Coalition of the Unwilling Resists Anti-ISIS Commitment, Scottish Independence Debate Gets Heated, Democrats to Hold the Senate?: P.M. Links
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Public Domain The Obama administration faces challenges piecing together a new coalition of the willing out of countries very unwilling to send military forces to Iraq, again, to clean up the mess there, again.
- Willing or not, U.S. ground troops may well be on their way to battle ISIS, say Pentagon officials.
- With sentiment on Scottish independence running neck and neck just two days before the vote, tempers are getting frayed and the rhetoric has turned vitriolic. For those who can decipher local accents, that is.
- In Pennsylvania, Eric Matthew Frein is sought in the ambush killing of one state trooper and the wounding of another. He's reportedly been vocal in the past about his desire to kill police and commit mass murder.
- Ukraine is moving to strengthen economic and political relations with Europe—but the country's government may essentially cede control over the eastern part of the country to separatists as part of the deal.
- Political forecaster Nate Silver says Democrats are closing the gap in terms of the odds of controlling the Senate. Well, they have made such a seductively persuasive case for their policies. Stop laughing, you'll hurt yourself.
- Political pundits suspect that Rand Paul may not be a carbon copy of his father—that he may be both a better campaigner and less ideologically hardcore. Nothing gets by that Beltway jungle telegraph.
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Political forecaster Nate Silver says Democrats are closing the gap in terms of the odds of controlling the Senate.
I thought Silver has been discredited.
Sure, his baseball work.
And, IMO, its better than his political work.
If the dems somehow keep the senate after the last 2 years, it might be time to think about moving. Because it's over baby.
There headline is misleading. There has been some movement for Democrats but most of it has either made races that were utterly hopeless to now mostly hopeless or increases in states they were going to win anyway.
The bottom line is that Democrats are going to have to win in places were Obama has ensured they are despised. maybe. but unlikely.
Hello.
Obama can't even piece together a four-piece puzzle at this pivotal point.
Political races tighten up as Election Day gets closer? No. Way.
He got the World Cup completely wrong.
Out of 20 World Cups (40 spots in the final - winner/runner up), five countries take up 26 of those or 73%.
How much did he miss by 'cuz you can almost bet one of those five (Germany, Brazil, Italy, Argentina and Holland (for good measure) will usually be in the final.
29 of 40. Sorry.
He had Brazil easily beating the Germans. Even if you guess he right four teams in the semis, which he didn't, that still doesn't make you right.
He had Brazil with some astronomical chance of winning the whole thing. It was the product of his believing statistical correlation automatically corresponds to reality. His picks were on the level of those handicapper call in places that justify their picks with something like
"the Vikings are 15 and 1 against the spread as a road dog playing in a warm climate against a team with red uniforms."
Well, to be fair, everyone bought into the Brazil myth. He was 50% right!
Except me of course.
John has apparently been taking statistics lessons from buttplug, since apparently 45% is an "astronomical chance" now:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/interactives/world-cup/
45% chance of winning a tournament of 24 is astronomical or close too.
The next highest chance he gave a team was Argentina at 13%. He gave Brazil a higher chance of winning the tournament than the next FIVE TEAMS COMBINED.
That is, in the context, an astronomical chance of winning. He had Brazil as overwhelming favorites.
Here is a hint for you. There is more to statistics than just reading a single number.
The context being that John doesn't know jack about statistics.
The context being that Dragon, didn't think through what he was saying and thus can't admit he is wrong.
"Astronomical" is a relative term. Beyond that, you are just throwing shit to try and change the subject from how badly Silver fucked up. Call it it what you will. Say he made Brazil overwhelming favorites, whatever works for you. No matter what term you use, Silver was complete and utterly wrong. And he wasn't just kind of wrong. He went out on a huge limb and gave Brazil a much higher chance of winning than anyone else, even those who had them as a favorite, were giving them. And they turned out to be a deeply flawed team that had no shot of winning.
Playing semantics with my choice of words doesn't save Silver.
If I take a 6 sided die and say "there's a 67% the next roll will be higher than 2", and proceed to roll a 1, that doesn't make the prediction wrong.
If I take a 6 sided die and say "there's a 67% the next roll will be higher than 2", and proceed to roll a 1, that doesn't make the prediction wrong.
Except that sports isn't rolling dice. By your logic no prediction ever made about any sporting event could ever be wrong, as long as it as a % next to it.
If Brazil had lost in penalty kicks to the Germans, then yes, you could say that Silver wasn't necessarily wrong. He was only playing the percentages. But for them to nearly lose in the round before and then lose in such decisive fashion means Silver was just dead wrong in his assessment of them. Brazil no more had a 45% chance of winning that tournament than I have a 45% chance of banging Eva Green tonight.
If I take a 6 sided die and say "there's a 67% the next roll will be higher than 2", and proceed to roll a 1, that doesn't make the prediction wrong.
The inherent lack of understanding basic math is what makes the prediction wrong and the predictor a fool or liar.
Not sure what was wrong with the original statement (unless you get all Tulpaie).
Serious Dragon, is Silver your brother or something? Does it hurt that much to admit he doesn't know shit about soccer and made a stupid prediction? Is there some kind of nerd fraternity bond that prevents you from admitting the obvious?
Dragon, you're the idiot here, not John.
To be fair, soccer results seem completely random, even though the best teams keep winning.
How? I've never heard that. I remember there was a time when he predicted some stuff that the Dems didn't like so his prediction had become "unreliable."
Willing or not, U.S. ground troops may well be on their way to battle ISIS, say Pentagon officials.
If you like your bootprint-free Iraqi ground you can keep your bootprint-free Iraqi ground.
Where there is only one set of footprints, that's where the US military is carrying you, little Iraqi government.
+SUPER nice
Nice ripoff of that annoyingly treacly quote.
Sand People walk side by side, to hide their numbers.
Shouldn't they walk single file, so there is only one set of footprints?
I think we're gonna revert to the original plan of sending in barefoot troops instead. Win-win!
Oh goddammit.
OECD unveils proposals to curb corporate tax avoidance
Yum, these rich are tasty.
Is their proposal for every company that ever does business in the US to pay the US gov. the full corporate tax rate on all of their income?
I couldn't really tell - but it seems as though it would force them to make up the difference between the US taxes and the foreign taxes?
New international tax rules proposed on Tuesday could eliminate structures that have allowed companies such as Google Inc (GOOGL.O) and Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) to shave billions of dollars off reduce their tax bills liability.
The Obama administration faces challenges piecing together a new coalition of the willing out of countries very unwilling to send military forces to Iraq, again, to clean up the mess there, again.
The messiah united the world in indifference.
whatever
Couched in our indifference,
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
The borders of our lives.
NASA: Hottest August Globally Since Records Began In 1880
I thought last august was the hottest ever? I guess this august will be the hottest until next august.
I thought it was always the third hottest. That has the advantage of sounding more plausible.
You may be right. What god blesses you with this infinite wisdom on science?
The earth is somewhere around 4.5 billion years old.
Records go back to 1880, or around 135 years, or around 0.000003% of the history of the earth.
Given that, what, exactly, does "hottest since records began" mean?
It's the hottest it's been since last August.
To be sure, there was a time the Earth was a spinning ball of plasma.
Ah, the good old days
And, on the flip side, there was a time the Earth was a giant snowball. So, averaged out, it's not so bad.
Precisely so
And there were multiple ice ages, followed by an equal number of global warmings, all without SUVs, somehow.
Maybe it was Fred Flintstones' suv.
Pro Lib would be the one to reminisce about them.
This is false, of course, though I suppose the Earth could be reheated through kinetic means via the asteroid belt if certain financial transactions fail to occur.
Well, in all fairness at least they aren't claiming to know the temps before people started keeping records.
We don't need to worry about the temperature of the early earth, just since the end of the last ice age.
"Hottest since records began" is another way to say "advances the narrative."
Good to know. The US mid-Atlantic was unseasonably cool relative to recent years.
Seriously this was one of the best summers temp wise I've ever seen. I think we may have had 2 weeks total of plus 90 degree days in VA I can't recall a single 100+ degree day at all.
It's been brutally hot here in Tampa the last six weeks or so, but before anyone runs off to join any cults, we also had an unusually mild May.
It's been seemingly quite on the crazy story front. I thought the hot brought out the crazy?
It's too hot. Man it's hot. It's like Africa hot. Tarzan couldn't take this kind of hot.
Ditto for KY, but not the worst I could remember. Im not sure we ever hit 100.
It was just 90 and no rain for way too long.
Yeah but we've had quite a bit of rain so it has only been twice as muggy as normal. Besides, another month or so and our temps will be down in the eighties.
Who the hell wants to be in Tampa, anyway?
Personally, I love Tampa.
Want or not, here I am.
LA tied the record for today. QED. Global warming.
WEATHER ISN'T C....oh.
^^THIS supports the consensus
Woodland Hills broke it's record at 107 Previous record was in 1989. I was there and if you'd have told me that 25 years later it'd be this hot again, I still wouldn't have given up my car.
Over West Antarctica, however, it was so hot NASA had to put in the color brown to cover the 4?C to 8?C (7?F to over 14?F!) anomalous warmth. Fortunately that is so far away from us why should anybody should get very concerned about it when D.C. had such a mild summer? It's not like recent studies have found that glaciers in West Antarctic ice sheet "have begun the process of irreversible collapse," is it?
Sounds scary doesn't it? Except that Antarctica has been cooling in the summer such that the continent as a whole has in fact been cooling.
"By contrast, the eastern Antarctic and Antarctic plateau have cooled, primarily in summer, with warming over the Antarctic Peninsula [C3 Ed: approximately 4% of Antarctica land mass]...Moreover, sea-ice extent around Antarctica has modestly increased.....In other words, the authors find that most of the Antarctic continent has cooled, rather than just the Southern Ocean..."
http://www.natureworldnews.com.....rctica.htm
But it is global warming that is making it cooler of course. it would be nice if these clowns would get the narrative straight.
global warming climate change.
Irritable Climate Syndrome!
Do these people live up to every bad expectation or what?
Tony says that I can't "use Feynman" because I am an infidel, and Feynman would be of the "pro-science" religion.
My guess is that Tony thinks Feynman, having died in 1988, would be one of the virtuous pagans who never got the chance to accept Christ CAGW.
Sadly, you can tell the ones who are members of the religion from the scientists who think the theory is correct: the scientists are walking away from the theory as evidence piles up that it is incorrect, while the religious rationalize away the failure of the apocalypse to arrive on schedule.
The change in temperatures between the two halves of the continent means Antarctica is going to tip over!
I thought part of the (alleged) problem was that Earth doesn't reflect enough energy back into space. Isn't nice white ice a lot more reflective than sea water?
Remind me again, WTF is NASA and why are they still a thing?
Because Boeing needs contracts despite being demonstrably inferior to their competition?
I thought that's what IM EXM was for.
Boeing needs lots of contracts.
NASA GISS is the most fiddled with temp record. It's also the hottest and the one with the hottest trend.
Bullshit. Antarctic ice coverage just reached its all-time greatest extent. Apparently the freezing point of water has increased.
let me gues:
Don't let abortion become illegal.
#waronwomen.
Income inequality.
Minimum wage.
One of the local Democratic candidates is running a commercial with lines like, "What if were the 'Violence Against Your Sister Act'?"
Retch-inducing. And that's not the negative ad. Thankfully that's not my district; the two cnadidates in my district don't seem to have started with the negative ads yet.
In California the Dems are campaigning against one Republican, claiming on TV that he "didn't support women in Sacramento", since he voted against forcing businesses to arbitrarily pay women more than they are now.
What if it were the "Deny Your Brother Due Process" Act? What if you were the sort of chump who supported or opposed acts based solely on their name or cutesy acronym? What if I was a judge and a commentator on Fox News?
Well, that "income inequality" thing seems to have gained traction. It's even got the other team making noises about addressing it.
I'm curious what the income inequality stats are when you consider non-monetary welfare or subsidies or services (particularly including public education).
Alison Dunderhead Crimes is running as a republican, it seems.
Mitch McConnell is still an ass-weasel, though.
We so need a "none of the above" on this one.
What does it say about The Lightbringer when He can't build "a coalition of the willing" as well as that idiot Dubya?
Dubya selfishly used up the supply of willing, robbing future generations of coalitional possibilities.
The Lightbringer's problem is that he believes the world is just Chicago populated with 7 billion inhabitants most of whom talk funny.
Dealing with other heads of state, he seems to think, is just like dealing with a crooked real estate broker or an alderman waiting, hand out, palm up.
I suggest he's mistaken.
...but the country's government may essentially cede control over the eastern part of the country to separatists as part of the deal.
Free staters, take note!
When I was in Switzerland, there was a coworker from Scotland.
A woman from London had to translate for us, I understood about 1 in 3 words he said, I think it was the same in return.
What, you don't watch Willy on The Simpsons enough?
But don't be reading my mind between four and five. That's Willy's time!
Glaswegian litmus test.
When we went to Ireland, my wife thought they had a special holiday for tourists, turns out it was Thursday.
...tempers are getting frayed and the rhetoric has turned vitriolic.
Which, of course, is unusual for Scotsmen.
"Political forecaster Nate Silver says Democrats are closing the gap in terms of the odds of controlling the Senate. Well, they have made such a seductively persuasive case for their policies."
Obo can commit buggery with goats on the platz at noon, and the voters will claim it was for the goat's own good.
Only Scots who go to the polls wearing kilts (sans underwear) should be allowed to vote on independence.
Serious question, can Scotland really afford to go off on its own?
Scotland's governing class doesn't care. They'll get their cut regardless.
Like Quebec. I haven't studied it but I have a sneaking suspicion nationalists in both share similar traits.
And it's not good.
It's too bad Quebec is between the rest of Canada, or else it might make logical sense for more of the rest of Canada to encourage it to secede.
Why can't Canada simply expel Quebec?
There are people make such grumblings.
I'll draft the expulsion decree. In English only, just to make it more fun.
Not with the way Quebec manages itself...the only way it's staying afloat is through equalization payments from more productive provinces (read: Alberta).
Canada is smack dab in the middle of the US, but that doesn't stop us from ruling Alaska.
Can Quebec?
Absolutely not.
Nationalists can kick and scream all they want interpreting and making stats work in their favor but Quebec is already a 'have-not' province in Canada - a perennial under achiever with a bloated bureaucracy taking its share of equalization payments.
My best analogy is they're the teenager who wants out of the house but want mom and pop to pay the rent.
And wait until the Cree areas try to secede from a soon-to-be-independent Quebec.
That's the elephant in the room. Never mind giant ethnics like Italians, Chinese Jews, Irish and Greeks (and the rest of the 'ethnics') wanting no part of it, the Natives actually have guns...and are willing to use them. They too will fight.
That's why like rats Quebec nationalists went behind the scenes trying to enlist soldiers to defect from the Canadian army to the Quebec.
They knew.
Treacherous.
22 minutes usually isn't very good but this was spot on.
"The uploader has not made this video available in your country."
Why can't you Canadians upload a video?
Hey man, take it up with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, our local propaganda mill (which won't allow their youtube to be viewed outside the country for some goddamn reason).
More like the CRTC.
Sonsabitches.
Rufus J. Firefly|9.16.14 @ 4:40PM|#
"Serious question, can Scotland really afford to go off on its own?"
I'm pretty sure that's never stopped a gov't devoted to handing out free shit.
Can the US afford Obo? See?
RACIST!
Well given that their two major parties are leftist and even-more-leftist it will be entertaining to watch, if nothing else.
Sounds like the US.
And you're the one who wants to check whether they're wearing underwear. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
I would gladly assist Andrew in this - for the good of humanity, of course.
Many hands make light work. I'll certainly assist.
I probably shouldn't ask this, since I'm not sure if I want to know the answer, but: do you like ginger pubic hair? :-p
Who doesn't?
Let's just say I like gingers and leave it at that.
If ye cannae punch yer ballot wid a claymore, ye nae can vote, Sassenach.
Oh, fer foke's sake! just like a fokin' Eddinbugger tae use a claymore whan a sghian dubh would suffice, ya puffed up jolly bastard!
*starts playing Mumblety Peg*
I have mixed feelings about Scottish Independence. It's a good thing when people peacefully choose to govern themselves, but the Scots are collectively slightly to the left of Karl Marx's dead body. So, home rule good, communism bad?
My grandfather was born in Scotland and really hated it there. He thought all Scots were cheap bastards or drunkards or both, so, yeah, not sure what that adds.
I can't vote so I sit here and watch. But if I did, it would be hard to choose between death by English socialism or death by Scottish socialism.
On balance, I like small polities. I think rent-seeking increases exponentially with population. It might be worth a lurch to the left to be in a small country.
The overall level of government mischief increases as the governed population grows larger.
That's exactly my impression. Although the Edinburgh Trams were probably per capita one of the worst boondoggles I have ever heard of. It cost 1800 pounds per person and it basically goes only to the Airport, slower than the Airport bus shuttle.
Big cities have the corruption of machine politics; small towns have the corruption of petty rivalries.
California is way more liberal than the USA as a whole, but I'd vote to secede in a heartbeat.
If only Scotland's failure would serve as an abject lesson for the rest of the world. But nobody's learning from Venezuela, it seems.
"He thought all Scots were cheap bastards or drunkards or both, so, yeah, not sure what that adds"
With bad taste in food.
Hey, Scots gave the western world frying, so show a little respect.
And a lot more besides:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.....iscoveries
Won't it be good for the rest of the UK to get rid of Scotland if they're just to the left of Marx?
Yes. The Scots are the worst. Worse than Episiarch even. They seem to be an entire race of busy body totalitarian know nothings. It is like the readership of Salon formed its own country. Yeah, it is that bad.
Are they worse than Nikki though?
I am Nikki's minion. You leave Nikki alone. She is the bestest. You monster.
🙂
I suspect when they can no longer suck off the tit of England, Marxism will get less attractive to the Scots. If they want to go full retard, well, reality will just have to teach them to be smarter.
I was actually wondering if the appeal of being on their own might overwhelm the socialism. Because if they fail, they'll likely be forced to try to go back to the UK. And they will most assuredly fail if they continue as is on their own.
Going broke and having to give up their sovereignty to England in order to pay their debts is their move. Its all the Scots have.
What about the oil? That's going to be how the war starts, right?
Good question. Not sure who owns the North Sea oil. But even if the Scots get it, they will fuck it up. They are too stupid to pump the stuff out of the ground. Look what happened when the socialist vampire got its fangs in in Venezuela. It is now importing oil.
When the Scottish Navy sails out to sieze the oil platforms?
It's not quite that simple. There has been some question about that, even internally.
I say let the U.S. manage the oil and dole out a commission to each country involved.
IIRC they are going to try to be petro-commies, like the Norwegians.
I think they will fail, but it will be entertaining in a Youtube of Russian Car Crashes way.
Their plan is to say "We'll be like Norway" with no blueprint whatsoever for how to actually do it, except that they will have a bunch of oil money.
They are highly educated though. Five quite good Universities.
So the debates on unrealistic legislation will be salted with apropos references to Proust and Simone de Beauvoir? I guess that's something.
Maybe that's why they're to the left of Marx....
"UK oil production has fallen from a peak of close to 2.82m b/d in 1999, when the country's net exports were 972,000 b/d. Until recently, the UK's mature North Sea fields have seen decline rates averaging around 6pc a year. However, oil output slumped by more than 17pc in 2011 and 14pc in 2012 to less than 1m b/d, exacerbated by heavy maintenance and unplanned outages," said OPEC in the 107-page document.
OPEC's poor assessment for the prospects of North Sea production will come as a further blow to Mr Salmond who has argued that exploiting oil resources will be enough to sustain Scotland's economy if he is successful in September's referendum. According to Mr Salmond's figures, the region's remaining oil reserves will be worth ?300,000 per person.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fin.....-lows.html
Scotland gives me hope for six Californias. I know it's completely different, but a waffles can dream.
Didn't make it on the ballot.
There will always be six Californias in my mind.
I'm bummed about that too, even though I'd end up living in the most marxist of the six.
Yeah, the California Secretary of State pulled out 100 signatures at random, said "sorry, only 67 are valid and you need 70", so they don't have to count the rest of the 1.3 million submitted to see if 800,000 are valid. And the newspapers reported that "only" 757,231 valid signatures were reported, even though it's only a guess, by an organization with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
I dream of the sovereign state of Somerset Hills (previously part of NJ). Unfortunately, we'd need to build a fence to keep the hostile natives out and probably would require an iron dome. So, doesn't seem workable yet.
Can I become secretary of defense?
Which is a shame given their role in The Enlightenment and the classical liberal heritage.
Mind you, so did the French, English, Germans and Italian.
Ugh. What a mess.
He thought all Scots were cheap bastards or drunkards or both,
So which one was your grandfather? :-p
Well, he didn't drink ever, so cheap bastard, I guess. My mother (half Scot) was the drunkard.
Given how strong the feelings are regarding succession up here, really the only fair thing to say is that it's been amazingly peaceful. Where else in the world could a secession take place completely non-violently?
Obviously the UK is sometimes appalling but I have marveled at how they have handled this referendum.
Where else in the world could a secession take place completely non-violently?
Czechoslovakia. But Klaus and Meciar were non-far-left, so the Nobel Committee felt forced to award the Peace Prize that year to Rigoberta Menchu.
The Booty-Eating Renaissance
Long considered a taboo in heterosexual circles, oral-anal sex, or, anilingus?known colloquially as "tossing salad," "rimming," and "eating booty"?has been a steady topic of conversation over the past few months. Trend pieces have been written in New York, GQ, and Cosmopolitan. Chris Brown Instragram'd (then promptly deleted) a picture of himself licking a model's ass with the caption "Eat da booty! #idgt [I don't get tired] lol." Nicki Minaj, on her latest single "Anaconda," speaks of a man who "[tosses] salad like his name Romaine." Straight people seem to have finally discovered that they too have assholes that can be explored for sexual pleasure; that gay men don't have a monopoly on anuses.
Um, no thanks.
You never go ass-to-mouth.
I thought that was the point.
tastes like chicken?
HM is gonna have some links for that. Probably to the 2 Live Crew song.
I went to the Cosmo link in the article, I regret that decision:
All people have some hair around the anus. If you are performing analingus on a hairy guy, just part the hair with your hands so you have better access.
Aye coromba no bueno. Dingle-berries scare me.
The beso negro! Popular in the middle ages among the Spanish nobles.
The black kiss? sounds like death.
Is it possible for me to unsee this?
Only if you go and reread some of Sugarfree's Pelosi or Hillary Clinton fanfic. But that's really going into destroying the village to save it territory.
More like nuking the entire province.
or breaking your finger to assuage a broken arm.
The booty eaters are out there John, and they vote.
You needed to be aware.
over the past few months
Reason commenters led the way on this.
well that was nice.
Ah, I appear to be missing from that edition of AM links.
The world's transmogrification into a place I neither can nor want to understand continues apace, I see.
I've been trying to speed it up, but I'm just one broken man.
Both you and my ex-wife have non-functioning pancreases.
From this I posit that human morality resides in the pancreas, and diabetes are the root of much of the evil in the world.
That's valid.
Gay men certainly don't have a monopoly on typhoid and dysentery, either... but they should.
but they should.
Okaaay...
Turn the other cheek, Jesse. He wants to get both of them in the same shot.
What's the matter with this for you poop fetishists? I thought you kept saying how clean the asshole was?
What's the matter with this for you poop fetishists? I thought you kept saying how clean the asshole was?
What's the matter with this for you urine fetishists? I thought you kept saying how clean the vagina/penis was?
Lazy trolling is lazy.
I had a girlfriend who loved all things anal. Hers, that is. She kept it clean. She could get off without a reach-around.
I thought I misread your screen name for second.
Robin Thicke Says He Was High When Recording 'Blurred Lines'
Remember kids, if you do drugs you might inflict shitty pop-songs on the masses and rake in oodles of dollars in the process.
For shame.
So getting stoned might cause you to become a no talent hack and rape the corpse of an actual artist?
Maybe I need to reconsider my objection to prohibition. If prohibition saves us from future Robin Thickes, maybe it is a burden we must bear.
Gaye was high as hell too. Blame the hack, not the weed.
Saying Gaye was high is an understatement. And yeah, sadly, it will take a lot more than ending drugs to rid the universe of Robin Thicke. If only it were that easy.
I blame Canada. Deport him and Beiber.
What amazes me is that it took two guys to rip off just one Marvin Gaye song.
My sweet Lord,
Doo lang doo lang doo lang.
Does anyone else listen to EconTalk?
They had a recent piece on economic modeling that I thought applied well to the Global warming modeling.
One of the basic ideas was that you can take situation B and use assumptions A1 thru A10 with some calibration and prove that models B.
But assumptions A11-A20 would also work.
And when your model doesnt work for B2, you say that you didnt consider A21 and A22, but now it works for B2 also.
And so on.
That could easily have been called "fMRI talk"
Just add a few epicycles and it'll be right as rain!
"U.S. ground troops may well be on their way to battle ISIS"
Not to worry. They are going to be welcomed with flowers by the moderate Muslim forces that they will join up with to fight ISIS.
The absurdity of US involvement in this clusterfuck is astounding. The USG actually thinks there are moderate Muslims than want to ally with historically fickle infidels to fight against other Muslims who have a history of showing no quarter. Sure there are moderate Muslims. But taking up arms to join an illegal rebel group to do battle against a real state and an insurgent state simultaneously is hardly what I'd call "moderate".
In other words, there will be no flowers because there are no moderate Muslim fighters.
I'm going to reread The Quiet American.
Come on. Trust us. Just because we walked off and left the Vietnamese and Cambodians to die and are about to do the same to the Afghans doesn't mean we don't care. Come on moderate Muslims. Who loves you baby.
Maybe the French should intervene first, for old times' sake.
"In Pennsylvania, Eric Matthew Frein is sought in the ambush killing of one state trooper and the wounding of another."
Probably best not to let the kids play outside in PA.
They might be mistaken for 31 yo Eric Matthew Frein.
Now, now - cops would not make a mistake like that...
HEY! IT'S CHRIS DORNER!!!!
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
Look, anyone could mistake a four foot tall six year old girl for a middle aged six foot tall white man. Give the cops some slack here.
Warning: Almanian's comment below this contains triggering material for thsoe who like good music.
FUCK! You wanna hear Amazing Grace AGAIN??!
In Pennsylvania, Eric Matthew Frein is sought in the ambush killing of one state trooper and the wounding of another. He's reportedly been vocal in the past about his desire to kill police and commit mass murder.
Is it just the cops seeking him, or is it would-be employers looking for someone with his particular skill set?
As a bagpipe-playing (40+ years now), kilt wearing 'murcan of Scottish descent, I have no opinion on the vote for Scottish independence.
Ohhhh - that's a lie!! I hope they go for it - for the lulz!
Zoe Quinn has learned a few things as "The Internet's most hated person
Let's just say that she is still very tied to her narrative of the events. A narrative that has been echoed by the mainstream press and sites such as Vox. Which is why I find passages such as:
To be rich.
NOT SUBREDDITS!
Guess you'll just have to make due with sympathetic coverage from The Washington Post and the goddamned New Yorker.
Also, you fuckers better read and respond. I had issues posting that comment and it took 30 goddamn minutes to post.
Zoe Quinn: Bringing the enlightened culture of American college campuses to the Gaming World
Fuck Zoe Quinn and the SJWs she rode in with.
Is this the girl who slept around to get good reviews on a crappy game she made?
Yeah, that's the one. Then when that blatant nepotism was revealed by her ex, she went batshit and a bunch of pro-SJW moderators on various sites tried to cover it up. Pretty entertaining. And the game wasn't even that good. Kinda garbage, actually, if what I hear is true.
"Complete shit" is the most charitable review I've seen of her game.
*review from someone she hasn't slept with, that is.
Yep, and for extra bonus points she also sabotaged a group trying to promote women in game design because they would compete with the thing she wanted to start.
I don't understand any of this. Should I? can you tardsplain it.
Yeah, I'm with Idle Hands. I stopped paying attention to major gaming scenes after they were seriously discussing putting 'trigger warnings' on games and how Sarkessian was a hero for having people say mean things about her on the internet (does that mean libertarians are some kind of saints?).
I didn't even know there was such a thing as gaming media until this broke. But Sarkessian really is right out of central casting. She wrote a text based game designed to show people the effects of depression. The Onion couldn't print that with a straight face. And she was serious and then couldn't understand why everyone laughed at her. These people defy explanation.
No, Quinn is the one who made Depression Quest. Sarkeesian is the "Video Game Tropes vs. Women" girl.
I need to start keeping score of these nuts at home I guess.
Yes, Sarkeesian, who sets out to piss off as many people as possible and acted surprised she pissed off anyone at all.
It's like throwing a water balloon at someone and then getting mad at them for being wet.
Sarkeesian is way better looking than Quinn.
My God, Quinn is homely as a fence post. Jesus, just how hard up were these people she slept with?
This is why I play a millennia-old game like Go.
Well, that and you can do it on an old computer without the latest memory and hardware acceleration.
Do computers still suck at Go?
It is misogynistic to point out she was screwing game developers and people in the industry she was supposed to cover.
My advice to Zoe is to find herself a sugar daddy because her career is over and when her 15 minutes of fame are up, she will no longer be useful to her feminist champions.
The hell it is. The gaming journalism scene is top heavy with people who think exactly like her. She is just the spark that set off a powder keg that has building for a while.
Think of it as the ESPNification of gaming.
With ugly chicks. And I was being sarcastic.
'Gaming culture' has a massive inferiority complex. Basically, the one thing they never, ever want to be seen as is 'childish'. This is why they wrote articles on whether video games were art years after the majority of people who cared were saying yes. Nowadays, if things haven't changed in the past year or so, journalists' attempts to be seen as 'mature' mainly manifest through pushing the social justice envelope as far as they can.
The same thing happens with sports journalists. Sports journalists always feel inferior to the real journalists covering the news. So they try and make up for it often by being the worst and most insufferable sorts of Progs. See. e.g. Mich Albom and John Feinstein.
Main difference being, real journalists slurping the cock of the PC Brigade gets them more access and credibility, whereas ESPN seems to be actively trying to bury the very industry that made them titans.
Why oh why didn't people just ignore this woman? Don't her critics realize that they've pretty much punched her ticket for free publicity, showers of attention and sympathy, and media access for broadcasting her insufferable self-righteousness to the world?
She shouldn't be ignored because her existence points to what complete hypocritical assholes the entire media is. With any luck the entire gaming media industry will die as a result of this as readers realized they are being fed bullshit.
Since it's a link to cracked.com, I presume the list of 5 items runs to two pages?
I have a serious love-hate relationship with Cracked. It seems the last few years have sapped the few non-lefty voices from their offerings. It was never a bastion of right-wing ideology, mind, but I was initially drawn to their articles specifically because of the lack of bias either way. That has definitely changed over the last 2-3 years.
Jesus, people have to inject their stupid politics into everything that's fun. Music, sports, video games, food, movies, whatever. You can't do anything anymore without being scolded by some fucking progressive busybody.
Jesus, people have to inject their stupid politics into everything that's fun.
Yes they do. These people are totalitarian. Everything is about politics for them. Everything is the state and must conform to and be a tool for advancing their politics. They are sick.
It seems like such a sad way to live. I almost feel sorry for them.
It is a horrible way to live. But it is hard to feel sorry for them since they are such a menace to the rest of us.
Rousseau's disciples
What is notable is that the gaming community is actually pushing back. Unlike so many of those other areas gaming lives online, and attempts to control it the way the SJWs have infected other areas may not work due to it's decentralized nature.
Problem is that too much of the pushing back is only helping her, because it's metaphorical equivalent of protesting Al Sharpton by organizing a klan rally.
Exactly. The people just going around saying she's a stupid whore are playing right into her hands. It would be much more helpful to focus the criticism on the "journalists" who enabled her and their attempts to quash discussion of the issue, things which we should find much more troubling than Quinn's actions.
The solution is to stop reading these publications. Put them out of business.
The solution is to stop reading these publications. Put them out of business.
Hard to do. Kotaku, for example, is ground zero for this sort of shit and their existence as part of the Gawker collective means that they are not going anywhere anytime soon.
A lot of people are doing that. There have been a number of very well thought out articles written recently by game designers and un-co-opted gaming media sites. Of course, there are also assholes, it's the internet. That doesn't mean that aggressively countering the SJW narrative is a bad idea. The time to play nice with these people has long passed. Calling them out as the politically driven crony control freaks they are is a welcome change.
If the revelations were true, I'm really bothered by them.
On the other hand, the way they came out makes me question if they are actually true.
On the third hand, her attempt to distract by just playing the "ooo, sexism" card makes me think they are.
On the fourth hand, the fact that so much of the response seem to have been have been unbelievably vile, kind of makes me not really care anymore, because I actually consider it a far worse problem than the initial issue.
In the end I basically just have to throw my hands up because I have no real clue what actually happened anymore, and neither side really seems to care what actually happened anyways, and regardless of what did actually happen, Zoe's not the person ruining my game time by screaming obscenities about it in Lion's Arch for no apparent reason when I'm just trying to do some crafting.
Quinn has never denied what happened. What is there to be confused about Stormy? All of the allegations are true. No one has ever denied that. They just claimed it was mean and sexist to raise them.
Thanks for your input, Shiva Destroyer of Worlds.
metaphorical equivalent of protesting Al Sharpton by organizing a klan rally.
That was absurd even for you.
But it's true. How does "There's no sexism in gaming you whore now go get raped and make me a sandwich" really help as a rebuttal?
Poor little thing, having the entire internet jump on her back like that. It's so unfair how we use our patriarchy to keep good decent women down. Especially for fucking around to get good reviews. I mean lord knows there are a ton of gamer guys sleeping their games to good reviews and nobody says anything about them (pay no attention to the fact that the demographic split is like 90/10 in favor of heterosexual males).
What a self important twat.
Say what you will about Ann Coulter, but in regards to taking shit, death threats, harassment etc she should be the model for females injecting themselves into the rough and tumble.
Question: who would be Coulter's lefty equivalent, ie someone who is terrible and therefore spewed at viciously, but takes it like a champ?
James Carville?
Oh wait, even better: Larry Flynt
Next you'll know, the British army surreptitiously occupies some fort in the outskirts of Scotland, egos will be tested, someone will make a silly mistake, war will erupt, thousands upon thousands will be slaughtered, the Union will be preserved, the Scots will be brought under the yoke of a reconstruction program, southern politicians will populate their county seats of government and historians will sing songs of praise for the PM for 150 years because he freed the slaves. Oh, and prima nocte will be enacted.
I don't see what this has to do with insulting gays. Please stay on topic.
Also, I have noticed that cracked has become less funny as it has decided to become more progressive and push things like modern day feminism.
To with, this article:
5 Responses to Sexism that make everything worse
Example bit:
That's not funny. Because the goddamn progs ruin everything
Oh, yeah, Cracked has been SJW-territory for years now. I haven't read a single article of theirs in ages for that very reason.
Was... was that passage supposed to be funny?
C'mon, Cracked, I used to like you guys. But I guess if you're going to commit comedy seppuku, you might as well go full retard.
I know a former female investment banker; she now works as an analyst for the Fed.
And she's quite nice - as long as I don't discuss monetary theory with her.
This "analysis" misses a few important points, among them:
-What's your fucking SOLUTION to your "problem", statist prick?
-Have you asked why our federal government is run by one personality type (shitweasel) and logically extended that to ask "why do we give them so much power??"
On a lighter note:
http://www.afro.com/joan-river.....e-passing/
OK, she called Obama a tranny instead of a Wookie.
But she nailed Chelsea Handler, whom she called a "drunk" and a "whore."
Calling Handler a drunk and a whore is an insult to drunk whores everywhere. I think the better description is drunk and cheap whore. Damn does she look tough these days. She never was a raving beauty but she wasn't just horrible at first. But she aged very fast.
That pretty much sums it up.
And the thing is, I generally have a soft spot for drunk whores. Yet even I still can't stand Handler.
The comments on that are full on fellating for the transgendered wookie.
Michelle Obama was named best dressed of the week on Fashion Police for the 2013 inaugural ball, IIRC.
The referendum is as good as over : Bill Clinton has weighed in.
(Somehow it doesn't appear to have even made the Scotsman. East Lothian news. That's like the Cedar Rapids Gazette.)
Dude seems a wee bit full of himself.
http://www.Crypt-Tools.tk