TSRF wrote:

The thing inherently better about base 10 is most of us have 10 fingers.

Plus, money is base 10.

I’ve been through this before, the subtle relentless subterfuge to foist the metric system upon this soon to be great again nation!

Billy_T wrote:

bnw wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

Again, bnw, no safe space is needed for anything I’ve said. And I’ve never needed it to make my case or debate things here or in the real world.

Au contraire.

Then state your case and let’s see. One-liners don’t count as debate. Can’t make a decent argument or back it up that way.

Go for it.

Safe space. Run with it. By design I have no such luxury.

Safe space.

Billy_T wrote:

bnw wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

bnw wrote:

I would respond and in the same vernacular but again I would be accused of name-calling. Enjoy the safe space.

Unless I misunderstand the board rules, it’s not out of bounds to criticize public figures here. That’s what I did. And I speak the truth about them.

It is, however, out of bounds to engage in “name-calling” with fellow posters. Again, if I understand the board rules. And I didn’t do that.

No “safe space” needed for what I wrote.

BS. Just keep believing that.

I post facts, not BS. And facts about right-wing BS. The right floods us and overwhelms us with so much BS, day after day after day, it becomes nearly impossible to keep up with. Which is the point. And it’s making the country crazy. Which is also the point.

Oh, like the one about Podesta being a satanist, or that the leaked emails prove Clinton and company were running a child sex-trade operation out of that little pizza shop, or that Podesta used “password” as his email password. All of that has been thoroughly debunked. It’s all bullshit, lies and more bullshit.

And the really sad thing? The tragic thing for America? There is plenty of real stuff to expose about the Dems — and the GOP. There’s absolutely no need to invent shit about them in order to achieve the “public good.” We have more than enough very real horrors to deal with, like war, the surveillance state, capitalism, environmental destruction, mass inequality, etc. etc.

It hurts all of us when the right produces mass quantities of bullshit and people buy it.

And it needs to stop.

Safe space.

zn wrote:

Algebra and Trigometry and Calculus

Oh my

Don’t forget geometry!

Billy_T wrote:

bnw wrote:

I would respond and in the same vernacular but again I would be accused of name-calling. Enjoy the safe space.

Unless I misunderstand the board rules, it’s not out of bounds to criticize public figures here. That’s what I did. And I speak the truth about them.

It is, however, out of bounds to engage in “name-calling” with fellow posters. Again, if I understand the board rules. And I didn’t do that.

No “safe space” needed for what I wrote.

BS. Just keep believing that.

Billy_T wrote:

Also, about that praise of Wikileaks in Wikipedia. Don’t stop there. Wikipedia also says:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks

Inadequate curation and violations of personal privacy

Wikileaks has drawn criticism for violating the personal privacy of a multitude of individuals and inadequately curating its content. These critics include transparency advocates, such as Edward Snowden, the Sunlight Foundation and the Federation of American Scientists.[341]

Wikileaks has published individuals’ Social Security numbers, medical information, and credit card numbers.[342] An analysis by the Associated Press found that Wikileaks had in one of its mass-disclosures published “the personal information of hundreds of people — including sick children, rape victims and mental health patients”.[342] Wikileaks has named teenage rape victims, and outed an individual arrested for homosexuality in Saudi Arabia.[342] Some of Wikileaks’ cables “described patients with psychiatric conditions, seriously ill children or refugees”.[342] An analysis of Wikileaks’ Saudi cables “turned up more than 500 passport, identity, academic or employment files… three dozen records pertaining to family issues in the cables — including messages about marriages, divorces, missing children, elopements and custody battles. Many are very personal, like the marital certificates that reveal whether the bride was a virgin. Others deal with Saudis who are deeply in debt, including one man who says his wife stole his money. One divorce document details a male partner’s infertility. Others identify the partners of women suffering from sexually transmitted diseases including HIV and Hepatitis C.”[342] Two individuals named in the DNC leaks were targeted by identity thieves following Wikileaks’ reveal of their Social Security and credit card information.[342]

Wikileaks’ publishing of Sony’s hacked e-mails drew criticism for violating the privacy of Sony’s employees and for failing to be in the public interest.[343][344] Michael A. Cohen, a fellow at the Century Foundation, argues that “data dumps like these represent a threat to our already shrinking zone of privacy.”[343] He noted that the willingness of Wikileaks to publish information of this type encourages hacking and cybertheft: “With ready and willing amplifiers, what’s to deter the next cyberthief from stealing a company’s database of information and threatening to send it to Wikileaks if a list of demands aren’t met?”[343]

The Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for open government, has criticized Wikileaks for inadequate curation of its content. With the DNC leaks, “Wikileaks again failed the due diligence review we expect of putatively journalistic entities when it published the personal information of ordinary citizens, including passport and Social Security numbers contained in the hacked emails of Democratic National Committee staff. We are not alone in raising ethical questions about Wikileaks’ shift from whistleblower to platform for weaponized transparency. Any organization that “doxxes” a public is harming privacy.”[345] The manner in which Wikileaks publishes content can have the effect of censoring political enemies: “Wikileaks’ indiscriminate disclosure in this case is perhaps the closest we’ve seen in reality to the bogeyman projected by enemies to reform — that transparency is just a Trojan Horse for chilling speech and silencing political enemies.”[345]

In July 2016, Edward Snowden criticized Wikileaks for insufficiently curating its content.[346] When Snowden made data public, he did so by working with the Washington Post, the Guardian and other news organizations, chosing only to make documents public which exposed National Security Agency surveillance programs.[346] Content that compromised national security or exposed sensitive personal information was withheld.[346] Wikileaks, on the other hand, makes little effort to remove sensitive personal information or withhold content with adverse national security implications. Wikileaks responded by accusing Snowden of pandering to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.[346]

University of North Carolina Professor Zeynep Tufekci has criticized Wikileaks for exposing sensitive personal information: “WikiLeaks, for example, gleefully tweeted to its millions of followers that a Clinton Foundation employee had attempted suicide… Data dumps by WikiLeaks have outed rape victims and gay people in Saudi Arabia, private citizens’ emails and personal information in Turkey, and the voice mail messages of Democratic National Committee staff members.”[347] She argues these data dumps which violate personal privacy without being in the public interest “threaten our ability to dissent by destroying privacy and unleashing a glut of questionable information that functions, somewhat unexpectedly, as its own form of censorship, rather than as a way to illuminate the maneuverings of the powerful.”[347]

In January 2017, Wikileaks proposed to create a database tracking verified Twitter users which would include sensitive personal information homes, families and finances.[348][349][350] According to the Chicago Tribune, “the proposal faced a sharp and swift backlash as technologists, journalists and security researchers slammed the idea as a “sinister” and dangerous abuse of power and privacy.”[348] Twitter furthermore bans the use of Twitter data for “surveillance purposes,” stating “Posting another person’s private and confidential information is a violation of the Twitter rules.”[349]

There’s always detractors. However the worldwide winning of journalistic awards remains the issue. wikileaks is legit.

Billy_T wrote:

TSRF wrote:

I learned a new term today, reading this very board: Crybully.

If there was a dictionary that had pictures of people next to terms, whose picture do you think would be next to “crybully”?

It’s similar to the hysteria against “political correctness.” In reality, PC is just the call for decency, civil dialogue, courtesy and good manners. Are there abuses? Yeah. But they’re incredibly rare. The thing the right does so well, and so effectively, is to take a tiny, tiny part for the whole, and blow that up into the Apocalypse. Its followers lap that stuff up like kids and koolaid, repeating it endlessly, across social media, until they’ve turned it into a supposed national crisis.

It’s like if the Rams had this wide receiver, who was really excellent, caught everything thrown his way, until one day . . . . he drops one. And the media picks up on that one drop, blows it up into an end of the world story, fans go crazy, spread it through social media, and they get so whipped up into a frenzy, they burn the guy’s house down and he flees for his life.

That’s what the right does. That’s how they work. From Alex Jones to Trump, they lie, lie, lie or, at best, on their best days, exaggerate things beyond all bounds, sending their fans into paroxysms of hate. So a completely innocent comment about “cheese pizza” becomes “code” for child sex-trafficking, and every mass shooting becomes a government-led “false flag” operation.

These people, before social media and the Internet, were basically harmless, isolated and alone. But in the Internet age, they’ve managed to find each other and become dangerous. Right-wing, paranoid, fringe lunatics have found one another and together they’ve mainstreamed their crazy.

This is NOT going to be a safe and happy four years.

I would respond and in the same vernacular but again I would be accused of name-calling. Enjoy the safe space.

Billy_T wrote:

Yes, this would involve a hack and theft. They couldn’t develop that database of “family/job/financial/housing relationships” without hacking and theft. When people sign up for a Twitter account, they assume this information is private,

You assume it involves a hack and theft. You do not know that. Besides why would Twitter even want that information? wikileaks is proposing to verify the so called Twitter “verified” designation. Governments use social media to gain information on people all the time. Governments use social media to manufacture a history on people too in order to set the narrative in the MSM. I suspect a recent example is the Ft. Lauderdale shooter who supposedly took out a social media account only a week before but never added anything to it.

Imagine Twitter having an account for a Donald Trump claiming to be the president of the USA but really isn’t. You seem to trust Twitter? Why? wikileaks has a proven journalistic history-

“The organisation has won a number of awards, including The Economist’s New Media Award in 2008 at the Index on Censorship Awards[1] and Amnesty International’s UK Media Award in 2009.[2][3] In 2010, the New York Daily News listed WikiLeaks first among websites “that could totally change the news”,[4] and Julian Assange received the Sam Adams Award[5] and was named the Readers’ Choice for TIME’s Person of the Year in 2010.[6] The UK Information Commissioner has stated that “WikiLeaks is part of the phenomenon of the online, empowered citizen”.[7] In its first days, an Internet petition calling for the cessation of extrajudicial intimidation of WikiLeaks attracted over six hundred thousand signatures.[8] Supporters of WikiLeaks in the media and academia have commended it for exposing state and corporate secrets, increasing transparency, supporting freedom of the press, and enhancing democratic discourse while challenging powerful institutions.[9][10][11][12][13][14][15]”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reception_of_WikiLeaks

Wikileaks considers itself an independent media organization funded entirely by its readers, book and film sales.

@McFaul WikiLeaks is an award winning independent media organization, funded entirely by its readers, book and film sales.

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 24, 2016

You then ask will wikileaks develop the same data on itself. I don’t know though I would doubt it.

Billy_T wrote:

bnw wrote:

We’ll have to wait and find out. I know my being clued in to this election (in reality I paid attention to what was happening in the real world) would give you the impression that I am in the loop, but I am not.

I’m not asking you because I think you were in the loop. I’m asking you because you use the phrase a lot and then tell us we shouldn’t “fear it.” We should “embrace it.”

So what is “it,” exactly? One would think you wouldn’t bother repeating a phrase if you didn’t know what it meant. And one would also think you know the plan to implement this and make it happen, or you wouldn’t say we should embrace it, etc.

This is pretty basic stuff. Just askin’.

We’ll see. Why fear the prospect of Making America Great Again?

zn wrote:

I am originally from Manitoba and coastal New England weather is not as bad as there, by a longshot.

Heck Chicago was worse than here when I lived there. Also by a longshot.

I like coastal NE. I like winter. I am never bothered by snow.

When I lived in good ole “72 degrees every day” San Diego, got so I was sick of it. I need seasons.

I’m with T.

.

Not here. I’ve had enough of winter. I’d love to garden and fish all year long.

Billy_T wrote:

bnw wrote:

Time to Make America Great Again! Don’t fear it. Embrace it!

I asked this of you before, and unless I missed it, you never responded. Could you please define what “Make America Great Again!” actually means?

Please be specific, and then tell us how Trump plans to make that happen, exactly. Cuz he never did. And it’s just empty rhetoric without an actual plan. It’s just a bumper sticker without an iota of actual substance.

Trump never told anyone what it (MAGA) actually means, nor did he describe his plans to make that bumper sticker slogan happen. But that empty rhetoric sure did resonant with neo-Nazis in particular, and white supremacists in general. It sure did make them cheer and say heil Trump with the salute to boot.

So, again, what does it really mean, bnw?

We’ll have to wait and find out. I know my being clued in to this election (in reality I paid attention to what was happening in the real world) would give you the impression that I am in the loop, but I am not.

Billy_T wrote:

bnw wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

This isn’t about the pledge of allegiance or the Lord’s Prayer (although I’m opposed to students being asked to recite either in a public school…).

This is what it’s about…

Ms. DeVos is a chip off the old block. At a 2001 gathering of conservative Christian philanthropists, she singled out education reform as a way to “advance God’s kingdom.”

She wants to use education to forward the religious right’s agenda.

That is HER opinion. You vote for YOUR school board accordingly.

She’ll be setting federal policy, bnw. So that makes it a national problem on a huge scale.

Trump has brought in a host of swamp creatures, including the most billionaires, CEOs and Wall Street big wigs in our history. And most of the people he’s tasked with running this or that agency have a long record of battling them in order to increase their own wealth, undermining them, suing them to increase their own wealth, or seeking their destruction. Devos is easily one of the worst possible choices for the job she’s going to hold. She wants to do away with public education itself, and privatize it to make way for a theocracy instead.

That’s like the Rams hiring a football coach who hates the NFL, hates LA, hates football in general, and hates team sports.

She hasn’t testified to anything yet and the crybabies are already wetting themselves. Can’t do any worse than what we have now.

nittany ram wrote:

This isn’t about the pledge of allegiance or the Lord’s Prayer (although I’m opposed to students being asked to recite either in a public school…).

This is what it’s about…

Ms. DeVos is a chip off the old block. At a 2001 gathering of conservative Christian philanthropists, she singled out education reform as a way to “advance God’s kingdom.”

She wants to use education to forward the religious right’s agenda.

That is HER opinion. You vote for YOUR school board accordingly.

nittany ram wrote:

bnw wrote:

Shove down their throat? Like the 10 commandments? Or a Christmas Party? Oh the horror!

No. Like teaching creationism in science class.

I’m sure that if your kid’s school was teaching that Christianity was wrong and was immersing them in Islam, you’d be fine with it.

Yeah, this is what I want my kid to learn…

Way to leap to the absurd. I remember when in public school we recited the pledge of allegiance and the Lord’s Prayer (protestant version) every day at the start of the day. No one was forced to participate. No creationism was taught. No “immersing” involved.

TSRF wrote:

Where does the idea that HRC wanted to start a war with Russia come from?

Doesn’t everyone remember MAD? It still holds water.

Any “war” between us is going to be of the cold variety, and is still, and always has been ongoing.

My fear is Trump is going to work with Russia where his economic interests and theirs align. I feel for our allies…

The economic sanctions against Russia have been a hardship on Germany in particular. Hildabeast views war as a money making opportunity.