J. D. Stembal

Your intentions are honorable. It's shows your character that you want to make up for how you treated her as a child. However, I don't think you could have prevented or helped your niece avoid prison. You are not her mother. You didn't decide to bring your niece into the world. It's on her mother to make things right, as far as that is possible. Ultimately, your niece needs to help herself. You can be supportive without being financially supportive. Books are a great idea. I very much liked In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts for the stories on addiction, but I stopped reading the book once the author gave parents "who did the best they could" a free pass from guilt and started blaming white colonists for the multi-generational cultural collapse of Native Americans. I will no longer recommend Gabor Mate's book to anyone who seeks to pursue rational thought, but it may still have limited value for its insight into the nature of addiction in the brain.

Wasn't the recent broadcast of the miniseries, Cosmos, hosted by NDT, a vehicle for anthropomorphic climate change propaganda? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/05/cosmos-climate-change_n_5268839.html Qualify "awesome".

Rome had this structure called the Colosseum. Do you see any parallels between now and then?

230,000 Japanese would like to have a word. I am not trying to dismiss your assertion out of hand, but that would be quite a large and elaborate conspiracy to be effective. Presenting, as evidence, a picture that shows a heard of sheep which survived a carpet bombing isn't a clincher for me. What is the science behind the assertion that a nuclear bomb cannot explode? I remember, perhaps incorrectly, reading in Feynmen's memoir that detonation was one of the obstacles that his team was tasked with overcoming in New Mexico.

When I was fourteen, I believed in alien visitors from another galaxy. Thank you, Chris Carter. I read a book (forgot the name) and did a report on the probability of space faring intelligent life in the universe other than humans. The odds are miniscule that all these factors are true that it may as well be considered untrue. Time will tell if we meet space faring intelligent life or not. When I was eighteen, I convinced myself that astral travel and remote sensing was possible. I spent a few years in college researching it and practicing and I successfully learned how to self-hypnotize or fall asleep at any hour of the day. As for astral travel, I did not accomplish it. I have never believed in the existence of an omniscient or omnipotent deity. I humbly suggest that you subject your religious views to the same level of rigorous research and testing. I have not seen any hostility directed at you, but at other members contributing to your thread. It's our pleasure and privilege to pose you with challenging questions. If we make you feel uncomfortable with our questions, please take some time to reflect on your emotions and then get back to us. You are the one who created the thread, so here are some questions of my own. What kind of reception did you expect from a philosophy forum? What was your purpose for coming out?

Why are you a church-going atheist? I do not understand your purpose. It appears that you are flying stealth in attempt to convert more local Christians to atheism. This strikes me as like trying to change politics from the inside by lying to your constituents. I'm not being critical of you. I just don't understand what going to church means to you. I was required to take a class like this. It was more a political science discussion based on the stories of the New Testament. It was interesting for me because I had never cracked a bible open before. I don't think this type of study helps anyone think in a more rational manner. If a bible study teacher attempted to pepper some actual philosophy into the mix, it might serve the purpose better. The adults in the class can decide whether or not his instruction is valuable or not.

More straight, white, male prejudice. I am deeply shocked and saddened that supposedly intelligent people can think in this way. Also, when are people are going to figure out that you cannot attribute responsibility on abstract concepts? Anecdotal tangent:

This looks like typical father always knows best fare. Wranglerstar reminds me of my father only more civil with his son. I wonder if this is his real self or his public facing father persona. I recall when I was about eight, my father bought me a beginner's chemistry set. Some of the chemicals were caustic, but were clearly labeled. This was after being told many times the story of how my dad nearly set fire to his parents' house with a chemistry accident when he was a teenager. We took out the set once and did a couple of basic experiments and I never touched it again. It wasn't out of a lack of interest so much as it was fear of failure, and property destruction. If my father, who is well versed with chemistry, almost accidentally destroyed his parent's house, how much damage would I cause? One of the YT commenters expressed my sentiments about the Wrangler videos exactly, then later retracted the feeling as "unfounded":

Stop it, guys. I already have way too many books in my shopping cart at the moment! I'm thinking more about shit tests, and which ones I've seen in the past. I want to share them for educational purposes. She cancels two dates in a row, playing it off like it's no big deal. (I responded with the command respect option from the shit test tool bag.) I'm going to the bathroom; I'll be right back. (She leaves the venue.) Another variation: My friends and I are all going to this hotspot. (She doesn't show.) This is not so much of a shit test as a GTFO tactic. She gives you the wrong phone number or the number of her ex. She lies about having a boyfriend. She encourages you to shoot pool with her and then wanders off, essentially pawning your attention off on someone else. When women dance in packs, this is so you can be deflected onto other women that are less desirable to you. She completely ignores you or pretends to be engrossed in her phone. (I watched this happen to a friend.)

You touched on a good point. While Schiff may not value Bitcoin in the short term, he is still accepting them which suggests that they are a functional currency with a tangible value. Whether specific individuals, companies, or investment groups will find that currency worthwhile to use, only the future will demonstrate. Thanks for the clarification. Is this information on the Euro Pacific Capital website? I didn't dig deep enough. While I'm far from the position to dictate how people use their cryptocurrency, taking coins and immediately cashing them out for fiat defeats the ultimate purpose (severing state control over central banking, i.e. ending the Fed) of the distributed currency platform, at least in the short term. In the future, I envision more people will be holding their assets in cryptocurrency, especially after the next impending financial collapse. The stage is already set for the next round of corporate tax supported bailouts. For a comparison of overhead costs, Euro Pacific Capital charges a fee for the gold certificate fund: When I buy Bitcoins for fiat on Coindesk, the fee is 1%. Which transaction is more efficient?

I don't think there's anything wrong with having pride in your health and body, but it's very obvious when men post shirtless selfies online that they are making the statement, "Look! See what I did to impress you?" Without the body, the brain cannot survive, and vice versa. The motivation for health and well being should come from within you. I had a female friend a while back who was 28-ish and heavily playing the field. She had a profile on every free dating website out there, and she shared with me her profile once. It read like a who's who of every man she had slept with in the last three years. "If you have minimum wage tattoos (neck, face or hands), please don't contact me. If you have daddy issues and like dating girls young enough to be your daughter, don't contact me." One of the lines referenced narcissist men who show their man tits on their profile pictures. I now understand that she thought it was acceptible for her to call men out on their shortcomings (men whom she had dated in the past), but why couldn't she just come out and say, "This is the man I want...?" It struck me as peculiar that the profile read like an admission of her terrible choices in partners without her coming out and saying, "I have a terrible choice in men." After listening to Mr. Molyneux, I can say with near certainty that her inability to find the man she was seeking was due to her not having a stable father in her life. I met her mother, almost 50, and she was even more gorgeous than her daughter, and also perpetually single. I've heard that she's now married and expecting, so I hope her sense of judgement turns out to be better than her mother's for her child's sake.

A better idea, in my humble opinion, would be to not save the money for college at all, and spend that future capital on allowing one of the parents to stay home with the children, at least for the first five years. Then, if it can be budgeted, hire tutors and have at least one parent involved in a mentor role after age five so your child never has to set foot in a public school. Basically, parents are banking the money for college by having tax financed compulsory education, and look how swimmingly this worked out. Now, we have Obama stepping in and make getting Associate's Degrees also tax subsidized. They briefly talk about cutting expenses and practicing living off one income, but it becomes very clear later in the article that this practice is for the mother to take her state guaranteed twelve week maternity leave with every intention of jumping back into her career so the couple can afford daycare, which can cost up to $18,000 per year, according to the article.

When that happens, it is an indication that what has been deemed scientifically true is potentially no longer true. There are plenty of examples of this from Galileo to the present.

How would "too low" of a value make cryptocurrency not worthwhile? What is the threshold for "too low"? How do you define "worthwhile"? You must realize that other people will have completely differing definitions for these words you are using. I'm just curious what these words mean to you. The most obvious benefit of cryptocurrency is a platform to accept global payments for goods and services with minimal overhead costs (~1%), and absolutely no inflation, regulation, taxation or oversight from the government. The opportunity cost of not using the currency is having to deal with these four cons of fiat. Cryptocurrency is the perfect money laundering tool. Get paid in Bitcoins, don't report the income because you don't have to do so, convert it to gold or other precious metals via Peter Schiff's Euro Pacific Capital, and then back into fiat if it suits you. It's peculiar that Peter Schiff bad mouths Bitcoins when he accepts them in exchange for gold and other securities. It's as if he wants to openly trade gold for Bitcoins, but not let on as to why he does it. If he really thought Bitcoins were worthless (or not worthwhile), he wouldn't accept them as currency.

The problem that I have is everyone, including women, should be striving to be alphas, but sometimes we will behave like betas because of insecurity stemming from childrood trauma. I'm not sure what guilt management is. Why does someone have to be guilty? If a woman is making me feel bad about being in relationship with her, that's when I start shopping for a new one, or dump her and take a sabbatical from the insanity of poon. Currently, I'm on sabbatical. If men want to put up with the insanity, they have to be honest with themselves about why they put up it. I rufuse to do it any more. I'm on strike until I can find a woman who doesn't act like any other woman, a woman who is her own woman. If I have to go into a coffin while still single, so be it.

I bought three IFS books by Jay Earley and Bonnie Weiss because they were far cheaper than the Richard Schwartz approved literature. Self Therapy: Second Edition Self Therapy Workbook Freedom from Your Inner Critic Surely, you can use these tools to determine what alpha, beta, and zeta mean to you. I don't find those terms to be particularly helpful in any rational discussion. Mostly, they are a mearns for men to shame each other in chat rooms.

Examples would be great, as would statistics and anything else that is not emotionally charged. I specifically objected to post #160 because you used adjectives like tyrannical to describe the persecution of the transgendered and dysphoric. Is the government rounding up and disappearing the transgendered? Where are the gas chambers? You don't have evidence of any such event, so this is an emotionally manipulative statement. You also are using words like small-minded, mindless, primitive, idiotic, and ignorant to describe us! The implication is that we are perpetuating ignorance in this thread. I posed a few questions to keep the conversaion going in a productive direction, as did MMX. Would you describe us as ignorant? I've heard of men changing their gender to female after marriage and having children, but only two anecdotal examples. I've also heard of a woman taking hormore therapy to become masculine. I've never actually met a transgendered person, except I was once groped against my will by a man who may have been dressed as a woman in Bangkok. I didn't hang around long enough to chat about gender dysphoria, I'm sorry to say. Can we say with any certainty why men decide to become women, especially after having a family? In the article you linked the unidentified man says he was living a lie, and must act to change despite the pain it will bring to his wife and children. Is it possible that he does not want to have a family any more? Perhaps this man never wanted to be tied down witha wife, three children and successful career, or he did not expect to receive so little compassion and appreciation from his family for his contributions. I'm not saying that this is definitely the case, but it's a possibility that men need to consider. I propose that in some cases transgenderism and dysphoria is a reaction by men to a lack of emotional support offered to them by their families, then later on, everyone else. I recall sometimes wishing to be a woman for a day as a teenager. I sought out a sexual relationship with a male friend in high school. Of course, the rumor got out, and then I went back to dating women after this friend stopped talking to me. I don't feel that I am a gay man, but the thought of being a straight female was very appealing. I cross-dressed on Halloween and other occasions, and grew my hair out very long. Even though I am sexually attracted to women, why did I behave like this when I was younger? Women flocked around me, and I had many female friends and lovers. Did they not want me challenging their womanhood? Was it because they felt I was more beautiful than them? Were they jealous of my subconscious attempts to emulate them? This is total speculation, but I believe there is a strong desire for young men to want to live life as a woman instead, but we are shoehorned into a thankless role as beast of burden that cannot ever feel emotion at an early age. When I brought up the topic of blame, I intended to focus more attention on parents. Parents are to blame for gender dysphoria, not the general society. Parents aren't required to birth their child around doctors or in a hospital where there is a chance the butchers will start fileting genitals with or without parental consent. Circumscision is definitely not required, but it was done to me anyway. Parents have an obligation to support their children emotionally no matter what, and I believe that husbands and wives also have the same obligation to support each other. Going back to the example you linked above, if after twenty years, a husband decides that becoming a woman is really the right path for him, his wife and family should listen to him, try to understand, and support the decision. It's a problematic scenario, to be certain, but why should men be so unheard, misunderstood, and unloved?

I found this article to be gynocentric and infuriating. Please give it a read and tell me your feelings and thoughts. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/baby-limbo--millennials-struggle-to-find-the-right-time-for-parenthood-163523510.html The first part that really infuriated me was practice living off one income so you can save for child daycare. Excuse me? Why practice if you are going to throw your infant in baby prison? The second part was the bit about Obamacare making insurers cover most prenatal care services. This is how we know that ACA is a wealth transfer from male to female, considering all the single Mellennials out there. Some other sticking points for me: - Encouraging women to wait as long as they can to have children, while completely ignoring the consequences. - The fact that in the US, only 10-15% of employers offer paternity leave (no fault to the writer). - Pushing parents to start a college savings fund for their children early. Maybe the kid won't want or need to go? The article had a few obvious things to say about saving money, like not going out to dinner, and subscribing to cable, so it wasn't all useless.

As an alcoholic, I would like to point out what alcohol meant for me. I used to think of it as a lubricant for social anxiety. Once I got a couple drinks in me, I could open up, focus and trust people. What I didn't understand was that I should have been trusting myself, and not opening up to untrustworthy people. The alcohol was the honey to attract me to hang out with losers, users, and abusers. Take the alcohol away, like I did last year, and hanging out in certain groups of people quickly became intolerable for me, so I don't hang out with them. Alcoholism means for me that I was surrounded by assholes, as Stefan suggested in a show last April or May. I was one of those males who would put on more cologne than I ought to have. I also spiked my hair up straight to the ceiling in an effort to make me look taller, like the bros from Jersey Shore. I didn't spend any time in tanning beds, though. I liked my pale white pallor. All this was in an effort for a Me Plus strategy to give me the confidence to deal with the emotional vampires of the club dating scene. I was one of the biggest narcissists out there. Luckily, I never seriously considered plastic surgery. I did, however, fraternize with a plastic surgeon who told me all about penile enhancment. I shiver at the thought of the trade now. How ghastly!

Even charts which show Fascism on the left show anarchy and liberty on the extreme right. Freedom is just too extreme for most people, I suppose. America is considered moderate. I would put it further left than Nazi Germany.

It is very telling that you don't recall your childhood before age five in public school. You were overweight at six years old, and on top of it you were having trouble with using the bathroom. If your mother will still talk to you, I would get down to the bottom of what you were fed and how you were taught to use the toilet. I have a suspicion that since your family was lower class and single parent, that you were often neglected, and there wasn't enough nutritious food around the house. Obesity is a disease of malnutrition, and not a result of overeating like the uninformed often descibe it. What does Eliot Hulse have to say about nutrition? I haven't yet listened to his channel, but I've heard of him. Congratulations on losing weight. I trust you are pursuing a healthy means to this end. I can recommend some channels if you would like. To the question of leaving your father... is there any possibility of rehabilitation for him? Can you negotiate with him about the drug and alcohol use? Do you care for your father's well being? If you do, then tell him how you feel. Try to make a connection. I sense that you may have already tried this. Perhaps it is worth another try? It's up to you to decide. If you absolutely need to leave as soon as possible, then you could hock the gaming rig for a bicycle or moped (I don't think you need a license if it's under 150cc) or save the money for a deposit on a room and bus fare. There are a lot of websites for finding rentals like Craigslist, Padmapper, Zillow, etc. You will find your way!

You mentioned in another thread that you aren't naturally the sharpest dresser, yet you are handsome in your photo. Add posture into the mix and before you even say one word to a woman, she already knows if she interested in you. Then you can get to chatting, and finding out who she is. I don't care what you decide to wear in public. I shop at Goodwill and wear my clothes until they fall apart. Just know that if you aren't kitted out in colorful menswear and accessories (watch, chains, rings), you probably aren't going to get many stares, or side ways glances from women. If you do get a lingering look from a woman, then you can move it to investigate. When I'm in my normal dressed down state, the only women who stare at me are the ones that are whispering to their friends something cynical about my appearance that I cannot overhear. I could throw on a suit, tie and a collared shirt and go hit it up with women at social hotspots around town, but I just don't see the fun or virtue in this type of male peacocking behavior anymore. It hasn't landed me a virtuous women during the last 18 years. Why would it suddenly start working now?

How can leftists say with a straight face that money shouldn't be a top concern for businesses? What does the customer usually consider first when shopping? Price. I try to buy my groceries on manager's special because a lot of times the butcher puts too much meat and fish out in the coolers. I'm actually doing my part to help keep the business afloat (continuing profits) by pursuing a lower price. I don't care if the meat is going to be past date in a couple days. I'll eat it today if it's at a savings. This cute presentation is operating on the premise that democracy in America was all about what the people want. We don't even have a true democracy. It's a republic. While some of the observations are correct, the argument falls flat at the very beginning. The corporation does not need to be removed from the government. The government needs to be removed from the corporation.

I am heartbroken to hear about your family. The fact that you can stick up for other children instead of internalizing child abuse is amazing. I have trouble speaking up against child abuse when I see it right in front of my eyes, mostly because I'm not exactly sure what I am seeing unless I really think it through. It's incredibly rare that I see a parent physically abusing a child in public. The last time I saw this happening, I was visiting my father's family, it was my brother being whipped by a belt, and it took me a solid 40 minutes of thought to confront my father about it. I could not react in the moment other than saying, "What the hell is going on here?" and hugging my brother and sister after the abuser had left the room. I was at the post office the other day and observed a woman in front of me in line, who had her two young children with her. She seemed incredibly distracted by her children, who were playing with the doors of the boxes about 30 feet away from her. Once more people started showing up behind us and line, she started anxiously coaxing her daughter, who was probably 2 or 3, over to her. "Come and help mommy! Mommy needs your help holding the mail." The son and daughter wandered over and she immediately tried to get her daughter to hold her mail. When she didn't want to hold the mail, the mother picked her up, and the daughter began to cry. She was obviously happier playing around the Post Office with her older brother. An older woman, probably sixty, was observing these motherly interactions and vocally chuckling to herself the whole time. Eventually, she started engaging the mother in conversation while she was holding her daughter, and the brother, probably age 4, wandered off again and started playing. This time, her mother was oblivious to her son as she was engaged in conversation. Within a minute or two, the son called out, "Mommy, I need help!" He had gotten his arm stuck behind a display. Mom ran over to help, afterwards keeping her son close by her side at the counter. She made a couple of strangely sarcastically sounding comments about the wonders of a child's curiousity, and held her son's hand for the remainder of the visit. He started passively struggling against her grip by leaning backwards horizonally inches above the floor. After about a minute of this, the mother shouted, "Please stand up." He then stopped. I don't think I observed overt abuse, but there was something about this woman's interaction with her children that seemed smothering, yet dismissive at the same time. Should I have said something? What could I have said? Is there a great question I may have posed to her? I was struggling to find words for my feelings in reaction to her mothering. I don't really have a personal basis for comparison because my own mother was largely absent from my childhood, just like my father. If I saw a woman hitting and smacking her children in public, my reaction would be immediate, but there are psychological forms of abuse that are much less obvious and much more devastating. You may have reacted strongly by yelling at the women, but you need to understand that the compulsion lies within you because of your history. The next time you see and confront child abuse, you will probably have a better handle on your reaction, and find yourself more calmly dealing with the emotions stirred up within you.

I started buying BTC in May 2014, when the price was about $480. I will keep holding mine (and buying more!) because they have utility beyond a speculation tool. Imagine what is going to happen to the price of BTC when QE4 starts, as people start fleeing the US dollar, and the prices of everyday items starts exceeding reasonable levels. Bitcoin needs a viable venue for buying and selling products via BTC without these transactions being taxed or regulated by the state. Every time someone has tried this, the Feds raid the company's servers and steal the coins. That is the true purpose and value of Bitcoin, and why it's such a threat to the establishment. When people can safely buy an unlicensed weapon tax-free from a complete stranger over the internet, we will know what economic freedom looks like. (Enter the DarkMarket, a peer-to-peer tool for online free trade! http://www.wired.com/2014/04/darkmarket/) I'm also not worried about the miners. Driving most of the miners out just means it will take longer to mine more coins, which means the price will face an upward pressure. Here's what Schiff had to say about cryptocurrencies yesterday, timestamp 22:25, to show the arguments from the perspective of a gold bug. He's very bearish on cryptocurrency, if you didn't already know.