@eoe

As ironic as it may be to say this, I think that the Republican Congress will be a strong bulwark against Trump's more nationalistic impulses if it turns out he actually wants to act on them and they weren't just part of demagogic campaigning.

If for no other reason that they know demographics are against them in the longer term. They may have won the election on the electoral college but lost the popular vote - even with all the attempts at voter suppression. In the longer term, winning with their party base becomes harder and harder.

They know if Trump enacts genuine deportation measures against Latinos then the frankly astounding 1/3 of voting Latinos that supported Trump will turn sharply against the Republican party. That group represents the fastest growing demographic in America and they can't afford to lose them for a generation.

In contrast, they will be also act a constraint against any of his ideas on infrastructure spending, congressional term limits or curbing trade. Since it's already clear he's filling his cabinet with establishment Republicans and he has little knowledge of policy, he will likely acquiesce to their suggestions for lack of any other policy advice.

Cenk Uygur can become tiresome, but he was pretty good last night in their coverage and kept my attention well, i was actually quite impressed. I really don't care for the rest of the lineup though. The guy on the right is the epitome of impotent rage, stumbling over his words, making complicated points poorly, a fretting, nervous, often very pink man in an ill fitting suit. At times reminded me of the main character from Limitless at his drug-binge/mental breakdown apex, with tight claustrophobia inducing collars riding up around his neck, the crispness of which contrasting and highlighting the beads of sweat, speaking too quickly and spitting. The guy on the left thinks he's 10 times cooler than he is, which is all the more annoying because he is actually a little bit cool - if he didn't think he was so cool, he'd be pretty cool! I could handle Sarkeezian's imperious hauteur - hell i'd find it very attractive - if it wasn't so obviously an act. She found herself compelled to leave the studio for a stiff drink at some point, presumably to bask in the moment when she theatrically interrupted the depleted panel and announced her actions proudly, claiming she was now in a feisty mood before ranting at types of people she blamed. I even think she used some kind of tv-friendly profanity; if you have the wherewithal to soft-censor your 'uncontrolled' outburst, you're faking it. Whatever kind of Don Draper scene she'd staged to pad her portfolio of career highlights, her disappointing final rant meandered down well trodden paths.

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)

Where did I say any of those things?

Where did I say Mosul is representative of Islam as a whole? I didn't. I said Dubai is not representative of Islam as a whole and offered Mosul as a contrast. Did you not watch the video?

Where did I say Christian fundamentalism isn't a problem today? I didn't. I said Christianity used to have more power and I am correct.

Where did I say Christians don't have political power or that the power they do have doesn't cause problems? I didn't. I said Christianity used to have more power. Ancient myths applied dogmatically nearly always cause problems.

You can't show where I said anything like your accusations . Learn to read. You seem to be splitting. Not everything is black or white. Not much of anything is black or white. Mostly there is grey.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_%28psychology%29

The muslim world? Is that like a less wacky Disneyland? Do you have any idea how many different types of muslim there are in the world?

The notion that they collectively have one agreed view on the west is a pretty big indicator that someone hasn't a fecking clue about the subject. For example, do you think every Catholic has the same views as the pope? Why should muslims be any different?

Do you expect the 'head' muslim to call a press conference?

"Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for attending. As you know I have been appointed spokesperson for all 1.6 billion muslims. I had a chat with all of them this morning and here's what we all think."

And for Peter's sake, if you're going to criticise the example for being unrepresentative of the average muslim meeting a rich celebrity, don't choose fucking Mosul as your counter balance. Occupied as it is by the most fringe religious extremists in the world who think nothing of killing people who agree with them. The overwhelming majority of people in Saudi on the other hand are normal, every day folk going about their lives in pretty much the same way you or i do. Like the overwhelming majority of Americans do.

It's like contrasting someone who believes in social justice with an ultra left wing terrorist. One is an average person with an average person's reactions to, say, meeting celebrities. The other is a lunatic who might do anything to make some obscure point that only makes sense to them. Bullshit argument.

I am sure the father read the constitution, but then the religious books he follows are in contrast with it, so he must view it as pagan doctrine and sinful...

The contrast in sincerity is shocking, you can tell Michelle actually believes/understand what she's saying.

Interesting to see the differences in coverage. Let's play spot the contrast:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/us/politics/melania-trump-speech.html?_r=0

vs

http://nation.foxnews.com/2016/07/19/phony-controversy-melania-trump-accused-plagiarizing-michelle-obamas-2008-remarks

1. I *AM* an LGBTQ person, I don't speak for them, but I am one voice.
I tend to avoid harassing people.

2. No.

3. a) Both. They aren't mutually exclusive. I want women to be equal and I want legal protections in place to maintain this. This is not secret information.
b) They do.

4. Question 3b) suggests women should be responsible for their safety. Question 4 seems to criticize the notion of being responsible for your own safety. Glad to see unified thought in this. The answer is I expected random bouts of mockery, judgement, and violence. You know, the other 95% of my life.

5. Because shitting on a group that seeks to change culture to react similarly to loss of black life as it does for white lives, while pointing out where society fails to meet this standard is pretty charactersticly racist.
Also I don't say that "Kill all white people" is not racist.

6. Yes. Did you know that the permanence of objects, the transmission of ideas and culture and systems of law are based on events in the past? That by studying history we can understand how humans work in a unique way, that knowing that say, there was a WWI may help us understand the conditions under which WWII occurred and that this knowledge may help us decide what to do in the aftermath of WWII to avoid a recurrence?
That if a group has historically had problems, many of those problems have probably been inherited along with consequences of the problems (such as poverty, strongly inherited social trait). Yes. Linear time,human affairs, culture. They are all things that exist.

7. Yes, I have many examples of people doing this. Mostly this is due to short lifespan. But there are many manchildren in our culture, who seem to think that other people asserting boundaries is immature.

8. There are programs designed to help boost male education dropout rate. If you 'fight' for 'improvements in the fairness of social order ' to help achieve this, you are a Social Justice Warrior, and so you could just have asked yourself.
Also, American bias? Pretty sure this is not a global stat...

9. Because one focusses on correcting the inequalities between the sexes and was born at a time when women didn't have proper property rights, voting rights etc etc, and so it was primarily focussed on uplifting women and so the name 'feminism'. Egalitarianism on the other hand, is the general pursuit. Many feminists are egalitarian, but not all. Hence different words. English, motherfucker....

10. Nothing, as I am not.

11. No, my grandparents were being enslaved in eastern Europe by the far left and right (but more the right, let's be honest).

Seriously though, I don't remember the liberal protests of "Not all ISIS".

12. Ingroup outgroup hatred and distrust is a universal human trait. Race seems to provoke instinctive group psychology in humans, presumably from evolving in racially separate groups.

13. The phrase is intended to deflate 'Black Lives Matter' whose point is that society seems to disagree, in practice, with this. There's only one realistic motivation to undermining the attempts to equalize how the lives of different races are treated socially.
It's also designed to be perfectly innocuous outside of this context so that white people can totally believe they aren't being dicks by saying it.

14. My social justice fighting is almost always done in secret. I hate the limelight, and I hate endlessly seeking credit for doing the right thing. So I try to keep it to a minimum while also raising consciousness about issues where I can.
Hey wait, did you fall for the bias that the big public figures are representative in all ways of the group? HAHAHAHA! Noob.
Wait, did a man voicing a cartoon kangaroo wearing an Islamic headdress, superimposed on video footage of a woman in a gym grinding her hips tell me to stop trying show off how awesome I am and and to get real?

15. No, they are both not capable of giving consent. Sounds like you have had a bitter experience. Sorry to hear that.

16. I spent two decades trying to change myself. I tortured myself into a deep suicidal insanity. When I stopped that, and when society had changed in response to my and others plights being publicised sympathetically I felt happy and comfortable with myself.
You would prefer millions in silent minorities living through personal hells if the alternative means you have to learn better manners? What a dick.

17. Sure. It's also OK if you say 'nigga' in the context of asking this question. But I'm white and English. You should ask some black Americans if your usage causes unintended messages to be sent. I'd certainly avoid placing joyful emphasis, especially through increased volume, on the word.

18. Ah, you've confused a mixture of ideas and notions within a group as a contradiction of group idealogy. Whoops. I don't understand gender identity. I get gender, but I never felt membership in any group. That's how I feel, and have since the 1990s. The internet has allowed disparate and rare individuals to form groups, and some of these groups are people with different opinions about how they feel about gender and they are very excited to meet people other people with idiosyncratic views as they had previously been alone with their eccentric perspective.

19. If white men are too privileged then the society is not my notion of equal.

20. After rejecting the premise as nonsensical. In as much as I want rules to govern social interactions that take into consideration the diversity of humanity as best as possible, I recognize those same rules will govern my behaviour.

21. Women can choose how to present themselves. Video Game creators choose how to present women in their art. I can suggest that the art routinely portrays women as helpless sex devices, while supporting women who wish to do so for themselves.

22. You DO that? I've never even had the notion. I just sort of listen and digest and try to see if gaps can reasonably be filled with pre-existent knowledge or logical inferrences and then I compare and contrast that with my own differring opinion and I consider why someone might have come to their ideas. Assuming they aren't stupid I try to understand as best I can and present to them my perspective from their perspective. I don't sing, or plug in headphones or have an imaginary rock concert.

23. I have done no such thing. Look, here I am listening to you. You have all been asking questions that have easy answers to if you looked outside your bubble of fighting a handful of twitter and youtube users thinking these people represent the entirety of things and seeking only to destroy them with your arguments rather than understanding the ideas themselves.

24. Reverse Racism is where white guys are systematically (and often deliberately) disadvantaged - such as the complaints against Affirmative Action. I'm sure your buddies can fill you in on the details. The liberal SJWs you hate tend to roll their eyes when they hear it too. Strange you should ask.

25. No. I've never seen the list. I just use whatever pronouns people feel comfortable with. Typically I only need to know three to get by in life, same as most other English speakers.

26. I'm the audience motherfucker, and so are you. That's how it works.

27. I don't do those things, but yes, I have considered the notion of concept saturation in discourse. Have you considered the idea that people vary in their identification of problems, based on a number of factors. Some people are trigger happy and this may be a legitimate problem. Since you are aware of this, you also have a duty to try to overcome the saturation biases.
Similarly, if you keep using the word 'fucking', motherfucker, you'll find it loses its impact quite quickly. See this post motherfucker. Probably why you needed to add the crash zoom for impact. You could have achieved more impact with less sarcasm and and a more surprising fuck.

it's funny perhaps because when you're young those little moments, glimpses of infidelity seem so much bigger, more dramatic than the actual impact it has on your life before adulthood. It feels almost like mock passion; how one thinks one should respond. But it is a pure and naive response; romantic and tragic.

Also, honest and hurt and emboldened to make a video to send as a form of retribution. Yet what retribution did she really have? She threw a bracelet which she only momentarily cherished into a riverbed, as if it were the wedding ring worn for thirty years, now tarnished by her husband's revealed secrets.

It's funny because of it's contrast with our adult experiences and understanding, having experienced or known of this early form of love betrayal in our youth, we are now mature and knowing of human nature, but now reminded in an amusing way because of what she doesn't know yet that we know: irony.

Perhaps a scandal to all of her 12 year old classmates, to some it is frivolous and others an amusement. Something to acknowledge and also chuckle at, but also to admire in her self worth and conquering spirit. It's beautiful, I think. I'm with eric on this: you go girl! hahaha!

*Warning I've only gone and done yet another wall of text again! This may or may not get read by anyone on here (good god I wouldn't blame anyone for skipping it), but at the very least it's formed the backbone to a video script so it's not a complete waste of my time! (he tells himself)*

This is as much @bareboards2 as yourself, but he already made it clear he wasn't willing to engage on the issue, so you're getting it instead MWAHAHAHHAHA! *coughs*

I don't wish this to come across as over condescending (though I'm sure it will none the less as I'm in one of those moods). But pretty much every (successful) comedy premise operates on the same underlying principle of irony. i.e. there is an expectation or understanding, which is deliberately subverted, and what results is comedy.

In this case, amongst other things we have the understood premises that:
A. rape is a bad, often horrific thing.
B. that there is an established social taboo about praising such behaviour.
C. that there is a section of society inherently opposed to making light of things of which they do not approve (or in a way in which they do not approve)
D. most words and phrases have an expected association and meaning.

What Jim Jefferies (an accomplished and well respected comedies amongst his peers) has done here, is take these commonly understood premises and subverted the audiences normal expectations in order to evoke a sense of irony, from which the audience derives humour and amusement.

A simple joke might take a single such premise and perform a single inversion of our expectation. e.g. my dog has no nose, how does he smell?....terrible!

By subverting our assumed meaning (that the missing nose refers to the dogs implied lack of olfactory senses), the joke creates basic irony by substituting this expected meaning for that of the odour of the dog itself.

This is of course a terrible joke, because it is as simple as a joke could be. It has only one layer of irony and lacks any sense of novelty which, might tip such a terrible joke into working for any other than the very young or simple minded.

We could of course attempt to boost this joke by adding more levels of irony contextually. e.g. a very serious or complex comedian Like say Stuart Lee, could perhaps deliver this joke in a routine and get a laugh by being completely incongruous with his style and past material.

And herein we see the building blocks from which any sophisticated professional comedy routine is built. By layering several different strands or ironic subversion, a good comedian can begin to make a routine more complex and often more than just the sum of its parts to boot.

In this case, Jim is taking the four main premises listed above, layering them and trying to find the sweetest spot of subverted expectation for each. (something which usually takes a great deal of skill and experience at this level)

He mentions the fact that his jokes incite outrage in a certain section of society because this helps to strengthen one of the strands of irony with which he is playing. The fact that he also does so in a boastful tone is itself a subversion, it is understood by the audience that he does not/should not be proud of being merely offensive and as such we have yet another strand of irony thrown into the mix.

You know how better music tends to have more and/or more complex musical things happening at once? It is the same with comedy. The more ironic threads a comedian can juggle around coherently, the more sophisticated and adept their routines could be considered to be.

Naturally as with music there's no accounting for taste as you say. Some people simply can't get past a style or associations of a given musician or song (or painting or whatever).

But dammit Jim is really one of the greats right now. Like him or lump him, the dude is pretty (deceptively) masterful at his craft.

There are at least 4-5 major threads of irony built into this bit and countless other smaller ones besides. He dances around and weaves between them like some sort of comedy ballerina. Every beat has been finely tuned over months of gig's (and years of previous material) to strike the strongest harmonies between these strands and probe for the strongest sense of dissonance in the audience. Not to mention, tone of voice, stance, timing etc.

I think Ahmed is basically terrible too, but it is because the jokes lack much semblance of complexity or nuance. Jeff Dunham's material in general feels extremely simple and seems like it uses shock as a mere crutch, rather than something deeper and more intelligent.

Taste is taste, but I feel one can to a reasonable extent criticise things like the films of Michael Bay, or the music of Justin Beiber for being objectively shallow by breaking down their material into its constituent parts (or lack thereof).

Likewise one could take the music of Wagner and while not enjoying the sound of it, still examine the complexity of it's composition and the clear superiority of skill Wagner had over most of this peers.

I guess what all this boils down to is, Jim seems to me to be clearly very very good at what he does (as he ought after all these years). Reducing his act to mere controversy feels a lot like accusing Black Sabbath of just making noise and using satanic imagery to get attention (or insert other less out of date example here).

The jokes were never at the expense of victims, they are at the expense of our expectations. He makes his own true feelings on the matter abundantly clear towards the end of the section.

As as he says himself his job is to say funny things, not to be a social activist.

I take no issue with you not liking it, but I do take issue with the suggestion that it is somehow two dimensional, or for that matter using controversy cheaply.

Offensive initial premises are some of the most ironically rich in comedy. It's like deliberately choosing the brightest paints when trying to create a striking painting. Why would you avoid the strongest materials because some people (not in your audience) find the contrast too striking?

Eh, much love anyway. This was more an exercise in intellectual masturbation than anything else. Not that I didn't mean all of it sincerely.

In contrast to the implication from Myers, saying "I don't want congrats, I wan't toughness & vigilance" is not spreading bigotry or misinformation.

I'm in favour of firearm regulation. But there are plenty of countries with ready availability of AR15s to vetted people showing that it is the vetting process and the demeanor of the populace that are the major factors in criminal activity with legal firearms (illegal firearms used in criminal activity being a different thing). Focus should be on regulating firearms away from criminal and crazy people.

The Galaxy Tab S2 (and the iPad) has a 2048x1536 (not 1080p) screen, but it's not the resolution they're bragging about. Samsung uses OLED screens, which offer far better picture quality than IPS LED. The contrast, color reproduction, and viewing angles are way better than any IPS LED screen.

Display Mate rated the S7 screen rated as the best they'd ever tested. ([url redacted] I really want to get an OLED TV someday, but they're so expensive... Someday...

Edit: It won't let me post urls, so you'll have to google the display mate review I guess...

The legal responsibility of Apple (along with all publicly traded corporations) is to maximize shareholder profits. If they act against those interests, then their management is liable, acting illegally, and susceptible to lawsuits.

That's the law and their "patriotic" duty. Their manufacture of popular products is the way they have gone about doing just that.

In China, by contrast, Apple has no problem unlocking phones or complying with the Chinese rulers' requests. But in the US, why should they comply if they don't have to (and it's their legal duty to act on behalf of their stock holders' interests)? They have already said that if they lose their legal battle, they will comply with whatever legal requirements. It would still be their duty to use any and all loopholes at their disposal to act in service to their shareholders' best interests, however they see fit. It's the State's problem to deal with such muddles, if the law is what it is. Not Apple's.

It's the same as with Apple's avoidance of taxes. Apple has the legal (and ethical) responsibility to avoid paying taxes however the law permits them to do so, and to not pay unnecessarily more than they have to do so. Again, they have that legal responsibility towards their shareholders.

The tax code, for anyone who looks it, is completely arbitrary. There is no "right" amount or percentage that anyone person or group "should" be taxed or is "fair" to be taxed. Such amounts are arbitrary and certainly not determined by some user's preference on videosift. (This is why videosift has no say in how much anyone pays in taxes or what the tax code actually says.)

I'm late to the party, but that was quite fun to watch. Reminds me in some ways of watching the interviews with Battlebots builders and then the actual matches.

I bet these will pick up some steam here on the sift once more people check it out.


**edit**
Oh, and the neon didn't bother me. I bet the pilots need some high-contrast visual cues to help them navigate; might not need to be neon, but something. If enough people object to the neon in particular, I'm sure they will experiment with alternatives.