Terrible Editorials, Opinion Pieces and Letters to the Editor

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Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Bruce Leroy posted:

Regardless, I've always wondered whether those major cities with supposedly high crime rates are actually more crime-ridden than other places, especially more rural and suburban areas. Basically, if we adjust for population and density, are there really more crimes in cities like Chicago, DC, and Detroit than Palin's Wasilla per capita or is it just that there are so many people in those densely packed metro areas that it just seems like they have worse problems with crime. So, if you multiplied the crime rate of Wasilla by the factor necessary for it's population to equal that of Detroit, would you get approximately the same level of crime in both places, but Detroit seems worse because all those crimes are labeled as happening in one city?

Crime rates are generally measured as a fraction of population for this reason. And yes, it is indeed higher. For example, Detroit in 2009 had 365 homicides with a population of 908,000, for a rate of 40 per hundred thousand. while Wasilla had...um, zero.

Well, murder's probably not the best one to look at - since Wasilla only has about 11,000 people, even a similar murder rate to Detroit would only predict about four murders. Wasilla had 49 burglaries, for a rate of 446 per hundred thousand; Detroit had 18,993, for a rate of 2091 per hundred thousand, so the burglary rate is indeed about 4.7 times higher.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2011 10:55

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 15:13

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Mr Interweb posted:

How is that permanent if it's only for 10 years?

Raising taxes permanently by a percentage that will yield $467 billion per decade, or $46.7 billion/year.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2011 19:37

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Bruce Leroy posted:

Each and every time I hear a person claim that homosexuals can just stop being gay, I want to bring them the first gay person I can find of the same sex and say, "Well, if it can work one way, it should work the other, so get on your knees and start being gay."

That's not a particularly compelling counter. They do (profess to) believe that that's exactly how it works, and that it could work the other way - they would simply refuse on the basis of its supposed immorality.

A better response to ask if they feel that they've actually "chosen" heterosexuality, whether they ever experienced a powerful attraction to someone of the same gender, as gay people do. Most of the time, presumably, the answer will be 'no,' and this makes a significant difference that you can then use. And if the answer is 'yes,' well, then you've got a whole weird situation. But that's unlikely.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2011 07:16

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Bruce Leroy posted:

My point is more so that the onus is on them to prove sexuality is a choice by showing that they, the person making the exorbitant claim, can do so. It's basically like asking the CEO of a natural gas company to live in a house next to a fracking site for a year if fracking is harmless and no big deal for the ecosystem and people living near it.

If they aren't willing to subject themselves to the same thing they are expecting of another person, they can just gently caress off.

"I am subjecting myself to the same thing I'm expecting from them - a heterosexual lifestyle."

quote:

Your response to the scenario isn't much better because the homophobes claim that they didn't choose to be heterosexual because it's the default position of humans, while homosexuality is an uncommon aberration, requiring conscious choice or child sexual abuse. These people aren't really responsive to the counter that homosexuality isn't a choice because heterosexuality isn't a choice. To them, it's like saying that eating feces is normal and natural because it used to be food and humans naturally eat food.

That's why my response was specifically to ask about whether or not they had experienced homosexual desire.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2011 07:45

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Glitterbomber posted:

Gut clenched thinking he was gonna make some 'murder everyone crossing the border' thing, found he literally meant the animal, couldn't stop laughing.

Carrying off pets and threatening people? How can you be sure?

# ¿ Jan 11, 2012 02:25

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Phlag posted:

I've never understood the obsession with Adam Smith in the first place. Economics is a science - or at least it strives to be one-, and obsessing over what one of the first modern economists thought and basing your national policy around that seems analogous to obsessing over what Alexander Graham Bell thought about telephones and basing the latest iPhone design on that. It lends credence to the idea that much of the devotion to various economic theories is more of a religious relationship than a practical, scientific one. While it's interesting that Smith had some progressive ideas (and revealing that so many conservatives don't recognize this), it shouldn't even matter if he hadn't, because in the 235 years since Wealth of Nations was published, a lot of other very smart people with very good data have also thought about the topics at hand.

Foundational principles are important. It's been 153 years since 'On the Origin of Species' was published, and Darwin is still the central name in biology, despite that many other great minds have worked on and helped to evolve (so to speak) the ideas on which he wrote.

To an extent, it's just about symbolism.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2012 23:06

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

A Fancy 400 lbs posted:

The difference is that Biologists admit Darwin was wrong about many specific mechanisms even if he correctly figured out the general process, whereas hardcore ancaps all seem to base their ideas off the assumption that what Adam Smith said(or what they were taught he said) is correct and anything contradicting it is false.

I'm not sure that's true? As has been pointed out, his actual writings are not really being heavily drawn upon here - rather, his name is simply invoked to symbolize the idea of market efficiency. He's being used as a figurehead, not a prophet.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2012 23:20

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

A Fancy 400 lbs posted:

Yeah, that's why I put "(or what they were taught he said)".

It still strikes me as a misinterpretation of what's going on. It's not as though most people have had any kind of significant education (accurate or otherwise) as to what Adam Smith wrote, either. Rather, they have learned about the idea of the market, of supply and demand, rational actors, the whole affair, and they've learned that Adam Smith is associated with these concepts, so his name is invoked in their defense. But it's the concepts themselves which are at the heart of the an-cap worldview, not Smith.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2012 23:43

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

ts12 posted:

Reminder that these things happened to Michael Reagan:

Ronald Reagan, great president, better dad.

God, that first one is just tragic.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2012 03:54

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

A Fancy 400 lbs posted:

I'm living with my parents right now, so we're 3 people. We spend maybe $100/wk. Scale that up to 4 people and it's $133, double it it's $266. They literally spend about double what my family does per person per month.

$100 a week? That would seem remarkably low, going by the USDA's food plans posted earlier. Even the cheapest 'thrifty' plan would have about $125 for a family of three adults.

Maybe food is especially cheap where you are?

# ¿ Mar 29, 2012 19:54

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

A Fancy 400 lbs posted:

We shop pretty much exclusively at Aldi and eat a LOT of leftovers. We'll make spaghetti once and freeze a couple containers of it so we can have it two more times, for instance.

Ah. Well, given that you're apparently being very thrifty indeed, it doesn't seem especially absurd that they would spend quite a bit more than you on food.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2012 00:07

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Orange Devil posted:

Charity is inherently, perhaps not evil, but certainly an affront to the dignity of humanity and also a way to cover up societies ugly truths. See this RSA Animate video featuring Zizek for a good explanation.

...is he criticizing ethical purchasing decisions? Like, he gives the example of Starbucks advertising that it buys fair trade beans, and says that this is "cultural capitalism at its purest," that you "buy your redemption from being only a consumerist."

And then he goes on to quote Oscar Wilde, and talks about handing out bread to people, short-term cures. But how on earth does fair trade constitute an example of this?

There's also a certain hypocrisy I've always seen in the broader line of criticism (that charity only sustains the present state of affairs), which is that cutting off charity in the hopes of provoking some utopian rebellion would unquestionably result in great short-term suffering and has no guarantee of actually producing a situation any better than the one we started out with.

"It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property." When this is applied simply to the act of charitable giving, then while I disagree with it, I can more or less see the argument. When it's applied to the act of purchasing ethically-made goods, it's nonsense.

Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Apr 8, 2012

# ¿ Apr 8, 2012 21:02

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Orange Devil posted:

Fair trade is still based on the capitalist model of exploitation of labour.

This does not establish that it is bad, for anyone who does not subscribe to marxist views of labor.

Conversely, the positive effects are obvious.

quote:

This is why to my knowledge nobody advocates cutting off charity in order to provoke rebellion, let alone any kind of utopia. Zizek is explicitly not utopian, by the way.

Saying that charity is inherently immoral certainly seems to contain the implication that it should be stopped.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2012 21:45

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

namesake posted:

If you approach things like Fairtrade as 'I'm doing what I can; I buy Fairtrade.' then you are still very much part of the problem and having that option of buying your redemption is actually a very bad thing to fall into because it allows you to consider yourself as helping out but in a way which doesn't solve the problem.

If you think if fairtrade as 'buying your redemption,' then you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the point is. It is not the purchase of a karmic indulgence; it is literally meant to be paying a fair price for what you buy.

There is also something of a reverse tragedy of the commons here. My own refusal to give to charity or to purchase items at a fair price is not the event that will spark The Revolution That Ends Privation Forever. Nor will it affect other people's giving. If I stop giving to charity, all that changes are the particular circumstances of the people who were helped. How, then, are the things in which I am interested (human welfare) in any way improved by my refusal to give to charity?

# ¿ Apr 8, 2012 22:01

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

namesake posted:

... a real solution ... universally and unilaterally ... guaranteed success ...

Here again is this utopian angle. You want a guaranteed, universal, permanent solution to poverty and suffering. That's noble - I'd like to have the same. But there is no actual mechanism for this to be achieved, so you pin your hopes on The Revolution, and attack anything that actually makes things better for actual people on the basis that it forestalls The Revolution.

It's a classic case of the perfect being the enemy of the good.

namesake posted:

You can believe something is a positive factor in society without believing it's a real solution. Progressive taxation doesn't solve the problems of wealth inequality but it's still a drat good idea in the meantime.

You can indeed. And if you believe that something is a positive factor in society, you probably wouldn't call it inherently immoral.

Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Apr 8, 2012

# ¿ Apr 8, 2012 22:02

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

namesake posted:

No one is asking you to actually stop doing these things though, only to think bigger than the temporary buoying of commodity values to a few select communities.

A Fancy 400 lbs posted:

Paying a fair price: Good, relative to your other currently available options.

zero alpha posted:

He's just saying that lifestyle changes by Upper Class first-worlders is woefully inadequate. Yeah it's good,

Except that he says it's immoral. Which implies that it's not good (and should not be done).

Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Apr 8, 2012

# ¿ Apr 8, 2012 22:08

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

namesake posted:

Yes this is back to 'I'm doing what I can; I buy Fairtrade.'. Why aren't you questioning why it's even a choice for you NOT to pay a fair value for something? Could it be a systemic problem with our system of production?

It could be, sure. And I would be in favor of better international trade controls to make it less an option and more of a standard state of affairs. However, I control only my own actions, not those of governments or multinationals or societies.

Furthermore, I am going to be very skeptical of anyone whose solution is "destroy the current state of affairs entirely and implement my new system which will totally be better," for reasons that should be obvious.

quote:

I'm not seeing where the inherent part comes into it. However if you believe that a radical re-alignment is needed to fix a desperate problem, halfarsing it with some minor reforms and then stopping is pretty immoral yeah.

But again, you're confusing the individual with the collective. I cannot create a radical realignment, even disregarding all the suffering that such a realignment would create in pursuit of a goal that might not even be realized. All I can do is help others on a small, limited scale, or not.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2012 22:15

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

V. Illych L. posted:

It's immoral because it's dishonest - it feeds into the illusion of ethical living being possible.

Ethical living isn't possible? :raise:

# ¿ Apr 8, 2012 22:23

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

A Fancy 400 lbs posted:

Sometimes an immoral option is the best current option if every other option is even more immoral.

That sounds rather like semantics to justify some philosopher's over-the-top declaration.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2012 22:25

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

V. Illych L. posted:

Not in capitalism!

I'll take that under advisement.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2012 22:27

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

A Fancy 400 lbs posted:

Are you serious? Do you honestly think you always have a perfectly ethical choice in every situation you ever have been in and ever will be in?

No, I think that if something is in fact the most moral option available, then calling it 'immoral' is unreasonable.

Ethics concerns itself with what should be done, so it has to be responsive to circumstance. A set of ethics that dubs every action and non-action available to you as morally wrong is just useless.

namesake posted:

Well it's a good thing that we both agree that democracy is a sham right now, but don't you think it'd be a good idea to try and create a real one at least? So that you do have the power to help people out like that, or even give them the power to help themselves?

Even in a perfect democracy, what I said would still be true. I am one person, not the voting public. I can express my views, but I cannot control what the majority does. And frankly, I have only a limited trust in the will of the public - I don't actually think that some theoretical, perfectly-written "fair compensation" plebiscite would in fact pass a vote in the US.

Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Apr 8, 2012

# ¿ Apr 8, 2012 22:29

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

namesake posted:

This is assuming that the options being offered to you are somehow eternal and immutable and that no more can ever be created.

No, it assumes nothing. I said "available to you."

Presumably, you are implying that there is another option which should be taken instead of donating to charity. Is it "starting The Revolution?"

# ¿ Apr 8, 2012 22:35

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

A Fancy 400 lbs posted:

Morality is about what should be done in an ideal situation.

I suppose I'll just say that this is not really my view of morality. Ideal situations occur rarely enough that it seems better to orient one's morality around realistic situations.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2012 22:40

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

namesake posted:

Is that somehow not an option? It's got a pretty good historical precedent when it comes to creating new choices.

Kicking off the revolution that will permanently eliminate poverty is not in fact a realistic alternative to donating to charity, no.

namesake posted:

Pragmatism is a false objective standard. You approach a situation with preconceived notions of what is 'worth' doing based on numerous external criteria, often massively subjective and changable, and take a course of action from there. Pragmatism is a rhetorical device used to eliminate opposing viewpoints from discussion in a group, not a rational approach to problem solving.

That certainly is a set of assertions.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2012 22:45

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

namesake posted:

Seriously this is exactly what you've just done. Approached a problem with a limited range of solutions and then gotten annoyed when someone with a broader range is proposing a more complete solution and appealing to pragmatism, the intellectual brother of 'common sense', when someone defends this other option.

Rather than attempting to unilaterally monopolise the discourse I suggest you at least think about the questions I asked earlier about Fairtrade being a viable capitalist solution. Any time that it raises some doubts, then you know exactly what we thought and then decided to check out this other path.

Pragmatism does indeed dismiss options that consist of nothing more than wishes and fairy dust. I will gladly concede that point. Whether that's an unfair dismissal or not I suppose depends on your perspective.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2012 23:00

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Bruce Leroy posted:

That's for straight income, not capital gains. Capital gains get taxed at the flat 15% or 18% (I can't remember which because I'm too poor to have any investments) irrespective of how much money you earn from them. This is why Warren Buffet's yearly profits mean he's taxed at a lower level than his secretary who earns a paycheck.

Not exactly.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2012 19:35

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Cordyceps Headache posted:

What the hell was even the point of that article? Like, I don't understand what those two pages were trying to get at. I mean, I've actually heard about the concept he's talking about, but it was just a general statistical observation about primates, it doesn't actually mean we have preset limits to our empathy.

The point of the article is that there are preset (soft) limits to our empathy. You can disbelieve it, but I don't know how you can miss what is being said.

Jack Gladney posted:

A better title for this one would be "The Naturalistic Fallacy."

Someone saying that a phenomenon is "the single reason society doesn't work" probably isn't saying that phenomenon is a good thing.

Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Jan 25, 2013

# ¿ Jan 25, 2013 22:47

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Cordyceps Headache posted:

But that's not a novel idea, and the reason society works the way it does, a rule based system of governance based on general moral precepts, is precisely because empathy isn't enough to direct human action to the greater social benefit. His explanations are reductive and stupid, and his piece ultimately has no point, it doesn't suggest anything beyond superficial platitudes.

Perhaps your problem is in the assumption that everything is written for the purposes of moral guidance? When you're presenting a pop-science perspective on something from neurology, you don't actually need to have suggestions for what to do in there.

Jack Gladney posted:

He's saying that it's useless to try to compensate for the deficit he describes because of our inescapable nature, that we should embrace cruel indifference because there's nothing we can do about it.

Really? Show me where he says this.

Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Jan 25, 2013

# ¿ Jan 25, 2013 23:31

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

The Crotch posted:

Like, that's the entire last section of the article, no?

Sort of. To be honest, the last section of the article seems only tangentially related to the central idea. But yeah, that's certainly what I take away from the concept - the structure of human consciousness may make it difficult for us to 'naturally' or instinctively act with respect and regard for all people, so it's important that we apply our higher faculties to the task.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2013 00:24

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Install Gentoo posted:

The caffeine is not actually worse unless they're drinking a lot in a single day (like let's say a case of it), plus the other stuff is about harmless. All of the harm they pose is exactly the same in soda. Most energy drinks are basically on the level of slightly more caffiene mountain dew.

http://www.energyfiend.com/the-caffeine-database

Based on this, the median energy drink contains about 120 mg of caffeine, compared to ~41 in the median soda, or ~52 in your example of (a can of) mountain dew. If you're concerned about your child's caffeine consumption, keeping them away from energy drinks seems reasonable.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2013 02:11

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Install Gentoo posted:

That shows McDonald's coffee has more caffeine per ounce then most energy drinks.

Look if you're concerned about your child's caffeine consumption then you should be making them have no caffeine because the health effects of caffiene aren't very different between what's in a bottle of Coke versus a can of Monster vs a cup of coffee.

Kids don't generally drink coffee, either. Canada has health recommendations of no more than 45 mg/day for kids 4-6, 62.5 for 7-9, and 85 mg for kids 10-12; this would allow a can of coke or two, while most energy drinks would exceed the recommended limits substantially.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2013 03:09

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Shipon posted:

Just beware they don't misprint your letter and god forbid it be a controversial opinion. I once wrote a letter to the editor advocating single-payer healthcare and they replaced a term with its polar opposite and devoted an entire page to responses to the letter trying to get me on that point.

Was it replacing 'monopsony' with 'monopoly?'

# ¿ Jun 26, 2013 00:25

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Mo_Steel posted:

Oh hey, it's actually more like 19% to 7%. This is of course if we accept Lewis' framing of only focusing on stranger committed homicides. If we look at homicides overall, black on white and white on black homicide rates are almost identical.

That, uh, doesn't have the upshot that you seem to think it does. Blacks make up ~13% of the population, and whites ~74%; if 19% of stranger homicides are black on white and 7% are white on black, that means that their respective rates for such offenses would be 1.46 and .095, about a fifteen-fold difference.

Of course, the other side of this is that if a black guy kills a totally random person, it's far more likely to be an "interracial crime" than if a white guy does the same thing. Correcting for that would be...hm. A trifle tricky. Let me think about it.

edit: Going by the information in the graph and sidebar, eyeballing where appropriate, it looks like the breakdown is something like

40% white on white
34% black on black
19% black on white
7% white on black

For killings by white people, the 40/7 split compared to the population's 72.4/12.6 split means that the rate of being a victim of a white stranger killing is 0.552 for white people and .556 for black people, units essentially arbitrary. That's...considerably more equal than I expected, actually. Weird.

For killings by black people, however, the 19/34 split means that the rate of being a victim of a black stranger killing is .262 for white people and 2.698 for black people. The bias is way, way, way towards intra-racial victimization; any higher rate of interracial offenses among blacks seems pretty clearly to be an artifact of the higher baseline offense rate, rather than any sense in which whites are being 'targeted.'

Oh, but worthy of note, in a 'lying with statistics' kind of way - if all artifacts of racism were completely dead and buried, if all groups committed murder at the same rate and targeted other groups at identical rates, you would still see 'differential rates of interracial criminality' for the reasons above. Specifically, whites would commit 72.4% of stranger murders, victimizing blacks 12.6% of the time (for 9.12% of stranger killings total), and blacks would commit 12.6% of stranger murders, victimizing whites 72.4% of the time (also for 9.12% of stranger killings total). Then you divide those 9.12% shares by each group's representation in the population, and voila! Blacks committing interracial murder at a rate 5.74 times as great as whites! Purely due to the different proportions in the population.

Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 09:15 on Sep 16, 2013

# ¿ Sep 16, 2013 08:33

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Mo_Steel posted:

e: The more I look at the drop in the 1990s, the more confused I am. Does anyone have a good source for what could've contributed to the fall in black homicides and victimization rates? There's a similar trend in the data presented for homicides in large cities too, which makes sense if you consider the difficulties associated with gangs, poverty and drug use in large cities, but what happened in the 1990s to help facilitate the decrease? Given the 2001 and 2007 recessions it's not as though poverty fell off the map too, and while I haven't checked numbers I'd be surprised if drug use has fallen off in major cities either.

Well, this guy says it's due to a combination of an increase in the number of police, an increase in imprisonment, the decline of the crack epidemic and the legalization of abortion. Some or all of those factors could be considered controversial, however.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2013 06:52

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Vorpal Cat posted:

Well one out of three correct talking points is above average for these things.

I'd say two out of three. Grown adults are filling up jobs that teenagers would once have taken, and recent immigrants (both legal and illegal) are generally willing to accept much less pay for much harder work than our home-grown citizens are, keeping the labor price low.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2013 00:53

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

John Charity Spring posted:

The point of it is to be part of the establishment push to rehabilitate the First World War through distortion and outright falsehood. Nothing more than that.

Why on earth would "the establishment" care about doing that.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2014 21:19

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Silver2195 posted:

To rehabilitate the idea of war in general, I suppose? Still rather , though.

Indeed. Nobody's attitude about our present engagements, or those we're likely to be involved in in the future, is going to be altered one scintilla by a minor tidying-up of the image of world war I.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2014 21:56

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

They're doing it because they're personally military fetishists and actually believe it. Not everything in the world is a scheme, for god's sake.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2014 05:24

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

blackguy32 posted:

World Health Organization

http://www.who.int/topics/violence/en/

quote:

Violence is the intentional use of physical force or power

???

# ¿ Sep 26, 2014 00:32

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 15:13

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Shalebridge Cradle posted:

read the next three words

"threatened or actual"

Yeah, that's still not "anything that harms people in any way," and clearly is focused on, you know, physical violence. Since it's either doing it, or threatening to do it.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2014 00:53

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