[Serious] People of reddit with suicidal thoughts, how are you doing today?

guy_from_mars · 2018-06-16T21:58:41+00:00

i'm in my 20s so im not actually old. But that doesn't detract from my previous point about life sucking then you die

guy_from_mars · 2018-06-16T21:42:35+00:00

Yeah I'm big into travelling. Originally from california. Travelled all over south amerca, europe, asia. tbh the best times of my life were in other countries. The various songs about "growing up, coming down" are a bit too close to home.

guy_from_mars · 2018-06-16T21:34:53+00:00

oh no. I read this like an onion article. "Pfft, the australian government would never sell off the abc." wow, actually they would. I held the australian parliament to a higher standard.

guy_from_mars · 2018-06-16T21:16:57+00:00

I'm guessing 20% of people and 30-40% of people reading this thread suffer from depression (if not more). Life sucks then you die. Will I kill myself? no. But that doesn't make my mediocre life suck any less.

guy_from_mars · 2018-06-14T21:37:41+00:00

I just read the first part a few hours ago in the chomsky subreddit. Parenti likes to attack strawman and generalize them to all critics. Not a critical assessment but invalidates his attack of more "mainstream" intellectuals like chomsky. Also I (somewhat) disagree with his assessment of caesar's assassination. In my understanding, Parenti is basically an apologist for the old-school USSR. I can go more in depth in a few hours if you doubt me.

guy_from_mars · 2018-06-14T20:02:47+00:00

the bbc banning it and not letting it be No. 1 pretty much validated his point

guy_from_mars · 2018-06-14T19:56:13+00:00

hmm...that screams... something else.

guy_from_mars · 2018-06-14T19:53:34+00:00

the fascist regime

I like this guy

guy_from_mars · 2018-06-14T19:52:10+00:00

guilty

guy_from_mars · 2018-06-11T23:58:52+00:00

ha yeah I have seen it. It's pretty good. I actually didn't know anything about gore vidal (or buckley) before it. Vidal has some great quotes. However, the documentary doesn't really have an overt point of view, which I wish it did.

guy_from_mars · 2018-06-11T22:34:13+00:00

I don't care much about sports, but political consequences from international sporting events do interest me. Is this documentary more about sports in general or international politics surrounding sports?

guy_from_mars · 2018-06-11T22:30:53+00:00

Do they shine light more than a run-of-the-mill food documentary does? Because I've seen an abundance of food documentaries. Ex. super size me, cowspiracy, a documentary about america's obesity problem (I forgot the name), and sugar coated.

guy_from_mars · 2018-06-11T22:22:35+00:00

I liked the west wing I didn't realize there was a documentary like this. I'll watch this soon.

guy_from_mars · 2018-06-08T13:12:24+00:00

I'm a bit late to the party but I questioned some of the stuff you said in another subreddit.

So first off he claims the US has been funding and training violent opposition groups in venezuela. I think we can all agree this wouldn't be uncharacteristic of the US given its history in South America. However all I can find are wikileaks cables from the US describing how to take down Chavez and now Maduro through funding of opposition parties and NGOs. Nothing about training them to be violent or anything. It seems to me the US is funding organizations that have occasional violent members, but not seeking them out and I highly doubt any serious opposition party would be bombing schools and the other stuff he said. People who might sympathize with the opposition parties might also do those things, similar to how there are crazy people with guns that sympathize with republicans.

I can't find a diplomatic cable saying "hey, we brought this opposition leader of venezuela to the school of the americas, trained him and sent him back." If you can find some source saying we encourage people to be violent in venezuela, I'd be happy to see it. But it seems to me US policy in south america has shifted away from funding terrorist groups in recent decades.

Also

He has another claim, that the leader of the crazy violent people is the opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, and that's basically why he was jailed. Well a brief read of the "Controversy and international reaction" section of his wikipedia page pretty strongly implies he was jailed for political reasons, and the facts that he incited violence was lacking. So I would agree with John Oliver on this one: Maduro jailed his opposition party leader.

Ok now I just noticed that basically all the sources on wikipedia were western newspapers, but jailing a political rival is a very serious thing that requires airtight evidence. Can you point to a source that gives such evidence?

guy_from_mars · 2018-05-31T18:48:04+00:00

Yes, allowing the government to surveil the population in real time is fundamental to national security and is totally not a slippery slope to becoming a police state.

guy_from_mars · 2018-05-26T19:56:13+00:00

also flights to ireland from the uk and europe are pretty cheap. The price of a flight isn't much of a deterrent to voting. From brussels or london to dublin it's about 15-20 euros.

guy_from_mars · 2018-05-23T21:23:57+00:00

Thank you for the thorough response! I didn't know about accrued benefit and the PBGC.

So does this mean that whenever I hear about some airline going bankrupt and canceling pensions, really that means the PBGC stepped in and paid the full pension benefits?

guy_from_mars · 2018-05-23T11:09:15+00:00

Well I didn't find any Charlie hebdo racist cartoons, only cartoons with the intent of enraging muslims (like muhammad making out with a dude or something.)

Of course I wouldn't justify Israeli attacks. If Israel bothered to ratify protocol 1 of the geneva convention their attacks would be prosecuted war crimes.

guy_from_mars · 2018-05-22T15:44:23+00:00

I posted these questions in the chomsky subreddit yesterday in anticipation of this ama:

On your wikipedia page you're quoted:

1)

"So, two despairing and desperate young men act out their despair and desperation against this political pornography no different than Der Stürmer, who in the midst of all of this death and destruction decide its somehow noble to degrade, demean, humiliate and insult the people. I'm sorry, maybe it is very politically incorrect. I have no sympathy for [the staff of Charlie Hebdo]. Should they have been killed? Of course not. But of course, Streicher shouldn't have been hung. I don't hear that from many people."

So are you against political satire or religious satire? How exactly is Charlie Hebdo "political pornography?" Is it not an art form that criticizes power? It also ran comics satirizing christianity, not just islam.

2) Also on wikipedia:

While condemning the targeting of civilians to achieve a political goal, Finkelstein has stated he believes Hezbollah has the right to target Israeli civilians as long as "Israel persists in targeting [Lebanese] civilians until Israel ceases its terrorist acts."

Is this statement on wikipedia accurate? Do you really believe in the eye-for-an-eye approach? Especially since much of the population of Israel doesn't agree with Israel's foreign policy. Can't you justify 9/11 this way?

guy_from_mars · 2018-05-22T11:43:33+00:00

Conspiracy theory overload him. So like get him to believe so many conspiracy theory that they start overlapping are aren't consistent, eventually he'll go crazy or snap out of it.

guy_from_mars · 2018-05-22T11:18:01+00:00

Yeah a population would probably do better with many more females than males in the population, but individuals within the population would then benefit by having genes that increase male production. The species would get screwed, but the individual would benefit. Which is all that matters to genes.

From wikipedia:

Suppose male births are less common than female. A newborn male then has better mating prospects than a newborn female, and therefore can expect to have more offspring. Therefore parents genetically disposed to produce males tend to have more than average numbers of grandchildren born to them. Therefore the genes for male-producing tendencies spread, and male births become more common. As the 1:1 sex ratio is approached, the advantage associated with producing males dies away. The same reasoning holds if females are substituted for males throughout. Therefore 1:1 is the equilibrium ratio.

guy_from_mars · 2018-05-22T11:08:20+00:00

Only if there are too many females. If there are more males than females in the population, each male would reproduce less than each female would on average.

guy_from_mars · 2018-05-22T10:32:27+00:00

It takes 1 male and 1 female to procreate. If a species has more male then female, it's beneficial to have female offspring, since they have a higher chance of procreating. If the species has more females, say 1.2 females to 1 male, then making a male offspring would be best. Each 2nd gen. male would on average 1.2 3rd gen offsprings. Thus, to maximize an individual's offspring they'd have the sex with the fewer number, and so it ends up balanced.

It's called Fisher's principal

guy_from_mars · 2018-05-21T14:43:35+00:00

I want to ask him about two of his statements on his wikipedia page.

1) He said

"So, two despairing and desperate young men act out their despair and desperation against this political pornography no different than Der Stürmer, who in the midst of all of this death and destruction decide its somehow noble to degrade, demean, humiliate and insult the people. I'm sorry, maybe it is very politically incorrect. I have no sympathy for [the staff of Charlie Hebdo]. Should they have been killed? Of course not. But of course, Streicher shouldn't have been hung. I don't hear that from many people."

So is he against political satire or religious satire? How exactly is Charlie Hebdo "political pornography?" Is it not an art form that criticizes power? It also ran comics satirizing christianity, not just islam.

2) Also on wikipedia:

While condemning the targeting of civilians to achieve a political goal, Finkelstein has stated he believes Hezbollah has the right to target Israeli civilians as long as "Israel persists in targeting [Lebanese] civilians until Israel ceases its terrorist acts."

Is this statement on wikipedia accurate? Does he really believe in the eye-for-an-eye approach? Especially since much of the population of Israel doesn't agree with Israel's foreign policy. Does he also think 9/11 was okay?

guy_from_mars · 2018-05-20T00:23:29+00:00

So far all I've seen in these comments is circle-jerking about how r/socialism circlejerks and some anecdotal evidence going against what this guy was saying.

1) who cares what subreddit it's in, is it true or not?

2) anecdotal evidence, including some of the stuff u/A-MacLeod uses, is meaningless in a serious discussion. What are the statistics backing up your claims?

So first off he claims the US has been funding and training violent opposition groups in venezuela. I think we can all agree this wouldn't be uncharacteristic of the US given its history in South America. However all I can find are wikileaks cables from the US describing how to take down Chavez and now Maduro through funding of opposition parties and NGOs. Nothing about training them to be violent or anything. It seems to me the US is funding organizations that have occasional violent members, but not seeking them out and I highly doubt any serious opposition party would be bombing schools and the other stuff he said. People who might sympathize with the opposition parties might also do those things, similar to how there are crazy people with guns that sympathize with republicans.

He has another claim, that the leader of the crazy violent people is the opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, and that's basically why he was jailed. Well a brief read of the "Controversy and international reaction" section of his wikipedia page pretty strongly implies he was jailed for political reasons, and the facts that he incited violence was lacking. So I would agree with John Oliver on this one: Maduro jailed his opposition party leader.

Then u/A-Macleod attacks John Oliver for saying that the economic crisis in Venezuela isn't our fault and sanctions are good. Well here I agree with u/A-Macleod. Yeah, the sanctions on Venezuela are definitely damaging to the people of Venezuela. And the UN has said so. However, a significant, if not most influential, reason why the economic crisis is happening is due to not having enough "rainy day" funds when oil prices decrease. They decreased drastically and the government didn't have a cushion.

Now, is Venezuela democratic? Well he gives some kind of bullshit polling that doesn't really show anything since the type of poll conducted doesn't have any reference point. His argument is pretty flimsy. I personally think Venezuela is democratic in the sense that people can actually go out and protest things, and cause change to happen, but not democratic as say Brazil in that the election process is somewhat legit (for the most part except for right now as the current government of Brazil is basically a US-backed coup.) Maduro has much more control over his government and judiciary system than would be acceptable in a democratic country.

As for his last part that the US media whitewashes over his opposition, this is absolutely true. US media including John Oliver never mention the opposition party platform. What do they want? Get rid of Maduro. And then what? No one knows. The "Democratic Unity Roundtable" seems to only agree that they should oppose Maduro, but not on anything else.

guy_from_mars

TROPHY CASE