quote:Originally posted by GaalDornick: I vote too. By "we" I meant Americans in general.
Americans in general vote. Over 60% of registered voters turned out in 2012- higher than any election since 1948. In addition, a higher percentage of voting population turned out in 2012 than has turned out since the 1970s- and that is despite a lower rate of registration and higher barriers to register. So people seem to be voting, in general.
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: i want you to get them into the raw milk movement using some woo claim that raw milk helps you be immune to vaccine virus shedding. So that they start drinking unpasteurized milk. And literally die.
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his super mega logic with that death toll between ice cream and raw milk is my absolute favorite
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That was my first thought as well. I think there are slightly more people that eat ice cream than drink raw milk
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quote: Her mission is an extension of that of Hussein Obama, to foment unrest and destabilize America. Her message was clear, “whatever is wrong with your life is America and the white man’s fault, and whitey owes you.”
Decide for yourself if that is a fair characterization.
That that kind of extreme disinformation is believed is super depressing. I cannot think that whoever came up with that summary was being sincere, but other people believe it. This is terrible.
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Bill O'Reilly saying "I do know we are heading in the wrong direction on just about every important issue" is just him providing an invitation to feast on his tears for watching his platform literally die off
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quote:Science has now established that human DNA is present on conception. So there really isn't much debate about it.
*adjusts monocle* You don't say.
quote:Going forward, talking points believes America is in for a big shock. I don't know how that shock is going to be delivered. But I do know we are heading in the wrong direction on just about every important issue and the polls back me up. Two thirds of Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction. Whether it's another brutal terror attack here or an economic collapse of some kind, I cannot tell you.
There you have it. He has predicted that some kind of bad thing will happen. Therefore it will have happened because we didn't do what he says.
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In tonight's episode of Grumpy Old Man Who Knows When Things Were Better: tides. How do they work? No one knows!
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: Back to O'Reilly, this was quite a howler:
quote:Science has now established that human DNA is present on conception. So there really isn't much debate about it.
*adjusts monocle* You don't say.
*nods* Yes, I'm sure you've heard about the recent scientific breakthrough that, at long last, proved there is most certainly human DNA present at conception. (which the feminazi abortionists have vociferously denied for years) If you haven't, then it's because the liberal media has been trying to keep it under wraps. Good thing we have Bill O'Reilly to keep us informed.
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I don't know, science always changes its mind. In 5 years science will say there is no human DNA present!
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Did you guys watch the video or just read the transcript? The video has a Watters World segment where Watters totally debunks global warming and other liberal myths with unedited interviews with liberal spokespeople.
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I hadn't watched that - I just read the transcript.
I watched it. Wow, I'm rethinking everything, knowing that someone was able to find some people who vote left but can't articulate support for their position(s). Blastocysts have DNA??? Liberal idiots exist??? Thank you Bill O'Reilly.
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In all seriousness, it's not like he's the first person to use the shtick where an interviewer puts people on the spot (seriously, asking a guy to explain why his state is predominantly liberal or the benefits of legalizing marijuana and then giving them less than 3 seconds before cutting away does not make him dumb. I'm not ashamed to admit it would probably take me about that long to compose a response in my head on the spot) films their response, then cherry-picks and selectively edits the 'funniest' responses. But he's the first person I've seen use it to make a statement about the way most people who follow a political ideology are. Jimmy Kimmel does it all the time and I think Jay Leno used to. But they did it for schadenfreude laughs and didn't use it to pivot to a larger point about the way most people are.
quote:Originally posted by GaalDornick: In all seriousness, it's not like he's the first person to use the shtick where an interviewer puts people on the spot (seriously, asking a guy to explain why his state is predominantly liberal or the benefits of legalizing marijuana and then giving them less than 3 seconds before cutting away does not make him dumb. I'm not ashamed to admit it would probably take me about that long to compose a response in my head on the spot) films their response, then cherry-picks and selectively edits the 'funniest' responses. But he's the first person I've seen use it to make a statement about the way most people who follow a political ideology are. Jimmy Kimmel does it all the time and I think Jay Leno used to. But they did it for schadenfreude laughs and didn't use it to pivot to a larger point about the way most people are.
Actually I see this as worse in a couple of ways. And I'm not a fan of "man on the street," and "there you have it," sort of segments in the first place. There is, as you point out, an incentive for the editor to simply cut creatively, and to only show the responses from people who aren't comfortable in front of the camera.
No, I find this worse also because the segment shows the interviewer's mocking questions, without showing what prompted them. That's downright dishonest, and as long as O'Reilly is still pretending to not be a comedy show (haha), he has a responsibility not to bend the truth into a bizarre and salty pretzel.
But that's all old news. O'Reilly has been blatantly lying to and manipulating his audience for years. It's hardly a secret.
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It doesn't seem like O'Leary is keeping a straight line of reasoning here. He starts off defending the vilification of the 1% with arguments about the importance of small business owners. Small business owners aren't the 1%. Also, he keeps talking about the lack of jobs, but we're sitting on a 5.4% unemployment rate right now that keeps going down. Doesn't exactly corroborate his story that the biggest problem is lack of jobs.
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It doesn't seem like O'Leary is keeping a straight line of reasoning here. He starts off defending the vilification of the 1% with arguments about the importance of small business owners. Small business owners aren't the 1%.
Actually, quite a few small business owners *are* the 1%. "The top 1% by wealth" is actually an amorphous hodgepodge of people of various standards of living (anywhere from upper middle class to "owns their own fleet of personal jets") and disparate incomes, due to A) various forms of wealth generating different amounts of disposable income and B) the fact that it's not a homogenous level of wealth but actually is the most severely skewed to the right. (i.e, the top .5% is roughly 10x as wealthy as the bottom .5%, and so on, until you reach the top .1% where you see an enormous amount of wealth concentrated in the hands of a very few) This can be annoying, since it allows anyone to cherry pick "the top 1%" to mean anything they want it to mean: i.e, Kevin O'Leary (who is a smug, evil little man) can rightly say that a good percentage of the people in the 1% are small business owners as if that brushes aside all of the hedge fund managers and CEOs, etc that own a high percentage of the wealth there. And it's not like wealth is necessarily the best metric to use.
To give you an example, it's entirely possible - even probable, considering the razor thin profit margins a lot of new businesses run at (if they're even profitable at all) - for the owner of $5 million business to earn around $50,000 a year in disposable income.
It's also possible, and unfortunately in our consumerist society even very likely, for someone who makes a salary of $250,000 a year to be hundreds of thousands, or even a million dollars in debt - fancy car, lots of credit card debt, student loans, mortgage on a million dollar home, etc.
The first person is in the top 1% (or close to it) and the second person actually has quite a bit of negative wealth and is in the bottom 10%. But the second person clearly has a much higher standard of living and a lot more disposable income than the first.
I've written pretty extensively about this in other places, but when talking about income inequality and distribution of wealth, there are a lot more factors that go into the equation than what percentile you fall into when calculating net worth. Treating (or even taxing) the top 1% as if they were a homogenous group is a pretty dangerous idea - you need to look at how they got that wealth, how much wealth they accrue every year, how much of that wealth goes back into the economy (i.e, by business does well and the valuation doubles, and I hire 5 more people) vs. how much goes towards enriching oneself (my payday loan company drove 5,000 families into bankruptcy and has thousands more trapped in an endless cycle of debt, another yacht for me!), etc. etc.
The "top 1%" is an easy metric to throw out there and argue about, but unfortunately also a pretty meaningless one.
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What's that weird little hands together squat thing he's doing at the end?
This video makes me supremely uncomfortable. I know the Germans have a word for it. It's when you are so embarrassed for someone you want to turn off your ears and crawl out of your skin.
My body language reading skills ping off that he's psyching himself up to just go for it, man, like give it all the energy and more, and it'll be cool, it'll be better than you think, and people will be like "cool, man," because the force of your passion will carry it through. Fake it until you make it just do it just do it HERE GOES.
Auuurrrghghhh *wince wince cringe like a spider
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What's that weird little hands together squat thing he's doing at the end?
This video makes me supremely uncomfortable. I know the Germans have a word for it. It's when you are so embarrassed for someone you want to turn off your ears and crawl out of your skin.
My body language reading skills ping off that he's psyching himself up to just go for it, man, like give it all the energy and more, and it'll be cool, it'll be better than you think, and people will be like "cool, man," because the force of your passion will carry it through. Fake it until you make it just do it just do it HERE GOES.
Auuurrrghghhh *wince wince cringe like a spider
On the basis of this description I will jump into an open manhole cover before watching this. Seriously, if I watch it it'll have to be old school Stalinist style. Walking down a drab, poorly lit grey hallway, turn a corner, BAM! A big dose of embarrassment humor served up fresh straight out of the hot pipes of the Net.
Um, the followup mashup video made it bearable and kind of hilarious. I would definitely avoid the original. But inserting him into an Avengers or Batman movie made it contextually more appropriate than just him pacing around alone with spasmodic episodes of screaming.
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We don't have to be *quite* as embarrassed for him. It's meant to be a parody, and was meant to be remixed (that's why it was released with a creative commons license and was filmed with a green screen).
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You’re walking in the woods. There’s no one around and your phone is dead. Out of the corner of your eye you spot him… Shia Labeouf He gets down on all fours and breaks into a sprint! He’s gaining on you!” Premise
You are one of the unlucky ones. You have been caught up in a deadly struggle with Shia Labeouf. Band together with other strangers to escape, outwit and possibly even kill Shia Labeouf. Character Creation
You will need :- A name A brief description of your character An item you have in your possession. How to Play
Your character can be anyone. Unless the Shia Master (SM) specifically stipulates it during an action, your general fitness and body shape won’t limit you in any particular way. The item in your possession can be virtually anything with the exception of the following: A working cellphone or other communication device. Large quantities of ammo. Items that immediately and completely resolve the situation. Paper bags with which to trap Shia Labeouf. Each character begins play with 5 blood tokens. These represent your wellbeing. As you are attacked and move through various challenges, you will lose blood tokens. When your Shia Master (SM) requires it, roll a D6. If the number is equal or greater than your current number of blood tokens, you lose one, which is discarded into the centre of the table. Once you lose all five, the next attack will be fatal.The only goal is to survive and escape the scenario you are in. Shia Labeouf will hunt you as long as you remain in the vicinity. The item you have can possibly aid you in some way, though your SM will determine how helpful it is in a given situation. Actions are taken in the following order - The GM describes the scene -> The players offer their actions -> the GM will give how the environment and Shia respond to them. Once the new situation has been described, the cycle repeats. Good luck…. SM’s Section
This is a little or no prep one-shot RPG. Character creation takes about 60 seconds. This is a collaborative story-telling game and has no stats and uses only a single die to do every significant action. Descriptiveness is encouraged! It’s unlikely the game will last more than 2 hours. Shia Labeouf is fast, powerful and possibly naked. Think the bastard son of Jason and Mike Myers with the cruelty of Freddy Krueger and the speed and power of the Wolfman. He hunts mercilessly and will not stop until he has tasted blood and consumed the flesh of his quarry. Gently guide your players by describing the areas they are in. Unless their actions are completely ridiculous, allow them to attempt them. Success is automatic but blood tokens are not unlimited. For game purposes Shia Labeouf has a minimum of 5 +[2x the number of players] in blood tokens, though the number can be adjusted by the SM if they wish to increase the challenge. If the players attack Shia, either directly or with environmental hazards, remove one of his blood tokens then have him retreat to give the players a brief respite. If the players somehow manage to deplete all of Shia’s tokens, they are victorious but forever scarred by their horrifying experience. If a player dies as a result of expending all their blood tokens, these discarded tokens are added to Shia’s total as he consumes the body, bones and all! Of course, while he feasts, the players can flee unimpeded. Interrupting his feeding will greatly anger Shia and cause him to target the interrupter more viciously than the others. Each scenario is an exercise in improvisation for the SM. You are given a setting and expected to run with it in whatever direction Shia chases your players. Think of it as a particularly tongue in cheek horror film. Vivid descriptions are key, whereas maps and miniatures are discouraged. You describe a scene, the players respond and you insert Shia's actions where appropriate. Players roll for actions that may result in harm, physical or mental. This game is not intended to be fair to the players. People will die. If the players manage to get into a safe situation (locked in a safe room, trapping Shia permanently) you can expend 2 of his blood tokens to cause a Shia Surprise! where he escapes the situation, however implausible his escape may be. Do not allow the players a huge amount of time to think or plan. More than five minutes of safety should be interrupted, using a Shia Surprise! if necessary. Feel free to play on horror story cliches and make the game as serious or silly as you wish. Silly is kind of inevitable though. Some locations are given below to get you started. Flip a coin for the left or right column then roll a d6 to decide the nightmare that awaits your players! Hunting Grounds
Hunting Grounds A Dark Wood A locked shopping mall A high school or university campus A large manor house on the hill A ship at sea (or in space) A national park The ghetto at 3am An office building A suburb on Halloween night A summer camp A sprawling subway system A disused amusement park
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I have a few far right-wing Israeli friends on Facebook that post a lot of garbage, usually about Obama hating Israel, and when I saw this link described as 'BBC's blatant bias against Israel' I assumed it would just be them asking hard-hitting questions, probably about Netanyahu's hypocrisy. I was disappointed to see that it was pretty bad questions. The South African apartheid question was irrelevant to the topic and implied a false equivalence between South Africa and Israel. I thought Tzipi Livni handled the interview beautifully.
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Honestly, the people on FB who are claiming that the Charleston killings are "just as much about religion as they are about race" are stomping on my very last nerve.
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It's been making its rounds on FB and I find it pretty fascinating. On one hand, I can identify pretty strongly with his arguments, having seen quite a bit of the sort of anti-factual, witch hunt mentality he's describing. On the other, his use of "millennial" and the way he describes us is pretty annoying, and in a lot of ways defeats the whole point of his article. (by which I mean, arguing against having facts discarded in favor of criticizing assumed motive based on identity, while at the same time establishing a sweepingly categorical identity for your opponents and creating a BS motive for an entire generation of people to behave a certain way... is a little on the nose to say the least)
Also, I think he greatly exaggerates the power and influence of the group he's describing. They're generally viewed as something of a joke and their methods are routinely mocked and discredited, even (especially) by people of my generation.
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The article is "hyper-literate," in the way that a transformer's movie is hyper-kinetic. It reads like he googled the sparks notes for the authorities he claims as justification for his arguments:
quote: When George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four (and here some will lambast me for picking a white male author from a historically colonialist power despite the fact that he fought and wrote against this colonialism), he wrote it to warn against the several dangers of extremism on either side of the political spectrum. Orwell’s magnum opus is about authoritarianism on both ends of the political spectrum.
For starters, this is most definitely not a satisfying thesis for Nineteen Eighty-Four unless you happen to be in the 10th grade and need fodder for a 5 paragraph essay.
Nineteen Eighty-Four has a much more prosaic and complicated moral undercarriage. While on the surface it is about authoritarianism, more deeply, it depicts the inability of humanity to confront its own history and its own nature. That human beings are prone to the ecstasies of power and the abuse of power, and that we are bound to continue to repeat and to perfect our ability to rule and to control ourselves, and our surroundings- to the extent of stripping away our very humanity, is what the book is really all about. Long, long passages of the book deal with this issue in great detail.
Orwell treats the state of the world in Nineteen Eighty-Four as a mere outgrowth of the human condition- an inevitability, not a failure of some political ideology. That human beings would pursue power over their surroundings by plundering the concept of individual thinking was his primary focus. His thesis was essentially that this was an inevitable result of our nature. It's a purely pessimistic work.
Second, and more importantly, so what? This is where the 10th grade style and depth of argumentation really kicks in. He cites a supposed interpretation of Orwell as if that in itself is proof of his point. As if the fact that Orwell's book exists means that a) it is right, and b) it is in support of his arguments. One, it isn't, and two, he makes no effort whatsoever to explain why it might be.
I dunno. Don't believe everything you read.
quote:
quote: 2+2=5 “In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy.” — George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
This particular brand of social justice advocacy assaults reason in a particularly frightening way — by outright denying it and utilizing fear-mongering to discourage dissent. There is no gray: only black and white. One must mimic the orthodoxy or be barred forcibly from the chapel and jeered at by the townspeople. To disagree with the millennial social justice orthodoxy is to make a pariah of oneself willingly. Adherence to the narrative is the single litmus test for collegiate (and beyond) social acceptance these days.
Again, no, no, and no. 2+2=5 is about a demonstration of complete power over reality. There is no gray, but there is also no black or white. In fact, there is a passage in the book that specifically refers to the idea that Winston is expected to be able believe that black *is* white. This is not about the twisting of reality to fit certain parameters- it is about the complete destruction of reality.
It is about the person being replaced by the system- not merely adopting the system. In the book, O'Brien (the chief interlocutor in Winston's sessions in the Ministry of Love) is arguing that the human will to power can overcome even simple logic, and can eventually replace all human agency. He even uses a device to demonstrate to Winston that his ability to comprehend simple logic can be overcome by a force of will.
The ecstasy of power that O'Brien describes is one of "a boot smashing the face of a child... forever." It is a total dominion over the world through the sheer exercise of power for the sake of power. It is not about shunning, or collecting influence, but about totally eradicating the individual will through a patient, overwhelming application of force. And O'Brien states quite plainly that the ultimate goal is: "Power. Pure Power."
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identity politics circles have indeed warped into a cyclically radicalized netherworld of bizarre and cannibalistic psychodrama but at the same time i couldn't even read through half of that article without haaaaaaaaating the author
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: identity politics circles have indeed warped into a cyclically radicalized netherworld of bizarre and cannibalistic psychodrama but at the same time i couldn't even read through half of that article without haaaaaaaaating the author
Yeah. He really does himself in.
quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath:
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: The article is "hyper-literate,"
I feel like I'm missing something here.
No, perhaps I should have explained. The article makes use of something the author has no doubt seen better writers do, splashing out from the page with references to a large number of related works. I used to do the same thing when I thought the epitome of modern writing was The LoveSong of J. Alfred Prufrock (itself written by a 19 year old). It's just done very badly.
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The article makes some theoretically good points in a mess of hasty generalization and unintentional irony.
This stuck out:
quote:A millennial social justice advocate can discount an opinion simply because it is said or written by a group they feel oppresses them. It is a logical fallacy known as ad hominem whereby one attacks the person saying an argument rather than the argument itself. But this logical fallacy has become the primary weapon of the millennial social justice advocate. It is miasma to academia, to critical thinking, and to intellectual honesty. Yet it is the primary mode of operating on college campuses nationwide.
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I didn't actually get through the entire article. At about the tenth time I saw him speak for Millennials I lost interest.
He was making good points about the social media zeitgeist...but I don't know why he's saying it's a phenomenon of millennials.
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Maybe because "millennials" are the go to butt monkeys when it comes time to criticize anything one feels is wrong with society. It's actually an especially irritating trend for me, as well as for most of my friends who are veterans.
There's nothing quite like the bemused look on a 20-something veterans' face when a soft, fat old man starts ranting about "your generation" and how lazy, spoiled, and entitled millennials are. I know for me, it helps to imagine them curled up bawling like a little child when confronted with the physical and psychological toll of working 100 hour weeks for 7 months in 110+ degree weather, or going a month without a shower or something.
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quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: Maybe because "millennials" are the go to butt monkeys when it comes time to criticize anything one feels is wrong with society. It's actually an especially irritating trend for me, as well as for most of my friends who are veterans.
There's nothing quite like the bemused look on a 20-something veterans' face when a soft, fat old man starts ranting about "your generation" and how lazy, spoiled, and entitled millennials are. I know for me, it helps to imagine them curled up bawling like a little child when confronted with the physical and psychological toll of working 100 hour weeks for 7 months in 110+ degree weather, or going a month without a shower or something.
One might almost begin to think that 'kids these days' is a recurring theme, particularly in wealthy nations when things always seemed better when the ranter in question was young and had few cares and many luxuries and things were done for them that they now have to do for others.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Alright. im an annoyed millennial but I don't have any of that.
Well, I've worked 45 hour weeks for more than half a decade in 120+ degree plus environments. But that's just the life of a cook.
But still.
That's pretty arduous as well, and not something I would ever want to do.
The point is you've worked incredibly hard to make it to a point where you're in a relatively comfortable, middle-class income job in your late 20s, and yet are often castigated as lazy, entitled, weak, and unmotivated by people who often as not walked into their careers right out college. I don't really understand where all the distain and contempt for our generation comes from.
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