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Messages - More Than Mortal
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11791
« on: October 22, 2014, 01:53:51 PM »
Grades not good enough to get into one of those, I suppose?
Nope. I'm just terrible at working. They look at your GCSEs for Oxbridge, and I didn't terribly in the subjects I just didn't care about.
Not to mention I just can't revise, so I sort of fracked up my philosophy exam and ended up with a C instead of an A >.>
Ah, like that. Birmingham's also a pretty great college though, no?
It's in the Russell Group, so yeah.
11792
« on: October 22, 2014, 01:51:13 PM »
Grades not good enough to get into one of those, I suppose?
Nope. I'm just terrible at working. They look at your GCSEs for Oxbridge, and I didn't terribly in the subjects I just didn't care about. Not to mention I just can't revise, so I sort of fucked up my philosophy exam and ended up with a C instead of an A >.>
11793
« on: October 22, 2014, 01:48:16 PM »
No Cambridge or Oxford?
N'aw m80. Fucked myself over, there.
11794
« on: October 22, 2014, 01:42:02 PM »
One ambitious and two insurance ones <.<
Any particular reason?
11795
« on: October 22, 2014, 01:38:40 PM »
So, I'm currently applying to Uni with predicted grades of an A in politics, an A in history and a B in philosophy.
Each Uni has different entry requirements, which could probably be divided into "ambitious", "safe" and "insurance".
I have one ambitious choice: the University of Birmingham, at AAB.
I have two safe choices: the University of East Anglia, at ABB and the University of Essex at ABB-BBB.
Now, I'm unsure whether to have one insurance choice (at like BCC or BBC) and add a second ambitious one, or have a single ambitious choice and two insurances.
11796
« on: October 22, 2014, 01:30:00 AM »
Most people threaten to commit suicide just for attention. Telling someone that you don't care or egging them on to kill themselves probably does more to change their mind than giving them the attention they want.
Wow. I don't even care if you're joking, I just lost all respect for you.
11797
« on: October 22, 2014, 01:26:52 AM »
Good for you. So do I.
11798
« on: October 22, 2014, 01:25:41 AM »
Also, if you truly didn't care then explain your comment.
I care enough about my lack of interest to profess it.
11799
« on: October 21, 2014, 03:16:24 PM »
From the Daily Telegraph.Ever since the fictional hoverboards in 1989’s Back to the Future Part II children (and adults) have dreamed of scooting along six inches from the ground, safe from the rough terrain and water which would stop a normal skateboard in its tracks.
In the 90s the film’s director Robert Zemeckis cruelly spread rumours that a commercial version was under development, raising hopes around the world before scientists dashed them with a dose of reality - the problem was just too hard.
But now a Californian startup claims to have cracked it and developed a working prototype, although there are several catches: the battery only lasts seven minutes, it will only float over smooth metal and it costs $10,000. There is also a limited supply of just ten hoverboards available.
Hendo Hover has turned to Kickstarter to crowdfund the $250,000 it needs to create the first run of products. It claims to need the money to put the “finishing touches” to its device.
Currently its HENDO hoverboard levitates one inch from the ground but will only work above conductive surfaces. In a demonstration video the company shows it floating above a flat copper surface and a half-pipe skateboard ramp coated in a thin sheet of the same metal.
The money raised will also go towards “creating places to ride them”, as existing skateparks with their tarmac surface are unsuitable. Engineers claim that one day they could be improved to work on any surface, but this is still some way off.
Those pledging $5 will get a mention on the company’s social media accounts, while those giving $100 will get a five minute ride on a hoverboard. Only those giving $10,000 will get a hoverboard, and there are only 10 available in this campaign.
The company claims that those donating to get a hoverboard will be presented with the devices today, but only $3,856 of the target of $250,000 has so far been raised, meaning that nobody with deep pockets has yet taken the plunge.
“Our engineering team has been amazing, rapidly iterating on design after design. In fact, this our 18th prototype, and we continue to make advances week after week,” says the company’s Kickstarter campaign.
“The magic behind the hoverboard lies in its four disc-shaped hover engines. These create a special magnetic field which literally pushes against itself, generating the lift which levitates our board off the ground.”
A video reportedly showing the device in action gives the impression that it’s rather hard to control: without wheels or friction it seems nearly impossible to point it in a specific direction. It is intended to be propelled with the push of a foot, like a skateboard, but its creators say that the technology used to make it levitate could be adapted to provide forward momentum.
Despite the obvious connection to the Back to the Future franchise featuring Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly, it seems that the company is making no direct connection: “Yep, there was a movie. However, our attorneys have told us not to go there.”
The company has also created a “whitebox” device which will float in the same way as the hoverboard, and be used to demonstrate the technology to engineers: “It is designed to be explored, taken apart, and analysed, encouraging you to dare to wonder.”
The startup hopes that it can licence the technology to be used in factories, warehouses and anywhere else that levitating heavy objects could prove useful.  I've underlined the bits to do with the actual technology. Spoiler Emboldened bit at the end just for personal interest as to how technology is pushing a massive shift in the way our economy, and labour, is structured.
11800
« on: October 21, 2014, 02:22:34 PM »
People who think Depression is a result of weakness, or that people should just get over it, are just terrible. I'm not even joking when I say I wouldn't flinch if they were shot in front of me.
I've "battled" with depression (on and off, thankfully) for almost a year now. It isn't something you just switch off or get over, as men of great fortitude like Churchill, Lincoln, Nietzsche, Asimov, Darwin, Hemingway, Kafka and Twain all learned in their lives.
11801
« on: October 21, 2014, 02:13:53 PM »
There's also the problem with egosyntonic and egodystonic mental illnesses, where in the former the "sufferer" doesn't necessarily feel anything is wrong with them. Which usually comes about from the most volatile disorders like the Cluster B (dramatic) diagnoses - particularly ASPD and, as an extension, psychopathy.
11802
« on: October 21, 2014, 02:09:32 PM »
Indeed. Generally, this line of questioning, discrepancies, and lack of understanding highlights the vast underfunding and lack of research into some of these mental illnesses.
Completely agree, especially when it comes to the prison system. Prisons are essentially de facto asylums for the mentally ill. Just pushes the issue to one side.
11803
« on: October 21, 2014, 02:06:50 PM »
Well, this gets into the scope of what qualifies as a mental illness. Some would argue severe anxiety is a mild degree of it, so it generally comes down to your personal perspective.
I think that straddles the boundaries between temperament and illness. Having a severe episode of anxiety triggered because you're unaware of what serious consequences could arise? Doesn't seem, at least to me, to be an illness. Having severe episodes of anxiety triggered because of fear of consequences, as well as a general sense of anxiousness in your life? That's probably an illness. It comes down to how constant and interwoven it is with your personality.
11804
« on: October 21, 2014, 02:01:04 PM »
There are people who do suffer from mental illness, but not everybody who kills themselves are mentally ill.
I'd say this is false.
No it's true. Killing yourself because of blackmail, or killing yourself because the police call on you for sexting (as on English lad did) doesn't constitute mental illness. There's perhaps an underlying psychological aberration - such as abnormally high levels of anxiety - but nothing to constitute an illness or a disorder.
11805
« on: October 21, 2014, 01:57:54 PM »
I don't know enough, or care enough, about instruments of death to give a fuck.
11806
« on: October 21, 2014, 01:51:43 PM »
Around half of people who commit suicide have depression.
Now, considering that is only one illness, it's fair to say that more than half of the people who commit suicide are mentally ill.
11807
« on: October 21, 2014, 01:39:51 PM »
How can an opinion be wrong? That doesn't make sense. I don't care if somebody supported the idea of killing all humans to protect the earth, I would never say their opinion is wrong "I think human health should be predicated on the idea of vomiting all the time and only eating fatty foods. It's also quite clear that, since God created water before the stars, water cannot be two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen". Opinions can contradict facts in a number of ways. The only difference between arguing maths and society is that the second is a much more diffuse subject with convoluted metric systems, but both still have wholly correct answers.
11808
« on: October 21, 2014, 01:18:27 PM »
From the BBC.Bee colonies in Brisbane are waging war for months on end, sending waves of workers who collide, grapple and die.
A genetic analysis of the battlefield fatalities showed that two different species of stingless bees were fighting for control of a single hive.
The attacking swarm eventually took over the hive entirely, placing a new queen of its own in the usurped nest.
The study, published in the American Naturalist journal, suggests that such usurped nests are surprisingly common.
Ecologists from Brisbane, in Australia, and Oxford, in the UK, looked in detail at one particular hive.
It was inhabited by a bee species native to the area around Brisbane, called Tetragonula carbonaria.
"They live in the hollows of trees and other cavities, so they're quite common in and around the city," said the study's lead author Dr Paul Cunningham, from the Queensland University of Technology.
"And around this time of year, people see these big swarms outside the trees or around their houses. They're fighting swarms," Dr Cunningham told BBC News.
"If you stand under the swarm, you can see these bees dropping out of the air. They've grabbed hold of each other in this death grip - they're locked together, and both the bees die."
Game of drones?
These battling bees are the workers - the female members of a colony that cannot reproduce but collect pollen and, apparently, sometimes wage war.
Dr Cunningham said around 600 households in Brisbane keep these stingless bees as pets, and had expressed concern about the "carnage" they were seeing outside their hives.
So when Dr Cunningham's team found a hive playing host to such a skirmish, they monitored it over a period of several months - observing the bees' behaviour and collecting the carcasses for genetic analysis.
Between July and October 2008, the researchers witnessed three successive waves of invasion.
Unexpectedly, they all came from a single, rival colony of an entirely different species, called Tetragonula hockingsi.
"The first thing we found was that it was two species fighting," Dr Cunningham explained. "The attacking bees are a species that's much more common further north."
The next intriguing result came from the final outcome of the war.
The attacking hockingsi bees eventually won the "numbers game" and overcame the nest completely - and moved in.
"They actually started dragging out the workers and youngsters from the hive," Dr Cunningham said.
"A few months later we opened it up and looked at the genetics of the brood. There was a new queen in residence, and she was a daughter of the attacking colony's queen.
"These bees were playing a Game of Thrones."
This type of large-scale insect warfare is well-known in ants, but less so in bees.
To figure out how often it was happening, Dr Cunningham's team also did a survey of 260 hives around the city, for a further five years.
During that time, they saw 46 examples of a switch between the characteristic building styles of the two different species: carbonaria bees construct orderly, spiral-shaped nests, while those of the invading northerners hockingsi are less organised.
"[Those 46 changes suggest] this is probably quite a common behaviour," Dr Cunningham said.
He hopes the research will encourage people to look closer at native, stingless bees, which can be a more resilient alternative to honey bees.
"If we're going to really use and manipulate these bees in the future, we need to understand what their behaviour is and how they maintain territories and things."
11809
« on: October 21, 2014, 12:15:36 PM »
I have nothing against religious individuals as people.
It's just their non-cognitivist metaphysics I reject - rightfully so, and fervently so, I might maintain.
11810
« on: October 21, 2014, 12:11:31 PM »
Personally, I, believe in nothing. "Cognito ergo sum"
Make your mind up.
11811
« on: October 21, 2014, 11:41:01 AM »
This thread really didn't need to end up like this, but since I've made a sort of quasi-claim, now that I'm on my laptop, I'll back it up.
Suicide is in absolutely no way the result of cowardice. To claim as such is essentially the same as claiming those who deserted in World War One, who had shellshock, were cowards. You can play the semantics game all you want, and say that those soldiers suffered from cowardice as a symptom of PTSD but that won't cut it simply because one of the key components of cowardice is the fact that it is contemptible.
When people like Kinder and myself can claim to have been to that dark place, in the grip of mental illness (definitely with me, not sure with Kinder), and come out alive it shouldn't constitute a judgement call on other people in a similar situation. One of the hallmarks of suicidality - whether a result of mental illness or not - is feeling as if there is no alternative; it's like piling weights up on somebody's back. Depression, depending on one's psychosomatic "structure", if you like, can vary from person to person. For me, it doesn't create a feeling of sadness so much as apathy and an increased awareness of being emotionally hollow.
I didn't attempt suicide twice because I felt bad, or it felt as if I was in a dark place, it was because I saw no meaning or point to anything which didn't occupy that depressive space. My perception and awareness was, at least I believe now, fundamentally limited and, perhaps, flawed. In the same way you can't call a paranoid schizophrenic morally, socially or personally responsible, you can't call a suicidal individual a coward because the fault lies in their ability to perceive, not in their ability to cope.
11812
« on: October 21, 2014, 10:20:08 AM »
I'm not damage controlling in the slightest. I gave you my reasons as to why the charge of ignorance isn't an insult, and then amended it because I'm unwilling to argue such a ridiculous and juvenile point with you.
Stop dragging it on and accusing me of damage control when I quite explicitly amended with deterrence to your opinion in order to try and avoid exactly the sort of shit you're pullong right now.
Mate, just stop being so defensive and drop the point. Think I'm damage controlling all you want, but trying to call me out and trying to drag me into an unworthy issue isn't worth your time nor mine.
11813
« on: October 21, 2014, 10:11:30 AM »
Calling you ignorant is an attack on your argument because your apparent ignorance is a direct consequence of the content of your assertion. Ignorance stems from an assertion being devoid of reason, facts or coherence. If you want to construe that as an attack on your character then that isn't really my problem; you could quite easily go from being offended at being called ignorant to being challenged at all, since any assertion to the contrary is, by proxy, a charge of some sort of ignorance.
Now, if you don't like the explanation I've just given you for why ignorance isn't an insult - and why the charge of ignorance is hidden in any sort of challenge - then I'll amend it because I can't be bothered to argue over something so damn asinine.
"ITT: kinder displays a deficit in his reasoned understanding of depression and suicide, thus his assertion is without much worth".
Although, I'd advise not expecting others to be so politically correct for your benefit, especially after calling suicidal people cowards.
11814
« on: October 21, 2014, 09:55:30 AM »
Calling you ignorant isn't an attack on your character in any way whatsoever; it's merely an observation as to your apparent "intellectual deficit" when it comes to the issue. It's essentially equal to me getting flustered if you said I was ignorant about guns.
If I said "Kinder demonstrates his shitflinging retardation and general sperglordyness" then it'd be a personal attack. But if you're going to claim suicidal people are cowards, I don't see how calling you ignorant is any worse or, regardless, an insult in the first place.
11815
« on: October 21, 2014, 09:38:33 AM »
ITT: Kinder demonstrates his astounding ignorance of suicide and depression.
11816
« on: October 21, 2014, 01:21:31 AM »
No, it isn't.
Yes, myself.
No, I don't.
11817
« on: October 20, 2014, 06:44:06 PM »
Because opinions are so important
Hi, Dustin. This is a forum. Enjoy your stay.
11818
« on: October 20, 2014, 06:12:56 PM »
Obviously, the answer is yes. But I'm talking fundamentally; are we seeing, essentially, a paradigm shift in British politics. I needn't go over how UKIP has stormed the right-wing of British politics, winning the European elections and becoming the third most popular party. The age of two-party democracy had been nudged by the Liberal Democrats getting into government, but now it seems the Green Party on the Left is also joining UKIP is the dis-establishment of the status quo. Recently, the Green Party polled 8pc, putting them fourth, causing the Lib Dems to fall into fifth. In a blind test, based on 2010 policies, it seems as if they have the most popular ideas. It isn't hard to believe, as a majority in every party requires the re-nationalisation of railways, energy and water - yet the Greens are the only ones who actually claim to try to provide this. So, is it fair to say that British politics is undergoing an irreversible shift? Even if the Green Party nor UKIP will be forming a government any time soon?
11819
« on: October 20, 2014, 05:56:34 PM »
I feel it really represents the struggles of people my age, and the way the Establishment is trying to convert us to their puritanism. *kicks over a table*
11820
« on: October 20, 2014, 05:52:40 PM »
ego-eccentric BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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