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So what you're saying is it's being blown out of proportion by the media and the rioting isn't significant or representative of anything. Well, I don't live there so you probably have a better perspective. Idleness and stupidity ostensibly brought down the Roman Empire, though.

Nah. They wouldn't try forcibly taking your kids away, that's too much trouble. What they'd do instead is progressively tax the **** out of families wanting to rear their own children while offering tax breaks and any other advantages you can think of to sperm donors and surrogate mothers. In 25 years you'd have an entire generation that would believe that being raised by the state isn't at all bad (because they themselves would have been) and would see people wanting to have kids and rear them themselves as anarchists, unwashed savages, or what have you. If only you could fight complacency with a gun. Close. Odds are you are actually a brain floating in space and everything is just a figment of your imagination.

Sadly, it's probably already out in Japan.

I seriously doubt they were looking to appeal to the kind of violent "anti-system" groups that pull that **** off. The wage slave that stays at home and is more bothered by his mortgage payments eating up the better part of his salary than the protests he watches on TV, on the other hand... Regardless, it's very worrying. People rioting because they don't like the result of free and fair elections isn't something you see every day. That's an obvious sign of disenfranchisement and I think it's only going to get worse.

So you're bringing that **** here instead. May I suggest Obs look into hiring Stanley Woo? Because that's how bad it's getting.

What I gathered from the article was that some philosophers are trying to understand what in a family and how exactly it affects a child's opportunities and what that means for equality. If there is "X" that is creating an advantage, it follows that someone without access to "X" is at a disadvantage. The bedtime stories thing is just chosen as an example of something that is (according to Swift) helping create this advantage while at the same time being non-renounceable in a family context, unlike schooling in private elite institutions. Controversial indeed.

Exorcizing spectres, that's what I'm here for.

The vibe I'm getting ITT is that some people have skimmed the article or settled for the partial quotations posted here rather than, you know, read it. It's a constant throughout history that those asking questions and trying to gain a rigorous understanding of things beyond "common knowledge" and "conventional wisdom" will be faced with, at the very least, a vitriolic knee-jerk reaction. "The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow" — William Osler

Epistemology and formal logic are important branches of philosophy and arguably at the core of modern "hard" science, alongside mathematics. They are of course much more boring and therefore nowhere near as popular as political philosophy, so...

You sure you read the link? Because the lawmaker putting the bill forward is from the "centrist Progress Party". Are you suggesting he's actually an anarcho-capitalist in disguise? I don't know if that'd be better than him being a revolutionary subversive, to be honest. As I said before, I think that sort of over the top characterization prevents meaningful debate, and that's an objectively bad thing. If you want to portrait those clowns as the reincarnation of Ming the Merciless, go right ahead. It just bothers me that the caricaturisation becomes so prevalent that it effectively supplants and becomes the political debate. I don't know, maybe I'm projecting and in the UK it doesn't actually happen. Enforcing the laws is both the obvious solution and unlikely to happen. I've just seen too many examples of subverting public power, conflicts of interest, corrupt officials, crony prosecutors and complacent judges to believe that's anything but a pipe dream. For that to work you need people to have a strong moral fiber — but if they do, they'll do the right thing because it's the right thing, not because it's the law. Unless you believe that those in power in any given society are can be, somehow, consistently possessed of a stronger moral character than those they rule over, laws by themselves just aren't much good. Just like with any other human instrument, results depend more on the person wielding it than the tool itself. That's high praise, thanks. No hard feelings whatsoever, of course. Besides, you are a Fallout Tactics fan so you're cool regardless of who you vote for. Sounds good but in practice it doesn't work so well, in my experience. You'd think elected officials living right next door would be good for transparency and accountability, but it just as easily promotes clientelism and nepotism, it's just human nature. Having most decisions be made at the local level also has great potential to create greater levels of inequality between parts of the country, and it encourages the creation of multiple redundant administrations... which results in an even bigger overall state apparatus -and consequently mismanagement, waste and corruption- than with bona fide centralization, only now we're calling it "local". It also requires a proportionally larger oversight administration, judicial or not, with all that entails. I say maximum political power should go nowhere. Or to Skynet.

I don't know about the GOG ones, but I sank a lot of hours into Starfleet Command (especially II). Very little storytelling but solid real-time tactical gameplay which the games were built around. Great dynamic music system too. SFC3 was pretty meh. Those are IPLY games so I'm hoping they'll turn up soon on GOG. IIRC getting them to run on modern systems was a bit of a pain so I'll be picking up the bundle when they do. Man, time really ****ing flies. /was just waxing goddamn nostalgic

You guys are going to love this one because The Reds Really Are Coming. Or as close as it gets in the 21st century, anyway. And I don't mean Liverpool. Iceland proposes bill to abolish fractional reserve banking My, what are private banks going to do without the power to create eleventy gajillion dollars out of thin air to receive interest payments from? However could they survive only by earning money from abusive commissions and fees? We must prevent this catastrophe. Quick, to the Cayman Islands Batcave! Of course, it remains to be seen whether it'll pass and stick. But if it does there's a chance that other countries might try to copy the initiative. Including the UK which haven't yet relinquished control of their monetary policy instruments to the EU.

I'm guessing that those doing genital mutilation (of either sex, mind) don't much pay attention to Twitter. Which is about the only thing I can admire about them. Seriously, if Whedon is off Twitter, he's better off.

Right, right. I'm sure you guys are aware that that all sorts of arbitrary **** is already handled by committees, right? They aren't "people's" committees, true. They are "parliamentary"[1][2] committees, but they are committees all the same, so other than the obvious reference to revolutionary terrors, I'm not sure what your point is. Fun fact: in Europe, conservative and centre-right parties are usually named... the People's Party. Maybe the "1%er Party" and the "Lizard Overlords Party" were taken. I don't know. Regardless, I still haven't seen either of you (or anyone else here for that matter) mention actual proposals and discuss them. I guess you guys just don't know. I'm sure you'll agree that dismissing stuff based on ignorance and prejudice isn't sensible, however. See, other than the obvious slippery slope (regulation means dictatorship and that means genocide and camps!), the most glaring flaw in your stance is that you are forgetting that deregulation is what caused the 2008 cluster****. But it gets better, because economists are already warning that the 2008 fail was nothing compared to what will happen when (not if) the global financial derivatives market, which is currently at least 10 times the size of the world's GDP, collapses. Repeat, not if, but when. And that is just a portion of the make-believe global financial economy. So, what do you want to do about it? Let me guess, nothing. Because it will sort itself out eventually, right? Only history suggests it won't, and it'll result in either massive bailouts whose cost will be assumed by the taxpayer* while execs continue to pocket nice bonuses, or a total crash that will make everyone equally miserable. Sounds familiar? I don't care what other people earn. I care what that means for me. It's funny, because I'm not even arguing for regulation. I hate regulation. Regulation means somebody's making them rules, and that somebody is 9 times out of 10 either exploiting the rules for himself or selling out to someone who does. But please, please don't make it look like that only happens in so-called "socialist" countries. So, what do you want to do? Is anyone out there saying what you want to hear? Don't forget that, If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal — Emma Goldman *remember, as per your own admission, the super-rich don't pay taxes because fiscal engineering is a thing and they can afford to hire experts, or even outright buy MPs to write them some nice custom-made bills. So by taxpayer, we actually mean the poor and middle class.

Sure, go right ahead. You posted only questions, but not your perfectly smart but dangerously left-leaning colleague's responses. Maybe we can compare them to actual proposals/demands made by the montagnards bolsheviks British left and discuss their merits and flaws.

Bro. The environment is what I'm concerned about. You think those MRAPs comply with EPA fuel economy regulations? Please!

I'm guessing the article refers more to the $4.2bn worth of military aircraft, MRAPs and other hand-me-down hardware. edit: btw, that comes 100% out of tax dollars.

You broke my precious links. ;C My point is that a) militarized SWAT teams are deployed at the drop of a hat and b) they don't **** around and people often die, not necessarily the bad guys (assuming there are bad guys present at all). If you aren't worried about those two factors combined in a school environment... I don't know what to say to you. If there is a shooter situation at your school, the lockdown protocols themselves are more likely to prevent fatalities than a bunch of trigger-happy Delta wannabes dropping by 10-12 minutes later.

And you have absolutely no problem with yahoos that are for all intents and purpose indistinguishable* from spec ops kill teams possibly showing up at school at the first sign of trouble[1][2][3]? O-kay. *except for the huge beer gut trying to break free from the constrains of the tactical vest Ah, true. The other guy that was murdered alongside Kyle. Good catch, bonus points for trivia and visual acuity.

At least that guy is actually enforcing the twisted laws of the future. Punisher's entire point is that he ignores the law and kills people he knows done "Bad stuff" which is exactly what you don't want LAW ENFORCEMENT to idolize. But as I mentioned I doubt that is why they using that symbol, I really think its got to do with Chris Kyle For once, Bruce is right. Right click on the image and open it in a new window — it reads "Chris Kyle" right over the Texas flag, and somethingsomething underneath. Why public servants would want to sport the name of, at best, a pathological liar on their shoulder is beyond me, however. Lol @ "law enforcement", though. You couldn't tell those guys apart from typical USASOC or MARSOC operators if it weren't for the "Garland Police" patch. But technically they aren't military, so no need to formally repeal that pesky Posse Comitatus Act! Great job. :salute: For reference, for those of you who have actually forgotten, this is what law enforcement looks like: edit: is that a combat knife scabbard that's partially covered by his hand? Uh...

I filled it out... I think. "Gotovo" means I completed it? That's the last button I clicked on. Then I got some ad asking me to register with SM, in Russian. At least I think it was asking me to register...

I played a bit more of Xenonauts. I just read that they decided to make psi abilities unavailable to the player because "lol imba". Some of the changes I really like (such as making laser weapons useful). This one, not so much. Needs autoresolve for ground missions, though.

In Soviet Russia, forum trolls you!

Funny that you mention an ideological funny bone when it was you who first linked, as is custom, the crimes of Soviet Russia with modern Western left politics. Because "political DNA". I have news for you mate, you share 35-60% of your genes with the common fly — how often do you find yourself sucking or wanting to suck crap? But then I'm "derailing" the thread by pointing out simple facts. My bad, I thought this thread was "UK election special", not "The Red Scare Special vol. MDLXXIII". I must have misread. The whole thing is silly because modern Western pinkos are about as close to Marxism-Leninism as modern liberals are to John Stuart Mill. That is, not close at all. Facile appeals to emotion (fear), broad sweeping statements and mental shortcuts have exactly the same stifling effect on debate as using the law to suppress it. Arguably worse, because a top-down crackdown is much easier to recognize than the pitfalls of groupthink. And what is this "importing client voters from overseas", exactly? You mean aliens? Can aliens vote in the UK? And this is wrong... why?

I know the point he was making, but it's a specious point. The average "leftie" isn't for criminalization of private property and internment in camps anymore than the average "righty" is for the revival of a caucasian-centric Roman Empire and phrenology-enabled subjugation of "sub-humans".