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Comments
^^ Most of my "expertise" is in matters of Central Europe, so if it isn't Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Poland or Italian city-states, you almost definitely have a better idea than I do about what's going on.
Trust me when I say that people who habitually torrent things always know more about technology than you do.
^^^^ Maybe the problem is with you and not with whoever uploaded it?
^^ VLC is shit. Never suggest that anyone use it.
@DYRE:
If it works it works. I agree it causes more problems than it solves, and as such I wouldn't suggest it as anyone's primary player, but sometimes it will play things that regular players won't without a lot of fuss. It can't hurt to try.^ Pretty much, yeah
was that intentional
Also, funnily enough, me too. I watched it with a cousin I never really talked to and we hit it from there.
Solace is...not really bad? but not really good either. I dunno. I remember feeling distinctly disappointed with it.
Oh, we've been like brothers since infants (we are mere months apart in age), but we still bonded over the movie,
I don't even.
Does anyone else have this problem where you meet someone new and hit it off with them really well, but you forget/don't bother to/feel awkward asking for some way to keep in touch with them if you want to hang out? I have this habit of finding people who I can somehow converse with for hours on end, and then failing to keep in touch with them.
Context:
>working with a friend on a presentation a friend and I were supposed to do today
>another girl walks into the study where we're trying to study
>the class we have to present for is a joke anyway, so I just converse with this new person about God knows what (after having already conversed with other friends/made silly jokes after hearing a song about booty/showed them the glory of Moonbase Alpha)
>it's already past midnight, so I'm probably overly vulgar and prone to rambling
>but dear God, I'm actually amusing her
>we talk about our lives and classes and stuff
>she goes to bed, and I leave the dorm
>didn't get her last name or her number or anything, just her first name
Now I'm wondering when's the next time I'll even see her.
Yes.
I was wondering whom to vote for, if elections were this year. The criminals* or the insane?
* if you feel charitable, you may just call them stupid, but I feel stupidity is more evenly spread around the political spectrum.
Well, with criminals, you more-or-less know what you're getting.
Just add her on Facebook or something?
I might hang out in that study more often anyway.
@Everest: I had a very similar situation a couple weeks ago. Now I have a hard time keeping in touch even when I have this girl's Facebook (mainly because neither of us really uses it).
@JHM:
Well, not quite. Apart from several short earlier periods, Serbia became fully independent from Byzantine sovereignty somewhere in the late 12th century. The Fourth Crusade in 1204 terribly hurt the Byzantines, and Serbs spent pretty much the entire 13th century peacefully building up their economy, military and statehood, only for King Milutin launch a successful military campaign against the Byzantines at the beginning of the 14th century, taking large parts of their territory. His son, Stephen of Decani, pacified the neighboring Bulgaria, and grandson King Dusan used a political turmoil in Constantinople to conquer more than half of what was left of the Byzantine Empire in the mid-14th century, which is when that code of laws was written.
Dusan gave himself the title "Emperor of Serbs, Greeks and Albanians" and had ambitions to conquer the rest of the Byzantine Empire, return it to its former glory and raise an effective front against the Turks. He died young, before he managed to accomplish that, was succeeded by an incompetent son who gave way too much power to feudal lords, whose constant infighting and terrible organization made the Ottoman conquest a joke. After the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, what was left of Serbia remained a vassal of sometimes Turkey, sometimes Hungary, sometimes both at the same time for the next 70 years, when it was finally crushed.
@lrdgck: What are the exact parties in question?
I'm trying to write a Lovecraftian western but I'm beginning to feel like all my time entrenching myself in Silent Hill lately is working against me.
I'm not going to provide any further info till next evening, so until then you'll have to do with that.
So basically, the Polish political scene nowadays is: PO ("the criminals") - the ruling party, supposedly liberal centre-right, in practice a ruling party by virtue of not being PiS; PiS ("the insane") - the primary opposition party, religious social-democratic nationalists, run by a guy who seems to exhibit some sort of Napoleonic-messianic complex - scarily enough, I can never guess if he's a rabid wacko, or a devious mastermind; SLD - supposedly social-democratic, in practice the remnant of the Party, subsisting on old regime personnel, pandering to the New Left, and commie nostalgia filter; Ruch Palikota - the New Left, modern left-liberal who may or may not be a vanity project of their leader, I could also call them a political machination by PO leader if I saw him smart enough to pull that off; PSL - supposedly the agrarian party, in practice a self-propelled nepotic machine, in league with PO so far (I respect them, 'cause they're - metaphorically speaking - harder to kill than Rasputin).
So, "the criminals" stayed in power right for that reason - they were predictable. But then, there was a heap of annoying events that cast them in a negative light.
First, a massive financial pyramid scam - but not in the amount of money stolen (which still was not neglectable), but in scope; given the flamboyant funding of various enterprises by the scammer, pretty much nobody believes he himself was not a front for some bigger operation. Gold smuggling is probably the least harmful option.
Then some journalist impersonated a government official, and tricked a judge dealing with that case into admitting to him he can direct the case to their intention. Some of the judicial staff there also seemed to be buddies with the Prime Minister, whose son had been an analyst for one of the scam-funded enterprises.
In the meantime, two kids died (i.e. somewhere between murder and criminal negligence) in a foster family. It quickly turned out that pretty moch NONE of the local services - local administration, child care service, foster families, police, justice - none of them worked anywhere near properly.
And now for the big finale: remember that time when Polish President suffered a bad case of plane crash in Russia? You bet these things cause conspiracy theories to spring up like mushrooms after the rain. Most of the time, they've been in the realm of conspiracy theories. Until now: as the more PiS-friendly of the crash victims' families got an exhumation they've been asking for, it turned out that no, for those two years they've been mourning for the wrong person. After two fucking years of the government telling everyone that everything is in best fucking order and the complainers are just a bunch of crazy old conspiratorial farts. And then some doctor broke some sort of vow of silence the medical crew has agreed on (AFAIK they don't deny his words, just are upset he broke that vow), and divulged that yeah, all the time, the government pretty much allowed the Russian side to do whatever they wanted. Mind you, this does not validate the conspiracy theories, but proves the complainers have been right all the time that the government has been totally uninterested in not even the basic decency. So as I said, it does not validate the conspiracy theories - after that, it's hard not to feel the urge to get some tinfoil just in case it comes handy, but even if you steer a ten-foot-pole length away from anything related to aluminum, you can still feel the stink.
Finally, "the insane" has yet again attempted a strategy of reaching out to the not-crazy. I'm not going to fall for that, he did it plenty of times before and always returned to his insane home ground in the end, but he's picked like the best time to strike. So you can guess, after that string of shit, he suddenly starts to look appealing.
I'm curious what the time will bring. The opposition most likely won't get the votes to hasten the elections, and the schedule has them in like three years. Much can happen by then.
I am having so much fun watching my roommate watch Breaking Bad. He’s getting so stressed out and it’s amazing.
^^That's a fucked up choice, and I know it all too well. Modern participatory democracy has become a fucked up, degenerated system, and usually gives you nothing but an illusion of choice - I've yet to see a reasonable person in any country who genuinely and wholeheartedly supports a candidate or party, believing that they will fully represent their interests, rather than simply picking what they deem the lesser evil. This year I voted solely because it were the first elections where I was eligible to vote, and I couldn't think of anything witty to spoil the ballot with. I know that ideology is pretty much nonexistent and meaningless in modern mainstream politics, but I picked the party that (at least in theory) was the closest to what I stand for. Maybe you could do it too.
Democracy gone bad is a horrible thing, but to flatly condemn all democracy is just silly.
I'm not condemning democracy in general, only the type of democracy that is most prevalent today.
What I see as ideal is a non-partisan hybrid of direct and parliamentary democracy, based on the majority rule system.
Think of it like this - the state is radically decentralized into municipalities, which hold a large part of executive power based on the direct democratic system. Since it would be impractical to have a pure direct democratic system for legislation, each municipality gets to pick a number of representatives to represent them in the legislative body by direct vote. The representatives run solely as individuals, with no party backing them, and are instantly repealable in case the majority population of the municipality they represent see their work as unsatisfactory or contrary to their interests.
You know what's surreal?
Have a teacher who talks lenghtily about his experiences posting on forums on the internet.
That would be pretty weird, yeah.
Stand back everyone, I'm USING the INTERNET!
Well, using the internet is normal, but I'd expect a prof to mostly be using it for, like, email and Farmville.
I just don't expect a professor to tell me about that time he argued with some douche on a forum about why Independence Day is a horrible movie.
@Juan: was it tv tropes
He never specified.