depends on how you define "maximum nasty" @enoch

There was a time where I thought for sure we were heading towards another civil war. My assumption was that the gun nuts and other right wing lunatics would eventually take up arms against their country but ultimately lose.

But as I think about it more, for all their bluster and rhetoric. Chickenhawks are ultimately cowards and even gun-nuts really don't want to sacrifice their lives for their interpretation of the 2nd amendment. When it comes right down to it, most people don't want to fight and kill their fellow countrymen despite how much they want to try and demonize the "other"

The core issue as I see it that is preventing our political system from being more effective is private money in our politics and I don't think that's going to be fixed without a constitutional amendment prohibiting it. Thanks to the internet age, elections should be 100 percent publicly funded and lobbying and donations should be outlawed, because anyone can e-mail/blog and thus influence their elected officials without bribes or gifts or perks being involved. Money is not free speech

income inequality is going to get worse and worse until it reaches a tipping point that galvanizes the 99 percent but we're just not there yet. While I'm sure there will be some bloodshed during this process, I think on a national level it will be relatively bloodless and relatively peaceful.

as always, it's just going to be painful and it's going to take time. One of the problems with change is that you usually have to wait for people with bad ideas to die of old age before better ideas are implemented.

This is really the main problem we face. Just because many people don't care doesn't mean that they can't, however. I know I never used to care, it takes time to learn what's going on and what the real issues are. So there's definitely hope. The biggest challenge I think any resistance will have is how to organise - as pointed out in the vid, pretty much any groups get infiltrated, everyone is spied on in every country if they use digital communications, and well, what do you do about that, I don't know,

video is dead.

but the main reason it didn't succeed is because it got associated with college hipsters and the homeless looking for a free place to crash. Camping out 24/7 is not something the typical person wants to do. It was extremely unrelate-able. Let alone hang out with annoying hipsters and smelly homeless people.

most of the 99 percent are wage slaves who cannot take time off work to.......go sit in a tent on concrete for weeks on end. They needed something way more accessible to the regular person.

it was a marketing failure.

Yet poverty and literacy rates continue to improve globally.

Infant mortality, life expectancy, access to clean water and food. All improve. Perfect? No.

But those are just facts.

There are no magic wands to fix the problems around us. It takes time and concerted effort.

same phenom with Cannabis... its just taking time and the internet now.

i mean, i can type it out: anticancer, neuroprotectants, alt. nontoxic pain relief, antiinflammatory... plant fibers themselves used for many products, cheaply and quickly grown unlike wood... hemp seeds contain all essential amino acids.

quite literally manna from creation. ignorance alone is enough to deny our birthrights!~ /soapbox

good post

Are you asking why evolution doesn't behave in a more efficient manner? For what purpose would you filter out the natural qualities of existence that give it diversity?

The lazy mistakes of our universe are erosion, planet formation, star formation, etc. etc. It's all mistakes. The universe doesn't care if one quality is more beneficial than another, otherwise all of existence would be perfect and in harmony -- One thing changed and causation caused another thing to happen. Because those things happened, it lead to another thing, which formed another thing in a pattern that eventually gave shape to something greater than all the random, lazy changes before it.

That's language, that's sports, that's art, that's technology, and that's mankind.

The universe is not "correct" as defined by human concepts of efficiency or return on investment. Things take time to evolve because the process of evolution is gradual and made up of changes with no particular value. We merely add value to things based upon our needs and desires. Correctness forms over time, as we either process things into "culture" or deviate from that culture for a more efficient pathway.

The tale of John Henry is the tale of humanity BEING OUT DONE AT ALL LEVELS BY MACHINES. Humans are only creative things and all the stuff that takes time and effort is meaningless. Therefore if you're not creative, you're essentially an inefficient machine. Worthless.

You. Yes, I'm talking to you. Hahahahaha. Life.

They might keep going but more than likely a collision like that inflicts deadly injuries. It just takes time to bleed or starve to death

The problem we have now is that science has advanced so far that the average person just doesn't understand it. Science is progressing faster than our education of science, so we're running into Arthur C. Clark's third law that any science sufficiently advanced enough is indistinguishable from magic.

There is a scientific pathway that takes you from Newton's apple all the way to the most advanced computers and medical knowledge. The problem is, you can't fit that pathway into one easy to read book. You can't explain complex things in sound bites. We're talking the cumulative efforts and trial and error of human beings over the course of thousands of years that takes us from the discovery of fire to the interwebs.

You can't summarize that shit into a few simplistic parables and stories.

It's hard to understand. It takes time to understand. Not everyone *will* understand it. Not everyone wants to understand it. More XKCD goodness: http://xkcd.com/154/

but it happens whether or not you believe in it or understand it. Because someone else DID do the work.

Just have to say. I don't get it. Is it useful? is there a point? is there a reason? Is there a purpose? It all seems like tradition for traditions sake. I admit it takes time and practice, but is it a skill? and if so, I need to smoke what your smoking, because to me it's just middle aged men cutting shit with a sharp object.

And since i'm in a terrible mood i would also like to say; when did videosift turn into reddit.com/videos? Seems like the whole purpose of this web community is lost in a sea of lame shit I can see somewhere else. Why dosen't siftbot copy and past reddit's entire front page onto videosifts and just save everyone else the trouble.

I guess this website it practicing in the art of futility, just like this video.

I really enjoy sift talk and blog posts (beyond 'should we make a minor tweak to sift rules' blah blah ones).

I reckon they should be worth big points - they take time and effort to produce.

Now I will agree that the wording of this particular poll could be better. I was irritated at the time so my bias does come out. However with the sacrifice of my pride I do feel that the inclusion of a second poll slot would enhance the sift in a meaningful way. You aren't a jerk @dag to question my motives, it is only right that you do so. I know that the promote issue is a more important one while this one seems fairly minor in comparison.

I understand that having a second option would take time and effort on your part to enable, and that sometimes one just has to trim the "fat" off of work schedules. However I will restate that I honestly believe that this will be to benefit the sift and not just my stupid polling.

Ah , well I wasn't expecting this! What is that, parchment in the background? Or my crazy monitor again?

I like a refresh but it will take time to bed in with me.

In the meantime I do worry about the teeny channel labels and hard to see text. Speaking for the elderly and hard of seeing this is a concern.

Showing only the last 3 promoted videos? Hmmm....

Also no love for channel owners? Was hoping to see some new features there. And I can't see how to find new channel submissions. Clicking on a channel shows the latest videos but Upcoming just shows everything.

Are the old RSS feeds broken?

I would also like a *complete* listing of all videos on a channel.

Also there are filtering options for Upcoming videos but none for sifted ones. Said it before we need easy filtering options whenever there is a list of videos.

I find it truly shocking how few Americans understand how the system works, or perhaps you understand, but are intentionally obfuscating.

Democrats in Congress are not Obama's plaything, to do with as he wishes. Many of them are right leaning, and either refuse to follow Obama's lead, or they demand concessions, on that bit of legislation or on their own pet projects. Cobbling all that together takes time, and Obama had to make priorities. He chose healthcare, IMO a wise choice. After two years, he managed to push a decent healthcare package through, and a couple of other things, then the Republican Congress came in and roadblocked any further progress.

That is what happened. If you think otherwise then I suggest you look it up, it's called American Democracy (which should by all rights be an oxymoron IMO).

>> ^ponceleon:

Don't have time to see the whole thing now, but I feel like the new challenge for journalism in the information age is that they need to understand that freedom of the press is not freedom to report without checking facts. Sensationalism is the rule rather than actual reporting. In an age where "reality" TV is scripted and caters to the lowest commmon denominator, as a society we have to hope that this too will bounce back.
If anyone saw last night's South Park, it was pure brilliance. We just need James Cameron to come in and raise the bar dammit!


Journalists work for money the same as most folks. Good journalism in the sense you're talking about takes time, and therefore is expensive. Furthermore, balanced, dry articles about the nuanced nature of the world around us don't lend themselves well to attention-grabbing headlines, a problem perhaps exacerbated by the need for page views and the ability to track, per article posted, what people view most.

I mean, really, what are more people going to want to read - or rather, see - "Higgs Boson identified with high probability" or "Lady Catherine caught with her tits out - photos inside!"?

We've conflated information with entertainment. I wonder how to turn that particular tide back.