From what I can understand, they think of freedom not as the ability to do what they want, but as the inability for others to stop them from doing something, so instead of focusing on doing what makes them happy, they focus on the things people dislike about them, making sure that they never feel forced to stop, as that would make them less free.

As much as I personally disagree with you, given that all you're thinking about is your own benefit, and not any of the myriad of benefits to the city, the world, the people who can't afford cars, etc, I understand that your outlook is shared by the vast majority of Americans, and can't be ignored if we ever hope to have an effective public transport system.

We're going to need to somehow devise a system so convenient that it actually sounds attractive to the huge amount of people who spend 10%+ of their paycheck on car payments not because they have to, but because they want to.

Hmm, I'm not sure I agree with that.

By teaching kids that pushing against the "natural order" of the world gets you killed, and that you should just stay in your preassigned life designation, you're not hardening them, you're teaching them that rising up and fighting back is useless, and will only get you killed. The original story was meant to keep kids in line, and I think we've got enough propaganda keeping people in line at the moment.

Maybe the Disney version only made the ending nicer to be more palatable to a modern audience, but the lesson that a better life can be attained by persevering through challenges is a sentiment that I can definitely support instilling in the younger generation.

The issue with that sentiment is that a significant amount of the population simply can't afford to be picky. They buy the cheapest available version of whatever they need because that's what they can afford. All of the power of consumer choice is slowly being stripped away as more and more people are pushed into poverty, and that's by design.

In the context of people who hack their systems? I'd certainly say so.

Because in that scenario you need to think about where to eat, and you need to wait a few minutes for the burger. People go to fast food places because they immediately recognize the logos and know they can eat there without having to think about it, and they'll happily pay more money for a worse product if they can get it right now without having to leave their car. And they'll happily pay this higher price for the same reason. And they'll view the normal price as being the "cheaper" price and probably go more often during the off-peak hours to "save money" as well. It's a win-win-win for Wendy's.

America has been emphasizing convenience over all else for decades for this exact reason. It's cheaper and more lucrative for a company to provide a quick, easy product than a better quality one, so they just shoved advertisements into our faces until we were collectively convinced that that's what we want, too.

Well, Down Syndrome is always caused by a 3rd copy of chromosome 21. Sometimes it's translocated, attached to another chromosome, but the extra DNA is still there. A mosaic, where some cells have the trisomy and some don't, can also result in Down Syndrome, but again, it's caused by the extra DNA in those cells that have it. There are other conditions caused by trisomies of chromosome 13 or 18, or of the sex chromosomes, but those aren't Down Syndrome.

It makes perfect sense when you remember that the worth of human life and ethics aren't factored in when people decide how the country works.

a caserol

Gotta call it a hot dish, or people will look at you weird.

They are, but you're not close range sitting in your car with a rolled-up window between you and the guy outside. Even if he just cracked the window and tried stabbing through the opening it'd take a couple seconds.

Open and shut against a regular person, sure, but if we've learned anything in the last 8 years, it's that government officials who spread misinformation won't see repercussions for a long time, if ever.

The Republican idea of patriotism is just another flavor of Christianity - blind faith in a power you believe to be bigger than yourself. It used to be faith in America as a concept, unerring and omnipotent - under God, but when things started shifting leftward with the civil rights movement, it became faith in a president to bring things back to their halcyon days. It started with Reagan, and now it's Trump, who gave them new hope with his slogan of making America great again.

The Republican idea of patriotism was never about making your country great, it was about believing your country is already great despite all evidence to the contrary - essentially just another religion.