Swagnarok

I think this general principle should be adhered to:

"If a child is born with a genetic defect that would cause his or her quality of life, and especially his or her childhood, to be markedly lower than that of his or her peers, and it is within the means of scientists and doctors to correct the cause of this, then they ought to do so."

Everything that falls outside the scope of this, however, ought to be strictly regulated, because the elimination of genetic diversity is the elimination of genetic propagation, and thus the extermination of bloodlines and may in some contexts constitute genocide. In addition, the elimination of genetic diversity reduces our collective ability to withstand pandemics.

I wasn't arguing it should be decriminalized. But should a 20-17 relationship carry the same penalty as a violent rape?

For example, there's the common law definition of rape, which precludes the mere possibility that a biological female could commit the act (a nonsensical definition but one which remains in the law books today). Similarly there's the definition of rape which requires penetration, which in many cases would let the rapist off the hook altogether simply based on the details of how the crime was perpetrated, and which similarly assumes that a woman cannot commit rape. There was an infamous case in Alaska recently in which a judge couldn't convict a rapist because the way that the act was carried out did not meet the state's definition of penetration as per their criminal code.

There's statutory rape, which may involve consent by both parties in some cases (though for legal purposes it is always so assumed that the minor cannot consent). If it was a 20 year old guy and a 17 year old girl, would you slap a million dollar fine on him? Turn him into a slave until he could pay up?

There's situations where a man initiates a sexual act with a woman, in which she does not refuse but for which she did not express verbal consent. Many on the Left want this definition to be a thing (so, basically, 100% of married men would be in prison as violent sex offenders).

There are categories of sexual assault which do not fall under so severe a definition as rape (such as simple inappropriate touching). Million dollar fine?

Jeff Bezos has a net worth of something like 50 billion dollars. So does that mean he can simply pay a fine for rape each time and then get let off the hook, and effectively get away with it the first 40,000 times?

How do you define "rape"? Is there a single one-size-fits-all definition, for which a single uniform standard of punishment can be applied?

No, because this will encourage zero-sum game thinking in Congress. Each Senator and Representative would be angling to secure goodies for their constituents, screw the wellbeing of the country at large.

Just their sons? So if the child was a girl, they would not hold it partially responsible for the act of their rapist, but they would if it was a boy?

(Okay, people aren't completely rational, I get it. But this kind of thing absolutely infuriates me.)

If I'm not mistaken, the Court decided in the Slaughterhouse Cases that the 13th Amendment can only be interpreted literally, and in Griswold v. Connecticut it was found that there was a "penumbra" of rights encapsulated in certain amendments that established a right to privacy, which along with the 9th Amendment is the legal basis for abortion.

The ruling in Roe v. Wade was strengthened by the ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which declared Roe to be unbreakable precedent.

So to overturn Roe would require a chain of rulings that slowly enumerated a right superseding that of privacy, and then ultimately interpreted as a right to life for fetuses.

Oh yeah, and I decided I'm going to try to learn Russian. AKA the most alien-sounding language on planet earth. Apparently the letter h does not exist in their alphabet (or, at least, not by itself). A giant incomplete mess which, somehow, adequately fulfills the needs of the language.

That chart is absolutely amazing, by the way. In the year 1275 the UK had a higher GDP per capita than the Democratic Republic of the Congo does today. That is to say, there are people in Africa today who are actually living in the Middle Ages, in terms of standard of living.

To understand what I'm talking about, take the example of YouTube.

Let's say that you're a content creator. You want lots of people to view your content, and you want to be monetarily compensated for a large number of views in accordance with some kind of algorithm.

Any video streaming service can in theory provide you with the latter thing. HOWEVER, YouTube is where most people turn for user-generated videos to watch, because the vast majority of stuff is already on YouTube. So what do you do? You post it on YouTube, because that's the most rational decision for you. Maybe you could post it on some other website instead, so as to help them out, but that doesn't do you much good. There's little economic reason for you to post your content other than on YouTube, so you don't.

What was YouTube's advantage here? The size that it's already accumulated. It hit a critical mass long ago that virtually assured further growth. For that reason I predict that YouTube will continue to be a widely used service even into the 2030s decade, because it's basically a digital city.

But anyways, critical mass ensuring further growth. That's the principle I'd like to talk about here. Entrepreneurs and investors are "gravitationally attracted" to commercial hubs that've already achieved a certain size.

These hubs are called cities. The expansion of a city is a nearly unstoppable force, absent a massive disaster that strikes a city and disperses a significantly large sum of its accumulated capital elsewhere (and even then it might recover). Most of the economic growth happening in the United States today is happening in cities, whereas but a smaller portion trickles down to the countryside. As a natural consequence, inequality between urban and rural areas is naturally slated to increase over time. For whatever reason some of us assume that the latter ought to be able to mostly keep up, but that's just not the case too often.

The cities receive the talented people and the bold risk takers who have a business model in mind. These they receive from lesser developed areas, and of course from among the burghers themselves, since there are demographically more burghers than otherwise. But more importantly to this discussion is the process of brain drain.

The best and the brightest from rural areas rarely stay there, and instead move to the cities to seek opportunity, because opportunity is of course centered in urban areas, because those services which would help make their dreams a reality had already moved to the cities long ago.

The advantage of the city is twofold: first, geography. It is the natural midpoint between opposite areas. However, for services which can be facilitated over the internet or by telephone this is far less important in the emerging economy.

So what is the principle advantage of cities? It is their critical mass which they've already achieved. It serves as a magnet to the surrounding areas. While the burghers themselves (descendants of people who moved from the countryside) do produce, there is also something distinctly parasitic about cities.

It's also important to keep in mind that when we talk about "Trump Country" (and especially in the pejorative sense), we're talking about areas that have been victimized by the market forces of urbanization. Revolutionary start-up companies that might've been centered in their towns, and provided jobs to their towns, but which instead went to the cities. The people who stayed behind were indeed left behind.

In the modern world, there exists a potential to do things differently. A more geographically dispersed economy. And perhaps a more equitable one as well.

It would allow us to take better advantage of our large landmass, and so make land and home ownership more affordable for the average American. Most people would enjoy better air quality, less noise pollution, and even a natural landscape surrounding their homes.

Total ruralization is unreasonable, but a shift from urban to a somewhat more natural (and I don't mean a centrally planned grid whose only shrubbage was 1 centimeter tall plastic grass) suburban setting wouldn't be. It'd require a gradual relocation of American workplaces (mostly offices designed to provide long-distance services) to make this vision a reality.

It could happen naturally, but most likely it would require no small amount of government intervention. The city-rural divide could be bridged, and our politics might stand to become less polarized as a result.

It's interesting to note that maybe about a decade ago the US conducted wargames in which the general roleplaying as Iran succeeded in sinking a number of US carriers. Granted, the loss of carriers would not in itself spell a loss for the US (as the US could still attack from land bases in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, as they did with Iraq) but the psychological impact of such a contingency would likely be enough to get the US to tap out.

The US government's response to the outcome of the games seems muted, like they're denying that anything big happened. Either they're trying to cover up a significant weakness, or the general in question "cheated" (that is, utilized certain advantageous conditions that would not be present in an actual conflict), or they've improved their capabilities since then. I'm skeptical about the first, but also the third. I think it's a weakness which'll be there no matter what but which the Navy has spent a lot of time figuring out how to minimize the risk of. Carriers, after all, don't travel alone and are guarded with ships carrying loads of missile defense weapons.

As for an actual war, I don't think so, or at least not at this time. It's definitely not in Iran's interest, and it's clear that if they were to try something now they would not have the element of surprise. The real question is whether Trump would be willing to try something; considering that he ran for President largely on the platform of NOT going around invading other countries, I highly doubt it. The Mueller probe's conclusion was overall to his benefit, and his approval rating is pretty okay at the moment, so unlike Reagan or Clinton I don't think he's going to feel the need to start a foreign *ahem* adventure to improve his numbers. In this case it'd probably backfire anyways if he did.

Historically the development of lactose tolerance helped provide much-needed Vitamin D to European populations who were reeling from the effects of the Neolithic Revolution (e.g. rickets). And today you have people in sub-Saharan Africa who're given the sustenance they need to survive by way of dairy products derived fresh from a cow or similar livestock, and from eggs that chickens produce on a daily basis. To make a moral statement out of "thou shalt be a strict vegan" is absurd. Human lives are near-infinitely more important.

For the most part it's a choice that affluent peoples make because their food security accords them the luxury of dietary sensibility.

Congrats to Ramshutu for getting the position, but also thanks for the document.

In 2019, the likelihood that LGBT couple is going to have trouble finding somebody to make their wedding cake or take their wedding photos is slim to none. This was primarily meant to dissuade the kinds of @$$holes who decided to pick on the owners of Masterpiece Cakeshop to force them out of business on account of the owner's religious beliefs that they didn't like.

That is to say, the Left has already demonstrated bad faith on the issue, so this could legitimately be intended to protect religious liberties in the post-2015 landscape.

I don't know, man. If I were a billionaire, I think I'd be happy to trade every penny I was worth for a fair shot of becoming President of the United States.

Yeah. Investing in the casino industry was a massive mistake for Trump. The new report simply puts a price tag on something that's been public knowledge since, well, since it happened in the first place.

Keep in mind, of course, that this was about three decades ago.

Just to be clear: the freaking Associated Press now says that Trump's approval rating stands at 46%, probably the highest figure of his first presidency. What you are saying, in effect, is that 46% of Americans are cognitively challenged.

Good Gott no, I can just picture it now:

 "30 million people are playing this adult dating sim find out why"

 "They thought nobody was filming CLICK THE LINK NOW YOU SHAMELESS PERV!"

 "You won't BELIEVE what these child actors look like now"

 "50 keto diet tips for slimmer waistline"

 *Naruto videogame except with scantily clad women*

"Amazing Pikachu and Eevee fanart designed by furries"

 "Hillary Clinton plastic surgery find out more"

A few years ago, I was driving by in a car when I saw a turkey vulture on the side of the ride. As the car approached, it took off right then and there, crossing the road in front of me in one of the most beautiful displays that I've ever seen. As I looked on, one word came to my lips:

 "...Magnificent."

Turkey Vulture. No explanation needed.

So, like, freckles basically?

Since North Korea (an ongoing situation), no new country has attained nuclear weapons. The Nonproliferation Treaty is holding, for now.

If, say, South Korea or Japan went nuclear tomorrow (and there's no evidence that that's happening), it'd be a positive rather than negative development, because North Korea needs deterring besides from just the United States government. There's always going to be the question of whether we'd seriously risk making the US homeland a nuclear target to avenge Seoul or Tokyo, so these countries need deterrent forces of their own.

There have been rumors that Saudi Arabia is considering pursuing nuclear weapons in response to Iran (whose nuclear program the Obama Administration failed to adequately negate and which Trump is trying to handle now), but at this time that is just that: a rumor.

Haven't watched it. Sorry.

It'll be a long-term viable fuel source once we can develop thorium reactors, but conventional nuclear reactors utilizing the latest industry technologies could probably work out in the meantime. Developing electric cars is the right direction because it would allow compatibility with these.

The problem, of course, is that if every country does this then all countries will be one step closer to developing a nuclear weapon. That is true. However, economics will shift more towards using uranium for fuel rather than for weapons that probably won't be used, a "swords for plowshares" kind of situation.

Some countries, like North Korea, are well-suited for using such renewables as hydroelectric power to supply their energy needs, so they don't require nuclear reactors. In addition, their small size and high density would make a meltdown even more catastrophic, so these would have reason to pursue alternative means.

And some, of course, will still be mostly dependent on oil, which we can't really do anything about.

To shift the Overton Window, you need people like Nancy Pelosi as much as you need the "radicals" (though excuse me for implying mistakenly that in objective terms she is not one, she's just not as much of one as certain other Lefties are).

Somebody plays the "Throw Donald Trump in jail!" card and then their lackey Pelosi comes in behind them and says "Now now, let's be reasonable, moderate people here: we can suffice simply by impeaching the President", even though in truth that is not actually a moderate position. It's a false compromise.

Haha, I'm sorry that you got the wrong impression but I wasn't talking about Game of Thrones.

I've been meaning to make a topic about this.

The beauty of the situation is that the US didn't have to physically intervene for something like this to happen. All we had to do was churn out the propaganda, start stumping for this lacklustre, Beto-esque guy with no charisma of his own, and then POOF we have a proxy to take on Maduro and possibly/probably assume the Presidency after he's gone.

People like him, of course, are always going to be pro-US, because it's the opposite of what their predecessors did and because the US supported them in their rise in the first place.

It's scary how much soft power the US actually has. In the past 30 years so many formerly anti-US countries have flipped by way of revolution that it's not even funny. Our advantage actually lies in long stretches of peace; the longer such peace goes on the more advantageous our position becomes. Just this year alone we saw successful coup d'etats in Sudan and Algeria that overturned longstanding regimes.

To stand a real chance our adversaries ALWAYS have to take the initiative of aggressive military action, unless we would be so dumb as to prop them up ourselves. The Soviet Union flipped Gott knows how many countries to Marxism by force and ultimately even that wasn't enough.

They say the US army is the strongest in the world. While it's probably been the single strongest sea power consistently since the end of WWII, it seems more likely than not that the Soviets were the strongest land power. Our ability to defend Europe, or even the Eurasian continent in general, from them was far less certain. We won the Cold War by buying ourselves time and limiting their expansion, bluffing and blustering our way through the decades until time finally took its toll on the Eastern Bloc.

They say that the Cold War is over. Nope. As long as there are countries at odds with us or otherwise not aligned with us it's not over. But our adversaries have been made to keep the peace since 1991, which means they're forced onto the defensive.

First season is the best. You ought to go back and finish, if you have the time. Then it gets a little slow in seasons 2 and 3, so a casual fan might not consider it a worthwhile investment to keep going. But I will say that the longer it goes on the more it's revealed that the world isn't what it seems.

Shingeki no Kyojin: OPENING 5

When they have the opening for Season 3 Part 2 I'll be sure to update here.

(I mean Attack on Titan, If you still don't know.)

They executed 36 other men IN THAT ONE WEEK. Insane.

1st--Plan C

2nd--Plan B

3rd--Plan A

Question 1: Plan C

Question 2: Plan C

Question 3: Yes

Question 4: Yes

The EU should do a thorough audit of all the accounts commenting on this page, and on hundreds of other pages like it. Those with IP addresses stemming from Europe should be tracked down and the persons behind them should be immediately deported, along with their whole families.

By the definition provided here (somebody who supports Donald Trump, voted for him in 2016, and will vote for him again in 2020), I am only partway a "Trumpanzee". I actually voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, my intentions of such having been documented back on DDO. However, I will surely vote for Trump in 2020, if nothing else then because whatever party wins that election will be in a position to draw up the electoral map for the next 10 years and because said party will also determine who the next new Supreme Court justice is, and perhaps most importantly because the only possible way (short of a dictatorship) at this point to shift the Overton Window to the right of where it is now (or, approximately, towards the center) is for Trump to serve two terms and come out reasonably popular. For that he's obviously gonna need a second term. If he loses in 2020 there will probably be no hope for America whatsoever.

Russia leaked Hillary Clinton's and the DNC's private transactions, and in the process revealed some things that made them look bad. Somebody in turn leaked the Access Hollywood tapes, which likewise never should've seen the light of day and which made Trump look very bad, possibly costing him a million female votes.

That is to say, both sides got leaked. Both sides had dirt that got exposed. You can't say that the mere fact that said leaking occurred is the sole reason a candidate won. Trump still lost the popular vote (but won the election due to the Electoral College), which if there was a sophisticated campaign by a powerful foreign government to turn popular opinion against Hillary you simply would not expect. (In conclusion, the Russian effort was not particularly sophisticated, and it pretty much did nothing more than tip the scales a little bit to compensate for certain unfair disadvantages that Trump faced.)

As the report admitted, the Trump campaign anticipated that it would gain from Russia's actions, but it did not outright coordinate its actions with the Russian government or with representatives of such, and there is no evidence that Trump was aware of the "Trump Tower Meeting". Hence, the report concludes that there is no evidence of collusion.

The media is focusing now on obstruction of justice, as Trump took actions which could be considered to have the effect of interfering with the investigation in some way or another. I haven't read the report, so I imagine a good bit of it focuses on Trump's hostile tweets (which in any event are perfectly understandable, since being subject to an investigation that might question the legitimacy of one's election is a pretty humiliating situation to be in for anybody). As for other examples cited, Mueller decided not to attempt to levy charges, so it's pretty much an open and shut case at this point. Trump's been cleared of criminal wrongdoing, more or less.

What I'd take from the release of the Mueller Report is that the people who already thought he's guilty will be more sure of that now, the people who already thought he's innocent will be more sure now that he's innocent, and the undecideds will be a little more open now to the possibility of voting for him in 2020. A win overall.

Hey, who's your local meth supplier? I think you need to complain to them that the stuff they're giving you is a tad too strong. Probably laced it with some unwholesome other products to cut costs.

I saw the video and it was surprisingly, well, not bad. What the cleric described does not sound at all like a beating, but rather a "shoulder tap/shake". Considering that this video came from the Arabian Peninsula you'd really expect a lot worse...

Okay...let's say, just for the sake of argument, that we actually gave this a try. Would there be any actual evidence that we were accomplishing anything whatsoever? Could we see, hear, or feel spirits? Would we have any way of knowing that we hadn't just dug a monumentally expensive hole in the ground for absolutely nothing?

In addition, let's say for the sake of argument that your plan actually worked. What would prevent the God who put them there in the first place from recapturing them and placing them back in torment elsewhere?

What purpose would there be in God imprisoning damned human souls in the earth's core? Wouldn't anything that produced the sensation of extreme pain do the trick? Why put them in a place that'll eventually run out of heat? Can incorporeal entities be harmed or otherwise affected by physical heat?

Also, aren't you sort of begging the question? Why would God, whose intent is was to make the penalty of damned souls last forever, put them in such a prison that living humans would eventually be able to break them out?

I don't know about that. LBJ was among the last of the Democrats who took the Soviet threat seriously. Dem politicians after him seemed downright eager to collude with the ComIntern to undermine the foreign policy interests of the United States.

If nothing else, the War on Poverty probably helped alleviate criticisms of capitalism by giving such a massive concession, stripping radicals of a major talking point and so helping to keep the peace at home.

Omar al-Bashir, Sudan's long-running dictator (since 1989), a figure who is internationally wanted for perpetrating the Darfur Genocide, has been ousted in a coup d'etat by the Sudanese military, whose head is now the national leader of Sudan. A two-year transitional period has been announced, with intent to stage elections sometime soon. Reportedly he is still alive, but his fate is uncertain. Whether he'll be handed over to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face justice remains to be seen.

Go love yourself you very smart adult. I'm going to kick your innovative saint so hard that everyone here will see how I've made you my good dog. Nothing but a Hollywood star who spends all his time on a debate website and you think that makes you a tough guy? Heck, everybody here just knows you as the hero of DART.

You mad bro? Go ahead: be a little thick skinned (person) and go crying to the mods to get mean old Swagnarok off your back. Love you, you frickin piece of jolly rancher (better than poop IMO).

Good Gott, the sheer paranoia of this...

1. Either cool or funny.

2. Severely appealing.

3. What do you mean? Obviously if I had a choice I'd make myself the alpha or whatever, but realistically I'd be *close to* the bottom of the food chain, though probably not all the way at the bottom (to be fair, though, if I was on an island and there was absolutely nothing to do other than to focus on survival then I'd likely find myself obsessing over the task to such a degree that I'd find myself in a relatively high position on the chain, especially compared to people who didn't really care one way or another; I think I could also do a pretty decent job of organizing the survival effort, though there'd be the question of whether anyone would listen to me)

4. I usually don't like competition, but there are exceptions. Competition takes a lot of work, so it depends on how motivated I am to exert myself in a particular area, but usually not.

I actually remember, when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old I was sitting in a Sunday school-like class (at a very large local church, in a dimly-lit large room on the second floor of the gymnasium building) and the teacher, a middle-aged woman, was getting emotional talking about a school shooting that in hindsight had to have been Columbine, since I think there wasn't another major school shooting like it in the US until Virginia Tech, and then after that it didn't become super common until the 2010s. That was several years after it happened, of course. But close enough to it that it was still lingering strongly in the public consciousness (and especially among Evangelicals who were particularly antsy about that kind of thing).

An unexpectedly serious topic considering how old we all were. She was talking about the implications of violent video games and thinking violent thoughts. I'm not going to say she was wrong, because obviously the kind of sh*t that happens every couple of months now used to almost never happen. The spike in these incidents happened as there began to be a bigger and more realistic market for violent consumer products (such as video games and movies of a violent nature), though of course it took a long time for the former to catch up with the latter, and to be fair overall rates of violence are lower now than they used to be. But among some people their unwillingness to keep a clear distinction between violent fantasy and reality, based on desire that was fed for years and years by violent mediums, is having increasingly tragic consequences for our society. Heck, the Christchurch Mosque Shooting was livestreamed, so it could be seen as an extreme manifestation of that same market, with the target audience being less satisfied with simulated violence and now starting to develop a taste for snuff videos, which would strongly suggest that we're going to get a lot more of that happening in coming years.

I must say, though, it's got to really suck being the mother of one of those two boys. A stigma attached to them for the rest of their lives, though in truth what Eric and Dylan did had little to do with them having been subject to "bad parenting". I mean, how many mothers really know anything at all about the interests and personalities of their teenaged sons? Usually they cloister themselves up in their rooms and don't disclose except to friends who they mainly hang out with away from home, right?

I know Mrs. Klebold appeared on TEDTalks once. Maybe it was a way to finally tell her side of the story, to show that she was a victim as much as anybody else (save maybe the dead).

And yes, I know that yours is a troll account, possibly to commemorate the upcoming 20th anniversary of the incident.

As far as I'm aware they were released about 15-20 years ago (2005 at the latest). What those two boys did was fairly straightforward, and it didn't really concern any other ongoing criminal investigations (save for maybe whoever sold them the weapons they used), so it would've been released fairly quickly, or at least, it would've surely taken them less than 20 years to do so.

I mean, heck, they even released police dispatch transcripts and recordings from that county on that day. Pretty much everything related to that case is out there on the internet now. It's just a matter of where to look. You could probably find the entire content of the Basement Tapes on YouTube, though of course if you do watch those then expect a ton of profanities and vulgarities.

I've read Eric Harris's diary. Some crazy sh*t right there. Incessant narcissistic boasting, a whiny brat who hated everybody and everything, like "mwahaha I'm so evil", which I guess in hindsight he really was. If somebody had gotten their hands on that ahead of time they would've known for sure that he was a danger to other people.

Sociopathy/psychopathy in general just translates to a large excess of selfishness (usually of a self-destructive nature), not necessarily sadism. But Eric Harris was one of a kind, so...