Vimeo description:
Atmospheric refraction plays with the light of any object near the horizon. Here stars, startrails and the sun, filmed in timelapse photography from two major observatories in Chile, display immense distortion above inversion layers in the outskirts of the Atacama desert, Chile. The moon scene is filmed near Boston at the Atlantic Ocean shoreline. The mirage is an optical phenomenon in which light rays are refracted and bent in the atmosphere and produce distorted or multiple images of the object.

Got ya.

I agree.

Another interesting phenomenon is the sexualisation of female athletes. I.e. to be taken "seriously" in a sporting magazine a female will be pressured to do a scantily clad photo shoot, whilst the men will not be be.

By the way - does anybody here have familiarity with / appreciation for / a part in Deaf culture? I have to admit, for all my rampant political correctness, this is a phenomenon I have a bit of a hard time embracing.

Smoothly done, at least.

Must be so frustrating for non-gamers. It's a social phenomenon! Just too many more important things going on in the world.

I fear you have misunderstood what I was getting at.

He talks for full minute about the ironic idea of the victims hypothetically having a sense of cognitive dissonance about the experience (done from his perspective).

Timestamp: 3:40ish to 4:50ish

I don't for a moment think he is suggesting they actually did, but the juxtaposition of that can be funny for the reasons I already outlined.
i.e. it is a common phenomenon in other areas of our experience, with people we idolise. By associating it with an experience in which we presume most people wouldn't or didn't feel that way, we have more strings of that irony thrown into the comedy orchestra.

Cosby is famous and loved and his fans presumably find him funny. There is therefore humour in the ridiculous idea that there might be some starstruck joy in being violated by said idol.

I think the bit worked perfectly if one can detach oneself from ideological prejudices.

As I already said, Louis's bits about paedophilia don't appear to be doing anything different here and thus far you have failed to explain how they actually differ, other than using the unqualified term "truthful".

Louis talks about their desires and relates them in a way universal to the human condition. This is precisely what much of Jim routine is clearly doing. "think about the thing you really love to do, well that's how Bill feels about rape" (paraphrased).

I can't see a distinction right now other than you appear to be much more emotionally sensitive to the rape thing. This is understandable, but I'm not seeing the lack of equivalence between the two comics here in terms of composition and implied meaning?

This whole bit felt deeply multi stranded and was tackling many disparate concepts at once. The gradation of rape was merely one of them and I think it's unfair to break it down to only one, or to deny the "truthfulness" hiding behind the sham.

Without that "truthfulness" the whole bit doesn't work, the assumption that the audience recognises the reality beneath the sham is unavoidable. Unless of course you think the audience and or Jim to be genuinely callous and misogynistic (which you've made clear you do not).

I guess my whole point is that the two bits are functionally almost identical. The only difference I can really see is a different style of delivery and subject matter.

I notice you appear to have dodged the comparisons to his war jokes?

Is there no moral equivalence there? If anything there is far less empathy and personal "truth" being explored. The "little cunt" just dies, Jim never attempts to humanise him or relate the kids experience in an ironic way.

By your logic that routine should be far more offensive surely? (especially when we consider that life and subsequent brutal death in a warzone is quite possibly a more horrible experience than most rapes, especially the kind being discussed here)

As a small sidenote, I think it's slightly risky to indicate, even tongue in cheek, that any of us were involved at the start of a movement that began in the 1800s... even if you're kidding, people might get the wrong idea. Third wave feminism, which coincidentally I think you're more opposed to than the first two waves, did begin (I think?) in the US in the 1980's or 90's, but the overall movement was a well-established global phenomenon at that point. None of us were close to being involved in starting it.

As far as your main point goes, I think it's partly a question of whether you define your own vision by the end goal you want to achieve, or the first problem you want to solve. "Black Lives Matter" is not the end goal, it's the first problem we need to solve on the way to a state free of police murder. Egalitarianism, on the other hand, can be the end goal. It doesn't tell me which problem areas you want to address though.

For some feminists, feminism is the end goal - a woman-centric world would be better, more sane, and more sustainable in their view than any other world. For other feminists, feminism is the first problem area to address, ie that we are literally living in a culture of undeniable male supremacy.

The problem with only defining your end goal is that it can become a little unclear what, if any, action you want to take. "You matter" is certainly fine, but I have no idea what you want to change in society, or if you want to change anything. I matter, you matter, and the Koch brothers matter - but we still have very different ideas about what society should be. In a perfect world I might want to join up under the egalitarian banner, but in the current mess we're in, I tend more towards environmentalism, socialism and feminism - because those are the problem areas I want us to address first.

white noise is a random signal with equal power across 20Hz-20kHz (usually). the phenomenon of
'muffling other sounds" with an added sound is called "masking" and has nothing to with white noise specifically. "At high levels, LRADs can cause disorientation, deafness, nausea, and severe discomfort." is true for any sound, not just white noise.

there is also pink noise, brown/red noise, grey noise, plus other less commonly used varieties.

Sorry, but "believing shit you see on the internet" is not a phenomenon unique to conservatives.

Just limited to Trump and based on my own social media group:
No, Trump's cousin's obituary did not ask people not to vote for him.
No, Trump didn't say republicans are the "dumbest group of voters."
And no, Cruz and Rubio didn't tweet that they would support Hillary over Trump.

And that's just related to Trump and just in the last week.

Don't even get me started on naturopaths/anti-vaxxer morons (although I will categorically state that doctors are not being murdered because they found "cancer enzymes" in vaccines)

The world would be a better place if everyone stopped to take 5 seconds to google whatever nonsense they're about to share. In fact, I think there should a feature on facebook/twitter that does this automatically.

I don't think we can lay the ascendance of Trump at the feet of Idiocy. You see, people who are scared and angry of change have a tendency to 'flock' around a possible leader who promises them a return to the good old days. I mean, look at leaders like Mussolini and Hitler, people were suffering from the punitive effects of reparations from WW 1 and flocked to demagogues who promised better days.

This tendency to flock is littered with examples throughout history. The people not scared of change tend to look at those affected by the phenomenon and scold them for being out of their 'flocking minds'.

tl;dr
Yes, I absolutely wrote two paragraphs to get in a pun.

Remarkable how nonchalant the narrator seemed about Roberta Cowell's gender reassignment. Is all the media and political attention sex changes of public figures a modern phenomenon?

You don't need to link any angry man-hating feminist videos, and I don't need to link any angry woman-hating videos by people calling themselves humanists while threatening Anita Sarkeesian's life. We both know that they exist, and should ideally agree that this doesn't mean most self-labelled feminists hate men and most self-labelled humanists don't hate women. In fact, the vast majority of feminists and humanists don't even make angry videos on the internet.

Then you go into statistics on rape by men against women outside of prison and rape by men against in prison. This is a fucking horrible cultural phenomenon, and I discussed that. Above. You saw it? Yeah you did. But you wanted to make pretend rape threats instead, which fine, that's your deal, I guess. Nevertheless I can quote myself, again:

"if we concede that there's a pervasive and destructive culture of rape of women by men outside of prison, I will also concede that there's a pervasive and destructive culture of rape of men by men in prison. In fact, I'll go ahead and concede that anyway. Which is fucking awful, but doesn't mean that feminists are wrong for railing against the situation outside of prison."

Furthermore - I gave you some quotes specifically showing you good sources of arguments. Not examplesof things men should tolerate or be fine about it. Quite the opposite, in fact. Don't pretend that I said that men should be fine with rape, because I never did. I said that just as white people have the privilege to shrug off inflammatory comments by BLM activists while still respecting the underlying movement, men have the privilege to be able to shrug off some inflammatory comments by feminist activists while still respecting the underlying movement. I am a little surprised that you responded with "I should have some people rape the fuck out of you" but okay, that's how you roll. If you don't want to go back on that comment - we'll just let it stand on its own, I guess.

As for Nicholas Cristakis in the video you link to, there's a shitload to discuss there, but it's much more nuanced and weird than feminism vs whatever.

- There's the weirdness of the role of a 'Master' and what it has come to mean at Yale. While I think the students are being unbearably unbearable, it would be a little different if they did it to a teacher rather than a master, who has a sort of weird guidance counsellor / therapist role. I don't know why that role needs to exist, or what it means in practice normally.
- There's the absolute insufferable pampered entitled gall and rudeness of those students which makes my goddamn blood boil.
- There's the question of racism and cultural appropriation at halloween (which started the whole thing) which to me is both a silly and difficult debate; I'm absolutely disguested by blackface, but I don't really mind if some four-year old white or black or hispanic girl wants to dress up as Mulan.
- There's the issue of job security in the academic world and what kind of protection Christakis has from fallout over a perfectly reasonable letter his wife wrote...

Those are all interesting, I agree, but I don't see what the video has to do with this one.

First of all, statistics aren't a game Not all of the internet is about being a tough guy winner, and sometimes some of us are just trying to explain ourselves.

Secondly, I'm not giving you links because I like links, but because I like sources. Not all sources are equal. A blog post by a conservative think tank employee and right wing activist isn't as neutral as the CDC or the US Census. Nothing is 100% 'neutral', but numbers gathered by the Labor Department are a little more transparent than a blog post by Christina Hoff Sommers. Say what you will about her, but her agenda is always very clear.

Thirdly, can you clarify your point about illegal discrimination? I don't think anybody talked about illegal discrimination, just the actual wage gap. Illegal discrimination is not necessary to establish oppression - nobody is illegally preventing women from becoming president, but we still have a historic gender gap in the oval office. Things can be shitty and in need of change even if it nothing currently illegal is going on (like the pew research polling you linked to shows). Illiteracy, for example, is a shitty phenomenon for citizens and bad for democracy, but it's not illegal; the wage gap is bad for citizens and for democracy, even when it is not illegal.

Fourthly, if you are willing to accept that there's a pervasive and destructive culture of rape of women by men outside of prison, I will also concede that there's a pervasive and destructive culture of rape of men by men in prison. In fact, I'll go ahead and concede that anyway. Which is fucking awful, but doesn't mean that feminists are wrong for railing against the situation outside of prison. The are two different sectors of society, and the factors that create a rape culture in one sector do not apply so much in the other. Still awful though.

fifthly, you ended on some stuff which might just have been random thoughts, because I don't see how they fit in anywhere:

"[the existence of self-perpetuating unjust power structures] does not automatically equate to men getting a free ride" - was not said by me, ever. We should get rid of injustice even if not all men get a free ride, I think

"in fact i would posit that this obnoxious behavior works against the very thing they are trying to convey" - can be said about all sorts of uppity oppressed groups

"this woman has received death threats and threats of physical violence from other feminists!" - doesn't make her right, and it doesn't make her wrong, and it doesn't 'ruin' all of feminism.

"at the end of the day this is actually a human issue,and a valid one and we all have a right to our own opinion,but not a right to impose it upon another. feel free to disagree." ...nobody can disagree with this because it means nothing. It's a Hallmark card. I tried to give you actual facts and you countered with "we are all humans so everything is like, always a human issue and like, opinions, man."

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.

I more or less agree with you, but if the company had not fired him the anger would have been redirected towards them until he was.

I find the current popular trend of online vigilantism in the name of social justice disturbing. Jon Ronson gives an excellent TED talk on the phenomenon.
I really must get around to reading his book.

Ummm....yeah, what s/he said. They all seem like late-adopters to me.

And frankly, I have never understood the "burn on the way out" myth/phenomenon. It must be psychological, or my taste receptors suck all the capsaicin away at first contact.

Personally, I just get the hick-ups when I approach my limit.
BTW, my preference is for the naga bhut jolokia. Chiles for Life!