J-William

Thanks for that. Holy moley, what a read... In your opinion, is there any rhyme or reason behind US policy in Libya and Syria? The question could be extended to Iraq as well since it shares a common theme. I guess I'm just ignorant, but why do the US and Israel treat Iran as the greatest threat in the middle east? If Obama can be buddies with the president of Vietnam while they are still officially communist, why the Iran hate? This stuff and the US position is awfully confounding... Following the money and oil makes some sense, but man... the thought of innocent people dying in Iraq, Syria, and Libya just so US politicians can enrich their friends and be buddies with Saudi dictators.

I assume you mean the age that you should assert your needs with your child. You actually can start it at 2. kids can talk and understand simpler concepts. My 2 1/2 yr old daughter often wants me to carry her, but I don't want to carry her all the time. you can't expect a 2yr old to leave you alone for a half-hour so you can get some work done, heck I can't even get time alone to get a glass of water oftentimes. Even simpler, a 2yr old can throw rocks pretty hard, you need him to not throw them at people, or indoors. You can assert your need for them to not throw rocks. Does that help?

This guy sounds like a real toxic asshole ... I mean he calls his daughter a "little carpet muncher" and explains away her problem with him as he spanked her once in 3rd grade. He's put forward some sort of public school, hollywood lefty conspiracy as a reason for his daughter being gay. He's not bothered to be a caring and kind father, he's busy raging on the internet instead of writing a letter to his daughter apologizing for being a colossal asshole and asking her to tell him some more. I don't think you have anything to gain from engaging with this kind of guy.

Needless to say the line about ISIS eating babies and thus needing to be immediately bombed back to the stone age makes one immediately skeptical... especially since no reference is being made to how US foreign policy in the middle east plays a large part in the current messes. My VPN connection isn't working these days, and google's services are being blocked in China (along with almost anything interesting or useful it seems). Could you try this: http://www.filedropper.com/ it works through the great firewall.

I would try not to put that burden on her as much as I can. Not because she's some kind of shrinking violet but because nobody can stand a full frontal assault from people they depend on all day every day. At this point in their life they are like religion inflicting robots. They want a choice in the matter but they probably don't have that choice anymore. A contract won't be worth the paper it's written on. It is important that you both go into this with eyes wide open knowing that she is going to need your support. Snakes don't do a very good job of biting you if you're looking out for each other and you are aware that they are there. My wife and I have been able to thrive with our daughter without any help from family, but neither one of us has to go away to work and we live in China where we can afford to have some help around the house.

Amazon has a system setup to make that even easier. I think you can have it automatically turrn the pages in the Kindle app on yuor phone while it reads (as long as someone has gone through and done the work to make them work together)... I imagine it's awesome, though I haven't tried it myself. but, this is excellent advice. It's a common method in second language learning, along with reading or listening to the content in your native language and then reading in the target language. It really improves comprehension when you're already familiar with the material. I've been trying to improve my reading comprehension in Chinese. I find that books I've read (like Harry Potter) I can zip through at a relatively comfortable pace, whereas books I've never read in English are super slow reading in Chinese. Basically I can read the English version and the Chinese version in less time than it would take to trudge through the Chinese version alone. You should see similar results if you listen to the audiobook first and then try reading the book. Audiobooks are great, don't be discouraged. I Originally listened to the Hitchhiker's guide books as audiobooks while we were driving to Colorado for vacation, they were like a fever dream, but on going to the library and actually reading the books they made a whole lot less sense

See here's your problem right there how can you know the number of times you have broken the law? There so many laws and whether or not you have broken them is generally up to the interpretation of the cop on the spot. You probably broke three laws this afternoon, how would you ever know? But if you don't wants to have a bad interaction with cops try your best to not have interactions with cops. It seems counterintuitive but I feel less worried about cops here in China then I did back when I used to live in the US. If you just focus on the actual likelihood of a bad encounter with police, you most likely to be okay especially if you are white and middle-class. Most white people never have a bad encounter with a police officer and if they do it's because they were doing something stupid or obviously illegal. So don't worry be happy!

I... your father is nutty crazy... and a super-asshole. Have you given any thought to defooing and not leaving a forwarding address? I assume that's not really possible with your wife's family, but as long as they don't circumcise there's probably not much religious harm that can come in the first year or two of life... So maybe you can get things in order so you are taking some of the burden from your wife by that point? As unpleasent as your father is, he makes a good point that if you are away the people in your family's life will have a bigger influence than you do... So do what you can to get better people, or get the bad people out.

Well you certainly make a good point that kickstarter is not always the way to fund a game. If your overall point is that people are more likely to fund a known quantity, whether that be a more complete game or a game with a famous developer attached to it, I certainly agree with that point. I also think the evidence would back up that idea. Good feedback. I'm glad I watched that video. Heck, maybe it would be worthwhile to take some more time and finish up my demo so that people can play it and get excited, that's got to be more useful than all the press in the world. Y'know the more I think about it the more I think I need a gameplay demo. I think my concept is solid, but actually communicating about it is hard... yeah... well it's actually a game that rewards the player for not stabbing and obeying the NAP.... but that's a secret, don't tell nobody

So I'm working on launching a kickstarter for my game. Like a good objectivist I've been doing it all on my own. But I got to thinking about what Stef says about community, so I've decided to ask for some help. My game is called Consanguinity. it's like a 2D zelda but much more complicated. All characters in the game are persistent, which means if you talk to them they will remember you and if you kill a character they stay dead (unlike Zelda where you can kill the same bad guy every time you enter a room). The other big element is relationships (thus the name). Every NPC has relationships and they develop new ones and forget unimportant ones. For example if you were to kill an NPC and his family found out then you might have his family members coming after you (this applies to "bad" guys as well) That's the basic rundown. I think I need to work on my pitch a bit. so first question: Kickstarter or...? I know kickstarter and so do a lot of people. Im looking to raise $25k. I think Kickstarter is the best choice, but I don't really know why someone would choose the other crowd-funding platforms, except some allow you to keep the money if you don't meet the goal. I don't think that's something I want because I don't want to feel obligated to still make the game if I only got $2,000. What are your thoughts? 2nd: promotion? I have a few games journalists in mind who might be interested in covering the game, and I will try to get my friends and family involved as best I can. Beyond that I will send out press releases, have an active twitter and facebook and do what I can. How's that approach sound? Do you have any other ideas of how to promote a kickstarter game? 3rd: check out this trailer. It's the prototype, the completed trailer will have gameplay instead of hand draw stick figures.

You are correct, there is an ignore feature! It's a bit hidden, but if someone is really bugging you it can be done.

Why should anyone care that you are skeptical of bitcoin?

a little perspective on the Israeli strategy of retaliation from a Reddit question. http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/298q8z/how_effective_was_the_german_strategy_of/ So, perhaps if Israel systematically recreates Lidice for every urban center in Gaza... then someday they might stop the resistance? I'm just gonna go ahead and throw out a laundry list of similarities to german occupation, for the record: Germans no doubt felt they were defending themselves when commiting massacres claimed that they had historical right to the land they invaded claimed a mission from god claimed that the people they killed were lesser barbaric people did, or would have claimed that the resistance was using human shields and were terrorists.

I think this thread is doing alright for solid advice... So I'll just give you my experience which is quite opposite yours, but similar :-D When I was a kid I just devoured books. The library had a reading program where you read some books and got some small prize, and they had a little pamphlet to fill out. it took somewhere around 5-7 books to fill it out, but they had an extra page for the high acheivers which went up to like 30 books. I filled that up almost every summer. in 4th grade we had to do book reports, but only based on the book length. I didn't like writing that stuff, so I wrote mine on Moby Dick which was exactly 600 pages (we were required to do reports on 6 100pg books or whatever length to get to 600 total pages) I found Moby Dick to be dreadfully boring and so never read it, but Boy's Life had a comic version of the story that I wrote the report from. in 5th grade everyone was raving about the lord of the rings... I finally read them and wondered what the fuss was about (and they were kinda boring) In 6th grade I read straight through The Grapes of Wrath (and still didn't get the reference from TMNT) In 8th grade I found a copy of Atlas Shrugged sitting around our house and read through it (skipping a good chunk of the middle.) Anyhow. as a kid I read hundreds of books. Since I've become an adult things have slowed down (being busy can do that). I find that I don't have any interest in re-reading books. I also find it hard to find something I want to read. I tried reading "Game of thrones" and found it far too grotesquely violent and statist in the first chapter. I've wanted to read Les Miserables, but even though I no longer had to cart around a five pound book to read it I just can't motivate myself (I've already seen the movie, and know what happens..) Honestly it's so long... but I guess that's what happens when you pay a wordy writer by the word.. Honestly the last thing that really caught my interest were the works of Phillip K. Dick... and after reading all of them (ok I skipped some longer more boring stuff...) I am desperate for something and I've never trusted popular opinion on adult fiction. It's more interesting to me to read Harry Potter. the advice I'd give is don't be too proud. read Harry potter or some sci-fi paperback, or a dime-store detective novel... whatever it takes to hold your attention. Ayn Rand was a big fan of Mickey Spillane, and I agree he wrote some fun detective novels. whatever gets your juices flowing in movies or other media is a great place to start in reading, even if it's just comic books!

oh boy those were the days... I like the settled down atmosphere, and now of course if someone with -30 reputation gets banned it's hard to make the case that people were super interested in what they had to say and they were just shut down by "the man" Oh, hey I didn't see this earlier... it's giving me flashbacks to the days of "oh this guy was banned from the board, it's super unfair and we're busy chattering about it. Also, come on... "without any personal attacks". he repeatedly called myself and others liars without providing solid evidence, he evaded and ignored evidence and arguments. If you look back at my first post in the thread and his response he takes my question and reframes it in a way he likes. Everything he did was classic trolling. I think your judgement is flawed in continuing to support him and chat with him. But then I guess if you are trying to justify war it's not hard to justify a little trolling too. a little side note: it seems that much of my negative reputation points from that thread are gone... pretty much confirming he was downvoting me cuz I disagreed. I think it's only just deserts if he got banned for disagreeing with Stef (but I think he got banned for trollin)

I don't know about censoring yourself... there can be an element of watching how you're saying something, if you're intending to communicate well. I was posting some stuff over on that thread started by the Israeli guy to defend the genocide in Gaza, and I noticed I had a down vote on a few posts and it caused me to pause for a minute and reflect on whether I was being too hostile. If someone is going down a road of being irrational or hostile, maybe the points can help. The down votes continued after I decided to limit my hostility and just focus on facts. So pretty much confirming that it was the Israeli guy who was doing the down voting. Even that I'm not worried about because the system limits the damage that one person can do to your reputation. Oh, and I wanted the negative threshold to be even higher (lower?) in that thread, because I was tired of seeing defenses of genocide. So an ignore button would be a great addition, but I do like the communal aspect of the point system. I like that I can see my FDR friends are looking out for my sanity by saying "yeah, here's a real nutbar you can safely ignore"

Ah, perhaps he's one of those wonderful Subjectivists... when they believe in freedom it's not the freedom that you or I want, they want freedom from objective reality. Do you see that in his writing? I think Ayn Rand called it a cult of death or something, because freedom from objective reality is death. There is no other realm or plane of existence. Anyhow I haven't read any of these books, or indeed know the author, but I think it is endlessly fascinating the worldview that is revealed by what a writer writes and how. Ah, perhaps he's one of those wonderful Subjectivists... when they believe in freedom it's not the freedom that you or I want, they want freedom from objective reality. Do you see that in his writing? I think Ayn Rand called it a cult of death or something, because freedom from objective reality is death. There is no other realm or plane of existence. Anyhow I haven't read any of these books, or indeed know the author, but I think it is endlessly fascinating the worldview that is revealed by what a writer writes and how. Ah, perhaps he's one of those wonderful Subjectivists... when they believe in freedom it's not the freedom that you or I want, they want freedom from objective reality. Do you see that in his writing? I think Ayn Rand called it a cult of death or something, because freedom from objective reality is death. There is no other realm or plane of existence. Anyhow I haven't read any of these books, or indeed know the author, but I think it is endlessly fascinating the worldview that is revealed by what a writer writes and how. Ah, perhaps he's one of those wonderful Subjectivists... when they believe in freedom it's not the freedom that you or I want, they want freedom from objective reality. Do you see that in his writing? I think Ayn Rand called it a cult of death or something, because freedom from objective reality is death. There is no other realm or plane of existence. Anyhow I haven't read any of these books, or indeed know the author, but I think it is endlessly fascinating the worldview that is revealed by what a writer writes and how.

Oh good, I was about to write an article in "Libertarianism Today" trashing psychology, but I think I now shan't bother.

This seems very religious to me... like these people fell through a time warp from some dark 12th century corner of Christendom. I'm pretty sure that's not a real product... but perhaps a product that feminists and christians could both get behind.

I don't think there's much to say about this article... It's just pure cotton candy for lefties to rot their brains. but if you need a laugh. Yup, he thinks that Brazil has a dynamic economy and that state control has been dismantled... There isn't much more to say about that

So what I take from this is that if you wants to find a good woman you need to do your best to show yourself to be responsive and vulnerable so that you can quickly walk on by the women who just want a bad man or a dominant asshole. I think that's a good lesson to keep your heart safe and out of the shredder.

This is pretty much the answer right here. This topic is well covered in libertarian circles. I believe Stephan has covered more than once. The lifetime of the device is one of the things which is taken into consideration when designing a device. There are many other considerations which compete, and like all things there are trade-offs. So you could make a phone that would last 20 years but it would be bigger and fatter and more expensive. Most people, especially the sort of people that buy the latest and greatest hardware, do not want a three or four-year-old phone. It doesn't really matter how long the phone lasts because the people paying for the newest and fastest phone don't care how long it lasts as long as it lasts long enough. I saw a phone just the other day that's $15 and can play MP3s and video and even let you chat online. Now that phone is not very good, but it's a lot better than any cell phone you could have bought 20 years ago. I personally use a four-year-old iPhone that works pretty well for me. My wife's father uses my old Nokia phone which is probably six years old, and it works perfectly well. NASA has electronics that will last for 20, 30,40, or 50 years and they spend whole lot of money on those electronics. Those electronics are also not very fast and not very user-friendly.

Yup, cuz you know men didn't develop the technology that makes it possible. If all men are good for is MANual labor, then I bet she'd love a world where that's all they did... without any men to maintain the tech infrastructure at least the feminist could burn their bras for something useful, heat!

I just found a wonderful article for anyone still reading this thread. This talking point is perhaps most relevant to the current thread..

This right here is thee best part of the thread! First off I'm glad that I'm a liar and I love palestine so much I can't keep my head on straight (if you'll take a glance at my picture over on the left you'll see I'd fit right in there). You changed your T-shirt example. Is that because of incidents like this where Palestinians are getting beat up just for being Arab? Or are those just more lies? I'm fully aware of that fact. I'm reporting on what others have found out. I'm confused as to why you would even mention that. The fact itself isn't new or a focus of the survey I linked to.