Every 5 years you can vote in yet another rigged / slanted election.

Who need another fucking layer of overseers to ruin their lives.

So, firstly, I must agree with @ChaosEngine, a commencement speech is no place for political commentary. A commencement speech's purpose is to allow one who has paved a complex path through life and come out on top, or one who has overcome something great, (and) has a important lesson for those less-learned to share their knowledge, that it may be used for good.

(God that sentence is long, let me catch my virtual breath...)

Next, why, if he is to provide political commentary during a commencement speech, as so many do nowadays, does he slam Trump?

Anybody? Is it his hair? Is it his puffy little face? Is it because he looks like a pumpkin? No? Perhaps its because he is a disaster waiting to happen, because that seems to be the general sentiment from many people who are allowed to speak their minds en-masse nowadays...

But how is Trump worse than Clinton? Hmmm? Perhaps there are buried rape cases THAT WERE MADE PUBLIC BTW, in Trump's past? No?

Perhaps making billions of dollars FROM ONE MILLION is just inherently evil? Hmmm, no?

Okay, that Hairdo, it must burn a hole in the Ozone layer wherever he walks... Or flames must flower at his feet, as lotus flowers did for the Buddha? NO?

Perhaps he was wrong about the people that you blokes are letting into the country? Yes? Then how come one of them, (whom you could never tell is a radical, HE HAD A WIFE AND CHILD), just killed 50 members of the LGBT community in the horrible massacre in Orlando?(which was so bad we are getting news coverage of it in LONDON)

Hmmm, maybe electing someone who actually admits there is a problem, destroying political correctness, and being damned with the "established order" which supposedly keeps you Americans safe isnt such a bad idea...

Maybe electing a Woman with a hideous blot of a record, and a long standing member of said establishment is one such bad idea...

"[the] world is actually healthier, wealthier, better educated, more tolerant, less violent than it has ever been."

Not in places like Afghanistan, Libya, Jemen, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Lebanon, downtown Chicago, Detroit or Cleveland. Not in Greece. And I'm not entirely sure it's a better place for the hundreds of millions of Chinese who left their rural areas to become work nomads. Also not sure about the all the millions of people in Africa whose livelihood gets crushed by subsidised produce/corn from the West. Not sure about all the Indian farmers who are driven into suicide by the monopoly powers of seed suppliers. Not sure about India as a whole, now suffering from the third year in a row of a belated monsoon and horrific drought.

"Democracy means you don't everything you want, when you want it, all the time" ... "and occasionally comprise, and stay principled, but recognise that it's a long march towards progress"

He talks the talk, but even for a center-right guy, he doesn't walk the walk. Principles went out the window in Gitmo. Principles went out the window when the drivers behind the illegal war of aggression in Iraq were not prosecuted in accordance with the Nuremberg Principles. Principles went out the window when carpet surveillance pissed all over the Constitution. Principles went out the window when US military forces aid Al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria just because they oppose Assad. Even mentioning principles in the face of the gruesome, drone-driven terror campaigns in at least half a dozen countries makes me want to vomit.

And don't get me started on compromise. If you ban single-payer and drop the public option before negotiations begin, that's not compromise. That's theatre meant to mislead us plebs while you add an additional layer of "market" to an already dysfunctional market, which ends up profiting the insurance companies yet again.

We made viking longboats when I was a kid. My mum and I got well into it, we built a proper keel and ribs and then layered strips of card for the hull. She did quite a bit of the fiddly construction, but we did the research and planning together and I was thrilled to be making something totally awesome.

There is obviously value in getting kids to go away and create something independently, but real life projects are usually collaborative, even if reading any CV makes it seem otherwise. In the end it was a different (obviously inferior ) boat that "won", but you better believe that if my hypothetical kids ever have to build a boat that I am going to pass on what my mum passed on to me.

I can only speak for myself I guess, but certainly when I would order a chicken burger, I would only think about juicy soft chicken breast with a crunchy outer bread layer and the mayonnaise. There's no way I would order the burger and think about where the chicken came from, what happened to it, how it felt while hanging upside down, and the sad existence it lived prior to that.

Obviously everyone knows that meat comes from a farm. But again speaking for myself, once you know the reality of it, it's a different story.

If you have any hints on how to make headway without even unwilling being insulting while trying to make my points, I'm all ears

@greatgooglymoogly

Thanks for taking the time to watch it.

Like I said in my previous comment, this talk needs to take a lot of shortcuts, otherwise its length would surpass anyone's attention span.

So, point by point.

By "balanced budget", I suppose you refer to the federal budget. A balanced budget is not neccessarily a bad thing, but it is undesirable in most case. The key reason is sectoral balances. The economy can divided into three sectors: public, private, foreign. Since one person's spending is another person's income, the sum of all spending and income of these three sectors is zero by definition.

More precisely: if the public sector runs a surplus and the private sector runs a surplus, the foreign sector needs to run a deficit of a corresponding size.

Two examples:
- the government runs a balanced budget, no surplus, no deficit
- the private sector runs a surplus (savings) of 2% of GDP
- the foreign sector must, by definition, run a deficit of 2% of GDP (your country runs a current account surplus of 2% of GDP)

- the government runs a deficit of 2% of GDP
- the foreign sector runs a surplus of 3% (your current account deficit of 3%)
- your private sector must, by definition, run a deficit of 1% of GDP, aka burn through savings or run up debt

If you intend to allow the private sector to net save, you need to run either a current account surplus or a public sector deficit, or both. Since we don't export goods to Mars just yet, not all countries can run current account surpluses, so you need to run a public sector deficit if you want your private sector to net save. No two ways about it.

Germany runs a balanced public budget, sort of, and its private sector net saves. But that comes at the cost of a current account surplus to the tune of €250B. That's 250 billion Euros worth of debt other countries have to accumulate so that both the private and public sector in Germany can avoid deficits. Parasitic is what I'd call this behaviour, and I'm German.

If you feel ambitious, you could try to have both surplus and deficit within the private sector by allowing households to net save while "forcing" corporations to run the corresponding deficits. But to any politician trying that, I'd advise to avoid air travel.

As for the "devaluation of the currency", see my previous comment.

Also, she didn't use real numbers, because a) the talk is short and numbers kill people's attention rather quickly, and b) it's a policy decision to use debt to finance a deficit. One might just as well monetise it, like I explained in my previous comment.

Helicopter money would be quite helpful these days, actually. Even monetarists like AEP say so. If fiscal policy is off the table (deficit hawkery), what else are you left with...

As for your question related to the Fed, let me quote Eric Tymoigne on why MMT views both central bank and Treasury as part of the consolidated government:

"MMT authors tend to like to work with a consolidated government because they see it as an effective strategy for policy purpose (see next section), but also because the unconsolidated case just hides under layers of institutional complexity the main point: one way or another the Fed finances the Treasury, always. This monetary financing is not an option and is not by itself inflationary."

MMT principle: the central bank needs to be under democratic control, aka be part of government. The Fed in particular can pride itself on its independance all it wants, it still cannot fulfill any of its goals without the Treasury's help. It cannot diverge from government policies too long. Unlike the ECB, which is a nightmare in its construction.

Anyway, what does he mean by "one way or another the Fed finances the Treasury, always"? Well, the simple case is debt monetisation, direct financing. However, the Fed also participates by ensuring that Primary Dealers have enough reserves to make a reasonable bid on treasuries. The Fed makes sure that auctions of treasuries will always succeed. Always. Either by providing reserves to ensure buyers can afford the treasuries, by replacing maturing treasuries or buying them outright. No chance whatsoever for bond vigilantes. Betting against treasuries is pointless, you will always lose.

But what about taxation as a means to finance the Treasury? Well, the video's Monopoly example illustrated quite nicely, you cannot collect taxes until you have spent currency into circulation. Spending comes before taxation, it does not depend on it. Until reserves are injected into the banking system, either by the Fed through asset purchases or the Treasury through spending, taxes cannot be paid. Again, monetary financing is not optional. If the Treasury borrows money from the public, it borrows back money it previously spent.

Yes, I ignored the distribution of wealth, taxation, the fixation on growth and a million other things. That's a different discussion.

I hate advertising. I despise it. I think it is evil and wrong and creepy, and am deeply concerned about how much influence it has over modern life, especially in the US. I run adblock software in any browser I use ALL THE TIME, I block advertising servers in my hosts file, and even block at the router level as an additional layer of redundancy. And I feel zero guilt and entirely justified in doing so.

...That being said, Adam's plug at the end of this video is exactly what I think advertising should be. He is (clearly) enthusiastic about The Martian as a creative work / product. He has an audience that are interested in hearing him talk about things that he is enthusiastic about. Fox could have ignored or turned down Adam's (I'm sure) polite inquiries about possibly being able to see one of these props in person, but instead they recognized that they actually stand a lot to gain by letting him check it out.

He is genuinely interested in Fox's property, I'm sure he would happily recommend the movie even if they hadn't been kind enough to let him check out the prop, and now Fox gets free advertising and goodwill spread directly at an audience that is likely very receptive towards their product. Everybody wins.

So kudos to Fox and Adam for this. Maybe it keeps up a bit further away from AD-mageddon. And to chip in -- I agree with Adam; see The Martian and read the book. Both are very good. And I'm not being paid to say that.

Well, it may look more complex than it is.
We made these in my first year 3D Sculpture class in Art school.
We used Foam-core, cardboard and paper, but the concept was the same. Creating a multi-layered image that expands out in 3D but when viewed straight-on can be viewed as 2D.

What he has here is no so much as a puzzle as it is, assembled.

Yap, wheat and rye, mostly. Some maize. It's been a week since the last snow fell, but it remained cold enough to maintain a thin layer on top of everything.

Those wind turbines on the second picture were in the process of going offline. There's hardly any wind at all. Solar panels are working splendidly though, cloudless sky all day and perfect working temperatures.

I believe the chimneys were constructed in stages, only building up X layers of brick per day. The impact probably popped loose at the daily starting layer because the other layers would be continuous lays and possibly stronger.

That being said, the covered area out back went off sometime later than those, so your impressive timed explosives are possible too.

I'm sure that layer of foil totally saved the pan.

Hahaha... seriously, what kind of passive aggressive bullshit is that? "Ignoring the theoretical underpinnings of socialism, because I've decided that that's waffling, I say Jesus was a socialist." Next time, maybe just write TL;DR and make a farting noise while rolling your eyes.

You can't dismiss the actual meaning of the word Socialist as 'semantics', if you're talking about whether or not something is socialist. That doesn't help the discussion.

In order to use socialism as you appear to be doing, you would have to first:
- ignore the history of socialism and its political development,
- ignore the entire body of academic work, current and past, on socialism, and
- ignore how the word socialism "IS used now, like it or not" in actual socialist or semi-socialist countries

By doing that you end up at your definition of the word, yes. But you had to take a pretty long detour to get to that point

Marx's quote on religion is pretty straightforward - it can be, as you say, open to interpretation, but it's generally agreed that he didn't say that your Jesus was a stand-up socialist. He is more commonly taken to mean that religion is a false response to the real suffering of the oppressed; religion provides a fiction of suffering and a fiction of redemption/happiness, that will never translate into real change. It makes the oppressed feel like they are bettering their lives, while actually keeping them passive and preventing them from changing anything.

The slightly larger context of the quote is this: "Das religiöse Elend ist in einem der Ausdruck des wirklichen Elendes und in einem die Protestation gegen das wirkliche Elend. Die Religion ist der Seufzer der bedrängten Kreatur, das Gemüth einer herzlosen Welt, wie sie der Geist geistloser Zustände ist. Sie ist das Opium des Volks."

I don't know how to make that more plain, but I can try. Religious suffering is on one hand a response to real suffering (wirkliche Elend, by which one would mean a materialistically determined actual lack of freedom, resources, physical wellbeing, etc), but it is also a false reaction against that real suffering. Real oppression creates suffering to which there could be a real respones, but religion instead substitutes in false suffering and false responses - it tries to tackle real suffering with metaphysical solutions. He goes on to say:

"Die Aufhebung der Religion als des illusorischen Glücks des Volkes ist die Forderung seines wirklichen Glücks."

This, too, seems pretty straightforward to me, but you might see 4 or 5 different things there. Religion teaches the people an illusory form of happiness, which doesn't actually change or even challenge the conditions of suffering, and must therefore be tossed out, for the people to ever achieve real happiness.

A fundamental difference here is that religious goodness is internally, individually, and fundamentally motivated. 'Good' is 'Good', and you as a Christian individual should choose to do Good. A goal of Marxism is to abolish that kind of fundamentalism and replace it with continuous criticism; creating a society that always questions, together, what good is, through the lens of dialectical materialism.

You might recognize this line of thinking* from what modern Europeans call the autonomous left wing, or what Marx and Trotsky called the Permanent Revolution, which Wikipedia helpfully comments on as "Marx outlines his proposal that the proletariat 'make the revolution permanent'. In essence, it consists of the working class maintaining a militant and independent approach to politics both before, during and after the 'struggle' which will bring the 'petty-bourgeois democrats' to power." Which sounds great, except it can also lead to purges, paranoia, and informant societies.

My entire point is that socialism and Christianity are entirely different beasts. One is a rich, layered mythology with an extremely deep academic and political history, but no modern critical or explanatory components.** The other is an academic theory of economics and politics, with all the tools of discourse of modern academia in its toolbelt, and a completely different critical and analytical goal.

TL;DR? Well, Jesus (in a lenient interpretation) taught that we should help the weak. Marx explained that the people should organize to eradicate the conditions that force weakness onto the people. Jesus
taught that greed would keep a man from heaven, Marx explained that religion, nationalism, tribalism and commodity fetishism blinded the people to its common materialist interests. Jesus taught that the meek will be rewarded for their meekness, and while on earth we should render unto Caesar what is Caesar's; Marx explained that meekness as a virtue is a way of preventing actual revolutionary change, and that dividing the world into the spiritual and the materialistic helped keep the people sedate and passive, which plays right into the hands of the Caesars.

*I'm just kidding, I know you don't recognize any of this


**There probably are modern scholars of Christianity who adapt and adopt some of the tools of modern academic discourse; I know too little about academic Christianity.

*promote (drunk with power points!)

The magnificent mad rambling Slovenian bastard nailed it again!

The e-cig thing in particular is a hot topic for me at the moment due to the moronic new EU legislation & combined media shitstorm.

As we shoot down the layers of poorly researched bullshit the anti crowd throw at us in arguments it generally seems come down to something along the lines of "you are setting a bad example", or "you'd still be better off not smoking".

At that point "mind your own fucking business you self righteous prude" starts to seem like a perfectly mature response.

It is weird that they just skipped over the part where they soaked the whole thing in epoxy to give it the strength it needed to work.

It is also weird to here packaging folk referring to that material as "cardboard" rather than "corrugated" or "corrugated fiberboard". In industry circles, "cardboard" is solid, not a multi-layered material with corrugations.

Wow.. so.. a lot of good.. a lot of bad. Actor performances and writing were all over the board. The seasoned actors were all awesome, and sean young who at first seamed out of place turned out a wonderful performance as Dr Lucien and a hopeful character. The space sequences were numerous and well done with great ship models. Pyrotechnics were kept minimal as those are still hard to do in style in CG so its best to keep it good or keep it out.

The bad how ever. The klaxon mining facility was just all kinds of horribleness. The bad layering, the over the top and ridiculous amounts of shooting flames, and the cherry on the top is the introduction to the main bad guy race with their mask straight out of planet of the apes. I seriously can't believe someone though those were a go for filming. Also most of the planet intro scenes are more of a neo electro artistic style rather than something that looks real. This is a bit surprising since I would think the "animated paintings" from enterprise and voyager era would have been pretty low cost. The worst of the performances is by Crystal Conway, chekovs great great grand daughter.

Writing was also up and down. I think the story was ok with 2 general sins being committed. #1 a little to much backstory stuffed into the first 30 minutes. Icheb's borg roots were uncomfortably recited in a full scene in front of his own crew who would have already known this, and should have instead been a few lines to say he was a borg and then leaving his origin story for a later date. And #2, a lot of plot points like the doorway placed on earth ahead of time and being able to transport through the time distortion seem awfully convenient and tries to absolve the episode from going any farther in complexity. This is a pretty big sin when you consider these need to be %90 self contained episodes. Also it seems no matter how bad you are or how much of an outlaw you are, finding you in the star trek universe is one scene away. I do have to give props to Corin Nemec as the captain of the other ship. His crew is actually pretty bad but I liked him. I was sad to see his script called for more shooting and less investigating. Also I feel bad for the horrible looking bridge set they built him.

Still in the end, I am a big supporter for more star trek. I loved voyager and I think the renegade crew is actually in good shape. Lexxa, is not BAD but needs more work. Like another comment I read, she doesn't seem very smart about anything, no hidden talents. Her fighting is pretty horrible and scripted, and while she pulls the bad girl image off, she lacks the muscle or fancy footwork to look like she could actually hold her own physically.

Ronara was largely forgettable and suffered from the same origin scene stuffing scene sin as Icheb. Chekovs 2 girls on the other hand look like good additions and I think they pulled the female andorian well. Nothing dramatic in their acting but at this point, not sucking is a good thing.

Unfortunately who knows how many years till we see eps 2. I seem to recall this one finished its kickstarter long ago but delayed heavily.