SnapSlav

Amen to that... ~_~ I'd say this forum compared to what I prefer is like saying Windows 2.0 is preferable to DOS; one is more "user friendly" and the other actually allows total control to the user. Since I'm used to those formats, just like I was used to working with DOS on my first computers, it never seemed cumbersome to me at all. It's convenient to highlight a section of text and click on a popup that turns that highlight into a quote. But it's also convenient to be able to manually arrange/design/format quote boxes, too, albeit it takes more skill/knowledge/understanding/experience to do the latter. Even though I haven't gone back to earlier forums I used to frequent, it's still embedded reflex within me to just toss out lines of forum code like [ i] [ quote=] [/ url] (WITHOUT the spaces) and so on and so on.

As you said, they both threaten the quality of incoming doctors, though I didn't say they were but tangentially related, I said it was tangential to the topic. Related topics, but distinct topics. But like I said, I merely suggested the topic, I don't own it. So it's not for me to say anything silly like "don't talk about X". The free tuition is a much newer event, but it's all part of a much bigger ugly picture of the collapse of our civilization. And I feel sad that I didn't write that with any hint of irony or hyperbole. =/

Blame the website. I've never used a forum with this type of interface, before. Everything I've used before has been varying degrees of "better", or at least it granted me total control over what I wrote and how the finished product looked. This doesn't. =/ But I'll see if I can tweak the post to be more accurate. EDIT: There, fixed. =]

Not to suggest that this isn't an important discussion, but it's kinda tangential to the topic... What's going on with this newest announcement isn't simply "lowering of standards", it's a shift from partially (and arguably predominantly) subsidized medical education to entirely subsidized medical education. As a principle, I am wholly against subsidization of industries. I try to talk people out of recycling plastics and papers because they're effectively charging themselves to be paid the pennies-on-the-dollar that they'll get for their trash... whereas they'd be getting paid for their trash in the form of gas-produced energy if they simply threw it away! Because it's subsidized, people don't see the true costs of what they're doing, so they do things they otherwise would have avoided doing. A growing and strong country cannot feed its population (at least, not healthily) off of corn products, so the bulk of farmers would not grow corn, but once the government steps in and subsidizes the corn, the farmers grow more of the stuff! We're in a health epidemic that was largely caused by obscuring the natural incentives of free market indicators of value. We're in a vicious death-spiral of dysgenic population alteration because welfare has removed the incentive for wealthy people to have more children and given that incentive to poor people. We're in a global humanitarian crisis because of foreign aid for the same reasons. Every time "good things" are subsidized, we end up creating disasters. What I'm seeing is we're going to reverse the direction that medicine has taken us if these paths continue. We're going to go back to a time where going to the doctor was a risky decision more than it was a good decision. Or worse, we're going to see a major collapse of the entire industry, when generations of capable doctors fail to be created, because social programs stepped in and removed market incentives. Would I like it for BOTH market incentives to dictate who can and cannot be a doctor, AND admission standards to be unflinchingly fair and unbiased? Absolutely. But the two topics are only tangentially related, they're still separate topics of discussion. But by all means, don't let me discourage you! If this is the direction people wish to steer the conversation, then this is what people want to talk about! =)

You quote "some Chinese guy" earlier, but I think this snippet is a glittering gem which I would like to save! I've long liked the Fight Club rendition of this sentiment, "I can't get married; I'm a 30-year-old boy!" This also echoes that, but also says so much more. It's more than just the boys, it's the girls too. I'm seeing a generation surrounding me that are children playing at adulthood, and I think this sentence explained it to me the best. So thanks!

So apparently NYU has announced that their medical school will have free tuition to all of its students. They touted this as "improving diversity" as they anticipated it to remove (any and all) barriers to entry. One news station even described it as eliminating "merit based systems" from the equation. The announcement was met with thunderous applause. They're hoping this policy will be adopted all across the country. This worries me... Nothing in this world is free. You know that what you're doing has value because someone is willing to pay a price for it. Price tells us what we can and cannot do. When we remove incentives to put our time to something useful, we lose the valuable desire to do that useful something. When something of incredible value requires equally incredible dedication, it deserves the necessary price barrier so that only those dedicated to pursuing it will do so. Now we have young women spending their most prime years studying a service that many of them will abandon. We have the floodgates opened so that people who have no business attempting medicine will now waste their time, and the facility's resources, pursuing such degrees. Simply making medicine itself "free" in the countries attempting socialized medicine has universally resulted in a tremendous disaster and very costly, incredibly slow medical care. And now they want to apply this same disaster to the study of medicine, too? Someone tell me I'm dreaming, or that I missed something that makes this a-okay somehow... ~_~

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeowzah! I REALLY procrastinated on this! >_< Well it should go without saying that I finished reading the book... uh... months ago, and I really enjoyed it! Quite amusingly, the one section I'd had a bit of a reservation over remained the singular section of the book that I wasn't completely sold over (that being about his interpretation of inductive reasoning). Like many other books I have read, it followed a formula, and that formula exists for a very good reason, it works. He used simplistic words and analogies for the same reason Trump never digs deep into his bag of language when trying to reach an audience: you want to be able to communicate to as many people as possible. I wanted to joke that I found Stef's "Bob" character to be a god-like entity because of how multi-faceted he could be, so much so that I really wanted to meet this person to behold their glory! Obviously this is because Stef just names a hypothetical character "Bob" when he's trying to make a point, and obviously the Bob of one chapter is not the same Bob from 2 previous chapters, or even one of multiple Bobs several chapters before that! So linguistically the book did a good job of keeping concepts simple, but still engaging, so "just about anyone" could pick it up and read it! I even found myself periodically hearing it in his voice (I read the physical book, not audiobook) since I can now do that after listening to hundreds of his videos and podcasts. I don't believe I was ever "lost" while reading the book (meanwhile I had to stop and re-read paragraphs of Warren Farrel's Why Men Earn More REPEATEDLY because of how densely packed those pages could be) but consequently neither did I feel particularly won over. The book didn't really tell me anything I didn't know already. But people who have never heard about UPB, peaceful parenting, or rational-empiricism-based philosophy? I think the book could be its own worst enemy. It's a gift to people who already know what's written down before they read it, and after they read it they may come away as I was realizing that they'd heard this all before. It's a coffee table paperweight to people who don't know what's held within its pages, because the instant a dear concept is reviewed with a skeptical eye in this book, I know they'll just stop reading it. I mean I couldn't get my best friend to even say "thank you" when I gave him a free copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad when we were in college, despite gushing over the book with him, and having very similar dispositions in many respects, and we both had "not the best" relationships with our fathers, so a book that lionized the concept of a "second father" should've really struck a shared chord with us both. But the truth is... I sought out the book so I could read it, and since my friend didn't, when I gave him the book, he lacked any interest or enthusiasm whatsoever to bother picking it up. I fear this is the fate to be had of The Art of the Argument; not because I wish it to be, but because I fear that's just what most people are like. That being said, I'm definitely going to recommend it to as many people as I find who share a similar interest in not being a brainwashed leftist, which out here in deep-blue California is such a high barrier to entry, that I won't be recommending this book to that many people I meet. But I do have several in mind, already. However, like I already said, I worry that people are just too easily distracted, or too easily put-off by surprising information, otherwise I'm just recommending a book to them on a topic that they're already WELL-familiar with. So about that gazelle analogy about inductive reasoning that didn't quite resonate with me... I went into that section of the book a bit confused because Stefan opened it with very clear endorsement of the concept of inductive reasoning. Not as the one-and-only way, but as a viable tool. Full disclosure, I'm entirely aware that what I have been taught as a child may have been VERY nefarious propaganda that is entirely false, so take what I'm about to say with the appropriate grain of salt, but... I always grew up "understanding" that deductive reasoning was observing evidence, and using a form of rationalization (best typified in the "proofs" segment of geometry lessons) attempting to arrive at the proper conclusion. Meanwhile inductive reasoning was starting with a conclusion, then coming up with the argument that supports it, often by cherry-picking evidence that backs up the notion while dismissing dissenting evidence/arguments. In the book, meanwhile, Stefan expresses inductive reasoning as being to rationale as cautious-alertness is to a gazelle. He described the lion as needing to use precise planning to catch the gazelle, thus representing deductive reasoning, and the gazelle's fear that any stirring in the grass could be a lion to be an excess of inductive reasoning, but an overall cautiousness fueled by such paranoia as a good representation of inductive reasoning. Or perhaps I just didn't get that part at all? Either way, I wasn't convinced by the end of reading that section, and I was certain he'd touch upon it some more so I might better understand his argument... only to find that he didn't. So is this the one island in a book I otherwise thoroughly enjoyed which contained a less-than-stellar concept? Or did I gloriously misread his explanation? That's about it for my current thoughts on the book (horribly belated, though they may be), and I plan on rereading it soon, though for now I have a few other titles on my plate that I need to get to, first. Not the least of which is Jordan Petersons' 12 Rules for Life! I only have so much time in the day to spend peddling away on the exercise bike during which I can squeeze in my reading! I can bring books with me when I go on appointment and find myself with time to kill, but I generally like to have time dedicated to reading, which is either hour chunks while I exercise daily, or spontaneous and unpredictable down times where I can make the most of them with reading. Neither is ideal for getting through multiple books as soon as possible. But that being said, I tore through The Art of the Deal years ago doing the same thing, ending up going over my planned exercise time so I could keep reading. So I wouldn't put it past myself to likewise fiddle with my schedule so I can squeeze in some more good reading time. I'm really looking forward to next time I read this book, after I've read some other great titles, so I have more ideas swimming through my head to entertain me! ^^

I DID say 5% was "being generous" though. I only included the possibility because I can't honestly rule it out, for the same reason I argued that you could've mis-remembered this whole affair. Hell, there have been times where the "Yugoslav wars never happened" propaganda has been so stifling that I even momentarily believed that I concocted every one of those memories of bombed-out buildings and sad moments with family ALL in my head! So it goes without saying, that without absolute certainty- a real bitch of a thing to have -I leave room for doubt. Me saying "5% likelihood, which is generous" is about the same thing as saying "never happened, full stop". Well, that's more than me, that's for sure! Unless we count the stuff I wrote in a matter of days when I was 8-9... which I don't think is fair, so no... XD Not sure if we're talking about the same person? Blonde's videos that stick out in my mind are her argument for the failure of civic nationalism, her detailing the genetic history of her lineage and how genes are propagated, and a MULTITUDE of subjects tackling the culture wars. About the only thing "girly" about her channel is that she herself is quite the looker. Oh, and she has a small dog, which is kinda cliche West-Coast Girl, I suppose. But I generally watch her on the Beauty and the Beta podcast (and their weekly live call-in show if I ever get around to it) more than anything else. Since she's the "stop being such a touchy-feely pansy" counterbalance to Matt Christiansen's liberal half of the show, that says a LOT about how forthright she tends to be! There have been VERY few episodes (if any) of that podcast which left me disappointed. I know there was one topic which I was unhappy about their coverage, but I honestly am struggling to remember what it was about. Generally speaking, the podcast goes like this: Summary of the week's crazy shit. If it's at all polarizing between the two, Matt will take a Sargon-esque liberal deference while Blonde points out that we've seen this damn dance several times already. The rest of the time you'd think they agree on just about everything, except cringe videos, which Blonde HATES and that Matt LOVES to make her suffer through. Except that they actually do disagree on most things, but they have strong respect for each other so they don't usually fight about it. It's not really about "here's what you coulda said back then, but this is kinda pointless to know about, now". It's more like if you had a cousin who recited the wage gap myth to you in idle conversation, and you'd briefly forgotten all the myriad of ways to shoot that down for the silly superstition that it is, even if you filed them away as someone to part company with, you could be better prepared for the next person that comes along and says the same tired lie that they've been taught to repeat. Sooner or later, it'll be someone that you either take a gamble on, or you already know that they have good wiring but that they've been fed bad data, and it's more than worthwhile to correct them. Sometimes "missed opportunities" with someone else is the reminder to keep yourself brushed up on anti-crazy data/arguments for the next opportunity to come. Like the wage gap, the argument about pot prosecution vs coke prosecution is a COMMON fallacy brought up by lefties. You can't be the expert on 100% of the stupid shit they recite, but seeing 50% of it coming will make you look like an intellectual titan... or they'll start the autistic screeching because they instinctively know that they can't win, but they can't admit it. Either way, you win. The consequence of avoiding the risk of becoming a monster is to let other monsters have their way. Be wary of the abyss staring back, but you have to take that risk to hunt the monsters.

Fine... lead a horse to water and all that. I'm not gonna force this issue any further. The confusion could have been averted by simply quoting the parts you were responding to, much like what I am doing now. If I quote a block of text, in which you make 3 distinct statements, and I'm only responding to one of the statements and I say that I disagree, that kinda implies that there is disagreement with the block, unless otherwise stated. When I remove sections of particular quotes, this is because I don't want to entangle tertiary comments up in a response. Many have done it before me, and it's practically a necessary staple of forum conduct to avoid such misunderstandings. It really helps conversation along when you do that. Like I said, can't have been me. I don't think I EVER said a word on the FONV boards over on Steam, nor do I believe I EVER used the Artorias avatar on my Steam profile. The second is possible, so I won't rule it out entirely, but we're talking about 5% likelihood, and that's being generous. We'd had a previous discussion about a year ago on these boards where we went off on a tangential gaming conversation, and FONV featured considerably in that conversation. Given what you described, I am positive that this conversation was what you were remembering. Even if your brain was telling you it came from elsewhere, this is where I stemmed from. Good to know. =) I forgot to include in my comment- but you sorta touched on this idea yourself anyway -that writers share in common that trait that Stefan described in actors where they can be very... non-genuine. Like actors need to inhabit the minds of other people, they can be fundamentally disturbed individuals, writes need to be able to inhabit "multiple minds". The major difference is that the writers are creating the minds that they temporarily inhabit, while the actors rarely have the opportunity to do so. The way I described it, when talking about my own works, was that "every character was a part of me". Meanwhile actors are always playing other people, not simply part of themselves. This is, of course, assuming that the writer in question is actually TRYING to do a convincing/good job. They could just as easily not do ANY of this... and I'd argue that makes for much less compelling reading as a result. Anyway, all rather redundant, at this point, since you already understand that! Might as well try to dig into that considerable backlog I've left for myself... I think one of my biggest hangups and why I didn't jump on it sooner, was... I have never even HEARD OF "yandex"! If you wrote a yahoo acount- or hell, even one with aol -I would've trusted it without a second thought. But what is yandex? <.< Well I don't think this necessarily applies to Blonde in the Belly of the Beast, because she lives in a VERY liberal environment, and she has many similarities with Lauren Southern in that her ability to not cave to the social pressures of group think was because of wisdom imparted to her at a young age (and a good family life, I'm sure) rather than simply "naturally leaning right". After all, she IS a young woman. EVERYTHING in her biology is screaming at her to be a liberal, and she's very, very conservative, but she admits that she still feels that nurturing tendency attempting to "override" her better judgement. What I find particularly endearing about her perspective is that she often tackles those doubts of hers as a "stupid woman-brain". I adore self-effacing whimsy. X) I highly, highly recommend her work, not just to you, but anyone else reading this. She's bee on Stefan's YouTube show a couple times, which adds to surprise that her co-host for Beauty and the Beta, Matt Christiansen, has YET to be on the show! I love the way he tackles major events that VERY few other outlets even bother to touch upon at all, so I think he really adds a lot of value to the so-called "skeptosphere", that's for sure. I think this is a pretty huge issue. For one thing, humans and dogs are very hard to separate, because they were bred alongside us for so many centuries, they just "go with" us, for better or for worse. It's one thing if you had a MASSIVE case of arachnophobia and you knew someone with a pet tarantula, because spiders don't really make for the best of pets. Nor do snakes. So in neither case will you really have to face owners with these kinds of unusual pets that really frighten you. But dogs? Dogs are "man's best friend" in true spirit. They were made to be that way. So dogs will be a ubiquitous presence in your life, like it or not, so you gotta be able to handle it. For another matter... ANY weakness will have its moment. Even if it seemed like a particularly rare trigger that you could handle, Murphy will find a way when you least expect it. I had a pretty specific trigger associated with a very personal trauma, so I expected to be able to get away with not conquering that trauma and besting that weakness, and I was very, very wrong. Among friends, at work, it found a way to strike, and I realized that I had to get a handle on this thing. I still don't like the subject of that trauma, and the specific experience that imparted that trauma upon me will still upset me if I dwell on it for long, but at least I won't fall apart at the simple exposure to this trigger anymore. You don't need to conquer it all in one day. It COULD take years! Just start working on it. You don't need to have a dog as a pet for the rest of your life, but preferably you want to be able to feel "okay" around dogs, even if you never come around to liking them. Sounds like you really made up your mind that you don't want to bother with him. So this begs the question, why is this an issue for you? Are you concerned that you could lose out on a meaningful friendship, even if every fiber of your being is telling you "I really don't give a damn"? Or do you see hope in "turning him around", but you'd rather not be the one to do all the work to get him to come around? Or is it his new kid, and you're thinking that if you had a relationship with him, you had the opportunity to make a difference in the kid's life, and prevent another child from being early-indoctrinated into the leftist ranks? Whatever the case may be, he's on your mind. On matters like seeing racism in government because of MJ vs coke... that's a very common red herring. The two drugs are NOT at all comparable. The better example to bring up is the prosecution of meth and crack, as both do roughly the same level of harm to the individual, have similar rates of addiction, similar costs, and one is vastly preferred by whites and the other is vastly preferred by blacks. Because the drugs are so similar, it's no surprise to find that prosecution of these drugs is also very similar. You don't see a difference like with cocaine and marijuana. For another thing, we're in a major cultural shift where more and more states and local jurisdictions are deciding that they don't want to prosecute for MJ offenses, and they'd rather legalize the substance. You won't hear the same case about snow. So you could easily attack such a flimsy argument as the product of bias that it is, if you wanted to. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what excuses he uses, if he wants to see something, he'll see it. If he doesn't know that's what he's doing, then revealing that will help him reconsider. If he DOES want to do that, consciously or unconsciously, then probing will only help you learn that's what he's doing. Because revealing it someone who wants to find excuses will either confound them, and they'll double down because that's their natural inclination, or they'll lie through their teeth knowing that they've been found out, and they'll try to distract... or even come up without another excuse (moving the goal post). Either way, if you're already set on leaving him out of your life, except for those rare times where you see family every now and then, regardless of how well you get along with them or not, then this is all a rather moot point. It only matters if you actually seek to try to do something about this relationship.

Well if you wanna be accurate to how you speak, and you speak improperly, then that's how you wish to write. But the "edited" version you gave had a bit of a ramble without any pauses at the start of it, and if you rambled before you paused, then okay, you did it right. But you DID say you edited it, so that kinda infers that you knew you didn't. If you wanna have the best of both worlds, where you represent how you speak in your writing, but you also do so properly, you can. That's the balance I always strive to strike, and I think I manage it pretty well. And you neglect to touch on the fact that in your pursuit of "context", you REMOVED context from a comment. That was kinda the crux of my point... If what you're being repetitive about is justified, the fact that it's repetitive is a moot point. Seeing as I GRAVITATE towards context, I can't imagine that your driving home the point about the importance of context was at all warranted. At. All. Case in point... Here's another example of neglecting the entire point of what I said. The paragraph you quoted was not just me saying "I was joking, deflect, deflect, deflect, deflect." It was opening with a comment, moving on to a point, and concluding on that point. If you took that literally, you would've noted that the majority of that statement was, "Yeah, I agree." Can't have been me, if this is true and I'm being honest. I believe FDR is the only place where I've taken to the Artorias avatar with my nickname being the same. I think I may have used it as a placeholder on some... other... sites, but for the most part I've got Donquixote Doflamingo, Guts, and a few of my own drawings as my avatars. I don't think I've EVER used Artorias as my Steam avatar... Seems to me you're just remembering our earlier conversation in another topic on these boards, and your mind's conflated that with some other instance of you reading some stuff on Steam. Possibly stuff by me, possibly something completely different. The human mind's ability to manufacture memories can be quite outstanding, sometimes... First (or second) person perspective presents you a great opportunity to differentiate your characters. For instance, if both of them have the same tendency to wander off in their thoughts and notice the same sorts of mundane details that conceal plot-relevant observations, then they won't feel like different characters. No amount of representing their different ways of speaking will make a difference if the reader picks up on that they both think the same way. This is one of the greatest struggles of many writers, because they have to know how they write, as the author, and they have to convincingly fabricate the way in which their characters would write the story, if they were to author one. The Great Gatsby is a perfect example of a fictional character from the book authoring the book. The various stories of Sherlock Holmes is another. If every story written by these authors had the same manner of exploring different character's thoughts, one could argue that they weren't the most inventive author. But in a book with TWO different narrators, this put that observation directly under the spotlight. It may not make any damn difference in the long-run, but just something to think about.

I'm reminded of two things that I think apply: 1) Stef's recent call-in show video of the "gay" couple realizing one wasn't gay, where one of them described living out in the wilderness in a cabin effectively off the grid. 2) The YouTube channel "Primitive Technology" (basically recordings of hand-building things to live off the grid). Perhaps the solution you're looking for is less a stockpile of food that will last you, and more the skills that will help you get by if, as you say, normal societal structures break down. You gotta know how to attack problems with inventive solutions, and you're looking towards hoarding where you could be looking in the direction of resource-production. If you live in the middle of a big city where there aren't any low-population areas to set up camp in relative isolation and safety, then I think gangs and hoodlum violence is your biggest worry, not your food acquisition. I do agree with Boss's statement of don't underestimate the free market. While I love the Post Apocalyptic genre, they're all unlikely and highly impractical scenarios of what might happen if a massive catastrophe struck the world. These storytellers assume that people are simply incapable of moving on and rebuilding after shit hits the fan. Don't underestimate the capacity of human beings to strive to make their surroundings more suitable to their needs. When outside force is removed, things that need doing people will get done. So my suggestion? Start looking up these survival videos, see if you can arrange going camping and practice your survival skills. These will take you a LONG way in the event that they're ever needed. Stores of food, meanwhile, can always be stolen. Murphy's a bitch like that. Always account for Murphy.

Hmmmmmm, still needs improvement. "Any man who is, I respect by default, because he has achieved by my current age of 20 what I want to achieve by 30." This hits all the right marks. Proper placement of commas to denote proper moments of pause and emphasis, a bit of tweaking to make the sentence flow better, and it all means exactly the same thing using exactly the same words, the only changes being the added/removed commas and rearrangement of the component sentiments. Like I've been saying, I know my shit. =P It should go without saying that I was kidding, thus the "so what you're saying is..." in quotes and all. I like to jump on the meme train every now and then, but unfortunately for me, I don't have remotely the creativity to invent any of my own... or when I do, I've been long-beaten to the punch. Anyway, I do agree. Few men are remarkable enough to have found their character, and are standing on their own, enough to earn the right to start a family, and have started it. Cause fire and forget is not the same thing as being a young-and-hungry entrepreneur who's got his shit together and started a family while barely out of his teens. That being said, however, we SHOULD be aiming for that, and the fact that it's not so common (in the West) these days... more's the pity. That got a bit irritatingly repetitive. I don't disagree that context is paramount, but I don't see how that single point warranted recounting as a response to the various different things I'd said. Hell, I even STATED how a comment was in context to what you said, but you separated it from the rest- taking it out of context by doing so -then proceeded to comment that context was key. I feel that the irony deserves some acknowledging! Hmm, I don't think that was me. Perhaps you're recalling a previous conversation you and I had on these boards where we got into it about the greatness of FONV? As far as I can recall, I never really said much on the FONV boards. I DID write a review for it, but it was a "Steam review", which is just one of those tiny blurbs that's barely even one paragraph. And if it hasn't become abundantly apparent, less-than-a-paragraph is just not my style. =/ The most recent Steam boards banter I can recall participating in were from a couple months ago, perhaps end of last year, and after I moved onto something else, I stopped bothering with those conversations. Thought it might have been that which you had happened upon... cause I got downright mean a couple of times. XD That description brings me back to the thought of Steinbeck's works. Cause seriously, East of Eden is a BEAST to read (no pun intended), as are most of Steinbeck's real "books", in contrast to Of Mice and Men being a shorter novella rather than a full novel. His shorter works, which still considered full books by most, are quite small and easy reads compared to the mainstay of his career. Obviously I can't comment until I've seen the work myself, but the way you described the reactions is interesting. At least based on how you characterized their tastes, I may lean towards how your therapist feels, because sometimes characters aren't everything, as sometimes they're swept up in a series of events they simply CANNOT control or alter, and so you see what they're really made of by how they handle this situation. The flip-side, seeing characters in and of themselves, is very "girly". Sometimes, the things going on in a character's head all the time are NOT that interesting. Sometimes they are. The titular Old Man of The Old Man and the Sea was a great case of a character's thoughts being worth exploring, but it was ALSO a story where the character had no control over his circumstances, and so his response to the situation informed what he was really made of. So that book sorta touched on both of those different "tastes" simultaneously. Perhaps your work does this too, or perhaps it leans heavy one way and not the other, or perhaps something completely different than what you described? I wouldn't know until I read it, myself. (Yes, I know, email or bust. I'm getting around to it...)

As a general rule, end sentences that have begun, and sentences that have not begun you need not end. What could "sentences that have not begun" POSSIBLY mean? Well, asides are a perfect example. An aside is either a fully-fledged statement, or a brief (and incomplete) statement. The incomplete aside need not have grammatically correct punctuation, so long as the complete statement that incorporates it does have the correct punctuation. For instance, that "and incomplete" aside was not a fully-formed statement, so it need not necessitate a period with the parentheses. But if the parentheses blocked-in a self-contained thought within a full-statement, then both might need their own separate punctuation. This can get complicated, especially if you think/speak in a constantly-streaming series of tangents and offshoots like I do, myself. This is why I prefer certain methods of denoting such side-commentary depending on the given aside. Hyphen breaks for next-to-full statements, parentheses for full-statements that do not conclude when the full statement concludes, semicolon and colon where appropriate, and so on and so on. We may never know. I don't recall editing that post, and it's been weeks, so I honestly couldn't tell you if I fixed an error that you spotted before the fix, or if you indeed spotted something in your delirium that wasn't really there. Or... perhaps PROJECTING your own errors onto perfect-and-flawless me? But... you wouldn't do that, would you? =3 To be brutally blunt, I do think you don't know. Your example was riddled with passive language! "Therefore I'd say 'not well; he's got food poisoning from that rancid meat he ate from the back of the fridge that he didn't want to waste'" "Wanting to" is another version of "going to", which is a huge passive language faux pas. The slang "I'd" implies the passive "would", and the slang "he's got" implies the passive "has received", which is VERY passive- on top of past-tense! Like I said, active-language is hard to master. It's easy to slip into passive language... like I just did. And did again. And again! >_< Which game? I had a recent stint of verbal-schoolings (the easiest to boast about, and the least worthwhile to matter) on some boards a few months back. But for all I know, there might just be quite an old backlog of things I've said that I don't even remember talking about! I think that rule of thumb is easily torn apart by the same principle as avoiding spoiler by not mentioning something at all. You hear the logic behind spoiler alerts A LOT when Game of Thrones is the topic of conversation, but I believe the same thing happens when people discuss other major works of fiction, like Marvel movies, TWD, etc. I'm in agreement with those that state that saying ANYTHING can constitute spoilers, particularly in a series such as GOT where death happens to many characters, and so unpredictably that those alive in the books still find their way dead in the show; because simply mentioning a character can spoil the fact that they make it out of a particularly dramatic scrape alive, should you notice that they're in this scrape, but you don't recall them having done said mundane activity that the spoiler talked about. In context to your comment, not describing the castle unless it has a purpose clearly gives away that the object will serve an intended purpose. By contrast, those paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs of Steinbeck describing rivers and streams and forests and mountains that the two rival families would COME to live in (They hadn't even settled there yet!) served to settle the reader into the setting itself, but it also served to ground the story in its pace and give you a future sense of urgency. When several chapters are dedicated to telling you about a valley, multiple series of events involving a blood feud going on in a single chapter will feel like events are rapidly spiraling out of control! It REALLY took me out of the book to have to slog through all that scenery description, but it was very ingenious on his part. Meanwhile, if all he'd done in Of Mice and Men was to describe Lenny's predilection for soft things and bad habit of breaking those soft things, and only described Curly's Wife as having soft hair, you would've seen the tragedy coming a mile away, because you knew those two details were the only thing that mattered. Sometimes, you gotta toss out extra details, if only to serve as a distraction. Did my mentioning of the peculiarity of a character's pendant (an absolutely trivial detail, it would seem) matter to story in the long-run? Oh, absolutely! But did my description of another character being a dog and sleeping with several women have much impact on the story? No, not really; it simply served to tell you a little bit about that character. Him being a dog didn't have any major impact on the story at all... even if the things those actions happened around DID matter. Was fucking that babe in a hot spring really what mattered, or was the fact that she used her body to manipulate him what really mattered? Since the latter detail is implied, you could figure it out while reading the event, or you could find out when it is clearly revealed to you. Because it's couched in minutia, you don't really know what's important and what's tangential, so the story can still surprise you. Again, ASoIaF is DAMN good at this! TONS of minutia, but much of it both informs the world, as well as foreshadow major events to come. (Incidentally, if I just spoiled OMAM for you, the irony is not lost on me... >_<) The hell for? O.o Well a perfect example was my uncovering of a TYPO in Stef's latest book! Yes, he missed something in proofing-stage of The Art of the Argument, so now the book is flawed! But really, should that have stopped him from printing it? I knew what he meant, and if I wasn't so ornery about writing (e.g. a "typical" person) would I have even noticed this typo? Probably not. "Perfection is the enemy of good." Teaching techniques meant to improve a skill is just that, skills to help improve. If they are used to delay, they can work against you. If you would rather make a book that you look back on in 20 years and think to yourself "Oh GOD I can't believe I ever let this see the light of day!" but the printing/sale of which propelled you to make better books, that's perfectly fine. Even random internet squabbles from years ago that I find bother me on a writing-style level, to say nothing of those novels I wrote. I still love the stories I made, even if the language I used in those stories makes me cringe... ~_~ "So what you're saying is..." 19 is too young to be married, or be a father, or own property? =P

My oh my! I was curious if days had gone by without reply because your posts were being put into Hidden mode (I still don't get why that happens to SOME of my posts, and not others...) but THIS? Damn, what a flood! On account of my need to do some other things with my time at this moment, and the sheer volume of responses I must cover, I'm gonna have to do that "I'll touch on just a few points" thing again, though I promise I won't delay for several months this time! XD Hey, I'm JUST a bit more than a decade your senior. I ain't THAT old! =P Well, no. Active language deliberately avoids (and achieves the polar opposite of) "passive language", so-called because it simply describes things as "in a state of being" rather than in a moment of achieving something. You might notice this when you read articles by leftist journalists describing antifa riots as "violence breaking out" rather than explaining that parties are responsible for actions. Passive language makes frequent use of past-tense and relies heavily upon variations of states of being. Active language, by contrast, makes HEAVY use of verbs and often creates very colorful phrases to add an extra bit of flair to otherwise drab language. As a demonstration, that ENTIRE short paragraph above was structured using active language (and this sentence is not). Examples of active vs passive: He's still breathing vs he yet draws breath. The mountains were taller than the eye could see vs the peaks of the mountains reached far into the heavens beyond conceivable vision. Obviously mountains don't reach, they're inanimate rocks. So active language tends to describe static objects as agents of some kind of action. I'm often reminded of Steinbeck's work when I think about this element of active language, not necessarily because he never uses passive language, but because he spends entire CHAPTERS dedicated to describing scenery (like the first several of East of Eden) before he gets around to his story. The simple way to reformat ones writing into an active sort is to go line by line and seek out and eliminate ANY of the following words or phrases, or they variants: is, am, were, goes, does, be, was, "is ___ing", and so on. It's a very simple concept to grasp, but quite difficult to master, because of how endemic passive language is to how we communicate. We are creatures in a state of flux of being, so we describe ourselves and the world around us as "being" this or that. I can understand the hesitancy to take writing advice from someone who does not make a living off of their writing. "Those who can, do; those who cannot, teach" and all that. XD That's like listening to an electrician give you tax advice; he could have very good advice, but it's not his job, so he could very well be wasting your time, too. I only know that my adoration of One Piece is a mixture of appreciation for a finely crafted story, and of FIERCE displeasure at reading the wikia dedicated to the series, because every new development is described in as much detail as the evidence can support, but ALWAYS using the phrase "as seen in" over and over and over and over again... It's AGONY reading fan-made article after fan-made article written in passive language, because they just don't know any better! T_T I call BS. I re-read my original post and see no such errors of which you speak! What hast thou spotted that which I dost not?

Of course I did. Hence the anime eyes. =)

It's all in good spirits, of course! ^^ I can just throw out a couple off the top of my head, cause it's not just you, but anyone can learn from these. I'll be specific, but I don't want to cite and quote exact examples. We've each written A LOT at this point, and needless padding just seems excessive. For one thing, there are differences in idioms and phrases from country to country, so shared language does not mean shared customs or shared phrases. "Blood is thicker than water" is the way one culture says it, and "blood isn't water" is the way another says it, for example. That being said, I'm not aware of ANYONE who says "clench thirst". The proper phrase would be to "quench thirst", as quenching is specifically defined as satisfying ones thirst. There were a few other curious instances of phrasing that I think likewise spawn from writing homonyms in place of the words they should have been, similar to how people these days will incorrectly write "would of" instead of "would've". Next, syntax is everything. If a sentence has all the structure of going from setup to revelation to conclusion, only to lack the final piece of the puzzle. <- That just looks all WRONG, wouldn't you agree? Likewise, an aside- either denoted by pause through commas, or by separation through hyphens, or by segmentation through brackets/parentheses, or by emphasis through quotes -needs to be held to the same flow of the sentence. (I find hyphen separation is best when the side thought itself requires a few commas to pause and collect your thoughts, and parentheses seem most appropriate to serve as examples, as seen with this very explanation!) If your thoughtful aside interrupts a thought, at the end of the aside, you finish your thought. I noticed you had a slip of misreading this exact thing when you thought Sieg said that the "retarded" uncle had 3 kids; the structure of the statements actually made clear that he was back to talking about the favored uncle. (Granted that came after the end of a LONG parenthesized section, so it's easy to make that mistake, cause one can lose sight of where he's going when an aside keeps going... and going...) And finally on the topic of syntax, place your commas and your periods where they belong. Periods end the sentence, commas denote where you pause. Your pause may come before you make an aside, but it should also come after the conclusion of that aside, to denote the return to the previous statement. There were a couple of these, nothing catastrophic. =) Your post was FAR from illegible, and generally I always tend to find errors in ANY posts I read (including my own, frequently), I just thought I'd whimsically target you just cause it happened to coincide with the point I was making, and I didn't want to EXCLUDE you from my comment at all... but like I said, you aren't necessarily the subject of this thread, so I didn't want to make it all about you, either. That being said, this post was entirely about you (kinda), so I should probably stop. XD

Good to see you! (Mostly because I haven't been coming around, I'm sure you've been here far more frequently than myself! ^_< ) It goes without saying that it's really commendable how much detail you went into on what you've experienced and how it's helped shape your decisions for the future. I'm not sure if I should go into such detail, myself... although I think I would be spoiling the party if I don't? XD Maybe, lemme warm up to it... But my advice, in little bits and pieces, wherever I can find it appropriate to offer any: Y'know, I was a writer in the past, and although I haven't really been arranging any books lately, I still have the old skills kicking around in my head. I can always offer some pointers, or at the very least, some constructive, critical feedback- say, like pointing out errors in MUCH of barns' post, for example? =D (But he's not the subject of this discussion, so I won't put him on the spot (unless he wouldn't mind? =o), suffice it to say, I'm not trying to be mean, just saying............ saw some errors, and I'd only offer corrections for correction's sake.) While it's certainly true that every writer has his/her own writing style, there are still many objectively true things to consider about the process of writing. Active rather than passive language (don't even get me STARTED on reading wiki articles), proper placement of particular punctuation (pardon the alliteration, it honestly was a happy coincidence), so on and so forth. Everybody doesn't have to read exactly like Steinbeck, but it's a REALLY good idea to have as few errors as possible! *_* Just throwing that out there... I'm afraid I must be the bearer of some bad news... Work relationships? Business-partner relationships? Using people for utilities? All of this IS "personal stuff". Whether you're starting a business, or you're on the job any given day, or you own a big and profitable company, EVERYTHING is "the personal stuff". I have found that, for whatever reason (perhaps it's the increasingly-detached distance people have from the services around them, or the manner our culture looks at the world, or whatever), people seem to think of things that don't involve directly looking at another human face as being some kind of "machine". They see their interactions with business as minor plays in the midst of giant cogs trying to move things along, and they don't feel like anything human is going on. They consider that the world is just flowing along in a very systematic manner, with corporations being these gigantic monoliths that don't involve any human emotion at all. All of this is false. EVERYTHING is people interacting with people. Every time you pick up the phone to deal with customer support, you're talking to a human being who is worrying much the same way you might be that they might come off weird and embarrass themselves over the phone. Products getting "churned out" is the direct result of people passing the time as they chat with one another, helping machines do what other people want them to do. Most of all, every business relationship is a close friendship LONG before it ever reaches the point of "want to go into business with me?" The term "nepotism" gets thrown around, when in fact, that's just the reality of humans being humans. Business teams are husbands and wives, families, or very close friends. It's not some kind of "unfair" deal that you are disadvantaged by, it's just that people naturally wish to help those they are close to, before they ever wish to help a total stranger. So friends and family ALWAYS come first. Simply put (and to stop belaboring the point), you've gotta get a handle on interacting with people on a deeply personal level before you can EVER hope to move into a productive and professional level with anyone. Chances are you're not going to go into business with a total stranger. It will be a friend, or at the very, very least, a friend of a friend that you have good reason to feel that you can trust. This might seem like a non sequitur, but I think this might be important to touch on: How have you been addressing this? Have you been addressing this? It might seem small or possibly inconsequential, but I've found that every "limitation" has a tendency to grow itself into an impassible barrier over time. I had a trauma in the past that gave me a pretty wicked trigger, but it was associated with such a specific situation, I figured I could avoid it. WRONG! I was humiliated in front of peers and coworkers on several occasions because I didn't get a handle on my traumas and failed to address them. This was affecting me in my life in more and more ways as time wore on, because I wasn't handling it. Finally I did (gradual and controlled exposure in therapy setting), and a few years later I can say that while the core trauma still upsets me to this day, at least I'm not rendered a useless, quivering mess if I remember it. Actually, the "u" in "honor" doesn't necessarily demonstrate "English", so much as it demonstrates ANY of the Oxfordian English approaches to writing... basically EVERYTHING ELSE but American English! XD The Canadians do it too, as do the Scotts, the Irish, the Aussies, and plenty Europeans who learned English as a non-primary language. Hmm, and why aren't we besties? =D Kidding (maybe). From personal experience, I've found this to be quite the opposite case! Might I suggest Blonde in the Belly of the Beast, for observation purposes? =D I watch her weekly podcast she co-hosts with Matt Christiansen, "Beauty and the Beta" (though I'm a few weeks behind), her being the conservative, and him being the liberal, and she's quite the outspoken firebrand! Sadly for any of us, she is taken, but whenever I have in mind the kinds of women I want to form a relationship with, she certainly serves as my model. The more like her they are, the better I'll get along with them! =D So, I think that's enough "distractions" out of the way... Now onto the meat of your concerns... So how well do you know your uncle? You surely have reasons that you would like to maintain a relationship with him, in spite of the concerns you have that make you think it would be best to cut yourself off from that entire wing of your family. There's the matter of interconnected relationships, for one thing (as Stef mentioned in his latest video about Forgiveness, that a "family tree" is much more like a giant web, because there's lines between everyone) and cutting yourself off from certain people doesn't actually guarantee that others won't try to push you back together. This is especially difficult when it comes to family. I can remember an interaction I had with a cousin when we met (for the first time in years) for Thanksgiving back in 2016, and without naming who I was referring to, I mentioned that there was "evil" within my family. My cousin just laughed, in complete disbelief that ANYONE in our family could be "evil", and thought that I MUST be joking. So, guess that means don't keep that cousin terribly high on my list of contacts? Lucky for me it's not much of a problem, cause like I said, hadn't seen them in years before that gathering... You either see something in your relationship with that uncle and your niece/nephews that gives you pause from cutting yourself off from them entirely, or you just like them "enough" that you don't mind putting up with the rest of their baggage for the rest of them. You don't have to have 100% of your relationships be absolutely ideal models of virtuosity, but your close circle should definitely meet all your requirements and expectations. That circle can be one that you've chosen... but you can't choose your family of origin. If that uncle from your family of origin is the best of the bunch, why not give him a chance? To pull another example from my own family, I have another cousin that is a sweetheart, I get along very well with her, her husband, and her daughter, but she's very soft when it comes to holding the rest of our family accountable for their actions, and she herself has forsaken the "family religion" in favor of abstract woo-woo spiritualism. Those latter 2 things do bother me, but are they bad enough that I have to cut ties with her altogether? In my estimate, no. She has a great head on her shoulders, and we can talk things out. More importantly, even if she forgives the rest of our family a bit too easily for my tastes, she hasn't repeated those mistakes on her daughter, so she may not be the most virtuous person in my family, but she's in that ballpark, and that's enough to keep a relationship. Perhaps your uncle is similar in this regard; not the most virtuous person, but worth knowing? Make no mistake, when I first learned that Stefan was an open advocate for "deFOOing", I was happy to learn this, because I had long-held sentiments that I needed to cut myself off from my own family of origin. So if it's the best thing for you, I might be the first to support your decision to well-and-truly sever those ties for good. But the important thing is assessing that this is, indeed, the best thing for you. Cutting yourself off from people who abuse, and who pardon abuse? Absolutely. From people who adamantly support the demonic Democratic party because they believe in all its distopian ideals? Certainly. But people who are, as you put it "at best, misguided"? Perhaps a chance would not be unwarranted?

I've got some contacts in San Diego, but I myself am about a 2 hour drive away. That being said, for an important enough occasion, 2 hours of driving isn't nearly enough to stop me from going! Hell, I do it for business just about any time it's asked of me! XD It's been hard finding other philosophers in the Southern California region, let alone any wanting to meet up. I guess the direction of the state's governance and culture just grooms far more lefties out here... Welcome, by the way! =D

Absolutely fascinating just how little ANY of that got into the history books! Thanks for the careful explanation!

Oh, but didn't you get the memo? That's TOTALLY not a contradiction! Like, literally! /s (Does it even need to be said? XD)

No private ownership is one thing, and it's certainly a core component of Socialism which strives for total collectivist ownership. But Socialism is still a very different beast from that one thing, and the UK may have dipped and dabbed in a few aspects of it (I've heard Tony Blair's administration described as "Socialist" recently) but it never fully embraced the utopian zeitgeist. Canada is a good example of this kind of situation. It has many socialized systems, and it's one of the better examples of the horrors of "creeping socialism", in that it's growing more and more socialist. But is it right now, or was it ever, at the state that the Soviet Union had arrived at anywhere between the 1920s to the 1970s? Not really. Granted, that doesn't mean I wish to defend the UK system, especially with these latest revelations and the conviction of Count Dankula (ironic, considering his expressed Communist leanings) adding more and more crap to an already nasty list. I really liked watching the videos of the debates from Thatcher's days, because it's so alien to what I'm used to, but that's about it for my appreciation of British governance. XD

Having finished the video now, I can say that it was a great speech (as always). But more importantly was what I took away from the videos of the protests outside afterward. For one thing, that queer person near the end was interesting. He/she was clearly a "gender-nonconforming" type (visible breasts, deep voice, etc), which you could say put him/her firmly on the same ideological side as the disrupting protestors, but was at the same time disappointed by the protest. Then there was that guy walking amidst the protestors handing out Pepsi, which just made me laugh out loud. That was genius. But the biggest takeaway from the end of the video for me was, whenever you heard the cheering and the chanting, there was a noteworthy pitch to their cries. A higher pitch. As I remember the infamous Milo speech where a group of feminists stood up to smear their faces with red paint as they decried "This man preaches hatred", then joined by a group of BLM supporters shouting their chant, only to be drowned out by a bunch of MAGA people chanting "Trump!" back... when you heard "Black lives matter!" in that confrontation, it was higher pitched, and when you heard "Trump! Trump! Trump!" in that same moment, it was distinctly lower pitch. Put simply, all the crazies were predominantly women, all the people NOT raising some kind of violent fuss were predominantly (non-effeminate) men. Like Stef says whenever he covers race and IQ, that he wishes with all his heart that these were not true, but that these facts are undeniably true, I wish it weren't the case that women seem to be the problem, but it looks undeniably the case that women (certainly in crowds) are the driving force behind all of the cultural problems of recent year. It's not just that they voted in the welfare state decades ago, they keep congregating and forming activist groups that push these far-leftist agendas, including all these disruptive protests and riots. I feel like what Neil Strauss described in "The Game" when he said that it was harder and harder to not become misogynist when a PUA learned more and more about human psychology and put it to work. Nowadays, when I hear the loud cheers of women, I can't help but think that whatever came before it was actually a bad idea. The recent Oscars certainly didn't help discount that notion.

Poe's Law is all about the satire being indistinguishable from that which it is satirizing. It comments on how ridiculous that which is being satirized is, despite being its legitimate claim. So these people are not being ironic, they are genuinely that ridiculous. Having grown up and been through American public education, both "before" it got bad, and returned to see what the college system had become "after" getting bad, I can say that these kids sincerely believe that EVERYTHING they're doing is just. They just don't realize that they're the violent ones, that they're the intolerant ones, that they're the evil ones. That's a huge reason for why I say that ignorance is the root of all evil, because these people are willfully ignoring ideas that could help them; they had to ignore to become what they are, and it is evil. Teachers were always insisting how evil the Nazis were, and they always called them Nazis, they only ever said what the nickname stemmed from a couple times, and most students almost immediately forgot it. They gave the students the ammunition, but never taught them how to maintain the rifle (to be briefly metaphoric). I can still remember a particular day in my freshman writing class when I was in high school- now decades ago (:shudders: Tempus Fugit, amirite?) -where the teacher introduced the concept of relativism vs universalism, and the phrase she gave as an example of these terms put into use were "it's all relative". INSTANTLY, whenever students were called on to address a question, and they didn't have a good answer, when the teacher pressed them, they smirked and said "it's all relative", and the class would laugh, and the student would give that wide shit-eating grin of someone who knew they'd gotten away with something bad, yet they were sincere. These kids latched onto the concept of relativism and used it as an escape from critical thinking from that day onward, because they saw an easy out. They didn't realize they were cheating themselves out of greater understanding, or that they were headed down a dark path that leads to much of where we are today, but they saw something that they liked, and they embraced it. The ones at these protests? They are these kids, years later, having metastasized their ideological cancer to the point that they don't know anymore what's right and what's wrong.... because it's all relative, ha! I don't think it's mislabeling in the slightest to call them demons.

The trouble with this (obviously) is that it comes well into the future, in retrospect. The UK seems to be embracing all this thought-police stuff because it fought off Socialism in the past, it was not a Socialist state in the past. As the modern saying goes, the strongest anti-Communists today used to live under Communism. The Russians and the Chinese may have contempt for these acts now because having lived under the death camp called Communism, they know just how evil it is from firsthand experience, and meanwhile those who fought it, like the British, have begun to forget. Then again, the leaders of the Socialist sinking ship that is the EU is Merkel's Germany, and they were CERTAINLY members of a Socialist state, but perhaps the problem with them is that most of the people who lived it are dead, whereas there are still many who lived during the Soviet Union before its collapse in the late 80s?

Well it's more a matter of hardly anybody commenting on the topic than it was nobody mentioning that fact. Cause that came out well after most of these were stated. But yeah, it was just absurd. It reminds me of the stand-down orders given to university police during the Antifa riots while a non-leftist was trying to speak to an audience. Was the deputy given direct stand-down orders, or was he just that spineless? Who can say. Personally, I find that running-for-office level of obfuscation and evasiveness on the part of "Sheriff" Scott Israel to be the FAR more infuriating detail. I know many centrist or litertarian/conservative leaning minds like to say that more conservative-minded and protective people get into armed forces and law enforcement, and here's some bleeding heart politician spouting out phrases so absurd that even JAKE TAPPER has to call him on how nonsensical his "answers" are to his questioning. Just insane. Watched the video, and I have to say, I'm a bit skeptical of the claim that Whole Language is at the root of this problem. That's not to say that I think it should stay. But I think there's more of a problem going on with the public schools than the humiliation children are forced to endure for being put on the spot when they don't know something because they were taught so poorly. Maybe I'm only drawing from biased interpretations of "olden times" teaching, but I believe there was QUITE the spectacle of placing young children in front of the classroom, on a stool, meant to sit there for the rest of class, wearing a cone on there head with the word "dunce" on it if they got too many questions wrong. That's an OLD tradition of humiliation, so the current Progressive Education equivalent doesn't strike me as being particularly new or noteworthy. But the shift from seeing boys as boys to seeing boys as defective and in need of medicating for "acting out", the shift from structured teaching to "everybody matters" teaching, the shift to a heavy emphasis on unearned self-esteem, and the increasing government monopolization of education, are combined the major contributing factors to these school shooting phenomenons. That being said, the video only served to reinforce my belief that these schools have GOT to go. Appreciate the link!