Jaron Lanier is a Computer scientist, composer, visual artist and author. He is considered a founding father of the field of virtual reality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaron_Lanier

He is certainly NOT mainstream but most definitely NOT a crackpot.

His ideas and musings should be considered.

1vote & 7 views.

I know that it is a total waste of my time. If it is not a mainstream or a popular artist/group with the in crowd of the sift a great song by an amazing artist gets no love.

Here is some information on Mr. Marr. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Marr

In the 10 years that I have participated in this community I have grown very tired of it’s current state. I think that I messaged dag a few years ago and described this site as a video crack(drug) site. Short and dumbed down videos. End of rant.

No, no, don't equivocate.

Sure, there's some hypocrisy on all sides, but no other network comes even close to Fox News.

They pull this "if Obama did it, it's horrible; if Trump did it, it's great" shit all the time. Blatantly.

I watch plenty of "mainstream" media, and I haven't seen anyone, who previously supported starting a dialogue with our adversaries, blast Trump for it. They do blast Trump, who has no clue about the nuances of the politics and history of that region, for going into it unprepared. They blast him for singing praises to Kim (brushing aside the all the murder, concentration camps, torture) while causing rifts with our actual allies.

But hey, Fox's bullshit works. You'd think it would stop working in this age when we have... you know.. video evidence of stuff... but no... still works.

The problem is not with the media but with the gullible/ignorant/stupid population that consumes it. The same mouth-breathers that had their pitchforks out, when Hannity told them Obama is willing to talk to dictators, are now praising dear supreme leader Trump, because now Hannity is telling them that talking to dictators is a good thing. Completely predictable but still astonishing.

How do they take our money? Half the people who work for Walmart qualify for food stamps, even though they make so much money they could easily pay living wages, give benefits and still make a profit. This happens at big companies all across the country. That's how they take our money. But you, as a Christian, don't give a crap about those employees, they just better get another job and work 80 hours a week, so they don't have to get food stamps, just so the rich people running these companies and the shareholders can continue to reap in the huge amounts of money. Who cares Jesus commanded you to help the poor, and that the rich were going to hell, in modern Christian culture it is the rich who are blessed, and the poor who need to be vilified.

I'd wager most of us are working, probably 40 hours or more. Used to be that one person in the family working 40 hours a week was enough. Now that isn't enough in most cases. That money moved to the top. We have one of the largest and fastest growing wealth and income gaps in the world, and in history. Real world income isn't staying with inflation, but that 1% that modern Christians love so much, is staying so far ahead of the curve.

And as to, "they like making $8 an hour" bull fucking shit. While I'm making well more than that, I know that isn't true. They got the best job they can get. It's not that people aren't applying for the jobs that are out there, the employers aren't hiring the people applying. Perhaps that person making $8 an hour doesn't have a college degree, and can't afford to go to college. I have a worthless bachelor's degree in "programming and applications" which basically means I know how to use Word, which I knew before I had it (I could have taught even the programming classes for all the further we got into the programming). That degree cost me near $25k, and who knows how much it'll cost by the time I'm done paying it off with all the interest on it. Back on point, those people can apply to a ton of jobs, but unless they are qualified they won't get it, and even among those they do qualify for, there are a ton of applicants for each job out there. Nobody is working Walmart, McDonald's, Lowes or whatever because it's their dream job. It's the job they can get.

Why should you make a living off 40 hours a week, but they should have to work 80? Why the double standard? Why say let the rich owners and shareholders take that income that used to go to the workers and just say f the employees, so long as I make a living at 40, those people better just work longer. This is why I HATE Christianity because every person who thinks that is a Christian. Every person who thinks that LGBTQIA+ people shouldn't have equal rights under the law is a Christian. Every person who was shouting "let him die" at the Republican debate in '08 in regards to a guy without insurance, was a pro-life Christian. Every person who cheered at the idea of carpet bombing at the 16' debates were pro-life Christians. It's why, in the unlikely event it is real, I'd rather burn in hell than be around those people for all eternity. I've never met a good right-wing Christian. Never. They are all evil vile people who are full of greed and have zero of the love of Christ. Their witness is a shining example of how evil and vile Christianity is.

I'm surprised that fat tub of lard Trump, who dictated his son's letter, who dictated his Doctor's letter, can swing a golf club as often as he does... a guy who bitched and moaned about how often Obama golfed, and who's own golfing and vacation time has far outdone Obama's golfing and vacation time.

We got a President, flagrantly breaking the emoluments clause, and nobody seems to give a rats ass (save a few on the further end of the left, certainly the mainstream media, which Fox and the right accuse of being far left, doesn't care, nor do even moderate Democrats).

I know you don't believe he, or Fox and the like are the ones doing the lies and deceit... and nobody will ever convince you otherwise. I know, because I too once was a far-right Christian, who only trusted Fox, and thought the science of climate change was a joke, as was evolution and the big bang (though I was an old earth creationist, I could never get into the 6,000-10,000-year-old argument)... then I learned to actually vet my news and information. I have no doubt that most of my anger at the right is the fact I was so easily deceived for over 30, nearly 40 years of my life. Hopefully, in the highly unlikely event that others on the right learn that they are the ones who've been lied to, that they are the ones more guilty of spreading falsehoods, deceit, greed, and setting a horribly bad witness for their faith that does far more harm than good, they don't get as angry as I did and leave the faith all together and then hate all of what they once were a part of.

There are some core philosophies withing homeopathy that have some merit for some cases (e.g. treat like from like, stop unhealthy activities to heal...) but it is mostly practiced and promoted by charlatans.

Most of the good ideas that homeopathy came up with were adopted by mainstream medicine anyway.

Operation mockingbird ?



“Operation Mockingbird” was a fully implemented CIA program to spread disinformation throughout American media.

CIA Director William Colby testified to the Church Committee that over 400 CIA agents were active in the US media to control what was reported through American mainstream television, newspapers, and magazines.

CIA Funding and Manipulation of the U.S. Mainstream Media According to the Congress report published in 1976:

I think if you're going to have P2W - it should take place on a P2W server separate from those who are grinding the game. It's just one of the many reasons WoW isn't all that special anymore. Need a level 100 toon? Pay $30, get one instantly, on any sever ya like, you know with the people who put in 1000 hours of their real life.

I don't really care about loot boxes as long as they are cosmetic. In HOTS or Overwatch it's just like an added bonus, even though most of it is trash. Though, having loot boxes in HOTS is a little different than Overwatch which was an overrated/overpriced $60 game while HOTS (also made by Blizzard) is actually free to fucking play and even then I have most of the toons and never spent a cent and get plenty of loot boxes for free as well.

Keep this shit up though and the underground/indie devs are going to take over the gaming industry. Just like what happened with music, MTV not playing real music, the radio playing the same shit over and over again, major labels putting out garbage over and over again... and it eventually broke the mainstream music industry (thank fucking god).

So, wiki says they're convicted terroristic mass kidnapping murderers of children dressed up as a Chinese Christian group...and the disguise seems to work as often as not. To me, that says as much about mainstream Christianity as it does about this apparent cult.

I think this music video is an example of "flirty fishing".
Wiki-Christian groups also regard the group as a heretical sect that deserves the label "evil cult" due to the radical differences that separate Eastern Lightning teaching from orthodox Christian doctrine.[7] The group seems to stray from the second Christian doctrine of neighbourly love. The group also uses flirty fishing to attract potential converts.

@JustSaying and @draebor --

I was aware of the ban on Nazi symbols / flags / etc. in Germany, and (wrongly) assumed that meant that the country was just kind of trying to "gloss over" that part of history; not talk about it in schools, etc. A sifter (can't remember who offhand) set me straight a few years ago.

However, this does remind me of a thought that I had then: what about piracy?

Any games featuring Nazis have to be heavily edited to get a legal German release. But are there any extra considerations for piracy, or even people that buy the original versions of such games outside of the country and them bring them in?

The internet is really ramping up the speed of globalization, and it seems like it would be essentially impossible to enforce the ban on Nazi imagery in the digital realm. The best a government can hope to control such things is to try to keep them out of the mainstream. But the world is full of examples of failures to control such things -- lots of cracks in the Great Firewall of China, El Paquete in Cuba, etc.

So I'm curious if Germany even makes any attempt to add any additional measure to try to prevent piracy of media containing those things, and/or circumventing region-blocked access to such things in legitimate distributors like Steam.

Yay, at least you bothered to watch the video.

And yes, No Bullshit's channel is loaded with a lot of biased opinions as he leans significantly to the right. But you'd be hard pressed to argue that, despite this particular video not making the mainstream air, that the coverage has shown the depths both sides have plunged to. Australian coverage has been downright blinkered at this point, there is no violence on the left at all and it's all nazi's killing folks... /eyeroll

So instead, you could look at channels like Sargon's, who, despite being constantly labelled as an alt right dickhead, is generally slightly left of center but who calls out violence where/when ever it happens.

I've seen a lot of shit in burrowing in to this, from a lot of sources on both sides (and people who try to be objective). Objectively, if you show up in black masks with pre-bagged shit, urine, fireworks and glass bottles, weighted sap gloves, bike locks and pepper spray combined with a clear message that it's okay to attack "nazi's" who's crime is expressing their admittedly vile ideology, you're not a good person.

Red shirts vs brown shirts, Wiemar Germany pre-WWII anyone?

You can try to make this about me ('ermagerd, you caused me to downvotes the video'), but you've admitted you didn't even watch the vid. At least I gave it a fair hearing, and while I do certainly admit the videos maker has an agenda, it is still documenting what is going on out there. Turn off the fucking voice track if you're too much of a snowflake to hear commentary you don't agree with, but the footage is damning...

As for Bob, I've been fairly unequivocal in the past about his line of deeply partisan BS and the veiled racism he espouses. As per the Ruins Everything sift up (https://videosift.com/video/Why-Proving-Someone-Wrong-Often-Backfires) atm about arguing and how it generally reinforces opinions, do you think that you two haranguing each other constantly (or even you and I) is going to accomplish anything other than entrenching the other side? \= |

NOBODY is saying anybody is heroes. I haven't read or saw any reports saying they were heroes, save for Fox who says that the media was. Just that people were counter protesting those sort of people the whole word fought a war to defeat.

What is happening is that Trump refuses to say just how fucking evil Nazis and the KKK are. He wouldn't do this if it was a Muslim who ran people over, nor would you. He, Fox, and all those on the right would all be saying how it proves how evil Islam is. By that standard, the fact they don't see how evil Nazis are, proves how evil Christianity is, if God won't convict you that Nazis are one of the greatest evils that ever existed... that anyone who isn't a fucking Nazi themselves, wouldn't call out the absolute shit that is a Nazi or KKK is, is reprehensible. I'm sure most Christians would take offense to such a statement, for such blanket blame of a few bad Nazis proving how evil Christianity is, but don't think twice blaming a terrorist act by a Muslim on the religion itself.

We got Republicans trying to push through laws that protect drivers who hurt or kill people who are peacefully protesting. As if the first amendment doesn't matter. Now, to be fair, most of those probably wouldn't protect the asshole who killed that lady down there, as he clearly had intent to hurt and kill.

Let's repeat the main point, there are no mainstream media saying any group is a hero. People may have called out the one lady as heroic, though it wouldn't have been if it wasn't for a White Supremacist asshole who killed her because she was protesting against White Supremacist like him. But NOBODY in the mainstream media is saying any groups are heroes. All we have is Fox saying as such, and trying to give fucking Nazis a pass for not being some of the most evil people ever. There's no fucking blame on both sides. The fact that we have such a blatantly racist President, with a White Supremacist in Bannon, has emboldened such hate groups, they are gloating how he wouldn't put them down, and then how he rolled back what he said Monday. They love that he's so clearly on their side of pure hate.

He wouldn't have waited days to condemn the violence if it was Muslims at the center. He'd have said something right away, talking about the dangers of radical Islam. He wouldn't have waited to get the facts, as he's proven time and time again. Nor would have the far right media machine like Fox.

Fuck anyone who would stand with the Nazis and the KKK. Fuck anyone who'd defend their hate.

The fact that the Republicans who could do anything about this asshole only have harsh words and won't start a hearing on conduct unbecoming a President, the fact that he's made us the laughing stock of the world, just shows how low the party and its supporters have gone.

What killed a federal job guarantee in 1945? Jim Crow.

Check out page 7.

"The Full Employment Bill had potential to change the prevailing system of racial and labor relations premised on the subordination of African Americans. Consequently, the bill faced opposition from business and farm lobbies, who sought to replace the bill with one that was less threatening."

Also, get a load of its details:

“all Americans able to work and seeking work have the right to useful, remunerative, regular and full-time employment. And it is the policy of the United States to assure the existence at all times of sufficient employment opportunities to enable all Americans [...] to freely exercise this right.”

That's part of what I mean when I laugh at the notion that policy proposals by Sanders/Corbyn are "radical". A federal job guarantee was accepted mainstream in 1945, yet a living wage is considered pie-in-the-sky utopian madness in 2017.

Remember Scott Ritter? Arms inspector, made the rounds with Seymour Hersh about a decade ago with "Target Iran", when the Bush administration was in a very bellicose posture vis-a-vis Iran.

Interesting guy, often amongst the first to call out attempts to fabricate a casus belli on Middle Eastern nations.

He had a go at the NSA document supposedly leaked by Leigh Winner. Check it out: Leaked NSA Report Short on Facts, Proves Little in ‘Russiagate’ Case

"In many ways, the rush to blame Russia for attempting to undermine American democracy by meddling in our election system has become a self-fulfilling prophesy. The damage done to the credibility of our democratic institutions as a result of the politicized congressional proceedings has been incalculable, and by all accounts the worst is yet to come.

The Russians barely had to lift a finger—the wounds derived from this political maelstrom have all been self-inflicted. The fact that the mainstream media have been unable to accurately report on the issue only underscores the depths to which institutions and agencies will fall to deride and destroy that which they detest and abhor, namely President Trump."

@harlequinn

Yeeeaaaaaah...

Judging by the incoherent rambling of that last post, it looks like I struck a nerve. I mean, come on man. You claim you can't remember everything you read, but in this case you somehow didn't remember that the Christian god is omnipotent--a fundamental doctrine of every major denomination of Christianity in existence today? That's seriously your defense?

Quit your bullshit. You tried to shut down @newtboy and got yourself shut down instead. I'm sure that's frustrating and contributed to the nonsensical nature of that last post, but still....

To answer in all seriousness your subsequent questions:

1) Yes, atheism has brought me immense peace. It felt great to let go of religion--Christianity specifically--especially all the guilt-tripping and fire-and-brimstone bullshit that went along with it. As a side bonus, I felt relieved that I was no longer financially subsidizing a bunch of pedophiles (I left long before the major scandals broke in mainstream media).

2) No, I'm not angry but I am certainly annoyed at all the numb nuts who keep blowing themselves up, discriminating against the LGBT community, and trying to tell women what they can and can't do with their bodies using only their Bronze Age (or older in the case of religions like Hinduism and Buddhism) superstitious beliefs as the rationale for their behavior.

3) No, I am not vegan. Just had fried chicken for dinner tonight.

4) Yes, I had to Google the exact passages but I knew the bible said somewhere that god was omnipotent because, as a former Christian, I'd read through it several times before. Sorry to hear you are so "forgetful" about the holy text that forms the backbone of your religion. Actually, I know you're not forgetful; the point the guy in the video is making is that most Christians choose not to look at the parts of the bible they don't like or even worse make ridiculous convoluted arguments to try to explain them away (as you tried to do here in explaining away god's omnipotence/omniscience).

Moving on, the "tenability" of Christianity has nothing to do with "Tradition." The whole thing is a house of cards. It doesn't matter in the slightest whether you want to interpret any holy text in the world literally or through some collective interpretation by an ostensibly educated priest-class. What makes all religion untenable is the fact that it is 100% made up bullshit. There is as much evidence for the existence of a Christian god as there is for Zeus, Thor, Santa Claus, or the tooth fairy (i.e. none).

Finally, no, I don't need to come up with a system to replace religion. It already exists and it is called "using reason and compassion." The idea itself that we need some system to control us or protect us from ourselves is archaic and frankly anachronistic in this day and age.

Now, I mean this in all seriousness--I wish you the best. I was you once, a long time ago, trying to stave off the cognitive dissonance of being a rationale human being yet also believing in a religion. I'd argue with atheists just like you're trying to do now. But the thing is... they made good arguments. The stuff they pointed out stuck with me. At first I'd shrug it off, but the facts nagged at me and nagged at me until I finally set out to prove those pesky atheists wrong--only to find out through research that everything they were saying was 100% correct.

Like I said in the previous post, you'll either face the facts or turn away and hide from them. I can't tell you if you'd be happier or not without religion--no one can. What I can tell you is that at the very least you would no longer be contributing to a collective hive-mind that has very real and very negative effects on the world we live in, regardless of whatever benefits the religion may bring to you personally. Either way, I sincerely wish you peace.