People with arachnophobia are funny to me, because guys, that spider was objectively cute af, but nooo, you guys see 8 eyes and you lose your minds! Imagine if you will that someone walking down the street freaked the fuck out because of a puppy on a leash, like, climbing the walls and shouting to kill it with fire. That's what it looks like from an arachnophile's perspective.

So good. I think this video is a pretty great argument for giving the crazy alt-right types plenty of leash to exercise 1st amendment rights -- give them a little and they'll find a way to hang themselves with it.

With that said, comments / (mild) rebuttals to your post @newtboy:
(my thoughts in italics inline with the quoted post:)

they call it perrito when asking people to catch it, which means puppy. So while training IS the issue, it's not the owner's fault that it's untrained if it's only a few months old. The real problem is likely the whole "walking a dog from your bike on-leash in a city." deal.

Congratulations! Your video, A New Method for training a cat to walk on a leash, has reached the #1 spot in the current Top 15 New Videos listing. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish but you managed to pull it off. For your contribution you have been awarded 2 Power Points.

This achievement has earned you your "Golden One" Level 15 Badge!

I personally know several people who's cats love going for walks on a leash. They even wait patiently by the door at the same time every day, eager for the activity, so don't believe all the idiot yammering from anti-cat dickheads who have no clue what they are talking about. Unfortunately, I can't walk my cat because of too many DOG OWNERS in the neighborhood who ignore leash laws and let their dangerous, flea-bitten, fur-covered shit factories run loose.

Your video, A New Method for training a cat to walk on a leash: Introduc, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Is it sad that this is how my wife gets me from out under our car? It's ok, honey, let me go get your collar and leash and then we can go for a walk. It's okay, bae, it's ooookaaayyy.

But the other cars! Scary...

Wait... honey... you say I have a microchip? What does that even mean? You're not my owner?! Babe, I completely forgot before we were married I was sold to an Irishman to fill in for a cattle dog on a ranch in Tulsa. Damn, well, I guess time for my homeward bound moment. Say goodbye to your precious Luna. Bye.

I'm as surprised as most everyone at how the election turned out. In the week or so leading up to election night, I considered the possibility that Trump might win the popular vote but lose the electoral college, but not the other way around.

Still, as someone who thinks the electoral college is bullshit, consider this thing from all angles:

Hypothetical Possibility 1: At first, when I thought that Trump might win the popular vote but lose the electoral college, I thought that would be a good thing going forward. Both sides would have been screwed out of a victory by the idiotic system in recent memory, which might push for bipartisan support to scrap it.

But thinking further ... I don't think that would have actually panned out. The GOP establishment wouldn't have seen that as "their" candidate getting screwed, they would have been happy. They might have had to pay lip service to the idea of reconsidering the electoral college to pander to angry Republican voters who felt cheated out of a Trump presidency, but they could easily have just left it at that and sat on the issue until apathy took over again.


Possibility 2: The likely reality. Trump will win by electoral votes but lose the popular vote, and that will stand. The Senate and House are both Republican controlled, and the Supreme Court will very likely swing further in that direction. Possibly a LOT.

That sounds terrible. And it definitely means that in the short term, there will be absolutely zero traction for anyone wanting to push the idea of getting rid of the electoral college. BUT -- it also sets up a gold-plated opportunity to see real, actual movement on that front in 2 years. Think Trump is going to be horrendous? Think GOP-controlled Legislature will be abysmal? Look on the bright side -- if those expectations are correct, the blowback in midterm elections won't be a "wave". It'll be a fuckin' tsunami. And that's what we need to have a shot at killing the electoral college.


Possibility 3: Faithless Elector rampage. You can argue, with some merit, that the electoral college was intended to prevent or safeguard against exactly the kind of situation that we are in now. And I'd love to see President Bernie myself. But what would actually result if enough electors swapped to make that happen?

First, NYTimes projects Trump getting 306 electoral votes. That would mean that 37 faithless electors would have to happen to flip the election. You have to go back more than 100 years to find an election where there has been more than 1 faithless elector. There has only been 1 election with more than 37 faithless electors, and that was in 1872 because the candidate died. So realistically, it would be close to impossible to pull this off. (all info from wikipedia)

But forget the odds and just assume that it did happen. I think that would be a strategically terrible idea for Democrats, liberals, etc. Trump won because enough people didn't like the prospect of President Hillary and/or actually wanted to see what Trump himself could do. In either case, his voters generally aren't going to give him a whole lot of leash to screw things up or fail to deliver on their expectations. It will be next to impossible for him to keep those swing people happy. If Trump is 1/10th as terrible as the average Democrat expects him to be, he will alienate all of those people in very short order.

But if faithless electors "stole" the presidency from him (and you know that's how it would be perceived)? Oh, man ... he'd effectively be a political martyr. The anger and backlash would likely be apocalyptic and/or lead to revolt. Worse than almost any realistic way that Trump himself might fuck things up as the President. Even if that was somehow avoided, which I tend to think would be impossible, whoever got installed as President would have the shortest leash of all time, and a massively hostile and motivated Legislature that they would be forced to attempt to work with. Better have some sacrificial lamb to put in there that has zero political future, and even then they would probably cause massive damage to their party by association when they inevitably fall.

No, I think the clear best option is to let Trump (and the GOP) dig his own grave over the next year or two, and then graciously ride the wave of comeuppance.

Always enlightening (if rather unpleasant) to hear what some of the extreme voices like Coulter are saying. And to be fair, she was somewhat more coherent than usual.

But I thought Maher did an excellent job of asking very legitimate, logical questions and then giving her enough leash with her responses to get herself into trouble.

If you hate Trump, watch this video. And other videos from his supporters and toadies. And read the Drudge Report on occasion. Because as Sun Tzu said:

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

Ruby's at least part Border Collie, I've got a BC and they're not meant to be on leashes ...
Depending on how long it was since they last let her off her reaction was predictable :-D

Ahhhh fuck yeah shit YES I needed some Die Antwoord in my life tonight, baby! Zef style! I will let the demons possess me tonight. But no drugs. Just the pure madness of a freak on a leash needing to vomit out its soul. I might get hurt. I might be in pain after I'm done hurling myself at trees and walls and off of things; into things; out of things...

But more importantly, zef-portantly: what do I wear whilst embodying such madness?

I'm not sure which is more amazing, the fact that kitty was riding a scooter or the fact that kitty seems to be on a leash and isn't trying to claw it's owners eyes out.

I know it's Colbert's shtick and I never really got into it, but still...

"I have friends who live and work in London. They said "don't worry,we're very sensible people."

What's sensible for people in London might not be sensible for people in Salford. Or Boston. Or Wolverhampton. London, or the South-East in general, is as representative of the UK as the East/West Coast is of the US.

The hinterland has been drained at the expense of the center, on both a global and a national scale. If you live and work in the City of London, things might look quite ok, and whatever issues there are only need some reforms to no longer be an issue. But if your factory, the factory that provided jobs for the people in your home town, closed down ten, twenty years ago and now the best you can get is zero-hour contracts, then no, things are not ok.

People up top keep telling you that the economy is growing, that everyone's gonna be better off, that it's ok for multinational corporations and rich individuals to optimise their taxes, while they cut your welfare. Banks get a bailout, you get to pay the bedroom tax.

So no, your sensible friends, if they exist, live in a different universe than many of their countrymen. That's the disconnect we've been talking about.

-----
"The British economy is tanking. The pound has plunged to its lowest level since 1985... The Dow lost 611 points."

Again, so what? If the economy is growing and it has no effect on you, why should you give a jar of cold piss about the value of the pound or the stock exchange? Arguably, a drop in the exchange rate of the pound makes it easier for you to export your goods and raises the prices for imports, thereby encouraging you to produce the shit yourself. The UK does have a sovereign currency, unlike the Spanish, the Greeks, the Portuguese or the Italians who have to suffer internal devaluations, because Wolfgang Schäuble says so.

"Equity losses over $2 trillion"

Why should that matter? QE has pushed up stock prices beyond any resonable level, so what meaning do these book values hold? Not to mention that a lot of people made a shitload of money by shorting these stocks, including George Soros against Deutsche.

"There'll be no more money"

QE never trickled down anyway, makes no difference. Corbyn's people call their version "QE for the People" and "Green QE" for a reason: the previous version was only meant to prop up banks and stock values.

--------------

On a more general note, the hatred, the racism, the xenophobia... in most cases, it's a pressure valve. You leash out against someone else, you need someone to blame. The narrative is that we're living in a meritocracy, which makes it your fault that you didn't inherit an investment portfolio. So you start blaming yourself. You're a fuck-up. You worked hard and not only didn't climb the ladder, you actually went down. There's depression for ya. Guess what happens if someone, a person of perceived authority, then comes along and tells you it's not your fault, it's the fault of the immigrants. That narrative is very appealing if history is any indication. Even the supposedly most prosperous country in the EU, Germany, has the very same issue in the eastern parts, where there is no hope for a meaningful job.

People need work, meaningful work. Wanna guess how many of those "xenophobes" would be out in the street protesting against immigrants if they had a meaningful job with decent pay? Not to many would be my guess.

So the likes of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson are providing the narrative. But the lack of social cohesion is a result of market fundamentalism, of Thatcherism, of Third Way social-democrats leaving the lower half of the income distribution to the wolves. You can't exclude large swaths of the population from the benefits of increased productivity, etc. Social dividend, they called it. It's what keeps the torches and pitchforks locked away in the barn.

Mine carries the single extra disk I bring, the disk rag, the bags for dog poo, and the leash. My dog is my caddy, she wears a small pack that is just the right size for disks.
That said, I see people at my local courses all the time with strollers full of disks, drinks, rags, radios, etc.

I tend to agree.

I've been around for a while, but I think I've personally posted/sifted fewer total videos than years that I've been a member.

I understand some of the perks and privileges being reserved to the primary sifters / contributors -- especially things that deal with that specific aspect of the site.

I'm here for two main reasons --
1) to enjoy the content gathered here by the primary sifters and to contribute to the voting process that makes the site great as a normal community member, and
2) to comment on those videos in an environment that is *infinitely* superior to the cesspool that is the YouTube comments system.

Site-wise, I'm stuck in the purgatory between Probie and Star-level. I can get Power Points, but don't really have anything to do with them. Especially since I basically don't ever sift anything myself.

I'm completely happy with how the site works overall, but I think that users/commenters-but-not-sifters like me would probably do good things with a bit more leash; a few more privileges / invocations, as suggested by @Retroboy.