Chokes McGee posted:

this seems like an excellent way to pick up a horrific prion

Relentlessboredomm posted:

Anyone have some good literature to support a universal healthcare argument? I was debating this with a friend who seemed relatively open to the idea and mostly seemed resistant on the basis of "gov't is incompetent".

Ice Phisherman posted:

Wouldn't even be that hard.

A massive solar flare would fry most new technology on the planet. All of that data and a society and depends on computers declines precipitously overnight.
Climate change forces people to move/flee. Political instability follows in its wake.
Resource wars.
A new disease sweeps the world. Doesn't even have to be black death. The Spanish flu killed 10% of the world.
Limited war between nations. The Koreas or India/Pakistan. Imagine some of the largest cities in the world suddenly not being there anymore and what kind of panic that would cause. That's if they don't go nuclear.

For one that is definitely going to happen you'll see robotics and early AI that replaces the jobs of most people and it's only scaling up. Nothing like massive unemployment to make life fun.

The stability of the world is fragile. Don't assume it can take too many shocks. OR really any one big shock and fully recover.

Ice Phisherman posted:

This is pretty reductionist. The 19th and 20th centuries have been outliers in terms of world history because we haven't regressed too far socially or technologically. All throughout history there were social, political and technological backslides. For example the Romans built the triple walls of Constantinople that allowed it to exist all the way up to the middle of the 15th century but they sure as poo poo couldn't make new walls like those elsewhere. The technology was lost. The Roman empire for all of its faults was stable and prosperous until it wasn't and fell into dozens upon dozens of successor states and kingdoms in which the Catholic church was really the only binding force left in the west and not really suited to the task of governance.

There is no line that's better to worse or worse to better in history. History is not a discipline for people who want easy black and white answers. It's full of grey areas, heavy nuance and unknowns. I would even say that times back then were better in some ways despite the ignorance and cruelty as humans didn't have the power to exterminate themselves in nuclear fire. A power which I trust in the hands of no one.

Historically progress "forwards" as you would call it is not steadily forward. We're in a weird time right now where things are better for the average Joe and Jane. We know that history is full of declines and collapses of all kinds. The fact that we haven't had one in a long time is an outlier.

MaxxBot posted:

I agree with your point but given how information is disseminated so easily now wouldn't that make such a profound technological backslide less likely? Unless of course we had mass nuclear war or something like that, I could easily see a big backslide in that case.

Cingulate posted:

I'm not saying it's only up, all the time (see: Trump as a presidential candidate). But the long-term trend is up, up, up.

RVProfootballer posted:

You were talking about something like social/societal progress over time, right? Ignoring differences between regions in the same time, taking any particular issue, I think it is difficult to see a consistent upward trend from pre-history to now. Persecution of religious or ethnic or sexual or political minorities has risen and fallen more than simply improved linearly. Ancient Greece, some eras of Rome, the Enlightenment, French Revolution and Napoleonic era, and yeah during the latter half of the 20th century have been good in some respects (and bad in others). Caveat that I am not a historian and not a lay expert by any means, just a history nerd. But reading about the Roman republic and early French revolution is kinda sobering in how they had a ton right hundreds and thousands of years ago.

awesmoe posted:

Why the assumption that people have to post poo poo constantly in this thread? If it's not about politics then don't loving post it because nobody cares outside the dozen or so usual boring suspects.
Of course it's way too late at this point, the thread is unreadable and completely useless as a politics resource. But at least everyone has a thread to chat in.

Nonsense posted:

They used to probate people who tried to give actual health advice to people who just wanted to slurp bacon grease with every meal.

Pollyanna posted:

I've been eating a balanced diet of meat and vegetables alongside working out at the gym over the past three months and I still have lost only a few pounds total, from a max of 202. I'm beginning to think not trying was more satisfying.

RVProfootballer posted:

You were talking about something like social/societal progress over time, right? Ignoring differences between regions in the same time, taking any particular issue, I think it is difficult to see a consistent upward trend from pre-history to now. Persecution of religious or ethnic or sexual or political minorities has risen and fallen more than simply improved linearly. Ancient Greece, some eras of Rome, the Enlightenment, French Revolution and Napoleonic era, and yeah during the latter half of the 20th century have been good in some respects (and bad in others). Caveat that I am not a historian and not a lay expert by any means, just a history nerd. But reading about the Roman republic and early French revolution is kinda sobering in how they had a ton right hundreds and thousands of years ago.

Nonsense posted:

They used to probate people who tried to give actual health advice to people who just wanted to slurp bacon grease with every meal.

The Shortest Path posted:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/casar-vargas/why-i-can-no-longer-suppo_1_b_12698874.html

:vomit:

WampaLord posted:

And on the flip side, now because of those idiots, anyone attempting keto/low carb gets laughed out of the forum.

Nonsense posted:

They used to probate people who tried to give actual health advice to people who just wanted to slurp bacon grease with every meal.

HookedOnChthonics posted:

Iceland is kind of a special case considering that more people work for Target in the US than live there.

Koyaanisgoatse posted:

Shook Nate is at it again

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-is-just-a-normal-polling-error-behind-clinton/

Combed Thunderclap posted:

Ian Morris's The Measure of Civilization basically validates everyone's opinion, which is to say there have been series of rises and collapses (and no one's quite sure why our current civilization hasn't collapsed as scheduled; Morris argues that luck allowed us to get sufficiently far that we discovered fossil fuels, which are really useful for keeping the lights on and systems relatively functional even when there's civilizational turbulance), but that on the whole human civilization has never been more developed (with the likes of Pinkner arguing that despite obvious and very loud conflicts humanity has never been more peaceful).

Harrow posted:

Why's that, out of curiosity?

The Shortest Path posted:

Still less gross than some of the moderation in this subforum re: black posters.

Nonsense posted:

South Carolina made a victim of police brutality into the bad guy, and a county that is nearly half African American, made a jury of 11 white folk declare Walter Scott a violent criminal.

greatn posted:

I just got an email from Hillary Clinton with the subject line "Stop Refreshing 538".

MaxxBot posted:

YLLS/W&W used to have an extremely rigid orthodoxy of dumb minimalist workout programs and hardline low-carb or "clean eating" philosophies, that's pretty much entirely dead now though and it's much more sane.

greatn posted:

I just got an email from Hillary Clinton with the subject line "Stop Refreshing 538".

Cingulate posted:

The Romans nailed 6000 slaves to crosses alongside the Appina way. They had some impressive architecture that was hardly matched within Europe for a few hundred years, but it also took some time to match them with regards to genocide. And the loss of technology after the dark ages is usually overstated.

There's a massive tendency better to worse in the history of humanity. Just consider the fraction of the population that's enslaved, or starving, or victim of war, or unable to read, or dying before adulthood, or ... Anything, really.

I'm not saying it's only up, all the time (see: Trump as a presidential candidate). But the long-term trend is up, up, up.

Combed Thunderclap posted:

But this is the thing, I'm thinking of things in terms of economic and social development whereas if you want to wade into whether or not a society is better re: rights then things get very subjective very quickly. But I honestly can't think of times when more people were more well-off and less dead/literally starving than when they are now, or literally any time period in the past where I'd want to be other than the present day. The Roman Republic and early French Revolution are cool time periods but they were still pretty lovely for lots of people.

Also none of this excuses the massive geographic and economic inequalities that still exist but I can't allow those to negate the billions who have been lifted out of hyperextreme poverty.

Koyaanisgoatse posted:

Shook Nate is at it again

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-is-just-a-normal-polling-error-behind-clinton/

greatn posted:

I just got an email from Hillary Clinton with the subject line "Stop Refreshing 538".

FlamingLiberal posted:

Why is he caring about a national average 4 days from the election? You don't win through the popular vote.

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

A linear view of history conveniently ignores everything outside of Western Civ too.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

I too am on the Keto diet.

GalacticAcid posted:

Cingulate posted:

My dad loves that book. I haven't come around to really read it though.

quote:

A ruling on Wednesday from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit granted a petition for a stay filed by Securus Technologies. This puts a halt to rate caps on inmate calling services that were implemented in August.

“Petitioners have satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending court review,” judges wrote.

The FCC has repeatedly been stymied in attempts to lower the rates inmates pay for phone calls to family, friends, and lawyers. After a March 2016 federal appeals court ruling stayed new rate caps of 11˘ to 22˘ per minute on both interstate and intrastate calls from prisons, the FCC proposed new caps of 13˘ to 31˘ per minute in an attempt to satisfy the court. Those new caps were halted in this week's ruling.

As we’ve previously written, prison phone companies Global Tel*Link (GTL) and Securus Technologies argued that the FCC's limits fell short of what the companies are contractually obligated to pay in "site commissions" to correctional facilities. Though the FCC hasn’t tried to ban or limit the site commissions, the commission argued that the latest caps would better account for the companies’ costs

greatn posted:

I just got an email from Hillary Clinton with the subject line "Stop Refreshing 538".

Cingulate posted:

The Romans nailed 6000 slaves to crosses alongside the Appina way.

Cingulate posted:

... is there any way to become an American citizen before Nov 8th and add my vote to the Abuelapile?