I hate passive aggressive people who don't know how to deal with a situation like this in an adult fashion. Instead they make things worse and now have a relationship with their NEXT DOOR neighbor full of animosity. Just idiotic imo.

btw I think it's not cool AT ALL to play your music so loud that it annoys your neighbor.

I'm just guessing, but I'm fairly sure the fuel is a relatively small part of the cost of any space vehicle. Isn't it just liquid hydrogen and oxygen? They wouldn't be using solid fuel for landing, which these days is often some treated rubber or aluminum oxide, so also fairly cheap...

...cheap that is, when compared to just tossing the pressure tanks, pumps, high pressure-high temperature lines, multiple moveable nozzles, mixing/reaction chambers, computers to run it all, redundant safety features, guidance, frame, skin, etc. that make up the fragile vehicle that can't be dropped by parachute or other passive means and still be reusable.

@Asmo
i get what you are saying but i think you are missing the insidious implications that this new system of indoctrination represents.

i think @ChaosEngine's term 'stealth totalitarianism" is rather clever..and apt.

i agree with you on the points of peer pressure and how people can easily be manipulated.we are all,to varying degrees,subjected to a plethora of propaganda and targeted rhetoric,all meant to mold and shape our opinions in order to sustain the status quo while giving the impression that somehow our conclusions are an organic and natural response,when in reality we have been duped.

on that point we agree that this is not actually something new or novel but an old,tried and true method of social control.

what is new about this 'gaming" system,is that it is not taking the more subtle and passive approach of what current and supposedly "free" societies now implement to control public opinions and attitudes in order to either remain in power,sway the public into policies against their own interest,or create an atmosphere of fear to foment opposition.

this new system is actually aggressive.
this system will actively use its own population to do the oppressing,manipulating and controlling FOR them.

it is brilliant in it's simplicity.
it will use very human attributes we all possess in order to enact a better system of control,all the while having the appearance of being a harmless and innocuous social media competition.

but it is anything but harmless.
nor innocuous.
it will and can affect every facet of someones life.from their job to where they will be able to live,to even HOW they live.

think back to the times of east germany and the stasi,or the weimar republic,or even the soviet union of the 80's.

all used elements this new gaming system is representing,but those systems of control,while relying on the public to do much of its surveilling,all had one thing in common that they ALL relied heavily on:fear.

fear of reprisal.
fear of exposure.
fear and suspicion were the driving forces that kept those systems in power and the people in a perpetual state of paranoia.

the dread of the midnight knock.
of jackboots and black bags.

but those systems of control were fragile and once even a little resistance was exerted those systems crumbled incredibly fast.

this new system is far more subtle and devious in my opinion,because it removes the spectre of an imposing and oppressive government that will respond with violence and replaces it with the citizen to do the work for them.

the government does not have to do anything.
your neighbor will,and not because of some fear-based reason but rather for points to propel their own ambitions.their own selfish desires.

the wholesale implications are absolutely terrifying if you really think about it.

i would speculate that within a very short amount of time dissent and criticism of the chinese government will all but have vanished.replaced by a obedient and compliant population.

not because they are afraid of reprisal from the government but rather fueled by their own selfish desires for a better job,better living quarters,more privileges etc etc.

so a seemingly benign system utilizing social media will become of a self-propelled system,where those who do not tow the party line soon face joblessness,homelessness and ostracization.

not because the government strong armed them into submission,but rather their own neighbors.

so you are right.
there is nothing new here,but this system has taken the old forms of social control and brilliantly utilized one of humanities greatest weaknesses:selfishness.

it is the simplicity that makes this so brilliant and yet so horrifying at the same time.

Hahaha... seriously, what kind of passive aggressive bullshit is that? "Ignoring the theoretical underpinnings of socialism, because I've decided that that's waffling, I say Jesus was a socialist." Next time, maybe just write TL;DR and make a farting noise while rolling your eyes.

You can't dismiss the actual meaning of the word Socialist as 'semantics', if you're talking about whether or not something is socialist. That doesn't help the discussion.

In order to use socialism as you appear to be doing, you would have to first:
- ignore the history of socialism and its political development,
- ignore the entire body of academic work, current and past, on socialism, and
- ignore how the word socialism "IS used now, like it or not" in actual socialist or semi-socialist countries

By doing that you end up at your definition of the word, yes. But you had to take a pretty long detour to get to that point

Marx's quote on religion is pretty straightforward - it can be, as you say, open to interpretation, but it's generally agreed that he didn't say that your Jesus was a stand-up socialist. He is more commonly taken to mean that religion is a false response to the real suffering of the oppressed; religion provides a fiction of suffering and a fiction of redemption/happiness, that will never translate into real change. It makes the oppressed feel like they are bettering their lives, while actually keeping them passive and preventing them from changing anything.

The slightly larger context of the quote is this: "Das religiöse Elend ist in einem der Ausdruck des wirklichen Elendes und in einem die Protestation gegen das wirkliche Elend. Die Religion ist der Seufzer der bedrängten Kreatur, das Gemüth einer herzlosen Welt, wie sie der Geist geistloser Zustände ist. Sie ist das Opium des Volks."

I don't know how to make that more plain, but I can try. Religious suffering is on one hand a response to real suffering (wirkliche Elend, by which one would mean a materialistically determined actual lack of freedom, resources, physical wellbeing, etc), but it is also a false reaction against that real suffering. Real oppression creates suffering to which there could be a real respones, but religion instead substitutes in false suffering and false responses - it tries to tackle real suffering with metaphysical solutions. He goes on to say:

"Die Aufhebung der Religion als des illusorischen Glücks des Volkes ist die Forderung seines wirklichen Glücks."

This, too, seems pretty straightforward to me, but you might see 4 or 5 different things there. Religion teaches the people an illusory form of happiness, which doesn't actually change or even challenge the conditions of suffering, and must therefore be tossed out, for the people to ever achieve real happiness.

A fundamental difference here is that religious goodness is internally, individually, and fundamentally motivated. 'Good' is 'Good', and you as a Christian individual should choose to do Good. A goal of Marxism is to abolish that kind of fundamentalism and replace it with continuous criticism; creating a society that always questions, together, what good is, through the lens of dialectical materialism.

You might recognize this line of thinking* from what modern Europeans call the autonomous left wing, or what Marx and Trotsky called the Permanent Revolution, which Wikipedia helpfully comments on as "Marx outlines his proposal that the proletariat 'make the revolution permanent'. In essence, it consists of the working class maintaining a militant and independent approach to politics both before, during and after the 'struggle' which will bring the 'petty-bourgeois democrats' to power." Which sounds great, except it can also lead to purges, paranoia, and informant societies.

My entire point is that socialism and Christianity are entirely different beasts. One is a rich, layered mythology with an extremely deep academic and political history, but no modern critical or explanatory components.** The other is an academic theory of economics and politics, with all the tools of discourse of modern academia in its toolbelt, and a completely different critical and analytical goal.

TL;DR? Well, Jesus (in a lenient interpretation) taught that we should help the weak. Marx explained that the people should organize to eradicate the conditions that force weakness onto the people. Jesus
taught that greed would keep a man from heaven, Marx explained that religion, nationalism, tribalism and commodity fetishism blinded the people to its common materialist interests. Jesus taught that the meek will be rewarded for their meekness, and while on earth we should render unto Caesar what is Caesar's; Marx explained that meekness as a virtue is a way of preventing actual revolutionary change, and that dividing the world into the spiritual and the materialistic helped keep the people sedate and passive, which plays right into the hands of the Caesars.

*I'm just kidding, I know you don't recognize any of this


**There probably are modern scholars of Christianity who adapt and adopt some of the tools of modern academic discourse; I know too little about academic Christianity.

Oh, I am blunt, alright. A lot of people dont like that, because actually they feel attacked since they see those people I criticize in themselves or how they support them with their passiveness. Plus I am very good at figuring out people, analyzing them. Thats what I dont keep silent about either.
It was not an ad hominem attack, because I offered facts (which got ignored with an excuse of ad hominem), and I actually tried to explain why they react how they react.
I havent seen anyone deny anything I said about them. And thats the point. I dont care if hes pissed off now. If hes open and objective he will think about what I said, even check those facts for himself and maybe one day will think that I was right all along. Or not, and hes a lost case, and in that case me being friendly towards his ignorance wouldnt have changed anything. I learned that friendliness (PC) only plays into the hands of these people. I know these people because I was like them once and had friends like them, was part of their "society". It buys them time, it makes them look less despicable than they actually are, it makes people ignore whats really going on. I am sick of sugar coating, newspeak. This has brought us to where we are. Its nothing more than lies. Read 1984 for some insight on how horrible this PC and newspeak already is. Smart people predicted all this. But nobody ever listened to them.

You know, I wasnt much different than these guys here once. I didnt want to believe all this stuff, or only partly. I tried to put it out of my mind with excuses like "stupid conspiracy theorists" or "these are just rare exceptions" or "nobody could have ever predicted it" and used mainstream media sources to make myself feel better if someone told me the harsh reality which I didnt want to accept, and yet knew deep in me that he was right.
I learned from those discussions. They werent pretty, but in the end those guys were absolutely 100% right, even though back then I hated them with a passion for telling me that straight to my face with no friendliness at all, because they saw that I supported this shit.
I didnt lose that passion, but I learned a lot from that.
I am disgusted by my former self when I now think back, how I supported this absolute human scum, how I let them use me as a tool, with their PC ways, lies, corruption and shiny things that are just gold coated turds.

I dont owe anyone an apology, who talks absolute bullshit, lies.
I owed those people an apology for what I said when I was like him. When I spewed out massive ignorance towards them, only to protect myself. And I actually apologized to them later, in the cases where I could still find them.

But yeah, its a waste of time. I said what I wanted to say. Trying to discredit everything or parts of what I said just because I wasnt politically correct, making myself a target for these irrelevant rhetorics (actually excuses) is the problem we have. "OMG he called me a bad thing! He must be a bad person! Nothing he says can be true! OMG! YAY! I CAN JUSTIFY IGNORING HIM NOW!" Do you even see the hypocrisy in that, calling my "attacks" ad hominem? Its funny, the term Whataboutism follows pretty much the same logic "OMG, he exposed my hypocrisy, so what do I do now! Oh right I am sure there is some rhetorical crap I can throw at him to discredit him! No... damn... Well then I simply invent it and call it... Whataboutism!! Yeah!" Thats how it was born. Not even I was that way back then. I thought about what those people said, even if they got really mad at me and called me MUCH worse things than I called people here. I never cared about how they said it. I cared about what they said, even though I didnt realize it back then.
So yeah. Accept it or dont. If facts cant penetrate ignorance, nothing can. Sugar coating it wont change a thing. Ignorant people are ignorant. And now I sounded like MJ in South Park. "Thats ignorant".

So I'm playing Pillars of Eternity...

It is wonderful. Practically everything I dreamed it could be. There is a hint of the modern mechanics I find distasteful. I really don't want all my characters spamming minor debuffs that last 7 seconds each in every fight, but I've been able to pick passive abilities for the most part and keep special stuff on the spellcasters where it belongs.

It's built with such obvious love. Everything from the title screen onward: the careful reproduction of the infinity engine aesthetic, the writing and characterisation, the soundtrack (I never notice music in games), the little text-adventure style sections, the puzzles... I was genuinely almost moved to tears by it all within my first few minutes of this incredible game.

Baldur's Gate III. I'm playing Baldur's Gate III.

And for that reason, *promote

One more instance of cops covering for each others murders. I only wish I could be surprised by this, but sadly this is exactly how criminal cops are treated almost every time. It took over 4 years to get any charge at all, and that only came about because of public shaming and investigation (the only investigation in this murder) by the local news, and there must have been not only absolutely zero investigation but actual cover up at the scene by the entire force (at least every one involved in any way with the 'investigation') for his story to have held up at all in the first place. There was clearly no GSR test done on him, or it would have shown he shot her...and the investigators had to actually HIDE the testimony of most or all of the witnesses to further his story that she shot herself (with his secured gun) and actively help him claim he wasn't involved.

That, @Stormsinger, is why so many people no longer believe in the 'good cop'. That doesn't mean the cops can't EVER act properly or 'good', it means that, in this and far too many other cases, entire forces are obviously, unavoidably complicit in crimes up to and including murder (if you help cover it up, you're complicit...that's the law), and murderers are bad, period, no matter how many little old ladies they help across the street or how professionally they act when they're not being actively or passively criminal.

(before someone jumps on the 'passively criminal' phrase as ridiculous, please note that it's the law that an officer MUST act to stop any serious crime they are aware of, and not doing so is being actively criminal by intentionally shirking their sworn duties).

I never said to rely on Putin or RT solely. I just tried to explain that ignoring him and RT because of stupid reasons like that is not very wise, because the west isnt much better. You have to see all the sides to make a proper judgement.

A, B and C are irrelevant. Ownership is irrelevant because the western media is also "owned" by people with an agenda. But even between those different people there is a common agenda. You can see that in Germanys media right now very well. They are outright lying collectively to the people just to stay politically correct.

Reputation also is irrelevant because objectivity > reputation.

Funding is also irrelevant, as you said yourself. You can see it very well that it doesnt change much where they get their money from. The agenda matters. Also very well observable lately.

Putin first and foremost is a counterweight. He makes the western mistakes more obvious. He also has very good points when defending his own countries actions. Even the homosexual ones, if you ever listened to him on that topic. Yes, as a political leader he is of course manipulating, but he makes much more sense, actually uses facts and doesnt nearly lie as much as any politician I have ever seen.
You of course need to have and acknowledge those facts to realize that. But you made it clear that you arent. Comparing Russias imperialism with Americas shows just how much. Its pretty much clear the USA was involved in that coup detat once again. Now imagine how the USA would have reacted if Russia did that in Canada or Mexico. Or imagine how the USA would react to being completely surrounded by Russian military bases, having decades of history of destabilizing and overthrowing countries and whole regions, breaking and ignoring international law, even threatening the country where the international court sits to never dare to bring one of their before their court and then Russia claiming that the USA is the aggressor.

Actually Russia has long been very passive about the eastern expansion of NATO and they forgave that bleeding out of Russia towards the west in the 90s. Something like that happening at their doorstep actually justifies much MUCH harsher reactions, but they didnt use them. Instead they actually took another (hypocritical) slap in the face rather passively and silently with those sanctions.

Syria... I am surprised you even bring that up, because thats just stupid to use that for your argument. Syria has been a long ally of Russia and they asked for help after the US and NATO started bombing their infrastructure instead of ISIS. The war in Syria is even more obviously an externally funded war, not a civil war, while in the Ukraine you can actually see parts of a civil war, it started like that, because those people didnt want the new government. Also again mostly due to America and their support of other totalitarian regimes in that region.
You should read this:
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/05/31/holes-in-the-neocons-syrian-story/

Common sense is probably the wrong phrase.

But how else does the system work? If you are going to invest a group with the responsibility to enforce laws (by violence if necessary), then almost by definition, any kind of active* resistance against them has to be a crime.

Otherwise, what? You're a ninja/the hulk/Ronda Rousey and if you can fight off the cops, you go free?

*passive resistance, as at a demonstration, is a different scenario.

Well, he was not exactly 'riding on the pavement'. He was being chased ffs. Take away the fact that he was a passive aggressive twat, if someone else had been innocently on the curb with his bike and had some lumbering asshole chase after him, the fact that he was on the pavement wouldn't even have been brought up.

The bicyclist has a serious passive aggression problem. He's also a massive narcissist, every half-assed "incident" never goes to the police, it goes on youtube.

Staying "out of the door area" only makes sense when there's actually someone in the car he's passing. Doors don't just pop open by themselves. Just look inside the fucking car... He rides this way to piss people off. Notice how he crowds the guy when trying to pull into a parking spot before the altercation.

I wouldn't be surprised if this (getting youtube video of pissed off people) is the only reason he goes out on his bike.

How is anyone making excuses for the police here?

So fucking what if he was trying to provoke a reaction? His reasons for filming the police like he did don't come into it at all. So what if the officers didn't like it and so what if he did it for this reason.

I don't see how any of this is relevant. This is a video of a person acting completely legally and within his rights and being arrested just because the police didn't like it.

So what if it's provoking, the police should be trained to be able to deal with a provocative situation. You know what would have ended this? The police doing their jobs and ignoring him. That's what should have happened.

Being rude isn't against the law. It's not OK for police to arrest someone for being rude. The only thing this guy was doing was filming the police and people think that's wrong? Or he didn't answer their questions? He's allowed to do that. It's OK. How can you say he was acting like a tool? He did nothing wrong.

The police are supposedly trained individuals. They shouldn't be reacting to provocation, especially when it's so passive as this example. This guy is hardly pushing his luck here. He made no threats to the officers, he didn't do anything even remotely violent or threatening he just exercised his rights. So the police didn't like it, so what?

Fucking apologists. The law is what it is and the police should be held to a high standard regarding it. They should do their job. Let's get this straight, what they did here was arrest someone just because they didn't like what he was doing, even though what he was doing was perfectly legal. That should disgust you, it really should. It shouldn't be OK because you think the guy was being a bit of a dick. That's not relevant because being a bit of a dick shouldn't get you arrested. It's only an excuse if you think that it's not unreasonable for the police to arrest people they just don't like.

Corbyn was referenced in quite a few articles by Monbiot, Jones and Milne over at the Guardian, but that's about all I read about him. Never really looked into his positions.

However, Frankie dropped this line about him in his column yesterday:

"I honestly don’t think that Corbyn would make a good leader but only because he would quickly take his own life in a highly unconvincing manner on a long country walk, an inquiry taking 15 years to report that he had kicked himself to death."

That sparked my interest. The comment section provided this gem:

"Corbyn is measured, articulate, doesn't take crap from interviewers, and doesn't look morally constipated through having consumed a surfeit of focus group tripe, unlike the other three."

Again, interesting.

Then you brought him up, and Jacobin runs a piece on him. So I suppose I'll be taking a look at him now.

i promoted that video because i found it disturbing.
had no idea it was manipulated bullshit,which others sifters clarified and now i know.

so sorry to offend your tender sensibilities.
love me some passive/aggressive with my coffee.
cheers mate..have a great day.