The Current Events Thread

[Madican]

This just in: Hacking Twitter accounts can erase $200 billion of value from US stock markets

Stuff like this is why I think automatic programs doing trading should be made illegal. They're also responsible for the first crash that kicked off this recession.

[Riku]

Oh lawd, that Syrian Electronic Army thing was getting into the little news feed ticker at the bottom of the screen on one of the televisions at work. They basically just went and typed "We were here"

[SaintCrazy]

See kids? Look how far you can get in life with those 1337 facebook hacking skills you used in middle school.

[Riku]

The best part of it was, it was a piddly little safeway broadcast, that would only be seen on televisions in safeway break rooms, which are ignored 90% of the time. Why even bother?

[Doormaster]

Couldn't social services take the kids away or something?

I think it went on to say that they did just that

[SaintCrazy]

So George W. Bush's presidential library is opening at my university, I get to be there playing with the band!

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obam ... itics.html

All 5 living presidents will be there, including Obama.

I get to be in the same zip code as there guys, I'm p. excited.

Edit: there's also a live feed of the dedication here: http://www.bushcenter.org/live

[Lambeth]

Bush Sr. and Carter look really fucking old.

[Turbro]

Rhode Island has basically passed marriage equality
It has to be voted on by the RI House, but it already passed there once.

[Exeres]

It sucks that Florida is going to be one of the last states to follow this trend, if they do it at all.

[D-vid]

One thing I wondered about that whole thing is, if you get married in a state where that's okay, and then you move to a state where it's not yet, are you not considered married there or what?

[Lambeth]

Yeah. You won't get certain things in some states, like tax benefits or hospital visiting status.

[D-vid]

Wow that's stupid.

[Exeres]

That's what you get when you live in a place that insists on treating its 50 separate regions as individual nations.

[Kamak]

Well, the thing is that the states are able to manage laws for things that the federal government hasn't gotten to yet. It can be pretty difficult to get some federal laws passed, at least more so than the average state, and if an issue only "affects" a few states, it's even harder to dedicate federal time to it. In the meantime, the states have to address the issue, so they make their own laws to cover it, so if the federal government ever steps up and makes a law about it, it'll trump the states.

Unfortunately though, States sometimes get indignant if their state laws are overturned by the feds because "they don't understand" and other stuff like that, including feeling attacked when the majority of the nation thinks contrary to you. This also opens states up to doing less than good things to certain groups, such as Arizona targeting immigrants and requiring them to have paperwork in their cars, or states not having to recognize gay marriage outside of the states that legalize it (IIRC, there are some states that even if you can't get a gay marriage in them, they treat you just the same as a heterosexual couple, but I can't remember them off the top of my head).

This is where we expect the federal government to put their foot down, but unfortunately it can be slowed down by the politicians against it and with heated media and public attention on the matter, sometimes politicians think it's best to not even recognize as an issue lest they upset their voters.

Like anything, it's a system that works in some ways, but it's ripe for abuse when the thing that's supposed to check its power doesn't do its job.

[D-vid]

Having some state-wide-only laws isn't a bad thing in itself.
But. With things that are not only present nationwide, but internationally too, like marriage, you kinda want a nationwide consensus about it.