I too am conflicted.

On one hand, that trailer had both Led Zepplin AND Peter Dinklage (he was the voice of the drone), which is pretty much instant awesome.

On the other hand, Bungie and stupid system exclusive bollocks... so meh.

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.

Yes and no. On one hand, he did preach inclusion and forgiveness, but he also said that the Law still applies. So technically, homosexuality is still against the Christian faith (along with eating shellfish, rabbit, pork, etc and thinking for yourself)

"Do not think that I [Jesus] have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke or a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. (Matthew 5:17-18)"

The problem is you're talking out of both sides of your mouth.

On the one hand you're saying you know how dangerous a guy with a knife is. That being the case, you know that as close as he was to one of the officers, he could have murdered the officer if the officer attempted anything other than to completely stop him (by killing him).

And on the other hand you're saying the officer should consider the guy's mental well-being. Okay, and do what about it, try to talk him into seeking counseling?

There is no such thing as "containing the situation" when "the situation" is a guy standing a very close distance to you with a knife and approaching. There's no talking to him, no tasing him, no tossing a net over him... there's nothing that will guarantee he won't stab you except shooting him.

Still on a third hand you're staying it's part of an officer's job to risk his life to deal with the threat instead of neutralizing it, but that you feel officers shouldn't gamble with their lives. Those two concepts are completely contradictory.

It's quite a thing to realize he's dead within 20 seconds of the police arriving, but everything about that has zero bearing on his killing. When a guy is approaching an officer with a knife within seconds of their arrival, he's not going to call out to the guy and bystanders to ask them if the guy was showing aggression to anyone else because why in the fuck would that matter. He's directly showing aggressive intent towards the officers themselves for goodness' sake! Nothing that happened before that matters.

If as a cop your life is in imminent danger, the guy's mental state, what he did before you arrived, what alternatives to a gun *might* stop him or "contain" him... NONE of that matters because THERE IS A GUY COMING TOWARDS YOU WITH A KNIFE. That's all the cops were thinking and that's all they needed to be thinking when they decided they had to to shoot him to have as close to a 100% chance of survival as possible.

To summarize: Guy approaches you menacingly with a knife, you. must. shoot. him, if you want to attempt to guarantee you're not going to die.

BUT

we can agree to disagree.

Ahh, you beat me to it.

One handed typing? My question is how does she manage to take off her sweater while typing?

Now there's a skill.

Shouldn't this be in *skillful ? (yeah siftie, you don't like me, I know, I know)

Ok, now I know you're either trolling or an idiot.

So, on one hand, we can do away with the foundation of every judicial system in the developed world and basically bring in Judge Dredd (adding in cruel and unusual punishment just for good measure).

And on the other hand, we need to fix the judiciary system so that it's 100% completely infallible.

Congratulations! You've somehow managed to present two ideas; both completely and utterly retarded and at the same time contradicting each other.

That's actually impressive in its stupidity.

I would argue it's definitely really very much not the same.

On the one hand you have someone who puts themselves in imminent danger of severe injury and then they're injured. This is the natural result of what the guy did to himself.

On the other hand they're jeering for death and destruction because they look at a whole civilization as deserving it. This is more of a vengeance mindset and just want to see anyone be punished so they feel more powerful and feel someone is being taught a lesson.

I am conflicted. On one hand, John Oliver is awesome.

On the other hand, everyone in this video who's not John Oliver is a festering sore on the arsehole of humanity.

Fuck TMZ and the vapid, celebrity worshiping excuse for a culture they promote.

I feel like I can take a middleground on the whole tailgating issue, as a commuting biker I tend to experience both ends of the equation quite regularly and IMHO the problem lies in the extremes in attitude.

On the one hand if you drive/ride a lot and have good confidence in the vehicle and roadcraft in general (frequently the case with professional van and truck divers) it can be extremely frustrating when people don't practice good lane and speed discipline. I don't mean people maintaining a decent pace (it's your problem if you want to go faster than posted limits and they don't) I mean people either:
A. Driving below the posted limit (within reason)
B. Accelerating to speed absurdly slowly or slowing to 2mph to take a corner you could hit at 10-20 comfortably
C. Hogging the outside/passing lane because THEY are going as fast as THEY want to go so why should they speed up or slow down to get out of everybodys way? (C**TS!)

Under the above circumstances I understand why people end up tailgating, in fact I think it happens without much of a conscious effort most of the time. They are going so far below the pace the seems reasonable that you close the gap without realising. Getting to this stage is understandable/inevitable, it's what you do next that defines you as a responsible road user:

A responsible driver/rider at this point backs off, the point has already been made to the driver in front. They know they are going slower than you want to go or that you want to pass in the passing lane they are hogging. Sitting on their bumper is not only dangerous to both of you but it's obnoxious and likely to be counter productive. When you see someone driving too close your natural response is to slow down for safety or simply as a fuck you to the other guy. Even if you were about to get out of their way you might change your mind and think "screw you buddy I got the hint but now your just being rude".

When I back away I find people let me through far more often, wheras in the past when i've just tail gated them like a dick it's got me nothing but two angry motorists (and a hugely elevated chance of an incident). The lorry driver could have left a bigger gap but it didn't look that unreasonable (plus lorries have a hard time gaining speed and are naturally inclined (and taught) to preserve it where possible).

It might not be that unfair to suggest he was antagonising the car infront, but it pales into insignificance compared to...

.....the other side of the equation (which blue peugeot falls squarely into) who are generally IMHO far worse/more dangerous. The one's that adopt an imperious and selfish attitude to speed and road position. "I'm going as fast as I want to go and there's car on the inside that I'll pass in about 30seconds so I'm just going to sit in the outside lane going 2mph faster than slow lane traffic, because why should I have to go to the trouble of changing lanes to let someone else go faster than I want to go!"

Touching the brakes to give a tailgater a shock done properly is fine (I might even go so far as to recommend it) but holy shit! I think it'd be dangerous to scrub more than 1 or 2mph never mind an illegal stop on a dual carageway. Even if there was a mechanical reason for stopping it's still illegal to stop there without pulling off to the side.

Either way 45k in damages feels like pretty just deserts. I dearly hope he got at least a 12 month ban to boot. There's slipping up and then there's premeditated dangerous driving!

I usually try to see things from everybody's perspective when it comes to stuff like this but the Peugot driver is so disproportionately stupid and reckless than I can't really even try to defend him/her. I get why they might have been annoyed but that all became irrelevant the moment they tried to cause an accident!

We had a guy like this on our college campus back in the 90s. He also called himself "Brother" something-or-other and used to stand in the quad yelling at girls that walked by in mini-skirts that they were whores and sluts and would burn in hell. The university protected his right to free speech until the boyfriend of one of the girls he verbally accosted punched him in the jaw and sent him to the hospital. The boyfriend was arrested by campus police and charged with assault.

So moral of the story--in the United States you don't legally have the right to not be offended/insulted in a public space. I'm glad to hear in this news story that other students defended his right to speak freely and while on the one hand I'm glad some students decided to counter-protest him, I can't help but feeling the fastest way to make him go away is to completely ignore him and show how irrelevant both he and his crazy ideas are.

Stop banking in the 19th century people. I can honestly count the number of times I've used cash in the last year on one hand.

I constantly see credit card companies attempt to prey on people in malls or with mailouts. Hell, they did it to me when I was young and stupid. When I started work, I got a credit card with a $500 limit on it for travel and expenses, etc. Less than 6 months later the bank had increased the limit 4 times to over $3000. If I was smart I should have refused each increase, but like an idiot I basically looked on it as free money. Suddenly I was paying a fortune in interest and struggling to clear the card. Every penny I earned went on it, and then I'd rack up the bills over the next month again just to live.

But credit cards are great if you know how to use them. Eventually I paid mine off and now I live completely off it; fuel, groceries, the works. I pay for everything on it, and I get reward points that easily cover the cost of the annual card fee. I make sure it's cleared every month. Meanwhile, my salary sits in my bank account offsetting my mortgage. Now it literally is free money.

I actually feel kinda bad, because essentially people who are bad with money and run up credit card bills at 20% interest are basically subsidising my card for me.

That is a valid concern, and it's very difficult to address.

Certainly, bionics for injury victims should be made available through your health system. I'd agree with the speaker here when he says that is a human right.

But voluntary augmentation is a much harder sell. On one hand, the situation you describe (where we have an augmented "caste" and a baseline caste) is certainly undesirable. But equally, it's not really practicable to fund everyone for every augmentation they want.

Tricky question.

Although as Yahtzee says "if there's a conflict between people who have ocean liner pistons for forearms and people who insist that everyone be as shit as they, I know which side I'm on!"

@BoneRemake et. al.:

I will answer to your comment for a change, Read the following paragraph, which is one of the last paragraphs and the meat of the matter if you want the short answer. For you or any that desire to join in Group Therapy, then continue reading.

Submissions to this Site are governed. I do not care...nor am I constrained to care or consider if, when, where, whether, how, etc., someone reads or does not read the guidelines. Nor am I constrained to care or consider whether their violation of said guidelines is intentional, accident of misinterpretation, the violators age, intelligence, sex or lack thereof, hair color.... AND I DO NOT CARE ! I am empowered to initiate, second, contest (which I do), or ignore an invocation of Ban. The reason I do not care is that each and every banee is informed at the time of banning that there are available avenues for redress in the occurrence of mitigating circumstance(s) or professed reorientation and thereby capable of productive and compliant participation at the Sift if that is, becomes, or ever was their intended purpose.


<Do you honestly have no clue as to what you do ? >
On one hand I might say arguably better than do you...on the other who really does?

<The only thing I personaly respect about what you do with the ban thing is that you adhere the Terms of service ( which everyone reads of course right ??? ).>
What can I say to that...ok.

<The rest of the time you deny possible gems in the rough without any warning.>
Blanket generalizations are inherently ridiculous and unsupportable. Aside from that your statement of observation is highly speculative and the issue of warning is mute besides.

< I mean I do not want to be so in your face, but to see you write that made me mad.>
I was polite and succinct. It is my privilege to exercise to inquire....the rest is a personal problem with which you must deal though I would wish otherwise for you and myself.

<You have denied so many possible peole here without any incling of the genuine purpose of the site,>
I have denied no peole(sic) here, possible or otherwise. As far as my having an incling(sic) this is again arguable to contestable and at best highly speculative on your part. I would submit to you, however, that the purpose of the site is served and supported by the originator(s) of the site and the rules and policies that they deem necessary and relevant. The interpretive perimeters by which they are implemented are set and monitored for compliance by those same individuals. If you have an issue with those policies there is ample avenue for open discussion and elucidation, not with me...not my job by happenstance or inclination.

<you just outright ban people>
I patently do not. I may and do initiate or second a ban and that only. Checks and Balances.

<and we are not stupid>
I wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole. Really...we?...am I included?...how many are you?...whom all?...of course you are not.

<it is so you can garner some form of level up>
Your point? My motivation(s) for participation on any or whatever level I so chose or in what manner I choose is my own and not for you or anyone else to judge but for a quantifiable breach of demeanor and then not solely by but a couple of individuals. Do you not submit videos, comments, polls, etc., and accept comments, votes, badges, etc? If I were someone else here I might comment on the desirability of some number of those submissions as relates to the quality and genuine purpose of this or any site for that matter. But I am not that or any someone else and make no such judgement at this time about your contributions including the relevant comment.

<you got called on a lot of things in the past in that regard>
Really, how many...how many with objective merit or...on down and so what? As far as called on, you might say that is true of both of us and perhaps more so for you and then comes the argument respective to justifiability on grounds.

<SERIOUSLY ? ? you ask her why she explained

that ??>
You got me on that one, Yes, However, I did not pass a value judgement, express any alternate or opposing view or stance. Therefore I might profess some surprise at the timbre of your comments. Love you still.

While much of that which I attempted to cover strained answerability, much or most of the remainder defies it and so the following which is a departure from the set format.

Speaking to what may be trenchant to this matter overall is the following:

Submissions to this Site are governed. I do not care...nor am I constrained to care or consider if, when, where, whether, how, etc., someone reads or does not read the guidelines. Nor am I constrained to care or consider whether their violation of said guidelines is intentional, accident of misinterpretation, the violators age, intelligence, sex or lack thereof, hair color.... AND I DO NOT CARE ! I am empowered to initiate, seconded, contest (which I do), or ignore an invocation of Ban. The reason I do not care is that each and every banee is informed at the time of banning that there are available avenues for redress in the occurrence of mitigating circumstance(s) and thereby capable of productive and compliant participation at the Sift if that is, becomes, or ever was their intended purpose.

All the indulgence outside of this stance which is the sole province of the commenter and not binding...is merely that...indulgence and any and all are free to exercise their proclivity to such.

That was fun, overall, and I too love you enough to respond having done so with no vehemence, unsupportable assertions, profanity, personal aspersions, ear biting, eye gouging, or tongue pulling.

Again, love you Boneremake. Let's do this again sometime....NOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooo...,

I'm kinda torn on these. On the one hand, that's some pretty *skilful surfing.

On the other, it's kinda sad that surfing videos with women all seem to spend half their time gazing lustfully at girls in bikinis (see the rozy ad for how bad this can get *related=http://videosift.com/video/New-Roxy-Ad-Sexploitation-or-Not-You-Decide)

Your video, 42 lb Flywheel Above Head One Handed, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 14 Badge!