Brien's com badge location when Sisko realized that O'Brien and his com badge weren't in the same place. O'Brien could not have carried out his plan without assistance from Sisko. Sisko gave a blustery non-answer.

O'Brien wasn't a rogue player here. They all held the same values but were constrained by the Prime Directive. The Prime Directive was the rule that they didn't interfere with other cultures. The Prime Directive is a metaphor of people who go into other cultures and change their cultures for the worse, as was blamed on the Christians in the case of some native cultures.

If Sisko knew about and could stop O'Brien in a second but allowed his actions, was Sisko complicit in the crime?

I don't think it's very unrealistic

If Flynn (a military man) committed an illegal action, and Trump knew about it but allowed it anyway, was Trump complicit in the illegal action? Those are some of the questions the US is now asking.

I think those scenarios get played out in a lot of ways.

In DS9, there's a recurring theme of exploring the point at which inaction or blindly following orders becomes immoral in itself. Picard struggled with it and so did Sisko. They both took actions or inactions they felt were more moral than blindly following orders.

[Edit: removed a possible spoiler] I'll just say here that your questions about what happens when military orders aren't followed is explored a lot.

About the hunters, I just saw a post on reddit yesterday about a hunter who was killed when the elephant he killed fell on him. The hunter and anti-hunter discussion turned so vitriolic that the thread had to be shut down due to death threats. It doesn't seem like the hunter question is very settled. There's not much more to explore.

Those are a ton of questions. Those questions are deep as fuck. Yet none of them were adequately addressed let alone resolved. Tosk went free. For them, the hunt continued. For me, I’m sitting here with philosophical blue balls.

I've read that when a piece of fiction stays with you, it's a great piece of fiction. This piece made you think and question. I rarely see that when people watch things. I think that's a great achievement for a piece of fiction.

Their introduction and the whole explanation for the mystery brings about what could be some very interesting moral dilemmas that never get explored. Finally, we have the episode's protagonist act irrationally and against his own self interest to help his new alien friend, everything works out in the end, with the exception of the moral dilemmas being completely ignored.

What would you like them to explore?

Disclaimer: I'm a big Star Trek fan, and my favorite series is DS9 because of the moral ambiguity.

To me, that episode was about hunting and the moral dilemmas of hunting animals. But it could be about any situation where the prey has accepted their fate, even in a human context because of social acceptance.

That episode first gave the perspective of the hunted, their actions and motivations. It opens the question. How would you behave if you were in a class that was hunted? Tosk was skittish, distrustful, secretive and non-assertive except when the Tosk thought it might get in more trouble. Those are probably traits many would adopt if they were hunted.

Then it gets revealed why the Tosk was behaving that way. Another class of the aliens was hunting Tosk.

That custom was foreign to the crew of DS9 because class and species differences were supposedly eliminated by that time.

It's still common in our time though. People hunt animals and marginalize other people.

It didn't seem at all odd to me that O'Brien acted against his interest to help Tosk. People sacrifice their self-interest to help animals all the time. They sacrifice even more if the hunted class are people, like the Jewish people in the time of the Holocaust. O'Brien saw Tosk as another person, not a dispensable creature because he wasn't in a culture that saw hunting as socially acceptable.

The ethical line that gets drawn when people see other beings as animals or beings like themselves is also an ethical question.

It's an interesting thought experiment to wonder why more people didn't hide Jewish people during the Holocaust.

It has implications for what happens today. If people can see other people as enough different from themselves, they can care less about them. People of different religions or races can be marginalized or treated differently.

The writers of DS9 couldn't explore those moral ambiguities explicitly because once a real life context was given, not in the form of a metaphor, the viewer is likely to revert to their view of the socially accepted view of the moment and not explore the possibility that there might be other ways of looking at things.

You might be interested in this story about leaks in the white house.

When asked Tuesday night for an update on the unfolding situation, one top White House aide simply texted a reporter two fireworks emoji.

More congress (Adam Schiff) getting involved, asking for tapes of the dinner meeting.