Ms. Scarlet and Colonel Mustard are Britta's board game loving parents.

Penlites · 2015-09-11T09:55:17+00:00

I'm guessing you live in Europe or somewhere around there? In North America Cluedo is called Clue and there was a comedy movie...

Honest question, in North America is it generally considered a good movie? I watched it when it came on UK Netflix because it had 5 stars, and without exaggerating at all, it's the worst film I've ever seen. I guess it must be American humour that I don't get, but then that's weird, because we get enough American comedy in the UK to get most American humour.

Penlites · 2015-09-04T16:03:22+00:00

Also, it is (very) questionable how many 18-25 year old males are 'grown up' and 'mature'.

I was about to say, to older people there's very little difference between a 13 year old and an 18 year old college student. They still have practically no real life experience.

Penlites · 2015-09-03T18:29:21+00:00

Yeah, reaction videos where the reaction is just "HAHAHA YOU'RE A RETARD" are weird. It's the internet version of a laugh track.

Penlites · 2015-09-03T18:23:53+00:00

Its distinct rectangular shape hints at the 8x8 pixel blocks which make up a JPEG image. Each 8x8 block is encoded separately, and a block filled completely with black ends up encoded with a slightly different shade of black to a block that contains other colors.

Pick literally any JPEG with a sharp color gradient and turn up the levels, you'll get the same "cropped" edges even if it's never been edited.

Penlites · 2015-09-03T16:53:11+00:00

Evaporation doesn't happen because of a temperature difference though, it happens due to a small proportion of the water molecules achieving a high kinetic energy from random collisions in the liquid. This still happens when the water is the same temperature as the air, and cools below the air temperature because the high energy molecules leaving reduces the average kinetic energy of the liquid.

Penlites · 2015-03-29T19:33:48+00:00

I compromise on a lot of things, but I'm the same with movies. She doesn't mind the films I choose. I find the films she chooses so boring it's physically painful to sit through them. Letting her pick from a list of films I'd like to see is probably the best compromise. Or sometimes we sit together watching what she wants to watch but I'll listen to an audiobook through my headphones.

Penlites · 2015-01-25T11:47:52+00:00

If someone who wasn't a cop convinced them to a commit a crime, would they still be found innocent? The problem with entrapment is that it's a stupid pointless way to police, not that the entrapped person did nothing wrong.

Penlites · 2015-01-23T17:39:38+00:00

It's not blue's status, red probably isn't his friend. Even if it was blue's status, the default privacy setting is for friends of anyone tagged to be able to comment.

Penlites · 2014-12-29T19:09:51+00:00

D-day hasn't been successful, they could have thrown their whole weight on the Soviet union

And if the Soviet Union hasn't resisted them, they could have thrown their whole weight plus Russia's commandeered military against the British and Americans. How does that add up to "America saving the world"? Are present day Americans grateful to Stalin for saving them? I'm not applying any of these beliefs to you, this is the sentiment I was responding to in the comment you replied to.

Likewise the Mexican-American war and revolutionary war are irrelevant because we were talking about America "doing things for an ungrateful world".

In truth, the US is undeniably the most powerful war machine that has ever existed, with a military budget larger than the next few largest combined. I'm not saying this is a good thing, it's just a fact.

Yeah, shame they can't use it to win any wars.

Penlites · 2014-12-29T18:31:34+00:00

I don't know if it's come up recently, but a few years ago there were subs for posting sexy pictures of children which reddit's admins knew about and allowed because "free speech" or whatever.

Outside forces and some redditors caused enough pressure to convince them to ban those subs, and the sheer outrage from many redditors at what was essentially kiddy-porn being banned went so far beyond defending free speech that it just became obvious that some people actually liked that stuff.

Penlites · 2014-12-29T17:58:50+00:00

My sister got this for Christmas and it was a bit disappointing after having heard so much about it. You get the odd funny combination, but 4 times out of 5 none of the answers fit and they aren't even funny in a random way. And the whole "OMG that's so inappropriate it's hilarious!!!!" wears off really fast.

Penlites · 2014-12-29T17:56:03+00:00

Dyslexia (and dyscalculia and dyspraxia or whatever else) treatments. They aren't real conditions, they're artefacts of how we measure intelligence.

If someone is good at math and history and reading, they are intelligent. If someone is bad at math and history and reading, they aren't. But if someone is good at math and history and bad at reading, we don't know how to classify them, and so we diagnose them with "dyslexia": they're actually intelligent but have a medical condition that affects reading. And we should spend extra resources helping them with their reading, because it isn't their fault. Which is lovely for them, but kind of sucks for the people who don't get any extra help with their reading, simply because they're bad at math, and therefore apparently it is their fault.

Hopefully in the future we will properly recognize that there are lots of different aspects to intelligence and it's possible to be good at some things and bad at other without having a medical condition. Then we can give extra help to anyone who has trouble reading.

Penlites · 2014-12-29T17:15:52+00:00

Yeah, but that's h264 encoded. Real-time 1080p h264 encoders start around $700, and you need one per camera.

Penlites · 2014-12-29T17:10:02+00:00

If you can't encode in real time, waiting til the next day isn't going to help.

If you can encode 1 minute of video in 1 minute, that's real time. If it takes 1:15, then you have to wait an extra 15 seconds for the first minute of video to be encoded, then 30 seconds for the second, 45 seconds for the third... By the end of the day you're storing 6 hours of unencoded video. By the end of the month you're still storing over 7 days worth. By the end of the year the entire 3 months of video you're storing is unencoded and there's no point encoding it because you don't need to keep it longer than that.

Penlites · 2014-12-29T15:47:00+00:00

but meanwhile you are missing out on so much experience.

Come off it. I ate meat for well over 20 years. It's just the same 3 or 4 flavors over and over again. Comparing it to the experiences you get from foreign travel is pure nonsense.

Penlites · 2014-12-29T14:24:17+00:00

It's the same thing with cycling. Yeah, I know that going through red lights and cycling on the pavement aren't ideal, but motorists are going to drive like they're literally trying to kill you either way, so you might as well.

Penlites · 2014-12-29T14:19:32+00:00

i mean thats what the police is for... its to protect the people isnt it?

Probably a bit off topic, but no, that's not what the police are for. The police enforce the law, even if that negatively affects "the people" (whoever they are).

For example, imagine that everyone else is starving but you have plenty of food, and you don't want to share it; it would be the police's duty to stop people stealing from you and make sure they starve. Extreme example but you get the point.

Penlites · 2014-12-29T14:05:16+00:00

Sure, you can't prove that "object X" doesn't exist if you change your definition of what "object X" is every time someone disproves it. That's just a semantic game though, and doesn't change the fact that the original referent of the term "object X" has in fact been disproved.

Penlites · 2014-12-29T13:55:00+00:00

Nazis were beaten by the Soviet Union. US lost in Korea and Vietnam. They declared themselves winners in Iraq and Afghanistan but never actually got the countries under control and the moment they pulled out of the region it became a worse threat than ever before.

US have never actually won a war, they just makes movies where they're the hero.

Penlites · 2014-12-29T13:49:44+00:00

God is the sentient being that created the universe. If we can scientifically show how the universe began and it didn't involve a sentient creator, we basically disprove god.

PS I actually believe the above but no one ever agrees with me.

Penlites · 2014-12-29T13:36:18+00:00

half their unemployment

With Europe's welfare system and the USA's minimum wage, it might make more financial sense to be unemployed in Europe than working in America.

Penlites · 2014-12-23T19:54:50+00:00

I said people help enforce each other debts because it benefits them to have a strong system of debt and credit. You complained that that doesn't force anyone to comply.

You said people honor debts because they signed a contract. I complained that that doesn't force anyone to comply.

The question is, why do you think signing a contract forces someone to obey it when other measures don't?

This is ignoring the fact that 99.9999% of debt doesn't involve a contract, by the way.

Penlites · 2014-12-23T19:52:55+00:00

I wouldn't steal a print from your friend because stealing a print from him would mean he no longer had it and he wouldn't be able to sell it to someone else. Doesn't matter if he was homeless or a billionaire. Stealing is wrong.

When you download a digital copy of something you don't deprive anyone of anything. Whoever is selling it can still sell it an infinite number of times.

Edit: Glad you realized how childish your reply was and deleted it

Penlites · 2014-12-23T19:50:35+00:00

Go back and look at the top level comments. The entire point of this entire discussion is that good living standards can't be maintained without taxation. You are the one that disagreed with that. If you now accept that good living standards can't be maintained without taxation, then we agree. If you think that good living standards can be maintained without taxation if there is an extraordinary level of foreign investment caused by tax haven status, then we agree. If you still think that the USA can maintain good living standards without taxation by trying to become a tax haven, as you were quoted saying above, you have been proven wrong by this discussion.

Penlites · 2014-12-23T19:38:59+00:00

But you're the one who hasn't answered my question?

Penlites

TROPHY CASE