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A day that will live in e-fame-y.

Irritable Duncan "Trust-me-I-know-what-I'm doing" Syndrome reckons that, when he and the rest of the Conservative Party are re-elected in this May's General Election, he'll make £12 billion (US$17.8 billion) of welfare cuts but he won't tell us before the election what these cuts will be, Allegedly, it's "Not relevant."

There aren't that many poor, sick, disabled and needy left un-kicked, but it's highly amusing that thousands of people in one of the world's most highly-developed countries are having to resort to food banks.

Goodness only knows how much worse it will get if the loony right UKIP get some seats. Anyone but an imbecile can see that they'd vote with the Conservatives on many issues or even form a coalition.

So hurry up and vote Tory to keep the hopeless, sneering socialists down.

God save the Queen etc.

Hello, fellow Soylentils! Please come into my journal, as we prepare to discuss the pertinent issues of our times.

Two issues: Toxic posters. As much as I love Ethanol_Fueled, his charm, such as it is, wears of rather quickly. But he is a prince compared to gweg_troll, the single (if that)-minded racist who is oh so concerned about all rational people modding him down because he is, in fact, indubitubly, a racist. But there is still worse, my fellow Soylentils, MikeeUSA, the wanna be rapist of children, really need to be, well, exiled from our community. I suggest multiple SPAM mods, IP banning, and &*%*%$#$($@%#$^$&*/.

Part of what makes the internet such a tool for progressive politics is that it allows the recidivists to come out and state their positions. Yes, the fact that African Americans commit more crime per capita proves, well, that correlation is not causation. Poor people commit more crime, and African Americans tend to be in that demographic. Gee! I wonder why? See, it's %*^*^%&$&%s racism that creates the conditions that confirm racism. Boy, are you racists stupid! Ever read (excuse me for accusing you of being literate) Huck Finn? Jim was better man that any of you wannabe crackers could ever be.

Second, (notice I actually skipped Eth? That is because he is asleep on a mattress of dubious provenance right now) I want to see MikeeUSA on the Sex Offender Registry, because if he is not already on it, he definitely will be soon. This is one seriously sick person, one of those that cannot be cured by any know psychotherapy or time behind bars. So we, and the rest of the internet, need to find him, identify him to the authorities, and have him put into protective custody. I do not make this demand lightly, I know that Mighty Buzzard and others will defend personal rights to a point, but not to this point. The Bible says, "Blessed are the peace-makers". Never does it say, "blessed are the perverted pedofiles who quote the Old Testament". See?

So there is my "nice" journal, discussing pleasant topic which all might engage at their leisure. And we will just have to accept that modding has a clear "reality" bias, because, as Stephan Colbert put it,"reality has a clear liberal bias". So, as the great! Philosopher Hegel said, "reality's bias is just reality, so it's not a bias at all."

Begun, this grand experiment is. We have had some whose feefees were hurt by moderation, which is strange, since moderation should be by definition moderate, or at least moderating. But maybe we have the opposite effect occurring. Not to say that the extreme views are prevailing, but the noise to signal ratio seems to be increasing. I must confess, bear with me here, that I actually used the "disagree" mod, to disagree with someone objecting to the "disagree" mod. Perverse, yes. Uncalled for? I think not! Mod me the same if you disagree!

But all this belies the dysfunctional state of debate (or the more polite term, discourse) in America. Yes, I specify America, as in the United States of, because of the rank corruption of political discourse by the one percent, combined with a uniquely American anti-intellectualism that discounts scholarship, research, learning, schools, teachers, and basically anything that requires some effort to understand. Americans are lazy. Unfortunately, they have added scared to the repertoire. But I assume that Soylent News includes more than cowardly Americans who have to run of to former Russian Colonies.

So, topic of the day: Faith. Do you believe that free and unfettered argument will get us all closer to the actual truth? Or do you reject the same because of the possibility that your position will lose the debate?

Alright, time for confessions. I only post journals in an attempt to get Ethanol_fueled's journals off the front page. So here is my anti-Ethanol_fueled journal entry. Maybe, in a future when Soylent News is a self-respecting news aggregator, such measures will not be necessary. (And yes, I know, that at present they are futile.)

I just used my last moderation point to troll rate someone. OK, it was not someone, it was an asshole. Seriously, who are these people that in this day and age can keep spewing racism, sexism, and how they are metrically challenged in the organ department? Guns? F**king Cowards. If you need a gun to defend yourself, you are probably a criminal. Bad boyz? White Bad Boyz? KKK Boyz? You know, if you are an oath keeper, you are already a lying sack of it. Defend the Constitution? You do realize that this means you have to be able to read the Constitution first, so you know what it is you are defending? Else, perchance, you find yourself defending the Protocols of the Teutonic Knights! You know, Nazi shit?

Recently I came across a video of John Cleese explaining Fox News with the insight that you have to know at least enough to be right in order to know you are wrong, and this is exactly what conservatives are lacking. Ah, here it is! Now this is the problem, and it does point out how arguing with these people is really no use at all. Seriously? Cops saying they _are_ the cop that shot the kid? Are they actually saying that they are racist child-murderers? See: too stupid to know that they are stupid.

I think it is nice that Soylent News covers these terribly fascist events in American, if only for the edification of the rest of the world. But let not all these people who do in fact listen to Fox New think that somehow they are right, or even in the majority. Liberals have more guns that conservatives, and they are better shots, since they do not get all emotional about their targets.

So I am not saying that we kick out all the neo-conservatives and neo-liberals and neo-nazis, I am just saying that if you are one of those, expect no mercy from things like reality and logic and humanity, and ethics. We owe you nothing less.

OK, my contributions of late seem to be more complaining than anything. I really try not to smite idiots with negmod points, seriously! But I do hang on to the last few mod points, just in case a late-breaking egregious post should be made. And here is my latest complaint. Mod points come with a nice notification, and even some direction to proper usage. That is all well and good. There also is a date and time of expiration for said mod points. But my expiration time always seems to be an hour off. I am assuming this time is changed to local 24-hour format, no problem. Perhaps Slashcode is unaware that not all time-zones practice Daylight Savings? Or perhaps I am not where I think I am. I guess I could just remember, for Soylent News Mod points, that 18:05 is not 6:05 local time, but in fact 5:05. Wait, is it leap ahead, or fall back, if you do not have Daylight Saving Time? (And what fools think we can save daylight? If we could, the whole solar power at night thing would already be solved.)

Any way, it is probably better that I lose mod points before I can use them in nasty ways. Live long and prosper, whatever time matrix you find yourself in.

Once in a long while, I post something that is beyond the ken of mere mortals. Unfortunately, mere mortals take this as a disagreement of opinion. But in fact, it is not. I am right, and they are wrong. You may think I am being conceited in this, but I assure you, I have grounds for my position.

So I am wondering why, in the grande scale of things, I am disturbed when some ill-advised comment of mine is appropriately modded down. Yes, I probably had it coming. Yes, it is probably justified. And if I had just waited half a day, this would not have happened. But can't you see that I have gone from a karma rating of 50 to just a paltry 49!! Oh, really, not a big deal. We are all after the same thing here (except for those libertarian free market fucks that are trying to pump the site for all it's worth and then sell us out down the river to some corporation niced.).

Yes, I mod down posts, especially if they are ethanol fueled and full of racism, misogyny, and ignorance of too many categories to be categorized. Or Republican. We need to stand up for reason, science, evidencem and logical thinking. Any religious stuff is right out, and any libertarian/Republican economic ideology is on the same level. No bias, no prejudice, just that bullshit needs to be called bullshit, and not allowed to pass as polite conversation.

We are the last best place on the internet. We are People, we are soylent. We have to act like people, people who can think, reason, argue according to the rules of logic. That is all I ask. I hope it is not too much.

Once upon a time, screens were 4:3, video equipment produced 4:3 video, YouTube videos were 4:3, and all was well.

Then the industry said: Let there be 16:9. And there was 16:9. And the chaos began.

It began with 16:9 TVs which deformed 4:3 material to fit the 16:9 screen, and players that allowed to configure a 4:3 screen for output, but deformed 16:9 material to fit the 4:3 screen instead. But not only that, even TV stations did deform 4:3 material they used in 16:9 broadcasts (like old 4:3 recordings showed in new 16:9 news). It continued with pure 4:3 broadcasts no longer being broadcast in 4:3 (although still technically possible and understood perfectly by any 16:9 TV), but 16:9 with black bars left and right, which on a 4:3 TV causes a black frame around an image that is much smaller than necessary.

But at least those were professionals, so while their decisions were not always what you would wish, what they did was at least halfway sensible. But on YouTube, you'll find an even worse situation: 4:3 material converted from 16:9 to 4:3. What this results in is a square image surrounded by black bars left and right, and certainly again the ugly distortions which non-proportional rescaling brings.

In short, since the advent of 16:9, there are masses of terribly distorted videos. And strangely, I've not even seen a single comment about that terrible distortion (but maybe having a minimal sense for aesthetics is strongly correlated with having no desire to get an account with Google — which actually is the main reason why I didn't leave such a comment on such videos).

OK, granted, I no longer see any comments on YouTube, so I can't tell if it has changed (I guess it's related to Google+ integration). But I'd expect such comments to have been made early on anyway.

How to find the most useless page of SoylentNews:

From the dropdown selection button below the story (the one offering "Threaded", "Nested", etc. for comments) select "No Comments", then click "Change".

The option delivers what it promises: No comments. Also no story. Just the settings bar.

Note that this is not a critique (it's clearly just an artefact of how Slashcode works, and not harmful in any way). I just considered it amusing.