BADGERY THING

Ah, the many physiological ills called by repeated inbreeding. At least, I’d guess that’s what this is.

@Beta (If you’re still here and if you can be bothered to scroll back to your response to my response)
I wasn’t saying that was what definitely would happen; I was more or less guessing. And I wouldn’t call it a slippery slope fallacy- a gross exaggeration of the consequences, perhaps, but ‘slippery slope’ implies small, possibly positive social or legal measure paving the way for larger, negative consequences from the expansion of that policy. I don’t think I said that, but if did you’re welcome to correct me on it.

But I digress. It’s interesting how different attitudes can be. In the UK we tend to put our trust in our police force to sort it if there’s danger, and we tend to consider our political system to be robust enough to prevent oppressive dictatorship from becoming a serious risk. Of course, in theory, Cameron could try to pass a law making himself permanent ruler of the nation tomorrow, but it wouldn’t go through, and he’d lose the next election. Combine that with a bit more leniency toward laws you’d probably call ‘oppressive’ over there, and the system just about works. I get where you’re coming from too, though – maybe our way is flawed because it has us put too much trust in a government that may turn dictatorial on us at any moment, or maybe you’re paranoid over there and don’t trust those in power enough. Who can say?

@Beta_Carotene Yar, over here the consensus is that it is right for government to sacrifice freedom in exchange for safety. Different values, I guess. Shame we can’t have both, but hey, what can we do.

Thing is, I reckon if the US (I’m assuming that’s where you are – correct me if I’m wrong) government tried to take people’s guns away, you’d get less safety, not more of it, because there would be a lot of people who would be completely unwilling to give up their guns to the point of shooting anyone who tries to take ‘em, and this’d combine with armed criminals who saw a less well armed society for them to take bits of… the police would be completely overwhelmed, and any good that came of it would be lost in the anarchy. European type measures wouldn’t work, I don’t think.

That said, I don’t live there, so what the hell do I know?

Heh, well, fellow Europeans, we can expect careful control and licensing of 3D printers, with private ownership being banned within the next couple of years. And they’ll find other ways in which these things are dangerous, too. Could you use one to print currency? Or to create clones of, or illegal versions of vehicles? Synthetic drugs, possibly? I’d certainly bet they could do explosives.

Let’s be honest here: I like what anonymous stands for, but they’re… rubbish. We’ve got an organisation with a core of bored script kiddies and self-taught basement dwellers, as well as whole lot of mmorpg junkies and /b/tards who hardly know their c++ from their java and think they’re being clever by using their computers as part of DDOS attacks (so what, you’ve taken a site down for a couple of hours, big friggin’ whoop) of the kind which could be carried out by a trained monkey. And they are up against highly gifted top-tier university graduates who’ve been taught cyber-warfare techniques by some of the best in the world and have access to near-bottomless funding. These are people trained to deal with carefully co-ordinated, militaristically precise attacks by the likes of the Chinese or Russian secret services, and they will spend their working hours honing their skills in drawn out battles of wit and infiltration with equally talented and well trained foreigners in order to gain in the great online intelligence-gathering contest that makes up a fairly large-ish part of modern espionage operations.

Of course anonymous failed; it was literally like pitting one of those slightly deranged survivalist groups against the US military. They hadn’t a snowball’s chance in hell.

Sorry chaps, but I can say with a clear conscience that I’ve never done anything that can be deemed discriminatory against transgender people, and I never will. Ever. What’s more, I signed petitions against Russia’s anti-LGBT laws and, as a member of Amnesty International I’ve sent money and written letters to aid in the fight for rights in the Middle East. And I swear to God, if ever my government or anyone I know ever does anything that could be considered discriminatory to any section of society, I will stand up and be counted. I know I’m not helping in a big way, but I care, and I will continue to care for a long as I live.

So thanks for this slap in the face. I really, really appreciate it.

Just because an ideal is attainable doesn’t mean it’s reasonable. Why should we try to reach an ideal someone else sets when we can be happy with ourselves? Why is Bond any better than I am? I know the person I want to be, and I am that person. Why go out and climb a mountain when you can sit at its base drinking whisky and sodas and draw occasional amusement at all the meaningless bravado of all those damn mountaineers?

Kinda makes me wonder: is today, May 10 2013, all that much better in the west than May 10 1993 was? Y’know, I’m not all that sure it is. It seems like what we’re doing is making more and more technological gimmicks and pretending they somehow improve our quality of life when in fact we were all perfectly capable of being just as happy beforehand. More stuff =/= more happiness. The key developments over the last century or so, in my view, have been representative government with equal rule of law, quality medical care and reliable, clean food and water supplies. Everything else, pretty much, I reckon I could do without and not be much less happy. Replace cars with horses, lose TV and the internet, go back to pre-industrial revolution standards in most areas, whatever, I still don’t think life would be much less pleasant at all. No more pleasant, sure, but no less pleasant either. We’d just have less stuff.

And yet all of our political and economic systems are geared towards acquiring more stuff, rather than, say, working towards actually improving and retaining human welfare; they just work on the assumption that the two mean the same thing.

One of these days, I really should join the Occupy movement.

The fashion industry’s always been about superficiality. I mean, we have a whole collection of firms which make their money by subtly telling people they aren’t pretty enough so they’ll buy shit in attempt to solve that problem. This guy’s targeting insecure, superficial ‘popular’ cheerleader-y and jockish types, which is fine, but people with larger body types can be insecure and superficial too and, for that matter, they can also be ‘popular’. So I’d say he’s limiting the brand somewhat.

But by getting annoyed about this, we’re missing a cardinal issue: Abercrombie & Fitch is brand for boring sheep who believe individuality is something that can be bought, and is made all the better if everyone else buys it too. If you’re properly cool, you could pull the whole image thing off while wearing a binbag with holes cut out for the arms, regardless of your body type. And you’ll know it, and so you’ll have whatever the hell clothes you want and sod the marketing.

As a fairly regular poster on a site about internet culture, I reckon I know about this kind of thing.

Well, you can’t blame the guy for trying to jump on his newfound fame – he might even have spoken the way he did to engineer it. But so far as online personalities go he’s definitely no Tom Ridgewell.

I’d say that, like Scumbag Steve and his attempted rap career, people will soon realise that his meme is far funnier and far more interesting than he is. And then people will develop new memes, and the majority of web culture aficionados, when his name is mentioned, will respond with “oh yeah, that guy” if they even remember him at all.

Shipping between Holmes and Watson?

Someone ought to dig down into Conan-Doyle’s grave and then attach a generator to his corpse, because I reckon the speed at which he’s spinning down there might just be enough to solve the global energy crisis.

OK, OK, that’s unnecessarily snarky, ‘cos the TV series is an entirely different universe with different characters who just happen to have the same names. But believe you me, in the books at least, Watson DEFINITELY isn’t gay. Just sayin’.

“Won the German elections and became chancellor”

In fact, it’s a whole lot more complex than that. The Nazis never formed a majority government, although they did become the largest party in the Reichstag. Hitler’s chancellorship (which was in fact only Germany’s second highest position) was part of a conspiracy between Hindenburg (the president) and Von Papen, another prominent member of Hindenburg’s party. The idea was that by allowing Hitler the chancellorship while making the more politically experienced Von Papen Vice-Chancellor, Hitler and his party could be controlled.

However, it didn’t work like that, in fact Von Papen was entirely outmanoeuvred, then a mysteriously convenient fire at the Reichstag building started by a lone extreme Communist in 1933 that then convinced Hindenburg and the Reichstag to pass a piece of legislation called the Enabling Act which granted Hitler ‘emergency powers’ to deal with the threat, which he used to make himself de facto dictator. From there, he was able to increasingly marginalise Hindenburg until his death, and Hitler’s claiming of the title Fuhrer in 1934

Apologies for the pedantry, but if we’re going to do articles on historical people, we have to get this kind of stuff right. Hitler NEVER won an election.

Baaaaah, the rock ‘n’ roll movement did a far better job of this kind of thing, and with way more class. I implore you all:

“That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her.”

from Porphyria’s Lover, E. A. Poe

Question is, would this mean a union of New Zealand and Canada to fight the stereotypical brashness overload?

Of course, if you guys wanna unite you could always both REJOIN THE BRITISH EMPIRE!!!! C’mon, it was great the last time round! Hey? Hey? (sighs as his nation fades into global insignificance)

“Wolves don’t have names” – Angua, in Men at Arms

Besides, I’d be “Alpha Demon”. Which is a silly name for a wolf, especially since it’s only slightly below Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way in the “names that are trying to compensate for something” stakes.

(sighs) And this, ladies and gentlemen of the USA, is just one reason why our universities here in the UK are better than yours.

Barding, dammit! The stuff’s called barding! Not “horse armor”, BARDING! Dammit, Bethesda! Oh, and while we’re at it, not every cruciform two-handed sword is a goddam claymore. The term “claymore” is actually fairly specifically defined. And you know those contraptions made up of a spiky ball on a stick that Bethesda insists are called maces? THOSE ARE MORNING STARS, DAMMIT!!! Seriously, if you’re gonna use historic military technology, you can at least get it right. Geez.

@clevername: Agreed. I’ve played Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim, and Morrowind was always my favourite.

I’ve come to think there’s kind of an uncanny valley effect going on with Skyrim: as the world becomes more and more realistic, the ways in which it isn’t quite right seem to pull harder and harder and I just can’t get myself to roleplay like I can with Morrowind. Or, come to that, the two latest Fallouts. The freedom in Skyrim has always felt a bit… contrived to me, somehow.

Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed the game and played it a lot. But, nar, the je ne sais quoi that makes a world truly immersive just wasn’t quite there for me.

Doom is the ultimate proof that technologically better doesn’t mean objectively better. Because, don’t get me wrong I’m a fan of Halo, F.E.A.R. and several other modern shooters, but Doom anally rapes all of them. Period. And if you disagree, you can go to a corner and jerk off.

Fanboy out!

Wow, you have no idea how deeply significant this page is going to be in my existence. Nutella is, well, let’s just say it’s heavily implicated in some internal banter between myself and my immediate cohorts and leave it at that.