YOUR POLITICAL OPINION IS PERFECTLY FINE

I'm sure that you're a reasonably intelligent person, you have decent values, you care about people around you, and you take a respectable amount of time to get informed before forming a political opinion (none of that is sarcasm).

But so are other people. You do not hold a monopoly on common sense, or morality.

A worrying proportion of online debate quickly devolves into a trench war between two camps. Every person of every side of every issue is totally convinced that they have "reality" on their side because they know the "facts" while the other side is "deluded" and "just pushing their agenda". Everybody spends their time telling the other side to "do their research". Everybody is completely convinced that people holding an opposing view are "biased", "dishonest", or "have a distorted view of reality" because "their sources are wrong".

Conversations of this kind are pretty unproductive as they create resentment and they are notat all likely to make anybody think again about their position. No matter how hard you are convinced of being the one seeing clearly, people on the other side are just as convinced as you are.

And everyone's like " :( "

I would like to end this post with a short list of humble suggestions on ways to be more persuasive and pleasant in your conversations about touchy topics.
- Spend less time lecturing people about how they can't think, and more time putting your ideas out there to show how good they are.
- Try to read more than the title and/or the first few lines of an opinion text before taking a giant dump on it.
- Refrain from attacking a caricature of what the other side has said.
- End your posts with a short list of humble suggestions.

FOR THE THREE OF YOU WHO PLAY MAGIC THE GATHERING

TRUMP HAD NO PATH TO 270.....

...so he took a path to 304 instead.

Surprisingly few people know when to use the word "fewer" :o

Even native english speakers seem to be struggling with this simple word. So I made this quick guide.


In english, different quantity words are used depending on whether the quantity to measure is discreet or secable, ie "countable'.


If we want to measure something that is a quantity but not a number, the interrogative is "How much" and the comparatives are "More" and "Less". For example: more honey, less water.


If we are looking at separate objects and expect a number as an answer, the interrogative term is "How many" and the comparatives are "More" and "Fewer". Examples: more chairs, fewer tables.


"Less" means "a smaller quantity of". "Fewer" means "a smaller number of". The confusion arises from the fact that the antonym of both is "More".


Complete the following text with the appropriate word.


I own a restaurant. Yesterday I made more money than today because there were MORE customers in my restaurant. But tomorrow I expect to make LESS money because I expect _____ customers.


Hint : If your answer was "less", you might be a slow learner.

I CAN DRAW A TRIANGLE WITH THREE 90 DEGREE ANGLES

It's easy really. Start at the North Pole (let's say you have an infinite pencil that can draw on any surface for this one). Draw a straight line all the way to the equator. Turn 90 degrees. Walk exactly one quarter of the equator. Turn 90 degrees again. Walk back to the north pole.

Boom. You just drew a triangle with 3 right angles :o

A triangle's angles need to total 180 degrees only if space is flat. If space has a positive curvature (like a sphere), it will be more. If space has a negative curvature, it will be less.

YOU KNOW WHO ELSE WON THE POPULAR VOTE?

Hitler.

TRUMP AND TWITTER

Trump has gotten his (un)fair share of criticism for his use of Twitter. Apparently, it reveals that he's "off the hook" and "impulsive" and "is having ameltdown a 3AM". But here's my 2 cents on it.

- The people who are making those criticisms are the ones who have been wrong about him since the beginning: they were saying that he was just a joke candidate and should not even run; then they said he had no chance at all; they trusted the polls; they predicted the market would crash and it did the exact opposite... Judging those people's track record at making predictions, I'm not sure I trust their analysis.

- Trump does not go after people that don't attack him. He only ever retaliates when things are said about him that he judges to be unfair. He just wants to let everyone know that if you pick a fight with him, you'll get a bloody nose.

- Twitter allows him to bypass the mainstream media almost entirely and talk directly to the people. That's part of his appeal and integral to his brand: a man of the people who gets his message across unfiltered.

- His mastery of Twitter would be impressive coming from anyone, but at 70 years old, it's exemplary. It's easy to underestimate the mental acumen needed to correctly carry a message in 140 characters. He completely smashes the prejudice that old people are supposed to be bad at, or scared of, technology. Plus it allows him to reach an entire segment of the population that spends its time online and doesn't care at all about TV.

I suspect that his intense use of Twitter was much more helpful than not in his quest for the Presidency...and that is one of the reasons the bitter leftwing media can't stop bashing him for it.

THAT MOVIE WAS SSSSOOOOOO GREAT!

Man! Have you seen that movie??? Greatest thing ever! Woah! So awesome! That action scene? Where the guy does the thing! JESUS H. CHRIST! I was blown away! And that ending....PERFECT! Never seen anything so great. Just a classic all-around, 11 out of ten, Everybody should go see this movie, it's the best work of art of all time, it's gonna make a sextillion dollars on opening weekend.

...What? They're planning a sequel? HOW DARE THEY??? Monsters! They're ruining my childhood! That's such a lazy cash grab! Where's the integrity? They should be ashamed! Hollywood doesn't have any original ideas, like, EVER!

EQUALITY ONLY EVER WORKS ONE WAY

I saw this most excellent article recently.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/12/female-doctors-superiority/511034/?utm_source=atltw

Actual scientific litterature showing that women are measurably better than men at taking care of vulnerable, sick people? As a man, this makes me full of joy. Not only does it confirm my lifelong prejudice that women have more empathy than men (who have more systems-oriented brains), but now we have a way of actually saving more lives and making peoples' lives better using this knowledge.

Now that we have actual credible evidence that female physicians are better at their very important jobs (only, you know, saving lives), I can't wait for society to start discriminating towards female applicants in universities, and to start paying practicing female physicians their due. If women do as good a job, they should receive equal pay. If they do a BETTER job, by all means give them higher pay.

Buuuuuut....

There's a major problem with western society at large (and you see me coming from a mile away), which is that whenever a situation like this occurs but with the genders reversed, it becomes sexist misogynistic barbaric forbidden knowledge. If the same study had shown that men save more lives and cure more illness, there is simply no way it could have been reported accurately. The media would be trying to either hide it, spin it in a spectacularly dihonest way, or blame the results of the study on russian hackers. (Ba-dum PSSH). This needs to stop. Just as this study needs to come out, I need to be able to say "I expect male pro hockey players to be paid more because they're better at it and draw a hundred times more fans and bring in a thousand times more money than female pro hockey players" without being crucified and called every name in the book. We need to be able to celebrate, instead of shunning, the strenghts and accomplishments of BOTH genders

It might take a while to bring this idea back to the front of public consciousness, but men and women are DIFFERENT. They have different biology, different brain chemistry, different priorities, values and tastes. Men are not better than women in any absolute way. Woman are not better than men in any absolute way. But not being better is not the same thing as being identical.

HOW MANY SUPER MARIOS....

...does it take to change a lightbulb?

Only one, but he needs 8 tries before he changes the right one.

SETTING THE BAR

An important quality in a leader is the art of setting a standard of quality that is both satisfactory for the team as a whole and realistically attainable by individual members.

If you set it too low, the work quality is not going to be what it could be or what it should be.

If I come to work every day knowing that I can't ever suffer any negative consequences no matter how much I botched my job the day before, it's gonna be very hard for me to strive for excellence.

But if you set it too high, people are going to stop trying to attain it.

If I give you 98% and all you do is complain that you didn't get 99%, soon I'm gonna stop making that extra effort to make you happy.

Be smart, set the bar high, but keep it clearable.

DIVERSITY!!!....???

Diversity is an absolute necessity in any modern society. Including every subgroup of people at every level is the best way to make sure that you have maximum productivity and happiness.

You need diversity of color: you need white people, but you also need yellow people, pink people, and every shade of brown from caffe latte to bitter chocolate. Especially on promotional and marketing material.

You need diversity of gender : men and women need to be represented equally in every profession no matter what. 50% mailwomen, 50% female nurses, 50% female garbage truck drivers, 50% female construction workers, 50% female soldiers. Because.

You need diversity of age : you need young people and old people everywhere. Nothing is possible if you don't have every age group included.

You need diversity of religion : you gotta have people believing in every possible combination of unverifiable nonsense; you gotta have those who believe in one god, those who believe in trillions of gods, those who believe that god has blonde hair and those who believe that he's got brown hair.

You need diversity....of thought? Oh! No! That's bad! Can't have people disagreeing among themselves about anything can we? That would be a disaster! Think about the ensuing mayhem if there ever was a discussion about any topic and someone somewhere had an idea that isn't already uniformly accepted by the rest of the group! Boom! End of the world right there. No no, everyone must make sure to say (and think) all the right things all the time, and nothing else ever.

DIFFERENT WAYS OF MEASURING

I often hear bitter people moaning about how the rich "waste" their money.

"How can you waste a hundred (or a thousand, or ten thousand or whatever) dollars on such a silly thing? It's sooooo not worth that much." They'll say. For example, let's picture a very very rich kid who enjoys Magic the Gathering. In order to win just a little more often, the kid buys a super powerful card for 1000$ from Ebay. What an idiot! How dare he throw away such a large sum on something so trivial? Doesn't he realize how hard it is to earn a thousand dollars?

The answer to that question is "You're counting the wrong way". As in, you're not picturing money in a way that would allow you to answer your own question.

Let's say a kid from Bangladesh comes up to you and asks "How can you be so stupid as to waste a whole dollar on a can of soda? That's a day's work!" What would you tell him? Probably something along the lines of "One dollar is really not much to me". Well, the difference between you and that kid is about the same as the difference between you and the rich kid. So associating a specific amount to a specific good is meaningless. What you need to ask is "How much TIME would I be willing to dedicate to acquiring this good?", because that's really what you are doing when you're buying anything: you're exchanging a given amount of paid work that you have done in the past for something that you need or want now.

So let's say you earn 10$ an hour, and you want that 1000$ card. What you are spending is 100 hours of revenue. But if you earned 1000$ an hour, you would really only be spending one hour of revenue. If you earned 100000$ an hour (as quite a few people actually do), that card would be worth 36 seconds of your work, and so on.

Would you spend 36 seconds of your time acquiring something that you think you will enjoy quite a lot? I bet you would. Let's say you had a bank card with an arbitrarily large sum of money associated with it. The concrete result of having such a card would be that you could swipe it anywhere to acquire anything, and the amount still available would not change in any significant way. That's exactly what rich people are doing : spending a negligible fraction of a day's work on something they want. Whereas that negligible fraction will get you a can of soda, their negligible fraction will net them a brand-new car for their collection. But deep down, you're both doing the same thing.

That's why if you want to fantasize about your "perfect rich life", ie what you would do if you were a billionaire, you don't ask yourself "What would I do if I had a billion dollars?" but rather "What would I do if everything was free?"

THE GENDER GRADING GAP

How come girls are doing so much better than boys in school?

Feminists will be happy to say that this is due to gilrs becoming more mature more quickly than boys, being better at listening, better behaved, and generally just being superior human beings compared to boys.

But one factor that is hard to ignore is the unfair advantage that girls get because female teachers (who are the overwhelming majority of teachers, which for some reason does not outrage feminists who are "all about equality") give girls higher grades when presented with identical material to grade.

What?

A large-scale scientific study across 60 countries reveal that female teacher will systematically and unfairly grade a paper or an assignment higher if they think it was produced by a female student, rather than being presented anonymously or under a boy's name.

So from the earliest age, boys have to work harder to get the same result and recognition. This piles up over other factors like limited access to physical education, the reduction or even abolition or recess time, restriction on what activites are allowed during said recess, and so on. Gee, I wonder if we could call that discrimination?

And all that unfairness doesn't even benefit girls, since better grades do not at all translate to better job performance, better career paths and better income if they were earned because of a systemic failure and are not the result of actual performance.

Where's the outrage?

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-31733742
http://www.bbc.com/news/education-31751672
http://www.returnofkings.com/75159/study-shows-girls-get-better-grades-for-the-same-work-as-boys
http://www.bbc.com/news/education-31751667

VEHICULAR DISCRIMINATION

I'm a victim! I'm oppressed! It's winter where I live, and it snows. When there's a major snowfall, they plough the roads and the sidewalks right away, but sometimes they wait up to a day before they free the bicycle path :( As a cyclist, I am thus discriminated against and that is unfair. This is vehicularism! I want to be able to ride to work on the same day there was a snowstorm dammit! The worst part of all this is, I live in a world where this text could be taken seriously by some people lol.

THESE DON'T MEAN ANYTHING ANYMORE THANKS TO OVERUSE

The following phrases and expressions have been rendered completely useless, thanks to us using them in more and more generous ways until their meaning becomes so vague that we might as well not use them at all anymore.

Jumping the Shark : originally a direct reference to a particular scene in a particular popular TV series.
Intended meaning : is supposed to designate a crucial, irreversible moment in a story or person's career where they lose all credibility. The crucial part is that the blunder commited is supposed to be so major that no recovery is possible. For example, the death of a very important (non superhero) character in a series; or a politician being convicted of a major crime and going to jail.
Current meaning : whenever anybody does anything we don't like. "Lucas really jumped the shark with the Ewoks"; "My friend totally jumped the shark with that Facebook post".

Dunning-Krueger : the Dunning-Krueger Effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is. It was originally discovered with a rather specific set of studies in which people of different abilitty levels were systematically unable to evaluate in which percentile they were located regarding their own performance.
Intended meaning : it's only meaningful to talk about DKE when you're talking about groups of people, and you have some objective way of measuring the relative performances of the members of that group.
Current meaning : used to describe anyone you think is not as good as he thinks; basically a synonym of "bragger" or blowhard".

Click-Bait : a type of internet article written with the overt intent of generating "clicks", or page views.
Intended meaning : "click-bait" articles are supposed to be mostly devoid of any content at all, political or otherwise, take very little time to write, and most importantly be spread over several pages in order to maximize clicking and ad revenue. You can have a Top-50 of something spread out over 50 pages with a single sentence and a lone picture on each page as an egregious example.
Current meaning : an article that says something you don't feel like hearing, no matter how true, rational or articulate it is. "CNN is just click-bait"; "Fox News is just click-bait".

Racist/Sexist/Misogynist/Homophobe/Transphobe/Fascist/White Supremacist : you can look up the official definitions in a dictionary I guess.
Current meaning : words you call someone if you have nothing intelligent to say about or against them or their arguments.

2016 WAS A GREAT YEAR FOR DISCOVERING MENTORS

Just this year, I have discovered the following intellectuals and learned quite a lot from them. A lot of what you find here was inspired by one or more of those guys. Just off the top of my head :

Milo Yiannopoulos : talk about being created by your society. This guy is a direct product of the silly, stuck-up, over-PC culture that pollutes school campuses in north America. He is basically an antidote to these anti-fun thought police : he's arrogant, provocative, and generally a hellraiser and a troll. But he's also very funny, smart and articulate. If you actually take time to listen to his message and not just focus on the (ahem) "colored" vocabulary he uses, you can't see there's not a malicious bone in his body. He just gives people "tough love" as he would put it. I discovered him on the Rubin Report as he was shitting on atheists. As a hardcore atheist myself, I found his take pretty amusing and a little bit too accurate for comfort lol. Milo is also an exemplar on how to be able to take criticism of all kinds and being available for debate.

Scott Adams : the dumbest thing you can say about this guy is "B..b..but he's just a cartoonist!" He actually has an IQ high enough that he could've get a high-end career at NASA; it's just that he wanted a job he could do in his pajamas. He started Periscoping about a year ago, and his brilliant insight on the role of persuasion in politics was a beacon for me (and lots of others apparently). In part thanks to him, I understood that Trump had great chances of winning the presidency, and I saw lots of upside to that.

Jordan Peterson : that psychologist from TorontoU who made the news because he refuses to use those silly made-up pronouns. The man shows terrific untellectual courage and honesty. His level of discourse about the true causes and motivations of the SJW/PC movements is awesome. His course "Maps of meaning" is very interesting and available as a series of YT videos. Not only does he have a rock-solid mastery of his subject, he's also got style and contagious passion.

Stephan Molyneux : a canadian philosopher with a motormouth. Just the sheer quantity of stuff he puts out would be enough to be impressive. He's knowledgeable about lots of things and he's not afraid to tackle touchy issues. His stance on mens' issues and his denunciation of the excessive gynocentrism of western societies is highly needed.

Dave Cullen (Computing Forever) : a UK guy with a penchant for anti-social justice rants. His "regressive news" feature is very informative. He's a funny guy and his SJW/entitled millenial impressions are just too funny.

PERKS OF BEING RICH

Here are some things you can do when you are rich.

- Eat great food.
- Work a light schedule
- Get up when you want to, without the need for an alarm clock
- Be doing what you feel like doing at pretty much any moment of the day.
- Travel a lot.

Jeez, I just realised I've been doing all those things for the last several years. I guess I'm rich.

CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR PROMOTION

Hi! Have a seat. I just wanted a quick meeting with you to bring you some great news. You have not been here very long, but your excellent performance has made us reevaluate your position in the company. We have decided to award you a major promotion!

First of all, your job title will be changed to something quite a bit longer and more pompous. We might even add "Senior" or something like that in front of it. And you will be the beneficiary of lots of new responsibilities, as someone of your magnitude deserves to be. We will provide you with a new, longer task description that fully recognizes how valuable you are to the company. Your will receive an exclusive new plaque with your name and title on it; be sure to display it proudly on your desk, so others can marvel at your privilege and be inspired by your excellence.

Of course you realize that your salary and conditions will remain the same for now and for an undeterminate amount of time in the future. Because no matter how great you are, the company cannot afford additional expenditures at the moment. Even though your new position will require countless additional hours of unpaid labor, we know that someone of your caliber acknoledges that what matters is being an important part of this company's vision. After all, the current economic conjecture plus projected profitability minus calculated actuarial range and so on and so forth, right?

I hope you're happy about your promotion.

Oh! On the way out, when you walk in front of the abandoned desk that used to belong to your downsized coworker, could you pick up his pile of untreated files and add it to your own? That would be super appreciated.

THE GENIUS OF ALEC BALDWIN

Baldwin's SNL portrayal of Trump is pure genius.

Not because it's any good, of course. It's completely off. Trump does not sound or act anything like that. The hand gestures are not really similar; the voice is off; facial expressions? Nah. But most importantly, the character is not the same at all. Alec sounds much meaner, much more vindictive, and much more stupid than the real Trump.  If you have spent one hour of your life one time to actually hear the man speak, it's pretty obvious to you that the portrayal is poor.

The genius comes from the fact that Baldwin portrays exactly what people WANT to see in Trump. He's a perfect, carbon copy representation of what you THINK Trump is like if you know little about the actual Trump (an alarming number of people know very little about the actual Trump).

Also, the sketches are super funny.

I just hope they don't stretch this skit out too much. Now is as good a time as any to stop.

TOP TEN PLANETS IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM

10 - Asteroid Belt: That stupid thing couldn't coalesce into a sphere? WTF?
9- Neptune: Super boring. Is literally the last planet now that the other one was reclassified for some reason.

8- Saturn: Is pretty useful for accelerating the occasional space probe.
7- Jupiter: I guess that giant storm thingy is kinda cool.
6- Mars: Was the star of an Arnold movie in the 90s.
5- Mercury: Parts of it can be melted and put in tubes of glass to indicate the temperature.
4- Venus: Almost made us believe it had dinosaurs on it once.
3- Uranus: You can't ever get tired of hearing that pun.
2- Earth: Hosts us. That's a positive thing, right? Right?
1- Aw crap.

REMEMBER WHEN TRUMP GOT SHAT ON FOR BEING A POTENTIAL SORE LOSER?

That was a while ago, wasn'it?

It was 3 recounts, 2 death threats to college electors, and one very vague and Weekly-World-News-like accusation of russian hacking ago actually :p

Seriously though, how many times have you seen that scenario play out?

A treats B like shit because B according to A, B would do something that A wouldn't like if X happened, even though X has not happened and B has done nothing wrong at all. And then A goes on to actually do exactly what he shat on B for.

There's no way to be absolutely sure of course, but I suspect that if Trump had lost, he wouldn't have acted half as silly as the Dems are now.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE MINDSET

I have almost 20 years experience as a professional dishwasher and cleaner. So you could say that I know what I'm doing when I'm washing dishes. I used to work a a big culinary school with several chefs and hundreds of hi-grade students. There was so much work to be done that I, the lone dishwasher, would have to help the cooks carry stuff and do basic preparations. In exchange, near the end of the shifts, when most of the customers were gone and the dishes came pouring in, those cooks would come help me do a "dishes blitz" because doing everything alone was simply impossible. During some of the hairier nights, even the top chef would come help me out.

And this is where you see how someone can behave irrationally because he can't let go of a particular mindset. The guy had just spent the entire evening giving instructions and orders, teaching and correcting students in their work. He was firmly set in his "teacher/boss" mindset. But the thing is, he wasn't very good at washing massive amount of dishes. So I tried several times to show him tricks of the trade, to give him a tip or two on how to be better at it. But he could not accept anything I said; he didn't even listen to me, because he was too stuck in his manner of thinking. Whenever I tried to tell him something, he just cut me off and turned my advice back on me.

Had the guy just come in from home, I'm pretty sure he would've gotten what I said and implemented it pretty easily. But he wasn't a guy coming from home: he was THE TEACHER. So there you had this world-class food maker, working in pretty useless fashion in the dishes area, like overstuffing the machine so nothing would clean properly, or racking glasses the wrong way, or other basic beginner mistakes like that, because the was THE TEACHER and nothing else. He had a mental block; he couldn't change his attitude even when circumstances would have required it.

When I see a 3rd-wave feminist, I see the same mental mistake: the got-stuck-in-an-obsolete-mindset mistake. The modern feminists' mindset is I WANT MORE THINGS FROM SOCIETY. (They call that "wanting equality", but that's a pretty transparent lie so I won't get into that here). So the same thing happens to them than to my chef from earlier: as the situation changes, and their goals are met, their mindset itself does not change.

Let's say feminists asked for "more grade-school female teachers" 20 years ago, when the ratio of female teachers was 20%. Their mindset of WE WANT MORE THINGS was (arguably) relevant back then. But as the proportion of female teachers hit 50% and kept increasing, they did not change their tune. As of today, where I live there's 80% female teachers. But are they satisfied? Do they stop requesting, even though their goal has been reached and exceeded by far? No, of course not. I saw an article in a major newspaper just today where a feminist complains about the "poor women teachers" and "the oppressive patriarchy and blatant sexism of the school system" (they have a very limited vocabulary). The logic of the article was extremely poor and twisted, as it would have to be to pretend that something is the opposite of what it actually is.

If an outsider were to look at this, he would clearly see that the pretend goal of "equality" has long been achieved and forgotten. But these feminists are not outsiders. They are the WANTERS OF MORE THINGS. They are unable to change discourse and attitude as reality changes; they don't even stop to check if their goals have been met or not; they just plow ahead.

So it's not only important to have an open MIND: it's also important to have an open mindSET, so you can adapt and change course according to the current situation.

YOUR PRONOUNS ARE NOT UP FOR DEBATE?

Well, that's excellent news. I was afraid that we were going to have a very boring and unproductive discussion about stupid made-up words. I was willing to have it, because I think it's important that we give everyone a chance to express their ideas, no matter how inane they are. But I'm happy that you decided to be reasonbale and not debate such a silly topic. Since you're so clearly a girl, of course we'll just keep using her/she/hers and be done with it.

Glad we can put this behind us.

"RIBA"

That's the russian word for "fish".

In russian, whenever you want to say "a small something", you just add a K before the final A.

So if you want to say "small fish'. you say...

RIBKA

The russian word for "water" is VODA.

So if you want to say "small water", you say...

_____

:D

NOT ALL DESCRIPTORS ARE LABELS

The term "Millenial" is not a label in the same sense as "Liberal" or "Atheist" are labels. It's a category; it's an age group. You can be born in any year and choose your political leaning and describe it as"liberal" or any other number of ways. You can believe in one god, zero gods, or a multitude of gods, at any age, and thus call yourself an "agnostic atheist" or whatever you want.

But you can't be a young baby boomer, and you can't choose to describe yourself as a "Millenial" if you're 70 years old.

So saying "As a millenial, I don't like labels" does not make you look like a retard.

Creating endless memes in bad faith about that phrase does.

Trevor Noah has Tomi Lahren on his show.

Half the audience : ZOMFG HE SOOO TOATLLY DISTORYED HER ZOMGZOMGWTFBBQ

Other half of the audience WAOH SHE SOOOO RIPPED HIM A NEW ASSHOAL PWNZOARZ GTFOKTXBAI

My take : cool talk. They should do that more often.

 

Seriously though, if shitfests like the Daily Show had the exact opposite proportion of what they have now (as in, 95% debates and 5% commentary), maybe this country would understand itself better. If Noah could drop his silly habit of baiting a cheap laugh every 2 minutes, these talks would actually become pretty edifying.

I hope she does Maher next.

YOU'RE NOT AN EXPERT ON CLIMATE CHANGE

"Climate change is a fact"

What does that sentence really mean?

Does it mean "The climate is changing" or "The climate is not was it used to be and won't be what it is now in the future"? In that case, I think it's fair to say that's true...but it's not very meaningful or insightful.

Does it mean "The Earth is warming up at exactly the rate predicted and in the exact way predicted by our climate models"? In that case, it would be extraordinarily insightful...but not very true.

Or does it mean something between those two things?

If the weather forecast says "12 inches of snow" and you get 3 inches, was the prediction right? Was the snowfall a "fact"? What about if you do get 12 inches, but a day or 2 after it was supposed to fall? What if you get 12 inches of snow at the right time...but a few hundred miles off? I would say there is no clear-cut, one-word answer to that question. Nobody's saying that there was no snow, nobody is pretending that it was 100% sunny that day.  But you could argue that the prediction was not 100% on, that being off by a factor of 4 is an error big enough to call it a failure or a useless prediction. You could rate the "truth" of the prediction as a 7 out of 10 or something. Even better would be to rate each aspect of the prediction separately, like A+ for quantity, B- for timing and so on. In none of those cases is it crystal-clear whether the forecast became a "fact" or not. It's all on a scale.

You're not an expert on climatology or climate change. I'm sure as hell not one. Nobody you know personally is. Even the world's leading authorities on the subject are having trouble coming up with a model that is not so inaccurate that it becomes completely useless. Climate models are mindblowingly complex pieces of mathematics, physics, dynamics, and so on. Thousands of scientists all over the world have to cooperate and rely on each others' research and results to come up with predictions and. On top of that, it's next to impossible to get your hands on data that has not already been spun in one political manner or another. The best we have right now basically boils down to "It's definitely going in this general direction but with pretty large error bars on both sides"

Add the twist that there is much to gain by overselling the "threat" of climate change to rival industrial nations. If one superpower can keep running its economy full-throttle while others voluntarily sign crippling accords and deals, it gains a yuge advantage. Climate change propaganda is partly a weapon of economic and monetary domination.

Factoring all that, you're left with little in lieu of easy-to-digest, simplistic conclusions. Endlessly repeating "Climate change is a fact because 98% of climate experts agree on it" or sharing clips of Bernie Sanders saying it does not make you look smart...or I should say, it makes you look exactly as smart as the ones yelling "Climate change is a hoax".

OVERHEARD IN A COFFEE SHOP

First Guy : You know what? Sometimes I wonder about what amount of immigration is the best for my country...I'm worried that some cultures might not share values that are very dear to me and my peers, and that letting in an inordinate number of people form those cultures might cause friction. In my opinion, we should carefully select who we let in and who we keep out so we don't overburden our social safety net.

Second Guy : You're so racist.

First Guy : Well, it's not that. I just expect that people that want to come live in this  country ask for permission before moving in. Remember that western culture has a much more egalitarian view of gender issues; if you look at Scandinavian countries for example, you can see that the crime rate against women has gone up tenfold since the beginning of massive immigration about a decade ago. That can't be a coincidence. And speaking of Scandinavia, did you know that the more egalitarian a society is, the more pronounced the differences between the genders become? That's because men and women have fundamental biological differences, are attracted to different carreers and generally speaking seek different things out of life.

Second Guy : Man, you're soooo sexist.

First Guy : Meh, I'm not so sure that's fair. I'm just not that into that recent "everybody should think exactly the same and everybody should be included in everything all the time" ideology I see popping around on TV and social media. I'm convinced that giving equal rights and opportunities to as many people as possible is the best we can do of course, but that doesn't imply that the end result will be equal representation of every possible type of person in every facet of society. Human beings come in multiple colors, sizes, cultural backgrounds, academic backgrounds, political leanings, and we need to respect that. I don't see the point in constantly and suddenly being offended on other people's behalf for things that have been around for decades or centuries. The state doesn't need to come in every time someone feels uneasy about someone else saying or doing something they disagree with. I really can't see how you police every little minor aspect of people's public and even private life until it fits everyone 100%. After all, as just another average guy, I just wanna make sure the needs of my family and close relatives are met before I go on a crusade to save every human being on the planet.

Second Guy : You're literally Hitler.

First Guy : *sigh*

OMG TRUMP IS PRESIDENT WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE

In under one month, we went from OMG HE'S GONNA DEPORT EVELENTY MILLION PEOPLE AND DECLARE WORLDWAR 3 OHNOES to "He tweets a lot" and "He answers the phone when Taiwan calls".

Maybe we'll make it after all.

MEN WON'T MARRY BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE TO (YET)

In north America, men are fleeing the marriage institution (and traditional family model) in droves because the social contract has become too unfair to them. For a man, the long-term risks of getting married exceed the potential benefits by far, and since men can see that, there's fewer and fewer of them who buy in. Every man knows a man whose life has been crippled or ruined to some degree by a bad marriage; while some are still willing to try it, and some marriages of course DO turn out perfectly fine, there is a shortage.

So we have a multitude of women who end up with no potential partners, wondering what went wrong and what to do next. If the current trend continues, I fully expect the extreme feminists to do, one more time, what has been so successfull in the past : go cry to daddy-state for some new laws favoring them even more. After the predictable round of public shaming in the mass media, the usual victimisation and complaining, their next logical step would be to lobby for some state muscle to come in. Maybe in the force of short-term financial incentives to draw men into marriage, or (more probable and in line with past changes) penalties against men who do not marry. For example, in Quebec, in addition to paying provincial tax, federal tax, retirement plans, invalidity insurance, and unemployment insurance directly off of our paychecks, there is also this little thing called "family insurance" (whatever). It is a very small amount for now (around 1%), but the principle is basically that every single worker in the province has to contribute directly to finance family creators IN ADDITION to every other deduction. The wedge is already in; all they really need to do is increase the amount paid by unmarried people until it becomes crippling.

Men don't want to marry anymore because it's not worth it and it's too dangerous. We as a society could revise our social contract until it becomes equitable again. But I predict that feminist lobbies will find it preferable to force men into marriage in some way.

BROWN FEMALE PRIVILEGE

I'm a single white 41-year old male. I rent a small and miserable room in an unpopular part of town so that my rent is low enough to allow me to work part-time and travel quite a lot. Of course the woman upstairs is a single mother and she can afford a gigantic 7-room appartment for herself and one daughter, all on a 22-hour a week job, thanks to the welfare state, but that's not what this piece is about.

One of the disadvantages of living in a cramped space is that you have to rub shoulders with fellow roomates a little too often, and from a little too close. While each room is entirely seperate and has its own lock and mailbox, we do share bathrooms and common hallways. One of the other renters is a 22-year old Haitian immigrant. She came in about a year ago and never really adapted to the place. She spends an inordinate amount of time wandering aimlessly in the corridors, hugs the bathroom for literally hours, keeps pestering the intendant, and is generally a nuisance. I would already be considered a monster just for saying this out loud, because tolerance only ever works one way: WE the local people have to tolerate THEM. But again, if that was all there was, I wouldn't say a thing.

However the situation culminated recently when that girl had a breakup (or something, I don't know her that much) and started behaving in a completely random and unacceptable manner. She started making noisy fusses in the common areas at any time of day or night; she literally lied down and started sleeping in the middle of the hallway or in front of other tenant's doors, with her pillow and everything. One night, she was completely drunk, as well as deeply intoxicated on something else. Around 2 AM, she started trying to break into random tenant's appartments. She tried breaking in my place by barging and pulling on my door. I had to go out and try to reason with her (impossible) and escorting her back to her own room. But she came back, at 2h30, then 3h10, then 3h40, then 4h10. On her fifth "visit", I called the cops.

They came in around an hour later. And what did they do? They politely asked her to stop doing that and to go to bed. So of course she kept doing it, and around 6 AM, another tenant also called the cops. They came back and asked her one more time to please not do that then left. She finally ran out of energy around 7h30 and went to bed.

Now you ask, "How is any of this sexist or racist? Did the cops do anything wrong?" No, I don't really think so. But an old trick of mine is : if I suspect that something could be sexist or racist, I flip it around to see if the outcome would be different. Now try picturing this situation instead. If I, as a 41-year old white male, got completely drunk and intoxicated on powerful psychotropes, and tried breaking into a 22-year old girl's room in the middle of the night, and the cops arrived...do you think they would politely ask me to stop and then leave?

It's pretty funny just to think about it. And yes,I understand that the cops have to do assessment of risk and so on, that I'm considered more "dangerous" by default and I should just accept it and so on. But the main beef I have about situations like these is this : showing people that they can get away with more deviant behavior than other people because of their identity is not a good way to integrate them.

YOU ARE ACTUALLY ALLOWED TO SHOUT "FIRE!" IN A CROWDED THEATRE :o

....if you're one of the actors and one of your lines is "Fire!"

...or if there is an actual fire.

More seriously though, you are also allowed to do it if you have reasonable reason to think that it's true even if it does not turn out to be (the "Just wanted to be safe" defense).

The phrase originated in the 1919 case of Schenk VS The United States which was about propaganda against the draft. The original wording was "falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater". The popular culture version usually omits the very important word "falsely". It's mostly used by people who want to censor speech that displeases them. It was never a law or even an amendment to a law. It was never anything more than a remark from one of the judges in a decision that was overturned long ago.

Only speech that is both dangerous and completely false is punishable by law. Which means that speech that is considered dangerous but turns out to be true is allowed. So don't be intimidated by someone who throws this at you in an argument ;)

TWO GUYS MEET AT THE GYM A FEW DAYS AFTER THE ELECTION

One whispers to the other "My wife is still convinced that I voted for Hillary, but I voted for Trump lololol"

The other goes "You too?"

How many hundreds of times do you think that very scene has actually played out across the nation?

#shytrumpsupporter

OLD, TIRED QUOTE ISN'T TRUE ANYMORE

Shigeru Miyamoto : "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad."

Millions of gamers : "What about download patches?"

Mityamoto : "...Shut up."

A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/shigeru_miyamoto.html

A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/shigeru_miyamoto.html

A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/shigeru_miyamoto.html

A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/shigeru_miyamoto.html

A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/shigeru_miyamoto.html

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AKA POSITIVE DISCRIMINATION............................. (AKA DISCRIMINATION)

Affirmative action is the policy of favoring members of a disadvantaged group who suffer or have suffered from discrimination within a culture.

Or if you prefer, you do the exact same thing you used to hate other people for doing. Instead of creating an actual level playing field where literally EVERYONE can compete fairly, you arbitrarily decide that one group has "has its time" and now needs to take a back seat. Positive (ugh) discrimination leaves meritocracy and effort on the back-burner for the profit of identity politics.

The inevitable end result is that you end up with a less competent corps of personel than you would have with REAL equality. For example, if only 10% of candidates for police jobs are women, and you force a quota of 50% female police workers, the women chosen for the job won't be as good as a simple result of being selected from a much smaller pool of applicants. And again, since nobody bats an eye when it's men being shafted, here's a reverse example : if a health-care system decided to impose 50% male nurses, you would get a dropoff in nurse quality because you would have to turn away many excellent female candidates and let in mediocre men.

It also creates as many problems as it solves. Watch the sh*t hit the fan when you combine the current implementation of this idea (forcing equality of outcome and equal representation everywhere) with that other deliriant ideology, the spectrum of gender identities. There's not gonna be enough jobs in existence to accomodate everyone I tell ya. What's Justin "2015" Trudeau gonna do about his silly cabinet parity when there's more accepted genders than positions in the cabinet? Enlarge it? Make ministers take turns?

Somewhere along the way, we stopped thinking "Offering the same opportunities that white men have to women and minorities is progress" and started thinking "Women and minorities are a progress compared to white men".

Preventing someone from getting a job or an award because of their identity, even though they are the most qualified for it, is discrimination pure and simple. You're just adding the word "positive" at the end to feel better about yourself when you're the one doing it.

PLEASE DON'T USE SEXIST WORDS LIKE....

"Mansplaining" is a sexist and thus completely unacceptable word.

To see if something is sexist (or racist or discriminatory in any way), just flip it around.

Let's say I think the phrase "The boy gave a red balloon to the girl." is not sexist. I flip it.

The girl gave a red balloon to the boy.

Seems fine.

Now let's try...

My husband keeps mansplaining to me about everything.   >

My wife keeps womansplaining to me about everything.

If you're a woman, would you find it perfectly acceptable if someone told you that you're "womansplaining" ? If not, why?

If you can't take it, don't dish it out.

THE DAILY SHOW HAS LOST IT

The original point of the show was to be a funny show on a comedy network. For a long while, all was well. But gradually, the show writers lost the ability to distinguish satire (that they were doing) from actual politics (with which it has nothing to do).

Jon Stewart spent a lot of his airtime making fun of things that were not political; he also reminded his audience from time to time that "we don't do any actual journalism; don't use us as a source of information". The new South African guy from South Africa, South African Trevor Noah, doesn't waste time with such disclaimers. He's replaced the space between the unamusing sketches with the usual self-flagellation and victimisation (did you know he had it rough in South Africa during his youth? Bet you didn't know that.)

That is one of the main problems with many of these satirical shows: they are so unfunny that it becomes very easy to forget that they are actually nothing but comedy. If you could get a regular laguh out of watching an episode, you'd have a better chance of remembering later on that what you saw was just a joke show on Comedy Central. Stewart hid behind the "I'm just a comedian" line all his career, but at least he had the decency of actually being a good one. Now what we have on air is pontificating, holier-than-thou smartasses that don't even try to make a joke. Being as funny as a real news show is a great way to get confused with real news.

I'd pay a fair sum to see the unedited versions of some of the interviews they have done the past couple years. I bet it would give off a completely different vibe. They tried to ambush Milo Yiannopoulos with this tactic and he acceted to be interviewed on the condition that his own staff could also record the whole thing and then make their own edited version. The Daily Show crew ran away immediately. That tells you a lot.

NOV 28TH!!!!! ELECTION DAY IS UPON US AT LAST !!!!!

I bet they don't find that lapsus as funny now.

THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL VERSUS THE PRESIDENCY

You're Donald Trump.

You love your country because it has been so generous to you. But it's not perfect. And lately, you feel like it's been going in the wrong direction. You wish you could do something about it.

So you decide to become president.

The first thing you need to do is to get elected. Because you have 45 years of experience dealing with wealthy and important people, you know a lot about how to speak in a manner that connects with your audience. You have an instinct for what makes people tick, what is gonna have a persuasive effect and what will and won't matter. It's already obvious to you that facts and policies don't influence people's decisions.

What type of discourse are you most likely to make...
- A rational discourse about the policies you want to implement?
or
- A populist approach that is the most likely to generate interest and votes?

Of course, along the campaign trail you're gonna run into some tough questions. The primaries are basically an insult contest, and you're pretty good at that. You and your team are working on a series of "linguistic killshots" to take out an opponent Whenever he becomes too prominent. Cruz has a rat face so Lyin' Ted should do it. Jeb looks calm and composed, why not turn that against him and call him "low-energy"? He could just be dumb enough to overact and ridicule himself while trying to get rid of the image.

You're an atheist, like most of the modern-day presidents were. But just like they did, you're gonna have to play the religiosity game. If you get in a tight spot, you'll just get out with the vaguest non-answer you can muster.

You think that Bush's Secure Fence Act is a pretty cool thing that wasn't sold well enough to the public. Obama liked it at the time. It's already half built....why not revive the project, build the second half and then claim credit for the whole thing? But instead of boring people with something like "Let's reinstate the 2008 SFA and build 313 miles of fencing while double-layering an additional 685 miles on order to curb illegal immigration by an additional 18%", of course you're gonna yell "Build a wall!" to get the blood boiling. And work out the rest with the appropriate people later on.

Like any politician, you'll promise a lot of things and then adjust and move along with public opinion and what's actually feasable.

You're pretty sure you can do this.

DUMB-KEYWORD SMASHING PART 2 : THE ONES WE HEAR A BIT LESS OFTEN

ANTI-LGBT Trump says he fully upholds gay marriage because "That was settled in the Supreme Court"
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/donald-trump-same-sex-marriage-231310

IMPULSIVE,  MAN-WITHOUT A PLAN Trump talks about politics and a possible presidential candidacy 28 years before it happened.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEPs17_AkTI

NARCISSIST Trump pays for ice rink construction in Central Park then gives away all operating income to charity.
http://www.nytimes.com/1986/11/15/nyregion/about-new-york-pssst-here-s-a-secret-trump-rebuilds-ice-rink.html

YOU KNOW WHO ELSE WAS ROOTING FOR CLINTON?

ISIS.

VIRTUE SIGNALING

Virtue signaling is a process by which an individual tries to better his social status within a given in-group by adopting a set of accepted ideas and opinions within that group, regardless of their validity or quality. Relaying those ideas around in the group rapidly becomes a way to increase your status; criticizing them, or having diverging ideas makes you lose status.

A major problem in modern mainstream journalism is that journalists give way too much importance to virtue signaling to their peers as opposed to digging for complete coverage of a story. One particular angle becomes the "right" one, and the others fall in disregard. In Hollywood, the code of conduct is very complex and strict. You have to have the right opinions about lots of things if you want to keep your career going. These two factors combined limit the range of acceptable things to say in mainstream media to a surprising degree.

It is possible to commit virtue signaling errors if one possesses insufficient information or has the wrong prejudices towards a group. Those errors can be vey costly and limit or completely cut your access privileges to the target group. For example, early on election night, a couple of tourists entered a cosy bar in Los Angeles and started watching with the other patrons. Just to make conversation, the man asked the nearest patron "So, how are things looking?". The other answered "Looks like Hillary is winning." So the couple of tourists, eager to virtue-signal their political views, erupted in an exagerrated cry of joy and hi-fived each other. The 4 nearest customers turned towards them in an unfriendly manner, and one said in an icy tone "Actually we happen to be rooting for Trump here." Oops. After overplaying their opening hand in such a clumsy manner, the couple had little choice but to leave and try at another bar.

Finally, virtue signaling is most of what people do all day every day on social media by liking the right things and by showing outrage towards the right things.

PRIMARY SOURCES

The best way to form an educated opinion on any subject is "primary sources", ie information coming directly from what you want to learn about. A good example of a primary source is a a verbatim transcript of a speech, or the complete recordings of the speech itself. Primary sources let you avoid things like spin, quoting out of context, voluntary omission of important parts, and pre-priming by pundits.

In todays' media-oversaturated world, one problem is that there's so much more secondary and tertiary sources of information than ever before, that it becomes easy to get lost in the shuffle and to neglect consumption of the source material itself. For example, I'm sure you've spent countless hours in front of your TV and computer watching tons of commentary, analysis, crtiticism, and comedy about the election. You might have a favorite channel that tells you all you need to know; you might flip through them all to get more points of view and cover all the biases; all-in-all, you're pretty confident that your opinion is informed.

Buuuuut...
How many complete, unedited Trump speeches have you heard or watched during the entirety of the campaign? ___
Do you think that that amount of primary source information is sufficient to make your position a truly educated one?

Again, primary sources by themselves are not enough. But they are the most essential part of the evidence you need to build an opinion or a case, because litterally 100% of the rest is built upon that. Any news network edits and cuts exerpts and spins parts of the primary sources; analysts talk about the primary sources and tell you what THEY thought of it, and so on.

I have selected for you a few speeches that I personally think should be heard in their original form, without media bias and editing. You will probably hear things during some of those that you don't agree with; you'll probably hear things that will give you goosebumps or make you pull your hair out : that's all right. But after taking in some of it, you might soften your opinion. Where others saw rage, you might see passion; where you thought was hate, you might find clumsily expressed good intentions. What could have been perceived like classlessness might just be colorful talk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-dZlm7m4Rw (Just a cool all-around one)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_q61B-DyPk (Yeah, the rapists one. He talks about hundreds of others things too :p )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im_uLJKzs-4 (He says he wants to rely on experts more than you might think.)

YOU LIKE THOSE KEYWORDS? LET'S CHECK'EM OUT.

Here's RACIST Trump actively fighting against racism.
https://spectator.org/64643_when-trump-fought-racists/

Here's SEXIST Trump hiring a woman to a top job in 1980.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/barbara-res-donald-trump-boss-article-1.2525669

Here's HOMOPHOBIC Trump.

Here's ANTISEMITE Trump lending his personal jet to fly a 3-year old Jewish boy to a hospital on the other side of the country.
http://www.snopes.com/trump-flies-sick-boy/

Bonus Track : He was on the ground to help out along with 200 of his staff on 9/11.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYXygIcIJ6I

HOW TO USE THE WORD "FACT" PROPERLY

Almost never.

Whenever you're about to say it or write it down, make sure that you're not talking about something else. Generally, the word "fact" should be replaced by the phrase "my personal interpretation of an anecdote or something I saw on TV". Sure, it's a mouthful; it doesn't roll off the tongue as easily. But maybe, you're only thinking of something as a "fact" because you have not been sufficiently exposed to other peoples' different perspectives on it.

An even better solution is to replace it with "I think". Here are two statements to illustrate my point.
- It is a fact that Donald Trump is racist. .
- I think that Donald Trump is racist.
I would argue that the second statement is preferable for a few reasons. First, it's actually more persuasive. You're explicitely stating that you're thinking; you're not just spewing out something you got from somewhere, you actually thought about it. Second of all, it's more inviting for another person to engage conversation. There's an implicit "What do YOU think?" at the end of that second statement. Not only are you sounding less authoritarian, but you also increase your chance of learning something.

The word "fact" should be reserved for boring things like....facts. Like the Earth is round and stuff. And even that can be questioned.

THEY EVEN GOT TO THE KIDS

When they see seven-year old kids bashing Trump on TV, some people go "Wow, that man is so evil and incompetent that even 3rd graders can see it."

Others go "Wow, the adults that are supposed to be responsible for those kids' education should really be doing a better job".

LET'S TRAVEL FOUR YEARS INTO THE FUTURE

Let's try a little thought experiment. Let's say you wake up and it's december 2020. First thing you do is you run to a pile of "old" newspapers in order to catch up on world events from 2016 to 2020.

And as you browse through the pile, it gradually dawns upon you that nothing major has really changed. Some people's lives got a little better, other's a little worse. There was the amount of natural disaster and mayhem you'd expect. It is now 0.09 degrees warmer outside on average.

But you mostly discover that the United States are, by and large, in a state comparable to 2016. The rich are still way too rich, the poor still need to work full-time just not to starve, everybody's obsessed with celebrity culture and entertainment. City people act all smug about country people; country people are angry that the system leaves them feeling stranded.

Donald Trump? Heh. He's mostly considered an okay president, a not-quite Reagan. His critics accuse him of flip-flopping on everything; his supporters praise his flexibility and ability to A-B test. His approval rating is 32%, and he's not going to run for a second mandate because he's tired and wants to spend more time with his family.

And that's it. The Republican party in power for the last 4 years hasn't done anything way out of the ordinary. They signed some dubious deals, and some great ones too. Immigration is a little bit different, minorities still get shafted in some ways, but no hecatomb or civil war or anything.

Would your mind be blown? It's shouldn't be, because after all, you're not an expert on politics; you don't know at all what's going on behind the scenes. You can barely make out a picture of what's going on on the public stage because the media are completely biased and untrustworthy. You have no notion of how teams of cognitive scientists work behind the curtain to shape public opinion. You're moslty ignorant about any notion of persuasion and large-scale communication. You're drowning in an ocean of information, misinformation and disinformation, and you have no way of sorting out what matters and what doesn't in that ocean.

Now let's travel back to 2012. I come up to you and I say "Donald Trump is going to be the next President of the United States."

Would your mind be blown? It's shouldn't be, because after all, you're not an expert on politics; you don't know at all what's going on behind the scenes, and you can barely make out a picture of what's going on on the public stage because the media are completely biased and untrustworthy. You have no notion of how teams of cognitive scientists work behind the curtain to shape public opinion. You're moslty ignorant about any notion of persuasion and large-scale communication. You're drowning in an ocean of information, misinformation and disinformation, and you have no way of sorting out what matters and what doesn't in that ocean.

(TL;DR for those of you who need the Tweet format : the concept of Trump being a perfectly fine president is as "unthinkable" now as the concept of him being elected was 4 years ago because we the public don't know shit.)

THAT DAMN POPULAR VOTE ARGUMENT

B...B...BUT TRUMP IS A NARCISSIST!

(Writer's note : I am mainly writing this piece as a counterpoint to the Huffington's post "Trump and Narcissistic Personality Disorder" article published on July 31st. Yes, I am a random faceless nobody blogger and I'm willing to tackle HuffPo head-on. That's how low my esteem of them is.)

Without going into too much detail about the clinical definition of what an acutal "Narcissist" is, because none of us have medical degrees or expertise, I will be content to use the layman's definition of the word, which is:

"Narcissism: a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others. But behind this mask of ultraconfidence lies a fragile self-esteem that's vulnerable to the slightest criticism. Something something guy looking at his own reflection blabbity-blah."

Because anyway, that's what people mean when they call someone that. I do not consider Trump to fit the mold at all. He does manifest some of the behaviour associated with the word, but I think it's mostly for show. He's a very colorful speaker and he likes to remind us every 15 minutes or so how successful he is or how popular he is; however there's nothing worrying about that, it's just campagin self-promotion.

Need for admiration? Who doesn't have that? Next!

His reaction to criticism is actually very sane in my opinion. First of all he never attacks anyone gratuitously; he only retorts when he feels attacked. He uses social media in a very effective manner, putting people in their place and making it clear that it's not a good idea to trash him. He never (?) apologizes, but again to me it's pretty clearly just campaigning strategy. 

As for lack of empathy for others, well...the man is five years past the legal retirement age; he's got a numerous and loving family; he's worth ten freaking billion dollars. With that kind of money, he could be layin' on his ass on his private island somewhere sipping Margarita's; he could be grabbing all the pussy he wanted on a tropical beach without a care in the world. Instead of that, he gets up a 4 AM every morning to attend meetings, prepare and give speeches and go on tours, all of that with the ultimate goal of serving his country for a dollar a year. He believes so strongly in a better America for everyone that he's willing to put in an amount of effort that you or I could never put in no matter how much you paid us.

So.....is Donald Trump a narcissist?

I'm gonna have to say no.

GRAB THEM BY THE PUSSY!

Don't. I just wanted to talk about the almost perfect timing of the Access Hollywood tapes release by the Clinton clan. Why "almost perfect"? If they had made this public sooner, let's say early in the campaign, people would probably have not taken it seriously enough and it would have faded away easily. But at that time, paranoia and fear were at their peak and the tapes fully fed into the public's confirmation bias that Trump was just a classless jerk who mistook women for objects.

Of course, any rational person could see that a simple conversation in a bus 11 years ago, as classless as it could have been, had no real impact on someone's ability to be the president. The attack was not about policies, about facts, or anything boring like that. It was a 100% an attack on his personality; it appealed 100% to your feelings. And that is why it was so effective. It grabbed you by the balls.

(Thunderous applause)

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Buuuut....here's the critical factor the Dems missed : the frantic flow of information around that period made so that 3 weeks was actually TOO long. We had had way too many scandals by that point, we got tired of this one in around 5 days. Plus, Trump the master manipulator, in one of his strongest moves of the campaign, completely deflected the ire of the braindead masses with a simple diversion : he changed the subject by bashing on well-respected cultural icon SNL. Less than a day after his tirade, everybody was saying he was a vain idiot for disliking Alex Baldwin and SNL, and it completely sucked the wind of the tape scandal. You can almost picture him sitting in his office going "Man, this is too easy."

PROJECT VERITAS : TROUBLING REVELATIONS

Do you know about Project Veritas?

It's a non-profit organization with the goal of exposing corruption and dishonesty in public and private institutions.

It hit upon something big about one month before the US election. Remember those "violent Trump supporters" at early Trump rallies? The media was extatic to jump on this precious footage of Trump enthusiasts harassing and fighting with "peaceful" protesters or standers by. It allowed them to paint those people as violent, impulsive and dumb.

Turns out, there is another layer to the story, one that Project Veritas's crew uncovered with a set of hidden cameras put on key personel during the campaign. Using extremely questionable methods, they caught people working for the Democratic campaign saying disturbing things while being recorded. Scott Foval of Americans United for Change describes extensively how democrats actively troll and provoke Trump ralliers in order to bait them and provide scenes for the media to capture and use as propaganda. The more juicy part is at 7:08
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IuJGHuIkzY
He basically exposes a gigantic machination initiated by the Hillary camp against unknowing republicans. The Trump supporters were not violent on their own; they were manipulated and framed.

Now, I want you to notice 2 things about what was just exposed here:
1- What actually happened is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what you thought had happened;
2- That fact changes your opinion NOT AT ALL.
That's because people are not rational and don't care about facts. They only think they do.

TRUMP IS RACIST!

Just kidding, I know he's not really racist. I went with the "controversial" title to grab your attention, because I know a lot of people who have been conditioned into thinking he is the most racist man on Earth. So this is sort of a set of counterarguments that I want to put at your disposal.

---Now, the most obvious out of the way first. The most common argument you will hear about Trump being racist is what he said about Mexicans. Putting aside that "Mexican" is not even a race...
Actual quoite : "When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
Assuming that racism means "People from another race than mine are inherently inferior and/or all alike", that statement couldn't be any less racist. He says right there that some of them are good people, that the Mexicans have their own "best people". He's simply stating that the ones fleeing their country to come here without permission aren't usually those best people. And counting the fact that of the estimated 11 million illegals in the US, 3 million of them have committed felonies or worse (a rate of over 25%), he seems to be on to something. Colorful language to be sure, but not racist, and part of a much larger speech that shows a man that's full of love for his country and its people.

---The tired routine about the KKK. So many factors render this "argument" completely moot. The KKK didn't even endorse Trump : its leader simply said that he found qualities in him. Even if they DID endorse him, that wouldn't mean anything. You have no control over who endorses you. The communist party endorsed Hillary; nobody batted an eye. Trump has repudiated and denied any interest in David Duke and his KKK innumrable times, except that one time where he seemed to not really understand the question and said "I'll have to get back to you on that" and did the next day. Of course the media jumped on that soudbyte and abused the hell out of it, but that doesnt' mean it's valid. THE KKK ARGUMENT IS NOTHING.

---The wall. I've already written quite a bit on this, so TL;DR is : several walls already exist in other countries and have supporters; the wall does nothing against people who want to come in a legit manner; it's perfectly feasable. As a matter of fact, both Obama and Hillary are on record voting for the construction of a fence between Mexico and the US in the last decade. Bet you did not know that.

---So many "racist" things attributed to him are so stretched that they barely mean anything anymore. We have anecdotal evidence of one of his black employees saying he said means things 25 years ago: what can I argue against that? Other than "it weighs nothing"? There's a giant page titled "Final Answer about Trump's Racism" with a hundred entries, but all those entries link to either Buzzfeed or Jezabel or Gawker (RIP) articles with no primary sources and no evidence. And do not forget that the zeitgeist changes very quickly: some of the things he might have said in 1981 will sound very rough to our ears, but they could have been pretty innocuous at the time. Running decades-old events through the filter of our offense-prone ears is not very fair. It's very easy to overblow everything in today's outrage culture.

After all this, my very boring conlusion is that Trump is no more or less racist than any other presidential candidate of recent history. He said several hair-raising things, sure. The man is a bit strange and seems to be having minor brain-farts sometimes. But he's far from the white-supremacist monster that his opponents wanted to paint him as.

This research was my main source for information. It's very interesting and nuanced, but I suspect no one will ever take the half-hour needed to read it.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/

THE BLUE WALL

Actually heard on the news :

"Unfortunately, the blue wall of the Democratic fortress did not hold and a wave of red crashed on the northeastern states."

It's not gonna be easy, but I'm gonna try to report the same news using MORE biased language.

"The cute little angels of the nice and beautiful princess Hillary did not bring enough marshmallows and ultrasoft WhiteSwan bathroom tissue to retain the fatal hordes of the mortal enemy of evil demon Donald Trump and his gang of studded Hell's who invaded the territory while laughing maniacally and distributing crystal-meth to 4-year-old kids." 

TRUMP IS #NOTMYPRESIDENT

Because I live in Canada.

THIS IS NOT A POLITICAL POST, IT'S A LINGUISTICS POST

Just wanted to clear some confusion about the use of the word "Literally", mostly by millenials it seems.

The word is defined as : ‘in a literal sense, as opposed to a non-literal, figurative or exaggerated sense’.

Literally literally means "to the letter" if you refer to it's latin root "litter".

For example, I've heard several people say  "Trump is literally Hitler" or "Trump is literally a clown". Both statements are false. Only one person in the history of mankind could be literally Hitler and he's dead. As for the clown thing, unless I misread or skipped parts of Mr. Trump's biography, I don't think he ever was literally a clown. He was however, elected democratically as the 45th President of the United States early on November 9th 2016. So the statement "Trump is literally the President" would be accurate.

I'M THE MOST RATIONAL PERSON I KNOW BY FAR

(Apparently our level of discourse has sunk so low that we now need warnings like this. So here goes : THIS PIECE IS SATIRE!!!)

Why? First of all, I'm a very well-informed customer. Whever I need to buy something, I do a lot of research to evaluate what's available on the market. So when I finally do make a purchase, I can be sure that my choice is objectively the best one for what I need. I'm not an impulse buyer or a trend follower, unlike most people.

Does advertisment affect me? That's kind of a stupid question, no? I just told you I only take rational factors into account. But does advertisement work on other people? Another stupid question! If it didn't work on other people, do you think there would be as much advertisement everywhere? If everyone was as rational as I am, companies would have stopped advertising long ago. I often hear people comparing BRAND-X to a cult. In find that very funny because that is so obvious to me too. I saw a guy with a BRAND-X the other day, and I thought "What a fool! If he hadn't been blinded by all the hype, he'd clearly see why BRAND-Y is better".

I also pride myself in being extremely open-minded. I an entirely open to all sets of ideas and opinions. As long as they make sense, of course. Even though I have a very powerful intellect, you can't expect anybody to waste their time reading or watching stuff that is clearly propaganda, bullshit or just plain nonsense. That's why I love watching PROGRAM-X. SHOWHOST-X is so funny! Clearly a superior mind like me. I respect SHOWHOST-X for being honest and having integrity in his reporting, for telling it like it is. Whenever SHOWHOST-X covers a topic, you know he's gonna do a deep-dive on it, like the entire 21 minutes of his show on one single topic, Wow! That way I can learn a lot about that topic, not just some superficial, coffee-machine-conversation-caliber knowledge. He's also balanced, and fair too. Not like SHOWHOST-Y on that other network, ugh! What a crook. That guy is mean and only promotes the establishment's view. He's just a pawn in the system, and I'm sure he knows it. SHOWHOST-Y has no conscience and only spews his clearly-false, one-sided narrative because some crooked corporation is willing to pay him millions of dollars to do it.

And when I vote, I carefully examine each candidate's strenghts and weaknesses, and positions on issues that really matter. Look, I know democracy does not work perfectly, or even very well at all, because every vote counts the same. My well-informed, well-researched vote is worth the same as that of any other silly ignorant hippie. Most people just cast their vote for stupid resons, like they saw their candidate holding a cute baby or saw a decade-old tape with another candidate saying something they didn't like on it. If only other people weren't so irrational and easy to influence, we would live in a much better world, because my candidate would win easily and do what's truly right.

(Once more with feeling ; THIS PIECE IS SATIRE!!!)

ABOUT THAT POPULAR VOTE THAT HILLARY WON

Picture, if you will, a game identical to classical chess. Only instead of needing to capture the opponent's king in order to win, you need to capture both of his bishops. Or something like that.

Do you think that that game would look anything like the chess we know about? It's pretty easy to see that even though the board looks the same and the pieces move the same, the strategy involved would be quite different. You wouldn't have the same openings; the theoretical point values of the pieces would be yugely different; the grandmasters would have very different systems, and so on. But most importantly, you wouldn't be able to argue "B-b-but I took his king first!" after losing a game.

The rules of the election were pretty clear since before the beginning of the campaign, right? Every party involved knew fully well that the stakes of the presidency would be decided by the 538 votes of the electoral college, right?

Picture, if you will, an identical election campagin but instead of having to win the electoral college, you had to win the popular vote in order to become president.

Now, do you think that that campaign would have looked anything like what we saw unfold during the last 18 months? It's pretty easy to see that even though the candidates are the same and the people are the same, the strategy involved would be quite different. Candidates would have campaigned in a quite different way and in different places; the relative importance of votes in different counties would de vastly different; and so on. But most importantly, you wouldn't be able to argue "B-b-but I won the electoral college!" after losing that election.

If you're still sour, you can always resort to saying "Bah, most people are stupid and uninformed anyway."

But don't forget that most people voted for Hillary.

SPOTTING AND DISARMING LOADED QUESTIONS IN TIME

Let me ask you a question.

"How can people be so stupid?"

Can you spot how the question is dishonest and loaded? How it is really an affirmation followed by a question?

Let's unpack it.
The question really means :

- People are so stupid.
- How can they be?

A more honest, unloaded question would be :

"Are people stupid?"
My personal opinion is that no, people are not stupid. So I don't even have to answer the loaded question.

YOUR WORST FEARS CANNOT POSSIBLY COME TRUE

 Even if Trump DOES gas millions of Jews, that still doesn't make him literally Hitler.

INCLUSIVENESS

In 2016, Edmund Burke would have to say “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good aerogender, anongender, autogender, bigender, blurgender, boyflux, cloudgender, demifluid, demi-vapor, epicene, femflux, genderfuzz, hemigender, horogender, libragender, magigender, nanogender, neutrois, nonbinary, omnigender, pangender, perigender, subgender, tragender, vapogender, vibragender and vocigender people to do nothing."

ARE THE NUCLEAR CODES IN GOOD HANDS?

Let's talk about the nuclear codes that everyone is so afraid to give to a "mad man".

When I look for someone to give the nuclear codes to, what I'm looking for is someone who can withstand pressure and keep a cold head in critical moments. I want a person with their head on their shoulders at all times, who will not be intoxicated or made incapable of clear thinking and action for any reason when critical situations occur.

So let's look at Hillary, who almost got those codes. It's public knowledge that she's a social drinker. She appeared suspiciously drunks in public on several occasions. Wikileaks revealed a troubling exchange where one of her staff members had to "sober her up" at 3:30 in the afternoon. Some of her speeches and public apparitions were peppered with incidents like her looking dazed and confused for no particular reason. She has concerning health problems. She passed out on the way to her car on 9/11. On election night, she couldn't even come out to give a speech when she learned the bad (for her) news. If she's made incapable of taking action by a simple electoral loss, how well could she react to a situation involving civilization-threatening weaponry?

On the other side, we have this uber-alpha male with rhinoceros-thick skin who can withstand tons upon tons of unfair and fabricated criticism for months on end and who loves his country so much that he's not even gonna draw his salary to serve it. (That's right, this narcissitic self-centered money-grabbing lunatic is going to serve his country for 1$ a year, the legal minimum he was allowed to take.) The man does not drink, never has. No drug use of any kind. Couldn't be more straight edge.

Oh, and that night where he had to be taken off-stage in a hurry because someone yelled "GUN!". While he was being escorted by his concerned secret service personel, in a moment where there was a very real threat for his own life, he had that look on his face.

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-NB094_0312go_J_20160312131419.jpg

BUILD THE WALL

Is it a stupid idea?

Well, my apartment has walls. I don't think they're a stupid idea. They come with the upside of keeping people out if I don't want them coming in. And you can leave a hole in a wall, put a door there. If someone wants to come inside, they can knock and you can let them in if you want to.

But a wall across a whole country border? It's not that different. It just takes more bricks. Some sections can be just fence. I'm pretty sure China did something similar a couple thousand years ago. Created lots of jobs for lots of people.

Can we do it?

We built skyscrapers so high that your watch goes faster on the top floor than on the ground floor. We have dams made of billions of tons of concrete that hold back quadrillions of tons of water. We got a particle accelerator that runs across two countries. We spent ten billion dollars over 20 years to dig a tunnel under the Alps because we didn't feel like going around them. So yeah, we can build a wall.

And it's gonna be an amazing wall. It's gonna be amazing. It's gonna be the best wall.

CHECK YOUR INDOCTRINATION

You might be a victim of indoctrination if...

- millions (or tens of millions) of people disagree with you on a particular topic, and you are completely unable to conceive that some or all of them are rational, well-informed, or well-educated;

- you find it so hard to argue for your position that you mostly or entirely rely on links to outside sources that support it;

- you have a hard time differentiating comedy and social commentary, you rely on comedians to provide you with actual insight on social issues even though they themselves will hide behind the "I'm just a comedian" defense whenever criticized;

- whenever someone on "the other side" says or does something violent or extreme, you feel that it's because THEY have been indoctrinated; but whenver someone on "your" side does the same, you feel that it's "for the greater good";

- you experience an excessive physical or visceral reaction when thinking or talking about a topic that really does not affect you in any immediate, physical manner, or you are willing to pay a high personal price (losing contact with friends or family members) over something that really has no effect on you personally;

- whenever you're reading a text about some abstract concept, you just can't stop yourself from mapping the abscract and general concepts expressed in that text onto some specific facts or recent events.

CRITICIZING JOHN OLIVER SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO.

Or rather, because nobody ever fucking does it.

This piece covers only the season 3 finale episode, "We Must Fight Trump, a Klan-Backed Misogynist Internet Troll" and then again, only a fraction of what was said on that episode, because there is just way too much bullshit to cover everything.

Since there is dishonesty and bias right there in the opening statement, let's start with that. The very first word is manipulative. What WE are they referring to? Are they implicitely admitting that this show is exclusively for people who voted against him? Or are they implying that even the 60 million Trump supporters should come to their senses and join "Us"? This US vs THEM framing is not a good indicator of the fairness of what is to come.

Klan-backed : Well first of all, who backed whom? Did Donald Trump endorse the KKK? Not even close. You can choose who you back, but you have no control whatsoever over who "backs you".The KKK has been reduced to marginality, even insignificance, for a long time. The fact that they choose to post a piece about Trump in their newspaper means nothing. And it's not even real "backing" as seen here http://www.snopes.com/…/02/kkk-newspaper-backs-donald-trump/ . And even more importantly, the Trump campaign completely disavowed the not-really-an-endorsement.

Misogynist : while there is some validity to the criticism, this word has become such an overused keyword that it barely means anything anymore.

Now on to the piece proper.

QUOTE : "It turns out, instead of showing our daughters that they could someday be president, America proved that no grandpa is too racist to become leader of the free world"
The american people very much showed that a woman could be elected president. Hillary was the Democratic party's candidate, she received over 60 million votes, won the popular vote, got tons of support from every possible angle. Any younger woman can look at what happened and conclude that a woman can become president if she does like Hillary but is just a little less corrupt, just a little less bad at campaigning, and knows how to work the actual rules of the college electorate just a little better.
The "racist" thing would warrant its own column. Let's just mention that he never said "All Mexicans are rapists" and maybe revisit the topic later. http://www.politifact.com/…/tim-kaine-falsely-says-trump-s…/

QUOTE : "Some of Trump's policies are alarming, including repealing and replacing Obamacare"
That could mean replacing it with something better. Obamacare is far from perfect. Nothing alarming about re-working a health system.
"building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and having Mexico pay for it"
The wall-building idea is gaining more and more traction worldwide as time goes on and nations realize that ILLEGAL immigration is actually a problem. Several countries in Europe already have or are planning walls. Norway, that haven for globalism and openness, is building one right now. https://www.lifezette.com/polize…/norway-builds-border-wall/ . And yes, that one is only 600 feet long and the US/Mexico border is thousands of miles long, but that's a question of feasability and not principle. If the principle is sound, the US have the means to build it.
"deporting all 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country"
That policy has since been changed to "work on deporting the 3 million immigrants that are in the US illegally and have commited felonies or worse". What would be more alarming than that would be sending the message that these people can do whatever they want. What is so wrong about wanting to enforce your country's laws?

QUOTE : "That leaves us with two devastating options: Either we just elected a president who didn’t mean a single word he said, or we elected one who did.”
Very weak false dichotomy fallacy. Reality is obviously not limited to those two options. Maybe they just elected a pretty normal president, who made thousands of statements, some of which were fully true, some partially true, and so on. Probably some of his promises will be completely fulfilled, others partially, others not. Trump is a very good campaigner and a master at persuasion; he obviously used simplified and colored language on countless occasions, like any normal human being does. Obama has left dozens of unfulfilled promises on the floor and is still considered a good president.

QUOTE : (about social media) "It’s best to avoid this new breed of “hyper-partisan, wildly distorted clickbait "
Very weak double fault fallacy. Traditional media has been losing the people's trust for ages and is at an all-time low mainly because it's heavily biased and dishonest.

In conclusion, the Last Week Tonight Show and its host and team of writers are about as fair and balanced as Fox News, with the added sucker-punch move of being able to hide behind the tired and clichéd "I'm just a comedian" when they are put in front of the weakness of their political discourse.
Additional criticism and analysis available here https://lorenzoae.wordpress.com/…/john-oliver-isnt-mad-max…/