Downvoting is an interesting case that I thought about quite a bit.

I think it *could* go to the Regular Member level, but I'm fine with it staying at Bronze Star because:
* Downvoting is a bit more subject to abuse than the bookkeeping invocations I mentioned before, mainly because it can auto-discard things that get downvoted early. Right?
* IF downvoting was as integral a function as upvoting, I'd say that regular members should get it. BUT, either by design or just as the emergent de-facto standard, it isn't used very much -- even amongst those that have access to it.
* There are some exceptions to that trend, like, say, @ant. Even though that seems to get under some people's skin, I like the way ant uses downvoting -- especially when considered to be a perk reserved for the real upper echelons of contributing members.
* BUT, all of that is primarily relevant to *video* downvoting. *Comment* downvoting isn't as critical / exploitable, so it seems like that could be made available to members before they can downvote videos. I would sometimes like to have that ability, but if the powers that be feel that it should be reserved for Star-level, I don't feel strongly enough about it to push.


I think that's probably all my thoughts on the topic. Thanks again to @Retroboy for bringing it up for discussion, and to @lucky760 / dag et al. for considering it.

Sociopaths aren't inherently bad, they're inherently detached from some instinctual behaviors that most other life displays in social situations.
The reason Sociopath has become a negative word in recent years is because of the damage that people who carry the label that have done to society as a whole (capitalism, exploitation, economic greed).
Personally I despise that kind of thinking, but you have to recognize sociopathic behavior is simply another way of approaching life that manifests itself in humans.

I think it is funny how my own empathy caused me to write this in defense of Stu.

I am German myself and I am disgusted how the German media and politicians are only blaming Greece. Some conservative papers (like welt.de) are ticking out completely and are turning to phrases that are very close to our Nazi history and are not allowing overly critical comments.

How Germans could chop down wages so quickly and without much opposition from the people and other parties?
The main reason is Hartz IV. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartz_concept
Its a reform for the unemployed people, which at first sight doesnt have much to do with wages of the working people. But it does have everything to do with it. Let me explain:
Before Hartz IV unemployed people didnt have much to fear from the state. They got their unemployment (Sozialhilfe) money every month which was enough to live without much fear of anything. It didnt mean much to be unemployed. But people found a job if they wanted to. Of course, like every country, it was exploited by a tiny minority. People were happy with it and many countries were envious of that system because it provided so much social security that people got very peaceful and crime rates were pretty much non-existent.

Hartz IV was planned to cut the massive costs of that social system. The left wing government (which turned out to be massive hypocrites), a coalition of a socialist party and a green party, claimed it would decrease unemployment rates massively and save lots of tax money and they would force those lazy useless unemployed people to get jobs. They emphasized on "the hard earning people whos tax money is stolen by lazy unemployed" and used the tiny minority of exploiters to get Hartz IV under way. Hartz IV was basically a cut for unemployed people where they would barely have enough money to live from or pay the rent from it. It also allowed the government to use many tricks to adjust the unemployment rate. They for example excluded people who were unemployed at a certain age or people who were send on useless trainings (like how you write a job application or how you use a PC), which were forced on them from the government. If they didnt attend, they would get cuts on the already not enough Hartz IV money.

They got it through the parliament (since there was no oppositon of mention thank to their "democratic" coalition) and it went all downhill from there. Unemployed people were suddenly massively discriminated, even by the politicians, because they had created so much hate against unemployed and built many stereotypes in the process, supported by stupid fake shows in the media, just to push Hartz IV through. As I said before, they only used the minority that exploited the system before in their arguments, and didnt care about the majority. That also lead to companies falling for the created stereotype and not employing people who had been using Hartz IV at one time and even going as far as them looking at older employees as inferior. They got rid of them in a massive purge, which also led to the trick of excluding old people near pension-age from the unemployment statistics. Pensions dropped because those old fired people didnt get a job anymore and had to use Hartz IV. That meant that they had to use up their savings before they get Hartz IV money (that rule is part of Hartz IV), which drained old people of their money and also caused them to get caught in an even worse trap:
After a few years of getting Hartz IV money, they dropped to the lowest pension rate, which was barely above Hartz IV. It didnt matter if they worked 40 years of their life in a well paid job. Now they were poor and would never get a pension that was appropriate to their former job. That lead to a massive shift in wealth away from the normal people (middle class and poor), to the rich people. The buying power of Germans was destroyed, and it became even worse after the socialist/conservative government (yes, a stupid coalition like that is possible here) increased the sales tax by 3% to a whopping 19%. As result of this living costs exploded and black labor skyrocketed. Cost of energy of any kind, taxes, food prices, gas, rents, every day stuff you need increased massively. The Euro was to blame too, because prices of many things (especially food) were just exchanged 1-1 to the Euro. So for example if there was cheese before that cost 1 Deutsche Mark, it would now cost 1 Euro, even though 1 Euro was worth 2 Deutsche Mark. Wages collapsed, while everything got much more pricy. Hartz IV made all that worse.
Now for the main reason how Hatz IV pushed wages down:
The fear of dropping into Hartz IV (for the reasons I mentioned) was massive. Nobody ever wanted to drop into Hartz IV because they knew then everything was over. So they accepted extremely low wage jobs, even if that meant they would get less money than they would from Hartz IV, which already was barely enough to live a crappy live from. They took 2, 3, 4 shitty paid jobs instead, and the companies loved it, because they saved a lot of money with that. The problem with that was that even well educated people had fear of Hartz IV and accepted lower wages because of it. Wages didnt rise for 20 years (and they dont rise much now either). Yet living costs, as I said, increased massively. It all came together.
Germanys economy was very low at one point, yet they still tried to tell us that the unemployment rate dropped again (even 2007/08 and every year after that). People started to learn how they manipulated us and now we are here. Companies making revenue records after revenue records, yet nothing is arriving at the people. The media claims everything is well, the statistics still lie to us that the unemployment rate is low, but its not.
And now they are trying to blame the Greeks for our problems. Just like the unemployed Germans before, and the stupid masses fall for it again.
Yet they still wonder why Germans are a dying breed (population has been dropping for years now), and dont get that having children is very expensive in Germany and only few people still have money or time for that (since both women and men have multiple jobs to be able to live) because of these developments.

Thanks for your extra link there, that video is one very good talk on the subject. The writing is absolutely on the wall for some party like the Golden Dawn to exploit future unrest by just standing back and waiting for their moment. History repeats itself, and those who study it are doomed to watch helplessly as most refuse to learn from it.

ExxonMobil had the Bush administration lobbying strongly to replace the chair of the IPCC with a more agreeable alternative, which we know about because of a leaked memo. So let us not pretend that the IPCC are above the skepticism of being politically influenced. The name "intergovernmental panel" says it all, in my opinion; i had assumed the I stood for Independent.

I don't apologise for not reading the entire thread because i noticed that in your first post you said the following, and it gave me cause to doubt your take on the science in the rest of the thread. I've been in too many discussions in which i spent hours researching only to find out people were completely wrong, and i spent 45 mins on your first paragraph already. Anyway here is the quote again:

"IPCC best estimates for 2100 are about 1.5 degree increase, so another hundred years and increase that is about twice as bad. Of course, it's twice as bad as what we saw the last 100 yeas and not only survived, but thrived under."

Firstly, the planet's flora and fauna have most certainly NOT thrived during that time. Humans have flourished by exploiting nature, so yes we have 'thrived'. In the same way that if i were to steal money from a dozen old ladies, i might say i was thriving even though i was out of work during the economic downturn. Pretty much every source agrees that the one thing the ecosystem is not doing is thriving - we are in or on the verge of the sixth mass extinction on the planet. So this is an inspiring yet futile "hurrah for us!" bravado that ignores the truth; we stand on the deck of a galleon around a big bonfire, ripping up planks and chopping up the boat, throwing it on the fire and going "we're all lovely and warm!" as we sit lower and lower in the water.

Secondly and in my opinion most significantly, according to the IPCC conclusions on page 8 you have used the term "best estimates" to mean "best case scenario" rather than "most reliable estimate" - which is why i have downvoted that comment, as it is misleading and incorrect. I would say it's cynically misleading, but i suspect you've lifted that from a cynical source rather than being cynical yourself.

I don't know if you realise, but you referred to only one result out of four, the rest of which strongly indicate a greater than 2 degree rise. Your reference is to RCP 2.6 which assumes CO2 emissions peak between 2010 and 2020. A decade in which the most populous countries on the planet are developing and a decade in which we must start to reduce global emissions so that we have a good chance of your best case scenario happening. We are already half way through it, and according to Mauna Loa observatory and every other source i could find (including EPA, NOAA and IEA) we are still increasing our CO2 emissions year on year including this year, where we've broken the 400ppm milestone, 120ppm greater than pre industrial times, half of which occured since 1980 (Pieter Tans).

So in fairness, you might have underplayed the IPCC report (which you seem to get almost all of your information from) in as much as newtboy might have overestimated the dangers and rapidity of climate change. I think you're out on a limb by telling him that the scientific community disagrees with him and he's using dodgy sources, when you've cherry picked one quarter of a conclusion from one source (the IPCC) to argue for your best case scenario which you refer to (unscientifically and incorrectly) as the "best estimate".

However, i do at least appreciate that despite your doubts (and in my opinion, slight confusion over the results, i don't think you're being intentionally misleading) you are very much behind changing our behaviour and using resources that are more appropriate... and that's what really matters right now is that people recognise the need to change.

I've also cheered for his retirement from the movie making world, especially due to the German tax laws he exploited. However, as a friend pointed out, he's really good at being really bad at making movies.

For a good example, my favorite movie of his is Postal. It is so absolutely horrible that I actually enjoyed it. Don't pay for it, though, he doesn't deserve any residuals. The whole movie is on YouTube, strangely enough. If you watch it and feel like you should pay, just send money directly to Dave Foley.

That's rather the point of the video, isn't it? BP are the ones who were all "¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ... sorry".

This event and others like it happened because someone thought it was worth the risk for money.

Actually a lot of people did; the company, whose major decision-makers will only be concerned if it affects the value of their beach properties, and even then may not notice.

The government, which for various reasons allows the exploitation of natural resources like this. Those reasons range from direct cash deposits in offshore accounts, to the general notions of what's "good for the economy" held by our corporate-entertained politicians.

Environmental risk management should be done with zero regard to the likelihood of said risk; assume it *will* happen and work from there.

But no, that's sandal-wearing, beard-and-vegetable-growing lib*/greenie/hippy talk.

What if everyone just stopped playing and watching football for a year or two? FAN STRIKE! Erase football from your mind until these worker exploiting pyramid builders are gone.

I don't know what dirt Blatter has on what politician, but how did he not get arrested?

The business around the Qatar world cup demonstrates perfectly how this horrible world works. Football is loved around the world, for the most part by peace loving individuals who believe in fair play and good sportsmanship.

Yet somehow, the money that we pay to watch football (and the money that the advertisers pay for the privilege selling us things while we watch) was used to set up a football competition in a country at a time when football is not playable. To ensure this impossible spectacle takes place, tens of thousands of low paid (and many unpaid for years at a time) migrants were moved into desolate infested squats in order to provide the slave labour to build the beautifully designed and wonderfully engineered, air conditioned stadia that we will all sit in or otherwise experience, in comfort, at the expense of all of those poor people.

And yet almost every one of us would be outraged and moved to action at the possibility of a person being exploited in our name.

They investigated themselves, they found themselves to be acting in an exemplary fashion. If anyone is punished for corruption, they will eventually return to their normal life of luxury after a brief stint out in the cold, and possibly be rehired under an umbrella company or to a lower-profile position of equal importance.

The same happened with the banks, the same happens with our politicians and their spiderweb of connections in big business and finance. Fuck capitalism. We need something new.

I thought this video did a terrible job of making a more direct link between the school system and prison. All this really delivered on was more facts regarding racial inequality.
Between the school failure rate and the for-profit prison systems, I could see a conflict of interest between the two being exploited, and there is so much evidence to support that I think it would be trivial to build a case in a short video like this.
Instead they just reiterate "Racism bad, minorities getting screwed", which, while being a message I completely agree, sympathize with, and speak out about, it has almost nothing to do with the way this video is described and presented.

We are a known quantity on many interstellar maps if the evolutionary paradigm is true. It wouldn't take that long for a sufficiently advanced civilization to locate every planet that has life on it, especially if they could use inter-dimensional travel. They could automate everything using robotics, or by some other means unknown to us. Perhaps they could even instantly colonize those planets using sentient robots.

The point is that we are a resource to be exploited and after an estimated 15 billion years of the Universe existing, according to the secular narrative, there should be many civilizations out there capable of doing just that. That we haven't been contacted or seen any activity at all is more than curious; it is dramatic evidence that we are in fact alone in the cosmos.

I used to think anti-vaxxers were just morons but she talks about the fear of trusting in a system where certain fringes have exploited FUD to prey upon people who's only thought is the safety of their kids.

And only when the worst occurs, these poor bastards realise that the real danger is contracting the disease, and the FUD is distracting them from it...

Hopefully, this might leads others to reconsider their stance.

I think the problem is ultimately a political one.

There are absolutely social issues in Islam (similar to every religion, but marginally more repressive), but the terrorist angle is there because of geography. Most of the adherents to Islam live in the third world and yeah, they absolutely have genuine, legitimate grievances with the west. Not because we're secular godless infidels, but because of the way we've exploited people.

And these people are exploited by their religious leaders.

Look at Northern Ireland. You had Catholics on one side and Protestants on the other, but because both were Christians, it was framed as a political struggle. If the republicans had been druids or something, then it would be recast as a religious issue.

If most Christians were living in the third world, we'd be looking at the exact same problem. The only reason Christianity is any less problematic than Islam is because it has had to live in an affluent education demographic who increasingly won't put up with it's original treatment of women, homosexuals, etc.

In poorer areas, (southern US, South America, parts of Africa) Christianity is indistinguishable from the Taliban.

There's some debate on the exact phenomenons at play and their extents, but the gist of it is correct, it's not like they have "no idea" how it works. An airfoil moving through air (or any other fluid, same principles work in water as well) generates a higher pressure below it and a lower pressure above it, which results in lift. This can be done even with simple flat plank by using angle of attack, or more effectively if you shape it like a good airfoil. Similarly the wings in racing cars do the same thing but flipped upside down, pushing the car down to the ground (though exploiting underbody aerodynamics can be much more effective if regulations allow it).

The only thing that really bothered me in the video was the insistence on the angle of attack being required for lift. Some planes are so light and have wings that produce so much lift (due to size and shape), that at high speeds they actually need to have negative angle of attack to fly level. If the plane didn't point down a bit it'd just keep climbing higher and higher.

Yeah, I'm with you 100% on this, hard to say.

It's nice, but feels exploitive.