It's a worthless pile of rocks.

As much as it has meaning culturally - it is as a symbol of a tyrant's vanity, purchased with the starvation and travail of his people.

The crime here is that local people are forcibly prevented from redistributing good stone into useful projects by the pimps who run the national prostitution racket of the tourism industry.

After seeing the colony freeze, go hungry, suffer plague, have it's foreign support removed, get swindled by outsiders, and eventually descend into near-anarchy, Bradford made the following entries:


All this whille no supply was heard of, neither knew they when they might expecte any. So they begane to thinke how they might raise as much torne as they could, and obtaine a beter crope then they had done, that they might not still thus languish in miserie. At length, after much debate of things, the Govr (with the advise of the cheefest amongest them) gave way that they should set corve every man for his owne perticuler, and in that regard trust to them selves; in all other things to goe on in the generall way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcell of land, according to the proportion of their number for that end, only for present use (but made no devission for inheritance), and ranged all boys and youth under some familie. This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more torne was planted then other waise would have bene by any means the Govr or any other could use, and saved him a great deall of trouble, and gave farr better contente. The women now wente willingly into the feild, and tooke their litle-ons with them to set torne, which before would aledg weaknes, and inabilitie; whom to have compelled would have bene thought great tiranie and oppression.

The experience that was had in this commone course and condition, tried sundrie years, and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanitie of that conceite of Platos and other.ancients, applauded by some of aater times; -that the taking away of propertie, and bringing in communitie into a comone wealth, would make them happy and $orishing; as if they were wiser then God. For this comunitie (so farr as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much imployment that would have been to their benefite and comforte. For the yong-men that were most able and fitte for labour and servise did repine that they should spend their time and streingth to worke for other mens wives and children, with out any recompence. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in devission of victails and cloaths, then he that was weake and not able to doe a quarter the other could; this was thought injuestice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalised in labours, and victails, cloaths, etc., with the meaner and yonger sorte, thought it some indignite and disrespect unto them. And for mens wives to be commanded to doe servise for other men, as dresing their meate, washing their cloaths, etc., they deemd it a kind of slaverie, neither could many husbands well brooke it. Upon the poynte all being to have alike, and all to doe alike, they thought them selves in the like condition, and ove as good as another; and so, if it did not cut of those relations that God hath set amongest men, yet it did at least much diminish and take of the mutuall respects that should be preserved amongst them. And would have bene worse if they had been men of another condition. Let pone objecte this is mens corruption, and nothing to the course it selfe. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in his wisdome saw another course fiter for them.


When he said "We can't solve the world's problems, but I can solve this tiny problem for these cats" I nearly puked. He spent 100k$+ on those cats, that is enough to do a shitload of good in developing countries or even in any developed country.
Nice to have such a catty home, but don't act as if you are doing something else with your money than spending it on your own vanity project and especially not because "you can't fix the world's problems".
What is next? I can't solve the world's problems, so instead I am solving this tiny problem for the Ferarri workers by buying my new 500k car, look how good a person I am?

Now that is some vanity at 8:56... The man has a strong awareness of the visibility of his chest hair.

Climate change-The hot-topic for a new age of ineffectuals...something for the insects to rally-around and discuss which produces nay but fodder for the same passive-aggressive types who are being seduced by their desire to trade practical action (whatever that could be) for polemic intercourse with themselves and others like them on the internet....

....people who are passionate to a fault and use forums like this to espouse their anger and frustration with tomes of keystrokes AT and not WITH others they deem unworthy, those ignorant and simpering few with opinions or observations dissimilar to theirs (and lower than 130 I.Q.'s....*cough), who know they are helpless to act to stop the high-speed train of planet-fucking (wage-slave-required and dutifully induced through the programming by adepts of semantic mind-fucking).This delusional empowerment, with all the invisible superpowers of new 'information' gives them the license and ability to do absolutely nothing to correct or marginally disrupt the pace of the so-labeled change while becomming better dicks in doing-so.

This fan-driven subject of climate change they use not only to deride those with any dissenting opinion and doubt regarding the mechanics and unfolding of what our big, blue marble is handing the creatures onnit, but also and most evidently obvious, to bolster their own superiority and self-satisfaction in their ability to process the distraction of disinformation/information/datum-ad-nauseum, and then condense it into how clever they can be in being complete assholes without breaking rules of accepted decorum so they can hear themselves bark, howl, and foment.

Smug, helpless, and irritatingly predictable in their helplessness to do anything more effectual than to add more used motor oil to the bonfire of their own vanity.

I would ask these irritating bugs what ARE you prepared to do to alter the course of the 'changes' in the 'terminal climate' described above? Recycle and drive a hybrid? Sacrifice anything but another trip to a polling-station? Oh I know, sit at your computer keyboard and grow more incensed while going-on with your business of spouting and shouting from a mountain of trash that you add-to daily by converting oxygen to more life-giving C02 and buying shit you don't need with paper you are forced to trade for 'bads and disservices??'

Thought so.

Fuck global warming in it's ass and let the planet shake and quiver with change as humans and/or their own slave-like actions continue to feed the earth-furnace. The bigger fish to fry and serve head-on have you by the short and curlies and we're all bio-fuel for future generations

Great. I tried Crossfit and I thought it was actually quite cool for a bit. However I had specific goals and Crossfits main problem is its unwillingness to adapt.

Here's the idea, you go in and you're given a notebook to track your progress (at the place I went to at least). You tell them your goals and write them down, then you record the workouts you do and the time you do them in ect.

Time: They time how fast you can go through various workouts which seems fine. Until you are doing things badly because you are trying to speed through them, and there's not a lot of reason to try and be FASTER every time. It makes sense to me to limit a workout to say 20 mins, it does not to try and beat your time of doing the same workout by 30 seconds or so. It just leads to sloppy reps and injuries.

Goals: Your goals btw don't matter. It's just a bunch of "I wanna be fitter" usually. My goals were very specific though because they had to do with my chosen profession (soccer referee) and the fact that I really don't care how much I can lift or what I look like.

Looks: They try to make this about fitness, it's all about being able to do MORE WORK. Being fit is it's own reward and being an athlete throughout life is what's cool. On this idea they refuse to have mirrors. I remember having mirrors growing up having Tae Kwon Do classes. Why were their mirrors? So you can look at what you are doing and adjust your form accordingly, they're a great took. The same goes for high school in weightlifting. You can look at yourself lift in the mirror and adjust how you are doing it. Instead they have people there correcting your form, often I found doing a bad job of it and in my case even debating with each other how I ,with heavy weights on my shoulders, should be lifting things. Yeah they don't want you admiring your body or something, the principle is stupid because SOME PEOPLE are there just for vanity and they have mirrors at home. I am there so I can do these things right like I know how, a mirror helps me with that.

Crossfit is a good idea, but I would like it to be less like the rigid religion I found and more flexible to what those paying would like. I'm not paying to join a cult, it's a club of fitness and I can do more leg lifts while you're using the kettlebells.

So who's gonna help me start a gym that'll be an answer to those Crossfit gyms. That are a bit less intense and a bit more focussed on making the gym fun and productive on your terms rather than theirs? Kickstart It!

What do I get from this trailer?

PG-13 "death" scene. All he does is get blown up in a car, not the extremely violent and painful death of Alex Murphy from the original film goes through, the trigger in him remembering his previous life and becoming more than just an emotionless robot/cyborg. The trigger in this? His family. Yawn. They turn one of the most important scenes from the original into "boom". Also leads me to believe this'll be a PG-13 puss-fest.

Face time! The vanity of celebrities or producers that think they need to have the star's face plastered throughout the entire film (massive props for Karl Urban and the director of Dredd for sticking with the fact Dredd never shows his face). In the original, once he was RoboCop, you only ever see his face until the end. It was a good visual reminder to the audience that he was human, to reinforce that now he's reclaiming some of humanity.

It IS a powersuit. Rather than literally being a human brain in a robot as the original is, you see it's just a guy in a suit with a robot leg and arm (his bare hand and his "face in a helmet" looks ridiculous). Kinda weakens the human mind battling the robot programming aspect of the plot. Especially considering it seems he's all emo as soon as he wakes up "What have you done to me! WAH WAH!"

Where's the satire? Sure it may be hard to wedge in satirical aspects in a trailer, but I have a feeling there'll be none of it in this one. The tone is completely different and feels very generic.

Granted this is just a trailer, but it feels like this is nothing more than a generic action movie with the same name as an old beloved cult classic. I'm not against reboots, but if you plan to reboot something successful, two things need to be kept in tact: The tone and feel, and key aspects to the plot. I'd love to see more RoboCop, this isn't it.

Video creators: We understand the concepts of car insurance and liability.

Just say 1 sentence explaining why dashcams are common in Russia, and then end your vanity video.

Really... he paid, what, $50,000 to make a viral video promoting... his own fame?

He just got lucky in business back when the internet was first starting, and now instead of building new things that make the world better, he's flushing his lucky money down the toilet on prostitutes and vanity videos.

A fat cat who wastes money on infantile hedonism is the worst type of fat cat.

@enoch @Fletch @Yogi

I've done a complete turn around on this issue for sure. After doing some reading, I believe this to be much ado about nothing. I know I'm taking an extremely unpopular position here, siding against the left, the right, the media and videosift, essentially siding up with Obama and David Simon. Taking an unpopular position has never stopped me before. /vanity

I believe wiretaps are an important tool for law enforcement/counter terrorism, but only if there are proper checks and balances in place to make sure that these searches are constitutionally 'reasonable' and not a means of abuse.

Contrary to media hysteria, Obama can't listen in on your phone calls or read your sexts without a court order. That warrant has been the go to check and balance for decades, I don't see why it shouldn't be sufficient today.

BUT IT'S ALL DONE IN SECRECY. Yeah, that's kind of the point of a wiretap.

BUT WHAT IF THIS POWER IS ABUSED? Then we need to reassess checks, balances, oversight, etc...

My questiosn to you:

Do you all think that surveillance should be a legal tool in criminal investigations?

If yes, what changes do we make to current policy without rendering surveillance toothless?

I'm open to any arguments you want to pose or any reading material you want to share. Am I missing something here? Change my mind.

If only Jaden had some talent...
Until he acquires/discovers some, I guess he'll just have to keep appearing in dad's vanity projects. Not that I wouldn't do the same, had I a world-famous dad. Unfortunately, I don't have a world-famous dad, so I'll just settle for despising the little prick.

Ecclesiastes 1:14 I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.

This world is temporal; it is passing away. These monuments of human achievement we have constructed to declare our own glory are all sandcastles awaiting high tide. They are grains of sand being washed into the cosmic sea. We will leave this world the same way we entered it; at the complete mercy of forces beyond our control or understanding. This American dream is a shadow play; there is nothing from this world that can completely satisfy us:

Ecclesiastes 3:11

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

We know there is much more to this life than the gratification we can squeeze out of this moment. There is a perpetual, lingering dissatisfaction, when your hope is resting on shifting sands. Uncertainty is lurking at the doorstep, trying to sell us a lifetime subscription. A guest pass on a prison ship made of mind and sinew. We hunger for we don't see; a sense of permanence. A place called home. Something to fill the gap between heart and mind. We thirst for an eternal wellspring, welling up into life everlasting. A joy inexpressible and full of glory. We know there is more because He set it in our hearts to seek after Him. We know all of the ways of this world lead to death, but when put away uncertainty and seek after Him with all of our hearts, we will the find the bridge to eternity; we will find our Savior.

John 14:6

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Well, how can I possibly counter that.
Your self asserted grasp on eating disorders far outstrips mine.
Also, Your comparison to Ebola is a ridiculous straw man that any reasonable person should be able to differentiate.
Normalization related to weightgain is the effect of a society getting ever fatter and people becoming less and less concerned with it, or less likely to avoid emulating it because it has every day prevalence and gains acceptance.
For your consideration here is Normalization

Your argument about a given method or therapy (I am not saying this guys letter was either) having a necessary outcome of positive would discredit EVERY attempt at getting someone to lose weight, as no method has 100% success or is necessarily "good/positive".

The act of pointing out that someone is heavy isn't nice. But, denying that vanity can cause people to want to change is just silly.

You trying to claim that my argument is that this is my preferred method is also silly and another straw man.

The implications/effect of this guys letter, as I am sure he is experiencing is by no means known, or reliable from individual to individual.

Every line of your post is more concerned with using falsified assertions of my position to try and better your argument all while failing to include references or anything substantive to debunk my actual arguments. It is not working.

>> ^NinjaInHeat:

I don't know what to say except again that it's pretty obvious you don't know the first thing about eating disorders.
How exactly does the American obesity problem equals the "normalization" of it? That's like saying the normalization of Ebola is a problem in Africa.
I'll give you this much, your idea of dealing with a problem is definitely an effective one.
Making a person super self-conscious about their physical appearance is a very effective way of having them change it. The problem here is that you to understand that effective doesn't necessarily equal good/positive.
Your idea of the proper way to deal with these issues is a scary one, more so for the fact you don't even realize what the implications of it are.

1.Yes you are.

2. Choosing to continue smoking and choosing to not take steps to get your weight under control and or stop overeating are well paralleled as demonstrated above. Feel free to argue it.

3. Being overweight in the playground DOES make them more likely to die of heart disease in later life.
Here's a quote for you.
“This is incredibly important,” said Jennifer L. Baker of the Institute of Preventive Medicine in Copenhagen, who led the research, being published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. “This is the first study to convincingly show that excess childhood weight is associated with heart disease in adulthood, or with any significant health problem in adulthood.”

To you point about it being his business etc... You know what, you're right. It isn't his business.
Does that matter? Not a whole lot. In fact he IS doing her a favor.
Hurting her feelings however unkind may be an important catalyst in getting her to change her habits.
Vanity is an INCREDIBLY powerful driving force for people.

In my view, someone who knows there is a problem and chooses to ignore it is a bigger (although perhaps socially nicer) coward.

Oh and people get away with comments like that in public all the time. I don't know what fantasy world you live in where no one chastises anyone, must be nice.

>> ^Jinx:


Oh, I'm making hyperbolic conclusions and then you equate smoking to being overweight? Being fat in a playground doesn't make the kids more at risk of heart disease.

so I guess you're right then. I dont get it. I don't get why her weight is your business if its not some wrong headed belief that she is a poor role model (that at least seemed to be the point of the email no?)
There is no easy solution. I'm not suggesting we ignore obesity or its health risks but there are right ways of tackling problems and there are the futile ways. If it was as fucking easy and emailing fat people to point out that they are fat and oh, here are the health risks then, err, why are people still overweight? So stop pretending that this email is in any way helpful. At best its tactless, at worst its cruel. Now, if I had a family member with weight problems I would consider it my place and indeed my duty to not just confront them about it, but also help them maintain a healthier lifestyle. I'd hope they'd do the same for me, but a stranger who is unwilling to invest any assistance to me beyond their critique? Fuck that. Mind your business.

nice vanity project