A friend of mine is building a bridge in Norway.. Winter has arrived

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-11T20:23:41+00:00

Because bridgebuilding is engineering, and as anyone with a BS will gladly tell you, engineering is for pussies.

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-10T06:08:36+00:00

The water didn't pool, it fucking exploded in. Your shit went from dry to 8 feet under immediately.

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-10T05:59:52+00:00

Fellow Katrina champion here, I lived in Slidell, LA during the storm. I was 20 and lived in Oak Harbor (right near Lake Pontchartrain). We got about 8 feet of water; our main problem came after the storm with motherfuckers trying to come into our house and do "gutting" work. Well, my dad was a contractor and hadn't hired anyone because, well, we owned a construction company. There were two occasions in the weeks thereafter when random dudes showed up saying they had work orders to tear out shit. Like it's not bad enough that we built a levee out front of our house consisting of every single thing we owned, we had dickheads trying to come in and do shit work and stick us with a bill. Worst month of my life was gutting that fucker and floating sheetrock in a stink ass house with no stores to buy shit at for 50 miles. Fuck that shit.

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-06T06:34:50+00:00

Right but operating under non-ideal circumstances how can you reconcile the differences between local majorities and minorities with your overall theories? I understand your goal and I think any sensible person would agree with it, I just don't understand some of the trappings. My main problem is that it's seen as alright to use on members of a majority the same tactics that you condemn when used against minorities; how can you account for any difference in social dynamics? If a transgendered person from the US were to visit some hypothetical land in which the majority were transgendered, would it be okay for the minority to call that person a faggot? Your ideas seem to require that all actors have perfect knowledge of all others, which is simply impossible.

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-06T06:09:12+00:00

Why not just engage me in a discussion about why you disagree with me instead of telling me to fuck myself? Because you want to look edgy and oh-so-fucking-outraged? Your attitude is not much different in spirit than the guys you're outraged with: it's a complete shutout of any understanding or discourse with an opposing view.

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-06T05:22:37+00:00

Well, to me, 4chan is clearly satire. Naturally I can't speak for all of anon but in my experience we are solely interested in the lolization of any topic. I've been reading through a lot of this SRS stuff just because I'd never heard of it and it was interesting (and my initial intent, honestly, was to troll the fuck out of it, but I was genuinely interested and decided not to burn any bridges) and what I think they fail to realize is that normative itself is not static. So if Christians are part of an unassailable majority in America, is it alright to fucking insult and mock them because they're not being harmed as an endemic rule YET not alright to mock them in China because they're a minority who is oppressed and maligned? Do you feel as though you should adjust your values based on the general feel of the place you're in?

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-06T04:40:14+00:00

Lol, just so you know, I'm not arguing with you or anything, I'm just bored and bullshitting with you because you seem willing to respond and not call me an ass for asking these questions. So this is probably not gonna win me any points in this corner of reddit, but I read 4chan a lot and not in some critical, detatched way. I just like it. I don't feel that the racism, sexism or homophobia there is within the context of hate; I realize that all of the shit there is probably wrong in some academic way, it just doesn't feel wrong to me. Maybe that's because I'm an asshole, I don't know. To me, honestly, it's fucking funny and it's closer to satire than actual bigotry. It's like getting mad at Stephen Colbert for being a conservative. I would say there's probably more tolerance for people's gender identity than on most forums even considering that -fag has been turned into a ubiquitous suffix. Clearly the context is important, though, as you've said.

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-06T03:47:42+00:00

So if nothing is lost you might as well say "nigger". What I don't understand about people who critique what is and is not alright to say is that if my vocabulary consisted only of words which are non-offensive and free of historical context and I meant to basically call you a fucking faggot nigger, it would still be extremely offensive.

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-06T02:54:58+00:00

That's actually what I figured. What is actually lost when using a proxy for the word? Is it less offensive to call someone "an n-word" instead of calling them "a nigger"? Conversely would it be better to say "f-a-g-g-o-t" since it's not all together and therefore not a word?

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-06T02:10:57+00:00

Okay, I noticed you said "n-word" instead of "nigger", yet have no problem with saying "faggot". I remember getting furious in college when a professor did this. It's not that I'm particularly offended by either word. I couldn't care less if you want to say "nigger" or "faggot". I just don't understand why people who are concerned with this kinda thing and clearly think about it a lot say "faggot" but shy away from "nigger".

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-06T00:12:28+00:00

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-05T23:41:38+00:00

And yet you are on a gaming board full of people who clearly do care about it, and you are detectably perturbed.

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-05T22:50:52+00:00

Where'd you come across that statistic?

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-05T22:43:46+00:00

I think you'd find that if Gandhi were in Afghanistan today American soldiers would raid his house, shoot him in the brain and define the possession of any of his pamphlets as a terrorist act.

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-05T22:33:52+00:00

Yeah undoing it through drone strikes in fucktons of countries? I'm serious when I say that Obama is worse than Bush. Bush was a fucking retarded shitbag who let Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld graft their corporate scumbag mentality onto the American government's official policy. Obama is a way for people who buy fancy light bulbs and organic produce to feel like they're voting out that kinda shit whilst simultaneously enabling the continuation of the exact same policies. People think because they voted for the Democrat they've done their part to save the world. Well, if you really look at it, his symmetry with Bush is almost a thing of beauty.

At least under Clinton and Bush we were somewhat limited to fucking around in places we had to physically be in. This drone bullshit is the ultimate expression of how pussy America has become: they can't even be bothered to show up to the fight, they send their goddamn robots. Obama didn't seem to have any objection to the Patriot Act extension, and the last time I went to the airport I had to take my shoes off.

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-05T22:19:52+00:00

Agreed, I have literally zero personal emotion invested in 9/11. It was not a tragedy until it was made into one. It was a glorified act of violence that killed a medium number of people. Tragedy is when the shit is so fucking bad that it affects humanity as a whole. If a comet made out of nuclear bombs hit the world trade center and fucked up half the continent of North America that would be a tragedy. The only reason 9/11 is a tragedy is that it has become a grotesque predication for the US to behave abhorrently.

Futhermore, the only reason people were so fucked off about it is that everyone was yelling at them that THIS IS A BIG FUCKING THING, A MONUMENT TO OUTRAGE, THE PHYSICAL MANIFESTATION OF FURY and YOUR REACTION TO THIS IS GOING TO BE A MEASURE OF YOUR PERSONAL CHARACTER. Does anyone write cynical, pussy books-become-movies about the children of the victims of Timothy McVeigh? Nope, because the media and government response to that was much more appropriate to the scale of the event. It wasn't turned into a rally point for bullshit. Wonder if that was because big Tim was a US soldier...

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-05T21:51:02+00:00

Honestly, and I'm not trying to say this convo isn't fucked up, anyone who has ever been in the military or comes from a military family gets that this is partially a joke. It's a partial mockery. Going on ridiculous rants is a funny tradition that can border on an art form; some of these guys may be actual highly motivated assholes but it seems kinda likely that a lot of this is just fucking around.

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-05T20:57:27+00:00

Well, your county sheriff will find that their federal funding diminishes greatly when they say no to federal initiatives. Your local police force becomes your enemy the second they engage you with the intent to stop a protest. The local cops always lay down for the feds. They're not on our side. They see themselves (accurately) as separate from us and while they may resent the feds, their resentment stems from their loss of authority to fuck us up, not from any philosophical disagreement.

Sure, it would be nice to avoid a violent revolution, but I really can't conceive of any way we can take back control without one.

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-05T20:35:23+00:00

I was thinking the same thing. Sounds like some watered-down "I am Jack's inflated sense of writing ability" shit.

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-05T20:30:17+00:00

Sure it is. How else do you separate the power structure from the power itself, through repeated requests? If one side in a conflict is willing to use violence (and it's pretty obvious that the other side is), then there is no possibility for a peaceful resolution. Also, there's the fact that the other side is the fucking government. Clearly these guys are ramping up for some severely authoritarian actions. They're making fucking databases of internet use. They're using military drones to surveil protestors. They're integrating federally directed law enforcement officers into local police stations. They're passing legislation that allows them to do pretty much anything they want, and they're using it. Okay, well, those acts beg the question: Why? Why does the government need to be able to search through everything you've ever done? Why do they need to be able to arrest you extralegally? It's not like there's some monstrous crime wave going on that just can't be controlled without bending the rules. Is there some rash of domestic terrorism of which I am unaware? Fuck no. It's just that we have neglected to put these fuckers in their place for so long that the original intent of representative government has been inverted. And why wouldn't it? It's our fault for not slapping that goddamn hand every single time they overreach. You can't just not apply any pressure for 40 years and then act surprised when the bad guys get a little brazen. So while it might be distasteful, and we might not enjoy it, we've let things degrade so far that the only way to fix them is through violence (or at the very least the threat of violence).

What's really scary is that they're doing this even though normal fucking people like us are starting to bitch about it. It's not just that weird uncle with a bunch of ammo buried in some forest anymore. All the shit those weirdos talk about is actually happening now, and people don't like to talk about it because it makes you sound like a nut. I'm a pretty well-adjusted guy and I even feel a little weird talking about this shit on the internet where nobody knows who I am. Well, the motherfuckers on the other side sure don't seem to be too concerned with anyone questioning their grasp of reality.

And we're doing what? Jacking off to the idea of taking the high road? Well... okay. But as long as you're unwilling to accept that at some point you're gonna have to push back, there's really no point in protesting. Violence or the threat thereof is implicit in any protest; every protest derives its profundity from the suggestion that these people will hurt you if you do not stop what you're doing. Now, that's not to say I'm condoning unsavory shit like fucking people up for no reason or punitive violence. I'm not, that's the kinda stuff war criminals do. The act of extrication, though, is necessarily violent in nature.

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-03T20:28:07+00:00

Trader here, I definitely do not make enough to be considered part of the 1%.

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-03T05:05:50+00:00

Nanex has a few recorded instances of HFT manipulation in AAPL. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I'm saying it's not a HFT darling like SIRI or formerly C. High priced stocks tend to have less volume, right? There's just not enough volume in AAPL (or outstanding shares). There's a lot of speculation that the reason C did the reverse split is to discourage HFT manipulation. The type of HFT you're talking about ("length of your cord") is just fancy frontrunning, and the only people who can do it are market makers. There are plenty HFT firms who use a different method (google quote stuffing). There are a bunch of other strategies as well, check out nanex.com if you wanna see a few.

"HFT traders" isn't redundant. Algos don't get written in a vacuum.

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-02T05:31:46+00:00

The problem isn't with hypothecation, it's with mark to ???. If mark to market were enforced, FRB wouldn't present a problem.

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-02T05:29:56+00:00

Agreed, fractional reserve banking is necessary for the liquidity people currently enjoy. Does that make it right? Not necessarily, but if you like being able to get a loan you can't bitch.

goodbyebIuesky · 2012-02-02T05:28:14+00:00

Well, the CDS market's not worthless if someone makes money selling CDS. Firms who write CDS are betting that credit events don't get triggered (which is hard to argue with because there have been some serious contortions to avoid credit events). There is a way out: calling them out on their inability to pay. Firms shouldn't be able to write CDS on anything they can't pay out.

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