Do any of the people criticizing the IRS know how much it costs to shoot anything? It takes cameras and lighting and wardrobe and actors and food for everyone involved and someone to edit the whole thing together, not to mention several other things. Commercials, TV shows, films, and music video are all commonly shot on much higher budgets than this, and judging from glimpses at the video in question it does look quite low budget. If anything they should be praised for trying to be interesting while keeping it inexpensive, assuming the $60,000 figure is accurate.
In the frontier days of the internet there were fewer ads but the quality of the content was a fair bit lower. I'm not even talking about the technology here, I'm talking about eyesore websites where someone wrote a bunch of inane details about themselves and their interests, websites that were indefinitely Under Construction. Back then one could run searches on particular topics and not get back any results, or at least any results of value. Certainly UseNet is looked back upon fondly by this group, but even then there was always some troublemaker that insisted on crossposting something controversial between two conflicted groups (i.e. asking a question and crossposting between an atheist and christian group so that the replies show up on both groups), never mind the more conventional trolls. Anyone looking back on AOL ought to remember that they censored the hell out of your environment there-- you got kicked off for swearing and naughty content was carefully sanitized from their download archives. Before I got on the internet, I remember a friend telling me a number of stories of how he got kicked off different BBSes for swearing and fighting with admins.
The present internet is a lot more crowded but with it there is a lot more content. More of it is crap, and more of it is precious, because there is a lot more content. It is more commercialized and there are a lot more ads, but it is a lot bigger and more sophisticated. Yes, more sophisticated. The hacker types that use math references for user names are still out there, and alongside them we have specialists and connoisseurs of every kind weighing in on every topic one can possibly think of. Without getting into the downsides and problems still faced, could you have ever imagined something quite as extensive as Wikipedia back then? Let alone all the smaller wikis created for greater detail into countless subjects?
As long as the internet thrives, it will continue to get just a little more amazing. And a little more awful.
Re:A racket for many, a valuable experience for fe
on
Just Say No To College
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· Score: 1
Hear hear. I would agree that sometimes college is a little too soon. I for one started out involuntarily dragging my way hobbling through college in a nearly constant state of academic probation, miserable and loathing the subjects I had to deal with. Yet a year and a half after graduating, when I voluntarily returned to study a different field, I enjoyed the material even with my considerably heavier assignments and wound up on the dean's honor list.
Hear hear, I concur. The Republican party has been a bit melodramatic and for that there's a good chance that the more outrageous things being said are emotional reactions (but they should really rethink publicly getting racist about it). There was a lot of fear and uncertainty on the left when Bush got re-elected with the abrasive way he dealt with other countries, and the result was a lot of people on the left hoping for, or even speaking of more of the same.
Do you really imagine every time utters the "n" word, they actually believe in the superiority of the white race?
It's a statement suggesting inferiority of African races, used by plenty of Jews, Hispanics, Asians, and so on. "Kike" doesn't mean "White is best" either, it means "damn non-Christian Jews"
Someone who calls the president an idiot is attacking his competency. Someone calling him a "nigger" is targeting the fact that he's colored. Preemptively, anyone out there who wants to disingenuously bring up the dictionary's definition of the word is denying how its usage is going to be construed.
At my local Trader Joe's there are usually a broad and scaling variety of meats and produce, almost all relabelled with the store's brand regardless of origin. A package of strawberries, a package of extra sweet premium strawberries, then a package of organic strawberries. A whole chicken, an all natural chicken, an organic free range chicken, and then a kosher chicken. And so on. All ordered from cheapest to most expensive. Whole Foods has a staggering variety of teas (which is the only thing I ever go there for). And even most supermarkets have a "Value" generic before the generic brand, which precede a variety of brand names. On an underlying level, more space on the shelves are dedicated to products more expensive than the cheapest option available, than the cheapest and generic options.
My point was that when people have a choice in the matter, the budget to permit such options, they don't beeline for the $0.79 cent roll of paper towels that fall apart before getting the job done or the cheap meat that carries a conspicuously bleachy flavor. People aim for quality when they can get it, or when it matters to them.
They buy quality/brand names when it matters or when they can afford it. If people only cared for the cheapest products available, there wouldn't quite be a market for organic free range cage free free trade products made without high fructose corn syrup. There wouldn't be such large lines for Apple products (ok this is more a case of status symbol but it doesn't take away from my point too much).
"Radical" is the term you are looking for, and you are correct, it extends into every ideology whether political or religious (same shit; the belief of, "a big man in high places will make everything perfect if we would all just agree to do what he wants"). Whether it's a vegan that proclaims "MEAT IS MURDER" and harasses anyone who eats dairy products, the "fuck science it's all magic" breed of Republican, gay guys so flamboyant that they gleefully say the most vulgar and inappropriate things in public, or the Atheist that wants to pick a fight with every Christian he meets, taking beliefs to extremes makes the entire group look bad.
I too had the very first issue; the one with Super Mario Bros 2 on the front cover. However, I have to admit that I dropped my subscription a few years later, and afterwards only re-subscribed because each time my subscription was about to run out they offered free Player's Guides worth the same (if not greater) cost as the annual subscription. Not only was this in an age before GameFAQs, the art was pretty and wasn't going to be found anywhere else.
Sure Nintendo Power was very biased, but you have to admit that they really knew how to make every game, even the crappy ones, sound like a lot of fun. With the maps, walkthroughs, and extensive coverage of the games they reviewed, they really knew how to hype up pretty much anything. Being from an era when video games weren't as popular and gamers were not nearly as connected, they pulled off things that can't be pulled off anymore.
They fell out of relevance fast once arcades and other companies started to give Nintendo consoles some decent competition, and I never would have guessed that they would have outlasted EGM-- or even survived this long after the internet started running circles around gaming magazines. But when they first began they were all young gamers had, and that will earn them a special place with many.
The people in the former group are often overreacting to unique circumstances. The precautions that followed the Columbine shooting such as metal detectors, transparent backpacks, and cracking down extra hard on anything resembling bullying were an over the top reaction to an unusual event. Following 9/11, one cannot even begin to list the different ways that both the people and the government started trying to make sure this that a very unusual and unlikely event would never happen again.
In the case of the latter, one can try to look at the signs, but how much can be done without reaching past what the law ought to be doing?
A wise fictional doctor once said, "Bad things sometimes happen."
An unfortunate day not to have any mod points for you. Between misinformation and lies and the flood of disinfo attempting to fill in the blanks, how can anyone know for sure what to think? Only a couple of days after the incident that fallout map started making its rounds, and when the question comes up of how dangerous 750 rads is... yeah. Not terribly surprising people in New York were flipping out and hoarding radiation pills. While I don't condone mass hysteria, I agree that silence is worse on subjects like this.
This writing tries to twist things and make it sound like guns are the only legitimate force, and because other weapons may kill, they're as good as lethal.
Why a gun and not a taser? Why not pepper spray? If it must be a gun, why lethal rounds instead of rubber bullets or beanbag rounds? These are all less than lethal (note I did not say nonlethal) options that require about as much manual dexterity as a gun full of lead and show a greater sincerity for an intent to self defense. You will still discourage or stop most attackers, and if your judgement was impaired somehow the innocent will survive your ignorance in such a matter. (i.e. missing and accidentally hitting a 12 year old, making assumptions when two people are fighting and shooting the creepier looking one)
People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force, watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst.
Because it might be possible to punch somebody fatally that opens the floodgates to equate any aggression with an intent to kill? The less than lethal weapons mentioned all have a chance at killing their targets but the idea is that they are less likely to kill.
I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid.
Semantics. It means you're too cowardly to trust reason to function in day to day life.
It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The really dangerous people who have less to lose, the people who don't give a fuck, the people with the excess courage and confidence that they'll be the one to survive a shootout-- those are the people who are going to who are going to try to be faster on the draw. Those are the people who are going to want more expensive and dangerous (or illegal) weapons than you have. Those are the people who are feeling lucky enough to make you draw your weapon because they're betting they're faster or that you're going to panic and hesitate or misfire. A sociopath brimming with confidence, a thug with experience in shootouts drawing a family man with kids he wants to come home to into a confrontation, a gangster with a much stronger gun than the law abiding civilians can afford or legally own... how does the personal firearm equalize anything on those grounds?
The real courage would be the quiet confidence to stop an aggressor from harming you or himself without being dragged down by fantasies about killing the bad guys.
That may be, but a 'smart person' lacking enough would be regarded as an "eccentric" at best and a freak at worst if they blundered too much socially. Smiling nervously and not being able to say anything, or behaving callously isn't that uncommon amongst people with otherwise sharp minds.
Dumb people are those that chug ten Monsters in under an hour, play chicken on a busy highway at midday. Are people that smoke pot or drink themselves to death?
'Smart people' can develop addictions too. To caffeine, to video games, to drugs, to alcohol, to gambling, to thrill seeking, to porn. They often do. This ties into the third part rather nicely:
But, answer me this question: Why are smart people, who know so much, often die at a younger age than those who barely know the founding president of our country?
My best guess would be the stress. Because more is expected of them, because they were bullied, because they think too much about the things that most people stop thinking about once their head starts to hurt. Depression sets in, and then those addictions become the relief.
I don't really agree with the conventional idea of people being "smart" and "dumb", the concepts are used in shallow ways. Most people I've met are "smart" in some form, even as so many have proven themselves dumb in another form. I believe that it's a matter of how it manifests.
Some people are good at memorizing things. Some people have a keen perception of patterns which gives them insight into what might logically come next. Some people just put a lot of effort into studying and work their way into understanding a subject through sheer diligence. Some are fast learners. And that thug loitering on the street corner that barely knows how to speak properly? He picks up on body language in a way nobody else can.
Meanwhile those people all have their flaws. The memorization guy might have horrible social skills. Perhaps insightful pattern guy gets sentimental about the things he believes in, and thus becomes stubborn and irrational about things that don't match his views. The diligent one is really just a stubborn person faking it-- they are terrible and it takes them a long time to learn, but they invest the time beating it into their head. The fast learner picks up on something quickly, but then becomes bored of it right away and moves on with only a superficial understanding of the subject. Or, the fast learner never learned to study, so when the time comes he is in a fix. I think you can fill in the blanks as you wish for the thug on the street corner.
This is the reason why society manages to function while we witness so many stupid people.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps "homebrew" is the word you're looking for.
Do any of the people criticizing the IRS know how much it costs to shoot anything? It takes cameras and lighting and wardrobe and actors and food for everyone involved and someone to edit the whole thing together, not to mention several other things. Commercials, TV shows, films, and music video are all commonly shot on much higher budgets than this, and judging from glimpses at the video in question it does look quite low budget. If anything they should be praised for trying to be interesting while keeping it inexpensive, assuming the $60,000 figure is accurate.
In the frontier days of the internet there were fewer ads but the quality of the content was a fair bit lower. I'm not even talking about the technology here, I'm talking about eyesore websites where someone wrote a bunch of inane details about themselves and their interests, websites that were indefinitely Under Construction. Back then one could run searches on particular topics and not get back any results, or at least any results of value. Certainly UseNet is looked back upon fondly by this group, but even then there was always some troublemaker that insisted on crossposting something controversial between two conflicted groups (i.e. asking a question and crossposting between an atheist and christian group so that the replies show up on both groups), never mind the more conventional trolls. Anyone looking back on AOL ought to remember that they censored the hell out of your environment there-- you got kicked off for swearing and naughty content was carefully sanitized from their download archives. Before I got on the internet, I remember a friend telling me a number of stories of how he got kicked off different BBSes for swearing and fighting with admins.
The present internet is a lot more crowded but with it there is a lot more content. More of it is crap, and more of it is precious, because there is a lot more content. It is more commercialized and there are a lot more ads, but it is a lot bigger and more sophisticated. Yes, more sophisticated. The hacker types that use math references for user names are still out there, and alongside them we have specialists and connoisseurs of every kind weighing in on every topic one can possibly think of. Without getting into the downsides and problems still faced, could you have ever imagined something quite as extensive as Wikipedia back then? Let alone all the smaller wikis created for greater detail into countless subjects?
As long as the internet thrives, it will continue to get just a little more amazing. And a little more awful.
Remember when:
-chat rooms and web forums were TROLL-FREE? People were actually nice and considerate to each other!
Nope, I can't either.
There are reports of catfish attacking humans as well. From the sound of things, they'll eat anything they're big enough to attempt to eat.
Hear hear. I would agree that sometimes college is a little too soon. I for one started out involuntarily dragging my way hobbling through college in a nearly constant state of academic probation, miserable and loathing the subjects I had to deal with. Yet a year and a half after graduating, when I voluntarily returned to study a different field, I enjoyed the material even with my considerably heavier assignments and wound up on the dean's honor list.
It's been tried already. Just like with anything else that gets enough votes, you'll get a long statement about why everything is already in place, and nothing further will be done.
Hear hear, I concur. The Republican party has been a bit melodramatic and for that there's a good chance that the more outrageous things being said are emotional reactions (but they should really rethink publicly getting racist about it). There was a lot of fear and uncertainty on the left when Bush got re-elected with the abrasive way he dealt with other countries, and the result was a lot of people on the left hoping for, or even speaking of more of the same.
Do you really imagine every time utters the "n" word, they actually believe in the superiority of the white race?
It's a statement suggesting inferiority of African races, used by plenty of Jews, Hispanics, Asians, and so on. "Kike" doesn't mean "White is best" either, it means "damn non-Christian Jews"
Someone who calls the president an idiot is attacking his competency. Someone calling him a "nigger" is targeting the fact that he's colored. Preemptively, anyone out there who wants to disingenuously bring up the dictionary's definition of the word is denying how its usage is going to be construed.
Nope that keenly describes public school on the West Coast too.
At my local Trader Joe's there are usually a broad and scaling variety of meats and produce, almost all relabelled with the store's brand regardless of origin. A package of strawberries, a package of extra sweet premium strawberries, then a package of organic strawberries. A whole chicken, an all natural chicken, an organic free range chicken, and then a kosher chicken. And so on. All ordered from cheapest to most expensive. Whole Foods has a staggering variety of teas (which is the only thing I ever go there for). And even most supermarkets have a "Value" generic before the generic brand, which precede a variety of brand names. On an underlying level, more space on the shelves are dedicated to products more expensive than the cheapest option available, than the cheapest and generic options.
My point was that when people have a choice in the matter, the budget to permit such options, they don't beeline for the $0.79 cent roll of paper towels that fall apart before getting the job done or the cheap meat that carries a conspicuously bleachy flavor. People aim for quality when they can get it, or when it matters to them.
They buy quality/brand names when it matters or when they can afford it. If people only cared for the cheapest products available, there wouldn't quite be a market for organic free range cage free free trade products made without high fructose corn syrup. There wouldn't be such large lines for Apple products (ok this is more a case of status symbol but it doesn't take away from my point too much).
The irony is that these threads on the subject of trolling seem to be generating the intended effect.
It's good to know I wasn't the only one who thought of them with that exact same phrase in mind.
"Radical" is the term you are looking for, and you are correct, it extends into every ideology whether political or religious (same shit; the belief of, "a big man in high places will make everything perfect if we would all just agree to do what he wants"). Whether it's a vegan that proclaims "MEAT IS MURDER" and harasses anyone who eats dairy products, the "fuck science it's all magic" breed of Republican, gay guys so flamboyant that they gleefully say the most vulgar and inappropriate things in public, or the Atheist that wants to pick a fight with every Christian he meets, taking beliefs to extremes makes the entire group look bad.
LVNs and other lower level nurses don't make much money at all. The ones that do are the supervisors and others with management positions.
I too had the very first issue; the one with Super Mario Bros 2 on the front cover. However, I have to admit that I dropped my subscription a few years later, and afterwards only re-subscribed because each time my subscription was about to run out they offered free Player's Guides worth the same (if not greater) cost as the annual subscription. Not only was this in an age before GameFAQs, the art was pretty and wasn't going to be found anywhere else.
Sure Nintendo Power was very biased, but you have to admit that they really knew how to make every game, even the crappy ones, sound like a lot of fun. With the maps, walkthroughs, and extensive coverage of the games they reviewed, they really knew how to hype up pretty much anything. Being from an era when video games weren't as popular and gamers were not nearly as connected, they pulled off things that can't be pulled off anymore.
They fell out of relevance fast once arcades and other companies started to give Nintendo consoles some decent competition, and I never would have guessed that they would have outlasted EGM-- or even survived this long after the internet started running circles around gaming magazines. But when they first began they were all young gamers had, and that will earn them a special place with many.
The people in the former group are often overreacting to unique circumstances. The precautions that followed the Columbine shooting such as metal detectors, transparent backpacks, and cracking down extra hard on anything resembling bullying were an over the top reaction to an unusual event. Following 9/11, one cannot even begin to list the different ways that both the people and the government started trying to make sure this that a very unusual and unlikely event would never happen again.
In the case of the latter, one can try to look at the signs, but how much can be done without reaching past what the law ought to be doing?
A wise fictional doctor once said, "Bad things sometimes happen."
An unfortunate day not to have any mod points for you. Between misinformation and lies and the flood of disinfo attempting to fill in the blanks, how can anyone know for sure what to think? Only a couple of days after the incident that fallout map started making its rounds, and when the question comes up of how dangerous 750 rads is... yeah. Not terribly surprising people in New York were flipping out and hoarding radiation pills. While I don't condone mass hysteria, I agree that silence is worse on subjects like this.
In Florida Bank of America has sued itself multiple times.
George Carlin totally warned us.
This writing tries to twist things and make it sound like guns are the only legitimate force, and because other weapons may kill, they're as good as lethal.
Why a gun and not a taser? Why not pepper spray? If it must be a gun, why lethal rounds instead of rubber bullets or beanbag rounds? These are all less than lethal (note I did not say nonlethal) options that require about as much manual dexterity as a gun full of lead and show a greater sincerity for an intent to self defense. You will still discourage or stop most attackers, and if your judgement was impaired somehow the innocent will survive your ignorance in such a matter. (i.e. missing and accidentally hitting a 12 year old, making assumptions when two people are fighting and shooting the creepier looking one)
People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force, watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst.
Because it might be possible to punch somebody fatally that opens the floodgates to equate any aggression with an intent to kill? The less than lethal weapons mentioned all have a chance at killing their targets but the idea is that they are less likely to kill.
I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid.
Semantics. It means you're too cowardly to trust reason to function in day to day life.
It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The really dangerous people who have less to lose, the people who don't give a fuck, the people with the excess courage and confidence that they'll be the one to survive a shootout-- those are the people who are going to who are going to try to be faster on the draw. Those are the people who are going to want more expensive and dangerous (or illegal) weapons than you have. Those are the people who are feeling lucky enough to make you draw your weapon because they're betting they're faster or that you're going to panic and hesitate or misfire. A sociopath brimming with confidence, a thug with experience in shootouts drawing a family man with kids he wants to come home to into a confrontation, a gangster with a much stronger gun than the law abiding civilians can afford or legally own... how does the personal firearm equalize anything on those grounds?
The real courage would be the quiet confidence to stop an aggressor from harming you or himself without being dragged down by fantasies about killing the bad guys.
Yes, this one here.
Social skills do not equal intelligence.
That may be, but a 'smart person' lacking enough would be regarded as an "eccentric" at best and a freak at worst if they blundered too much socially. Smiling nervously and not being able to say anything, or behaving callously isn't that uncommon amongst people with otherwise sharp minds.
Dumb people are those that chug ten Monsters in under an hour, play chicken on a busy highway at midday. Are people that smoke pot or drink themselves to death?
'Smart people' can develop addictions too. To caffeine, to video games, to drugs, to alcohol, to gambling, to thrill seeking, to porn. They often do. This ties into the third part rather nicely:
But, answer me this question: Why are smart people, who know so much, often die at a younger age than those who barely know the founding president of our country?
My best guess would be the stress. Because more is expected of them, because they were bullied, because they think too much about the things that most people stop thinking about once their head starts to hurt. Depression sets in, and then those addictions become the relief.
I don't really agree with the conventional idea of people being "smart" and "dumb", the concepts are used in shallow ways. Most people I've met are "smart" in some form, even as so many have proven themselves dumb in another form. I believe that it's a matter of how it manifests.
Some people are good at memorizing things. Some people have a keen perception of patterns which gives them insight into what might logically come next. Some people just put a lot of effort into studying and work their way into understanding a subject through sheer diligence. Some are fast learners. And that thug loitering on the street corner that barely knows how to speak properly? He picks up on body language in a way nobody else can.
Meanwhile those people all have their flaws. The memorization guy might have horrible social skills. Perhaps insightful pattern guy gets sentimental about the things he believes in, and thus becomes stubborn and irrational about things that don't match his views. The diligent one is really just a stubborn person faking it-- they are terrible and it takes them a long time to learn, but they invest the time beating it into their head. The fast learner picks up on something quickly, but then becomes bored of it right away and moves on with only a superficial understanding of the subject. Or, the fast learner never learned to study, so when the time comes he is in a fix. I think you can fill in the blanks as you wish for the thug on the street corner.
This is the reason why society manages to function while we witness so many stupid people.