Lurker > darkknight109

Odds are excellent he gets impeached.

0% chance he gets convicted, though. Moscow Mitch would never allow it.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

LinkPizza posted...

Which is like a physical version of paid DLC...

...that had none of the issues I've brought up and also had the advantage of being far more archivable.

LinkPizza posted...

Except you dont have to buy the loot boxes.

Sure, in the same way you don't need to use a motorized vehicle to cross the country. You could just walk.

LinkPizza posted...

As for the other part, its not always an incomplete product just because it has DLC.

Yes, it is. That's not my opinion, that's literally how the English language works.

If you make Product X, while also developing Products Y and Z that are additional pieces to Product X that share the same development cycle and are planned at the same time, Product X is not complete when it is sold on its own.

Hell, some of them don't even try to hide it. It's not uncommon for games sell their "final version, with all DLC included" packages as "[Game Title]: Complete Edition".
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

LinkPizza posted...

Again, as long as its done right. I dont See a problem with that.

The problem is, it almost never is "done right".

LinkPizza posted...

And what did suck back then was you couldnt get more of a game when you finished unless they made a sequel of something.

Expansion packs existed back then.

LinkPizza posted...

You also have the option of just not buying the DLC...

Which, you'll note, is exactly what I said I do.

However, that's also a disingenuous argument. Saying, "You don't have to buy the DLC" is much like EA's constant insistence of, "You don't have to buy the lootboxes or microtransactions! They're just timesaving options or surprise mechanics! If you would prefer to grind for 800 hours to get the character and equipment you want, you're totally free to do that!" - it's technically true, but in a meaningless way that ultimately leads to a shittier end product.

Saying, "Just don't buy the DLC" is basically saying, "Just accept an incomplete product. Either that or buy into the manipulative business practices like the rest of us!". You wind up fucked either way.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

LinkPizza posted...

The other option is no DLC at all, so...

Which was never a problem in the pre-Xbox era.

And for the record, the other option is "free DLC", which some companies still do. Sega did that all the time in the Dreamcast era.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

Peterass posted...

Guess we'll just ignore the transcript and the Ukrainian president who stated he wasn't pressured to do anything right?

I mean, what's Zelensky going to do? Toss Trump under the bus and hope the Republican who replaces him, along with the Republican running the senate, look favourably on the fact that he just dethroned their president and don't tear his badly-needed military aid to ribbons, while also implicitly admitting to his own voters that he's America's bitch? Fat fucking chance.

Also, the transcript is out and it showed pretty much exactly what everyone expected it would - even Republicans are signing off that this is a damning revelation.

Peterass posted...

3 years is a ridiculous amount of time to not accept the results of a fair election.

Dude, everyone's accepted the results of the election. People aren't saying, "Get rid of him, he rigged the election," they're saying, "Get rid of him, dude's corrupt as fuck." You can acknowledge that the election was fair (as fair as it can be despite Russian interference, anyways) and still want Trump gone. You can acknowledge he won the election and still, on Day 1, think he deserves to be impeached for breaching campaign finance laws. Or violating the prohibition against emoluments. Or due to the multiple allegations of sexual assault made against him.

The only people who still bring up 2016 are Republicans, who are the political equivalents of the 40 year old in his basement looking through his high school yearbook and sighing wistfully as he remembers that time he won the big game back in high school and wondering why no one else ever comments how amazing it was. Democrats have long since moved on - Trump has given them more than enough ammunition to call for his ouster that has nothing to do with 2016.

Gaawa_chan posted...

This is also not to say that the Biden family isn't also corrupt as Hell. I think I first learned about Hunter Biden's corruption back in... 2015?

Corrupt how?

The allegations against Hunter Biden are completely, transparently politically-motivated bullshit cooked up by Trump and his cronies. To wit:
1) Hunter was never a subject of investigation by Ukraine, and the current prosecutor has made clear that they have no evidence or allegations he ever participated in wrongdoing.
2) An investigation was launched into Burisma, the company that Hunter is on the board of directors of, but it involved transactions that occurred before Hunter joined the company in 2014. There are no allegations of wrongdoing that date from the time Hunter has been with the company.
3) That investigation went dormant due to lack of evidence and the unlikelihood of charges long before Joe Biden pressed for the ouster of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin.
4) On that note, Shokin's ouster was pushed for not just by Biden and the US, but also by the EU, the IMF, and ordinary Ukrainian citizens, who were protesting and calling for his resignation. His removal had nothing to do with the investigations he was doing, but rather the ones he wasn't doing, as he was famously soft on corruption, refusing to prosecute anyone from the current or previous governments.

And if you're a Vice President hoping to cover up your son's corrupt activity, pushing for the removal of a prosecutor who is soft on corruption and who has stopped investigating your son's company in favour of one that will take a much harder line on white collar crime probably isn't a winning move.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

adjl posted...

DLC is the one monetization strategy that I do think has some value. Yes, it frequently gets abused, but there are plenty of examples of DLC that simply add more content to a game that's already perfectly enjoyable on its own, comparable to the expansion packs of yore. As long as it feels like it's adding something new and not just replacing what was removed, I'm fine with DLC.

DLC is abused far more than people appreciate. It's accounted for in the earliest parts of the game's development. Management - not the director or the game's developers, but management - decides how much DLC will be made, when it will be released, and what it will cost. They make these decisions not based on the creative needs of the game or the desires of the team to add in additional content, but based on marketing and engagement studies in the hopes of retaining as many customers for as long as possible and milking as much money out of them as possible. It is, in a sense, understandable why they do this - resources need to be allocated, budgets need to be planned, timetables need to be worked out.

But... it's fundamentally dishonest. It's a way of selling an incomplete product, since you're basically asking your creative team, "Yeah, come up with a great idea we can sell later, but make sure not to include it in the basic product. Gotta have something to boost up those Q2 numbers!"

DLC is the perfect example of a system that sounds great in theory (after all, who doesn't like the idea of their favourite game getting new content?), but has been thoroughly ruined by greedy assholes looking to pad their bottom line.

Yes, the above doesn't apply to everyone. Yes, some studios - usually indie developers running on shoestring budgets - really do develop and release DLC purely based on the desire to add items that, due to time or budget constraints, simply didn't fit in the original package. But the number of development studios that statement applies to is vanishingly small - smaller than most people appreciate.

So I don't support it. It's a shitty business model that uses price obfuscation and underhanded and/or exploitative psychology tricks to separate people from their money. If you want to sell me a product, sell it to me once. Tell me up front how much you want me to pay for it, so that I can make an informed decision on whether or not what you're selling is worth it.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

Solid Sonic posted...

Which one takes precedence for you?

Not supporting bad practices. Because if you only boycott games you hate and were never going to buy anyways, the boycott doesn't work and you just let those bad practices take over (which is why ideas that were considered fringe and terrible last generation - games-as-service, microtransactions, lootboxes, season passes, etc. - spread rapidly and have become a standard part of the industry.

To that end, I refuse to:
-Buy and game that isn't DRM-free. That means either a physical copy or, if digital, through a vendor like GOG.com that releases the game without any DRM bullshit. No Steam, Origin, or Epic Store for me.
-Spend a penny on the game outside of what I initially paid for it. No paid DLC, since I don't like having the game chopped up and sold back to me at a premium; no microtransactions or lootboxes; and no XBLA, PSN, or Nintendo Online subscriptions (though, in fairness, I almost never took part in the online mode for those consoles even when they were free). I do not think it's unreasonable for me to request that a game be a single, complete package sold for one final price. I will sometimes wait for a GOTY Edition to get all the extra content, especially if I know the studio almost always releases one eventually.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

Aaantlion posted...

Face it, he's better at nicknames than you are.

I mean, I guess if elementary schoolyard humour is your thing, he's probably the funniest man alive.

Also, I've literally never made up a nickname for someone, so yeah, in that sense Trump wins by default.

Aaantlion posted...

Some of those it feels like you made up on the spot

Literally every single one of those is an actual nickname Trump has used.

Aaantlion posted...

and you omitted the more notable ones he used

Thus further proving my point. Thanks.

Aaantlion posted...

However, and most importantly, wasn't this *exactly* the behavior you criticized him for?

I've criticized him for a lot of things - you'll have to be more specific.Moreover, I'm not the fucking President of the United States, so there's a pretty big gap in what's expected of me, an average citizen, and Trump.

But to get to the core of your statement, yes, I've criticized Trump - and others - for the incredibly dumb practice of "insulting" political nicknames that would make a third grader roll their eyes and say, "Seriously? That's fucking stupid." They're not creative, they're not funny, they're not doing anything to improve the political discourse - they're just juvenile name calling and anyone who thinks they constitute wit - notably including Trump - clearly stopped mentally maturing around age 5. Stephen Harpo, Justin Trudope, Barrack Obomber, Shillary, Cheeto Jesus - all of them are stupid, all of them should be outlawed and their users shunned.

However, I make an exception for Moscow Mitch and *only* for Moscow Mitch (OK, actually, I also make an exception for "Cheeto Benito", because that one's actually kind of funny) for two very important reasons.

First of all, unlike 99% of all these dumb political nicknames, including every single one Trump has ever come up with, this one actually has a basis in fact and points to a very serious issue - specifically that for 4+ years at least, Moscow Mitch has stood in the way of all attempts to beef up American election security and safeguard it against Russian meddling. Calling him "Moscow Mitch" reminds everyone that this goat-fucker is so nakedly powerhungry, so completely consumed by his own need to exert his will on others and secure his hold on power, he is willing to do anything, up to and including deliberately not doing his job and leaving the proverbial door unlocked for America's greatest foe on the world stage, because he knows that the foreign actors that will take advantage of a lapse in security will do so to the benefit of him and his party (and you can bet that if another country tried to rig things in favour of the Democrats, this asshole would get a security bill passed tomorrow morning). That's borderline treason and any opportunity taken to remind people of that is a good one.

The second, and far more important reason, is that Moscow Mitch has stated that he feels deeply insulted by the nickname, which is more than enough reason for me to keep using it. After all the bullshit he's heaped on the US and the rest of the world, he deserves to feel insulted and a whole lot worse. Is that petty? You betcha - but given who they've got in charge, the Republicans have lost all right to complain about pettiness at this point.

The nickname also appeared to play a role in him finally backing down and signing on to the Democrats' election security bill, so there's that.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

Aaantlion posted...

You guys need your own laugh track.

When Trump gets one for every time he says Crooked Hillary, Cryin' Chuck Schumer, Sleepy Joe Biden, Low Energy Jeb, Pocahontas, Crazy Joe Biden, Lyin' Ted Cruz, Crazy Bernie, Lyin' James Comey, Liddle Bob Corker, Wacky Omarosa, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, Lil' Marco Rubio, Mr. Magoo, Sloppy Steve Bannon, I'll consider it.

Strangely, I never heard you - a "left-leaning centrist" - in any way reacting to Trump's penchant for insulting nicknames. Guess the shoe doesn't fit so well on the other foot, huh?

Aaantlion posted...

...what? And where was this indignation when Obama arrested more whistleblowers than any previous president and used that threat to intimidate other people from coming forward?

Probably still there. I know plenty of leftists who were upset with that aspect of his presidency.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

SeahorseCpt89 posted...

Hope they know what theyre doing, going to be near impossible to convince the Senate to vote him out.

It's not going to be "near-impossible" - it's going to be just straight-up impossible. No way Moscow Mitch and his band of spineless cronies ever vote to convict, regardless of the facts of the case. I seriously think that Trump could enact his hypothetical fantasy of shooting someone in downtown Manhattan and the Republicans would just claim it was justified and the left is engaging in a witch hunt.

This isn't about removing Trump - this is about getting to the facts. This is about getting around Trump's stonewalling of Congress's investigative powers. This is about presenting the most complete picture to the voters, in advance of next year's election, of the scope and scale of Trump's misdeeds.

Best of luck to them. I'm glad they finally grew a spine.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

Absolutely deny.

I work on computers every day. I need multiple large monitors to manage multiple datasets and reports simultaneously and I need a keyboard and mouse to be able to effectively do my work. The most advanced 2x4 touchscreen in the world could not replace what I do.

Smart phones are fine for casual users - my parents love theirs - but if you need serious work to be done, 90% of the time you're on a computer.

OhhhJa posted...

kukukupo posted...

I've actually gotten rid of my smartphone.

There is NOTHING it can do that I can't do much better and more comfortably on a PC apart from making phone calls.

Do you go outside? Lol

Speaking as someone who also doesn't own a smartphone, for the exact same reason, I don't want to be glued to a screen when I go outside. When I have something I need to do, I sit down at a computer and do it; when I go outside, I have other activities to take part in.

What's the point of going outside if you're just going to spend the whole time staring at your phone?
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

Try to find out what's causing the observed effects currently attributed to climate change (mass die-offs, extreme weather, rising water levels, changing weather patterns, etc.).

"Climate change" is not the dangerous part; it's all the things that climate change causes. Even if all the scientists were lying to us about the cause (spoiler alert: they're not), the effect is still happening. Climate change being a lie would actually put us in a substantially worse position, because it means that the planet is still experiencing significant adverse effects, only now we have no idea why or how to solve it.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

Aaantlion posted...

While I can understand making excuses up to a certain extent, there's a point where you have to sit back and consider whether your parents, your friends' parents, and relatives' parents would ever do something like that as well as what you may have thought of ones who did.

But how would you know? Unless this is a person you know very well and/or you've been around this person for most of the day, you aren't acting off a complete set of information.

It's the same with bad driving. You never know if the "asshole" who cut you off is legitimately a terrible driver, or someone who's distracted because she's racing to get to the hospital because she just found out her mother is dying and who, ordinarily, is an excellent driver.

You can't say, "Well I/my parents/my friends would never do that!" if you don't know the situation that led up to that decision. And if you think you can, you're fooling yourself.

Aaantlion posted...

Giving into a shouting child isn't something that most people are going to frown on.

Sure it is. And with good reason - it's oftentimes bad parenting. Instead of disciplining them and providing clear boundaries, you're giving into what is, in essence, emotional terrorism. "Cater to my whims or I will start screaming and make your life hell."

But there are times when that decision makes sense and most (but not all) bad parenting choices are the same way.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

I tend not to judge bad parenting in public because, short of things that are straight-up criminal (like the stories of kids not being properly strapped in during car rides in this topic), you don't know the whole story so what looks like bad parenting may be the end result of circumstances that actually somewhat justify the actions taken.

Had a good demonstration of that years ago when I was babysitting my niece (then ~4 years old - her parents were off in Europe, so I had her for a couple weeks). We were doing some grocery shopping. She wanted a chocolate bar; we were literally going straight home from the grocery store and having dinner, so I said no. She demanded the chocolate bar; I said no. She then stomped her foot down and barked loudly, "BUY THAT CHOCOLATE BAR!!", in a tone that made it abundantly clear that a shrieking, screaming tantrum was one more denial away.

Shitty behaviour, right? And every parenting guide in the world says not to give into shitty behaviour, lest you encourage more. I could feel the judging eyes of the rest of the supermarket lineup on me, waiting for my reaction.

But, what absolutely no one else was privy to was what had led up to that moment in time. The night before the kid had been up all night with a fever and was extremely tired as a result. We had to get up early the next day to get her to a doctor's appointment, which involved getting some shots, which she hated. She'd apparently had a rough day in preschool, which included a fight with another kid (who apparently started it, according to the preschool teacher). Then, after I picked her up, she had to sit and wait while I tended to some errands. By the time we hit the supermarket, this kid was 100% done with absolutely everything and everyone. If this kid had a tantrum, it was going to be a DEFCON 1 nuclear scale grand meltdown. And, being underslept myself (because I was the one staying up all night looking after her) and at the end of a long day, I did not have the energy left to properly handle that sort of a tantrum and didn't 100% trust myself not to lose my shit either.

So in that moment? I bought her the damn chocolate bar. It shut her up and kept her busy for a couple minutes while I paid and headed off a tantrum neither of us were prepared to deal with.

Would I have made that same decision if confronted with the same situation but with different circumstances surrounding it? No, probably not - in most cases the correct response would be to enforce "No means no" and deal with the resultant tantrum, come what may. But in that particular confluence of circumstances, an action that I'm sure on the surface absolutely looked like obvious shitty parenting was absolutely the right call. And it got both me and my niece back home without either of us exploding, so I count that as a win.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

It's weird to me that sex ed seems to be a one- or two-time thing in parts of the world. Is that an American thing?

Here, when I was going through it, it was a yearly thing from Grade 4 to Grade 10, with each year adding more info.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

Zangulus posted...

They're suspending civilian sales and nothing else. And they're only doing it because they say the market is saturated at this point, which is kind of psychotic really.

This. Like, I find it more than a little disturbing that a weapons manufacturer, when talking about a weapon designed for war which has been involved in dozens of mass shootings at this point, has essentially said, "Yeah, we've basically succeeded in selling this thing to everyone who we could see as a potential customer."
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

OhhhJa posted...

Ahhh yes, the elite's sneaky underhanded path to world government where they maximize profit at the expense of a population of slaves. Much like NAFTA and the EU

I was going to respond to this, but it's honestly so ridiculous it does a better job serving as its own counterargument than anything anyone else could post.

dainkinkaide posted...

And when the Liberals actually tried to move towards electoral reform, none of the parties could agree on what electoral system to use, so they just gave up and basically let the Conservatives have their way (that way being no change).

Well, in defence of "the system", this is one of those annoying issues where everyone has "skin in the game", so arguments - even well-reasoned ones - are automatically assumed to be self serving. And not without reason - it's no coincidence that all of the parties neatly lined up behind the systems that gave themselves the most benefit (and about the only way you can tell someone isn't arguing out of self-interest is when they happen to be advocating a voting system that favours someone else's party).

The Conservatives wanted to keep things as-is because, in a country where 60-70% of the population are left-leaning, a FPTP system is pretty much their only hope of ever securing power.

The Liberals wanted ranked ballots which, not coincidentally, happens to be the system most beneficial to centrist parties, with the Liberals are more likely to be the second-choice candidate for both Conservative and NDP voters.

The NDP wanted true proportional representation, as that's the most advantageous option for smaller parties.

For what it's worth, I'm of the mind that prop rep is better than ranked ballots, but either would be a massive improvement over FPTP.

dainkinkaide posted...

This is the only reason I hope the PPC gains some traction. It'll split the vote on the right, and it might actually make the Conservatives willing to look at some kind of electoral reform.

Don't hold your breath. They never went down this road in the 90s, when the split between the Progressive Conservatives and the Reform/Canadian Alliance basically permanently locked the conservatives out of government; and four years ago in Alberta, when the Wildrose/Progressive Conservative divide split the vote hard enough to deliver the NDP the election, there wasn't even a whisper of electoral reform among the conservative camps (despite the fact that the NDP probably would have supported it, even though it basically would have de facto barred them from ever forming government in Alberta again).

The natural conservative reaction to vote splitting in Canada seems to be, "Dammit, the lefties are winning again! We have to all combine into one party to beat them!", instead of recognizing that multiple parties representing multiple different views don't necessarily (and shouldn't) fit under one big tent.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

- Foreign policy - focusing on Canada - Meaningless sloganeering. All parties focus on Canada. And if Donald Trump's disastrous "America First" policies have taught us anything, it's that behaving like a self-centred asshole on the world stage is a great way to torpedo treaties and lucrative trade deals like the TPP, but isn't so helpful for getting new ones signed (the USMCA appears dead in the water, Trump's attempts to bully China into submission are biting his own economy, and he's left sitting on the outside looking in at the Pacific Trade deal, even as he attempts to negotiate the exact same benefits he walked away from that Obama successfully secured).

- Rejecting alarmism with global warming - removing the useless carbon tax that gets a tax on top of it. - Global warming is probably the most significant threat to the planet today and Bernier is an idiot for trying to stand in the way of ways to fix it (nevermind dubbing legitimate concern about it as "alarmism"). Study after study shows that carbon taxes are one of the most efficient, cost-effective ways to fight global warming. I get that nobody likes paying taxes, but in terms of all the taxes we have to pay this one is actually one of the most sensible.

- Making dairy products more affordable - cheese costs way too much in Canada. Because cheese is definitely a hot-button issue that will drive out the voters. This one isn't dumb, but it is pointless and probably not very smart politically, because it's going to piss off dairy farmers and literally no one else will care.

- Removing interprovincial trade barriers - one of Bernier's rare good ideas. That said, he's probably overstepping his bounds here. Interprovincial trade is something that mostly rests in provincial jurisdiction.

- Give provinces incentives to deal with long wait times for healthcare - as above. Good idea, but not really something the feds have many tools to implement.

- Respecting legal firearms owners and targeting criminals - Yes, because if there's one thing Canada (7th most guns per capita in the world) needs, it's more guns. This was dumb when the Harper Conservatives were bitching about it, it remains dumb now. Canada's regulatory regime is fine - if anything, it's probably a little too loose.

- Fairness in equalization payments - this is long overdue. Quebec doesnt need $3.5B dollars per year generated from our oil while rejecting a pipeline to transfer it there and accepting oil from Saudi Arabia. - Best of luck with the confederation crisis that would emerge from this one. Given the shitshows that were the Charlottetown and Meech Lake accords, it'd actually be really entertaining - in a morbid, "Oh God, they actually thought this was a good idea" kind of way - to see how this one would go down.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

zebatov posted...

That one single billboard wasnt racist.

Sure it was.

Citation: it got taken down for being racist.

zebatov posted...

It stated they want to end mass-immigration.

Which is a bullshit dogwhistle term used by those on the far right, typically to discriminate against brown people.

zebatov posted...

As a matter of fact, they only want to reduce current immigration numbers by 50,000 per year, bringing it to 200,000 total.

Just gonna throw some math at you real quick.

250 000 sounds like a whole 'lotta people to be bringing in in a year... until you realize that Canada's population is 37 million. Meaning, 250 000 is less than 1% of the population. That is not an unreasonable number.

zebatov posted...

Im saying what you said was anti-Canadian because you seem to disagree with everything listed there. And that entire list is pro-Canada. You cant argue that.

Bullshit I can't argue that. That entire list is populist garbage that is absolutely bad for Canada. It's the same sort of garbage that the US is suffering under right now, and seeing the state of their country I'm not in favour of importing any ideas on governance from them at the moment.

Let's take a rundown, shall we?

- Pro-veteran - Meaningless sloganeering. All parties are "pro-veteran".

- Canadian values and culture - Also meaningless sloganeering. All parties represent Canadian values and culture. The ones that do so openly usually use it as code for, "Let's crack down on all the weird ideas those scary Asians and brown people keep bringing into our country."

- Ending open-borders - We don't have open borders. More anti-immigrant dog whistling.

- Reducing overall immigration and selecting skilled workers over non-skilled workers - Immigrants are not only good, but necessary for our economy. Like most developed countries, our native birthrate is not enough to sustain our population. We need immigrants to fill the gap. Nothing about immigration is harmful to Canada and suggesting otherwise is nearly always just xenophobic pandering.

- Pro-Canadian oil - Meaningless sloganeering. All parties are "Pro-Canadian oil", and I say that as someone who works in the oil and gas industry. Two successive governments of different parties have tried to get a tidal oil pipeline built and the Liberals are the ones that have actually come closest to success. Conservatives actually tend to be far worse for us to do business under, because their ham-handed attempts to ram through pet projects stirs up opposition. The Harper government fucked up so badly on Northern Gateway they basically turned it into a political hot potato that had zero chance of getting built, and their slipshod attempt to cut corners has set the Trans Mountain expansion back by years.

- Pro-freedom of expression - Meaningless sloganeering. No party has cut down on freedom of expression or expressed opposition to it.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

CharlesBronson posted...

Get a life. I come back from my 2 week suspension and you 2 are still arguing about the same shit.

...he says, six days after the last post in the topic.

CharlesBronson posted...

No one wants to read your walls of text

Clearly you do, or you wouldn't have bothered responding to it.

CharlesBronson posted...

and obviously if you haven't changed his opinion after all this then you are not going to so just give up.

If you think I was trying to change his mind, you clearly weren't paying attention and/or don't have much experience in actual debating.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

Kungfu Kenobi posted...

But I think that's what it's going to take: it's going to take a false majority of truly ridiculous proportions to wake people up.

Don't hold your breath. Two elections ago the UK had its least representative election ever (worse than anything Canada has managed thus far) and it doesn't seem to have spurred any great calls for change.

zebatov posted...

Thats very anti-Canadian of you, darkknight

Whenever someone calls me "anti-Canadian" (or "unpatriotic", "disloyal", or any other suitably jingoistic term) because they disagree with my opinions, I feel pretty safe in ignoring most of what they have to say.

zebatov posted...

So you side-stepped the citations because there are none

I sidestepped citations because you edited in that request after I already started replying to you.

Anyways, citation: the PPC had a bunch of billboard ads taken down for being racist, while their leader yabbers endlessly on Twitter about "mass immigration" and a bunch of other xenophobic bullshit designed to appeal to the absolute lowest dregs of humanity. Hard pass, thanks.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

zebatov posted...

- Pro-veteran
- Canadian values and culture
- Ending open-borders
- Reducing overall immigration and selecting skilled workers over non-skilled workers
- Pro-Canadian oil
- Pro-freedom of expression
- Foreign policy - focusing on Canada
- Rejecting alarmism with global warming - removing the useless carbon tax that gets a tax on top of it
- Making dairy products more affordable - cheese costs way too much in Canada
- Removing interprovincial trade barriers
- Give provinces incentives to deal with long wait times for healthcare
- Respecting legal firearms owners and targeting criminals
- Fairness in equalization payments - this is long overdue. Quebec doesnt need $3.5B dollars per year generated from our oil while rejecting a pipeline to transfer it there and accepting oil from Saudi Arabia.

I always find it impressive when, even at its most political-doublespeaky, a political party's platform immediately makes it sound like a collection of reactionary lunatics.

Which, surprise surprise, is exactly what the PPC is. I do appreciate their presence, if only for the fact that they'll leach support from the CPC and increase the odds of us keeping a sensible government around. That being said, I will say that for however much I dislike the CPC, at least they have a collective brain in their heads, which is more than I can say for the creative thinkers behind the PPC.

Keep the Trumpian bullshit south of the border where it belongs.
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

PyroBlade1985 posted...

Mead, don't you think that it's hypocritical that someone like Trudeau gets a free pass from the outrage brigade?

Trudeau isn't getting a free pass from the outrage brigade.

...like, do you guys not bother to actually check before you make posts like this and just kind of assume, "Leftist, so nobody must be talking about it"? Because a bunch of people in this topic have made that mistake, despite the fact that this is making international headlines.

zebatov posted...

Trudeau in blackface in the early 90s: https://bit.ly/2kTk5wt

[...]

PPC is the best choice for Canada.

*complains about brownface*
*advocates for a party that has made its brand on demonizing non-white people*

Umm...

Kungfu Kenobi posted...

The last few elections show just how badly we need election reform. We needed it when Harper squeezed by with his minority, and we need it now. This isn't a left/right thing.

I've been banging this drum for years now and it never seems to catch on. I thought Trudeau was the best leader on the ballot - and I still do - but the single most disappointing thing he did was abandon the push for electoral reform.

Like, I don't get it. I just don't. We have a system where you can get less than 40% of the vote and still wind up with, essentially, 100% of the power and whether you're on the left or the right that *should* fucking outrage you. Yet for some reason it just... doesn't. Hell, last year BC had an electoral reform referendum - our third in 14 years - and people stuck with the current FPTP voting system. And not by a little bit either - over 60% of the electorate voted for FPTP. That's unreal.

Stephen Harper got his majority with less than 40% of the votes, which pissed off the left, and then Trudeau did the exact same thing, which pissed off the right. You'd think with that kind of a track record people would be hungry for change, but it just never goes anywhere. It's infuriating.
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

Kyuubi4269 posted...

darkknight109 posted...

Guns are absolutely the issue. You think a 20 year old could kill six adults and 20 children with a hammer?

Yes. Like, easily.

There was a guy who went on a stabbing spree on London Bridge outside Parliament, he got a load of people in a high security public space.

So how many mass-stabbings can you name over the last, let's say, 10 years with a double digit body count? Because I'd bet everything I own that the number of mass shootings that are in that category are substantially higher.
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

Terminator had a higher peak, but also lower lows; Matrix had more consistent quality and was better overall.
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

No ownership, no offline mode, no physical games...

No thank you.
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

SunWuKung420 posted...

The ad did nothing to address the mental health issue and guns aren't the issue. You can replace gun with hammer and you'd still have the same problem of using violence as a problem solving tool.

Guns are absolutely the issue. You think a 20 year old could kill six adults and 20 children with a hammer?

Hell, the day after the Sandy Hook shooting there was a similar incident at a primary school in China, except due to lack of guns the guy was armed with a knife instead and went on a stabbing spree. Know how many people he killed?

Zero. He killed zero people. He attacked and wounded children and adults before he was finally subdued, but all of them survived.

There's a reason why the US, which has ~1/20th of the world's population, accounts for over a third of its mass shootings.
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

Firewerx posted...

How a cautious German public felt about a Nazi government in 1933, and how a euphoric German people felt about Hitler's leadership in 1942 after three years of seemingly unstoppable victories, may well be two very different things. And how much support swung behind Hitler during the war's later years out of a sense of patriotic duty, of national solidarity against Germany's enemies who were bombing her cities?

I don't know. Do you have a source for these assertions or are you just throwing them out there and hoping they'll stick?

Firewerx posted...

But you have to consider the possibility that many skeptics gradually warmed to Hitler's style of government once the German economy began picking up again and he began scoring points with stunts like the remilitarization of the Rhineland.

Ah, WW2 myth #756: "The Nazis were good administrators"

The Nazis were shit administrators (being a government full of extremists lead by a lunatic tends to have that effect; firing all the career bureaucrats who supported your political opponents and gutting your own administration doesn't help either) and they wound up racking up huge deficits and making their citizens work ~60 hours a week in order to pay for their military projects.

Living under Nazi rule was brutal and there's no evidence I'm aware of that Hitler ever enjoyed the sort of widespread popularity that gets ascribed to him. Hell, he never even got full control of his own armed forces (the Kriegsmarine had a standing order that anyone joining their ranks had to leave the Nazi party and their grand admiral, Erich Raeder, used to get into hours-long shouting matches with Hitler). He got into office mostly due to violence and skulduggery and stayed there by outlawing opposition parties and killing anyone who disagreed with him. Those are generally not things popular leaders have to do to stay in power.

Aaantlion posted...

Because genes are apparently the only thing you have to worry about a parent passing on to their child. Upbringing totally isn't a thing >_>

I'm at least 75% sure that if Merkel was a secret Nazi sympathizer, she'd have played her hand by now. Also, she probably wouldn't have been so accommodating to refugees fleeing violence and terror in the Middle East.
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

Spiders are legit the best housemates. They're quiet, they keep to out-of-the-way areas, they don't damage the house like ants or termites, don't get into the food like various other bugs, their webs are easily cleaned up, and they kill and eat things you don't want in your house.

If I find a big one inside I'll relocate it outside, but only because there's not much for them to eat in my place. The smaller ones get to stay.
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

Kyuubi4269 posted...

That explains how they were voted in.

Sure. Except they never received a majority of the vote, even after doing their best to kill, beat up, and/or arrest as many of their opponents and opposition voters as they could. The last truly free election in pre-WW2 Germany was in 1932 where the Nazis won 33% of the vote and actually lost seats compared to the previous election.

The Nazis engineered another election a year later and this time did their best to stack the vote. They beat up, arrested, or straight-up killed opposition politicians, attacked leftist meetings, organizations, and homes, and banned newspapers and newsletters from those political groups. Thousands of communist party members were jailed, government officials known to belong to centrist or leftist parties were fired, and the brownshirts basically wreaked terror and violence on anyone who wasn't a right winger.

And with this incredible campaign of aggression and vote suppression, the Nazi's share of the popular vote surged all the way up to... 44%. Meaning a majority of the country still didn't vote for them.

The idea that the Nazis were super-popular and had the entire population under their thrall is a post-war myth designed to make Germany a more impressive villain, the better to lionize the Allied victory and fit the narrative of WW2 being "the good war". File it in with the "Hitler was a brilliant strategist and tactical genius" and "The Western Front was the only one that mattered" untruths as an annoying falsehood that won't die.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

rjsilverthorn posted...

darkknight109 posted...

Ferarri619 posted...

And not much is known about his wartime service.

Shouldn't we find this chilling?

Probably - what office does he hold in her government again?

None, seeing as he is dead.

Sounds like a good reason not to find it chilling, then.
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

Ferarri619 posted...

And not much is known about his wartime service.

Shouldn't we find this chilling?

Probably - what office does he hold in her government again?
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

Peterass posted...

How was anything credible if there is zero proof, recollection (including the recollection of the "victim"), or corroboration by anyone?

Ramirez's legal team gave the FBI a list of over 25 corroborating witnesses; none of them were interviewed, thanks to the fact the Republicans severely curtailed the FBI's investigation.
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

OhhhJa posted...

I guess they want us to forget that they wasted all that taxpayer money on some partisan bullshit that they knew was bullshit the whole time.

This is your weekly reminder that the "Russia Collusion" investigation was initiated by Republicans, at the request of a Republican official, while both houses of Congress were controlled by Republicans, with a registered Republican serving as special prosecutor running the investigation and reporting to a Republican attorney general.
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

The Republicans want to keep a sexual predator on the Supreme Court, despite multiple credible accusations of sexual misconduct. Where's the outrage?

See? I can play this game too!
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

green dragon posted...

Isn't japan extremely horrible to black people? I've always wanted to go, but I heard they treated black people extremely poorly.

I have a black colleague who went to Japan, and he didn't seem to be treated any differently than any other foreigner. Keep in mind that most "racism" you see in Japan is of the, "Wow, you can speak three words of Japanese? That's amazing!" variety, where you're fawned over for extremely basic things. The Western "have someone toss a beer bottle at your head while screaming racial slurs" isn't really a thing over there.

scigeek101 posted...

And JR rakes in loads of cash from clueless tourists because they'll all buy the JR pass without checking to see what the prices actually are beyond this vague sense of "super expensive"

They ain't cheap but neither is the JR pass.

Depends how much travelling you're doing. When I went, I got the comprehensive pass for one week. I think it was ~29,000 yen, but I used it to buy over 60,000 yen worth of tickets, as I was taking a lot of day trips and moving around the country quite a lot.

It's not worth it if you're only taking the shinkansen once or twice, but beyond that they start to get cost effective very quickly (especially if you get the regional passes rather than the nationwide one).

mooreandrew58 posted...

I think they look down on mixed people living there

They don't really "look down" on people, so much as automatically assume anyone who isn't ethnic Japanese isn't from there (not without reason - last census I saw had ~97% of the country being ethnic Japanese). Hell, I even fell prey to this while I was there - saw a group of four white and black guys during a visit to Hirosaki Castle. I made some small talk and asked them where they were from, naturally assuming they were tourists like me. I failed to completely hide my surprise when they answered "Yamagata".
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

FatalAccident posted...

Ive generally muddled my way around European countries and in Mexico with broken french/Spanish etc but get the feeling somewhere like Japan would be a bit different. How have you guys got around?

Tokyo and Osaka are super-easy to get around with no Japanese. Being major tourist hubs, the level of English knowledge is overall fairly good and important signage and announcements are usually in English as well. I still usually recommend that people learn a little Japanese before they go (just the basics - "Excuse me", "Where is the washroom", etc.), but it's completely feasible to get around the city without it.

FatalAccident posted...

Really? I expected them to be uncompromisingly Japanese, as far as I know theyve got a super strong culture? Didnt think theyd be that accommodating to English speakers. Or is it more just cause Tokyo is a tourist hotspot?

A bit of column A and a bit of column B.

Japan has the lowest level of second language knowledge of any developed nation (due in no small part to their low immigration levels). Tokyo and Osaka benefit from being major tourist hubs, but as soon as you head outside the major metropolitan areas, English knowledge and signage drops off very quickly. This summer I was visiting Iwate and Aomori for the first time, which are two of the more rural prefectures, and I had to lean very heavily on my Japanese (I'm not fluent, but I can speak low-level conversational Japanese, which was enough to get by in most situations). So yes, the fact that Tokyo sees lots of tourists works in your favour.

That being said, one thing you will quickly discover is that hospitality is Serious Business in Japan. The Japanese are drop-dead-heart-attack serious about how they treat their guests. Like, there was one point where I was in a store and I asked where the bank was (my next destination). In most countries, you'd get instructions on how to get there; in really good countries, they might even give you a map; in Japan, someone from the store escorted me all the way to the bank, while holding an umbrella over my head (it was raining and I'd left mine in the hotel).

FatalAccident posted...

Just Tokyo really, but from what I hear the place is literally one of the biggest cities on the planet so I imagine I can just visit different districts and get different experiences.

Do yourself a huge favour: plan to spend some time outside of Tokyo. Everybody goes to Japan, stays in Tokyo and assumes that's all the country has to offer. Tokyo is amazing, but there is so, so, so much to see outside of it. I have a soft spot for northern Japan (Iwate has some amazingly beautiful natural spots), but there's really neat stuff everywhere.
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

The absence of F-Zero GX on this poll is absolutely unforgivable.

No Gamecube game has ever deserved or needed an HD remake more than that game.

(props for including Baten Kaitos, though - those games were fantastic)
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

I'll take literally any JRPG character's inventory bag. Carry anything, have it auto-sort and allow items of the same type to stack, all with absolutely no physical exertion required? Yes please.
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

Kyuubi4269 posted...

A left-right divide isn't appropriate for determining criminal tendencies.

On an individual scale? No, I'd agree.

But on a national scale?

Again, the data here isn't ambiguous, whether you're looking at the cause side or the effect side.

On the effect side, Republican states are poorer and have higher violent crime rates. That tells me that Republican efforts to stymie poverty and crime in their states are not working, while Democrat strategies are. A cynic could suggest causality - that Republicans are the source of poverty, rather than just an ineffective band-aid for it. I don't know if I'd go that far, and proving that causality would be a tall order, but the pieces of the puzzle are there at least.

On the cause side, Republicans love strategies that do not work. Cutting taxes on the rich does not promote economic growth or wage growth for low-income earners - whether you call it trickle-down economics, supply-side economics, Reaganomics, or whatever other political slogan you like, it has never, ever, ever worked as advertised. Trump has proven that again for a new generation as his much-vaunted tax cut has ballooned the deficit, fallen well short of its goals for growth (as the US economy now shudders and seems to be slowly sliding into recession), and resulted in few tangible benefits for the working class while investors and corporate owners enriched themselves with stock buybacks and executive bonuses. On the justice side, punitive justice has never been effective. The US recidivism rate is laughably high - nearly 80% for violent offenders. The corresponding rate in nations that use more rehabilitative methods favoured by progressives? As low as 20%.

I'd buy the argument that "it's not a political thing" if the data supported that... but it doesn't. Not in the US, at least. There is a marked trend of Democratic strongholds being more prosperous and less prone to crime than their Republican counterparts, to the point where if you pull up the ordered list of states by violent crime rate and scroll down, you can practically see the exact points where the data shifts from deep blue to purple to ruby red. I agree that it's oversimplistic to put the blame purely on politics, but the politicians are clearly helping fuel trends that are feeding this dynamic, so I disagree with the notion that it's a totally separate issue (especially since politicians are the ones responsible for addressing both crime and poverty).
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

Kyuubi4269 posted...

You're contradicting yourself there bud. Which way did you mean?

Typo - swap red and blue, which the rest of my post made abundantly clear.

Kyuubi4269 posted...

Slight counter point; cities are crime-infested hellholes and they are typically left leaning.

Counter-counter-point: cities everywhere always have more crime. That's what you get when you stuff more people into a close proximity.

I'll point out at this point that I think the original arguments as stated ("Republicans are uneducated/Democrat states have higher crime") are oversimplistic, though they do tie in to a larger, more comprehensive argument. But as a simple surface brush only one of those statements is straight-up wrong and it's the second one - Republican states have higher crime rates and that's not an opinion, it's a simple statement of fact.

Debate why that is all you like, but it's true.

If you want to hear my full thoughts, uneducated voters tend to vote Republican and also tend to be poor (partly because higher education in America is now both increasingly serving as a gateway to nearly all of the few reliable paths to a decent, high-paying career and is simultaneously becoming prohibitively expensive as American schools hike tuition far faster than wages rise, in part due to poor regulation and collapsing government investment); poverty tends to breed crime; Republican policies tend to favour income inequality, which exacerbates poverty and leads to more crime; Republicans also tend to favour policies that research shows breed more crime (punitive instead of rehabilitative justice systems, loose gun laws, deregulation, etc.) and also frequently cut funding for education and social programs that help the impoverished; repeat the cycle again.

To my eye it's not a coincidence that Republican-led states headline the lists of both the poorest and the most violent states, and it's too much of a trend to be pure coincidence. Quibble all you like about where specifically that crime manifests and what the granular voting data looks like, but it doesn't change the overall picture.
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

Aaantlion posted...

Even if that were true, it'd be misleading. The most crime-ridden portions of those Republican states tend to be heavily-Democrat areas.

Yet the red states as a whole are, unarguably, safer and have less crime than the blue states. Which should tell you something. After all, if Democrats were truly more violent and criminal than Republicans, states with lots of them should have more crime; yet the opposite is true.

Aaantlion posted...

In general, though, I tried to fact-check the red vs blue thing and it was mostly biased-looking (as you might expect) with suspect reasoning. For instance, one looked solely on the basis of presidential elections even if the win was narrow and the opposing party has the governor's seat.

"One" what?

Seriously, this is a laughable attempt at deflection by trying to find one source of data or study you don't like - which, notably, I didn't even put forward - and using that to frame your argument. It's strawmanning of the worst kind.

Let's take a look at the murder rate. The ten worst states by homicide rate are, in order, Louisiana, Missouri, Maryland, Arkansas, Alaska, Alabama, Mississippi, Illinois, South Carolina, and Tennessee. With the exception of Maryland and Illinois, all of those states are ruby-red by pretty much any metric. By contrast, the ten lowest murder rates belong to New Hampshire, North Dakota, Maine, Idaho, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Nebraska, Vermont, Utah, and Massachusetts.

Or we can look at the violent crime rate in general. The highest violent crime rates overall are Alaska, New Mexico, Tennessee, Louisiana, Nevada, Arkansas, Missouri, Alabama, Arizona, and South Carolina. That's one blue state (New Mexico), two purple states (blue-leaning Nevada and red-leaning Arizona), and, once again, seven of the reddest states in the union. And on the other end we have Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Virginia, Kentucky, Idaho, Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Wyoming - two red states (Kentucky and Wyoming), and a collection of blue states.

So yes, the idea that blue states are crime-infested hellhole is just more Trump blathering and Republican propaganda. Or, as you like to call it, "fake news".
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

Ferarri619 posted...

I'm not from the USA, but, I hear from Democrats that Republican states are uneducated, but then I hear from Republicans that Democratic states are crime-infested hellholes.
...So, which one is it? As an outsider I'm legitimately curious.

Neither, but "Republican states are uneducated" is closer to true. Republican voters have less education on average than Democrats - those with a high school education or less (i.e. no post secondary education) are much more likely to be Republicans than Democrats and the higher your education level, the more likely you are to be a Democrat. Republican states also tend to invest less into education (to the point where some of them have had to drop to four day school weeks because they can't afford to keep the schools open for a full five).

The "Democrat states are crime infested" nonsense is just a complete lie, though. Republican states have higher crime rates, particularly violent crime rates, than Democrat states.
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

Well, the Republicans have to get their votes from somewhere, and clearly educated people aren't working out too well for them...
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

LinkPizza posted...

Theyre not perfect. And if I have to put my life into the hands of a machine, I want it to be perfect with no mistakes made. And nobody getting hurt or dying.

Then you're going to have to stay home and never go outside, because every time you do you're putting your life into the hands of a machine, except it's a biological one rather than a digital one. And it's a biological one with an incredibly shitty accident rate compared to the alternatives.

Upgrading to AVs makes things safer - that's simple fact. Your argument here makes absolutely no sense - what you've basically said in this paragraph is, "I have a 1 in 77 chance of dying in a motor vehicle crash; AVs are unsafe, because I could die in them, so even though my odds of dying are much lower [project rate would be about 1 in 300 - a quarter of the rate of manual vehicles], I'd rather stick with the current, substantially less safe system."

Your argument is pure emotion and the facts simply do not support what you're saying.

LinkPizza posted...

I wont see, but you already know the reason why, as I shouldnt have to keep saying it.

You may not, but enough other people will that it will sustain the change.

There are holdouts to any new technology, and I say that as someone who still willingly owns a flip-phone. But it won't stop change or even slow it down.

LinkPizza posted...

Like I said, I dont know as I havent seen how theyd handle some do the drivers Ive seen... Thats all...

And I'm explaining it to you. AVs are programmed to react to other drivers. If someone is driving aggressively or erratically, the AV can compensate. The AV does not expect human drivers to be flawless; in fact, it anticipates most of them doing dumb things, because human drivers do those things all the time and any AV that didn't compensate for that would be crashing constantly.

LinkPizza posted...

Because people waste multiple paychecks and rock it having enough to pay bills and such to buy them.

I don't think you see what I'm getting at here.

The average wage in India is $1,670 per year. In other words, even if you literally spent on nothing else, it would take five months worth of paycheques to afford a new iPhone on the average Indian wage; in actuality, you'd probably have to save up for years.

Yet they're still commonplace. Why? Because manufacturers sell them cheaper there. Because that's what the market will support.

LinkPizza posted...

Which also sucks. Not owning a car sucks. Renting one would be worse.

I'm pretty sure if you told someone who couldn't afford to buy a car, "You can either take transit or, for about the same cost, have a private car that will drive you to and from wherever you need to go, at whatever time you need," 90% of them would take the car.

I don't see any reasonable argument for your statement that having to rent a car is worse than just straight-up not owning one.
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

LinkPizza posted...

All Im saying is raising the price wont automatically push customers away of you have good benefits. Meaning companies can easily raise the price without always losing the customer like you seem to believe.

You've already pointed out the hole in your own argument.

If a company raises their prices, they need to provide some "extra" service in order to justify that raise or else yes, they will lose customers.

Put it this way - if you're insuring someone for $1000 a month and I come along and offer them the exact same coverage and service for $800 a month, they'd be idiots not to take me up on it. If you charge more, you must provide more, or else you must drop your prices to match your competition. That's simple economics.

LinkPizza posted...

The problem is that insurance companies would probably rather not have to keep paying to get cars fixed.

All the more reason for them to insure AVs, which have lower accident rates than humans, meaning less payout for the underwriters.

LinkPizza posted...

If youre talking about riding then for racing, its not only for rich people. I know people who arent rich, but have horses. Though, I live in a place with an abundance of farms. So, horses and other farm animals, and llamas are pretty common here.

And manual drive cars will some day occupy that same niche. Expect them to follow the same general trend as horses, given that they have similar "careers".

LinkPizza posted...

Either way, people dont like their hobbies being taken away. Especially if its like all they like to do. Like I know people where their car is their only hobby, so...

You'll still be able to be a car hobbyist in the future; it'll just be an anachronistic hobby, like ren-faires.

LinkPizza posted...

ve given plenty of good reasons.

Literally every reason you give in the rest of this paragraph applies to every other city that has adopted AVs and they've found ways around them. These are not valid arguments.

LinkPizza posted...

Really? Because I havent heard anything about their planning.

Then you're probably not all that tied in with what they're doing.
---

Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

LinkPizza posted...

Also, are you talking about the pyramid with the stuff like love, safety, esteem, etc. on it. Because it so, those all cant be solved with the Internet.

Sure they can - not all, as previously mentioned, but most.

Start at the bottom (which is how the pyramid works - you have to fill each row at the bottom before building your way to the next one) and let's go through it.

Physiological? No, the internet's not going to do this for you. However, these are basic necessities that most everyone in the developed world already has guaranteed. If you are above the poverty line, you already have these covered.

Safety and security? The internet can somewhat address some of this row, but others - like security of body or security of health - are no-goes.

Love and belonging? Yes, the internet can do this. You can meet new friends online, keep up with family online, and there's plenty of dating sites to find sexual intimacy online.

Esteem? Confidence, achievement, self-esteem, respect of and by others? Yes, those are all things you can accomplish online.

Self-actualization? This is one the internet is particularly good at.

So there you go - the internet can satisfy the majority of our needs, typically with zero cost. That's not something that could have been done for free in the pre-internet days.

LinkPizza posted...

And we have no plan, so were fucked. The technology is here. Doesnt mean we have to keep rushing headlong into it.

We do, actually. Because if we don't, someone else will.

China is one of the biggest boosters of AI and automation. Even if you were able to convince everyone in the West to just... *stop* producing AI (which will never happen, but I'll humour the hypothetical), all that would happen is the West would stagnate and experience a sharp economic decline while China leaps ahead of us. We know this because that exact thing happened, with the roles switched, when China's Qing dynasty decided they'd reached a level of technology where no further advancement was needed and sealed themselves off from the world. That resulted in the Opium Wars and being subjugated by Great Britain.

So yes, this train doesn't stop. That's why we all need to start coming up with a plan moving forward, because just saying, "Why can't we just live the good life with the tech we have?" is a non-starter of an argument.

LinkPizza posted...

It doesnt make any sense to charge a human driver more who doesnt have accidents that are their fault.

Sure it does - we do it all the time.

Are you a male under 25? Congratulations, even if you've never had an at-fault accident or traffic ticket, you're going to be paying ridiculously high insurance rates! Why? Because, statistically, the insurance companies have identified you as being high-risk.

By contrast, self-driving cars - once they have established themselves - are a known commodity. They are a system that works better than any human and, as such, are a low risk for any insurance company to cover. Hence, they will get better rates.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

LinkPizza posted...

Except for all that depends on how much we get a month for forced welfare/UBI.

Right. So start talking about it so we can sort out these sorts of details.

LinkPizza posted...

You mean the people who dont care and get to make decision better start talking about it. How about you call them up and let them know, then...

I would, but they won't listen to me. Not if I'm the only one talking about it.

But if a bunch of people start talking about it? Then they listen. That's our job now - mobilize, talk about it, come up with some concrete plans of attack, argue, lobby, do what you have to to get this issue on the political agenda.

Because you sitting and complaining about how unfair it all is sure isn't going to change anything.

LinkPizza posted...

UBI wont let us just get a little extra because we want something expensive.

Sure it will - it's called a "part time job". We're swimming in them right now and UBI won't change that.

LinkPizza posted...

And thats the problem. We wont have the jobs to help us have a better life (or in some cases, the same as they use to have).

Yes, and I'm asking you what's your alternative?

You didn't actually address my question. Those jobs are gone and there's no bringing them back. More will join them shortly. This process is not reversible.

So tell me your alternative. There's no point complaining about an imperfect solution unless you can come up with an improvement to it.

LinkPizza posted...

It might go down. Or it might not. Thats just a big guess.

It's not a guess at all, it's literally something that's already happened and is continuing to happen.

Here's a challenge for you. Let's say I told you that you needed to collect as much music as possible - any type, any genre, any format - using only the following resources:
-A computer with a high speed internet connection
-Unlimited data storage
-A budget of zero dollars and zero cents.

How much would you be able to collect? Answer: enough that anyone listening to it could listen to your collection for the rest of their life and never have to hear a repeated song. In fact, new, free songs are being made faster than you can collect them.

Now imagine I gave you the same assignment, but in the year 1980. How many songs would you have been able to attain then? Answer: very little.

Music is now free. Not all music, of course, but enough of it that you can put together a perfectly serviceable playlist of songs you like without spending a cent.

And this trend is everywhere. After adjusting for inflation, video games are now cheaper than they've ever been. We get more TV networks for less money than at any point in history. As companies automate their production and distribution networks, shipping prices are dropping.

Automation drops costs; if it didn't, people wouldn't bother doing it. That's automation's big payoff.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

LinkPizza posted...

No. I did explained that the amount of people would not work with smaller vehicles. But I also explained the prices of everything. And explained the that wed pay more in fuel, way more in vehicle cost (both to get a replacement for everything & the extra needed to have the same amount of room), and how we would still need drivers (though they wouldnt be driving).

None of this is unique to your city; it's universal. Yet other places are doing this and being cost effective about it.

LinkPizza posted...

And also, trains have conductors. Technically, you can still get someone to help.

And there's no reason why you couldn't have a button on an AV that, when pressed, immediately alerts headquarters that there's a problem. Add in some remote cameras and you could have a single person in a central location monitoring buses for a problem; if there's an emergency, they contact first responders, and if a mess is made, they recall the bus for cleaning and send out a replacement. There's no reason why any of that would require someone present on the bus itself.

LinkPizza posted...

They wont want half the route self-driving and the other half not.

Why not?

Again, this is how other cities are doing it. Route XX is an AV route, all other routes are manual drive.

LinkPizza posted...

Its very different

No, I mean the need for backups. You'll need those regardless of whether you have an AV or a manual drive vehicle. It's a null factor.

LinkPizza posted...

Most likely wont be here. One of the main reasons the city doesnt want them is cost, though. Our city has actually said they didnt want them for apparently multiple reasons. But cost was the biggest, according to my boss.

If cost is the main reason, start preparing, because new tech costs drop quickly. They may not fit the city's budget now, but that will change in the future, especially when the city realizes they can significantly reduce the costs associated with drivers by switching to AVs.

LinkPizza posted...

I dont see everyone getting a pay raise with this. Theres only so much money they can just give away for free every month.

"Everyone" won't, but that doesn't mean you need to set UBI at the bare minimum value. As an example, you could say that UBI pays out $50k a year in today's dollars. You won't be buying a million-dollar mansion with that money, but that's a living wage.

And, again, automation itself is providing the answer to this conundrum. Every job lost to automation represents savings and that savings can be re-invested into society at large. Today, when I order a pizza, I have to pay not only the cost of the ingredients, but also a share of the building's rent, the wage of the cook preparing it, the wage of the delivery driver bringing it to my house, and some fuel and vehicle maintenance. But if you could automate the cook and turn the delivery driver into a drone, those costs disappear and the pizza becomes cheaper to make. For a lot of automated services, this cost can round down to zero (which is why so much content is available online for free these days).
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!

Zangulus posted...

A reminder that TC lies about everything in order to get any response at all

https://theappalachianonline.com/2016/04/28/arson-in-lovill/

lol, busted.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!