Well, you know, of course it is human nature to feel a little temporary [whatever] when the critics talk.

But like another artist once said; the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

So they really "have no complaint" about the critics being, uhm, critical. The work either sucks, so who cares, or it is worth talking about, so critics talking about it provides just desserts.

You conflate having an opinion with "forcing" it on people.

1. You have an opinion
2. ...
3. violence!

Notice the whole claim of "violence" is predicated on the word "forcing," which in this case is a verb. Notice the complete lack of action though. So just from that we can see it is a false accusation; the only action taken was giving his own opinion. But you lie, and claim he took an action to "force" his opinion on you. But you're not forced to believe every opinion you hear; that is silly, and shows a misunderstanding even over the word opinion. Then you double down on the lie, by claiming the "force" not only exists, but was violent.

Getting arrested for making death threats is also not "typical," and I have no problem believing that these people hold both of these characteristics.

I agree with what you're saying, but I did want to point out that in the "Goth" and similar communities it is common for both men and women to role-play necrophilia, and they generally associate that with their whole personal and artistic sense of self; fake necrophilia is part of being a [whatever group they are], and being a [group] is how they define themselves.

Of course, threatening people with death for disagreeing that it is healthy is usually NOT a defining trait in any of these groups. In fact, there is a word for groups that add that sort of thing to their collective sense of self: gangs.

He's more important than you are, you're still wet behind the ears. Look at his user id, he's probably been playing games since your parents were in diapers.

Oh, and protip: you're not everyone, either! He spoke for himself, and you can speak for yourself. And as somebody who spent the 80s playing "Moon Unit (cracked by the Nibbler)" on the Apple ][, I totally agree. In the old days game designers assumed gamers were nerds, and showed respect for our intelligence and basic decency. Now they accuse us of being disgusting, mindless brutes.

If game designers respected the male mind, I'd have games other than Civilization * to play. Luckily there is internet chess. Men are such brutes though, only half of them say "good game" after winning. ;)

She doesn't say men are evil, she says that neckbeards are destroying the gaming experience for both men and women.

I'm a man, and I love my wife, therefore I wouldn't participate in any community that is full of misogynists. It is disgusting and games do not provide the level of benefit that would be required to get me to spend time in a culture that hates me and hates my family and hates me and my family for loving and respecting each other.

If you spend time reading your game "friends" saying these nasty things, you're a neckbeard, not a man.

It is reasonable to expect people not to commit murder. Knowing that humans are humans, we can only expect that some will be unreasonable, and do it anyways. It is then reasonable to expect them to face Justice. Knowing that humans are humans, we can only expect that some will escape Justice.

Reasonable expectations are what those with Reason are likely to do. It does not mean any sort of guarantee, or imply a believe in absolutes, or claim that all humans are or will be reasonable.

If it is phrased as a joke, then it is not credible. If it is an impossible scenario, then it is not credible. "If you don't shut up I'm going to send a bunch of Cardassians to your planet!" Or if they admit they don't know where you are, then it is not credible. "If I knew where you lived, you'd be toast!"

You can get the whole thing from the semantics of the words "credible" and "non-credible," by checking if it is non-credible. If it has something as mentioned above that makes it "non-credible," then it is not credible. If it doesn't contain only of those things, and is just a threat, without anything to discredit it, and it contains claims of having access to you, such as knowing your address, then it is clearly credible.

Note that "credible" doesn't say, "actually planned and they're at the door" or anything like that. If it is not non-credible, then it is credible; if they make it sound like they might really do it, then that is clearly and indisputably a "credible" threat. But if you can't tell, then it is credible as a threat.

Dictionary gives "able to be believed; convincing." And: "capable of persuading people that something will happen or be successful."
Synonyms are: believable, plausible, tenable, able to hold water, conceivable, likely, probable, possible, feasible, reasonable, with a ring of truth, persuasive

A threat such as, "I know where you live in Sometown, Somestate and I've been tracking your location and I'm gonna [felony] and [felony] you!" Clearly plausible as a threat; you'd have to know independently if they are or are not stalking you in order to determine it. But the claim itself is that they are stalking you, so the stalking part is plausible, and if they are stalking you, then the rest is even likely.

"You're so lame, if I met you I'd totally [felony] you." Not very plausible as an actual threat.

Sorry, Mr. Russian Apologist, but they would only be "in Kiev in a few days" if that is their marching orders.

If their plan is to annex the east now, and the rest next year, then no, the story will be true today, and not where you claim in "a few days."

"R" that you're quoting is the Russian government propaganda rag. You can actually check them on real events in the world, and then check back in 6 months and see what was the truth. They're full of lies every time. I wouldn't trust them for a baseball score.

Check back in 6 months, compare what they reported on this conflict to what really happened. Because they were reporting the Ukrainian protests as being a bunch of Fascists who, if they had their way, would be building concentration camps for Russian speakers. Of course, the protesters won, got new elections, and turned out to be what they appeared to be; moderate youths who want increased relations with the EU.

Well, for the US an open conflict started by China in our bond market, that would naturally leave them frozen out of it. They enjoy buying our bonds, so they'd be cutting their own nose. And as the largest bond holder, they'd be destroying their own investments. Our continued bilateral economic friendliness is a basic requirement for China to get any return on those investments.

When they're the biggest bond holder, attacking the market would risk losing their investment, and for the US, our risk is that we would have to write off a bunch of debt. We'd come out ahead in the long term; they could trash our federal budget for a couple years, but most of the US economy is private and independent of the government.

Also, in the short term the dollar would drop, and China would have increased costs in keeping their currency pegged low against. Likely it would rise. That would lower the value of their giant pot of cash, which would be growing quickly without bond purchases. They would be stuck with shrinking liquid assets where they used to have an increasing investment portfolio.

So, no. The whole situation is an object lesson in not buying somebody's debt if you want them to be your enemy; you'll only be able to afford them as friends. China may not be our "best" friend, but their economic friendliness runs deep. Trillions of dollars deep.

Im not 100% clear why we wouldnt want to get involved here, if ever there were a time to get involved.

Because of natural gas interests to benefit Europe, naturally. European countries are spending themselves into the ground so they lean on the US to be World Police. Oligarchs protecting oligarchs, that is all.

And see, we can discredit everybody who claims this will be yet another "war for oil". "War for hydrocarbons" just doesn't have the same ring to it. There's no appetite for a "war for energy" because then people would point out that we have many safe ways of producing all the energy we need already (but the corporate arms dealers don't much care for those).

We haven't, though. What country did we annex again? Oh, right. They all still have both political sovereignty, and also control of their legal borders. Iraq, not annexed. Grenada, not annexed. Vietnam, not annexed. Korea, not annexed. Germany, not annexed. Japan, not annexed. Panama, not annexed and we gave the canal back early. Italy, not annexed. Afghanistan, we wouldn't take it if they annexed themselves for us! Lebanon, not annexed. Libya, not annexed.

Russia doing this is the first time this has been done since the WWII-era. This is a major thing, and Russia has to lose; they have to give back the territory, or they will be economically isolated. They'll be like North Korea in 30 years unless they change course. What happens when the US and European domestic auto markets are all running electric, and Europe has enough wave and wind power to cover their winter heating? Russia's only "energy market" will be recycling their nukes to sell as fuel to France.

Russia and China just signed a big longterm gas and oil deal. Any amounts over that, in a scenario where Russia doesn't have other buyers, and China would be able to push the price down as far as they wanted; barely over cost.

Also, China is 9th in the world in natural gas production, and they don't use much; only 5% of their energy usage in 2012.

And they've been working hard to diversify their energy supply. They're not going to stop buying from the countries they just signed trade agreements with. Those are real victories much bigger than a short-term discount. They're also not going to convert factories to a new fuel source just to be supplied by Russia, because Russia is not an honest player; everybody knows, especially the Chinese, that they will raise your prices if you don't act like their puppet. China doesn't like being told what to do. At. All.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...

You read a lot of strange propaganda if you still believe that stuff even 6 months later. You make it sound like their protesters were American paratroopers. A little too much Pravda in your ear, I'd say.

Most Ukrainians are secular, and those who are religious are mostly Christians. I don't see much parallel at all to Afghanistan and the things that went wrong after we double-crossed them.

Also, we wouldn't economically abandon Ukraine afterwards; all of Europe already have trade ties, and nobody is against trading with them or investing there, post-war. Heck, I've got sunflower oil from Ukraine in my kitchen right now. Afghanistan went sideways because we promised them they could be in the modern family of nations if they drove out the Russians, and that was a lie. They were abandoned to their mud huts.