_qik1's comments

Not the sharpest comparison since the LGBT community at large has never called for any ethnic cleansings as far as I'm aware

First you need to stop seeing it as a binary (being gay isn't a bit that gets 'flipped,' it's more of a range that you are predisposed to fall somewhere within) and then this will start making more compatible sense. If you're willing to accept that, here's a really good interview on the subject: http://www.salon.com/2012/01/22/the_invention_of_the_heteros...

I remember reading online that to bait the valve half life 2 leaker/hacker to come to the US for authorities to capture, valve sent the hacker a phoney job offer. At the end of the day, all these smart tech workers want is to get paid for their skills.

https://www.wired.com/2008/11/valve-tricked-h/

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/06/what-drove-one-half-l... (better story)

Venezuela had a command economy that bet everything on an unstable natural resource. Terrible move, not related to socializing health care or helping the poor.

Cuba was economically starved by the US and its allies and unable to interact with the global economy. This paired with its early history of horrific human rights abuses led to a rough state that continues to this day. But, and this does not excuse how violent the state was in its early days, Cuba does have no unemployment or homelessness which is something remarkable.

Those are edge cases though. Look at the northern european countries, canada, or germany

Thank goodness someone is as brave as you are to defend neo-nazis and their rights. Do you also debate firefighters because, well, they're just as bad as the fires?

You see, white nationalists/facists/neo-nazis/alt-righters/whathaveyou have an ideology of genocide and oppression. Enacting violence against them can be seen as a form of self defense. Engaging them in debate only validates their ideology. Arguable, the best plan of action is to ignore them entirely and starve them of airtime, but the media clearly didn't get that memo.

Now, when you have somebody like Milo Y coming to campus with plans to publicly name undocumented foreign students (like he publicly named a transgender student at his last talk, forcing her to leave the school after harassment from his followers) in an attempt to incite violence against them or deportation, knocking over a few lights and breaking some windows to keep him at bay is pretty reasonable for defense.

BLM is a peaceful organization. There are rogue actors, but that is a result of its poor central planning and lack of clear agenda. Please do not discredit the entire movement of people fighting to stop systemic racism because a few of them torch some trash cans and break a few windows.

What is really interesting to see is political cartoons from the days of the MLK led Civil Rights protests. The arguments against the civil rights movement are exactly the same as the ones against BLM now. People thought the protesters were "too violent" and were a bunch of thugs destroying their own neighborhoods and holding back the more respectable black people and their agenda. The same arguments are used today to discredit the work of Black Lives Matter.

After all, didn't MLK say that a riot is the language of the unheard?

Fellow commentors, please be aware that "virtue signalling" is a buzzword used by the alt-right to discredit activists or socially progressive people. This tactic is meant to dissuade the socially progressive from actively taking a role in enacting change.

This is a really cool demonstration, love the code breakdowns. For a less technical, but broader scale description of ray tracing, Disney made an excellent video describing their use of ray tracing in movies. Check it out here:

https://youtu.be/frLwRLS_ZR0

Stop fearmongering and implying immigrants are naturally criminals.

Criminality us a result of being marginalized from society and not being able to work "honest" livings. You are forced to rely on your own group, pushed to the edges and fighting for its own.

Considering your views towards Muslims and willingness to ignore vast amounts of domestic terrorism, it seems like the goals of the 9/11 hijackers has been acheived.

9/11 is a valid date to start from because a large part of its shock value is that for the most part of post WW2 America, there weren't any foreign attacks on American soil. 9/11 was the anomaly, meant to provoke US outrage and further our violence against the middle East, convincing more young people that the US was an agressor and that they were the righteous. Clearly, these people are not righteous, but neither were we.

Fun fact: the vast majority of North American terrorism is committed by white men. No other group since 9/11 has contributed more to terror than disgruntled white dudes in North America. Refugees are trying to escspe the same horrors you are describing. The situation is similar to the US turning away Jews under the banner of "America First" during WW2 because they feared Nazis sneaking in with the Jews. The "safe" countries you describe haven't been rocked by war, their national identities not torn down and confused by decades of installed dictators, foreign resource exploitation, and post-cold-war rebel group armings. Remember, we created the Taliban to fight the Russians. That one sure had some long lasting effects. Now we're empowering neo-nazis domestically to fight this perceived threat of Muslim people. How do you think this is going to play out when we're done being afraid of Muslims?

It's easy to be scared right now, but turning to racist rhetoric instead of finding parallels in history is what allows fascism to take hold. Read up, educate yourself, and come back tomorrow better ready for building a better tommorrow.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/01/31/most-te...

I don't think Carmack works that way. All he really cares about professionally (I'm not talking about his personal life or rocketry) is doing good work and pushing his code to the limits of the field. Oculus hardware was a big coding challenge without much marked territory or set rules for Carmack, so that's probably the only thing he was thinking about while working.

You might be excited by smaller galleries hosting installation rotating artists then. These spaces are more unique and have artists building to complement the specific sites.

To be fair, both movies you listed as low budget flops are in the same niche genre, I think that's more of a trend of people not being interested in that sort of movie right now.

Anti-labor rhetoric and actions is almost always the first response of dying old gaurd in industry. This should come as no surprise

Four times, it was America that installed said dictator...

It was wrong then, it's wrong now. Here are some key differences:

1. Trump has made islamaphobic rhetoric a cornerstone of his campaign, giving this racist undertones

2. That was a quiet secret at the time, this was an extremely public executive order. Both are wrong, but that doesn't somehow detract from or excuse this massive escalation. There wasn't this outrage at the time because nobody heard about it

3. The political situation at the time wasn't as life-or-death for refugees. Sending political refugees back now is a death sentence. That said, the US has been pretty terrible at accepting refugees in general this past decade, which is very shameful

4. This order detained cleared refugees while in transit, and, originally blocked green card holders from returning to the US after exiting for any reason

5. Remember that Trump has a neo-nazi in his cabinet with bannon, who reportedly wrote this order. That alone should be reason for heightened suspicion

Looks like the interior of a Megaron, google says it's the Palace of Nestor from the Mycenaeans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Nestor

Interesting, but the argument has always been that x is Uber's Netflix DVD phase. Uber black car was the DVD phase for UberX, UberX was the DVD phase for Uber pool, and, now, Uber pool is the DVD phase for fully automating the driver out of the picture. It's certainly an interesting strategy to watch unfold. It's reasonable to assume that Uber black car very deliberately was a stepping stone to the more accessible UberX, but what I want to know is if during the initial pitch meetings they had any idea that their game was to burn money/remain solvent as long as they possibly can in order to have an upper hand in the future self-driving market.

They could pass laws that override the order, or, which was what happened constantly during Obama's turn, simply vote against all directives put forward by the president and his party as a sign of disapproval. They can also vote to strip resources from organizations tasked with carrying out executive orders. Now, Trump's most recent orders have lined up very well with the extreme end of the right wing, so they aren't going to try to stop him.