I agree, GoT is indeed also shit, dreadful entertainment.
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I'll offer this analogy:
Pro wrestling : storytelling :: pimping : business.
Professional wrestling is storytelling in its purest form. You have a pure avenue for conflict with its own rules, and you have a pure avenue for advancing stories. You start with a set of stock characters and go from there. The purity of it as a business is what's so interesting about it to me personally.
Fair enough when you see it like that.
From a cynic's pov, wrestling is pretend fighting between people in fancy dress who consume too many steroids, for the benefit of young boys, adults with downs syndrome, and the occasional smart guy who likes a good story.
I take the piss, but I can sit and watch snooker. That's entertainment to me, yet tons of people would rather watch water boil. I'm just a little surprised that someone who I consider to be intelligent watches wrestling on a regular basis. You must be in the top 0.1% IQ when it comes to those watching this shit.
When pro wrestling is done well it's a blast to watch. It's not about truly believing you're watching an actual fight. It's been blown away by the creativity and how perfectly some moves are pulled off like the video spoon posted earlier. It's also about being surprised or impressed with the method they turned a story around, same thing as with a show you know is fiction.
I think a problem people have with seeing what's enjoyable about it is they need to associate it with something. Like Ong considers it a (fake) sport so compares it to golf. It's not a sport at all though. Yes they're tremendous athletes (thy really are) but it's not a sport. The term given to it is sports entertainment but I always think of it more as sports theatre. Not in the prestigious way, but just in the way theatre also has poor sets compared to $$$$ tv shows, so you're really just there for the story and the skilled performance whether it be singing or wrassling.
While I think outside of NXT and Wrestlemania pro wrestling is pretty garbage these days and haven't watched much more than the odd highlight clip for over 10 years now, I can't deny when it's good it's one of my favourite things to watch though.
I just remember how awesome the Rock was til he decided to become Dwayne Johnson.
Just like how awesome Stephen Colbert was til he decided to become Stephen Colbert.
Slash is British AND Black. WTF?
Why'd a capitalized black? Am I racist?
I assume anyone wearing a cape is racist.
Superman included.
Blankman wasn't a racist.
...
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/20...5-85a73c296fc2
PNAS is why I pay taxes.
Yes, I noticed that too. Gonna share your thoughts?
The PC narrative that we've got going on is working towards being poised for a complete collapse. It's not at its breaking point yet, but it's getting there, and it's going to be interesting to watch it all unfold.
Meanwhile, the shit is profitable as fuck. Men are making a ton of money selling stupid shit to stupid people like "I bathe in male tears" t-shirts.
For me, this is one of those 'check yourself' moments. No matter how much it may seem like I'm right, I can still be wrong, and here comes something saying just that.
this can explain why men are problem-solvey and why women often merge analytics with feelings.Quote:
Overall, the results suggest that male brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and co-ordinated action, whereas female brains are designed to facilitate communication between analytical and intuitive processing modes.
where do they say brains cant be characterized into two different categories?
For some reason I took the time to glance at and then read this non-descript wall of text postcard that I got in the mail a few weeks back. Turns out Symantec did something fishy with the way they sold some software, and I am the beneficiary of a class action law suit. Ship the $50.
Anyways, I go to fill out my form online, and what do you know? Garden City Group LLC is the firm officiating dispersal of funds. Ring a bell?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...0-a-month.html
I love this idea. I'd have opened my own business years ago if this was the scenario here.
Has been debated into the fucking ground all over europe. Never took off, so I'm not overly positive it will happen this time either. The best suggestion I've heard regarding this is to make it a fast devaluing regional currency which would be tied to an official currency but devalue after a set period of time - something like 2% A month. This solves the problem of hoarding which leads to inflation or the money simply leaving the country. I'm pretty sure it has already been shown to be actually cheaper than the current social systems simply by eliminating the whole apparatus behind them.
Guaranteed basic income is way better than welfare. It mainly has to do with the fact that its incorruptible and doesn't require an army of bureaucrats to distribute. That last bit is of course why it will never happen. People would actively campaign against any government reform that involves sacking entire departments of public sector jobs, even if it's a better system.
I replied with a series of talking points with mild elaboration here in the Rich White Men Rule the World thread: http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...ld-199514.html
Basic income sounds great in practise, but here it would raise the welfare bill by some £80b, by my calculations. There would have to be eligibility criteria for it to be viable here.
The Green Party were keen on this idea, and it is one reason I find them appealing. But they abandoned it because, I assume, they realised they couldn't afford it.
Freedom of speech doesn't cover what a lot of people think it covers.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of speech.
lolQuote:
Child welfare services in Norway have reportedly removed five Christian children from their parents’ home and placed them into foster care after the parents were accused of radicalizing and indoctrinating their children with Christianity. According to the British-based Christian Institute, Norway’s child protection services, known as the Barnevernet, seized the three sons and two daughters of Ruth and Marius Bodnariu in mid-November.
Although the family wasn’t quite sure at the time why their children were being taken away from them, their lawyer discovered that the parents were being charged with Christian indoctrination. The Bodnariu’s lawyer obtained a copy of the government document that lists the charges against Marius and Ruth, which includes being listed as “radical Christians who were indoctrinating their children.”
paul ryan looking pretty suave with his new beard
somebody who desperately needs a beard to hide his frogneck: mitch mcconnell
Liberal talking head Stephen Colbert continues to fail after falling to fourth place -- behind Seth Meyers, who comes on AFTER him.
Increasing immigration decreases unemployment LOLQuote:
UPDATED: Sweden's Employment Agency (Arbetsförmedlingen) has predicted that 60 percent of unemployed people living in Sweden will be foreign-born by 2017, while the jobless rate for Swedes is set to shrink. (source)
Do you think that Sweden represents USA and UK?
I guarantee that in my town, there is a higher percentage of unemployed white people than there are Muslims, even though we have a generous benefits system for immigrants.
Also, there's a good chance any figures you pull up of this nature are skewed by the fact many incoming immigrants will need to claim benefits in the short term before they find work.
Spoon, where are your ancestors from? Ireland? UK? Holland? Carolina?
It's more about the screening process for immigrants than where they're immigrating to tbh. Sweden's problem that's led to high unemployment is that they've been bringing in tons of immigrants that aren't employable to a large degree.
Edit: Forgot to answer your question. I'm pretty close to one-half Cherokee and one-half German.
Ok when we get into the screening of immigrants, I think we'll share some common ground. It's not just a responsibility of a state to check who they're letting in, it's a duty.
My problem is with laying the blame on an entire culture of people for the actions of a few.
To say "ban all Muslims" is to ban a thought, a belief. One doesn't have to be foreign to be a Muslim, one doesn't even need to be black. I could be a Muslim, I'm white British. If I decide to believe in Allah, does that make me unwelcome in USA? What if I decide to believe in Santa? It's ok for me to believe in something only children and retards believe in, but it's not ok for me to believe something that 1.5 billion adults believe in?
You can't ban a religion. You can't ban someone from believeing in fairies. You need to have more than "this person is Muslim", at least if you want to have any credibility when it comes to defending your principles of freedom.
The police in Finland can't even keep their own from being attacked and raped by Muslim immigrants.
Source: https://themuslimissue.wordpress.com...sylum-shelter/
"Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on," his campaign said in a statement. "
Fair enough. He does indeed leave the door ajar in regards changing his policy, although I must say "until we can figure out what's going on" is somewhat vague and very much open to interpretation.
Also, the problem is made worse by the Finnish police covering it up.
If a Muslim man rapes a local woman, you jail him and deport him. You don't stop other Muslims from entering, because to do so is fucking racist. You would be blaming a culture for the actions of an individual.
Banning Muslims is ridiculous and unfair. I don't really get how anyone can defend it.
Now Banning all religions, that's a worthy idea.
As far as I can tell there are 3 things it brings to the table.
1. Moral compass
2. Sense of community.
3. It's about freedom so it doesn't matter what it brings.
Well....
1. No it doesn't. A moral compass is really saying it teaches you right from wrong. So what, wait a minute, you mean it's like studying ethics? Well I though ethics was effectively critical thinking. And if there's one thing around at odds with critical thinking it's religion. If the very foundations of your thoughts are an unquestionable absolute that can never be tested or verified then regardless of best intentions you run the risk of false conclusions.
If you want to give kids a moral compass have them study ethics from a young age. Considering wider consequences of actions and thinking about right and wrong from a logical perspective will do far more good.
2. You can find community anywhere you look. You just have to bother searching for it. Jesus fuck! Look at me enjoying it right here in a poker forum.
3. Fuck you! Your freedoms tend to lead to some people somewhere getting killed, always have and leads will.
And that's the end of today's rong's rant
One of the most surprising views held by otherwise respectable Christians is that the Bible is the only source of moral code.
I can't even describe how shocking it was to me that I said something akin to, "It's obvious that morality is subjective because different cultures, and even our own culture in the past, have different morals. It is all-too-likely that the morals we hold today will not be those held by our descendents." and I was met with cold contempt.
Jesuit university students!
One girl actually sneered at me for months and announced that I was a "moral relativist" whenever she saw me.
lol
I thought she was intelligent aside from this.
***
I don't exactly know what morality is, aside from a broad definition that it is a prescription for how we should spend our time.
I find it hard to conjecture there is any absolute morality when looking at the wealth of data to the contrary. Or at least, we need to be more honest about the cruel nature of humanity when we try to parse out "right" and "wrong."
Is it right to assume any person is capable of never harboring any cruelness? Even in thought? Does thought count?
If that's not a reasonable assumption, then what does that mean for moral guides which presume that it is?
Should they be discarded, or at least widely discredited? Or are they noble in their goals and worthy of pursuit, despite their unreasonable expectations for human behavior, so long as we embrace a policy of forgiveness?
Srsly.
The circumstances are completely different, so your analogy doesn't hold up at all. It has nothing to do with the country of Mexico in your analogy.
Now if there were camps of Mexican "refugees" that had driven up the rape rate by four-figure percentages, then you can start to look at the camps as a whole and the types of people you're letting come into those camps.
The problem with your analogy actually illustrates the problem with the refugee situation in a major way: Nobody wants to come out and turn away refugees because it makes them a target. The end result is that no one is being turned away, and that is an open invitation for criminals to come in at rates much higher than they would be found in the normal population. And people wonder why the rape rates have went up so much there.
They covered it up because it doesn't support the narrative.
Life isn't fair. It's not fair that we keep getting innocent people blown up by extremists of one particular religion who have declared a holy war on us.
@MMM, amorality is the way to go (not to be confused with immorality).
I like the idea that Trump is taking a negotiating strategy whereby you're first to make a demand and you go way over the top to force the other party to battle you down to where-ever you were intending to be.
That's why he wants to build a wall and he wants to screen out all muslims, aside from netting him all of the news coverage and forcing the political conversation onto his ground, he can seem reasonable in coming down from those extremes and agreeing to something more prudent and pragmatic.
Dunno if that's the case but it would be cool.
you're correct that they're not employable to a large degree, but they are still employable.
what's really happening here is immigrants who haven't learned the work ethic the way native swedes typically do are being given relatively isolated space and free money.
the problem isn't immigration, it's sweden's domestic policy
i forgot to add to the employability:
the welfare that disincentivizes productivity aside, regulation is the main reason why people with even as low of skills as middle east immigrants seems unemployable or less employable. they're not naturally unemployable. in fact, theyre among the most employable. the largest amounts of natural jobs are very low skill and overqualification tends to make one "unemployable" for those jobs as well.
to understand this, look at china. the farmers from the mainland who have flooded to the coast and created the chinese miracle by all getting employed and experiencing rapidly rising standards of living are every bit as low skill as the lowest of skill of peoples alive. china just doesn't have much of any regulation at the street level, so anybody can start a business or work as anything they want. uneducated, malnourished farmers are making more money than they ever thought they'd see selling shit wherever they can find a spot on the street. or they flock to the unregulated factories.
regulation is the main cause of poverty, by a lot.
banning all religions is an awful idea. there's much more to the situation than what you've described.
if we're using correlations, i'll have the winning one: by several magnitudes over, the best places to live are places that have embraced protestantism. take that secularists!
GOAT Southpark season y/n?
So many scenes this season had me dying and this most recent episode was a great cap.
Hey for all of you dipshits who were on Trayvon's side or that other kid that got lit the fuck up in Ferguson, there are tons of examples here of people dying from being punched once or twice: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/c...wfully_killed/
Lack of lethal force my fucking ass.
Wait, what's the context here? That if someone thinks he's going to be punched, then it's reasonable to assume his life is in danger and use of lethal force is justified? Is that the point you're making?
Ok, so now tell me how many police officers in the UK have died in the line of duty in the last ten years.
I'll save you the bother - 12
Of these, 4 were shot and 1 stabbed. 2 were run over by the suspect. The rest were accidents.
During this same ten years, police killed 18 suspects for various reasons.
Now how many police officers do you suppose were chased, attacked, punched, felt threatened, and basically under American standards have justification to shoot? I can't find figures for this, but I'll go out on a limb and say it's a much higher figure than the ones just discussed.
We don't have a problem here with police killing people, or with criminals killing police. Sure it happenes, we have nearly 70million people here. But it's rare.
You guys have around five times our population. We have similar cultures, similar education levels, similar people. Your rates should be comparable to ours. But they're not.
I mean you had 127 police deaths in 2014, compared with 625 killings by police. That's around twice as many cops dying, per capita. Meanwhile, your cops are killing around 7 times more suspects, per capita.
Why can't you see something is very wrong? Shooting a suspect should be a last resort, and even then it should be an effort to disable, not kill.
And yes, I realise this Zimmerman chap was not a cop, he was a neighbourhood watch security guard. But he was security, so it's a fair comparison imo.
I should add, if I were in possession of all the facts, I might agree that Zimmerman wasn't in the wrong to shoot. Maybe he did need to shoot to protect himself, I don't know and I'm not going to critisise him personally. But I can't see how your cops and security need to shoot quite so many people. Your cops are dying at twice the rate ours our, but suspects are dying at 7x the rate. That tells me that your cops are very likely shooting when their lives are not in danger.
Absolutely no.
Use of intentionally lethal force should happen only in response to same, and it should be used to kill, nothing less.
Try to avoid a combat situation at all costs. Work to deflect any non-lethal combat that is engaged against you. If you believe your life is threatened by a murderous person with lethal intent, then kill that threat, by whatever means you have.
If someone is throwing punches at a police officer, then that officer has every reason to believe that their life is being threatened. If brandishing their weapon doesn't immediately end the assault, then shooting to kill out of self preservation is exactly what should happen.
***
I don't know all the facts in any of the high-profile cases, and am not choosing any sides w.r.t. any specific event.
You surprise me mojo.Quote:
If someone is throwing punches at a police officer, then that officer has every reason to believe that their life is being threatened. If brandishing their weapon doesn't immediately end the assault, then shooting to kill out of self preservation is exactly what should happen.
Shooting to kill someone who is throwing a punch is a gross overreaction. Brandisihing a weapon, fair enough. Shooting in the shoulder, leg, arm, fair enough. Shooting in the head, heart, not fair enough. It's unnecessary, it is not reasonable force. Just because it's possible to die from being punched, doesn't mean that is the intention of the person throwing the punch, and it certainly does not mean that it's reasonable to think your life is in danger. Your life is in more danger getting into a car.
Lethal force should be used against armed suspects. It's reasonable in this case to think that a bullet in the leg might not resolve the situation.
I have no problem with anyone defending themselves, but with the intention to kill? It's too much in nearly every case. It's like we've lost all value for human life.
(edited your/you're typo that tilts the fuck out of me)
Our police shot and killed someone today...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-35070431
As default, the case is immediately referred to an independant body which will investigate if the shooting was necessary. This starts immediately, there will be investigators at the scene that police are obliged to cooperate with.
I don't doubt that this was likely a case of necessary force, it's unlikely armed cops would even be present if this man was unarmed.
Of course, in a nation where people are allowed guns, you can't have unarmed police. I understand that. But armed police have immense responsibilities. I think one problem you have in America is that your armed police are not highly trained elites, like ours. This is understandable because you have so many more armed police than we do, it would be prohibitively expensive to train all of them to the same standard as ours.
I'm not sure what the solution is. You can't train all cops to elite status, and you can't have unarmed cops. Taking guns off people would be a solution, but not a popular one, and that brings with it other problems, such as total reliance on your government for protection.
But one thing is certain... your cops are killing too many people.
Shooting to injure is cruel and unusual punishment. The punishment for whatever they're doing is truly none of the police officer's business. It is his business to have a better than average understanding of the laws and to arrest (detain while they document the event) people who seem to be going against that understanding. The officer is not a judge or jury. It is not his/her right to dole out punishments.
If the officer does not truly believe that their life is being threatened, then it is wrong to even brandish the weapon. Brandishing a weapon is no joke. It is not something taken lightly. Any cop will tell you that. If someone brandishes a weapon to a cop, that cop immediately starts to fear for their life. They know exactly that brandishing their weapon is a threat of deadly force.
They also know that making hollow threats may cost them their lives. If not theirs right then, then one of their coworkers in the future.
Meh. It may be that cops are killing too many people. IDK what the right amount is.
To me, though, it's all a secondary effect of a greater judicial problem. America imprisons more Americans than any other country imprisons any other countrymen. I suspect that even this is a secondary effect of a legal system with no mandatory sunset clauses and a legacy of unfairly persecuting the least wealthy citizens.
IDK. I'm no legal expert.
It's messed up that even a person who gets a law degree still only understands one tiny corner of American Law and jurisprudence. It's absolutely scandalous that the laws are so many and complex that it is unreasonable to expect any citizen to understand them all.
Scandalous, I say.
Punsihment? It's not punishment, you're right that punsihment is for the courts to decide. Shooting someone is not supposed to be punishment, it's protection. And how is it more cruel than killing? I mean how is shooting someone in the shoulder more cruel than shooting someone in the face? Because pain? I'd rather be in pain than dead.Quote:
Shooting to injure is cruel and unusual punishment.
And yes, brandisihing a weapon is no joke, and not to be done lightly. It would be done as a warning. A policeman does not need to be in fear of his life to brandish a weapon, fear of injury is enough, or perhaps a belief that the suspect will escape. However, to use lethal force, one needs to be in fear of his life.
An unarmed man threatening an armed police officer is very rarely going to be a genuine case of a policeman being in fear of his life.
Sure, but a minute ago we were talking about punches. There's no question that brandishing a weapon at police is going to give reasonable grounds for police to fear for their life, I'm not arguing against that point. I'm saying that in the case where the suspect is unarmed and the police officer is armed, it is nearly always the case that the police officer is in very little danger, and that arrest will be possible without injury or death to either party.Quote:
If someone brandishes a weapon to a cop, that cop immediately starts to fear for their life. They know exactly that brandishing their weapon is a threat of deadly force.
The point of a polic officer shooting someone is to end the threat the suspect poses. Sure, killing them does that, but in most cases, so does a shot in the shoulder. The latter is much more responsible. Of course it's cruel, but killing someone is much worse. I don't even know how you can use the cruelness of non-lethal shots as support of lethal force. It's like saying smacking a naughty child is cruel, so better to drown it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oef...ature=youtu.be
Thank you very much and I hope the world lasts for you.
I mean this with no offense, but I can tell that you have no experience with guns whatsoever. You can go look up why the bold isn't the case if you'd like. It's an incredibly common misconception that you have there.
TL;DR Version: IRL isn't a movie.
Correct.
This is grossly incorrect. A single punch can kill you. It's irrelevant if the intent to kill is there or not.
Cops kill because they're trained to take every precaution and protect themselves. They live in a world where every cop killed on duty is a story told to every other police in the Union. Just like with a company that takes safety seriously, they drill into their heads how easy it is to die so that when they're lazily handling a compactor or approaching a routine traffic stop, that image of death will pop into their heads.
That's why I turn my car off, put the keys on the dash, and grip the 10 and 2 for every speeding ticket. I want to communicate as clear as possible, I am no threat.
I have a family name that isn't particularly common, and a high percentage of men who have it in this area are more or less known criminals who have been in and out of jail and prison for various reasons. I was pulled over a lot for no reason in my teens and early 20s in the area just because a cop wanted to fuck with me because he assumed I was a piece of shit. I basically know what it's like to be profiled and harassed by cops in a lot of ways.
Along those lines, I just want to point out that I pretty much hate cops.
I am almost 1 episode in to Fargo and this show is incredible.
I hope so. I'm getting even more of 1 episode in right now.
I don't even care if you do intend to cause offfence, I stopped giving a shit about that years ago.
But you're right. I have literally no experience handling guns. I'm still unconvinced that shooting an unarmed man with intent to kill is acceptable self defence though.
The intent might be irrelevant, but the probability isn't. Yes a punch can kill, but it's ridiculously unlikely. Also, you might be able to kill with a punch, but I very much doubt I can. I'm barely 10 stone and haven't thrown a punch in over a decade. I can understand a cop being in fear for his life if a 7 foot monster is running at him, but being in fear of your life when some unarmed skinny little shit throws a weak ass punch, it's bullshit.Quote:
This is grossly incorrect. A single punch can kill you. It's irrelevant if the intent to kill is there or not.
Chasing after a criminal can kill too, you might have a heart attack or get hit by a car. That doesn't mean that someone running away is threatening the life of the cop.
The fact of the matter is, if I take a single punch to the head, skinny old me, I am extremely unlikely to die. If someone is threatening to punch me, I am not likely to be in fear of my life. Not unless it's a boxer.
So a strong cop who works out and has a gun... like fuck is he in fear of his life. He just has a gun and panics. This is the problem with having standard police being armed. To not panic and make responsible and accurate risk assessments under such circumstances requires extreme discipline, which would normally require intense training.
To be a cop generally requires a certain type of person... power hungry, control freak, morally arrogant, bereft of empathy.
I don't like cops, but it's because most of them are arseholes, rather than anything against police in general. I recognise the need for police, and wish that they would be more selective about who they employ, ie those who want to make the world a better place, rather than those who get a kick out of being the big man.
I would like to add to this. I mean in a lot of cases, I'm not even sure if a cop who panics and kills someone is morally responsible for his actions, if indeed he hasn't been trained to a sufficient standard to deal with such incidents. The moral burden then falls on those who should have trained him.Quote:
To not panic and make responsible and accurate risk assessments under such circumstances requires extreme discipline, which would normally require intense training.
It might be the case that there isn't much that can be done to improve this alarming trend of cops shooting unarmed suspects. The only solution I can think is to disarm the police, but that would require the disarming of the people too. I don't think that's gonna happen, I'm not even sure I think that should happen.
And I recognise that some low life getting killed is preferable to a cop getting killed.
But when someone gets killed by police, you have to stop and question, every single time, if it was unavoidable. Shooting should be an act of last resort, and, where the suspect is unarmed, disabling is obviously enough. You shoot someone in the shoulder, they might live, they might die, but they're not going to throw a killer punch. You shoot someone in the head or chest, they probably die. You're trying to stop the man, not kill him.
In fact here I demonstrate my empathy, even for cops who kill suspects...
Quote:
I would like to add to this. I mean in a lot of cases, I'm not even sure if a cop who panics and kills someone is morally responsible for his actions, if indeed he hasn't been trained to a sufficient standard to deal with such incidents. The moral burden then falls on those who should have trained him.
Let's see what a big booty buys yah
I don't have to like someone to have empathy.
I can put myself in the shoes of a cop, and still think he's an arsehole.
I'm not sure if it's you or me being unclear here.
I think a lot more than 1 in 20 cops are arseholes. That's based on my personal experience with cops, which is low. Oh, it's also based on those real life TV programmes where they follow actual cops on their rounds. But then again, it takes the arsehole cops to be the one that says "yeah I want a tv crew to follow me around catching bad guys".