100%.
Rhonda Rousey could kick my, or your, ass.
Her 23 & 24th chromosomes being different from ours doesn’t negate that.

On average is what you said somewhat true….mostly (there are athletic disciplines that benefit female physique strongly, and there are exceptions to every “rule”)…. but sports are played by the exceptional, and a shitload more than chromosomal arrangement and genital assignment determines how exceptional a person is in a given field.

It is possible that the best woman in a sport is better than the best man, true in almost all sports, equally possible a man born a girl could be better, or a woman born a boy…If you can’t accept that, then yes, we must live in two separate realities.

What about hermaphrodites? Can they play for either team, or none at all?

Again, denying a citizen their right to participate in publicly funded sports is pretty damn unAmerican. If your not American and your culture differs, that’s on you and not my business.

I have a few French friends, and as I see it there's quite a fundamental cultural difference at play here. I'll do my best to explain it, although I don't fully understand it myself.

There's a very fundamental French principle of equality that's considered as sacred as American freedom of speech. It means that when you're French, you're French, and explicitly not a member of a sub-culture. I heard about this when they banned wearing a hijab (I think) in schools: the children are French first, and must comply by French norms above others.

The French government have fought very hard to fight the foundation of religious and ethnic sub-cultures within France. This is obviously very different to the American approach of embracing your heritage and, just as Freedom of Speech has unwanted side-effects, so does this. The players are French, not African. Their cultural past was indeed wiped when they became French (at birth or otherwise). Yes, they're of African descent, but that's considered very different to being African.

Now, it's fair enough to argue the the American approach is better, but I think it's important to understand that this is not the French approach. There is a fundamental cultural difference there, and without understanding that, you're going to miss the point of their argument.

This video's language and cultural differences are just too steep a barriers for this crowd to judge it's sift worthiness fairly.

No worries, I wasn't calling you out on it, just curious to be honest.

I know it's not a popular opinion but I'm of the mindset that crime statistics should be more thoroughly collected and made public via an open data initiative. I guess the question is what would be done with the statistics? Do black communities have more incidents of violent theft? Are pedophiles more likely to be white? Do police really shoot more unarmed black people than white? Does it happen more at night or during the day? Are the offending officers always white? How long have they been in the job (is inexperience an issue, etc)?

I guess the real question is that, while knowing this information would allow us to make more informed statements about police shootings and violent crime in general, would it really help us address the core problems like social and financial inequity, education, cultural differences, etc?

Obviously data collection would need to be standardized and the presentation of it anonymized, with geographic areas generalized so as not to impact things like property values, etc.

@SDGundamX those cultural factors are all true, and none of it contradicts my point. Both culture and inborn personality traits play a role. A place where murderers have been routinely caught and removed from the gene pool for centuries is going to be a place with a lot less genes for psychopathy. Not so much in a frontier society without effective law enforcement for much of its history, like the US. The US isn't the worst in this respect, but it hasn't been civilized for nearly as long as Western Europe or Japan, and this is a source of both genetic and cultural differences.

Wow, this needs more votes.

The cultural differences are telling when my reaction to this is "he's going to get fired for fucking with the company property".

@SDGundamX -- I've lived in Thailand for almost 10 years, and a lot of the things she mentions for Japan are similar here or at least have semi-related corresponding cultural rules.

I also definitely have "farang privilege" which would be the Thai equivalent of "gaijin privilege". Not showing emotion is also big here, especially with regards to anger. Thais avoid confrontation at pretty much all costs. Which in and of itself can be infuriating -- sometimes a process or system is woefully inadequate or blatantly broken, but point it out as an area of concern (even in a constructive way) and an entire room of Thais will break into nervous silence out of fear of insulting or appearing critical of whoever is responsible for said system.

I love living here, but sometimes the cultural differences can be an obstacle...

The mixture of valid points, exaggerations, ignorance of context and completely false information makes it a bit... difficult to digest.

Generally speaking, a lot of errors were made regarding Cologne.

The police fucked up entirely and basically was unable to maintain control of the square in front of the central train station where shitloads of theft, sexual harassment and even a few rapes were committed.

The public media did not report on it properly. They did, in fact, refuse to report it at all at first. But that doesn't stem from an obession with PC nor is it special treatment for refugees/immigrants -- it's good old-fashioned pro-government bias. A few days later, they were all playing the same tune again: bad immigrants, bad muslims, need more law-and-order, close the borders, need new laws, etc. Same shit as always.

And yes, you cannot expect all these refugees to be model citizens from the get-go. Different culture, different language, segregation, no work permit, no familiy, maybe first-hand experience with war -- they are bound to commit crimes, assuming otherwise would be naive.

And accepting a million refugees might have been a bad idea after cutting down public personnel and services for two decades straight. But what's done is done. The question now is what can be done to improve the situation for everyone involved. What doesn't help is further segregation (refugee camps), private security (aka mobs hunting brown people, happened in Cologne already) or downplaying the massive problems.

As for that wierd tirade from 1:07 onwards about true Germans: except for all the people from Bohemia, Prussia and Silesia, aka Poland; or the millions of immigrants from Italy and Turkey; or the folks from former Yugoslavia; etc. Two thirds of the bloody country has family names that mark them as n-th generation immigrant. Half of my extended family is from what is now Russia (Kaliningrad) while my family name is distinctively Dutch. "Paid German taxes" gives a hint to his motivations. Folks in East Germany didn't pay German taxes: do they count? Refugees from former German enclaves ("Russlanddeutsche") didn't pay German taxes, nor did they speak proper German: do they count?

All in all a very misguided rant, too eager to abuse real fuck-ups for his own ideology. Rape culture, SJW, PC -- doesn't apply in this case. It's small government, media with establishment bias, a general inability for open discussion of problems, and a shitload of incompetent arseholes in positions of power (e.g.: chief of police in Cologne, gone now).

By the way, he forgot to mention the hundreds(!) of refugee shelters that were set on fire during the last few months. Bands of immigrants committing crimes are a problem, bands of Germans committing crimes are a problem.

We had a six digit number of prime suspects for trouble already: young, male, unemployed, un(der)educated, no fucking hope. It's the main cause for the persisting problems with Nazis in East Germany: no hope. Adding a million additional people, lots of them with equally bad prospects, without any serious effort to integrate them is bound to blow up in our faces eventually.

The best thing that can happen for the entire Eurozone would be a massive integration program in Germany. And by massive I don't mean a meagre billion Euros. We're talking 15-20 billion a year, for at least five years. The more the better. Even in the current economic regime, it would be much cheaper than the repercussions from staying the current course: doing fuck all.

I like that he makes the distinction between cultural differences and the illusion of "better". That's quite nice of him.

Yeah, it's a bit misleading in the Australian comparison too. That particular car addicted rich area of Sydney doesn't necessarily reflect the rest of the country (or even the rest of Sydney).

A few of the 10-12 year olds at my kids school walk to school by themselves or in small groups (or take the bus a few stops to school). The vast majority are accompanied by their parents, but not all.

Even so, although slightly exaggerated by picking extremes in both Japan and Australia, the cultural difference they point out is real and interesting.

I think she does it here because that is her experience -- to random people that she meets, they immediately identify her as "Asian", but nothing more specific than that. Plus, the talk seems to be delivered to a group of mostly, well, Asians. There are massive cultural differences between subgroups for sure, but on the other hand I'm sure they do share some common experiences due to being someone readily identifiable as "Asian" in a Western country.


...And I think you're wrong about no-one referring to Germans, French, Italians, English, etc. as "Europeans". I think LOTS of Americans do that if they see someone who is white and doesn't have an American accent, but they can't identify their particular home country.

And as an example on the other side of the coin, as a white American living in Thailand, I get Thais asking me these same sorts of questions ALL THE TIME. "Where are you from", etc., just like Nat described as happening to Asians in the west. Heck, in Thai the word for any western foreigner (non-Thai) is "farang", which most likely has roots in the way Thais heard and tried to repeat the word "France" as said by early French visitors, who were some of the first westerners to visit the country. In Thai, "France" is said like "fah-rang-sey" or "fah-rang-set", and most people think that the word "farang" for any westerner comes from that. So, if I go out with my British friends, the Thais will refer to all of us as "farang", which is basically like calling us "Frenchie". My Brit friends tend to take a bit more offense to that than I do...

But in all seriousness, I don't find being called a "farang" offensive. It is basically never meant as an insult, and in my opinion westerners calling Chinese / Japanese / Thai "Asian" isn't either. It can get annoying, but annoying isn't exactly the same thing as offensive.

Great talk. I love Nat, she's genuinely funny.

I have to say that it surprises me to hear her refer to "Asians" as a single group. There are massive cultural differences between Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Thais, etc. No-one refers to Germans, French, Italians and English as "Europeans".

I also don't really think there's anything wrong with making fun of your culture. Many of my favourite comedians do that all the time (Dylan Moran and Billy Connolly for example). There's a world of difference between recognising and laughing at your own cultural quirks and making racist stereotype jokes.

I can't imagine the pain of losing your wife and newborn child within days of each other.

I understand taking photos or videos of the kid. I don't understand posting them on youtube.

I actually clicked through to the youtube page to get more info:

"For more information please visit: http://www.piccomemorial.com
To donate to a Memorial Fund to help with medical bills and associated expenses, please visit: http://www.youcaring.com/memorial-fun...

© Chris Picco 2014

ALL MEDIA INQUIRES, PLEASE CONTACT:
Brett Walls • brett.walls@gardenpediatrics.com • 909-647-7167"

The whole thing feels horribly cynical to me.

Maybe it's just a cultural difference, but to me grieving is a time not to intrude on the family.

Well, my response was not meant to be taken entirely seriously.

That said, most of the people @blankfist is talking about (his "democratic friends") probably have reasons not a million miles away from that.

As to whether secession is an inherent right, I don't know; it's a complicated question.

Legally, not really. Obviously, anything in international law is kinda murky with different jurisdictions etc, but there doesn't seem to be much support for the concept as a blanket rule. In individual cases, where there is a significant cultural difference, it can happen and with the backing of the parent country and the international community.

What is certain is that there is no legal framework that would allow secession in any form from the USA.

Morally and ethically? Jesus, that's a minefield. In theory, I could get behind the idea that if you have a well defined geographical region with a majority population that wants independence, you should be allowed to do that.

In practice, it's kind of a nightmare and often leads to all kinds of suffering and misery (I don't really need to list examples, do I?).

So yeah, as in so many things in life, the answer is "it depends".

I think it is a cultural difference, vil. You are from the Czech Republic. I am assuming you don't have this insult in your country.

Trust us that it is an insult here. Both to men and girls.