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Yanny or Laurel

b4rringt0n says...

I only hear laurel. I tried playing with the settings and slowing it down or speeding it up but i can't hear yanny at all. The auto subtitles available to me are only spanish for some reason and it says yani

b4rringt0n (Member Profile)

Full Frontal - Iraq War: 15 Years Later

Mordhaus says...

I'm pretty sure the stupidest war ever was the War of Jenkins' Ear, which not only was dumb in it's own merit but also spawned two additional wars that killed close to 2 million people.

Basically Britain and a trading company decided that a little war would help to spur trade, so they seized on an 8 year old incident involving the Spanish boarding a ship and cutting off the captain's ear to fan the flames of conflict.

While the casualties of this little conflict were only around 30k dead or wounded, and a paltry 500 ships, it nicely helped kick off the War of Austrian Succession. That fun conflict led to around half a million dead.

Not satisfied, the powers of Europe stewed over the previous two incidents and then decided to really get down and dirty. The Seven Years war was the first really 'global' war, involving every European great power of the time and spanning five continents. Roughly 1.25 million people got to shuffle their mortal coil off the world thanks, in part, to a little trade war over an ear.

Airfish 8

Foreigner Surprising Indians with Hindi (Smiles Galore)

SFOGuy says...

Speaking even a little Italian has brought smiles, extra plates, great service, and complete confusion (I'm not caucasian); same with Chinese.
Gotta work on my Spanish!

Foreigner Surprising Indians with Hindi (Smiles Galore)

MilkmanDan says...

I've found that Mexicans (especially outside of major tourist areas, but even there) LOVE it if visitors attempt to speak Spanish with them, even just a few words.

Thailand is pretty similar. I've lived here for ~10 years and can speak Thai fairly well. So, many locals know me and aren't surprised when I speak Thai with them, but if I travel I get a lot of smiles just like this video.

I guess French people are stereotypically less patient/pleased to deal with visitors trying to use the local language, but I don't know if that's true. Never been there, unless Quebec counts (where it didn't seem true).

A Brilliant Analysis of Solar Energy into the Future

newtboy says...

I agree for the most part, but with batteries, now becoming reasonable in size and price, it's not so hard to be totally off grid. Micro hydro can also be efficient power storage if properly designed with a dual reservoir system.
Granted, that seems to work best in small scale setups so far, but there is an island .....(https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/09/17/349223674/tiny-spanish-island-nears-its-goal-100-percent-renewable-energy)
...currently (since 2014) using this tech to be nearly 100% green.

Dismissing projections as unrealistic without fully examining them may doom our economy and planet.
That's what happened with solar, people just claimed it's expensive and unreliable, which meant those they convinced didn't know how wrong that is, and didn't buy systems or support solar farms. I ignored them and did some light math, and found that even an expensive high tech system with batteries, professionally installed, would pay for itself in about 8 years, with a 20 year expected lifespan (and I live in Humboldt county, with the foggiest airport in America, not Arizona). I'm damn glad I didn't listen. Even a 2 year delay would have cost me 1/2 my rebates, making the system take an extra 2+ years to pay for itself by costing me thousands upon thousands of dollars (instead of saving me thousands per year).

Edit: Also, here in Humboldt we just switched to choice in electricity, we can choose regular pge power (mostly old school generation), a mixture of up to 75% (I think, maybe higher) renewable for cheaper, or 100% renewable for more. All 3 now bill transmission (including voltage/frequency regulation) separately, so it's easy to see what generation alone costs. It's clear so far that mostly renewable is the best bet economically, and I assume it will become more renewable as new technologies become available.....at least I hope so.

Negromancy or Necromancy

Colbert To Trump: 'Doing Nothing Is Cowardice'

scheherazade says...

Freedom of religion is independent of civilian armament.
History shows that religious persecution is normal for humanity, and in most cases it's perpetrated by the government. Sometimes to consolidate power (with government tie-ins to the main religion), and sometimes to pander to the grimace of a majority.

Ironically, in this country, freedom of religion only exists due to armed conflict, albeit merely as a side effect of independence from a religiously homogeneous ruling power.



It's true that Catalonians would likely have been shot at if they were armed.
However, likewise, the Spanish government will never grant the Catalans democracy so long as the Catalans are not armed - simply because it doesn't have to.
(*Barring self suicidal/sacrificial behavior on part of the Catalans that eventually [after much suffering] embarrasses the government into compliance - often under risk that 3rd parties will intervene if things continue)

When the government manufactures consent, it will be first in line to claim that people have democratic freedom. When the government fails to manufacture consent, it will crack down with force.

At the end of the day, in government, might makes right. Laws are only words on paper, the government's arms are what make the laws matter.

Likewise, democracy is no more than an idea. The people's force of arms (or threat thereof) is what assert's the people's dominance over the government.



You can say the police/military are stronger and it would never matter, however, the size of an [armed] population is orders of magnitude larger than the size of an army. Factor in the fact that the people need to cooperate with the government in order to support and supply the government's military. No government can withstand armed resistance of the population at large. This is one of the main lessons from The Prince.

Civilian armament is a bulwark against potentially colossal ills (albeit ills that come once every few generations).

Look at NK. The people get TV, radio, cell, from SK. They can look across the river and see massive cities on the Chinese side. They know they have to play along with the charade that their government demands. At the end of the day, without guns, things won't change.

Look at what happened during the Arab Spring. All these unarmed nations turned to external armed groups to fight for them to change their governments. All it accomplished was them becoming serfs to the invited 3rd parties. This is another lesson from The Prince : always take power by your own means, never rely on auxiliaries, because your auxiliaries will become your new rulers.






Below is general pontification. No longer a reply.
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Civilian armament does come with periodic tragedies. Those tragedies suck. But they're also much less significant than the risks of disarmament.
(Eg. School shootings, 7-11 robberies, etc -versus- Tamils vs Sri Lankan government, Rohingya vs Burmese government. etc.)

Regarding rifles specifically (all varieties combined), there is no point in arguing magnitudes (Around 400 lives per year - albeit taken in newsworthy large chunks). 'Falling out of bed' kills more people, same is true for 'Slip and fall'. No one fears their bed or a wet floor.

Pistols could go away and not matter much.
They have minimal militia utility, and they represent almost the entirety of firearms used in violent crime. (Albeit used to take lives in a non newsworthy 1 at a time manner)

(In the U.S.) If tragedy was the only way to die (otherwise infinite lifespan), you would live on average 9000 years. Guns, car crashes, drownings, etc. ~All tragedies included. (http://service.prerender.io/http://polstats.com/?_escaped_fragment_=/life#!/life)






A computer learning example I was taught:

Boy walking with his mom&dad down a path.
Lion #1 jumps out, eats his dad.
(Data : Specifically lion #1 eats his father.)
The boy and mom keep walking
Lion #2 jumps out, eats his mother.
(Data : Specifically lion #2 eats his mother)
The boy keeps walking
He comes across Lion #3.

Question : Should he be worried?

If you are going to generalize [the first two] lions and people, then yes, he should be worried.

In reality, lions may be very unlikely to eat people (versus say, a gazelle). But if you generalized from the prior two events, you will think they are dangerous.

(The relevance to computer learning is that : Computers learn racism, too. If you include racial data along with other data in a learning algorithm, that algorithm can and will be able to make decisions based on race. Not because the software cares - but because it can analyze and correlate.)

(Note : This is also why arguing religion is likely futile. If a child is raised being told that everything is as it is because God did it, then that becomes their basis for reality. Telling them that their belief in god is wrong, is like telling the boy in the example that lions are statistically quite safe to people. It challenges what they've learned.)



I mentioned this example, because it illustrates learning and perception. And it segways into my following analogy.



Here's a weird analogy, but it goes like this :

(I'm sure SJW minded people will shit themselves over it, but whatever)

"Gun ownership in today's urban society" is like "Black people in 80's white bred society".

2/3 of the population today has no contact with firearms (mostly urban folk)
They only see them on movies used to shoot people, and on the news used to shoot people.
If you are part of that 2/3, you see guns as murder tools.
If you are part of the remaining 1/3, you see guns like shoes or telephones - absolutely mundane daily items that harm nobody.

In the 80's, if you were in a white bred community, your only understanding of black people would be from movies where they are gangsters and shoot people, and from the nightly news where you heard about some black person who shot people.
If you were part of an 80's white bred community, you saw black people as dangerous likely killers.
If you were part of an 80's black/mixed community, you saw black people as regular people living the same mundane lives as anyone else.

In either case, you can analytically know better. But your gut feelings come from your experience.



Basically, I know guns look bad to 2/3 of the population. That won't change. People's beliefs are what they are.
I also know that the likelihood of being in a shooting is essentially zero.
I also know that history repeats itself, and -just in case- I'd rather live in an armed society than an unarmed society. Even if I don't carry a gun.

-scheherazade

newtboy said:

But, without guns, the freedom to practice religion is fairly safe, without religion, guns aren't.

If the Catalonians had automatic weapons in their basements they would be being shot by the police looking for those illegal weapons AND beaten up when unarmed in public. Having weapons hasn't stopped brutality in America, it's exacerbated it. They don't make police respect you, they make you an immediate threat to be stopped.

Mordhaus (Member Profile)

siftbot says...

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Mordhaus (Member Profile)

"Algun Dia" from Julieta Venegas' MTV Unplugged 2008

Vox: Why America still uses Fahrenheit

ChaosEngine says...

"And if you prefer one or the other, I can adapt. Humans are good at that. ;-) "

No, they're not. Or did you miss the part where some of the smartest people on the planet crashed millions of dollars into another planet? People are TERRIBLE at these kinds of things. One conversion? Fine. Ten conversions? No problem. Hundreds, thousands or millions of conversions? The probability of error tends to 100%.

It would definitely be more efficient if everyone used one common language (especially for cross cultural endeavours such as business and engineering). In fact, that kinda happens by default and that language tends to be English.

However, there are practicalities in play. First up, there aren't just two languages, there are hundreds, and there is a broad split in the number of speakers of each language. Whereas in metric v imperal, the US is the ONLY country in the developed world that hangs onto imperial.

Second, learning a new language is an order of magnitude more work than changing to using metric.

I'm speaking from experience here; in the course of my life, I've studied Irish, French, German, Spanish and Japanese, and I am in no way close to fluent in any of them

On the other hand, when I left Ireland, it was officially metric but imperial was still common (distances were in KM, speed limits in miles, people used imperial weights for humans, metric for food). When I moved to NZ, everything is metric, and honestly, relearning happens without effort. Once you immerse yourself, you eventually just start thinking in the new system.


Finally, metric is just a better system for everything. There isn't a single scenario where imperial is a more useful measurement.

Come on America, join us. It's awesome and you don't really want to use "English" units, do you? Did you fight a war to get rid of them? What would George Washington say!? It's unamerican, I tells ya!

TheFreak said:

Extend the argument and it's not logical for the world to speak more than one language. Translating between languages is a whole lot more work than translating temperature scales. We should all speak Mandarin, because it's the most spoken language in the world. But my best friend's 2 year old speaks Mandarin AND English. I suspect he'll be just fine.

Anyway, long story short, I agree we should all know how to use the metric system. That doesn't mean we all need to use it for everything.

ANTIFA is a major gift to the right

ledpup says...

And Chomsky! flies his hypocritical colours at full mast in those comments. So the Spanish anti-fascists/anarchists (that he loves so dearly) were fighting the good fight but Antifa and Redneck Revolt are mere tools of the Neo-Nazis? The first time the US left has displayed some chutzpah in years and he's spouting slander!

Those comments are so woefully off that I wonder if he's just been massively taken out of context or something.

Despacito (metal cover by Leo Moracchioli)

oritteropo says...

Quite a few Spanish pop songs have crazy view counts. It is often claimed that there are over 500 million Spanish speakers (including 50 million in the USA), and some of the youtube vids have view counts that suggest that every Spanish speaker in the world has watched it at least once, and maybe two or three times!

For example, Shakira's song Chantaje (blackmail) has 1.5 billion views and Daddy Yankee's older song Limbo has 700 million views.

I came across Despacito not long after its release (it went straight to the top of the Latin charts) but I was as surprised as you are that it crossed over to the English charts!

eric3579 said:

So i just watched the original video and it has 2.7 BILLION views. All in six months. Anyone know how this song got so big so fast. I d never heard of it till a few weeks ago. The original https://youtu.be/kJQP7kiw5Fk



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