I do agree that unilateral disarmament is a difficult thing to achieve, but there are other arguments as to why it should be pursued. I am sure we agree on a lot of things on this subject, but let me at least put the other side out there:

1. America as the over achieving nation in the world has a duty to lead by example. How can the country with the largest nuclear arsenal expect other countries to start the process that we all signed up to? Hey France, why didn't you get rid of your 87 nukes? Well America, why haven't you touched that pile of 500? (making up numbers here to illustrate the point)

2. The US isn't worried about Best Korea nuking them because they would need a staging platform and a functional ballistic missile. They can be launched from subs, but NK isn't really your worry there. The most developed nations are the concern, and if you could get an agreement it could happen, with peacekeepers and mutually open inspections, and pressure on smaller countries to abide or be trade embargoed to stop them (which the west does/has done already). Unlikely as things are right now, i agree.

3. We have ageing equipment housing extremely dangerous explosives. They require a huge amount of maintenance and whatnot, costing billions. The UK has to replace their system soon to the tune of hundreds of billions of pounds. Imagine what kind of alternative modern anti-nuclear defence system we could develop using all that money and all our technology? That way we could be safe from nukes without using nukes and it would cost less in the long run.

Also if you claim your weapons as part of a defence, it's a bit of a giveaway that you're bullshitting if you then go off around the world antagonising other countries, knowing that they can't really fight back. So i think in fairness we should crack open that self-defence argument and see what percentage of it is referring to "a good offence".

Having said all that, binning all the US nukes overnight wouldn't be a great idea. The UK would be less of a target and safer without nukes imo, but the US would probably make the world a lot safer just by having less.

Let's be honest here, the amount of nukes we have is preposterous. No one could possibly have any reason to use that many, the potential for absolute worldwide devastation is far too high to need that many - you could potentially finish the world off in a nuclear winter, according to the average figures given, in about 100 'small' nukes. Not 100 each per country, but 100 total worldwide.

And remember, that doesn't mean you can use 90 and be safe. The figure 100 was enough to likely cause a global famine by causing temperature drops leading to crop failures. That doesn't account for extinction of animals and the devastation of the natural balance (which would lead to our eventual extinction) which can be wildly unpredictable. You could shoot 40 at a country, win the conflict, and cause the starvation of millions+ in your own (and other) countries for the next 20 odd years..... or worse.

WTF? That's the only kind of behaviour i encourage.

Why don't you go back to your boring shit and let the rest of us have a good time? I promise we'll keep the noise down whilst we're being fabulous - you won't lose any nap time, and your little snowflake sensibilities won't be damaged (unless the temptation to watch us is too ...hard... to bear).

Pretty funny with the diagnosis, but when i realised he was saying "oh shit" and "aw hell nah" before 'fainting', i started to ask a few questions..

Sounds like an exercising in rearranging the furniture on the Titanic to me.

In a world where discrimination and separatism is qualitatively and quantitatively on the rise, people in charge must be ecstatic that they can appease people without having to do anything meaningful that might piss off the extremists on the right, or "shareholders". And people are so used to being told that change is only possible through incremental adjustments that they'll eat it up like candy and think this is progress.

"People people people, if you're going to call someone a filthy tranny and throw fast food at xem on public transport, at least use the proper pronoun when you verbally abuse xem."

When there's a hole in the boat and you're taking on water, the least of your concerns should be about what language you use to describe the in-rushing water or shape of the hole, nor arguing over the colour of the material you use to repair it.

I'm sure some people will see this as a victory. Until next time they apply for a job and not get hired due to transphobia. And the manager of the company, with a gleam in their eye, begins the rejection letter with 'Dear bun/bunself', then sniggers to themselves and says "fucking trannies."

What I'm trying to say was summed nicely in a tweet i saw the other day:
ALTRIGHT/NEO NAZI: your all going to the gas chambers!!!
NEOLIBERAL: you're*

If this is the extent of what activism is able to achieve, i should say that the establishment/elite have won by pacifying and declawing the protesters. It's no longer about breaking the shackles of oppression. We can't go around breaking shackles everywhere - think of the effect on the economy? And what about people getting hit by shrapnel? No, instead the LGBTQ community will be given multi coloured chains, the black community will be given slightly longer chains, and we'll pad the shackles with silk so that everyone is much more comfortable. Don't complain about the concept of being chained, instead complain that your chain is not as nice as the next guy's chain.

It's as though the great struggle of protest and civil disobedience has been taken over by the liberal intelligentsia, and the worst kind of discrimination faced by a 20 year old middle-class university student with rainbow coloured dreadlocks and a nose piercing is the letter they receive about their student loan that begins "dear sir/madam". So they go out and march about it and think they've made progress when they get their own pronoun. In their life, in their experiences, they are treated equally in other respects, so they think they ARE fighting inequality.

But for the working class male or female transsexual who gets filthy looks and a seat isolated by themselves on public transport, to travel to their entry level job where they've been skipped over for promotion for not looking the part, or getting the right level of respect from the trans-phobic staff, getting snide whispered comments from customers about the size of their hands, getting abuse yelled at them as they travel to have a night out at the ONLY trans-friendly bar within a 20 mile radius....... I get the feeling that receiving a letter with the correct pronoun isn't exactly going to change their fucking lives.

To remove a weed, you go for the roots. Some wanker calling you him/her when you prefer bun/bunself is not the root of this problem. The problem is that they are trans-phobic, not the language - which is just the tool they use to discriminate against you. To change the language and think that you've won is a bit like redefining room temperature and claiming you've warmed everybody by a few degrees.

If you march for equal rights, fair pay, fair treatment then people are going to see that and join your protest because they also want those things. Those things will solve the problems faced by the trans community, feminists, masculinists, minorities alike! And through common goals and by supporting each other en masse for simple, unified goals like EQUALITY, progress will be made, change will happen. It is a concept called solidarity and seems to be going out of fashion, but our grandparents knew.

The objective for the establishment is to drive a wedge between groups of people so that their demands are more manageable, and they can be turned on each other. Feminists, masculinists, LGBT, everyone... can't you see how better off you'd be marching together for common values that lie at the core of what every human wants?

Wall of text, sorry... and I know it looks like i'm being insensitive. So congratulations, genuinely, for getting someone to use your preferred pronoun if that makes you feel better. But whilst people have been fighting tooth and nail to get their own pronoun (in civilised settings only), we've suffered huge leaps backwards in freedom and tolerance behind their backs whilst they were bent over intently concentrating on the finer detail of what their ideal equality looks like.

I was off school on the few days they covered long division, 15 years ago or so, and never bothered to learn it. To this day I never had a clue how to do it... but i don't think i'll ever forget divide, multiply and subtract, bring it on down and bring it on back.

I think the excess bureaucracy in teaching these days takes away from teachers being able to tailor and refine their methods to deliver things in a memorable way.

As good as this game looks, I can't figure out who on earth would pay top dollar just to get teabagged by some Saudi oil baron's son who had the requisite 3 million dollars to get the best stuff..

In all seriousness though - I don't understand how the real money investment is going to be justified in terms of gameplay. If you pay top top money then you expect the game to work, be good fun, and have a big advantage over all the people who can't afford all the good stuff (AKA "pwning newbs" in the parlance of our time). But if they don't keep the newbs playing the game, the game world will be empty, no economy or trade, it'll be a dead game - who wants to keep playing a game where some pay2win kid runs circles round you all day? So how do you keep newbies interested and keep them playing, whilst also still ensuring people who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars will have their huge advantage over everyone else? How will an economy work within that system too?

I feel like it's a recipe for either a dead game, or some seriously pissed off rich people. If the rich people don't mind dropping 100k on a game, will they mind dropping 100k on suing the developers? The frankly ridiculous buy-ins may have given them some very big headaches before the game has even started, in terms of economy and relative strength of the players. Starting to get no man's sky vibes.

May the Earth never know a day when elephants don't walk upon her.

Best one for me is Electric Love. Beautifully snatched my attention away from something I was intensely focused on until I had no choice but to see where the beautiful choral harmonies were coming from. One of those "Holy shit, this is beautiful!" moments.

Suddenly accuracy and detail become popular, and all it took was for the worst developed world leadership candidate in modern history to win the presidency of the US.

Do the words horse, stable and bolted mean anything to anyone?

We're about 10 years into post truth politics by now, and it seems a strange thing to me to start the fight-back here, on individual comments made by people beholden to themselves. Rather than opinion-shaping mass media printing literal lies.

Let he who did not engage in hyperbole during Trump's campaign cast the first stone. Everyone's suddenly twice the pedantic nerd I ever am when the phrase "post truth" becomes en vogue.

I don't want to be a dick or anything, but look at the backlash to all this policing of PC language. People were happy to give a potential president of the US the leeway to be sexist and xenophobic because of political correctness fatigue. Do you really want to do the same thing but with FACTS? Because that's where this ends...

2024 -- "Oh you can't say anything these days without being sure you're 100% correct and accurate and can't be misconstrued! So what if the president's opinion on climate change doesn't involve facts? It's about time someone spoke their mind without the fact-checking police getting involved!"

I genuinely don't want to be a dick about it. But if I am one, I'm pretty sure I do also have a good point.

I've tried many times to watch anime and I've never managed to. Just can't get into it. But i can watch good analyses of anime all day.

I've actually been on one of these in Thailand at Hanuman World, near Phuket.

I was the only person riding it that day, and the staff were looking at me and asking if I was ready to use it with a touch of incredulity - as though not many people did, or people had backed out when they saw it.

It was as you'd expect, fast, extreme and terrifying/terrific, and about 1/3rd of the way down it i realised i was completely out of breath. The corners and drops and stuff were so extreme and at such high speed I was having to tense every muscle and hold my breath - it was exhausting just to sit on it. I had to take very deep very determined breaths to recover. I don't think i'd have second thoughts about skydiving or bungee jumping after riding that thing. It was insane, and i'd love to do it again. However rough it looks on the video, it feels about 10x more violent when you're on one.

I don't remember him saying one was right and the other was wrong, but hey maybe i'm mistaken.

What i don't understand is why it's ok for you to express your opinion about his youtube video without becoming a respected youtube videographer yourself, but it's not ok for him to express his opinion about the colours in Marvel films without becoming a Marvel film maker.

Are people not allowed to express their opinions on things? And if that's the case, why did you express yours?

Cenk Uygur can become tiresome, but he was pretty good last night in their coverage and kept my attention well, i was actually quite impressed. I really don't care for the rest of the lineup though. The guy on the right is the epitome of impotent rage, stumbling over his words, making complicated points poorly, a fretting, nervous, often very pink man in an ill fitting suit. At times reminded me of the main character from Limitless at his drug-binge/mental breakdown apex, with tight claustrophobia inducing collars riding up around his neck, the crispness of which contrasting and highlighting the beads of sweat, speaking too quickly and spitting. The guy on the left thinks he's 10 times cooler than he is, which is all the more annoying because he is actually a little bit cool - if he didn't think he was so cool, he'd be pretty cool! I could handle Sarkeezian's imperious hauteur - hell i'd find it very attractive - if it wasn't so obviously an act. She found herself compelled to leave the studio for a stiff drink at some point, presumably to bask in the moment when she theatrically interrupted the depleted panel and announced her actions proudly, claiming she was now in a feisty mood before ranting at types of people she blamed. I even think she used some kind of tv-friendly profanity; if you have the wherewithal to soft-censor your 'uncontrolled' outburst, you're faking it. Whatever kind of Don Draper scene she'd staged to pad her portfolio of career highlights, her disappointing final rant meandered down well trodden paths.

Funny impressions but the title is misleading.

To be fair, you were taught this in school if you were taught wave particle duality and the double slit experiment. Look at this. Now imagine a particle bouncing along in very small steps (quantum leaps if you will), and the direction it goes depends on the strength and orientation of the wave where it lands. You may never have been told to think about it like that, but that's what makes physics so amazing that sometimes all it takes is for someone to think about it slightly differently. The information was there all along, but who would imagine the 'particle' bit of an electron interacting with the 'wave' bit - the electron interacts with itself?

I absolutely love it, it's amazing, and simple and beautiful. It may provide insights into new ways we can model quantum behaviour, it might open up new questions to ask.

There's things I'd like to know. First, if the standing waves generated at each step in the droplet's progression interact with each other, the droplet is reacting according to waves it made in the past - what implications does that have for the notion of real particles in a spacetime continuum? For the double slits experiment to work in that model - in the ball on a rubber sheet sense - the sheet would have to stay warped to some extent after the ball had passed. In the quantum sense of the real double slits experiment, we would say it IS a wave, passes through both slits and appears according to statistical probability (the diffraction pattern).

Presumably several droplets released along the same path would go on to take a different route through the slits, to create a diffraction pattern as it must. Perhaps because of fluctuations in the temperature or density of the water at different locations? Is that a limitation of the model or an indicator about the nature of the fabric of spacetime? Perhaps even due to quantum fluctuations in the water particles - the water is never the same twice even if its perfectly still each time - which would potentially mean we're cyclically using quantum mechanics to explain quantum mechanics and we actually haven't explained very much.

The philosophy bit: But this reaches to the heart of the issue with quantum mechanics and perhaps science in general. How accurately can we model reality? The reality is beyond our ability to see, so we can only recreate simpler versions that are always wrong in some way... our idea of what happens - our models - can never be 100% because only a particle in spacetime can perfectly represent a particle in spacetime.

Scientific results and definitions are always defined with limits - "it works like this, within these confines, under these conditions, with these assumptions." There are always error margins. We are always only ever communicating an idea between different consciousnesses, and that idea will never be as true to life as life itself.

Sorry for the wall of text, it's a great and provocative experiment.