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[kaijyuu]

Go full nihilist and you'll be extremely carefree.


It's not as good as it sounds. In fact it's not "good" at all; it's nothing, with is IMO worse than bad. My nihilist days were horrible.

[Jopax]

It's always nice to keep something to remind you of past awesomeness. I have a pair of medals from the robotics compettition from two years ago, it's nice to look at them sometimes and go "Yeah, I was that awesome once, that means I can be that awesome again."

And nihilism is only cool if you're absolutely drunk, and with someone, nothing beats philosphical discussions of several drunk people trying to convince each other that life sucks.

Edit: Slightly sad/ragey thing, annoying roommate has taken my spot on the dining table, I usually do my digital stuff there, and now because the table is taken I can't, fuck him and his stupid face.

[Truean]

.

[miauw62]

Raged a little over failing in tf2 due to my mouse breaking.
Parents order me to stop.
I play on.
I mess with the mouse a little (lightly bash it to the table), makes noise, parents rage at me for not stopping and trying to make the mouse work again.

Spoiler: raging gibberish (click to show/hide)

GAHAGHGAAHGZHOIRZHPHGEZPIGHGIOPAGAHEGIOEPHGAIGHA

[Vattic]

Got a load of work to do on my MC texture pack but feel shitty. A string of things have kept me from updating lately and I'd imagine the users will be getting angry about it. I feel I'm letting them down but what can I do?

she thought milk and eggs come from factories

Not much annoys me more than society's tendency to mask the truth from children under the assumption that THEY CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH! Sorry I always think of that movie when those words come to mind...

I can only wonder how different the world might be if reality weren't shied away from at every opportunity (thanks to the politically correct movement) especially in children who're supposed to be learning to function in reality as they grow into adults.

Yeah it's pretty terrible. I remember when the results of a survey of children hit the press here in the UK. Not sure how reliable it is. Still they now take inner-city children to farms / set up inner-city farms to try and explain all this.

The strange thing is my mum grew up on a farm but it was a while until she asked where meat came from. Funny thing is she thought sausages came out of the pig ready made but I hear this one is pretty common.

heh, my parents never tried to hide the truth from me. they let me discover it myself.

Same here: If I asked I was told. Frequently got asked not to repeat things to my friends, though, so as not to upset other parents.

[Knight of Fools]

The truth can shatter lives.

[kaijyuu]

Not a good reason to deny it.

[DeKaFu]

So it's just a coincidence that all those people living nearby those damn things got cancer at 6 times the national average for cancer? Total fluke huh? I'm just imagining the cancer patients and corpses.... No causal connection. Pardon me there haven't been studies done on the matter. Nobody does that sorta thing, because they don't wanna know. We as a society have to move all that electricity and this is really the only way to do it so if this becomes unpalatable then we're all screwed. [sigh]. I understand the preference of peer reviewed studies, but that's also partially a testament to our being incredibly arrogant things as human beings.

I'm sorry, but this attitude bugs me. If there's no evidence of a causal connection, then there's no evidence! Raw statistics like that are notoriously misleading because they don't account for the literally hundreds of possible confounding factors (such as the age, genetic makeup, occupations, smoking status, past history etc. of the people being counted). I imagine there's plenty of people who would like to know, but you can't do a meaningful study without some idea of a causal mechanism, and "the electric thingies are somehow making cancer" isn't a mechanism.

Without actual, good-quality studies to back it up, there's no way I could trust the assertion that there's a link, even if the person asserting believes it has affected them personally.

[Vattic]

So it's just a coincidence that all those people living nearby those damn things got cancer at 6 times the national average for cancer? Total fluke huh? I'm just imagining the cancer patients and corpses.... No causal connection. Pardon me there haven't been studies done on the matter. Nobody does that sorta thing, because they don't wanna know. We as a society have to move all that electricity and this is really the only way to do it so if this becomes unpalatable then we're all screwed. [sigh]. I understand the preference of peer reviewed studies, but that's also partially a testament to our being incredibly arrogant things as human beings.

I'm sorry, but this attitude bugs me. If there's no evidence of a causal connection, then there's no evidence! Raw statistics like that are notoriously misleading because they don't account for the literally hundreds of possible confounding factors (such as the age, genetic makeup, occupations, smoking status, past history etc. of the people being counted). I imagine there's plenty of people who would like to know, but you can't do a meaningful study without some idea of a causal mechanism, and "the electric thingies are somehow making cancer" isn't a mechanism.

Without actual, good-quality studies to back it up, there's no way I could trust the assertion that there's a link, even if the person asserting believes it has affected them personally.

From what I read there have been lots of epidemiological studies and more have found no evidence while few found some. While a lack of evidence for something doesn't prove anything I'd still err on the side of the majority of studies. Admittedly it's been a while since I read up on the subject so maybe the science has moved on. The only reason I read into it was because a friend of the family said my computer monitor was going to kill me; She stopped complaining when I pointed out her cordless landline phone was giving out far more radiation than anything I owned.

[Truean]

.

[kaijyuu]

There are a million more likely causes than those power lines. In fact I've never heard of any link between electricity and cancer; it's almost always radiation and chemicals that cause it.

If you wanna go by gut feeling and small sample sizes, sure whatever, but I don't think that's good enough evidence to convict anyone of a crime. Not to say I'm not bummed the power company didn't have to pay anything... but they deserve it for different reasons.

[MonkeyHead]

For me, the crux of the issue is this: Its all well and good stating "six times the national average". Until I know what the national average actually is I have no idea if six times it is a big deal, a bump in data or statistical noise. Six times 0.5% is still only 3%, enough to be background noise...

[Reelya]

Whether or not it's correct, the theory is electromagnetic radiation from power lines, it goes with the physics that there's leakage. No differences between that and the 'radiation' theory, it's the same thing.

actually, the size of the statistical bump also depends on sample size, a bigger sample needs a smaller increase to be significant. For the fluctuations in background noise theory, you can compare multiple locations, and assess the likeliness of them always clustering around power lines.

I looked for Australian studies and found this:

http://www.thedailygreen.com/going-green/5625

A Tasmanian study of more than 850 patients reported that those who lived close to high-voltage power lines during childhood are up to five times more likely to develop cancer, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald. For every year lived within 50 meters of a power line, risk of cancer was found to increase by seven percent.

you need to believe it's just a coincidental glitch that the Tasmanian study found the same thing as the American one.

[kaijyuu]

Even if statistics have proven it's causing cancer... was that presented in court? It sounds like it wasn't.

[Reelya]

Well, the correlation studies are done, ultra-high voltage lines produce a lot of radiation, and radiation is known to cause cancer.

But there's no 100% proof that any particular person got cancer from the power lines - e.g. some of those people would have gotten cancer from other sources.

It's the same logic as a firing squad, you can't prove who fired the fatal bullet, so nobody is guilty.