The Refuge of the Toads

[deLurch]

Please take the Steersman pledge. He has never budged on any position and never will, regardless of evidence. You've fought the good fight, and been patient, persistent and even charitable. And while I've enjoyed and been instructed by your interaction with him, I think it is time to stop encouraging his behavior. He has zero empathy, and if he is not a racist, he sure plays one well. I honestly think if folks here ignore him long enough, he'll go away. Failing that he should be mercilessly mocked like Creativity or any other authoritarian ideologue. Life is too short.

That would require me to read through his long tomes to discover what his positions really are (instead of just taking your word for it). He rarely discusses topics I find interesting. I reply on the rare occasion he does bring something up I find worth while.

[Keating]

This was linked on Breitbart, but I think if we had a few more people in the Middle East with this attitude, we'd have fewer Steersmens.

"Imagine a Western youth coming here and carrying out a suicide mission in one of our public squares in the name of the Cross. Imagine that two skyscrapers had collapsed in some Arab capital, and that an extremist Christian group, donning millennium-old garb, had emerged to take responsibility for the event, while stressing its determination to revive Christian teachings or some Christian rulings, according to its understanding, to live like in the time [of Jesus] and his disciples, and to implement certain edicts of Christian scholars…

"Imagine hearing the voices of monks and priests from churches and prayer houses in and out of the Arab world, screaming on loudspeakers and levelling accusations against Muslims, calling them infidels, and chanting: 'God, eliminate the Muslims and defeat them all.'

"Imagine that we had provided an endless number of foreign groups with visas, ID cards, citizenships, proper jobs, free education, free modern healthcare, social security, and so on, and later a member of one of these groups came out, consumed by hatred and bloodlust, and killed our sons on our streets, in our buildings, in our newspaper [offices], in our mosques and in our schools.
"Imagine a Frenchmen or a German in Paris or Berlin leading his Muslim neighbor [somewhere] in order to slaughter him and then freeze his head in an ice box, in a cold and calculating manner... as one terrorist did with the head of an American in Riyadh years ago.[2]

"Imagine that we visited their country as tourists and they shot at us, blew up car bombs near us, and announced their opposition to our presence [there] by chanting: 'Remove the Muslims from the land of culture.'

"These images are far from the mind of the Arab or Muslim terrorist because he is certain, or used to be certain, that the West is humanitarian and that the Western citizen would refuse to respond [in this manner] to the barbaric crimes [of the Muslim terrorists]. Despite the terrorist acts of Al-Qaeda and ISIS, we [Muslims] have been on [Western] soil for years without any fear or worry. Millions of Muslim tourists, immigrants, students, and job seekers [travel to the West] with the doors open [to them], and the streets safe [for them].

"However, how much longer [will this last]? Today things are different. [Western] anger [at Muslims] is apparent, and they make scary declarations. One who recently championed [these views] is Donald Trump, who demanded to bar Muslims from entering the U.S.
"It is strange that we [Muslims] believe we have the right to condemn such statements rather than address the implications of some of our extremist curricula, our education, and our regimes, and be ashamed [of them]... It is strange that we condemn [the West] instead of addressing what is happening in our midst - the extremist ways in which we interpret the shari'a and our reactionary attitudes towards each other and the world. It is strange that we condemn instead of apologizing to the world.

"How would you react if a European blew up a theater in your city or a café that your son frequents? What would you do if you heard curses against your religion and faith every Sunday, as they hear [against theirs] from some of our imams on Fridays and other days?
"Imagine being in Amsterdam, London, or New York and knowing that students [there] learn as part of their curricula that you are an infidel, and that killing you is jihad that leads to the virgins of paradise. Would you extend your stay there to the end of the summer, or stay away? [Would you] blow yourself up [as the Muslim terrorists do], or would you do less than that: [Merely] conquer your rage and demand to ban Christians from entering Arab countries. What would you do?

"[Imagine] the war that would break out had Westerners shed their values in the face of the bloody crimes committed by foreigners, and if Western or Christian counter-radicalism had emerged in our Arab cities?

"After all these farces, some Arab analyst comes out touting a pathetic message, and reciting the same words in his friend's ear that he has repeated millions of times: 'Those [Muslims who commit terrorism] do not represent Islam, but only themselves.'
"This is all we [know how to do] – absolve [ourselves] of guilt.

[Couch]

My porn life really began when I discovered Penthouse in the late 1970s. At the time there were three main porn mags. Playboy was going for "tasteful", Hustler was going for full hardcore, and Penthouse had well photographed models in more hardcore poses. Penthouse was my favorite at the time.

Mine began in the roughly the same era, though it was difficult to know which periodicals were involved as I found all my grot pics as kid playing around abandoned railway lines. I don't know what it was about abandoned railway lines in the UK at the time, but they attracted torn-out 'nudey mag' (as we used to call them) pages as turds might attract a swarm of bluebottles*. Being that young, it seemed incomprehsensible to me why a bloke would want to buy a magazine devoted to 'nudey ladies' when there were plenty of motorbike and car magazines available. Also, despite being so young, it still struck me as vaguely...wrong that you'd sometimes find pages where the private parts of the good lady had been inexplicably ripped out. That in particular seemed very weird, even though - bizarrely enough - it seemed perfectly reasonable back then to expect to find such excerpts from choice periodicals in the bushes around abandoned railway lines.

I miss hedge porn. I swear kids nowadays don't know they're born. All they have to do is type in whatever they want to see and there it is. They're spoilt as fuck.
They'll never know the sheer joy of being 12 and seeing a distant page poking out of a hedge or blowing forlornly across a field. No other feeling like it. Of course there were the times when it wasn't worth getting excited about. "Porn Mirage" was common. You'd get to the treasure and instead of seeing a woman with a massive hairy minge and floppy tits it would be a page from the sports section of the Argos catalogue. You'd fall to your knees, the clouds would burst and a single tear would roll down your cheek.

Fuck, 'Hedge Porn', I should've realised there'd be a name for it. To the extent I'd coined a name in my own mind, it was 'bush porn', which I suppose is pretty similar. Any small patch of suburban bushland would reliably yield pages from a porno mag.

Years later, discussing the phenomena with mates, we speculated it was planted by pervs who'd have a neaby 'hide' from which to keep vigilant watch for the not-infrequent occurrence whereby you and/or your chums would rub one out en-discoverie.

I too was disturbed by the carefully torn out vaginas and bum-holes until it occurred to me the resulting hole in the page approximated to the girth of an erect penis - whereupon I presumed 'fucking the centrefold' was literally the object of the exercise; and perhaps one could (or could convince one's friend) to reach around and make a fist behind the hole so there was some resistance encountered which was greater than mere air.

[Steersman]

<snip>

My point was that both Namazie and, presumably or potentially, Kirbmarc may have been letting allegiances to relatives - not wanting their feelings hurt, for example - get the better of their reason. Which, given both Namazie's podcast with Harris and Kirbmarc's rather obstinate refusal to concede that some Western democracies have limits on free speech, sure looked like cut-and-dried cases of people's "conduct, character, or motives being relevant to the issue".

No, I had read the Twitter exchanges and the subsequent posts here and my post above was made in that connection.

I think what you've done is, at least in respect of Kirbmarc, worse than an ad hominem. And that is because you've read enough of the guy's work here to know he's admirably intellectually detached and coolly rational. I think, and I'd expect most who saw your tweet think, that it was as nasty and probably racist attempt by you to dog-whistle and poison the well because you were being owned in the argument on its merits.

As I said, Steers, new low. Keep it up, matey.

Generally speaking. In many cases. But when it comes to Islam he seems remarkably unwilling to consider that Islam itself is the problem - "bad to the bone". You might note the following from the Wikipedia article on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, arguably one of the four "horsemen":

In a 2007 interview in the London Evening Standard,[19] Hirsi Ali characterised Islam as "the new fascism":

"Just like Nazism started with Hitler's vision, the Islamic vision is a caliphate — a society ruled by Sharia law – in which women who have sex before marriage are stoned to death, homosexuals are beaten, and apostates like me are killed. Sharia law is as inimical to liberal democracy as Nazism." In this interview, she said, "Violence is inherent in Islam – it's a destructive, nihilistic cult of death. It legitimates murder."

In a 2007 article in Reason magazine, Hirsi Ali said that Islam, the religion, must be defeated and that "we are at war with Islam. And there's no middle ground in wars." She said, "Islam, period. Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace...There comes a moment when you crush your enemy." She reiterated her position that the problem it isn't just a few "rotten apples" in the Islamic community but "I’m saying it’s the entire basket." She stated that the majority of Muslims aren't "moderates" and they must radically alter their religion.

In all probability "the entire basket" is a stretch, but when most Muslims accept that the Quran is the literal word of gawd, one might suggest that it's a short one.

As for "racist", I don't think you have the foggiest idea what the word means so you throw it about with the same gay abandon as "feminists" throw around "misogynist", as transactivists throw around "transphobic", as Islamists throw around "islamophobic", at the drop of a hat, at the slightest hurt feeling.

[Brive1987]

Faster than the fat arse Sherman (in fact so fast they had to govern its engine so it didn't blow)
More manoeuvrable than the clumsy Sherman - could play tag with the German beasties
Lower silhouette than the Sherman

I keep reading 'Steersman' for 'Sherman' here, I don't know why.

You say that like it's a diminishment of meaning.

[Couch]

Steers, 'for a variety of reasons, racist' is the epithet I'm probably, above all others, most careful about dispensing. My definition of iracism approximates to:

"...prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior".

I didn't come to the conclusion you're an inveterate racist overnight.

[Steersman]

This was linked on Breitbart, but I think if we had a few more people in the Middle East with this attitude, we'd have fewer Steersmens.

"Imagine a Western youth coming here and carrying out a suicide mission in one of our public squares in the name of the Cross. Imagine that two skyscrapers had collapsed in some Arab capital, and that an extremist Christian group, donning millennium-old garb, had emerged to take responsibility for the event, while stressing its determination to revive Christian teachings or some Christian rulings, according to its understanding, to live like in the time [of Jesus] and his disciples, and to implement certain edicts of Christian scholars…
<snip>

"It is strange that we [Muslims] believe we have the right to condemn such statements rather than address the implications of some of our extremist curricula, our education, and our regimes, and be ashamed [of them]... It is strange that we condemn [the West] instead of addressing what is happening in our midst - the extremist ways in which we interpret the shari'a and our reactionary attitudes towards each other and the world. It is strange that we condemn instead of apologizing to the world. ....
"After all these farces, some Arab analyst comes out touting a pathetic message, and reciting the same words in his friend's ear that he has repeated millions of times: 'Those [Muslims who commit terrorism] do not represent Islam, but only themselves.'

"This is all we [know how to do] – absolve [ourselves] of guilt.

Impressive - and commendable; may her tribe increase.

[Brive1987]

I still haven't listened to the SGU segment w/ Galef & Novella père but am going to take exception to the title of the clip on youtube: "Free Speech vs Social Justice".

Free speech & social justice aren't in opposition - unless "social justice" is code here for "authoritarianism", which would be a shame. Might as well just add "warriorship" in if that's what they meant.

AFAICT, social justice work is much more likely to be effective when people have the ability to speak freely and everyone understands that expressing an opinion is not anything like crushing sacrosanct eggshells. Free speech allows people to point out injustices that are invisible to, beneficial to, or even designed by those in the dominant culture. It better allows those who are being "helped" by people who mean well but are imposing a solution to say so & express their own views & participate in developing a solution.

Or maybe I just have my rose-colored glasses on again.

It's a bullshit title that reflects the Novella's disconnect from the real issues.
From their perspective FS advocates are advocates for rape and division whereas SJ is personified by feminists aggressively pushing back against said rape narrative.

But Julia does make the obvious point that if SJ = equality for women then there is no problem. If SJ = "enthusiastic SJ" then it needs to be open to vigorous criticism.

[DaveDodo007]

Every playboy centerfold.

Lol, no pussy until Miss January 1972, Marilyn Cole (PMOY 1973) even then it is hidden in the forest.

http://i.imgur.com/RYbb40H.jpg

[Steersman]

Steers, 'for a variety of reasons, racist' is the epithet I'm probably, above all others, most careful about dispensing. My definition of iracism approximates to:

"...prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior".

I didn't come to the conclusion you're an inveterate racist overnight.

Pray tell, what precise statement have I ever made that explictly asserts that I think that all of one race, any race, is superior to all of another? Because that's what the consequences of that definition is.

You might consider that Islam is not a race, and that criticizing individuals in a group is not criticizing all of it; looks like wrapping yourself in a flag if you think otherwise. And you really might want to consider reading some stuff on stereotypes - Wikipedia and the SPSP Journal for starters.

[rayshul]

Husband and I went through the entire Playboy collection last night (centerfolds)... very interesting to note the changes in what was attractive, body type, hairstyles, and the surroundings the women posed in. Huge differences in body shape and face. There's a definite feel in the 90s-00s that the photography really lost something in its design - in the other ones you get a sense of the character of the girls, what they're doing, where they're playing.

Basically there's a point where it all gets very airbrushed and it's just not interesting.

Also noticed recurring themes - they have all sorts of animals, they have glasses but rarely wear them, there's an odd pose they do where it looks like they've fallen and can't get up, and some are bad at putting on clothes. Some have finely haired legs, then there's a point where everything is shaved. And there's a shitload of bitches in the navy.

[feathers]

Also noticed recurring themes - they have all sorts of animals, they have glasses but rarely wear them, there's an odd pose they do where it looks like they've fallen and can't get up, and some are bad at putting on clothes. Some have finely haired legs, then there's a point where everything is shaved. And there's a shitload of bitches in the navy.

True, the navy lets in every cunt.

[Biohazard]

"Tiger tanks"? how cute.

http://www.goingfaster.com/ogre/Winch3.jpg

[Couch]

Steers, 'for a variety of reasons, racist' is the epithet I'm probably, above all others, most careful about dispensing. My definition of iracism approximates to:

"...prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior".

I didn't come to the conclusion you're an inveterate racist overnight.

Pray tell, what precise statement have I ever made that explictly asserts that I think that all of one race, any race, is superior to all of another? Because that's what the consequences of that definition is.

You might consider that Islam is not a race, and that criticizing individuals in a group is not criticizing all of it; looks like wrapping yourself in a flag if you think otherwise. And you really might want to consider reading some stuff on stereotypes - Wikipedia and the SPSP Journal for starters.

Stop being duplicitous, Steers. You didn't accuse Kirbmarc and Namaze of having Islamist relatives, you accused them of having Muslim relatives, and in the fomer's case at least your accusation is based entirely on your knowledge or assumptions about his race.

Let me put this another way. Do you think you're racist?

To put this question in fair context, I think most people are racist to some smaller or larger degree. I know I am and realising that was important for me. I've come to recognise in-group affinity and out-group hostility, in both myself and others, and one group delineator this applies to is definitely race.

So, do you think you are racist to some degree or other?

[Ape+lust]

Husband and I went through the entire Playboy collection last night (centerfolds)... very interesting to note the changes in what was attractive, body type, hairstyles, and the surroundings the women posed in. Huge differences in body shape and face. There's a definite feel in the 90s-00s that the photography really lost something in its design - in the other ones you get a sense of the character of the girls, what they're doing, where they're playing.

One thing about the women never changed.

http://imgur.com/VOCKYqd.jpg

[screwtape]

Not so fast my friend, the game is not over yet! They did not have the same gun as the 75mm, just the same ammunition.

Cromwells carried the QF 6pdr or the QF 75mm which was a 6pdr bored out to take the American 75mm shells.
The reason they went with the 75mm was that in Italy, the HE shells of the 6pdr were inferior.

Although not nearly as good as the QF 17pdr, the 6pdr was still a pretty good AT gun, better than the M3 75mm as it had a much higher muzzle velocity and could fire tungsten core and sabot rounds.

So we can say that the 6pdr Cromwells pip the Sherman on that too.


Get in!

GB.png

But were the electrics done by Lucas? If so, all bets are off.

[Oglebart]

I'm sure that this would be would be viewed as certain heresy in some quarters, but I find Chris Rock massively irritating and really not funny at all. I haven't seen a large amount of his stuff, but I think enough to have an opinion, and I'm not impressed.

Do I need an extended stay at my nearest re-education camp?

[Keating]

My porn life really began when I discovered Penthouse in the late 1970s. At the time there were three main porn mags. Playboy was going for "tasteful", Hustler was going for full hardcore, and Penthouse had well photographed models in more hardcore poses. Penthouse was my favorite at the time.

Mine began in the roughly the same era, though it was difficult to know which periodicals were involved as I found all my grot pics as kid playing around abandoned railway lines. I don't know what it was about abandoned railway lines in the UK at the time, but they attracted torn-out 'nudey mag' (as we used to call them) pages as turds might attract a swarm of bluebottles*. Being that young, it seemed incomprehsensible to me why a bloke would want to buy a magazine devoted to 'nudey ladies' when there were plenty of motorbike and car magazines available. Also, despite being so young, it still struck me as vaguely...wrong that you'd sometimes find pages where the private parts of the good lady had been inexplicably ripped out. That in particular seemed very weird, even though - bizarrely enough - it seemed perfectly reasonable back then to expect to find such excerpts from choice periodicals in the bushes around abandoned railway lines.

I miss hedge porn. I swear kids nowadays don't know they're born. All they have to do is type in whatever they want to see and there it is. They're spoilt as fuck.
They'll never know the sheer joy of being 12 and seeing a distant page poking out of a hedge or blowing forlornly across a field. No other feeling like it. Of course there were the times when it wasn't worth getting excited about. "Porn Mirage" was common. You'd get to the treasure and instead of seeing a woman with a massive hairy minge and floppy tits it would be a page from the sports section of the Argos catalogue. You'd fall to your knees, the clouds would burst and a single tear would roll down your cheek.

I never encountered hedge porn. My first exposure was pretty traditional though; my father's bedside table when I was alone in the house.

[Keating]

I'm sure that this would be would be viewed as certain heresy in some quarters, but I find Chris Rock massively irritating and really not funny at all. I haven't seen a large amount of his stuff, but I think enough to have an opinion, and I'm not impressed.

Do I need an extended stay at my nearest re-education camp?

PM Steersman to ask about his favourite Chris Rock skit.

[Gumby]

I'm sure that this would be would be viewed as certain heresy in some quarters, but I find Chris Rock massively irritating and really not funny at all. I haven't seen a large amount of his stuff, but I think enough to have an opinion, and I'm not impressed.

Do I need an extended stay at my nearest re-education camp?

Not a fan either, but that doesn't mean he's bad. His delivery is just grating to me.

I didn't watch the academy awards but did anyone catch Joe Biden introducing Lady Gaga, who proceeded to make everyone teary-eyed with a song about sexual assault? Apparently she wrapped it up by pulling out the "1 in 5 college women are raped" lie, with Biden pleading for us to educate ourselves on this bullshit statistic.

Why don't so many people use their fucking brains? If 1 in 5 college women were truly being raped it would be the biggest news story in the US. But no, some vapid celeb trots out 1 in 5 (or 77 cents on the dollar, even) and it's treated as scientific research.

[CommanderTuvok]

Another difficult story for the SJWs/FTBullies who have turned Islamist-enablers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35685981

Obviously, meninism or colonialism made her do it.

[Spike13]

Regarding WW2 tanks,

The allies were just lucky that a young Russian farm boy discovered that 2meter exhaust port flaw on the Tigers and Panthers.

( he was out shooting Womp-rats in his T-34 )

Between the Tiger and Panther tanks and Japenese swords that could cut battleships in half, it's a miracle we won the war.

[VickyCaramel]

Faster than the fat arse Sherman (in fact so fast they had to govern its engine so it didn't blow)
More manoeuvrable than the clumsy Sherman - could play tag with the German beasties
Lower silhouette than the Sherman
And not given the friendly nickname of "tommy cooker" by the Germans.

http://i.imgur.com/n76f1ST.jpg

Alas it failed a clean sweep by having the 75 mm gun as the Sherman. Oh well.

Not so fast my friend, the game is not over yet! They did not have the same gun as the 75mm, just the same ammunition.

Cromwells carried the QF 6pdr or the QF 75mm which was a 6pdr bored out to take the American 75mm shells.
The reason they went with the 75mm was that in Italy, the HE shells of the 6pdr were inferior.

Although not nearly as good as the QF 17pdr, the 6pdr was still a pretty good AT gun, better than the M3 75mm as it had a much higher muzzle velocity and could fire tungsten core and sabot rounds.

So we can say that the 6pdr Cromwells pip the Sherman on that too.


Get in!

GB.png

Ah yes. I see some British units kept the 6pdr configuration especially early on - as the M72 75mm AP round was shit. I'm not sure whether the rebored QF 75mm was better or worse than a comparative US M3. It can't be good having a gun fire a heavier shell than it is designed to do so.

I have also read that the 6pdr was better at short range than the M3, even when he M3 was firing M61 ammo - but not so much as the range increased.

Although i take Slymepit in-jokes seriously, I only did about 20 mins research into this. But I did wonder about the Quick Fire mechanism, I know it was successful in the whole, but didn't see how it compared to the M3. I did wonder if it were faster.
The 6prd was firing high velocity, high pressure rounds, and although the M3 rounds were much heavier and with a bigger charge, there isn't a huge difference in muzzle energy, so I doubt the barrel would have had much problem dealing with it as but all accounts they only had to shave a little to make it fit.

The 75mm was designed to take 38,000 PSI, while the 6prd was designed to take 44,800 PSI, so the mechanism and lightly modified barrel would easily be able to take any of the 75mm shells.

[VickyCaramel]

Not so fast my friend, the game is not over yet! They did not have the same gun as the 75mm, just the same ammunition.

Cromwells carried the QF 6pdr or the QF 75mm which was a 6pdr bored out to take the American 75mm shells.
The reason they went with the 75mm was that in Italy, the HE shells of the 6pdr were inferior.

Although not nearly as good as the QF 17pdr, the 6pdr was still a pretty good AT gun, better than the M3 75mm as it had a much higher muzzle velocity and could fire tungsten core and sabot rounds.

So we can say that the 6pdr Cromwells pip the Sherman on that too.


Get in!

GB.png

But were the electrics done by Lucas? If so, all bets are off.

Electrics by Lucas, assembled by Rover... it doesn't sound promising does it? Thankfully it wasn't built in the 1980s.

[VickyCaramel]

Last night Jenny McDermott called me "a nobody". Don't worry, it didn't hurt. My first thought was, "Who have you ever helped"?

...because in the twenty or so years I have been doing this, I can name names of people I have actually helped leave cults, religions, violent relationships etc. And I got to thinking about my track record.

Then I remembered that years ago I used to get bulletin boards shut down. I didn't actually think about the issue of free speech or no-platforming at the time. My post-hock justification is that it was difficult to challenge their ideas from the inside as descenting voices would quickly get banned, and back in those days (pre-Myspace) there was no social media so you couldn't challenge their ideas from the outside, so we would pressure the servers, software providers, networks, inform the media, and in some cases post stuff that would break their code.

The sites I targeted were Polly-Anna (pro-anorexia), Bloodletting (Pro-self harm and blood drinking) and sites were teens were encouraging each other to commit suicide. I occasionally used to target chatrroms on networks that were representing themselves as helping with homework or teaching languages, which were actually fronts for Scientology, I was reasonably successful in getting these shut down as Scientology had already had chats closed down for various violations of TofS.

So what do you think? Did I do the right thing?

[Shatterface]

'76 was Ladybird Summer.

Hard to picture it if you weren't there but try to imagine a red and black blizzard that lasted weeks.

And O Levels in insane temperatures.

I distinctly remember a heatwave in the low countries in '75, but WP tells me we had one in both '75 and '76.

A heatwave in .nl means you can release a fish mid-air and it'll happily swim away.

Ladybirds were bad enough, but remember the elephant plague of '76?

Couldn't move in Birkenhead for the big nosed fuckers.

[youtube]3GDsamFbg3g[/youtube]

(It's okay to call them big noses, they're thick skinned)

[John D]

"Tiger tanks"? how cute.

http://www.goingfaster.com/ogre/Winch3.jpg

Ogre Mk V. I have three miniatures of this "tank." I was a big Steve Jackson fan in the late 70s and I have about two hundred of the Ogre minis. Ogre is a great little game... not very realistic,... but super tactical.

Honor.jpg

(22.45 KiB) Downloaded 251 times

Val Jean.jpg

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[John D]

My porn life really began when I discovered Penthouse in the late 1970s. At the time there were three main porn mags. Playboy was going for "tasteful", Hustler was going for full hardcore, and Penthouse had well photographed models in more hardcore poses. Penthouse was my favorite at the time.

Mine began in the roughly the same era, though it was difficult to know which periodicals were involved as I found all my grot pics as kid playing around abandoned railway lines. I don't know what it was about abandoned railway lines in the UK at the time, but they attracted torn-out 'nudey mag' (as we used to call them) pages as turds might attract a swarm of bluebottles*. Being that young, it seemed incomprehsensible to me why a bloke would want to buy a magazine devoted to 'nudey ladies' when there were plenty of motorbike and car magazines available. Also, despite being so young, it still struck me as vaguely...wrong that you'd sometimes find pages where the private parts of the good lady had been inexplicably ripped out. That in particular seemed very weird, even though - bizarrely enough - it seemed perfectly reasonable back then to expect to find such excerpts from choice periodicals in the bushes around abandoned railway lines.

I miss hedge porn. I swear kids nowadays don't know they're born. All they have to do is type in whatever they want to see and there it is. They're spoilt as fuck.
They'll never know the sheer joy of being 12 and seeing a distant page poking out of a hedge or blowing forlornly across a field. No other feeling like it. Of course there were the times when it wasn't worth getting excited about. "Porn Mirage" was common. You'd get to the treasure and instead of seeing a woman with a massive hairy minge and floppy tits it would be a page from the sports section of the Argos catalogue. You'd fall to your knees, the clouds would burst and a single tear would roll down your cheek.

Haha. I woke up this morning feeling like shit. I drank too much yesterday and the weather became very humid. I was sore and had a bad headache and I had to start another grind of a day. Self pity... no doubt.

I have a few minutes to check in at the pit and found myself laughing and remembering stuff from my past. I really feel much better now. Thanks for the yucks.

[feathers]

The sites I targeted were Polly-Anna (pro-anorexia), Bloodletting (Pro-self harm and blood drinking) and sites were teens were encouraging each other to commit suicide.

Wait, is that why we're now saddled with all those hypersensitive feather-triggered university twens? Then maybe it would have been more merciful to encourage them a bit more.

[Ape+lust]

Rebecca race-posturing like she gives a shit.

Arthur Chu mistaking Chris Rock to be his kind of volcanically stifled loser.

Both of them recognizing their natural affinity as peers. Again. Maybe one day the Potato and Fungus will do great things together.

*swoon* :dance:

http://imgur.com/wcQkVnK.png

[jet_lagg]

I miss hedge porn. I swear kids nowadays don't know they're born. All they have to do is type in whatever they want to see and there it is. They're spoilt as fuck.
They'll never know the sheer joy of being 12 and seeing a distant page poking out of a hedge or blowing forlornly across a field. No other feeling like it. Of course there were the times when it wasn't worth getting excited about. "Porn Mirage" was common. You'd get to the treasure and instead of seeing a woman with a massive hairy minge and floppy tits it would be a page from the sports section of the Argos catalogue. You'd fall to your knees, the clouds would burst and a single tear would roll down your cheek.

A buddy and I stumbled on a stack of magazines while hiking the train tracks once. Great selection, the sort of fetish variety you'd not see the likes of again until broadband internet. I swear it felt like winning the lotto.

[Gumby]

A buddy and I stumbled on a stack of magazines while hiking the train tracks once. Great selection, the sort of fetish variety you'd not see the likes of again until broadband internet. I swear it felt like winning the lotto.

My jackpot was a collection of hundreds of hardcore porn magazines, which I found in the collection bin for a church paper drive, of all placrd. So I have Christianity to thank for my introduction to hardcore German shit-in-mouth porn at the tender age of ten.

[jet_lagg]

Last night Jenny McDermott called me "a nobody". Don't worry, it didn't hurt. My first thought was, "Who have you ever helped"?

...because in the twenty or so years I have been doing this, I can name names of people I have actually helped leave cults, religions, violent relationships etc. And I got to thinking about my track record.

Then I remembered that years ago I used to get bulletin boards shut down. I didn't actually think about the issue of free speech or no-platforming at the time. My post-hock justification is that it was difficult to challenge their ideas from the inside as descenting voices would quickly get banned, and back in those days (pre-Myspace) there was no social media so you couldn't challenge their ideas from the outside, so we would pressure the servers, software providers, networks, inform the media, and in some cases post stuff that would break their code.

The sites I targeted were Polly-Anna (pro-anorexia), Bloodletting (Pro-self harm and blood drinking) and sites were teens were encouraging each other to commit suicide. I occasionally used to target chatrroms on networks that were representing themselves as helping with homework or teaching languages, which were actually fronts for Scientology, I was reasonably successful in getting these shut down as Scientology had already had chats closed down for various violations of TofS.

So what do you think? Did I do the right thing?

Ethics are a moving target. It's one thing to say you believe on the rule of law and another entirely to say that when you're convinced beyond a reasonable doubt some dude raped your sister and the courts let him walk. What if he's going to strike again? Do you just wait until it happens and hope there's enough to put him away? Or do you stand in the shadows outside the bar until he leaves and then take a claw hammer to the back of his head?

Same goes for any other slogan you care to name. I bang on about free speech and no platforming, but there are definitely circumstances where I would abandon those principles for what I perceived as the greater good. That's not really a great answer for anyone interested in a unified theory of morality, but it's the best I've got :D

[jet_lagg]

Steers, 'for a variety of reasons, racist' is the epithet I'm probably, above all others, most careful about dispensing. My definition of iracism approximates to:

"...prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior".

I didn't come to the conclusion you're an inveterate racist overnight.

Pray tell, what precise statement have I ever made that explictly asserts that I think that all of one race, any race, is superior to all of another? Because that's what the consequences of that definition is.

You might consider that Islam is not a race, and that criticizing individuals in a group is not criticizing all of it; looks like wrapping yourself in a flag if you think otherwise. And you really might want to consider reading some stuff on stereotypes - Wikipedia and the SPSP Journal for starters.

Stop being duplicitous, Steers. You didn't accuse Kirbmarc and Namaze of having Islamist relatives, you accused them of having Muslim relatives, and in the fomer's case at least your accusation is based entirely on your knowledge or assumptions about his race.

Let me put this another way. Do you think you're racist?

<snip>

When people call Steersman racist I'm in a position a bit like the one where people call Milo Yiannopoulos homophobic. I think the truth is more nuanced than that (though Milo explains that nuance while also being entertaining, no offense, Steers), but I'm not going to begrudge anyone using the word as a bit of shorthand. It's close enough.

[Tony Parsehole]

Haha. I woke up this morning feeling like shit. I drank too much yesterday and the weather became very humid. I was sore and had a bad headache and I had to start another grind of a day. Self pity... no doubt.

I have a few minutes to check in at the pit and found myself laughing and remembering stuff from my past. I really feel much better now. Thanks for the yucks.

There, there, John. It'll be alright, mate.
https://turkishbmovies.files.wordpress. ... omoti2.jpg

[Tigzy]

Mine began in the roughly the same era, though it was difficult to know which periodicals were involved as I found all my grot pics as kid playing around abandoned railway lines. I don't know what it was about abandoned railway lines in the UK at the time, but they attracted torn-out 'nudey mag' (as we used to call them) pages as turds might attract a swarm of bluebottles*. Being that young, it seemed incomprehsensible to me why a bloke would want to buy a magazine devoted to 'nudey ladies' when there were plenty of motorbike and car magazines available. Also, despite being so young, it still struck me as vaguely...wrong that you'd sometimes find pages where the private parts of the good lady had been inexplicably ripped out. That in particular seemed very weird, even though - bizarrely enough - it seemed perfectly reasonable back then to expect to find such excerpts from choice periodicals in the bushes around abandoned railway lines.

I miss hedge porn. I swear kids nowadays don't know they're born. All they have to do is type in whatever they want to see and there it is. They're spoilt as fuck.
They'll never know the sheer joy of being 12 and seeing a distant page poking out of a hedge or blowing forlornly across a field. No other feeling like it. Of course there were the times when it wasn't worth getting excited about. "Porn Mirage" was common. You'd get to the treasure and instead of seeing a woman with a massive hairy minge and floppy tits it would be a page from the sports section of the Argos catalogue. You'd fall to your knees, the clouds would burst and a single tear would roll down your cheek.

Fuck, 'Hedge Porn', I should've realised there'd be a name for it. To the extent I'd coined a name in my own mind, it was 'bush porn', which I suppose is pretty similar. Any small patch of suburban bushland would reliably yield pages from a porno mag.

Years later, discussing the phenomena with mates, we speculated it was planted by pervs who'd have a neaby 'hide' from which to keep vigilant watch for the not-infrequent occurrence whereby you and/or your chums would rub one out en-discoverie.

I too was disturbed by the carefully torn out vaginas and bum-holes until it occurred to me the resulting hole in the page approximated to the girth of an erect penis - whereupon I presumed 'fucking the centrefold' was literally the object of the exercise; and perhaps one could (or could convince one's friend) to reach around and make a fist behind the hole so there was some resistance encountered which was greater than mere air.

We should totally form a club where we can relieve those wonderful, long-ago days by going out to abandoned railway lines and urban wasteground looking for torn-out nudey-mag pages.

Nothing could possibly go wrong with this idea.

[Outed1TimeAsGrey!]

I still haven't listened to the SGU segment w/ Galef & Novella père but am going to take exception to the title of the clip on youtube: "Free Speech vs Social Justice".

Free speech & social justice aren't in opposition - unless "social justice" is code here for "authoritarianism", which would be a shame. Might as well just add "warriorship" in if that's what they meant.

AFAICT, social justice work is much more likely to be effective when people have the ability to speak freely and everyone understands that expressing an opinion is not anything like crushing sacrosanct eggshells. Free speech allows people to point out injustices that are invisible to, beneficial to, or even designed by those in the dominant culture. It better allows those who are being "helped" by people who mean well but are imposing a solution to say so & express their own views & participate in developing a solution.

Or maybe I just have my rose-colored glasses on again.

Once you know the absolute truth and you are in positions of power to enforce it, free speech is your enemy.

[Tony Parsehole]

I miss hedge porn. I swear kids nowadays don't know they're born. All they have to do is type in whatever they want to see and there it is. They're spoilt as fuck.
They'll never know the sheer joy of being 12 and seeing a distant page poking out of a hedge or blowing forlornly across a field. No other feeling like it. Of course there were the times when it wasn't worth getting excited about. "Porn Mirage" was common. You'd get to the treasure and instead of seeing a woman with a massive hairy minge and floppy tits it would be a page from the sports section of the Argos catalogue. You'd fall to your knees, the clouds would burst and a single tear would roll down your cheek.

A buddy and I stumbled on a stack of magazines while hiking the train tracks once. Great selection, the sort of fetish variety you'd not see the likes of again until broadband internet. I swear it felt like winning the lotto.

When I was at an age where I only used my dick for pissing out of, I found what can only be described as a tome of porn. A massive, thick War And Peace catalogue it was. And it was full of women with giant twats. Every single one of them looked like a prize winning cabbage. All with New-Romantic 80's hair and make up. Never seen anything like it since. Must have been some proper specialist shite.
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4170 ... udrey2.jpg

[Matt Cavanaugh]

The West fought the Nazis but didn't deport all Germans to some isolated place.

Yes we did, we sent them all to... [jarring chord] Germany!

In the years following WWII, 31 million national & ethnic Germans were forcibly relocated, with between 1/2 - 2 million dying in the process. Most of the ethnic Germans had lived in their regions for centuries. About 1/4 of total German territory was annexed, mostly in the East, with the entire population expelled. The Sudeten had been uninhabited wilderness first settled by Germans in the 13th century. It was made part of Czechoslovakia in 1919, then again in 1945, this time with its ~90% German population forcibly removed. The ~40% of Prague's citizens who were German, were also expelled.

Figures from the Cesspool of Lies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_an ... _(1944–50)

[comhcinc]

Haha. I woke up this morning feeling like shit. I drank too much yesterday and the weather became very humid. I was sore and had a bad headache and I had to start another grind of a day. Self pity... no doubt.

I have a few minutes to check in at the pit and found myself laughing and remembering stuff from my past. I really feel much better now. Thanks for the yucks.

There, there, John. It'll be alright, mate.
https://turkishbmovies.files.wordpress. ... omoti2.jpg

I remember that porn.

[Tony Parsehole]

We should totally form a club where we can relieve those wonderful, long-ago days by going out to abandoned railway lines and urban wasteground looking for torn-out nudey-mag pages.

Nothing could possibly go wrong with this idea.

I always wonder what happened to the collection of heavily dog-eared pages I found over the years. I certainly don't remember chucking any out. Maybe the porn fairies came and took them away when we got dial-up in.

[Matt Cavanaugh]

NB: These brutal relocations were fully agreed to by the US & UK in concert with Stalin. FDR's Morgenthau plan would have made the sowing of Carthage with salt seem like an act of kindness.

[Tony Parsehole]

Tigzy? can we call ourselves "GrumbleSpotters"?

[Spike13]

Last night Jenny McDermott called me "a nobody". Don't worry, it didn't hurt. My first thought was, "Who have you ever helped"?

...because in the twenty or so years I have been doing this, I can name names of people I have actually helped leave cults, religions, violent relationships etc. And I got to thinking about my track record.

Then I remembered that years ago I used to get bulletin boards shut down. I didn't actually think about the issue of free speech or no-platforming at the time. My post-hock justification is that it was difficult to challenge their ideas from the inside as descenting voices would quickly get banned, and back in those days (pre-Myspace) there was no social media so you couldn't challenge their ideas from the outside, so we would pressure the servers, software providers, networks, inform the media, and in some cases post stuff that would break their code.

The sites I targeted were Polly-Anna (pro-anorexia), Bloodletting (Pro-self harm and blood drinking) and sites were teens were encouraging each other to commit suicide. I occasionally used to target chatrroms on networks that were representing themselves as helping with homework or teaching languages, which were actually fronts for Scientology, I was reasonably successful in getting these shut down as Scientology had already had chats closed down for various violations of TofS.

So what do you think? Did I do the right thing?

In the case of cults and general whackos using homework assistance sites as recruiting tools, yes certainly you were right. These weren't out in the open sites proclaiming a certain belief, but bait and switch operations that used deception.

[Tony Parsehole]

A buddy and I stumbled on a stack of magazines while hiking the train tracks once. Great selection, the sort of fetish variety you'd not see the likes of again until broadband internet. I swear it felt like winning the lotto.

My jackpot was a collection of hundreds of hardcore porn magazines, which I found in the collection bin for a church paper drive, of all placrd. So I have Christianity to thank for my introduction to hardcore German shit-in-mouth porn at the tender age of ten.

Ha! Sods law that, mate. Finding the most deviant shit in your formative years!

[Matt Cavanaugh]

"Tiger tanks"? how cute.

http://www.goingfaster.com/ogre/Winch3.jpg

Ogre Mk V. I have three miniatures of this "tank." I was a big Steve Jackson fan in the late 70s and I have about two hundred of the Ogre minis. Ogre is a great little game... not very realistic,... but super tactical.

Honor.jpg

Val Jean.jpg

I had Ogre, but no models. A great little game!

Jackson designed clean, well-balanced games. Most came packaged in small boxes (size of today's movie DVDs) that hung from display hooks. Sold for about $4. Maps were a folded sheet of paper; pieces, 2-color printing on thin cardboard you cut apart with scissors.

His One-Page Bulge was very spartan yet realistic. Fuck weather tables and assorted A/C types -- the Allied player rolled a die each turn and got between 1 to 6 Air Support points.

Car Wars was a silly but fun riff on Mad Max. I recall having a Mercedes sedan with a Bofors in the back seat.

[Tigzy]

Tigzy? can we call ourselves "GrumbleSpotters"?

If it were possible, certainly. Unfortunately, I can only see it playing out like this:

'Yeah Sarge...found a couple of middle-aged blokes hanging around the bushes of the abandoned railway line. Claim they're looking for free porn. Yeah...I know. Internet. One of 'em's a muscle boy, looks like something out of Mortal Kombat. Reckon that one's their gimp. Get the van ready, I'm bringing 'em in.'


Pity, cos there's the makings of a dashed fine hobby there.

[Tony Parsehole]

Tigzy? can we call ourselves "GrumbleSpotters"?

If it were possible, certainly. Unfortunately, I can only see it playing out like this:

'Yeah Sarge...found a couple of middle-aged blokes hanging around the bushes of the abandoned railway line. Claim they're looking for free porn. Yeah...I know. Internet. One of 'em's a muscle boy, looks like something out of Mortal Kombat. Reckon that one's their gimp. Get the van ready, I'm bringing 'em in.'


Pity, cos there's the makings of a dashed fine hobby there.

hahahaha!
'Tis a shame indeed.

[Outed1TimeAsGrey!]

I didn't watch the academy awards but did anyone catch Joe Biden introducing Lady Gaga, who proceeded to make everyone teary-eyed with a song about sexual assault? Apparently she wrapped it up by pulling out the "1 in 5 college women are raped" lie, with Biden pleading for us to educate ourselves on this bullshit statistic.

Why don't so many people use their fucking brains? If 1 in 5 college women were truly being raped it would be the biggest news story in the US. But no, some vapid celeb trots out 1 in 5 (or 77 cents on the dollar, even) and it's treated as scientific research.

From memory - my excuse for errors -

A survey that was done in US in 1989??? reported that of the female 21 year olds at college roughly 1 in 5 had been raped at some time (that is at some age up to age 21). It was a big survey.

Another source the reported annual rape figure is 0.6% a year for college females. I assume they are in college for 3 years and that only some rapes are reported. (One phone survey in America had 4.6 times as many crimes as the number reported.) If all that is taken as true... what do we get?

Reported rapes 0.6 * 4.6 = 2.76%. Chance of not being raped in year = 1-.0276 = .0.9724. Over 3 years raise to power 3 =0.92 That means roughly 8% chance of being raped at college = roughly 1 in 12.

(Reported figures give chance of 1 in 56) So actual risk probably somewhere between.

(The rate of rape is very age dependent. College girls are past the highest risk, but around 20 still high risk.) The national risk is 0.7% reported. I think that is a total population figure so it probably includes very low risk old ladies. If that assumption is correct it suggests that colleges are very safe places, because they contain young women at high risk, but the % reported rapes is lower than the national average)


Working back from the 1989 survey of 20% having been raped upto age 21. As rape highest risk is at early puberty, let's assume 8 years of rape risk leading to 20% raped by age 21.

So chance of not having been raped by age 21 is 0.8 Taking the 8th root of that gives chance of not being raped in any one year (assuming all the years equal chance from 13 to 21) =0.969 which is a risk of rape of 1-.969 = 0.031 Related to national report of 0.7 would give a ratio of total rapes / reported rapes of about 3.1/0.7 = 4.43

Interesting. 4.43 is essentially identical to the phone survey relationship of 4.6 (total crimes vs reported crimes in USA)

So, my hypothesis is actual risk of rape during a 3 year college course is 1 in 12.



Errors: We don't know for sure the rate of unreported rapes. My memory isn't great. I could have misread that original stats. My math may be wrong.

[Guestus Aurelius]

Novella and Galef agree at the start that giving someone a platform legitimizes their views.

What utter bullshit.

[Guestus Aurelius]

Novella sounds like a fucking idiot.

[feathers]

I miss hedge porn. I swear kids nowadays don't know they're born. All they have to do is type in whatever they want to see and there it is. They're spoilt as fuck.
They'll never know the sheer joy of being 12 and seeing a distant page poking out of a hedge or blowing forlornly across a field. No other feeling like it. Of course there were the times when it wasn't worth getting excited about. "Porn Mirage" was common. You'd get to the treasure and instead of seeing a woman with a massive hairy minge and floppy tits it would be a page from the sports section of the Argos catalogue. You'd fall to your knees, the clouds would burst and a single tear would roll down your cheek.

A buddy and I stumbled on a stack of magazines while hiking the train tracks once. Great selection, the sort of fetish variety you'd not see the likes of again until broadband internet. I swear it felt like winning the lotto.

You lot live in a weird country where the railways are stacked with pr0n. In Holland, the railways tend to be populated by, I don't know, trains, and masturbating between the tracks would necessarily end in a spectacular climax, one way or the other, within about five minutes.

[Billie from Ockham]

So, my hypothesis is actual risk of rape during a 3 year college course is 1 in 12.

You must start with a definition of rape or you are wasting your time. The survey that got us the 1 in 5 stat used a hugely wide definition, while LEAs who give us under 1% per year use a narrow definition. I'm quite sure that something happens to 1 in 5 US undergraduate women. What I'm not sure of is whether they are raped by any reasonable definition of the term. More likely, they take a course in Women's Studies or Communications.

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

NB: These brutal relocations were fully agreed to by the US & UK in concert with Stalin. FDR's Morgenthau plan would have made the sowing of Carthage with salt seem like an act of kindness.

On the other hand, as far as Poland is concerned, the krauts came in, took the lands, changed the local names/politics and in the end exterminated almost all the local population.

Fair's fair.

[Guestus Aurelius]

The commenter Tyrion Lannister is on the money on that Novella/Galef video: Novella really is making special exceptions for feminists when he says that the feminist/Islamist video Dawkins retweeted was out-of-bounds because misogyny is real. He doesn't say that it's out-of-bounds because bigotry against Muslims is real, and he sure as hell doesn't apply the same logic to crude criticism of anyone else whose supporters have sometimes received mean or even harassing comments.

(Not to mention the ridiculousness of citing misogyny to decry mocking feminism. Novella is way smarter than this.)

He also draws a false equivalence between the "social justice" side and the "free speech" side. There is no equivalence. One side wants to force its politics on everyone else and is willing to use silencing tactics to do so. The other side doesn't, and isn't pushing any political agenda at all.

[Guestus Aurelius]

(anyone else should read any other ideology)

[Spike13]

Rebecca race-posturing like she gives a shit.

Arthur Chu mistaking Chris Rock to be his kind of volcanically stifled loser.

Both of them recognizing their natural affinity as peers. Again. Maybe one day the Potato and Fungus will do great things together.

*swoon* :dance:

http://imgur.com/wcQkVnK.png

Nothing says equality like quotas and pandering.

[jet_lagg]

We should totally form a club where we can relieve those wonderful, long-ago days by going out to abandoned railway lines and urban wasteground looking for torn-out nudey-mag pages.

Nothing could possibly go wrong with this idea.

I always wonder what happened to the collection of heavily dog-eared pages I found over the years. I certainly don't remember chucking any out. Maybe the porn fairies came and took them away when we got dial-up in.

Mudlarking for porn. I've been meaning to get out of the apartment more. Count me in

[Steersman]

I'm sure that this would be would be viewed as certain heresy in some quarters, but I find Chris Rock massively irritating and really not funny at all. I haven't seen a large amount of his stuff, but I think enough to have an opinion, and I'm not impressed.

Do I need an extended stay at my nearest re-education camp?

PM Steersman to ask about his favourite Chris Rock skit.

Ask and it shall be given, knock and the door shall be opened ....
[youtube]51vFbsZkhXU[/youtube]

[Kirbmarc]

When people call Steersman racist I'm in a position a bit like the one where people call Milo Yiannopoulos homophobic. I think the truth is more nuanced than that (though Milo explains that nuance while also being entertaining, no offense, Steers), but I'm not going to begrudge anyone using the word as a bit of shorthand. It's close enough.

For the record I don't think that Steersman is a racist (and to be honest I don't really care whether he is or not), but he is surely an authoritarian with no respect for civil rights. He's as bad as many SJWs on this aspect.

Saying that you're going to deport all people with a certain opinion, or that you're going to ban a certain opinion is the hallmark of authoritarianism, regardless of what that opinion might be.