Azaghul

1 hour ago, Woot said:

I think it's just one degree higher of punishment than a life sentence and there's plenty of people who have earned it. The only drawback is that there's no takebacks if you find out later they were innocent. But that can be solved by requiring a higher standard of evidence, restricting it to people who were basically caught red handed or confessed, rather than abolishing the death penalty.

Even confessions are notoriously unreliable.

There's been way too many cases of innocent, or questionably guilty people being executed for me to be OK with it.

Can't really blame any one party.  Most of the nations involved were responsible for putting the powder kegs in place and the war wasn't really "about" anything.

4 hours ago, Chief Savage Man said:

only for white people

Would be poetic justice.

12 hours ago, Chief Savage Man said:

manifest destiny was and is a load of horseshit that was invented so that the united states can pretend it is any different than any other imperial colonizing power

 

i mean the cat is out of the bag and has had three hundred million kittens and I'm one of them but no, the colonizer had no right to establish anything beyond trading posts to interact with the native americans. the principle that entire races of people don't deserve sovereignty/self-determination is obviously incorrect, and there's no way to justify it, so really this is a discussion about raw imperialism, and manifest destiny is only a smoke screen that allows the united states to act as though it is somehow the only world power in history that wasn't built through imperialist behavior

This.

Touch choice between Janeway, Sisko, and Picard.

Empire Strikes Back > Return of the Jedi > New Hope > Rogue One > The Force Awakens > Phantom Menace > Revenge of the Sith > Attack of the Clones

Hello

They still have friends.  They'll still jump into wars.  It might give them a political out to avoid a loosing war, but other than that, it's not functionally much different than having treaties.

Vocal

Obama > Clinton >> Johnson >>>> Trump

1 hour ago, Memph said:

There was a point made on other websites that displacement by rising housing prices in gentrifying cities is often less than loss of low income populations due to abandonment in cities experiencing decline.

 

I definitely agree that allowing more new housing to be built can limit displacement caused by rising housing prices in areas experiencing gentrification though. Doesn't mean you should let all of the historic buildings get destroyed but pretty much every city has plenty of buildings that aren't that historic but can't get redeveloped due to NIMBYs.

I live in Austin, Texas which is definitely facing displacement from gentrification and not abandonment.

I agree about historic buildings but it should be limited.  For example in Austin, "historic" buildings only have to be 50 years old and they do things like label a house historic because the current mayor grew up in it.  NIMBY's often abuse it because they just don't want it to change.

122.  Probably didn't help that I was doing it at 2 AM.

Mostly negative, but it's complicated, depending on how you define gentrification.

In many cases it's historically marginalized communities being displaced by rising housing prices.  This is often brought about by NIMBYism when generally wealthier folks fight against density in cities and don't allow supply to meet demand, driving up housing prices and pushing the middle class into formally working class areas.  That's at least what is happening in Austni.

Pro-tip: In city council elections, the candidate most focused on "preserving neighborhoods" is probably a NIMBY and someone you shouldn't vote for.

Hiking.  Voted it under walking.

On 8/7/2016 at 1:08 PM, Milord said:

Well he is a preaty bad liar then , if I was him and wanted to get elected I would lie about Mexican Immigrants and other related questions.All this Scandals are not good for polls

So that's why I don't consider him a politician because he is too blunt.

Hillary is clearly a Phony.

There's a difference being brash and being honest.

He's flip flopped quite a bit on immigration, he's just sticking with the current anti-immigrant shtick because it plays well with a lot of racist/xenophobic white people.

His scandals aren't generally about his "honesty" unless you mean honest in the sense that he doesn't have a politeness / decency filter to contain his ego and pathological need to strike back at anyone that criticizes him.  He's proven time and time again that he's not above flip flopping (he's significantly worse than even Clinton) or spouting complete bullshit.

On 7/10/2016 at 11:48 AM, Rin said:

I have a vacation album full of rocks. If you don't like rocks, there's also a lot of epic rubble:

 

 

 

Context: I was walking down the middle of the tourism hotspot looking for a fast food joint and came across these beautiful rubble heaps. This is literally the most scenic part of town too.

Which country?

I've been on 3 big trips in my life.  France and the UK with my family about 10 years ago.  A 6 week trip by myself from Turkey->Germany with a bunch of places in between last year.  And an 8 week trip to Japan/Taiwan/China/South Korea a few months ago.

They were all really great in their own ways.  There's somewhat more history in Europe which I like.  Asia was more culturally different from the US which I liked.  It's really hard to say which I liked better.

I just want to highly recommend travel to everyone here!  Do it while you're young and can go for several weeks.  It's not cheap but it doesn't have to be super expensive, both trips including airfare cost me about $5000 each and you could probably do cheaper (like not eating out for most meals like I did.)  Stay in hostels, do your research on cheap airfare and internal travel (busses are cheaper than trains), go minimal on tours and just walk around taking it in.

If you have a little extra money, spend it on travelling, not nice cars or nicer housing or other material things.

A week to a few weeks.  Fresh water is the main limiting factor initially but you say that's there.  The body can go at least a week without food.  I don't have any experience hunting or fishing so I'm not sure how that would go.  I have experience camping but not foraging.

I've never made a fire without matches or a lighter, I'd give it 50/50 that I'd be able to figure out another way successfully.

Skyrim is my favorite.

Other: It's not really that simple.

How evil is the worst candidate?  How much better is the "lesser of two evils" candidate?  How much better is the "good third party" candidate than the "lesser of two evils" candidate?

On a 1-10 scale where 10 is good, if the choice is between a 1, a 2, and a non-viable 9, I'll probably vote for the 9.  Same as if the choice is between say a 4 or 5, a 6, and a 9.  But if the choice is between a 1, a 6, and a non-viable 9, I'm voting for the 6.

I'm not a big fan of Hillary's but she's not horrible to me, she's about a 6 out of 10.  If the opponent was some tolerable Republican candidate that I disagreed with ideologically but could otherwise generally respect, like Romney or McCain, a 3 or 4 out of 10, I might consider voting 3rd party if one of them was really good.  But with Trump on the ballot, I'm 100% going to vote for Clinton to stop him.  He's horrible on multiple levels: would have a totally reckless and dangerous foreign policy, actively and deliberately promotes racism and bigotry.  He is totally unqualified, undignified, and not someone I can remotely respect.

This is great.  I also appreciate that Alex/Sheepy took it in good humor.

I love storms and snow on occasion.  Sunny is awesome when it's not too hot out, and what I'd prefer to see the most often.  Unfortunately in Texas, it's often very hot out.

I'm against it because the war system / resource system has major flaws that need addressing, Sheepy has better things to do than waste time on things like this.

Guadalupe Peek, the highest point in Texas, and Wheeler Peek, the highest point in New Mexico.  Both involved about a 3000 foot change in elevation and 8-9 hour hike.  And I hiked down a 4000 foot peek in Austria (took a gondola up.)

Other than that a few smaller mountains/hills here and there.  I really want to hike some more, maybe do some peaks in Colorodo.

I'm probably ideologically closer to Clinton, but I voted for Sanders because he's more honest.

I hope the 3 votes for Trump are ironic.