War Room Lounge v72: Nope

What are the chances we've been visited by intelligent space aliens?


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I disagree. Again, I was curious if Mr. Jack meant WaPo was "excellent" in a relative or an absolute sense. An excellent paper in an absolute sense should not be running stories of such low importance on its front page. Worse, we have multiple newspapers of similar scope that do not run such stories consistently, so at least by this metric WaPo is not even "excellent" in a relative sense.
Ugh, semantic arguments. Look, a newspaper cannot be "excellent" in an absolute sense, so it's obvious that it was meant in terms relative to other papers. Whether or not you believe it to be excellent on the basis of a single story's existence is also relative to your personal tastes. Now, if a bunch of surveys were put together and all of them had the WaPo rated in the top 10 US newspapers, then describing it as excellent is a fair use of the word.
 
I would have to be making a shit-ton more money before I did a complete 180 on my political beliefs.

Yea he's not rich or nothing, but around $130k. Which is good, but I mean not ground breaking or anything. But he used to make like 70ish around 2011-12 and caught a couple of good breaks post-masters. I still think he's a Dem at heart because those are his policies, but the debates are scaring him off because he hates Trump, but also keeps saying "these new candidates are gonna make me pay all my money for these free programs, bring back Obama ASAP". He says Biden is the only one he likes (probably because of the Obama connection). This may be what Jack/Fawlty was talking about yesterday about not losing the moderate votes if the candidate is "too" progressive.

I think these problems occur because people aren't deep into politics. I don't think he fully understands the dangers of making the wrong choice and now is just afraid to have a bunch of tax increases lol. But he did say he wouldn't vote for one of "those guys". So maybe Biden IS the best candidate after all.
 
The point of my post was that I wanted to try to understand your basis for ranking news outlets. By at least one metric (featuring stories of little/no practical importance in prominent front-page locations), Washington Post is clearly lagging behind WSJ and FT. I subscribe to WSJ; everything on the current front page is more important than that n-word story that the Washington Post featured.

Here's the front page of today's WaPo:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/todays_paper/updates/

Seems quite appropriate. Even if you were right about the story being on the front page (which as you can see, you were not), it seems to be a very poor criterion for such a judgment. The talent and resources would be better.

As for the relative/absolute scale thing: I didn't write that the Washington Post "sucks". Read more carefully. The point of journalism is supposed to be something like "offering consumers an accurate overview of the day's most important stories with ethics and accuracy."

That seems to be both an unreasonably low bar and to be something that a layperson can't really judge. Even poor outlets can nail accuracy if they try to, and ethical standards aren't going to be apparent to people without knowledge of the process in most cases.

By this line of reasoning, we can't fault Breitbart for featuring "illegal immigrant commits crime"-type stories out of proportion with other crimes so long as the details of the stories aren't wrong. @Jack V Savage has consistently rejecting your line of thinking in his attacks on Breitbart.

Breitbart doesn't have a come-on section with viral stories. It deliberately tries to turn inconsequential stories viral for propaganda purposes.
 
I would have to be making a shit-ton more money before I did a complete 180 on my political beliefs.

My views have evolved left as my income has grown (really, I made a career switch that pretty much instantly tripled my income, and then it's kind of climbed a little since).
 
My views have evolved left as my income has grown (really, I made a career switch that pretty much instantly tripled my income, and then it's kind of climbed a little since).
I just made one that improved my pre-tax yearly income by ABOUT 33% or so, and at the high end I could make almost double....

I'll admit I'm a TAD more open to SOME social programs but there's still a fair amount of that cynical/resentment attitude of "motherfucker... I didn't get handed shit either" in me.
 
Pretty much, although I would assume they would have a found a much more efficient system of engines by then, as chemical fueled rockets are an awful method for deep space travel. NASA is currently working on ION drives, which are nothing new but becoming more fuel efficient and faster with each new design. And there is always the fun put-put engines that were designed in the 50s but would be better served for massive ships since you are literally using nuclear bombs to propel the ship (major downside, no brakes).

In the end, natural human curiosity may want us to travel the stars, the feasibility of it is just plain outside of our current level of scientific knowledge and it may remain that way for several more centuries. So an alien species that has a few hundred thousand years on us would presumably have much faster, more effective ways to travel in deep space. But that still brings us back to the initial question of: Why? Does deep space travel and exploration really HAVE a worthwhile purpose for living beings when a simple probe can do the same thing with less resources and 0 risk?
Even with great propulsion you're still limited by the speed of light and in practice much less than that. But let's say aliens can travel at 0.999... the speed of light.
It would take them around 150 THOUSAND years to cross the milky way. Hell, even if they're on proxima centauri it would take them around 5 years each trip, communications would be virtually impossible with their home planets too.
It also makes it pretty much stupid for probes too. We send a probe to proxima centauri and we only get the first call back in 2029 and we learn it broke down.
 
I'm not surprised. Dirt poor Palestinians are able to make SMGs.
You got any experience with 80% lowers?
The hardest part of making a gun is the barrel. Luckily for americans only receivers are considered guns. There is a video on youtube of a guy making a AR receiver from soda cans. He melts the aluminum and uses a basic machine shop to machine it.
Some other guy made a small .32acp pistol with woodworking tools, it mostly works but the bullets do not spin properly and tumble before hitting the target, still deadly at close range but cannot hit a human at 10 yards.
There are some videos of guys trying to rifle their barrels but accuracy suffers. Not that big of a deal for improvised SMGs and you can make smoothbore shotguns.
 
I would have to be making a shit-ton more money before I did a complete 180 on my political beliefs.

So money would affect your political beliefs?
 
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@Lead @Gregolian just hit 19 reps of 225lbs bench press a little bit ago. Damn man tried every ounce in the world to hit that 20. Much sadness, such fails.
 
@Lead @Gregolian just hit 19 reps of 225lbs bench press a little bit ago. Damn man tried every ounce in the world to hit that 20. Much sadness, such fails.

Why are you repping at 225? Is that the weight they do for the nfl combine? I don’t think I ever tried repping out on that.
 
Why are you repping at 225? Is that the weight they do for the nfl combine? I don’t think I ever tried repping out on that.

That's exactly what it is haha!!! Towards the end of the month two of my friends and I always do a chest day together and try to do a combine 225lbs bench press run. I've crashed around 16-18 reps but got 19 for the first time today. Most hyped and pissed I've been at the same time in a long time lol. Might take a couple of months to get to that 20.
 
My views have evolved left as my income has grown (really, I made a career switch that pretty much instantly tripled my income, and then it's kind of climbed a little since).

Yeah my income jumped up 30-50% (some discretion on bonuses) this year and I switched my registration to Democrat.

Some sole searching has definitely made me more progressive
 
Yeah my income jumped up 30-50% (some discretion on bonuses) this year and I switched my registration to Democrat.

Some sole searching has definitely made me more progressive
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That's exactly what it is haha!!! Towards the end of the month two of my friends and I always do a chest day together and try to do a combine 225lbs bench press run. I've crashed around 16-18 reps but got 19 for the first time today. Most hyped and pissed I've been at the same time in a long time lol. Might take a couple of months to get to that 20.

Nice. I wish I had tried it back when I did lift. I haven’t for about three years now. Grappling is still keeping me in shape but my bench is probably awful right now.
 
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