Post: #176

New evidence that welfare increases dependency, from Norway
http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~gdahl/papers/fa...ltures.pdf

Quoted from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhHTq4_jwcc
"A recent study published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics provides new support for the idea that welfare programs exacerbate, rather than inhibit, inter-generational poverty. Past research on this topic has hampered by the difficulties inherent in correlational research. It's been known for a long time that children of parents who use welfare are more likely than average to use welfare. But that could be because those children inherent the problems that lead to the parents needing welfare in the first place. Findings like this don't show that being on welfare actually causes inter-generational poverty.

This new study attempted to surpass these difficulties by taking advantage of a natural experiment. In Norway whether or not someone gets to receive certain kinds of welfare benefits depends largely on which judge is randomly assigned to review their case. Some judges give out welfare more readily than others. And so who does and does not receive welfare benefits is partly a matter of luck. This allowed researchers to compare life outcomes for families who, before applying for welfare, were extremely similar. To be specific, the researchers controlled for differences in income, labor experience, age, health, and family structure, among other variables. The hope behind these controls is that the only important difference between the families is that, by the luck of the draw, some were able to receive welfare while others were not.

The researchers managed to find data on 14,722 families to make these comparisons with. They found that the adult children of families put on welfare were up to 12% more likely to apply for welfare themselves when compared to children of families who were not put on welfare. Since these families were more or less identical except for the fact that some got welfare and others didn't, this research suggests that parents going on welfare causes their children to be more likely to need welfare in the future. This suggests that there is some substance to the view that welfare creates a culture of dependency. However, the effect is much smaller than some conservatives might have guessed.

Regardless, most people feel that we have an obligation to help those in need. Studies like this won't change that. What they will hopefully do is convince us to try and implement welfare policies that minimize inter generational poverty as much as possible. "

Post: #177

This is not usually the sort of thing that I'm particularly interested in, but an article in the NY Times today brought to my attention one of the most amazing and mythos-laden creatures I've ever come come across: the tardigrade.

First of all, this thing looks like a f'ing boss. Here is a picture taken with an electron microscope (these creatures are tiny, about 1/16 of an inch long):



Their main claims to fame are:

-- They are found everywhere
-- They are unlike any other animal known in nature; they were earlier grouped with the arthropods because they also have 8 legs, but are in fact a different phylum.
-- They can survive virtually any conditions (as you will see below this is no exaggeration; if anything an understatement)

Here are some quotes from the article expanding on this:

Quote:When scientists at the American Museum of Natural History mounted an exhibit about creatures that survive under conditions few others can tolerate, they did not have to go far to find the show’s mascot.

“We just got them from Central Park,” said Mark Siddall, a curator of the show, Life at the Limits. “Scoop up some moss, and you’ll find them.”

He was talking about tardigrades, tiny creatures that live just about everywhere: in moss and lichens, but also in bubbling hot springs, Antarctic ice, deep-sea trenches and Himalayan mountaintops. They have even survived the extreme cold and radiation of outer space.

...

According to the society, formed this year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, people can find tardigrades if they gather some lichen or moss, especially on a damp day, put it in a shallow dish of water, and “agitate” it a bit. Debris will settle to the bottom of the dish, and tardigrades will probably be prowling in it.

Quote:Confronted with drying, rapid temperature changes, changes in water salinity or other problems, tardigrades can curtail their metabolism to 0.01 percent of normal, entering a kind of suspended animation in which they lose “the vast, vast, vast majority of their body water,” Dr. Siddall said. They curl up into something called a “tun.”

Tuns can be subjected to atmospheric pressure 600 times that of the surface of Earth, and they will bounce right back. They can be chilled to more than 300 degrees Fahrenheit below zero for more than a year, no problem. The European Space Agency once sent tuns into space: Two-thirds survived simultaneous exposure to solar radiation and the vacuum of space.

Without water, “the damaging effects of freezing cannot happen,” Dr. Siddall explained. “It protects against heat because the water inside cannot turn into a gas that expands.” Even radiation needs water to do damage, he said. When cosmic radiation hits water in a cell, it produces a highly reactive form of oxygen that damages cell DNA. The tun doesn’t have this problem.

Tuns have been reconstituted after more than a century and brought back to life as tardigrades, looking not a day older.

******************

This magnificent and awesome-looking creature, which can survive and thrive in any and all conditions, would make a fitting mascot for the forum. I am almost glad I didn't know about it earlier; The Tardigrade of Oz does not have quite the same ring to it but I would have been tempted.

EDIT: the NYT being the NYT, they saw fit to insert a shrugging, almost perfunctory bit of nihilist rhetoric at the very end of the article about how these (or any other creatures) have "no purpose" but "simply are". I acknowledged it with a grim LOL as I stared into the tardigrade's come-at-me-bro visage, and as it stared me down.

Post: #178

The Lizard of Oz has returned!

Welcome back my friend. We've missed you.

Post: #179

delete

Post: #180

I know throughout history that many royal families have been inbred, however I found it interesting (and gross) to learn the extent of the Habsburgs of Spain, specifically Charles II:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_Spain

Quote:Charles II's genome was actually more homozygous than that of a child whose parents are siblings

Post: #181

Apparently the first man[0] to minor in women’s studies is an "anti-sexist activist" which founded a consulting firm[1] that "provides gender violence prevention and leadership training to institutions in the public and private sectors". At a recent event at Vanderbilt University titled "Healthy Masculinities Week"[2] he stated that “there has been a ratcheting up of what it takes to be considered menacing in the 1980s and 90s.”.

This statement is mostly based on his work in the educational video "Tough Guise" (from 2000, sold through mediaed)[3] in which he explains this concept of ever increasing masculinity and how this leads to a broadly carried concept of "more violence is more masculine". A sample from this documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3exzMPT4nGI

The event held at the university was the second edition, with the previous being called "The Politics of Masculinity"[4]. This year's event got quite some negative response in the media, notably Fox News denouncing the event by stating that "they try to demasculinize men" and "feminize men" with one of the most quoted statements from the special being: "and they are trying - and by they I mean the academics and the liberal left - to turn men into thumb-sucking, little beta-males in skinny jeans"[5, starting 1:35]

So not only did I learn there is a public dialogue about masculinity, it's also getting pretty mainstream with even Fox News covering it. This was in September. Though I have nothing in favor of Fox News, it is quite remarkable they made such a bold statement (though by a conservative feminine panel member[6]) which sounds like a typical red pilled insult. Like it was quoted directly from some top comment which you would find in certain communities online.

There was a thread about this "Healthy Masculinities Week" on the forum[7], but other than that it hasn't been discussed much in this circle. I considered creating a new thread, but it's not that relevant anymore. Maybe it's too late, but if Roosh (or anyone capable of that matter) wants to keep up the stampede of going public with the neo-masculine ideology, this could have been an excellent entry point.

Maybe a close eye should be kept on Vanderbilt organizing such an event in the future. The subject line of their latest masculinity event was "Explore healthy masculinity through various lenses: American society, the gay and bisexual community, fraternities, and more" so as a liberal university I see no reason why they shouldn't include the neo-masculinity lens, too. Other than of course the reason being that they don't want to hear it.

[0] http://www.jacksonkatz.com/
[1] http://www.mvpstrat.com/
[2] http://www.vanderbilt.edu/WomensCenter/n...-week-2015
[3] http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/24488/
[4] http://www.vanderbilt.edu/mhs/2014/08/pa...sculinity/
[5] https://video.foxnews.com/v/446421949900...e-students
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Tantaros but more importantly https://www.google.com/search?q=andrea+t...s&tbm=isch
[7] /archive/inde...50277.html

Post: #182

^ That last post from the banned member was more fitting for other threads, not this one, back to interesting stories:

The Chernobyl Story

This is a great breakdown of the history and aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear distaster, filled with over 100 pictures and clear descriptions.

This is one of the best I've ever seen on the web, but note possibly NSFW pictures of radioactive burns and mutated animals.

https://imgur.com/a/TwY6q#7gCHWj2

Post: #183

This is a great thread and should be revived.

G

Post: #184

Why some plants (like soy) contain phytoestrogens ?

It's just the plants that defend themselves against the animals who want to eat them, by lowering their fertility.

The phytoestrogens are a fucking poison.

http://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/6/3/35/pdf

Quote:Despite their unrivalled value in livestock systems, certain temperate, pasture,
legume species and varieties may contain phytoestrogens which can lower flock/herd fertility.
Such compounds, whose chemical structure and biological activity resembles that of estradiol-17,
include the isoflavones that have caused devastating effects (some of them permanent) on the fertility
of many Australian sheep flocks.

Post: #185

^

This the Work of Deep Soy

Most do not Talk about This

Post: #186

^When they talk about the Australian sheep flocks they're actually referring to the citizenry.

Sad!

Post: #187

Post: #188

(11-21-2016 06:24 PM)LeBeau Wrote:  This is a great breakdown of the history and aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear distaster, filled with over 100 pictures and clear descriptions.

This is one of the best I've ever seen on the web, but note possibly NSFW pictures of radioactive burns and mutated animals.

https://imgur.com/a/TwY6q#7gCHWj2

Excellent post, that was fascinating. Sorry, I had to pull some interesting snippets:

The outside world remained ignorant of the accident at Chernobyl until the morning of Monday the 28th of April (over 2 full days after the explosion), when a sensor detected elevated radiation levels on engineer Cliff Robinson as he arrived for work at Sweden’s Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant, over 1,000 kilometers away.

The World found out when some guy at a power plant 600 miles away found out the soles of his shoes were hot with radioactivity.
...
“The first time we came, the dogs were running around near their houses, guarding them, waiting for people to come back”, recounted Viktor Verzhikovskiy, Chairman of the Khoyniki Society of Volunteer Hunters and Fishermen. “They were happy to see us, they ran toward our voices. We shot them in the houses, and the barns, in the yards. We’d drag them out onto the street and load them onto the dump truck. It wasn’t very nice. They couldn’t understand: why are we killing them? They were easy to kill, they were household pets. They didn’t fear guns or people.”
...
The work took months. To make matters worse, each time it rained within 100km of the plant new spots of heavy contamination appeared, brought down from the still highly radioactive clouds above.

Sorry, after reading that I had to drop a few snippets.

Post: #189

(06-28-2017 08:09 AM)YoungBlade Wrote:  ^

This the Work of Deep Soy

Most do not Talk about This

Excellent. Deep Soy is going into my lexicon.

Heard another useful term on the Weimerica podcast:

"The Eye of Soros" is upon us.

Post: #190

(11-21-2016 06:24 PM)LeBeau Wrote:  ^ That last post from the banned member was more fitting for other threads, not this one, back to interesting stories:

The Chernobyl Story

This is a great breakdown of the history and aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear distaster, filled with over 100 pictures and clear descriptions.

This is one of the best I've ever seen on the web, but note possibly NSFW pictures of radioactive burns and mutated animals.

https://imgur.com/a/TwY6q#7gCHWj2

I was a kid when it happened and I remember my friends and me didn't care about it much. Sure, grown ups emptied the super market shelves (or so said the news, I don't remember much of a panic) but it took me decades to look up '80s history again and see things from a more mature perspective. And Fallout, the game.

If I saw the casualties pics as a kid however I would have much trouble sleeping and not because I'd be afraid of ghosts.
I remember secretly reading a teenager novel (I was only going to elementary school but I had an inquisitive mind) about the world after the bomb, called "Th last Children of Sevenborn" or something, I had an existential kind of fear for days.

I think Chernobyl will be a point of interest for people, not only because it is a symbol of destruction (it was the closest we would come to a Cold War nuclear holocaust) but also because it shows that humans as a whole can overcome, no matter the personal cost.

Anyway, enough soliloquy, +1 rep to you, sir!

Post: #191

Post: #192

My brain was wired for useless trivia.

I can't remember the names of the last 5 people I've met. I barely remember my day yesterday or the day before that.

But I vividly remember my 11th grade biology class, I remember a specific day where we learned about a thing called Trophylaxis.

Trophylaxis is the transfer or exchange of regurgitated liquid food between individuals of certain social insects such as ants or bees.

Post: #193

(06-28-2017 10:45 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  

This is the very definition of brains and brawn.

Sheer marketing genius.

Post: #194

(06-28-2017 10:45 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  

Insulting Southerners for publicity is effective.

Like many good ideas in this world, Andy Kaufman did it first:

Post: #195

So I googled and found a website that tells a sites worth.
   

Post: #196

Advertisements?

Post: #197

(06-30-2017 02:55 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  Advertisements?

Yeah that part made me doubt the site's credibility.
Maybe they don't know what this $30 is for, so they called it ads. Could be for signature's affiliated links?
Where does this $30 come from??

Post: #198

(06-30-2017 01:50 AM)Mayhem Wrote:  So I googled and found a website that tells a sites worth.

I feel like I'm getting a screamin deal then

Post: #199

A meltdown thread I read made me curious, so I ran the numbers.

Title_Number of Posts (Guesstimated)

Male Feminist 1-24
Game Denialist 25-74
Beta Orbiter 75-149
Recovering Beta 150-249
Chubby Chaser 250-599
Wingman 600-999
Alpha Male 1000-1499
True Player 1500-2999
International Playboy 3000-5999
Innovative Casanova 6000-17620+

Post: #200

(07-10-2017 02:36 PM)Mayhem Wrote:  A meltdown thread I read made me curious, so I ran the numbers.

   

   

G