people altering their brain chemistry with the same chemical offers roughly homogenous results? must be aliens.

None of the things in that list are even the slightest bit unrelated, and I think that you would be hard-pressed to give an actual, rational reason for claiming that they are.

No, what's happening here is that I jokingly said I find a band you apparently happen to like to be offensively homogenous, and you took real offense to it.

Now, look - if I had been fifteen years old, I might have liked Mumford & Sons. After all, I was completely into the craze at that point, reading Walden, listening almost exclusively to bands who took their names from animals and collectively dressed like day labourers from the early 1900s, but... then it got old, and it got old fast. Why? Because they never created anything knew. It was always accoustic, it always had the exact same sound and feel, and it could almost always be split into one of two categories - maudlin lovesongs (as in, "here I sit brokenhearted") or bright-eyed nature-romanticism (as in, "let's go into the forest and pick wild flowers and be happy FOREVER").

And now, Mumford & Sons are simply carrying on that trend. It's not a new trend by any means, and it's certainly not going to end with our current generation of band wagoneers.

And as it happens, I dislike it quite a bit.

And you're just going to have to deal with that.

I hadn't even noticed that the loathing of this band had become so ubiquitous as to become cliché.

I'm pretty happy about it, though.

Really, I'm just so tired of all these retro-fetishist, nature-romanticist hipsters with their beards and their work boots and their flannel shirts, treating masculinity as an accessory because they honestly just don't know any better. They're all just perpetual adolescents who for the life of them cannot seem to figure out what it means to become an adult. So they try to find shortcuts.

Dylan was pretentious, but he was also a genius lyricist. Seriously, no bandwagon here, and I don't know if I'd call him the greatest songwriter of all time, but... he was good. Dylan was also highly political, and could be fairly incisive, while these confused little boys, all these hipster douchebags who seem to think that honesty can be bought at a thrift store, only ever sing about flowers and trees and broken hearts.

And they're all the same. Always. As a group, they are so homogenous that it becomes offensive to me.

I suppose you could consider it going on a tangent but I think it's more escalating the topic to the point of being interesting. Anyone who has been around computers for a long time knows how file deletion works and all of us have seen video or movies about people piecing together shredded documents.

The connection to life and information is quite relevant to the topic of deletion. In fact I believe even Stephen Hawking concerned himself with the concept of information loss (deletion) with regards to blackholes and the problems with conservation of energy (energy in the form of entropy). The resolution he came to involved the outer edge of a blackhole maintaining a version of this information forever.

If you expand the scope of the definition of information to be a specific state of the universe at a point in time, including its complex members (ie us and our consciousness), and remove the temporal importance of "now" then we are all information about states of the universe at varying points in its existence.

The point at which even that basic information (the current unique state of the universe) becomes erased or irrelevant (ie heat death when there is a perfectly homogenous distribution of energy throughout the universe) is quite interesting and depressing. At that point any record of the past and the ability to discern one moment of time from the next is gone. With no variation in the universe even time itself becomes impossible to measure unless your an objective viewer of the universe (God?).

So, just to get things clear here, you're saying the rule is that you are allowed to label, overgeneralize, degrade and denigrate 100% of Americans and/or 100% of non Texans as a homogeneous group with their heads up their asses, but others are not allowed to complain about 'typical' members of other groups? I choose to exercise my freedom to not follow that ridiculous, self serving rule you've made up. Thanks.
If you can't keep it straight that I'm talking about the sub set of far right wing Texans and want to ascribe my comments to ALL Texans, that's on you not me. I feel I was quite clear.
If you want to intentionally miss-read and miss-represent my statement that there is no perfect utopia, and reverse what I said 180 deg. in order to set up a straw man you CAN argue against and a position you CAN ridicule you may, but most people reading can see that you did it, and it's not a good look. It just makes you look like your comprehension skills are severely lacking (or that your simply a whining little troll having a temper tantrum).

what a profoundly sad thread this has become.

i am not referring to the most excellent posts by @Chairman_woo and his discourse with @shinyblurry.

no.

it is the ignore function use i am talking about.
what an intellectually weak and vapid excuse to not engage with those who you may disagree with or (gasp) not actually like.

are your tender sensibilities so fragile as to not survive scrutiny of one who may disagree? or is it the manner in which they disagree?
is THAT the measure of how you judge anothers ideas?
words?
and you find this to be a valid reason?
this makes sense in your world?

well allow me to point out that without the dissenting voice challenging your preconceptions and only allowing those that parrot the same homogenized,pastuerized vanilla-same cloned vomit will only serve to create a stagnant pond of lifeless banality.

but as long as you are safe in your little bubble world in which you are always right and the circle-jerk perpetuates a lackluster and flaccid worldview.then thats ok right? as long as the echo chamber reflects how RIGHT you are.

@chingalera offends you?
good! because maybe you needed to be offended.

@VoodooV we have to apologize to @bareboards2 for derailing her thread?
no we fucking dont.
human discourse is by its very nature an ugly evolving creature.so get over yourself.love your commentary,hate your high horse..so get the fuck off it.

@bareboards2 is a very nice and sweet woman,and sometimes can be sensitive but she is a big girl and i dont think we will find her weeping in a dark,curtains drawn room.in fact i am willing to bet she loves the fact her video got such a great discussion going.so who are you to judge? or tell us what we should or should not do for that matter?

this brings me all back to my main point.
the sift used to have a vibrant community that discussed,argued and debated.the arguments were legendary and we still see old skool sifters refer to these people with fondness,even if they disagreed with them vehemently.
they were passionate and had something to say.
the list reads like a funeral march to those great voices who have passed and no longer engage in the sift:@MINK,@rougy,@choggie,@thinker247,@joedirt

what do we have now?
bunch of panty waist pussies who will only jump on the band wagon because other people join in the carnage.jumping on @BoBknight,@shinyblurry,@Lantern.
its like a bully convention with free crystal meth.
these folks might as well be black living in mississippi in the 1800's.
look! a chrsitan fundamentalist!
a conservative right winger!
lets lynch em......

and those tired pussies dont even have the courage to choke on their own hypocrisy.
wont even acknowledge that those in the minority have some serious balls to post comments on a secular left site.
this hasnt become a self-masturbatory thread.
its one big circle jerk.

so to those old skool peeps that i know still lurk here on the sift.
please come back.
for the love of god come back.
because these pussies are to busy sucking each others dicks.

im going to get some fresh air because you fuckers have sucked all the vibrance out of the air and left it stale with your own hubris.

and for the love of christ.get the fuck over yourself.

I don't really understand how you can say "If you don't want to get raped, don't dress like a slut", as if raping sluts is somehow normal or more approved of. Raping anyone is bad, whatever their profession is. Though I do agree with the similar sentiment that "If you don't want to be thought of as a slut, don't dress like a slut." Just like (borrowing from Dave Chappelle) if you don't want to be thought of as a policeman don't go wearing a police uniform.

About the equal pay, they go on about it here too, but it's frankly just bullshit. They get the statistics by running together averages of every job but neglect the fact that if you take a man and a woman who do the same job and have equal experience, they get equal per hour pay. The fact that women on average end up in lower paying jobs and/or do less hours is another issue entirely. If we "equalized" the wages like they're suggesting it'd lead to a situation where women get paid more for less work, which is even less equal.

The microaggression thing... Really? People take the words that seriously? What the fuck is wrong with people? And aren't most swear words in English actually religious in origin, rather than sexual in nature? And even then, I can't think of a single swear word that says "what women do during sex is bad and humiliating". Any suggestions?

Reproductive health... Well, the American medical system is fucked up beyond recognition anyways, so par for the course. Good luck with that.

Media representation is a pretty valid point though, but I must say you don't really see a wide variety of men either, they're largely homogenized in very similar ways to how women in media are usually portrayed. And to the sheer amount of women on TV... I'd like to think that if more women were better at it than men, then there'd be more women there. I don't want a 50/50 split just for the sake of equality, I want the best people to do the jobs whether they're men or women.

Olympics sucks without never ending corporate homogenous slick mercantile bullshit

edit: (i refuse to use the sarcasm button)

For the last 20 or so years, my family has owned a yellow-naped Green Amazon parrot. He's finicky, and very territorial around his cage. He's quite a bit larger than these Caiques, but smaller than a Macaw. When we let him out of his cage, he's not nearly this... playful. He usually just wants to hide in a corner until he feels safe enough to explore. If you handle while they're still very young, then they can be this playful. It really depends on how their raised.

In general, social animals, that is to say, animals that flock or group with animals from the same or even similar species (the birds on Telegraph Hill in SF come to mind, they're not a homogeneous flock) tend to make better pets than animals that lead solitary lives in the wild (cats, reptiles, etc). They tend to have a more defined personality, and have more capability to read social cues and take training.

The things is, birds know they're fragile - most of their bones are only paper-thin. So they posture up, get defensive and territorial around their cages. To train them, you usually have to take them out of their place of power, that is, their cage, to another space that they don't have as much familiarity or control.

The Amazon my family has kept for 20 years, as I said, is very finicky. But 20 years of trust built up has made him a little more friendly to me, at least. He tolerates my mom, and used to be outright hostile to my dad (the bird would kick grit from the bottom of his cage at him, lunge to bite at him if he got close to his cage. But I'm the only one he'll let pet him on a consistent basis, and even then, if he's in a mood he might lunge at me. He also hasn't had much training at all, and to handle him by hand is to risk getting bit HARD. No one else in the family has attempted it, and I usually get bit in the process His jaws put out a LOT of force. Usually he tries to play with my earrings or hair, but winds up chomping my ear or scalp. I don't hold it against him, he's probably trying to figure out how to climb to the top of my head. If you want to handle animals, you have to accept that getting bit or scratched will be an inevitability.

My wife's family took care of a Grey Amazon that found his way to their home about 20 years ago. You could say the bird adopted them. One of his legs was busted - he likely broke it himself to break free of what chained him down, and he still managed to fly away with clipped wings. Most birds keep their beak ground and well-kept, but he let his beak over-grow, curving to one side of his upper beak and hooking upwards in a manner that looked threatening. His cage was left open frequently so he could bop around, but usually he'd just want to climb up someone's leg all the way up to their shoulders. He was very rough around the edges, likely because of the constant pain of a disfigured leg, but eventually warmed up to me and let me scratch his head. He passed away a couple years ago, around Christmas time. He is missed.

If I could wish for one thing in America's collective consciousness it would be to learn what the fuck socialism is inside and out. Then maybe we could all move on from this strangely fucked up "plateau" we've been sitting on for a while and start fixing this place up. Come tog-get-THAAA! Right nowwww!

>> ^enoch:

this was a pretty good rant but i do find it ironic that he chastises people for not knowing history and meanings when he,himself,is using a twisted and perverted meaning of "libertarianism".
maybe if he understood that his version of "libertarianism" is the bastardized,homogenized and totally corrupted american version.
lets call it 'ron paul libertarianism" and it is almost completely opposite of the original ideology found in europe and even in the beginnings of this country.
jefferson would not recognize the libertarian philosophy we see espoused in the american media today.

this was a pretty good rant but i do find it ironic that he chastises people for not knowing history and meanings when he,himself,is using a twisted and perverted meaning of "libertarianism".
maybe if he understood that his version of "libertarianism" is the bastardized,homogenized and totally corrupted american version.
lets call it 'ron paul libertarianism" and it is almost completely opposite of the original ideology found in europe and even in the beginnings of this country.

jefferson would not recognize the libertarian philosophy we see espoused in the american media today.

>> ^entr0py:

>> ^kceaton1:
Utah, used to be the old number one, for insight. BTW, we are also a VERY heavily abstinence leaning state--outside of Salt Lake City, Park City, and Ogden. Some adults I know personally didn't truly know what sex was--fully and all its implications until they were 25 years old, almost seniors in COLLEGE...
Utah. Utah is almost all low to high middle income Caucasian urbanites... It's incredibly homogeneous. But, you could say due to the LDS church's influence this is a special scenario. Yet, in other states religion tends to be one of the highest reasons this subject comes up.
Luckily, my parents taught me early and I had Sex Ed in my health class and knew by 14 the full implications. Utah (our idiotic political carpetbaggers that have carved the state up so they can get these things into the pasture and passed easily due to the higher numbers of their types in office; that are all affiliated with the Tea Party strangely enough--and like Glenn beck...), this year, tried to BAN Sex Ed in its legislature. But the governor was forced to veto the bill due to public outrage (strangely enough, it pissed off a lot of people here). Basically they passed a bill that would have forced abstinence ONLY education even though (I believe) we are number two behind Mississippi.

I'm dubious about that. In fact, here's the first data I came across with a google search. Check out page 15. Utah is way below average and among the lowest in the country for every year they have data, going back to the 80s. In 2005 we were number 45 out of 50 in teen pregnancies.
But then again we're not an abstinence only state. If republicans manage to change that, as they nearly did, I guess we'll have a good case study.


Strange I'll have to check that out. Of course, I'm COMPLETELY basing everything I'm saying off of what a KSL report said pre-veto (of the 2012 Utah legislature's "Abstinence Only" Bill). Perhaps they had their data misconstrued and presented it the wrong way. I'll post the KSL story if I can find it in their history; then look at our information and statistics and then see what they may have possible misread and thought it was us, for some reason--they specifically said the previous cycle year to this study; so I'm confused to.

Thanks for catching that for me @entr0py, I appreciate that sort of thing.

So I admit I may be wrong, sorry if I am! I'll release another, "I'm sorry", later when I have better detail of why I got bad reporting.

>> ^kceaton1:

Utah, used to be the old number one, for insight. BTW, we are also a VERY heavily abstinence leaning state--outside of Salt Lake City, Park City, and Ogden. Some adults I know personally didn't truly know what sex was--fully and all its implications until they were 25 years old, almost seniors in COLLEGE...
Utah. Utah is almost all low to high middle income Caucasian urbanites... It's incredibly homogeneous. But, you could say due to the LDS church's influence this is a special scenario. Yet, in other states religion tends to be one of the highest reasons this subject comes up.
Luckily, my parents taught me early and I had Sex Ed in my health class and knew by 14 the full implications. Utah (our idiotic political carpetbaggers that have carved the state up so they can get these things into the pasture and passed easily due to the higher numbers of their types in office; that are all affiliated with the Tea Party strangely enough--and like Glenn beck...), this year, tried to BAN Sex Ed in its legislature. But the governor was forced to veto the bill due to public outrage (strangely enough, it pissed off a lot of people here). Basically they passed a bill that would have forced abstinence ONLY education even though (I believe) we are number two behind Mississippi.


I'm dubious about that. In fact, here's the first data I came across with a google search. Check out page 15. Utah is way below average and among the lowest in the country for every year they have data, going back to the 80s. In 2005 we were number 45 out of 50 in teen pregnancies.

But then again we're not an abstinence only state. If republicans manage to change that, as they nearly did, I guess we'll have a good case study.

>> ^dag:

I'm all for sex ed, but correlation is not causation - as is quickly skimmed over by Cenk, ethnicity, income etc would play a much larger role than just a few crppy high school health classes.



Utah, used to be the old number one, for insight. BTW, we are also a VERY heavily abstinence leaning state--outside of Salt Lake City, Park City, and Ogden. Some adults I know personally didn't truly know what sex was--fully and all its implications until they were 25 years old, almost seniors in COLLEGE...

Utah. Utah is almost all low to high middle income Caucasian urbanites... It's incredibly homogeneous. But, you could say due to the LDS church's influence this is a special scenario. Yet, in other states religion tends to be one of the highest reasons this subject comes up.

Luckily, my parents taught me early and I had Sex Ed in my health class and knew by 14 the full implications. Utah (our idiotic political carpetbaggers that have carved the state up so they can get these things into the pasture and passed easily due to the higher numbers of their types in office; that are all affiliated with the Tea Party strangely enough--and like Glenn beck...), this year, tried to BAN Sex Ed in its legislature. But the governor was forced to veto the bill due to *public* outrage (strangely enough, it pissed off a lot of people here). Basically they passed a bill that would have forced abstinence ONLY education even though (I believe) we are number two behind Mississippi.