I remember seeing a live, ~30s version of the segment a long time ago, and I totally agree "thoughts & prayers" are worth less than nothing if you don't then tell what you're gonna do about it. Sometimes, those "thoughts and prayers" Christian contribute nothing positive, just full of hate and ego-boosting self-righteousness, and looks at the world as a zero-sum game.

Maturity over Mar-a-Lago 😆

“We will never compromise our principles. House Democrats will always put
American values over autocracy.
Benevolence over bigotry.
Constitution over the cult.
Democracy over demagogues.
Economic opportunity over extremism.
Freedom over fascism,
Governing over gaslighting.
Hopefulness over hatred.
Inclusion over isolation,
Justice over judicial overreach.
Knowledge over kangaroo courts,
Liberty over limitation.
Maturity over Mar-a-Lago.
Normalcy over negativity.
Opportunity over obstruction,
People over politics.
Quality of life issues over QAnon.
Reason over racism.
Substance over slander.
Triumph over tyranny.
Understanding over ugliness.
Voting rights over voter suppression.
Working families over the well connected.
Xenia* over xenophobia.
Yes, we can over you can’t do it, and
zealous representation over zero sum confrontation.”

So much failure at being a human being re-framed as “it’s your fault I suck”.

Thinking marriage is supposed to be a zero-sum game exposes your flawed intellect by defining it in terms of $, status, self-satisfaction...

No surprise you don’t “get it”.

I vent because I just became widowed 1 month ago and I was not even close to prepared to be ripped apart. If you expect to be whole as an individual in marriage, then you deserve to be thoroughly stomped by your former partner. Keep on whining!

Well, I fully support the Black Lives Movement. Peaceful, and sometimes agitated, marching for justice. Gay Rights. That explosive moment at Stonewall in Greenwich Village, when the gay men fought back and said NO MORE.

Do I want a single woman who is in danger of being physically assaulted to "fight back?" A single gay man? A single black person? No, honey bunny, I absolutely do not. I think that is the height of idiocy for a single individual to fight back against one, two, three men. Especially when they are armed and have proven that they are capable of using that weapon in anger, fear, adrenaline.

Keep yourself safe, deescalate the situation if you can, submit to rape [edit] IF you think the man/men will kill you if you do fight back -- fight back if it is safe to fight back. (Interesting stat -- something like 90% of assaults against women are by single unarmed attackers. No gun? No knife? Try to avoid, try to deescalate, and if that doesn't work, fight back and yell and make yourself as difficult a target as possible.)

I took a self defense class years ago, geared towards women protecting themselves from violence by men. Not because I was afraid, but because of the psychological skills that we were taught about setting boundaries, taking charge, making choices -- skills needed in every day life that can also be applied to rare events of possible violence.

It was called Powerful Choices. Choices, my friend. Choices.

I must say, it is shocking to me that so many people live in a zero sum world. A black and white world. Where there is only one way to respond despite the actual circumstances. That this moment has to be used to fight larger battles or you are a failure.

I am a big fan of using your noggin to be safe. A fan of demonstrations (I prefer peaceful.) A fan of changing the laws, the procedures, the culture. A fan of acting strategically for the long run.

So you have me all wrong, my friend. All wrong.

@Sayja
i can agree that that this is not a zero sum situation.

but i have to disagree that this video,or even the other video i posted has anything to do with 'mens rights".

and i have to take you to task for your specious claim that 'there seem to be a lot of men on the internet that feel threatened by feminism".

while i cannot speak for anybody other than myself,i can quite confidently state that i personally,do not feel threatened by feminism,but i find this "intersective third wave feminism" to be a form of feminism that,until recently i have been wholly unaware of ,to be out of touch and nothing that resembles the feminism i grew up with.

and i think that distinctions differentiating the two forms of feminism extremely important.

equality,fairness and justice are noble ideals to fight for and classic feminism did just that.it took amazing courage for those women to stand up and fight for issues regarding women.
see:suffragist movement of the 1800's.

or the bra-burners of the 60's fighting for their sexual rights and rejecting traditional social norms.that they owned their bodies and therefore.their future.

even the proud women of the 70's 80's and 90's who brought to light the casual nature of our society in regards to womens sexuality and heightened rape awareness.

what i find most disturbing,and i am struggling to understand (and maybe you can help me in that regard) is how the feminist movement which has taken courage and determination,addressing real and actual womens issues,has been perverted into this weird,perpetual victimhood decrying the "oppressive patriarchy".

because this new feminism is threatening and is garnering actual real life consequences.
see: stephanie guthrie vs greg elliot
see:the duke lacrosse players

cases where you don't actually have to BE harassed,you just have to "FEEL" as if you are being harassed.

or where you can accuse three boys of rape,get the coach fired and ruin three boys lives,and when it is revealed to all be a fabrication?

the accuser walks away with zero consequences.

so i find it delicious irony when some will defend these "third wave' feminists and state EMPHATICALLY,that words have consequences and that these men SHOULD pay a price for their words.

yet the accusers rarely,if ever,pay for THEIR words.no consequences for THEIR misrepresentation.they just falsely accused.which had real world consequences.

hypocrisy much?

and where was this "oppressive patriarchy" swooping in to protect these men?

can you explain how that is morally,or intellectually consistent?
because it appears to me to be pretty damn hypocritical.

so this woman disagrees with the current trend of feminism.
that is her right and she explains why she disagrees.
does this mean she deserves the death threats and threats of physical violence from these feminists?

so if you could explain to me this "third wave feminism" i would really appreciate it my friend,because i dont get it and it is a real break from the philosophical feminism that have grown accustomed.

What a joke. Gotta love ideologies being *destroyed* by YouTube opinions. Amazing how often feminism is turned into a straw man for these types of discussions.

A little sad to see this and the other men's rights type video that Enoch submitted so quickly jumping to Top 15. There seem to be a lot of men on the internet that feel threatened and wronged by feminism, and I don't get it. It's not a zero sum situation.

Agree a lot with JustSaying's comment about a" lack of empathy" and "an addiction to differences".

You are completely entitled to your opinion on this track.. not that fond of it myself, tbh.... but pretty much everything else you've said is simply untrue.

First up, digital instruments are still instruments. Some of them require great skill to play in real time (see Beardyman for example).

Some are authoring tools that aren't used for performance. So what? In the past, we called those kinds of tools sheet music, where a composer could write some music and have others perform it.

Second, it's not a zero-sum game. Just because some people use a sampler doesn't take away from people playing guitar.

Finally, there are literally millions of musicians still playing instruments (by which I'm assuming you mean traditional instruments like strings, percussion, wind, etc). With the web as a distribution and learning tool, it has never been easier to learn, write and record music. So if you want to listen to rock or classical or blues or jazz or soul or funk or metal or folk or any combination thereof, it's out there. Go look for it.

if you come from the perspective that arguments are a zero sum dynamic,"winning" being the desired outcome,then i can see where this video makes some salient points.

then yes...internet arguing then becomes an exercise in futility.

if you make assumptions about peoples intentions based on arbitrary and cosmetic indicators such as avatars and a few comments,then of course the argument will be biased on those parameters.

but if you view an argument as a vehicle to understand the person you are engaging with,then the dynamic changes to a much more beneficial interaction between both parties.

it takes patience and a desire to understand,along with a healthy dose of respect.

i argue with newt all the time.
sometimes we find out we actually agree but were using different analogies or language to express our position.other times we disagreed but respected each other enough to hear the other person out to better understand WHY they felt/thought the way they did,and yet still disagreed in the end,but now had a much fuller picture to better compliment that disagreement.

"winning" should not be the first thing on the agenda.understanding should always be the first order of business,and having someone lay out the logical connections based on their understanding and interpretations is truly the best way to accomplish that goal.

and if y'all could be nice to each other?
yeah..that would be great.

Honestly, by biggest contention with this isn't that she didn't respond (although even a simple expression of sympathy would have probably been better than silence) but the way people reacted to the threats she got and how her status as victim has elevated her to the point where anything she says is beyond question in the eyes of many.

And you are right that smaller problems should not be ignored but that does not mean we should lose all perspective either.
Being threatened with rape over the internet and actually being raped is a world of difference and yet whenever you hear about the threats made against Sarkeesian they are always "serious". We're always told that we are not supposed to believe everything we see on the internet and yet the reporting on these events spoke as if they had nearly happened already. The guy who made the threats to shoot up Utah State University was hardly scary, hell, he wasn't even very creative, just copy paste other shootings or threats of shootings and watch everyone scurry.

And no, it's not a zero sum game, it's the media game, and in the media game perceptions and appearance are as good as truth.

You want to talk about trivial stories getting media coverage?

Yesterday, the island of Vanuatu was all but destroyed by a cyclone. 24 people confirmed dead, tens of thousands left homeless and "the development of the country wiped out" but what was the headline on NZs largest news site (and bear in mind that NZ is the closest developed nation to Vanuatu)?

Some d-list celebrity said something mean on a reality tv show, and the country lost their shit.

So, when someone threatens "the deadliest school shooting in American history" at your speaking engagement, that is not "faux victimhood". That is genuinely fucking scary.

Bad shit happens to people every fucking day and it's not deemed newsworthy. If you really want to get pissy about it, why does this one womans awful experience merit more support than the 200+ schoolgirls that are still missing?

The answer is that it's not a zero sum game.
I can say that I feel that the representation of women (and non-caucasians while I'm at it) in video games is pretty bad and should change.
I can also say that this woman had an awful experience and I wish it hadn't happened.
And I can also say that I sincerely hope those girls don't get sold in slavery.
And a million other issues of social justice, environment, etc.

Some of those are more important than others. Doesn't mean the "lesser" ones should be ignored.

@Jerykk

You seem to subscribe to the idea of government spending being fixed and a zero sum game. It's not. If a prison rehabilitation program prevents a former criminal from re-offending and he finds gainful employment, then not only does the country derive potentially lost tax revenue but they avoid the cost of future incarceration. There's a good chance that's a net positive, even though there's initial money put down.

Your mentality fits a uniquely American approach to social problems that many in the rest of the developed world (Europe, Australia, Japan) would find strange, possibly even pathological. Being that, government spending should be kept to a minimum, and every policy should be based on market incentives (in this case threats), even in cases where taking a different approach would produce a better result. Now I studied economics and would be one of the first to say that this is clearly a better approach in many situations. But not all cases.

Your statement here is a good example:

"History has proven that fear is a very effective deterrent. Convince people that there are significant consequences for their actions and they'll think twice before doing something stupid.'

This is intuition, but your intuition is wrong. Firstly codified law does little 'convincing'. How many offenders do you think know the likely sentence of their crime before they are caught? If you agree then how likely do you think say a doubling of the prison term for shop-lifting going to have any effect?

There's no reason to test this because the data exists already when comparing pre and post juvenile offenders. The potential punishment leaps but the risk of re-offending barely changes.

As for more serious crimes, if the graveness of the death penalty is such a strong deterrent, then why does the US lead the charts among developed countries for murder and incarceration rates despite being one of the few that have it? Not to mention, the ones that do, Singapore and Japan barely ever use it.

Frankly, the whole notion that you can rationally deal with a person who is committing a crime (who is fundamentally acting irrational in committing the crime in the first place) is ludicrous.

Let's be serious. Your idea of punishment being a deterrent sounds nice but is not supported by any actual real world data. Meanwhile Scandinavian countries which do focus on rehabilitation have seen substantial drops in recidivism. There's the 'trust me it will work this time' and there's the 'supported by actual evidence' approach.

You've got it mixed up.. I'll bet that alpha males are the most chauvinist bunch on the planet but they are the minority. Betas have to learn how to communicate. Then there's the unfitting to both category males, usually not too bright but not a complete tool either, has a huge and fragile ego, not good at communicating and most of all, has a weird concept of zero-sum game when it comes to rights of any people: any freedom granted to someone else is directly diminishing theirs. This is the bunch that are the most vocal about it.

"We will FORCE insurance companies to compete against each other through the magic of doing nothing to force them to compete. Furthermore, we will wilfully neglect to observe past instances of collusion and price fixing that have plagued such essential industries on the blind premise that regulation is bad bad bad. This means everyone is a winner in what is essentially a zero-sum game. I know that such an idea if logically impossible but America is the land of freedom and we have the freedom to ignore logic and necessary entailment. God bless you and God bless the United States."

That was absolutely great! He just turned equilibrium in on itself, to be what he thought was fair I am sure! I am sure most people got what he was doing, but it is such a great tactic, it is worth explaining in long form.

So this game theory is based on 2 things:

If you choose steal you can either get everything, or nothing
If you choose split you can either get half , or nothing

In this, it is always the better proposition to steal, the risk is the same with a better pay off. It is of course, the more morally dubious because you (until this guy) need to lie in a believable fashion that you will choose split even though you plan to steal. This is the basis for may different game theory zero sum systems. The genius here is the double tactic. He is actually taking ALL of the risk (afforded him, as he is going to choose split) and only risking half of the reward, but on the reverse notion that he is going to steal when he is actually going to split. He is trying to get the fair outcome by convincing the other person the only fair outcome that could possibly happen is for him to act in the fair way ( split ), because he is planning on scorching the earth. This tactic is much like King Solomon's baby tactic, only the man who really wants the prize money will choose to go along with this plan. The person whom is here for spite will cause them to loose it all, so he placed all his chips that he was a good man, and since he was, the baby, in this case 6 large ones was his. This is an absolutely brilliant way to solve a zero sum gain where you take all the risk of the liars position with only half the reward. Thanks for the share, and sorry for the over share, this was just really exciting to the logic side of maaa brain!

If I recall, Bush pushed for the bailout. Here is the Fox News article.

Yes, I am aware of this. It's a disgrace, more so than if a Democrat president initiated it. Bush was a liberal with a few conservative tendencies.

I've never been offered a job by a poor man, have you? Unless you're a vote-buying politician, you shouldn't overly concern yourself that someone else has more than you, nor blame them. Economics is not a zero-sum game.

I don't see your point at all here. People do not want to tax the rich more, they just want repeal the tax breaks that Bush implemented.

You may not want to tax the rich more, the socialists dream of nothing else. And raising taxes on the middle class and poor too. I'm here to tell you that repealing the rather modest Bush tax cuts will do nothing--NOTHING--to help the economy nor fill government coffers.


Unless you know otherwise, over the ENTIRE lifespan of these tax breaks, the economy has been on a downhill. How can you justify them then?

The problem goes back to spending more than we have, always will. I don't see how you can single out the tax breaks as being the single source for economic woes.


Remember this is tax breaks over income only, if the rich invest their money into their businesses, they are never taxed on that money anyways.

The profits are taxed. What I mean by 'zero-sum game' is this: socialists believe in order for someone to win at economics, someone else must lose. It's balderdash. Wealth is created not when the slices of pie are "more balanced" but when the pie itself grows larger.