The last word in pedicures...or scream.

...how many ways is this a real bad, very bad, idea?

Oh well, a new way trim the verge.

Chernobyl was a big cock-up allright, as was Fukushima, although that seems to have been less severe.

What would you say is the most dangerous form of energy production we have now? What about the safest? Look up "Deaths by terawatt hour", you might be surprised.

Even wind power has killed about 3 times as many people per TWH produced as nuclear, AFAIK mainly due to the amounts of steel and concrete used in constructing the plants, the production of which is relatively dangerous. Coal is on a different planet altogether, killing about 1500 times as many people per TWH as nuclear.

Even if you assume the total deaths from nuclear power production are underreported and underestimated by a factor of 10, that would still only put it on par with solar power in terms of people killed to produce energy.

Now, nuclear isn't a cureall solution to our energy problems. Even if we wanted to, we simply couldn't build enough power plants to cover all our energy needs with nuclear, you've got the storage issue, you've got the issue of plant placement, and in general relying on one technology alone is a bad idea.

Still. Coal. 1500 times as deadly. How many articles and videos have you seen on how scary coal is? What gives?

Your video, Why Electronic Voting is a BAD Idea, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 15 Badge!

Bad idea, once they are finished and you go out to inspect the work and find nothing there and then they'll just tell you it's invisible.

I hope you don't feel like that I'm pushing anything onto you. I'd like to just present the facts. I wasn't vegan until I turned 33, so I'm certainly not judging or trying to give out this information in order to put anyone down or elevate myself. I'm not trying to troll, I'm not trying to out-do you. I'm also typing this with limited time, so apologies if some of it sounds frank. (The videos below do a better job than me anyway).

1) A proper plant based diet makes it 8 times less likely for cancer cells to grow. There is a reason why 3rd world countries (that have largely plant based diets due to poverty) don't get cancers us westerners have. Also the #1 killer in the western world is cardiovascular disease, in the US alone one person dies every 8 seconds from it. Which is around 400, 000 people a year.

I know you're sceptical. I was too. So here's some actual science from actual doctors, who have come these conclusions on proper peer reviewed and non biased / industry funded research:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rNY7xKyGCQ2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZtPGyLaiHE1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYTf0z_zVs03
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XVf36nwraw4


2)Vegans aren't anti-choice, they are pro life, pro planet. The actions of people eating animal products goes way further than a person choosing to eat something(sure they are typically ignorant of the consequences, as most of pre-vegans were too). When a large portion of the planet chooses to eat animal products it effects everyone, because it's destroying the planet through global warming, deforestation, dumping of animal agriculture waste and so on. It kills more animals than just ones being brutalised in cages. It will eventually kill us too. To me it seems like a bad idea to destroy the only place in the universe that we can currently live.
So by eating animal products you're really making a choice for you, for me, for my hypothetical grandchildren, and of course for the animal that almost certainly wants to keep being alive. So as a vegan I'd like you refrain for making choices that impact my life, and I'm standing up for the voiceless animals who would certainly object to your choice too.

3) As you (hopefully) saw in at least one of the videos above, there is nothing in meat which cannot be obtained from a plant source (and without all of the bad stuff that comes with meat).



Your idea of a farm with humanely raised animals is a good start, but it's just not practical, the earth isn't big enough to meet demand. It's also still highly unethical as you still kill the animals at an early age in order to harvest their flesh.

You have a picture of two dogs in your avatar. I'm sure if someone decided to schedule their lives to end early for any reason, let alone to eat them, you'd find that pretty immoral right? You no doubt treat your dogs very well, but that doesn't make it OK to kill when they reach adolescence. If I said I wanted to eat your dogs (I don't of course) then any reason you came up with applies still to any farm animals that you currently feel fine with eating.

The animals also aren't stupid and they're aware of what's going on. My grandparents owned a massive farm with cows/pigs/rabbits/chickens and crops as well. They were living very comfortable lives as far as farm animals go, but they did not like it when you approached them, they knew what was waiting for them.
When you see typical farm animals that are truly free this is what they look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIF3BYBXZWA
They behave like pets, even cows kick a ball around.

Also cows milk is only created for when the cow is pregnant. Even if the cow is living in cow utopia, if it is getting milked then that's milk that should have gone to a calf. It was most likely artificially impregnated, and also most likely bought from someone that breeds female cows, and kills the male cows (since you only need one bull to harvest the semen).
When you really think about it, even the best treated animals are being breed and used to make someone money as the primary goal. That is immoral.



So what it really comes down to is taste. The ethics, the environmentalism, the health don't play a role in the debate at all, and hopefully one of those things is important to you, perhaps all 3.

Being animal product free isn't as hard as you think, it's as simple as swapping out a few ingredients here and there. It's not all about eating broccoli and kale. You'll still be eating burritos, burgers, pizzas, pastas, curries etc. Just slightly different and before you know it, you'll barely know the difference, and eventually prefer them that way.

And this is probably the part I found the hardest to believe myself, but once I knew about it, veganism became the easiest thing in the world. Taste is completely influenced by the foods you eat, because of brain chemistry. I thought I could never stop eating two things: cheese and chocolate. After about a month of not eating them (and yes it takes a little bit of effort towards the 3 week mark) you will break the dopamine effect in your brain and you'll never want to eat them again. I can eat vegan cheese and dairy free chocolate, but it does absolutely nothing for me these days. This is coming from someone that wouldn't eat regular chocolate, I had to have the good stuff, everyday. The cravings get pretty intense at the 3 week mark, I won't lie, but then one day you realise you've not had the cravings for several days.
When it comes to meats, even if they are well done, all I can smell is oil and blood. Eggs all I smell is sulphur. I find all of that quite repugnant and I see them for what they really are, rather than what my dopamine recepters tell me.

Now of course you can be unhealthy vegan, and eat all of the oreos, chips, and dairy free chocolate you want. That's up to you, either way the planet and animals don't care which way you go about it

The tailgater was of the super aggressive type and 100% in the wrong for their actions. If they'd looked at the road situation they would have seen the merging car that meant moving to the right was a bad idea for the car in front, and waited the extra 10-20 seconds it would have taken for the first car to safely move over.

The front car did nothing wrong until they braked unnecessarily because they were upset at being tailgated. It is always the following cars fault if they rear end someone, but I wouldn't be surprised if the police were tempted to charge them with something like dangerous driving based on that footage. I'm sure they could argue their foot slipped or they thought they saw a deer though.

So yeah, both are jerks in my mind but the tailgater made it all possible.

Um, talk about day late and a dollar short.... this video is 5 days late actually, but not a bad idea.
I didn't watch...did anyone actually ask the question at the debate? I doubt it, doesn't the DNC screen the questions themselves? They don't want the uninformed masses to understand the system, it makes it much harder for them to rig it.
It is pretty disgusting that the party named "democrats" are so blatantly undemocratic. I expect this kind of disrespect for the voters from the republicans, but the democrats at least usually pretend to respect their voters....not this time.
Please, Bernie, dump them and run as an independent. The two parties are dinosaurs that need to be killed and eaten. THEY are a major problem with our system today, and it would be nice to have a major candidate who's not in either party. I think the country is ready.
How amazing would it be to have a third party president not beholding to either camp OR major donors.

Ahhh, a request for a telling of 'the saga of the broken newt'.

The first time was ridiculous, remodeling my bathroom and lifting a heavy cast iron tub by hand, not realizing it was liquid nailed to the sub floor. I crushed a vertebrae, popped a disk, and severed the nerve that operates below the knee. I was completely paralyzed below the knee for over 6 months, then for about 1 1/2 years I had partial feeling and movement, it was like my leg was completely asleep that entire time....and still is to a small extent (weakness, pins and needles).
The second time, I ran my car into a highway divider head on at 55mph and went airborne. Good thing it was an Acura Legend, a tank of a car, or it certainly would have been far worse. I was already so irreparably broken, I didn't even go get another MRI for that one, which was probably a bad idea. I still have extra back pain from that (6+ years after the fact), but it didn't do new nerve damage (that I know of) so I just accepted it as one more injury to add to the (excessively long) list.
I am accident prone, and don't take proper care of myself. I'm now paying for over 4 decades of that behavior.

This is execution.

With the armoured car, they could have driven up next to the car, shined a freaking high powered halogen light inside and seen if there was a gun with zero danger to anyone... That takes about 15 seconds.

How dafuq do you feel threatened with an armoured vehicle, that much backup, vests/shields and automatic firearms? It is fucking beyond me...

At the very least this is voluntary manslaughter.

And seriously, these people were too fucking moronic to think through that executing two sleeping people was perhaps a bad idea, and yet we let them wield the guns and dispense the lawn??!?!?

@dag, this the childish behavior that exemplifies why having to invoke you publicly is a bad idea.

Most sites have a report button.

Well, cheers for sticking with it anyway, I really appreciate it.

It's a one hour talk on the deficit in particular, and most of what she says is based on MMT principles that would add another 5 hours to her talk if she were to explain them. With neoclassical economics, you can sort of jump right in, given how they are taught at schools and regurgitated by talking heads and politicians, day in and day out. MMT runs contrary to many pieces of "common sense" and since you can't really give 10 hour talks everytime, this is what you end up with – bits and pieces that require previous knowledge.

I'd offer talks by other MMT proponents such as William Mitchell (UNSW), Randy Wray (UMKC) or Michael Hudson (UMKC), but they are even less comprehensible. Sorry. Eric Tymoigne provided a wonderful primer on banking over at NEP, but it's long and dry.

Since I'm significantly worse at explaining the basics of MMT, I'm not even going to try to "weave a narrative" and instead I'll just work my way through it, point by point.

@notarobot

"Let's address inequality by taking on debt to increase spending to help transfer money to large private corporations."

You don't have to take on debt. The US as the sole legal issuer of the Dollar can always "print more". That's what the short Greenspan clip was all about. Of course, you don't actually print Federal Reserve Notes to pay for federal expenses. It's the digital age, after all.

If the federal government were to acquire, say, ten more KC-46 from Boeing, some minion at the Treasury would give some minion at the Fed a call and say "We need $2 billion, could you arrange the transfer?" The Fed minion then proceeds to debit $2B from the Treasury's account at the Fed (Treasury General Account, TGA) and credits $2B to Boeing's account at Bank X. Plain accounting.

If TGA runs negative, there are two options. The Treasury could sell bonds, take on new debt. Or it could monetise debt by selling those bonds straight to the Fed – think Overt Monetary Financing.

The second option is the interesting one: a swap of public debt for account credits. Any interest on this debt would be transfered straight back in the TGA. It's all left pocket, right pocket, really. Both the Fed and the Treasury are part of the consolidated government.

However, running a deficit amounts to a new injection of reserves. This puts a downward pressure on the overnight interest rate (Fed Funds Rate in the US, FFR) unless it is offset by an increase in outstanding debt by the Treasury (or a draw-down of the TT&Ls, but that's minor in this case). So the sale of t-bonds is not a neccessity, it's how the Treasury supports the Fed's monetary policy by raising the FFR. If the target FFR is 0%, there's no need for the Treasury to drain reserves by selling bonds.

Additionally, you might want to sell t-bonds to provide the private sector with the ability to earn interest on a safe asset (pension funds, etc). Treasury bonds are as solid as it gets, unlike municipal bonds of Detroit or stocks of Deutsche Bank.

To quote Randy Wray: "And, indeed, treasury securities really are nothing more than a saving account at the Fed that pay more interest than do reserve deposits (bank “checking accounts”) at the Fed."

Point is: for a government that uses its own sovereign, free-floating currency, it is a political decision to take on debt to finance its deficit, not an economic neccessity.

"Weimar Republic"

I'm rather glad that you went with Weimar Germany and not Zimbabwe, because I know a lot more about the former than the latter. The very, very short version: the economy of 1920's Germany was in ruins and its vastly reduced supply capacity couldn't match the increase in nominal spending. In an economy at maximum capacity, spending increases are a bad idea, especially if meant to pay reparations.

Let's try a longer version. Your point, I assume, is that an increase in the money supply leads to (hyper-)inflation. That's Quantity Theory of Monetary 101, MV=PY. Amount of money in circulation times velocity of circulation equals average prices times real output. However, QTM works on two assumptions that are quite... questionable.

First, it assumes full employment (max output, Y is constant). Or in other terms, an economy running at full capacity. Does anyone know any economy today that is running at full capacity? I don't. In fact, I was born in '83 and in my lifetime, we haven't had full employment in any major country. Some people refer to 3% unemployment as "full employment", even though 3% unemployment in the '60s would have been referred to as "mass unemployment".

Second, it assumes a constant velocity of circulation (V is constant). That's how many times a Dollar has been "used" over a year. However, velocity was proven to be rather volatile by countless studies.

If both Y and V are constant, any increase in the money supply M would mean an increase in prices P. The only way for an economy at full capacity to compensate for increased spending would be a rationing of said spending through higher prices. Inflation goes up when demand outpaces supply, right?

But like I said, neither Y nor V are constant, so the application of this theory in this form is misleading to say the least. There's a lot of slack in every economy in the world, especially the US economy. Any increase in purchases will be met by corporations with excess capacity. They will, generally speaking, increase their market share rather than hike prices. Monopolies might not, but that's a different issue altogether.

Again, the short version: additional spending leads to increased inflation only if it cannot be met with unused capacity. Only in an economy at or near full capacity will it lead to significant inflation. And even then, excess private demand can easily be curbed: taxation.

As for the Angry Birds analogy: yeah, I'm not a fan either. But all the other talks on this topic are even worse, unfortunatly. There's only a handful of MMT economists doing these kinds of public talks and I haven't yet spotted a Neil deGrasse Tyson among them, if you know what I mean.

Um...no....I don't see that.
First, what would your alternative be, knowing that baby elephants NEED a family structure to thrive, and often just die when they don't have one? Would you just put it in a cage with no contact and just hope it survives? Bad idea.
I see she is doing this because baby elephants need this interaction from a 'family' unit, or they either wither and die or survive, but become rouges that have never known herd life in any way and are problem elephants that get shot.
If it were all about herself at the animals expense, why are the other less social animals not brought onto the porch? I'll answer, because they don't need to be.
Perhaps before calling out the behavior of those who's life has been spent successfully rescuing, rehabilitating, and reintroducing to the wild abandoned and injured animals you should do a little research on what those animals require?

@Imagoamin

whoa whoa whoa...
did you think i was calling YOU a bed-wetter?
like as in actually using the pronoun "you" to direct my fictional interaction as representing an actual person,in this case YOU?

well,that certainly explains the tone of your reply.

if this is the case then i humbly and sincerely apologize.i was not referring to you at all,but rather a hypothetical and totally fictional interaction between a cry-baby and myself.

which you actually just made my point about humor,and in this case sarcastic humor.an over the top referencing of a certain hyper-sensitive group,in order to make my point about bad ideas,bad philosophy and poor judgment.

the sarcasm should have been obvious.
but alas...it appears it was not,and has been misconstrued as a personal attack.

moving on to your suey park rebuttal.
while the response to her initial call for justice can easily be seen as vile and grotesque (because it is) how does that take away from her inanity? her blatant disregard for nuance and context? or that she simply lacks the basic intelligence to discern satire from actual racist remarks?

it does not.

i think that most people would agree that the vile,disgusting and dehumanizing responses that suey park was subjected to,are to be condemned and yes...ridiculed..for the stupid and trollish behavior they represent.

you do not reply to stupid with even more stupid.

i dont really understand your defense of language,or better put,the imposing of certain words being stricken from the language altogether because some people find them offensive.

language is a fluid animal,and it is ever-changing.words and terms are dropped from the vocabulary or they morph into something altogether new.i have no skin in on the game in that regard.that is how language progresses,and yes,certain words can be offensive in certain contexts.so we should avoid using them,if only to be a decent human being.

my issue is with the FORCED attempts to re-integrate new words.to control what people say and attempt to bring real world consequences upon them,and then turn around and call it "justice".that is not justice! that is censorship!

maybe this will help a bit.
i view words and language as such:words are the means to express thoughts,feelings and imaginings.when we consider the complexity of our thoughts,feelings and imaginings then it becomes quite apparent that words will NEVER suffice to truly,and accurately,express those very human creations.

words will always be inadequate.

so when some people get it in their head that certain words are just too offensive to even utter.this narrows the field of expression that is already inadequate.(i am not talking about BLATANT,and archaic terms that are not only offensive,but are no longer relevant,and in existence still to simply disparage,insult or dehumanize).

now maybe some words no longer serve a valid purpose or are truly offensive and need to be re-examined,but the only way to reach that conclusion as a people..we must actually TALK to one another,and it is in this free market of ideas where bad ideas go to die.

but we have to able to conversate for that to happen.don't you agree?

now i am not going to bother addressing the rest of your comment,because your tone was just a reaction to where you presumed i was coming from.

and you did presume.

you seem like a decent sort,so i will just chalk your final response up to finding my comment offensive and replied in kind.

just know i wasnt heated,nor enraged.
and i certainly wasnt calling you a bed-wetter.
though the extreme end of social justice warriors are STILL humorless cunts.

@Imagoamin

i can agree with your basic premise:free speech can have consequences in the form of MORE speech.

you are totally free to espouse the most ridiculous,self-centered narcissistic cry-baby drivel you like,and i am totally free to ridicule you as the cry-baby bed-wetter you are behaving like.

the problems arise when that interaction is then seen as "harassment" and a defamation of the constantly oppressed group of bed-wetters.how dare i slander such a tender group! havent they suffered enough?

nobody is saying that one group is excused from free speech or from criticism,and most people would agree that if you yell FIRE in a room and cause a panic when there was no fire,there should be consequences for your actions.

what people ARE saying is that making certain words unacceptable,therefore changing the very language we use to express,convey and deliver complex thoughts,feelings and imaginings is counter-productive.made further so when an abstract art form such as comedy is so easily taken out of context to further an agenda.

remember #cancelcolbert?

the comedy and satire was totally lost on that over-privileged nitwit suey park.she instead focused on a single element of his monologue and chose to be offended,without even considering the larger implications of the humor in colberts bit.

does she have a right to be offended?of course.
does she have a right to be outraged and start a twitter campaign to shut down colberts show?yep..she sure does.

and we have the right to absolutely take her inane,and un-self-aware false campaign for justice to task,and ridicule her relentlessly.

because bad ideas,poor understandings and judgements dressed up as social justice SHOULD be ridiculed for the stupidity they represent.

as for your assertion that comedians are thin skinned,or need to grow a thicker skin,i think you have no idea what you are fucking talking about.you ever spoke in public? in front of crowd?

believe me...you grow thick skin,and fast,until it becomes titanium.

i see no further reason to beat that particular horse but just look up chris rock,seinfeld,louis ck ,bill burr,joe rogan.they all lay out quite clearly why universities are a dead zone for comedy.

because the extreme end of social justice warriors are humorless cunts.