Swagnarok

Women don't have to worry about finding a mate. Guys will literally flock to them, and then they pick one. So many guys, in fact, that they complain about it. Save an exceptionally unattractive woman, not being able to find a mate is something that women usually aren't going to have a problem with. So as for those guys who seem to always be pestering you, you can't understand where they're coming from. You'll never have to deal with rejection, or being alone. A ton of guys would give an eye and a limb to be in your shoes. So don't be so quick to judge, ladies.

You have to understand that in our culture, men are supposed to initiate courtship, and that's the way it goes ninety eight times out of a hundred, probably. If he's interested in you, he can't wait for you to show interest. Because he's most likely gonna be waiting forever before he receives any sort of unambiguous signal. So he has to just go for it, and then find out afterwards whether or not you're interested. It's like a coin toss. If a guy never asks a girl out, he will die single and alone. And that's something most people would prefer to avoid. Since the probability of being rejected is high, he usually has to ask out several people before getting a match. By "several people" I mean whatever women he's had enough contact with to deem a potentially suitable partner, who potentially might show interest or willingness to him. A woman who he hangs out with a lot would probably be near the top of that list.

Some guys just never have the guts. Other guys take almost any ambiguous signal (such as a polite smile or polite laughter at a half-@$$ed joke) to mean a yes and so they go for it, no holds barred. Because when two people of the opposite sex interact, communication difficulties can easily ensue.

Courtship is very often preceded by friendship. It can sometimes be difficult for a guy to tell when trying to take things to the next stage is inappropriate (again, miscommunication), unless she tells him off the bat, which she might feel to be too awkward a conversation to have (and so she doesn't).

If a guy continues to attempt courtship with her after this convo has been had, I'd have a lot less sympathy for him. I'd also have very little sympathy with a guy who started out with "Hey, wanna bone?", though forgive me if I'm skeptical of the claim that anybody either here or on DDO did that to you, except perhaps out of malice (the reasons behind which should escape no seasoned user here).

Your best bet would be a guy who's in a situation where he's not looking for somebody, though among people of your age finding a male person in that kind of situation is sort of unlikely. Many are generally apathetic towards dating but would run with an opportunity if handed to them. Just approach one of those guys, signal interest in friendship only, and poof. There you go. Platonic thingamajig established.

(Note to Mods: If I reported my own above post, it was by accident, because I'm presently accessing this Site via a device that uses touch screen.)

That's the thing: funding and authorizing the wall was always supposed to be Congress's job. But in two years time they never did, even though Trump complained about their lack of action over and over and over again. Short of this present shutdown, or declaring a national emergency, there's little that Trump himself could've done to get the wall built.

As for why they should've given him the wall, well, it would've done *something* at least to address what most Republicans acknowledge as a serious problem. It could've come in a different package. Maybe as a comprehensive immigration and border security reform bill. Maybe something that did not involve a literal wall but got the job done regardless. Instead, they've sat on their hands for two years and obstructed Trump at every turn.

Trump's had to deal with a record-breakingly obstructionist Congress. Obama at least got to pass the stimulus package, and then Obamacare. Trump, like Obama, saw his own party in charge of both houses during the first half of his first term. But they haven't played ball with him (or so to speak), not even once. The elites are so entrenched that they've even used the Republican Party as a tool to block Trump from getting anything done. It's been nothing but non-stop war against the President since day one.

This is an outrage, plain and simple. The wall was the item upon which Trump ran for president. And the elites have cheated him and his supporters out of such. They've passed nothing that might make even the slightest contribution to our border security. It's been "never Trump" since day one, and now that the Dems control the House we can expect even more of that.

The situation that President 45 has found himself in is, truly, without historical precedent in perhaps any country that has ever existed. While it's understood that the President does not control the Legislature, if he and his party rose to power in the same election then it should be reasonably expected that they give some deference to the platform that he ran on. Even if this amounts to less than perfect accommodation, it's downright their obligation to give him at least a little bit of what he wants.

These de facto powers that a US President has always exercised in this kind of situation are being stripped of Trump, and it constitutes a de facto infringement on the powers of the Executive by the elites. If Trump, in declaring a national emergency, is able to get what he wants entirely without Congress's permission, then all I have to say about the matter is that they brought it upon themselves. The shutdown also is every bit as much on their heads as it is on Trump's, because his demands are few and very far from being unreasonable, a small spending package that he's only now pressing after nearly two years of being President.

We're all descendants of the winners. Our ancestors built civilizations upon the graves of the losers. Just about doesn't matter who you are, at some point down the line your ancestors conquered and settled land that previously belonged to someone else.

Modern man is remarkably compassionate compared to virtually any of his forebears.

(Little did they know...the situation on planet earth was about to get that much worse.)

He just was an ordinary man, trying to make ends meet for himself and for his family, in a cruel world that'll chew you up and spit you out. His name was Gunther Black. And this is his story.

This is an internet meme. Nobody here invented the above dialogue.

Literally at any time somebody could hop the open border carrying a highly infectious super-strain of a virus against which the general public has little to no immunity against, with the potential to kill tens of millions of people, and we don't need some kind of border control and immigration screening apparatus?

It's absolutely insane that our politicians have let us bear this risk every day of the past half-century that this debate has been ongoing. Ideology has blinded generation after generation of lawmakers and presidents. The time is now. Trump cannot afford to fail, for all our sakes.

I'm sure that I could defend the position well enough, but I'm not the same caliber debater as you are. Not even close, lol.

I mean, I could give it a shot. But I don't think I'd make for a great opponent.

Governments kill people for the benefit of their citizens. A politician who is making a good faith effort to represent the interests of his/her nation is in effect just the guy who does the paperwork (as he would expect any other rational leader in his position to enact the same policies), and so he/she is not responsible for the deaths incurred by that government and there's no reason why he or she shouldn't be able to sleep peacefully at night.

Otherwise, the position of "national leader" would be one that all rational persons concerned for their own consciences would turn down, and so in an ideal world there would be nobody to do the work that needs to be done, which is a very undesirable outcome (unless you're an anarchist).

In any case, a leader who does his job well should usually end up saving more lives than he takes, so it should "balance" out good enough.

Just make sure to publicly state your intention to assassinate the President. Nothing bad will happen, I guarantee.

And on her first day she flirted with the notion of indicting a sitting President. Marvelous.

Breaking Bad is awesome. Not gonna lie, though: I did not expect Walter White to be such a mild-mannered and physically unimposing person at the show's beginning, which I'm guessing was the whole point.

Speaking of which, I was VERY surprised to see reported by the Washington Post (of all publications) something that said illegal disinformation tactics may've been used against Judge Roy Moore in his Senate bid. I mean, no sh*t Sherlock, but at least it's a baby step in the right direction.

Congrats to him. Anybody know the year?

Royal ((Lamer)), obviously. Not sure why anyone would even question that. I'm here on the internet and I make a higher than average number of posts so clearly that makes me the greatest thing that ever happened to this place or anywhere else ever. Anyone who questions this is part of a vast conspiracy against me by the Mods who keep banning me (obviously because they're jealous of my awesomeness).

Coal as a power source probably isn't going anywhere for the next half century, at least. Growth in the 3rd world, dependent upon cheap sources of energy, will make sure of that.

Anthropology? Must be one heck of a university. What would you like to do with a degree like that?

The Yazidi are not Satanists in any true sense of the word. That's just the product of centuries of Muslim slander. They're a fringe offshoot of Zoroastrianism.

Alright. Fair enough.

Here's a few more questions that you probably should be able to answer:

-Is chronic inflation the single greatest economic problem in America today?

-Though Saudi Arabia be under the rule of an odious government, is it a probable threat to the United States and the world?

-Thoughts on Trump's scheduled withdrawal from Syria? Afghanistan?

-Does eastern philosophy have anything of value to offer the west?

-You've said that the US has more power than several of our most viable rivals combined. Can you justify this claim, considering that China's GDP is now considerably larger than ours (and the gap is growing)?

-Can you summarize the philosophy of Dostoevsky? How does it compare to that of Nietzsche?

Not sure why Trump would feel any pressing need to be loyal to a party that wouldn't give him a wall even when they had a majority in both houses and which even now is fighting nail and tooth against funding for such, even though this is probably going to be their last chance ever.

The Republican Party itself is RINO.

What is your greatest intellectual ideological accomplishment (that is, what unique idea, theory, argument, or whatever are you particularly proud of)?

I have a theory (and this is just a theory):

It's been said that Russian trolls have stumped for both sides of the aisle, in an effort to fan the flames of division in the West.

*hint hint hint*

Relationships are a f*** ton of work. When you stop making an effort towards it, it sputters out and dies off. It can be exhausting for that reason.

Islam definitely enforces modes of thinking that are toxic to human welfare.

For example, there's "Atomism", which establishes that Allah recreates the Universe every moment, and that there are no fixed laws of physics or science. As a consequence, the Muslim world has seen extremely little in terms of indigenous scientific advancement, and its soldiers in particular are garbage because they rarely bother to work out military strategy and just assume that Allah will give them the victory. It's a collective learned helplessness that breeds inferior people.

Additionally, the prevailing mindset in the Muslim world is that everything that happened happened because somebody caused it to happen. So whenever anything bad or otherwise undesirable happens over there, their first instinct is to blame some conspiracy against Islam, for which somebody needs to pay. That's why they hate the West and why they're so prone to murder the indigenous Christians and Jews living in their midst.

How many times have you gotten stung?

I don't think RM can help it if he has Histrionic Personality Disorder.

What was your DDO account? It's pretty apparent you used to be a regular there.

There are pretty much only two ways to solve mass resource consumption:

1. Technological innovation which increases efficiency of said consumption finally begins to outpace increase in demand (in recent decades it's only served to slow such down)

2. Large-scale government action to either decrease demand or to otherwise reduce consumption or increase efficiency in some areas.

(Note that I meant "You" in a general sense, not referring to you specifically.)

My point is that either you put your money where your mouth is or shut the f*ck up about materialism and consumerism. There's no virtue to be gained from flapping your gums when you are clearly a consumer like everybody else.

There's another thing to note:

Trump can't force people to take cabinet positions in his Administration. A lot of seasoned public servants have shown unwillingness to work under him, simply because of the pitch black reputation that the media's given him. So Trump has to select his candidates from that pool of willing people.

Vive les gilets jaunes! Senseless destruction and wanton violence as a means of resolving complex issues is so great!

I'm not sure what to make of the above comment.

Denying free will can in itself drive a person insane, if they really take this belief seriously in their lives. To claim moral agency for oneself is probably necessary for a healthy human psyche. But what's necessary for a healthy human psyche is not necessarily what is true about reality.

Eastern Orthodoxy, so far as I understand it, recognizes sin as a spiritual disease, rather than as the collective sum of bad choices made by beings who are presented with an unbiased choice between good and evil and then decide to do wrong just for the lulz. So in that respect it's more honest than Roman Catholicism or most Protestant denominations, though unfortunately I don't think it goes so far as to throw out free will altogether.

I am not an atheist, because I am still open to the possibility of becoming Christian one day (I am hesitant to use the label for myself whenever I've yet to make the sacrifice of self required to be saved). But from a purely logical standpoint the whole thing just does not compute.

We were born sinners, because we are the descendants of people who chose to sin, and for that we are condemned. It is not enough to say that we are beings with a knowledge of good and evil, because the fact that we are naturally selfish biases us extremely heavily towards committing at least a few sins in our lifetime, and in our current state we surely could not go an eternity without doing so. The Bible pretty much admits that it's impossible for a normal (re: non-Jesus) person to live a full life without sinning at all. So to that extent we literally cannot help but to be sinners.

God could have chosen at any time to make us born not sinners, or at the very least make us born into a world where there is not a natural bias towards sin. But He never did that. He allowed us to be born the way that we are and then has the audacity to damn us to a punishment of infinite severity and length, to horrors literally unimaginable and unending. This is not justice. A God who would do this is not just. If He is not just, then at least one Biblical claim about Him is false (and an extremely important one at that).

Yes, I know that they're the same (or so to speak). God the Father was the one who spoke to the Patriarchs, Moses, and the Prophets, whereas the Holy Spirit was involved in certain passages and likely in the penning of the books of the OT. God the Son (Jesus) appeared only in the New Testament, though He was prophesied about in the OT.

So far as knowledge goes, I think I understand Christianity well enough.

It's funny, because the vast majority of people don't realize how vastly nicer the God of the OT was compared to the God of the NT. He would bless (cause to prosper) the Jews for doing good, and cause them to either suffer on earth or die if they consistently failed to keep His laws.

But that's it. They died physically. And this generally only applied to Jews, more rarely to Gentiles who behaved in an exceptionally atrocious manner. At the absolute worst, He would cut short a person's mortal lifespan.

The God of the NT, on the other hand, would literally throw a person in Hell for all eternity, even if they were a gentile who was well-behaved by human standards, on account of the nature that they were born with. Christianity is an insanely cruel ideology because it holds that human beings are sh*t who deserve whatever they get, though I really don't have a problem with it since the overall outcome of its belief and practice tends to be highly positive, both historically and today.

Oh wow, it's almost as if Trump holds his people up to a standard of competence, and does away with them if they can't meet that.

What you'd expect from a businessman. If some part of the operation is inefficient then maybe it's time to fire some people, or so the reasoning goes. When people think that their jobs could be on the chopping block at any time, it usually motivates them to do a better job.

Past presidents didn't, either because they just didn't care, didn't realize the extent of the government's issues, or valued the facade of unity too highly. And we're now beginning to learn about the catastrophic behind-the-scenes failures of the Obama Administration.

So by "Select Winner" you mean debates that employ voting without different point categories being awarded?

(If so then yes.)

1. Yes

2. Yes

3. ?

4. Yes

5. ?

The Jews are a small minority in a sea of Arabs, and also the indigenous people of Israel. They have done very well for themselves, in sharp contrast to their Arab neighbors. They deserve the prosperity that they have, and we should not let the Arabs drag them down (though it should be noted that many Arabs living in Israel have benefited from the modern society that the Jews built).

We should all be clear that responsibility for the Israeli-Arab conflict falls squarely on Israel's neighbors (with the possible exception of Jordan), which have refused to take in resettle of the Palestinian refugees from 1948. The "right to return" is bulls**t because in practice that'd mean a Jewish loss of demographic majority, probably some form of sharia law, and possibly even a mass slaughter of Jews. The Palestinians must either be relocated to more spacey Arab countries or learn to live in the tiny Palestinian Territories (which means population control).

Israel is under no obligation whatsoever to lift sanctions on the Palestinian Territories until Hamas is ousted from power, because what happened 2006 was such an incredible show of bad faith on the Palestinians' part and they deserve all that's happened to them these past 12 years simply for making their beds with terrorists.

Saudi Arabia is located largely on flat, desert (that is, easily invade-able) terrain. Just like Iraq. Its only valuable resource seems to be oil. Their economy will probably crash whenever they run out of that resource, or whenever technology causes oil to dramatically and permanently devalue. Its people seem to live off welfare and not be highly trained in any skill, so I think it's probably safe to say that they're f**ked without oil.

In short, they're not really a threat physically speaking. They have a very well-funded military, but they could not sustain that without their current oil binges, and in any case the King of Saudi Arabia seems to be on our side for now. He's more scared of Iran (which, funny coincidence, so are we), so there's room in the present environment for an alliance, if only to keep Saudi Arabia from cozying up with China and Russia.

We have good reason to be wary of Saudi Arabia's wahabbist interpretation of Islam, because if exported it could sink the Muslim world deeper into a special kind of barbarism that it's been slowly crawling its way out of these past 100 years. And because, quite frankly, Saudi Arabia is like a less militaristic version of North Korea in fact. But I'm reasonably confident that the King will either be ousted or forced to transition to a constitutional monarchy within the next 10-30 years, since it's a giant kleptocracy which I can't envision surviving when the easy money stops flowing, so whatever.

Our main concern should be to keep them from getting nukes (by providing them with military assurances) and keep them from pivoting towards the side of our enemies.

No comment on Yemen.

Because we all know that this Site is the de facto continuation of the DDO community, and so impersonation of somebody there is the same as impersonation of somebody here, since at any moment the real person could cross over here. Additionally, because of who airmax is any imposter who managed to be believed by a lot of people would be taking on a level of influence and prestige among the userbase here that he or she does not deserve, and which might very well be abused, to the detriment of the real airmax's reputation.

Pretty sure any ethnic Russian is more white than any ethnic Latino.

Yes for all of them.

The only way to prevent this would be for nuclear countries to invest in better survivability platforms rather than prioritizing speed of retaliation, which would give the systems time to second guess their own decisions and perhaps prevent a catastrophe. It'd also help for countries to handicap the speed of their own nukes, but that's probably not going to happen, simply because in that case ABM capabilities would outstrip these and render their arsenals obsolete.

Examples of survivability platforms would be nuclear submarines, large numbers of warheads and delivery vehicles scattered over a large area (and especially when employing mobile launchers), nuclear command-and-control bunkers deep within the earth/mountains, etc.