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It's probably because explorers/traders/poachers/lumberjacks tend to be male. Is there no Wikipedia list for people who fought bears with their bare hands and won? This is humiliating.
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Apr 15, 2013 19:27
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Well, at least her anime version doesn't have a gigantic penis.
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Apr 15, 2013 22:59
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I think I've only had sleep paralysis once in my life, and a mild form at that. It was purely auditory and consisted of being unable to move while hearing creepy, somewhat malevolent whispering voices. I still found it to be disturbing at the time and it is odd to me that some people are describing it at as 'a pleasant experience'.
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Apr 20, 2013 02:48
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Basebf555 posted:Every criminologist whose opinion I've read on the subject says the murders were personal, yea. There are only two scenarios where someone would obliterate the victim by hitting them with an ax 30+ times. Either it was a completely disorganized, unhinged, manic killer who would never be able to just blend in or fade away after something like that, or it was someone with a personal connection to the victims. Someone with anger towards them. Nah. A few months ago, an old woman in Flanders was murdered during a burglary gone wrong. She was stabbed thirty-four times for no particular reason. The article's here - it's in Dutch, but it basically says that the suspect is 'astonished' by the brutality of his own acts. Most of us are potential murderers, under the right circumstances your instincts will just take over.
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May 13, 2013 23:39
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TheModernAmerican posted:Literally one example doesn't prove that it is common. When exactly did I say it was common? My point is just that the brutality of a murder does not necessarily point to it being 'personal'.
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May 14, 2013 01:14
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Mans posted:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolomeu_de_las_Casas I think nearly everyone agrees now that de las Casas was exaggerating to make a point. Not about the cruelty of the Spaniards as such, but those numbers are pure fantasy. The general sentiment he expresses is still laudable, of course. Phlegmish has a new favorite as of 22:31 on May 18, 2013 |
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May 18, 2013 22:29
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the night dad posted:I demand more unsettling space things; all the unsettling space things. Seconding this if only because space trivia, unlike most of the stuff in this thread, doesn't actively make me hate the human race.
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May 20, 2013 09:39
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JoltSpree posted:This one bothers me. The observable universe has been around for billions of years, and is impossibly big. There should be an abundant evidence of extra-terrestrial life, but there simply isn't. So how is it that we're here? And if there were other intelligent races, what happened to them? Life itself is probably fairly common across the galaxy, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is 1) complex, 2) sentient and 3) both sufficiently advanced and willing to engage in interstellar travel across enormous distances. It took 1.5 billion years for multicellular organisms to evolve. After that, it took another 2.3 billion years to get to where we are now. Everything about our planet's evolutionary history seems to indicate that self-conscious life forms basically constitute an extremely unlikely fluke. Intelligent life is by no means inevitable, on the contrary. As far as the third point is concerned, the human race itself hasn't reached it yet, and to me it seems doubtful that we ever will. Even if we do manage interstellar travel, permanently and sustainably colonizing another planet poses so many problems that I don't see us making a serious attempt until the physical existence of Earth itself is threatened, and at that point I don't think we'll still be around. With all that in mind, it doesn't surprise me at all that we haven't encountered aliens yet. To me the most likely scenario is that any intelligent alien species, who probably have existed or even still exist in our galaxy, have not found a way to signal their presence to each other or to us across the barriers of space and time. It's quite possible that there's a whole slew of alien-manufactured Voyager I-like objects floating through space, but it's extremely unlikely that we will ever be able to observe them.
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May 20, 2013 22:27
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Arschlochkind posted:Yeah if we're the first that means we get dibs on being the mysterious ancient precursor race. We have to make sure they never find out about bronies.
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May 21, 2013 04:44
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Basebf555 posted:The assumption(it may or may not be a good one, we can't be sure) is that the building blocks of life are pretty much the same anywhere in the universe. All the "stuff" that came from the Big Bang was spread around everywhere. So we have the same origins as all other life in the universe, we all came from that original "stuff". Evolution worked its magic on Earth, and it would probably play out a lot differently on another planet, but the original material is the same regardless. So no, you really don't have more in common with a brick than alien life, at least under this assumption that all organic life uses the same basic elements. We would still be just as 'related' to them as to an inaminate object since we don't have any common ancestry whatsoever, structural similarity notwithstanding. I, for one, am planning to be a total xenophobe if we do ever come across alien life forms. This is are planet. Hovermoose posted:Notice how short it is relative to the others? That is the short flash in which the universe we know and love exists. In a short time the universe will enter the degenerate era, where stars will either long since have died or be nearing the end of their lifespan. Corpses of long gone stars will dominate the universe in this era and energy will keep getting more and more sparse as the last dwarf stars burn out and black holes evaporate. Keep in mind that this is a logarithmic scale which mean that the time axis increases exponentially. Have you ever wondered why existence...is? Not in the anthropocentric sense of 'why do we exist' or even 'why does life exist'. Simply; why does the universe exist? It's something I find genuinely unsettling. It's so difficult to wrap your head around that I'm having trouble even expressing what I mean.
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May 22, 2013 00:49
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If that's really what their plan consisted of, then that is an extremely stupid and inefficient way to obtain food. There's probably something more to it it in the book.
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May 30, 2013 16:27
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FutonForensic posted:The Georgia Guidestones are a set of giant stone slabs engraved with instructions for humanity in multiple languages. The sponsors of this project are unknown to this day. I'm mostly puzzled by their decision to include an inscription in Hebrew, a language spoken by barely six million people.
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Jun 10, 2013 17:25
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This happened to acquaintances of my brother-in-law. I don't even know them, but I still feel really uncomfortable whenever I think about it. That's something that stays with you for the rest of your life.
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Jun 10, 2013 17:37
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jalopybrown posted:An Marchal was 17 & Eefje Lambrecks was 19. It's weird, I'm actually from Belgium and I always assumed they were little girls as well. I don't know why.
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Jun 13, 2013 05:34
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The existence of 'traditions' like foot binding is the reason I'm not a cultural relativist. The good news is that this practice has been almost completely eradicated.
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Jun 13, 2013 20:22
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quote:Chisso used yakuza in order to threaten and silence patients and their supporters.[8] Patients and their supporters started the "single shareholder" movement by buying one share of Chisso each, which was aimed at accusing the executives of Chisso in its general meeting. A thousand of the single shareholders participating in the movement gathered in front of a hall in Osaka to attend the general meeting called on November 28, 1970, but the company prevented them from entering the hall by asking yakuza to become shareholders and occupy the hall. The meeting ended in five minutes with all the bills submitted by the board approved.[8] What the gently caress. You know how earlier in this thread, there was this story about survivors of a bear attack in Japan becoming bear hunters? Why does the equivalent of that never happen in these situations? The thing I hate the most about these stories is not even the sociopathy, cruelty and lack of empathy displayed by people in positions of responsibility, it's the fact that they almost always get away with it. I would love it if there was some kind of superhero to punish Chisso's board of directors by putting mercury in their food or something. I need to stop reading this thread, because it's pissing me off too much.
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Jun 19, 2013 06:12
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Avshalom posted:Next time someone mentions that to you, tell them that because there's no real endemic culture of antiziganism in the States, Romani people are able to get jobs and education and the end result is that they integrate as functioning, happy members of society. See if they get the point. Chicken, egg. A lot of the hostility that exists towards the Roma community stems from the fact that many of them do have a rather insular, ethnocentric mentality. As a general rule, they have little interest in becoming 'functioning, happy members' of whatever host society they happen to live in - which is of course the entire reason that they've managed to survive as a distinct group over the centuries. The idea that the problem is purely due to discrimination is fairly nonsensical, since many Western Europeans had the exact same attitude that you do when Roma people first started immigrating to Western Europe in the nineties and early 2000's. I'm not sure what else to say. I'm certain this post will be condemned as xenophobic, but I genuinely believe that you have a very one-sided view of the issue.
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Aug 6, 2013 19:15
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SheepNameKiller posted:I'm not sure what you think your post is if it's not xenophobic since you're basically sticking up for people that discriminate based on cultural heritage. I'm pointing out that late-nineties Western Europeans literally believed that, unlike in backwards, racist Eastern Europe, there's no real endemic culture of antiziganism in Western Europe, Romani people are able to get jobs and education and the end result is that they integrate as functioning, happy members of society. Social-democratic governments, both at the local and the national level, have instituted various measures to accomplish this integration over the past two decades. For example, to get Romani parents in Ghent to send their children to school, the municipal government offered pupils free meals if they attended. None of these attempts were successful in the long term. I find it bizarre that people here seem to dismiss the very possibility that the problem might come from two sides. No, a much more logical conclusion is that those naturally fascist 'Europeans' are simply indulging in their irrational hatred for this particular minority group. Is that what you really believe? None of this excuses base antiziganism, but when looking at broader patterns I think it's fair to say that the mentality of many Roma people is part of the problem. Inevitable posted:My grandma says the same thing about Mexicans. Sure. I know this discussion cannot possibly end well for me if I go on about this subject, I just found Avshalom's posts to be self-righteous and (perhaps ironically) fairly Americentric. Phlegmish has a new favorite as of 20:00 on Aug 6, 2013 |
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Aug 6, 2013 19:52
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StrangersInTheNight posted:It couldn't possibly be that efforts to integrate the Romani are patronizing and strive to erase their cultural heritage, which makes them hesitant to try an join, and leaves them a marginalized culture that has the same survival behaviors as any poor, lower class peoples. You can't call efforts to basically fold them into your culture and erase theirs sincere integration efforts, and it's no wonder they resist. If their culture is being treated as something that needs to be taught 'out' of them, then of course you're having trouble; that's a basic lack of respect that's going to turn anyone away. And it is their fear, as well; that by assimilating they will lose themselves. AlbieQuirky posted:It's like there wasn't even a bunch of posts earlier in the thread about the horrors of residential schools/"Indian schools"/the Stolen Generations/English-only schools in Wales and Ireland/somehow we missed the English-only schools for Maori, but them too. Except that the original point of criticism was that European societies supposedly don't offer them any ability to gain employment or education, not giving them the opportunity to integrate. Now it turns out that giving them that opportunity actually constitutes an attempt to erase their culture. So which is it? Maybe at this point you should just come right out and admit that there is literally no course of action that European states could possibly follow in this scenario without them being the bad guys somehow. D&D goons are mostly unable to interpret social reality in a way that everything doesn't basically boil down to 'institutional oppression'. Every negative aspect of every non-dominant group's cultural traits is due to past or present discrimination by the dominant group. In many cases, there is a lot of truth to this view. The problem is that it's an oversimplified way of looking at things in the specific case of the Romani people, which is why people in this thread are having to twist every which way just to push the traditional oppression narrative. Unlike Mexicans in the US, North Africans in Europe, indigenous Australians or any of the other groups mentioned in this thread, the Romani 'ethnicity' is to a large extent defined by the semi-nomadic lifestyle that is associated with it. They have managed to survive as a distinct group in Europe for almost a millennium, continuously moving from country to country. This impressive feat was partly made possible by the evolution of certain cultural traits, including clannishness and ethnocentrism. This attitude often leads to behavior that is intuitively seen as unacceptable by the native population. The crimes commited by Romani people are usually petty, and they obviously aren't the only demographic group that commit crime. Thing is, it is the type of crime that specifically eats away at the mechanisms of mutual trust and social capital that are supposed to be at the heart of Western European societies. People get the impression that Roma people feel absolutely no empathy or solidarity with the native population, and this makes them more likely to have a negative view of that particular community. Phlegmish has a new favorite as of 17:56 on Aug 7, 2013 |
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Aug 7, 2013 17:54
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Lencho posted:Not wikipedia, but this is the most scaring thing in the internet for me I also find this deeply unsettling, because it is weird to me that this is going on in a society that is otherwise reasonably functional. I don't understand what drives people to commit these random acts of violence against their own countrymen. The phenomenon of narcocorridos is also completely hosed up. You'd expect public opinion to be completely, unambiguously opposed to the cartels.
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Nov 16, 2013 23:27
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Alain Perdrix posted:Yeah. I do. Was it you?
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Nov 17, 2013 04:26
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Or you could just look at modern-day Southern Italy: Triangle of death quote:The triangle of death (Italian: Triangolo della morte) is an area in the Italian province of Campania comprising the municipalities of Acerra, Nola and Marigliano. The region has recently experienced increasing deaths caused by cancer and other diseases that exceeds the Italian national average. The rise in cancer-related mortality is thought to be mainly caused by pollution from illegal waste disposal by the Camorra criminal organization. I cannot express how angry I would be if someone close to me got cancer just because these worthless, parasitic, society-destroying shitheads wanted to make easy money. gently caress the mafia and gently caress the cartels.
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Nov 18, 2013 22:48
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