[Non-political] News that makes you Laugh/Cry/Both...

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Jan 14, 2016 5:51 pm

Republicans seem to like cancer OK. At least when a Democrat is suggesting investment in researching treatment for it.

-Username17

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Thu Jan 14, 2016 9:59 pm

Koumei wrote:Jesus shitdicks, now Alan Rickman is also dead, also age 69, also from cancer.

I pointed out earlier to my sister that if 2016 really wants to keep killing awesome 69 year old British dudes it'll come for Tim Curry next. She was not amused.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Fri Jan 15, 2016 9:44 am

Pentagon: U.S. sailors made 'navigational error' into Iranian waters

LOL.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jan 15, 2016 10:34 am

Longes wrote:Pentagon: U.S. sailors made 'navigational error' into Iranian waters

LOL.

It's really easy to do. States get 12 nautical miles from their land borders and the Straights of Hormuz are only 21 nautical miles across. There's literally no high seas corridor into and out of the Persian Gulf.

-Username17

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Fri Jan 15, 2016 10:42 am

Who owns the overlapping waters? Do they split the difference?

Eikre · Post by **Eikre** » Fri Jan 15, 2016 10:28 pm

By default, the boarder in that case runs through the median. Nations may, of course, exercise their sovereign power to enter a treaty ceding that territory or annexing it.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sat Jan 16, 2016 12:38 am

Whipstitch wrote:
Koumei wrote:Jesus shitdicks, now Alan Rickman is also dead, also age 69, also from cancer.
I pointed out earlier to my sister that if 2016 really wants to keep killing awesome 69 year old British dudes it'll come for Tim Curry next. She was not amused.

It really doesn't need to kill Tim Curry. After his stroke, he probably isn't going to be in shape to do any acting anytime soon, if ever again.

angelfromanotherpin · Sat Jan 16, 2016 12:42 am

hyzmarca wrote:It really doesn't need to kill Tim Curry. After his stroke, he probably isn't going to be in shape to do any acting anytime soon, if ever again.

He's actually just been cast as the narrator in the Rocky Horror remake.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Jan 16, 2016 1:16 am

It doesn't check the "british" box, but Trump is a well known 69 year old man, so I'm hoping [Mod Edit] Wishing death on anyone is forbidden[/Mod]

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sat Jan 16, 2016 1:48 am

Prak wrote:It doesn't check the "british" box, but Trump is a well known 69 year old man, so I'm hoping [Mod Edit] Wishing death on anyone is forbidden[/Mod]

I'm a little shocked he doesn't have heart problems, as much time as he apparently spends angry

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Jan 16, 2016 1:53 am

Heart problems require a heart. I'm fairly certain that Donald Trump is either several hundred pounds of shit in a person suit, kind of like the shit demon in Dogma with a really good latex costume, or just the comb over operating a sophisticated golem.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sat Jan 16, 2016 2:46 pm

http://www.lizardpeoplemeet.com/

Red Archon · Post by **Red Archon** » Sat Jan 16, 2016 4:44 pm

Bitcoin developer Mike Hearn declares the project a failure. How ever will we get over this shock?

vagrant · Post by **vagrant** » Sat Jan 16, 2016 5:07 pm

The most amusing part is that the butters are still in denial. Especially the Chinese, who see this as the West 'chickening out' and leaving the pie to them. (Which just goes to show, regardless of nationality, all butters are buttheads.)

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Jan 16, 2016 5:08 pm

We'll just have to take it one day at a time in the aftershock of the great currency collapse, I suppose. Or go have a wank, whichever works.

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Sat Jan 16, 2016 6:16 pm

Red Archon wrote:Bitcoin developer Mike Hearn declares the project a failure. How ever will we get over this shock?

This is a great illustration of why libertarianism is a pipe dream. What exists outside government regulations isn't a free market utopia, but the formation of trusts who muscle their way into the market and then do whatever they want. Bitcoin suckers shunned systems where they can at very least vote for the people who appoint the central bank presidents and ended in an absolutist dictatorship.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jan 16, 2016 7:04 pm

Bitcoin mining produces half as many coins per block in a few months. It was always pretty much inevitable that things would suffer a huge collapse sometime in 2016. The gross income of Bitcoin "mining" is about to halve, while operating costs won't similarly fall.

The entire concept of the growth of coins slowing to an asymptotic finish was always retarded. If the amount of money you pay the people maintaining the system is always falling, how the fucking hell do you expect people to keep maintaining it? But of course, the ultimately finite nature of BitCoin was precisely the selling point needed to get the kind of whackjobs who supported this fiasco in the first place on board.

People saw the enforced scarcity as a source of value. But of course for anything to be currency rather than simply an asset, it needs to be constantly being used and refreshed. If you can't replace BitCoins that wear out and get lost, which you can't, the entire system is ultimately doomed.

Frank Trollman, 2013 wrote:So here's a thing that's been bothering me about the whole BitCoin thing: the entire claim that it has any "real value" at all is that there is, ultimately, a finite number of them. After a specific time in the future, all BitCoin mining operations will have zero return because there will be no more bits to hash. At the same time, the entire claim to having "real utility" is that you don't have to pay transaction fees because the overhead of verification is taken care of... by the mining servers.

If the "real value" clause ever actually comes due, then even if BitCoins can be sold for a billion dollars each at that moment, the mining servers will still turn off. And then the financial infrastructure that every BitCoin transaction and wallet is freeloading off of will just cease to exist.

It takes real resources to store and verify commodity currency, whether the commodity is bars of gold or strings of numbers. Right now, BitCoin is paying for those resources with the issuance of new virtual coins. But the up front promise is that they are eventually going to stop doing that. At which point they will be paying for the resources required to maintain and verify these coins and transactions with... nothing.

So even if BitCoin doesn't have any particular scandal that makes it vanish into the ether of e-gold and other digital gold currency scams, the music still has to stop eventually. They are saying simultaneously that they can keep transaction fees down by paying for financial infrastructure with newly issued BitCoins and also that there is a limit to the number of BitCoins they will ever issue. And while both of those things can be simultaneously true for a while, in the long run one or the other promise has to be broken.

It's bumping up to the halving date, so one or the other promise has to be broken. Looks like they are breaking both. Big surprise.

-Username17

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 1:39 pm

Say hello to negative oil prices

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 3:20 pm

Women Forced to Work in Wartime Brothels Were Not Sex Slaves, Japan’s Foreign Minister Says - He prefers the term comfort women

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Tue Jan 19, 2016 8:48 pm

Count Arioch may be happy to learn that
"There could be a really cool spider just under your feet!"

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Wed Jan 20, 2016 11:29 pm

Y'know, it's shit like this that makes life with entomophobia REALLY fucking suck.

Count Arioch the 28th · Thu Jan 21, 2016 10:24 am

Arthropods have been evolving to live inside houses just as humans have been.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 4:49 pm

Ancient History wrote:http://www.lizardpeoplemeet.com/

I'm glad I clicked on the dropdowns.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 5:22 pm

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:Arthropods have been evolving to live inside houses just as humans have been.

Uh what? Like I think this is wrong according to all possible things you could have meant, but literally the closest to true you could be is:

"Neither humans nor Arthropods have been evolving to live inside houses."

Although, like I said, I think that's probably wrong because I suspect that unlike humans, arthropods have been evolving to live inside houses, since they have shorter life cycles and mostly have to adapt to the environment of the house.

Count Arioch the 28th · Fri Jan 22, 2016 8:53 pm

Although I have since fallen out of touch with most of them, I was told that by several somewhat prominent entomologists and arachnologists I used to talk with online sometimes. It's entirely likely that I worded that poorly, the communication center of my brain is kind of scrambled and I don't express thoughts well. I certainly don't expect anyone to believe most things I say. That being said, I am sure you won't mind if I take the words over someone who spent years studying arthropods over someone who has not.