Nicky

Me too. Interstellar and Arrival are my two favorite movies of the past few years. Do watch Arrival, if you haven't seen it. It's just as good.

Is dignity a right?
---------------
No.

Such an obvious, absolute, and undeniably true statement of fact and of Rand's position, will resonate with those who get it. 
Well said.
Unfortunately, lesser minds will quibble, squirm, equivocate, whine, and in the end babble some anti-conceptual, inconsistent, irrelevancy, and I am decidedly not talking about Laika. 

An acquaintance of mine replied on the circulating video used as part of the case:
As I've always said, if your' going to carry or just own a gun, you're obligated to train and practice. One thing you have to consider in carrying is encounters with law enforcement. In states where I don't have to I don't inform the officer I have a gun unless asked.(like AZ) I don't. In states where I'm required to do so (like MI) I do. In either case when I'm pulled over, before the officer is out of his car, I have my license, registration and proof of insurance out and ready. Then if I do have to inform I'm not reaching for my wallet, making the cop uncomfortable. I can tell him I'm reaching for my ID but why should he believe me? I keep both hands in sight at all times. One MI officer requested I keep both hands out the window and visible to him while he went back to the car to run me.. If you didn't get your ID out ahead of time, and have to tell him you have a gun, both hands on the wheel and ask him how he wants you to proceed. That way no one gets carried away. Yes the cop needed better training. Personally when the driver started reaching I'd have warned him while drawing my weapon and aiming at him. I still would have had time to shoot were he to start to bring up a weapon. Mistakes were made by both. Plan ahead folks.
 

As far as I know, reservation laws on the vast majority of reservations are very similar to regular local laws.
The problem is that federal law prevents non tribe members from owning land on the reservation. So while you can transfer ownership, you can only transfer it within the confines of small tribes (the biggest are the Navajo, at 300,000, but after that it's 20,000 or less), you can't transfer it to outsiders.
Which has all kinds of consequences:
1. property values are low
2. real estate can't be used as collateral in loans or mortgages (since the bank can't own it).
3. reservations can't attract investment the way other jurisdictions can (there are lots of countries that restrict land ownership by foreigners, and they end up having the same problem).
So young tribe members wishing to build a life, who have trouble raising the money to buy a home (or start a business) react in two different ways: they either decide to depend on local government for help, or they leave the reservation. It's easy to guess which type of person does which, and what the effect is on the overall prosperity levels on reservations.
This problem could be solved without any intrusive measures, land confiscations, or any further interference with the sovereignty of reservation governments. There's no need to cause any protests, or any violent reaction, by mandating anything.
All that's needed is to remove the race restriction on the federal level. Leave the decision up to the reservation's government. If they want to open up to the world, and invite non-natives to buy land and join their community, fine. If they don't, that's fine as well. Let them be racist. It's their loss, and, eventually, their population would leave, and that would be that.

The US federal government isn't operating under the assumption that taxation is voluntary.

There are different purposes for "thinking", or exerting mental effort (or "focusing" one's mind) such as:
1. to learn knowledge others shared with you (you specifically, or with a group you're a part of)
2. to apply that knowledge in creative ways (to create new knowledge)
3. to communicate with others effectively
I think there are enough qualitative differences among those three activities, that they should be discussed separately...as evidenced by the fact that a person can excel at one or two, and be really bad at the other one or two.
Since the subject you seem to be most interested in is learning, I'd love to take a crack at a partial answer to that. Partial, because it's a big subject, and I don't think anyone understands it as well as we should (compared to other fields of research).
I'll start with my personal experience. My main two areas of focus are language learning (I do it for enjoyment, been doing it almost every day, since the day I was born) and programming (that's my profession), and I have basically the same approach to both. I learn in two ways:
1. I immerse myself into an environment where the knowledge I'm trying to learn is being used/put into practice by people who are better at it than me. In language learning, that can mean a wide variety of things, including watching TV or hanging out with friends who speak the language. So it's really easy to do, especially in the Internet age. Probably why I do it regularly.
In programming, it's a little more tricky, because, in this field, information tends to be presented in the form of courses or books written for the purposes of teaching beginners or entry level programmers, most often in an extremely oversimplified manner. That doesn't work for me. Never has, never will. I will use them if I must, but I prefer immersion. So I look for places where the knowledge is actually being put into practice, on a level that is the same or close to what a professional programmer would do. I don't want someone holding my hand through the process, I want to be thrown into the thick of things. There are people who will open up a youtube channel or blog, and just start DOING programming on it. Not teaching, not "Hello, world" exercises, actual projects. There are also books like that, where professional programmers don't try to teach, they just present knowledge to their peers. There are also collaborative projects, etc. That's what I'm looking for.
2. I practice what I learn. Sometimes, if I must, I rely on "exercises" (in programming, not in language learning...in natural language learning, I just dive into using the language in whatever way I can, with the small exception of learning pronunciation...that area benefits greatly from structured exercises), but, in general, I prefer to do actual, professional level projects from the start. Also, this second "step" doesn't come AFTER the first step is over. It's in parallel.
The most important things to note, about my process, are that a. it doesn't involve and conscious decision making, once the immersion begins...I don't "think", or "make decisions" about learning (I don't take mental notes along the lines of "oh, this is an important bit", or "oh, this is related to this other thing, I better make a conscious connection here"), it just happens incidentally, and b. ideally, there is a degree of difficulty involved: keeping up with what's going on is a challenge, it requires effort, and forces you to think in a way you wouldn't in a more easily accessible environment (my theory on why this difficulty helps is that, by forcing you to focus on trying to process what's happening, it prevents you from trying to focus on "learning", meaning "memorizing" or "remembering" discrete items of information).
That's what works for me, and for many others I talk to about this subject. Structured classes, teachers, memorization techniques, etc., don't work as well.
Finally, just to back the above up with some research, I've come across some very interesting research recently, involving memorization and learning: https://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/research/
It's a lot of information, covering a variety of topics related to learning, but here's an especially relevant quote, on what they call "desirable difficulties":
 
 

As opposed to which book, the DIM Hypothesis? You're implying that Peikoff's goal is to help totalitarianism triumph with this book?


Peikoff recognizes that American intellectuals hold the wrong ideas, that those ideas cause them to view the Universe as malevolent, and that these ideas and view inevitably lead to a dark future for those who hold them. He also recognizes the fact that these intellectuals aren't willing to listen to anyone with better ideas.

The Benevolent Universe Premise has nothing to do with what you expect of him: pretend that the statements above are not true. The Benevolent Universe Premise is the reason why an old man put all the effort he has left into finishing a book identifying those facts: it's because he believes it will make a difference, sometime, somewhere. Not here and now, obviously, because here and now, American intellectuals won't even read it (or Atlas Shrugged for that matter, except maybe to jeer at it).

So, you made it clear what you're arguing against here, but what exactly are you arguing for? That any day now, America's leadership is gonna see the light and turn the country around? What are you basing this on (other than the Benevolent Universe Premise, which you are misinterpreting to mean something it doesn't and cannot mean: that evil can turn into good all by itself).

It can be, sure. It's the history of how you, as an individual, came to exist.
It only becomes tribalism if you assign significance to the tribal or ethnic background of your ancestors. But, if you are simply interested in who they were as individuals, it's a selfish, individualistic pursuit.

It can be, sure. It's the history of how you, as an individual, came to exist.
It only becomes tribalism if you assign significance to the tribal or ethnic background of your ancestors. But, if you are simply interested in who they were as individuals, it's a selfish, individualistic pursuit.

There are different purposes for "thinking", or exerting mental effort (or "focusing" one's mind) such as:
1. to learn knowledge others shared with you (you specifically, or with a group you're a part of)
2. to apply that knowledge in creative ways (to create new knowledge)
3. to communicate with others effectively
I think there are enough qualitative differences among those three activities, that they should be discussed separately...as evidenced by the fact that a person can excel at one or two, and be really bad at the other one or two.
Since the subject you seem to be most interested in is learning, I'd love to take a crack at a partial answer to that. Partial, because it's a big subject, and I don't think anyone understands it as well as we should (compared to other fields of research).
I'll start with my personal experience. My main two areas of focus are language learning (I do it for enjoyment, been doing it almost every day, since the day I was born) and programming (that's my profession), and I have basically the same approach to both. I learn in two ways:
1. I immerse myself into an environment where the knowledge I'm trying to learn is being used/put into practice by people who are better at it than me. In language learning, that can mean a wide variety of things, including watching TV or hanging out with friends who speak the language. So it's really easy to do, especially in the Internet age. Probably why I do it regularly.
In programming, it's a little more tricky, because, in this field, information tends to be presented in the form of courses or books written for the purposes of teaching beginners or entry level programmers, most often in an extremely oversimplified manner. That doesn't work for me. Never has, never will. I will use them if I must, but I prefer immersion. So I look for places where the knowledge is actually being put into practice, on a level that is the same or close to what a professional programmer would do. I don't want someone holding my hand through the process, I want to be thrown into the thick of things. There are people who will open up a youtube channel or blog, and just start DOING programming on it. Not teaching, not "Hello, world" exercises, actual projects. There are also books like that, where professional programmers don't try to teach, they just present knowledge to their peers. There are also collaborative projects, etc. That's what I'm looking for.
2. I practice what I learn. Sometimes, if I must, I rely on "exercises" (in programming, not in language learning...in natural language learning, I just dive into using the language in whatever way I can, with the small exception of learning pronunciation...that area benefits greatly from structured exercises), but, in general, I prefer to do actual, professional level projects from the start. Also, this second "step" doesn't come AFTER the first step is over. It's in parallel.
The most important things to note, about my process, are that a. it doesn't involve and conscious decision making, once the immersion begins...I don't "think", or "make decisions" about learning (I don't take mental notes along the lines of "oh, this is an important bit", or "oh, this is related to this other thing, I better make a conscious connection here"), it just happens incidentally, and b. ideally, there is a degree of difficulty involved: keeping up with what's going on is a challenge, it requires effort, and forces you to think in a way you wouldn't in a more easily accessible environment (my theory on why this difficulty helps is that, by forcing you to focus on trying to process what's happening, it prevents you from trying to focus on "learning", meaning "memorizing" or "remembering" discrete items of information).
That's what works for me, and for many others I talk to about this subject. Structured classes, teachers, memorization techniques, etc., don't work as well.
Finally, just to back the above up with some research, I've come across some very interesting research recently, involving memorization and learning: https://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/research/
It's a lot of information, covering a variety of topics related to learning, but here's an especially relevant quote, on what they call "desirable difficulties":
 
 

Consciousness is a functionality biological mechanisms possess. So, your question boils down to: is it possible to recreate that functionality in a different mechanism?
And yes, sure. Why wouldn't it be. Of course, the brain is the most complex thing in nature, and we're still struggling with much simpler kinds of functionality found in living things, so it's going to take a lot of effort. But it's a finite amount of complexity, that will take a finite amount of effort to understand and re-create.

No. While someone does have the right to wish you dead, they don't have the right to do it using a service that belongs to someone who forbids such behavior. And Twitter does forbid that. You are right to take advantage of their policies, and spare yourself from being subjected to that kind of behavior.
As for reporting this to the government (on the grounds of "harassment"), that's a more interesting question. Harassment should indeed be a crime (and it is...in most jurisdictions, it's referred to as "stalking"). But if it happens once, no, it is not "harassment/stalking". Harassment/stalking entails a series of credible threats aimed at terrorizing someone, not just a one time expression of ill will.
I like the precedents set by the US judiciary, on what constitutes a threat. They go the farthest towards protecting free speech, out of any country. Check out cases involving the Black Panthers threatening Police, for instance, on wikipedia. They make for an interesting read. It is amazing how far you can take free speech rights in the US...and rightfully so, imo.

Ok, here it is: NONE.
There. It's summarized. There's NOTHING mystics have to say that I don't understand. Now it's your turn to contradict that by naming something.

This statement is the essence of collectivism.

The most important purpose a transcontinental border wall would serve is to meet the desires and expectations of the American electorate. Regardless of any conversation about the popular vote versus the legitimacy of President Trump, it has been my experience that the Americans who voted for Trump want that wall. It has nothing to do with economic or security benefits; it's a matter of democracy. Trump supporters were gleeful at the thought of the wall. Now, as the fog of campaign rhetoric is lifting, and these people are becoming slightly more aware of the fact that this wall will be one more expensive boondoggle for the taxpayers to bear, they continue to cling to the vision. Will the wall and Trump's other isolationist policies lead to economic and security disaster? They don't care: Build the wall. It will make them feel better.
Here's a fantasy, although not so crazy: A fortification rivaling the Maginot Line and the Chinese Great Wall spans the roughly 1,954 miles of America's southern border. It does exactly that which it was designed to do. The cost of building, maintenance, and staffing it with troops exceeds anything our budgets could sustain. It would make a perfectly good tourist site; visitors from China, Saudi Arabia, and Russia could have their pictures taken while posing atop or in front of the wall brandishing the Trump logo. The heirs of the Trump dynasty would own and operate the hotels and casinos that punctuates the serpentine structure. As our descendants revert to savagery as a means of survival, they can sit around the campfires, and tell their children of the once powerful American Empire, and how the second coming of the Trump-King will once again make America Great!

I'd like to think the chances of this are low, because American business interests in Mexico and with Mexico will put pressure in the opposite direction.
However, we know that Trump is clueless about economics. We know that he would rather stoke his egoless soul with sticking to a stupid idea than admitting he's wrong. We know that the trailer trash that cheered him on wouldn't mind apoorer Mexico that's worse off than they are. 
So, it is possible; though I still believe it is unlikely.
"A prosperous Mexico, caused by a capitalist-leaning Mexico"ought to be an important pillar of US foreign policy. So, it's no surprise that the clueless yahoos and their Dear Leader want the opposite.
Let me add a note of realistic optimism though...
We've all got an overdose of the idiot, but we have not seen reactions. The main reason is that everyone else is waiting to see what the idiot actually does; they don't want to react to his ravings alone. Reactions will come from home and abroad. 
The Mexican president cancelling his visit was one small reaction. Internal Mexican politics made it difficulty or him to meet Trump. Two days later, there are reports that he spoke to the Chiief Yahoo and they agreed not to talk about who will pay for a wall... Not just between themselves, but also in public.
Similarly, The Chief Yahoo said that NATO was obsolete. Then, his defense secretary contradicted him, saying that if NATO did not exist, we'd need to invent it. And, standing by him, Teresa May announced that he'd told her that he was 100% behind NATO, and Cheif Idiot quietly stood quietly by, dangling his bonnet and plume.
As time goes by, we'll see more reaction. It's even possible that the hoards of yahoos will thin as they see their Cheif being caught in more lies, and being bested by others. 

Every time Trump expresses hostility towards Mexico, the peso takes a significant tumble. This has been happening for months, so, surely, even Trump noticed the correlation by now. Whether it's just a negotiating tactic or destabilizing the Mexican economy is his end game, he's clearly trying to hurt Mexico, on purpose. And there are voices on the right cheering it on, as if Mexico's failure would be some kind of victory for the US.
So what happens if it works? Clearly, Mexico is at the United States' mercy. Just the threat of a trade war has caused the peso to drop 12% over the last three months, with experts predicting a 50% drop if the rhetoric escalates. What happens if Trump blows up NAFTA, starts a trade war, Mexico devolves into hyperinflation, and the already unpopular government is overthrown or replaced by populists or radical socialists like in Venezuela? Or worse, a civil war between a weakened government and the cartels?
Could the US end up with a failed state, like Syria or Venezuela, on its doorstep, with tens of millions of economic migrants, and cartel soldiers and Islamic terrorists hiding among them, flooding across the border? And would it be possible for a populist demagogue to exploit that crisis, and expand his power beyond constitutional limits?
And, even if Trump gets voted out of office in four years, could the next President deal with the crisis he inherits? Would there be a way to walk back the failure of the Mexican economy, and stabilize the region? Or will the US be faced with permanent war on its southern border?

Every time Trump expresses hostility towards Mexico, the peso takes a significant tumble. This has been happening for months, so, surely, even Trump noticed the correlation by now. Whether it's just a negotiating tactic or destabilizing the Mexican economy is his end game, he's clearly trying to hurt Mexico, on purpose. And there are voices on the right cheering it on, as if Mexico's failure would be some kind of victory for the US.
So what happens if it works? Clearly, Mexico is at the United States' mercy. Just the threat of a trade war has caused the peso to drop 12% over the last three months, with experts predicting a 50% drop if the rhetoric escalates. What happens if Trump blows up NAFTA, starts a trade war, Mexico devolves into hyperinflation, and the already unpopular government is overthrown or replaced by populists or radical socialists like in Venezuela? Or worse, a civil war between a weakened government and the cartels?
Could the US end up with a failed state, like Syria or Venezuela, on its doorstep, with tens of millions of economic migrants, and cartel soldiers and Islamic terrorists hiding among them, flooding across the border? And would it be possible for a populist demagogue to exploit that crisis, and expand his power beyond constitutional limits?
And, even if Trump gets voted out of office in four years, could the next President deal with the crisis he inherits? Would there be a way to walk back the failure of the Mexican economy, and stabilize the region? Or will the US be faced with permanent war on its southern border?

Every time Trump expresses hostility towards Mexico, the peso takes a significant tumble. This has been happening for months, so, surely, even Trump noticed the correlation by now. Whether it's just a negotiating tactic or destabilizing the Mexican economy is his end game, he's clearly trying to hurt Mexico, on purpose. And there are voices on the right cheering it on, as if Mexico's failure would be some kind of victory for the US.
So what happens if it works? Clearly, Mexico is at the United States' mercy. Just the threat of a trade war has caused the peso to drop 12% over the last three months, with experts predicting a 50% drop if the rhetoric escalates. What happens if Trump blows up NAFTA, starts a trade war, Mexico devolves into hyperinflation, and the already unpopular government is overthrown or replaced by populists or radical socialists like in Venezuela? Or worse, a civil war between a weakened government and the cartels?
Could the US end up with a failed state, like Syria or Venezuela, on its doorstep, with tens of millions of economic migrants, and cartel soldiers and Islamic terrorists hiding among them, flooding across the border? And would it be possible for a populist demagogue to exploit that crisis, and expand his power beyond constitutional limits?
And, even if Trump gets voted out of office in four years, could the next President deal with the crisis he inherits? Would there be a way to walk back the failure of the Mexican economy, and stabilize the region? Or will the US be faced with permanent war on its southern border?

The same day Trump threw out the TPP and initiated a process that will destroy NAFTA, you're choosing to focus on a bureaucratic technicality of next to no consequence?
 

You have presented no argument that they are. I can't think of any either. So I guess it's settled, they're not living for the sake of the Walton family.
Also, your question contains a blatant lie. $9/hour (about the average minimum wage in the US) is a lot more than is required for survival. There are billions of people in the world who work much harder and in much worse conditions, and survive on less than 10% of what Walmart employees get paid.
On a global scale, Walmart employees are part of the economic elite: they live in a level of comfort and luxury that is not available to most people in the world (precisely thanks to the fact that in the US, which is one of the more capitalist countries in the world, the Waltons were able to build a store chain that supports the kind of employment conditions most people can only dream of, for 1.4 million people).

Child rearing is a subject of its own (widely covered in Objectivist circles). Don't have any links for you, but they shouldn't be too hard to find.
As for illness, it is addressed through medicine (sorry for stating the obvious, but since you haven't...). Objectivism believes that all science, including medical science (both basic and applied), should be free from government coercion.
Given the current state of the world (in which medical science and the healthcare industry are not free), most Objectivists are focused on pointing out the flaws of socialist systems, rather than on creating or imagining a healthcare system without government corercion...simply because such a world is so far from reality, given current politics. But there may be materials I'm not aware of, that do that as well. So don't let me stop you from searching for them.

Black Americans are part of American culture. All those ideas you list (revisionist history, affirmative action, etc.) are the products of American culture, not black culture. Blacks didn't come up with them, (mostly white) Americans did.
The way to change black people's minds is through changing the overall culture. There's no reason to focus on one racial group or another.

If you want a value judgement, the people to ask would be women (since they wouldn't get the physical reaction the first photo is intended to cause in men).
And even then, it's an unfair comparison. The second woman doesn't have the team of stylists and professional photographers the Japanese pop star in the first image has.
[just as a note: I know a little bit about the girl in the picture. Her name is Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, and she works hard to create a very interesting image for herself. I even like some of her songs (check out Fashion Monster on youtube, that's probably her best video). But that has nothing to do with the picture. The picture shows a model, made up and photographed by professionals...just by looking at it, the safer assumption would be that the picture has almost nothing to do with the person in it, she might as well be an inanimate object someone else dressed up to look a certain way. Point is, there aren't many objective value judgements you can make about the person in the picture, just by looking at it. ]