Sias

I'm so proud that my dear Republican friends decided to go for the real issue here! After all, what worth does you life even have if you destroyed the immortal sanctity of your soul though the most dirty and vile evils of pornography? To add onto what @SuperIb said: I would be careful with immediately attributing mental disorders to all these people who committed mass shootings. Sure enough, I've heard the argument that anyone who fails so spectacularly on a moral level that he decides to run amok should be classified as mentally ill, but... Let's not forget that people suffering from mental disorders are still far more likely to be victims of a crime than to be its perpetrators, and that there is a huge stigma associated with mental illness already, which is why we should generally avoid to worsen this. Really, I think the problem isn't necessarily someone suddenly turning crazy, but that there exist people who decide in a totally calm and rational manner that either other humans in general or [insert minority here] aren't worthy to live anymore and therefore deserve to die.

Unfortunately, that's probably true. Florida is even thinking about lowering the age requirement for buying semi-automatics, because why not? It's not like anything bad will ever come out of it. What I really dislike about the aftermath of this whole affair though is how conservatives responded to the admirable political activism a lot of students have displayed. It was immediately met with something along the lines of: Oh my, you're opinion isn't valid because you're still totally confused and shocked by your trauma. How dare you politicize the death of innocent students to further your own evil agenda! You're all actors paid by CNN anyways, so why should I care?

It's terribly unrealistic that congress would pass legislation making it impossible for "people with the correct mindest" to get their hands on some guns, especially considering how much Americans love their firearms. Most of the talk I've been hearing about the issue suggests the need for more background checks and the closure of gun loopholes, neither of which are bad things imo. There's also the problem with semi-automatic rifles because really, what "multiple purposes" do they have besides killing as many people as quickly as possible? When should people try to tackle the USA's gun issues instead? As soon as these incidents are over, noone really cares anymore and nothing gets done.

I've been pretty busy lately and therefore don't have the time to participate as much in this discussion as I'd like to, but I nevertheless wanted to quickly pop in to address your point about innovation and the free market. What it boils down to is that the free market isn't really that good at stimulating innovation at all. Its main motivation is simply the maximization of profit, and this ends up all too often in avoiding innovation (due to possible financial risk) or directly impeding it (because it would conflict with your current business interests). The free market is great at extracting tons of money out of existing innovations, but it's terrible at reinvesting this in anything else than increasing the dividends of their shareholders. There was a pretty nice article about this in the Guardian a while back and I'll just quote the most relevant part:

Core conservatives are literally the group with the second worst result regarding homosexuals in your quiz. They are significantly more against homosexuality than others. Later on in your post you wrote "I can't really comment on this point too much because I don't understand your situation". That is literally what I try to tell you all this time. Is it still possible for a rich person to talk about poor people? Yes. But their opinion only has merit when they actually are well-educated about the topic or at least somewhat knowledgeable regarding the differences between their circumstances of life and those that others have had. And no matter what you do (unless you fall into poverty yourself), you're always going to miss the specific insight on the issue that you only gain when you've been in such a situation before. If you want a comparision: Whatever I do in my life, I'll never be able to personally experience a pregnancy myself. And no matter how much I read up on it or how often I talk to people who are pregnant, I'm always going to miss an important perspective on the topic: the inside perspective. Which means that in the end of it all, I may miss key aspects of the issue because I don't really know what I'm talking about. Source please. The US has border security as well, and it's actually pretty strict in comparision. And that's when we dismiss the ton of other issues that pop up when you try to migrate to another country. You sound like you may have a terrible, terrible misunderstanding about how scientifis studies in fact work. And do you realize that the polls regarding Trump/Clintion had a thing called margin of error? There's also the issue that many of them were too old to take into context the latest turn of events directly before the election. Uhhh... Have you actually ever looked at the restrictions on the first amendment? This sounds like a very nice example of a paradox. Where did you get the idea that the second amendment was meant to be totally free and not free in context only? Also, why do you believe that "the left" wants to take away all your arms when the large, large majority is simply in favour of stricter gun control? First of all, the government already is taking capital away from private owners (taxes and stuff, duh). And secondly, I told you that this is clearly allowed by the 5th amendment, so... I don't see the issue you have here? Of course conservatism more closely resembles the American ideals of hundreds of years ago - that's the whole point of conservatism, it refuses to modernize old norms and ideas. On the other side however, have you maybe considered that the American ideals may have changed with time as well? Also sure, of course the opposing political view uses "liberal" as an insult, just like how today "alt-right" can be utilized the same way. This basically ties into what I wrote earlier: You make sweeping, insulting (and wrong!) generalizations about millions of people beacuse you don't really seem to have an idea at all about how their situation actually works. What you're saying isn't politically incorrect, it's factually incorrect. Poor people would only waste their money on "useless crap"? They need the influence and advice of conservatives to reach anything in life? Really? You do realize that you're coming across as incredibly, incredibly patronizing right now? Because Trump has such a good grasp on his money management, right? You're vastly, vastly underestimating what poor people have to deal with here. Not only do they have to be really careful due to having practically no safety nets to fall back on at all, they also have to plan their expenses very closely as there's often simply not enough money around to fulfill everything what others would consider basic life standards. And btw, the problem with rich people managing the economy is more of an issue with them trying to exploit the system for their own gain.

To be honest, I wouldn't call 50% acceptance of homosexuals "not that bad", but rather terrible, no matter what political group may hold that view. Also, what are your moral reasons against trans people? When someone accuses you of speaking from a position of privilege, they don't try to invalidate all hardships in your life. They attempt to tell you that you're likely underestimating a problem because you've never been personally exposed to it and that your life would've been even harder if not for said privilege you possess. "The poor don't know how to be rich" is probably the weirdest accusation of poor people that I've ever read. Like, really. Also, I'm preeetty sure that your 3-step-plan to success doesn't actually work. You might have missed the part where social democracies still have capitalism. And you're grossly oversimplifying how easy it is to move from one country to another. There's quite a large difference between a random anecdote and a controlled scientific study, but sure. Congrats, there have been dozens of restrictions to free speech since eternities ago. Mainly because people recognized that it may actually not be that healthy to society as a whole if everyone can just say whatever they want. Also, you might be mixing up freedom of speech and freedom of consequences. What. Did you miss the part where the 5th amendment clearly does allow taking capital from private owners? American ideals and American society as you would like to have them.

Meh. Sure, the government does protect your rights to be a jerk - but only to a certain extent. You can call someone an idiot, but if you overdo it, you may be charged due to verbal harassment. And you can't just walk around and punch people either. There's a line somewhere, and we're debating where exactly that is. Also, I disagree with you notion that it's not the government's job to fight jerkish people. Shouldn't there be laws to create a society as peaceful and harmonious as possible? Then there's the problem of simply "finding another bakery". Sure, that might work in the city. What happens though when you live in some tiny village and the baker refuses to serve you? What's when the general population in that village is rather homophobic and everyone refuses to sell you anything? And sorry, but this is a false equivalence if I've ever seen one. A dress code or buying something are both things a customer can freely choose to cange through their actions. Being homosexual/black/trans/etc however are static attributes of a person and therefore can't be changed.

Isn't Joel Osteen the guy who refused to open his megachurch in order to shelter hurricane victims? Really, the evangelists may fear that their right of free religious expression may be infringed upon, but it rather sounds like they're unhappy because they aren't allowed to sexually discriminate people anymore. Also, don't you see the problems that would arise if we let people deny others goods and services just due to their religious beliefs? Also, what @Res and @Lord Raven said.

Ah ok, thank you. One further question though if you still have the time: I've been planning to inherit Lightning Breath to my Ninian for a while, but recently I had to face quite a few of them in the arena who all used Dark Breath. The rest of her set would be Moonbow/TA/WoM/Hone Atk. Would Lightning Breath still be optimal or was there a change in general opinion recently and I just never noticed?

Real honest question now: Is it this impossible to grasp as a concept that you might not know the full extent of racism in the US because you don't have to experience said racism yourself? Don't you think that someone who has actually been to NK many times and done quite a bit of research for this might be able to assess the situation better than you? Also, he doesn't even propose to put the NK issue off or ignore it like you claim (there are six suggested options to slowly corrode them), he just puts forth a recommendation against blowing everyone up and starting WW3.

So I've been using a +Atk/-Res Nino with a LnD set quite successfully for a while, but now I also got her +Spd/-Res version. As I have quite a bunch of feathers in reverse, I'm considering to promote the latter and merge the two. My question is now: Which one should be the one that I keep? 45 base Spd from +Spd Nino admittedly sounds pretty awesome, but I fear that a potential boost might go to waste in that case, so I'm not sure. Similar issue with summer Elise btw, where I pulled one +Atk/-HP and one +Spd/-HP.

If you're so horribly upset about Clinton's email issues, wouldn't this be even more of a reason to get angry at the Trump administration now because they're doing exactly the same? Maybe you tend to not notice problems like these as you might be blinded by your privilege? From your own article:

I'm pretty sure it wasn't actually illegal because you know, no charges filed against her and all that. Careless though? I'll give you that. My problem is that when Clinton used her private email account, the entire right flipped out due to them fearing leaks of confidential information. A lot of Trump's best buddies do pretty much exactly the same now, but noone seems to care. It's called hypocrisy. Comparing birth control to murder is waaay far fetched. We aren't in the dark ages anymore. I'll leave the stuff regarding homosexuality in the trusty hands of @Shoblongoo

Half the Trump administration has used their personal email accounts for government business, and strangely noone on the political right seems to care. Some people also believe that being homosexual is as bad as being a murderer. Most people don't listen to those, so why should we now? Also, birth control gets used for health reasons by a good deal of people, so it is very much a necessity for them.

I qoute from your article: " The United States unequivocally condemns the application of the death penalty for conduct such as homosexuality, blasphemy, adultery, and apostasy. We do not consider such conduct appropriate for criminalization." Which means that in theory they should 100% support the resolution because it "called for the death penalty to be banned as a sanction for specific forms of conduct, such as apostasy, blasphemy, adultery and consensual same-sex relations, as well as criticising its use on minors, mentally ill people and pregnant women." In practice however they voted against it as they still support the death penalty in general - whiich sadly isn't what the resolution was about in the first place. See how that doesn't make sense? It's nevertheless wrong and serves to confuse the positions of the Democrats with that of the Liberals (who are more like the Republicans in a lot of areas btw). Why continue using it just for the sake of it? It needlessly confuses political standings. I was never talking about Clinton's mental health, but about politics. :/ Kansas 4: Republicans won, but lost 8% while Democrats gained 16%. Fairly close now (53% vs 46%) Montana at-large: Republicans won, but lost 6% while Democrats gained 3%. Fairly close now (50% vs 44%) California 34: Republicans didn't run. Georgia 6: Republicans won, but lost 10% while Democrats gained 10%. Very close now (52% vs 48%) South Carolina 5: Republicans won, but lost 8% while Democrates gained 9%. Very close now (51% vs 48%) Do you notice a trend? What may also be interesting is this article detailing the following:

Did you even read the article? There was a vote at the UN's Human Rights Council because the use of death penalty to punish homosexuality is still a big problem in a lot of other countries. And the US pretty much were the only industrialized nation who voted against that motion. It can cause friction. Just as there can be friction inside a singular culture. And comparing gangs to cultures is in all honesty a really really weird thing to do. The US has a liberal party as well, which is very much not left in a lot of its positions. Left=liberal is simply a wrong equation to make, so why don't you use left=progressive instead? Crime rates are based on numerics, duh. And I tried to explain those to you. Really? Considering his approval rating and his general popularity everywhere outside the US (and maybe Russia), I'd say that he very much still is a laughing stock to a lot of people. Also, last I checked his policies like Trumpcare or banning transgender people from the military were wildly unpopular as well. Yeah, one race. One. A race where the democrats lost but nevertheless had huge gains in comparision to the last time. Really, you're awfully sure about your total Republican domination coming 2018. Maybe, just maybe there actually could be a grain of truth inside these cards? I don't know whether you've just been living under a rock for the entirety of Obama's presidency, including the campaign beforehand and the aftermath now, but... Wow. Also, last I checked a lot of GOP policies were very controversial even within the party, which I detailed above.

That's a problem with quite a bunch of support chains though - they just go and randomly reference one of the main characters, even though it may not be all that appropriate. And if they wanted to bring Lucina up as figure of responsibility in any of the other child supports, Inigo's actually isn't a bad choice for that. Also, I believe it's not exactly fair to criticize the support on the basis that Lucina could have "retreated" at that point. A lot of supports work off assumptions about your gameplay that may not true at all - for example, Sully being Chrom's equal or Lon'qu protecting Lissa from dangerous bandits doesn't make much sense either when you've immediately benched the former but used the latter throughout the whole game. The problem probably is that you're still stating this as if it were a fact, but it's purely your subjective opinion.

My cousin sent me this a few days ago, which is another nice example showing how much they actually care about LGBT people. Diversity doesn't automatically lead to violence. And the thing with Germany is the following: While the crime rates in general admittedly did go up (although some fields like burglary continue to decrease), you have to see this in context. First of all, more inhabitants in a country simply equals more crime numerically, so the absolute number of crimes obvously did rise with the absolute number of refugees. Furthermore, the situation of these people is quite terrible most of the time - not only are many traumatised by war or persecution, they also have to live in a new nation whose language they don't speak, often crowded together with other foreign people of various ethnicities, cultures and religions, possibly waiting for a long time until their request for asylum gets accepted and even longer until they can get a job and lead a somewhat normal life again. It's only natural that people like these are more suspectible to crime, but as soon as the immigration process actually kicks in, these rates go down drastically again. Finally, there seem to be some problems with statistics like these in general, for example a differentiation between suspects and proven perpetrators or issues with criminals from another EU country who get added to the "foreigner" category as well. It's also interesting to note that recently right-wing extremist hate crimes have increased rather harshly. Hm. I'm glad that you kinda seem to get my point now? There's no such thing as inherently violent black city culture, but instead the problem of being disadvantaged by poverty/bad education/racism... A lot of people also saw Trump as laughing stock. In my opinion, the Democrats actually have the opposite problem: They generally try to fish right-wing voters away from the GOP by moving further right themselves. Hillary herself was somewhat center-right and attempted to expand that position by actions like picking an anti-abortion vice-presidential candidate, even though appeasing the left wing by choosing someone who's popular with the Bernie crowd might have been wiser. This strategy obviously doesn't work however, and when you consider that quite a bunch of left policies are very popular with Americans, why shouldn't they be embraced? Also, have you kept an eye on the elections that have happened since Trump was elected? A lot of formerly safe Republican areas suddenly had ~30% point swings in favor of the Democrats. The seat distibution may be indeed in favor of the GOP, but everything's still very much up in the air. Left and right don't just equate liberal and conservative though? if you look at some political orientation chart, one axis is usually liberal/authorative and the other left=progressive/right=conservative. And then there are splits like with most liberal parties, which are commonly socially progressive but fiscally conservative. Or it could mean that Trump, like pretty much everyone who's seriously angry about "political correctness", is a huge hypocrite.

I don't know whether you've actually skipped reading a part of my response, but I literally quoted the part where the site tells you that "Gun Violence Archive has always used the FBI derived definition". The only difference is that you've just talked about mass homicides, whereas everyone else has been talking about mass shootings. And no, a mass shooting is not merely a mass homicide with a gun. If I went to my old school and shot everyone of my former teachers in the leg, it wouldn't be a mass homicide because noone would've actually died. The definition of mass shooting would still apply however as that necessitates me shooting and heavily injuring OR killing a lot of people. My point is that you're literally using a different definition for mass shooting than everyone else. And even then, the website nevertheless doesn't define it as anything over 1 victim, like you claim, but instead as needing 4+ victims. The article you brought up before is similarly wrong: They separate mass shooting from mass public shootings and exclude criminal activity or commomplace circumstance on purpose to lower the numbers. Yeah. The alt-right suggests that the colour of your skin causes you to use more violence. You suggest that the colour of your skin causes you to belong to a culture that uses more violence. Don't you see that those two arguments are very very similar?

That's actually very interesting and kind of makes me a little sad that I can't read Japanese. I wonder how many little things like this I may have missed? Nice to see that you're agreeing with me on the gameplay front though, haha.

You say that "the numbers are made up of completely unrelated instances". So alright, let's see: Your article tells us that the Shooting Tracker counts their mass shootings as events where “four or more people are shot in one event, or related series of events, likely without a cooling off period. Victims might include the gunman; the data is based on news reports”. If you go and look at their actual website however, the definition is "FOUR or more shot and/or killed in a single event [incident], at the same general time and location, not including the shooter". Hm. The article then goes on and claims that the FBI does use different metrics for their statistics - when the Shooting Tracker tells us that "Gun Violence Archive has always used the FBI derived definition". Yeah. Seems like someone didn't really do their research properly. Even then, the difference they claim exists between mass shooting ("four or more people are shot in one event, or related series of events, likely without a cooling off period") and mass killing ("those incidents with at least three dead") is practically marginal. They then continue to write that we shouldn't add the numbers from mass murders ("a multiple homicide with at least four victims, not including the offender"), mass shootings ("a mass murder committed with a firearm") and mass public shootings ("a mass shooting “in at least one or more public locations, such as a workplace, school, restaurant, house of worship, neighborhood, or other public setting . . . and not attributable to any other underlying criminal activity or commonplace circumstance (armed robbery, criminal competition, insurance fraud, argument, or romantic triangle)") together. Mass murders aren't counted anyways though (unless done with a gun, in which case they are mass shootings), mass shootings are mass shootings and therefore rightfully belong into the statistics, while mass public shootings are literally just mass shootings in public places. It also doesn't make sense to exclude criminal activity or commomplace circumstance, because y'know, if you shoot a mass of people, then you shoot a mass of people, regardless of whatever reasons you may have had for that. The article concludes after this: "Under the Tracker’s broad definition, crimes are lumped together that have nothing in common — except for the use of firearms, and a certain number of victims." The funny thing is that the use of firearms and a certain numbers of victims are literally what defines a mass shooting, so they don't even need to have anything more in common. But yeah, sure. Completely unrelated things. I didn't mean to insult you, but if you want to avoid situations like these in the future, you should maybe stop using this argument of yours which is literally almost the exact same one the alt-right usually makes?

But you do realize your article literally only nitpicks that we shouldn't count the "mass shootings", "mass killings", "mass murders" and "mass public shootings" together? They don't even challenge the individual numbers. You know, it's not about "offending anyone", it's about trying to combat (casual) racism. And even then, he didn't only use the n-word only in private, but in public as well, so? "Being black makes you more murderous" and "the black culture black people experience makes them more murderous" is honestly a rather tiny difference, don't you think? You're almost literally reiterating the talking points of the alt-right here.

The fact that he just let it slip and probably uses it in private rather frequently makes things even worse because it casualizes racism. :/ Muslim person shoots a bunch of people - We have to act immediately and ban all Muslims from coming into the country, we also have to add extra surveillance on the Muslims already here and ban burkas because they might be hiding an AK47. White person shoots a bunch of people - Don't politicize the tragedy the victims haven't even gone cold, you have to wait until everyone has forgotten about the tragedy before you talk about it, everyone knows that. Hurricane that kills hundreds of people is heavily intensified by climate change - Don't politicize the tragedy, you have to wait until people have forgotten about the hurricane before you talk about it. Essentially: Tragedy that the right wing uses to further their pre-existing goals - it's politicized in the media. Tragedy that the left wing uses to further their pre-existing goals - don't you dare politicize it. Also, mass shootings aren't rare in the USA, and even if they were, we should nevertheless talk about them because a whole lot of people DIE each time. Now just hold on a second and think long and hard about why that particular statistic may look the way it does. And please don't just tell me again that black city culture is inherently violent. This is still one of the funniest things I've ever heard considering it's coming from someone who supports the Republicans.

I'm pretty sure that David Duke's agenda is also just to make as many of his white clan friends as possible happy. On the other side PDP's global warming video definitely has some kind of policial message as well, while his words make a lot of people rather angry, which should be rather obvious if you look at the massive backlash he gets. In additon to that he apparently throws around a lot of demeaning jokes about black/gay/whatever people, causing a negative influence especially on his younger user base as a direct result of his actions. They might reiterate some of the racist stuff he says and actually start to believe it, leading us to all sorts of further problems. Also, freedom of speech doesn't equal freedom from consequences or criticism. Do I believe that Clinton did overexaggerate? Yes. However, do I also believe that she has a certain point? Yes. Like, just lean back and consider: Which party tries to pass homophobic laws allwoing gay people to get fired for their sexual orientation or being forcefully outed at school? Which party fervently blocks any further attempts at gun regulation that would likely lead to fewer deaths? And so on and so on. I'd never think that all people supporting the GOP are homphobic/racist/misogynistic/..., but they definitely do enable policies like these and apparently don't consider their detriments important enough to abstain from voting for the Republicans.

I totally agree that they probably are very close friends, I just believe that the game never really specifies who exactly is his best friend among the multiple close friends he has. They might be besties after Fates though, simply because all the others weren't really around anymore. Sure, it's another reference to the mark, but... It never really specifies whether Inigo is just wondering about it because Lucina had one or because he himself was in possession of the brand. I did explain this one already!