Racial Epithet Shows Up on Minecraft Menu, Developer Apologizes

HARDonE · 3 months

The other irony is that Afrikaans is spoken primarily by white South Africans- it's the language of the Dutch settlers who controlled the country until the British messed up their shit in the second Boer War.

raisedroofbeams · 4 months

No.

Edit: Well, if this reaches the front page, maybe.

OCDTrigger · 7 months

I get it, and I agree with your overall point that the police are acting inhumanely. It's just that a lot of people use the Geneva Conventions as a shorthand for human rights, when it's actually pretty limited in its protections.

OCDTrigger · 7 months

I agree that what's depicted in the photos is fucked up. That comparison really doesn't hold up though- if you wanted police to act like they were in a military conflict with OWS protesters the results would be terrible, even if they did follow the rules of war. Soldiers are allowed to fight and kill any enemy combatant, even if they're unarmed and even if they're in the mess hall or asleep in the barracks at the time, unless they explicitly surrender. If that situation was marine-taliban instead of police-OWS, it would have absolutely been legal to fire on them- the people helping the wounded wouldn't be immune unless they were wearing medic badges and not participating in combat. Also, the requirement to give medical attention only applies to prisoners- if that protester had been in police custody instead of still in the middle of the protest, he probably would have been treated.

They still should have called an ambulance, but not for any reason relating to the Geneva conventions.

OCDTrigger · 7 months

This is well intentioned, but off base. The Geneva Convention only applies to wars, not domestic law enforcement- large parts of it don't even apply to civil wars. There are a lot of elements that don't make any sense when applied to occupy wall street- for instance, all soldiers are required to wear uniforms, but plainclothes police are legal. Also, prisoners of war must be returned to their home countries at the end of the war, but arrested protesters could face charges in civilian courts.

Also, the medic analogy is inaccurate. Even if we pretend that the police are marines and protesters are taliban, it would be entirely legal for the marines to shoot the taliban in that situation. They're not "exclusively engaged in medical duties;" they were just seconds ago involved in the conflict. If a Taliban fighter shooting at marines puts down his weapon to help the wounded, it's still legal to shoot him because he is a combatant.

Either way, protesters are not combatants; occupy wall street is not a war. It simply doesn't apply.

Discuss · 7 months

Cargo shorts, baseball hat, sperrys, fake (or real, if you've got it) moustache, and CCCP tee shirt. Broseph Stalin.

Mind_Virus · 7 months

As a Massachusetts kid, this makes me happy. The irony, though, is that (limited) abusive police behavior is probably the best possible thing for the movement. OWS has gotten orders of magnitude more press since the arrests than beforehand. It's a tough issue to create that kind of dramatic conflict about, since economic justice isn't something that's directly enforced by police like segregation was in the 50s and 60s. There's less opportunity to have incidents like the arrests in New York that paint the protestors in a sympathetic light.

Jamacin_Me_Crazy · 8 months

I agree entirely- if you order one at a random bar you're likely to get it with soda water though, so I thought I'd warn him.

Jamacin_Me_Crazy · 8 months

Oy, you. Here's the deal. You could go to the bar and drink some fluorescent blue nonsense that tastes like koolaid that's been sitting too long in the sun. Or you could drink some alcohol that actually tastes like alcohol, the way men and women of class have done for ages. "But raisedroofbeams", you say, "the whole point of a mixed drink is to make booze not taste like booze." False! Alcohol is delicious. Here are some ideas:

The Gin and Tonic. A classic, beloved by both old British men and your thinking college drinker for generations. It's refreshing, citrusy, and, if made right, fairly high in alcohol content. Plus, it prevents malaria.
Manhattan. Very strong, very tasty. More than half whisky, but the vermouth and bitters take some of the edge off and add some sweetness. It comes in a cocktail glass, which has acquired unfortunate Sex-and-the-City connotations, but don't let your precious masculinity be threatened. It's strong and made of bourbon. You're in the clear. Also, if you're going to a fancier place, ask for it with rye instead, because rye whisky is awesome.
Old Fashioned. Another bourbon choice, arguably improved by changing it to rye. Whisky, bitters, sugar, and in most places soda water. This drink got your great grandfather through the Great Depression and your grandfather through Korea.
If you're a vodka fan, try a vodka gimlet or a vodka tonic. A gimlet is half liquor half lime juice, and a vodka tonic is a gin and tonic that doesn't taste like a christmas tree. Although I don't know why you wouldn't want that.
If rum is more your deal, and the place you're going to has ginger beer, get a Dark and Stormy. Just do it. It's so good. Alternatively, a rum and coke is a fine drink- as long as it's white rum, not that spiced Captain Morgan bullshit that is basically a boozier type of cough syrup.
Finally, beer choices. If you're at a sports bar with friends, sharing a pitcher of whatever shitty beer they have cheap pitchers of is cool. I prefer Rolling Rock for the cheap stuff, but decent beers that are widely available include Sam Adams and anything from Sierra Nevada. Beer varies so much from place to place that it's up to you to find local brews that you like.

Now go, young drinker, and gloriously participate in the ritualistic cheering of large, padded men beating each other in between messages from your capitalist overlords.

silentsynergy · 8 months

The Human Centiportal.

raisedroofbeams · 8 months

Thanks. It really ultra-tied the tesseract together, dimensionally speaking.

raisedroofbeams · 8 months

By this point, there are 500 miniaturized Hitlers in my kitchen calling me Dad. Occasionally one of them dissolves into a fine red mist. I think I'm going to need a new rug.

raisedroofbeams · 8 months

Well, I don't know much about sociology- I was talking about political science, because that's what I study. I agree that ideology can definitely trump evidence for some professors, which is a serious problem. In my university at least, though, most of my polisci professors have tried pretty hard to keep their politics out of the classroom.

raisedroofbeams · 8 months

Ha, yeah. I definitely see where you're coming from. Academic insight often doesn't get turned directly into policy, but there are ways that it can make in impact. Think tanks and policy groups write papers specifically designed for policy makers, and those get read by people high up in government. Studies can be used in court cases as well- take the debate over gay marriage. It's all well and good to say "banning gay marriage is wrong," but having actual evidence that gay marriage doesn't harm children will help you convince a judge of that too.

And sometimes, it actually does make a direct impact. The war in Libya, whatever you think of it, was basically a direct implementation of the Responsibility to Protect- the idea, formulated by academics and diplomats after the Rwandan genocide, that states can lose their right to sovereignty if they fail to protect their citizens from mass atrocities or genocide. The way the Libyan intervention happened- seeking UN approval, making sure the Arab League was on board, (formally) limiting the mission to protecting civilians- fits those guidelines very closely. In the US, for example, one of Obama's chief advisers on the issue was Samantha Power- an academic who wrote a book on the problem of when the world should intervene in cases of humanitarian crisis.

raisedroofbeams · 8 months

Of course it's inductive. Each of those theories attempts to explain why states behave the way they do by looking empirical evidence- that is, how states have behaved in the past- and building a model of how decisions are made based on that. The reason that there's disagreement is because the variables are, well, much more variable than that of hard sciences, so it's not generally possible to come up with hard and fast laws or quantitative equations of how these things work. You're dealing with billions of people, different and changing political structures, economic problems, and cultural differences, all without the ability to run full-scale experiments because you can't really model a country in the lab. Not that people haven't tried- there are lots of political scientists who use game theory or complex computer models to try to predict political behavior.

I realize that sounds vague, but that's because those are some of the broadest questions in the discipline. Day to day, if a political scientist is writing a paper, he or she's doing it on a much more measurable issue. For example, there have been studies which correlate voter preference with class, race, religion, etc. to determine which is the best predictor of political leanings. There was a 1970s study which used a case study of pre-election media exposure in a small part of the United States to measure the influence that news sources have in people's political priorities. If you want to know when states follow the geneva conventions and when they don't, and empirically informed guesses as to why, there are papers that analyze those cases. The fact there's debate over what the empirical record indicates doesn't mean it's not inductive- just that there's more ambiguity in a field where there aren't fixed laws of the universe, just explanations for behavior in a world of changing politics and human variables.

The scientific method does apply- there are observations, hypotheses, and testing. The fact that the hypotheses are usually falsified by studies of actual events rather than experiments doesn't change that. That's like saying that evolution is a faulty theory for human development because we didn't see it occur in a lab.

TL;DR: Just because there's debate within the discipline doesn't change the fact that it's empirically based.

raisedroofbeams · 8 months

I was replying to milkontherocks, who said

lol at "he can't understand... political science or sociology"

raisedroofbeams · 8 months

I'd say it's definitely easier to bullshit them, but to gain a full and meaningful understanding of them? I don't think so at all. Part of what makes IR and polisci interesting is that it's not as quantitative- you're dealing with historical circumstances and human variables that can't be reduced to laws or formulas, and so to legitimately study politics requires having both a theoretical and historical context to your thinking that is very easy to fuck up.

I would absolutely do terribly at electrical engineering- whatever skill set I had for that sort of thing has gone straight down hill since math team in seventh grade. I just think that the elitism is bullshit- while it's definitely easier to fake your way through polisci than hard science, that same fuzziness makes doing actual, rigorous study more challenging due to the lack of an easily identifiable right answer. You have to constantly be self critical if you want your research to stand up to any sort of scrutiny.

I responded harshly because I think the "lol social science" mindset is a narrow minded circlejerk. I have total respect for people who do well at the hard sciences. Also, I'm drunk.

raisedroofbeams · 8 months

Enlighten me then? I could definitely be wrong, but that comment looked like the standard elitism on this site towards any field of study that isn't a hard science, engineering, or programming.

raisedroofbeams · 8 months

Can you explain the difference between the Realist, Liberal, and Constructivist schools of thought on international relations, and the implications each one has for foreign policy decisions and the international system in general?

Or do you really think that shit is easier than computer science, or whatever typical reddit thing you study?

raisedroofbeams · 8 months

This glorious fight scene in They Live. The rest of the movie is a typical, cool but 80's-cheesy John Carpenter film, and then the two main characters- who are supposed to be friends?- kick the shit out of each other for 5 minutes.

All because of one guy's irrational fear of sunglasses.

02116663ag · 9 months

Did you even read it? It's about Gaddafi's government giving contracts to US companies in 2007 as an attempt to improve relations with the US. It has nothing to do with campaign financing.

tisitoj · 9 months

Amphibious dinosaur.

tisitoj · 9 months

My doctor told me that I needed expensive drugs for my epilepsy. I told him I wasn't going to deal with his shlmzzxjcnjndorasdernoinqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq

raisedroofbeams

TROPHY CASE

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