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smltwnrckr

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Everything posted by smltwnrckr

  1. Someone on the news just said 40% of the population of Gaza is under 15. Is this true?
  2. The entire notion of justified unrestrained bloodlust is central to the problem here. Justified and unrestrained bloodlust is the only thing that drives a person to do such a thing in the first place.
  3. Right. All these arguments that this is just some timeless fight that has always been and always will be are just not true. What's going on in Gaza is all pretty recent.
  4. Right. But I'm more into the why than how. Why did those two crazy kids find a way to work it out and these ones just can't?
  5. I'm less generous. I think it is closer to... they talk and look like us, so they're good. But I've never lost money betting against the goodness of humanity. Do I'm not going to be the most optimistic.voice.
  6. I dunno. I think it has little to nothing to do with evolution that the prevailing sentimwnt in America is that Israel is good and Palestinians don't know how to play nice and never will. (And, in turn, the counterprevailing sentiment is Palestinians are always righteous victims). I think there are other reasons why that is the case.
  7. Any Irish history experts here? How come that more or less ended? *crossing fingers the definitive book on the conflict doesn't end with, "and they all learned to tolerate each other because they were white."*
  8. Yea. The retarded as shit position seems to me is to start this conversation by picking the good guy.
  9. Trump supposedly won because some otherwise comfortable working class white people had heroin problems, some other working class white people weree rumpy about being told they're racist, a few coal.miners wanted to still coal.mine and a bunch of middle class white people didn't like Hilary. Seemingly crazy electoral decisions can be based on circumstance.
  10. As is what @youngredbullfan is arguing. And yet, they are in opposition. So let's not pretend the lines arent clearly drawn here.
  11. I'm glad I dint have to say this as a stand alone abstract point in a complex conversation. But it needed to be stated, out loud and clear. Better to be stated in context.
  12. They're too busy being bad moms and not reforming their own government. Don't you remember?
  13. I successfully defended my PhD dissertation yesterday. No revisions necessary before I file it next month. That means you have to call me Doctor, now. It's, like, the law. It's been a wild run to being over educated and under employed. And a wild year at that.
  14. Yea, and that was after they put heavy equipment on their levees to keep people off and to prevent cuts that would have potentially limited flooding in other towns. And then stopped answering their phones. A lot of people are so used to just getting their way that they assume they're entitled to certain things. That's why it's obnoxious when we see California ag talking about being the victims of big, bad environmentalists in water issues. Operations like those run by the Boswells and other major families and companies have always dominated water priorities and expect to continue to do so forever. Heck, the signature case that still defines how our water rights structures was a conflict between the two biggest farmers in the world not far from Tulare - Lux v. Hagin. There are still families in Planada who are having a hard time getting resources for the floods here in January that destroyed the neighborhoods where they live (mostly as low-income renters). But I bet you if and when the Boswells DO have to flood fields and lose some crops, there won't be any question about whether they should or will be compensated handsomely by the taxpayers for planting pistachios and tomatoes at the bottom of a lake.
  15. I mean chaos theory really is about complexity of systems and how they fail due to unpredictability. So... Once, I watched the movie The Witch with my wife's whole family and at the beginning I said the movie is about trees. I had them completely convinced by the end of the conversation. Seriously, though. The Tulare thing is a great example of how our water woes go well beyond the whole environmentalists vs development narrative people like to say it's all about. When the flooding started a few weeks back, there were armed guards walking levees to prevent sabotage, and farmers were cutting banks in the middle of the night to drown towns so that they could save their crops. It's not fish vs farms... its farms vs other farms, towns vs towns, farms vs towns, etc. and it goes back a long way.
  16. Tulare Lake. Google News it, everyone. Welcome to how water really works in the west.
  17. This entire argument is silly, BTW. Homogeneity and Heterogeneity are largely relative to the categories you use to organize space, people and knowledge. Idaho is both homogenous and heterogeneous.
  18. Western NY isn't even a single state in that three states in a state model. Buffalo and rural areas in the southern tier are light years apart in many ways. Yet, as an outsider, I could tell the differences when I'd get into New England or into rural Pennsylvania and could tell I wasn't in NY anymore. There are things that hold the state together, culturally and historically.
  19. I think they make those now. Like, you put some ceramic rocks in the freezer, and then pour your drink over them, and you get it cold without the water melting. I personally like the water evening it out a bit.
  20. I once ordered a bourbon over ice at a bar in Sonora, and the bartender slowly turned to look at the bottles, looked back at me, looked at the bottles, and said ummmmmm... and I eventually just had to point to the Jim Beam. Homegirl didn't know what bourbon was. She looked good while annoying me, though. I wonder if that had anything to do with why she was a bartender.
  21. It's almost like the most qualified people to make that decision are the woman and her doctor. Or, as some would call it, the whore and the murderer?
  22. Officer Big has his own arc in season two that is really weird but funny. He and Kenny Boy have an... adventure.
  23. I love it because it's just straight up funny, and super smart. But also some of the most touching and emotionally intense stuff I've seen on TV. The way they are able to move from one to the other and have it all make sense and fit is what is so unique about it, IMO. In season two (and I think in the end of season 1) there's a rival between the Wes Studi and Gary Farmer characters over who has better medicine or whatever, basically two of the most famous native American actors trying on screen to absurdly out-Indian each other in a show about modern indigenous teenagers. Pretty smart stuff, and hilarious.
  24. S2 is quite good and really gets into more of the individual characters and the back story of some of the adults. Also, the girl who plays Willie Jack (the tom boy of the group) Paulina Alexis is lights out. Shockingly good. Crazy that most of the kids had never been on TV before. Kind of annihilates any arguments against pushing for more and better representation on TV, IMO.
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