abbreviated *backup=

I have only barely heard that term, and had NO idea what your abbreviation meant.
How about don't insult everyone because you love abbreviations of odd terms you use.

Where was this 'clarity' in that 'defense'? Beyond the understandable defense of your punctuation mistake, I didn't see it.
Question...IMLTHO? Does this mean In My Lithium Taking Hilarious Opinion? I've honestly never seen this abbreviation before.
Interesting, so you do understand that YOU are the problem, so much that the sift had to invent an ignore 'button' largely to allow others to ignore you, you just insist on being the problem and forcing the community to 'gang up on poor little you' so you can whine about the unfairness of life and other people? Why? Has no one ever told you that 'poor little bully' isn't a good look?
Wait a second...I thought you were the 'waiting for a chance to fuck with others' robot program...is that why you're mad, someone else is appearing to infringe on your domain?

Might I remind you of a previous chat we had....

newtboy said : ...Or perhaps (and this seems the most likely) you're a feckless and feculent fecal philiac in love with reading your own sophomoric posts.

chingalera said :Guilty an all charges Von Astute and might I add, how refreshing your critique of my lack of forethought when responding to regular fare here....



Newts don't buzz or attack, but we are deadly when bitten. ;-}

I was waiting till someone abbreviates it to RHNB

Fixed.

I didn't think "bought" would fit, so I didn't even try.

Plus, I write the word "bot" for "bought" a million times a day for work. It is instinctive for me to abbreviate. I'm bone deep bored with writing/typing out the word "bought."

But I fixed it, hunny bunny. Just for you!

If anyone wants to read more about Stephen and LGBTQIA youth, here is the NYT article.

The New York Time's

Generation LGBTQIA

By MICHAEL SCHULMAN

Published: January 10, 2013

STEPHEN IRA, a junior at Sarah Lawrence College, uploaded a video last March on We Happy Trans, a site that shares "positive perspectives" on being transgender.

In the breakneck six-and-a-half-minute monologue - hair tousled, sitting in a wood-paneled dorm room - Stephen exuberantly declared himself "a queer, a nerd fighter, a writer, an artist and a guy who needs a haircut," and held forth on everything from his style icons (Truman Capote and "any male-identified person who wears thigh-highs or garters") to his toy zebra.

Because Stephen, who was born Kathlyn, is the 21-year-old child of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, the video went viral, garnering nearly half a million views. But that was not the only reason for its appeal. With its adrenalized, freewheeling eloquence, the video seemed like a battle cry for a new generation of post-gay gender activists, for whom Stephen represents a rare public face.

Armed with the millennial generation's defining traits - Web savvy, boundless confidence and social networks that extend online and off - Stephen and his peers are forging a political identity all their own, often at odds with mainstream gay culture.

If the gay-rights movement today seems to revolve around same-sex marriage, this generation is seeking something more radical: an upending of gender roles beyond the binary of male/female. The core question isn't whom they love, but who they are - that is, identity as distinct from sexual orientation.

But what to call this movement? Whereas "gay and lesbian" was once used to lump together various sexual minorities - and more recently "L.G.B.T." to include bisexual and transgender - the new vanguard wants a broader, more inclusive abbreviation. "Youth today do not define themselves on the spectrum of L.G.B.T.," said Shane Windmeyer, a founder of Campus Pride, a national student advocacy group based in Charlotte, N.C.

Part of the solution has been to add more letters, and in recent years the post-post-post-gay-rights banner has gotten significantly longer, some might say unwieldy. The emerging rubric is "L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," which stands for different things, depending on whom you ask.

"Q" can mean "questioning" or "queer," an umbrella term itself, formerly derogatory before it was appropriated by gay activists in the 1990s. "I" is for "intersex," someone whose anatomy is not exclusively male or female. And "A" stands for "ally" (a friend of the cause) or "asexual," characterized by the absence of sexual attraction.

It may be a mouthful, but it's catching on, especially on liberal-arts campuses.

The University of Missouri, Kansas City, for example, has an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Resource Center that, among other things, helps student locate "gender-neutral" restrooms on campus. Vassar College offers an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Discussion Group on Thursday afternoons. Lehigh University will be hosting its second annual L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Intercollegiate Conference next month, followed by a Queer Prom. Amherst College even has an L.G.B.T.Q.Q.I.A.A. center, where every group gets its own letter.

The term is also gaining traction on social media sites like Twitter and Tumblr, where posts tagged with "lgbtqia" suggest a younger, more progressive outlook than posts that are merely labeled "lgbt."

"There's a very different generation of people coming of age, with completely different conceptions of gender and sexuality," said Jack Halberstam (formerly Judith), a transgender professor at the University of Southern California and the author, most recently, of "Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal."

"When you see terms like L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," Professor Halberstam added, "it's because people are seeing all the things that fall out of the binary, and demanding that a name come into being."

And with a plethora of ever-expanding categories like "genderqueer" and "androgyne" to choose from, each with an online subculture, piecing together a gender identity can be as D.I.Y. as making a Pinterest board.

BUT sometimes L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. is not enough. At the University of Pennsylvania last fall, eight freshmen united in the frustration that no campus group represented them.

Sure, Penn already had some two dozen gay student groups, including Queer People of Color, Lambda Alliance and J-Bagel, which bills itself as the university's "Jewish L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Community." But none focused on gender identity (the closest, Trans Penn, mostly catered to faculty members and graduate students).

Richard Parsons, an 18-year-old transgender male, discovered that when he attended a student mixer called the Gay Affair, sponsored by Penn's L.G.B.T. Center. "I left thoroughly disappointed," said Richard, a garrulous freshman with close-cropped hair, wire-framed glasses and preppy clothes, who added, "This is the L.G.B.T. Center, and it's all gay guys."

Through Facebook, Richard and others started a group called Penn Non-Cis, which is short for "non-cisgender." For those not fluent in gender-studies speak, "cis" means "on the same side as" and "cisgender" denotes someone whose gender identity matches his or her biology, which describes most of the student body. The group seeks to represent everyone else. "This is a freshman uprising," Richard said.

On a brisk Tuesday night in November, about 40 students crowded into the L.G.B.T. Center, a converted 19th-century carriage house, for the group's inaugural open mike. The organizers had lured students by handing out fliers on campus while barking: "Free condoms! Free ChapStick!"

"There's a really vibrant L.G.B.T. scene," Kate Campbell, one of the M.C.'s, began. "However, that mostly encompasses the L.G.B. and not too much of the T. So we're aiming to change that."

Students read poems and diary entries, and sang guitar ballads. Then Britt Gilbert - a punky-looking freshman with a blond bob, chunky glasses and a rock band T-shirt - took the stage. She wanted to talk about the concept of "bi-gender."

"Does anyone want to share what they think it is?"

Silence.

She explained that being bi-gender is like manifesting both masculine and feminine personas, almost as if one had a "detachable penis." "Some days I wake up and think, 'Why am I in this body?' " she said. "Most days I wake up and think, 'What was I thinking yesterday?' 

"Britt's grunginess belies a warm matter-of-factness, at least when describing her journey. As she elaborated afterward, she first heard the term "bi-gender" from Kate, who found it on Tumblr. The two met at freshman orientation and bonded. In high school, Kate identified as "agender" and used the singular pronoun "they"; she now sees her gender as an "amorphous blob."

By contrast, Britt's evolution was more linear. She grew up in suburban Pennsylvania and never took to gender norms. As a child, she worshiped Cher and thought boy bands were icky. Playing video games, she dreaded having to choose male or female avatars.

In middle school, she started calling herself bisexual and dated boys. By 10th grade, she had come out as a lesbian. Her parents thought it was a phase - until she brought home a girlfriend, Ash. But she still wasn't settled.

"While I definitely knew that I liked girls, I didn't know that I was one," Britt said. Sometimes she would leave the house in a dress and feel uncomfortable, as if she were wearing a Halloween costume. Other days, she felt fine. She wasn't "trapped in the wrong body," as the cliché has it - she just didn't know which body she wanted.

When Kate told her about the term "bi-gender," it clicked instantly. "I knew what it was, before I knew what it was," Britt said, adding that it is more fluid than "transgender" but less vague than "genderqueer" - a catchall term for nontraditional gender identities.

At first, the only person she told was Ash, who responded, "It took you this long to figure it out?" For others, the concept was not so easy to grasp. Coming out as a lesbian had been relatively simple, Britt said, "since people know what that is." But when she got to Penn, she was relieved to find a small community of freshmen who had gone through similar awakenings.

Among them was Richard Parsons, the group's most politically lucid member. Raised female, Richard grew up in Orlando, Fla., and realized he was transgender in high school. One summer, he wanted to room with a transgender friend at camp, but his mother objected. "She's like, 'Well, if you say that he's a guy, then I don't want you rooming with a guy,' " he recalled. "We were in a car and I basically blurted out, 'I think I might be a guy, too!' "

After much door-slamming and tears, Richard and his mother reconciled. But when she asked what to call him, he had no idea. He chose "Richard" on a whim, and later added a middle name, Matthew, because it means "gift of God."

By the time he got to Penn, he had been binding his breasts for more than two years and had developed back pain. At the open mike, he told a harrowing story about visiting the university health center for numbness and having a panic attack when he was escorted into a women's changing room.

Nevertheless, he praised the university for offering gender-neutral housing. The college's medical program also covers sexual reassignment surgery, which, he added, "has heavily influenced my decision to probably go under the Penn insurance plan next year."

PENN has not always been so forward-thinking; a decade ago, the L.G.B.T. Center (nestled amid fraternity houses) was barely used. But in 2010, the university began reaching out to applicants whose essays raised gay themes. Last year, the gay newsmagazine The Advocate ranked Penn among the top 10 trans-friendly universities, alongside liberal standbys like New York University.

More and more colleges, mostly in the Northeast, are catering to gender-nonconforming students. According to a survey by Campus Pride, at least 203 campuses now allow transgender students to room with their preferred gender; 49 have a process to change one's name and gender in university records; and 57 cover hormone therapy. In December, the University of Iowa became the first to add a "transgender" checkbox to its college application.

"I wrote about an experience I had with a drag queen as my application essay for all the Ivy Leagues I applied to," said Santiago Cortes, one of the Penn students. "And I got into a few of the Ivy Leagues - Dartmouth, Columbia and Penn. Strangely not Brown.

"But even these measures cannot keep pace with the demands of incoming students, who are challenging the curriculum much as gay activists did in the '80s and '90s. Rather than protest the lack of gay studies classes, they are critiquing existing ones for being too narrow.

Several members of Penn Non-Cis had been complaining among themselves about a writing seminar they were taking called "Beyond 'Will & Grace,' " which examined gay characters on shows like "Ellen," "Glee" and "Modern Family." The professor, Gail Shister, who is a lesbian, had criticized several students for using "L.G.B.T.Q." in their essays, saying it was clunky, and proposed using "queer" instead. Some students found the suggestion offensive, including Britt Gilbert, who described Ms. Shister as "unaccepting of things that she doesn't understand."

Ms. Shister, reached by phone, said the criticism was strictly grammatical. "I am all about economy of expression," she said. "L.G.B.T.Q. doesn't exactly flow off the tongue. So I tell the students, 'Don't put in an acronym with five or six letters.' "

One thing is clear. Ms. Shister, who is 60 and in 1979 became The Philadelphia Inquirer's first female sportswriter, is of a different generation, a fact she acknowledges freely, even gratefully. "Frankly, I'm both proud and envious that these young people are growing up in an age where they're free to love who they want," she said.

If history is any guide, the age gap won't be so easy to overcome. As liberated gay men in the 1970s once baffled their pre-Stonewall forebears, the new gender outlaws, to borrow a phrase from the transgender writer Kate Bornstein, may soon be running ideological circles around their elders.

Still, the alphabet soup of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. may be difficult to sustain. "In the next 10 or 20 years, the various categories heaped under the umbrella of L.G.B.T. will become quite quotidian," Professor Halberstam said.

Even at the open mike, as students picked at potato chips and pineapple slices, the bounds of identity politics were spilling over and becoming blurry.

At one point, Santiago, a curly-haired freshman from Colombia, stood before the crowd. He and a friend had been pondering the limits of what he calls "L.G.B.T.Q. plus."

"Why do only certain letters get to be in the full acronym?" he asked.

Then he rattled off a list of gender identities, many culled from Wikipedia. "We have our lesbians, our gays," he said, before adding, "bisexual, transsexual, queer, homosexual, asexual." He took a breath and continued. "Pansexual. Omnisexual. Trisexual. Agender. Bi-gender. Third gender. Transgender. Transvestite. Intersexual. Two-spirit. Hijra. Polyamorous."

By now, the list had turned into free verse. He ended: "Undecided. Questioning. Other. Human."

The room burst into applause.

Correction: January 10, 2013, Thursday

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An earlier version of this article and a picture caption referred incorrectly to a Sarah Lawrence College student who uploaded a video online about being transgender. He says he is Stephen Ira, not Stephen Ira Beatty.

Source NYT

Fair Use

Did you even read my post? I specifically mention that I am from Canada and that the US is different. Second I have my PALR and know quite a lot about our gun laws here in Canada.

Cool story tho

EDIT: I realized I cut the "Canada vs US" out of my abbreviated post here, so I can see what you mean.

>> ^Shepppard:

@Buck
DO NOT drag Canadian gun ownership into your thought process. Your entire post is invalidated if you refer to Canadian gun ownership the way you do American gun ownership.
Buying a gun in most of (if not all) of the U.S. is basically passing a 3-15 day background check. If you don't have a felony, history of mental health problems, or even some larger misdemeanors, you get your gun.
Canadians need to first off pass a safety course (C.anadian F.irearms S.afety C.ourse) then mail away an application for gun ownership. If you're granted the PAL (Possession and Acquisition License) you can then go out and buy sporting rifles, shotguns and airguns with an overall length of 660mm or greater. (Air rifles that are capable of a muzzle velocity of over 500 feet per second require the license.)
Handguns, and anything fully automatic are still prohibited.
If you want a handgun, you can take a CRFSC (R for Restricted) test and pass it, and then you're allowed to own and use Handguns. Fully automatic weapons, however, are still prohibited.
TL;DR:
Canadians have to jump through hoops and actually pass safety courses and tests before even being allowed to mail off your application and be considered for gun ownership.
Americans have to not be crazy, not have been in jail, and be able to wait up to two weeks.
Comparing gun ownership between the two is NOT valid.

One could take English as a major but that would be suicide.
The english language long ago just puked up all its guts and died.
It's been replaced with texting with abbreviated nonsense words
Like OMG U LOOSR GET A JOB O WAIT U CANT U TURD.

Did it miss any other ones?

>> ^arekin:

I guess english was so bad they didn't even need to mention it.

In reply to this comment by UsesProzac:
@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/kulpims" title="member since May 14th, 2007" class="profilelink">kulpims thought of a funny nick name, PAS, which is close to dog in Slovenian, his native tongue. Dog is pes. Thought that was humorous

Pumkin And Storm, PAS. haha. Jen is much prettier
In reply to this comment by pumkinandstorm:
In reply to this comment by UsesProzac:
Aww, thank you @<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/pumkinandstorm" title="member since March 27th, 2012" class="profilelink"><strong style="color:#f52c65">pumkinandstorm! I want to call you just pumkin or storm, but those names are already taken! Aahhhhh! I'm trying to remember your name.. I'm terrible with names. I'm Laura. :

The picture was an emo moment, decided to capture it. W_-
In reply to this comment by pumkinandstorm:
What a beautiful avatar. It's art!


You can call me Jen if you like (it's my real name) : When I set up this account I wasn't really thinking too clearly about a good user name. I wish I hadn't used TWO names...it sounds like I have multiple personality disorder. ; Or...if you can come up with a creative abbreviation for pumkinandstorm, that would be great too! I'm open to anything! :


Kulpims is a genius!!! That is really funny. PAS it is! It also sounds a bit like "paws" which is also related. Haha.

In reply to this comment by UsesProzac:
Aww, thank you @<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/pumkinandstorm" title="member since March 27th, 2012" class="profilelink"><strong style="color:#f52c65">pumkinandstorm! I want to call you just pumkin or storm, but those names are already taken! Aahhhhh! I'm trying to remember your name.. I'm terrible with names. I'm Laura. :

The picture was an emo moment, decided to capture it. W_-
In reply to this comment by pumkinandstorm:
What a beautiful avatar. It's art!


You can call me Jen if you like (it's my real name) When I set up this account I wasn't really thinking too clearly about a good user name. I wish I hadn't used TWO names...it sounds like I have multiple personality disorder. Or...if you can come up with a creative abbreviation for pumkinandstorm, that would be great too! I'm open to anything!

>> ^mintbbb:

I like it
promote


Thanks MB! (which is also the abbreviation for Manitoba!)

I'm coming hard for Friday.
Like a pedophile
At his computer desk
Watching Rebecca smile.
I go the extra mile.
The marathon's 27th mile.
Then I hit the ice cold beverage isle.
I got a cast-iron liver.
And I would rather drown my sorrows
Than cry a river.
I use my brain like you
Use a plain flight ticket.
Now I'm in a place
Where all the fences are white picket.
The only way it might get disturbing
Is if you're bothered by the sound
Of light cricket chirping.
I just let in soak in like Robatussen.
And about the fast-paced rap race
There's no discussion.
I'm just trying to get into the proper mood.
Remix of everyday life, chopped and screwed.
What can I do to get the weekdays behind me?
Watsky, remind me.
Thank you, kindly.

Kick Monday in the nutsack.
Wedgie Wednesday's buttcrack.
I'm coming hard for Friday.
And if you're not, get the fuck back. (x2)

Compared to my old testicles, hecka small.
Mine crack walls, like a wrecking ball.
While my checkered drawls fall y'all's yornaments.
Fear for a porno flick.
Time to deck the halls.
I'm glad it's all finished.
The week is all bidness.
But now I'm chilling, sprawled out
With a tall Guinness.
I'm gonna set the world record
For the funnest time ever
Had on the planet.
So everybody call Guinness.
I swear a lot.
This ain't Fisher-Price.
If I'm a bad influence
Then here's the great advice:
Kids! Don't be a dickweed!
Appreciate the shit out of the present moment
And be fucking nice!
I whistle weird for the tune of it.
If they all did, it'd ruin it.
We spent two months on this here
Bluegrass-folk rock-hip hop album
Because we really felt like doing it.
So everybody...

Kick Monday in the nutsack.
Wedgie Wednesday's buttcrack.
I'm coming hard for Friday.
And if you're not, get the fuck back. (x2)

I'm an Amurican.
I put my work in.
And when work's done
It's time for perking.
Hey, let's invite the vultures down to have a drink.
They must be getting tired doing all the circling.
Cause it's the world's end.
We're overheatelated!
And, from what I hear,
We're also overpeopleated!
So, there's no room.
So, we'll all explode soon.
Let's get abbreviated
And forget what we created.
So I've been thinking
We should have a big party
For all humans, and even women.
For the dumb Southeners, and the lazy Mexicans.
The A-rabs, and the coloreds, and their peckers and
The cheap Jews, which is me, too!
I'll even treat you!
But, just this once, cause nothing's free, dude.
And when the fiery end comes
We'll burn up quicker.
Cause we're full of liquor.
So everybody

Kick Monday in the nutsack.

They abbreviated thou as y^ou. The pronunciation changed over time to the familiar "u".

That's why many people (e.g. the amish) refuse to use the new-fangled you and always use the correct (i.e. old) thou.

The "heavily armed and armoured" part is the problem. These are not heavily armed. They fit squarely within the definition of an APC:

armored personnel carrier 
noun
a tracked military vehicle with a steel or aluminum hull used to transport troops in combat and usually fitted with light armament. Abbreviation: APC>> ^AeroMechanical:

I think you could call those tanks. Dictionary definition of 'tank' is "an enclosed heavily armed and armored combat vehicle that moves on tracks." Depends on the audience and context. To the world at large, those are tanks.

>> ^Diogenes:

@criticalthud
let's be really clear... i agree with your position on corporate personhood
but... we can use "citizens united" to abbreviate the scotus decision: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission... and how that decision has overturned several previous legal precedents and aspects of bcra -- and we can also use "citizens united" to refer directly to the non-profit group of the same name...
i'm just pointing out the latter (the npo) filed suit against the fec because they felt that a media corporation (moore, et al) was violating bcra - the fec dismissed their complaint -- then the group made a similar 'documentary' about hillary clinton and promoted it with the same style and timing of moore's anti-bush film - a lower court barred it, stating that it violated the bcra -- this background led us to the troubling scotus decision
what i was pointing out was that bcra, etc, was already allowing corporate political advocacy through the media, i.e. movie producers, book publishers, newspaper conglomerates, and television networks, etc
this, imho, is what really muddies the waters


thanks i really appreciate the clarification. muddy waters for sure. You raise some good points. Especially in distinguishing an over-reach of political influence from entertainment and documentary media. But are we getting to the point where campaign finance legislation will necessarily intrude on free press and the works of film-makers? what is your take? I would prefer to think that legislation could and should be narrowly tailored in this instance.
and (edit)
@bmacs24 I think it makes sense to start with the fundamental underlying legal ambiguity by which the power grab occurs. The war on "terror" is another ambiguous area of laws that also leads to incredible abuse.
Otherwise you find yourself caught in the minutiae, trying to re-arrange the top bricks on the shit-stack