Something I somehow doubt too many of you would know but 4chan, despite being considered an unsavoury place because of certain subsections of it (which I'm not proud to admit I visit to learn what "the other side" is talking about), has a lot of great communities as well and I usually find the discussion quality there better than reddit.
Also, in the context of this thread, 4chan is an ephemeral site so there is no such thing as link to content.
If you are a video game enthusiast, particularly of a niche genre, /vg/ can be a good place. I'm really into roguelikes, so I visit the '/rlg/' thread around once a week to see what's going on and potentially get some advice if I'm at a tricky part in a run or need to make a decision about where to take my character.
Standard disclaimer applies about 4chan. If you're thin-skinned, you may find it not worth the trouble. Just don't engage with the trolls and you'll be fine.
/tg/ is truly excellent for non-video game discussion (board games, card games, w40k, MtG, etc). They are a bit opinionated much like /vg/ and I'd agree, thin skinned people will be happiest if they stay away. For example there is little love for Paizo/Pathfinder on /tg/ (although there are some fans...)
I spend a lot of time on /out/ as in outdoor hobbies because I live in a "recreational state". No online community is 100% perfect but its bizarre how /out/ is on average more civilized than heavily moderated communities.
I don't know what it's like now, but for a time /m/ was a major hub of the tokusatsu community, and most of the major fansubbing groups got their start on /m/.
/diy/ is really great. Generally post quality is inversely proportional to board popularity. Also avoid any board related to entertainment if you want rational discussion.
To provide a concrete example of why /diy/ is great, most "diy-ish" discussion boards I participate in devolve into "look how awesome I am" "look how much money/debt I can spend" "I am more of an authority than you" "my favorite authority could kick the butt of your favorite authority" and similar self-aggrandizement-posting. People on /diy/ actually talk about /diy/ topics, which is a refreshing change from most non-anon non-chan discussion boards. Its a relatively low-sophistry zone... emphasis on relatively...
The biggest problem I see on /diy/ is questionable humor, sort of like how blue collar occupations used to haze the apprentices a bit, you'll see the most ridiculous / comical suggestions sometimes.
I am not an American and I obviously have no right to meddle in your affairs. But only today Trump tweeted out Obama being against immigration and then from their the rabbit hole went deeper and there was a video of gasp, bernie sanders calling open borders a "Koch brother" conspiracy.
I'm beginning to wonder if anyone high up in America really has any integrity? I fail to see anyone who is consistent in their views and actions.
Google cooperating with Chinese censors knowing fully well how China persecutes Muslims (and that is something I do get emotional over), and Schmidt talking about bifurcation of internet soundbyte to make a case when its clear that the so called bifurcation is because of language.
It just all seems so staged at this point. And I don't mean to insult my America brothers here but I just want to know who actually is on the "right" side?
Edit: I see that the person who replied "politics I'd cesspool of.." Has his comment deleted. I understand that this is defeatist attitude and we are all smart people but better to talk than to silence him. Silencing is the reason I never saw this 10 year old video.
I'm pretty sure the people getting tear gassed over globalization at the G8 were against capital leveraging international workers to destroy domestic labor power and the ones getting tear gassed recently are fighting against policies targeting immigrant and refugee communities. It seems pretty consistent to want to protect workers and also fight xenophobia.
There's a wide variety of positions between "open borders" and "forcibly take refugee children away from their families and put both in detention facilities".
One can object to the latter without supporting the former.
I'm pretty sure we don't permanently separate families for doing things like petty theft.
There's also the the 'Affluenza' case where a teenager killed four people and got off scott-free. Well, until he was found fleeing probation in a foreign country and was dragged back here.
So I don't know: Do you think crossing the border is worse than murder?
The affluenza comparison feels like a "whataboutism" to me. Virtually nobody holds that case up as an example of the system working in a healthy and desirable way.
No. It's not. The comment I directly replied to was asking for a crime where you can take your children with you when you're arrested.
We've already established the fact the system is massively stacked against minorities. Then we continue to use 'but it's a crime!' as justification for vile and malicious behavior to people that have committed something without an actual victim like smoking marijuana or crossing the border.
And again, we do not permanently separate families in every single case where someone commits misdemeanor. So then why is it OK to permanently separate all immigrants who cross the border despite it being the same level of crime? Give me one reason outside of 'racism and xenophobia.'
I'm only commenting on your affluenza comparison specifically.
Here's an example of why I think the comparison is meaningless. Grand theft can be charged as a misdemeanor with up to a two year jail sentence. But Brock Turner was sentenced to only six months of jail time for rape. Do you think grand theft is worse than rape? Of course not, but the problem here is the Brock Turner sentence, not the sentencing for grand theft. This question could only be posed because, by design, I selected a more serious crime (rape) for which there exists at least one case where an inappropriately lenient sentence was given out.
You did the same. By design, you selected a more serious crime (murder) for which there exists at least one case where an inappropriately lenient sentence was given out. You then used this highly dysfunctional example to draw a comparison to the less serious crime. But the simplest response to your question comparing crossing the border and murder is simply that the affluenza sentencing was wrong.
And yet you failed to address my point entirely. Which is that far worse crimes in the US end up with more lenient sentencing than immigrants crossing the border.
But fine then, I want to draw up a more apt comparison and I want you to address this. Public intoxication is a misdemeanor similar to crossing the border illegally. How often do you think people caught being publicly intoxicated end up losing custody of their children or being permanently separated from their family?
As was clear from my first post, and as I stated explicitly in my second, and as I now state explicitly again, I was only commenting on your affluenza comparison. I found the comparison to be meaningless and invalid for the reasons I stated above. I never registered any opinion whatsoever on the specific issues at the border, so in particular I’m curious why you’re so confident I even disagree with you on that. Someone who agrees with your conclusion may still find your path there fallacious.
I think that's more than valid. Does doing so require always crossing border illegally? Also, what percentage of people are under a legitimate threat of their lives (or relatives)?
Why are you focusing on people who entered the country illegally? The trump admin has separated families who crossed the border legally at ports of entry and then requested asylum[1].
So who is doing this? And why? I only know the top leaders of US politics and all of them pretend that they are holy and the other side is pure evil.
Funnily a child comment to you points out that "trump puts children in cage" and I followed the issue and somebody said it was an Obama era photo and they were detained by Obama because the so called parents were actually traffickers which I of course would support Obama for
Globalism is part of the core philosophy of neo-liberalism, which most mainline political parties were advocating up until the past couple of years when public sentiment went against globalism. Both Republicans and Democrats were in favour of the TPP, for example.
Globalism is orthogonal to leftism/rightism. Brexit support was roughly similar among both Labour and Conservative party supporters.
Yep, indeed. This has turned quite strikingly since the Seattle round. Democrats used to be pro-Us workers. Pro-Union. Now they forget about US workers, except to demand minimum wage increases but that does not do anything to protect well-paying union jobs which get shipped off or get undercut by illegal workers who work for less then minimum wage.
It's quite interesting to see the Trump faction take this mantle and the Democrats (and traditional Repubs) have no idea how to react except to be reactionary and be pro-Globalization pro-TPP, pro-intervention, etc.
They think it's political point scoring but you are substantially correct. Maybe mentioning that this shift took place in the late 80s and 90s would have helped.
I will sound jaded and trite when I say this but if you want to understand American decisions (corporate or government) the most accurate thing to do is to follow the money. If you remember that point, it becomes quite simple that decisions are not really inconsistent. They're actually completely consistent. It's not bad or good, it's just the way it is.
If you think putting children in cages and having open borders is the only two positions you can hold, you're delusional.
Bernie wants a stronger social system in the U.S. If you want universal healthcare, you can't have open borders. But you also don't have to put children in cages. You consider each case, provide asylum if they're in danger, deport if not etc.
Yeah, "Open borders" is a pretty extreme example of "weasel words" that we would spot if it came in a set of product requirements. Does it refer to residency or just to visiting? What's the opposite of an open border, a closed border? Would a closed border with Mexico really mean no travel across it at all, like the Berlin wall?
People argue about "health tourism" in the UK system of near-universal healthcare(+), and the actual hospitals point out that it would cost them far more to check everyone's immigration status than they would recover from visitors who technically aren't entitled to care. There's nothing to say you can't have a "universal" healthcare system which imposes a residency requirement for non-acute care.
I agree, that "health tourism" isn't really a thing, however my use of the term "open-borders" was in reference to how detractors of universal healthcare, (mostly on the right), in the U.S. straw man it as meaning that it means the entire Latin America moving to the U.S. Putting aside the implied supremacy of the U.S. etc., I just wanted to point out that this is not what people like Bernie are arguing for and is therefore a total strawman.
Health tourism absolutely is a thing. There are even companies that specialize in arranging it. However, my understanding is that it predominantly falls into two categories, neither of which is particularly about exploiting systems like the NHS:
1) People traveling to e.g. the US or Israel to get procedures that aren't available in their home country.
2) People traveling from high-cost to low-cost countries and paying everything out-of-pocket because even forgoing insurance and adding travel costs still leaves it drastically cheaper than their home country.
There are some cases of people scamming government-funded healthcare, but I think those have been sensationalized by the press.
I think you have a wonderful observation. I don't think so lot of people know what is right. I think most people's definition of right is totally driven by political ideology consumed via mass media and social network echo chambers. I think most of us aren't educated about this topic to know the real long-term effects of open borders or isolationism. I think all sides have to put the emotion and rhetoric down and view it through multiple lenses. What does open borders look like for our economy and form of government in 10. 25, or 50 years? Does it likely lead to a place America loses the good parts of its national identity because the amount of people coming in can't be assimilated into our philosophies in our constitution? Does isolationism lead us to a place where we aren't longer a world leader and some horrible state fills the vacuum on the world's stage?
I certainly don't know. How do we define right and wrong in an era where ever issue of morality is polarized? Or where it's okay for one politician to do something but not for another politician? I think in the case of Google, they are selling their souls by providing services to a government that persecutes Muslims (and their own people), but we can't forget that they also have cooperated with the U.S. government which has committed just as many atrocities here and around the world. It's not in this moment that Google crossed the line. I think unfortunately, the great experiment of democracy is just about over. I fear it will be looked upon by historians as this emergent phenomenon that occurred between massive tyrannical empires.
> Does it likely lead to a place America loses the good parts of its national identity because the amount of people coming in can't be assimilated into our philosophies in our constitution?
The people who have most challenged U.S. principles of liberty and democracy, and 'all men are created equal", have been those whose families have been in the U.S. for generations. They've supported slavery, segregation, lynching and other oppression, voter suppression, and, whether one agrees with the policies or not, the Republican Party's current policies of being anti-immigrant, voter suppression, supporting partisanship in the judiciary, and in foreign policy ignoring human rights and democracy while supporting dictators.
I'm definitely not saying that ideology is right, I'm just saying that I don't think that any side really has a good understanding of the impacts of either decision. I've been careful to not express my own opinion, but I'll share it now, probably to my own detriment.
I think that immigration doesn't have to be a polarized thing. The two major sides have done their best to turn this into a polarized issue and a false dichotomy. While I would certainly love to see people coming into the country through legal means, I also feel that our legal process is shit. The thing that I can't get through the heads of anyone that oppose "those brown people" is that yeah, statistically, we may get some criminals, but per capita, we have wayyyy more people trying to come here than are likely criminals. If this many people are trying to escape from their country, be it Syria or Mexico, we have to look at that and think about what it takes to drive someone to leave the place that they grew up.
The other thing that I've shared in the past that will likely get me shredded if the wrong person comes across this, is that I'm happy to not be in the majority race. I would rather be in a place where everyone has a seat at the table. As far as losing our national identity, I don't buy that either. The number one threat to our national identity right now is... wait for it... Americans. For years we were told that Muslims would come here and implement Sharia law. We are now seeing court enabled protections for those who feel their religious beliefs are violated by LGBT people such as myself. We are actively taking the steps to implement the Christian version of Sharia law.
Even at the end of these opinions, I still don't think I fully understand the right solution. I think this is a dangerous time for this country. History is on the side of us having another civil war or revolution. I hesitate to compare us to the French Revolution as so many do, so I'll draw out a larger comparison. What has happened in history when laws begin to favor wealth and the center of power? I don't mean everyday legislation, but the level of shit we are beginning to see here with extreme tax breaks and protections. It doesn't look good.
Conflating things like maintaining a border and detaining children of asylum seekers as a deterrent doesn't help the discussion other than to muddy the waters.
The “right” side is the one supported by evidence. There are some things maybe people can never agree on, but for the vast majority of issues, there is evidence that supports one side more than the other.
And that's a shame. People are scared to debate values because they don't want the value structures that their lives center around to crumble. Without debating values, you might end up spending a huge proportion of your life on something that later doesn't matter to you...
The propagandists would love you to throw up your hands and believe this; their goal is to paralyze you, sow chaos and despair.
It's like a liar saying to you, after they lie to your face for the 10th time, 'everyone lies'. It's a false attempt to justify and normalize their bad behavior. Technically yes, but it's meaningless; some people are far more trustworthy than others. The trustworthiness of information and politicians varies greatly.
> The trustworthiness of information and politicians varies greatly.
Yes it does - and we are hopeless at determining who is trustworthy and who isn’t.
For example I am a well educated, well paid, and politically aware person and I trust Trump. Other equally educated, paid, aware, etc people distrust Trump.
> throw up your hands
I think we need techniques to move in a positive direction even in the face of propaganda.
Techniques to ensure politicians are worse off when we the people are worse off. E.g. Salary capping for life at say 2x median state pay.
Techniques that help us risk adjust decisions based on how easy it is to back out of them. E.g. It’s far easier to add more immigrants if we find out we have taken in too few than it is to kick out immigrants if we find out we have taken in too many.
Techniques that ensure negative consequences of voting a particular way are felt by the voters. E.g. if you vote to ban private schools and it goes through then your kids are assigned to a bottom 25% public school.
> we are hopeless at determining who is trustworthy and who isn’t
We are not at all hopeless. We're not perfect, but we do pretty well. Just because people make mistakes sometimes doesn't at all mean that everyone is hopeless. Bad software is written, but we can produce good software. People trust the wrong person, but democracy and human rights has blossomed and spread.
Your proposals about politicians are interesting in that Trump likely wouldn't agree to facing the consequences of his actions.
> Bad software is written, but we can produce good software.
Great example! How do we make our political system more robust like software dev?
Even good software developers make plenty of mistakes and the system overall manages to keep trucking on.
It’s because we have a whole host of techniques to limit our losses - for example at work we have systems in place to automatically roll back recent changes if we detect a problem.
We could apply this technique to legislation by putting in a set of conditions under which the legislation would be automatically revoked.
> Your proposals about politicians are interesting in that Trump likely wouldn't agree to facing the consequences of his actions.
It is not just politicians - we all have an aversion to taking responsibility for our actions and beliefs.
You have every right to meddle in American affairs. This is the country of all people of the world. All people who value freedom and individual dignity. Decent Americans welcome everyone and want to help everyone because they realize it helps themselves to do so. It does no good for regular people to buy into these notions of separation. That notion is a tool for maintaining power. The underbelly of the world are the only ones who care about power for themselves. It's a disease.
Also as a muslim, it's very amusing to me that there are people who are fighting for me without my asking them and yet them telling me and other muslim it's bad.
It's hilarious what the politically programmed noise-makers think of themselves.
Snark, except snark only comes from people with little knowledge, as in this case you seem unaware that they are a completely independent entity as of today.
I'm definitely a Windows fanboy if anything but in general I've found Linux doing font rendering better than Windows. And that's since the last 6 years. Which makes me think maybe it's my settings? If think it's only for Firefox on Windows. Would you have any tips?
I have a wild guess. Windows changed the default font to Segoe in Vista, which was released eleven years ago, and you are not a fan. I'm guessing six years is a rough guest or you stuck on XP, or dealt with this problem and forgot you did it years later when you reset settings.
That said, I searched "Firefox Segoe" before writing this and the top few results were from about six years ago when some naming problem caused Firefox to use the wrong version of Segoe. Worth checking on your own.
The Microlino belongs to the category L7E, thats why he doesn't need to pass a crash test. But that doesn't mean that its not important for us to make the Microlino as safe as possible. After our crash simulations the Microlino passes the crash test with 50 km/h.”
I wouldn’t bet on that. It doesn’t weigh much, which means it will decelerate fast when hitting a ‘normal’ car head-on), and it has very little space for a crumple zone.
Thanks for the answer. I couldn't figure if the seats are one behind another or side by side? If side by side the it seems 7ft should be enough crumple zone. If one behind another then I'd like the car to have just one seat for safety reasons.
Side by side (watch the video, near the end). That increases the amount of room for impacts from the back, but not that for impacts from the front or the sides. I also couldn’t find any mention of airbags on that site.
I highly doubt Bloomberg would run this story without a lot of faith in this. Michael Bloomberg has strongly hinted at plans to run for president on a democratic ticket and it's in his interest to undermine trumps anti-china agenda and something you can expect his eponymous news org to help him with.
It's a reputable news organization. Mike ain't calling the editorial shots. It's possible that both sides completely and earnestly believe their story is correct.
Journalistic freedom in the US has allowed American journalists and news organisations to publish a lot of untruths. The hurdle to prosecute for slander and libel is much much higher in the US than many other European countries. We can debate its pros and cons but that's the way it is currently and Michael Bloomberg would not be affected in the slightest even if it turns out the story is all toss.
This is especially so in the current "China threat" political climate in the US. China is essentially a boogieman in the US right now and attacking it has proven to be a great generator of votes for politicians.
I agree with all you said but it seems that you misunderstood what I was trying to convey (or I what you were trying to convey)
I'm saying Bloomberg the publication is likely right about the story because they are taking a stand that hurts Bloomberg the persons presidential aspirations. They wouldn't have ran it unless it really was something.
Thank you