Raider5678

The random teleporting of things like quarks and atoms. The state of matter being two places at once. The state of matter is in two different forms at once. (Wave and particle) Stuff like that. Confusing. However, mainly it's because it seems like magic, many of the concepts. Once again, however, magic is just something we don't fully understand. So yeah. It's complicated to understand, therefore, it's strange. Like mindreading.

https://www.iraqbodycount.org/ This source puts Iraq deaths up to 260k from direct war violence. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/15/iraq-death-toll_n_4102855.html This one puts it at 500k. They did it by getting together 2000 families, asking them how many people they knew had died before the war, and then asking how many they knew had died after the war. Which is still well below 1 million people dead. So I'm not sure where you got that number. Because that's more than twice even generous estimates. Additionally, world war 1 had 18 million deaths. World war 2 had between 50-80 million. Now I know you don't "include" violent periods in the past in your progress reports, but I disagree if that's a logical way to do it. If it is, then you'd have to ignore almost all of human history back to before recorded history. Vietnam, the Korean war, world war 2, world war 1, the civil war, Napoleon wars, the French revolution, the revolutionary war, the French and Indian war, (around this point and back, death tolls were lower because of a smaller population size) Colonial wars, medieval times, the Germanic tribe wars, the Roman wars, the Greek wars, the Persian wars, all the way back to the Assyrians and the Egyptians. We have never before in recorded history had a period of time with less war going on than now. Just saying. Even if you measure the wars in terms of death per 100,000 per year, war is a dying trend. Now I'm not saying war is good, or that we should bring back wars, or that war is non-existent. I'm just saying, it is something we've made progress on. We're living in more peaceful times than ever before. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch North Korea's military parade.

So through that, they came to the conclusion right-wing authoritarians were more emotionally stable?

Could you clarify that? Like what is that test?

Ultimately I don't mind people downvoting my stuff. I've said stupid stuff before, and I can definitely see why some got like 12 downvotes. But yeah. I see. I was just about to say I received another 2 of them on the same posts, but that would be it reversing. Alright then. Additionally, it could have been a case of confirmation bias on my point if it is fairly sporadic.

I'd like to put in the ability to see who downvoted your posts. For the past few days, I've woken up in the morning to a string of downvotes of posts I made days or even weeks ago.

Respectfully, I disagree. One thing I've learned is that you can convince most people of anything. If you're clever enough, you could get people to vote on a bill that is completely and utterly terrible......because you convinced them it wasn't. When we vote in politicians, they know what to look for in bills. If it's completely and utterly terrible, they'll point it out and most won't vote for it. Let's say I wanted to pass Bill A. Bill A states as follows: All consumption of coffee is now illegal. Now I got to prove why we should do this. I get a lot of scientists to publish thousands of studies on the harmful effects of coffee. (If this doesn't make sense, replace coffee with marijuana or a drug of some type) Then I convince the majority of voters, at least 51%, to pass this bill. Congratulations. You now have a bill that doesn't absolutely nothing. There's no power under it. Who will enforce the bill? Where will funding to enforce the bill come from? What are the penalties? What are the offenses? Is it legal to own just not to use? How will this fit into the current budget of the city-state? What are the estimated impacts of this bill? What are the predictions for this bill? Is the bill realistic? Will it waste more money then it saves? And about 50 other questions. Even if a bill was written by an idiot, if it sounds popular enough, it could possibly become law. Like "No more paying taxes for anyone making less than $75,000." That'd get a large number of voters considering most of them will be far below that. And convincing them they shouldn't pay taxes is not hard. Trust me. But, if you'd like to theorize about this idea I have no problem with it. First and foremost you have to address the budget. How much money does each city-state get? Is it dependant on how many people are in the city-state? Is it dependant on the poverty level(since you're thinking worldwide, you MUST account for this) etc. Questions like this you need to answer with a solid budget plan. How are taxes collected? How much per person are taxes? Do city-states only get what they collect in taxes? etc. The U.S.A. made the mistake of not having a powerful government to collect taxes. They nearly destroyed themselves when individual states refused to pay taxes. Think carefully. Use statistics on the number of people in the world, how much they make, etc. You may have to set the budget up in stages. As you absorb 3rd world countries your budget needs will have to shift dramatically. So maybe have differen't stages like "Stage 1: Absorbing Europe. Stage 2: Absorbing Asia Stage(Many small poor countries here.) 3: Absorbing North America(You get Mexico here. A massive poorish country.) Stage 4: absorbing south America Stage 5: Absorbing Africa(final stage. Most 3rd world countries. Poorest people on earth.) Also, drop the Aussies in with Europe.

Actually, they elected senators, who then wrote the bill, which was then brought before the people to be voted on. The people didn't write the bills. They just voted on which ones to pass.

Yes. Smaller nukes would inevitably lead to many more nukes. More nukes mean security will be spread thinner, and there are more opportunities to steal one.

Leave Trump out of it. This isn't really related to the tread topic, is an attack on the Republican Party(which I have no problem about, but this is neither the time nor the place), and this type of thing is what lead to the other thread being closed in the first place.

Funny. I always assumed the redskin squirrels would be from the United States.... I never even knew they were an invasive species either way, so yeah. Learn something new everyday.

Unless I'm wrong, you could probably make apple cider with it as well. I don't drink wine. So that's what I'd make instead.

That a lot of these threads have shown up. Come to read it thought he said posts, not threads. My mistake.

Well said.

But if there is enough matter to form black holes, it would have had to first form stars and planets first. Unless I"m mistaken?

Agreed. The goal of life is not to win every argument there is, but to win the ones that truly matter.

If the wine industry in California disappeared, they wouldn't lose 40% of their GDP. So, I'm not sure that's a fair comparison. Not defending coal, but that's definitely not a good comparison.

Alright. I meant conservatism per say, as in the ideology.

Correct. Conservatism isn't against renewable energy. Texas, for example, arguably the more Conservative state there is, has a renewable energy industry that is skyrocketing. In fact, it generated more wind power than any other state.

I totally forgot steel was carbonized iron. But yes, I agree. There are a lot of jobs to be made in the renewable energy industry. Well. If the tariffs don't shut it down.

Alright, that's my bad. It seemed as though it was addressed to me personally. Or generally. You get the idea.

Read the line directly underneath it. Where did I imply it was? I'm not sure I get where you're going.... Also, when did you become a believer

And I realize that the decline in jobs is not the Democrats or Liberals fault. I stated that in my post. However, I was also pointing out Coal employed 21% of all rural jobs, 40% of rural GDP. Unless you disagree with statistics, coal mattered. Even if it's been in decline for 80 years, it was still incredibly valuable to the economy less then 20 years ago. I know. As I stated in the post. But thanks for pointing it out again. Just in case anyone didn't catch that I already pointed out it wasn't because of Democrats or "liberals"

Previously 50,000 jobs 5 years ago. And if you ignore just 3 counties that are large cities, that accounted for 21.9% of the entire states jobs. Maybe the cities are doing well, but the rural counties, which is every single county except for 3, might as well have just gone through another great depression. But hey. It's not the majority, right? No. It was not grossly exaggerated. Edit(wanted to add) I've been to West Virginia several times with the sole purpose of helping people out. (http://www.worldvisionusprograms.org/appalachia.php) I've been on that trip almost 10 times. And when you see thousands of people who can't afford even to fix their roof, it becomes a lot more personal. People are more than just numbers. When you can just discard even just 30,000 living, breathing, suffering people, you've reduced them to numbers. The trip I went on, was the sole purpose of donating labor to help repair peoples homes to at least a substandard level. Almost 100,000 people a year. The poverty level there isn't just limited to coal miners when 21% of rural jobs disappear in less than 2 decades. A lot of people are affected. Also, coal jobs also accounted for 39.4% of rural income. Now I don't think Donald Trump is helping them, but as MigL pointed out. They feel abandoned. They aren't complaining about Democrats because they like Republicans. They're complaining about Democrats because too many of them a Democrat in office means massive economic downfall could happen at any moment. They feel forgotten and listing them off as "how much it matters is grossly exaggerated" doesn't help them in feeling like they're forgotten. I've talked to many families. They often ask how you voted. Don't ask why. And I've only ever heard one thing. "Democrats destroyed the countries economy." In truth, they just got hit especially hard by recessions. But try convincing them of that when at the same moment you're saying about how little the coal jobs matter. Like I've said. I've personally been there. I've been going there every year since I was 5. Their economy relied much more heavily on coal then you seem to think. We're not "lying to ourselves". It's the truth.