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I'd go to the UK. Expecting to get in a fight at some point, probably due to accidentally walking into a bar with a British flag.
I'd wanna go to Australia because word is Aus women adore American men more than their own dildos, but I'm afraid I'd meet my demise via Toilet Snake or Drop Bear.
This week in dumb history:
Quote:
Examination of Rebekah Nurse wife to Francis Nurse of Salem before the Honoured Magistrates the. 24.March. 1691/2 & particularly that when her hands were at liberty some of the afflicted were pinched, & upon the motion of her head & fingers some of them were tortured; & farther that some of the afflicted then & there affirmed that they saw a black man whispering in her ear, & that they saw birds fluttering about her,
Complete court transcripts from the Salem witch trials.
It's even dumber than the sketch. I guess most people already knew this and I'm really late to the party, but what they considered evidence was either hearsay or people reacting in court. The suspect waves her hands and the accuser would scream in pain, and that was the evidence. I thought I read this one wrong the first time around: http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/texts/tei/swp?div_id=n15 Interestingly enough she survived. According to wikipedia it was probably because she belonged to some rich guy and there was no point in convicting slaves anyway as they had no property. Actual quote.
The funny part to me is that something we do now is going look like complete idiocy to people in the future. And I bet none of us know what it is because it just seems 'normal'.
@Oskar: I guess reading or watching "The Crucible" isn't required in high school?
My senior year Language Arts class watched it and had to use it as a basis for a mock trial of Grendel from Beowulf.
I figured it was part of a standardized curriculum, but I guess not.
I did not pay much attention in school. I watched The Witch yesterday, which is an insane movie. This is a 3M budget directorial debut by some hipster looking guy that puts any period movie I've ever seen to shame. The main thing I took away was how important the idea of predestination was for the puritans at the time and how it ties into the whole witch craze. It's one of the best movies of the past decade disguised as a low budget horror movie.
I still find it really hard to wrap my head around the idea that the average person at the time would be regarded as a religious fanatic today. Stranger than fiction or "you couldn't come up with that" is very cliche but it absolutely holds up when you look at middle age europe or colonial england.
I know that it's not the same, but I pretty much feel this way still.
I.e. that most people today hold religious beliefs which are in direct conflict with themselves, let alone in conflict with easily observable data. They will not change their minds due to any new input, which makes them fanatics, IMO.
...
Which on the whole I'm totally OK with. I don't want to know what's going on behind the scenes in other people's heads and so long as they're not [unattractive body part]s in general, I don't care how they got to that state.
Where I'm not OK is where they stubbornly hold on to false ideas of what it means to be a human and pretend that they are paragons of the species with total disregard to understanding the ramifications of individuality and culture, then use that ignorant ideology as an excuse to be mean to someone.
btw i was totally wrong about l-theanine and alcohol. u guise were totally right it was placebo.
the effect was probably from coffee. i would actively choose against alcohol and for lots of coffee. quitting coffee brought alcohol back into the equation.
I hesitate to bring this up because it's so trivial, but every time i hear the saying 'head over heels', it bugs me.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/head-over-heels.html
From the diagram, the head is clearly under the heels, not over them. Why isn't the saying 'head under heels'?
Well thanks now that bugs me too.
British politeness and subtle sarcasm, translated for the Yanks. I don't think this is jizzfeed fake news. Seems legit...
https://www.buzzfeed.com/hilarywardl...MBd#.caGrPmvzV
19. “Anyway, it was lovely to meet you.” – Please go away now.
^ legit
I've definitely never complained about a shit haircut. Not like the hairdresser can do much about it. So yeah, being polite to his face and then slagging him off behind his back is the British thing to do.
Wuf, it works because we all know what they actually mean. The politeness is taken as this person cares about my feelings that is good not ohh my haircut isn't shit.
My favorite is when you bump into someone who's standing still and they say 'sorry' like it's their fault. Now that's being polite!
Edit: Although I imagine it really means 'watch where you're going, cunt'
~1/2 of that list is in common usage in America. Not confusing at all.
Southern hospitality can give the british politeness a run for its money.
Like: "I love your pants. They're so slimming!" -> Even those pants can't hide that you're a fat bastard.
EDIT: Most confusing thing about British language is using the word "pissed" to mean drunk and not angry.
Yeah usually we'd say "pissed off" to denote anger, but "pissed" alone cuts it too.
The word "bollocks" is probably the most confusing British word I can think of. It can mean whatever you want it to.
Like... I just had a bath a shaved my bollocks. (I just shaved my testicles)
Bollocks, I have no weed. (Oh dear, I have no weed)
This weed is bollocks. (This weed is not very good)
This weed is the bollocks. (This weed is very good)
I've done bollocks all today. (I've had a lazy day)
What the buggering bollocks are you talking about? (Stop talking shit)
The list could go on and on.
dog's bollocks is still my favorite brit phrase. is it still in use or too archaic?
Yeah that's a common phrase here. It means something of premium value, better than merely very good. It's the next step up after "the bollocks".
How did it come to pass that "the dog's balls" means "premium?"
Cuz dogs really really like licking their balls
I think a related question is... do bees have knees?
Would have resulted in going off topic in the other thread if anyone answered so may aswell post it here.
On a side note at what point do we think we're going to see this become a complete non-issue? (the gay part). I've probably mentioned this before but I find it interesting that there is a point (I'm not implying it has been reached) where things like being gay need to be highlighted and turned into big social issues to get change in society but ultimately the end point is it not mattering at all and I struggle to see the other point ever going away.
Are there any examples in history of this happening? Over time to people just give less of a shit as it becomes part of society?
I would say so.
I think significantly less people give a shit about weed today than they did 20 years ago when I started smoking it.
Fuck you guys for not talking about my really interesting point above.
Also ROYAL RUMBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Anyone else watching?
What...in...the ... fuck?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england...ester-38798220
How did that article not have Florida in it?
Not sure whether to be more shocked at what she did or the fact she kept her job.
Is it me, or does the world seem to have a fetish for firings these days? This woman clearly has an illustrious, established, track record of accomplishment. I mean, she obviously didn't get that job by flashing cleavage.
One moment of weakness really shouldn't be a person's undoing. The panel ruled that this incident was out of character, and not part of a pattern of behavior. She expressed regret, profusely it seems. I'm surprised she didnt' get fired, but I'm also glad she didn't. Feels like justice was served here.
Your words express my sentiment, but I couldn't find the words.
Thanks, bro.
Only thing you left out was:
She blamed excessive drinking in her home life due to high stress.
At first I thought, "bold choice to state as much." but then I thought, "Even heard of a cop who doesn't do this?"
Stressful jobs still need to be done and the people who do them can have a drink after their shift, for all I care.
Well, first of all, I think she should have to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, 'cause it's not normal to take our your tit at work. She could very well have a problem in her brain.
Second, great past service doesn't excuse that behaviour. The words she used alone should get her in serious trouble, never mind the popped tit.
I agree, so long as serious trouble is not necessarily always the same as fired.
Society is messed up. Being a person is messed up. Occasional faults should be overlooked if there is reason to believe those faults are not the big picture. We all have moments which we are not proud of, and that doesn't mean we are bad at our jobs.
Punishing a person who needs help is wrong. It's just incredibly hard to know that the help will make any difference in most cases, and punishment seems to be popular in society nowadays.
Still, you don't beat a child to teach them something, you patiently show them over and over until they get it. Well, not everything that we need to know about being an adult is taught to us as children. In fact, a huge bunch of it is blatantly left out because social taboos consider certain topics to be "stripping children of their childhood."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.877b3dd4d286
It's becoming a trend to attack your political opponents by undermining their livelihood. I don't like what this professor is saying, but the other lady is WAY out of line to go complaining to her employer.
if you don't like what's being said on facebook, TURN IT OFF!!
"this lady was mean to me on facebook, She shouldn't be allowed to earn a living!"
What's this world coming to???
This is dumb.
I thought they were coworkers and this was happening on the clock. Apparently not.
The complaintant is described as a former professor... so not clear if she's still affiliated with the university or not.
It's not clear whether or not any of the facebook posts were posted from the university or during her work hours.
If not, then I fall on the side of it not being the employer's business unless there is an economic ramification to the university. If this costs them money, then they have a reason to take a stand one way or the other, but if this is a conflict between 2 people not on company grounds or company time, then what do they care? They only care as a PR move.
So I tried to go back and find a link to a more exhaustive article that I had read weeks ago. I couldn't. But the professor's main argument is that everything she said, she said as a private citizen, on her own time. This other woman didn't like the attacks, and decided to tattle. Really weak sauce in my opinion.
Also reminds me of something else way back, sorry if I'm fuzz on the details, but does anyone remember the guy who got fired as the result of an online petition. It was someone who was named for a big job at a big company like google or something. Cant' remember, this was maybe 2 or 3 years ago. Anyway, this guy, privately, donated to an organization that supports traditional marriage. The gay community lost it's mind, started an online petition, and this guy was fired.
Again, the libs keep wondering why Trump won. Someone with right-leaning views has nowhere to voice their opinion except a voting booth.
Um, wait. They both expressed their views in a public internet forum. The liberal person is the one who received the complaint. No-one is threatening the Trump supporter by calling her employer and saying she should be in trouble for being mean on the internet. How was her freedom of speech trampled on?
Also, people need to grow a fucking skin. Someone on the internet swearing at you and calling you an idiot is about the dumbest thing to be offended by ever. Look at Ong, he gets this all the time from me (fully justified of course) and still he comes back. He's a grown-up.
As for the professor, she should probably go anonymous on the internet until she gets a handle on herself. Independent of her right to be a bitch outside of work hours, it's not a very smart move to be a bitch in public with her name for all to see. Even if she can't be 'in trouble' for it, she still looks like a douche to her employer and colleagues. This is why I would never use my real name online; nothing good can come from it.
Ya, still don't quite follow your argument though. Are you saying those people voted Trump in protest to people who called them out for supporting Trump?
No, I'm saying that after years of being marginalized, attacked, and vilified for their views, conservatives went silent publicly, and thus were under represented in the polls and the perceived political climate in America during the election(s).
This clearly affected the liberal's ability to develop an effective strategy.
When you take into account all levels of government, the dems have lost over 1,000 seats in federal and state legislatures during Obama's tenure as president.
And they still cry foul over the popular vote, still brand Trump as Hitler, and accuse his supporters of nazism
Why do you think Bill O'Reilly has the number one cable news show for two decades running now?
Is it because so many people espouse his conservative viewpoint?
Is it because he's charming and handsome?
Is it because he reports on juicy and salacious stories?
I don't think its' any of those. I think people like conflict, or to put it more diplomatically, robust debate. And Bill does a better job of bringing on people who can intelligently debate both sides of an issue. Rachel Maddow just brings on people who agree with her....Zzzzzzz
Sure Fox has an overall conservative slant, but every single program has regular guests from liberal camps ready to present an intelligent argument for their side. Juan Williams, Kirsten Powers, that ugly lady from Boston-Mary Ann something, Julie Roginsky (sp?), I could go on and I'm just listing democrats that are on Fox News.
I think if it were all Kool-Aid sipping right-wing nutjobs, they wouldn't have the ratings they have. O'Reilly beat ESPN this year! And all of the other shows between 5pm and 10pm are #1 in their time slots among all of cable news.
That's evidence of broad appeal, not an underlying single-minded agenda
I challenge anyone to watch Fox News from 8 to 8:20 on weeknights. You'll see Bill lay out his 'talking points memo' which is a heavily researched, fact based, argument on whatever the news story of the day is. And then immediately after, he'll bring on someone from the opposition and his first question is "Where am I going wrong?". How much more fair and balanced can a network be?
PBS Frontline has a 4-hour documentary in 2 parts called Divided States of America and it's pretty good.
It gave me a ton of context for the National Congressional Republicans' digging in their feet so hard and opposing all movement from Obama's White House.
The documentary tells the story of how Obama gave lip service to unifying the parties to get elected, but then basically put his foot down at the end of all bipartisan meetings and said that he's not actually taking any of the suggestions from the Reps. He even convinced some Dems who didn't support the ACA to vote in favor, and it very likely cost the Dems those seats in Congress. I was unaware that this all started BEFORE the Reps were digging in and stopping all movement from White House.
The Republican's constituencies were going ape shit ballistic in a way that the Congressmen had never seen. At town hall meetings usually attended by less than 100 people, they were seeing crowds of thousands. Plenty of those people had binders with full printed copies of bills like the ACA and were 100% informed and critical of the contents.
I'm impressed. I now feel like I would have probably dug my heels in like they did, if I was in their position (not to the point of going on strike, but that's a separate issue). Their base was fired up... and not with ignorance, but with direct criticism of national bills that they'd not only read, but book-eared, and side-noted and researched. You can't ignore your constituency when they're ersatz staffers.
Disclaimer: it's PBS; the tone is weird. Like, there is ominous music throughout the whole thing. However, they interview Reps and Dems alike and let them state their positions in their own words.
Bravo! Surprised this came from PBS. You probably saw the clip of Obama completely bitch-slapping John McCain when he humbly asked for some say in the healthcare situation. "John...you lost"
Those stories get buried nowadays, but it wasn't until they were shit on and shut out that the GOP became "the party of no"
The response was the Tea Party movement, but then even that got undermined by a corrupt IRS. The fact that isn't the scandal of the century, to me, is CLEAR evidence of profound media bias. Lois Lerner should have been in jail, and Obama should have been impeached over that.
Fucking 5th amendment!
If you want a good documentary from the other side, Oliver Stone has one on Netflix. Fuck if I can remember the name of it. Its' good though. Really challenges the historical narrative of American greatness. He makes some good points.
He won about the same % of the popular vote as the polls predicted. It's not as if everyone was too oppressed to admit they supported him.
Maybe there were a couple of states they thought they had sown up that went to Trump in the end. The biggest problem with their strategy was that they had Clinton running. Pretty much anyone else would have beat Trump imo.
A wee bit hyperbolic, don't you think? "Crying foul" about the popular vote? The only one who seems to be making a big stink over that is Trump. No-one on the left (at least no-one who's taken seriously) says Trump didn't really win b/c of the popular vote.
The comparisons to Hitler come from his far-right programme, the people he's hired on (e.g., Bannon), and the fact that he's a charismatic populist. They may be going too far, but aren't entirely without reason.
I haven't heard anyone call Trump supporters Nazis here. OTOH, I've heard a lot of the words 'cuck', 'libtard', 'shitlib', etc. from certain people here.
Can't say I've watched Fox News in a long time, but 'fair and balanced' aren't words that come to mind. It may have gotten better, but I remember some of their shows like the one where they put up a graphic that said "Obama-Biden/ Osama bin Laden: Coincidence?"
That was the day I stopped watching Fox News.
I must have missed that one. I'll have to look for it. Sounds like it might be taken out of context, they have been known to make fun of themselves quite a bit.
Anyway, I highly recommend it, as Fox has the hottest lineup of any news station, and it's not even close.
Complete and total bitch move, that. That has become the modus operandi of quite a few SJWs (which, up until a month ago, I did not know what the fuck that even was) and it’s sickening
People seem to have problems disagreeing, like an innate need to be in an eco chamber to only hear whatever it is you agree with, and then they turn to whomever is higher up to the person they are disagreeing with. Like complaining to mommy.
Such bitch moves. It’s low.
Clinton definitely could have won, and should have. Trump won Wisconsin, but by 27,000 votes. If you look county by county, he lost Milwaukee. However, Clinton's margin of victory in that precinct was 27,000 votes less than Obama's in 2012. That's a compelling stat when you consider that Hillary made 0 visits to that state.
The votes were there to be had. She choose not to chase them. That's political malpractice!
There were other states that Hillary took for granted, and Trump got those by razor thin margins. I don't think Hillary is totally clueless. I'm sure her decisions on where to spend campaign resources heavily considered empirical data at the time.
But if the data is wrong....
Hahahaha, conspiracy level over 9000!
One of my former students. Kind of an interesting read (though if you're looking for evidence they're being trained to kill us all, you'll be disappointed).
http://www.eshim.uk/2016/12/my-umrah...e_30.html#more
Would you all rather win something with a big caveat next to your name or come second place?
Probably depends on what you're talking about. But I'd probably rather win.
OJ Simpson, he won. Big caveats there. But caveats are better than life in prison.
New England Patriots, they're widely hated and considered unapologetic cheaters by other fan bases. If my choices are: 5 Lombardi trophies and some questions about spying and deflations...or....be the Buffalo Bills of the early 90's....I'll take the championships.
Just staying on football...
The Giants beat the Patriots, but what if the refs called Eli 'in the grasp' (like the should have). Different outcome. Caveat? Are the Giants not champions now?
2006 AFC Championship game. After the game Ellis Hobbs got a letter from the league apologizing for calling a non-existent pass interference penalty that cost the Patriots the game. Colts went on to beat the Bears and Peyton Manning got his first ring. Caveats? Or "shit happens"?
I was talking more sports and general achievements.