I didn't know Grumpy Cat had family.

What God is he? In which religion? Or is he the personification of God an atheist thinks God(s) would or could do if there really is a God of such power?

Having God-like powers is no God.

This short films series speak more of the misconception of God (as a religious symbol, real deity, imaginary fictional character) than real understanding OR rejection of God for the people involved in the project IMO. It's like they have a full-on hate-on of "God," whatever their definition is.

It's not advancing any intelligent argument for OR against God. It serves more to troll people into defending or attacking their or others' belief.

Or... or... if the intention is to setup a hypothetical scenario which "a grumpy old human being, senile in his neurological faculty, is given God-like powers, than what this person can and will do for self-serving pleasure?" then it makes all kinds of sense in a comic book sort of way.

He was so young back and less grumpy.

@PlayhousePals

Heh, I'm just getting old is all. I am rooting for them, and good on them for turning the tables and shaming the adults. When I joined the Sift many years ago I would've absolutely have been optimistic about their chances of effecting change. But in the past decade, I have learned from first-hand experience how the world works, and seen too much happen in the world to give them more than a snowball's chance in hell.

I mean, shame only works on people that feel shame and the United States government has proven time and again in the past decade that it, like the current President, is absolutely shameless. The only way to make politicians understand is to actually threaten their re-election, but with lobbyist money skewing politics how do individual voters even do that? I just don't see enough of a grassroots campaign forming that actually gives the NRA and gun industry a run for their money.

Of course, I would be more than happy to be proven wrong. I didn't think I'd see the day gay marriage was legalized in the U.S. either and figured it wouldn't happen until I was a senior citizen if at all. Hopefully my pessimism is just grumpy old man talk.

@eric3579 -- Rock on! Sincere thanks for making me less grumpy.

I lived in Turkey for four years, and after a while I noticed that Turks didn't respond well to my smiling. They didn't understand it as a friendly signal, and it actually caused friction. I never asked about it, but I somehow caught on that they thought I was stupid. I thought about it, and it made perfect sense to me that it was stupid to smile at things that shouldn't make you happy.

So I stopped smiling in stores and restaurants, with coworkers, and even with Turkish friends. My interactions with people improved noticeably.

After four years, I moved back to Canada, where I continued not smiling for no reason. I've never been able to get back into the habit. I just feel stupid and unnatural smiling for no reason. People smile at me just because they see me, and they smile politely. I can't smile back. I just raise my eyebrows.

People now tell me constantly that I'm too sad, that I should smile more that I'm not happy. Now, there's some truth to that -- I do suffer from depression -- but that predates living in Turkey and it's only since then that anyone's accused me of being sad, or even noticed that I don't smile as much as I should. I've had to train my friends out of referring to me as grumpy.

My job is teaching English as a Second Language to students from all over the world. My Western students -- particularly the Latinos -- tell me daily (literally) that I don't smile enough. My East Asian and Eastern European students have never said a word in that direction. I just realized the divide now after watching this video.

I used to drive between San Antone and Houston a lot and whenever I saw the La Grange exit on I-10 I had to throw in this cassette, it became a ritual.

Always made sure to stop to eat at Grumpys in Flatonia, good food there.

Is there a signed treaty? No. But the US SoS (James A. Baker III) and the German Foreign Minister (Hans-Dietrich Genscher) are on the record in 1990

Genscher is on video tape stating very clearly: "Wir waren uns einig, dass nicht die Absicht besteht das NATO-Verteidigungsgebiet auszudehnen nach Osten. Das gilt übrigens nicht nur im Bezug auf die DDR, die wir da nicht einverlaiben wollen, sondern das gilt ganz generell."

In English: we are in agreement that there is no intention of expanding the NATO security zone eastwards. This applies not only to the GDR, which we do not intend to incorporate, but in general."

Or how about Baker's words, Feb. 9, 1990, St. Catherine's Hall at the Kremlin:
"If we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO's jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the East."

And the minutes show Gorbachev as having said:
"Certainly any extension of the zone of NATO is unacceptable."

To which Baker replied:
"I agree."

Again, no treaties, nothing. But some people, myself included, make the argument that unequivocal statements of a nation's highest-ranking diplomat are to be taken seriously, unless overruled by explicit, written agreements.

And from what we've heard from Gorbachev over the years, he took them for their words.

Admittedly, having been replaced by Yelzin who received massive "help" from the US might have made Gorbachev a little grumpy.

What remains at the end is this: NATO was created as a defensive alliance against the Soviets and wasn't dissolved when the Soviet Union collapsed. The highest-ranking diplomats of the primary players at that time (US, FRG) are on the record with promises that NATO wouldn't expand eastwards after the German reunification. Now NATO is closer to Russia's border than ever and the Ukraine had a democratically elected government (they were thugs, but elected) overthrown by forces that had massive support from the US. As a result, fascist militias wearing SS insignia are roaming free in Novorossiya, with government support.

If I were Russia, I'd be pissed.

But I'm in Germany, so now I have a strongman in charge of Russia, a thug who has journalists and opposition in general killed, on the one side, and the Americans who installed a Nazi-sympathising regime in Ukraine on the other.

What's not to like about it.

So when the US establishment then goes on a full-blown bender to position Russia as a scapegoat for now having to live with President Trump, they are playing with fire just to distract from their fucked-up domestic policies.

And we're not even touching on the hypocrisy of the US being outraged when some foreign nation meddles in their internal affairs. Of course Russia tries to influence US politics in their favor. Guess what, so does the UK, France, Germany, NZ, China, Japan, even bloody Luxembourg for all I know. Just like the US exerts influence on German politics (ie German Marshall Fund, Atlantikbrücke, etc), and on politics of every other nation of significance.

Old people are grumpy.

He retired so he could devote more time to his two main hobbies, grumpiness and setting fire to anthills with magnifying glasses.
My new frog comes from http://animalsquotingshakespeare.tumblr.com/

*promote

If anything needs promoting in a grumpy world, it is this.

PS A lot of this good work being done is because of the Gates and Clinton Foundations. Two people who have been vilified on other fronts. So more good news -- you don't have to be perfect to be a positive force.

@transmorpher

It's a little difficult to 'debate' your comment, because the points that you address to me are numbered but don't reference to specific parts of my post. That's probably my fault as i was releasing frustration haphazardly and sarcastically, and that sarcasm wasn't aimed at you. All i can do is try and sum up whether i think we agree or disagree overall.

Essentially everything is a question of 'taste', even for you. There's no escaping our nature, most of us don't drink our own piss, many of us won't swallow our own blood, almost all of us have a flavour that we can't abide because we were fed it as a child. So yes, our decisions are defined by taste. But taste is decided by the food that is available to people, within reasonable distance of their house, at a price they find affordable according to the society around them, from a range of food that is decided by society around them. Your average person does not have the luxury to walk around a high street supermarket selecting the most humane and delicious foods. People get what they can afford, what they understand, what they can prepare and what is available. Our ancestors ate chicken because of necessity of their own kind, their children are exposed to chicken through no fault of their own, fast forward a few generations, and thus chicken becomes an affordable, accessible staple. Can we reach a compromise here? It may not be necessary for chickens to die to feed the human race, but it may be necessary for some people to eat chicken today because of their particular life.

I don't like the use of the phrase 'if i can do it, i know anyone can'. I think it's a mistake to deal in certainties, especially pertaining to lifestyles that you can't possibly know about without having lived them. Are you one of the many homeless people accepting chicken soup from a stranger because it's nourishing, cheap and easy for a stranger to buy, and keeps you warm on the streets? Are you a single mother with coeliac disease, a grumpy teenager and picky toddler who has 20 minutes to get to the supermarket and get something cooking? Or one of the millions using foodbanks in the UK (to our shame) now? I don't think you're willfully turning a blind eye to those people, i'm not tugging heart strings to do you a disservice. Maybe you're just fortunate you not only have the choice, but you have such choice that you can't imagine a life without it. I won't budge an inch on this one, you can't know what people have to do, and we have to accept life is not ideal.

And within that idealism and choice problem we can include illnesses that once again in IDEAL situations could survive without dead animals, nevertheless find it necessary to eat what they can identify and feel safe with.

Yes, those damn gluten hipsters drive me round the bend but only because they make people think that a LITTLE gluten is ok, it makes people take the problem less seriously (see Tumblr feminism... JOKE).

I agree that we must look at what action we can take now - and that is why i keep reminding you that we are not in an ideal world. If the veganism argument is to succeed then you must suggest a reasonable pathway to go from how we are now to whatever situation you would prefer. My "ideal farm" description was just me demonstrating the problem - that you need to show us your blueprint for how we start again without killing animals and feeding everyone we have.

And on that subject, your suggestions need to be backed by real research, otherwise you don't have any real plan. "It's fair to say there is very little risk" is a nice bit of illustrative language but it is not backed by any fact or figure and so i'm compelled to do my Penn and Teller impression and call bullshit. As of right now, the life expectancy of humans is better than it has ever been. It is up to you to prove that changing the diet of 7 billion people will result in neutrality or improvement of health and longevity. That proof must come in the form of large statistical analyses and thorough science. I don't want to sound like i'm being a dick, but any time you state something like that as a fact or with certainty, it needs to be backed up by something. I'm not nit picking and asking for common knowledge to have a citation, but things like this do:

-- 70% of farmland claim
-- 'fair to say very little risk' claim
-- meat gives you cancer claim - i accept it may have a carcinogenic effect but i'll remind you so does breathing, joss-sticks, broccoli, apples and water
-- 'the impact to the planet would be immense' claim - in what way, and what would be the downsides in terms of economy, productivity, health, animal welfare (where are all the animals going to be sent to retire as of day 1?)
-- etc. etc.

Oh, and a cow might get its protein from plants, but it walks around a field all day eating grass, chewing the cud and having sloppy shits with 4 stomachs and enzymes that i don't have................. I'm a bit puzzled by this one... I probably can't survive on what an alligator or a goldfish eats, but i can survive on parts of an alligator or fish. I can't eat enough krill in a day to keep me going, but i can let a whale do it for me...?

If this is being a grumpy old man, then hand me my cane.

In fact, forget the cane.

Give me a rocking chair and a shotgun, because these particular kids need to regret being on my lawn.

(edit redacted)
I'm just being grumpy.