I agree that NoScript tends to make it a hassle to get basic functionality out of the vast majority of the web. You have to play around with allowing scripts from some domains and not others, on pretty much every page you visit.

...Which is pretty scary, if you think about it. Are all of those cross-site scripts beneficial or even necessary from a user standpoint? Hell no. Users stand to gain nothing from all that crap running. From our perspective, they just increase load times and data usage, often compounded with auto-reloading. We should have control over that stuff in all circumstances, but it becomes absolutely critical in mobile internet where we generally don't have as much processing power AND the vast majority of people have data usage caps.

Basically what I'm saying is, the admitted fact that NoScript tends to make the web unusable is a symptom of a deeper problem with how the web is constructed these days.

If you like the idea of NoScript, but generally find it too high-maintenance, you might want to try Privacy Badger. It requires somewhat less user input with regards to which trackers/scripts get blocked, instead going with defaults based on "trustworthiness" as measured by algorithms from the EFF. Those defaults can be tweaked if you desire, also.

I usually run a Firefox (or Pale Moon) client that is extremely locked down. UBlock Origin, NoScript, Privacy Badger, Self-Destructing Cookies, sometimes Ghostery, etc. I use that as my default browser, and take the time to fine-tune the controls in NoScript, element hiding in uBlock, etc. for sites that I visit regularly.

But frequently, I'll find a link to some article that I want to read and notice that the page content won't load at all since it requires some nonsensical script. In those cases, if I don't want to take the time to fiddle with NoScript etc. permissions, I copy the URL and fire up Chrome in incognito mode, with only uBlock Origin.

Probably not worth the hassle for most people, but I guess I'm kicking and screaming my way into this brave new world.

@bareboards2 Ma'am, I apologize both for the factually untrue statement, which I made without keeping with proper English debate/conversation etiquette, and also for assuming a gender for you title without proper evaluation.

To make clear my position, as I believe many, if not all of you here (@PlayhousePals @newtboy @Januari @bareboards2) mistake my position and/or personal political siding...

Firstly, I DO NOT like Trump, his policies, his manner, his monomaniacal bent towards the topics he figures are worth his time to address, not much of anything, actually.

Secondly, yes, I am conservative, and for a young male in British society, this leaves me at rather an odd way with those of an opposing political bent, particularly those of the Liberal/Progressive variety(Liberal less so, as it is an off-take of Libertarianism). I believe that effectually bending society over backwards to meet the stresses of a brave new world is a brash and undeveloped concept. I believe the perfect society is a logical one, where all that are able are held to an advantageously high level of acumen, education, etiquette, state of public dress, etc. I do not believe in the idea of "Utopia", as basic human psychology(which I have the equivalent of the american bachelors degree in) denies the facet of a cohesive human culture/society.

Thirdly, I arrive in support of Trump not out of a liking for him or his policy, but an awareness of what the enaction of his policies would bring. This awareness is spawned by the awareness of the state of the American Political Establishment, as is governed by people with power beyond reckoning, the face of which happens to be Hillary Clinton. Trump's policies, if allowed to be implemented, would cause such as rift in the political establishment/climate, as well as the hearts and minds of the American people, as to bring about change.

So, in effect, I support Trump for the very reason many of you don't, the Chaos that would almost inevitably ensue. A chaos that would likely go unnoticed, as such shifts occur without common knowledge...

Or... You could vote for a woman who has on more occasions than is accountable, broken Federal Law, covered up her husband's brutalization of women, and God knows what else, and only manages to escape prison because she is one of the sharpest tools the totalitarian American political establishment has...

Good song.

I read on Kotaku it's better than Civ 5 with the Brave New World expansion pack.

I liked the Hunger Games (first movie) enough that I decided to read the books. OK, but the third one went off the rails a bit and overall I felt like it would be better to try to get the YA audience to read Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, or 1984, all of which still hold up pretty well.

I haven't watched Divergent yet. Would you (or your wife) recommend watching the movie first and then reading (if I like the movie), or going straight to the books?

I finally started re-reading A Song of Ice and Fire, so this would probably have to wait a good while until I finish that, but I don't mind holding off if that would be the thing to do.

No, dumbassess....Here's a 'strawman' for yas all:

The terrorists are created by a highly influential and financed cabal of cunts who need attention drawn away from their fascist police-state vision of something worse than Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, and Nineteen-Eighty-Four combined ever thought about being imagined, in order to prepare the world for an end game fist-fuck without lube and wrist-watches the likes of which Bradbury, Huxley, or Orwell could have never fucking imagined in their worst drug-addled nightmares, This potential anything-goes scenario enabled, by willing participants who think they have a clue ready to doubly-assfuck the gullible into thinking that sophistic mumbo-jumbo is some kind of cure.

Get a fucking clue people, you're all cattle to the conductors of the most twisted opera of catshit ever perpetrated on the civilized world.

Now: Are these the words of a "troll" or simply someone with a clue tired of reading the rambling retardation of passionate idiots??

Seconding Artician. The brain evolved by natural selection, just like the rest of the body. It has built in biases and modules that vary genetically. Look at the wide variety of personalities in dog breeds, for example. In humans, the big five personality traits are estimated to be about 50% heritable based on twin studies.

Gattaca is a good movie and Brave New World is a good book, but they should not be taken as the ends of some slippery slope that any eugenic policy inevitably leads to. I think it's unfortunate that so much fear of eugenics is propagated by dystopian fictions like those. Eugenics can be done in a humane way that respects all individual rights. For instance:

1. a system of incentives for highly successful people to have more children or donate to sperm banks.

2. Universal single-payer healthcare, providing among other things free condoms and birth control pills to all, so that the use of contraception will not be so much inversely correlated with income as it has been from 1850 to the present when the poor often couldn't afford it (and it's a demonstrable fact that on average the poor tend to have lower intelligence partly due to genetics)

Even such modest, individual rights respecting policies, if phrased in terms of benefiting the gene pool, are political suicide because people are still afraid of imaginary slippery slopes leading to Hitler. Most of the US is still in denial of the implications of biological science, for reasons that speak well of them, but it's time to grow up and get over that habit of Godwinizing any attempt to improve the gene pool regardless of whether it infringes individual rights.

Or maybe lots of people people don't actually believe that, but are reluctant to say otherwise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0W9sSqeJnA

Manning is no coward; neither is Snowden. Persons in our Govt should be feared.

"In his 2009 book, A Terrible Mistake, researcher H. P. Albarelli Jr. concurs with the Olson family and concludes that Frank Olson was murdered because a personal crisis of conscience made it likely he would divulge state secrets concerning several CIA programs, chief among them Project ARTICHOKE and an MKDELTA project code-named Project SPAN"

whistleblow much.. thanks to the internet now just ignorance and massive disinformation can still prevent the "truth", but its harder. progress? certainly.

brave new world on the exponential curve. running man, anyone...

My major problem with it is that the government/NSA claimed it disrupted terror plots because of it's surveillance. Am sorry but I call bullshit on that. Terror groups are aware of this kind of activity and wouldn't go planning anything. Human intelligence is still the best way of tackling this.

From my perspective this is just J. Edgar Hoover communist witch hunt excuses to basically keep taps on everyone Brave New World style.

A few questions...
ANYBODY who doesn't give 110% to their career will not reach the highest levels of that career?
Are you saying that Georgew W. gave 110% to become President? Well, if that what he delivered is what it takes to get the job, it's a shame I can't run for office. I wouldn't even have to put on pants to come across as less idiotic as he did.
Are you really buying into this "Just give everything and you'll get there" myth? 'Cause that's not how the real world works for everyone. Have you ever been denied a deserved promotion? That is not that uncommon, especially for women. Look, giving your best is usually necessary but not always required. Luck, a lack of scruple, intolerance of others, manipulative skills and connections can really propel your career even if you don't work hard enough to deserve it. Just think of the cliché of the woman who sleeps her way on top. She doesn't even have to give 110% there, men are easy to please.

And regarding you biological theories, yes, men are stronger but how strong do you have to be to sit in an office? How much strength does it take to type on a keyboard? I'd say the jobs these female breadwinners we're talking about have are usually not involving tasks of great physical strength.
And why is it automatically the women job to take care of the children?
I mean, we're talking 2 parent families here since single women have no other choice than going to work unless you want to suggest poverty or child labour as viable alternatives.
In todays first world society it shouldn't be such a stretch to consider men as caregivers of the family's offspring. What makes the stronger sex so unsuitable to play that part? Because we're emotional cripples, unable to bond with the little ones like people with real breasts? Because society could point at us and laugh about our mangina? What is it a woman does a man can't do?
Oh I get it, that's just how biology wants it, right? We have to listen to mother nature, it's the smart thing to do. Well, that's at least what I told the cops after I left my house naked. You know, pants don't grow on trees and shirts don't run through the woods, evading capture by predators. It's not natural, not what mother wants. Let's not do this. Right?
We decided to shape the world as we see fit a long time ago. We can't change all behavioural routines in our heads but we are not powerless either. Why stick to role models that are ancient when we can make new ones with more benefits? Humans can't fly; didn't stop them from building planes. This is a question of nurture not nature.

What troubles me the the most, though, is your apparent belief that households with both parents working do it by choice. That is certainly not always the case, especially not in lower income families in America. To avoid that both parents would be forced to work, you need to have minimum incomes that are high enough to feed an entire family. How much is the minimum wage in america and how well can one person provide for a family with it? Would you like to raise 2 kids with only that much money?

Another thing is your idea that "women should gravitate to careers that will give the maximum flexibility so that they can spend all the needed time with their children". What kind of career is that? What jobs allow you to have "maximum flexibility" in terms or worktime? Drug dealing? E-Mail spamming? Porn?
I'm sure such jobs exist but I'd say they're very, very rare. Not a viable solution.

You call it "guidelines not rules" but maybe these guidelines are as antiquitated as ducking under the table when the bomb drops. We live in a brave new world, we need to do better than this. We shouldn't leave potential untapped because grampa doesn't like it. This is the 21st century, let's act like it.

There is nothing that makes women less qualified to bring home the bucks. "Think of the children" is simply a lazy argument against it and only shows the real problems of this debate: sexism and a lack of social security.

Hmmm. Ok fucj it. I'll go and find a video with Aussies praising the confiscation of their property and rendering the place crime-free...ish.

This is more for the country that's headed towards a colossal fist-fuck because of politicians (criminals), pharmaceutical companies (insulated from mention by all major media and, not surprisingly, self-pimping turds without a clue like TYT, one of THE most flaccid, non-journalistic cretinfests on the web) who help to "create" mental-health problems larger than they need to be by unleashing damaged goods full of legal drugs prescribed by complicit doctors. Step in, the magic wand of unraveling and deconstruction of the U.S. Constitution by appointed and approved, so-called scholars from Harvard(oh hey, the same place not a few of the cunts who run the country hailed-from) to "provide" a solution for a problem that they created and you have the slow-motion train-wreck of the coming police state in one of the best places to be on the planet.

Everything is propaganda sparky, it's your job to wade through what you perceive to be bullshit, kinna like I'm wading thorough yours without really wanting to argue.

Brave New World. Newsflash: Eliminate gun-free zones, arm yourselves against an agenda to let mental health monstrosities roam the place un-checked on hardcore psychotropics with guns STOLEN from their fucked-up mommy, and don't ask a country who will hide their guns from a government determined to take them ALL away to accept anything less than a sane solution to what is primarily a problem created by the people with the MOST money, power, and influence.

Tell me why the pharmaceutical companies shouldn't be having their asses dragged across the coals on television for their part in mass-murder? Answer: Because they have more power and money than a gun lobby.

Again, I give fuck-all about loaded facts and figures form any side of the aisle, they mean dick because the real issue lies in governments fist-fucking their citizens. Shame on the the Brits for letting their government take their shit away and shame on the Aussies for letting the Crown fuck them as well.

>> ^Norsuelefantti:

So soon USA will become a cult nation? Can't wait.


Trips me out that it took someone besides the submitter and 2 days to add this to the cult channel. Mormonism is about as glaring an example of a cult as any of them. Others you may have heard of....
Scientology
Jehovah's Witnesses
Church Universal and Triumphant
Moonies
Raëlism
Christian Scientists
Unification Church...and a shitpot full of others including some fringe militant polygamists with their heads up to their red necks up each other's asses.
It's a brave new world, William Gibson fans get ready because he pretty much nailed with every novel possible scenarios for soon-to-be Planet E, and whack religions factor way in.
Personally, I'd love to have al...er, some of you, members of my church someday

Brave New World

Nice. I was just looking through previous what are you readings yesterday for suggestions.

Starting The Mote in God's Eye. Looks promising.

Skim-read The Reluctant Fundamentalist this afternoon - it's rather dreadful.

Finished Crime and Punishment a couple of days ago. Loved it. One of those few 'classic' novels that isn't all hype. It's engaging and enjoyable, and very rewarding. The ultimate message that we should stop trying to think for ourselves and just do what Jesus says is possibly not the best, but that doesn't overwhelm and the style isn't preachy. I have yet to read a novel more perfectly structured.
It was a little distracting that one of the characters is basically Columbo. When he did the 'just one more thing' routine I had to put the book down for a minute. Turns out Columbo was based on Porphyrius. Man, that makes it weird for the modern reader.
I'm developing a taste for golden age russian literature; I hope to read a lot more soon.

Before that I burned through I Am Legend in one sitting. It's electrifying.

Brave New World needs to be more widely read.

The Algebraist is notable for having one of the least likeable villains ever. Genuinely, I think that's its main literary achievement. I have huge respect for Iain Banks for writing a world-conquering, star-spanning tyrant who is in no way cool or enviable. Archimandrite Luseferous is like a parody of a fourteen-year-old's power fantasies; not a Magnificent Bastard, he's just a contemptible, nasty (occasionally terrifying) creature with no charisma or real intelligence and we need to see more of that.
There's great stuff in this book, but it does follow the standard disappointing SF novel arc of: 'big ideas, big ideas, oh no the plot is taking over, narrowing focus, narrowing focus, now it's just about this guy and his Quest, how did the galaxy get so small, inevitable convenient climax.' Very much worth reading to pick out the many great elements in this book, but those elements don't really come together.
I'll get round to the Culture novels eventually.

Oh, I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for the first time since I was five, but couldn't carry the enthusiasm on to the rest of the Narnia books.

Thinking about Crime and Punishment reminded me, I really need to pick up a cheap second-hand ereader so I can stop paying for public domain books.

I like the sound of The Quantum Thief, that goes on the list.

Every day each of us sees the good, the bad, and the ugly things that make us what we are. Chaplins message was laudable. But good, like evil, cannot be forced upon us (Brave new world), it has to be down to the individual. And, as long as we remain individuals - which we should- it can only be hoped that good will prevail. I believe education is the key. Those intent on evil, and power, have always preyed upon the ignorant, the weak, and the frightened.