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Well, unlike the second video and the one linked by Kirottu, she does not provide a single link or mention a specific study to back her claims. "Most workplace pay gaps narrow to the point of vanishing when one accounts for all of these relevant factors". I can guarantee that without a ****ton of citations, that would trigger an edit war on Wikipedia, let alone on any serious discussion forum in- or outside the internets (a "common sense proof" would draw nothing but derision — note that in Kirottu's video, that argument is used in a joking manner). This is 2015, it's almost mandatory to have a plethora of links and data to back one's soapboxing. If you want to take her at face value, it's your prerogative, but if you insist on accepting a laughably low standard of rigour from speakers you are ideologically close to while railing against "progressives" and "radical left-wingers" at every chance you get, be ready to draw flak. We all have our biases, hmm? As an aside, she's also a pretty terrible narrator. I thought only numbers theory lecturers could get away with being so bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbbFiTMn_ok http://www.inquisitr.com/2146081/ronald-moon-jr-got-beaten-up-for-trying-to-make-a-community-center-in-his-cincinnati-neighborhood-but-the-internet-rallies-to-his-support/ I don't know, I thought it was pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, I know he's hardly the only one risking bodily harm to help people, but still. Thought about making a new thread but I figured it fits perfectly here. Happy thought quota reached. Now back to your regularly scheduled doomsaying... (there's a fundraiser involved, apologies in advance if this goes against board policy on solicitation)

Reporting for duty! Yeah, one shouldn't expect corporations to do the right thing, because... reasons. Regardless, I wouldn't hold my breath for legislation to fix this mess, because legislation is literally bought and paid for by the corporations it benefits. So I can't expect corporations not to **** me over, and I can't expect the Man not to **** me over. Hmm, that's nice. But not to worry, I'm sure that putting a piece of paper in a plastic box next year will totally change things this time. *thinks of puppies and sunshines* Putting brass in that steel container will.. (Not really, but that one liner feels natural at this moment) Damn son, you got that from a Clint Eastwood flick?

Reporting for duty! Yeah, one shouldn't expect corporations to do the right thing, because... reasons. Regardless, I wouldn't hold my breath for legislation to fix this mess, because legislation is literally bought and paid for by the corporations it benefits. So I can't expect corporations not to **** me over, and I can't expect the Man not to **** me over. Hmm, that's nice. But not to worry, I'm sure that putting a piece of paper in a plastic box next year will totally change things this time. *thinks of puppies and sunshines*

Yep. I posted something similar a while ago, where a London School of Economics professor dirty hippie discussed a facet of this. I'm still skeptical that we will see a comprehensive reorganization of the economy to accomodate for increased automatization and disappearance of human manual labor. Ideally, work hours would be reduced in average or altogether eliminated without an actual loss of purchasing power, which would supposedly increase demand for the kind of services that non-sentient machines cannot provide. In practice, we have a reduction or altogether elimination of work hours with a corresponding reduction in purchasing power (minijobs and unemployment), and an increase in the ratio of non-jobs dedicated to the non-economy to actual productive jobs. For example, machines are really good at counting, and despite high-speed trading accounting for roughly half of all equity transactions, the financial sector keeps on growing. You wonder whether it's possible for a society to function with a 25% unemployment rate. The answer is a very emphatic yes. Spain currently is close to that figure (~23%) and what this means is simply the destruction of the traditional middle class that works for a living — we currently have an underclass that live off of a conditional government subsidy that is equivalent to roughly two thirds of minimum wage, and an upper class that has has grown by 27% since the 2008 crisis began. I'm not even getting into what this means for social stability, ecological sustainability, freedom and justice, and some other stuff nobody seems to give a toss about. As far as I know, no credible effort is being made to correct any of these problems. As Rosbjerg pointed out, some "new" political movements are popping up that at least talk about these issues, but they propose the same old solutions with a strong statist slant that haven't worked as advertised in the past and are doubtful to work in the present where nation-states are very much depowered in the context of global economics. Of course, anyone who talks about global economic imbalances and financial meltdown is likely to be branded a crank, despite the fact that we're still recovering from the last crash, and urgent suggestions are immediately made to cease pondering these things and to think about ponies and pretty flowers instead. Good luck.

And this right here has the potential to be the deal breaker. The usual comment about Beth games is "but they are great with mods!". Without, not so much. I'll wait and see, of course. I got my money's worth out of FO3, after all.

**** yes. Beginning my day with a Flawless Victory is the universe's way of assuring me that nothing can go wrong.

^ Hahaha, no matter how many variations of that joke I see, it just never gets old. edit: to contribute something to the thread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2ftVPk-WZw still better than EP 7. :smug:

Now I'm depressed because I remembered that they aren't making Beavis & Butthead anymore. Thanks pal. I can't watch that and not be immediately reminded that the corporation that built some of my fondest childhood memories has become a soulless capitalist leviathan that will stop at nothing to make a buck. Thanks pal. It's like you guys are doing it on purpose! ( )

It would depend on the specifics of the weapon (which understandably are most likely top-secret), but a Faraday cage can in principle protect electronics from EMPs. Since it's not nuke-scale EMP, and is supposed to be precise enough to target data centers, protection is logistically feasible and may become a standard for critical locations. I'm not sure how it would affect other possible future technologies such as photonic computers, either. According to some scientists, current silicon-based computers are expected to reach their physical limits in terms of power at some point after 2020.

Wow, you really are obtuse, aren't you? Is this due to your missing chromosomes or were you dropped on your head at birth? To what degree does it get you disability benefits? Again: I did not bring up the issue of doom and gloom in your precious puppies and sunshines thread, that was someone else. Hell, I even liked GD's post about simple things that make him happy, despite disagreeing with his last line. You smugly posed a question, on the laughably incorrect supposition that since you go through life smiling like you're both titular characters in Dumb & Dumber, nobody has any real problems. I responded providing precise examples that prove how disconnected from reality you are, and you cherry picked the answers and became fixated on "the price of fish". This sort of idiocy has a name, that I'm sure the eminent Internet Psychiatrist Hiro Protagonist is familiar with: anal retentiveness. Basically your posts in this thread except for the OP can be summed up as "Waah waaah mommy the meanies stole my thread" and "lol u mad?". Forget what I said about going back to school, it just wouldn't be fair to slow down class progress enough to accomodate for the very special kind of attention you require. I know you're testing me, but I'd never cheat on you!

Where did I say "life sucks"? In this thread or elsewhere? Or posted anything that can be construed as such? Yeah. Seeing how it's just you who got that impression, and after explaining it to you using short words in simple sentences, I'm finally convinced that it's pointless to keep on trying to get anything through your thick skull. Good luck in elementary. Maybe in a year or two you'll stop trying to get the square peg in the the round hole. Final piece of advice: the thread isn't your property. People aren't going to talk about what you tell them to the way you want them to. Better get used to this...

Hit a nerve? You? That's rich. You couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a bulldozer, bud. Don't pat yourself in the back so hard, you'll hurt yourself. Looks like you are desperate to show everyone how happy you are despite... whatever. And especially despite the fact that overarching societal problems and personal satisfaction aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. The thread had already been derailed before I started posting here, I simply replied to what other folks were saying. You don't like topics evolving beyond whatever you had in mind? Toughen up and deal.

I remember a biochemist friend of mine used to rant about how his cultures would keep getting contaminated by bacteria, thus ruining his experiments, when he was trying to work on his Ph.D. So I guess he'd disagree about no results being bad, heh. Joking aside, I read an article that explored an epigenetic model as an explanation for sexual orientation, fascinating stuff. It was very hypothetical and there were some criticisms even in the same article, but what surprised me most was that one of the scientists involved suggested abandoning the research for being a sensitive subject. She figured the effort would be better spent researching "the epigenetics of cancer".

>Hiro asks questions about how issues are affecting other people >Someone answers those questions giving specific examples explaining how vague societal problems cause real problems >Hiro ignores the answers and goes full spastic But I needed a financial advisor earlier, and now I need a therapist. Tell you what, let's make a deal. I'll get both if you go back and finish elementary school, so you get some basic reading comprehension and reasoning skills. Deal? http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-014-9219-y That was posted a while ago in these boards. I'll let you guess by whom.

Should I only care about the curbing of civil liberties once they have directly effected me? I still remember those government paid posters being everywhere, railroad stations, bus stops etc. encouraging people to watch each other carefully and report any unusual behavior. Yes, that was in Australia. Wait, what?

Oh, wow. I estimate that the odds of something like that happening over here range between "lol, that's a good one" and "a celluloid dog would sooner chase an asbestos cat through hell". Remember, we have made the religious fervor-triggered assault of churches to parade icons around into a national holiday. STOP TRYING TO TAKE AWAY MY DREAMS

Seriously though, I'm not talking about abolishing spirituality. I'm talking about the institution. One does not need to participate in centrally organized, directed group activities to have a religious life, right? Not that there's anything wrong with religious group activities, my beef is more with the "centrally organized, directed" part.

It's pretty uncanny how accurate Orwell's predictions were. You have newspeak, telescreens, and perpetual war. "Truth is stranger than fiction" indeed.

You mean... return it to what it was before the Catholic Church officially hijacked what had been essentially a private contract between citizens for property transfer purposes? *GASP* I like your suggestion to abolish marriage. I'd just like to take it one step further: **** (abolish) the Church. And **** the state too. :D

Ah, I see what you're trying to say. If it doesn't happen to Barothmuk, it's not happening, right? I'm sure it has nothing to do with someone giving you precise answers to the questions you were asking for. How are you enjoying your cognitive dissonance? And forget about fish prices, that's just a footnote. Focus on everything else I said, like increased cancer risk, legal discrimination on a gender basis and fines and prison sentences for protesting illegally. Oh, but I haven't caught cancer yet (that I know of) and I'm obviously not posting from jail so everything's really OK and I'm just moping right?

I'd rather examine your claims in detail before accepting them, thank you. Oh, wait. We don't really need to. Eating healthy would increase food costs for one person by $550 per year. This increase alone is higher than your $45/mo figure. So, chances are, you aren't really eating healthy. The other possibility is that you are growing a large part of your food, but you aren't computing the (opportunity) cost. Either way, it's not $45. No, I'm not confusing anything. Official figures show that, in 2013, the poverty rate (defined by people living under the poverty line as calculated by the US Census) was 14.5%. In the same year, 14.3% of all households in the US were in a situation of food insecurity, with 5.6% being in a situation of very low food security, i.e. they couldn't afford as much food as they needed at some point. So, no, "nearly all poor people" cannot afford to eat well, let alone less immediate needs.

So, you told someone with a clear addiction problem to knock it off. I know you are a sensible guy so I suspect you weren't surprised when she didn't listen to your well-meaning advice. Don't hold it against her, though. People who frequently engage in self-destructive behavior are simply unable to break off the vicious circle by themselves in most cases. I agree, the first step is to stop digging, but even that may be beyond what that lady's capacity. Let's say I can bench 265 and you can bench 300. No matter how hard I try, I'm not benching 300. Does that make me weak? With proper guidance, training I may get there and beyond, but the starting point is different for everyone owing to a myriad different biological and environmental factors. Willpower, much like physical strength, isn't unlimited. Same for reasoning ability, etc. You literally have no idea how hard she may have been struggling because you are not her and you only caught a glimpse of her life. Why do people do stuff that is bad for them? Why do they make evidently bad decisions? Why can't they cease certain behaviors despite being aware of the evident negative consequences of their actions? Because people aren't rational. Intelligence is much like an iceberg; a large part is hidden under the surface and we are oblivious to its influence. Research has shown emotions to be key in the decision-making process but emotions reside in the limbic system, an ancient brain we share with reptiles, more primitive mammals and birds. They are beyond our control and identifying them doesn't come naturally. Ultimately it's a debate about free will, and the jury's still out on that one. BTW I liked your stance on "going where the work is". Does this also apply to foreign workers entering another country illegally to find work if none is to be had at home?