Ugh. Look, I don't like Trump. But however bad he is, comparing him to Hillary in terms of better/worse is like being forced to eat a sandwich made of pigeon turds or rat feces. They're both terrible. They're both sandwiches made of shit.

Being a better tasting shit sandwich doesn't change the shit sandwich from being a shit sandwich. You can try to mask the flavor with hot sauce or swiss cheese, but it's still a shit sandwich.

Hillary is an awful candidate. The only way she'd ever have a chance at winning it to be put up against someone as weak as Trump.

And vice-versa. Trump could never stand a chance unless his opponent was as disliked as Hillary.

But here we are. Shit sandwich vs. Shit sandwich.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and list reasons why Hillary is terrible. Google can offer plenty of criticisms of her---and to be clear, don't think I'm coming at this by suggesting that Trump is some kind of saint. I. Don't. Like. Him. But Trump is doing one thing right, that I don't see Hillary doing. He's engaging with the "deplorables" of the nation.

This doesn't make Trump less of a shit sandwich (Did I mention that I don't like Trump? I don't like Trump.) but it could be the difference between Shit Sandwich, and President Shit Sandwich. (Sorry!)

To explain where I'm coming from on this, see Johnathan Pie's rant on Brexit. Basically, the "Keep things as they are" campaign was dismissive of the "deplorables" of the nation. Look how that vote turned out.

The thesis of that rant is basically that for many people the Brexit vote boiled down to:

"If you've got nothing, why would you vote for things to stay as they are? At least with uncertainty, there's some hope that things might change."

Hillary, for many people, means "Maintaining the status quo." For this group, Trump is at least a different flavour of shit sandwich--which might just put him in the White House. (Sorry.)

...

Here's the link to J. Pie's rant:

http://videosift.com/video/Jonathan-Pie-on-Brexit

I remember Dolly having braces and not having braces. I remember the Berenstein bears and the Berenstain bears. I remember the FBI agents in E.T. having guns and I remember them holding radios. I remember the sky blazing away and the mountains melting and all life turning to ash as the sun expanded and consumed the earth. I remember the great obelisk in the sky...and not in the sky...as the seas boiled and did not.

I am not pan-dimensional.
I am not omni-universal.
I am not immortal.
I am inevitable.

Or really, really not paying close attention to my surroundings. Whatever.

My blood is boiling.

Talking to a conspiracy theorist about either the moon landing or the flat earth theory is exasperating. They discredit a scientific theory on the slightest technicality in your brief retelling of it, but if you baulk at their vague one-sentence alternative you're brainwashed.

You can tell them about the retroreflectors, or the satellite images we have of the landing site. You can tell them about sundials, the phases of the moon or constellations.

They don't care - anything can be faked and their definition of "proof" boils down to seeing it with their own naked eye.

It's totally impractical to take everyone up in a Red Bull balloon to see the curvature of the Earth for themselves. Presumably you'd have to take everyone up twice at two locations to show that the circular horizon is not an edge. Or kill two birds with one stone and take them to the moon landing site and back again because nothing less will suffice.

Because if I take them to the most advanced telescope in the world and focus it on the moon landing site - the image could be faked. You could show them how the telescope works, but each component could produce a faked output. The only way they would accept the telescope information is if they built it themselves from raw materials - oh you used a standard electronic device such as a basic motor? Illuminati dude, that thing can produce EM waves that fake the image. You're going to use a Macbook to read the USB output? Are you a shill?

Literally nothing is good enough but they are all, without exception, too fucking lazy to go and prove it to themselves from first principles.

Which is called "getting a degree in physics", where you are also taught to question every step, AKA being "brainwashed".

i am just going to add to the opinions and perspectives that @MilkmanDan ,@ChaosEngine ,@dannym3141 and especially @newtboy who i agree with so clearly that i swear we are related.

since many dynamics have already been covered, i.e:police culture,racism,incompetence etc etc.

i shall offer a historical perspective in the ways of the power dynamic.

while this is a power vs powerlessness dynamic dealing with agents of the state,it helps to understand just how we got to this point,and it is NOT the first time we have been here.

see:labor movement of the 30's and the labor strikes,and the response from not only the business community but our own government.

see: the civil rights movement and segregation,and how demagouges used political power to divide by way of racism,and then used police to intimidate,beat and imprison.

there are many MANY examples here in america where the police have been used to suppress and oppress a people or community for less than altruistic reasons,and most certainly not aligning with the ideology we were taught in school the function of police.nevermind the syrupy sweet,idealized picture shoved down our throats since an early age.

so we see on our facebooks,our twitters and/or whatever social media you prefer,that black lives matter...and the counter point,that NO..ALL lives matter.

now this would make sense in a world that never took history into account,or a growing cultural norm of violence and oppression that had been slowly seeping into poor communities (mainly black and latino).

oh wait..
that's right.
social media pundits NEVER fucking consider any of those factors,because just like bill o'reilly,those are pesky nuances and context conflict with their own narrow narrative.

but let us consider them and how they may possibly be a major driving factor in americas current climate.

let us take ferguson as an example,that is a good place to start.
and let us go back to 2008,where we can see the boiling begin to take place in this extremely impoverished community which was already struggling.

the population is a black majority,poor to working poor.home ownership is low,food stamp recipients are high and the future is pretty bleak.

in 2008 ferguson received approximately 18% of it's total fiscal revenue from misdemeanor infractions i.e:traffic,parking,moving violations.small time stuff.basic fines for small infractions.in 2008 that number jumped to 66%.

why?
what happened?
what changed?

well the comptroller of ferguson (and greater st louis),along with HUNDREDS of other smaller municipalities across the country,had bought the rotten fish that wall street was selling in the form of bullshit derivatives.

now wall street and the big banks got their tax payer bailout,but towns like ferguson did not.they lost millions,sometimes billions.this meant pensions were either reduced or outright denied,because there was NO money!

but a town still has to pay police.
fire fighters and school teachers,
clerks and judges,
keep the roads paved and the street lights working.

so what is a local government to do?
can't tax the working class who own homes.you already jacked their property tax to the roof.
can't tax the local business,you already squeeze them as well.
how about those non-property owning people in ferguson?
they need to pay up as well,and let's use the police force to relinquish them of the paltry money they don't have.

to the tune of 66% of all of fergusons revenue.
that is insanity.

so what if you live in ferguson?
chances are you are black,and either poor or working poor.

you make,if you are lucky,20 grand a year and by one man's testimony he paid over 2,000 in traffic tickets in one year.the majority of americans dont see those kind of numbers their entire lifetime.

and what if you began to realize that it was not just you.that almost every person you know or talked to had similar stories.

would you begin to feel a tad bit targeted?

what if the city of ferguson started to become very creative with not only their rules but how they enforced those rules?

what if every year the fines went up?
not remained the same,but actually UP? every year.

what if,as a community people began to actually fear the police? to experience anxiety just by the sight of a patrol car,even though they were not engaging in anything illegal? and who knows...maybe there is some new ordinance on the books that you are unaware of?

would you become paranoid and suspicious of law enforcement?

and then..what if....you started losing friends to cops.people you grew up with being shot in the street,and every time the mayor comes out and calls it a "justifiable killing".

would that make you feel any better?
any less paranoid or anxious?

there was ONE police shooting in ten years and then..as if by magic ..(which is how the media seems to always portray this..shocking news..at 11)..you lose 5 friends in a year.all to cops..all "justifiable".

would you begin to think there was a conspiracy?
targeting you and your neighbors?

i BET you would.
i know i would.

now lets look at the cops.

they are just a tool.
an instrument for the state to uphold the law and write citations for infractions.they dont MAKE the laws,nor the infractions,not even the fines.

they just do what they are told.

and they are told to go into these poor and working poor neighborhoods and write tickets,a LOT of tickets.

do you really think they are unaware of the growing hostility towards them? the looks of disgust,fear and apprehension?

but...this is their job,and they do what they are told.

they see.
they know.
they are aware of the growing hatred towards them,and this makes them anxious..and defensive..and in some horrible,tragic cases...trigger happy.

a natural and normal response to heightened stimuli in the face of great uncertainty.

so they react impulsively and out of fear in a way that ten years ago would have been unheard of.

they think themselves good cops.
they do a good job.
they do what they are told.
and the people hate them for it.
so they respond instinctively and with poor judgement.

we..as citizens,respond with disgust and indignation when a cop abuses his/her authority.we see this as a major moral breach in the citizen/cop relationship,because we feel as agents of the law they should be held to a higher standard than the rest of us...and rightly so,but when you put a human being in a tense and dangerous situation,not of their making,they will fail at some point to react correctly and with sound judgement.

they SHOULD be held accountable,but so should the city council members and the mayor and all the local representatives who created this toxic climate in the first place.

the lesson to be learned here is that nothing is a binary situation when people are concerned.

so when black lives matter protestors address people to make them aware of the situation,this is what they are talking about.the police killing are only a last stage manifestation of a situation that began in 2008 on wall street.

and we need to be aware,because right now it is the predominantly black communities,but soon coming to a neighborhood near YOU.

the poor and working poor have become expendable.no longer relevant to the system.which is why police shootings are being handled the way they are.our value is ever increasingly being judged on how well we can feed the system.

until this disparity is addressed there will continue to be police shootings.people will die and there will be no indictments.

because police do what they are told.

it is up to us to make policy makers accountable for their actions,and in doing so address a toxic climate that both the poor,working poor and cops alike have to swim in.

stop forcing cops to write tickets to fund a city that lost it's savings due to fuckhead bankers.

this blood..all of it..is on those bankers hands.

*Warning I've only gone and done yet another wall of text again! This may or may not get read by anyone on here (good god I wouldn't blame anyone for skipping it), but at the very least it's formed the backbone to a video script so it's not a complete waste of my time! (he tells himself)*

This is as much @bareboards2 as yourself, but he already made it clear he wasn't willing to engage on the issue, so you're getting it instead MWAHAHAHHAHA! *coughs*

I don't wish this to come across as over condescending (though I'm sure it will none the less as I'm in one of those moods). But pretty much every (successful) comedy premise operates on the same underlying principle of irony. i.e. there is an expectation or understanding, which is deliberately subverted, and what results is comedy.

In this case, amongst other things we have the understood premises that:
A. rape is a bad, often horrific thing.
B. that there is an established social taboo about praising such behaviour.
C. that there is a section of society inherently opposed to making light of things of which they do not approve (or in a way in which they do not approve)
D. most words and phrases have an expected association and meaning.

What Jim Jefferies (an accomplished and well respected comedies amongst his peers) has done here, is take these commonly understood premises and subverted the audiences normal expectations in order to evoke a sense of irony, from which the audience derives humour and amusement.

A simple joke might take a single such premise and perform a single inversion of our expectation. e.g. my dog has no nose, how does he smell?....terrible!

By subverting our assumed meaning (that the missing nose refers to the dogs implied lack of olfactory senses), the joke creates basic irony by substituting this expected meaning for that of the odour of the dog itself.

This is of course a terrible joke, because it is as simple as a joke could be. It has only one layer of irony and lacks any sense of novelty which, might tip such a terrible joke into working for any other than the very young or simple minded.

We could of course attempt to boost this joke by adding more levels of irony contextually. e.g. a very serious or complex comedian Like say Stuart Lee, could perhaps deliver this joke in a routine and get a laugh by being completely incongruous with his style and past material.

And herein we see the building blocks from which any sophisticated professional comedy routine is built. By layering several different strands or ironic subversion, a good comedian can begin to make a routine more complex and often more than just the sum of its parts to boot.

In this case, Jim is taking the four main premises listed above, layering them and trying to find the sweetest spot of subverted expectation for each. (something which usually takes a great deal of skill and experience at this level)

He mentions the fact that his jokes incite outrage in a certain section of society because this helps to strengthen one of the strands of irony with which he is playing. The fact that he also does so in a boastful tone is itself a subversion, it is understood by the audience that he does not/should not be proud of being merely offensive and as such we have yet another strand of irony thrown into the mix.

You know how better music tends to have more and/or more complex musical things happening at once? It is the same with comedy. The more ironic threads a comedian can juggle around coherently, the more sophisticated and adept their routines could be considered to be.

Naturally as with music there's no accounting for taste as you say. Some people simply can't get past a style or associations of a given musician or song (or painting or whatever).

But dammit Jim is really one of the greats right now. Like him or lump him, the dude is pretty (deceptively) masterful at his craft.

There are at least 4-5 major threads of irony built into this bit and countless other smaller ones besides. He dances around and weaves between them like some sort of comedy ballerina. Every beat has been finely tuned over months of gig's (and years of previous material) to strike the strongest harmonies between these strands and probe for the strongest sense of dissonance in the audience. Not to mention, tone of voice, stance, timing etc.

I think Ahmed is basically terrible too, but it is because the jokes lack much semblance of complexity or nuance. Jeff Dunham's material in general feels extremely simple and seems like it uses shock as a mere crutch, rather than something deeper and more intelligent.

Taste is taste, but I feel one can to a reasonable extent criticise things like the films of Michael Bay, or the music of Justin Beiber for being objectively shallow by breaking down their material into its constituent parts (or lack thereof).

Likewise one could take the music of Wagner and while not enjoying the sound of it, still examine the complexity of it's composition and the clear superiority of skill Wagner had over most of this peers.

I guess what all this boils down to is, Jim seems to me to be clearly very very good at what he does (as he ought after all these years). Reducing his act to mere controversy feels a lot like accusing Black Sabbath of just making noise and using satanic imagery to get attention (or insert other less out of date example here).

The jokes were never at the expense of victims, they are at the expense of our expectations. He makes his own true feelings on the matter abundantly clear towards the end of the section.

As as he says himself his job is to say funny things, not to be a social activist.

I take no issue with you not liking it, but I do take issue with the suggestion that it is somehow two dimensional, or for that matter using controversy cheaply.

Offensive initial premises are some of the most ironically rich in comedy. It's like deliberately choosing the brightest paints when trying to create a striking painting. Why would you avoid the strongest materials because some people (not in your audience) find the contrast too striking?

Eh, much love anyway. This was more an exercise in intellectual masturbation than anything else. Not that I didn't mean all of it sincerely.

Well, what pisses off me about racism in the States is that we enslaved people for 200+ years, made them live in shacks and treated them like cattle. We pretty much stripped them of dignity and all that is human to the point where many of them believed it, then we said: "Hey, you are free now, so act like us!" What in the funking funk is that kind of logic? Do we expect them to say, "Thanks for the freedom, now I'll just erase the indoctrination and all the memory and I'll magically be jolly jumping ideal citizen like the best examples of your race." What adequate tools did we give them to re-engage in society?

We often expect a tabula rasa from African Americans when in fact we ruined them and should heavily reinvest in them for at least a few decades, if not centuries. Racism based on half-assed logic boils my blood more than pure racism.

That's basically it.

Folks that don't have guns also view guns through a utilitarian lens. No need to have them unless you need to kill something. With that mentality, they're bound to see guns and killing as a combined issue. When they look at a modern rifle that has the same ergonomics as a war rifle, they think of killing people.

For gun owners, harming other folks is real far down the totem pole. They have other uses for guns, uses that aren't killing people.

Many non gun owners look at pistols and think 'oh, well, maybe one day I'd buy one to have just in case, just for protection'. They think of them as defensive arms, and not as the firearm category with the most kills associated.

So, yeah, it boils down to imagery and symbolism.

-scheherazade

I think I just found my wife her magic food.

You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. mushroom-kabobs, mushroom creole, mushroom gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There's pineapple mushroom, lemon mushroom, coconut mushroom, pepper mushroom , mushroom soup, mushroom stew, mushroom salad, mushroom and potatoes, mushroom burger, mushroom sandwich. That- that's about it.

Great list above! For me, it is videos that are superficial in the material the are supposed to cover. I was trying to find some information about multi-location VPNs. I found a few videos and they boil down to:

Find a VPN.
Find some software.
Set it all up!

No substance at all, just superficial concepts.

I'm glad we didn't make the same mistake the kind countries of Europe did, and instead we have a vetting process to help ensure that only genuine refugees are coming in. I'm not saying the approach is necessarily the best one, but what can you do when so many economic migrants are clogging the system (on purpose) for people in genuine need of help. (I'm a refugee myself btw).

If it was up to me I'd add some additional tests to ensure that these people are fit for a modern society too, you know, to make sure my daughter/wife/mother/sister etc can go outside on their own, unlike some cities in Europe now.

But then again if it was up to me, neither of the 3 major political parties would be in charge since they're all useless. Liberals are just a mouth piece for big business (literally, that's why they were formed). And they all also look like the bad guys from any 80s and 90s kids cartoon. The Labour party is well meaning, but ultimately as lame, pathetic and gut-less as their "leader", they simply don't stand for anything and all of their policies boil down the lowest common denominator. The Greens driven by emotion not facts, and now they don't even seem to care about the environment very much.

There needs to be some kind of progressive party that is capable of driving humanity forward into the future, instead of weighing it down with traditions of the past. The whole system needs a huge reform.

Good idea, terrible execution.
My brother had a kegger for his 16th birthday party and we heated the pool up to 105 deg, then threw 30-40 lbs of dry ice in. That was much better than this try on an infinity pool. The pool we had was an in ground pool, and the yard had a wood fence, so the fog stuck around and built up to 2-3ft deep. Lots of people went swimming while it boiled, I suppose we're lucky we didn't have any issues from too much CO2. Good times, good times.

I remember Neal Stephenson touching on this in his Baroque Cycle trilogy. In the book, they boiled urine to make phosphorous, and then used it as molotov cocktails if memory serves.

You have a charming definition of crime, which seems to boil down to "I hate this behavior, so it must be criminal"? I'm not saying I approve of Microsoft (presumably*) botching their product roll-out, but you're kind of proving my point about the hyperbole parade.

Of course, everything Microsoft does could be criminal from an antitrust perspective, but that's the risk of having a platform monopoly. From that perspective, making W10 free for most users could be seen as pro-consumer or anti-consumer with equal validity.

*~35% of Windows users appear to be using W10 - I don't know if that's above or below their current target.

Political discourse in America, boiled down to one video.