I think a lot like you do -- big government is a problem. But, while the GOP loudly and constantly *declares* that it is the party opposed to big government, to me it seems pretty clear that that is no longer even remotely true (if it ever was).

Is Clinton even more in bed with all of that than Trump? Probably, yeah. But this isn't an issue that revolves around Republican vs Democrat lines. It absolutely does revolve around corporations.

Yay for Capitalism and everything, but if Capitalism is the ultimate motivator, it stands to reason that these giant corporations *must* be getting a return on their investment when they funnel huge sums of money into politics. Otherwise, as Capitalist enterprises, they wouldn't be doing it.

So while I tend to agree that big government tends to be worse than small government for quite a few reasons (harder to monitor for corruption, less efficient, etc.), I think that big corporations and big government represent a feedback loop that feed off of each other. Thinking that the problem lies in one but not the other is doing yourself a disservice.

OMG...I was SOOOO hoping you would make that argument.
The 'blanket' minimum wage is the minimum we have decided that those living in the cheapest places to live should be paid. I agree, it should be based on cost of living...but the $15 an hour standard is what we've said should be the minimum in back woods Appalachia, and in larger cities it should be well over $20. Reduce the pay at the top to a reasonably high level and that won't cost most businesses another penny.

OK, bay area....you said ""those who choose to live there need to consider their income" ....ignoring the majority of people who are 'stuck' there without sufficient income; those who've lost financial stability, or those born there to poor parents who have never made any choice, and usually their parents who no longer have a choice to make at this point. They simply can't afford to move. The same goes for most low income people anywhere, they don't "choose" to live there, they don't have the luxury of a 'choice'. ...or are you lobbying for free moving and relocation services for the poor?

10 years ago, $15 an hour was not a living wage in many places, the bay area for one. I left there 20 years ago, and $15 an hour was pretty hard to live on as a single man sharing an apartment THEN, I can't imagine how it is now, especially for those with children.

No, you didn't say ONLY kids living at home have minimum wage jobs, but you did mention them as if they are a large percentage of minimum wage workers, and the group we should focus on, and implied that wages should be determined (at least in part) by THEIR needs. They are in fact the smallest group of minimum wage workers, and even they need more money to eventually move out.

Really? " those unwilling to put in the effort and gain the skill required to actually do a decent service to society." If you really believe a large percentage of people working for minimum wage are "unwilling to put in effort" to better themselves, I just don't know what to say. That's completely batshit insane, they work insanely hard for little compensation, with little respite, and absolutely no respect. Most are putting out more than a reasonable maximum effort just to go deeper into debt constantly, there is no amount of effort that makes more time to make more money to pay for training, or an amount of effort that makes tuition free. Also, who do you think will take over for them if they all put in the effort and gain the skill required to actually do a decent service to society"...(whatever the hell that insulting statement is supposed to mean besides implying they aren't decent or serving society today...by choice)?
What are you talking about "Complacency shouldn't be allowed to make life more difficult for all of us"? WHAT?!? OK, yes, so stop being so complacent about the horrendous way we treat those at the bottom of the financial system because that makes life more difficult for all of us by forcing those with 'more' (but not enough 'more' to avoid taxes) to pay higher taxes for welfare, prisons, policing, housing, etc....by making the nation more crime ridden because it's the only way to make a living for so many...by overtaxing our medical system because so many can't afford to be preemptive with their health and only accept medical help when it's at emergency stage...etc.

If the funds to raise the lowest wages don't come from the extravagant pay that goes to the top and are instead being transferred directly to consumers, yes, it's a vicious cycle. That's why you have to ALSO lower top compensation by law, like maybe tie it to the lowest paid worker in the company. That would stop inflation from being a feedback loop with wages.

racist videos galore

http://videosift.com/video/The-Blackface-Democrat
http://videosift.com/video/Black-mob-violence-The-First-Lady-explains-it-all
http://videosift.com/video/Muslim-Rape-Gangs-roaming-Europe-seeking-white-rape-victims
http://videosift.com/video/Sweden-Being-Raped-To-Death-By-Muslim-Migrants

That's just the last two months. Get him out of here!

These are your own rules to not post stuff like this!

"We love a good fiery comment thread, but sometimes they go overboard. Please avoid personal attacks. It's okay to criticize ideas but refrain personal insults. Please avoid blatantly racist speech, threats, or other verbal abuse. This goes for comments in public arenas as well as private member profile comments. If a comment is bad enough it will probably be deleted due to negative feedback. If these types of comments are regular occurrences, we will probably ask you to leave the community or simply ban you outright."

"Please do not post videos that make fun of other races.

Because of the high volume of world-wide traffic on VideoSift, it is very easy to unintentionally offend a good number of people with material like this. If you think a video is questionable, it is probably not going to pass our standards, and you are probably better off not submitting it."

Just watching this video made me nervous, but I think I could do it in real life, assuming a pilot was giving instructions over the radio.
---
I had a conversation with a commercial pilot before (at dinner, not in a flight) and he had flown both Boeing and Airbus and said they feel much different. Boeing spends a lot of time with the force-feedback so the planes behave much the same as their older analog counterparts, and lays things out based on pilot feedback ; whereas Airbus feels more like a video game, and they only care about fuel efficiency of the plane.

Either way, all pilots require hundreds of hours of training on a particular model (of large commercial airplane) before they get to be captain.

I never said that censorship was something that can only achieved by government.

I get that corporate censorship can and does happen for market reasons. And if companies bow to that, well, that's the world we live in. I judge these things individually on their merits.

The fundamental point is that if a company decides not to produce a game based on market feedback, that's their decision. No one is forcing them not to make that game.

And let's be honest here, Hatred (vile shitty piece of crap that it was) got released on Steam, FFS.

Once again, criticism is not censorship.

Sadly I'm right there with you.
When the international climate agreement was made public recently and I saw that what they were pleased and proud of was an agreement to somehow (they didn't say how) stop the rise in CO2 at almost exactly the level that's agreed on is the point of no return/the level that they think will start all the feedback loops making mitigation or survival impossible, which somehow no one seems to understand means they agreed to do NOTHING besides drive us directly over the cliff. If that's the best we can hope for, a non binding agreement to wait until it's too late to do anything that might save the species/planet, we might as well just say screw it and enjoy the little time we have left. How much comfort will driving a Prius give you when the clouds of Hydrogen Sulfide rise from the ocean?
This is from a guy with an expensive solar system who grows most of my own food.

'Too early to start drinking?' Never! I understand all those words, but not when you string them together like that....and I don't drink.

Hrm...

"whatever you humanist fuckheads are arguing for"

"I'm sorry, did I trigger you? Did I piss in your safe space? Aww."

Why is it that people that go out of their way to offend suddenly complain when it comes back at them?

I had a pretty reasonable response brewing to the post where you came up with the fuckhead bit, and trashed it because reasonable didn't seem what you were interested in. So why waste my time trying to reason with a person who is unreasonable right?

And hey, that's my presumption. Mebbe I caught you on a bad day, mebbe I'm being the ass here, it's entirely possible.

But this conversation is pretty much as pointless as vocal 3rd wave feminism. It's going around in circles, people occasionally getting mad, and the majority of the sift probably peaked in and decided they couldn't be fucked wading in among the 10 or so people dedicated to perpetuating the "conversation"... And of course it's not really accomplishing anything, we're all still being relatively civil to each other even if a bit terse...

The battle for equality isn't won, but it's pretty close (well, at least in the west, just forget about the majority of the worlds women who still live in conditions that make the 50's seem blissful...). 3rd wavers aren't fighting massive social injustice anymore, they are battling things like #gamergate and feedback against Sarkeesian, Tucker Max or that Return of Kings mob (who seem to be the biggest trolls on the planet but w/e).

Seriously, they are spending a lot of time and energy arguing with the lowest common denominators (who by and large love the attention). There used to be a time you could safely ignore the village idiot because, hey, he's a fucking idiot. Now, any dumbass can post on the internet and people will descend on them like the proverbial plagues of Egypt, followed shortly by supporters showing up. Not because those one offs are indicative of even a significant minority in broader society, but because it generates plenty of online hype to see "some guy" say something fucking awful and then the sides line up to start yelling at each other...

So I'm not overly concerned if we end up agreeing because in the grand scheme of things, it's also fairly pointless. We're both entitled to our opinions and they seem to be vaguely in the same park aka "equality good, hate and oppression bad", seems like a good place to stop.

So wait...the agreement is to 'limit' temperature rise to 3.6F, the exact temperature rise they have said is the point at which feedback loops become engaged and make CO2 the least of our problems? Then...at some future point...they agree to limit CO2 production to levels that natural processes can absorb, with no time limit for that, and until then we'll continue to add to the already out of balance levels of CO2, adding to the already unsolvable problem? How on earth can they expect to do the former without first going well beyond the latter? There's no way to limit temperature rise from CO2 without lowering the amount in the atmosphere...and this plan NEVER goes that far, it only agrees to, at some point, balance the amount we add with the amount being removed...that keeps the levels at above current levels, it does not lower them. That keeps the temperature rise in effect, only lowering the speed at which it's rise accelerates, not lowering the speed it rises.
From what I can grasp of this 'agreement', it's beyond worthless and does nothing to solve the problem, only agrees to limit the speed at which we make it worse. It seemingly ignores the fact that what we do today takes 50-100 years to effect the climate and pretends that slowing (not stopping) the RISE in CO2 production is in any way meaningful. If we stopped ALL human CO2 production tomorrow, we still will see the 3.6F rise, the acidification of the ocean, and the myriad of issues that come from those and other disrupted natural cycles.

Also, if we stopped all CO2 production tomorrow, that would mean shutting down coal power plants, and that (while necessary) brings with it the problem of stopping global dimming. Global dimming occurs when aerosols block sunlight in the upper atmosphere, and has directly counteracted some effects of global warming. If we stop putting the pollution up there, we get a few more degrees of temperature rise from that alone.
Unexpected feedbacks like this make solving the problem an issue that requires thorough knowledge of all the processes involved, a near impossibility, meaning anyone who's not a professional climatologist who's offering solutions or opinions is really just spouting hot air....kind of like I just did.

Exactly! the implications are huge in the understanding of evolution and even society, since say, the selfish gene in humans/red hair/disease/etc can be triggered or turned off, or say that there is an extra feedback mechanism in males´offspring! It could explain the enormously fast adaptability in the evolution of species and the programmed role of males in society and their EXPERIENCES/fears/emotions! Sperm production (gametogenesis) is constant in males, and nature is no dummy; one could hypothesize nature finds feedback mechanisms into genetics to compete and gain advantage with other males, even for future generations (?). This should have huge implications if the proper research is continued and these very interesting hypotheses and other´s are seriously questioned.

No. Try reading again. I am threatening to ban you if you continue with personal ad hom attacks, which are not allowed. When you say things like
"I am speaking to someone who doesn't even know the language he is speaking, you see my amusement?
I cant help it if your general ignorance seeps into every pore of your conscious existence, and I must admit it should be above me(or anyone, for that matter), to aggravate someone of such an argy-bargy disposition. However, maybe someday the light-bulb will turn on inside your head, and you might finally see past the world you've been spoon-fed since birth."

...it's called an 'ad hom attack', it means moving from discussion of ideas to simple personal attacks, which you started, and which is not allowed here and is a bannable offence.

Let's examine.
You posted a vitriolic politically charged, contradictory post, insulting everyone you discussed.
I replied incredulously because you actually said "I am not necessarily saying that Trump is a good person, or would make a good President, but he would me loads better than the other shrimps for candidates...", which is so patently ridiculous it required me to ridicule it...but not YOU.
You replied with some personal ad hom attacks on my person because you didn't like my position.
I (inappropriately) replied in kind. (I should have just told you to stop the first time or you'll be banned, but I gave you the benefit of a doubt...the first time).
You post more personal insults and now try to characterize that as 'cordial'.
I tell you that your personal insults are not allowed here (try reading the site rules) and tell you if you continue them I'll move to ban you.

You run to who you think is an admin for help...he'll likely tell you to stop personally insulting people you don't know and stick to the topic, because.....

What can't I say in a comment?
We love a good fiery comment thread, but sometimes they go overboard. Please avoid personal attacks. It's okay to criticize ideas but refrain personal insults. Please avoid blatantly racist speech, threats, or other verbal abuse. This goes for comments in public arenas as well as private member profile comments. If a comment is bad enough it will probably be deleted due to negative feedback. If these types of comments are regular occurrences, we will probably ask you to leave the community or simply ban you outright.

EDIT: What exactly is an Aggro manner? I understand aggro, but not Aggro.

It seemed like they were all marching in step. I wonder if they just happened to march in the same frequency that the bridge naturally resonates in, causing a feedback/amplification that over stressed the cable, or if it was simple cable failure for other reasons.
Either way, I'm glad no one was hurt (according to the TV piece I saw about this). It could have been far worse.

Thanks for the very nice feedback and for the patience as the outstanding changes slowly trickle through.

Also, this video is an example of exactly how to reward and encourage your children to use profanity without understanding what they're saying.
Yes, record, laugh at her words, watch that big smile spread across her face. She just found something amazingly funny to use, in order to get attention from adults!
But don't worry Mom, I'm sure you telling her "that's not nice", despite the other positive feedback, will alleviate any desire to repeat the word as much as possible.

Cool arrangement and vocal performance but it's not quite in tune... Still enjoyable and worthy of an upvote!

Edit: I think they were having some sound issues during this video. There's a bit of feedback you can hear at one point. I'm going to guess that the two girls on the left have perfect pitch and the other girl just has very good relative pitch and couldn't quite hear the others because of the sound system..

Great feedback, Thanks

Yes, I assumed line-ups, but not to the point of killing the experience.
I go to the Con in Vancouver and in Calgary and they are pretty decent..., What We don't get are all the promotional exclusives and swag.

The floor would be my biggest expectation, but the event may be outselling it's location. More people than space. Good thoughts, I'll consider.., But still, it sounds like a party all the same..