Not to mention, Trump was far more upset at the cast of Hamilton over their statements of asking Pence to keep in mind the diversity of America, than he was over literal Nazi's, around the corner from the White House saying "Hail Trump! Hail Our People! Hail Victory!" That get's a generic "continued to denounce racism of any kind", but a in response to very real fears of minorities, LFBTs and others, rather than say "It's okay, I understand your fears and I will be a President for all Americans" he instead attacks them for their fears... plus all the conflict of interests which were around long before he won, which constantly amazed me was never brought up when he was complaining about her supposed conflicts of interests. It's like the media wanted him to win...

Are you implying that white people are shitty to everyone else because they are white? Or is it less about skin color and more about how a dominant culture/race treats and mistreats others?
No matter which group is currently dominant, power always corrupts.

@Jinx
I'm not sure you could call this cultural misappropriation, I'm pretty sure GITS is owned by a Japanese company and sold the movie rights to Hollywood. And the credits will still feature the name of GITS's creator, Masamune Shirow, a Japanese man. So white people are not taking credit for something they didn't create.

People say they want to see more cultural diversity but they start throwing fits whenever someone uses a cultural element in their work and they themselves are not from that culture.
I see a world where older cultures are gradually going to mix together and become newer ones, this to me, is inevitable; and I look forward to the day where we can simply enjoy good works without all the moral hand wringing.

As for the trailer itself, I think it looks better than what little I've seen before. Although I am not sure I like some of the turns they are taking in the story that this trailer seems to imply. The first of her kind? I seem to recall there were lots of people like her in the mangas and the anime.

Blame presumes guilt. There's no guilt in voting for your interests, even if others don't understand them.

Reasons for those voting decisions are interesting, but also very hard to get since the media ignores everything between the coasts, and even the diverse internet is so full of filter bubbles that you're basically funneled straight into echo chambers. At least on my end, the Silicon Valley/Hollywood culture is drowning out everything else -- and I'm a commie outsider who doesn't give a shit about celebrities or "save zones".

That said, the election is just the most recent culmination of an ongoing, decades-long development. But that's beyond the point, so...

Populism trumps business as usual if business as usual leads to Detroit, Cleveland and Camden. Or the rural areas on the coast of Louisiana, which were hit much harder than New Orleans and still look worse than Chernobyl, 11 years after the fact.

So the question is: did you a) fail to provide an alternative, b) fail to make a convincing case for that alternative, c) decide against trying to convince those that think differently, or d) not even realize that not everybody shares your perception of reality.

Given the tone of the reactions, the collective damnation of Trump voters as (insert any insult in the book), I'm thinking that d) is a much bigger issue than anyone is willing to admit.

In short, I blame George R. R. Martin. If he had published The Winds of Winter by now, all would be well.

One of the great intellectual catastrophes of the modern world, and probably the harbinger of the ultimate doom of our civilisation, is the collapse in the distinction between 'compare to' and 'equate with'. We can reasonably compare almost anything to almost anything else, and how unfortunate that we can expect immediately to be confronted by some aggrieved outrage-peddler who imagines they have a right to find the comparison insulting.

It is a literal fact that any group of two or more people, or living things, or indeed most objects of any kind, will possess some internal differences. As a matter of certain truth, not subject to doubt, muslims share with rats and serial killers the trait that they evince diversity of behaviour and belief. This demonstrates the total banality of the 'but they're all different' argument. It's not for their differences that these groups are disliked.

That's probably enough of a lesson for one day, and certainly @oritteropo ought to know better. I don't want to take the trouble to argue deranged claims like 'there are muslims who don't believe in god', or tiresome diversions on how christians and other jews can be just as bad, or to debate the relative merits of various religiously mandated dress codes; but you are right about one thing @SDGundamX: I would much prefer that islamic violence and oppression were a harmless and overblown bogey, but ethics is not a children's game - these are real people, with real victims, and too many of both.

@gorillaman

The only thing I see failing completely is your absurd attempt at rationalizing your bigotry--more aptly labelled in this case by its proper name: Islamophobia. I don't for a second believe what I'm about to post will change your mind about Islam or Muslims in general but I do believe that this kind of bigotry needs to be called out when it rears its ugly head. And my, you went full ugly there, didn't you... comparing Muslims to rats and seriel killers? Classy.

Despite your protestations to the contrary, there are in fact Muslims who do not believe in God but for a variety of reasons (keeping peace with religious family members, maintaining a connection to their cultural heritage, networking, etc.) continue to attend services and identify as Muslims. This is true of many believers in all the major religions, including Christianity and Judaism.

You see, as much as you'd like Muslims to all be boogeymen coming to bring Sharia law down on the rest of world, anyone who has actually met and talked with a Muslim (and god-forbid actually visited one of the countries StukaFox listed) realizes that Muslims, like all people, are extremely diverse (again, despite your protestations to the contrary).

Indeed there are Sharia zealots. But there are also moderates and reformers and even liberal radicals. Mostly, though its just a lot of people trying to get on with their lives the best way they know how.

Now, I find most religious beliefs to be repugnant. However, I don't find the ideas expressed in the Koran to be much more repugnant than, say, the Bible. In fact, I'm less concerned about what is written in supposedly holy books and more concerned with how believers attempt to implement those ideas in reality. I do indeed find particular forms of this implementation, such as forcing women to wear a bhurka, disturbing (just as I find Christians' attacks on LGBT rights disturbing). It's important to note, though, that such practices are NOT universal. For example, in some Islamic countries like Malaysia it's enough to simply cover your hair with a colorful scarf.

On the other hand, other practices that you mentioned such as Female Genital Mutilation and virginity tests ARE NOT Islamic. FGM predates Islam and is still practiced in the locales where it originated (places such as Mali, for instance) that now happen to be Islamic majority areas. The Indonesian virginity tests as well do not stem from some universal commandment in Islam but from Indonesian culture which sees women as "the symbol of the nations moral guardians".

Again, I don't suppose any of this makes any difference to you. You want to see the world in black and white, us versus them, "rats" and "serial killers" versus you, the white knight who is just trying to save us all from our cultural relativistic blindness. And so the shades of grey I am describing to you will likely go overlooked. I would be happy to be proven wrong, but I suspect the reality is I'll receive some lengthy reply that can be distilled down to, "Islam bad, hur." Or perhaps, "All religions bad, but Islam worst, hur." To which I can only reply, that demonizing the practitioners of any particular religion is unlikely to bring about the reforms you seek.

Different cultural values. Alright then, @SDGundamX

The claim is that these places are examples of islamic countries 'filled with nice people'. I'm suggesting that @StukaFox's list of vicious police-states is perhaps not best chosen to illustrate this view.

There's a difference in category, isn't there, between being muslim and being japanese or american. It would be absurd to say, "I am japanese because I believe..." just as it would, "I am a muslim because I happened to be born..."

Now, we can actually make sweeping and not the less factual statements about people on the basis of their shared characteristics. Japanese people are born within such a set of geographical coordinates, or to parents who hold citizenship with the state of japan, or have naturalised following a particular procedure. Millions of people lumped together in a single sentence, and without assuming they're all alike.

Muslims, like rats or serial killers, aren't all alike and they don't all believe exactly the same things. Nevertheless by definition there really are certain specific beliefs to which they must all hew. Or show me the muslim who doesn't believe that there's a god, or that muhammed received its doctrine.

If you find basic, universal islamic beliefs repugnant (as every decent person must) then it is correct, objectively correct, to generalise your antipathy to all muslims, however many millions there may be, however widely spread. The apology from number and diversity fails completely.

@gorillaman

It's almost as if some countries have different cultural values than the United States. For example:

Japan:
--Distributing pornography is illegal and punishable by up to two years in prison and a $25,000 fine (under Article 175 of the Penal Code, which defines pornography as showing the naughty parts of a man or woman, hence mosaics on all Japanese porn)
--Domestic violence and rape laws are often unenforceable
--LGBT community has almost no legal recourse in the face of discrimination of virtually any kind (housing, work, banking, etc.)

America itself has its share of bat-shit insane laws (from the rest of the world's perspective at least) such as legalized death penalty, and "well-intentioned" Christians are still fighting to deny gay people the right to marry in court at this very moment.

Should we come to the conclusion that Americans and Japanese people are "bad people" because these laws exist? Or maybe, as Ahmed Ahmed suggested, we should stop lumping huge groups of people (in the case of Muslims literally millions of people from an extremely culturally diverse group of countries) together and assuming they're all alike and believe exactly the same things?

It's happening hardcore over here. It seems like sometime in the last 5 years, all the stops came out and it's become utterly shameless. They will say or do anything, and if they are wrong or found to be acting improperly they print a very small retraction - but the damage is already done. And other media outlets report on the false report!

Recently the Labour leader here has been repeatedly smeared by anti Semitism. They say his supporters are anti-Semites, that he doesn't express enough outrage in condemning anti-Semitism. The guy is famed for his tolerance and acceptance, says in almost every speech he gives that he wants to challenge any and all xenophobia, is the biggest cheerleader for women and minorities, has appointed the most diverse shadow cabinet in history, issued a full independent investigation into racism and abuse....... He does all of this, but now the stories are "claims of anti-Semitism appears to follow the Labour leader around" -- they are now reporting that they have reported false claims of anti-Semitism!

He doesn't even defend himself - he asks people instead to stop instrumentalising minorities to score political points. So then they claim he's not taking their false claims seriously enough and therefore not taking anti-Semitism seriously and the smear cycle goes on.

The worst thing about all of this is how complicit his opponents are in the game.... fair enough if you don't like him, it's ok to rubbish his policies. But this media misrepresentation is destroying a democracy that was already on its knees. And politicians, guardians of our society, manipulate and utilise this poisonous shit to get their way!

This year has completely turned me off politics again. To see what these people will to do an honest man has broken my spirit, but to that 70 year old bloke's credit, it hasn't broken his.

Beck is definitely one of the most talented and diverse musicians out there.

"YouTube is walking a fine line here, their empire is built on all these small creators as much as it's big ones advertisers and their willingness to pay for ads. Piss them off enough and they may decide it's no longer worth it and either quit or take their content elsewhere. The less diversity YouTube has in it's programming and the more it just looks like another TV network, with all the same safe boring advertiser-relevant bullshit."

Sure, but he never made the argument that YouTube couldn't do what it was doing, only questioned whether it should.

YouTube is walking a fine line here, their empire is built on all these small creators as much as it's big ones. Piss them off enough and they may decide it's no longer worth it and either quit or take their content elsewhere. The less diversity YouTube has in it's programming and the more it just looks like another TV network, with all the same safe boring bullshit.

The reality is that sceptics today are targeting esjews for the same reason they have every other group of harmful cultists in the past. It shouldn't come as a surprise that a community of dedicated rationalists would be mystified and angered by the sudden rise of a new anti-rational movement; especially where that movement has been directly damaging to their own, see things like elevatorgate and prominent sceptics getting banned from conventions for wrongthink.

But why should the focus be suddenly so sharply on one group of irrationalists, to the apparent neglect of the others? Because esjudaism is the fresher and more exigent threat. Everyone in the current generation who's capable of correcting their ideas about religion, ghosts, scientology and psychics has basically already done so. Whereas esjews, like their frequent allies and ideological partners the islamists, seem to be gaining ground and converts every day. There's more opportunity and more need to change minds there than elsewhere.

Controversially I'm going to claim that 'youtube sceptics' spend a lot of their time on social media. Some of them make their living through social media. I think it's possible to understand why so many of them object so strongly to the tsunami of censorship that's devastating speech on those platforms in response to social justice hysteria; to suppression of the fictional and fascist concept of 'hate speech', to the false reports and takedowns of youtube videos, to twitter's Ministry of Truth and Safety, to reddit's constant ideological purges.

Now, why are so many of these anti-esjew sceptics white males? Well for one thing because most people in the english-speaking world are white, get over it and stop screeching about diversity. More substantially because most people are idiots. Let me explain. When you have a terrible ideology, obviously you look to stupid people for converts, but when you have an explicitly bigoted ideology, one that demonises certain groups of people while advancing special privileges for others, you narrow your focus even more and direct your propaganda efforts specifically at stupid people in the classes you're pretending to represent. You don't get many jewish friends of national socialism, and you don't get many white male esjews. It's not that these people are sitting on their throne of privilege chuckling down at the poor minorities struggling up to meet them. It's that they're a bunch of retards, but the wrong kind of retards to be esjews.

So opposition to esjudaism comprises: every intelligent and moral person in the world, male and female, black and white, gay and straight; a bunch of stupid straight white men; conservatives and other defectives; actual misogynists, homophobes and racists who imagine we're on their side.

TLDR: Sturgeon's Law.

The coolest thing by far watching these Olympics is seeing the diversity up on that podium. Black, white, hispanic, asian, muslim, jewish...

US is kicking ass but that to me is where we really crush it. Pretty damn cool!

Diversity finally taking the curve towards absurdity.

Eh, I'm not sure about that. Actual airflow is the same as whatever the small fan can move. The Venturi effect would just make the higher velocity airflow through the small fan channel into a lower velocity flow through the larger (main part) channel (it's basically a complicated diffusor). The actual rate of flow is the same. You probably actually lose a fair amount of efficiency because of all the ducting and diversion. I would also guess that small, high-speed fans aren't as efficient as larger low speed fans for the same airflow.

That isn't to say it isn't a cool design, though. But yeah, for just getting the job done, a box fan is probably more efficient and effective.