Two words easily dismiss your entire argument: predator drones.

Look, there are plenty of other countries with high gun ownership rates, but a few sensible regulations stop this kind of shit happening, and guess what? Those countries aren’t oppressive dictatorships, they’re modern, progressive societies.

Meanwhile, the USA, for all your talk of guns preventing dictatorship is a disgrace. You have have bigoted asshole running your country, your healthcare is barbaric (and they’re trying to make it worse), your tax system is ridiculous and your minority citizens are being criticised for daring to protest about the systemic racism they have to endure.

Gun control won’t make your country “less free”, because it’s already ranked pretty low there. But it will certainly lower the number of mass shootings.

Bob, the people you're trying to either defend or deflect attention from are fucking cunts, end of story. I understand that people are being driven to the far right (leftist violence and impingement on free speech predated Trump and the rise of the alt right, and has a lot to do as a causal factor for both), and that certainly not everyone heading to that end of spectrum are awful, but anyone preaching racial purity, resisting the white genocide etc have lost the fucking plot. There is no right side apart from condemning all illegal violence and upholding free speech.

Newt, you pontificate about how even handed you've been, but where are the hosts of videos showing antifa violence? Where are the upvotes for this video? I've been considering putting some of them up not as a mitigation for the actions of the right, but to show that polarisation and extremism is no good for anyone, but I was almost entirely sure they wouldn't sift in the slightest. Given this vid has been up for 9 hours and has 1 vote (mine), the theory seems to hold water...

Meanwhile, Arnold's tirade against nazi's is top sift of the week. Not that he was wrong of course, but anyone with five minutes and a willingness to be open minded can find endless unbiased documentation of leftist violence, something he completely omits to mention. He talks about the nazi's rotting in hell, how about Stalin's communists (which antifa models itself off...)?

Sift is leftward leaning and that's cool, I generally agree with a lot of sensible ideas that people around here are for. But it has it's own bigotry against people expressing views that aren't in lockstep with the majority view, and members certainly aren't afraid to punish people for not toeing the line.

And one of my favourite quotes as an advocate for free speech no matter how awful or confronting it might be...

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."

H. L. Mencken

Misleading title, otherwise it would be a good post. The slave trade of the 1700's would never have grown into what if became if there were not buyers.

@newtboy, you are correct. Slavery indeed long predates the trade of Africans across oceans. Though, it probably didn't start in Mesopotamia because it was probably happening a little bit everywhere there were tribes that were aggressive with each other.

When slavery is thought of in a modern sense, we tend to think of the slave trade during the early stages of the industrial revolution.

And indeed, members of different tribes were more or less kidnapped and brought to the coast by coastal tribes, where they were sold to ships, which usually originated in Europe or N. America.

One of the busiest ports for the slave trade was Dakar, Senegal. The kingdom there would collect people, to take to Goree Island where they would be later loaded onto ships.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gor%C3%A9e

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.

So now I am curious about this, based on the title.

So they have these safari parks right, where you drive your own car between the animals. So based on that I would imagine the car would be safe from lions.

But when I just think about it, and about how much stronger such animals are than humans, I would expect the window to break if a lion pounces at it. It would shatter of course, so it would immediately confuse a big predator, but if it is dedicated enough to get really angry at the driver (maybe if the car stereo would be blaring Britney Spears or something like that, really pissing of the lion), that car window would only be a very minor stoppage for the lion's attack?

As I read on Twitter. Bill Paxton was the only actor to be killed by an Alien, a Terminator, and a Predator.

I'm an apex predator who's nearly as old as the dinosaurs, and you're a johnny come lately monkey who cant even be bothered to hold his camera the right way.
You could have captured me in my full reptilian glory, it would have been awesome. You know what? Fuck this I'm outta here! I hope you at least remember how to use those opposable thumbs of yours to change your pants properly.

TLDR Proof that alligators hate vertical video.

Didn't park itself as much as tried to hide from the predators.

The real irony is that economic hardship hits Seattle folks quite hard. We lose 20 families a week to cost of living problems, and our homeless tent cities are near legendary by now. We have 'economic anxiety' right here in River City. Still didn't vote for a sexual predator.

@gorillaman

The only thing I see failing completely is your absurd attempt at rationalizing your bigotry--more aptly labelled in this case by its proper name: Islamophobia. I don't for a second believe what I'm about to post will change your mind about Islam or Muslims in general but I do believe that this kind of bigotry needs to be called out when it rears its ugly head. And my, you went full ugly there, didn't you... comparing Muslims to rats and seriel killers? Classy.

Despite your protestations to the contrary, there are in fact Muslims who do not believe in God but for a variety of reasons (keeping peace with religious family members, maintaining a connection to their cultural heritage, networking, etc.) continue to attend services and identify as Muslims. This is true of many believers in all the major religions, including Christianity and Judaism.

You see, as much as you'd like Muslims to all be boogeymen coming to bring Sharia law down on the rest of world, anyone who has actually met and talked with a Muslim (and god-forbid actually visited one of the countries StukaFox listed) realizes that Muslims, like all people, are extremely diverse (again, despite your protestations to the contrary).

Indeed there are Sharia zealots. But there are also moderates and reformers and even liberal radicals. Mostly, though its just a lot of people trying to get on with their lives the best way they know how.

Now, I find most religious beliefs to be repugnant. However, I don't find the ideas expressed in the Koran to be much more repugnant than, say, the Bible. In fact, I'm less concerned about what is written in supposedly holy books and more concerned with how believers attempt to implement those ideas in reality. I do indeed find particular forms of this implementation, such as forcing women to wear a bhurka, disturbing (just as I find Christians' attacks on LGBT rights disturbing). It's important to note, though, that such practices are NOT universal. For example, in some Islamic countries like Malaysia it's enough to simply cover your hair with a colorful scarf.

On the other hand, other practices that you mentioned such as Female Genital Mutilation and virginity tests ARE NOT Islamic. FGM predates Islam and is still practiced in the locales where it originated (places such as Mali, for instance) that now happen to be Islamic majority areas. The Indonesian virginity tests as well do not stem from some universal commandment in Islam but from Indonesian culture which sees women as "the symbol of the nations moral guardians".

Again, I don't suppose any of this makes any difference to you. You want to see the world in black and white, us versus them, "rats" and "serial killers" versus you, the white knight who is just trying to save us all from our cultural relativistic blindness. And so the shades of grey I am describing to you will likely go overlooked. I would be happy to be proven wrong, but I suspect the reality is I'll receive some lengthy reply that can be distilled down to, "Islam bad, hur." Or perhaps, "All religions bad, but Islam worst, hur." To which I can only reply, that demonizing the practitioners of any particular religion is unlikely to bring about the reforms you seek.

I 100% agree that not only is Bernie the better candidate and would make a better President than either Clinton or Trump, he would also have a better chance of beating Trump.

Republicans might not like Sanders on a political level ("ermahgerd, teh socialism is coming!", etc), but they DESPISE Clinton on a personal level.

And let's be honest, most of that has nothing to do with her real or perceived failings.. it's because
a) she's a woman and
b) she was married to Bill.

But that is irrelevant because Clinton is the candidate.

Addressing your other points:
"Trump is a womanizer / misogynist / predator. Yeah, and Clinton is married to a worse one who disgraced the Presidency while he was in office.

Trump lies constantly. As opposed to the Clintons, who would never lie. For example, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" (Bill), "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is" (Bill)"

Sorry, I missed the part where Bill Clinton was the nominee. Leaving aside the dubious nature of the allegations against him, the point is that he's not the candidate, Hillary is.

The email thing was bad, but as has been gone over many times, it was stupid rather than malicious.

"Trump has no experience with government and would make an incompetent president. What's worse: a crooked / corrupt Washington insider that knows how to game the system, or someone with no experience?"

Easy, Trump is worse. When did we all decide that being able to make deals was a bad thing? That's what politics is. If you don't know the system, you will get railroaded.

Now, my preference would have been for someone who knows the system and wants to change it, but as that's not going to happen, I'll take someone who can get shit done over an inexperienced buffon any day.

Once again, I completely agree that Bernie would have stood a better chance than Hillary of being elected, but it pretty much doesn't matter anymore. Everyday that passes Trump slips further behind, giving me some small hope for humanity.
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/

Yeah, Trump is a complete tool. Guilty of all the stuff Maher said about him. Given that kind of "competition", what would the Democrats have to do to get those 20 states to flip their direction?

I can take a stab that that one, Bill -- he's sitting right next to you. If the Democrats had chosen Sanders as their candidate, I guarantee that at least some of those states would have gone blue on election day.

Firm, registered Democrats? They'd all happily vote for Bernie in the general, just like they will vote for Hillary.

Undecideds, moderates, and young people? Drastically more likely to vote for Bernie than Hillary. A huge segment of the voting population is disgusted with the two major choices, and would happily flock to a candidate that has a proven track record of honesty and integrity, instead of the dog and pony show that we have now.

Firm, die-hard Republicans? Maher is right; there is a certain percentage of people that would never vote Democrat. But, I don't think that number is above 50% of the population even in the reddest of red states. But even for many of those people that are completely dissatisfied by Trump, from their perspective Hillary is NOT a better option.


Let's consider how all the arguments against Trump play to that specific audience: (note that the responses are what *they* think, not necessarily what *I* think)

Trump is a womanizer / misogynist / predator. Yeah, and Clinton is married to a worse one who disgraced the Presidency while he was in office.

Trump lies constantly. As opposed to the Clintons, who would never lie. For example, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" (Bill), "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is" (Bill), and "I am confident that I never sent nor received any information that was classified at the time" (Hillary).

Trump has no experience with government and would make an incompetent president. What's worse: a crooked / corrupt Washington insider that knows how to game the system, or someone with no experience?

etc. etc.

Hillary goddamn Clinton is NOT going to be seen as a reasonable alternative to Trump to those people. No matter how much he goes off the rails. No matter what crazy, foul, contemptible shit he says or does. No matter how many skeletons you dig out of his closet. Why? Because they are convinced (reasonably or not) that the Clintons have done just as much questionable shit and more, they are perhaps just better at covering it up.

But if the Democrat candidate was Bernie Sanders, I'm sure a lot more of those hard-line Republicans would be way more tempted to vote blue in November.

@newtboy

I believe the quote you were looking for from me was:
What is more, upon the UN mandating a two state solution to the whole mess, the Jewish Palestinians immediately accepted. The Arab Palestinians though appealed to the Arab league, and many of the leaders within it that stood alongside the Nazi's pontificating solutions to 'the problem'.

The word stood being in the past tense. Guys like the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, leading the fight in Palestine in the 30's and coming back to fight during 1948.

You said:
The few actual refugees there that the axis created were absorbable by the Palestinians.

In which time frame did those few refugees arrive that you would count legitimate and absorbable? IMO it has to predate the Grand Mufti's uprising in the late 1930s, simply because tensions between Jewish and Arab Palestinians at this point were bad enough that Arab Palestinians already wanted negative immigration numbers for Jews.

Also maybe re-read you last paragraph. You come dangerously close to stating that the European Jews had the choice between living in camps and doing what the folks led by Haj Amin al-Husseini told them to do, or being considered invaders themselves. That's about the closest we've come to agreeing on something in fact, and I hardly blame the refugees for not choosing camps under the rule of a guy that stated:
Germany and Italy recognize the right of the Arab countries to solve the question of the Jewish elements, which exist in Palestine and in the other Arab countries, as required by the national and ethnic (völkisch) interests of the Arabs, and as the Jewish question was solved in Germany and Italy.

Amazing photography, but....

Ok, the jumping and the eyesight is impressive, but mapping the world in 3 dimensions... I would have said almost any animal is capable of that, otherwise, they would spend their time bumping into things.

As for learning and problem solving, the video doesn't really give any indication as to how we know that. Sneaking up on your prey and avoiding the potentially dangerous parts of it is something almost all predators do. It hardly qualifies as "genius".

I'm not saying the spider isn't clever (well, clever for something with a brain the size of a pinhead), but this doesn't really give a good example of that.

Your video, Alien vs Predator Stop Motion, 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 86 Badge!