I'm the opposite, in a sense. I couldn't really get hooked on Futurama. I watched pretty much all the episodes and enjoyed them, but didn't really get attached to any of the characters. However, Rick and Morty keeps me coming back because of the irreverence and the way nothing matters.

Rick and Morty is a middle finger to the universe, to causality, to the notion of object permanence, that suddenly jumps back to remind you of the endless and inescapable human suffering in the middle of it all.

Then again, it's been a fucking rough year. Wubba Lubba Dub Dub!

"Scientists" who falsify data or skew experiments to get their preconceived results should be ignored and silenced....those who steal from the company they were just fired from deserve jail.

Just read her wiki page...only bat shit crazy conspiracy nuts believe the government and scientific community as a whole conspired to ruin her because she told the truth....She's disgraced because she made repeatedly proven false anti vaccine claims they want ignored, but antivax conspiracy nuts love her. Reality is she's an anti vaxer whose experiments proved to be faked and whose theories are just insane.

Judy Anne Mikovits (c. 1958) is an American anti-vaccination activist, conspiracy theorist and discredited ex-medical researcher. She has made discredited claims about vaccines, coronavirus, and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). As research director of CFS research organization Whittemore Peterson Institute (WPI) from 2006 to 2011, Mikovits led a research effort that reported in 2009 that a retrovirus known as xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) was associated with CFS and may have had a causal role. However, the research came under fire, leading to an eventual retraction on December 22, 2011, by the journal Science.

In 2020, Mikovits drew attention online for promoting conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic, via the conspiracist YouTube video Plandemic[6] that were fact-checked and found to be either false or not based on scientific evidence.

Mikovits began to look for XMRV in her Chronic Fatigue Syndrome samples. In late 2008, a graduate student, who subsequently was hired as her technician, obtained two positive results from a group of twenty samples. He and Mikovits successively altered the experimental conditions until all samples gave a positive signal.

In 2009, Mikovits and co-workers reported in the journal Science that they had detected XMRV DNA in CFS patients and control subjects. Negative results were published soon after, disputing Mikovits's findings.

She's a fraud. Why else would Bobby love her so much?

The fathers are in jail

The past happened. And, you know, causality. Don't dismiss it like it doesn't mean anything anymore. It's like America's original sin. Except, you know, real.

But yeah, I don't think he is wrong, but how you want to go about solving it? Some are profiting from this situation; incarceration is an industry. To some, black men have more value in a cell than bringing up their children. Fix that.

Snopes included excerpts from at least two peer reviewed studies directly on topic that seem to contradict your contention....why dismiss it offhand?

In a peer-reviewed paper published by American Law and Economics Review in 2012, researchers Andrew Leigh of Australian National University and Christine Neill of Wilfrid Laurier University found that in the decade following the NFA, firearm homicides (both suicides and intentional killings) in Australia had dropped significantly:

In 1997, Australia implemented a gun buyback program that reduced the stock of firearms by around one-fifth (and nearly halved the number of gun-owning households). Using differences across states, we test[ed] whether the reduction in firearms availability affected homicide and suicide rates. We find that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80%, with no significant effect on non-firearm death rates. The effect on firearm homicides is of similar magnitude but is less precise [somewhere between 35% and 50%].

Similarly, Dr. David Hemenway and Mary Vriniotis of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center found in 2011 that the NFA had been “incredibly successful in terms of lives saved”:

For Australia, the NFA seems to have been incredibly successful in terms of lives saved. While 13 gun massacres (the killing of 4 or more people at one time) occurred in Australia in the 18 years before the NFA, resulting in more than one hundred deaths, in the 14 following years (and up to the present), there were no gun massacres.

The NFA also seems to have reduced firearm homicide outside of mass shootings, as well as firearm suicide. In the seven years before the NFA (1989-1995), the average annual firearm suicide death rate per 100,000 was 2.6 (with a yearly range of 2.2 to 2.9); in the seven years after the buyback was fully implemented (1998-2004), the average annual firearm suicide rate was 1.1 (yearly range 0.8 to 1.4). In the seven years before the NFA, the average annual firearm homicide rate per 100,000 was .43 (range .27 to .60) while for the seven years post NFA, the average annual firearm homicide rate was .25 (range .16 to .33)

Additional evidence strongly suggests that the buyback causally reduced firearm deaths. First, the drop in firearm deaths was largest among the type of firearms most affected by the buyback. Second, firearm deaths in states with higher buyback rates per capita fell proportionately more than in states with lower buyback rates.

Are you calling them liars?

Sorry, but this is simply not true. Earthquakes are caused by activity under the earth's surface. It has never been demonstrated that there is a causal relationship between solar flares and earthquakes.

Bob, the people you're trying to either defend or deflect attention from are fucking cunts, end of story. I understand that people are being driven to the far right (leftist violence and impingement on free speech predated Trump and the rise of the alt right, and has a lot to do as a causal factor for both), and that certainly not everyone heading to that end of spectrum are awful, but anyone preaching racial purity, resisting the white genocide etc have lost the fucking plot. There is no right side apart from condemning all illegal violence and upholding free speech.

Newt, you pontificate about how even handed you've been, but where are the hosts of videos showing antifa violence? Where are the upvotes for this video? I've been considering putting some of them up not as a mitigation for the actions of the right, but to show that polarisation and extremism is no good for anyone, but I was almost entirely sure they wouldn't sift in the slightest. Given this vid has been up for 9 hours and has 1 vote (mine), the theory seems to hold water...

Meanwhile, Arnold's tirade against nazi's is top sift of the week. Not that he was wrong of course, but anyone with five minutes and a willingness to be open minded can find endless unbiased documentation of leftist violence, something he completely omits to mention. He talks about the nazi's rotting in hell, how about Stalin's communists (which antifa models itself off...)?

Sift is leftward leaning and that's cool, I generally agree with a lot of sensible ideas that people around here are for. But it has it's own bigotry against people expressing views that aren't in lockstep with the majority view, and members certainly aren't afraid to punish people for not toeing the line.

And one of my favourite quotes as an advocate for free speech no matter how awful or confronting it might be...

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."

H. L. Mencken

OK, assuming what you say is correct (I'm not taking the time now to check) you have a point, but the stats, even if only 1/2 as bad as it seems, still show there's absolutely no equivalence.

Well, if you ate like that, no wonder you think meat is deadly. Eating like that, it is. Eaten in moderation, meaning <50g of CURED meats, and probably less than 1/3 lb of non cured lean red meats, the conclusion I came to is reasonable....that it's in no way comparable to smoking in it's danger. it's not even comparable if you eat 5 times the studied portion of cured meats, although it is clearly not healthy to do so. I eat < 1/2 lb of steak, on the rare occasions I eat it. I eat 1/2 a chicken breast on a normal day, baked. Because I eat good meat, properly prepared, in moderation, there's little to no statistical increase in danger to my health over eating pure vegetarian.

No sir, your stats are wrong....here's direct from the WHO.....
http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/
12. How many cancer cases every year can be attributed to consumption of processed meat and red meat?

According to the most recent estimates by the Global Burden of Disease Project, an independent academic research organization, about 34 000 cancer deaths per year worldwide are attributable to diets high in processed meat.
Eating red meat has not yet been established as a cause of cancer. However, if the reported associations were proven to be causal, the Global Burden of Disease Project has estimated that diets high in red meat could be responsible for 50 000 cancer deaths per year worldwide.
These numbers contrast with about 1 million cancer deaths per year globally due to tobacco smoking, 600 000 per year due to alcohol consumption, and more than 200 000 per year due to air pollution.

So, it's 34000 cancer deaths for cured meats (and IF the correlative results with red meat are in fact causative, another 50000 worldwide for red meat) VS 1000000 cancer tobacco deaths. So no, it's not 2/3 there, it's at best, IF red meat is the cause of cancers at the highest level possible (not at all proven) it's 1/12 of the way there....around 8.4%. Agreed, that's not good, but no where near what you (and he) claims.

Cholesterol and saturated fat only MAY cause heart disease and diabetes, not 'do without a doubt', and then usually only in high levels (in normal people). They raise the risk factor for those diseases, but do not automatically cause heart disease and/or diabetes, even in people with incredibly high levels.

Research indicates that you missed the mark with the 644000 number, it's more like 34000 (and maybe another 50000, unproven) according to the WHO, I'll take the stats of the organization whose study is being discussed.

So if you look at the real numbers, it's still not comparable at all. Cancer, and death rates are orders of magnitude different, far more than 10 times higher for smoking with every possible benefit of a doubt given to meats toxicity/effects, so not at all easily matched. Sorry.

(and you also appear to be 100% wrong about cancer survivability)
http://www.Cancer.org -Colon cancer-For stage IIB cancer, the survival rate is about 63%. The 5-year relative survival rate for stage IIIA colon cancers is about 89%. For stage IIIB cancers the survival rate is about 69%, and for stage IIIC cancers the survival rate is about 53%.
http://www.lung.org - Lung cancer-The five-year survival rate for lung cancer is 54 percent for cases detected when the disease is still localized (within the lungs). However, only 15 percent of lung cancer cases are diagnosed at an early stage. For distant tumors (spread to other organs) the five-year survival rate is only 4 percent.

So, to summarize, colon cancer 53%-89% survivability (depending largely on when it's caught) VS lung cancer 4% (for 85% of cases, and 54% for the 15% of lucky few with early detections)

No I am not. Science totally relies on cause & effect.

Science has methods to distinguish correlation from causality. Causality means repeatable results, possibility of practical use and my hypocritical benefit. Correlation means randomness and no reason to invest.

Im not against the notion of global warming or nuclear winter.

As far as nuclear winter is concerned I dont think there is much difference between a frozen planet and one that is merely a "few" degrees colder than normal for a couple of years. In either case humans are done for. So while the hype was overdone, reality is just as frightening.

Global warming is a projection into the future, and the future is one of the hardest things to predict. I am happy to agree that we are f*cking up our planet and need to stop ASAP. There are measurable indicators that are clearly out of bounds, conclusively because of human activity.

The political hype (of climate change) is a big risk - if the climate straightens out because of external factors humans might be tempted to not stop f*cking up their environment.

Lets stick to facts and not overemphasize various projections.

I do not claim to know the causal effects of vaccines with respect to autism.


I was just disgusted by the the kids presentation.
A kid of that age has no true knowledge, or interest in this subject.
Someone (mother?) feed this to him.

There's certainly a correlation there. Not sure it can be proven as causal (as there are certainly other factors like availability to fire arms).

But it's a solid hypothesis.

I know it's cute and all, but the dog merely understands the guy's upset, and he's doing the thing that usually gets the "d'aw, I'm not upset anymore" reaction. Dogs are said to have no concept of causality (I'm angry now because of what you did back then.) and in my experience it's true.

Dogs either pick up on your tone and body language, or they suffer from expectation of punishment. Bawling them out for something they are not -that second- doing is useless and approaching abuse in my view.

The dog acting sad because the garbage is strewn around the kitchen is not feeling guilty. He knows that when garbage is strewn around the kitchen, he's going to catch shit. The fact he did it is meaningless to him. The only way to get him to understand to stay out of the garbage is to catch him in the act and get medieval on his buttocks.

/rant

8:18 – "Germany is very financially responsible".

The clip makes a few good points, twists others and omits some central issues. But I want to comment on the quote above most of all, because it forms the basis for all kinds of arguments and recommendations.

The claim that Germany is financially responsible stems from what has been paraded around domestically as the "schwarze Null" (black zero), meaning a balanced budget. Given how focused most economic debates are around the national debt or the current budget deficit, it shouldn't come as a surprise that not running a deficit evokes positive responses in the public. If there has ever been an easy sell, politically, it's this.

However, it's not that simple.

For instance, the sectoral balance rule dictates, by pure accounting identity, that the sum of public balance, private balance and external balance is 0 at all times. In case of Germany, this means that the balanced public budget (no surplus, just a fat zero) requires a current account surplus of the same size as private savings – or an accumulation of private debt. For someone to run a surplus, someone else has to run a deficit. In this case, foreign economies have to run a deficit vis-á-vis Germany, so that neither the German government nor the German private sector have to run a deficit.

The composition of each sector is another topic entirely, but the point remains: no surplus in Germany without a deficit in the periphery. If everyone is to be like Germany, Klingons have to run the respective deficit.

My question: is it financially responsible to depend on other economies' deficits to keep your own house in order? Is it responsible to engage in this kind of behaviour after having locked yourself into a monetary union with less competitive economies who have no way of defending themselves through currency devaluation?

Second point: capital accounts and current accounts are two sides of the same coin. If Germany runs a current account surplus of X%, it also runs a capital account deficit of X%. Doesn't explain anything, but it's the same for the countries at the other side of these trade imbalances. Spain's current account deficit with Germany meant a capital inflow of the same size.

Let's look at EuroStat's dataset for current accounts. Germany had run a minor current account deficit during the late '90s and a small surplus up to 2003. From then on, it went up, up, up. Given the size of Germany's economy within Europe, that jump from 2% to 7.5% is enormous. Pre-GFC, the majority of this surplus went to... yap, PIIGS. Their deficits multiplied.

Subsequently, capital of equals size flowed into these countries, looking for investments. No nation, none, can absorb this amount of capital without it resulting in a massive misallocation, be it stock bubbles, housing bubbles, highways to nowhere or lavish consumption. Michael Pettis wrote a magnificent account (Syriza and the French indemnity of 1871-73) of this and explains how Germany handled a similar inflow of capital after the Franco-Prussian war: it crashed their economy.

As Pettis correctly points out, the question of causality remains. Was the capital flow a pull or a push?

The dataset linked above says it all happened at just about the same time, in all countries. It also happened at the same time as Germany's parliament signed of on "Agenda 2010", which is the cause of massive wage suppression in Germany. Germany intentionally lowered its unit labour costs and undercut the agreed upon inflation target (2%). German employees and retirees were forced to live below their means, so the export sector could gain competitiveness against all the other nations, including those in the same currency union. Beggar-thy-neighbour on steroids.

Greece overshot the inflation target. They lived beyond their means. But due to their size, it's economically negligable. France stayed on point the entire time, has higher productivity than Germany and still gets defamed as the lame duck of Europe. Yet Germany, after more than a decade of financial warfare against its fellow members of the EU/EZ, is hailed as the beacon of financial responsibility.

Mercantilism always comes at the cost of others. And the EU is living proof.

Exactly! Cops (or anyone really) see a scrawny white kid and think..

"He probably isn't dangerous"

Cops see an unarmed black teen and they immediately see them as a threat or a criminal.



Stop! Asserting that:

- the Civil War wasn't about Slavery..

- that white people are treated just as poorly as black people (sometimes)..

- that the ONLY DIFFERENCE between cops arresting a MASS fucking MURDERER WITHOUT INCIDENCE..

And murdering 12 year old Tamir Rice for wielding a BB-GUN!

Is that Rice pointed a "realistic-looking" gun at cops.


It's belittling, demeaning, insulting, disingenuous, and delusional to suggest that People of Color are treated by the same standards.

THIS is what White-Privilege provides you with.
A "get out of instantly being gunned-down" card..


So it's INFURIATING to have some cockfaced asshole like You or Lantern or Bobknight tell me..

that anything other than ingrained INSTITUTIONAL RACISM is responsible for the way People of Color are brutalized, jailed & murdered regularly, causally and on a daily basis.


Like I said before. Fuck off with that..
"Well, cops are mean to ME TOO!!" bullshit.

Stop diminishing the fundamental mistreatment of non-whites in America.

It's disgusting. It's sickening.
And it's perpetuated by willfully ignorant rhetoric like yours.

Do you even know what a sociopath is?


noun, Psychiatry.
1.
a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.

You causally mock the death & suffering of basically anyone who isn't a LEO on this site daily.

As the progressive treehugger hippie I am..

Why wouldn't I want you to learn some empathy and compassion?

The best way to gain understanding is thru share experience.

I want to hear that too...

Some possibly non-causal observations to the contrary from a biased party: "Total red-light running crash fatalities decreased 22% from 2007 to 2011, as the number of communities with red-light safety cameras increased 135%.... Within a few months after red-light cameras stopped operating in Virginia Beach, red-light running rates tripled at intersections where cameras were shut down...

A 2012 study by the Texas Transportation Institute found right-angle red-light running crashes decreased by 24% at intersections with red-light safety cameras.

A 2011 study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found red-light safety cameras lowered red-light running fatalities by 24% and the rate of all types of fatal crashes at signalized intersections by 17% in a study of 14 large U.S. cities."

(all from http://www.atsol.com/fact-sheets/ )

But maybe there are other other studies, with a more catchy, 'freaky' approach?