I just want to add: not that I think there isn't a problem with the attitude that men can't be raped. I just don't see how it has anything to do with this thread of discussion.

I don't understand your point. The citation was for a statistic on the percent of women being raped.

Are you asserting that as many men are being raped as women? Or what are you asserting? Even if that is your assertion, it's beside the point.

Dude, those are not okay either.

Why do you defend some *obviously* not-okay things by giving examples of other *obviously* not-okay things?

Wait...what the fuck are you talking about?

No, it isn't redundant -- they are orthogonal.

Cis is about what sex you view yourself as, relative to what one might have guessed at birth.

Straight is about what sex you are interested in, relative to what sex you view yourself as.

Why does it matter what direction the fuckwad-*ist direction goes? What relevance does it have to anything?

(Also you'll find social justice people defending basically all the other things you listed, except that's the first time I've ever encountered the term "swole" and honestly, anti-redhead sentiment is just not nearly as high as say, anti-trans sentiment like you were ridiculing)

That's entirely a distraction.

Being a racist isn't, in and of itself, a problem. Racist actions are a problem, and being a racist just happens to be a motivator for making a bunch of racist actions.

Taking racist actions without being racist is...not a particularly important distinction.

We're not talking about a comedy club here joking about how each ethnicity drives, after all. From the article:

Even if it was on their commute route, it would take time to go to blockbuster -- certainly if it was merely near.

And I'm not so convinced the "vast majority" of people had that. I'm not saying they didn't, but I wouldn't assume so. I know that was never true of my parents, aunts, or uncles.

You think that Comcast employees are especially likely to defend Netflix?

Prices rise all the time; the main countervailing forces are technological progress, economies of scale, and occasionally breaking oligarchies.

Physical disc Netflix is a declining business, so they are actually losing economies of scale. There's no great technological progress in physical disc delivery, nor is there a breaking of oligarchies. Thus, you would *expect* prices to rise faster than inflation, barring a service decrease.

What?

First of all, there are more than three phases of matter. A molecule in plasma state, despite being far apart from its neighbours like gas, interacts easily with them like liquids.

Second, "too far apart" is not well-defined or proven.

Third, "molecules aren't moving" isn't true of a solid object, nor have you shown why that's necessary for life.

The life forms we are most familiar with happen to include aspects of all three phases (no plasma aspects in any life form I know of). The artificial things we have created that exhibit some life-like characteristics, even though we all agree they aren't life (at least not yet), tend to be solids, like silicon chips -- electricity provides the transport mechanism through the solids.

This statement isn't true. The rest of your statements are true.

Consider a perfectly spherical planet with no surface water, but with an underground water supply not too far below the surface (eg. as Europa is hypothesized to be).

Now make it less smooth, eg. slam it with meteors such that there's no net loss in matter (possibly a slight net gain), but it's no longer perfectly smooth.

Now you have surface water on a planet with an average elevation higher than the water level.

Basically, any planet with surface water (or methane or whatever) and surface not-water is going to have an average elevation of water and an average elevation of not-water and they are likely going to be similar relative to the size of the planet as a whole, but there's no general statement you can make about which one is higher (there may be a probabilistic statement).

Do you really react so violently to the tiles that it bothers you that they are there in the menu?

The start menu looks fine now. Windows 7 had a bunch of useless buttons, which they've replaced with tiles which at least give you a weather report and a number of unread mails (not visible in the screenshot but a reasonable inference if you've ever used Windows 8 and recognize the tiles). The full screen thing was a disaster. It was basically the same as having a modal dialog. Except worse, since even a modal dialog lets you see in behind.

Demonstrably false, as an absolute statement. If you could get a loan in late 2008 / early 2009, it was a great time to buy blue chip stocks, and you made out like a bandit when they all bounced back.

This goes back to the fact that people see 0 as a magic number. And to be fair, it is a little bit magic -- there's a jump discontinuity in interest rates between having $1 and having -$1. But it's not so magical as that. Sometimes you have to spend money to make money, as you acknowledge with the car loan (that same argument goes to a small business loan).

There's a reason you see hugely profitable businesses issuing debt all the time.

No, I'm not incorrect.

You should note I'm not an American, so half the things you are quoting are just totally irrelevant (mortgage interest deduction on first house, 401k, etc.). Even if I were American, your first link is basically irrelevant and your second link is good but not really contradictory, and a mortgage interest deduction doesn't necessarily make interest rates good -- it's possible for cash to be better than a mortgage loan.

It's actually bizarre, you said: "If you have the cash, use the cash. If you don't, you shouldn't be buying it.". Then you argue that you shouldn't pay off your home. That's contradicting your advice.

However, it's not contradictory to using a credit card. There's 0 interest, that's 0, if you pay in full every month. The cost is carrying a piece of plastic, a potential vector for thieves, ineligibility for "cash discounts" (which most people who pay cash don't get...), and if you're stupid, charging more money than you can pay every month -- I don't make that last mistake, but that's where you're worried and that's where predatory lending comes into play; the rest is the same as debit cards. And if your card does annual fees, that -- most people would be better off with a no-fee card. The benefit is chargeback ability, liability protection, whatever rewards they offer, ability to buy things on the Internet, an infinite series of one-month interest free loans, and FICO score improvements.

Note: interest rates are low right now in many places so keeping the house debt is currently a good option in many, many cases, and I do have a mortgage that I could pay off in cash today if I wanted, but I'm leaving it there to come to term because I think I'll continue to do better on the market. It will come to term long before I retire though, assuming I still live there, especially because where I'm from 30 year fixed-rate mortgages aren't a thing like they are in the US.

That's basically lowest-common denominator advice -- a better piece that is still a simplification is to ensure your credit card use is always backed by cash (your accounting tips may help in tracking that independently of the banks). A majority (admittedly not a vast majority) of people pay in full every month, and thus do not lose and typically gain from credit cards (other than possible cash-only discounts which aren't super common and imply no debit card either). cite: http://www.creditcards.com/cre...

I agree that it's exceptionally rare that doing anything other than paying in full every month is a good idea, *especially* when you need that cash to eat because that starts a death spiral.

Also an oversimplification, this one dangerous. There was a time when mortgage rates were higher than some credit card rates...