Feel free to disown me though.

I'm not entirely sure what you'd even mean by that, or how you can say you don't really care. For as long as I've known you, you've been a massive supporter of net neutrality and online freedom. Trump is open about turning back net neutrality, has supported and signed laws that will remove a great deal of online privacy from your ISPs and is generally seeking more control of people on the internet in other ways. You live in California, one of the states that is the most vulnerable to climate change through droughts, wildfires, rising sea levels and falling air quality. Meanwhile, Trump calls climate change a "hoax", abandons international agreements, guts the national environmental protection agencies, and supports the revival of coal, oil, fracking and all sorts of fuels and practices that are very damaging to the environment over clean energy. You have benefited so much from financial aid that helped put you through college and got you where you are now. Trump's budget seeks to cut much of this funding and reduce government involvement and support in this area. You have repeatedly mentioned the issues you face from you being on the autism spectrum and how it affects your life. Trump has made a mockery of the science on this issue by implying that vaccinations cause autism, has been condemned by numerous US autism advocacy organizations and is seen by many to be bad news for autistic people in the US. You have studied computer science while Trump is widely seen as one of the least scientifically literate presidents in history who is oblivious to some basic science and has cut massive amounts of money from scientific research and development in his budget.

I'm not going to do anything to you. I just don't understand your continued support when Trump goes against so many of the things that matter to you and keeps fucking up all the time. It almost feels like you're forcing yourself to stick with it so that you wouldn't be called out on regretting a vote. Had another candidate won and done the same things, I can only imagine that you would've been a hugely vocal critic about them on net neutrality, climate change, science, autism and stuff like that. If it was Clinton who would've started getting rid of net neutrality, I would expect you to be the first to get mad and share around petitions to counter it (as I remember you doing before), yet when it's Trump you just don't even mention it at all. Also, I really hope you don't buy into this "killary" conspiracy theory that has long been debunked.

Joining a coalition and invading the entire developing world is the only way you are going to stop climate change, because the biggest polluters don't give a fuck. America isn't the problem here, we're comparably pretty clean.

The US is the single largest polluter in history. Despite having only a third of India's population, it pollutes more than twice as much. While the US is one of the global top polluters per person, China doesn't even breach the top 50. Not considering small countries that account for almost nothing at a global level of pollution, it is the single largest polluter per capita in a way that absolutely dwarfs China and India. Both India and China have been taking major steps to lower their emissions.

This "why should we do anything when there's China and India" meme is just bad.

I think what Trump did was absolutely stupid but this is such a petty thing to do. It's nothing more than a fucking ego-stroke. "Hey guys I know we all think it's stupid that Trump left the Paris Accords but I just want to let you know that we'll always be fighting global warming despite none of you thinking we wouldn't :^)"

Quote from: Flee on June 02, 2017, 10:28:06 AM

Daily reminder to bless the EU.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/02/european-leaders-vow-to-keep-fighting-global-warming-despite-us-withdrawal

But that's not really what the article is about. It's about them seeking to bypass the white house and directly go to the states themselves. I don't think there's anything petty about saying that they'll continue their efforts even without a partner. It's not as if they can ignore it. We could do with some hope and positive attitude now.

Daily reminder not to vote for the Tories.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/02/theresa-may-downing-street-declaration-us-paris-climate-accord-donald-trump

But don't worry guys, she was privately "robust in her disappointment" on the phone.

Was this deal fair for the USA and their taxpayers?

Short answer: yes.
Long answer: fucking yes.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/01/republican-senators-paris-climate-deal-energy-donations

"Twenty-two senators wrote a letter to the president when he was said to be on the fence about backing out. They received more than $10m from oil, gas and coal companies the past three election cycles."

What a farce of democracy.

Quote from: FatherlyNick on June 01, 2017, 02:59:21 AM

How do you pronounce ">" ?

"Reeeee".

"Maymay arrow", alternatively.

Dude does have a bit of a point though. Super Saiyan did go from something of a legendary status that was only achieved by an extremely talented fighter who spent his entire life training and only managed to push that far due to the rage of being faced with certain death and having his best friend killed in front of him, to "hey little girl, just focus on the tingles in your back for 2 seconds and you're a super saiyan now".

"It's a race against time...

AND EVIL"

10/10 would watch in theaters.

Work?

Pathway to extremism: what neo-Nazis and jihadis have in common - The Guardian

I don't agree with all of this (such as the immigration policies being the reason for terrorist attacks), but it's an interesting read nevertheless. Nothing all that new though. Underlined some key parts.

When 18-year-old Devon Arthurs burst into a Florida smoke shop with a pistol and took customers and an employee hostage, he told them that he was upset about America bombing Muslim countries. After Tampa police officers talked him into releasing his hostages and got him in handcuffs, Arthurs made references to “Allah Mohammed” and told the officers: “This wouldn’t have had to happen if your country didn’t bomb my country.” He said he had already killed several people.

Arthurs directed police to an apartment, where two men he described as his friends were found dead, both of them shot multiple times in the head and upper body. A third friend, Brandon Russell, was standing outside the apartment in army camouflage, weeping, according to court documents.

The path to radicalisation

Arthurs described to the police after his arrest last Friday was an unexpected one. Originally, he said, he and his three friends had all been neo-Nazis. But at some stage, Arthurs had converted to Islam. According to police and court documents, he told officers that he killed his friends for disrespecting his new religion. His behavior had a dual motivation, Arthurs explained, according to an affidavit from Tampa police: to raise awareness about anti-Muslim sentiment and “to take some of the neo-Nazis with him”.

Terrorists motivated by far-right extremism and by Islamist extremism share similar tactics, a similar brutality, and a similar desire to remake the global democratic order. But they are usually considered enemies at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Far right terror attacks in Europe have been motivated by opposition to Muslim immigration. But Arthur’s switch in allegiance raises a key question for analysts looking at the process of radicalisation: to what extent the factors that attract people to extremism are specific to a particular ideology at all.

At least two neo-Nazi sites denounced the murders, mourned the victims, and described Arthurs as a former commenter who had eventually been banned for his comments about Islam and terrorism. Both sites described the murders as “a Muslim terror plot” against a neo-Nazi group. However, officials at the FBI and at the UK’s domestic intelligence agency, MI5, say little distinguishes the “pathways to violence” taken by extremists following different ideologies. One UK official said “the mechanics of radicalisation” were broadly similar in all cases. “Our studies on both jihadis and rightwingers, and also school shooters and such like, found very little difference in terms of … pathways. It’s like when your immune system is down. You can guess you’ll get sick, but what sickness you contract depends on what you are exposed to,” said Paul Gill, an expert in extremism at the University College London.

Though it is almost impossible to create a typical terrorist profile, some research shows that “seekers” who are looking for a particular form of “brotherhood” or cause that can give their lives meaning are particularly prone to radicalisation. There is also evidence that a sudden destabilising event – or even a minor incident that has a powerful emotional impact – can make an individual vulnerable. But ideology can be secondary to a “propensity for violence”. “This guy [Arthur] has only changed the T-shirt [of] what his violence is about,” Gill said.

Arthurs also accused Russell, his surviving friend and a member of the army national guard, of visiting online neo-Nazi chat rooms, where he discussed killing people and bombing infrastructure, according to an FBI complaint. Russell confirmed to police that he had neo-Nazi beliefs and said he was part of a group called AtomWaffen, according to the FBI complaint against him. But he said the explosive materials in his apartment had been used for a university engineering club, according to the complaint. AtomWaffen, according to a thread on the online fascist forum Iron March, claimed about 40 members across the country, and had gained publicity in the past year for posting racist and neo-Nazi recruitment posters on university campuses – a tactic common in recent months among several American extremist youth groups, including Identity Evropa and Vanguard America.

On Tuesday, Iron March posted a statement mourning Arthurs’ alleged victims, Jeremy Himmelman, 22, and Andrew Oneschuk, 18, and offering support for Russell, who they said was being unfairly targeted by law enforcement and the media. They described the attack as a “Muslim terror plot” and said Arthurs’ three friends were “completely innocent of any accusation that the group conducted or advocated, or planned for terrorist acts”. Alyssa Himmelman, the sister of Jeremy, told the Associated Press her brother had been staying with a neo-Nazi because he needed a cheap place to live, not because he shared those beliefs. Russell’s lawyer Ian Goldstein declined to answer specific questions about the case, but in an email said: “There is a large amount of misinformation being circulated about my client right now.”

Although neo-Nazis and Islamist militants may follow similar paths to extremism, studies have revealed significant differences in their behavior once radicalised. Recent research has showed Islamic militant attackers are more likely to tell friends or family or other associates about their plans of violence: 71% of jihadis “leak” such information, compared with 53% of rightwing extremists. Experts said that while there were obvious ideological elements that both neo-Nazi and radical Islamic extremism shared – such as a virulent antisemitism – there were also clear differences.

“If you are looking at racist extremists and religious extremists, one thing that is striking is that religions allow entry and exit from the group – through conversion or apostasy – but you can’t change what the extremists consider as your ‘race’. They offer competing absolute visions,” said JM Berger, author of Jihad Joe, a study of Islamic extremists in America. Berger has also studied rightwing militancy.

“If someone has a profound identity crisis, you can see how they might not find the certainty they are looking for with neo-Nazism and look to the Islamic State for something even more absolute,” Berger said. Such cases are rare, but they do occur. Joseph Jeffrey Brice once idolized Timothy McVeigh – who killed 168 people with a truck bomb in Oklahoma City in 1995 and was “a self-declared, conservative, rightwing Christian”– but became interested in radical Islamic extremism after a homemade bomb nearly killed him in 2010. He was later jailed for terrorist offences including sending detailed instructions for “open source” bombmaking to an undercover FBI agent who he thought was an Islamic militant. In February, a 26-year-old suspected Islamic militant was arrested in Germany on suspicion of planning a terrorist act, storing “items and chemicals” for manufacturing explosives and spreading Isis propaganda online. Local media reported that “Sascha L” supported a neo-Nazi group, called Muslims “cockroaches” and posted videos calling for attacks on immigrants in Germany before his conversion to Islam some time in 2014.

A disproportionately high number of militants involved in plots in the west have been converts. In the UK between 2001 and 2013, 12% of “homegrown jihadis” were converts, but less than 4% of the overall Muslim population were. Meanwhile, as many as 41% of US-born alleged militants are converts, while just 23% of the Muslim population as a whole are converts. “With lone actors, they tend to jump around,” said Gill. “They are often looking for something to give their lives meaning. Many are converts [who are] looking for identity and answers.”

And I'm caught up.

Quote from: (((Fun_Timer))) on May 27, 2017, 01:06:48 AM

Wait, do pickup lines ever actually work?

i once told my soon to be gf that i didnt like sand and she made out with me. true story.

Is that Zverev?

Shouldn't've left the EU

EU regulations are all shit up until you suddenly find ham on the outside of your Tesco sandwich. Fucking Brexit.

I'd consider the same, but I know it would only cause more issues in the end.