Lurker > metroid composite

Maniac64 posted...

Rural towns don't have the same struggles as cities. If someone needs welfare they are more likely to get help from neighbors and family living nearby. They have a stronger belief in taking care of each other/their own.

In addition rural areas are struggling because people are moving to the cities which can cause increased resentment towards cities and policies that favor cities. Which includes a lot of government spending.

I have family that lives in rural Canada, and...that's kind of half-right, but also kind-of not.

It's more like people who fall on hard times go to the city where there are things like homeless shelters and they won't freeze to death. If you can't pull your own weight you get kicked off the rural island.

But there is definitely a culture against getting help from the government. Like...my grandpa did not want my mom getting a scholarship (but she did in secret and did not tell him). Kind of "do it yourself" taken to extremes.
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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

red13n posted...

Also the far right will continue to push this shit because the more divided they can keep people in as many aspects of life as they can the more relevant they can continue to be.

Both sides literally do these smear campaigns.

Eh, don't draw a false equivalency. Yeah, the left has tried and succeeded in getting some people fired recently (Bill O'Rilley jumps to mind, and the me too campaign in general) but generally people with multiple claims of sexual assault and often sexual assault lawsuits that were settled out of court.

Also, most of these were NOT politically motivated--if anything I'd guess that a majority of the "me too" targets were left leaning or democrats. Maybe you can call Bill O'Rilley's firing politically motivated, but the left at least is not hypocritical here.

The left has also tried and...usually failed to get people fired for really distasteful comments (Laura Ingraham for her comments about the Parkland shooters--she still has a job and did not in fact get fired). But these are generally comments made on air recently while doing her current job, and not twitter jokes from 10 years ago unrelated to current job.

Obviously yes, the left throws their own stones, but it's not manufactured the way this is. It's not like the left sees someone criticizing Obama, and reacts by digging through that person's old tweets looking for ways to get them fired.
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Lightning Strikes posted...

What is really troubling though, is that with the Fox purchase Disney now controls 40% of the industry, and since they said they severed ties with him it means he is effectively blacklisted from half the industry. Insane.

Yeah...Disney trying to keep a pristine G-rated sheen about them is not new, but them controlling 40% of the industry is new. That merger should not have been allowed to happen.

But companies should also auto-ignore campaigns spearheaded by Cernovich. They're never sincere (like...nobody believes he's actually offended by those jokes, right?)
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~~~and the oceans are full of plastic~~~

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-07/plastic-straws-aren-t-the-problem

Intense media interest in the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch -- a floating, France-sized gyre of oceanic plastic -- only heightened the concern.

...

Using surface samples and aerial surveys, the group determined that at least 46 percent of the plastic in the garbage patch by weight comes from a single product: fishing nets. Other fishing gear makes up a good chunk of the rest.

The impact of this junk goes well beyond pollution. Ghost gear, as it's sometimes called, goes on fishing long after it's been abandoned, to the great detriment of marine habitats. In 2013, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science estimated that lost and abandoned crab pots take in 1.25 million blue crabs each year.

This is a complicated problem. But since the early 1990s, there's been widespread agreement on at least one solution: a system to mark commercial fishing gear, so that the person or company that bought it can be held accountable when its abandoned. Combined with better onshore facilities to dispose of such gear -- ideally by recycling -- and penalties for dumping at sea, such a system could go a long way toward reducing marine waste. Countries belonging to the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization have even agreed on guidelines for the process.

But while rich countries should be able to meet such standards with ease, in the developing world -- where waste management is largely informal -- the problem is much harder. In Indonesia, for example, one study concluded that fishermen have little incentive to bring someone else's net to a disposal point unless they're getting paid to do so.

That's where all that anti-straw energy could really help. In 1990, after years of consumer pressure, the world's three largest tuna companies agreed to stop intentionally netting dolphins. Soon after, they introduced a "dolphin safe" certification label and tuna-related dolphin deaths declined precipitously. A similar campaign to pressure global seafood companies to adopt gear-marking practices -- and to help developing regions pay for them -- could have an even more profound impact. Energized consumers and activists in rich countries could play a crucial role in such a movement.

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I feel like the definition of "Christmas Movie" is really loose as-is.

Like...Home Alone gets universally considered a Christmas Movie, but I never thought of it like that when I would watch it 20 times throughout the year growing up. I just thought of it as a movie where some bad guys got beat up.
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LordoftheMorons posted...

Vaccines are actually probably the clearest case of this; diseases like measles are totally wiped out so no one has a frame of reference for what theyre preventing which lets idiots convince themselves that some imaginary downside of vaccines outweighs the real benefit.

Well, sure, although interestingly there is an actual scientific argument to be made that Americans over-vaccinate. (There's no scientific debate about Measles vaccines, but there is debate about flu vaccines--in that Europe doesn't do flu vaccines, and there's arguments that America's yearly attempts at trying to make partial flu vaccines is actually just making flu strains more resistant to vaccines).
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So like, have they said at all what they're meeting about? All I remember seeing was Trump insisting that part of the meeting would have no other Americans in the room, not even an American translator.
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Peace___Frog posted...

metroid composite posted...

But like...fair enough on the FBI--apparently there are a few isolated gangs that use the ICP look and listen to ICP music, and apparently they are spreading.

Yeah, but given that the fbi is no longer investigating white supremacist groups as domestic terrorists.... this just feels like another tactic of other-ing a group of people.

I mean, looking at the released documents, this investigation started in 2011, so in Obama's first term.

Not investigating white supremacists was something Trump wanted (so two presidential terms later)--I somehow doubt he actually succeeded, though--it's not like he stopped the FBI from looking into Russia's election meddling. Although he may have reduced the number of investigations/amount of funding directed towards white supremacist investigations.

(Also worth noting that Juggalos are mostly white).

Side note, I dunno why I spent a bunch of time re-typing stuff from that FBI document to quote it, apparently I could have just searched Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Juggalo_gang_subsets
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Jakyl25 posted...

SupremeZero posted...

https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/1017135013773660161?s=21

I

Uh

...

I will stand with Juggalos any day.

Im from the area. Ive known Juggalos. I drink Faygo. Ive sat next to Violent Jay at an indie wrestling event in a flea market.

Theyre not a violent transnational gang.

I don't know any Juggalos, but that was certainly the impression I had. I listen to ICP occasionally; they're ok, have never met their fans or felt compelled to paint my face though. I think a tenant I was renting to might have been a Juggalo, though.

Skimming through this, sounds like there is one actual gang in California that happens to listen to ICP music (ok, plausible, not really an indictment on Juggalos as a whole) and that some Juggalos do and deal drugs (I mean...this doesn't really surprise me either).

"Known to commit violent acts both in and around concerts and outside of concerts"--is pretty vague. Concerts in general can get rowdy, and that's not limited to ICP.

"Have their own hand signs, slang, an anthem, and a pledge of allegiance to the ICP" -- LOOLLLLL. Yeah, no shit. Juggalos have Juggalo culture.

"The ICP further promotes their music with successful clothing lines, jewlery, miscellaneous merchandise including hatchets" -- Congratulations, you just described.........Capitalism?

"[redacted] states that Juggalos are in a type of gang war in California with MS-13 and are holding their own against them." -- OK, California mentioned again. Sounds like maybe there is one group of Juggalos in California who are actually a gang.

"In Sheboygan they are considered a structured gang (With a member handbook desccribing ranks and duties) consisting of 8 members and 6 associates, ages ranging from 14-21, they have been linked to crimes such as graffiti, possession of narcotics, and theft. They are often seen wearing red, white, and black colours. They use white and black face paint resembling a clown." -- ok, this is a second location actually, Sheboygan is in Wisconsin.

"Juggalo members from Chicago recruited members in Sheboygan, and established [the group] there" -- ok, so maybe Chicago too.

Mmm...seems like they actually did find some genuine gang activity, spread across enough cities that I don't blame them for investigating it as a possible larger pattern.

Doesn't mean that it is; I would assume a small number of gangs that happen to like ICP music (the wisconsin group also apparently likes Grateful Dead too, and sometimes calls their gang the "dead heads" -- they also call themselves "wicked clowns" sometimes, with a "WC" hand signal, which I find hilarious given that in most of the world WC is the symbol for washroom).

But like...fair enough on the FBI--apparently there are a few isolated gangs that use the ICP look and listen to ICP music, and apparently they are spreading.
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Eddv posted...

He pretty handily lost the primary election.

I dont know why no one but fucking Bernie Sanders gets a pass on this

I mean, John McCain lost to Bush in the 2000 primary, and came back in the 2008 primary.

Hillary Clinton lost to Obama in the 2008 primary and came back in the 2016 primary.

Joe Biden got absolutely crushed by Obama in the 2008 primary, and he's thinking about coming back in the 2020 primary.

Mitt Romney lost to McCain in the 2008 primary, and came back in the 2012 primary.

Donald Trump lost in the 2000 election when he ran as an independent, and came back in 2016.

Why the fuck would "lost a primary once" disqualify someone exactly?
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Jakyl25 posted...

Wish I had 100% on Progress over Tradition. Tradition is such a bad concept

In the defence of tradition, sometimes changing things has unforseen consequences. Ex: pulling out of Iraq, even though I supported it and wanted it to happen earlier, led to the rise of ISIS. The saying "if it ain't broke don't fix it" didn't come from nowhere.

The problem in the US is when traditionalists try to argue for tradition long after something has been shown as safe. For example: gay marriage. By the time gay marriage became legal in the US, it had already been legal in other countries for over a decade with no adverse consequences. Multiple studies (going back decades) of gay parents in the US had already shown their kids were no more likely to be gay than the kids of straight parents, and tended to be raised about equally as well. There really was no risk involved with legalizing gay marriage.

If you want an actual hard choice, what's your opinion on whether polygamous/polyandrous marriage should be legalized. I knew a polyandrous (married to two men) woman. She certainly wanted it legalized. But there's actual risk involved in this one--we don't have decades of other countries with legalized polyamorous marriage, and polygamy has in the past been associated with a form of child abuse (where young girls in polygamy colonies were forced into marriage)--granted there are laws against child marriage and laws against child abuse, but would legalizing polygamy/polyandry put kids at risk?

If your answer is "don't know unitl we try, let's legailze it!" then yeah, maybe you should be 100% progress over tradition. If you're hesitating (I'm hesitating) then you probably shouldn't be at 100%.
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https://8values.github.io/results.html?e=75.0&d=71.8&g=66.9&s=70.9

Apparently I'm a Libertarian Socialist

I...guess this is a good time to link to Libertarian Socialist Rants?


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UltimaterializerX posted...

dems in deep red states are committing political suicide by voting no.

Wait, you're actually expecting Democrats to have a spine?

There were two or three Democrats in the Senate who voted in favour of Neil Gorsuch after getting the seat stolen away from them.

Corrik posted...

If he had nominated Garland, it would have been a real olive branch to soothe the divide. But, realistically that olive branch would have lasted maybe a week or two before extreme liberals were back at it, so I am glad he didn't.

See, the thing that bothers me about putting only extremists on the supreme court is that you get 5-4 decisions along party lines, which...honestly feels less like "these are the world's experts on the American constitution" and more like "these are a bunch of fucking partisan hacks." The supreme court is also looking less and less like the American people (a growing number of whom are independents). I think it would be better for everyone if there were like...a lot of independents and moderates on the supreme court. Like...maybe 3 democrats, 3 republicans, and 3 moderate/independents.

And make no mistake, we definitely have nothing like that right now. Kennedy may have sometimes been a swing vote, but he still voted with *googles* Alito 86% of the time, Roberts 88% of the time, and Thomas 84% of the time.
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FFX had a fine final boss. I don't really agree with some of the design decisions (making it self healing made it ridiculously hard if you were underlevelled, and ridiculously easy if you were overlevelled; same with prominently featuring turn delay mechanics--delaying half a turn hurts a lot more if you were slow). But like, the fight, the dialog, the unique talking mechanics, it all stands out in my mind; the fight is fine.

No, the game that I really really like that jumps to mind as having a weak final boss is Valkyrie Profile. I mean, there's three final bosses, Jotun the frost giant is really underwhelming and disappointing I think on purpose to encourage you to get the good ending. Loki is kinda ok, but it feels like more of a plot fight like "Oh yeah, I'm a god, let me make a +6000 sword of smiting. Hey look mom, I won!" And for the third ending...Freya, if you anger Asgard so bad they decide you're a failure and need to be euthanized arguably doesn't count, buuuuut she is kinda amazing actually, easily my favourite of the three; that said you get the same ending whether you kill her or die to her which is kind-of disappointing.
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UltimaterializerX posted...

Well yeah, its a leftist shit hole. Literally. Someone just dumped 20 pounds of feces in San Francisco somewhere on the street.

I mean, Cali is a massive state with mixed politics.

I live in a republican leaning suburb of a large republican leaning city (a city which Trump chose as his site for the wall prototypes).

I also haven't seen feces around lately, but 20 pounds doesn't sound like something that would be newsworthy. Like...what, was someone riding a horse in the city and the horse pooed? Cause pretty sure you can make close to 20 pounds of poo with a single horse.
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Reg posted...

Leaving abortion to the states = "poor people get fucked"

I mean, that's what happened in the 60s, but I don't believe the price gap will be too extreme in 2018. We have the internet now, people can just order the abortion pills delivered, or look up the chemical composition and do some home chemistry. There's a bunch of Dutch websites providing instructions to Americans on how to do home abortions--can't stop that information from getting in without blocking the internet.

See also: the number of abortions per year in Texas went up after they closed most of their abortion clinics.

(I will agree that it's bad policy, though. Same way prohibition was bad policy. Same way Marijuana regulation now is bad policy. Better to have it legal, regulated, and taxed. Safer, and busts up the smuggling rings).
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Female, and when I've taken online tests about brain gender I'm like...absolutely generic average for a woman too.

So...I guess less masculine than the typical man.
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I mostly watched the 90s cartoon, where Kingpin/Fisk showed up in like...80% of episodes, (even if he didn't end up directly fighting spiderman, he'd send the person who did) so he felt like the main rival.

Apparently he's not remotely important to spiderman outside of the 90s cartoon though.

(Personal favourite was Doc Oc, but I never expect the "iconic rival" to be the same as my personal favourite villain, so that's a pretty good case against Doc Oc).
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Mr Lasastryke posted...

uh... i don't think you have your priorities straight when you support a candidate with disastrous economic policies just because "hey candidate that doesn't oppose gay marriage." and several of my close friends are part of the LGBT community, including my best friend, so i certainly recognize how important the issue of gay marriage is.

(everyone should use "it's happening" image memes, though. those are awesome.)

Eh.

Like...yeah, ok, given a choice between someone with Canadian economic policies and libertarian economic policies, I would tend to lean towards the candidate with the Canadian policies.

But Ron Paul mostly operates within the bounds that a politician should operate. In my mind, politics is loosely a bunch of sliding bars to min max, like...

* Tax Breaks
* Education
* Paying off (or adding to) the debt
* Health Care
* Military
* Environment

Ron Paul advocates for lowering all the other bars, and increasing tax breaks. Which...admittedly I don't think this is optimally min-maxed, I think trickle down economics is less efficient than, say, spending on education. On the other hand, I think trickle down economics is MORE efficient than spending on the military. If tax breaks are slightly less than optimal, say, 60% efficiency for helping people (some money does indeed trickle down, just not as much as Republicans like to hype it), military spending is like...fucking 20%. It is a very inefficient way to help Americans.

So...Ron Paul who wants to lower taxes, but also lower military spending and disengage from foreign conflicts honestly looked from an overall min-max perspective pretty competitive compared to the 2008 field policy wise.

I'm not going to say he was better than Bernie Sanders on economic issues. Bernie who proposed both pulling out of foreign conflicts AND providing free college education is way more min-maxed. But I think Ron Paul was possibly competitive with 2008 Hillary, who certainly seemed to have more military plans than him, even if she did have better positions on education.

(The real problems with Ron Paul are not so much economic as social, where the KKK seems to really like him, and "get rid of regulation" to libertarians often seems to include stuff like 60s civil rights legislation and desegregation laws, which um...yeah, fuck that part of the libertarian platform).
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Ehh, I dunno, I definitely liked Ron Paul in 2008, and have occasionally used "it's happening" image memes. I recognized that economically his policies were more right wing than mine, certainly, but I genuinely did want him to win the primary cause hey, candidate that doesn't oppose gay marriage (unlike Hillary and Obama).

And I certainly didn't get sucked into the alt right. Nor do I really see Paul as the progenitor of the tea party. As far as I know he never pushed Obama's Birth Certificate as an issue, which was literally the rallying cry of the tea party.

I'm not saying there's zero overlap between people who liked Ron Paul and people who eventually jumped on Trump. But there's also some overlap between people who liked Ron Paul and then were big Bernie Sanders supporters in 2016. Some candidates are trendy and popular on the internet, and some people on the internet just like all the trendy candidates. (And I guess I kind-of fall in the "I often like popular internet meme candidates" camp, even if I never liked Trump at all).
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Ashethan posted...

If Obergefell is overturned, the next person to tell me "TRUMP IS THE MOST PRO LGBT CANDIDATE EVER" is getting punched in the face. I'm not an advocate of violence, but this I will make an exception for.

It's really easy to prove that he failed on his promise to be the most pro-LGBT candidate ever, and is possibly the worst in our lifetimes.

He banned transgender troops from the military.

(And did a number of smaller things like remove the restriction on government contractors that the government not provide contracts with organizations that fire people for being gay. Some of those you can maaaaybe excuse with "well he was just trying to reduce regulation and red tape", okay, but the trans military ban is extra red tape. Oh, also, he was the kenote speaker at an anti-LGBT conference while president, something no other president has done).
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Jakyl25 posted...

I would love it if progressive Democrats broke off to ourselves, leaving the moderate Republicans more free to hook up with moderate Democrats to form a Moderate party. I think (modDems + modGOP) > (modDems + Progressives). I dont think Trumpism could beat a party that encompassed Kasich, Manchin, Romney, Kaine, Jeb!, Schumer, etc.

There's a cynical part of me that looks at that list and thinks "You can call them the global elite coalition."

Also, that's also kind of how Hillary ran her 2016 campaign; picked Kaine as her running mate, spent most of her time trying to court moderate Republicans. She and Kaine lost to Trump AND in the end there were more registered Democrats who voted for Trump than there were registered Republicans who voted for Hillary. Know who else lost to trump? Kasich. Jeb Exclamation Point. And Romney also denounced Trump during the campaign.

I'm not convinced the "out of touch establishment coalition that loves Wall Street" is the path to defeating Trump.
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HashtagSEP posted...

You know what definitely doesn't help that perspective? When people who know better spread false information by saying dishonest things like "she called half the country deplorable"

The whole election was a big game of gotcha. Finding the one isolated quote that would get people upset, often reducing it to less of a sentence, and raging endlessly about it.

Like...if you talk to diehard Hillary supporters from the Dem primary, they'll often be really bitter about "Bernie called Hillary not qualified".

Yeah...so what actually happened was that first Hillary implied Bernie might not be qualified (which in and of itself is a little ridiculous he has what 40 years of experience). But she's smart and a lawyer, and did so without actually mentioning his name while making it obvious she was talking about him. And then Bernie, attempting to fire back, basically just gave his normal stump speech, but added in "not qualified if" to a bunch of his policy points. Here's the quote:

And she has been saying lately that she thinks that I am, quote unquote, not qualified to be president. Well let me, let me just say in response to Secretary Clinton: I don't believe that she is qualified if she is, if she is, through her super PAC, taking tens of millions of dollars in special interest funds. I don't think you are qualified if you get $15 million from Wall Street through your super PAC.

I don't think you are qualified if you have voted for the disastrous war in Iraq. I don't think you are qualified if you've supported virtually every disastrous trade agreement, which has cost us millions of decent-paying jobs. I don't think you are qualified if you supported the Panama free trade agreement, something I very strongly opposed and which, as all of you know, has allowed corporations and wealthy people all over the world to avoid paying their taxes to their countries.

Which...in context this is clearly a disagreement over policy positions. Not over the amount of experience Hillary has.

Somehow this translated to lots of people on the internet suuuper mad thinking Sanders had called Clinton inexperienced.

On the whole I thin Hillary played a clever game of gotcha, where she baited him into using her language, and Sanders fell for the bait like a sucker. And this got spun into "Sanders said mean untrue things about Hillary". When the reality was "Hillary plays Sanders like a fiddle, baits him into using language that will make him look bad."

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The whole deplorables thing feels pretty similar to me, where it somehow got boiled down to "she called us deplorables". (Again, focusing on a single word from the sentence and driving all the media spin around that word. Anyone remember how the actual phrase was "basket of deplorables"? Yeahh...somehow even the basket part got dropped; gotta condense those soundbites down to a single word.
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

On the Harley Davidson stuff--one interesting detail that's easy to miss--most of the production is shifting from the US to Thailand.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2018/05/11/union-harley-davidson-ship-work-thailand-closing-u-s-plant/601033002/

I've seen a lot of people just reading the headlines about EU tarrifs, and thinking they're moving produciton to the EU. Harley actually has zero EU factories, and doesn't seem to have any public plans to make EU factories. Most of their factories are in the US, with the next largest being in Australia, followed by Brazil and India. (The Thailand facility has not opened yet, but it sounds like it could be large if they're replacing their Kansas facility with it).
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

So...someone showed me this earlier:

https://www.roanoke.com/webmin/news/radford-bakery-that-turned-biden-away-sells-out-of-freedom/article_806b06ac-b68b-58ca-be58-5a46a0461bb5.html

It's a bakery, that refused to serve Joe Biden. I literally don't even remember this story happened, as it didn't seem important at the time.

And conservatives celebrated it, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan brought the baker along on the campaign trail.

Kinda puts the SHS being refused service stuff into perspective.
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OliviaTremor posted...

Absolutely stellar movie. Your comment about being surprised since it's Pixar is super weird considering Pixar has an absolutely stellar track record, their best movie stars a portly Asian kid, and they notoriously go all out researching their films.

I mean, Pixar always made good movies movie-wise (in terms of animation, cinematography, writing; always high quality).

But they used to fall into the Smurfs trap. (Behold the ensemble cast of 6 guys, and one token female love interest, with all-white voice actors).

They really started changing things up recently though. (First movie I really noticed them breaking from their formula was Brave, so...2012).
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Not played at all? PUBG.
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Pinky (Pinky and the Brain)
Fighter (8-Bit Theater)
Puck (Midsummer Night's Dream)
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Mr Lasastryke posted...

it's one thing for a host to do this but it's another thing for a politician to do it. i still don't see how politicians can avoid discussing trump's tweets.

i suppose you can try to just not give interviews to the majority of the mainstream media anymore

Oh, for actual politicians you just pivot. Literally just ignore the question and say your talking points.

Ex, if you're Bernie Sanders you say "I don't think the American people care about that. I think the American people care about this being the one major country on earth where healthcare is not a right. I think the American people care about us having the highest rate of childhood poverty in the developed world." blah blah blah

That said, ordinary people like moist of B8, when someone asks us a direct question, we're not going to dodge and avoid answering the question completely.
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Mr Lasastryke posted...

red sox 777 posted...

Liberals represent the Democratic Party

why do i represent the democratic party? i don't even live in the US.

Likewise, I'm a Canadian living in the US, but I also don't feel like I'm really all that well-aligned with the American democrat party. (I am reasonably well aligned with the Canadian NDP, but there's no equivalent party in the US).

For example, closest any American presidential candidate has come to representing my views is probably Bernie Sanders, but I still have serious disagreements with Sanders. (Sanders is anti-NAFTA, I think NAFTA is great, and spent a long time on a NAFTA visa).

Mr Lasastryke posted...

* an objection i do have to this position is that trump's tweets are kind of impossible to ignore - they're news because trump is the president of the US.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow show manages to ignore them completely (and that show's ratings soared when they decided to stop covering Trump tweets).

That show has also become mostly coverage about the Muller investigation, though. Which...I don't particularly like either. It's a lot like Hillary email coverage. Like...yes, we know this person is being investigated. But the investigation is top secret, so reporting right now won't tell us much, aaaaand "my political opponent is being investigated" is not a policy position. It's more of a convenient way to dodge taking a stand on important issues.
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

HeroicObiWan posted...

People always expect Star Wars to be something it never really was. The original trilogy gets so much of a pass that it puts way too high of expectations on any movies afterward.

I mean, while this is true, the first Star Wars movie my sister saw was The Phantom Menace, and she decided based on that that the entire series was hot garbage. I had to talk her into going to see TFA, which she did, and enjoyed, and then was actually really positive on TLJ too (more than I was).
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

New Triollgy > OT > Prequels
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Corrik posted...

Though Trump has reportedly been wanting the law changed also to allow parents to be detained with children during their cases. Apparently Obama tried this and was shot down by the courts, so he continued with the exceptions.

I am struggling to find a source that says Obama separated children from parents.

Like...here's an interview quote denying it:

former President Barack Obama's domestic policy director, Cecilia Muoz, stated unequivocally that separating children from their parents was not a policy the Obama administration followed.

"The Obama administration did not do that, no. We did not separate children from their parents," Muoz said.

Here's a source saying that it happened only in cases of possible domestic violence:

Separating parents from children was rare under the Obama administration and in the early part of the Trump administration, usually reserved only for cases where the safety of a child was in question. Nearly 1,800 immigrant families were separated over 17 months prior to February, according to a Reuters report.

Here's one that says the law existed as far back as 2005, but both the Bush and Obama administrations did not enforce it:

The zero tolerance practice of immediately imprisoning, prosecuting, and deporting immigrants who illegally enter the United States has been around since 2005, but the George W. Bush and Obama administrations were morally and pragmatically opposed to separating immigrant children from their families, even if some adult immigrants were clearly taking advantage of that compassion.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/separating-families-at-border-was-always-part-of-the-plan.html

Don't get me wrong, the Obama administration had a pretty bad record from human rights advocates over its immigration policy, but not on this particular point. (More on stuff like making 3 year olds represent themselves in court--the Obama administration definitely did that). Separating children from parents seems to have become policy part way through the Trump administration (not when Trump first took office, about a year later).
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

LapisLazuli posted...

You've specifically admitted to making post you don't even necessarily agree with for the sole intent of getting people riled up to argue with you.

You've got very little ground there, it's what you want to happen.

So on principle I generally don't look at usernames when I talk to people. If people make a good point I'll agree with them, if people make a bad point I'll disagree with them.

Intentionally posting stuff that the poster don't even agree with kind of messes with my trust in b8 users.

red sox 777 posted...

I guess, there's a fundamental difference of opinion here about what the topic is for, or what is interesting. Maybe we should divide this topic into 2 topics - Politics News and Politics Discussion?

But I think there is interesting discussion to be had that's not just trolling. I've had interesting discussions about, for example, trends in primary voting this year, who's likely to be in the presidential primaries coming up, debates about whether the TPP is good or bad, discussions about supreme court rulings and whether they set precedent or constitute a narrow ruling.

I don't want to eliminate discussion from the topic. I just want quality discussion.
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

SgtSphynx posted...

he justified separating children from parents with a passage from Romans, the same passage used to justify slavery

Oh ffs. Jesus is pretty explicitly anti-slavery. Literally the sermon on the mount had explicit instructions telling slaves to nonviolently protest their masters:

https://cpj.ca/defiance-not-compliance-turning-other-cheek

Wink goes on to examine the phrase if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also. Why, Wink asks, does Jesus reference the right cheek specifically? The answer is both challenging and enlightening. Jesus lived in a right-handed world where left hands were reserved only for unclean tasks. Therefore, we can assume that the person doing the hitting would have used their right hand. The only way to strike someone on the right cheek with your right hand is a backhanded slap. Such a blow connotes an insult, not a fistfight, and was a normal way to reprimand someone over whom you had power (e.g. masters to slaves, husbands to wives, Romans to Jews). To strike your equal in such a manner was socially and legally unacceptable, carrying with it a huge fine.

With this new understanding of the context Jesus was speaking in, picture the scenario with yourself as the oppressor. You are a wealthy, powerful person whose slave has displeased you in some way. You reprimand your slave with a backhanded slap. The response you expect is the response you have always received from your slaves the response you yourself would give if someone higher than you treated you the same way. You expect your slave to cower, submit, and slink away. Instead, your slave defiantly turns their other cheek and challenges you to hit them again. What can you do?

You would like to give your slave another backhanded slap to show them their place, but to do that you would have to use your left hand which would admit that your action is unclean. You could hit them on their left cheek, instead, but it would be embarrassing to hit your slave the way you should hit your equal. Youre confused. You dont know what to do. Flustered, you could order the slave be flogged, but the slave has already made their point. They have shown you that they are a human person with dignity and worth. You dont own them, you cannot control them, and they do not submit to your rule.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

I mean, I'm mostly interested in peace. I liked the Iran deal, and if Trump gets a deal that results in peace here I'll probably like this deal too.

Although admittedly, it's a little more personal with Korea, since I know a lot of people in e-sports who moved to South Korea, and some of my favourite game developers are from South Korea.

So...here's the thing. From what I understand, Trump has announced both stopping wargames, and pulling US troops out of South Korea. Stopping war games seems kind-of whatever, they can just start war games back up if the North acts out. US troops in South Korea, however, acts as a deterrent. If North Korea invades South Korea, they literally can't do it without attacking US Army bases, basically pulling the US into the war. The concern is that if the US pulls troops out of South Korea, then the North might think they can invade and the Americans might not respond.

Pulling troops out is a high risk move. Potentially high reward too if it actually leads to peace. But yeah, I'm definitely on edge worried about my friends right now.
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Wow, I guess Vancouver Canada just doesn't have a soccer stadium or something?

Super cool that the world cup is shared between three countries. But I would also find this pretty obnoxious if I was travelling here from elsewhere took the week off and wanted to watch the whole thing. Some 5 hour flights between rounds o_O
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Decidueye
Bonsley!

Houndoom
Bronzor
Jirachi
Spheal
chimecho
forretress
darmanitan
gallade
Tepig
kingler
lugia
baltoy
sablaye
Venosaur
carvanha
cryogonal
roserade
Mamoswine
cubone
linoone
purrloin
Gloom
geodude
elekid
vaporeon
metang
Metapod
seviper
shellos
kangaskhan
Solosis
musharna
kyurem
sudowoodo
Sawk
sawsbuck
escavalier
drifloon
yanma
Tododile
sewaddle
vespiquen
yamask
Victreebel
torterra
scolipede
kabuto

Lucario
Weedle
lunatone
charmander
jynx
dodrio
Steelix
oshawott
empoleon
audino
Diglett
wishiwashi
hitmontop
latios

Nidorino
Cherrim
ferroseed
carracosta
seel
poplio
Finneon
pachiriso
oricorio
Klink
anorith
tyranitar
gligar
cinccino


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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Tactics is pretty good.
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Blackscar posted...

That doesn't sound like a good deal to me. If Bernie would stronger, he would be the true leader of the Democratic Party instead of being a flip flopper. Just like how Donald overthrew or replaced the Republican leadership. But Bernie's getting pretty old now and I wouldn't expect him to last much longer.

Bernie looks a lot older than he is. About the same age as Biden. 5 years older than Trump.

Bernie's just always looked old. Pictures of Bernie from over 20 years ago already had him looking old. Like...here he is in the 80s with Jessie Jackson (looking like he's ready for a nursing home despite being not even 50):

http://chriscutrone.platypus1917.org/?p=2296
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision