I found a few reviews that may shed some light on how these men were portrayed. I get the impression Edison is the jerk and Westinghouse the better man.
-http://www.vulture.com/2017/09/the-current-war-is-absorbing-but-never-snaps-into-focus.html
-http://www.indiewire.com/2017/09/the-current-war-review-benedict-cumberbatch-tiff-2017-1201874791/
-http://variety.com/2017/film/reviews/the-current-war-film-review-1202553511/

Is this sweet fish just lonely? Not much entertainment value in that environment ... looks to me anyway.

I've had a variety of fish several times in my life. Many have displayed distinctive personality traits and would be amazingly interactive with me. Elvis and Costello [Oscars] were my favorites as was Jambi [goldfish ... old vids still on YT]. Too bad I dreaded cleaning those tanks though [ugg]. Coupled with the heartache of the eventual/inevitable burial at 'sea' [in most cases], my urge for serenity on that front has been satiated for good.

Good post, I was just looking into how Bitcoin works a week ago and this video helped solidify what I learned online. I can see the appeal of cryptocurrencies to criminals, hackers, or your garden variety government conspiracy theorist but I don't really see why an average person would have any interest in this, particularly given the volatility of the exchange rates between cryptocurrencies and the real world or the potential for hacking/losses due to errors in the system (see the disastrous Mt. Gox case here in Japan).

*doublepromote

Mark's been on the money since about the time he wrote "Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea", but there have been two significant developments in Europe that he seemingly didn't see coming: Portugal and the UK.

The Left Alliance in Portugal has basically been giving Schäuble the finger for two years now, with their unilateral end to austerity. How dare they defy the master of coin?! If Schäuble says you need another round of austerity, by God, you better tighten your belts, even if they are already around your neck.

Unsurprisingly, everyone going along with austerity without having a completely export-dependent economy is in deep doo-doo. Meanwhile, those pesky Portuguese actually managed to massively reduce unemployment, despite running a deficit that is entirely too small for their current situation. But that's a different story.

And then there's the UK. There's Corbyn. Tribune of the Plebs. Managed to get the youth voting by offering actual left-wing policies (the "radical youth", as the NYT likes to call them, while claiming that the warmongering, Constitution-shredding, wage-depressing, ecosphere-destroying "centrists" are not the real radicals). Managed to turn quite a lot of UKIP voters around as well. Within striking distance of the Tories, despite the media running 24h a day of drivel like "Jezza's Jihadi Comrades" -- Goebbels would be ashamed of the crudeness of the propaganda campaign by the Sun/Daily Mirror/etc.

The populist left is back, bitches. Corbyn and Sanders are the first steps past the neoliberal warmongers of the Third Way. The Obama experience of a corporatist disguised as a left populist may have given us The Orange One, but it also put another nail into the coffin of neoliberalism.

Antonio Gramsci, founding member of the Italian communist party, who was killed by the fascist regime of Mussolini, gave us the appropriate description of our time:
"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."

That's your Trump. That's your opioid epidemic. That's the EU's austerity program in Greece, doing twice as much damage as the German occupation in WW2.

Thank you for sharing your perspective, @MilkmanDan!

Here is a link from a farmer detailing what is in one of those license agreements, including a copy of one:

http://thefarmerslife.com/whats-in-a-monsanto-contract/

"That’s what we have to agree to in order to make use of Monsanto’s biotechnology on our farm. I don’t see anything in there that hurts my farm. Neither does Iowa farmer Dave Walton. I don’t have to buy their herbicides, and I don’t have to buy anything from them next year if I don’t want to. The biggest problem I have with seed companies is that it seems like they phase out a variety from time to time that is a really strong performer on our farm. "

What variety of spider is he?

I put a browser in incognito mode (so there would be no cookies / history to tailor results with) and tried it. Should be pretty much on par with average Thai results since I have Thai ISP and went through google.co.th. Also, I changed the search term to "Hitler" in Thai language script: "ฮิตเลอร์".

I'm pretty functionally fluent in listening to Thai and semi decent at speaking it (I can get along in daily life fine although I'll never be mistaken for a native speaker since I didn't grow up with a tonal language). I'm not completely illiterate when it comes to reading it, but I'm quite slow. Sort of "Dick and Jane" level. Anyway, it would take forever for me to interpret the results of that search reading everything in Thai, but here's a quick once-over:

#1 result is https://th.wikipedia.org/wiki/อดอล์ฟ_ฮิตเลอร์
The Thai wikipedia article on Hitler is a bit shorter than the English one, but seems to cover everything in a similar way. I didn't try to read much to confirm but it does talk about the holocaust and Jews.

#2 result is http://teen.mthai.com/variety/57766.html
Seems to be a blog-type article on Hitler, written by a (high school?) student. I used the Chrome translate feature (which generally produces nonsense with Thai to English, but can get you broad strokes) to save time. This one does mention that Hitler hated Jews and talks about the holocaust being "cruel", although it seems to present a sort of positive take on Hitler in general. At least, more than we'd generally be comfortable with in the West.

#3 result is https://pantip.com/topic/31569039
This is a web forum. The article/post is called "(เรื่องน่ารู้) 10 อันดับเหตุผลที่ทำไมฮิ
605;เลอร์ถึงเกลียดชาวยิว", which google translate converts to "(I know) 10 reasons why Hitler hated the Jews". My stab at a better translation would be "(Things you Should Know) 10 reasons why Hitler hated the Jews". Thai doesn't really have pronouns, so that bit in parenthesis is semi ambiguous, but น่ารู้ means "should know" or "worth knowing".

This one is interesting. The list it presents is:
* Jewish influence in communism.
* Jewish causes lost World War 1.
* Jews make Depression
* Hitler knot lodged since childhood.
* Hitler was influenced by the idea against genocide.
* Hitler's brain has been affected as a soldier.
* Master Race theory
* Hitler believed in conspiracy theories about Jews.
* Political nationalism
* Hitler envious of wealthy Jews.

It explains those in brief terms (a few sentences each) and then there is a poll where readers can vote on which one was the main reason that Hitler hated Jews. There's some anti-semitic implications mixed in there, but it is also blunt about the evil stuff that Hitler did and doesn't present him as a person to be emulated / respected.


I wish I read Thai better so I could get a better read on those. Your question is quite interesting, along with (my potentially incorrect take on) those first few search results.

*related=https://videosift.com/video/Sexy-disabled-dancers-and-the-skaterboard-humper

It is from the same dance group, but this one has a wider variety of scenes.

@enoch

Here's the deal, my friend.

The internet does not come with a tone of voice. You might consider that the way you read my words are not the way they are said in my head (cue to your cafe analogy.)

And I can't read tone of voice either. I supply it. And I have bodily reactions to you, too, my friend.

We both do this because both of us are a bit difficult, and both of us are supplying tone of voice that makes the words on the page different.

I'm not going to apologize for what I wrote. I meant what I said. Every word. And there is nothing wrong with what I wrote. You didn't like it for your own reasons, but there is nothing intrinsically wrong with anything I said.

I will say that you have supplied a context to gorillaman that he could have supplied himself with the sarcasm button. He didn't do that. So was he kidding? I don't know.

You assume that anyone who reads his post has the extensive knowledge of his motives and personality. Newcomers won't. And here is an embarrassing admission -- although I too have been on this site for ten years, I don't have a sense of who gorillaman is. Sorry, gorillaman. I just haven't been paying attention to you. This is a character flaw on my part, also, since you seem intent on listing my flaws. I am pretty much in my head, and until there have been repeated interactions, I don't really take in people. I am selfish that way.

About the Homeland Security remark. Gorillaman was given the benefit of the doubt for his motives, he was given context. I assumed that I would be accorded the same gift.

So let me give context.

I am repulsed by the term Homeland Security. I was repulsed the first time I heard it, I am repulsed every time I hear it.

So when I take on racism, homophobia, sexism, xenophoabia, or any garden variety hatred, I invoke Homeland Security to protect us from what is the real threat. Not scary brown skinned people. But the people amongst us who truly are a threat to our way of life.

My mistake -- and it was a mistake -- was to assume that people get the connection. Because of context. Which of course isn't good enough.

I like my jab at the concept of Homeland Security. But it obviously isn't working. I'll have to rework it, make it clear. give it context.

Because I agree with you there, my friend. Homeland Security evokes the Third Reich and it turns my stomach. Every time.

Yup; here is the Live Science take---in brief--it's a conceptual artist's thing (Vitaly Bulgarov) who has faked a website and even the Korea development company...

"New video clips purporting to show a 13-foot-tall (4 meters) humanoid robot piloted by a person in its torso look like something straight out of "Avatar" or "Transformers," but a Live Science investigation has revealed reasons to believe some skepticism might be in order.

The robot clips have been picked up by a variety of online news and technology outlets, including Kotaku and Wired UK. But the South Korean company that is supposedly developing the robot has virtually no online presence and was unfamiliar to robotics researchers contacted by Live Science.

Furthermore, the only source for the videos or any information about them is the Facebook and Instagram pages of a designer whose website mentions a conceptual art project about a "fictional robotics corporation that develops its products in a not-so-distant future."

The designer, Vitaly Bulgarov, told Live Science that the robot is real. However, he declined to share the names of scientists or engineers working on the project, and messages to the purported CEO of the company went unreturned. [Gallery: See Images of the Giant Humanoid Robot]

Mystery business

According to Bulgarov's Facebook page, the videos were taken in South Korea at a company called Korea Future Technology. Almost all references to this company online appear to be associated with Bulgarov's posts and the subsequent news pieces on the robot. Bulgarov said the company has been operating for several years."

""Robots are messy business," said Christian Hubicki, a postdoctoral robotics researcher at Georgia Tech who worked on the DURUS robot. "They get torn apart and put back together over and over, and transmission grease gets all over the place. Even the nice white floor is beautifully unscuffed [in these videos]. Never once during likely hundreds of hours of debugging the giant robot did it kick in a way that scratched it up?"

The people around the robot also appear to be too close for safety and are not following the standard practice of wearing safety goggles, Hubicki said.

Bulgarov said the company's CEO required that the lab be clean, and that the videos had been brightened in postproduction. Fearing said robotics labs in Asia can be relatively neat.

However, there's another problem: Hubicki told Live Science that the robot's leg joints look unusually smooth given the force that the step of a 1.5-ton robot would exert on the motors. [5 Reasons to Fear Robots]"

http://www.livescience.com/57296-giant-humanoid-robot-video-hoax.html

I agree with his 5 points completely, but I am optimistic that it will be easier to swing back the other direction in 2018 (midterms) or 2020 than he thinks.

Trump got a lot of angry, disenchanted voters to swing his direction because a complete question mark sounded better to them than Clinton's known-quantity establishment. But if he doesn't follow through for them (which is essentially impossible in many cases for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is self-contradictory stances/promises that can't ALL be followed) much of that support will collapse fast.

IF the Democratic Party gets its act together semi-quickly and follows at least some of Cenk's ideas, they can ride the wave the other direction.

I kind of had the opposite reaction, although I only watch streams of people playing BF1, didn't actually personally play it. Whereas I have some 150 hours in Overwatch right now.

BF1 and the series in general puts me off since it has so much down time. So much time seems to be spent just looking for someone to shoot or aiming at at a few tiny pixels miles away. Whereas Overwatch has familiar map choke points and if someone flanks you, it's almost certainly your fault for not paying attention.

Also Overwatch just offers so much in variety of play styles. I have a core of maybe 5 heroes I'm good at, but there's at least half the roster I haven't even seriously tried playing. Haven't even tried to get good at Hanzo's bow or Junkrat's remote jumps. BF offers the close quarters, rifle, sniper, vehicle and plane gameplay I've seen too much of already.

@gorillaman

The only thing I see failing completely is your absurd attempt at rationalizing your bigotry--more aptly labelled in this case by its proper name: Islamophobia. I don't for a second believe what I'm about to post will change your mind about Islam or Muslims in general but I do believe that this kind of bigotry needs to be called out when it rears its ugly head. And my, you went full ugly there, didn't you... comparing Muslims to rats and seriel killers? Classy.

Despite your protestations to the contrary, there are in fact Muslims who do not believe in God but for a variety of reasons (keeping peace with religious family members, maintaining a connection to their cultural heritage, networking, etc.) continue to attend services and identify as Muslims. This is true of many believers in all the major religions, including Christianity and Judaism.

You see, as much as you'd like Muslims to all be boogeymen coming to bring Sharia law down on the rest of world, anyone who has actually met and talked with a Muslim (and god-forbid actually visited one of the countries StukaFox listed) realizes that Muslims, like all people, are extremely diverse (again, despite your protestations to the contrary).

Indeed there are Sharia zealots. But there are also moderates and reformers and even liberal radicals. Mostly, though its just a lot of people trying to get on with their lives the best way they know how.

Now, I find most religious beliefs to be repugnant. However, I don't find the ideas expressed in the Koran to be much more repugnant than, say, the Bible. In fact, I'm less concerned about what is written in supposedly holy books and more concerned with how believers attempt to implement those ideas in reality. I do indeed find particular forms of this implementation, such as forcing women to wear a bhurka, disturbing (just as I find Christians' attacks on LGBT rights disturbing). It's important to note, though, that such practices are NOT universal. For example, in some Islamic countries like Malaysia it's enough to simply cover your hair with a colorful scarf.

On the other hand, other practices that you mentioned such as Female Genital Mutilation and virginity tests ARE NOT Islamic. FGM predates Islam and is still practiced in the locales where it originated (places such as Mali, for instance) that now happen to be Islamic majority areas. The Indonesian virginity tests as well do not stem from some universal commandment in Islam but from Indonesian culture which sees women as "the symbol of the nations moral guardians".

Again, I don't suppose any of this makes any difference to you. You want to see the world in black and white, us versus them, "rats" and "serial killers" versus you, the white knight who is just trying to save us all from our cultural relativistic blindness. And so the shades of grey I am describing to you will likely go overlooked. I would be happy to be proven wrong, but I suspect the reality is I'll receive some lengthy reply that can be distilled down to, "Islam bad, hur." Or perhaps, "All religions bad, but Islam worst, hur." To which I can only reply, that demonizing the practitioners of any particular religion is unlikely to bring about the reforms you seek.

Meh, I'll upvote if only so that we can have some variety here on the Sift. Sure, the arguments made in the video are painfully absurd but I'd rather seem them ripped to shreds in the comments then disappear from the Sift entirely due to downvotes.

Of the bowel variety?