eightpix

I think that Banksy’s couch gag broke something in me. I stopped watching the Simpsons about then.

The best part about it is the subtlety. Tiny shifts across a season. Few changes in visuals across the entire run.

It is the most lovely theme song I’ve heard.

This develops into the toddler who —after you’ve given advice, demand, direction, instruction, or other adult support — looks you dead in the eye, does the exact opposite, and acts like it’s your fucking fault.

They perfect trolling.

Hopefully, by the time they’re four, they come to understand that trolling your family is not a great survival strategy. Some people grow out of it. Some are just trolls to ‘others’, outside their established ingroup.

There are some people who’d sell their own mothers on a lark. Or, reneg on a friend just to see them squirm. Or, impose tariffs on allies and inflame every enemy but one. Those people, they’re behaving like toddlers.

Literally ignore them. They are no more than tourists. No official interactions. No preferential treatment.

Yeah, I’m still a fan of the group. Not too attached to their host.

I stand corrected.

I knew they were on late night with one of the Jimmies. The band they are is not tied to how they pay the bills. Funny thing is, I can imagine Fallon’s face, but not Kimmel’s.

The band they are is 1987 - 2007 for me. The last album of theirs I picked up was Undun in 2011.

The Roots in their pre-Jimmy Kimmel Fallon days, and even now, are my favourite musical group. Black Star is another duo I would raise to that level as well.

Taking a look at this page, for the Last Poets, who influenced Saul Williams, it’s a veritable who’s who of artists I love: Wu-Tang, Public Enemy, Brand Nubian, KRS-ONE, Guru, Mos Def & Talib Kweli.

e: I stand corrected.

That a bunch of barbarians from north and western Europe whose primary values were ownership, sequestration, exploitation, and domination set the political, economic, social, and psychological agenda for an entire planet. True, this may have been the mode of survival from Rome to the Renaissance, but why are we still locked into it now?

The next part of this comment includes crude generalizations of 1st to 18th century for every continent. Historians, feel free to clarify. Ahistorical boobs, at least be willing to ask questions before you attack.

Turtle Island sustainability and oral history, Asian cosmic coexistence, Middle Eastern knowledge preservation, African social development, East Asian detente, Australo-Pacific deep time and vast exploration, and/or panhumanistic duty to family — no. Every other culture and value system expressed by non-Europeans was summarily suppressed, violently undercut, and disregarded as backward, non-Christian drivel. This continues into today.

Gangsters, germ warfare, rapid industrialization — yes. Every means of short-term gain, power concentration, expansionism, and advantage-taking is normal. Inter- and sometimes intra-familial feuding, marriage pacts, and warmongering is normal.

Sometimes, it seems that almost ANY other system than the one we have now — centered on wealth and weapons — would be an improvement. However, ever other system can not contend with the threats of wealth and weapons.

There’s a bunch of these thought experiments that try to posit scenarios where C is violated.

Here’s one I remember from uni involving scissors. Similar to what OP was thinking, but really really big scissors.

Magneto’s power set could be very useful and easy to manage. Magnets can certainly be made stronger and weaker. He/I would need to build up to any dangerous level of magnetic power, so meditation before sleep would be clutch. Bullet-proof, flight, what amounts to telekinesis, and the ability to manifest any metallic object is fairly incredible, yet unobtrusive.

Also, Forge’s power set would be pretty nice to have. Can engineer, build, fix, and invent literally anything. Solve any technological problem at will. The photocopier would never be broken. Wait, does anyone still use a photocopier? The only thing that’d be annoying is becoming everyone’s IT department.

Jamie Madrox is also a great contender. Instant dupes of myself at will (and, yes, magically, they come with clothes).

These are my answers.

How annoying is it to have idiotic anti-intellectuals running nuclear superpowers?

Socrates.

This man upheld his right to think his own thoughts and to go where the evidence led him. He stood trial and was sentenced to death.

Now, the most powerful people do not think, have zero principles, disregard evidence, and would gladly have others die to secure their power.

USA: 25

Iran: 883? (I’ve seen numbers between 743 and 798)

China: unkown

Saudi Arabia: 330

Singapore: 9

Bottom line, though, is ANY executions are repugnant.

That the Xanatos gambit is what I now expect from all good villains. Any villain worth their salt has a way to defeat the hero — even captured, killed, or frustrated.

Nobody panics when things go “according to plan.” Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, an aid worker will get shot, or a truckload of humanitarians will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all “part of the plan”. But when I say that one little old CEO will die, well then everyone loses their minds!

December 23, 1995: On a wooden basement staircase, in an empty house, with no heat, with my dog. My parents lost the house. All our stuff had been moved out. Our nervous dog wouldn’t settle. I couldn’t leave him. That was the last night I slept in the house where I grew up.

December 1998: On a basement floor near Ottawa. At least it was carpeted. Hammered after some party near a college. In the night, some angel draped a blanket over me. Best feeling of my life to that point. Some guy’s sister was kind to us.

May 2009: Coober Pedy, Australia. Slept in a hostel that was in a mine. Slept underground in a room with bunk beds and no windows. It was weird. Felt like a bomb shelter.

December 2011: Wadi Rum, Jordan. Slept outside under the stars on a sleeping mat on a rock of biblical proportion. The guy in the tent next to ours was snoring. Loudly. My partner couldn’t take it. We dragged our mattresses out onto a rock 300 m from camp. I reasoned — scorpions were less likely to find us. Coulda been wrong. Still here to tell the tale.

I’ve slept in some weird places.

According to Article 27 of the Rome Statute, all wanted persons are equal before the court, including heads of a state or government. No immunities under international law may bar the court from exercising its jurisdiction. 

“No international court has ever found that a head of state or high ranking individual has immunity before it, and Article 27 was meant to codify that principle,” [says] “Leila Sadat, a leading expert on immunities and former ICC special advisor on crimes against humanity[.]”

The immunity loophole found in Article 98 (1), according to the judgement, must be read in context and interpreted in a manner that is consistent with the object and purpose of the Rome Statute, meaning that it should not be read to carve out an exception to Article 27’s clear provisions.

… the reference to state immunity under Article 98 (1) is related to the immunity of a state and its property, not its leaders or officials.

Epstein. 'Nuff said. There’s even a herpesvirus.

And Douglas. This may just be in my life. Nonetheless, it is what it is.

What do rank and file military realize they have to start refusing certain orders?

When do the Americans cut off the supply of certain weapons?

When does the Israeli populace see that a radically new direction is needed to secure peaceful relations “from the river to the sea”?

An indiscriminate attack on an unsuspecting population using planted explosives and does not differentiate between civilians and enemy combatants isn’t a “terrorist attack.”

What is it then? A “police action”? “Self-defense”?

From AP

A booby trap is defined as “any device designed or adapted to kill or injure, and which functions unexpectedly when a person disturbs or approaches an apparently harmless object,” according to Article 7 of a 1996 adaptation of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which Israel has adopted.

The protocol prohibits booby traps “or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects which are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material.”

Now, as far as a legal distinction, the jury is still out. But, morally, this is indefensible to the point of being state-sanctioned terrorism.