Just wanted to respond to show that I'm not ignoring this, but mainly just nodding my head. I don't consider myself a feminist, but I think that feminism is needed despite some of the excesses of its adherents, just like I don't consider myself a civil rights activists, but think that it's a needed movement despite some of the excesses of its adherents (I'm too lazy to be either a feminist or a civili rights activist).

I completely agree that the wage gap is real but incredibly hard to isolate, define and quantify, and that a lot of the intended measures to adress it can end up fucking over individuals while failing to adress the core issues. That, to me, means that we have to work smarter and harder, which some economists are doing. I just don't think CHS is the one leading that field forward, unfortunately.

And finally, death threats and threats of violence seem to me like they are almost synonymous with the internet. I find I can't draw any conclusions from the existence of threats of violence online, because if I did I would conclude that the following are all toxic cultures of death and violence: feminism, gaming, conservatism, progressivism, ISIS, Harry Potter, men's rights activism and environmentalism, to mention just a few. Of all of those I'm pretty sure it's only ISIS that actually represents a toxic culture of death.

Your video, Freddie Mercury's Isolated Vocals From We Are The Champions, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Freddie Mercury's Isolated Vocals From We Are The Champions has been added as a related post - related requested by Zawash on that post.

that nostalgia guy is such an apologist for anything SW.

I enjoyed the heck out of the movie, but the similarities to 4 was a huge negative for me.

His so called "explanation" for why it's similar to 4 is bullshit. It would be a credible explanation if sequels mimicing previous movies was a relatively isolated phenomenon. But sequels copying previous movies is something that has been going on for a long fucking time, so his argument just does NOT hold water at all.

Sequels mimic previous movies because Hollywood thinks we're idiots and that we don't notice these things. It's that simple. Hollywood has always tended towards safe and simple instead of taking risks and telling different stories.

It's not rocket science.

You seem to be unaware of studies done on people kept in isolation for extended periods of time. Invariably it causes psychosis or other, severe, permanent mental damage. I have never heard (in real life, not including movies) of a person who has endured any period of solitary who actually requested to stay there rather than be returned to the dangers of gen pop. I'm sure there have been a few, but not many.
To me, the possible danger of rape or stabbing is ridiculously preferable to solitary over any time period....and I say this as a seriously anti-social recluse.
I do agree that death is head and shoulders above life in solitary, to me isolation (and the side effects of it) is incredibly cruel, but sadly not unusual.

@ChaosEngine --

I understand and largely agree with what you are saying, but "enforced solitude and inactivity" vs "nicest cage" is a false dichotomy in the same way my comment was. I wasn't saying that the ideal rehabilitation solutions are either "rape 'n shiv" or "isolation", just that if those *were* the only two options available to me, I think I'd personally opt for isolation.

I 100% agree that a better environment and being treated with some dignity and respect is infinitely more likely to actually rehabilitate someone than focusing on the punishment aspect. On the other hand, some limitations on the "nicest cage" approach are likely necessary. Maybe violent people need to be kept in relative isolation until they can prove that they are able to move beyond that, etc.

And I think that at some point, there has to be a tipping point in the cost-benefit analysis of "attempt to rehabilitate this person into being a functional member of society" vs "make certain that this person is physically prevented from causing any further damage to society". Those are extreme cases, but I think that in those cases "physically prevented from causing damage" might reasonably be applied through either "locked in isolation with only basic needs (food, water) provided for for the rest of their life" or the death penalty. And in most cases, I think that if it has really come to the point of those, a quick and hopefully painless death is probably the less cruel and unusual option...

Saying you must choose between getting shivved/raped and being isolated is a false dichotomy.

Obviously, the US prison system is awful (doubly so since it seems almost designed to discourage rehabilitation). That doesn't mean that the Japanese system is good, only less bad.

On a personal level, I completely understand the desire to punish criminals for their crimes. If someone wronged me, I would want them to suffer for it.

But as a society, we need to move past that. Maybe prison SHOULD be a health spa. If it resulted in lower recidivism, wouldn't that be worth it? And I don't think it would encourage crime. Even the nicest cage is still a cage.

But at a very basic level, exercise and social interaction are necessary for humans to function normally. Do you have any idea what enforced solitude and inactivity do to people? How can you be expected to be a productive member of society after years of that?

Capitalism is a guideline or system of how to organise aspects of society (trade, labour and services for example), nothing more. How you use it defines its effect on us. I could sell you my child explicitly for the purpose of you raping it and it would show how evil capitalism is. Or I sell you my children's book explicitly for the purpose of you entertaining your own children and that would be quite nice.
The problem starts if you think everything needs to be a for profit business as capitalism should be unlimited. Then you live in a country that makes prisons privately owned businesses and thinks it's ok to bankrupt sick people and their families with medical bills.
Capitalism is as evil as the people controling it. Who allows these people to be evil? Who cares? Apparently not the majority.
However, all that is not the problem of this ad. The capitalism works to nobodies disadvantege here. Edeka tries to brand itself as family-friendly and established part of homelife. That is quite normal and acceptable for a grocery store. It is not like as if VW would be putting out ads on how honest they are.
The version of the ad I described as being better is as manipulative as this one with the exception that it doesn't make everyone look like assholes upon closer inspection.
Nobody nailed grandpa's door shut, he's allowed to step into the world and make new friends and other aquaintances. His isolation is understandable but mostly his own fault. I witnessed stuff like that myself, I have grandparents too.
On the other hand you bemoan the smombies of today. Do you see the irony of complaining about the screen-fixed stare of todays youth (and society in general) on an internet forum?
We created a distraction-addicted, short-term attention-spanned and self-affirming society on our own by willingly swallowing all the crap the distraction industry throws at us.
I don't have a twitter account because nothing I can say in 140 characters without established context is worth saying. That gotta mean something coming from me of all people.
I'm not on Facebook because I know what the 'StaSi' was and see no reason to do their work on my own person for Mr. Zuckerberg and his shareholders.
I have no internet connection on my cellphone because I prefer to know stuff instead of just looking it up. I don't write text messages all the time because I prefer spoken words with their complexity that simplifies communication instead of emojis that emulate things my face did since before cellphones stopped being science-fiction.
I choose not to stare at the palm of my hand and what's lying in it every 5 minutes because I can. Most of our modern society chooses differently. They chose poorly, as the real oldtimers would say.
And here we are, yet again, ranting about the evils of enticing screens in our lives, live on the internet. You know, we would not be this absurd joke if we'd sat at a dinnertable right now. With food and drink from Edeka.

The love of a God didn't save me from trauma, sexual and gender identity issues, clinical depression, and the ever looming bipolar disorder. Living is hard, even if it's also simultaneously fun and easy for me to succeed; because the concept of my personal identity isn't flush with the expectations that society and my family have. Being myself almost always gets me in trouble and is misunderstood with sometimes violent repercussions. This forms further cognitive dissonance which is a psychological isolation that has physical isolation as a matter of course. Depression runs in my family, despite all of their love and adoration of Jesus. Southern Baptists, bless their hearts.

I'm sorry to hear about all of that poolcleaner. I think maybe you have the idea that Christians, according to the bible, are supposed to live pain free lives. That isn't what the bible says, though. Jesus promised that Christians would suffer, not only persecutions but grievous trials, physically and spiritually. A Christian is supposed to die to himself, take up his cross, and follow Jesus.

That means a Christian can become depressed, or have gender issues, or any number of other infirmities or temptations. Christians can and do screw up all the time. People have a picture of churches filled with people who think they are perfect, but it is the opposite. Churches are usually filled with people who have screwed up everything royally, and God rebuilt their lives from the ground up. Churches are filled with people who know and proclaim that it is only by Gods grace and mercy that there is anything good happening in their lives; they are filled with broken people who are held together in the loving arms of almighty God. They fall apart sometimes and God puts them back together again.

There's almost nothing logical about anything you say. The only logic is that you make things make sense according to the Bible. If it's scientifically logical but goes against the teachings Christ or God, it's wrong. If the Bible can support the science, it's good!

The most destructive thing in a mans life is a lack of integrity. When you cheat, you aren't getting away with it because no one found out; you are going to reap a bitter harvest from the bad seed you have sown. A loss will occur, whether it is financially, or even mentally and emotionally, and it will far outweigh the temporary gains. It is the same with lying, hating, lusting, etc. Sin in our lives is destructive physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. The bible describes it in exacting detail and it matches reality because the true reality of mankind, what he is really like, and why, can only be found in scripture. The bible is right about everything it says about mankind. Although the bible does match our observations of the natural world, I think it is more remarkable how it matches the reality of the inner universe.

I don't know if think you think this is science or not, as far as the video goes. As far as I can tell it is speculation based on a few studies the author researched. Has anyone tested his theory?

You, on the other hand, make every excuse to prove your stupid philosophy is true and that science is wrong for not agreeing upon the truth of your hippy God love cult. Prove me to be objectively incorrect in my perspective and I will give up on my convictions. Because what is a conviction if it's a false one based upon circular logic and feel good analogies? Oh, them feels. Them Jesus feels. Jesus hippy love.

I'm not a Christian because I thought it was a good idea, or because it made me feel good. When I gave my life to Jesus, I didn't feel any differently at all, except perhaps with a realization of some things I had to change in my life. I became a Christian because God revealed Himself to me, and He showed me Jesus is the messiah. No one ever witnessed to me or explained the gospel in my entire life; it was entirely because of personal revelation that I became a Christian.

I'm not here to prove anything; I post when I feel motivated by God, and the intent of my heart is care and concern for your souls. I started coming here when I was a new christian, and I got into arguments with people over petty issues. To me, now, the real issue is where you're spending eternity and I am praying for that. Perhaps I will never be known on this forum as anything other than an unthinking zealot, but God knows I am sincere at least about that.

You do realize the people who have the whole world as their oyster are in an entirely different form of isolation, right? You're oversimplifying the concept of isolation in an effort to push your Jesus drug.

I understand this because I have lived that life; being both the life of the parties at fortune 500 companies and a solitary hermit, addicted and lonely in a world that no one else fully understands. Not because of a lack of Jesus drug, my friend. I tried the Jesus drug and it is the cause of much of my cognitive dissonance.

The love of a God didn't save me from trauma, sexual and gender identity issues, clinical depression, and the ever looming bipolar disorder. Living is hard, even if it's also simultaneously fun and easy for me to succeed; because the concept of my personal identity isn't flush with the expectations that society and my family have. Being myself almost always gets me in trouble and is misunderstood with sometimes violent repercussions. This forms further cognitive dissonance which is a psychological isolation that has physical isolation as a matter of course. Depression runs in my family, despite all of their love and adoration of Jesus. Southern Baptists, bless their hearts.

There are so many other factors you're ignoring just so that you can present the lamest of analogies of seeds on dry soil and sin cages.

Sin cages. Ignorant science versus the logical sin cage. Nuff said.

There's almost nothing logical about anything you say. The only logic is that you make things make sense according to the Bible. If it's scientifically logical but goes against the teachings Christ or God, it's wrong. If the Bible can support the science, it's good!

But that's not how science works. Scientists do not make stupid excuses in order to support prior written works which lack evidence. If something doesn't make sense, a scientist no longer uses it as a basis to explain the world around them.

You, on the other hand, make every excuse to prove your stupid philosophy is true and that science is wrong for not agreeing upon the truth of your hippy God love cult. Prove me to be objectively incorrect in my perspective and I will give up on my convictions. Because what is a conviction if it's a false one based upon circular logic and feel good analogies? Oh, them feels. Them Jesus feels. Jesus hippy love.

@newtboy

I don't think I'm much in danger of contradiction in suggesting that you yourself have yet to crack a book of feminist theory or engage with a feminist activist making no more extravagant sex/gender claims that the one you quote from that unimpeachable source, dictionary.com (and when did dictionaries move from being an aid to understanding obscure words to the ultimate arbiters of political thought?).

There is no separating the movement from the ideology; this is an ancient truism. Without the movement, the idea dies. Without the idea, the movement doesn't exist. My unfollowable second paragraph comprises only examples of actual, nasty feminist doctrine which I have encountered in the real world, and could probably even document with a few google searches. I can hardly be blamed that this group is so dissolute, so indiscriminately inclusive of maniacs and criminal fanatics that no single representative feminist can be found, no central text can answer for the whole.

But for the sake of increasingly and inexplicably divisive argument, let's attempt to isolate just that 'small-f' feminism in the definition you give: "feminism: noun: the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men", which I will unconditionally repudiate and abjure, for the following reasons.

i) Let's be boring and start with the name. A name that has rightly attracted much criticism, and which Virginia Woolf - not a feminist, merely a devastatingly intelligent and talented woman - called "a vicious and corrupt word that has done much harm in its day and is now obsolete".* Anyone can see the defect here, an implicitly sexist term that apparently calls for the advancement of one sex at the expense of - whom? Well, whom do you think? A special politics for women only and exclusionary of those other incidental members of the human species, once allies and comrades and now relegated to the other side of what has become a literally unending antagonism.

You may say, "it's only a name", but how little else your dictionary leaves me to examine. No, were there no other social or intellectual harm in feminism, I would reject it on the ground of its name alone.

ii, sailor) Would that there were a known equivalent for the term 'racialism' that could relate to the cultural fiction of gender. The demand for women's rights necessarily requires that such a category 'women' exists, and is in need of special protection. Well what virtue is there in any woman that exists in no man? What mannish fault that finds no womanly echo? Then how is this distinction maintained except through supernatural thinking?

There are no women; and if there are no women, then there is nothing for feminism to accomplish. You may sign me up at any time for the doctrine of 'anti-sexism' or of 'individualism', but I will spit on anyone who advocates for 'women's rights'.

iii) This has been touched on before, and praise satan for that time saving mercy, but I reject the implicit assumption that there is a natural societal opposition to the principle of sex equality and that those who fail to declare for this, again, historically very recent dogma fall by default into that opposing force.



*The quote is worth taking in its fuller context, written in a time when the word 'feminist' was a slur on those heroes whose suffering and idealism has been so ghoulishly plundered for the tawdry use of @bareboards2 and her cohort:

"What more fitting than to destroy an old word, a vicious and corrupt word that has done much harm in its day and is now obsolete? The word ‘feminist’ is the word indicated. That word, according to the dictionary, means ‘one who champions the rights of women’. Since the only right, the right to earn a living, has been won, the word no longer has a meaning. And a word without a meaning is a dead word, a corrupt word. Let us therefore celebrate this occasion by cremating the corpse. Let us write that word in large black letters on a sheet of foolscap; then solemnly apply a match to the paper. Look, how it burns! What a light dances over the world! Now let us bray the ashes in a mortar with a goose-feather pen, and declare in unison singing together that anyone who uses that word in future is a ring-the-bell-and-run-away-man, a mischief maker, a groper among old bones, the proof of whose defilement is written in a smudge of dirty water upon his face. The smoke has died down; the word is destroyed. Observe, Sir, what has happened as the result of our celebration. The word ‘feminist’ is destroyed; the air is cleared; and in that clearer air what do we see? Men and women working together for the same cause. The cloud has lifted from the past too. What were they working for in the nineteenth century — those queer dead women in their poke bonnets and shawls? The very same cause for which we are working now. ‘Our claim was no claim of women’s rights only;’— it is Josephine Butler who speaks —‘it was larger and deeper; it was a claim for the rights of all — all men and women — to the respect in their persons of the great principles of Justice and Equality and Liberty.’"

They're actually thinking of moving devils to Victoria on the mainland to isolate them from the tumour infected devils.

If you want some reading material that delves into this quite extensively check out:

• Denial of Death


• Existential Psychotherapy
  

When composer Eric Serra showed soprano Inva Mula (who dubs the voice of the Diva) the sheet music for the Diva Dance, she reportedly smiled and relayed to him that some of the notes written were not humanly possible to achieve because the human voice cannot change notes that fast. Hence, she performed the notes in isolation - one by one, as opposed to consecutively singing them all together and they digitized the notes to fit the music. There are a few moments when you can hear the differences in the vocal tones of The Diva's voice.

/imdb

I can't wait for "Alien Isolation 2" (please tell me that they're working on it ). Isolation is one of the best ever.