1281

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Star Wars ep 7 (with spoilers)

« on: December 22, 2015, 05:26:36 PM »

I watched TFA last night and thought it was a really, really fun movie.  I enjoyed it immensely from start to finish.  17/38 would see again.

My only (very minor) complaint was that I wish they wouldn't have unmasked Ren in the first film.  As soon as the mask came off, he ceased to be as menacing to me because he was slightly more humanized.  I totally get that the writers probably didn't want to write the part as Vader: Redux, but I just wasn't yet ready to view Ren as a troubled-and-possibly-still-fundamentally-good human being who deserves any measure of sympathy.  But, that's a pretty minor thing, and it didn't detract from the movie overall. 

I'm also on the side of the "lightsaber fighting is about the force, not fencing" side of that debate.  I think it kinda has to be that way or none of the movies make much sense.  The best example to me is that there isn't any other way to explain Luke overcoming Vader (or even not just being immediately killed by him in any of their fights).  If we're taking swordfighting as the analogy, then it just isn't believable to me at all that anyone who had only trained in swordfighting for a few years as an adult could ever come close to matching the prowess of someone who had been training for his/her entire life, from childhood.  I don't recall from the first movies when Anakin started training with lightsabers, but by the time of TESB, Vader had been using lightsabers to fight people for literally decades.  It just isn't believable to me that Luke defeats Vader by virtue of training and proficiency with a lightsaber, and I think this is explained by the notion that "the Force is strong" within him.  Luke can hang with Vader and eventually overcome him because of the Force, not awesome lightsaber training from Yoda.

1282

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: How can we drive traffic to tfes.org?

« on: December 17, 2015, 04:06:58 PM »

perhaps the zetetic council will get around to it one day after they finalize another table of contents.  isn't much of this in their purview?

1283

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: "Assault" weapons, for it or against it?

« on: December 16, 2015, 10:30:10 PM »

of those three quotes, one of them is on an entirely different subject, and one is by an entirely different person.  the fact that i've been confused for thork is giving me some serious pause.  whoopsy, i thought that IQs quote came from thork, but i just realized that it's copypasta i posted in complete nonsense.  same difference, i guess.

thank you for the awesome revisionist history lesson, but what does any of this have to do with private firearm use?

1284

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: "Assault" weapons, for it or against it?

« on: December 16, 2015, 05:47:59 PM »

i know you are wrong because of the Ultimate Red Truth File (1941).  this document is undeniable.  in it, stalin has a secret conversation with churchill and roosevelt in which he explains:

Dudes, I would seriously love to take down some fascists for my bros.  You know that.  But we got some issues over here tryin'a get our shit tight, nawmsayin?  Can't be stealin' on sucka emcees til we get that shit locked down for real.

that's straight out of stalin's mouth, and it's more recent, so it trumps whatever that advisor was talking about in your document.  stalin actually later addresses that interview in his secret meeting, as revealed in the red truth file (pp. 36-37):

S: What, that Rakovsky dude?  Shit, he's just a corner kid, doesn't know a damn thing.  We pump all the corner kids with disinfo in case the 5-0 start bangin' heads.
C: Nice, dude.  Nice.
S: Fuckin' SWICK is what it is, bro.  Pound it.

1285

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: "Assault" weapons, for it or against it?

« on: December 16, 2015, 03:48:15 AM »

[hindsight]even that might be putting it lightly.  it really can't be any worse than the second-worst military decision made in the 20th century.  the wehrmacht's invasion of the ussr takes first place for me, but it's probably a toss-up.[/hindsight]

1286

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: "Assault" weapons, for it or against it?

« on: December 16, 2015, 01:37:18 AM »

even if no american citizens in 1941 owned any guns, the difference would have been negligible from japan's perspective.  america was too large, too populated, and too far away to be conquered by the imperial army.  conquering america wasn't an objective of the imperial army in ww2.

1287

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: "Assault" weapons, for it or against it?

« on: December 16, 2015, 12:07:27 AM »

fwiw i was being sarcastic.  cherrypicking a few historical examples and taking them wildly out of context is a silly method of evaluating the net benefits of private gun ownership.

the carthaginians at cannae: no guns.
anglo-saxons at hastings: no guns.
cumans at kalka river: no guns.

america, on the other hand, has lots of guns and has never been invaded by romans, normans, or mongols.  not even once.  checkmate, liberals.

Vikings invaded America before Columbus existed.  And they had no guns, just axes.


Check mate conservatives.

yeah, and how many vikings have invaded america since the second amendment was passed?  DOUBLE CHECKMATE, LIBERALS.  KING ME.

1288

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: "Assault" weapons, for it or against it?

« on: December 15, 2015, 11:12:56 PM »

the carthaginians at cannae: no guns.
anglo-saxons at hastings: no guns.
cumans at kalka river: no guns.

america, on the other hand, has lots of guns and has never been invaded by romans, normans, or mongols.  not even once.  checkmate, liberals.

1289

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: "Assault" weapons, for it or against it?

« on: December 15, 2015, 04:48:23 PM »

i don't totally get the fixation on mass shootings.  i get that they're viscerally more frightening, but statistically they make up only a tiny fraction of 30,000+ firearms deaths in america each year.

1290

Technology & Information / Re: Computers are a conspiracy

« on: December 14, 2015, 06:00:33 PM »

This explains why processors stop working if you let the magic smoke get out.

lol noob.  all you have to do is pour water on it to cool it down and keep the magic smoke in.

just pour 1 cup of room temperature water on your processor each morning and you should be good.

1291

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Virtual Reality Headsets

« on: December 08, 2015, 02:42:25 PM »

I'll end up buying the first headset with a baseball simulator.

1292

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: ISIS and the Middle East

« on: December 08, 2015, 02:39:47 PM »

If it was a superweapon, then wouldn't it have done more than collapse a single crane? Doesn't seem like a very good superweapon to me.

1293

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: "Planned Parenthood"

« on: November 30, 2015, 01:43:38 AM »

a more tangible example: if keith ellison, literally just hours after the paris attacks, "while the bodies were still warm," while police and fire resuce was still ongoing, had gone on cnn and said, "If somebody is targeting west, it’s not indicative of what folks that are opposed to what some of the practices the west commits, of how we feel. We see these practices and that is something many of us have a legitimate concern about. That doesn’t mean we’re gonna take guns and walk into a suburb of paris."

the gop would have crushed ellison.  mercilessly.  i don't even get how that's deniable.

1294

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: "Planned Parenthood"

« on: November 30, 2015, 01:22:24 AM »

Here's me telling you what I didn't and did say.

I never suggested that you, personally, prompted Kinzinger's response. As far as I can tell, it was the executive team of Planned Parenthood who invoked this very common trope. See, the problem here is that you see me talking about "liberals", but you think "oh shit, he must be talking about me!". You then respond as if I targeted you personally. In other words, you fail to "delineate" between groups, subgroups, and individuals. How "ironic".

except that that's not precisely what happened.  you conveniently left out the part where you call me a liar with no integrity.  that's pretty relevant.  your actual response was,

"You, sir, need to stop trying to twist everyone's words around. It never ends well for you. It's not just that it reflects very poorly on your sense of integrity, you're simply not skilled enough to trick people....I never suggested..."

i told you that "what's not what i meant" will merit a positive response from me.  i didn't say that "that's not what i meant you liar" would elicit the same.  like most people, being inaccurately called a liar it tends to evoke sarcasm and vitriol from me.

either way, i still didn't stop you from clarifying what you wanted to say.  i pointed to the specific things you said that made me think you were grouping me with the gop=terrorists folks.  you were calling me dishonest, so it seemed pretty apropos to point out that my response was based on specific things you said, not just some shit i made up in my head.  i did this very sarcastically because you were being a dick.  hence the sentence, "yeah i can't imagine how i got that idea," or, put another way, "here are the things that gave me that idea."  but fair enough, i forgot to add the "but fine let's move on from here" explicitly to the end of that post.  i figured it was implied by the lack of any sentence like "gotcha haha can't take it back now" or anything else of the sort.  it wasn't a gotcha; it was a very sarcastic explanation that no, i was not just making things up.

you're not actually such a brilliant writer that it's impossible for anyone to misunderstand you. 

Compare and contrast it to "no you can't do that you already said it haha gotcha." as well as "here's why i thought you meant that, but nbd let's just move on from here."

my response was closest to "here's why i thought you meant that" while omitting the nbd let's just move on from here, although that was also said in my very next post.

You simply made up a story in your mind, and you're trying to spread it ahead of the facts. This is dangerous, because it creates interesting beliefs along the lines of "Mike Brown dindu nuttin". That's why you're getting called out on your shit.

whether or not the assailant was christian isn't relevant to what i find ironic.  let's forget about religion for the moment and just talk about specific beliefs.  kinzinger is saying that very many people believe abortion is a moral evil, a belief they share with the assailant, and we should not conflate them with people who also advocate and commit violence.  likewise, there are very many people who believe that america is a moral evil, a belief they share with jihadists, and we should not conflate them with people who also advocate and commit violence.  i find it ironic that a lawmaker from a group known for lambasting people who say the latter would say the former.

it's ironic to me because i think neither christians, nor muslims, nor their respective religious texts, are inherently violent.

Have you read either of them?

It's a bit like me saying that I don't think Harry Potter lived in England at some point during his life. It's not a claim I can honestly make, having read at least one of the HP books.

Your wishy-washy feels and thoughts about what a book says are quite insignificant when contrasted with the actual printed book.

i don't think any books have inherent meaning.  that's nonsense.

even if i did, your sole argument reduces to "the koran says kill infidels in it somewhere so that's what mulsims believe," which is pathetic and stupid.  it simply ignores the 1.5 billion counterexamples who aren't jihadists.

1295

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: "Planned Parenthood"

« on: November 29, 2015, 11:41:57 PM »

frankly i'll be happy with anyone who isn't named ted cruz

1296

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: "Planned Parenthood"

« on: November 29, 2015, 10:24:36 PM »

[Idiots] like garygreen are the reason we're going to end up with Donald "The Unstumpable" Trump.

this make no sense.  even if i granted you that i'm an idiot, my brand of idiocy gets us bernie, not trump.

1297

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: "Planned Parenthood"

« on: November 29, 2015, 09:45:04 PM »

In all the sentences you've quoted, I went out of my way to make it abundantly clear when I refer to you specifically, an when I cast general judgement upon liberals/neoprogressives/Democrats. It would take some serious mental gymnastics to conflate the two.

i disagree.  to me, statements like, "Were you intentionally setting yourself up for a "dayum those dumb lib'ruls" rant, or are you just very forgetful?" sound pretty strongly as if you're grouping me in with "liberals," the group of people you identify as calling republicans terrorists.

the sentence in question reads like this to me: "I think you're wrong: there's nothing ironic here. As usual, liberals decided to turn a tragedy into their usual "lol Republicans are the biggest terrorist group in America xDDDD" shtick."

it may be obvious to you that you're not lumping me in with the "usual" liberal rhetoric of "lol republicans are terrorists," but since i'm not in your brain reading your thoughts, the statement is at best ambiguous, and it absolutely reads to me as "i think you're wrong; as usual, a liberal is calling republicans terrorists." i can only interpret what you write, not what you think.  this is especially true since, up to this point, we haven't been talking about any other "liberal" response to the video other than my one snarky remark.  so if you're not talking about my remark in the context of liberals being overly critical of conservatives or calling them terrorists or whatever, who were you talking about?  what are liberals saying in the wake of this attack that you believe is overly critical/labeling them as terrorists?

but cool, i accept that you're not grouping me in with the folks who call republicans terrorists.  done deal.  as usual, you could have resolved this with the sentence, "I'm not saying that you personally call republicans terrorists."  that would have cleared things up nicely.

it took you longer than usual this time to make up a bogus reason to call me dishonest

Oh, no, I thought you were being dishonest from the get-go. But, as you may remember, we have an agreement under which I give you undue amounts of the benefit of the doubt to allow you to defend yourself.

This is also why I focused on your ineptitude, rather than lack of integrity. The latter is already sufficiently well established.

haha no u

you don't actually have to give me the benefit of any doubts or whatever agreement you're talking about.  you just say, "that's not what i said; i said x/y/z."  try it sometime.  i assure you, as i've assured you before, that i'll never respond with "no you can't do that you already said it haha gotcha."  i'll always respond, as i have this time, with "here's why i thought you meant that, but nbd let's just move on from here."

as usual, though, i suspect that this is less about the argument and more about derailing the conversation into an abyss you know i'll fall for.  your next post will prove me right by being just a string of personal attacks.  watch it happen.  it's almost...formulaic.

Are you really stupid enough to assume that all Republicans agree on all issues? You're talking about half of your country's political spectrum.

this to me is where you and blanko are fundamentally misunderstanding my snarky remark.  it doesn't matter what kinzinger's specific beliefs are, it doesn't matter than the gop is has some ideological diversity, it doesn't matter what the assailants specific religious beliefs were, and it doesn't matter if democrats also do ironic things.

the irony to me is that a member of a group widely regarded as being unwilling to distinguish between violent and non-violent muslims is extolling folks to make that distinction for christians.  it's funny to me because i so very, very often hear the gop, and conservative pundits, lambast democrats precisely for trying to make that distinction.  not universally, but very often.  it's ironic to me because i think neither christians, nor muslims, nor their respective religious texts, are inherently violent.

none of the other shit about how not all republicans are the same, or how the koran's core tenant is violence, or how we don't we don't know x/y/z about the assailant, is relevant to what i find ironic about kinzinger's statement.

1298

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: "Planned Parenthood"

« on: November 29, 2015, 08:47:01 PM »

Were you intentionally setting yourself up for a "dayum those dumb lib'ruls" rant, or are you just very forgetful?

That said, I still think you're horribly wrong. There's nothing surprising, controversial, ironic, hypocritical or whatever going on here. As usual, liberals decided to turn a tragedy into their usual "lol Republicans are the biggest terrorist group in America xDDDD" shtick, and Republicans have to defend themselves.

Fair enough, I'll chalk it down to you having redefined "Islam" in your mind. It's such a worrisome trend among American neoprogressives.

Once again you remind yourself of the substance of my objection. The pro-life platform is irrelevant here until evidence to the positive is presented. The burden of proof lies on liberals as the accusers

See, the problem here is that you see me talking about "liberals", but you think "oh shit, he must be talking about me!".

yeah i can't imagine how i got that idea

it took you longer than usual this time to make up a bogus reason to call me dishonest

1299

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: "Planned Parenthood"

« on: November 29, 2015, 05:59:25 PM »

this discussion probably can't go anywhere if you really believe that islam is an ideology of global domination because the koran says so.

If you'd like to propose an alternative standard for establishing what Islam is, you're welcome to try. But yeah, I doubt you'll be able to get anywhere there without making up a new Islam.

The Koran is the final authority on the tenets of Islam...Islam is largely inseparable from the Koran.

Once we start seeing vigilante western Christian groups crashing into buildings in Saudi Arabia and blowing themselves up in Turkey trying to kill as many people as they can, I might start taking your point more seriously. Of course, that's never going to happen, because western culture does not rely on the Koran.

ok.  this conversation isn't going to go anywhere.

it certainly doesn't delineate violent extremists from non-violent extremists like they're doing here with christians.

At this point, it's clear that you're trying to conflate "Republicans", "Christians" and "Planned Parenthood opponents".

Justify this.

we absolutely can't get anywhere in this discussion if you don't see the relationship between the christian belief, pro-life belief, and 20th century american conservatism in general.  on what do you think the pro-life platform is based?

As usual, liberals decided to turn a tragedy into their usual "lol Republicans are the biggest terrorist group in America xDDDD" shtick, and Republicans have to defend themselves.

sorry, but you'll have to point me to the passage where i said anything at all like "Republicans are the biggest terrorist group in America."  or even intimated that.  the most negative thing i've said about the gop so far is "lol irony" and "gop rhetoric toward islam is p negative tbqh."  wow i can just feel the vitriol...

So you are conflating Kinzinger's views with GOP's. Got it.

he's a gop politician.  your argument at this point is that i should not assume that a gop politician shares common political beliefs with the gop.  jesus christ.

In any case, what you're describing is not irony. The term you're actually looking for is "double standard".

the double standard is what i find ironic, dummy.

1300

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: "Planned Parenthood"

« on: November 29, 2015, 04:11:06 AM »

So it's ironic because you're assuming Kinzinger would not say a particular thing, or you're conflating Kinzinger's views with GOP as a whole? I'm not expecting you to not use hyperbole, but I'm beginning to wonder whether you actually know what irony is.

it's not possible for me to demonstrate in this thread that kinzinger doesn't believe something or didn't say something.  you, though, can demonstrate my error with a single quote.   since the gop is, by definition, a political party whose operational goal is to unify like-minded politicians into a single platform, i don't think it's super unreasonable to suppose that his view of islam is relatively aligned with gop rhetoric as a whole.

whatever he personally believes isn't what i find ironic.  i'm talking about gop rhetoric, not kinzinger's personal beliefs.

irony is often defined as the opposite of what's expected.  in one sense, it's not ironic at all for a gop lawmaker to defend the christian beliefs of his constituents.  to me, though, the irony is that a member of a group known for failing to delineate between violent and nonviolent islamists in the best case, and outright castigating those who suggest such a distinction in the worst case, is advocating for such a distinction when it involves a different religion.  it's ironic to me because i think the situations are nearly identical (and the differences superfluous).

in other words, all else equal, i would expect people who say, "many people share the underlying political/religious/social beliefs of this terrorist while also explicitly rejecting violence as justifiable or moral, and these two groups should not be conflated with one another" to advocate such a view regardless of the political/religious/social beliefs of the terrorist.  that the gop does not is the opposite of what i expect, so i find it ironic.

i'm seriously running out of ways to explain it.