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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Are the American police out of control?

« on: August 27, 2020, 12:31:14 PM »

Kenosha, WI

White police officer grabs unarmed black man by the shirt, and shoots him SEVEN times IN THE BACK while holding onto him, and with the victim's children in the adjacent car.

A few days later, a white 17-year old is permitted to mingle with protesters, open-carrying some sort of rifle, and police do nothing to stop him. He manages to shoot two or three people, some of whom are trying to stop him, others who identify him to the police as having shot people, yet the police let him go and he crosses the state line to go home to Illinois, before later being arrested....

Why should the police do something to stop a person who is not breaking any law and what were the people who got shot trying to stop him from doing?

The theme of this whole thread is that police seem to like stopping people who arent even breaking the law. And I would imagine the people who got shot were probably trying to stop him from shooting them..

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Are the American police out of control?

« on: August 24, 2020, 07:57:05 PM »

Or ... are the police out of control?

Totally out of control.

Detroit officer and his K-9 both out of control.

You know, you've already made your opinion clear in the thread title. You really don't have to include it in every single post you make.

I dunno man he seems on the fence to me.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Are the American police out of control?

« on: August 22, 2020, 12:03:10 PM »

Detroit officer and his K-9 both out of control.

Officer and K-9 walk along sidewalk outside private dog-owner's home, separated from sidewalk by chain-link fence.

Home-owner's dog barks at K-9 and officer, officer loses control of K-9, the two dogs snarl at each other at or close to the fence, officer shoots the home-owner's dog. All captured on surveillance video. Will hit the mainstream news soon, circulating on twitter at the moment. Will try to link to video and include here.

As someone says in the thread comments on twitter, it seems to be getting to the point where the police consider they have carte blanche to shoot at anything or anyone that impedes their progress, even to the slightest, insignificant degree.   

I saw that, whats disturbing is how fast the officer decided to shoot the dog... Not pull his dog away harder, not shoot a warning shot to maybe scare it away, not shoot his own k9 for the equally bad behaviour but no, shoot the dog in a secure back garden for his own negligence. There is no defending this officers behaviour. You would have to be a straight up psychopath to consider that a first option before even breaking a sweat. The officer should be arrested.

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Flat Earth Investigations / Re: ISS International Space Station

« on: August 22, 2020, 12:35:46 AM »

Not a greenscreen





https://astroacademy.org.uk/

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Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Debunking the debunkers

« on: August 17, 2020, 01:36:27 PM »

@pete, theres at the very least 200 claims from Eric Dubay that the website addresses, which is already a pretty substantial amount that has in fact been claimed by flat earthers.

https://flatearth.ws/eric-dubay [EDIT: Sorry, not gonna let @febunk get a backlink out of this ~pete]

Of course, I don't know the person running the website so I can't really make a judgement of his character like you can, so maybe his motives are bad but all I see on the website is a list of arguments used by flat earthers with an explanation of it. If I choose at random (you'll have to trust that I did in fact choose at random), Buoyancy for example. Flat earthers (maybe not you but some) claim that this explains why things fall, and on the website is this infographic;

Buoyancy is an upward force exerted by a fluid (liquid or gas) that opposes the weight of an immersed object. Buoyancy happens because the fluid has a pressure gradient. Pressure gradient occurs because the fluid is affected by acceleration, such as the Earth’s gravitational acceleration.

Flat-Earthers makes buoyancy as an “explanations” on how things fall. They are wrong. Without Earth’s gravitational acceleration, buoyancy will not occur.

Now, here's a random flat earther on youtube saying exactly this argument (just searched flat earth buoyancy and looked for the first seemingly legit flat earther since I know there's a ton of people on youtube making their own "debunk" videos);



So to me, that's all I see the website doing. Making a list of common claims from flat earthers and information on why it's considered incorrect. Would you disagree with this assessment Pete? Obviously you have your own beliefs about the earth but there are a lot of flat earthers out there with their own ideas so it's kind of hard to make a structured argument against flat earth with such a fractured set of communities so I'll give the benefit of the doubt that not every flat earth thinks all those flat earth claims are correct but they are claims from flat earthers.

Could you point out one in particular from the website you think is a purposeful strawman that no flat earther has claimed? Just so I can get an idea. EDIT: you may have done this already, I posted late and missed a lot of conversation apologies

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Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Debunking the debunkers

« on: August 16, 2020, 06:28:50 PM »

Has there been any effort in debunking (or at least arguing against) the information on this site?

Flatearth.ws doesn't even attempt to remain faithful to FET in their "debunks". This guy's entire website revolves around making up his own "FE" arguments and then explaining why they're wrong.

This pattern is pretty easy to spot: @febunk states that "Flat-Earthers claim <x>" or "Flat-Earthers assert <x>" and provides a rebuttal, but shies away from providing any sources or references of FE'ers actually making those claims. This is especially devious given that different FE groups often have very different beliefs about the specifics of our world. This methodology allows @febunk to choose the most convenient position for him to attack, or to make one up entirely. You don't know who he's debunking, or even if the people he's responding to actually exist.

I just had a quick scroll through the first page of his most recent posts, and I can't say I agree with any of the things that "Flat-Earthers [supposedly] assert". We generally don't give @febunk much of our time, since he did not extend the courtesy to learn our arguments before trying to dispute them. If he wants to keep fighting strawmen to make a quick buck, why should we care?

Also - is this forum the main place where all the FE debate around the world happens?

That's not an easy question to answer. The FE movement is very fractured. Different groups attract different people - it would be presumptuous of us to call ourselves "the main one", or to dismiss others as "lesser".

I actually thought of that website as more a hub for all the kinds of arguments flat earthers have actually made. If he's making up more arguments that only means he's going out of his way to think about it and respond to possible arguments, surely? I mean, I've seen so many of those flat earth arguments used by flat earthers, even if not yourself. Like, you'll see a flat earther make that argument, go to the website and find why that argument is incorrect.

And in all honesty what really seperates it from your wiki? It's a place to dump all the possible debate arguments into one place as a reference. I'm sure you don't agree with all the things in the wiki as potential reasons for the earth being flat, so should you also consider the wiki unstrustworthy? Sorry if this comes across as agressive but I am just asking to understand your viewpoint because you say the whole website revolves around making up flat earther viewpoints but that from my perspective isn't true because flat earthers do say those things (from what I've seen).

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Technology & Information / Re: Cameras

« on: August 16, 2020, 02:21:43 AM »

I set up a ghetto studio in my garage.

Nice, what is the usage though? close ups of apples are cool but what do you actually use that setup for?

I have a less ghetto setup but with a less than professional camera at the moment. (I dropped my nice DLSR camera in a river, RIP). I use my setup for reference images and photogrammetry. Looking to get myself a drone for capturing larger objects outdoors soon to avoid dropping in rivers in the future.

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Arts & Entertainment / Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)

« on: July 30, 2020, 10:01:43 PM »

Microsofts new Flight Sim coming up and will have VR support. I'll have my yoke and pedals ready (preordered). Nothing too special, a foldable playseat and the logitech flight sim yoke;

https://www.logitechg.com/en-gb/products/flight/flight-yoke-system-rudder-pedals-bundle.LOG-FLIGEU.html

The selling point about this game for me was the fact that it's using Bing maps to let you fly anywhere in the world with live feed of data from the real world, but VR has just topped it as a reason to play. It's on gamepass day one too... Win Win Win

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Science & Alternative Science / Re: Are Flat Earther's Afraid of Aliens?

« on: July 30, 2020, 12:06:44 PM »

I mean if god exists he's technically an extraterrestrial.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Are the American police out of control?

« on: July 22, 2020, 04:08:29 PM »

Right, In favor of less government/federal intervention in the lives of law abiding Americans, but think it's fine that a guy was pinned to the ground for dancing since dancing is so suspicious and we must be protected against people dancing.

Ok.

The guy wasn't pinned down for dancing in the street.

We went over that already.

What was he pinned down for then? Because as it happens they didn't have reason to do so and they're now receiving training after being placed on administrative leave and being investigated for their actions. Almost like they weren't trained well enough for the situation. It's a pretty clear cut case, he was detained for no real reason. the officers escalated a non-situation for no reason and for what? Because they had someone call the police about him dancing. Seems pretty clear cut to me, the officers were so far in the wrong that actions were taken against them. Strange that. Not sure why you're still defending officers for doing something stupid and clearly wrong. while claiming you think there should be less of that.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Are the American police out of control?

« on: July 22, 2020, 03:22:36 PM »

Right, In favor of less government/federal intervention in the lives of law abiding Americans, but think it's fine that a guy was pinned to the ground for dancing since dancing is so suspicious and we must be protected against people dancing.

Ok.

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Flat Earth Investigations / Re: RE Lunar Phases With Extreme Perspective Changes

« on: July 22, 2020, 08:41:32 AM »

My take: it’s an optical illusion - the string experiment proves that. Yes, it looks like the string perpendicular to the terminator will shoot off into space but if you keep following the line you’ll see it doesn't.

Again, that "take" is erroneous. There are several ways to hold the string up to the Moon, to connect to points in the sky.

You can do that with any round object lit by a light source as long as you hold the string perpendicular to the terminator line, what matters is when you bring the string from one object to the light source to see if the perpendicular line is heading directly toward the light source, if it goes off past the light source at an angle you might have a point to make, but not letting the line meet or go past the light source seems like a purposeful diversion.

It's a cool optical illusion.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Are the American police out of control?

« on: July 17, 2020, 03:35:08 PM »

There you guys go, talking about Trump again. The argument "He's not trump" DOES NOT WORK. Even if you/the media successfully convince people that Trump is bad, that doesn't mean that they are voting for your side. They may not vote or vote for some other opposition. Trump character assassination was tried all through the last 2016 election cycle, and failed. You need to have a compelling and populous platform that people want and like.

Quickly, what was Hillary Clinton's main platform for presidency? It was "I'm a woman!" and some vague stuff about rising middle class incomes. Nothing compelling or organic that people were really excited about. On the other hand, Trump focused on illegal immigration problems and 'drain the swamp' and the like, and quickly became a populist figure, ultimately elected as President of the United States.

If you can't tell us how and why people are really exited about the Democrat's compelling platform, it's a lost cause. You are just hoping that people 'vote blue no matter who'. Continuing the ol' say-some-stuff-about-Trump-and-hope-people-vote-for-my-side tactic will not work.

But more importantly, yes, American police are out of control.

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Technology & Information / Re: Should I become a console peasant?

« on: July 15, 2020, 10:57:43 AM »

The main issue and main advantage of consoles is that their specs are set in stone. The upside is that if you buy a game, it will work on your console. The downside is that if the game is computationally intensive, it will be forcibly gimped until it runs on the console. Some releases suffer from FPS drops even then. At least with PC you have the option to upgrade your components to keep on trucking.

Personally, I own a crapton of consoles for when I want the couch+controller experience (I could arrange that on PC, but I find consoles adequate for this purpose). I also have a PC for more "serious" gaming.

If you only want one machine, and money is not an issue, I'd be voting for PC as the superior option. But a console will work well enough, too, y'know?

I’m actually still kind of salty about this but my last pc was not bad spec wise, however when it came to upgrading hardware I found my motherboard was limited the components that were in there. That is to say, the motherboard limit for RAM was 64gb with a not great MHz speed and I had actually capped that limit with the best ram for it, and I already had the best cpu in there (that the motherboard could take) which meant any upgrades I wanted really needed a new motherboard and so the actual cost for upgrading RAM or CPU was more than a console. Though now I just future proofed by getting decent spec hardware that I know I can upgrade in the future... it was my own mistake for getting limited hardware to begin with but if after 5 years you end up having to replace all the parts to a pc just to keep it relevant for gaming you may end up being better off with a console.

Though my pc is also used for development so I tend to spec it out for that rather than playing games, it’s just a happy coincidence it’s also a gaming rig. Still, super salty about effectively having to buy a new computer to upgrade.

Anyway the specs for the new consoles are actually decent and there is a strong focus for 60fps gameplay which is nice. 30fps games were dark times

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Technology & Information / Re: Should I become a console peasant?

« on: July 14, 2020, 06:54:01 PM »

Ps5 IMO is the console worth getting, but they're mostly the same. The thing about xbox is if you have a reasonable windows pc, all exclusives for xbox will be on there too. Ps5 not only holds exclusives (at least for now, until they form some kind of deal with Epic Games) but actually is the more efficient console. That said, I have a powerhouse pc for work which can play any game on max settings and I'll still be getting a ps5 and maybe a nextbox just because I like having the choice. No reason not to have them all unless you're poor. With playstation you get the cool titles like Uncharted, Last of us, gran turismo (fuck forza it's not worth it). You got a pc it's as good as having an xbox. Though I prefer my shooters with a mouse and keyboard...

So in short, PC for RTS and FPS games, xbox if you have money to waste, ps5 if you want a console worth having for platformers and racing games and stuff, or just anything you would use a controller for. Get 'em all!

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Are the American police out of control?

« on: July 10, 2020, 12:41:05 PM »

That seems weird.

Weird enough to detain me?

Anyway my response wasn't to say normal things aren't normal. I said weird things happen. My response which you seem to be missing the point of is that I bring into question why a weird but harmless and legal activity are cause for phoning the police which ya know, lets assume the person who called the police was actually calling for a legit concern, the police who arrived should have been able to sus out what was going on pretty much in seconds. You seem to be having an equally hard time with this as the police seemed to... You don't detain people for dancing. That's moronic. You also glossed over my question regarding gender/race reversal. Would the situation have been the same if it were a blond white female acting the same way? You don't have to answer here but if your answer is no and you still can't see the problem then you are also the problem.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Are the American police out of control?

« on: July 10, 2020, 10:07:40 AM »

I don't know where all the people here live who are talking about how it's perfectly normal and not at all unusual for people to be dancing in the street. I've never seen that happen outside of a musical. I also question how confidently it's been asserted that it's entirely legal to dance in the streets. Really? The government doesn't have anything to say about people dancing on a public road that's regularly traversed by cars? I doubt there's any statute specifically about dancing, but there's a very strong argument to be made that it could constitute reckless behavior, or cause accidents. Also, the police don't need probable cause to detain someone, just reasonable suspicion, and while I personally wouldn't go calling the cops over someone dancing in the street, that's absolutely enough to detain someone for the course of an investigation. To keep boiling it down to "arrested for dancing," as if literally the first thing the police did is snap on the handcuffs, is disingenuous. I can't read the police's minds, and I can't say for a certainty that if this dude had cooperated that everything would have been fine, but as it stands, the video shows someone who has been clearly informed that he's being detained trying to leave, and so he's arrested. The police need to have the power to enforce laws, even laws against minor infractions, or we might as well not have these laws at all.

I'd say it's no more dangerous than kids playing in the street which happens on a daily basis, or people going for a jog will sometimes jog on the road in a place where there is not much traffic, which seems to be the case here.

I'm just wondering at what point people realise that "being different" in harmless ways is considered worthy of calling the cops in for an investigation. Had the person been say, a white blond female of the same age dancing in the street do you think the police would have been called? And more so do you think she'd have been pinned to the ground for not taking her non-existent crime seriously? And again, police who are trained to deescalate somehow escalated the situation of a guy dancing to detaining him which is fucking stupid. You show up, see the guy is just excising in unusual ways and some moron overreacted by calling the police, you move on. There was no reason for that situation to get out of hand especially when neighbours were chiming in to say they know him and it's what he does regularly. It's like they had no common sense to go "ah ok sorry we fucked up" at any point. They instead doubled down at every turn.

People are weird. I see weird people doing weird shit in the streets all the time. Kids play in the street, joggers jog in the street... No problem. Middle aged man dancing in the street is not worthy of calling the police let alone how badly that situation was handled by trained officers.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Are the American police out of control?

« on: July 09, 2020, 05:05:45 PM »

Any normal person wouldn't be dancing in the street.

Well first off this is obviously not true since the guy the police detained was seemingly normal when the police approached him and most of his neighbours seemed to think it was his normal routine. But lets brush aside that you think being abnormal is somehow suspicious for a moment.

Why would you detain someone for dancing? Why is it ok to dance for exercise in a gym or at home but not outside in public? What about street parties where people are dancing? Why were the police, who are trained to deescalate, escalate the situation to the point of detaining someone for dancing? They arrived on the scene, could see the guy was clearly in workout clothing, his neighbours even came out to say it's all cool and it's normal and they know him, he's not doing any harm but they carried on? Totallackey, if you were an officer in that situation how would it go down? Would you overreact to someone dancing? Because it seems since you're defending their actions that you too would have acted the same way. If so, why would you take offense or feel threatened, or why would you think dancing is going to be cause for harm or lead to any crime? Or would you act on impulse at your hurt feelings that the guy is just different to you and there's nothing you could do about it?

You would not be fun at parties. Imagine trying to defend the police officers pinning people down for dancing... At this point you have to be trolling yet again.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Are the American police out of control?

« on: July 03, 2020, 06:57:41 AM »

black man was arrested for dancing in the street... Wut. Why would it escalate to that point? Police are supposed to be trained to deescalate. I understand they have to investigate when someone calls them but... Cops arrive, ask the guy if everything is all good, guy says year just doing my morning routine. Cops at that point should have just stopped bothering him but instead went into restraining him, which is ridiculous. And having to have neighbours come out and vouch for you to the police is also ridiculous because he was doing nothing wrong... It's a completely bizarre exchange between the police and the guy.
 

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Technology & Information / Re: Dell TechDirect

« on: June 30, 2020, 07:50:44 PM »

Just finished my first Dell TechDirect self-help dispatch ticket.

Had to replace a motherboard on an in-warranty Latitude 5490. With Dell TechDirect, I was able to login to a portal, create a ticket with a brief description of the issue and troubleshooting steps, then select the part I needed. A few days later, the board arrived, with a return shipping label for the defective board. Very slick. Didn't have to call Dell or talk to a single tech rep, it was awesome!

Yeah, I loved that about Dell self repair.  Lenovo has something similar but it's much harder to get.  We just do the self ticket and they send a 3rd party repair guy to fix it.

Ah, wonder if they'll have some incentive to ditch the repair guy and let people do it themselves now that they risk COVID infection by doing house-calls.

I don't know, there's always a market for the totally tech illiterate that won't want to even try to understand (my sister is one of those self defeating people).