He did mention the terrorist organisation Al-Gebra.

Organisation name contains the word "Family"? Odds on it's a bunch of homophobic arseholes.

It's also interesting that they never once mentioned the link between organised crime and tattoos that make the older Koreans wary of them.

I had to take discrete math for computer science so I got a good grasp of it. It is merely envisioning everything as groups, rather than values. You don't have to DO anything to the groups, just realise what's inside those groups. In the end though it is merely a well organised way of indicating larger numbers for processing, not intended to find a specific number. I'm not sure what practicality there is for organizing the super large numbers like this either.

I can't agree with that. It might somewhat address the environmental factor but it doesn't satisfy the ethical reasons (or the health reasons if you care for yourself). There is also no reason why you can't do both. Being vegan and not having kids is not mutually exclusive, and it would address the immediate problem, until the long term (population) problem is resolved.

Meat is never healthy in any amount, just like cigarettes aren't, I came to that conclusion after reading the above mentioned books. Regular doctors get their nutritional advice from organisations formed by companies that sell meat and coincidentally the drugs that treat the chronic illnesses the meat causes. It's a great business model that's for sure. Make money from the cause, make money from the treatment.

Something that does not exist will never be aware of it's lack of existence. Therefore it cannot be sad that it is not existing, since you need to exist to experience the concept of loss.

Like I said. No GOOD reasons to eat animals
Hedonism doesn't usually count as a good reason.

I'll eat a bloody raw steak on youtube if you can think of a good reason

What's the difference between a pet pig and a livestock pig though?
They both want blankets and cookies. Or at the very least neither of them wants to stand in a tiny metal and concrete cage and be pumped full of antibiotics, hormones and god knows what else for their short miserable lives. Neither of them want to be bruised because they have only enough room to face one direction their entire lives. Neither of them want their testicles ripped out without anesthetic while they are piglets. Neither of them want to be beaten when they don't eat.

Also, despite what the marketing people say, humans are not omnivores, everything healthwise and physiologically suggests we are somewhere between herbivores and frugivores. It's also backed up historically too by analyzing fossilized poop!

Here is a quite simplified chart, but I think it does a pretty good point of showing how far away we are from typical mammalian omnivores http://www.whale.to/c/10013268_676368449097110_1949968139_n.jpg

I'm not having a go at you, but I just hope you aren't acting according to a few labels that some organisation has set.

On top of all this, according to several sources, including Edward Snowden, the FBI already have the ability to reset the number of attempts to unlock the phone. Here's an ACLU post about it:
https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/one-fbis-major-claims-iphone-case-fraudulent

According to the article, if there are too many attempts to unlock, the data on the phone doesn't get deleted, just the key to unlock that data. It's possible (and not all that difficult for an organisation like the FBI) to take a copy of the key ahead of time, and restore that key if they cause it to be wiped.

The money and manpower that have already gone into this case would easily cover the effort to go through this process. For those of you so inclined, this raises the question (and obvious answer) of why would the FBI go to so much bother to force apple to do it. You don't get a locked mass-murderer's phone and public support like this too often.

I've been watching for a good counter to that claim since I read it about a week ago, and haven't seen one. Anyone out there able to enlighten me?

@00Scud00

Apple has said it is planning to build a future firmware that cannot be flashed as the FBI has asked for in this case on an older iOS iPhone 5C (removing the time lock on password fails). That will likely be the more important legal case when it comes up - must a firmware be built to be potentially unlockable by officials to facilitate law enforcement.

From what I understand, serious terrorist organisations simply avoid using technology directly with their leaders (e.g. Osama avoided phone and email). Anyway as I said, this debate is not about that. It's about pressuring Apple to revert back to not having strong encryption enabled by default.

Where's the line?

On the shelf to the left of my screen rests a copy of Dirty Wars by Jeremy Scahill. Excuse the hyperbole, but every single page of that book details actions by the US military/intelligence agencies that were in violation of both international and domestic law. Individuals may refuse to obey unlawful orders, but the organisations will commit every atrocity in the book without much thought.

How many laws did the CIA break during those three years when Hayden was in charge? How many torture camps did it run? How many "black sites"? How many extrajudicial renditions took place?

Let's not even bother with all the shenanigans of the NSA under Hayden's command.

It keeps astounding me how the catholic church keeps evading any kind of charges regarding their child fucking issues. If any other organisation had as many incidents of accusations of raping children as the catholic church, they would've been closed down for good so many freaking years ago. If Lidl, a grocery store chain in my country, had as many complaints regarding child abuse as the catholic church had, it would be illegal to take children into a single Lidl store.
Apparently, Jersus loves you. Especially if you love children. With your cock.

@radx

I tend to see controlling the quantity of money along with the interest rate as a valid way for central banks to influence the economy when necessary but I admit in or after crises they are generally almost useless. Economics being a social science is always going to be notoriously unreliable in both prediction and in isolation the causes of a prior event, some would say almost useless.

Controlling purely the interest rates on overnight bank deposits for banks at the central bank (what setting the rate is, as opposed to the commonly held belief that the central bank dictates lending and borrowing rates) is if anything of little impact. These rates can be at 0% and if banks consider economic prospects poor, that will not cause them to lend any further.

Such was the case in the US in the immediate years after '08. i would argue the only action to have real economic impact was the buying up of distressed mortgage securities by the Fed. The parts of QE1, 2 that involved injecting money into the banks basically just led to them investing in low risk securities and earning interest (effectively just sitting on it) because they were not willing to risk lending it.

While I'm not a big fan of ceding authority to a largely independent organisation, I have to admit that since central banks have become independent, inflation in those countries has become a thing of the past. Now granted they get things wrong (e.g. Greenspan inflating the '08 bubble) but their main advantages is being willing to take measures that cause short term pain but long term gain. I don't think any elected politician would have been willing to take the measures Volcker did to curb inflation for example. In fact, while he was at the Fed, Reagan's government effectively inflated the Savings and Loans bubble.

Does noone realise that Gavin McGuinness is a comedian..?
I'm pretty sure hes just doing this to get a rise.

Hes the co-founder of Vice....that fairly left leaning media organisation. Who here HONESTLY thinks this guy...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL61JreooRk

..actually believes the shit he was saying here...?

In the case of this particular example the airline did cite that reason (I remember the forum buzz about it at the time).

But, I still agree with your point there. I've never been keen on the vapers who like to belligerently assert their "right to vape" everywhere they can without engaging their brains, or a bit of basic consideration.

Doubly so when snus so easy to order online & "stealth vaping" in public spaces is so easy to do.

That said, most of the negativity I've had & seen personally over the subject has been largely moralistic in nature. Specifically either "still bad for you!" or "think of the children!".

This may have been a bad example, but I could dig you up about as many media & campaign group hit pieces as you'd care to read.

Right now it's resulting in some deeply ill conceived legislation. I recognise that some sensible legal regulation is needed, but that is not what's happening at the moment. It seems like a double pronged shafting from the tobacco/pharma cartel and the morality police.

Maybe I'm just too emotionally invested on that one.

As for the other bit's. Your dealing with classic scattershot Slavoj. He writes in a much more ordered way than he speaks, but he is still very much a stream of consciousness when he gets going.
I enjoy "truffle hunting in the forest of knowledge" like that, but I understand why it rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

I this case, I don't think the specific examples are as important as the idea he is expressing (to him or myself).

That said, couldn't said health organisation be seen as pushing a moral position there? I guess your arguing it was beneficial to their business in some way? (not informed enough to have a strong position either way on that, but I think I can see where your coming from)

As for it being more dangerous than overt totalitarianism. The argument would be that you can see and fight overt ideologies, as such they are considerably less of a threat in modern developed countries.

Here I think, it would be "more dangerous" simply in the sense that there is a greater danger of anything significant actually happening.

Naturally the jackboots and piano wire kind is infinitely worse in practice. But there seems considerably less danger of that kind of totalitarianism gaining a serious foothold in most of our cultures than in times past.

The policing of peoples thoughts, language and consensual behaviour on the other hand (epitomised by the PC gone mad crowd). Could perhaps be said to be more dangerous, simply in the sense that it has more potential to do actual damage.

You could accuse that of being a bit hyperbolic, but that's our Slavoj.

Capitalism is a guideline or system of how to organise aspects of society (trade, labour and services for example), nothing more. How you use it defines its effect on us. I could sell you my child explicitly for the purpose of you raping it and it would show how evil capitalism is. Or I sell you my children's book explicitly for the purpose of you entertaining your own children and that would be quite nice.
The problem starts if you think everything needs to be a for profit business as capitalism should be unlimited. Then you live in a country that makes prisons privately owned businesses and thinks it's ok to bankrupt sick people and their families with medical bills.
Capitalism is as evil as the people controling it. Who allows these people to be evil? Who cares? Apparently not the majority.
However, all that is not the problem of this ad. The capitalism works to nobodies disadvantege here. Edeka tries to brand itself as family-friendly and established part of homelife. That is quite normal and acceptable for a grocery store. It is not like as if VW would be putting out ads on how honest they are.
The version of the ad I described as being better is as manipulative as this one with the exception that it doesn't make everyone look like assholes upon closer inspection.
Nobody nailed grandpa's door shut, he's allowed to step into the world and make new friends and other aquaintances. His isolation is understandable but mostly his own fault. I witnessed stuff like that myself, I have grandparents too.
On the other hand you bemoan the smombies of today. Do you see the irony of complaining about the screen-fixed stare of todays youth (and society in general) on an internet forum?
We created a distraction-addicted, short-term attention-spanned and self-affirming society on our own by willingly swallowing all the crap the distraction industry throws at us.
I don't have a twitter account because nothing I can say in 140 characters without established context is worth saying. That gotta mean something coming from me of all people.
I'm not on Facebook because I know what the 'StaSi' was and see no reason to do their work on my own person for Mr. Zuckerberg and his shareholders.
I have no internet connection on my cellphone because I prefer to know stuff instead of just looking it up. I don't write text messages all the time because I prefer spoken words with their complexity that simplifies communication instead of emojis that emulate things my face did since before cellphones stopped being science-fiction.
I choose not to stare at the palm of my hand and what's lying in it every 5 minutes because I can. Most of our modern society chooses differently. They chose poorly, as the real oldtimers would say.
And here we are, yet again, ranting about the evils of enticing screens in our lives, live on the internet. You know, we would not be this absurd joke if we'd sat at a dinnertable right now. With food and drink from Edeka.

Eh, your own links points to that article being linked to his statements. Anyway the general point is there are nuts in every country. Some of them happen to be religious fundamentalist nuts. Some of those are going to be Islamist.

I think the point you should be focusing on is that Trump routinely throws out assertions that turn out to be false or half truths. Not that in fact checking those assertions, some news organisations missed that while his statement was generally wrong, if you rephrased it, it was kinda right.