What A Relationship Is To Them

Some (but not all) consider a relationship to be all about them. Their wants and needs, as far as they are concerned, take precedence over everything else. They have expectations of the man that they would never even consider reciprocating - in fact, it rarely even occurs to them to consider it. They are less likely to consider the man's feelings, and some convince themselves that men simply don't have feelings. You'll also see some use weird bits of gender bias and double standards as a weapon to get their way.

Note that this isn't for all of them, but some or all of the above isn't uncommon among their young ages 18 - 25. Funny thing, though - the ones that do that will do as much as they can get away with, so if you don't tolerate their bullshit, you won't receive as much of it.

Public transportation (maybe) is Socialism.

If something is approved by the Congress by definition the people agreed to it. Public Transportation isn't just subways under New York City, commuter trains to and through suburbia, streetcars/ lightrail on the roads in the urban area, regional trains connecting rural regions and big towns/ small cities, and so on.. Yes we need a rail system just like how we needed Amtrak (which now puts us billions in deeper debt every year because no one uses it enough).

Amtrak doesn't own the railways it runs services on, they're owned by the state railways and private freight operators. They give it a lower priority to their own services, often have old infrastructure, operating restrictions, etc - Amtrak is greatly hampered in its operations. It takes 3 and a half hours for the Acela to cover the 231 miles from Boston to NYC, it takes an hour and 57 minutes for a TGV to do cover the 254 miles from Paris to Lyons. The reason for this is that the TGV uses dedicated purpose-built High-Speed Railways. While the Acela has to use pre-existing railways, bridges and overhead from the 1930s, go through level crossings, ride railways in Connecticut that are too close together preventing the use of the Pendalino tilting mechanism system, and so on. It was decided by the automotive industry and government working to enrich them shut down public transportation, build suburbanization, and the freeways to support it. What choice do people then have when that is done?

Eventually, oil prices will reach high enough that it will necessitate some people taking more public alternatives. In the mean time, I don't want to ride next to some smelly fuck who hasn't bathed in weeks. But that's my decision. If I can afford to live my life that way, then I will. People like their privacy and autonomy. I know I do. I wouldn't expect anyone to understand as much. Why would I want to wait another 15 minutes to an hour on transportation? That's wasted time in my day. The fastest route would still be my car. Why would I want to ride a bus or train that has to stop every five minutes when I can take a car and get there in a third of the time. As of right now, I would have to walk two miles to get to the nearest bus stop. Then I couldn't listen to my music as loud as I wanted or have the AC going to my optimal comfort zone. Cars are way superior.

Americans have been conditioned to want to get places as slowly as possible so they consume as much resources as possible. If someone inherits wealth, it already means his family has done massive amount of good for the society, face it, people getting filthy rich is a wonderful thing, everybody benefits from it.

The question isn't whether or not its more efficient. The question is whether or not people will like it. Obviously, America has chosen the route it wants to take; that's what a free society does. The free market will eventually fix this. Give it time.

9 movies i never bored to watch again

Stories of money and how people spend it (Part II)

People who aren't well off buy iPhone 3G. Fine, it's a bit expensive but no problem. I'd hardly call a $2000 investment on a luxury item "no problem" for people with no money. But they don't NEED an iPhone. If they keep spending beyond their means like that, it's gonna catch up to them one day, until they end up going bankrupt or die from the stress of trying to pay bills.

Poor people buy these things because it is all they can afford. People who earn more think about buying stocks or a house, so they save. But poorer people don't even think about buying things like that because they can't afford it. They go out and buy new phones and televisions because it is something they can afford and it makes them feel good so that they don't think they are poor. While a person who wants to buy a new house thinks that buying a new television when his one is only a few years old is a waste of money. He sees that his money would be better put towards the house. The poorer person sees the money as either buying a television or nothing.

Contribute to the economy is a worthwhile way, dont buy useless bullshit that is made to break and be disposable. The average is to live beyond your means and thats fucking destructive any way you slice it. The government doesn't give a shit about debt, why should I? In case you haven't read the first part, communism don't understand the concept of fun. Unless of course fun includes criticizing anyone more successful than you. Because when the government gets into debt they just take more money from tax payers. While we are unable to do this ourself.

I know I buy myself gifts and shit all the time to cheer myself up. How much are these gifts? Depends on what I can afford. If there is one thing I learned from my dad is that the more money you have the more money you're going to spend. Most people can't save money to save their life. Which is probably why so many end up in debt. They are unwilling and just unable to change their spending habits so even if they get out of debt most likely they just end up right back there because of stupid shit. Nevertheless, Keynes tells if people spend more it helps jump start the economy. It's ironic isn't it?

If you have a lot of money to spend what's so evil about spending it? Buying shit you really shouldn't- no one is saying not to buy expensive things. It's more so why do people buy things that are beyond what their income is. People worry about money while others don't care and spend what they have now and even get into debt to make themselves happy. They don't think about the future too much and just figure that they will figure it out when they need to buy a new firdge or computer. While people like us don't want to stress out about having money issues. So we worry about money issues now.

Fin

Stories of money and how people spend it (Part I)

I know people who buy new phones, televisions, go on holidays, when they still owe money. I mean they make a fine salary in terms of the average, but their money just goes. Aren't people able to live tight because it depresses them or something? Why do so many people live beyond their means? Were human beings ever good? The reason America is in an economic downturn at the moment because people buy shit they don't need or can't afford. Because we're condition to think that buying shit makes us happy. It doesn't. Buy houses well above their income. Banks have to foreclose when they can't pay their mortgage. Also, for many people, having visible status symbols like a nice car, big TV, vacations are pretty important. Nothing wrong with that, though. It's great to have stuff.

No one wants to work and only be able to afford food and scrape by and survive. Because the point of living would be just to work to feed and shelter yourself. But there needs to be some kind of balance. People who aren't well off buy iPhone 3G. Fine, it's a bit expensive but no problem. Then then the iPhone 4 comes out, the rush out and buy that too. Why do they need to do this? What is wrong with iphone3G which is only 2 years old? The iPhone developers are upgrading something when they probably have a lot of other bills and expenses to think about. Capitalism is about productivity and volumes of products. Businesses do all they can to move as much product as possible. Where that means creating a culture of idiotic consumption, they will do so. American debt based economy ridden in easy credit, predatory loans, fiat currency, rampant inflation, etc. Most people are completely retarded with economics, which doesn't help.

Blaming an economic system instead of people who live beyond their means is the answer I always hear and it's a cop out.

1. The average person is taught no budgeting skills and a line of credit allows them to overspend perpetually
2. The average person being fucking retarded doesnt help either
3. Money is the worst thing humanity has ever invented next to crack and AIDS

It's funny because I used to think when I was an undergrad that when I got my fancy ecoonomics degree and started making tons of money, I'd be happy living in a crappy apartment and saving my money for a cool car. It turns out the expenses always scale up with your income. No cool car for me yet but at least I could eat sushi twice a week. Social status, upholding appearances, makes me feel better about myself, etc. If I was going to work just to pay off debts and bills I would just kill myself. The best thing I could do for anyone is recommend Economics In One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt.

If people can afford their wants what's so wrong about it? Why must I feel this urge to judge/ criticize others for such arbitrary reasons? Perhaps it is people like me who are the reason humanity is turning to shit.

Everything America has contributed to the world comes from Europe

The rich get a good education and opportunities, while the poor are encouraged to have sex as early as possible.

Education as it stands in the US today is analogous to operant conditioning. Americans are generally anti-intellectual. If it involves work, they'll vilify it. That's why the best paying, highest worth jobs involve so little work, whereas the lower paying jobs that don't earn you much respect require so much work. Think a manager vs a construction worker. There's a reason why the politicians try to present themselves as "someone Joe the Plumber could have a beer with".

Unlike Europe, where in every country, every student is given private, 1-on-1 tutoring growing up, and they all legitimately want to be in school, and everyone strives to do the best the can to make something of their lives. Since the poorer people are a majority, you have bigger classes in public school. Students usually receive less attention and there is a bigger chance you'll have people being rude and not caring. When you don't pay for school, what incentive do you have to make it worthwhile? It sucks, but that's America.

Stars and celebrities don't encourage it, making the masses not give a shit at all about it. They want the fame, the riches, and the glory that follows it. A single baseball player gets paid millions for what he does. A teacher gets paid a couple hundred for what it does. Celebrites get instant millions for simply acting. Someone going to school to "get an education" ends up waiting tables to pay off their student loan, then eventually end up turning into a stripper. In other words, Americans want something that will make them instant money. They don't want to go through a slow process to aquire it.

Americans want the glamour life. They want instant money. They want the lavish lifestyle/ material shit. They want ways to make money without needing an education. If they can't download an education into their brains instantly, they wont mind remaining stupid and misinformed. It's a fucking contest over there of who can get rich without having to do nothing, quickly! Their media and magazines promote glitz & glam. Americans want that lifestyle, not an education.

America gone soft - Whiner with a victim complex

Bullying has gotten crazy nowadays. I saw on the news about a girl who was bullied to the point she killed herself. What did the school do? Nothing. That's stupid and teachers need to watch out for that sort of extreme bullying.

If you bully adults, it's called "harassment" or "assault and battery". Why shouldn't kids be entitled to the protection of the laws?

Bullying a great way to thin out the herd. The people who take it with a grain of salt and forget about it tend to be more successful. The ones who sit there and take it and cry like a little bitch end up in cubicals typing away. Even if those type of kids were homeschooled they would just as miserable and lonely.

Realize that some bullying isn't caused by an abusive family life and insecurity any more. It comes from overconfidence and being pampered little cunts who've lucked out in every aspect. They aren't popular because they bully, they bully because they're popular. Most school bullies are part of the "in-crowd". "In-crowd" teens are teens who come from upper-middle class families, or participate in high school sports.

Everytime we have a school shooting, things always gets worse for the people who are social outcasts of peer society. Take Columbine. Instead of dealing with the root causes of high school bullying, they gone after the potential victims of bullying: the geeks, nerds, and other people who do not fit in. This forced forced some of them to drop out of high school in favor of a GED.

I was never really bullied (seniors taking my lunch money isn't really a bully to me), and I don't understand why. I was a pretty skinny, small kid, and I acted like a total idiot throughout middle school and high school. Why would I want the respect of high school losers who'll be popping out babies the year after they graduate when I could have the respect of colleagues ten years down the line when I'm making shitloads of cash by being a doctor, lawyer, entrepreneur etc? Who gives a shit, they're losers anyway, and getting suspended for "fighting" or whatever isn't worth potentially shattering your chances at a decent future.

Overall, I think bullying is just a fact of life, and no amount of teachers or rules or anything is going to help it or stop it. If you want protection, you gotta do it yourself.

What the news didn't say is that she was new to the school and had already slept with four of the popular guys there. Four guys. So a group of girls called her a whore on Facebook, and one threw a redbull can at her. What did she expect?

Defeat the world poster

The rest of the world... Are you even trying?

LOL

The top ten things you didn't know about Iran

The assumptions most Americans hold about Iran and its policies are wrong
By Juan Cole

Thursday is a fateful day for the world, as the U.S., other members of the United Nations Security Council, and Germany meet in Geneva with Iran in a bid to resolve outstanding issues. Although Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had earlier attempted to put the nuclear issue off the bargaining table, this rhetorical flourish was a mere opening gambit and nuclear issues will certainly dominate the talks. As Henry Kissinger pointed out, these talks are just beginning and there are highly unlikely to be any breakthroughs for a very long time. Diplomacy is a marathon, not a sprint.

But on this occasion, I thought I'd take the opportunity to list some things that people tend to think they know about Iran, but for which the evidence is shaky.

Belief: Iran is aggressive and has threatened to attack Israel, its neighbors or the U.S.
Reality: Iran has not launched an aggressive war modern history (unlike the U.S. or Israel), and its leaders have a doctrine of "no first strike." This is true of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as of Revolutionary Guards commanders.

Belief: Iran is a militarized society bristling with dangerous weapons and a growing threat to world peace.
Reality: Iran's military budget is a little over $6 billion annually. Sweden, Singapore and Greece all have larger military budgets. Moreover, Iran is a country of 70 million, so that its per capita spending on defense is tiny compared to these others, since they are much smaller countries with regard to population. Iran spends less per capita on its military than any other country in the Persian Gulf region with the exception of the United Arab Emirates.

Belief: Iran has threatened to attack Israel militarily and to "wipe it off the map."
Reality: No Iranian leader in the executive has threatened an aggressive act of war on Israel, since this would contradict the doctrine of 'no first strike' to which the country has adhered. The Iranian president has explicitly said that Iran is not a threat to any country, including Israel.

Belief: But didn't President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threaten to "wipe Israel off the map?"
Reality: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did quote Ayatollah Khomeini to the effect that "this Occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" (in rezhim-e eshghalgar-i Qods bayad as safheh-e ruzgar mahv shavad). This was not a pledge to roll tanks and invade or to launch missiles, however. It is the expression of a hope that the regime will collapse, just as the Soviet Union did. It is not a threat to kill anyone at all.

Belief: But aren't Iranians Holocaust deniers?
Reality: Some are, some aren't. Former president Mohammad Khatami has castigated Ahmadinejad for questioning the full extent of the Holocaust, which he called "the crime of Nazism." Many educated Iranians in the regime are perfectly aware of the horrors of the Holocaust. In any case, despite what propagandists imply, neither Holocaust denial (as wicked as that is) nor calling Israel names is the same thing as pledging to attack it militarily.

Belief: Iran is like North Korea in having an active nuclear weapons program, and is the same sort of threat to the world.
Reality: Iran has a nuclear enrichment site at Natanz near Isfahan where it says it is trying to produce fuel for future civilian nuclear reactors to generate electricity. All Iranian leaders deny that this site is for weapons production, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly inspected it and found no weapons program. Iran is not being completely transparent, generating some doubts, but all the evidence the IAEA and the CIA can gather points to there not being a weapons program. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate by 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, assessed with fair confidence that Iran has no nuclear weapons research program. This assessment was based on debriefings of defecting nuclear scientists, as well as on the documents they brought out, in addition to U.S. signals intelligence from Iran. While Germany, Israel and recently the U.K. intelligence is more suspicious of Iranian intentions, all of them were badly wrong about Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction and Germany in particular was taken in by Curveball, a drunk Iraqi braggart.

Belief: The West recently discovered a secret Iranian nuclear weapons plant in a mountain near Qom.
Reality: Iran announced Monday a week ago to the International Atomic Energy Agency that it had begun work on a second, civilian nuclear enrichment facility near Qom. There are no nuclear materials at the site and it has not gone hot, so technically Iran is not in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, though it did break its word to the IAEA that it would immediately inform the UN of any work on a new facility. Iran has pledged to allow the site to be inspected regularly by the IAEA, and if it honors the pledge, as it largely has at the Natanz plant, then Iran cannot produce nuclear weapons at the site, since that would be detected by the inspectors. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted on Sunday that Iran could not produce nuclear weapons at Natanz precisely because it is being inspected. Yet American hawks have repeatedly demanded a strike on Natanz.

Belief: The world should sanction Iran not only because of its nuclear enrichment research program but also because the current regime stole June's presidential election and brutally repressed the subsequent demonstrations.
Reality: Iran's reform movement is dead set against increased sanctions on Iran, which likely would not affect the regime, and would harm ordinary Iranians.

Belief: Isn't the Iranian regime irrational and crazed, so that a doctrine of mutally assured destruction just would not work with them?
Reality: Iranian politicians are rational actors. If they were madmen, why haven't they invaded any of their neighbors? Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded both Iran and Kuwait. Israel invaded its neighbors more than once. In contrast, Iran has not started any wars. Demonizing people by calling them unbalanced is an old propaganda trick. The U.S. elite was once unalterably opposed to China having nuclear science because they believed the Chinese are intrinsically irrational. This kind of talk is a form of racism.

Belief: The international community would not have put sanctions on Iran, and would not be so worried, if it were not a gathering nuclear threat.
Reality: The centrifuge technology that Iran is using to enrich uranium is open-ended. In the old days, you could tell which countries might want a nuclear bomb by whether they were building light water reactors (unsuitable for bomb-making) or heavy-water reactors (could be used to make a bomb). But with centrifuges, once you can enrich to 5% to fuel a civilian reactor, you could theoretically feed the material back through many times and enrich to 90% for a bomb. However, as long as centrifuge plants are being actively inspected, they cannot be used to make a bomb. The two danger signals would be if Iran threw out the inspectors or if it found a way to create a secret facility. The latter task would be extremely difficult, however, as demonstrated by the CIA's discovery of the Qom facility construction in 2006 from satellite photos. Nuclear installations, especially centrifuge ones, consume a great deal of water, construction materiel, and so forth, so that constructing one in secret is a tall order. In any case, you can't attack and destroy a country because you have an intuition that they might be doing something illegal. You need some kind of proof. Moreover, Israel, Pakistan and India are all much worse citizens of the globe than Iran, since they refused to sign the NPT and then went for broke to get a bomb; and nothing at all has been done to any of them by the UNSC.

Juan Cole is a professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan and the author of "Engaging the Muslim World."
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