so i am sitting here drinking my coffee reading this thread and i have to say...

depressing.

so many wonderful people that i admire and respect getting twisted about?

words.

not the intent,nor over-all context..but words.

i can see where @newtboy is coming from,and what he is laying down is pretty non-controversial.i also see what @bareboards2 is laying down,and is not really in opposition to what newt is talking about.

both ideologies can reside in the same context and not be in conflict.in fact they compliment each other and ....and maybe i am reading their positions wrong..they actually agree on the fundamentals.

@bareboards2 actually addressed this by pointing out that "tone" can be misinterpreted.(good for you BB) and really the exchange between newt and BB was about their own self-identification.

yet this entire thread is almost exclusively focusing on words,and the gravitas and weight given to those words by the individual,which is subjective.

i feel newts pain.
i had a run where i was posting videos exposing hyper-militant third wave feminists and how they were using the justice system to punish those who disagreed with them,and every self-identified feminist came out of the wood work to declare their disappointment in me and defend the very thing they identified with.

what confused me was why people would even attempt to defend that absolute cluster fuck of abuse as somehow even being remotely to do with actual feminism.until i realized that many hadn't even watched the video or read the articles .so they were not defending those third wave feminists that had abused a justice system but rather defending a term that they self-identified as.

after long (and i mean long ..@Payback is still in therapy) back and forths between myself and fellow sifters.when i FINALLY got them to address the specific situation,not one...not ONE sifter..felt morally obligated to defend those feminists actions.

why?
because taken on its singular merits,those feminists were fucking wrong.

then why all the defensive posturing?
why the passive aggressive swipes at me?
and the exhaustive back and forths just to get self-identified feminists to at least admit that those particular feminists had abused their position to punish a man for simply disagreeing.

because they were defending feminism in general.
because they self-identified as feminists and failed to see the situation as it was and jumped to defend a WORD that they happened to identify with.

as a whole we can,as a society hold onto philosophies that are not mutually exclusive.
so you can be a feminist and a humanist.
or a humanist and an MRA advocate.

@bareboards2 may be a feminist but i know that if she witnessed me being harassed and discriminated against she would jump to my defense,as would @newtboy.

there are people who identify as something and yet can still be major dickweeds.so what they self-identify as does not automatically give them a pass.

so dont get so caught up in identity politics my friends.
they are just words after all.
just listen to the person talking,they will reveal if they are a total tool soon enough.how they self-identify is irrelevant.

What a BadAss ...
That cat's posture :-o

Oh, you mean the small area between Poland and Lithuania? The one that Russia is pouring troops and weapons, -- including missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, into at such a rate that the region is now one of Europe's most militarized places?

Moscow is stationing "thousands of troops, including mechanized and naval infantry brigades, military aircraft, modern long-range air defense units and hundreds of armored vehicles in the territory."

I mean, it's only scaring the piss out of two of our friendly countries in the region. Well, more if you consider that Russia's military buildup in the region allows them direct coverage of Sweden, Germany, and other nations that really don't trust the former USSR.

So, to use your example, I would absolutely expect Russia to get antsy and not sit by idly if we suddenly moved a LARGE portion of our active military forces to the Florida Keys. All of this is more posturing and sword rattling by Putin, a direct throwback to the USSR leaders of old. If he thought he could get away with it without open warfare, he would be rolling tanks into all the old USSR satellite states.

It isn't just this incident alone, either, as Russia has been steadily stepping up calculated shows of force and close encounters with our forces well away from anything close to their territory. Primarily, if you ask me, because the world outcry over the Ukraine situation stifled their little miniature coup attempt from taking over the entire country.

***Edit***

I just wanted to add, I don't want to go to war with Russia. I agree that many of the things that we are doing, such as considering adding former Soviet states to NATO, are antagonizing them. But I feel that in some cases our hands are tied by the fact that Putin, directly or indirectly, is making a lot of those former states think that he is planning on re-absorbing them under the umbrella of a new USSR. If he would keep his nose out of their internal affairs, I am pretty sure we wouldn't be building up in response.

There was a lot of posturing from Star Wars fans (from stardestroyer.net, I think) for a long time, with exaggerations about the power of imperial starships. However, some fans have done an extensive (and pretty ridiculous) amount of work to make a lengthy comparison, that, while only as accurate as can be interpreted from the provided material, does come out in strong favor towards Star Trek technology:
http://www.st-v-sw.net/
So yes, NdGT is correct, and really, you don't need to do the extensive research the fans did to confirm that. Logistics in a post-scarcity civilization alone gives a significant advantage.
But this is to be expected. When you have a TV show as focused on science and technology as Star Trek, it will certainly excel.
Meanwhile, Star Wars isn't supposed to be about high end technology. For them the technology is only there to highlight the story. The charm of the Millenium Falcon is not that it's a god-like ship that can mop the floor with everyone else, but that it's some guy's souped up junker that's full of surprises. The Death Star isn't the ultimate weapon, but a weapon of fear. (A weapon that destroys excessive amounts of available resources is impractical for anything else, and that especially includes Starkiller Base.)
And if there really needs to be some sort of sci-fi-peen competition, you can go the complete nonsense route with Doctor Who, where one Dalek could probably conquer both the Trek and Wars universes with minimal effort.
Or the overkill route with the Culture, where wiping the rest out would be an idle task, pursued for entertainment.
Star Wars fans just need to chill and embrace their universe of junkers and quaint technology. Star Trek fans have already embraced the fact that their universe isn't about action and explosions. (No, we don't include the Abramsverse.)

hmmm..i don't know.
this seems awfully tame.
where is the guy getting in the bouncers face chest thumping and questioning his sexual orientation?
or pleading his case after you caught him throwing up over the railing onto a toyota celica?
or being busted for passing out on the concrete,curled up into a cute little ball and begging "i just need a few minutes".
or the guy that loses his shit for being asked to leave,runs out into the middle of the parking lot,tears off his shirt and declares "i am from new york you fuck,i will bench you!"

for new years eve this is pretty damn tame.
where is the river of vomit?
the never ending male posturing and attempted fights with alcohol levels that would drop a horse?
where are the threats?
name calling?
constant bargaining?
tears?
and where the hell is the paddywagon parked just to the side for easy transportation to the drunk tank?

i think they edited the real juicy stuff out of this video.i feel cheated!

Typical libtard posturing. If she gave you the evidence, she wouldn't have it anymore - and then you'd get on her case for not having any evidence. She's onto your game.

I didn't see the "praying" in the rolling video, but the stills that look like that make me pretty sure that he's actually doing a Thai "wai": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_greeting

As that link mentions, the wai can be used for greeting / thank you / sorry depending on the situation. The still looks exactly like the kind of posture I'd expect in a "sorry" wai -- so I bet that he was treating the elephant in an anthropomorphic way and apologizing to it.

One more interesting but maybe less relevant piece of information about wais -- the height of where you put your "praying hands" along your chest/head is used to denote rank / class differences or add extra deference. So thumbs at sternum is used for equal rank / age, thumbs at chin/mouth for bosses or elders, and thumbs at nose for monks. If you really fuck something up and want to apologize profusely you can wai with thumbs on your forehead.

...So, although I think the guy was doing an "apologetic wai" to the elephant, his thumbs were at sternum level, which suggests that he's treating the elephant as an equal and has a certain degree of nonchalance.

Me neither, but here's the explanation from above:

Chickens raised wearing artificial tails, and consequently with more posteriorly located centre of mass, showed a more vertical orientation of the femur during standing and increased femoral displacement during locomotion. Our results support the hypothesis that gradual changes in the location of the centre of mass resulted in more crouched hindlimb postures and a shift from hip-driven to knee-driven limb movements through theropod evolution.

You do not HAVE to talk to a police officer. You MAY have to show ID depending on the state, but in most cases you do NOT have to show ID unless you are driving or were recently driving a vehicle. At the time he began walking he was not currently being detained for a crime.

If you follow the video link, you will see there is an abundance of information, including legal statements from the state AG that indicate that the officers had NO LEGAL CAUSE to arrest or detain the person filming and were incorrect in charging him with OoJ.

What happened here is that the cop got pissed that someone was filming him, decided he wanted to toss his weight around a bit, and then got further pissed off when his posturing was ignored. He is a cop, damnit, and people should quake in their boots when he is talking to them.

That is the problem with our police officers today. They have this idea that they are special and should be treated as such, when in reality they are simply public servants, OUR servants. We pay their salary to, thoeretically, protect and serve us. We do not pay them so we can serve them and kneel at their beck and call.

There are still officers out there that believe that way, but they are scared or unwilling to out the majority who do not. Until they do, they are no better in the end. For instance, the SGT who showed up on scene could have said that this was incorrect procedure, apologized, and punished the fucker who started it. But no, gotta stick to the thin blue line and back up the fuckup who got pissed about being filmed. Now they all get in trouble, more respect is lost for police, and the county will likely get sued. All because one guy got pissy about being filmed.

None of that is real. There are four people on stage there, but only one of them brings any value. The other three are there to convince you to watch the show through their posturing.

I remember during the production of the 5th Element they said they'd specifically composed the opera to be impossible for a human to sing, but this isn't the first time someone has covered it.

I always thought of Carlin as a philosopher trapped in a comedians body.

I think he's great; I agree with most of what he says, but I just don't think he's that funny. Witty, intelligent, insightful? Hell yeah. But never tears rolling down my face funny.

Also, my back hurts just looking at his posture

@oritteropo

There is a long history of Latin American currency crises which I would refer you to as examples of disorderly collapse. That Tsipras would break most of his electoral promises in his recent 4 month extension agreement should tell you that he knows how catastrophic it would be. You can't quantitatively approximate these kinds of events but qualitatively* (TYPO) the following is likely to occur:

1) Bank run - You saw significant withdrawals even leading up to the meeting with the Troika because of the possibility funding will abruptly stop. A stop to euro lending will see mass outflows with the expectation of bank collapse which will itself likely lead to the collapse of multiple banking institutions.

2) Foreign flows of currencies will dry up - Greek bond yields will spike, in effect no one will lend to the Greek government from overseas. Since like any economy, Greece needs to pay its public sector workers and requires foreign capital for imports, to preserve what it has, it will rapidly convert back to using the Drachma which it can issue and print/create. It is likely the banks will follow in turn and convert deposits to Drachma (another reason why people will withdraw money from banks as soon as they think euro support is over).

3) Drachma collapse - The Drachma will then depreciate rapidly. Again, the expectation of depreciation pretty much causes the depreciation. If people expect their currency to be worth less in the future, they will sell it, causing it to be worth less. Any existing savings accounts remaining will be decimated in value. Wages will fall drastically for everyone. Suddenly the cost of anything that relies on imported products (hint, a lot in any economy, especially Greece) will rise several-fold. This will lead to further job cuts, collapse of industries, which will precipitate further job loss, unemployment, output loss etc etc etc.

The tl;dr version of this is that government funding crises whether caused by debt or currency collapse in the first instance are self reinforcing and the consequences of an unmanaged collapse are all but guaranteed to be much worse than austerity but order. There is some evidence that countries who have a massive collapse and see their currency depreciate are then about to recover faster afterwards (a cheap currency boost exports, tourism etc) but the human toll is much more sudden and much more severe.

As far as IMF estimates being unrealistic, sure. All I'm arguing about is what is likely to happen and which outcome Greeks should prefer.

Sure Syriza has talked about the good kind of reform, but he's also promised the rest of what I talked about. None of which the Troika will let him do if he wants retain their funding. Anyone following this should have known he would not be allowed any of these promises he made in his election. Surely Tsipras himself knew this. It was either posturing/bluster or pure politics. Now the stability of his government is going to depend on how he can manage down his unrealistic expectations.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/28/alexis-tsipras-athens-lightning-speed-anti-austerity-policies

I don't think it is up to you, dear Ant.

But maybe you wouldn't be as big a douche as some of these posturing dudes.

How indeed.

Draghi's ECB has just made a move and I don't understand why. Come Feb 11th, they will no longer accept Greek bonds as collateral, effectively cutting off one of Greece's last two sources of credit. What remains is the Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) provided to the Greek Central Bank, through which the entire banking system must now get most of its credit.

Why did they do it? Why now? I don't think it has something to do with the Advocate Generals opinion piece the other day, declaring the ECB's membership in the troika to be a conflict of interest and that fiscal policy is not to be used as a tool to influence poltical decision-making.

Could it be pure idiocy like the time they pulled to plug on Cyprus only to backpeddle shortly after? Or might they be trying to force a move on part of Germany and Greece? "Stop messing around and get your ducks in a row NOW." -- that sorta thing? Is it mere posturing of sorts, a shot across the bow of Greece?

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Edit #1

I really don't like this. It looks like disaster, smells like disaster and tastes like disaster. And it's entirely too close for comfort. Are they truly going to turn Greece into a failed-state over principle? The way they casually discuss the lives of nearly 11 million people, and the future of the European Union as well, is bone-chilling.
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In the meantime, Schäuble's meeting with Varoufakis went just as expected, reports indicate. Schäuble won't budge a bit. Negotiations with the troika are mandatory, and fiscal waterboarding must be resumed at once. There will be no compromise, not with him in charge. He'll push Greece off the cliff without blinking even once. Convictions worthy of a Templar, that one. Worth remembering that he admitted taking 100k in bribes from an arms dealer in '94 and still managed to become Minister of Finance. A living legend, just not the kind I'd prefer.

With regards to hyperinflation, most folks over here seem to have forgotten, or maybe they never learned, that Chancellor Brüning's austerity regime led to deflation in 1930-32, pushing unemployment to 23%. What followed was a massive influx in membership and infuence for parties at both ends of the political spectrum, similar to Greece. Except in our case, it wasn't the left (KPD) who won the elections in '32...

Well, by that measure, I COULD think you were a complete snarky douchebag first, making personally insulting attacks for no reason other than you disagreed with my position...but where does that kind of thinking leave us?

As I still see it, you made a mistake in your logic, I said so and calmly explained how without name calling or insults (which continue in my direction). I don't see that as rude or insulting in any way, I'm sorry you do (but still don't get why).

Allow me to explain again, calmly, since you still don't seem to see my point...the cop started the stop with some attitude IMO (and not a helpful attitude), and much more important, he continued with the stop after seeing there was clearly no problem he needed to solve. If he was simply being a 'good guy helping' he would have nicely said 'OK sir, just making sure everything's OK.' and both gone on their way, not 5-6 minutes of posturing and snark.
If that doesn't convince you he wasn't just being a good guy, but instead was looking for something to cite the driver for, or a best exerting his power by 'holding' him without cause, nothing will.
It may have been his original reason for stopping the first time, even the second, but is evaporated the instant it's clear there's no problem, BEFORE he asks for ID and proof of insurance. That action denies the 'just trying to help' theory, it's not a 'helpful' action in any way. To me, that's applying logic, not telepathy.

If you really feel I'm a troll, please don't feed me, ignore me for gods sake! It's that simple. I would only ask that you note that I'm not the one of us who devolved into personal insults, nor will I simply because I disagree with your position. That's what trolls do. ;-)