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Comments
I like how no one responded to the ethical oil bit. I mean, I did frame it in the Canadian perspective, but I'm sure crap like that affects everyone.
But I bring it up because things are getting pretty heated in B.C. right now regarding pipelines. I wonder if the anti-Keystone XL pipelines are that vociferous.
I don't think it happens because of the issue in itself is worth less than the drama around here, it happens because we tacitly agree that oil exploitation is a dumb idea on the 21st century. FOCUS ON RENEWABLE.
Thing is, even if we all agree that oil is bad, there's still room for discussing alternatives and how to push back against the huge amount of money and influence the oil companies have. Heck, even to what extent oil protestors' actions are justified if you want to go that route. I'd say in B.C. at least, it's interesting because citizenfolk have had a storied history of being willing to risk arrest for environmental issues.
The book sounds like Appeal To Bigger Problems, the equivalent of mumbling Saudi-Arabia in feminist debates on local issues.
That's because it is.
I just want to point that we also ignored the sealion-on-penguin action(have to work in a joke about this comic, maybe: http://wondermark.com/1k62/).
Apparently research shows the penguins are victims of systemic oppresion. The first recorded case, once thought a one-off event, turned out to be a tip of the iceberg.
I feel like I also need to mention something...
I did. That's all I'll say since I don't want my personal life leaking onto this forum and this is venturing into nerve-hitting territory.
I'll have to survey my college professors on this now. It's a pretty interesting idea, an engineering college expierience should show me how bad do my fellow female students and professors have it.
Mind you, I'm not saying there is no occasional jerk, it's just I'd ask for more than an occasional jerk or even an occasional faculty staffed by jerks if I am to call it systemic and hostility. If it's everywhere, then I'd expect it to be a bit more than that.
It's more than the occasional jerk.
I think we should leave this conversation aside. It's not easy to discuss without real-world experience of that kind of thing.
Hmm...in its initial form, this forum was meant for petty grievances akin to James Rolfe's "You Know What's Bullshit?!" series, right? Compared to, say, On-Topic Conversations for "serious" discussions.
You say it like I wasn't petty enough.
I don't think this forum bears much of any resemblance to its "original form" by now.
I know I said this a lot already, but I still miss the times when we had the more goofy forum members posting so we had a good mix of silly and serious topics. Nowadays, that kind of topic has a low life span.
I also lost enthusiasm after the locked megathread exposed the ugly side of the forum.
Pretty much any kind of topic has a low life span nowadays.
Maybe I can liveblog something sometime.
Things are getting pretty heated here in the US over it too.
Supposedly they're gonna have a vote on it to try to help Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA)'s re-election efforts, I hear. (She's facing a runoff election in December.)
The pipeline, as I understand it, has multiple potential issues, the biggest of which are:
A1. facilitating more development of fossil fuels -- especially making oil from tar sands, which is very water-intensive
A2. potential problems that would occur due to leaks or ruptures in the pipeline, and especially how they may affect groundwater aquifers upon which people rely -- such as the Oglala Aquifer, if I recall correctly.
Do note that there already exists a Keystone pipeline running from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico (can't remember whether it's Houston or Louisiana). Keystone XL would just be an expansion of that capacity, doubling it or so.
Proponents have pointed to a couple counterarguments:
B1. It's better to use Canadian tar sand oil than to take it from conflict zones or otherwise get it from countries who might have unfriendly (or even outright destabilizing) uses for the money. Obviously, they mean the Middle East.
B2. The tar sands will be developed anyway, but if the US blocks the Keystone XL pipeline, Canada will instead develop a pipeline out to British Columbia to ship it out that way, or something along those lines, and it's better for the US to capture part of the revenue.
I don't think B1 really holds much water because it's really just a matter of time before Middle-Eastern oil sources will be developed, given that human civilization shows little significant signs of giving up much in the way of oil consumption anytime soon.
Some labor groups support it for reason B2, for what it's worth. Not sure how valid that reason is -- the companies that would be "creating" those jobs would be pretty pressured by their shareholders toward profit-maximization anyway, and besides, the construction jobs would only be temporary.
Personally, I don't support building Keystone XL.
Hence the "Actually, it's about ethics in oil production" comment. Bitumen has the same effect on the land and sea no matter where it comes from.
Regarding that argument, the majority of B.C. are firmly opposed to any pipelines and the environmental stakes are even worse since the oil is travelling by ocean. So I wouldn't bet on that.
On a related note, despite the free market trumpeting that usually comes with these projects, it's worth mentioning that fossil fuels receive $550 billion in subsidies (as of 2013) worldwide. So energy is currently a rigged carnival game right now.
Oh boy.
The "free market" is a myth anyway.
>ugly side
But that's always been here, especially looking at some of the Tumblr mocking trends and some lingo usage. Plenty of people have left in disgust towards BTL over it, if I recall correctly.
That's not what I meant. I was referring to ninjaclown constantly posting bullshit and being enabled by other users while refusing to defend his positions. Chagen, Tnu, Hatter, and the like never got away with that much. His behaviour in that thread drove me mad, because no matter how much uninformed, offensive drivel he posted, I would be blamed for getting angry at him even after all the times I said I was pissed because he was ignoring my counterarguments. That was the kind of passive-aggressive attitude we used to criticize TV Tropes for. Also, when I made the self-proclaimed centrist thread, I was actually referring to the forum itself (and yes, I am aware that it counts as passive-aggressive, but I wasn't sure what I was allowed to say).
I think in that case hardly anyone cared.
This place has self-proclaimed centrists? Closest I can remember was that political test thread and I got a result as super centrist, although I was in the minority.
At first I didn't mind as much. Then he started denying harassment, which hit a sensitive nerve for me.
I really don't know what to say, his, I am assuming, misguided regurgitations of GG partylines were so blatant regurgitation that I didn't feel like they needed more than a cursory glance to notice they were not that well-put arguments, so I didn't feel the need to intervene.
Even if I am theoretical pro-GG(which is funny because my latest game purchases are Analogue: A Hate Story and Hate Plus and I have never once engaged in the hashtag or collective activism/harassment surrounding it.). Mea Culpa for not putting effort into critiquing his points.
Rereading the thread, I'm pointing out some nuance to his posts and lambasting the excessive linkdumping.
>misguided
Lazy, gunjumpy and partisan, maybe, but I don't think NinjaClown makes decisions in false consciousness.
Also, it's funny, because I remember Christine Love for "don't take it personally, it just ain't your story, baby" and the student-teach thing made me cringe a tad for how little commentary there was on it for a game by a pronounced progressive dudette(essentially, zilch come-uppance for giving in to a student's flirtatious overtures). Was there ever any backlash out of the usual corner to that?
That's the part that made you cringe? Mine was when I was told there was absolutely nothing wrong with the kids having 0 boundaries. Granted, I played through the game shutting down all the advances from the student in question.
Not to mention the LOL privacy thing(assuming you didn't mean that). I completed all the routes on short VNs anyway, but it was a tad of a trainwreck with regards to message.
Somebody argued through linkdumps. We'll survive.
I've only played the 'Patriarchal Society in Space is bad mmmmkay' Duology of hers, so all my knowledge from her other games is merely second hand info. One thng that does bother me is how little middle ground she presents between the two AI. And the AI suicide in the second one is its own can of worms.
Update on the comet guy, people raised 18k to compensate for the boo-boo, and the vultures are stepping in: https://storify.com/public/templates/card/index.html?src=//storify.com/RipplesOfDoubt/conversation-with-mayainamura
At least it's a step up from e-begging for yourself.