It is absolutely possible to notice a pattern of genre preferences. I have a hard time believing that you are truly, utterly agnostic to all data points and extrapolations.
I like the Avengers. But it doesn't shock me when somebody just isn't a fan of the superhero movie genre. I don't like sports movies. I suppose it's hypothetically possible that a really great one could come out, but I'd bet against it.
(I'm a bit skeptical of calling Firefly a Western, even if the producers called it that -- but then, I don't know that I really have a good handle on what a Western actually is).
I just want to add: not that I think there isn't a problem with the attitude that men can't be raped. I just don't see how it has anything to do with this thread of discussion.
Why does it matter what direction the fuckwad-*ist direction goes? What relevance does it have to anything?
(Also you'll find social justice people defending basically all the other things you listed, except that's the first time I've ever encountered the term "swole" and honestly, anti-redhead sentiment is just not nearly as high as say, anti-trans sentiment like you were ridiculing)
Being a racist isn't, in and of itself, a problem. Racist actions are a problem, and being a racist just happens to be a motivator for making a bunch of racist actions.
Taking racist actions without being racist is...not a particularly important distinction.
We're not talking about a comedy club here joking about how each ethnicity drives, after all. From the article:
They filled my Tumblr mailbox with the usual anon posts like, ‘Die, you fucking cunt!’ And, ‘You'll know when I rape your mouth hole, bitch!’
Even if it was on their commute route, it would take time to go to blockbuster -- certainly if it was merely near.
And I'm not so convinced the "vast majority" of people had that. I'm not saying they didn't, but I wouldn't assume so. I know that was never true of my parents, aunts, or uncles.
You think that Comcast employees are especially likely to defend Netflix?
Prices rise all the time; the main countervailing forces are technological progress, economies of scale, and occasionally breaking oligarchies.
Physical disc Netflix is a declining business, so they are actually losing economies of scale. There's no great technological progress in physical disc delivery, nor is there a breaking of oligarchies. Thus, you would *expect* prices to rise faster than inflation, barring a service decrease.
First of all, there are more than three phases of matter. A molecule in plasma state, despite being far apart from its neighbours like gas, interacts easily with them like liquids.
Second, "too far apart" is not well-defined or proven.
Third, "molecules aren't moving" isn't true of a solid object, nor have you shown why that's necessary for life.
The life forms we are most familiar with happen to include aspects of all three phases (no plasma aspects in any life form I know of). The artificial things we have created that exhibit some life-like characteristics, even though we all agree they aren't life (at least not yet), tend to be solids, like silicon chips -- electricity provides the transport mechanism through the solids.
This would be true of any planet with any amount of surface water.
This statement isn't true. The rest of your statements are true.
Consider a perfectly spherical planet with no surface water, but with an underground water supply not too far below the surface (eg. as Europa is hypothesized to be).
Now make it less smooth, eg. slam it with meteors such that there's no net loss in matter (possibly a slight net gain), but it's no longer perfectly smooth.
Now you have surface water on a planet with an average elevation higher than the water level.
Basically, any planet with surface water (or methane or whatever) and surface not-water is going to have an average elevation of water and an average elevation of not-water and they are likely going to be similar relative to the size of the planet as a whole, but there's no general statement you can make about which one is higher (there may be a probabilistic statement).
Do you really react so violently to the tiles that it bothers you that they are there in the menu?
The start menu looks fine now. Windows 7 had a bunch of useless buttons, which they've replaced with tiles which at least give you a weather report and a number of unread mails (not visible in the screenshot but a reasonable inference if you've ever used Windows 8 and recognize the tiles). The full screen thing was a disaster. It was basically the same as having a modal dialog. Except worse, since even a modal dialog lets you see in behind.
You will always be further ahead financially if you never pay interest charges.
Demonstrably false, as an absolute statement. If you could get a loan in late 2008 / early 2009, it was a great time to buy blue chip stocks, and you made out like a bandit when they all bounced back.
This goes back to the fact that people see 0 as a magic number. And to be fair, it is a little bit magic -- there's a jump discontinuity in interest rates between having $1 and having -$1. But it's not so magical as that. Sometimes you have to spend money to make money, as you acknowledge with the car loan (that same argument goes to a small business loan).
There's a reason you see hugely profitable businesses issuing debt all the time.
You should note I'm not an American, so half the things you are quoting are just totally irrelevant (mortgage interest deduction on first house, 401k, etc.). Even if I were American, your first link is basically irrelevant and your second link is good but not really contradictory, and a mortgage interest deduction doesn't necessarily make interest rates good -- it's possible for cash to be better than a mortgage loan.
It's actually bizarre, you said: "If you have the cash, use the cash. If you don't, you shouldn't be buying it.". Then you argue that you shouldn't pay off your home. That's contradicting your advice.
However, it's not contradictory to using a credit card. There's 0 interest, that's 0, if you pay in full every month. The cost is carrying a piece of plastic, a potential vector for thieves, ineligibility for "cash discounts" (which most people who pay cash don't get...), and if you're stupid, charging more money than you can pay every month -- I don't make that last mistake, but that's where you're worried and that's where predatory lending comes into play; the rest is the same as debit cards. And if your card does annual fees, that -- most people would be better off with a no-fee card. The benefit is chargeback ability, liability protection, whatever rewards they offer, ability to buy things on the Internet, an infinite series of one-month interest free loans, and FICO score improvements.
Note: interest rates are low right now in many places so keeping the house debt is currently a good option in many, many cases, and I do have a mortgage that I could pay off in cash today if I wanted, but I'm leaving it there to come to term because I think I'll continue to do better on the market. It will come to term long before I retire though, assuming I still live there, especially because where I'm from 30 year fixed-rate mortgages aren't a thing like they are in the US.
Never own a credit card. They are all scams and are far more likely to ruin your credit than help it.
That's basically lowest-common denominator advice -- a better piece that is still a simplification is to ensure your credit card use is always backed by cash (your accounting tips may help in tracking that independently of the banks). A majority (admittedly not a vast majority) of people pay in full every month, and thus do not lose and typically gain from credit cards (other than possible cash-only discounts which aren't super common and imply no debit card either). cite: http://www.creditcards.com/cre...
I agree that it's exceptionally rare that doing anything other than paying in full every month is a good idea, *especially* when you need that cash to eat because that starts a death spiral.
[...] and why paying off your house before retirement is bad.
Also an oversimplification, this one dangerous. There was a time when mortgage rates were higher than some credit card rates...
Suggesting she become a homemaker despite her explicit request for career information and knowing nothing about her other than her gender -- yes, almost certainly misogyny.
I have to preface this by saying I don't currently have the position that any place needs population controls like this right now, so you don't lump me in with this. But your arguments are wild.
... and I thought Hitler died a long time ago.
Not really. He sterilized "undesirables" and hoped to do it before they had one child, so it wasn't so nondiscriminatory as this proposal.
He was after eugenics -- in many cases, using non-heritable criteria -- not population control.
In some ways this is like going after somebody who killed in self-defense in court by saying "you know who else killed people? HITLER!".
Is there any violation of personal freedom greater than dictating whether or not someone can reproduce?
Uhh, yeah. For instance, you can be locked in a cage. Or killed. Or enslaved.
Disallowing reproduction is definitely on the list, but it's not at the top.
Who the fuck gave you or anyone else the authority to decide whether or not the earth was overpopulated or who should "be allowed" to have children?
Reality may give us that authority.
We might not be there yet, but his hypothetical had, as its premise, the notion that the region *could not sustain those numbers*. That means you don't have kids, or you kill people, or you export people. If there's a third option, that means you could sustain those numbers and the premise is contradicted.
That's real big of you, you murderous prick.
Now you're making shit up. He did not advocate murder.
is to encourage economic growth by reducing government interference in people's lives
There are a lot of places with weak governments and poor economies. The idea that government interference causes babies is novel.
Education on birth control and unrestricted access to birth control -- both of which are typically, though not necessarily, provided by governments -- have the most consistent record or stabilizing population sizes. General population wealth and low infant & childhood mortality rates is also significant, but people have lots of funny contradictory ideas about how to improve that.
There's nothing greater than a semantic argument on slashdot.
Arguing whether science is a form of philosophy is like arguing whether the Game of Thrones TV show is an example of art. You don't necessarily have any disagreement about what science is (even though that's what everybody is focussing on); you have a disagreement on the definition of philosophy (which, like art, is notoriously hard to pin down).
Look unless she took those pics with an actual non internet connected camera, she gave implicit permission to post them by taking them with an internet enabled device.
No she didn't. What a bizarre assertion.
People ARE going to Hack your shizz.
What? As far as I can tell, this wasn't hacked. And even if it was...that's the opposite of permission.
This is today; you don't leave money in an open box on front porch expecting it to remain unmolested. You don't leave your front door unlocked. You don't leave the car keys in the ignition. You don't leave your packages in plain sight at a mall. You don't take pictures of yourself naked for any reason and leave them on an unsecured device and expect it to remain there untouched.
You realize people taking advantage of all the other things you mentioned are crimes that you can pursue in courts and nobody will blame you? In fact, you realize that if somebody steals your car, even when you left the keys in the ignition, or breaks into your house through an unlocked door, and you *don't* follow up on it with the authorities, that's viewed with suspicion?
(For that matter, I don't think my parents even have a front door lock, and I know my dad leaves the keys in the car -- my mom doesn't mostly so that she can click the button to find her car in the parking lot. Not everybody lives in fear -- to be fair, lots of people live in places where the fear is warranted. And I do lock my doors, living in a more heavily populated area. And none of us would leave a package unattended in a mall).
It's not the insistence on retribution that's the problem here. It's the fact that it was directed at the wrong target. Tor didn't have anything to do with this any more than the mall had anything to do with your package, left in plain sight, being stolen. Or a privately-owned highway that they used to drive your car away, after you left the keys in the car.
He's not saying taking pictures is repugnant. It's republishing them not only without her consent, not only *against* her express wishes, but specifically to humiliate her and make her angry.
Yes, Tor is the wrong target for punishment (though I'm unclear on whether she was seeking punitive damages from Tor, or just suing them to try to get them to help de-anonymize things).
You, however, are actively participating in the problem, by re-posting those links to slashdot. I'm not saying your hands should be chopped off or anything ridiculous, but I am saying that your behaviour is repugnant.
I think people have different notions of what "freedom from religion" means. What you're talking about is not at all the same as what some others I've seen have talked about. The first time I encountered the "separation clause doesn't imply freedom from religion" was somebody arguing that it would not violate the US constitution to require politicians to swear that they believed in a god (without specifying further the attributes of this god), which seems like a crystal-clear violation to me.
Saying that agnostic has in practice become the true absence of religion (as opposed to atheism which is "supposed to be") is not a sensible statement. It's like saying that sometimes people dye their hair, so in practice blue eyed people are the true brunettes.
One thing that's interesting is that nobody sits around talking about the absence of things. It doesn't make sense to sit in a circle and talk about how there are no robot showbusinessmen on Uranus that are re-enacting Earth's transmissions and rebroadcasting them with Faster-Than-Light technology to their home galaxy. Likewise, atheists don't sit around and talk about how there's no god.
So if you see atheists talking on the Internet, or go to atheist forums, then it's almost by definition that they are talking about religions (usually the dominant religion in their area, which in English-language forums is usually Christianity). And just like most informal groups of people, some of them are total jackasses about it.
Even so, a statement like this seems starkly opposed to reality:
as a group they go out and try to force other to believe as they do.
I've seen an atheist argue that a condition of political office should be atheism, on the basis that admitting that you are influenced by things that aren't real means you are mentally incompetent in the worst way*, and I can see how that is like "forcing" others to believe as they do -- but this is not a common stance, even among the vitriolic internet atheists.
*I also know deeply religious people who got extremely uncomfortable with George Bush's "god talks to me" speech, because they might not agree with the atheist I just mentioned, but they follow his argument as far as thinking that it's really not a good sign if a powerful political leader claims to be hearing the voice of god in his head.
Slashdot Mirror
It is absolutely possible to notice a pattern of genre preferences. I have a hard time believing that you are truly, utterly agnostic to all data points and extrapolations.
I like the Avengers. But it doesn't shock me when somebody just isn't a fan of the superhero movie genre. I don't like sports movies. I suppose it's hypothetically possible that a really great one could come out, but I'd bet against it.
(I'm a bit skeptical of calling Firefly a Western, even if the producers called it that -- but then, I don't know that I really have a good handle on what a Western actually is).
Would you be okay with a hypothetical country that allows ALL their citizens the exact same right: one vote per penis?
I just want to add: not that I think there isn't a problem with the attitude that men can't be raped. I just don't see how it has anything to do with this thread of discussion.
I don't understand your point. The citation was for a statistic on the percent of women being raped.
Are you asserting that as many men are being raped as women? Or what are you asserting? Even if that is your assertion, it's beside the point.
Dude, those are not okay either.
Why do you defend some *obviously* not-okay things by giving examples of other *obviously* not-okay things?
Wait...what the fuck are you talking about?
No, it isn't redundant -- they are orthogonal.
Cis is about what sex you view yourself as, relative to what one might have guessed at birth.
Straight is about what sex you are interested in, relative to what sex you view yourself as.
Why does it matter what direction the fuckwad-*ist direction goes? What relevance does it have to anything?
(Also you'll find social justice people defending basically all the other things you listed, except that's the first time I've ever encountered the term "swole" and honestly, anti-redhead sentiment is just not nearly as high as say, anti-trans sentiment like you were ridiculing)
That's entirely a distraction.
Being a racist isn't, in and of itself, a problem. Racist actions are a problem, and being a racist just happens to be a motivator for making a bunch of racist actions.
Taking racist actions without being racist is...not a particularly important distinction.
We're not talking about a comedy club here joking about how each ethnicity drives, after all. From the article:
They filled my Tumblr mailbox with the usual anon posts like, ‘Die, you fucking cunt!’ And, ‘You'll know when I rape your mouth hole, bitch!’
Even if it was on their commute route, it would take time to go to blockbuster -- certainly if it was merely near.
And I'm not so convinced the "vast majority" of people had that. I'm not saying they didn't, but I wouldn't assume so. I know that was never true of my parents, aunts, or uncles.
You think that Comcast employees are especially likely to defend Netflix?
Prices rise all the time; the main countervailing forces are technological progress, economies of scale, and occasionally breaking oligarchies.
Physical disc Netflix is a declining business, so they are actually losing economies of scale. There's no great technological progress in physical disc delivery, nor is there a breaking of oligarchies. Thus, you would *expect* prices to rise faster than inflation, barring a service decrease.
What?
First of all, there are more than three phases of matter. A molecule in plasma state, despite being far apart from its neighbours like gas, interacts easily with them like liquids.
Second, "too far apart" is not well-defined or proven.
Third, "molecules aren't moving" isn't true of a solid object, nor have you shown why that's necessary for life.
The life forms we are most familiar with happen to include aspects of all three phases (no plasma aspects in any life form I know of). The artificial things we have created that exhibit some life-like characteristics, even though we all agree they aren't life (at least not yet), tend to be solids, like silicon chips -- electricity provides the transport mechanism through the solids.
This would be true of any planet with any amount of surface water.
This statement isn't true. The rest of your statements are true.
Consider a perfectly spherical planet with no surface water, but with an underground water supply not too far below the surface (eg. as Europa is hypothesized to be).
Now make it less smooth, eg. slam it with meteors such that there's no net loss in matter (possibly a slight net gain), but it's no longer perfectly smooth.
Now you have surface water on a planet with an average elevation higher than the water level.
Basically, any planet with surface water (or methane or whatever) and surface not-water is going to have an average elevation of water and an average elevation of not-water and they are likely going to be similar relative to the size of the planet as a whole, but there's no general statement you can make about which one is higher (there may be a probabilistic statement).
Do you really react so violently to the tiles that it bothers you that they are there in the menu?
The start menu looks fine now. Windows 7 had a bunch of useless buttons, which they've replaced with tiles which at least give you a weather report and a number of unread mails (not visible in the screenshot but a reasonable inference if you've ever used Windows 8 and recognize the tiles). The full screen thing was a disaster. It was basically the same as having a modal dialog. Except worse, since even a modal dialog lets you see in behind.
You will always be further ahead financially if you never pay interest charges.
Demonstrably false, as an absolute statement. If you could get a loan in late 2008 / early 2009, it was a great time to buy blue chip stocks, and you made out like a bandit when they all bounced back.
This goes back to the fact that people see 0 as a magic number. And to be fair, it is a little bit magic -- there's a jump discontinuity in interest rates between having $1 and having -$1. But it's not so magical as that. Sometimes you have to spend money to make money, as you acknowledge with the car loan (that same argument goes to a small business loan).
There's a reason you see hugely profitable businesses issuing debt all the time.
No, I'm not incorrect.
You should note I'm not an American, so half the things you are quoting are just totally irrelevant (mortgage interest deduction on first house, 401k, etc.). Even if I were American, your first link is basically irrelevant and your second link is good but not really contradictory, and a mortgage interest deduction doesn't necessarily make interest rates good -- it's possible for cash to be better than a mortgage loan.
It's actually bizarre, you said: "If you have the cash, use the cash. If you don't, you shouldn't be buying it.". Then you argue that you shouldn't pay off your home. That's contradicting your advice.
However, it's not contradictory to using a credit card. There's 0 interest, that's 0, if you pay in full every month. The cost is carrying a piece of plastic, a potential vector for thieves, ineligibility for "cash discounts" (which most people who pay cash don't get...), and if you're stupid, charging more money than you can pay every month -- I don't make that last mistake, but that's where you're worried and that's where predatory lending comes into play; the rest is the same as debit cards. And if your card does annual fees, that -- most people would be better off with a no-fee card. The benefit is chargeback ability, liability protection, whatever rewards they offer, ability to buy things on the Internet, an infinite series of one-month interest free loans, and FICO score improvements.
Note: interest rates are low right now in many places so keeping the house debt is currently a good option in many, many cases, and I do have a mortgage that I could pay off in cash today if I wanted, but I'm leaving it there to come to term because I think I'll continue to do better on the market. It will come to term long before I retire though, assuming I still live there, especially because where I'm from 30 year fixed-rate mortgages aren't a thing like they are in the US.
Never own a credit card. They are all scams and are far more likely to ruin your credit than help it.
That's basically lowest-common denominator advice -- a better piece that is still a simplification is to ensure your credit card use is always backed by cash (your accounting tips may help in tracking that independently of the banks). A majority (admittedly not a vast majority) of people pay in full every month, and thus do not lose and typically gain from credit cards (other than possible cash-only discounts which aren't super common and imply no debit card either). cite: http://www.creditcards.com/cre...
I agree that it's exceptionally rare that doing anything other than paying in full every month is a good idea, *especially* when you need that cash to eat because that starts a death spiral.
[...] and why paying off your house before retirement is bad.
Also an oversimplification, this one dangerous. There was a time when mortgage rates were higher than some credit card rates...
Suggesting she become a homemaker despite her explicit request for career information and knowing nothing about her other than her gender -- yes, almost certainly misogyny.
I have to preface this by saying I don't currently have the position that any place needs population controls like this right now, so you don't lump me in with this. But your arguments are wild.
... and I thought Hitler died a long time ago.
Not really. He sterilized "undesirables" and hoped to do it before they had one child, so it wasn't so nondiscriminatory as this proposal.
He was after eugenics -- in many cases, using non-heritable criteria -- not population control.
In some ways this is like going after somebody who killed in self-defense in court by saying "you know who else killed people? HITLER!".
Is there any violation of personal freedom greater than dictating whether or not someone can reproduce?
Uhh, yeah. For instance, you can be locked in a cage. Or killed. Or enslaved.
Disallowing reproduction is definitely on the list, but it's not at the top.
Who the fuck gave you or anyone else the authority to decide whether or not the earth was overpopulated or who should "be allowed" to have children?
Reality may give us that authority.
We might not be there yet, but his hypothetical had, as its premise, the notion that the region *could not sustain those numbers*. That means you don't have kids, or you kill people, or you export people. If there's a third option, that means you could sustain those numbers and the premise is contradicted.
That's real big of you, you murderous prick.
Now you're making shit up. He did not advocate murder.
is to encourage economic growth by reducing government interference in people's lives
There are a lot of places with weak governments and poor economies. The idea that government interference causes babies is novel.
Education on birth control and unrestricted access to birth control -- both of which are typically, though not necessarily, provided by governments -- have the most consistent record or stabilizing population sizes. General population wealth and low infant & childhood mortality rates is also significant, but people have lots of funny contradictory ideas about how to improve that.
There's nothing greater than a semantic argument on slashdot.
Arguing whether science is a form of philosophy is like arguing whether the Game of Thrones TV show is an example of art. You don't necessarily have any disagreement about what science is (even though that's what everybody is focussing on); you have a disagreement on the definition of philosophy (which, like art, is notoriously hard to pin down).
Look unless she took those pics with an actual non internet connected camera, she gave implicit permission to post them by taking them with an internet enabled device.
No she didn't. What a bizarre assertion.
People ARE going to Hack your shizz.
What? As far as I can tell, this wasn't hacked. And even if it was...that's the opposite of permission.
This is today; you don't leave money in an open box on front porch expecting it to remain unmolested. You don't leave your front door unlocked. You don't leave the car keys in the ignition. You don't leave your packages in plain sight at a mall. You don't take pictures of yourself naked for any reason and leave them on an unsecured device and expect it to remain there untouched.
You realize people taking advantage of all the other things you mentioned are crimes that you can pursue in courts and nobody will blame you? In fact, you realize that if somebody steals your car, even when you left the keys in the ignition, or breaks into your house through an unlocked door, and you *don't* follow up on it with the authorities, that's viewed with suspicion?
(For that matter, I don't think my parents even have a front door lock, and I know my dad leaves the keys in the car -- my mom doesn't mostly so that she can click the button to find her car in the parking lot. Not everybody lives in fear -- to be fair, lots of people live in places where the fear is warranted. And I do lock my doors, living in a more heavily populated area. And none of us would leave a package unattended in a mall).
It's not the insistence on retribution that's the problem here. It's the fact that it was directed at the wrong target. Tor didn't have anything to do with this any more than the mall had anything to do with your package, left in plain sight, being stolen. Or a privately-owned highway that they used to drive your car away, after you left the keys in the car.
He's not saying taking pictures is repugnant. It's republishing them not only without her consent, not only *against* her express wishes, but specifically to humiliate her and make her angry.
Yes, Tor is the wrong target for punishment (though I'm unclear on whether she was seeking punitive damages from Tor, or just suing them to try to get them to help de-anonymize things).
You, however, are actively participating in the problem, by re-posting those links to slashdot. I'm not saying your hands should be chopped off or anything ridiculous, but I am saying that your behaviour is repugnant.
I think people have different notions of what "freedom from religion" means. What you're talking about is not at all the same as what some others I've seen have talked about. The first time I encountered the "separation clause doesn't imply freedom from religion" was somebody arguing that it would not violate the US constitution to require politicians to swear that they believed in a god (without specifying further the attributes of this god), which seems like a crystal-clear violation to me.
Saying that agnostic has in practice become the true absence of religion (as opposed to atheism which is "supposed to be") is not a sensible statement. It's like saying that sometimes people dye their hair, so in practice blue eyed people are the true brunettes.
One thing that's interesting is that nobody sits around talking about the absence of things. It doesn't make sense to sit in a circle and talk about how there are no robot showbusinessmen on Uranus that are re-enacting Earth's transmissions and rebroadcasting them with Faster-Than-Light technology to their home galaxy. Likewise, atheists don't sit around and talk about how there's no god.
So if you see atheists talking on the Internet, or go to atheist forums, then it's almost by definition that they are talking about religions (usually the dominant religion in their area, which in English-language forums is usually Christianity). And just like most informal groups of people, some of them are total jackasses about it.
Even so, a statement like this seems starkly opposed to reality:
as a group they go out and try to force other to believe as they do.
I've seen an atheist argue that a condition of political office should be atheism, on the basis that admitting that you are influenced by things that aren't real means you are mentally incompetent in the worst way*, and I can see how that is like "forcing" others to believe as they do -- but this is not a common stance, even among the vitriolic internet atheists.
*I also know deeply religious people who got extremely uncomfortable with George Bush's "god talks to me" speech, because they might not agree with the atheist I just mentioned, but they follow his argument as far as thinking that it's really not a good sign if a powerful political leader claims to be hearing the voice of god in his head.
By any standard. The term undesirable is used because it's not specific.