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@newtboy

can we trade debating partners?
@transmorpher appears to not be suffering from a bad case of twattery as my partner is and seems waaay cooler.

i have to admit i am watching with a tad bit of jealousy the snarky give and take you two are engaging in and what do i get?

a fucking quote miner.

might as well head to the church of the nazerene revival tent and strike up a convo there.

praise jesus!

I think that the GOP is in full-on panic mode, and doesn't care about legitimacy / shot at winning for this election.

They (the party elites) will do absolutely everything they can to prevent Trump from getting enough delegates to lock up the nomination. Hence Colorado and Wyoming. Those actions make it seem like they prefer Cruz, but actually they dislike him close to as much as they hate Trump.

Although it is still mathematically possible for Cruz (559 delegates) to get enough delegates to lock up the nomination (1237 needed), realistically it is out of reach (826 still available). Trump (756 delegates), on the other hand, could well manage it. So, the GOP strategy is to avoid that at all costs by encouraging people to vote for Cruz or Kasich in primaries, or even better to encourage more state GOP offices to hold a smoke-filled room convention that grants all the delegates to #NeverTrump instead of even bothering to let people vote.

If they manage that, the contested national convention will get ugly. They (GOP elites) would turn on Cruz instantly -- cast aside. In any other election cycle they would have turned on him already, but with juggernaut Trump, they have to use him to get to the contested convention.

So the question becomes who if not Trump or Cruz? Who will the GOP try to push in? I think that right now, they aren't as worried about answering that question as they are about trying to get there. That being said, they have some options:

Mitt Romney was their first thought. He took some tentative steps towards playing along with the GOP plans, failed to generate any excitement, and has since faded back into relative obscurity. But he remains an option.

Next up was Paul Ryan. A lot of the GOP see him as the future of the party; the "great white hope". There was a flurry of activity making it seem like he was going to take up the flag, but has since denied that he would be interested in or even accept getting the nod. However, he was cagey and close to as vocal against getting the nod to be speaker of the house, and then accepted that. You never know.

Kasich would be another option. He's relatively benign, and wouldn't offend many more of the republican base than the GOP is already ready and willing to offend in order to prevent Trump (and to a lesser extent Cruz).


Of those, I tend to think that Romney is the most likely choice for the GOP in the end. I think it would be extremely stupid to foist "future of the party" Ryan into this election, which would certainly taint his political future. Kasich makes a lot of sense, but on the other hand, "in for a penny, in for a pound" -- as long as the GOP is willing to go to these great lengths to keep Trump out they might as well just own the illegitimacy of it, shoot the moon, and hand pick someone that a) they have complete control over, and b) has nothing to lose in terms of political future. Voila, Mitt Romney.


I also don't think that the GOP will just throw in the towel if Trump locks down the number of delegates needed for the nomination. I'm sure they already have some last-ditch, scorched earth preliminary plans in place for that contingency.

However, I think that they essentially already have thrown in the towel with regards to the election in general. At least to a sufficient degree that they don't give a rats ass about the chances for whoever is the republican nominee winning. That's a *distant* priority behind NOT TRUMP, among other things. Which is pretty stupid, because the likely nomination of Hillary on the democrat side gives them what should be a *golden* opportunity to steal the election. IF they could come up with a vaguely tolerable candidate ... which they won't.

Or, the clothing is tight because most of it was designed for people with much less up there than she has. It sounds like she has a similar problem that fat people probably have, only it's just one part of her body.
I wonder if part of the problem is that to get enough material to cover those fun bags means the rest of you looks like you're wearing a circus tent.
So it seems a bit unfair to accuse her of having a pathological need to show off her tits when pretty much nothing short of a portable sports dome will ever really conceal those twin death stars.

It's worth noting though that in Europe the word Gypsy, or variants of Zigane / Zigeuner, is a racial slur and used in modern times in actual, horrifying violence against minorities. I mean to the point where it's used by the same people who paint swastikas on walls before they raze tent villages.

http://www.newstatesman.com/human-rights/2014/04/why-europe-failing-protect-its-roma-population-hate-crimes

In the US this is obviously not a thing, and it still doesn't make sense to me to start writing G*p*y (I just see 'guppy' when I read that) but there is a history of racism against the Romani going back centuries, as well as a modern culture of extreme marginalization and exclusion.

I don't want Europeans to go around casually using the N-word and thinking that that's only a disgusting term when it's used in the US, so I guess I wouldn't want Americans going around casually saying Gypsy either, if it can be avoided?

From what i understood, he wasn't complaining that the finished joint could be separated and reorientated - that's the whole point of the joint. The problem is that the joint is made by chopping bits off and gluing them back on, so the joint is only as strong as the dab of glue you used to put it back together.

Payback's got a great point though, with a 3D printer it might be possible to put it to good use. I say 3D print these type of joints as sockets into which you stick some wood or metal. A bit like old fashioned tents or gazebos that have plastic sockets to connect the poles. Could be a good way of building large amounts of shelters very quickly, maybe for things like the huge refugee camps we've got going right now due to western imperialism in the middle east.

There's something wrong with all those pictures...all of those camps are almost completely empty. What's the story with that? There must be a reason...such as those staying there are not allowed to work, but must still pay for food and services, or something else untenable. People would not be paying thousands of dollars for a chance to take their familys on an overloaded rubber raft across dangerous waters and continuing on a dangerous voyage through hostile countries to unknown possible places of refuge if there was a reasonable, safe place for them on the border of Syria.
Also, to be sure, tent cities are less than ideal in Southern Turkey where the temperature is often deadly....but they are better than nothing.
I'm not sure, beyond the smugglers getting them to Greece and food on the trail, what the Syrians might pay for that helps them reach Europe. The train tickets they're buying don't cost much, do they? Certainly not the thousands they pay the smugglers....but perhaps paying the smugglers is what you mean.

I've seen that once. Might have been after one of the irish scandals, a guy holding a sign with a little kid and an old clergyman with a robe-tent approaching with his hands out like mr burns and a big grin. The thing is when it comes to paedophilia, you can't think it of anyone you think you know, so you discard images like that as silly fairy tales without thinking beyond the metaphor. You don't want to be wondering if the guy you just shook hands with gets drunk before sunday school and manipulates extra private tuition with the shy kid who doesn't have a dad and cries a lot.

Sorry to be so graphic there, but it is what it is in all its vileness, and everyone complicit ought to feel fucking ashamed of themselves. I'll stop before i derail, but the moral standards these people are hiding behind are very shady indeed, because somewhere in that chain of command someone knew and kept quiet about the institutional rape-centres the Catholics kept running for many decades. Unless they've leaned on their own faith-leaders to press for justice and HARD, their hands are dirty, and they are ridiculous to stand there shouting shame on someone else.

Man, i think i'm in love with this woman..

Well, since the tent seems to be standing without the guy-line, I'd say they have this covered.

Kevin Smith seems to hype just about every Hollywood tent pole.

...and apparently one can use a built in simple editor to modify the publicly available stock wire frame models to match them exactly to the item in the photo, movie, painting, etc. I see that it's likely more work that they imply, but far less work than previous editors or other ways of doing photo realistic CG. I give a tentative thumbs up.

That assault on the subway -- that happened to me at 11 am on a Sunday in NYC. Beautiful sunny day. Outside. I stopped to watch a street vendor with a crowd, and someone was jostling me from behind, I thought to see better.

I realized he was jostling me rhythmically and panting.

I had just finished a self defense class, so I thought I was prepared to deal with it. I turned.... and looked down. This tiny guy was standing behind me, with a tent in his pants. I was 6 inches taller than him, and outweighed him by probably 50 pounds. He just looked up at me and... shrugged. Shrugged and smiled.

I had the physical skills to decimate him, but we were taught in class to use the skills to protect ourselves, not to attack.

I wasn't in danger. So I turned on my heel and walked away. Joined my friend, laughing. I'm a tourist in NYC for six hours, and I get sexually "assaulted." How funny!

It wasn't funny 15 minutes later. I started crying, just like this woman. I spent the day with my back against the wall where ever I went. I couldn't stand to have someone behind me. I kept feeling him on my ass. All day long.

I finally asked my friend to replace the "muscle memory." So she put her hand on my butt where he had assaulted me, and said soothing words.

That worked.

For six months. Until I was standing in line for a movie back home, and the man behind me had a cold. I could hear him breathing and I internally flipped out. I kept moving so he wouldn;t be behind me, but he wanted to stay in line, and kept getting behind me.

I went into the theater, took a seat, and sobbed.

Over something that didn't physically threaten me.

I had guilt over how I handled it. I had just taken that self defense course, and I had heard a story that amused the hell out of me.

A woman was on a bus, rush hour, pressed into the crowd, when a guy started groping her.

Know what she did?

She said LOUDLY so EVERYONE COULD HEAR -- I want you all to know that THIS MAN, THIS MAN RIGHT HERE, is touching me. I did not GIVE HIM PERMISSION TO TOUCH ME.

He slunk away. He left her alone.

I wish that this video offered solutions.

It was frustrating to know that the blonde woman was in a car full of people, and she didn't have a voice. She wasn't taught to speak up and make a scene.

And it is months later, and because she didn't speak, she still carries that.

And it is months later, and she didn't offer a solution based on her experience. She is still caught.

I'll tell you one thing -- that happens to me again?

I'M SPEAKING UP. Calmly. Loudly. Assertively. With conviction.

THIS MAN. THIS MAN RIGHT HERE.

If all women did that, this crap would stop.

They count on us staying silent.

Tell this to the women you love. Tell them to speak up if they feel safe -- and a crowded bus, a crowded subway car? You are surrounded by people. Nothing is going to happen to you.

They operate in the dark. They operate in silence. They count on your embarrassment.

Turn it on them, embarrass the bloody hell out of them and this crap will end.

Looks like an American Woodcock (snicker).

These well-camouflaged little guys spend most of their life tentatively creeping through the underbrush, effectively off-setting the sound of their own movements by moving "in-tune" with the rhythms of the forest and appearing as leaf-litter gently swaying in the wind.

I don't know, maybe a misfiring of that instinctual behavior when confronted with our own artificial rhythms might be what we're seeing here?

As a kid, I was really into astronomy, but was always bugged by the fact that books would talk about seeing the Milky Way at night, and about the thousands of stars in the night sky. I figured there was something wrong with my eyes or something, because I could never find the Milky Way, and while I never counted the stars, I thought there were only about a hundred at best.

Then when I was about 12, we went camping and on a night with a new moon, I went outside the tent after dark. I looked up at the sky and literally got dizzy at the stunning revelation that was the real night sky.

Nowadays, I always try to plan family camping trips around the new moon so my kids get a chance to see the real sky, but even out in the middle of nowhere it is getting increasingly difficult to find a spot without at least one glaring streetlight or security light.