Ok video, good job, I hate America now. Was that the point? Where's the call to action? Seems like a bunch of useless grousing stirring up undirected anger. Who's funding this? Who wants everyone angry with no hope or option to resolve?

You realize Bob that the question included 'militia' groups.

You know, like guys coming in from out of state with assault rifles to "defend" people. Like Kyle Rittenhouse killing two people trying to play 'militia', and then Trump Jr praising him by name as a hero on twitter.

There is actually very, very good reason Trump keeps getting asked these questions. It's because he keeps calling for actions from these milita style groups and praising their often racially motivated violence.

So... when did photo-realistic CGI animation start being called live action?

Unknowingly of noble birth, receives a call to action, is the only one who can save the day, blah blah blah. It might be an exciting movie if you've never seen an epic before. In other words, bring the kids.

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Published on Apr 14, 2016

The aerobatics skills of Russian pilots over the US destroyer Donald Cook in the Baltic Sea left the Pentagon and other US official running for cover in Washington over “aggressive close interactions” with Russian fighters jets.
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Russia-NATO relations
Releasing the footage of Russian jet flybys in the vicinity of the destroyer, the US Navy said that its vessel has encountered multiple “aggressive flight maneuvers ...within close proximity of the ship,” some as close as 30 feet (10 meters) on Monday and Tuesday.

The set of incidents took place as the US ship, which had sailed from the Polish port of Gdynia, was conducting exercises with its NATO ally Poland in the Baltic Sea. The Navy announced that the SU-24 first flew over Donald Cook on Monday as US sailors were rehearsing “deck landing drills with an allied [Polish] military helicopter”. The numerous close-range, low altitude encounters were witnessed at 3:00pm local time, forcing the commander of the ship to suspend helicopter refueling on the deck until the Russian jets departed the area.

The next day, the Navy said, Russia caused concern among US sailors when a Russian KA-27 Helix helicopter flew seven times over the ship at low altitude in international waters at around 5:00pm. Some 40 minutes later, two Russian SU-24 jets allegedly made a further 11 “close-range and low altitude passes”.

“The Russian aircraft flew in a simulated attack profile and failed to respond to repeated safety advisories in both English and Russian. USS Donald Cook’s commanding officer deemed several of these maneuvers as unsafe and unprofessional,” the Navy said.

Judging by the videos released by the US Navy, the sailors were nonplussed by the Russian aerobatic skills. They gathered on the top deck of the destroyer to watch the Russian pilots.

“He is on the deck below the bridge lane...It looks like he’ll be coming in across the flight deck, coming in low, bridge wing level...Over the bow, right turn, over the bow...” the voiceover on the footage states in what looks more like an instructor’s advice on how to maneuver in open waters, rather than the panic that the central command presented it to be. At least on the video no one can be seen running for cover.

According to a US defense official who spoke with Defense News, sailors aboard the Donald Cook claimed that the Russian jets’ low altitude stirred waters and created wake underneath the ship. US personnel on the American vessels, also claimed that Su-24 was “wings clean,” meaning no armaments were present on the Russian jets that could have posed a threat to US operations in the Baltic.

Yet at the same time, the official noted, that this week's incidents are “more aggressive than anything we’ve seen in some time,” as the SU-24 appeared to be flying in a “simulated attack profile.”

The Russian overflights have caused panic over in Washington, with White House spokesman Josh Earnest calling the actions of the Russian pilots “provocative” and “inconsistent with professional norms of militaries.”

“I hear the Russians are up to their old tricks again in the EUCOM [US European Command] AOR [area of responsibility],” Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman Col. Steve Warren said during a briefing on Wednesday, adding that the US is “concerned with this behavior.”

“We have deep concerns about the unsafe and unprofessional Russian flight maneuvers. These actions have the potential to unnecessarily escalate tensions between countries, and could result in a miscalculation or accident that could cause serious injury or death,” the US European Command said in a statement.

In the meantime Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, thanked the US crew for keeping their cool during the stressful situation.

“Bravo Zulu to the crew of USS Donald Cook for their initiative and toughness in how they handled themselves during this incident,” the admiral said on Facebook.

Russia has yet to comment on the incidents but most likely the Russian air craft flew from the Kaliningrad region, bordering Poland. Kaliningrad is the headquarters of the Russian Baltic Fleet, which also includes the Chernyakhovsk, Donskoye, and Kaliningrad Chkalovsk air bases.

Description Credits: Russia Today

Video Credits: Defense Media Activity - Navy

So let me get this straight, bobknight, for me to carry out this "call to action" I would need to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and then divorce my wife who isn't of European descent, remarry a white Christian woman and then have 9 children?

You truly live in very small and superficial world filled with fear and hopelessness, don't you?

*light bulb*

You're like the brain bug at the end of Starship Troopers!

"It's afraid... IT'S AFRAID!"

*cheers*

You better be afraid.

My original statement was not a call to action, rather a historical highlight of how we kaboshed the opportunity to correct a bad deed. Seeing as this statement has devolved into an internet argument (my least favorite online activity), I am going to refrain from participating altogether. It's been fun Videosift.

I dunno. I mean, it looks like it's better than the first one because at least it's picking the cartoon version of TMNT and sticking with it, but it still has that Michael Bay 'style' where they tell the CGI team to just go fucking nuts and to hell with composition or editing, shot to shot cohesion and basically realism and believability in general. Put tons of shiny CGI shit on the screen moving around really fast and call it action.

So... the 7-12 year old male demographic will probably like it. I guess that's okay. That's who the cartoon appealed to.

I'm finding it was a fair discussion on both sides. Harris is clearly more knowledge in the subject but Cenk came up with enough counter-examples to keep the discussion interesting.

Ultimately I think they've spent far too much arguing on the part/predominantly Islam to blame and whether Islamic is worse than certain other religions. Both are very subjective positions and I feel Harris comes off dogmatic here. He may be well placed to argue that people will undersell the role of Islam (perhaps due to political correctness) but to take a very absolutist position cheapens his argument.

I'm only half way but I feel they skipped over socio-economics far too quickly. The reason a middle class citizen in a western country can be radicalised by Islam (say ISIS) is because of the wellspring of specifically radical Islamic communities on the internet relative to other religions. This makes the chances of an impressionable individual stumbling on these much higher than say on a radical Christian call to action which I'm sure exist. As an area, the Middle East is also far more conflict prone and engender an immediate need to respond.

That Islam is so important in many Middle Eastern countries is in itself a product of their low socio-economic level. I suspect that in societies where religion rather than the nation state (which is corrupt or ineffectual) is the main cohesive entity and where low education may make many events we attribute to science unexplainable, it is no surprise that religion (Islam) is taken more seriously and literally. For example insofar as there being no effectual system of law and punishment to more humanely deal with criminals. Also because religion is such a more important glue of community, it's strictures are enforced more rigidly - more varied interpretations would lead to disagreements and risk breaking the community apart (or alternatively, I am saying that only communities with rigid ideologies have survived).

The reason why a Palestinian Christian behaves less radically than Palestinian Muslims on average may also have manifold explanations if it is true. If we accept that many religious groups are linked globally, it is arguable that western countries with their more moderate Christian view are a moderating influence relative to the more radical average global interpretation of Islam. Perhaps with suicide bombings being such an Islamic stigma, it is an activity they as a community have actively tried to avoid? Perhaps anthropologically being in the minority in a community engenders less radicalism and more passive behaviour?

No, it's understandable that people are offended enough by a sign saying "fuck the poor" to fight against it. Words are far easier to elicit from people than positive action...

People don't feel comfortable around beggars. Perhaps it highlights what might be, perhaps they are just snobs, but translating words in to action is one of the biggest problems with humanity.

Take the internet for example, slacktivism at an all time high and yet less and less actually seems to get fixed. Numbers drop dramatically from calls for action on forums to online petitions to online donations to physical presence at protests...

It's easy to offer an opinion, far harder (apparently) to offer 5 bucks...

I don't recall the moment in Videosift history that you're referencing.

You could probably write a Videosift web crawler that determines the moment that cat videos and boobs became popular, but I think it will likely determine that they have always been popular.

10 votes to determine quality control is too small of a value, UNLESS downvoting were used less sparingly.

But no one really downvotes as a form gating, they mainly downvote as an extreme action towards something they strongly disagree with. For example, ant downvoting things that are verbally vulgar. Well, what if you and everyone who felt that cat videos and boobs were poor quality, what if you guys downvoted as a rule to maintain quality control?

If you guys did that, you'd see something closer to the utopia of quality you think somehow magically occurs. It would then follow that, if sifters followed this method for maintaining quality, the Sift would have higher standards for Top 15.

Unless that is already happening, and people of value (to be defined) actually believe this is a video that is worthy. Clearly, by the rules and inputs available, even you agree that this video is worthy. Otherwise there would be AT LEAST one downvote.

You complained but failed a call to action. Figured I'd help you better understand how democratic systems work, and how lack of appropriate participation degrades quality of that democratic system over time, as potential voters cease to vote as needed to maintain quality.

Ironically the suggestion I'd put at the top of the list has little to do with my post:

Put a big button on the top right of every page that says to the affect 'Submit a Video', with negative space to the left and below.

This will encourage brand new users to contribute, and draw existing users to take part. It will also instantly communicate what Videosift is. It's not simply a site with videos on it, it's a site that people post videos to.

It's a well proven design idiom. Have a look at the call to actions on the following sites:

Stack Overflow - Ask Question
Youtube - Upload
Github - Fork

Yes, what really happened is his heli-crew got called into action!
They don't actually allow ice cream trucks to roam the air force base.

@enoch

I've been having this back and forth with a guy on another forum. He keeps insisting that because Zimmerman was hurt, he was within his rights to shoot Trayvon under SYG. And I keep trying to point out to him that SYG does not say that, but it falls on deaf ears.

And then it comes to witness testimony being the gospel the witness identified as "John" backs up Zimmerman. But the girlfriend of Trayvon who was on the phone with him is also a witness, but somehow her testimony is no good because she's his girlfriend, or underage, or is "speculation" and if she were really a witness the police would have talked to her, etc, etc.

I mean strictly from how events have been reported. We have Zimmerman's own words, phone call, and actions to judge him by. And with Trayvon all we know is that he's dead, was wearing a hoodie, and was a black teen going to the store and back. Yet somehow Trayvon was doing something wrong because Zimmerman identified him as suspicious. Even though there is AT LEAST one black resident in that neighborhood and being black in the neighborhood should not = auto-suspicion even if it's predominately white.

Zimmerman kept chasing and Trayvon should be covered under the law because of it, we KNOW Zimmerman followed him. He wouldn't have "lost" him if Trayvon hadn't tried to actively avoid him by running away. Running away from a creep is not a crime, following a kid is questionable behavior. More so after he was told not to, and the fact that he's neighborhood watch "leader" and should have known better.

The whole thing smacks of Zimmerman having a chip on his shoulder that he isn't "catching the bad guys" and him acting in accordance with that goal...even if it means forcing an encounter. Perhaps he didn't mean to kill Trayvon, or isn't a racist. But I believe he wanted an encounter to happen so at least one of these "punks/goons/coons" were caught. And then he claimed self defense, when he forced the thing upon an individual who was trying to get away from him. It's just compounded by the fact that Trayvon wasn't of a similar age, weight, and build to Zimmerman. He simply did not have the life experience to temper the encounter against, and Zimmerman should have not pushed it. In a role reversal, I'd have no problem with Zimmerman shooting a teenager who was pursuing him after he ran.....but that's not what happened. He forced it upon Trayvon, and got his ass handed to him and shot out of fear. Which does not excuse his actions leading up to the event, he was not immune under self defense laws until he met criteria.

This happens thousands of times a day. Someone cannot afford medical treatment for their pet and are faced with surrendering the animal to face an uncertain future and / or the pet is killed.

Most emergency veterinarians won't move beyond a basic diagnosis without payment in-hand. The business of staying in business demands this attitude I guess.

Some shelters or animal hospitals have a fund to subsidize treatment for strays or clients who cannot afford to pay at all. It would be nice to see the reporter on this story mention this as a 'call to action' for people to donate to their local shelter. Instead the story is almost sensationalized and the focus is lost.