How many black lives lost to rap music...mmm mmm mmm

East coast vs west coast

Teaching young black men to disrespect black women, disrespect cops.

If we could save one black life, wouldn't it be worth it? It's time to ban rap music!

Who's with me?!

Thats super sticky/packy snow that fell on not frozen ground, usually one of the first snowfalls in our region (Canada). That snow is the best for making snowmen. When you can't roll it anymore you flip it on its side and try to start the roll again. We would literally have 20 kids in the school yard trying to see how big we could get one roll to go when we were kids.

That's a pretty poor conclusion. I would have thrown in two other points:

1. If we hit the jackpot, we only got one spin so we've never known anything else. Given how vast the universe is with respect to space and time, is it so hard to believe that there are other dimensions so unknown and vast that of course there will be a universe that supports its own continued existence, and life? I would loosely liken it to the Drake Equation, which relies on huge numbers to demonstrate that even extremely improbable things are plausible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

2. I prefer to think that these constants are actually our own invention. We invented all numbers, units, and sciences to explain how we see things behave, but because of that we have to adjust our equations to fit the way the universe behaves. That implies that these constants are not adjustable, because they are not real in the first place -- they're just more imaginary ideas of our own invention.

Then we only have one choice !!!!

GET TO THE CHOPPA !!!!!

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*related=
http://videosift.com/search?q=samuel+jackson+sleep

Oh, sure, now only one works. Can we only do one at a time??

Your video, Key & Peele - Ratatouille: We all wish we could have one., has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

The Gist:

Guy in business suit looking thoughtfully out of window.
(Doubtful anyone who designs fine consumer goods, *actually designs consumer goods*, wears a suit). Maybe its supposed to be you! You avant-garde millionaire, you!

Person sketching watch designs. This is probably semi-close to reality, though they don’t show the hundreds of designs the visual designer creates that are dismissed at whim by the aforementioned, assumed (but inevitable even if not shown) suits.

People fiddling with plastic representations of what one would assume as the model for said watch design. Maybe realistic, though with the caveat that two people are sitting there going over said physical design, in any serious discussion concerning the actual physics of the end product. I can *not* imagine that nearly the entirety of this process today, both visual and mechanical design, are not done digitally.

Okay, there’s some CG. Because CG is the next step, rather than the first, least expensive step in any design process today. Who wants to quickly model everything in a matter of hours when you can fabricate expensive, physical material for iterative testing?

Holy shit, was that guy just looking at a wood cutout? I can’t even think of a shitty, sarcastic/realistic remark about that one. I might have misunderstood that shot.

Alright, now we’re machining shit. You can’t really fake that with a few grand for marketing. That’s the real stuff. (1.5m in)

No, they don’t sand/polish things by hand during the fabrication phase. That’s entirely too inaccurate and subjective to the assembler to leave up to human hands. (But hey: it’s a 2.5 million dollar piece of metal, so lets make those buyers feel good about their money spent).

Oh look: gemstones! (???) That's kingly.

More faux machining that is veritably inferior to quality mechanical assembly.

Oh shit, someone just turned a nob!

3.5 minutes in, and we see some actual hand-polished work that is legitimately viable to perform by hand.

Hey lets sand those nodules off the finished pieces, and micro-inspect those printed markings, because nothing about us says “accuracy” without a fallible human to do it. Also: what are they printing shit on there for? Was it pushing the price to $3mil to engrave the timestamps on the faces? That better be the highest quality electroplated coating, but even then I can't imagine that's superior than a tactile, physical representation.

Now they’re hand-engraving the sculpted ornamentation, but it’s one more point I can gladly give them because those kinds of human touches let you know at least some sort of artisan was involved. I can appreciate that, though realizing what I just said causes me to reflect on the inaccuracies of mass-production, and why we would take one over the other…

More microscopes. (Because if one notch is off, it’s back to the furnace for you!)

Awe shit, payday. A guy in a suit looking confident is walking towards your building!

Finally, the gear assembly. It certainly looks fantastic, photographically speaking. I can’t help but notice that all that detail is lost to hundreds of textural indentations or are due to stylized alternating polish/grinding. However, I’m confident that spending $2.5mil on this product would get me the absolute, most accurate, unnoticeable details (hand-made!) within a micro-millimeter of accuracy. Those indentations are like chrome on a street-racer in the 90’s: the more you have, the greater they perform.

@~8min, I’m pretty sure no one works like that at their desk. That posture would kill you in a month.

They know you can’t spin the head of a watch while it’s on your wrist, right?

Awe! It’s got 5 ringtones! That’s way more than any other watch I’ve even heard of! Except everything that doesn’t cost $2.5mil.


If I can take anything away from this that’s even remotely positive, it’s that at least millionaire shitheads are now being just as suckered as the rest of the consumer base. Let me sell ONE of those watches, and I would have enough money to overtake their business within a year, except for that I don't have the greed, dishonesty, and overall lack of morals that it would take to set up a quality factory, and trick such dickheads into buying (even superior BS) products.

it's just bizarre to me that so much is based getting from point a to point b. Lie the entire human race is measured by how we go from one place to another. It's petty isn't it? Where are we going wrong?

"The western domination is over."
Yep. Few people seem to realize that.
(Cue outrage reactions about how we're numbah one bro, don't you know.)

Up until I saw my fellow countrymen (including many I respected) fawning like chimps at a tea party during that whole "jubilee" thing I might have agreed. There seems to be a huge cognitive dissonance for most people when it comes to the royals.

On the one hand most don't really take it very seriously, on the other many (maybe even most) appear to have a sub-conscious desire/need to submit to their natural betters. Our whole national identity is built on the myths of Kings and failed rebellions and I fear for many the Monarchy represents a kind of bizarre political security blanket. We claim to not really care but deep down I think many of us secretly fear loosing our mythical matriarch.

One might liken it to celebrity worship backed by 100's & 1000's of years of religious mythology. The Royal's aren't really human to us, they are more like some closely related parent species born to a life we could only dream of. I realise that when asked directly most people would consciously acknowledge that was silly, but most would also respond the same to say Christian sexual repression. They know sex and nakedness when considered rationally are nothing to be ashamed of, but they still continue to treat their own urges as somehow sinful when they do not fall within rigidly defined social parameters.

We still haven't gotten over such Judeo-Christian self policing because the social structures built up around it are still with us (even if we fool ourselves into thinking we are beyond the reach of such sub-conscious influences). I don't think we will ever get over our master-slave culture while class and unearned privilege are still built into the fabric of our society. Having a Royal family, no matter how symbolic, is the very living embodiment of this kind of backwards ideology.

It's like trying to quit heroin while locked in a room with a big bag of the stuff.

It's true to say most don't take the whole thing very seriously but that to me is almost as concerning. Most people when asked don't believe advertising has a significant effect on their psyche but Coke-a-cola still feels like spending about 3 billion a year on it is worthwhile. One of them is clearly mistaken!

Our royal family here, is to me working in the same way as coke's advertising. It's a focal point for a lot of sub-conscious concepts we are bombarded with our whole lives. Naturally there are many sides to this and it wouldn't work without heavy media manipulation, state indoctrination etc. but it's an intrinsic part of the coercive myth none the less. Monarch's, Emperors and wealthy Dynasties are all poisons to me. No matter the pragmatic details, the sub-conscious effect seems significant and cumulative.

"Dead" symbolisms IMHO can often be the most dangerous. At least one is consciously aware of the devils we see. No one is watching the one's we have forgotten.....

The above is reason enough for me but I have bog all better to do this aft so I'll dive into the rabbithole a bit.....

(We do very quickly start getting into conspiracy theory territory hare so I'll try to keep it as uncontroversial as I can.)

A. The UK is truly ruled by financial elites not political ones IMHO. "The city" says jump, Whitehall says how high. The Royal family being among the wealthiest landowners and investors in the world (let alone UK) presumably can exert the same kind of influence. Naturally this occurs behind closed doors, but when the ownership class puts it's foot down the government ignores them to their extreme detriment. (It's hard to argue with people who own your economy de-facto and can make or break your career)

B. The queen herself sits on the council on foreign relations & Bilderberg group and she was actually the chairwoman of the "committee of 300" for several years. (and that's not even starting on club of Rome, shares in Goldman Sachs etc.)

C. SIS the uk's intelligence services (MI5/6 etc.), which have been proven to on occasion operate without civilian oversight in the past, are sworn to the crown. This is always going to be a most contentious point as it's incredibly difficult to prove wrongdoings, but I have very strong suspicions based on various incidents (David Kelly, James Andanson, Jill Dando etc.), that if they wanted/needed you dead/threatened that would not be especially difficult to arrange.

D. Jimmy Saville. This one really is tin foil hat territory, but it's no secret he was close to the Royal family. I am of the opinion this is because he was a top level procurer of "things", for which I feel there is a great deal of evidence, but I can't expect people to just go along with that idea. However given the latest "paedogeddon" scandal involving a extremely high level abuse ring (cabinet members, mi5/6, bankers etc.) it certainly would come as little surprise to find royal family members involved.

Points A&B I would stand behind firmly. C&D are drifting into conjecture but still potentially relevant I feel.

But even if we ignore all of them, our culture is built from the ground up upon the idea of privilege of birth. That there are some people born better or more deserving than the rest of us. When I refer to symbolism this is what I mean. Obviously the buck does not stop with the monarchy, England is hopelessly stratified by class all the way through, but the royal family exemplify this to absurd extremes.

At best I feel this hopelessly distorts and corrupts our collective sense of identity on a sub-conscious level. At worst....Well you must have some idea now how paranoid I'm capable of being about the way the world is run. (Not that I necessarily believe it all wholeheartedly, but I'm open to the possibility and inclined to suggest it more likely than the mainstream narrative)


On a pragmatic note: Tourism would be fine without them I think, we still have the history and the castles and the soldiers with silly hats etc. And I think the palaces would make great hotels and museums. They make great zoo exhibits I agree, just maybe not let them continue to own half the zoo and bribe the zoo keepers?


Anyway much love as always. You responded with considered points which is always worthy of respect, regardless of whether I agree with it all.

I'm no monarchist. But you're tilting at windmills. The symbolism you speak of is dead, because everyone knows how ridiculous they are. The government treats them with disdain and are always cleaning up after one of them goes gobbing off. The constitutional veto that the Queen nominally has, for example, would be impossible for her to exercise.

The British tourism industry is based almost entirely on the history of the Royal family and the USP is that we still have one - they're not just figures from history, we have, as Mr Stanhope points out, the genuine article still in residence. It's a zoo.

@Trancecoach holding a doctorate doesn't make you capable of understanding the scientific literature. If you held a bachelor's degree in one of the three sciences you'd stand a lot better chance of being able to understand the literature than someone who had a doctorate in say Art History. I would actually refer back to the Dunning Kruger effect and suggest that holding an unrelated qualification might lead you to overestimate your abilities.

And for someone who says that they *are* capable of understanding the scientific literature (and therefore the scientific method and approach), you dismiss "scientific consensus" as not being "scientific evidence". I don't understand what you mean here, but i think that's because you don't understand what scientific proof is.

I think it's a fundamental mistake that you're making. Scientists propose theories. Those theories that most accurately describe the situation and are most rigourously investigated are the ones that are accepted as being the case, and when things are found that are not correct, adjustments are made to the theory or other theories are proposed. There is never ever, ever.... EVER.. absolute evidence of anything in the way in which you request it, and that's your fundamental error, and stems from you not understanding the scientific method.

We have a lot of scientific consensus about gravity, but we do not have "scientific evidence" in the way you describe it. The evidence is ALL of the science that is done, ALL of the experiments ALL of the conclusions, positive and negative, and the consensus of the scientific community is reached and refined based on that research and ongoing research. There is no one document anywhere that constitutes "proof" that gravity is how we think it is. Not even all of the documents do that. They merely indicate to us what is most likely to be happening according to all of the knowledge and ingenuity that we've built up over the years.

I don't appreciate the scatter gun method you've used by posting all those links. You said in your latest post here that people try to confuse the issue by redirecting your request for "evidence" - the type that doesn't exist - towards other issues that you deem contentious. Yet you have almost drowned me in what appears to be about 15 different links to pages that seem to show singular examples of individuals that deny climate change. (Again, there are so many, and so many quotes, and no actual specification of what you are disagreeing with me about, that i can't rightly assess any of them.)

My point here is twofold - 1) don't try to be confusing like you accuse your opponents of, i.e. throwing as many links as possible to extend the argument to other points and 2) if that isn't what you were doing, could you perhaps condense your 15 links and selected quotes into a smaller point; that point being what it is about my previous posts you disagreed with?

Here are my points for you, simplified:
1) Scientific consensus does not mean "THIS IS HOW THINGS ARE" - it means that, on balance, according to everything we know and the opinions of those that are in the know, this is how we think things are until we know better.
2) There is no such thing as "scientific evidence" in the way you use the term; the only absolute proof is the one Descartes spoke about; the only thing you can know for sure is that your consciousness exists.
3) It is very easy to be misled by articles such as the one you linked from "the libertarian republic" website. This is also true of the last link you recommended for my research; you used that book to support your opposition to my assertion that human-caused climate change is not a matter of debate in the scientific community. Yet the same author was involved in the Copenhagen Consensus which lists as 6th most worthy of investigation (for the benefit and future of mankind), i quote; "R&D to Increase Yield Enhancements, to decrease hunger, fight biodiversity destruction, and lessen the effects of climate change"

I think that out of courtesy you should select one link which backs up whatever it is that you wish to refute, because it's not a good use of my time to have to go through each individual link, find out what you disagree with me about, and then spend time looking into it.

So, we disagree on one of the following:
1) The scientific consensus is that human-caused climate change is real, and that consensus represents the best of our current understanding as a species.
2) "Proof" in the sense you use it doesn't exist, the correct term is scientific evidence. The more evidence and the more convincing it is, the more firm the belief in a theory.
3) The article you linked from the libertarian website was unfairly representing its argument in relation to the paper it was referring to.

Please let me know. Remember - nothing is "beyond scepticism" in your words. I am sceptical about everything, including gravity, which i have an incredible amount of evidence for. However i am still sceptical about our understanding of it - i am always looking for differences. That doesn't mean that our understanding isn't the best one we have, and we should use it for our own advantage and safety.

I also note that you seem loathe to have a proper discussion with me. Our discussion could have been either about the scientific method or about the article you linked, but to throw all these links at me makes me feel you're unwilling or incapable of challenging your own opinion based on evidence. You don't even refer to the assessments of the article that i offered; you immediately discarded the article from your argument and linked me to other people that may or may not be misrepresenting the argument.

The answer to most of your questions is what I already stated. The internet is full of experiments in monetization. Notice the plural. None of them have proven successful over a broad range of content, or location. Since damned near every country has it's own legal restrictions, I think it's pretty obvious why there's no single system to work for them all. The same goes for various types of content. What works for games isn't really going to work for music, or text.

And I don't think I ever suggested trying to stop piracy, or deal with those who'd rather steal than support the artists. I gave up on those a long time ago...but I have no problem with calling those who steal thieves, especially when there -are- other alternatives. Don't like the name, don't do the deed.

I doubt you're ever going to see one new strategy to rule them all (welcome to the balkanized world). If we do get one new system...it'll be because the plutarchs won, and we'll be more worried about buying our water than getting our games or movies.