There's plenty wrong with decimating their natural habitats and then shooting them when they have nowhere else to look for food.

Animals might not understand how to write a contract but they understand territory very well.

We walk through their land and then we get upset if they aggressively defend it.

And the vast majority of this habitat loss is so someone can stick a cow on the land because that's what consumers are demanding. We're effectively replacing the planet's wonderful biodiversity with 5 animals and 5 types of crop to feed these farm animals. We must change our consumption habits, otherwise nature will change it for us in about 50 years.

Good points.

I'm not a gun nutadvocate, but I have friends who are. I have shot a fairly wide range of guns with them, including an AR-15. For myself, I only ever owned BB guns and a .22 pellet air rifle, for target shooting and varmint control on my family farm. I did go pheasant hunting with borrowed 20 and 12 gauge shotguns a couple times.

My friend that owns the AR-15 is a responsible gun owner. Do I think he needs it? Hell no. But he likes it. Do I need a PC with an i7 processor and nVidia 1060 GPU? Hell no. But I like it.

So I guess it becomes a question of to what extent the things that we like can be used for negative purposes. My nVidia 1060 is unlikely to be used to facilitate a crime (unless games or bitcoin mining get criminalized). However, even though AR-15s might be one of the primary firearms of choice for murderous wackos, the percentage of people that own AR-15's who are murderous wackos is also extremely low.

If banning AR-15s would significantly reduce the rate of mass shootings and/or the average number of deaths per incident, it could be well worth doing even though it would annoy many responsible owners like my friend. ...But, I just don't think that would be the case. Not by itself.

I think we're at a point where we NEED to do something. If the something that we decide to do is to ban AR-15s, well, so be it I guess. But I don't think we'd be pleased with the long-term results of that. It'd be cutting the flower off of the top of the weed. We need to dig deeper, and I think that registration and licensing are sane ways to attempt to do that.

Your video, Inside Of A Chinese Click Farm, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

From the YouTube link:

Guy Gets Inside A Chinese Click Farm And Holy Crap, That's A Lot Of Phones

​Turns out if you want to run a business where you rate a bunch of apps and write fake reviews, you can't just spoof having a bunch of phones — you actually need the phones. And so that's what we have here: a room full of phones relentlessly rating apps and writing BS reviews because everything in life (and particularly on the internet) is a lie.

A Russian man visited a Chinese click farm. They make fake ratings for mobile apps. He said they have 10,000 more phones.

A Russian Went Inside A Chinese Click-Farm: This Is What He Found

On the day when Snapchat erased billions of market cap from investors (and founders) accounts - as the MAUs-means-money model seems to break - we thought it worthwhile taking another glimpse into the hush-hush world of 'click-farms' and the fakeness of the latest social network fads.

So, if they're not human, where do all those "likes," "retweets," and "followers" lighting up your social media accounts from?

Thanks to this Russian gentleman - who visited a Chinese click farm, where they make fake ratings for mobile apps and other things like this - we now know...

He said they have 10,000 more phones just like these.

As we concluded previously, the bottom line is simple: "The illusion of a massive following is often just that," said Tony Harris, who does social media marketing for major Hollywood movie firms, said he would love to be able to give his clients massive numbers of Twitter followers and Facebook fans, but buying them from random strangers is not very effective or ethical. And once the prevailing users of social networks grasp that one of the main driving features of the current social networking fad du jour is nothing but a big cash scam operating out of a basement in the far east, expect both Facebook and shortly thereafter, Twitter, to go the way of 6 Degrees, Friendster and MySpace, only this time the bagholders will be the public. Because "it is never different this time." The only certain thing: someone will promptly step in to replace any social network that quietly fades into the sunset.

Inside China's phoney 'click farm': Tiny office uses 10,000 handsets to send fake ratings and 'likes' for boosting clients' online popularity.

Possible, but I don't really think so. I think that the Medical minds of the time thought that physical shock, pressure waves from bombing etc. as you described, were a (or perhaps THE) primary cause of the psychological problems of returning soldiers. So the name "shell shock" came from there, but the symptoms that it was describing were psychological and, I think precisely equal to modern PTSD. Basically, "shell shock" became a polite euphemism for "soldier that got mentally messed up in the war and is having difficulty returning to civilian life".

My grandfather was an Army Air Corps armorer during WWII. He went through basic training, but his primary job was loading ammunition, bombs, external gas tanks, etc. onto P-47 airplanes. He was never in a direct combat situation, as I would describe it. He was never shot at, never in the shockwave radius of explosions, etc. But after the war he was described as having mild "shell shock", manifested by being withdrawn, not wanting to talk about the war, and occasionally prone to angry outbursts over seemingly trivial things. Eventually, he started talking about the war in his mid 80's, and here's a few relevant (perhaps) stories of his:

He joined the European theater a couple days after D-Day. Came to shore on a Normandy beach in the same sort of landing craft seen in Saving Private Ryan, etc. Even though it was days later, there were still LOTS of bodies on the beach, and thick smell of death. Welcome to the war!

His fighter group took over a French farm house adjacent to a dirt landing strip / runway. They put up a barbed wire perimeter with a gate on the road. In one of the only times I heard of him having a firearm and being expected to potentially use it, he pulled guard duty at that gate one evening. His commanding officer gave him orders to shoot anyone that couldn't provide identification on sight. While he was standing guard, a woman in her 20's rolled up on a bicycle, somewhat distraught. She spoke no English, only French. She clearly wanted to get in, and even tried to push past my grandfather. By the letter of his orders, he was "supposed" to shoot her. Instead, he knocked her off her bike when she tried to ride past after getting nowhere verbally and physically restrained her. At gunpoint! When someone that spoke French got there, it turned out that she was the daughter of the family that lived in the farm house. They had no food, and she was coming back to get some potatoes they had left in the larder.

Riding trains was a common way to get air corps support staff up to near the front, and also to get everybody back to transport ships at the end of the war. On one of those journeys later in the war, my grandfather was riding in an open train car with a bunch of his buddies. They were all given meals at the start of the trip. A short while later, the track went through a French town. A bunch of civilians were waiting around the tracks begging for food. I'll never forgot my grandfather describing that scene. It was tough for him to get out, and then all he managed was "they was starvin'!" He later explained that he and his buddies all gave up the food that they had to those people in the first town -- only to have none left to give as they rolled past similar scenes in each town on down the line.

When my mother was growing up, she and her brothers learned that they'd better not leave any food on their plates to go to waste. She has said that the angriest she ever saw her dad was when her brothers got into a food fight one time, and my grandfather went ballistic. They couldn't really figure out what the big deal was, until years later when my grandfather started telling his war stories and suddenly things made more sense.


A lot of guys had a much rougher war than my grandfather. Way more direct combat. Saw stuff much worse -- and had to DO things that were hard to live with. I think the psychological fallout of stuff like that explains the vast majority of "shell shock", without the addition of CTE-like physical head trauma. I'd wager that when the docs said Stewart's father's shell shock was a reaction to aerial bombardment, that was really just a face-saving measure to try to explain away the perceived "weakness" of his condition.

I agree for the most part, but with batteries, now becoming reasonable in size and price, it's not so hard to be totally off grid. Micro hydro can also be efficient power storage if properly designed with a dual reservoir system.
Granted, that seems to work best in small scale setups so far, but there is an island .....(https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/09/17/349223674/tiny-spanish-island-nears-its-goal-100-percent-renewable-energy)
...currently (since 2014) using this tech to be nearly 100% green.

Dismissing projections as unrealistic without fully examining them may doom our economy and planet.
That's what happened with solar, people just claimed it's expensive and unreliable, which meant those they convinced didn't know how wrong that is, and didn't buy systems or support solar farms. I ignored them and did some light math, and found that even an expensive high tech system with batteries, professionally installed, would pay for itself in about 8 years, with a 20 year expected lifespan (and I live in Humboldt county, with the foggiest airport in America, not Arizona). I'm damn glad I didn't listen. Even a 2 year delay would have cost me 1/2 my rebates, making the system take an extra 2+ years to pay for itself by costing me thousands upon thousands of dollars (instead of saving me thousands per year).

Edit: Also, here in Humboldt we just switched to choice in electricity, we can choose regular pge power (mostly old school generation), a mixture of up to 75% (I think, maybe higher) renewable for cheaper, or 100% renewable for more. All 3 now bill transmission (including voltage/frequency regulation) separately, so it's easy to see what generation alone costs. It's clear so far that mostly renewable is the best bet economically, and I assume it will become more renewable as new technologies become available.....at least I hope so.

Lol. Nice try. If I were a Russian troll pretending to be left leaning, I would be doing it on a right wing site, wouldn't I?

Deliberate, he admitted as much. At the direction of Trump or Jared, or both, according to him. They're the only leaders of the transition team he reported to.

What he admitted he lied about was colluding with Russians to subvert American foreign policy, which is treason, he's been caught on tape and now admitted doing it at the transition teams direction.

It's about his team being liars and criminal traitors. If it's not at his direction, he's incompetent as a leader. If it's not with his knowledge, he's senile. Consider his best attribute was supposed to be his ability to get only the best people, so.....

Everyone who's not a Russian puppet or Trumpeter believes it, and you do too, you simply can't admit it or your world crashes down.

I'm here because I'm retired (low income doesn't necessarily mean low net worth), it's a fun site to watch more interesting videos and talk about them, and with few exceptions have adult conversations and maybe learn something I didn't know from interesting diverse people.
Even you've taught me something....that Putin's troll farms are so advanced they turned out right wing characters to "live" on left leaning sites in order to give the impression that right wingers are ridiculous know nothings that can only parrot the great leader's ramblings as if they weren't racist insanity and troll like 12 year olds with no information to add to a discussion but lots of "I no you are but wat am I" arguments, this to give the impression that those with opposing views aren't worth engaging elsewhere. That helps divide us farther, Dimitri. You know this, it's why you exist here. ;-)

Sounds like an old farm tractor idling.

The data of the study came out of Germany, where the effects of a change in temperature are much more moderate than in many other areas. Basically, this decline is attributed mostly due to farming, the saturation of everything with pesticides, and, generally speaking, the destruction of the ecosphere. Even worse, this is in a country with comparably extensive regulation on all these matters, unlike, say, India.

As you say, this really is no bueno.

Driving past fields of rapeseed in the late '90s meant a windshield full of bugs. We used to head into the fields wearing yellow shirts just to see who can get the densest armor of bugs. Now, I can walk past the very same fields outside the town I grew up in with less than 5 bugs on a yellow shirt.

Or how about another anecdote: when I grew up, barbecue in my (grand-)parents yard meant paying attention to all the wasps, so that you don't swallow one by accident. I haven't seen a single one over several barbecues this year. Bees and bumblebees are still around, though less plentiful, but wasps are a complete no-show. Haven't seen a hornet in two years.

I drove a semi sometimes for a couple years for my family farm. Didn't drive a whole lot, and pretty much all on back dirt roads and in lots/fields, to get some experience before possibly getting a CDL. Never ended up getting the CDL because I moved and changed jobs. I was around and learned from skilled drivers (my dad for one), so I know a little bit, but I'm certainly no expert. That being said:

Backing up a vehicle with a trailer is quite difficult because compared to a normal vehicle with no trailer, all your intuition is wrong and little mistakes get amplified quickly.

Backing up a car and want your tail end to go right? Turn the wheel right. Want the same thing to happen in a semi with a trailer? First turn the wheel left while you back up, which will push the tail end of your tractor left, causing a reaction like pressing on a lever that pushes the tail end of the trailer right. But don't overdo it, because that same lever-type action causes more movement the further you get away from the fulcrum point, so a tiny move there can result in a BIG swing.

Complicating that, you have no central rear view mirror. Side mirrors work, but distance can be obscured by the huge trailer very quickly.

Basically, backing up is one of the most daunting things about learning to drive a truck, particularly for people new to it. The "pull ups" he mentioned are the best way to overcome that. Pulling forward a short/medium distance gets the tractor and trailer back into alignment, so that straight back should result in the trailer going straight back. From that point, you can try to make small corrections. If it starts to swing a lot, pull up again and straighten out, lather rinse repeat.


The guy in the video does a good job (way better than I could do), but he seems to think he's the shit. I don't think you earn real trucking community bragging rights until you can reverse double trailers, or even triples if you want to be worshiped as a god.

Here's a video with doubles:


One of the full-timers on my family farm was quite good with doubles. Not "obstacle course" good, but I saw him reverse a slow circle around a grain bin. And he liked to tell stories about a some semi-mythical whiz guy that could reverse triples around a corner, etc.

Only what they mentioned in the news.
20 ish guns.
2 ar15s, 1 with a bump stock.
1 ak pattern rifle (47 claimed, but the news is clueless. Could be a 74, could be an odd variant), possibly with a bump stock.
Then a bunch of other guns, not described.

Yes, full auto varies. I erred on the higher rate side.
A more realistic rate would be 12hz auto, 6hz bump, and 3hz semi.

Only other non-NFA non-bump rapid fire mechanism that I know of is a binary trigger (fires on pull, and on release). Effectively doubles your semi fire rate.

In any case, he only needed 1 gun and spare magazines.
I assume he brought everything not because it was necessary, but because he was planning to die and he had the stuff, so why not use it one last time (not like he'll get another chance).

To be fair, so far, mass shooters have stuck around for the long haul. Escape hasn't been an issue. But sure, in the future it could be.

True, you don't have to be 100% squeaky clean, but the vegas guy so far does look like he was.

As an aside, our felony code is incredibly expansive. People get disqualified from gun ownership over things that most normal people wouldn't even think would be illegal.

There's a stat that some lawyer published : a person typically commits 3 [obscure] felonies per day just going about normal daily activities. You can basically put anyone in jail if you choose to monitor them.

IMO, felonies should be divided into major and minor, with anything non violent being minor, and not disqualifying of gun ownership or right to vote.

Eg. I don't care if someone is running a pot farm. It isn't bothering anyone, it shouldn't even be a crime. But if it's gonna be a felony, at least it should be some lesser felony than it is now.

-scheherazade

"waaahhh, poor me. I had to work hard on my parents farm milking 80 cows"

Your parents had a fucking FARM, moron. They had 80 cows. You had the privilege of working hard on land that your family owned.

You think that just because you had to work you weren't privileged?

Guess what, dumbass? I fucking worked too. I helped out at a family business from a young age and then I went to school and worked at that and then I went to university and fucking worked there too.

And it was a fucking privilege to be able to do all of that.

I was lucky.

Lucky to be born in a first world, english speaking country with parents who could not only afford to send me to college, but who valued education.

That's the fucking definition of privilege right there.

Is anyone surprised that this guy has a large personal collection of slavery mementos?

He doesn't get that he's right...
.....church, one that doesn't get set on fire or shot up...white privilege.
Jobs where you get paid a decent wage for hard work....white privilege......
Police there to help you, not see you as the enemy...white privilege.


This was just another 20 minutes of a display of pure ignorance and racism....of course @bobknight33 thinks this is "truth" that disproves white privilege....but it's really a display of white ignorance and deep seated hatred.

That slave story was utter apologist bullshit. That did not happen, a slave throwing a fit doesn't get their way and aren't just allowed to keep their family, they get beaten to death. Just pure bullshit....like most of what he says.

Southern white farmers/ranchers are the biggest, most entitled welfare queens around, I speak from experience.

I'm a white man who lived in East Palo Alto for years, and I walked through it alone dozens of times after midnight. No one bothered me. I have seen black men accosted in white neighborhoods for being black repeatedly.

This was pure bigoted ignorance and lies, bob. Don't be proud of this idiot, be ashamed. It's not Christian to denounce and deride others who don't have the advantages you have, nor is it Christian to pretend you and your free ancestors with rights had it just as bad as slaves and blacks that couldn't even vote and weren't considered humans.

The only message of truth I see is the truth that many white southerners are insanely ignorant and completely devoid of empathy for others or rationality....but just try to take their farm subsidies for not growing corn and you'll hear about how they are the true downtrodden in society and the blacks are in control, all on welfare, and are the ones destroying the country.