JadedWolf

Why would I limit myself specifically to the Netherlands? The world is a larger place . Regardless, the point is that if something like this can happen once, it can happen again. And just because I'm not an arab or muslim doesn't mean it doesn't worry me that next time a group could be targetted that I might be a part of. Or perhaps I shouldn't worry about such things because I am white. Is that this white privilege you keep talking about? Sorry, rather a cheap shot but sometimes your way of thinking just really is rather exasperating. Your moral compass seems to be quite strong, but I can't help but think it needs some serious calibrating.

Bruce, I have no doubt there were some very bad people among these people, but it seems to me they haven't exactly used a finetooth comb when they decided who to pick up. "Innocent until proven guilty" has in this case been turned completely on its head to "guilty until we torture you enough that we believe you might be innocent". You may be fine with that, but I can assure you that you won't like the sort of future that line of thinking leads to.

Things like this really make me quite pessimistic about the future. What kind of world are we heading to? The Geneva convention just seems like a dead letter at this point. We are perfectly willing to allow our governments to hold people without them even being formally accused of anything, and to torture them in all sorts of horrible ways. And after a few years a report comes out and all they can do is say "Well, yes, we did make some mistakes in our zeal to persue these horrible terrorists, but let's be honest who can really blame us, and look, aren't we wonderful that we are actually being honest about this?" It seems that all these rogue states that we condemn are just not blessed with the right spindoctors. Maybe if you are some Middle-Eastern dictator what you should do is just say "Yes, we did make some mistakes using that mustard gas against our own population in our zeal to persue those horrible terrorists, but we were in rather a bend at the time, and aren't we really wonderful to being completely honest about this and writing a nice lenghty report about how we regret this?"

I'm still in favour of penguins as heads of state. They're cheap, adorable and charismatic. Just let a penguin waddle in as your head of state and they will be pratically begging you for trade agreements.

And my question to you is who you'd rather have at the apex of the legal pyramid. A career liar? A sociopath who wants to kill people who wear glasses for asking too many questions? A penguin. Who could go wrong with a penguin?

Have you tried something like https://justgetflux.com/ ? You can set it to dim the blue lights at night. By the way, this thread always makes me think of... What I did today? Why, tried to take over the world, of course...

I'd rather discuss penguins, to be honest. Aren't they awesome?

So an anonymous account makes a bad joke about the ferguson-riots and people doxx him/her and their mom in hope that someone will burn their house down. Sounds logical, normal and morally sound. Kinda like the same morals as of certain journalists. Eh, while I certainly condemn doxxing people and threatening to burn their house down, a quick look through that person's blog doesn't do much to instill sympathy for her on a personal level. For anyone who now wants to have a go at me for implying she deserves what she is getting, see the first part of the sentence. Thanks.

"If ignorance is bliss, then knock the smile off my face..."

I think it's an interesting question to consider what exactly doing the right thing means. Just to give an example, during world war II my grandmother from my father's side would distribute forbidden newspapers, hiding them in her little baby daughter's (my aunt) pram. Not a huge deal, you'd think, just a small act of resistance. But considering that her husband was in hiding, and she had children to take care of, it really was a big risk. In theory even such a small thing was an act of resistance and could get you sent off to the camps. And what would've become of her children (my aunts) then? So, an act of bravery, or an act of irresponsibility towards her children? I really can't say.

Did you consider that just maybe your grandfather actually believed that Hitler was right? That he had good reason to fight for him? I know that all the propaganda teaches us that nazis were less than human bullet sponges, basically evil incarnate, but look beyond that. Trust me, you dunno my grandfather. You would be AMAZED at how little will this guy has. If person A and person B have a fight, he will take the side of whichever was the last person to talk to him and argue their side. No joke, he's THAT pathetic. This has happened. It was kind of an eye opener into how the Nazi army could've come to exist. Not saying Germans are normally like this (hell no) but wasn't aware such outrageously passive people existed. Now looking back he says the Nazi army was horrible, but honestly you could probably sit him down again, convince him Hitler was good and he'd buy into it all over again. Pathetic. Hush now, Longknife. The random stranger from the internet knows your grandfather a lot better than you do from the single paragraph you typed about him. Just go with it. Seriously though, kudos for giving such a polite response to such an obnoxious statement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance They mostly seem to choose option 4.

Could you gimme a source? I just moved, I don't have TV or a newspaper yet (and I'm debating getting either) and I must have missed it on the internet. Most of the time politicians respond with strong condemnation, not like this mayor apparently did. Anyway, yeah for some reason some of the ethnic groups (moluccans and moroccans specifically) in the Netherlands are seemingly pro-segregation. When I was looking for a new apartment it wasn't that uncommon for me to find qualifiers like "This apartment is only available for those with strong ties to the local community". I don't know if that reflects upon the ethnic groups or on how they are treated by society. I think it reflects on those ethnic groups at the moment, because they also can't stand each other and they tend to have... altercations. Still, nothing compared to gang wars and ghettos. http://www.nltimes.nl/2014/11/28/family-threatened-move-moluccan-neighborhood/ http://nos.nl/artikel/2006094-onrust-over-toewijzing-huis-molukse-wijk.html Just to give you some background: the Moluccans are a very special case in the Netherlands. The Moluccans were the elite soldiers of the Netherlands during colonial times. After the Netherlands lost Indonesia as a colony, they were stuck with the question what to do with them. Indonesia insisted they either join the new Indonesian army, or return to their islands disarmed. The Moluccans themselves wanted to fight for independence of their islands. The Netherlands then completely screwed them over, by ordering them to board ships to the Netherlands. Once they were here, they were discharged from the army, and in many cases sent to live in exactly the same camps that during WW2 held jews(!). They stayed there for decades. When eventually the government accepted that they had to do something to house all the Moluccans, they were divided among Dutch towns, but under their own demand that they would have their own areas to live in since that is how they have always lived and their culture is based on this togetherness.

The accents are quite funny in that movie. Oddly, the LAPD officer doesn't sound very American at all. Also, I am like 199% sure the girl at 3:20 is Dutch. It's easy to spot from the accent. The Finns are of course very Finnish. But yeah, when it comes to safety I'd say probably countries like Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium are similar. With the exception that, at least in the Netherlands and Belgium, there's been more incidents with Islamic terrorists here, but in the grand scale of things they are isolated incidents. Isolated incidents that somehow manage to cause a lot of people to feel unsafe, though. It's surprising how much impact these events can have when there's also an ethnic aspect to it. Edit: heh, just after I type this post, I read about a town in the Netherlands where a white family is harassed out of their new home, because the part of town they moved is considered to be Moluccan, and the local Moluccans didn't like Dutch people moving in there. They mayor's response? He's agreeing that it should be a Moluccan only area. Yeah, maybe they don't have things like that in Scandinavia.

Well, I don't know about simple but it certainly is different. The biggest difference is that old Dutch had four cases akin to German, but we only use the nominative now in modern Dutch. So one of the main problems in learning German is getting the hang of using different cases, period. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_grammar#Cases But hey, German is nothing compared to Finnish when it comes to cases. I mean, I just have to take one look into a Finnish grammar book and I just give up. Also, obligatory turkey to keep thread on topic:

To be fair, most of us can understand written German and mostly understand German if people don't have a horrible dialect and don't speak too fast. We're just completely buggered when it comes to actually speaking or writing German on the account of it being invented by people with a horrible fascination for extremely complicated grammar. I mean, ye Gods! Edit: but yeah, to stay at least somewhat on topic, happy turkey day.

And now for something completely different... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNdOMcbuiiA

That one is brilliant.

Apparently these birds are native to parts of Australia. So add to the list of venomous snakes, crocs and giant spiders: ****atoos trolling your cats.

An oldie, but a good one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6CcxJQq1x8

I don't know what to think of this one. Apparently the person who called the police about the kid already told the dispatcher he thought the gun was probably a fake. The gun did look very realistic however, and according to the police the kid refused to put his hands up and instead reached out for the gun. I'm waiting this one out to pass judgement, but I am certainly wondering what the parents of the kid were doing and why the kid was allowed to have a BB gun like that. I'm not saying there's anything that can make it right to shoot 12 year olds, but if I was waving around something like that when I was a kid my parents certainly would have taken it from me and punished me for my stupidity. And this is in a country where the police isn't known for shooting first and asking questions later. Edit: apparently, even though the caller actually told the dispatcher that he thought the gun was probably a fake, this was not told to the police officers who were sent to take a look. That sounds like a massive blunder to me.

I have it from a reputable source that not only will PoE have bugs, but Obsidian is fully aware of it and has no plans to remove them!

Why ghost peppers? Why not Carolina Reapers?

My thinking that if there ever were a real possibility of cyborg bodies like that, and given the costs of such a technology, it would inevitably lead to a practically immortal elite upper class of people with no regard for real human life. The world would be their perverse playground to live out their twisted fantasies born out of a lifetime of otherwise perpetual boredom. But then again, that's just my theory. There's actually a science fiction story, I can't remember who the author is right now at the moment, about a world where something akin happened. Basically a population of people is raised on a far away planet, groomed to perform on special days, when bored bureaucrats from other world link up with robots present on that planet to live out their vilest fantasies on the poor inhabitants. Hmm, does that ring a bell with anyone? That doesn't make much sense to me. They have sex dolls that aren't crappy so now they're sadistic monsters with complete control over a planet's population. What else makes them sadistic monsters? State of the art toasters? I was talking about cyborgs. Actual people, with (part) robot bodies. Nonek was talking about a real brain, a real spinal cord and real eyes in an otherwise robot body. So basically a cyborg. My thinking is that something like that would be very expensive and valuable, and only available to the incredibly wealthy. Imagine a rich old geezer, close to breathing out his last breathe. Imagine him having the chance to replace his crooked old body with a perfect robotic one. It would be like buying immortality. And once you are a cyborg, how would you look at normal people, especially after you've outlived a few generations of them?