Jack

I've been perturbed by the number of otherwise politically inactive people on Facebook adding a French Flag filter onto Facebook. One of my more trustworthy friends (who didn't change his picture) posted a status pointing out the trend, and I posted this in support of him. I think I figured out why I don't like the French flag filter, it's because the filter is no-thinking band-aid. When you put on the filter, you can leave it at that and ignore the circumstances that led to this tragedy, like the French Government's arm sales to Arab despots, allowing millions of fighting age "refugees" into their country, and neutering their own populace by making France a gun free country. The French Government has screwed their people by allowing the circumstances that led to the Pairs massacre, and showing your support by flying the French Government's colors isn't going to stop the next attach. Stopping foreign arm sales, increasing deportations, and allowing gun ownership would. What do you fine people think? Should free-thinking people be showing support for France, is the French flag filter a misdirection? Am I just an insane bigot who doesn't care about France in it's time of need?

I also find the term "unicorns" inappropriate. It's very discouraging to men who get into a bad relationship, then turn online and get the message that "all women are that way, you're better off alone." The men who believe that message start looking down on women and become inverse feminists. I've noticed in several of the FDR call-in shows with women that the comment section becomes filled with people saying "she's riding the cock carousel". The name calling and automatic dismissal are exactly the same strategies that feminist use to extract to shame men. A second problem with calling good women "unicorns" is that it shifts the locus of control for the relationship to an external source. A man who starts to believe good women are unicorns won't work as hard in relationships and is much more likely to dismiss a good woman for a single red flag, because after all, "good woman are unicorns." Lastly, telling women that the only women among them worthy of relationships are "unicorns" will discourage women from working hard in relationships. If they believe failure is inevitable, and no matter how hard they work, their man will leave because, "she isn't a unicorn," women won't work nearly as hard to become good women. Sorry if I got a bit ranty there. I've been thinking a lot about how abusive I've seen the MGTOW community get towards women, and I've gotten my Jimmies rustled. Maybe I shouldn't complain though, after all it's less competition for me!

Dig the article. Would love to see a mirror article for what qualities identify a grown-ass-woman as well!

Extending morality is an action who's alternative is inaction, not the opposite action. For example, if I do not eat, that doesn't mean I am throwing up. The argument that other species are incapable of "extending immorality" (hereafter called evil) and should not have evil inflicted on them can also be applied to rocks. A rock is not capable of being evil, and therefore does not deserve to be crushed (a destructive act that would be evil if inflicted on a moral actor) and melted down for gold, treating non moral actors or inanimate objects as moral actors quickly becomes absurd as your every step and breath becomes a transgression. Neither animals or rocks are capable of making decisions or choices on a moral basis. They also won't gain that ability unless they become a new species. This caveat is important so that future moral actors (such as babies) are still treated morally. At this point, there is no reason to suspect that animals will suddenly start making moral choices. I believe I've made a strong moral argument in my previous post and addressed the crux of the original poster's rebuttal. But there is one very important thing to consider, even if humanity wipes itself out, animal species will still continue to wipe each other out until the sun burns out and all life on earth dies. Only humanity has a chance of outliving the sun, and only through humanity can any piece of earth's ecosystem live on. The scale isn't weighing today's species and humanity, it's weighing the inevitable death of the planet and the preservation of known life. I suspect the original poster came here in bad faith in order to troll the forums. I won't be engaging in this thread anymore and only wrote this reply for the benefit of other people who happen by the topic. I'll still respond to personal messages and wish everyone the best! Keep on pondering!

I'm not sure about the last 5 years, but I do know that the number of ISPs was reduced as a result of regulation in the Clinton era. Watch The truth about net neutrality for more info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z_nBhfpmk4 That being said, recent rises in price could be a result of sharply increasing demand and infrastructure playing catch up. Netflix, youtube, and other streaming sites entered common use in the last 5 years or so. Their bandwidth requirements are absurdly high compared to text articles and video games.

I can't think of any rational system of measurement that gives non thinking species more value than humans. Economically, no species aside from humans has produced value, so humans are more valuable than all other species. Morally, no species beside humans are capable of being moral actors. Since other species are incapable of extending morality to others, they do not warrant having morality extended to them. Therefore there is no moral argument in favor of ending the human race for the sake of other species. Les Knight talked about the human race being destructive, but it's also the only species to ever create anything besides more of itself. He is comparing the negatives of humanity without ever considering the positives. Animals do not create art, trees do not build spaceships, no other species has created, or has the potential to create as much as humanity. We may very well be the only species to willing create another species (AI). This topic is another flavor of original sin which has been addressed and rebutted dozens of times on these forums, and by the FDR show. Advocating human extinction is intellectually and morally corrupt, as I discussed in the previous 2 paragraphs. That doesn't mean that you are personally a bad person, but you should examine why you're willing to spread and defend a movement dedicated to the extinction of your species. I guarantee it isn't' because you think other species hold more value than humans.

A Republican in my home state has proposed a bill in the Montana legislature that would make illegal, "any device, costume, or covering that gives the appearance of or simulates the genitals, pubic hair, anus region, or pubic hair region." here's a link to an article about it: http://billingsgazette.com/news/government-and-politics/missoula-lawmaker-yoga-pants-speedos-should-be-illegal-in-public/article_71538ba2-d529-5ec3-a289-108de20e9398.html The internet is already up in arms over the "yoga-pants ban," but I have spotted a more dire issue. A Montana paper, The Daily Inter Lake, has reported the law would also ban the exposure of nipples, including, wait for it... MALE NIPS. So say goodbye to river rafting without a shirt, trying to escape the summer heat, or proving your grit by wrestling bears in a jock strap (regular past-time here). So what do you think, grand wizards of FDR? Is this bill a terrible idea because the person pushing for it mentioned afterwards that "Yoga pants should be illegal in public anyway," is it a bad idea because it oppresses women's rights to wear the wonderfully slutty... I mean liberating leg covers. Is it a bad idea because it bans men from being topless? Or is it just a bad idea because it's absolutely ludicrous to send people to jail for what they wear?

I've been looking for ways to teach myself to use the R programming language. I'm an engineer with a lot of statistics and data use education. I learned R is a powerful language for statics analysis and big data usage, but did not get any education in it. Since R is free, and I have too much free time, I downloaded the R language and RStudio to write programs in. While I was looking for exercises and tutorials, I found a 40 video long lecture series that walks you through the functionality of R in a very easy to follow along way. Here's the link to the first video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX532N_XLIs&index=1&list=PLqzoL9-eJTNBDdKgJgJzaQcY6OXmsXAHU So far, R is very much like MatLab, and shares a lot of functionality with Minitab. If you're interested in learning some basic programming (easier than Java), and want to learn how to use some excellent tools for data analysis, check out R and the video series all for free. The series is top notch and the guy deserves way more traffic!

I came across an article on a war jounalists views of why young men are drawn to the military. https://medium.com/war-is-boring/sebastian-junger-knows-why-young-men-go-to-war-f163804cbf6 The article doesn't present very good evidence and puts forth a lot of things without substantial arguments, but it did get me thinking on rites of passage. Junger says that young men are drawn to the military because it's one of the only ways they know to become a man. It occurred to me that young men have no direction from school, family, or media what they have to do to transition from boys to men. So I'm curious, what modern rites of passage have you seen, and how do boys transition to men?

There's lots of tools to decide where to allocate resources in a company, mainly economic returns analysis. When deciding what to spend money on, a company will estimate where they will get the most bang for their buck. For keeping track of assets, prices are still used to estimate resource allocation. This is the whole purpose of accounting practices like GAAP which can be used to track inter-company transactions as well as outside purchases and costs. You're correct about smaller companies having a competitive advantage through quick decision making. Some larger companies try to emulate the smaller company advantage by making different business units as autonomous as possible. Gore (makers of Gore-tex) is a prime example of a diffuse corporate model.

As a mathematical concept, infinity seems to have the same validity as any other "number." Where infinity is different is that it is not observable. I can see that there are no eggs in my basket, I can see that there are a billion eggs in my basket, but I cannot see if there are infinite eggs. As for some infinities being larger than others, I remember from limits that one part of an equation would dominate another because it would approach infinity faster than the other. It wasn't that one infinity was bigger than the other, it's that one of the variables or ends of the equation would always be greater than the other, and you could cancel out an infinity that way. The definition of a number according to google is, "an arithmetical value, expressed by a word, symbol, or figure, representing a particular quantity and used in counting and making calculations and for showing order in a series or for identification." Since the definition of a number doesn't include that it needs to be observed, and since infinity doesn't contradict any part of that definition, I can conclude that yes, infinity is a number. It is different from every other number, but it is still a number.

I've heard Stef talk about this phenomenon before. Examples include Rome the republic becoming Rome the empire (why people still think republics will work 2000 years later is beyond me), The English empire that started out as constitutionally limited then collapsed after WW1 and WW2. And right now, the constitutionally bound United States of America that has become the nation with the most laws, the most prisoners, and the most occupied foreign countries in history. I as understand it, when a nation gets out of the way of it's economy, the economy grows faster than the rest of the world. The state leaching off that economy gets bigger and bolder than any of it's competing states. It takes over larger sections of it's economy and oppresses it's people, but does so slowly enough that the majority do not realize it. Since the state also grew more powerful than it's neighbors through the host economy's growth, it can leverage it's power to take what it wants from foreign powers as well as it's own people. Although, any state that can dominate others and it's own populace will, as is evident by empires that never had much freedom such as communist Russia. The reason for this is the very nature of the state itself, which must use violence to accomplish it's ends. Those ends are never for the good of the people. State's began with "Do what I say or I'll kill you," and that's what they'll always will be.

Some support for Stef's argument that officer's pistols were meant to shoot soldiers on their side: >Pistols don't have much stopping power unless they hit a vital organ. There are many records of people being shot in close combat with a pistol and not realizing it for another few minutes. The same thing has happened with rifles, but pistol users experience it more consistently. This lends credence to the idea of pistols as an execution device or a self defense tool rather than an offensive weapon. >Pistol developments in magazine size and rate of fire typically proceed rifle development. For example, in the US military, the Colt 1911 was developed as part of a self-loading pistol competition that originated in the 1890s. A self loading rifle was not adopted until 1936, 25 years after the pistol. If firearm development was about making your forces deadlier, it would makes sense to upgrade the general infantry man's rifle before his officer's pistol. >All officers had pistols. For a rear officer who did not expect combat, weapons as pistols wouldn't make much sense. There are weapons such as PDWs or carbines that were easily carried, would not fatigue a fit person and would be much more effective in repelling a surprise attack than a pistol. For generals and rear officers to carry pistols instead of carbines or PDWs indicates that their weapons had a purpose other than self defense. Pistols do make excellent backup weapons when a soldier's primary stops working, but for rear personnel, there are better options. There is also lots of anecdotal evidence surrounding the purpose of pistols in the military. For example, in Iraq, some American officers would conceal their sidearms as previously, the only people to carry sidearms were Sadam's secret police. So for Iraqis, pistols were associated with executions. I haven't done a lot of investigating, but these are some of the reasons I don't doubt that the primary purpose of a pistol is to execute, and not to fight. Thanks, and keep on pondering!

I head Stef say once that, "no good thought fits on a bumper sticker." I think that would make a great T-Shirt. Love your bumper sticker, it's a great way to promote the show!

I'm surprised at how well thought out the feminist arguments are in this case. I think they are deserving of a rational reply. Kevin did a great job dissecting each of the arguments. If you get the opportunity to talk with the feminist again, I'd be interested to hear what they have to say to Hannah's comparison between the Westborough Baptist Church and feminism. Although, this won't work on someone who isn't an atheist. I think you got lucky with this feminist and found someone who might be converted... might.