Science - Fire weapon under water - at your belly has been added as a related post - related requested by Zawash on that post.

Science - Fire weapon under water - at your belly has been added as a related post - related requested by Zawash on that post.

Sad to see such a beautiful old snake dead, probably just for being too close to people. Pretty big capybara in it's belly. That's likely why it's so big and healthy, a nice natural food source.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_PwMYuJMD0

I'd be tempted to just slide down the road on my belly.

Didn't watch the video, but did skim the comments... Christ...

First off, moving to Canada and any other decent first world nation be it New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Iceland, Netherlands, Canada etc... not as easy as just packing up and moving. You need a very narrow set of skills to move to those countries. We looked into all this countries, and all of their entry requirements exceeded what we had to offer them. People always say if you don't like it leave, but that ignores several facts. It isn't we don't like it, we just think it can be improved, change isn't bad. Humanity isn't bad. Caring for those less fortunate isn't bad. Guaranteeing everyone a minimum level of affordable health care isn't bad. Working to insure that all workers get a living wage (the way we used to have before the employers/owners started getting greedy and redistributing more wealth to themselves), isn't a bad goal, in fact it's a very good thing. The famed clip from the Newsroom's first episode when he goes on about how America isn't great anymore but it used to be...

Of course the whole concept of American exceptionalism, or any nation exceptionalism is flawed. We are all humans on this planet. Being American doesn't make you superior to somebody born in China or Mexico, Ethiopia, Syria or anywhere else. Location of birth is an accident of timing... and if it is divine intervention by God that placed you here instead of Ethiopia where you may have starved to death with an inflated malnourished belly despite all your prayers, then God is an ass and not worth serving. So if he's not an ass, then it is pure accident that you are here and not there. To think oneself superior and better than somebody in another nation because of their location of birth, and the religion that comes with that location, is insanity. And I draw that all ways. The Muslims who despise Christianity for not being the true faith, and Christians who despise Islam for not being the true faith. You are your faith by accident of birth, be it location and/or parentage etc... all of which is getting away from the point. Which is simply that to say that Chinese worker doesn't deserve a job manufacturing something that you think you should be building is asinine and not respectful of their humanity and a complete lack of any sort of empathy. Christ, I have Aspergers and I have more empathy in my farts than the entire Tea Party Christian Right.

Yes we need to respect the individual, but "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one"... and that quote is in context and not just a cherry pick sample. If it benefits just one and damages the many, then it is not a good thing. Most every faith in the world has some variation of the Golden Rule, to treat others the way you want others (not that specific person, but people as a general whole) to treat you. Christianity's Christ went further and said the greatest commandment was love, to show love to one another. Greed and selfishness is not love. Collectivism has many faults as well, but it isn't tyranny, and is certainly better for society as a whole in the long run than unrestrained greed motivated individualism. Like Pink Floyd's song, On the Turning Away, says, we are all "just a world we all must share". We can't turn away from the coldness inside towards others. We need to lift all of humanity up. Perhaps showing the Muslims love instead of hate and bigotry would convince them that perhaps Christianity isn't the enemy, that perhaps it is the answer, but showing them hate, and bigotry... and denying refugees trying to flee a horrible civil war is bigotry and hatred, and the fact that a rather disturbingly large percentage of the right can't see that isn't bigotry and hatred is scary beyond measure. I again find it amazing that people could lack that much empathy without a neurological disorder.

To invade others, tell them how to live their lives, to force democracy on them if they aren't ready, to insult them and belittle their faith, and all that isn't world building. It isn't reaching out with empathy. It's hate. It's bigotry and as noted by artician, it's what helps drive people to fly into buildings. They know that they know that their faith is the right one, and the lack of empathy to see that people of the Muslim faith have just as much faith in their religion as Christians have in theirs, that they have the same amount of knowledge and comfort from god that they are the correct faith, is what drives extremism.

And oh my god the guns. Guns would have saved the Jews. American mainland can't be invaded because too many people own guns... ask the Branch Davidians how well having not only military grade weapons but also training on how to use them worked for them against a slightly militarized police force, let alone an actual military. Yes, it would be incredibly hard, and resistance would probably eventually wear any invading force down the way the Taliban wore the Soviets down, or the Viet Cong did against the US Military might. So perhaps that can be counted as a victory, but would be long fought. Look, I support gun ownership. All I really call for is 1) allowing the CDC get back to it's job of collecting the data and finding out what's really going on with gun violence, and 2) closing the gun show loophole unless the CDC's investigation shows that it has zero effect, 3) you have to have a legal ID to own a gun and can't be on the no fly list, 4) the existing background checks kept the same, but also add a drug test, the right wants drug tests for welfare, then we should be testing for gun owenrship too. (I see little reason for "assault weapons" but aside from perhaps having perhaps a slightly better background check, I don't know if a ban yet needs to be called for, but I'm in the middle here.) Once we have have better data points from the CDC then we can really tackle the issue of gun violence. Yes, it will take years to get those answers, but I find it insane that the Republicans refuse to allow the investigation to go on, which says to me that they are afraid of what the data will show.

Unless you are nearly a pure Native American, then you are a refugee to the US.

The primary problem here and around the world is poverty and lack of proper education. This drives people to crime and extremism in religion which makes them susceptible to acting out terrorist acts, be it in the name of Allah (as is the public perceived norm) or Christ (ala the Planed Parenthood terrorist attack, the 2011 Norway attacks, etc). We need to address the growing income and wealth gaps. The way to doing that isn't by giving those at the top even more tax breaks and losing regulations (which is funny thing to complain about, too many regulations here in the US, meanwhile the same people complain about the low quality Chinese goods that aren't safe due to low regulations and poor labor conditions etc). We need to push education, and proper STEM programs, not deflated science trying to force Creationism in via so called "Intelligent Design" or "teaching the controversy" stick to the actual science. Don't object to the "new math" if it's teaching better fundamentals of understanding what the numbers are actually doing even if it doesn't teach the shortcuts we were taught... and lots of the stuff people complain about is just the fact we don't skip right to the shortcut that works. Yes, it works, but it helps if they better understand the underlying fundamentals of the numbers and the actual math. Again, change isn't a bad thing, to object just because you don't understand or don't like it compared to the simplified shortcut we all learned doesn't make it bad. Reading also needs pushed, and understanding of logical fallacies and logical and faulty thinking.

I believe that a post scarcity world is impossible due to the nature of humanity. There are far too many greedy people that will never want the world to get to that point. However, that should be the noble goal. Post scarcity society has many issues, but perhaps by the time we actually got there we'd be able to solve them.

TLDR: Basically it all comes down to empathy. To view everything as the others view it. I get the fear and panic and all that the right has, and not just because I once upon a time was a right wing evangelical Christian who called those who received food stamps lazy bums, who said that Democrats and the liberals just wanted to keep the poor trapped so they would always need help. Yes, I was there and that helps, but I can still empathize with them without that past. I've never been a Muslim raised in a nation dominated by Islam, but I can still empathize with the way they see what the US is doing to them, the way they have to see people like Donald Trump and the scary amount of Americans that support him. It's easy to see why some are driven to extremism. I can empathize with that Mexican who just wants a better life and knows that Mexico can't give it to him so he has to risk it all to try and immigrate to the US. I can empathize with the Chinese worker who has been given an opportunity to build something, to escape the poverty... for while perhaps still poverty, less poverty than before, and I'm thankful that I got that opportunity, and I'm sorry that somebody in the US doesn't get to do it, but I'm a human too. Empathy. Learn it. It can be learned, neurological disorder or not.

It really depends on your occupation, I suppose.

When I worked in the game industry we had monthly deadlines that had to get met or the publisher would pull their funding and the developer would go belly up. Sometimes we could meet those deadlines comfortably. Sometimes things would go wrong and we'd have to sleep at our desks or be out of a job because the company wouldn't be there in the morning if we didn't get the work done.

Other occupations, like firefighting, have the opposite problem--lots of downtime with sudden intense bursts of activity.

But I suppose any job that is a typical 9-5 gig could benefit from examining what the companies in this video have done.

the thumbnail looks like a sprig of grass coming out of a fat hairy belly.

Pure quality by John, as usual.

There are a few points I'd like to add, in order of appearance.

5:10 – Greek default or Grexit could be manageable by the rest of the EZ, economically. Italy looks a bit shaky and Spain still looks like shit, so things could spiral out of control, but chances would be better now than they were in, say, 2010.

However, Grexit would be a political nightmare. EZ membership is supposed to be irreversible, so Grexit would reduce the Euro from a common currency to a peg when viewed from the outside. That's open season on the rest of the PIIGS. If Greek then rebounds, other people might very well decide to give Germany the finger and leave as well. If Greece fails, you have a NATO member turn into a failed state, which not only gives NATO the shivers, but also buries any notion of solidarity within the EU. This union survives because of the promises it makes, which include increasing standards of living and solidarity among different peoples. Without it, we're left with... what exactly?

And nevermind the humanitarian catastrophe taking part in Greece. We've conditioned ourselves to block out the pain and suffering of people in Africa. We even manage to shrug at the cesspool of corruption that is Kosovo. But if we do that to Greece as well, what little moral authority Europe might still have left would be gone then.

5:32 – The last payment Greece received was in August, long before Syriza took over. The previous government was in disagreement with the Troika and therefore transfers were frozen.

5:57 – Troika payments are required to service previous debt obligations. They are separate from what the Greek banks require to maintain their liquidity. That would be Emergency Liquidiy Assistance (ELA) from the ECB, which is a different thing entirely, even though it comes from a member of the Troika.

The ECB is bound by law to maintain and ensure the stability of the banking system(s) within the EZ. If a bank runs into liquidity problems, support is provided by the national bank of the respective country, which funnels funds from the ECB to the troubled bank. That's ELA, and a limit on ELA is a limit on the amount of funds that banks can draw from through this process. If an illiquid bank is cut off from ELA, it goes belly up. Bad idea.

Some argue that the ECB should not provide ELA to those Greek banks anymore, since they are insolvent, and ECB rules forbid ELA to insolvent banks. But as Varoufakis said, even the ECB's own Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) department, which is the new banking oversight, declares the four large Greek banks to be solvent. So there is no reason for the ECB to cut ELA to Greek banks. It's all political, and the ECB is designed to be outside of politics. That's also a reason why its membership in the Troika is so controversial.

The political argument for cutting off ELA is that Germany et al. are on the hook for the total amount should Greece itself go belly up. Somewhere along the line, someone made the glorious decision to install the ECB as a currency issuer without providing it with the attributes of a regular currency issuer. If the Bank of Japan or the Bank of England racks up losses, noone cares. They issue their own currency, they cannot go bankrupt, whatever debt they have in their books is irrelevant, for this discussion anyways. But the ECB has to balance its books, it has to receive funds from its members to balance losses, and in proportion to their economic size.

They made sure that politicians can scare the demos by pointing out how they have to foot the bill for this shit, even though it's the one entity where debt truly doesn't matter at all.

By the way, the funds that Greece is hoping to acquire are meant, primarily, for two purposes: making debt payments and to provide financial room to convert ECB(?) debt into EFSF debt (4% interest down to 1%). That's all. No spending.

6:54 – "Printing" money is generating demand out of thin air. There is a shortage of demand throughout the entire continent. So yeah, if the folks at the ECB could type in a few numbers, that would be swell.

Even Germany has a shortage of demand. We are merely hiding it behind the €200b+ of demand that we steal from other countries, i.e. our current account surplus. But the infrastructure and investment spending over here is at all time lows. We'd need an additional €200b+ just to get the infrastructure back to the state it was in a decade ago.

There is no productivity growth in Europe. The UK actually lost a lot of productivity by its introduction of zero hour jobs and other forms of slavery. Without sufficient demand, there is no need to improve production capacities – they can't even sell what they could produce right now.

Unknown.

If the ECB pulls ELA, the Greek banking system goes belly up. Again, consequences unknown, but Deutsche Bank for instance didn't seem particularly stable during the last months, so the denial of any contagion risk might have been premature. Additionally, Draghi is tasked with maintaining the stability of the Euro and taking away Greece's last lifeline might just be too far out of his mandate, even for him. Keeping ELA up without increasing the limit will achieve the same result within days though.

If Greece fails to make its payment to the IMF tomorrow, it's at the discretion of Lagarde whether she pulls the plug. Info has been somewhat contradictory, but there should be a 30 day window before the board has to call it a default.

If a default is triggered this week, it's up to the ECB and the EC again. They have shown unwillingness to let things go bust, all the recent months of muddling through should be testament to that.

They cannot have a failed state within Europe without feeding right into the anti-European parties on both ends of the spectrum; they cannot throw Greece out of the EZ; they cannot revitalise the Greek economy without doing a 180 against their own ideology; they cannot let Syriza pull Greece out of the shit without encouraging Podemos. It's an impasse alright.

Should the Greek people vote against the proposal, a proposal that is no longer on the table, it'll be back to negotiations. Should they vote in favour of it, and should it still be available to them at that time in the first place, Tsipras might even get a majority for it in parliament, but Syriza will blow apart right then and there. The left wing cannot agree to further enslavement.

If, however, everything goes sour and Greece does indeed exit the EZ, introduce a new Drachma, the whole shebang, then we're in uncharted terrorities. The situation in Greece would deteriorate even further, given how much they rely on imports, especially of fuel. And the EU, already shaky from the tens of thousands of bodies floating in the Med, the falling standard of living for tens of millions and the sustained unemployment of an entire generation; this fecking union cannot turn the cradle of democracy into a failed state and survive. The governments might be ok with it, but the French people would rip this shit to shreds one way or another, and rightfully so.

If anyone else has the trouble I had catching what he says at 19:43 immediately after saying it would be a unilateral action, he says it would be casus belli (the trigger for war).

So, now they're trying to claim those were all personal 'treats' the officers brought to the raid with them, and not the store's edibles they are discussing as they eat them. Jesus f*cking Christ! Are cops so stupid now that they think anyone will believe that insanity? It's clearly obvious they are eating products from the store, and sharing them with each other, discussing the taste and the strength, and reading the labels (after eating the treat) to see what they're eating.

They also say the officers will eventually be given drug tests for marijuana, but the raid was May 26. No drug tests have yet been given, and likely won't be for another 2 weeks so the officers have a chance to be clean (marijuana can be detected for around a month on most tests). At the very least, they've given them a chance to 'flush' their systems to try to beat the test by announcing that a drug test is likely coming for them soon. If the higher ups were interested in knowing the 'truth', every officer involved would have had a drug test the moment this video was made known to them....but they're still 'investigating', and probably won't be testing until that's done... in a few weeks.

Interesting that they have no excuse, and so completely ignore the (attempted) destruction of the surveillance system and the joking with each other about abusing a wheelchair bound, near blind woman, and the 'playing darts' while on the clock, supposedly doing an inventory and 'securing the property' (which is not supposed to mean securing it in their bellies).

These professionals are acting less and less professional daily, and their 'supervisors' are bending over backwards to let the decline continue....and escalate.

Men walkin' 'long the railroad tracks
Goin' someplace there's no goin' back
Highway patrol choppers comin' up over the ridge

Hot soup on a campfire under the bridge
Shelter line stretchin' 'round the corner
Welcome to the new world order
Families sleepin' in their cars in the Southwest
No home no job no peace no rest

The highway is alive tonight
But nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it goes
I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light
Searchin' for the ghost of Tom Joad

He pulls a prayer book out of his sleeping bag
Preacher lights up a butt and takes a drag
Waitin' for when the last shall be first and the first shall be last
In a cardboard box 'neath the underpass
Got a one-way ticket to the promised land
You got a hole in your belly and gun in your hand
Sleeping on a pillow of solid rock
Bathin' in the city aqueduct

The highway is alive tonight
Where it's headed everybody knows
I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light
Waitin' on the ghost of Tom Joad

Now Tom said "Mom, wherever there's a cop beatin' a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Where there's a fight 'gainst the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me Mom I'll be there
Wherever there's somebody fightin' for a place to stand
Or decent job or a helpin' hand
Wherever somebody's strugglin' to be free
Look in their eyes Mom you'll see me."

Well the highway is alive tonight
But nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it goes
I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light
With the ghost of old Tom Joad

This reminded me of this girl at work that uses a mouse turned around backwards, where the cord is facing her belly. Every movement is reversed compared to how the rest of us move a mouse. Weirdest thing I've seen. Give it a shot yourself, although it's not near as difficult as riding this bike.

Thanks! I worry my posts now may be reliant on your promotes to sift, so often have you saved these tottering fawns from the ghastly, swollen belly of my pqueue.

When it showed the see-through belly I was half expecting to see Jim Henson's hand in there.