Two days ago, there was a forum/panel about freedom & democracy, where the lineup included: Jeremy Scahill, Edward Snowden, Paul Jay (of TRN), Rick Wolff, and others.

Now, I know I'm biased when it comes to the topics of surveillance, the war on terror, capitalism, etc, but that does sound like a panel worth reporting on, doesn't it? It's not frontpage stuff, sure, but a column/comment online...

Nothing, last I checked. Not a peep.

Who did report on it? RT Germany.

As far as I am concerned, RT is a valid source, as long as you remain aware of their (pro-Russia) angle. It's actually a great source for stuff on the US or the UK, most of the time. Just like I've seen good stuff on Russia in the Swiss media, unlike the red-baiting so prevelant in the WaPo these days.

Governmental enforcement of anti hate speech laws is draconian and antithetical to freedom.
Private institutions outlawing hate speech (or anything else they choose) in their privately run forums is not. Most colleges are not private.
Ideas and discussions can easily be expressed without devolving into racist name calling.

Now the move to legally outlaw the public expression of distasteful thoughts is nutty and fascist, imo, and leaves everyone gagged because any use of language and any thought can be offensive to someone.

@enoch, you seem to be under the impression that you or I or anyone else has some kind of right to say whatever the fuck we feel like saying on the sift.

We don't. This isn't some public forum, it's a privately run website and @dag or @lucky760 have the right to decide if they don't want @gorillaman calling Obama a "nigger prince".

The sad thing is, I mostly agree with his post, but that one stupid epithet undermined his whole point and made him look like an ignorant fool.

And yeah, I'll fucking say it, calling Obama a "nigger" offends me, and not in some sensitive snowflake way. It should fucking offend you too, and frankly, I have no problem whatsoever with either dag (in his Siftler guise) or us as a community deciding that that's not cool and we don't want it here.

Free speech is not absolute, and anyone who thinks it is is deluding themselves. There are well-documented limits to free speech (yelling "fire" in a public theatre, joking about bombs at airports). Once you accept that something is not absolute, you then simply have to argue the degree to which limits apply (same as gun control, if you accept that civilians can't have nukes, then you're already in favour of gun control, you're just arguing over the extent).

Oh and just one more thing -- are you by chance the dad in this video? My wife's nephew makes amateur porn. The man cannot stop talking about it. He has to find every post in every forum to see people's reactions.

-- That's how exhibitionism works.

Very interesting that you're only the 5th sifter to respond on a video about the amateur porn incident. Very interesting.

You know, he was only but a Nephelim's dream as well -- my wife's nephew I mean -- but you don't know him. Thank you very much, you've been very helpful.

Akai GX-265D

How do you figure posting a post on a public forum (that you are in) is behind your back? You really aren't the brightest bulb in the pack. Are you?

http://techdrake.com/2016/06/overwatchs-anti-cheat-proves-too-much-for-cheaters/

http://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20744844365

https://scrap.tf/raffles/N4F7RG

Overwatch does monitor for cheating. Blizzard also issues permanent bans. Battle.net in and of itself is fairly resistant, read the last link on how much harder it was to even create an aimbot hack for Overwatch than for any game using VAC.

Bethesda and Id, on the other hand, don't seem nearly as concerned or proactive. Which is bad, because you can have the most fun game in the universe and lose playerbase because of the cheating. They could take steps, very simple ones, such as enabling a spectator mode so that you could take video from the view of the cheating player. They could enable dedicated servers so that there could be admins in place to ban cheaters from those servers. They could even act on the multiple reports sent to them of obvious cheaters and ban them.

They chose to do none of that. Instead they chose to release a 15 dollar DLC that many say (including me) is hardly worth that amount. You get 3 new maps that you have to play in rotation mode, one new armor skin, some goofy rainbow spectrum colors, a few new post match taunts, and an extremely underwhelming new weapon/demon.

So, tldr mode, Blizzard does bust their ass to prevent hacking via software and bans, while Bethesda/Id does neither and releases new cash grab DLC. One of those methods is successful with an estimated 15m players and one has about 2k players on average. I'll let you figure out which is which and which will still be around in a month or two.

Damn I hate when people think that freedom of speech means you can't be moderated.

Fer fucks sake. Freedom of speech means the GOVERNMENT can't enact LAWS that stop you from saying whatever you want. I can erase whatever you say on my forum and you have no recourse. Why? because THAT would tread on MY Freedom of Speech.

/rant

Then there's Cover Doll a digital magazine... and their The Doll Forum... seems there's a much bigger industry here than one would think... then again, given how many dolls looked to be in the process of manufacturing, and the high price of such dolls, must mean the market is far bigger than most of us would think. .. Also I think Lars and the Real Girl was a bit better than Her... I also seem to recall there was (may still be) a documentary on Netflix over the whole thing...

I wasn't meaning to be a dick, but I was. I apologize.
It's not the number, it's the experience that comes from living with them. I have chased (stood ground) against enough just to know, but really I was reacting to your suggestion that watching a film about wildlife versus living with it was somehow superior experience.
And that's where I'm an assuming-asshole. I forget humans are universally stupid, and where they're not assuming things they see in movie are accurate portrayals of the real world, they're just making assumptions about other peoples life perspectives from their forum posts. /

Did a search for user name, which shows this user has been posting links to the reviews on this youtube channel to other sites. They have also been banned for doing this on another site/forum.

I believe that this is a self-link and violates the posting guidelines.

*ban

As a bass player I've tried playing some Babymetal for an internet forum challenge before. Not really my cup of tea, but some of the songs are fun. I don't think I've ever seen a video of them before, or if I have they tend to focus on the singer girls and not the band. So it was fun to see the bass player jamming out.

Dude's 6 string bass looks like it has a massively wide neck. Or maybe he's just proportionally small? I play a 5 string, and the neck seems like nowhere close to 5/6ths as wide as that beast... I thought maybe he was rocking an exotic bass with 8 or 10.

Yeah, I only did a bit of research and I don't know how trustworthy the sites are, but that is exactly what people are afraid of; that any you buy are most likely a non-native species, since there are more than 5000 species of the things.

http://www.crueltyfreeproductreviews.com/?p=102

http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/1989089/sources-for-dragonflies

Wow ... the weirdest thing just happened. As I was clicking on the Sift Talk Forum to see who's celebrating a birthday, YOUR screen name popped into my mind. A heartbeat later it was revealed that you indeed are basking in the limelight of the day! A good omen for fabulous enchantment perhaps? Here's wishing you a memorable time

The kid was spamming forums inviting people to play with them. When they showed up he would trap them so they can't get out killing them and taking all their stuff. The disturbing part was he was taking their heads and hanging them on his wall as we see in the fifty second mark. When the admin started destroying his chests they were also full of other player's heads.