I’ve nothing against YA fiction... I read and enjoyed the Hunger Games well into my 30s. This just has the look of Yet Another Dystopian YA Adaption in the vein of Hunger Games, Maze Runner, Divergent and so on. Doesn’t mean it’ll be BAD, though.

Ian Welsh reminds us of a quote by Mark Twain:

There were two ‘Reigns of Terror’, if we could but remember and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passions, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon a thousand persons, the other upon a hundred million; but our shudders are all for the horrors of the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief terror that we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror – that unspeakable bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

All food is organic. If you wanted to you could try inorganic but it would not work.

Not all food is Organic®. Just coining a new marketing label does not make an apple healthier. You can make people fear pesticides to squeeze some money out of them but in the end they have to eat something. Without pesticides most people would just die. Of hunger.

That said in western culture there is this reluctance to eat apples that are not the perfect shape and colour of an apple. If labeling these imperfect apples Organic® helps sell them and get them eaten, why not? If you want it someone will sell it to you.

$15,000 dildo sounds totally worth it. https://www.lelo.com/inez

Thor Buckswallow writes:
"This is the kind of toy that only comes around once in a lifetime. When you first insert this gorgeous pleasure rod into your hoo hah, your toes will curl while your left arm goes numb as receptors fly across your body delivering messages that could end world hunger. The first time I unboxed this hedonist pole and rammed it like a battering ram into the door of a third-world immigrant living in Germany into my vaginal cavity, I screamed so loud that my neighbors (who live 3 miles away on their own estate) called the police. I had to pay off the local police chief so he would bury the incident. Not a negative, though, since paying the local authorities off so they wouldn't interfere with the weekend torture rituals was on my to-do list anyways! LOL! Great product, would recommend."


Although I 'll be spending my hard earned money on this special treat.

"Earl", Quite simply the most distinguished gentleman’s plug in the world, is the finest butt plug in the land and for $2590 a bargain. https://www.lelo.com/earl

"It's one of *those* movies" pretty much covers it. It covers 'The Hunger Games' too. You go, you watch it, it's fun, you forget it afterward, but whatever, it was fun to watch. It's fine.

Spoilers for Hunger Games!

your stance about veganism is very similar to the climate deniers in that you choose to buy into myths and lies as opposed to looking into the facts youself. the documentary i posted considers the issues of local, and so called "small" farms also. they are no more humane or less cruel than so called "factory farming" and are every but as inefficient and environmentally devastating. "factory farming" is a mere symptom and the root cause is the commodification of sentient non-human animals, just as in the past humans used to commodify other human beings of certain races. for example here is an article on the myth of "humane" animal farming: http://freefromharm.org/animal-products-and-ethics/factory-farming-alternative-farming/

the fact that climate change is driven in large part but the raising of non-human animals for food is without question a well documented fact. the human population is without a doubt a major factor but above this issue is the fact that it requires MANY times the resources to produce on calorie of flesh, dairy or eggs than it does to produce one calorie of plant based food. are you aware that in the USA, around 80% of crops grown are fed to the 10 billion farmed animals who are murdered every year for food? it has been estimated that 800 million humans could be fed on the crops which are grown for farmed animals alone. these issues are also gone into detail in the documentary.

as far as "tugging on your heart strings" goes, how is having compassion and empathy for anyone who suffers a bad thing? no one would be questioning it if the victims were human children but since they are "only" cows, pigs chickens and fishes (all of whom feel pain just like you or i do, perhaps even more so), suddenly violence against them is considered a matter of personal choice. the bottom line is that if you would not wish to expeience something yourself, it is never moral or ethical to force others to experience it, especially not in the name of a momentary taste sensation.

finally, here is a quote which i think best summarizes the situation:
“Aren’t humans amazing? They kill wildlife – birds, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice and foxes by the million in order to protect their domestic animals and their feed. Then they kill domestic animals by the billion and eat them. This in turn kills people by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative – and fatal – health conditions like heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, and cancer. So then humans spend billions of dollars torturing and killing millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, few people recognize the absurdity of humans, who kill so easily and violently, and once a year send out cards praying for “Peace on Earth.”~ David Coates

Ugh. That tofucken looks disgusting. If they're going to try to sell veganism, they should try to not make the alternative look like a vomit box.

And they totally, totally overdid it with the cursing. After the 18th fuck, it's not funny anymore. It just makes you sound like a 15-year old who just learned how to cuss.

And, I'm sorry @newtboy, but even animals raised in 'humane' conditions are still treated horrendously by any human standard for any other sentient being. If we treated our mentally handicapped like even the best animals in the best farms, it'd be considered an atrocity.

Keep on cognitive dissonancing the shit out of that. Just admit to yourself that your enjoyment is more important than another being's suffering. Just admit it! And say, "I'm an asshole because my hunger is more important than suffering." proudly. Stop dancing around with that "humane slaughter" nonsense.

It's a shame Affleck didn't let the guy speak. This is something that needs to be talked about. That doesn't make anyone racist, and any right thinking Muslim would agree with that because we are ALL at risk.

However. There is currently the largest episode of human migration in history. The west is responsible for this with their destabilising campaigns in the middle east. Those places are breeding grounds for terrorism. Personal loss to the point of numbness towards violence and death, hunger, insecurity, fear, uncertainty... these things play directly into the hands of evil people looking to manipulate people to do their dirty deeds for them.

Our actions have led to this worldwide humanitarian crisis which has made us far more unsafe than before we began our poorly planned excursions into the region based on a knee-jerk, eye-for-an-eye reaction to a small number of individual thugs tragically murdering thousands of people. And haven't we just played into the hands of the extremists...

The indiscriminate bombing has to stop. This only ends diplomatically, but we are already at it again in Syria dropping bombs with no clear long term plan. We are fueling an already out of control humanitarian crisis and doing exactly what the terrorists need us to do for them to thrive.

Obviously I've been hungering for fuller access to the new navigation bar, with all its sexy live content, and that's great.

Haven't we lost a lot of information again? Who wants to have to click on every video's thumbnail to see its length, channels, views, tags and so on. Presumably the loss of the ability to display a video's comments without the need to visit its page isn't a permanent excision.

And have you started piling up a lot of buttockry on the bottom of the page again? 'Top Sifters of the Week', not interested, 'Top New Comments', sure, in the sidebar.

My ardency for the beta video page is undiminished, but there's little so far that I see to recommend the new front page, save its access to the excellent top bar.

Because this isn't that hard, and frankly, it's not even that creative.

Granted, there's some skill in the animation.
And there are some sorta funny (in a really dark and twisted way), vaguely inventive, ways of killing people, but it's nothing a bunch of stoned teenagers couldn't come up with.

The point is that what game developers do requires knowledge and skill, but they're not geniuses.*

You could try putting them to work solving the great issues of our time (climate change, overpopulation, poverty, hunger, Justin Bieber, etc), but they really wouldn't do any better than the people already working on those problems.

BTW, in case you weren't grossed out enough before, @ 2:02 the two characters are a father and his daughter.

* Well, some of them are, but they're geniuses in their field.

Kind of. It's hard to know. You are assuming rationality on the part of the business people.

My evidence? The Bechtel Test for the movies. Despite women being 1/2 the population, the moviemakers ignored that audience for decades as they chased what seemed like a better bet -- males from the age of 18-35, or whatever the range of ages is.

Despite the evidence of quality movies about women doing well at the box office, the "rational" business deciders kept saying - oh, that movie that just did well is the exception.

As the exceptions mounted up, FINALLY they are beginning to pay attention. Even then, it was pushed by book sales, you know? Hunger Games. Twilight.

Surely you wouldn't argue that sexism has been absent from the movie theaters all these years?

It may seem like a stretch to make this analogy, but I don't think it is. The blindness of those in charge is LEGION.

Racism can be subtle. The toymakers don't have to saying -- I don't want to make no n****r baby dolls for them to be twisted by the subtle racist stance that little black kids don't read.

I agree with you. It isn't evil.

It is "just" subtle racism that affects little girls standing in a toy aisle.

Slow down with the theories that our 'advancements' will solve all problems, not create more, because all the things you listed have been fairly disastrous in the long run, many being large parts of the issue at hand, climate change, and things like putting a man on the moon or traveling the globe in hours have gone backwards, meaning it was simpler to do either 35-45 years ago than it is today (we can't get to the moon with NASA today, or get on a concord). Assuming new tech will come along and solve the problems we can't solve today is wishful thinking, assuming they'll come with no strings attached means you aren't paying attention, all new tech is a double edged sword in one way or another.
IF humans could harness their tech, capital, and energy altruistically, yes, we could solve world hunger, disease, displacement, etc. Humans have never in history done that though.
We already can't feed a large percentage of the planet. If a large percentage of farmable land is lost to sea level rise (won't take much) and also a large population displaced by the same (a HUGE percentage of people live within 10 miles of a coast or estuary), we're screwed. It will mean less food, less land to grow food, more displaced people, less fresh water, fewer fisheries, etc. We can't solve a single one of these problems today. What evidence do you have we could solve it tomorrow, when conditions will be exponentially less favorable?
For instance, something like 1/3 of the population survives on glacial water. It's disappearing faster than predicted. There's simply no technology to solve that problem, even desalination doesn't work to get water into Nepal. People seem to like water and keeping their insides moist, how would you suggest we placate them?