Holy. Cow.

Never did I think someone could go from being banned as a blankfist sockpuppet to a Galaxy Star member (and in only 2.75 years)!

Congratulations!!! @dag is going to have to write and perform something special and we'll need to get you some custom icons!

Thanks for all your contributions, @PlayhousePals. You know you're one of this community's favorite pillars of sift!

Congrats on reaching gold!

You are an outstanding pillar of sift and a much appreciated presence in the face of tyranny of evil men.

E:D. Star Citizen. Torment. Pillars of Eternity. The Mandate. Hero-U.
It is a good age for crowd funding epicness.

I think the first 5 minutes was the most important part of the conversation. It's bigger than both men and he's got a point. The burden of proof in "journalism" has been on a downward trend for the last 10-20 years and sites like Salon have decided to just throw it out the window outright.

What they've discovered is that spreading "based on a true story" style journalism is much more profitable than traditional journalism and their (relatively) new and growing religion allows them to do it without sin.

This religion is much more damaging than any popular, established religion in practice today. This religion doesn't need buildings or ordained practitioners. This religion creates its own propaganda as a side effect of its practice. Its worshipers can often hide in plain sight and subvert civilization for years without direct personal repercussions; in fact they are often rewarded for their behavior.

The religion is Objectivism, and its deity is "the invisible hand". When your morality is judged by your profit than you've undone a core pillar of civilization. The damage of all other practiced religions in the modern era pale in comparison.

The first five minutes of this video were the only part of this conversation that were relevant to the real challenges of our times.

@SDGundamX and addressing the devil's advocate rather than 'you'...

Spiderman's head is also raised (the same angle of their face is shown) and his back is arched, and i think that's clear when they are side by side. If anything i think spiderman's left leg is poorly drawn and his backside does need to be more in the air, whereas spiderwoman is a more human-like natural position for raising a knee over a ledge with your chest close to the ground. Remember that they are different artists bringing their own styles to a particular genre, they both have their own personalities and methods/methodologies. Furthermore, how much of an arch difference is necessary or acceptable and who makes those rules? Surely we must draw men and women differently so that we know whether the character is male or female (do we have too few fem superheroes is another question), and as a species we have different shapes. Surely amongst all these factors we must accept that the spiderwoman is a reasonable artistic recreation of the spiderman pic? If not, why not, taking all of those factors into account (and i can probably list more)? Basically we're asking the question "what is art?" here.

So that's why i think it's impossible for anyone to say the pose is sexual but the creator. No one questioned whether the spiderman pose was overtly sexual until someone drew spiderwoman doing "the same" (for argument's sake) thing. To a bunch of people who do not automatically see women as sexual objects (and i consider myself among that bunch), her pose is not sexual because the context isn't sexual. The question of sexuality arises when someone looks at the pic and goes "Gee, if i were levitating several hundred meters in the air directly behind her and she wasn't wearing any pants, she'd be 'presenting' to me for a split second."

So the ultimate level of 'equality' (or whatever) would be a world in which anything, in its particular context, is legal and absolutely ok. But of course, we can't depict nude youngsters in cinema even in the context of a bath for good reason, which let's generalise to all potentially difficult subjects (like sexism, racism, etc.) and call the "no one's perfect rule" - we can't trust everyone to keep things in context.

Our supposedly greatest form of organisation and problem solving - national governments, the pillars of our society - can't sort their proverbial arses from their proverbial elbows; if they're not perfect, how can we trust all of society to be?

In conclusion - i suppose we need a certain level of sexism or reverse-sexism that hopefully keeps us balanced between short-changing the future prospects of young girls in favour of young boys because of a biased society, and treating other people unfairly because of an over-zealous pursuit of what seems to be impossible.

One way of helping this is by very carefully checking the facts, the context and the meaning of what someone says before saying things like "sexist" or "mansplaining" or "racist". Always react as slowly as you may, that way you can be more or less enraged in your response depending on new info!

Edit: Want to add that if i had a pic of myself in that spidey pose, i'd be pretty happy putting it up on an eharmony profile or something - it is a 'sexy' pose, it looks good, he looks lean and strong and fit. I don't like this idea that women don't have sexual urges or that lean, fit men aren't sexy to women. It's possibly sexist to assume that! He's kind of presenting too, from a certain position...

Congratulations @alien_concept and thank you for spending 6 years of your life helping to make this place a wonderful home away from homepage. You are a huge, steaming pillar of sift!

The siftbot has quite a singing voice. Excellent songwriting!

Now break out the crumpets and let's really celebrate Queen Rae!

*quality

You talk like Iran is a person. Last time I checked it was a country which, like most countries contains a diverse mix of beliefs and personalities.

Your not entirely wrong to suggest that Iran is ruled by people who appear to espouse the hard-line apocalyptic interpretation of Islam in much the same way as significant aspects of the US and Israeli ruling classes are into the Zionist/revelations side of Christianity and Judaism.

And for what it's worth a really serious Christian, Muslim or Jew would take that position. Why would you take a half arsed attitude if you truly believe our eternal souls are at stake!!!

But crucially, not everyone is an extremist. In fact most people aren't extremists they are just conformists. Iran is no different and the uprising a few years ago was mostly fuelled by the younger generation rebelling against the oppressive theocracy you are referring to.

There is a purist aspect to all Abrahamist religions that will never be appeased but Iran & by extension Islam is only one of the three pillars (of satan) and much like has happened in the west the rise of free communication via the internet etc. is causing to to start to be outgrown by its people.

In short: there are nutters (such as yourself) on both sides and not every (or even perhaps most) Iranians hate the west just like not all westerners hate Iran. Don't buy into the us vs them propaganda, there is a 3rd side here and its not restricted by nationality or culture, nor does it celebrate death over life. Only knowledge, evolution and temperance


You all seem dangerously delusional far as I can tell. Unless the basic concept of "I might be totally wrong about all this" isn't built into your religion/belief system you can go and get stuffed....(and you will be as a relic/warning to the kids of the future)

I guess that makes her a cat-a-pillar.

Get it?

Thank you...thank you...I'll be here all weekend...please...tip your waitress.

You've been a great contributer, @Barseps. Congratulations on working your way up to the crown. You earned it you pillar of sift!

Wowee! Way to go @PlayhousePals. We all knew you could do it. We were rooting for you.

Thanks for being such a huge, upstanding pillar of sift.

If only you knew the slightest bit about philosophy. But no, you have an understanding of what your religion says, which is *THEOLOGY*, not philosophy.

Proof: You attempt to 'prove' that empiricism, a 'theory of knowledge' that was ancient when his religion was founded, and is still considered an important pillar in modern philosophy and theology, is "false" in a self-referential statement.

In the entirety of civilization, in EVERY SINGLE ERA of man, the greatest thinkers have been consumed with empiricism... but unfortunately they lacked SB's supreme insight... too bad SB wasn't born 2500 years ago... he could have ensured that Aristotle didn't waste his time.... OH, and he could have warned Jesus about that bastard Judas.

If only you knew the slightest bit about philosophy. But no, you have an understanding of what your religion says, which is *THEOLOGY*, not philosophy.

Proof: You attempt to 'prove' that empiricism, a 'theory of knowledge' that was ancient when his religion was founded, and is still considered an important pillar in modern philosophy and theology, is "false" in a self-referential statement.

In the entirety of civilization, in EVERY SINGLE ERA of man, the greatest thinkers have been consumed with empiricism... but unfortunately they lacked SB's supreme insight... too bad SB wasn't born 2500 years ago... he could have ensured that Aristotle didn't waste his time.... OH, and he could have warned Jesus about that bastard Judas.

I personally know the queen-like member with admin-like powers gained through tenure on a site still going hard from back in the D & D days, first green-screen PC's days-All text generated scenarios-she's so much a pillar there, that if she failed to log-on at least once a week, the com-log would be replete with half the forum buzzing with tales of her glory and the other half crying, "I can't make a decision until she logs on again!"

Women of the internet have the capacity to wield extraordinary influence beyond their mere sex-appeal as a repose from the mundane, testosterone-gone-awry fare crowding the place...

I apologize if my above previous comments in any way might have influenced some insane decision any woman on this site may be about to make-I exercise my rights under mischief, to plead the Bart Simpson defense in this situation....

@renatojj
A government enforcing property rights and contracts and punishing fraud is a government intervening in the economy. Perhaps your pithy original comment wasn't meant to imply you actually wanted the government all the way out of the economy, but there was nothing there to stop me from reading it that way.

I don't think government is the whole society, but I also don't ascribe to your view of what government does. "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Must have been Marx who said that.

The two main pillars of socialism are social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy. I'm sure you don't agree with the first one, but if you want to remove government from the economy, wouldn't that require 'cooperative management of the economy'? So, can I assume you are at least a half-socialist?

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Great job Lann - thanks for all of your contributions - you are a pillar of Sift.