As I said to @newtboy sometime ago in a similar(ish) conversation, I appreciate your responses. It's nice to talk to someone not just spitting bile (which you'd do less if you ate a plant-based whole food diet ).

Those 'multiple phases of science' saying some food was good or bad at various times of your life is mostly the lobbyists and corporations making smoke screens. It's been known for decades that a plant-based whole food diet is protective against the #1 killer in the Western world. Again, it's the same as the tobacco companies. When the science disagrees with you, you cause a confusion smokescreen so people say exactly what you just said. And evidently it worked -- until the last few years when the internet and a handful of movies and books have started making it very clear what's going on. If you have a short attention span, I suggest you watch just a few 5-min videos on NutritionFacts. The guy is funny and has videos about just about everything in nutrition. And he takes everything from the newest studies. He also has a great book that came out recently, How Not to Die which is a fun read considering it's a diet science book.

Re: personal choice -- I understand you annoyance at being belittled by vegetarians/vegans, but you have to understand that we don't see it as a "personal choice". We see it as a moral one. Why is it not a "personal choice" to molest children? What if someone likes to molest children? It doesn't matter because, morally, you should not. And you're causing harm to another. The question is why are animals not allowed inside our moral-consideration-circle. Why are they excluded?

I personally think that vegetarians are hypocrites if they're doing it for moral reasons alone. You could argue that meat is murder, but dairy is torture. But, you gotta take whatever steps you need to get there. It's hard, I know. Giving up dairy was really hard.

My argument usually isn't about sentience. It's about choices. Why cause harm to something you don't need to just for your pleasure when there are literally better alternatives? We do, indeed, have to eat, so I eat the lowest form on the food chain that I can to survive. They just also luckily happen to be the most nutritious.

@greatgooglymoogly

Thanks for taking the time to watch it.

Like I said in my previous comment, this talk needs to take a lot of shortcuts, otherwise its length would surpass anyone's attention span.

So, point by point.

By "balanced budget", I suppose you refer to the federal budget. A balanced budget is not neccessarily a bad thing, but it is undesirable in most case. The key reason is sectoral balances. The economy can divided into three sectors: public, private, foreign. Since one person's spending is another person's income, the sum of all spending and income of these three sectors is zero by definition.

More precisely: if the public sector runs a surplus and the private sector runs a surplus, the foreign sector needs to run a deficit of a corresponding size.

Two examples:
- the government runs a balanced budget, no surplus, no deficit
- the private sector runs a surplus (savings) of 2% of GDP
- the foreign sector must, by definition, run a deficit of 2% of GDP (your country runs a current account surplus of 2% of GDP)

- the government runs a deficit of 2% of GDP
- the foreign sector runs a surplus of 3% (your current account deficit of 3%)
- your private sector must, by definition, run a deficit of 1% of GDP, aka burn through savings or run up debt

If you intend to allow the private sector to net save, you need to run either a current account surplus or a public sector deficit, or both. Since we don't export goods to Mars just yet, not all countries can run current account surpluses, so you need to run a public sector deficit if you want your private sector to net save. No two ways about it.

Germany runs a balanced public budget, sort of, and its private sector net saves. But that comes at the cost of a current account surplus to the tune of €250B. That's 250 billion Euros worth of debt other countries have to accumulate so that both the private and public sector in Germany can avoid deficits. Parasitic is what I'd call this behaviour, and I'm German.

If you feel ambitious, you could try to have both surplus and deficit within the private sector by allowing households to net save while "forcing" corporations to run the corresponding deficits. But to any politician trying that, I'd advise to avoid air travel.

As for the "devaluation of the currency", see my previous comment.

Also, she didn't use real numbers, because a) the talk is short and numbers kill people's attention rather quickly, and b) it's a policy decision to use debt to finance a deficit. One might just as well monetise it, like I explained in my previous comment.

Helicopter money would be quite helpful these days, actually. Even monetarists like AEP say so. If fiscal policy is off the table (deficit hawkery), what else are you left with...

As for your question related to the Fed, let me quote Eric Tymoigne on why MMT views both central bank and Treasury as part of the consolidated government:

"MMT authors tend to like to work with a consolidated government because they see it as an effective strategy for policy purpose (see next section), but also because the unconsolidated case just hides under layers of institutional complexity the main point: one way or another the Fed finances the Treasury, always. This monetary financing is not an option and is not by itself inflationary."

MMT principle: the central bank needs to be under democratic control, aka be part of government. The Fed in particular can pride itself on its independance all it wants, it still cannot fulfill any of its goals without the Treasury's help. It cannot diverge from government policies too long. Unlike the ECB, which is a nightmare in its construction.

Anyway, what does he mean by "one way or another the Fed finances the Treasury, always"? Well, the simple case is debt monetisation, direct financing. However, the Fed also participates by ensuring that Primary Dealers have enough reserves to make a reasonable bid on treasuries. The Fed makes sure that auctions of treasuries will always succeed. Always. Either by providing reserves to ensure buyers can afford the treasuries, by replacing maturing treasuries or buying them outright. No chance whatsoever for bond vigilantes. Betting against treasuries is pointless, you will always lose.

But what about taxation as a means to finance the Treasury? Well, the video's Monopoly example illustrated quite nicely, you cannot collect taxes until you have spent currency into circulation. Spending comes before taxation, it does not depend on it. Until reserves are injected into the banking system, either by the Fed through asset purchases or the Treasury through spending, taxes cannot be paid. Again, monetary financing is not optional. If the Treasury borrows money from the public, it borrows back money it previously spent.

Yes, I ignored the distribution of wealth, taxation, the fixation on growth and a million other things. That's a different discussion.

I have to disagree.
An audience of hundreds of thousands - millions of rabid followers is quite enough. If you have over 10000 followers, you're a public figure, and you are one on purpose.
Most of those who had a 'face punch' game made using their image don't have any security. In fact, I'm fairly certain there's one where you upload any picture you want.

Some humans have a better attention span, but not many. Most people by far are NOT capable of focusing on more than one issue at a time. They may think they are, they're wrong.

She is DEFINATELY polarizing. Anyone who listens to her or knows her work either thinks she's a shining warrior for feminism, or a self centered idiot pushing feminism back decades. Very few people who know about her work have no opinion.
If she gets EVERYONE'S knickers in a twist, she's pretty polarizing.

Specifics probably matter, but I'm going to say they don't sound satirical either. The differences are that the people that you listed have an audience of hundreds of millions. Sarkeesian has hundreds of thousands, maybe a million. Making threats and childish fantasies more concentrated. Also, I'm presuming making youtube videos about the media and feminism doesn't quite buy the security Hilary Clinton / the taxpayer can afford.

Finally, I seem to remember the Clinton one was focussed on a pun and not on Clinton. It was a game where you have to beat your political opponents (literally). Hardly ground breaking comedy but its a start.

If you think this draws attention away from other problems, I'm glad to inform you that other humans have a better attention span and are capable of understanding more than one woman's grievance at a time.

I also like that she is described as a 'polarising' public figure. I doubt that. The only people that dislike her are some gamers because she criticizes some aspects of an industry they support. Everyone else either hasn't heard of her, thinks she makes interesting points, or shrugs their shoulders and says 'she might be overreaching'. Hardly a real polarising figure just because she gets your knickers in a twist.

1. Weed in the Park (Illegal act in public place) Fine, they deserve to be called out on it, but it's also something that the public at large doesn't care enough about to affect them long term.

2. Winter Solstice Ritual. Fine, they could be fired from one company, but it's pretty rare to have strict religious fundamentalists as employers. They'll find a job elsewhere and be able to sue the other company.

3. Prostitute. It's illegal, if they're caught, I'm assuming they met in public. It's something that society tends to forgive.

As far as your version of VoodooV being a crazy stalker, that's probably something that could be dealt with using anti-harassment laws.

Even the racist moron in this video will end up with another job eventually, we have some social safety nets that will help him survive until then. The people who choose to crusade about these things also tend to have a short attention span, there's always something new to be outraged about. So, the likelihood of an ongoing campaign to keep this guy unemployed is pretty low.

Also, there is nothing forcing these companies to fire them. They can keep them employed and accept the bad PR and any accompanying loss of business. It's their choice.

Capitalism is a guideline or system of how to organise aspects of society (trade, labour and services for example), nothing more. How you use it defines its effect on us. I could sell you my child explicitly for the purpose of you raping it and it would show how evil capitalism is. Or I sell you my children's book explicitly for the purpose of you entertaining your own children and that would be quite nice.
The problem starts if you think everything needs to be a for profit business as capitalism should be unlimited. Then you live in a country that makes prisons privately owned businesses and thinks it's ok to bankrupt sick people and their families with medical bills.
Capitalism is as evil as the people controling it. Who allows these people to be evil? Who cares? Apparently not the majority.
However, all that is not the problem of this ad. The capitalism works to nobodies disadvantege here. Edeka tries to brand itself as family-friendly and established part of homelife. That is quite normal and acceptable for a grocery store. It is not like as if VW would be putting out ads on how honest they are.
The version of the ad I described as being better is as manipulative as this one with the exception that it doesn't make everyone look like assholes upon closer inspection.
Nobody nailed grandpa's door shut, he's allowed to step into the world and make new friends and other aquaintances. His isolation is understandable but mostly his own fault. I witnessed stuff like that myself, I have grandparents too.
On the other hand you bemoan the smombies of today. Do you see the irony of complaining about the screen-fixed stare of todays youth (and society in general) on an internet forum?
We created a distraction-addicted, short-term attention-spanned and self-affirming society on our own by willingly swallowing all the crap the distraction industry throws at us.
I don't have a twitter account because nothing I can say in 140 characters without established context is worth saying. That gotta mean something coming from me of all people.
I'm not on Facebook because I know what the 'StaSi' was and see no reason to do their work on my own person for Mr. Zuckerberg and his shareholders.
I have no internet connection on my cellphone because I prefer to know stuff instead of just looking it up. I don't write text messages all the time because I prefer spoken words with their complexity that simplifies communication instead of emojis that emulate things my face did since before cellphones stopped being science-fiction.
I choose not to stare at the palm of my hand and what's lying in it every 5 minutes because I can. Most of our modern society chooses differently. They chose poorly, as the real oldtimers would say.
And here we are, yet again, ranting about the evils of enticing screens in our lives, live on the internet. You know, we would not be this absurd joke if we'd sat at a dinnertable right now. With food and drink from Edeka.

Writing: All of these shows are what we might call 'clever,' which is generally a big selling point for me. Unexpected, heavily layered, structurally complex writing for comedic effect - a lot of recursive, iteratively growing humor. They're all also quite big on dialogue, and are comparatively 'dark'.

Themes: All of them also feature self-destructive and dysfunctional characters, to different degrees. In addition to this:

Rick & Morty: Does brilliant deconstruction of science fiction concepts without a condescending outside perspective. An amazing example is (spoilers) the time that Rick makes Cronenbergs of the entire global population, or the time that Morty's indecisiveness creates split quantum timelines.

Potentially good example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5A5Mb__fiA

Always Sunny: Never shies away from exploring the darkest consequences of its incredibly self-absorbed, idiotic, low attention span, high energy, self-destructive cast.

Potentially good example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_49P1RtqU0

Arrested Development: ...I'm not good at writing these synopses; I just wanted to see if I could figure out why I love these shows so much. Anyway, Arrested Development is the most heavily layered of all of them, so in just a few episodes it builds up an incredible library of call-backs, double meanings, etc. It's also less abrasive than the other two, if you have something against offensive shows.

...I don't know if there any good example scenes. You should just watch it.

I just wish they didn't edit out 95% of the drawing. I understand the internet has a short attention span, but that's why they invented clicking on the time slider to skip around.

You're totally right. I am now concerned about how short my attention span is. Is it possible I stopped the video before the second explosion? Time to re-evaluate my life.

My attention span is usually longer. It's just short when it's confronted with something that's not really funny. If I liked Ina-Gadda-Da-Vida I might have been able to sit though the whole thing without skipping, and given that each scene was a joke within itself I still saw the transition to outright ridiculous. It just didn't float my boat.
Unlike Tracecoach indicated in his posting comment "By a minute and a half in, I was laughing so hard I was crying and then it starts to get very, very weird."
I was, by the minute and a half mark thinking "when does the laughing start?".
By the two and a half minute thinking "the laughing should well and truly be started by now because shit is supposed to be weird by now"
Good for you guys for having a low threshold for boredom. Grass must intrigue you.

In other words you missed everything as it transitioned to different jokes, because you have a 30 second attention span.

Ho boy, some peeps attention span.

Once upon a time, National Geographic was serious, educational, and interesting. Now they find the need to be all "EXTREME" with people like this guy pandering to the audience, because clearly the general public is too stupid and has too short an attention span to actually listen to the stuff.

And yet, somehow we can tolerate David Attenborough's completely dry and boringly British delivery.

[EDIT]Oh, and remember the old theme song? Now THAT was a theme song!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF7FeNjNjHk

I don't think a short attention span is enough justification to say this is a bad example of a video. If people aren't interested in a subject you can't force them to be interested, but at the same time, the video's visualizations showed without telling where someone who wanted to know more where to look. Even in the video they annotated that this is more of a research jumping off point, that it is indeed a compressed version, and even paid a little lip service to other complications if only to get you going on your own.

I spent a good few hours looking at ISIS, trying to figure it out myself a week before this video came out, now that this video is out it did the same in about 4 and a half minutes. Granted, this is without on demand sourcing of sources, but like I said above, its a great primer. For people that want to know and don't, this is a good place to start. For those who don't care why does it matter?

It also taught us to not have an attention span of no more than a few minutes - then Much Music come in and finished the job.

The other thing I noticed is that, what was purely meant to be a learning tool, Sesame Street has become a monolith of marketing mayhem. Today, it's just a money maker, less about teaching and more about marketing it's wears to children.