I surely hope that we make it to a single payer system in my lifetime, but there is no way in hell that you could have gotten something like that passed out of the blue.
think of obamacare as a road towards single payer. a shitty road perhaps, one filled with potholes, but one that i am happy to take nonetheless.
So you would support a measure requiring all foods packaged by black folks be labeled as such? So those who don't want to eat such foods could avoid them? Oh, you don't? How is it different?
As for passing horse meat off as beef, well that's flat out lying, and clearly different. If they want to sell it as 'meat' without specifying the animal, that's fine by me.
Anyway, my point is, don't be so quick to dismiss homeopathic remedies.
i do not think that word means what you think it means. we should all HEARTILY dismiss homeopathic remedies, because they are quite literally selling you filtered water. a 13C homeopathic solution means whatever active ingredient used to be in the original solution has been diluted 1:10^26. (Avogadro's number is on the order of 10^23). homepathic companies should all be lined up and shot in a ditch for being horribly evil - those who purposely give false hope.
elderberry extract, ginseng, valerian root, etc etc are natural herbal remedies, which is NOT the same as homeopathy. herbal remedies are a mixed bag, because anyone can slap something in a bottle and call it an herbal remedy - and many companies do just that. certainly, SOME herbs do have beneficial effects on the body.
The concern is that people would avoid GMO products based on fear and prejudice rather than any actual science behind it.
What if we required labels that said 'this product was packaged by black people' ? I mean, what's the harm in putting a label that factually describes an item?
If there is no factual relevance to the labeling, then there is no reason to require it on the packaging.
Whether GMO falls into this camp or not is a separate debate, but if you accept that GMO foods are just as safe as anything else (signs point to yes in most cases), then labels should not be required.
the detonation of the atomic bomb is a perfectly reasonable way to mark the beginning of a new epoch, because there is a very real and easily identifiable geologic marker for that event (radioactive isotopes & plastic in the topsoil.) if millions of years from now aliens discovered our planet and looked through geological data, and wanted to classify periods based on that data, it's a safe bet that the sudden proliferation of radioactive isotopes and appearance of an entirely new substance (plastic) would be something that they noticed.
as for the necessity of defining a new epoch - would you deny that humans have profoundly changed the planet? no value judgements being made here, just straight facts, the planet is WAY FUCKING DIFFERENT than it was 1000 years ago due to human population explosions and human construction. also, lots of newly-extinct species.
but, i at least agree with you about nuclear power being the solution to a lot of our problems, if we would stop being such pussies about it. that has nothing to do with the topic at hand, though.
that's because humans are terribly bad at sticking to a gameplan or making 'random' decisions.
the correct play in many situations is going to be something like "based on the current size of the pot, and that it costs $X to call, i should raise 20% of the time, call 40% of the time, fold 40% of the time" because that is what a simple lookup table will tell you. math doesn't lie and can't be bluffed or intimidated.
a computer is shockingly effective at sticking to a gameplan like that and otherwise completely ignoring the opponent's actions. humans, not so much. the computer simply cannot be exploited and you cannot out-strategize it. the best you can do is break even.
note that perfect-play only means 'dont ever lose' which is totally different from 'win the most you can.' a really good human poker player is going to be much better at fleecing noobs than this bot, but this bot will always slowly beat anyone, even the best of the best, unless they also play perfectly (and thus tie.)
you will be bled dry before you hit a big hand. we are talking heads up short stack. you can only afford like 10 - 20 blinds total before you are out! good luck waiting on AK!
the ironic thing is, you will probably hit your AK after you have been bled down to like 2x the big blind. congrats, you just doubled up! your opponent is still sitting on a stack 10x your size. better hope your next two hands are AK too!
the robot is actually far better at making rational decisions than you are. the robot is not intimidated, cannot be bluffed. it does not care what you do, it just makes the best play in every situation.
the best play will not be 'if my hand is X and the table is Y, always fold'. you are correct that you could potentially exploit completely predictable behavior. that would not be a perfectly-playing robot.
the best play will be 'if my hand is X and the table is Y, fold 75% of the time, call 15% of the time, raise 10% of the time'
you cannot outsmart that strategy, you cannot trick it, you cannot even 'read' it - the best you can do is also play the odds perfectly.
How could anyone, in 2014, have thought this was acceptable?
"Acceptable"? Was the First Amendment declared null and void, while I was sleeping? What do you mean by "acceptable", mister thought-policeman?
If burning American flag, calling for killing of the sitting President, or publicly defecating on a police car is acceptable, having a book with a hare-brained bimbo as one of the characters certainly is too.
none of those things are acceptable either. 'legal' and 'acceptable' are not the same thing.
this is very clearly unacceptable. it was legal, but it was fucking terrible, and should be called out as such.
mattel has the right to produce terrible products, and everyone else has the right to mock and berate them for doing so. free speech runs both ways.
not really a solution. that $999 car will work, kinda, probably, maybe. or it could fail to start at any time because it is a car that you paid $999 for and it is almost certainly not what most people would consider 'reliable transportation.'
Bump the price up to around $4 or $5k, then you might have something reliable enough to count on for work, school, medical emergencies etc. But that is a much more difficult amount of money to scrape up for someone living paycheck to paycheck.
Your completely ignoring the hamburger analogy makes it quite clear that you have no interest in participating in an honest debate.
If the author had said "all men..." then there would have been no room for interpretation. She did not, thus we are left to infer which men she is speaking about. You choose to interpret it as all men.
My point is that you are interpreting her statement incorrectly. Anything that follows from that is useless, a straw man.
That is why 'not all men!' is a worthless argument, and widely mocked. It is arguing against a statement that is not even being made.
Once you can get over that hurdle you will see that authors such as the one mentioned here are not attacking every man in the world. They speak only of the ones that fit the criteria of the negative traits they discuss. You will stop seeing their words as personal attacks, which they are not, and instead see them as the first step of progress. Step one, acknowledge there is a problem.
It's shocking to me that we STILL can't collectively as a society get past step one without people jumping in to defend men. as if we need to be defended!
no, you are interpreting it as you want to interpret it. the author did not write 'all men...' she simply wrote 'men...' which could be interpreted several ways. you choose to interpret it in a way that is ridiculous, and then go on to refute the ridiculous statement that you have put into her mouth. this is what we call a 'straw man'.
how about this: if i were to say 'hamburgers are delicious', would it be a constructive response to say 'not ALL hamburgers are delicious! McDonald's hamburgers are terrible, and you are wrong for claiming that ALL hamburgers are delicious!'
no, it would be a ridiculous response, because any reasonable human being could infer that when i say 'hamburgers are delicious' i mean that some hamburgers are delicious, that i think hamburgers are delicious in a general sense but that there could certainly be some hamburgers that are not delicious. certainly i would not claim that every single hamburger in existence is delicious.
from that, we could perhaps infer that the author thinks that the majority of men are overly sensitive to criticism from women. based on the comments on this story and past stories that mention sexism, i would tend to agree with her.
No, I am trying to drag you, kicking and screaming, into an epiphany.
I assure you, the author is not an idiot. It would be idiotic to claim that all men are overly sensitive to criticism. Anyone with half a brain, who is not also blinded by their own defense mechanisms, can see that the author does not mean all men. that would indeed be a ridiculous statement.
You can either interpret your way, which gets us nowhere, or my way, which is the beginning of a dialog. Choice is yours.
Oh, i assure you, the post is terribly ironic. You are making a post defending men against criticism, against an article that says men are overly sensitive and quick to defend themselves. Delicious.
Every time a man responds to "men are this..." with "not ALL men!" an angel gets her wings.
We get it. Not ALL men. The author was not implying all men. Just some. That's still too many! There is still a problem that needs fixing! Self centered asshats assume they are being personally attacked, and feel the need to defend themselves, but THE CONVERSATION ISN'T ABOUT YOU.
Once that hurdle is overcome, maybe we can move on to actually making progress.
i suppose you don't appreciate the irony in your post, but i do. i appreciate it enough for both of us.
yes, we understand that NOT ALL MEN are extremely sensitive to being criticized by women.
some of them are. plenty enough to cause problems. jumping in and saying NOT ALL MEN is just derailing the conversation before it can get anywhere productive. way to defend us downtrodden and persecuted men everywhere!
where is the retconning, exactly? thor falls from grace. new person gets hammer. it's a story arc. possibly permanent, possibly temporary, but there is no retconning happening here.
marvel is saying that thor is whoever's wielding the hammer. much like DC has said that batman/nightwing/robin is whoever's wearing the mask. how many robins have there been again, exactly?
dude, you lost the game as soon as you said feminazi.
seriously, if you think that casting a female as the new thor is somehow equivalent to "bowing down to radical feminism nazi shit" then you are a lost cause and should probably just eat a bullet.
it's also amusing that you are TOTALLY FINE with the fact that marvel has already changed the norse mythology WILDLY... turning thor into a friggin alien instead of a god. one who was a depowered crippled doctor for a long time. but when mjolnir gets passed on to a female character, you are all of a sudden outraged because it's not following the sacred mythology.
you DID read the fucking summary and see that this is a new character, right? they aren't just giving existing thor a sex change. thor is falling from grace and losing his powers, a new female character is being introduced and mjolnir is being given to her. but of course you already knew all that.
Slashdot Mirror
oh, so despite google playing fast and loose with its own product rankings, it's still the best tool available?
well then.
Oh noes, socialism!
Sign me up. We are the only first world country WITHOUT single payer, and we have the most fucked health care. I don't think that is a coincidence.
I surely hope that we make it to a single payer system in my lifetime, but there is no way in hell that you could have gotten something like that passed out of the blue.
think of obamacare as a road towards single payer. a shitty road perhaps, one filled with potholes, but one that i am happy to take nonetheless.
So you would support a measure requiring all foods packaged by black folks be labeled as such? So those who don't want to eat such foods could avoid them? Oh, you don't? How is it different?
As for passing horse meat off as beef, well that's flat out lying, and clearly different. If they want to sell it as 'meat' without specifying the animal, that's fine by me.
Anyway, my point is, don't be so quick to dismiss homeopathic remedies.
i do not think that word means what you think it means. we should all HEARTILY dismiss homeopathic remedies, because they are quite literally selling you filtered water. a 13C homeopathic solution means whatever active ingredient used to be in the original solution has been diluted 1:10^26. (Avogadro's number is on the order of 10^23). homepathic companies should all be lined up and shot in a ditch for being horribly evil - those who purposely give false hope.
elderberry extract, ginseng, valerian root, etc etc are natural herbal remedies, which is NOT the same as homeopathy. herbal remedies are a mixed bag, because anyone can slap something in a bottle and call it an herbal remedy - and many companies do just that. certainly, SOME herbs do have beneficial effects on the body.
The concern is that people would avoid GMO products based on fear and prejudice rather than any actual science behind it.
What if we required labels that said 'this product was packaged by black people' ? I mean, what's the harm in putting a label that factually describes an item?
If there is no factual relevance to the labeling, then there is no reason to require it on the packaging.
Whether GMO falls into this camp or not is a separate debate, but if you accept that GMO foods are just as safe as anything else (signs point to yes in most cases), then labels should not be required.
good luck finding a geological marker for any of those things you mention.
the geological timescale cares very little for your opinions on culture or our ability to insert tab A into slot B enough times to create an airplane.
no, the dawn of the HUMAN age is the topic. the nuclear bomb just happens to be a nice easy geological marker for that.
note that the epoch is called the anthropocene epoch. anthopo, meaning human.
we aren't calling it the nuclear epoch.
the detonation of the atomic bomb is a perfectly reasonable way to mark the beginning of a new epoch, because there is a very real and easily identifiable geologic marker for that event (radioactive isotopes & plastic in the topsoil.) if millions of years from now aliens discovered our planet and looked through geological data, and wanted to classify periods based on that data, it's a safe bet that the sudden proliferation of radioactive isotopes and appearance of an entirely new substance (plastic) would be something that they noticed.
as for the necessity of defining a new epoch - would you deny that humans have profoundly changed the planet? no value judgements being made here, just straight facts, the planet is WAY FUCKING DIFFERENT than it was 1000 years ago due to human population explosions and human construction. also, lots of newly-extinct species.
but, i at least agree with you about nuclear power being the solution to a lot of our problems, if we would stop being such pussies about it. that has nothing to do with the topic at hand, though.
that's because humans are terribly bad at sticking to a gameplan or making 'random' decisions.
the correct play in many situations is going to be something like "based on the current size of the pot, and that it costs $X to call, i should raise 20% of the time, call 40% of the time, fold 40% of the time" because that is what a simple lookup table will tell you. math doesn't lie and can't be bluffed or intimidated.
a computer is shockingly effective at sticking to a gameplan like that and otherwise completely ignoring the opponent's actions. humans, not so much. the computer simply cannot be exploited and you cannot out-strategize it. the best you can do is break even.
note that perfect-play only means 'dont ever lose' which is totally different from 'win the most you can.' a really good human poker player is going to be much better at fleecing noobs than this bot, but this bot will always slowly beat anyone, even the best of the best, unless they also play perfectly (and thus tie.)
you will be bled dry before you hit a big hand. we are talking heads up short stack. you can only afford like 10 - 20 blinds total before you are out! good luck waiting on AK!
the ironic thing is, you will probably hit your AK after you have been bled down to like 2x the big blind. congrats, you just doubled up! your opponent is still sitting on a stack 10x your size. better hope your next two hands are AK too!
if hand = [2, 7] {
int x = Math.random();
if (x > 0.97) {
raise();
}
elseif (x > 0.9) {
call();
}
else {
fold();
}
}
there, you just got bluffed by a robot. easy peasy!
the robot is actually far better at making rational decisions than you are. the robot is not intimidated, cannot be bluffed. it does not care what you do, it just makes the best play in every situation.
the best play will not be 'if my hand is X and the table is Y, always fold'. you are correct that you could potentially exploit completely predictable behavior. that would not be a perfectly-playing robot.
the best play will be 'if my hand is X and the table is Y, fold 75% of the time, call 15% of the time, raise 10% of the time'
you cannot outsmart that strategy, you cannot trick it, you cannot even 'read' it - the best you can do is also play the odds perfectly.
otherwise you will slowly lose all your money.
"Acceptable"? Was the First Amendment declared null and void, while I was sleeping? What do you mean by "acceptable", mister thought-policeman?
If burning American flag, calling for killing of the sitting President, or publicly defecating on a police car is acceptable, having a book with a hare-brained bimbo as one of the characters certainly is too.
none of those things are acceptable either. 'legal' and 'acceptable' are not the same thing.
this is very clearly unacceptable. it was legal, but it was fucking terrible, and should be called out as such.
mattel has the right to produce terrible products, and everyone else has the right to mock and berate them for doing so. free speech runs both ways.
$5000 ambulance ride, stellar solution for someone who already can't afford car payments!
not really a solution. that $999 car will work, kinda, probably, maybe. or it could fail to start at any time because it is a car that you paid $999 for and it is almost certainly not what most people would consider 'reliable transportation.'
Bump the price up to around $4 or $5k, then you might have something reliable enough to count on for work, school, medical emergencies etc. But that is a much more difficult amount of money to scrape up for someone living paycheck to paycheck.
Your completely ignoring the hamburger analogy makes it quite clear that you have no interest in participating in an honest debate.
If the author had said "all men..." then there would have been no room for interpretation. She did not, thus we are left to infer which men she is speaking about. You choose to interpret it as all men.
My point is that you are interpreting her statement incorrectly. Anything that follows from that is useless, a straw man.
That is why 'not all men!' is a worthless argument, and widely mocked. It is arguing against a statement that is not even being made.
Once you can get over that hurdle you will see that authors such as the one mentioned here are not attacking every man in the world. They speak only of the ones that fit the criteria of the negative traits they discuss. You will stop seeing their words as personal attacks, which they are not, and instead see them as the first step of progress. Step one, acknowledge there is a problem.
It's shocking to me that we STILL can't collectively as a society get past step one without people jumping in to defend men. as if we need to be defended!
no, you are interpreting it as you want to interpret it. the author did not write 'all men...' she simply wrote 'men...' which could be interpreted several ways. you choose to interpret it in a way that is ridiculous, and then go on to refute the ridiculous statement that you have put into her mouth. this is what we call a 'straw man'.
how about this: if i were to say 'hamburgers are delicious', would it be a constructive response to say 'not ALL hamburgers are delicious! McDonald's hamburgers are terrible, and you are wrong for claiming that ALL hamburgers are delicious!'
no, it would be a ridiculous response, because any reasonable human being could infer that when i say 'hamburgers are delicious' i mean that some hamburgers are delicious, that i think hamburgers are delicious in a general sense but that there could certainly be some hamburgers that are not delicious. certainly i would not claim that every single hamburger in existence is delicious.
from that, we could perhaps infer that the author thinks that the majority of men are overly sensitive to criticism from women. based on the comments on this story and past stories that mention sexism, i would tend to agree with her.
No, I am trying to drag you, kicking and screaming, into an epiphany.
I assure you, the author is not an idiot. It would be idiotic to claim that all men are overly sensitive to criticism. Anyone with half a brain, who is not also blinded by their own defense mechanisms, can see that the author does not mean all men. that would indeed be a ridiculous statement.
You can either interpret your way, which gets us nowhere, or my way, which is the beginning of a dialog. Choice is yours.
Let's try this.
One of the consequences is that [some significant portion of] men are extremely sensitive to being criticized by women
Do you still disagree? Because that is the statement the author was making.
you're being so obtuse, i would think you were trolling if you didn't sound so sincere.
One of the consequences is that men are extremely sensitive to being criticized by women
This is something that is simply not true of all men so why make statements like that?
that's you, defending us men against criticism.
Oh, i assure you, the post is terribly ironic. You are making a post defending men against criticism, against an article that says men are overly sensitive and quick to defend themselves. Delicious.
Every time a man responds to "men are this..." with "not ALL men!" an angel gets her wings.
We get it. Not ALL men. The author was not implying all men. Just some. That's still too many! There is still a problem that needs fixing! Self centered asshats assume they are being personally attacked, and feel the need to defend themselves, but THE CONVERSATION ISN'T ABOUT YOU.
Once that hurdle is overcome, maybe we can move on to actually making progress.
i suppose you don't appreciate the irony in your post, but i do. i appreciate it enough for both of us.
yes, we understand that NOT ALL MEN are extremely sensitive to being criticized by women.
some of them are. plenty enough to cause problems. jumping in and saying NOT ALL MEN is just derailing the conversation before it can get anywhere productive. way to defend us downtrodden and persecuted men everywhere!
where is the retconning, exactly? thor falls from grace. new person gets hammer. it's a story arc. possibly permanent, possibly temporary, but there is no retconning happening here.
marvel is saying that thor is whoever's wielding the hammer. much like DC has said that batman/nightwing/robin is whoever's wearing the mask. how many robins have there been again, exactly?
nothing new to see here, move along.
dude, you lost the game as soon as you said feminazi.
seriously, if you think that casting a female as the new thor is somehow equivalent to "bowing down to radical feminism nazi shit" then you are a lost cause and should probably just eat a bullet.
it's also amusing that you are TOTALLY FINE with the fact that marvel has already changed the norse mythology WILDLY... turning thor into a friggin alien instead of a god. one who was a depowered crippled doctor for a long time. but when mjolnir gets passed on to a female character, you are all of a sudden outraged because it's not following the sacred mythology.
you DID read the fucking summary and see that this is a new character, right? they aren't just giving existing thor a sex change. thor is falling from grace and losing his powers, a new female character is being introduced and mjolnir is being given to her. but of course you already knew all that.