Happy 3rd Pit Birthday!

[Kirbmarc]

They're not mutually exclusive though.

SJW ideology is impossible to falsify. If something bad happens to a "minority" and they say they suffer from it, then it's Oppression from Powerful Tools and it's the Patriarchy's fault. If something bad happens to a Cis Hetero White Male and they say they suffer from it, it's because Masculinity is So Fragile, and the Patriarchy's fault, again.

[James Caruthers]

#IDidNothingWrong

[James Caruthers]

They're not mutually exclusive though.

SJW ideology is impossible to falsify. If something bad happens to a "minority" and they say they suffer from it, then it's Oppression from Powerful Tools and it's the Patriarchy's fault. If something bad happens to a Cis Hetero White Male and they say they suffer from it, it's because Masculinity is So Fragile, and the Patriarchy's fault, again.

Oh sure. I understand that. I'm just saying something can be powerful and very fragile (as in, reactionary/violent when questioned) at the same time.

Like RELIGION. 8-)

[Ape+lust]

It's all a matter of publicity.

SJW is the new black these days. All the cool kids call themselves feminists, tell others to "check their privilege" and fight "against trolls and harassers".

The "old media" love SJWs because they carry on their narrative which portrays the Internet as EVIL ("don't use the net, buy our newspaper! Or at least subscribe to the online version!") and because a new moral panic sells ("If you play too many video games you'll a become a racist rapist KKK pigfucker!").

Celebrities love the SJWs because they fancy themselves to be sophisticated ideologues and want to appear as "more moral" than the common folk (just read Helen Mirren's moronic and puritan tirade against men who put their arms around their girlfriends' shoulders)

In the news and entertainment business people claim to be in favor of freedom of speech and thought, but nobody really gives a shit about those freedoms unless it's their own speech and thought. Newspaper executives would love to put the competition out of business.

Add in the fact that an overwhelming majority of people in entertainment and in the news business are leftists and it's easy to see why they support the SJW feeding frenzy. Nobody gives a shit about the people who don't like SJW policies because they're obviously racist/neckbeard/rape apologists. Even the women or the #NotYourShield minorities, because they're simply brainwashed by the Patriarchy.

Google has two choices: defend freedom of speech and be demonized as "a haven for rape/harassment apologists" by pretty much anyone in the entertainment/news or cave in and throw a bone to the SJWs. It's easy to see why they picked the latter choice.

I hope that this is just a publicity stunt to capitalize on the SJW "fad" and that no SJW can actually get a position of power inside Google.

Google is the one company I'd expected to stay out of this, though. They're big enough that they can be indifferent. Or they could've gone their own way, with anti-harassment / pro-diversity initiatives helmed by adults and people who know what they're doing, not this band of poseurs. What they've done just indicates it's theater, as you've said, which is fucking stupid. By allying themselves with contentious idiots, they going to lose whatever upside they're expecting. They've inserted themselves into the most noisy, shallow, lowbrow sort of political bickering there is. It's not smart and very unlike Google.

[Kirbmarc]

<snip>

For most of history, religion was just part of the structuring of power and the justification of who had it. The same as historical patriarchy btw. It wasn't some illuminati controlling everything you do, it was just some shit that told you why you better stay in your place and that guy over there was better than you. It was also a promise-a guarantee that because that person over there had certain rights given by God and society, that you had certain rights as well. Those with power over you had obligations to you.

It goes back to what Dan Dennett said about how most people just don't really think about religion too much because they're busy living their lives. They have real problems to worry about, like how they're going to eat or whether or not the harvest will be good. They don't need to borrow trouble by pondering the infinite until they've convinced themselves their current community is built on bullshit... Something which the priests would not look too kindly on in any case. :lol:

Not to mention, the common people have been uneducated for most of human history and it's hard to think your way out of religion with no education or almost no education.

Most religions explicitly recommend to avoid critical thinking:

And he said: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Translation: just like a little children are gullible and obey to their parents you need to obey to your "superiors" and don't ask too many questions.

Matthew Henry's "concise commentary" makes it explicit:

18:1-6 Christ spoke many words of his sufferings, but only one of his glory; yet the disciples fasten upon that, and overlook the others. Many love to hear and speak of privileges and glory, who are willing to pass by the thoughts of work and trouble. Our Lord set a little child before them, solemnly assuring them, that unless they were converted and made like little children, they could not enter his kingdom. Children, when very young, do not desire authority, do not regard outward distinctions, are free from malice, are teachable, and willingly dependent on their parents. It is true that they soon begin to show other dispositions, and other ideas are taught them at an early age; but these are marks of childhood, and render them proper emblems of the lowly minds of true Christians. Surely we need to be daily renewed in the spirit of our minds, that we may become simple and humble, as little children, and willing to be the least of all. Let us daily study this subject, and examine our own spirits.

Translation: don't desire authority, let the priests have it, since God gave it to them. Be willing to be taught and dependent on the Daddy in the Sky (who is very silent about the subject matter) and the Big Brothers in the Church (who aren't).

Islam is even more explicit:

Islam is a verbal noun originating from the triliteral root s-l-m which forms a large class of words mostly relating to concepts of wholeness, safeness and peace. In a religious context it means "voluntary submission to God"

And since God is unavailable for comments you should submit to the power of the Holy Books, and preferably to the people who interpret God's word for you.

Religiously-inspired conflicts were always ultimately a power struggle between a group of priests and another group.

The idea that people didn't need "shepherds" and "sheepdogs" and could decide for themselves was seen as the Ultimate Evil by pretty much all the groups involved in the struggles.

[Tigzy]

You know, in the highly unlikely event of Google delisting or deranking 'wrongthink' sites as a result of inviting Randi (David Cameron's wet dream) Harper and the Quimster to slobber over the canteen pastry cart for a while, it's still hardly a disaster.

Think about it - how many of us use Google search out of habit rather than necessity? I'd wager: pretty much everyone. If Gsearch becomes too much of a pain in the arse about this SJW shit, then I'll just switch over to using Bing or Duckduckgo. Simples.

Google's big, but it's not really the boss of anyone when you think about it.

[Bhurzum]

I think I get the picture without looking up gaping.

Even though I'm nursing a hangover that would kill a civilian, I foolishly punched that into google image search.

The horror! The horror!

[Tigzy]

Google's big, but it's not really the boss of anyone when you think about it.

Though I have now just remembered that Google owns Youtube, which - given that there's no viable alternative as far as I can see - does kind of fuck up my last statement in that respect. I'm sure the likes of Tfoot aren't exactly gonna be thrilled at the prospect of a Sarky-influenced Youtube TOS.

Oh well, fuck it. Best not to start worrying unless anything concrete starts happening anyways.

[Kirbmarc]

Google is the one company I'd expected to stay out of this, though. They're big enough that they can be indifferent. Or they could've gone their own way, with anti-harassment / pro-diversity initiatives helmed by adults and people who know what they're doing, not this band of poseurs. What they've done just indicates it's theater, as you've said, which is fucking stupid. By allying themselves with contentious idiots, they going to lose whatever upside they're expecting. They've inserted themselves into the most noisy, shallow, lowbrow sort of political bickering there is. It's not smart and very unlike Google.

Smart and big as Google may be they still exist in a world where governments are more powerful than private companies. And many governments are threatening to "do something" about the "far west" of the Internet. David Cameron sponsored a law that would require people, instead of installing parental filters on their own, to ask the government to remove a mandatory parental filter. Politicians of all colors whine about the "lawless" nature of the Net, where "predators/harassers/trolls/terrorists" roam free.

Obama himself said something along these lines. Internet-based companies are concerned about being subjected to more restrictive laws, and want to keep some allies in the parliaments and the governments so that they won't have to worry about going out of business.

People like Anita Sarkeesian or Zoe Quinn have become symbols of the "dark nature of the web". Politicians of all stripes salivate at the thought of using them as a pretext to justify their control of the Internet as a "way to fight cyber-bullying and harassment"

By showing the world that they've given some thought to the "problem of cyber-attacks" by giving a space to the likes of Quinn and Sarky Google is telling to the world governments that they're on the side of the "victims", that they're good guys willing to fight the good fight, and (indirectly) "please do not target us when the Great Purge of the Internet comes".

[James Caruthers]

You know, in the highly unlikely event of Google delisting or deranking 'wrongthink' sites as a result of inviting Randi (David Cameron's wet dream) Harper and the Quimster to slobber over the canteen pastry cart for a while, it's still hardly a disaster.

Think about it - how many of us use Google search out of habit rather than necessity? I'd wager: pretty much everyone. If Gsearch becomes too much of a pain in the arse about this SJW shit, then I'll just switch over to using Bing or Duckduckgo. Simples.

Google's big, but it's not really the boss of anyone when you think about it.

I don't know about that. I would wager that the power Google wields is substantial in our internet age, and delisting something on Google could amount to a very effective form of censorship.

[paddybrown]

Religiously-inspired conflicts were always ultimately a power struggle between a group of priests and another group.

Not even always priests. The emperor Constantine wasn't a priest, he probably wasn't even a Christian.

Religion is nearly always politics in drag. If the protestant reformation had been about abstract theological questions and not political independence from the Vatican, it wouldn't have been nearly so bloody.

[acathode]

I bet not much will come of the GG backlash. Gamergate has been quite successful but they have pitted themselves (quite successfully) against the media and are also now firmly typecast as the bad guys. Google want to be seen as the good guys, and there are a lot more media consumers than there are GGers. Traditional and online media companies are doing really badly as a whole, so any hits on their revenue have significant impact whereas I don't think GG will be able to scratch Google's revenues - after all, they mostly own the online advertising market and have other significant revenue streams beside that.

When it comes to Google and other similar companies, the goal isn't (or at least shouldn't be) to hurt Google's revenue, but to make these kind of PR-stunts backfire and generate enough bad PR on social media etc to make companies think twice about associating with people like Harper. You don't need to hit the companies finances to dissuade them from pulling these kinds of PR stunts, you just need to make it so that they don't gain what they want from them.

Basically, take one of the SJW's own, very effective call-out culture tactics and use it against them. Obviously, the SJWs have an advantage due to their support from media, which makes it a whole lot easier to generate bad PR and get companies worried, but during the first months GG quite adequately showed that it was possible to do it even with media going all out against them.

But yeah, it's unlikely that this thing will lead to anything, especially considering that this doesn't seem entirely to be a PR stunt, but more the results of some SJWs working at Google, doing what SJWs do (ie. giving other SJWs money and influence). Also, overall, GG has lost most of it's "let's fuck shit up" steam that it had the first 6 months. At this point, it's no longer really GG that's going to "do" stuff, but more a general cultural shift where the rather big animosity against SJWs that have existed online have finally started to seep into the mainstream narrative - it's becoming more and more acceptable in mainstream media to make fun of or oppose the SJWs, and as this grows and SJWs become more and more of a laughing stock or case of concern, companies and politicians will silently withdraw their support to them.

[Tigzy]

I don't know about that. I would wager that the power Google wields is substantial in our internet age, and delisting something on Google could amount to a very effective form of censorship.

It would only be effective if there weren't any viable alternatives to Gsearch. But there are. In that respect, it's not a problem as far as I can see.

But as I said in my additional post - I'm not aware of any viable alternatives to Youtube (There's Vimeo of course, but I think that's more specialised towards HD arty-farty type stuff.), which could potentially hit the 'wrongthink' video makers and viewers pretty hard. But that's only *if* it happens, which I doubt.

[Kirbmarc]

I don't know about that. I would wager that the power Google wields is substantial in our internet age, and delisting something on Google could amount to a very effective form of censorship.

It would only be effective if there weren't any viable alternatives to Gsearch. But there are. In that respect, it's not a problem as far as I can see.

But as I said in my additional post - I'm not aware of any viable alternatives to Youtube (There's Vimeo of course, but I think that's more specialised towards HD arty-farty type stuff.), which could potentially hit the 'wrongthink' video makers and viewers pretty hard. But that's only *if* it happens, which I doubt.

Most people use Google search, though. Delist a site from there and you've pretty much killed its popularity with the general public. Only very dedicated people are likely to use Bing or another search tool just to keep themselves informed about what Google doesn't show.

[Shatterface]

More tragedy strikes in Saudi Arabia.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-34346449

What sort of god would allow his worshippers to be crushed during an event dedicated to his glory? It's almost as if this allah geezer doesn't exist.

Nah. He exists, but he's a troll. He created the event to gather loads of worshippers in one place and watch them stomp on each other. Bloody hilarious.

Or he's testing them because free will, and earthquakes are the result of evil spirits (this is what passes as "sophisticated theology" these days, just ask Alvin "Modal Logic FTW" Plantinga).

I prefer the troll theory anyway, it makes much more sense.

It's God's punishment for gay marriage.

[Tigzy]

Most people use Google search, though. Delist a site from there and you've pretty much killed its popularity with the general public. Only very dedicated people are likely to use Bing or another search tool just to keep themselves informed about what Google doesn't show.

A fair point. However, in such an situation where Google makes a habit of deranking/delisting wrongthink sites, then I'm pretty sure there'll be plenty of people making a noise about it. It could at least lead to Google getting the kind of rep Wikipedia has in relation to the quality of its info: sure it's useful, but if you really need to be sure, check other sources. Likewise with Google: 'Hmmm, it's not on Google, but I figure I'll just check with Bing or something, just to be sure.'

And don't forget, Bing has the backing of Microsoft, which is hardly small fry. They'd certainly have the means to let people know that the competition is prone to censorship if such a situation ever arose (not that I'm saying Microsoft wouldn't be above censorship either, but hypocrisy has never gotten in the way of making of a good buck.)

[RonSwanson]

When it comes to Google and other similar companies, the goal isn't (or at least shouldn't be) to hurt Google's revenue, but to make these kind of PR-stunts backfire and generate enough bad PR on social media etc to make companies think twice about associating with people like Harper.

Indeed. And it's happening already. I'm already seeing insidery claims on twitter (huge grain of salt of course) that this was basically not much more than a PR move and that it has in fact backfired a bit. This should be confirmed by what Google does next. If we don't hear of this again we'll know for sure.

I'm actually a bit more optimistic on this. It's one thing to invite people to sit in a round table and talk. It's a whole other thing to have engineers sit down and implement whatever ideas Sarkeesian et al come up with. Engineers will need concrete specs. What constitutes harassment? How do we filter? How do we avoid false positives? False negatives? You COULD go nuclear and do it the blockbot way. But that will be fought against hard and in any event you don't need Google brainpower to implement something so simple.

[Cnutella]

When it comes to Google and other similar companies, the goal isn't (or at least shouldn't be) to hurt Google's revenue, but to make these kind of PR-stunts backfire and generate enough bad PR on social media etc to make companies think twice about associating with people like Harper. You don't need to hit the companies finances to dissuade them from pulling these kinds of PR stunts, you just need to make it so that they don't gain what they want from them.

Basically, take one of the SJW's own, very effective call-out culture tactics and use it against them. Obviously, the SJWs have an advantage due to their support from media, which makes it a whole lot easier to generate bad PR and get companies worried, but during the first months GG quite adequately showed that it was possible to do it even with media going all out against them.

But yeah, it's unlikely that this thing will lead to anything, especially considering that this doesn't seem entirely to be a PR stunt, but more the results of some SJWs working at Google, doing what SJWs do (ie. giving other SJWs money and influence). Also, overall, GG has lost most of it's "let's fuck shit up" steam that it had the first 6 months. At this point, it's no longer really GG that's going to "do" stuff, but more a general cultural shift where the rather big animosity against SJWs that have existed online have finally started to seep into the mainstream narrative - it's becoming more and more acceptable in mainstream media to make fun of or oppose the SJWs, and as this grows and SJWs become more and more of a laughing stock or case of concern, companies and politicians will silently withdraw their support to them.

I vaguely suspect that the Josh Goldberg arrest was the last straw for some senior executive with progressive tendencies at Eugoogly. I suppose it could just be SJW connections at Google Ideas; if that's the case then there's definitely the possibility of it backfiring, especially after their snotty tweets.

I wonder if it's motivated by being fed up with the way anonymity simultaneously shits up the internet while also making it awesome. In principle, I would not have a huge issue with improving the chances of busting an anonymous bomb threat-maker or SWATer, but that sort of cooperation demands due process and oversite because otherwise, you know it is going to be abused.

Either way, the pendulum will swing inexorably back against the new PC. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

[Cnutella]

oversight. I meant oversight.

[Shatterface]

Kevin Kirkpatrick
September 23, 2015 at 1:44 pm
I don’t see the “massive mistake” of talking about abortion rights in terms of “people who may become pregnant”. If my son experienced an unwanted pregnancy in his teenage years, I would certainly hope pro-choice activists would be every bit as passionate in advocating for his access to abortion services as they would for a girl in the same circumstances. Should my son choose to take up arms in the battle for his right to decide how his uterus will and will not be used, I don’t see the “massive mistake” of establishing the movement in a way that makes him every bit as welcome to fight for his rights as women doing the same.

- See more at: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/201 ... /#comments

[James Caruthers]

I don't know about that. I would wager that the power Google wields is substantial in our internet age, and delisting something on Google could amount to a very effective form of censorship.

It would only be effective if there weren't any viable alternatives to Gsearch. But there are. In that respect, it's not a problem as far as I can see.

But as I said in my additional post - I'm not aware of any viable alternatives to Youtube (There's Vimeo of course, but I think that's more specialised towards HD arty-farty type stuff.), which could potentially hit the 'wrongthink' video makers and viewers pretty hard. But that's only *if* it happens, which I doubt.

Most people use Google search, though. Delist a site from there and you've pretty much killed its popularity with the general public. Only very dedicated people are likely to use Bing or another search tool just to keep themselves informed about what Google doesn't show.

It's like when Amazon or Ebay choose not to sell a certain type of product.

Yes, there are other alternatives.

No, most ordinary people won't use those alternatives and thus won't know what they are missing unless they were told about it beforehand.

Much like 8chan being delisted.

If you know about it, you can find 8chan. If you don't, and you use Google, you'll never even know the website exists because the search engine won't show it to you as a result of your searches.

[James Caruthers]

Dailymotion is an alternative to YouTube.

There are alternatives to YouTube but most are far inferior and less popular.

Much like the situation with search engines and Google, imo. Google is far and away the most popular and possibly still the best.

[Service Dog]

There are alternatives to Feminism, too. But Caruthers does all he can to delist them.

[Shatterface]

Jennifer Chavez
September 23, 2015 at 2:35 pm
Kevin Kirkpatrick, what acute impact does transantagonism play in limiting the accessibility of abortion services to transgender boys and men that is separate or distinct from misogyny? Do trans men get turned away from abortion clinics because they’re trans? I’m more inclined to believe that they would be denied abortion care because they have female genitals and that’s all misogynists care about.

- See more at: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/201 ... /#comments

[Aneris]

If you want to put a dent into Google's efforts, take them by their word and actions: they practically host these “anti good people” on YouTube, and if they mean it, float that they should disable or delete these channels. Google cannot come out and state “we didn't really mean to fulfill the wishes of Sarkeesian and co” — that will anger the SJWs, but they cannot (and won't) pull through either — and if they did (practically never going to happen) they have a major problem that could break YouTube. There are millions of subscribers to these various channels, and many more will worry about their community and materials even if unaffected for now. And even more who still value freedom of speech, also in the mainstream. Ergo, lobby google to pull through or call it a bluff and make that negative PR.

[Cnutella]

...And Shanley finally uncorks, spewing bitterness in a glorious bile-filled rant.

U mad, bro?

[Shatterface]

Lousy Canuck:

The demand to say “women” instead of “pregnant people” is offensive because it actually removes several sets of people from the scope of the question, and includes one major scope of people who shouldn’t be there. First, you lose anyone who isn’t a woman who has the functional reproductive organs to require reproductive services like access to abortion, including non-binary people and trans men. Second, you include women who cannot be pregnant, like trans women, women after menopause or a hysterectomy, or who are otherwise sterile.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck ... people.png

Of course, these are illustrative only. They don’t have raw numbers to back them up, because they are not to-scale.

Not to scale. No shit. There I was thinking a third of pregnancies happened to transmen.

[Cnutella]

I should post that last one to r/thathappened because it has the unmistakeable hallmarks of A Thing That Absolutely Happened In a Most Believable Way.

[debaser71]

From that google article.

"Somewhat unsurprisingly, its openness has made 8chan a gathering place for some of the Internet’s worst, including pedophiles and Gamergaters"

Tell me again that GG has fought off the SJW's successfully.

[Dave]

Most people use Google search, though. Delist a site from there and you've pretty much killed its popularity with the general public. Only very dedicated people are likely to use Bing or another search tool just to keep themselves informed about what Google doesn't show.

A fair point. However, in such an situation where Google makes a habit of deranking/delisting wrongthink sites, then I'm pretty sure there'll be plenty of people making a noise about it. It could at least lead to Google getting the kind of rep Wikipedia has in relation to the quality of its info: sure it's useful, but if you really need to be sure, check other sources. Likewise with Google: 'Hmmm, it's not on Google, but I figure I'll just check with Bing or something, just to be sure.'

And don't forget, Bing has the backing of Microsoft, which is hardly small fry. They'd certainly have the means to let people know that the competition is prone to censorship if such a situation ever arose (not that I'm saying Microsoft wouldn't be above censorship either, but hypocrisy has never gotten in the way of making of a good buck.)

Google execs are quite aware that the integrity of their search results is one of their greatest intangible assets. They will be very reluctant to fuck with that.

[Old_ones]

When it comes to Google and other similar companies, the goal isn't (or at least shouldn't be) to hurt Google's revenue, but to make these kind of PR-stunts backfire and generate enough bad PR on social media etc to make companies think twice about associating with people like Harper.

Indeed. And it's happening already. I'm already seeing insidery claims on twitter (huge grain of salt of course) that this was basically not much more than a PR move and that it has in fact backfired a bit. This should be confirmed by what Google does next. If we don't hear of this again we'll know for sure.

I'm actually a bit more optimistic on this. It's one thing to invite people to sit in a round table and talk. It's a whole other thing to have engineers sit down and implement whatever ideas Sarkeesian et al come up with. Engineers will need concrete specs. What constitutes harassment? How do we filter? How do we avoid false positives? False negatives? You COULD go nuclear and do it the blockbot way. But that will be fought against hard and in any event you don't need Google brainpower to implement something so simple.

Truf.

If google wants to invite the SJWs to make a google version of blockbot they can "go ahead and make my day". Because the people they invited to help them (Quinn, Sarkeesian, Cross, etc.) are a bunch of useless muppets, whose only successes come from exploiting a victim narrative. If you ask them to do something constructive, you are going to end up with "depression quest, the google algorythm", and google is going to have to deal with the fallout when it delists every website on the internet for containing "racist and misogynistic slurs" like "boobs", "black" and "female".

Batshit insanity isn't a bug of SJW ideology, its a feature. The changes (assuming google does anything) that google implements based on this google talk session are either going to be reasonable and moderate, or they are going to make intellectually broken cultists like Anita Sarkeesian happy. Either way google is going to have a mess on their hands, because the SJWs are the most entitled people on the planet, and will probably bite the hand that tried to feed them if they feel the changes are cosmetic.

[Billy The Hillbilly]

I'm gonna get me some head
From a pig who's dead

[youtube]FBpQJ98rR4o[/youtube]

[SM12]

This kid invented a portable refrigerator that uses no electricity and cost about 100 dollars.

If only he had repackaged it to look a bit like a bomb, he could have had a trip to the White House

http://www.techinsider.io/anurudh-ganes ... air-2015-9

[John D]

Surely, this must be a Poe. They are advocating killing predatory animals to improve the lives of prey animals.
http://qz.com/497675/to-truly-end-anima ... -the-lion/

[jimthepleb]

From that google article.

"Somewhat unsurprisingly, its openness has made 8chan a gathering place for some of the Internet’s worst, including pedophiles and Gamergaters"

Tell me again that GG has fought off the SJW's successfully.

Paedophiles and gamergaters...
Paedophiles and homosexuals...
Paedophiles and blacks...
They are so cute when they go full retard.

[Jack Wooster]

I believe I can add another characteristic to my previous attempts to define the Social Justice Warrior, one that probably gets closer to the heart of the phenomenon: seeking personal advantage through emotional blackmail.

That pretty much hits the nail on the head.

[jimthepleb]

When it comes to Google and other similar companies, the goal isn't (or at least shouldn't be) to hurt Google's revenue, but to make these kind of PR-stunts backfire and generate enough bad PR on social media etc to make companies think twice about associating with people like Harper.

Indeed. And it's happening already. I'm already seeing insidery claims on twitter (huge grain of salt of course) that this was basically not much more than a PR move and that it has in fact backfired a bit. This should be confirmed by what Google does next. If we don't hear of this again we'll know for sure.

I'm actually a bit more optimistic on this. It's one thing to invite people to sit in a round table and talk. It's a whole other thing to have engineers sit down and implement whatever ideas Sarkeesian et al come up with. Engineers will need concrete specs. What constitutes harassment? How do we filter? How do we avoid false positives? False negatives? You COULD go nuclear and do it the blockbot way. But that will be fought against hard and in any event you don't need Google brainpower to implement something so simple.

Truf.

If google wants to invite the SJWs to make a google version of blockbot they can "go ahead and make my day". Because the people they invited to help them (Quinn, Sarkeesian, Cross, etc.) are a bunch of useless muppets, whose only successes come from exploiting a victim narrative. If you ask them to do something constructive, you are going to end up with "depression quest, the google algorythm", and google is going to have to deal with the fallout when it delists every website on the internet for containing "racist and misogynistic slurs" like "boobs", "black" and "female".

Batshit insanity isn't a bug of SJW ideology, its a feature. The changes (assuming google does anything) that google implements based on this google talk session are either going to be reasonable and moderate, or they are going to make intellectually broken cultists like Anita Sarkeesian happy. Either way google is going to have a mess on their hands, because the SJWs are the most entitled people on the planet, and will probably bite the hand that tried to feed them if they feel the changes are cosmetic.

Vernaculis, a bright young youtuber in the vein of justicar, has done a recent video on laci green's MTV output where she describes EVERYTHING as 'problematic' which might rather stymie Google usefulness.

[Charles MacGruder]

Godfrey you Prophet

[Cunning Punt]

I'm gonna get me some head
From a pig who's dead

[youtube]FBpQJ98rR4o[/youtube]

Sheer brilliance.... and far far far FAR better than any shit that Super-fucking-tramp ever made. :obscene-buttsway:

[Aneris]

Godfrey you Prophet

This is just one example of why social justice is such an idiotic project. Here is a cover, titled: We had an abortion! With the idea to show face to de-stigmatize it.

http://www.emma.de/sites/default/files/ ... 1971_0.jpg
“We had an abortion!”

The haircuts should be a give-away. That was in 1971.

Now you argue, what could go wrong? In many countries this is done and not up to debate anymore. It can't be an interest to again fight through it yet again, when this battle was already won (in many places). Now we could be supportive, but then comes the issue of “being an ally”, which means as we know being supportive of post-modernist intersectionality bollocks. And on top of this, once you dedicate time to social justice concerns in other countries, the question comes up why I should care about the United States. Since American Secularists are often intellectually challenged let me spell it out. For Richard Dawkins, or someone from Europe the United States is a different country. We don't live there, we have no say in the politics and strictly it's as much of a concern what is going on there as what is going on in Syria. And Syria is half as far away. So this whole Moral Equivalence Fallacy that is touted by US secularists* is complete rubbish (e.g. surrounding Dear Muslima).

[Ericb]

Surely, this must be a Poe. They are advocating killing predatory animals to improve the lives of prey animals.
http://qz.com/497675/to-truly-end-anima ... -the-lion/

Only if you consider starvation because of overpopulation as an "improvement." Someone need to read up on ecology .

[Old_ones]

Vernaculis, a bright young youtuber in the vein of justicar, has done a recent video on laci green's MTV output where she describes EVERYTHING as 'problematic' which might rather stymie Google usefulness.

Yeah, I watched Vernaculis' video when it came out. The Laci Green vid he was responding to was a special brand of insane. Not only does she condemn literally everything in culture, but she does it in her characteristic smiley bubbly tone, as though she were telling you about about her favorite ice cream flavor. It makes you want to ask her whether she believes any of the shit that comes out of her mouth. I can believe someone out there thinks that literally everything in culture is oppressive to women and minorities, but if they tell me that with a big shit eating grin on their face, I start to doubt their sincerity.

Here is the response for anyone interested who didn't watch it:

[youtube]HvPAfJ3keUs[/youtube]

[Tribble]

Sorry, but the budgets for advertizing are usually equal to or larger than the budgets for R&D. That's pretty well known and a few minutes with teh google will get you lots of references. Now, you could try to get around this by focusing on the claim that more is spent on marketing than development for new drugs, such that, at the moment it goes on the market, probably more has been spend so far on R&D than marketing, but the general point being made about marketing vs R&D is accurate.

GSK (Glaxo Smith Kline)

Selling, general and administration (8,246) )
Research and development (3,450)

It's a bit tough to wiggle out the actual sales & marketing from the selling, general and admin costs. However, over 50% (54k/98k)of GSKs employees are sales force and the EE payroll for the company (buried in many expenses) was $7+ billion pounds. . Much of the other expenses in SGA are selling expenses as well. The only pure expense I could find explicitly stated in the footnotes was Direct Advertising which was $371 million pounds, but those are advertising buys not EEs, and related.

But the basic rule for drugs is that you spend more on sales & marketing than research. It's just the way it is.

And it's not the only industry. EA (Electronic Arts) spends more money on sales & marketing of their second-rate computer games than it does on product development. Which I find annoying because if they'd spend more money on making great products, they could save that, and more, on the M&A.

Anyway, I'm not sure who was arguing what position, but this is the way the drug industry (and many other consumer goods industries) works as a whole.

[John Greg]

HAHAHA. LousyCanuck, literary, diction, and intellectual wizardo supremo says:

Considering that dictionaries are catalogues of how people use words, rather than the final word on what those words mean, and considering further that the meaning of the word “woman” is in question by no less an authority than Ophelia Benson herself, the dictionary argument holds zero sway here.

:clap:

I am sure that a vast range of English, et al., PhDs are quaking in their boots in fear of Canuck's intellectual genuis.

Link: http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck ... nt-1467037

[Karmakin]

Vernaculis, a bright young youtuber in the vein of justicar, has done a recent video on laci green's MTV output where she describes EVERYTHING as 'problematic' which might rather stymie Google usefulness.

Yeah, I watched Vernaculis' video when it came out. The Laci Green vid he was responding to was a special brand of insane. Not only does she condemn literally everything in culture, but she does it in her characteristic smiley bubbly tone, as though she were telling you about about her favorite ice cream flavor. It makes you want to ask her whether she believes any of the shit that comes out of her mouth. I can believe someone out there thinks that literally everything in culture is oppressive to women and minorities, but if they tell me that with a big shit eating grin on their face, I start to doubt their sincerity.

Here is the response for anyone interested who didn't watch it:

[youtube]HvPAfJ3keUs[/youtube]

The problem is that they want it both ways. They want it so that they can demand the "other" people change the way they think/act/behave/feel/whatever, but the people in the inner circle, in the right tribe can just brush it off their shoulder. It's not a big deal. We already got that part of us covered, nothing needs to be changed here!

That's a fairly common bit of language usage. It's used in churches sometimes as well, where people are expected to get the "wink wink nod nod" that this stuff isn't to be taken literally/seriously.

[Tribble]

Sorry, but the budgets for advertizing are usually equal to or larger than the budgets for R&D. That's pretty well known and a few minutes with teh google will get you lots of references. Now, you could try to get around this by focusing on the claim that more is spent on marketing than development for new drugs, such that, at the moment it goes on the market, probably more has been spend so far on R&D than marketing, but the general point being made about marketing vs R&D is accurate.

Again, bollocks.

Read the frozen link above, and its link: New Scientist estimates a cost to bring a drug to market of around 2.5 billion$. But Fierce estimates that the TOTAL pharmaceutical ad budget (that would include such standbys as all of the acetaminophen/paracetamol, aspirin, and anti-histamine preparations) is only 2.7 billion$ per annum.

http://i.imgur.com/uYbYfTL.png

They're not accountants (and you don't appear to be one either). THey're telling you one small part of the costs -- direct advertising buys. -- because they can't read financial statements and, consequently, don't know what they're talking about. Marketing not only includes direct advertising buys, but the sales reps. And the vast majority of the marketing expenses for drug companies are the sales reps.

As I pointed out in the GSK stuff, 54/98ths of the EEs for GSK are sales force. That's 55% of the Company. And salesmen tend to be on the HIGH compensation side of the company payroll, not the low side. I wouldn't surprise me in the slightest of the $7+ billion pound payroll expense GSK had in 2014 that 60% (or more) was sales-related payroll.


You see what I'm saying? Direct advertising buys are low, but direct advertising is only a small fraction of what drug companies spend on pushing their drugs. Most of their advertising comes from direct, one-on-one meetings with physicians. Not the media. And that takes sales force.

[Billie from Ockham]

Sorry, but the budgets for advertizing are usually equal to or larger than the budgets for R&D. That's pretty well known and a few minutes with teh google will get you lots of references. Now, you could try to get around this by focusing on the claim that more is spent on marketing than development for new drugs, such that, at the moment it goes on the market, probably more has been spend so far on R&D than marketing, but the general point being made about marketing vs R&D is accurate.

GSK (Glaxo Smith Kline)

Selling, general and administration (8,246) )
Research and development (3,450)

It's a bit tough to wiggle out the actual sales & marketing from the selling, general and admin costs. However, over 50% (54k/98k)of GSKs employees are sales force and the EE payroll for the company (buried in many expenses) was $7+ billion pounds. . Much of the other expenses in SGA are selling expenses as well. The only pure expense I could find explicitly stated in the footnotes was Direct Advertising which was $371 million pounds, but those are advertising buys not EEs, and related.

But the basic rule for drugs is that you spend more on sales & marketing than research. It's just the way it is.

And it's not the only industry. EA (Electronic Arts) spends more money on sales & marketing of their second-rate computer games than it does on product development. Which I find annoying because if they'd spend more money on making great products, they could save that, and more, on the M&A.

Anyway, I'm not sure who was arguing what position, but this is the way the drug industry (and many other consumer goods industries) works as a whole.

Quoting numbers and accurately summarizing the situation is just floosh-bait, given that posting links to external sources that make the same point didn't work.

[Aneris]

HAHAHA. LousyCanuck, literary, diction, and intellectual wizardo supremo says:

Considering that dictionaries are catalogues of how people use words, rather than the final word on what those words mean, and considering further that the meaning of the word “woman” is in question by no less an authority than Ophelia Benson herself, the dictionary argument holds zero sway here.

:clap:

I am sure that a vast range of English, et al., PhDs are quaking in their boots in fear of Canuck's intellectual genuis.

Link: http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck ... nt-1467037

There are two camps in linguistics, called descriptivists and the prescriptivsts, compare describe and prescribe.

The general take of a prescriptivist is that there are rules that define how language should be used, and that mistakes result from when those rules are broken. [...] The idea behind descriptive linguistics is that a language is defined by what people do with it. In other words, you begin by studying and listening to native speakers. Then, when you notice patterns in the ways that they communicate, you can record those patterns as guesses about the principles of a language.

http://english.blogoverflow.com/2012/10 ... riptivism/

The difference between those camps can shrink to trivialities, since descriptivists tend to acknowledge that not every random person counts, but native speakers who are known to use the language carefully, i.e. writers.

[Shatterface]

The descriptivists and the prescriptivists are in pretty much agreement as to whether women get pregnant.

[Karmakin]

Sorry, but the budgets for advertizing are usually equal to or larger than the budgets for R&D. That's pretty well known and a few minutes with teh google will get you lots of references. Now, you could try to get around this by focusing on the claim that more is spent on marketing than development for new drugs, such that, at the moment it goes on the market, probably more has been spend so far on R&D than marketing, but the general point being made about marketing vs R&D is accurate.

Again, bollocks.

Read the frozen link above, and its link: New Scientist estimates a cost to bring a drug to market of around 2.5 billion$. But Fierce estimates that the TOTAL pharmaceutical ad budget (that would include such standbys as all of the acetaminophen/paracetamol, aspirin, and anti-histamine preparations) is only 2.7 billion$ per annum.

http://i.imgur.com/uYbYfTL.png

They're not accountants (and you don't appear to be one either). THey're telling you one small part of the costs -- direct advertising buys. -- because they can't read financial statements and, consequently, don't know what they're talking about. Marketing not only includes direct advertising buys, but the sales reps. And the vast majority of the marketing expenses for drug companies are the sales reps.

As I pointed out in the GSK stuff, 54/98ths of the EEs for GSK are sales force. That's 55% of the Company. And salesmen tend to be on the HIGH compensation side of the company payroll, not the low side. I wouldn't surprise me in the slightest of the $7+ billion pound payroll expense GSK had in 2014 that 60% (or more) was sales-related payroll.


You see what I'm saying? Direct advertising buys are low, but direct advertising is only a small fraction of what drug companies spend on pushing their drugs. Most of their advertising comes from direct, one-on-one meetings with physicians. Not the media. And that takes sales force.

Honestly, I thought everybody knew that.

I mean maybe not a majority of their advertising. But that a significant chunk comes from direct, one on one meetings and sales pitches, and that it's a massive problem, especially in the US in terms of costs, both in terms of making pharmaceuticals more expensive, but also in terms of incorrect diagnosis.

[Shatterface]

One of the commentators on Canuck or Opie (can't remember which) suggests it's time to abandon the term 'feminism' for reasons I can't be arsed parsing but there is a serious point there: if feminism is simply the proposition that women are people too then how can pregnant men be a feminist issue?

[Billie from Ockham]

You see what I'm saying? Direct advertising buys are low, but direct advertising is only a small fraction of what drug companies spend on pushing their drugs. Most of their advertising comes from direct, one-on-one meetings with physicians. Not the media. And that takes sales force.

Yep. If your goal is to show that Nerd of Readhead is wrong, as opposed to learn something about the drug industry, then you can (a) define the marketing cost of a new drug as only the DTC that occurs before a drug's release [which will make the number absurdly small] and (b) define the R&D cost of the new drug as the total amount spent on all R&D during the time that the drug in question was being developed and tested divided by the number of drugs approved in that period [which is not only a great way to inflate the number, but has actually been done by several companies]. Congrats! You have found a way to produce numbers that contradict what Nerd wrote. You have won an argument on the internet (albeit by being more stupid).*

* clearly not aimed at Tribble

[Steersman]

The descriptivists and the prescriptivists are in pretty much agreement as to whether women get pregnant.

:lol: But while the descriptivist/prescriptivist dichotomy seems like a useful one - and I found the Stack Exchange post on it quite informative, I'm not entirely sure that it has much relevance to the question of definitions. My general and frequently argued point is that going hog-wild in creating inconsistent and contradictory definitions for words is a recipe for disaster: As Alice said to Humpty Dumpty, "The question is ... whether you can make words mean so many different things".

[Dave]

The descriptivists and the prescriptivists are in pretty much agreement as to whether women get pregnant.

:lol: But while the descriptivist/prescriptivist dichotomy seems like a useful one - and I found the Stack Exchange post on it quite informative, I'm not entirely sure that it has much relevance to the question of definitions. My general and frequently argued point is that going hog-wild in creating inconsistent and contradictory definitions for words is a recipe for disaster: As Alice said to Humpty Dumpty, "The question is ... whether you can make words mean so many different things".

And as Humpty Dumpty LousyCanuck would reply, "The question is who is to be Mistress, thats all."

The answer is obviously Ophelia.

[Billie from Ockham]

I mean maybe not a majority of their advertising. But that a significant chunk comes from direct, one on one meetings and sales pitches, and that it's a massive problem, especially in the US in terms of costs, both in terms of making pharmaceuticals more expensive, but also in terms of incorrect diagnosis.

If care about the details, drug companies also use the "trick" that the makers of things like replacement hips use: consulting fees. And, on paper, these look legit enough to not be often called out for what they are: bribes. The surgeon is paid "consultant fees" to provide "valuable feedback" on "our products." When you try to raise the question of the rather high correlation between the use the company's products and the consulting fees paid, they reply with "well, duh! We get more and better feedback from those who use our products than from those who don't." When you try to follow up with "but the lag correlation is stronger from use to fee than from fee to use," they say that they pay after they get the useful feedback.

The head of orthopedic surgery at my local hospital gets more than twice as much in "consulting fees" from DePuy Orthopedics than he's paid by the state. We only know this because of our open-records law.

The relevance of all this is how additional costs that are clearly a form of marketing don't even show up on the ledger as marketing, but are sometimes charged to R&D, instead (again, on the grounds that these consulting fees are related to product development).

[jugheadnaut]

Perfectly serious. And now I have no idea what your position is: do you have evidence for your original complaint, or were you just fishing? If you have expertise in the area, just come out and say it; as I said, I do not mind at all being shown to be wrong. You have me confused, Billie, just spell out your position (with evidence, per Nerd).

I'm being trolled by a fungus, aren't I? Well, that's a step up from a horse, I guess.

On the small chance that I'm not.... Nerd said that more than half of the expenses for a new drug goes to marketing. Someone raised a doubt about this. I happen to know that Nerd is roughly correct. End of story. Good night. If you want to continue this tomorrow, please be prepared to provide peer-reviewed evidence that you don't mind being shown that you're wrong and that I have you confused. Please be aware that only papers that report probabilities (as frequencies) to 17 decimal places will be considered acceptable.

Nerd was disputing the claim that that clinical trials were the "killer" expense in bringing new drugs to market. While it is true that many pharmaceutical companies spend more in sales/marketing than R&D, this doesn't make him roughly correct. Nerd called the expense 'advertising'. He is entirely wrong:

- Advertising is not an expense in bringing a drug to market. It is an expense that occurs once a drug is on the market.
- Only for a few drugs with huge markets (e.g. cardiovascular health, mood disorders, sexual disorders) do fortunes get spent on advertising. While I don't have any citations at the moment, I'm confident in asserting that for the majority of drugs that a pharmaceutical company develops, R&D costs greatly outstrip marketing costs.
- Advertising != sales/marketing. It is a relatively small subset.

A bigger issue with the R&D vs marketing issue is the false belief that these basically come out of the same pool so if only pharmaceutical companies spent less on marketing, they could spend more on R&D. R&D is risk capital. It is an expense the company needs to be entirely prepared to lose, and in most cases with drug development, they do lose it. Sales/marketing expenses are aimed at maximizing revenues for an existing product. It is not risk capital. Far from being competitive with each other, by increasing revenues sales/marketing expenditures generally increase the funds available for R&D.

Not that I defend how pharmaceutical companies use their marketing dollars. The current system is wasteful and sometimes borderline unethical, tantamount to bribes for doctors to prescribe certain medications. Doctors should be relying more on peer organizations and (heavens forbid) keeping up on current research when making medication plan decisions. Sales reps and patients wanting a particular drug because they saw a TV advertisement should not play a major role, as is the case now.

[Parody Accountant]

Jennifer Chavez
September 23, 2015 at 2:35 pm
Kevin Kirkpatrick, what acute impact does transantagonism play in limiting the accessibility of abortion services to transgender boys and men that is separate or distinct from misogyny? Do trans men get turned away from abortion clinics because they’re trans? I’m more inclined to believe that they would be denied abortion care because they have female genitals and that’s all misogynists care about.

- See more at: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/201 ... /#comments

WHAT?!?

[Aneris]

The descriptivists and the prescriptivists are in pretty much agreement as to whether women get pregnant.

Jason Thibeault is my favourite satirist in the secular movement, and if he wasn't joking all the time, he might be considered a genuine Dunning-Kruger candidate. Of course what he writes is almost by default sheer hogwash. He is however correct with the line that “dictionaries are catalogues of how people use words” at least in the descriptivist view. I don't think he disputes that women can get pregnant. He wants to include trans-men, and wants to have women who can't get pregnant acknowledged. The issue lies somewhere else: language works because people agree on what some name means, and hence the error is in “dictionary argument holds zero sway here”. You can say that “this law book holds now sway here” while breaking into a house, and think that the book does really nothing, which is true, until the cops come and throw you in jail. You have to see that Jason Thibeault is afflicted by a special kind of condition.

And once you go there, into meaning and referents and all that, it becomes obscurantist-level complicated quickly. Frankly, I hate it since I once encountered a brand of post-modern obscurantist Christian in a discussion. In one sense it is legitimate to question conventions in everyday language and look into it, but I can't help that this is done in the interest to murky the waters. For example we conventionally label things women that are not even human. All those characters in fiction and TV. This is not mysterious at all, and you might recall Teh Pipe That Isn't One™. But it suddenly becomes relevant when you deal with the brand of obscurantists like Jason Thibeault, and that means, alas, that the seemingly simple answers don't work either.

[Billie from Ockham]

- Advertising is not an expense in bringing a drug to market. It is an expense that occurs once a drug is on the market

Please keep in mind that, in the US, a prescription drug must already have at least one approved use before it can be advertized DTC. (That's an FDA rule.) Therefore, no new drug under development can be advertized, as it will not meet this requirement.

[Suet Cardigan]

Vernaculis, a bright young youtuber in the vein of justicar, has done a recent video on laci green's MTV output where she describes EVERYTHING as 'problematic' which might rather stymie Google usefulness.

Yeah, I watched Vernaculis' video when it came out. The Laci Green vid he was responding to was a special brand of insane. Not only does she condemn literally everything in culture, but she does it in her characteristic smiley bubbly tone, as though she were telling you about about her favorite ice cream flavor. It makes you want to ask her whether she believes any of the shit that comes out of her mouth. I can believe someone out there thinks that literally everything in culture is oppressive to women and minorities, but if they tell me that with a big shit eating grin on their face, I start to doubt their sincerity.

Here is the response for anyone interested who didn't watch it:

[youtube]HvPAfJ3keUs[/youtube]

Problematic2.jpg

(133.82 KiB) Downloaded 234 times

Problematic = "inaccurate". Behaviors can be "inaccurate".

Problematic.jpg

(125.59 KiB) Downloaded 237 times

Everyone and everything is problematic, therefore everyone and everything is "inaccurate".

She's gone round the twist.