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Topics - More Than Mortal

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541
The Flood / This time tomorrow I'll have my A-level results
« on: August 12, 2015, 06:37:42 AM »
Shitting fucking bricks.

542
Serious / Gender mixing in high schools harms academic achievement
« on: August 11, 2015, 07:02:42 AM »
American Economic Association.
Quote
This paper finds that a student's share of opposite gender school friends negatively affects high school GPA. It uses the gender composition of schoolmates in an individual's neighborhood as an instrument for the gender composition of an individual's self-reported friendship network. The effect occurs across all subjects for students older than 16, but only in mathematics and science for younger students. Additional results indicate effects may operate inside the classroom through difficulties getting along with the teacher and paying attention, and outside the classroom through romantic relationships.

This would explain why I tanked towards the end of high school and in the first year of sixth form.

543
Serious / The university thought police is at it again
« on: August 11, 2015, 06:06:52 AM »
Holy hell.
Quote
When students arrive on campus at the University of New Hampshire this fall, they’ll be welcomed with a “Bias-Free Language Guide” to help them in their conversations.

Since college campuses have become very concerned with “microaggressions” being committed on their campuses, UNH decided to help their students understand which words might offend others.

But, according to Campus Reform:

"The university website encourages readers to understand that the guide 'is not a means to censor but rather to create dialogues of inclusion where all of us feel comfortable and welcomed.'"

A few of the words which are deemed “problematic” are:

American
Mothering
Fathering
Illegal Alien
Caucasian
Homeless
Poor person
Obese
Overweight
Healthy
Orientals
Freshmen
For each category, the University makes recommendations that, for the most part, are much longer and contain multiple words.

Instead of “poor person,” for instance, the student should say “person who lacks advantages that others have.” Mothering and fathering are frowned upon because they advance gender stereotypes. Instead, one should use “parenting” or “nurturing” because they describe the behavior.

“European-American individuals” is the favored term over “Caucasian.” And instead of “healthy,” use “non-disabled individual.”

The purpose is to:

"…not stereotype or demean people based on personal characteristics."

Students will be able to access the university’s 4,750-word web page to easily understand which words they are supposed to use when conversing with their peers.

The world is literally fucking insane.

544
The Flood / Faggot Awards 2054: Most Intelligent User
« on: August 10, 2015, 06:38:15 PM »
You can't choose yourself, though. Or Goji, for that matter.

I nominate Turkey.

545
The Flood / i officially have the best avatar now
« on: August 10, 2015, 06:11:17 PM »
git gud

546
The Flood / The next door neighbours lost their kitten, I found him
« on: August 10, 2015, 04:32:32 PM »
I leave my window open due to the heat during these months, and the little shit must've climbed through. I was just on my laptop when I saw a dark shape out of the corner of my eye, I knew something was in my room. Thirty seconds later, he was standing upright against my bed, but he fucking crawled under the bed when I went to reach him. So I had to fucking remove my mattress to get the little cunt.

I heard the neighbours calling a few hours earlier, so I figured he must belong to them. She was fucking hella relieved that I'd found him.

So yeah, interesting day.

547
Serious / MUH SCANDINAVIA
« on: August 10, 2015, 12:19:06 PM »
meanwhile in the real world anybody who knows what the fuck they're talking about knows scandinavia's success is not due to its ridiculous welfare state

fucking bernie

548
Serious / ISIS threatens to kill the Queen
« on: August 09, 2015, 02:33:20 PM »
Fuckers.

If it wasn't already clear that we're at war, it is now.

549
Serious / Who won the Republican debates?
« on: August 08, 2015, 06:04:12 AM »
You can pick two winners.

I picked Kasich because he managed to do pretty well for an underdog, I think his polls will surge as a result. Plus, he's probably the closest candidate to my actual views.

I also picked Rubio, because he managed to put himself out there ahead of the others. It's no surprise the Democrats fear a Rubio ticket the most, given how he could position himself (either against Sanders or Clinton) as the candidate of the new instead of the old.

Bush also impressed me, but he didn't really "win".

550
Serious / Republican 2016 Debate Thread
« on: August 06, 2015, 07:53:37 PM »
Now that the proper debate is starting in a couple of minutes, I figured it deserved its own thread. Who else is tuning in? I'll be streaming it here.

551
Serious / Julian Assange gets absolutely wrecked
« on: August 05, 2015, 08:16:37 PM »
YouTube


It's all ogre.

552
Serious / My grandpa is starting to slip, I think
« on: August 05, 2015, 02:58:42 PM »
So, I'm at my grandma's house tonight. My grandpa has slept pretty much solidly for the past three days, but other than that he hasn't been odd in any way. Today, however, when my grandma walked across the living room to the cupboard under the stairs my grandpa asked "How did you make your way around there? Did you feel your way around?"

At first I'd thought he'd gone blind, but that was stupid because he was following her with his eyes. When she asked him what she meant, he said she had to be quiet because he was watching out for the kids. My grandma thinks he thought he was back in the Upland's children home where he used to work. She also thinks he'd just woken up; my great grandma, who developed dementia, would do a similar thing where she'd wake up following a dream and just launch into explaining it as if it were fact.

He just isn't making a whole lot of sense really, although I wouldn't go so far as to call him persistently disoriented. My grandma thinks he may have had a stroke, but I doubt it to be honest. I know he has been hallucinating though. I'm doing some Google searches, but it isn't really yielding anything. Anybody have any ideas/personal experience with this sort of thing?

553
Serious / Teachers who who say gay marriage is wrong are extremists
« on: August 04, 2015, 05:05:06 PM »
According to a Tory MP.

Quote
New banning orders intended to clamp down on hate preachers and terrorist propagandists should be used against Christian teachers who teach children that gay marriage is “wrong”, a Tory MP has argued.

Mark Spencer called for those who use their position in the classroom to teach traditionalist views on marriage to be subject to “Extremism Disruption Orders” (EDOs), tough new restrictions planned by David Cameron and Theresa May to curb radicalisation by jihadists.

In a letter to a constituent, Mr Spencer, the MP for Sherwood in Nottinghamshire, insisted that Christian teachers were still “perfectly entitled” to express their views on same-sex marriage – but only “in some situations”.

Christian campaigners said Mr Spencer’s remarks confirmed what they had previously warned: that those who believe marriage should only be between a man and a woman would now be “branded extremists”.

The National Secular Society, which supports same-sex marriage, said the proposed banning orders could be one of the biggest threats to freedom of expression ever seen in the UK.

I knew these EDOs were a bad fucking idea.

554
Gaming / building a gaming laptop
« on: August 04, 2015, 02:04:40 PM »


need to know if my specs are tuff enuff

555
The Flood / what the jesus h FUCK is this
« on: August 03, 2015, 10:27:18 AM »

556
YouTube


Hyped.

557
Serious / A challenge to free will
« on: July 29, 2015, 11:52:10 AM »
YouTube

558
Serious / Denmark bans Halal and Kosher slaughter
« on: July 26, 2015, 11:37:55 AM »
Minister claims animal rights come before welfare.
Quote
Denmark’s government has brought in a ban on the religious slaughter of animals for the production of halal and kosher meat, after years of campaigning from welfare activists.

The change to the law, announced last week and effective as of yesterday, has been called “anti-Semitism” by Jewish leaders and “a clear interference in religious freedom” by the non-profit group Danish Halal.

European regulations require animals to be stunned before they are slaughtered, but grants exemptions on religious grounds. For meat to be considered kosher under Jewish law or halal under Islamic law, the animal must be conscious when killed.

Yet defending his government’s decision to remove this exemption, the minister for agriculture and food Dan Jørgensen told Denmark’s TV2 that “animal rights come before religion”.

Commenting on the change, Israel’s deputy minister of religious services Rabbi Eli Ben Dahan told the Jewish Daily Forward: “European anti-Semitism is showing its true colours across Europe, and is even intensifying in the government institutions.”

Al Jazeera quoted the monitoring group Danish Halal, which launched a petition against the ban, as saying it was “a clear interference in religious freedom limiting the rights of Muslims and Jews to practice their religion in Denmark”.

The ban has divided opinions in the country, particularly after it recently made headlines for animal welfare policy after Copenhagen Zoo slaughtered the “surplus” young male giraffe Marius.

On Twitter, David Krikler (@davekriks) wrote: “In Denmark butchering a healthy giraffe in front of kids is cool but a kosher/halal chicken is illegal.”

Byakuya Ali-Hassan (@SirOthello) said it was “disgusting” that “the same country that slaughtered a giraffe in public to be fed to lions… is banning halal meat because of the procedures”.

Mogens Larsen (@Moq72), from Aalborg in Denmark, tweeted: “Denmark bans the religious slaughter of animals. Not even zoo lions are allowed a taste of halal giraffe.”

Last year politicians in Britain said they would not be outlawing religious slaughter despite “strong pressure” from the RSPCA, the National Secular Society and other activists.
>shooting in copenhagen
>bans halal meat

based denmark

559
The Flood / I tried to make some rice krispie treats
« on: July 25, 2015, 09:18:33 AM »
YouTube


i failed

560
Serious / fuck
« on: July 25, 2015, 09:17:43 AM »
lock

561
The Flood / Mr P. is really a nigger gook Moslem
« on: July 25, 2015, 09:15:59 AM »
He lives in Kazookigookilondonistan, in the county of Abottawottalottabad. He beheaded my parents, in the dead of night. They never harmed nobody. But he done it all the same. Cut the power to our house, disabling the security system. He came in with an axe, doing that AYAYAYAYAYAYAYA shit they fucking do when they're killing infidels.

That's why I became Chris Kyle, and decided to take out my repressed homo-psychopathic urges out by going to Iraq and murdering children.

562
Serious / Automation will not increase long-term unemployment
« on: July 24, 2015, 09:48:46 AM »
This is a very popular trope among people, especially since CGP Grey's "Humans Need Not Apply" video, but it just isn't the case that automation will drastically increase long-run unemployment just because certain jobs will disappear.

  • David Autor's Polanyi’s Paradox and the Shape of Employment GrowthAutor is notable here has he has massively advanced our understanding of the interaction between technology & labour over the last couple of decades, he posits automation as an extension of the Skill-Biased Technological Change hypothesis which represents manageable inequality changes (this is wage inequality, labour/capital shares remain stable but there is a clear divergence between types of labour actors) but no structural employment issues. The absence of structural employment is expected based on the way we understand technology to act on labour, as a productivity multiplier, and even if the SBTC hypothesis turns out to be incorrect this does not imply structural employment but rather a different form of inequality.
  • Daron Acemoglu's Why Do New Technologies Complement Skills? A more comprehensive discussion of the SBTC effect.
  • The Future of Unemployment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation? The oft-cited paper and the first to do a thorough review of the scale of labour disruption that may occur in the future.
  • Robots Are Us: Some Economics of Human Replacement Built on the prior paper to examine some of the productivity effects in a simple tech & non-tech worker model. While some inputs to their model do produce a result which suggests a reduction in labor demand their conclusion is that the likely outcome is the other kind of inequality (declining labor share) but again with a clear policy solution, they also have alternative policy solutions for avoiding the unlikely scenario of net labor demand falling.

More generally it's argued that, historically, automation has not reduced employment. Automation has historically acted as a multiplier on productivity which drives demand for human labour. Pre-singularity its very hard to imagine this changing, we will undoubtedly encounter disruption effects (people will have the wrong skills, their earnings will reflect this matching issue rather than unemployment doing so) but from an economics perspective there is little difference between replacing a field worker with a tractor and an office worker with an algorithm. Certainly the office worker needs to find a new job, if they don't have demanded skills that job may not offer earnings growth opportunities but it doesn't imply unemployment any more than the mechanization of agriculture did.

563
The Flood / What's the best way to get bubblegum out of your hair?
« on: July 23, 2015, 08:20:52 PM »


Cancer.

564
The Flood / What do apples and niggers have in common?
« on: July 23, 2015, 08:18:44 PM »


Both hang from my tree in the yard.

565
The Flood / Why is Turkey such a basic bitch
« on: July 23, 2015, 07:58:19 PM »
With his engineering pseudoscience.

566


Worth it.

567
SPIEGAL
Quote
Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa...

Shikwati: ... for God's sake, please just stop.

SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for this paradox?

Shikwati: Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.

SPIEGEL: Even in a country like Kenya, people are starving to death each year. Someone has got to help them.

Shikwati: But it has to be the Kenyans themselves who help these people. When there's a drought in a region of Kenya, our corrupt politicians reflexively cry out for more help. This call then reaches the United Nations World Food Program -- which is a massive agency of apparatchiks who are in the absurd situation of, on the one hand, being dedicated to the fight against hunger while, on the other hand, being faced with unemployment were hunger actually eliminated. It's only natural that they willingly accept the plea for more help. And it's not uncommon that they demand a little more money than the respective African government originally requested. They then forward that request to their headquarters, and before long, several thousands tons of corn are shipped to Africa ...

SPIEGEL: ... corn that predominantly comes from highly-subsidized European and American farmers ...

Shikwati: ... and at some point, this corn ends up in the harbor of Mombasa. A portion of the corn often goes directly into the hands of unsrupulous politicians who then pass it on to their own tribe to boost their next election campaign. Another portion of the shipment ends up on the black market where the corn is dumped at extremely low prices. Local farmers may as well put down their hoes right away; no one can compete with the UN's World Food Program. And because the farmers go under in the face of this pressure, Kenya would have no reserves to draw on if there actually were a famine next year. It's a simple but fatal cycle.

SPIEGEL: If the World Food Program didn't do anything, the people would starve.

Shikwati: I don't think so. In such a case, the Kenyans, for a change, would be forced to initiate trade relations with Uganda or Tanzania, and buy their food there. This type of trade is vital for Africa. It would force us to improve our own infrastructure, while making national borders -- drawn by the Europeans by the way -- more permeable. It would also force us to establish laws favoring market economy.

SPIEGEL: Would Africa actually be able to solve these problems on its own?

Shikwati: Of course. Hunger should not be a problem in most of the countries south of the Sahara. In addition, there are vast natural resources: oil, gold, diamonds. Africa is always only portrayed as a continent of suffering, but most figures are vastly exaggerated. In the industrial nations, there's a sense that Africa would go under without development aid. But believe me, Africa existed before you Europeans came along. And we didn't do all that poorly either.

SPIEGEL: But AIDS didn't exist at that time.

Shikwati: If one were to believe all the horrorifying reports, then all Kenyans should actually be dead by now. But now, tests are being carried out everywhere, and it turns out that the figures were vastly exaggerated. It's not three million Kenyans that are infected. All of the sudden, it's only about one million. Malaria is just as much of a problem, but people rarely talk about that.

SPIEGEL: And why's that?

Shikwati: AIDS is big business, maybe Africa's biggest business. There's nothing else that can generate as much aid money as shocking figures on AIDS. AIDS is a political disease here, and we should be very skeptical.

SPIEGEL: The Americans and Europeans have frozen funds previously pledged to Kenya. The country is too corrupt, they say.

Shikwati: I am afraid, though, that the money will still be transfered before long. After all, it has to go somewhere. Unfortunately, the Europeans' devastating urge to do good can no longer be countered with reason. It makes no sense whatsoever that directly after the new Kenyan government was elected -- a leadership change that ended the dictatorship of Daniel arap Mois -- the faucets were suddenly opened and streams of money poured into the country.

SPIEGEL: Such aid is usually earmarked for a specific objective, though.

Shikwati: That doesn't change anything. Millions of dollars earmarked for the fight against AIDS are still stashed away in Kenyan bank accounts and have not been spent. Our politicians were overwhelmed with money, and they try to siphon off as much as possible. The late tyrant of the Central African Republic, Jean Bedel Bokassa, cynically summed it up by saying: "The French government pays for everything in our country. We ask the French for money. We get it, and then we waste it."

SPIEGEL: In the West, there are many compassionate citizens wanting to help Africa. Each year, they donate money and pack their old clothes into collection bags ...

Shikwati: ... and they flood our markets with that stuff. We can buy these donated clothes cheaply at our so-called Mitumba markets. There are Germans who spend a few dollars to get used Bayern Munich or Werder Bremen jerseys, in other words, clothes that that some German kids sent to Africa for a good cause. After buying these jerseys, they auction them off at Ebay and send them back to Germany -- for three times the price. That's insanity ...

SPIEGEL: ... and hopefully an exception.

Shikwati: Why do we get these mountains of clothes? No one is freezing here. Instead, our tailors lose their livlihoods. They're in the same position as our farmers. No one in the low-wage world of Africa can be cost-efficient enough to keep pace with donated products. In 1997, 137,000 workers were employed in Nigeria's textile industry. By 2003, the figure had dropped to 57,000. The results are the same in all other areas where overwhelming helpfulness and fragile African markets collide.

SPIEGEL: Following World War II, Germany only managed to get back on its feet because the Americans poured money into the country through the Marshall Plan. Wouldn't that qualify as successful development aid?

Shikwati: In Germany's case, only the destroyed infrastructure had to be repaired. Despite the economic crisis of the Weimar Republic, Germany was a highly- industrialized country before the war. The damages created by the tsunami in Thailand can also be fixed with a little money and some reconstruction aid. Africa, however, must take the first steps into modernity on its own. There must be a change in mentality. We have to stop perceiving ourselves as beggars. These days, Africans only perceive themselves as victims. On the other hand, no one can really picture an African as a businessman. In order to change the current situation, it would be helpful if the aid organizations were to pull out.

SPIEGEL: If they did that, many jobs would be immediately lost ...

Shikwati: ... jobs that were created artificially in the first place and that distort reality. Jobs with foreign aid organizations are, of course, quite popular, and they can be very selective in choosing the best people. When an aid organization needs a driver, dozens apply for the job. And because it's unacceptable that the aid worker's chauffeur only speaks his own tribal language, an applicant is needed who also speaks English fluently -- and, ideally, one who is also well mannered. So you end up with some African biochemist driving an aid worker around, distributing European food, and forcing local farmers out of their jobs. That's just crazy!

SPIEGEL: The German government takes pride in precisely monitoring the recipients of its funds.

Shikwati: And what's the result? A disaster. The German government threw money right at Rwanda's president Paul Kagame. This is a man who has the deaths of a million people on his conscience -- people that his army killed in the neighboring country of Congo.

SPIEGEL: What are the Germans supposed to do?

Shikwati: If they really want to fight poverty, they should completely halt development aid and give Africa the opportunity to ensure its own survival. Currently, Africa is like a child that immediately cries for its babysitter when something goes wrong. Africa should stand on its own two feet.

568
Serious / Secret deals in Iran nuclear agreement uncovered
« on: July 22, 2015, 04:10:25 PM »
By two congressmen having a meeting with IAEA officials in Vienna.
Quote
Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and Congressmen Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) issued a press release yesterday on a startling discovery they made during a July 17 meeting with International Atomic Energy Agency officials in Vienna: There are two secret side deals to the nuclear agreement with Iran that will not be shared with other nations, with Congress, or with the U.S. public.

One of these side deals concerns inspection of the Parchin military base, where Iran reportedly has conducted explosive testing related to nuclear-warhead development. The Iranian government has refused to allow the IAEA to visit this site. Over the last several years, Iran has taken steps to clean up evidence of weapons-related activity at Parchin. 

The other secret side deal concerns how the IAEA and Iran will resolve outstanding issues on possible military dimensions (PMDs) of Iran’s nuclear program. In late 2013, Iran agreed to resolve IAEA questions about nuclear weapons-related work in twelve areas. Iran only answered questions in one of these areas and rejected the rest as based on forgeries and fabrications.   

Former Department of Energy official William Tobey explained in a July 15 Wall Street Journal op-ed why it is crucial that Iran resolve the PMD issue. According to Tobey, “for inspections to be meaningful, Iran would have to completely and correctly declare all its relevant nuclear activities and procurement, past and present.”   According to the Cotton/Pompeo press release, there will be a secret, opaque procedure to verify Iran’s compliance with these side agreements.

The press release says: According to the IAEA, the Iran agreement negotiators, including the Obama administration, agreed that the IAEA and Iran would forge separate arrangements to govern the inspection of the Parchin military complex — one of the most secretive military facilities in Iran — and how Iran would satisfy the IAEA’s outstanding questions regarding past weaponization work. Both arrangements will not be vetted by any organization other than Iran and the IAEA, and will not be released even to the nations that negotiated the JCPOA [Iran nuclear agreement]. This means that the secret arrangements have not been released for public scrutiny and have not been submitted to Congress as part of its legislatively mandated review of the Iran deal.

This means that two crucial measures of Iranian compliance with the nuclear agreement will not be disclosed to Congress despite the requirements of the Corker-Cardin bill (the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act), which requires the Obama administration to provide the U.S. Congress with all documents associated with the agreement, including all “annexes, appendices, codicils, side agreements [emphasis added], implementing materials, documents, and guidance, technical, or other understandings and any related agreements, whether entered into or implemented prior to the agreement or to be entered into or implemented in the future.” 

It also means that Congress will have no way of knowing whether Iran complied with either side agreement.

This is especially troublesome for the PMD issue. I wrote in National Review on June 15 and June 17 that the Obama administration was trying to find a way to let Iran off the hook for past nuclear weapons-related work. It seems to have found a way to do this with a secret procedure shielded from the American public and the U.S. Congress.  What do Obama administration officials know about these secret agreements?

A source who was in the Cotton-Pompeo meeting told me that IAEA officials gave a vague answer to this question that “Secretary Kerry was told about the agreements.”

569
Serious / Fuck Jeb, let's have Kasich
« on: July 22, 2015, 03:27:53 PM »

570
Serious / Alien mothership "the size of Idaho" caught in NASA picture
« on: July 22, 2015, 12:00:59 PM »
Jesus.
Quote
A massive alien spacecraft, around the size of the US state of Idaho, has been spotted near the sun by ufologists in recent NASA pictures. They say the object definitely has a structure.

The video released by Youtube user Streetcap1 shows the original NASA image of the sun captured by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) on July 15, 2015.

“This UFO is awesome! Every time I try to ask NASA about these UFOs on Twitter, they ignore me. They have never answered me and refuse to talk about these giant UFOs near our sun,” said a statement from the UFO Sightings Daily, a website devoted to possible UFO detections on or above our planet.

According to the website, whose slogan is “the truth is within our grasp” (echoing the X-Files' “The Truth is Out There”), the alleged alien craft is about the size of Idaho (216,000 square kilometers).

UFO Sightings Daily cited an eyewitness who said the object, which is definitely not a space rock or a piece of space junk, “has structure and for NASA to dismiss it as nothing is an insult to people's intelligence."

“If they post data then they must expect UFO hunters to find anomalies and share them.”

Our planet seems to be a popular tourism destination for aliens, according to UFO Sightings Daily website. It has recorded about 113 alien faces on the earth and about 231 building on the moon. The site says it has the scoop on why UFOs create crop circles and how alien spaceships are sometimes captured on live TV.

NASA’s SOHO project is a collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. Launched in 1995, the project is designed to study the internal structure of the sun, its outer atmosphere and the origin of solar wind – the ionized gas that blows throughout the solar system. The project has become the number one comet finder, charting over 2,700 comets sightings since observations began.

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