nathanm

Threatened to charge with making threats [8-)] The law is supposedly full of these well-educated, erudite people who care deeply about formality and rules, but it hasn't really progressed beyond a kid in the schoolyard grabbing another kid's arm, hitting him in the face with it and taunting, "Stop punching yourself! Why are you punching yourself? Huh huh huh!"

Damn, this is super hardcore. This poor kid is enduring a non-stop assault of…well I don't even know where to start, I am sure those versed in psychology could base a whole course on all the tricks she's using. Never seen or experienced anything quite like it. It's not as Show Business as laptop shooter dad, but it probably deserves to be as popular. *whew*

I understand he's mainly complaining about not getting covered and that's valid, but if Adam wants to throw himself into the maw of the State I'm not going to follow him there. I'm having a hard time reconciling the points made throughout the video with the idea that he 'wants it to end peacefully'. Soooo…is it a good idea for everyone to try and get arrested? It's a sort of a militaristic view. Adam may have left the Marines, but I don't think the Marines have left Adam yet. It's not particularly market-like either. A free market doesn't spend too much time complaining about poor goods and service, it makes better ones. Let's look at Turkey as an example. If that doesn't qualify as "taking action" then I don't know what does. Stadium-sized throngs of people out in the streets. Great! OK, so now what…no more Turkish government? Every State agent has seen the light? Cops are going to walk away from their jobs? Taxation is abolished? I think wanting a quick fix is a fantasy. Statism grew over centuries and as painful as it is for us, it will probably take as long to go away. The SWAT cop doesn't care if I sit behind my keyboard and complain, but I merely feed his pathology if I go out and get in his face. I don't want to encourage the adrenaline rush meathead assholes will get by throwing me to the ground and beating me into a swollen, bloody mess. I want to physically ignore the State as much as is possible. The State is best equipped to wreck my body, since despite their best efforts, breaking my mind didn't work. I don't know what else I can do besides talking about it. I can't talk about it if I'm full of bullets and I can't talk about from jail. If I go out and engage the sociopaths on their own turf I am just going to make myself more stressed and angry, it's just going to be self-destructive even if the thugs don't lay a hand on me. How do you get back at the bullies who hassled you in school? Pound in their face? Slingshot a rock at goliath's head? No, you show up at the future class reunion as your own person who lived every moment after graduation as if those bullies didn't even exist.

http://freeisbeautiful.net/j-r-r-tolkien-catholic-and-libertarian/ “My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning the abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) — or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy…"

I am not sure about hobbit government, but I know that in the appendicies Sam Gamgee becomes "Mayor". I don't know if there's hobbit taxation and hobbit cops, though so it might just be a ceremonial title. Saruman and Wormtongue were the guys who came in and did the proper enslavement and ruination of Hobbiton. Also, when Aragorn becomes king he does something that doesn't exist in real life; he decrees that hobbits be left alone, and I think there was something about no Big Folk being allowed past a certain point or something. Crowing Aragorn is the minarchist libertarian desire to elect good people who have tried to reject to positions of massive power whereas the Ring stuff is more of a true anarchistic view of destroying power itself. Unfortunately getting rid of a state isn't quite as convenient as throwing jewelery into a volcano. But then again a lot of Tolkien 'bad stuff' takes the form of machinery and industrial development not just state power, so he's a bit hippy dippy in that regard.

Why are there no libertarian countries? The question is one Statists need to answer, not libertarians. But here's the answer anyway: Because it's not logically possible. States claim ownership over every piece of dirt on this planet not covered by water and will use violence to back it up. If it were possible to have independent communities with different social experiments going on that would mean that the centralized government did not exist. If you had AnCapLand and CommieVillage and DemocracyTown all doing their own thing it would mean that everyone is not forced to live in the same mental construct of a country.

Doesn't matter how many exorcisms you perform, you'll never be as cool as Max Von Sydow.

I probably don't play that many games, but the ones I do have consistently made me think that the video game market is pretty darn awesome. For me they have replaced movies for the most part. I remember thinking that Lorne Lanning wanting to move from games to movies was a horrible idea. Half-Life, Skyrim, Stranger's Wrath, Borderlands, Bioshock…these are all proper adventures I found far more compelling than any static, always the same movie. (I haven't played Halo or that other space one with the blue chick and the ending which made people go apeshit, can't remember the title; but those sound like they should go in there too) Granted, the more linear games are also always the same, but not quite as much as a movie. Old school games were more about basic object interaction, but these days there are stories and characters you can actually care about. More processing power and storage advances is just going to push these types of things into the stratosphere I think. Also, many of the retirement-age old folks in my family are playing video games now, something which was unheard of not very long ago. I personally can't imagine the market going anywhere but up. I also think games are a phenomenal bargain. 2-Hours of LOTR in the theater: $10 ($5 per hour of amusement) 1000 Hours of Skyrim: $60 (6 cents per hour of amusement) If that's not enough you have the games which have modding communities which is like a massive free smorgasboard. It blows my mind what people are willing to do for free. I guess free markets are destined to drive all costs to zero, right?

I also wanted to mention this improvement. The custom thumbnails look really good, and make for much more inviting targets (even without boobs no less) Actually, now that I look at them one minor improvement might be to move up the text slightly so it's not overalapped by the black time box in the lower right. Stuff like this title card are nicely done as well:

I am guessing the site's rule prohibit such a thing, but it really would be a valid social experiment to see how much people really are willing to spend their own money in deliberately violent acts. That is, without the usual statist euphemisms like protection, security, defense, stabilizing etc.

If he wore a full body leather bondage outfit he could easily disguise himself as a piece of overstuffed furniture and sleep undetected. Was there an ad in the newspaper for this position I wonder? HELP WANTED Upper Management. Sleep 2 hours per day. Limited responsibilities. Free Food. $150,000\year

Hmmm…self-destructive bureaucrats…this could be a good thing after all.

I was interested in the Belle Isle thing until I read that there's a $300,000 cover charge to live there. Damn. I was just going to crash land my plane there after flying through the cloaking shield, but I guess that's not gonna happen. Read the FAQ if you enjoy mixed blessings. http://www.commonwealthofbelleisle.com/faq/

This thread could not have gone any other way.

I wouldn't classify what he does as "smashing" or "destruction" necessarily.

I'm feeling a bit ambivalent about this one, but it touches on many ideas. Your thoughts?

Wouldn't you just love to leap into Tim Cook's body at that moment and answer for him? * sigh *

"You can always leave if you don't like it" isn't an argument. It sounds more like a concession to the claim that the State DOES use violence and that the only recourse is to run away. Just because person A can fight back or avoid the aggression of person B doesn't mean that person B is acting morally.

It's so weird how nobody ever tried to exploit non-bitcoin currencies in previous years. This must be an entirely new problem!

Displays of weaponry by individuals is only symbolic, as it is impossible to win if the police and military choose to attack you. You'll be dead, maybe some of the cops will be dead, but the government isn't going to give up after the bloodbath. I don't know at what level of citizen armament would genuinely worry those in power\military leaders, but I have to assume it would need to be WAY more than what we have now. No amount of fighting is going to convert the minds of those who desire to dominate other humans. Besides, you're just baiting them. They would be prefectly happy to get in a firefight. That's their entire job, what they train for, what they can't wait to happen in the midst of an otherwise dull day of waiting around. The SWAT guy doesn't give a fuck about making the world a more civilized place, he just wonders when he'll get to use all his badass gear and badass training to kill someone and 'be a hero'. That's not the sort of person who is going to be receptive to any fancy notions of gun ownership and liberty.

Citizens hate being surveiled by mounted cameras in public, but those cameras serve those in power. Cops hate being surveiled by everyday folks becaise those cameras do not serve those in power. But what could the cops possibly do if every person who was just LOOKING at the scene also had a HIDDEN camera in a hat or on their glasses or shoulder? A hidden camera and hopefully more than one, is the only way I can think of to fight this sort of crime. Since everyone's so fond of calling America a Christian Nation, well then when every person is able to record everything they see at the touch of a button we've effectively created a communal God (the all-seeing part at least) who watches your every move. Since universal surveilance is the alleged motivation for moral behavior, the majority of Americans should be in favor of hidden cameras for all. What if such videos automatically streamed into a Cloud server somewhere, encrypted and all that jazz, so that even smashing the camera itself would do nothing to destroy the evidence?

Uh oh, what could this mean for Molyneux and Kinsella? Or Jeffrey Tucker and Jordan Rudess?!

I don't mean to jab darkskyabove or anything, I had to look it up myself to be sure. But…technically speaking, the thread should be "Whose Money Is It?"

A real shame that they spoiled the ending right up front, though. You should watch all that and THEN you tell people it was made by NORTH KOREA. That's the twist to end all twists.

The comment thread below this article has some technical conversations about the possibility, which is what concerned me when I first heard of this. http://www.dailytech.com/Former+FBI+Agent+All+Your+Communications+are+Recorded+Government+Accessible/article31486.htm