I'm 50 years old and looming catastrophe has been hanging over our heads my whole life
1. Various Nuclear disaster scenarios 2. Global Economic collapse 3. Climate Change 4. Various religion based end-times 5. Y2K 6. etc
Honestly, it is like we can't function without having some sort of doomsday scenario in the picture
Y2K was averted precisely because we did something about it. We can do something about the other things you list as well. The exact answers to those problems are not apparent to me, but one thing I do know is that none of them will be solved by sticking our heads in the sand.
Like it or not advertising shapes the world we are in. Where do you think the million dollar super-star athlete salaries come from? Advertising. Free programming? Advertising. I can go on. It's incredibly unlikely you don't own at least one thing you either got for free due to advertising or was subsidized by advertising.
No one likes advertising, but everyone wants free stuff. Why do you think advertising is attached to free stuff? Who do you think is paying for the free stuff?
That's the problem: Ads are so damned pervasive that it is nearly impossible to get a moment's peace from them.
I run adblocker unapologetically. I refuse to sit through pre-content ads if I can help it. I don't care if the content is "free". That 30 second ad playing in front of the content I want to watch is 30 seconds of my life that I cannot get reimbursed for (never mind that it is the SAME DAMNED AD for the next 20 bits of content). If there was a way to pay a nominal fee for ad-free I'll gladly pay it.
Companies that pay advertisers want a return on their money spent. That's what all the tracking is about - to justify the money spent. I can understand them wanting to get that data, but I also understand not wanting to be tracked and targeted. Even if by an impersonal computer, it's creepy.
Full disclosure here - I work for an advertiser. And here's hilarity for you - nearly every computer in this department runs ad-block to stop viruses or who knows what else from getting into the system. There's a lot of abuse out there by the unscrupulous to the downright criminal "one simple trick scam" idiots.
All very good reasons I don't want to see ads. Let me repeat: I am willing to pay to avoid them. I don't listen to AM or FM radio anymore, Sirius XM is much better with NO ADS. I pay for Hulu Plus which does have ads, but not like one would see on a cable channel. If they ever come up with a paid tier where I see NO ADS I will gladly pay it. If your content service has no options to reduce or eliminate ads for me it is unlikely that I will continue to use it.
I'd say it is because of Christian inconsistencies. On the one hand they state that God's love is unconditional, on the other they say if you don't love God and follow His laws you will go to hell. There is no logic to religion.
"Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!
But He loves you! He loves you, and He needs money!"
There are some professions known for ethics, and marketing sure as hell isn't one of them. I'll turn off adblocking when it can be guaranteed that I won't acquire malware in the process.
No, scratch that. I truly hate most ads. In their current state they are a blight on civilization. 99% of the time they are nothing but an involuntary time waster, like understaffed checkout lines and stop lights. Why the hell should I have to spend several seconds of my precious lifetime in order for some slimy marketer to make a buck?
Fuck 'em. They can go find something to do that benefits society instead of wasting everyone's time.
I don't know if Kurt Bills would have been any better especially on this issue but at least I knew him and was able to have a discussion with him. Part of that may have been because I was a former student and a part of that was probably because he was my representative to the state house.
Had he been better on social issues I might have voted for him. Alas...
What happened to the American Dream (TM) where immigrants were welcome if they worked hard and tried to make their fortune in the New World? Seems like a lot of people who benefited, or people whose ancestors benefited from immigration now want to pull up the drawbridge.
Corporate America and the oligarchs decided that they wanted *that* slice of the pie as well as the one they already had. The American Dream is exactly that; a dream.
As a Minnesotan I've backed Klobuchar but I am extremely disappointed that she is supporting this.
It's time this nation stood up, and stopped pissing its pants every time someone phones in a bomb threat.
Sony couldn't give a flying fuck over whether a terrorist attack happens during one of their movies. What they are pissing themselves about is the promise of lawsuits should an attack happen.
The Dems (including Obama) expanded and extended the patriot act at a time when they could have pushed it through with little resistance.
As much as the talking heads are going to try to make this seem like a partisan issue the fact of the matter is that there is heavy bi-partisan support for controlling the slaves of the USA and any resistance to this is largely lip service to keep the sheep filling the party coffers.
How many times do we have to go through the "It's the Democrats!" "No, no, it's the Republicans" mantra before we get sick of the game and smash the established sacred idols of the jackass and the elephant? We, The People, have become of the dog chasing its own tail. The sad thing is that the vast majority think that they're fighting the good fight when they're just being kept busy while the real powers that be loot and pillage.
Granted. Do not mistake my post as support for Obama and the Democrats. Merely pointing out that the GOP need no other reason to oppose something than the fact that Obama supports it. Look back at the last 6 years and tell me I'm wrong.
I have faith that physicists have done their work well, and are impartial and not lying to me. But my mother that attends church feels the same way about her pastor. I do not have enough time left in my life to turn around and learn the skills I'd need to actually verify what scientist have told me, nor the money to buy the equipment. So I therefor am going on faith, just like my mother. It would be the hight of hypocrisy for me to scold her for doing the exact same thing I'm doing.
I'm not saying you should dump this science nonsense and start going to church. I'm saying you should get off your high horse and let people believe what they want to.
The difference is that it is *possible* for you to turn around and learn the skills needed to verify it, and it is *possible* because the equipment exists to allow one to verify.
There are no such skills or equipment to allow you to verify the existence of God.
Going into space is not like air travel. It costs a lot of money per pound, it's a vacuum, it's cold, and there's radiation. We already see permanent health damage from astronauts on the ISS after only six months. It's not that there are technological challenges to be solved, it's that some of these problems have no solution. Ever.
This isn't a matter of discovering Bernoulli's principle, it's a matter of discovering a new power source, or a way to defeat gravity, neither of which are likely to happen any time soon.
I'm sorry to dispel your childish notions of space travel for everyone, but it just isn't going to happen in your lifetime. Space travel will never be economical enough for anyone but governments, and it will never be profitable. Thus, I laugh at people like Elon Musk, who is just a 13 year-old boy with billions of dollars to waste on the silly flights of fancy.
You might want to get some help, MightyMartian. You're projecting your suicidal thoughts and inadequacies on others.
Translation: Space travel is hard, so we should not do it. Much easier to sit and do nothing but consume like a good little cog in the economy.
I for one am glad that we have MightyMartians in this world. If we were all macsimcons we'd still be living in trees.
Vladimir Putin announced on Russian Times that he will jump from the Mir space station at an altitude of 300,000 kilometers to celebrate the upcoming 70th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad.
Made even more of an awesome feat due to the fact that Mir had been de-orbited in 2001.
If this kind of thing isn't fixed soon, America is marching into becoming a facist state, while pretending to still be defenders of freedom and justice. And people are applauding this as it goes along.
"So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause." - Padme Amidala
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posting to remove bad mod....
I'm 50 years old and looming catastrophe has been hanging over our heads my whole life
1. Various Nuclear disaster scenarios
2. Global Economic collapse
3. Climate Change
4. Various religion based end-times
5. Y2K
6. etc
Honestly, it is like we can't function without having some sort of doomsday scenario in the picture
Y2K was averted precisely because we did something about it. We can do something about the other things you list as well. The exact answers to those problems are not apparent to me, but one thing I do know is that none of them will be solved by sticking our heads in the sand.
Like it or not advertising shapes the world we are in. Where do you think the million dollar super-star athlete salaries come from? Advertising. Free programming? Advertising. I can go on. It's incredibly unlikely you don't own at least one thing you either got for free due to advertising or was subsidized by advertising.
No one likes advertising, but everyone wants free stuff. Why do you think advertising is attached to free stuff? Who do you think is paying for the free stuff?
That's the problem: Ads are so damned pervasive that it is nearly impossible to get a moment's peace from them.
I run adblocker unapologetically. I refuse to sit through pre-content ads if I can help it. I don't care if the content is "free". That 30 second ad playing in front of the content I want to watch is 30 seconds of my life that I cannot get reimbursed for (never mind that it is the SAME DAMNED AD for the next 20 bits of content). If there was a way to pay a nominal fee for ad-free I'll gladly pay it.
Companies that pay advertisers want a return on their money spent. That's what all the tracking is about - to justify the money spent. I can understand them wanting to get that data, but I also understand not wanting to be tracked and targeted. Even if by an impersonal computer, it's creepy.
Full disclosure here - I work for an advertiser. And here's hilarity for you - nearly every computer in this department runs ad-block to stop viruses or who knows what else from getting into the system. There's a lot of abuse out there by the unscrupulous to the downright criminal "one simple trick scam" idiots.
All very good reasons I don't want to see ads. Let me repeat: I am willing to pay to avoid them. I don't listen to AM or FM radio anymore, Sirius XM is much better with NO ADS. I pay for Hulu Plus which does have ads, but not like one would see on a cable channel. If they ever come up with a paid tier where I see NO ADS I will gladly pay it. If your content service has no options to reduce or eliminate ads for me it is unlikely that I will continue to use it.
Answer: Butter the bottom
(alt: affix cat to superstructure)
Do both for redundancy
I'd say it is because of Christian inconsistencies. On the one hand they state that God's love is unconditional, on the other they say if you don't love God and follow His laws you will go to hell. There is no logic to religion.
"Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!
But He loves you! He loves you, and He needs money!"
- George Carlin
I will admit to seeing the term "lithobraking" for the first time. Gave me a good chuckle. :)
Just filler text here, just move along nothing to see...
We named the dog Indiana.
Political correctness has no place in education !!
It has no place in ANYWHERE. Political Correctness should be put to the rack, drawn and quartered, burned at the stake, and beheaded.
Ethics my ass!
There are some professions known for ethics, and marketing sure as hell isn't one of them. I'll turn off adblocking when it can be guaranteed that I won't acquire malware in the process.
No, scratch that. I truly hate most ads. In their current state they are a blight on civilization. 99% of the time they are nothing but an involuntary time waster, like understaffed checkout lines and stop lights. Why the hell should I have to spend several seconds of my precious lifetime in order for some slimy marketer to make a buck?
Fuck 'em. They can go find something to do that benefits society instead of wasting everyone's time.
You don't actually think they spend $20,000 on a hammer, $30,000 on a toilet seat, do you?
Humans are an unreliable, inefficient, and unpredictable element
That much is VERY true...
You must find and itemize any and all unforeseen problems that could crop up, complete with solutions and procedure to minimize their impact.
Or hide in your anonymity and know you are a coward
Quite the bluster from an Anonymous Coward.
I don't know if Kurt Bills would have been any better especially on this issue but at least I knew him and was able to have a discussion with him. Part of that may have been because I was a former student and a part of that was probably because he was my representative to the state house.
Had he been better on social issues I might have voted for him. Alas...
What happened to the American Dream (TM) where immigrants were welcome if they worked hard and tried to make their fortune in the New World? Seems like a lot of people who benefited, or people whose ancestors benefited from immigration now want to pull up the drawbridge.
Corporate America and the oligarchs decided that they wanted *that* slice of the pie as well as the one they already had. The American Dream is exactly that; a dream.
As a Minnesotan I've backed Klobuchar but I am extremely disappointed that she is supporting this.
It's time this nation stood up, and stopped pissing its pants every time someone phones in a bomb threat.
Sony couldn't give a flying fuck over whether a terrorist attack happens during one of their movies. What they are pissing themselves about is the promise of lawsuits should an attack happen.
The Dems (including Obama) expanded and extended the patriot act at a time when they could have pushed it through with little resistance.
As much as the talking heads are going to try to make this seem like a partisan issue the fact of the matter is that there is heavy bi-partisan support for controlling the slaves of the USA and any resistance to this is largely lip service to keep the sheep filling the party coffers.
How many times do we have to go through the "It's the Democrats!" "No, no, it's the Republicans" mantra before we get sick of the game and smash the established sacred idols of the jackass and the elephant? We, The People, have become of the dog chasing its own tail. The sad thing is that the vast majority think that they're fighting the good fight when they're just being kept busy while the real powers that be loot and pillage.
Granted. Do not mistake my post as support for Obama and the Democrats. Merely pointing out that the GOP need no other reason to oppose something than the fact that Obama supports it. Look back at the last 6 years and tell me I'm wrong.
Because Obama
Forgot to add: You do not have *faith* in those physicists, you have *trust* in them.
I have faith that physicists have done their work well, and are impartial and not lying to me. But my mother that attends church feels the same way about her pastor. I do not have enough time left in my life to turn around and learn the skills I'd need to actually verify what scientist have told me, nor the money to buy the equipment. So I therefor am going on faith, just like my mother. It would be the hight of hypocrisy for me to scold her for doing the exact same thing I'm doing.
I'm not saying you should dump this science nonsense and start going to church. I'm saying you should get off your high horse and let people believe what they want to.
The difference is that it is *possible* for you to turn around and learn the skills needed to verify it, and it is *possible* because the equipment exists to allow one to verify.
There are no such skills or equipment to allow you to verify the existence of God.
That was quite an illuminating rebuttal.
Going into space is not like air travel. It costs a lot of money per pound, it's a vacuum, it's cold, and there's radiation. We already see permanent health damage from astronauts on the ISS after only six months. It's not that there are technological challenges to be solved, it's that some of these problems have no solution. Ever.
This isn't a matter of discovering Bernoulli's principle, it's a matter of discovering a new power source, or a way to defeat gravity, neither of which are likely to happen any time soon.
I'm sorry to dispel your childish notions of space travel for everyone, but it just isn't going to happen in your lifetime. Space travel will never be economical enough for anyone but governments, and it will never be profitable. Thus, I laugh at people like Elon Musk, who is just a 13 year-old boy with billions of dollars to waste on the silly flights of fancy.
You might want to get some help, MightyMartian. You're projecting your suicidal thoughts and inadequacies on others.
Translation: Space travel is hard, so we should not do it. Much easier to sit and do nothing but consume like a good little cog in the economy.
I for one am glad that we have MightyMartians in this world. If we were all macsimcons we'd still be living in trees.
Vladimir Putin announced on Russian Times that he will jump from the Mir space station at an altitude of 300,000 kilometers to celebrate the upcoming 70th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad.
Made even more of an awesome feat due to the fact that Mir had been de-orbited in 2001.
"I'm a 30 second bomb!! I'm a 30 second bomb!! 29... 28... 27..."
If this kind of thing isn't fixed soon, America is marching into becoming a facist state, while pretending to still be defenders of freedom and justice. And people are applauding this as it goes along.
"So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause." - Padme Amidala