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OwlFancier posted:I mean they probably also think you have a large dragon/hydra in there with the heads of various democrats which sleeps on top of a pile of stolen taxpayer money but goldbuggery is a fairly common right wing quirk. Not honestly enormously sure why as it is capitalism that necessitates the expansion of the monetary supply, even if the gold standard is also not great for other reasons. Preaching to the choir. Especially the bolded bit. I've never been able to make sense of that other than the perceived scarcity of gold being what gold bugs really want. You can mine more gold, I suppose, but there's a whole host of other money supply considerations to think about when you make decisions on how to mint currency that the whole "scarce and valuable" poo poo falls apart fast under any real scrutiny. I have no idea what the venn diagram of gold bugs and crypto enthusiasts is, but I'd imagine there's significant overlap.
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Aug 19, 2022 22:18
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I have not paid that much attention to crypto weirdos but I suppose it does illustrate the internal contradiction, crypto having no use value and a highly volatile exchange value but also being finite, thus is both is like gold, but also centering the inherent "valuelessness" of itself.
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Aug 19, 2022 22:25
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I'm a Homeland Security officer. I have been issued a badge. I really sit in a cube processing papers. I imagine that's going to be the case for 99% of new hires at the IRS too. Also, that GS-5 position is going to pay like poo poo for the work.
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Aug 19, 2022 22:42
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Warmachine posted:Got it, so it's a ye old timey stick-up for their bullion. Also it gets looped into a lot of conspiracy tropes about how (((they))) control the OwlFancier posted:I mean they probably also think you have a large dragon/hydra in there with the heads of various democrats which sleeps on top of a pile of stolen taxpayer money but goldbuggery is a fairly common right wing quirk. Which is nonsense, because as we know dragons tend to be libertarians. 
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Aug 19, 2022 22:47
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Beerdeer posted:I'm a Homeland Security officer. I have been issued a badge. I'm pretty sure I'd be a GS-10, but it was mostly a flippant remark; unless I really thought they were going to let me go after conservatives for their tax fraud.
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Aug 19, 2022 23:17
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Jurgan posted:There actually is no figure in the Bible called "the Antichrist," the word antichrist is more like a category of person who goes against the spirit of Christ. It's a bit vague, to be honest. That's true, when the Bible specifically uses the term "antichrist" it's to refer to anyone who opposes Jesus or leads anyone astray from him. "The Antichrist" as a specific person, although the Bible doesn't refer to this person as such, is described in a few other passages. I couldn't remember off the top of my head so this was found on Wikipedia but 2 Thessalonians talks about how the Second Coming won't happen until "the lawless one" is revealed: As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here. Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction. He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God. - 2 Thessalonians 2:1-4 Jesus also uses the term false messiah (pseudokhristos) in Matthew and Mark: "For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and produce great signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, even the elect." Honestly I'd have to say by these verses, Trump doesn't fit the definition of "The Antichrist" because the first set of verses says that he will exalt himself over every god or object of worship. Trump doesn't do that, he very much pays lip service to worshiping the Christian God. You could definitely classify him as a false prophet though by Jesus' words, a man who leads faithful people astray (I'd put Reagan in that group too, as well as a vast majority of GOP politicians and media figures). Neito posted:Why do they keep saying that they're ARMED agents? Is that actually a thing? In addition to what other people have said about how IRS agents are hired and how some of them are qualified to carry firearms, right wing media is scaremongering about the IRS purchasing x amount of guns/bullets. I honestly don't know how much of that stuff the IRS normally buys, so I don't know if it's a significantly larger amount than usual, a slightly larger amount, or a normal amount. OwlFancier posted:Gold really does seem silly though, it being generally as useful as a paperweight unless you need to make circuitry. You can't eat it, it only has value if other people agree it does which, shocker, is also how fiat currency works. Gold is a little different than fiat in that you're right that it doesn't have much use outside of circuitry/jewelry and looking pretty, but the big reasons gold caught on as a store of value were its rarity, its durability, and how easy it was to divide it (pure gold is actually fairly soft, you can bite into it which is how you tell the difference between it and pyrite). You're absolutely correct that in a Mad Max style apocalypse or a hot civil war where food and water are scarce and survivability is difficult, gold would more or less be useless. I sort of think that in a slow economic collapse with a weak government though, where food is readily available, gold and silver would still be useful as currency. Goldbugs are generally banking on the latter, so I guess in theory they're not wrong that having a lot would be a good idea. That said, since the average person doesn't really have much gold in their possession, it's pretty doubtful that precious metals are going to become the new currency in a slow economic collapse, it'd probably just go back to regional paper currency like in the early colonial days. I'm no expert on the subject though so I'd say don't trust my word on any of that stuff, but I do think gold is a little different from fiat in a couple of ways. Just not enough ways that it really matters in the big picture. Crypto idiots though, yeah, that poo poo is useless in any and every situation. The worst part is crypto fails one of the big requirements for being useful as a currency (durability) since it's easy to accidentally send cryptocurrency to a dead address effectively destroying it forever. It's also not even technically finite since the client can be changed to just add more if they want (and Bitcoin will absolutely do this were they to ever reach the 22 million number or whatever, because miners would be furious if there wasn't still a way to make money by doing nothing).
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Aug 19, 2022 23:26
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Beerdeer posted:I'm a Homeland Security officer. I have been issued a badge. It will have LEAP, Law Enforcement Availability Pay, which is pretty good hike on top of the payscale.
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Aug 19, 2022 23:26
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The main thing gold does afaik is that it restricts the money supply, you can't create money for financial purposes, which meant that every time there was a big thing governments needed to spend money on, they basically just binned the gold standard because otherwise they would be hosed because it turns out that spending money you don't technically have is basically the only way out of an economic fuckup most of the time. Eventually they stopped going back to it.
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Aug 19, 2022 23:44
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Twelve by Pies posted:
None of them have done the math, either. They're thinking "87,000 armed agents!" but even if it's just 10,000 armed the amount of bullets purchased/10,000 = a few hundred per agent, and that certainly includes training rounds. So if they shoot a grand total of 20 clipazines during training for the year that'll account for almost all the allotted ammo. A regular duty load of one in the gun and 2 on the belt will take a chunk out of the remaining.
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Aug 20, 2022 00:26
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All this Antichrist talk reminds me of one of my favorite Biblical "translations" from the eons. The mark of the beast in all accepted early "editions" of the Bible was 616. Monks just started using 666 around the 7th century for no real reason, other than it looking scarier. I guess? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_115
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Aug 20, 2022 14:23
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616 is the number of the Marvel universe. Jesus was warning us about capeshit.
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Aug 20, 2022 22:41
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I think you mean gently caress GRAND RAPIDS MICHIGAN, there
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Aug 21, 2022 03:29
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'Over 1000 Scientists and Professionals Sign Formal Declaration: “There is No Climate Emergency”'quote:To: devere quote:To: devere quote:To: devere quote:To: devere
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Aug 21, 2022 22:12
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kik2dagroin posted:'Over 1000 Scientists and Professionals Sign Formal Declaration: “There is No Climate Emergency”' I’m glad we can finally hear the opinions of some misanthropic mechanical engineering PhDs.
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Aug 21, 2022 22:16
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quote:All you have to do is look around unless you are brainwashed , blind and very stupid ,LOL Agreed, all you have to do is look around to see how dangerous climate change is and how it's destroying the planet unless you are brainwashed, blind and very stupid.
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Aug 21, 2022 22:53
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Lol, "professionals"
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Aug 21, 2022 22:55
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I'm a professional and I say nuh-uh.
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Aug 21, 2022 23:10
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Captain Log posted:All this Antichrist talk reminds me of one of my favorite Biblical "translations" from the eons.
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Aug 21, 2022 23:32
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Terrible Opinions posted:Entirely possible it was just a very influential copy mistake. This is the first part of a video from a really soft spoken archealogy YouTuber with a bunch of highlighted Bible translation things. He was raised fundamentalist and broke out of it, which I can relate to. But he maintains a very respectful tone about the whole thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKp4yWGTfXo
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Aug 22, 2022 13:42
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Oh I'm familiar with intentional Biblical changes, I just didn't think there was any evidence of the number of the beast being such a change rather than a copy error.
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Aug 22, 2022 14:51
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Man that Trump guy sure must have been a giant loving idiot to have employed this guy for over a decade. Michael Cohen Predicts Trump’s Allies Will Turn on Him in FBI Investigation — ‘None of Them Want to Go to Prison quote:To: ChicagoConservative27 quote:To: ChicagoConservative27 quote:To: ChicagoConservative27
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Aug 22, 2022 15:08
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Herman Merman posted:Lol, "professionals" 
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Aug 23, 2022 15:08
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MOMENT OF TRUTH SUMMIT STARTS 9 AM ET LIVE (Links, info inside)quote:To: Hostage; All quote:To: Robert DeLong; All quote:To: Hostage This  CHYNA rant wasn't unprompted, the preceding post linked to another thread discussing a substack article whose author, complete with laser eyes in his profile pic, posts an awful lot on gab.com and Telegram. TL;DR the substack wastes thousands of words that amount to "CHYNA IS STEALING OUR DEMOCRACY  "quote:
 the government was sure better when it was staffed by literal Nazis quote:To: Hostage quote:To: semimojo quote:
quote:To: semimojo quote:To: Robert DeLong Fascists speaking at a fascist rally, very illuminating  quote:To: Mozilla Sounds like you have a problem with capitalism, FRiend  quote:To: combat_boots freepers lecturing other freepers about cherry picking data lmao quote:To: Freedom56v2
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Aug 23, 2022 16:59
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"Chinese is a very hard language to master" Idk hoss, about a billion tiny children have done it within this lifetime. I don't think it's really that difficult.
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Aug 23, 2022 18:19
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Xiahou Dun posted:"Chinese is a very hard language to master" It’s about as hard as English. The DoD uses a 1-4 rating scale, English and Mandarin are 5s, Spanish is a 3 or a 2 I think.
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Aug 24, 2022 02:27
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pseudanonymous posted:It’s about as hard as English. The DoD uses a 1-4 rating scale, English and Mandarin are 5s, Spanish is a 3 or a 2 I think. Yeah their list is also famously bullshit sourced from huffing their own farts. Hint : language “difficulty” is pretty much meaningless as a concept and has almost no backing.
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Aug 24, 2022 02:36
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Presumably it would depend on what other languages you know, much easier to learn german if you already know english etc, as they share common ancestors and most of the same sounds.
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Aug 24, 2022 02:46
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The sounds aren't the same at all, German sounds very silly. Oh right you're English.
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Aug 24, 2022 02:55
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It sounds a bit odd sure but most of the actual noises are already present in english except for a couple, I always found it much easier than french which is just impossible ululating.
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Aug 24, 2022 03:01
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OwlFancier posted:Presumably it would depend on what other languages you know, much easier to learn german if you already know english etc, as they share common ancestors and most of the same sounds. Sure, but that's talking about the difficulty of specific linguistic features for adult learners between different languages, which would be very different, and even then it's subject to massive variation between speakers. You can make some generalizations about some features ("Monolingual English speakers often have difficulties with retroflex consonants"), but they're miles from determinative and many speakers won't have those issues. Plus then you get into questions like trying to compare language that are phonologically or syntactically distinct but not necessarily both which no one has been able to show real generalizations about. And again, that's talking about between languages, which doesn't make any sense if you're saying "X language is difficult". "Chinese is difficult" is like saying "Bicycles are honorable" ; it doesn't actually mean anything. Also German and English do not share most of the same phoneme inventory, they're pretty drat distinct. From a phonological perspective, Spanish is much friendlier to a naive English speaker, for instance.
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Aug 24, 2022 03:01
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I would agree that the idea of inherently hard or easy languages is a bit daft, obvious options to improve some languages notwithstanding. Necessarily widely used languages have to meet a minimum level of usability because they change to become more usable over time.
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Aug 24, 2022 03:10
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OwlFancier posted:It sounds a bit odd sure but most of the actual noises are already present in english except for a couple, I always found it much easier than french which is just impossible ululating. Vowels, my dude. OwlFancier posted:I would agree that the idea of inherently hard or easy languages is a bit daft, obvious options to improve some languages notwithstanding. Necessarily widely used languages have to meet a minimum level of usability because they change to become more usable over time. There's actually some pretty strong evidence that languages with a stable group of speakers get increasingly full of exceptions and adding more odd features. It's non-native speakers coming in at a steady clip that might be what reduces this process and is how you wind up with like, Icelandic and poo poo. Xiahou Dun fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Aug 24, 2022 |
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Aug 24, 2022 03:12
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kik2dagroin posted:freepers: what have YOU done to save the Republic besides post comments?   
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Aug 24, 2022 08:42
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Xiahou Dun posted:From a phonological perspective, Spanish is much friendlier to a naive English speaker, for instance. As a native English speaker who finds it absolutely impossible to roll r's, I call bullshit on this.
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Aug 24, 2022 10:44
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Language was a mistake. Grunt, grumble...
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Aug 24, 2022 11:41
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Xiahou Dun posted:Vowels, my dude. Is there a good article on languages with a consistent population gaining more exceptions over time? I've heard people say it, but not being a linguist never could find a source.
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Aug 24, 2022 12:48
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English has pretty heavy roots in in the German language family tree, even if it sounds pretty foreign to non-speakers. I've always maintained that most Americans only know German from seeing snippets of Hitler screeching, who spoke with a loving bizarre accent. It would be like if Germans only heard English from watching Macho Man Randy Savage going on a coke fueled rant about winning the Intercontinental belt. (I'm not a Pro Wrestling guy, but this is one of the most hysterical cases I've ever seen of a guy who is absolutely off his tits managing to maintain a character while filmed. No idea why this only exists on DailyMotion.) https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x55xt7
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Aug 24, 2022 14:34
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The previously mentioned classifications of language difficulty isn't a statement on whether or not a language is inherently "hard" or "easy" but the expected difficulty an adult native English language speaker will have to learn it.
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Aug 24, 2022 14:46
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Scratch Monkey posted:The previously mentioned classifications of language difficulty isn't a statement on whether or not a language is inherently "hard" or "easy" but the expected difficulty an adult native English language speaker will have to learn it. Then how is English rated 5 (hardest), or was whoever posted that wrong
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Aug 24, 2022 14:54
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Twelve by Pies posted:As a native English speaker who finds it absolutely impossible to roll r's, I call bullshit on this. German isn't any friendlier on the "r" (there's the trill, but also a uvular, aveolar and dental version) and it has a lot of other sounds too, like several distinct vowels in an area English doesn't. Finding one thing difficult doesn't necessarily mean another thing is easier. Reflections85 posted:Is there a good article on languages with a consistent population gaining more exceptions over time? I've heard people say it, but not being a linguist never could find a source. For something that's not pitched for linguists, check out McWhorter. He's very readable and is a respected expert in his subfield. Just keep in mind he's very guilty of the classic popsci thing where an expert uses the fact that they're talking to a non-expert audience to make their argument look stronger than it is. The Power of Babel is my go to recommend for this. VitalSigns posted:Then how is English rated 5 (hardest), or was whoever posted that wrong Cause it wasn't made by linguists or for linguists and its only designed to make the English-speakers who came up with feel very smug.
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Aug 24, 2022 15:27
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