Your video, Life-size LEGO Technic Bugatti Chiron that drives?!, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Likely not, because a sitting judge did say, from the bench and on the record, that he was guilty of second degree murder and obstruction, so technically he was found guilty by a judge in court, but perhaps not in a legal sense (but that finding was part of the plea, so perhaps even legally).

I'm not sure about the video description, unless there's some technicality I'm missing. What about White Male Officer Michael Slager in South Carolina?

Yep...that seems like a bit of 'please don't throw me in that briar patch, Br'er Fox.' imo. If he could get banned for outrageously disgusting, intentionally provocative, unpatriotic, but technically allowed comments, it seems it would verify to him that liberals (which he believes we all are here) are all poised to censor and silence any voice that disagrees.
I prefer to allow the ugliness of the right to show itself publicly, hiding it does nothing to oppose it and only let's it fester, hidden safely in the dark.

It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.
I prefer the former to the latter two options.

The problem is, much of that awful stuff contradicts the other awful stuff and none of it is consistent. If he genuinely believes it all, there's something seriously wrong. The only belief I can pin down is that belief is fluid and constantly changing, and anything goes if it supports the cause/talking points of the day.

If you find one that's died of natural causes then technically it would be vegan.

As the issue is not with flesh of the rabbit, but rather whether or not it was exploited unnecessarily.

Of course it has to be genuinely natural causes. Going around digging holes as traps wouldn't count lol.

Printable guns are another scare tactic. We are talking about guns that can only fire small caliber rounds and that still require at least a few metal components. There is no such thing as a totally untraceable, all plastic gun. Technically, if there were such a thing, it would be illegal under existing law.

Ghost guns are another freak out buzz word. It's a grey area that is quasi legal as long as you only make it for yourself. If you plan on making them and selling them, you are fucked.

Hell, I can go down to Lowes and buy materials to make a higher caliber zip gun that is actually going to be deadlier than a plastic printed one. With a cork, some glue,plastic vanes, a nail, and a shotgun shell I can make a grenade. With some matches, pipe from Lowes, a firecracker fuse, and threadlocker I can make a pipe bomb.

The point being, you can make damn near anything deadly with some work and access to everyday components. If you want to frighten a gullible populace with a scary plastic 'gun' to further your agenda against guns in general, it's child play to do so.

The short answer is "it depends on the circumstances".
(Edit: because you have a legal right to do it doesn't mean it's warranted in every instance.)
The longer answer is "Yes I might if I knew for certain it wasn't someone who should be in my house, and Yes I would for certain if it was multiple unannounced intruders or a single armed intruder."

To be technical, in Texas they taught us someone only had to be unannounced on your property, not in your house (explained as a holdover from when horse and cattle rustling was a problem and a capital offense), so in that sense I would not do what I was taught in Texas. I have no qualms whatsoever about killing a known intruder inside my house....with or without warning.

Because it seems important to you to hear, yes, anything dealing with race is, by one definition, racist.

....but....

Just like discrimination, that's not necessarily bad.
Discrimination just means noticing a difference just like racism can mean making any distinction by race. Most definitions include prejudice and superiority as parts of racism, but not all. Discrimination by itself is not bad, it's discriminating against someone (especially based on racial assumptions) that's considered wrong.

Racism-the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race.

That characteristic could be nothing more than pigmentation levels, a physical characteristic with no other connotations or prejudices attached....it's still technically racism. E.g.. it's racist and discriminatory to state that Americans of African descent are at risk for sickle cell anemia, but not malicious or prejudicial.

People who claim to be 100% non-racist are liars, blind and deaf, or 100% brain dead. Reasonable people admit they see race, even those who don't discriminate against others based on race.

So I watched most of this, and I don't get it. It seems that the TL;DR is that a legal firm working for Apple asked him to take down a video because it had a single page of a technical manual. He said he would only if they submitted a DMCA claim. They didn't, so it's still up.

And?

To me, the video sorta oversells the difficulty in identifying / escaping from "ridiculous claims", at least in comparison to my personal experiences.

I grew up in a very religious (Christian, Methodist) family / city / state / country. I was questioning the indoctrination at an early age (younger than 10), and rejecting it due to never receiving satisfactory answers to those questions by ~12. Actually, one of the most significant pushes for me was the ultimate reward/punishment thing. Zero consistency and open contradictions between different religions / sects / sources, etc. In symbolic logic, contradictions mean that one of your premises is wrong. Reconsider what you "know" and try again.

With regards to atheism vs (a)gnosticism, technically I'm an agnostic because I don't know with absolute certainty that there is no god / gods out there. However, in practice, I easily and comfortably would rather self-identify as an atheist. Why, when I don't know for certain? Because I also don't know that there isn't an Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, Loch Ness Monster, or Leprechauns, yet I don't feel compelled to tell people that I'm "agnostic" about those things. No. They are pretty clearly human-invented bullshit, with readily apparent human motivations behind their invention. Sounds like religion to me.

That's basically Russel's teapot.

Oh @bobknight33, you slurp up the moronic lies every time.

Obama didn't separate those children from their families, they came alone.
Were they held in "cages", technically yes, for up to 72 hours (but usually less), but not for up to 20 days after being separated from their families. Obama was lambasted none the less by both parties and quickly made efforts to minimize the incarnation of children, Trump has maximized it while minimizing our ability to process them by not supporting the funding of more immigration judges.
Also note, Obama era "cages" had walls, not just open chain link, a small but psychologically significant difference.

"You don't like parents and kids separated, you don't want them detained (indefinitely) together either...what do you want?!"....really, she and the right are too dumb to come up with any other alternatives? That's impressive stupidity.
How about more immigration judges so families can go through the legal application process within the legal time frame instead of just warehousing them indefinitely and making the process longer and harder, breaking US and international laws in the process in the hopes they'll give up and just go home to die.

Liberals, and all other humans with a conscience, have been fighting this policy since day one, no one saved their outrage....how moronic a lie....but I expect nothing less from oan, whose hyper bias and aversion to fact is more apparent than Fox.

The Trump family separation policy was the distraction, distracting you from the ever increasing conviction rate in the Russia probes and our precipitously falling international standing.

You're dead on. This was orignally used for self-cooling beer kegs and was developed by Peter Maier-Laxhuber at the Technical University München, Germany (where else? ;-) ) in 1983.

From German Wikipedia:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selbstkühlendes_Bierfass

Brlliant idea to use the technology this way!

He took one tiny step towards a good thing, and gave up quite a lot of leverage to take that tentative step. IF it eventually leads to some binding meaningful agreement, kudos to him. It's insanely early to be patting any backs yet, though, except perhaps Kim's back, he did amazingly well for his country already.
It's not straw grasping, it's reality, there's no agreement yet, only a stated willingness to discuss one. That's only a good thing if it's successful, certainly not good if it ends with more concessions from us but nothing from NK, and I think that's what many people expect. Don't expect any kudos for Trump until the process bears tangible fruit that benefits us.

Edit: you said he made peace, but there is no peace agreement and we are still technically at war, then you said he got nuclear war off the table, but that's simply not in any way true. Who's grasping?

Pretty good video. Specific things:

Too many prostitutes: Most of the non-Thai people that complain about this went to the wrong places in Thailand. Pattaya was a tiny fishing village before the Vietnam war. Then, soldiers started getting shipped into the country for R&R. The Thai government didn't really know what to do with them, so they sorta passed the buck and decided to send them to Pattaya to relax. Bunch of stressed out dudes there, nothing to do, high demand for alternate activities ... the market answered.

Fast forward to today, and Pattaya knows exactly what put it on the map. I hate that place -- it is like what would happen if you took the worst/sleaziest elements of Vegas and Tijuana, and then built a "city" around it. Shittiest beach in Thailand, chock full of sleaze, disgusting. However, it is one of the most major tourist destinations. Gee, why could that be? Is it in spite of the nature of the place, or because of it? No false advertising here, you know what you're getting when you book a trip there. And if that is your thing, more power to ya.

Now, I don't want to act like prostitution exists in Pattaya and Soi Cowboy / Patpong in Bangkok, and is absent elsewhere. Far from it. Every town, down on to tiny ones, likely has a red-light district and brothels. The ones you hear about are sex tourism pits like those major ones, but the trade is alive and well pretty much everywhere -- and mostly caters to local Thais.

I've honestly never been to such an establishment or sought those services (in 11 years of being here), but I don't care that they are available. The most significant negative is that they are NOT well-regulated like, say, what I've heard about Amsterdam. Prostitution is technically illegal in Thailand. So the de-facto situation is that brothels have to pay protection money to police in order to avoid getting shut down or "inspected", etc.

Corruption is a major problem -- much worse than prostitution, in my opinion.


Too many ladyboys: It is certainly true that there are more trans people per capita here than pretty much anywhere else that I know of. It took me a while, being a country kid from Kansas, but I see that in pretty much the same light as the German narrator in the video at this point. Acceptance is good. You do you, man.

As a stereotype on the flip side of the coin, I think the ladyboys tend to be great in custom interaction kinds of jobs. Cashiers at 7-11, waitpeople at restaurants, etc. Polite, attentive, helpful. And often the most willing to attempt to use English. A lot of the best students that I've taught English to have been ladyboy leaning.


Freedom: I'm with @Mordhaus here. When your personal liberty is mainly due to the apathy / incompetence of the governing authority, and they may choose to get off their asses and revoke that at any time ... perhaps it isn't something to brag about. Very basic stuff like dissenting speech and protesting is met with being carted off for little re-education chats, etc. Pretty scary shit, actually.


Basically I tend to think that just like anywhere on Earth, there's a lot of good here and plenty of bad too. There's plenty of legitimate gripes with cultural elements and stuff in Thailand, but the most common ones (that the video pretty accurately listed) are pretty insignificant in my opinion.

Reminds me of a skating joke:

It is the Olympic men's figure skating. Out comes the
Russian competitor, he skates around to some classical music
in a slightly dull costume, performs some excellent leaps
but without any great artistic feel for the music.

The Judges' scores read: Britain 5.8: Russia 5.9: United
States 5.5: Ireland 6.0

Next comes the American competitor in a sparkling stars and
stripes costume, skating to some rock and roll music. He
gets the crowd clapping, but is not technically as good as
the Russian. He slightly misses landing a triple Salchow and
loses the center during a spin. But, artistically, it is a
more satisfying performance.

The Judges' scores read: Britain 5.8: Russia 5.5: United
States 5.9: Ireland 6.0

Finally out comes the Irish competitor wearing a tatty old
donkey jacket, with his skates tied over his wellies. He
reaches the ice, trips straight away and bangs his nose
which starts bleeding. He tries to get up, staggers a few
paces then slips again. He spends his entire 'routine'
getting up then falling over again. Finally he crawls off the
ice a tattered and bleeding mess.

The Judges' scores read: Britain 0.0: Russia 0.0: United
States 0.0: Ireland 6.0

The other 3 judges turn to the Irish judge and demand in
unison, "How the hell can you give that mess 6.0?!"

To which the Irish judge replies "You've gotta remember,
it's damn slippery out there."