Testing Chat IV: A New Hope

[Veef]

Dude we knew that as soon as they starting soliciting toys! This ain't like the Mandarin and his battle wheel chair!

[Oxymoron]

You can never bee too prudent with spoilarz

[Big Orangutan]

so the new superman film is simultaneously stupid and boring

Like the continuity confused Superman Returns was universally regarded as? Man of Steel gotten a 56% on Rotten Tomatoes, a mildly negative reception so-far.

[Questor]

All I've decided to think about it so far is:

If they wanted a way to get Nolanverse Bruce Wayne to pick up a phone and say: "Lucious, what the f***?" they found it.

[Big Orangutan]

I think super hero movies are a bubble waiting burst sooner rather than later.

When do you think Mike Wong will come back to the foundering, rudderless SD.Net?

[Aaron]

Hopefully never, the board is toxic enough.

[Oxymoron]

The last time he came back,

1 poster was made an unperson
and at least 3 got banned.

it's not like I care about the place, but I join Aaron in thinking that he would not contribute in a positive way to the board should he come back again.

[Flagg]

4 useless trolls got banned. I call that progress.

[timmy]

Gipsy Danger that shit

[Veef]

C'mon guys, that place is anal retentive enough.

[Oxymoron]

Gipsy Danger that shit

say what ?

[Veef]

P-Rimmy.

[Aaron]

That just raises further questions.

[Oxymoron]

I get it's a Pacific Rim reference, but I do not get the meaning in the context of the current discussion.

Apart maybe "let's go fishin'"

[Oxymoron]

(by the way, in the Pacific rim wiki there's a picture of a Jaeger fighting a kaiju in orbit ; if this is in the movie... )

[Veef]

Arnold P. Rimmer.

[joviwan]

It's J.

Arnold Judas Rimmer.

[adr]

so in my fanfiction there's community meetings to try to figure out what they want to do and discuss issues with the goal being informed consensus

part of the informed bit is there's always got to be at least one person being a contrarian, to break up group think and make sure they aren't just agreeing because they think everyone else is or something

but what if it is a super touchy issue where nobody wants to stick their neck out all alone to dissent? think of like after 9/11 with all the shit put on Barbara lee when she argued against the authorization for use of military force. that'd break the system


it seems to be one solution would be to have a random, secret lottery where a handful of people draw the dissent card. if you get that, even if you agree with a proposal, your job is to find something to criticize or propose something else as devil's advocate


what this does is:

1) make sure at least one person actually does speak against a proposal

2) redirect heat away from said person, since the public dissent might just be mandated by lottery and not that this person is actually a disloyal scumbag

3) by being random, it gives everyone some practice in thinking of alternatives without getting all tied up in one particular faction

and 4) with it being secret, someone who didn't draw the dissent card might still be more comfortable speaking up because he or she can get some of the protection of #2 as well



it is my hope that everyone can be reasonable and have healthy debate without the need for such systems but this would help to fill the cracks that leaves behind, to bust up supermajorities as dangerous to skeptical analysis.

note btw it would not be enforced. that is if nobody dissents, they can't punish someone for not doing his or her duty because it is a secret lottery, nobody can know who drew it anyway! so it would be more of a ritual to remind people to think against the grain and a cover story than like a legal requirement

[Phantasee]

Kanye's new album Yeezus leaked on Friday. It's coming out tomorrow in stores. I've listened to it several times. The first listen threw me off. It opens dark. It ends fairly familiarly, if not quite what we're used to. But hey, if you want his old shit, buy his old albums, right?

West pushes the art in new directions with every album and I think this might be his biggest push since 808s & Heartbreak, and I think it will be far more successful than 808s.

[RogueIce]

Looks like "Ebony" is the top porn search term for Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Maryland, and both Carolinas.

Plus Kentucky is the only state with gay male porn in the #1 slot, and Vermont is the only state with lesbian porn in the #1 slot.

And almost all of Venezuela's and Chile's top 10 spots are taken by variations of gay porn, apparently, as is all of Peru's.

It is kinda boring that for most countries the top search is for the nationality of the country in question.

I liked the one I found in Nigeria's #3 spot: "things I jack off to"

Seems refreshingly honest.

[Oxymoron]

I'd say self-referential.

[Bakustra]

so i'm learning how to stick needles into people, and that's pretty cool

I think super hero movies are a bubble waiting burst sooner rather than later.

When do you think Mike Wong will come back to the foundering, rudderless SD.Net?

don't sign your posts, don't put it in the middle of the post, and don't do it twice

*snip*

i have to say your av is affecting how i read your posts

it's something of an improvement

[Jung]

I think I just made noblebright versions of the Fey from that Dystopic Return of Magic story on AH.com (anyone else read it?) for a SB.com thing.

I feel a little weird about that.

[Bakustra]

Let's be honest, just eliminating subsidies for education and super-taxing the non-vocational subjects would achieve this. People are kidding themselves if they think the vast majority of retail, food service, data processing and middle management jobs done by most people couldn't be adequately performed by people who left school at 14. They can and were. The extra 7 years of education almost certainly doesn't make people better at their jobs than 7 years of work experience, during which they'd make rather than lose money.

If anything the education brainbug has become an anchor on rising economic prosperity despite higher notional total compensation. Rather than "starting out" at 21 with a few thousand in the bank and work experience, people "start out" at that age with 10s of thousands of debt, and it isn't really increasing their income, just letting them stand still relative to everyone else who has a diploma in something useless.

Engineering and medicine are exceptions, but it's not like everyone in 1900 was an engineer or doctor, or could be today. These are high IQ elite professions. But remember that even many of those don't really need any university education: accountancy, investment banking, arguably even law.

AUGH

fuuuuuuuuck yooooouuuuuuuuu

I think I just made noblebright versions of the Fey from that Dystopic Return of Magic story on AH.com (anyone else read it?) for a SB.com thing.

I feel a little weird about that.

noblebright?

[Straha]

Where the fuck is that screed from?