New Year 2015-2016

Fortunately in my childhood, there were practically no restrictions with fireworks, we had a lot, lot bigger bombs and we combined them to make even bigger and we were 10 years old and all by ourselves with lot of imagination. :)

It's the kids these days who cannot be trusted even with a matchbox. Give them a knife and they'll end up in a hospital, give them a bottle of booze and they'll end up in a hospital, give them air rifle and they'll end up in a hospital...

@real-cool-cat
You know, I have to second that comment. I've been Scout for five years, and I've seen all of the following:

1 2 people stab themselves with axes
2 1 person hurt themselves with a saw

3 4 exploding camping kitchens

4 4 uncontrolled fires within a scout camp

5 Aaaand 1 person being chased by someone with a knife. In the woods. In the middle of the night.

"We teach your children survival and responsibility"

Suuuure

@AppleEclipse i can confirm the uncontrolled fire part

also air rifles are cool

'@AppleEclipse' I blame the X-generation parents, who are taking the easy way and just forbid their children to do anything to keep them safe, instead of teaching them how to do things. In my times, practically every 15 year old boy knew how to use a chainsaw. Now I wouldn't dare to think what would happen.

Parents and children both are safely indoors with iPads and xBoxes and mommy is making sandwiches just correctly, two slices of cheese vertically, and one slice sideways.. :D

@real-cool-cat You, sir, are awesome.

'@real'-cool-cat You don't have echo-BOOMERS in Finland? Most millennials here are boomer children, not Xers. They're the classic "helicopter" parents.

'@Nephandus' My parents are boomers, siblings are late Xgen and I am millennial (also called echo-boomer I suppose..). Most Gen-Z's (born 2000 ---> ) are children of Gen-X's. And yes, they are helicoptering and it's really easy since Gen-Z's have smartphones already in the cradle.

@real-cool-cat same here, mabye childs are getting stupider in the years? XD
Anyway it's a kind of natural selection, i've blew everything over the years and i've never been injured, last New Year a seven years younger friend of mine has almost amputee a finger to open a bottle with a knife....

'@Theitalianboy' And let me guess, your friend's parents are generation X (born after 1964) and yours are not?

X's are mostly unfit parents and put all responsobility to schools.

@Theitalianboy I might argue that that kind of irresponsibility is the fault of the adults watching over them. I'm an Eagle scout, and the adult leaders in my troop didn't allow the stupid bullshit. Just the fun bullshit.

Also, people hurting themselves with blades is gonna happen even with safety precautions in mind. Doesn't necessarily mean the users are being idiots.

@real-cool-cat I read somewhere recently that in the 1950s, between 300 and 450 swedish children died in various accidents every year. Today it's barely around 100 kids... Granted there were a higher kid to adult ratio back then, and the healthcare was of course not as advanced as it is today.

It's quite fun how my Grandfathers generation was a "spoiled generation", then it was my dads generation that were the "spoiled" generation, nowadays my generation is the spoiled one, can't wait for the next generation to be the spoiled one.

'@Zervo' The spoiled generation was probably the one that you cannot no more give a knife in their hands, without them hurting themselves after doing a little work.

Yes, people died younger and had more lethal accidents back in the old days. Evolution was still working with humans too.

What is common to my father's generation (baby boomers), my oldest siblings generation (Generation X) and my own generation (Generation Y, millennials), is that we grew up being a lot outdoors and there was no internet. But people born in 2000 and after (Generation Z) have had different problems. I envy them not. They born into the complex, bureaucratic, boring world where everything sucks from television to music and world is full of schoolshootings and terrorists and rapists and you have to go to university to have a job in a supermarket and every other person that you see is eating depression medication and everybody's socially isolated, at least in emotional level.

When I was teenager, there was 0 teens eating antidepressants. 0 teens were anorectic. 0 teens were slashing themselves with razors. 0 schoolshootings.... I could go on and on. Sometimes I think we millennials (Generation Y) are the lucky bastards, we were teenagers when the internet came to public and were able to learn how it works when it was still simple. Just like many other technology that came to be afterwards. Life was just.. so much easier and happy overall.

"It was all so different before everything changed" -Old saying of the jungle.

@real-cool-cat I disagree. Different generations find different solutions to different problems but they always stay the same at the heart. Socrates (or it might have been Aristotle) already lamented the state of the youth. The older generations will always criticize the young without realizing that their elders did the exact same thing. And the young will always turn out to be just fine only to go on to criticize their own children's ways. It's all just nostalgia.

I don't see how you could call these times boring. I have the world at the tip of the finger. Just before I started writing this response to you I learned Japanese. I can talk to and share knowledge with people on the other side of the globe without ever having met them simply by responding to them on a forum like this. I can learn about history, about physics, chemistry, or anything else. I can watch thousands of movies, read millions of books in whatever language I desire. I find out about events everywhere in the world minutes after it happened. And all of that with nothing more than a mouseclick. So yes, this world is a boring one but only for those who don't know how to entertain themselves as it has always been.

Violent crimes are mostly going down. The amount of armed conflicts has gone down since WWII and wars between countries has almost completely vanished. The world is becoming a more peaceful and better place every day. What's become more is media coverage of crimes and conflicts. Some decades ago you'd only hear about, say, a murder if it happened somewhere in your region, nowadays such things are reported way beyond where it happened, across borders and continents. There were school shootings, anorexic people and other things you just rarely heard about them. Often especially in the case of psychological problems they weren't even classified as such and people rarely got help.

When books became something that could be mass produced, something that even the poor could buy, people feared children would become socially isolated shut-ins, only interested in the world of letters and not in the real world. There were articles that sounded exactly like those published today about the dangers of the Internet and the smartphone. (Just look at this two xkcd comic http://www.xkcd.com/1227/ http://www.xkcd.com/1601/ )

The world never truly changes. Or at least, we don't. We learn different skills because we need different things (which city-dweller really needs to know how chop wood?) but at our core we stay the same. I envy those that'll come after us. For they will be the ones who will walk on Mars and travel between planets, who will build robots and advanced AI, who will find the Theory of Everything and reach the heights of gods.

'@Criculann' Yes, Internet has revolutionized the way we get information, wikipedia is nice, easy to learn animations about thermodynamics and quantum physics and algebra and calculus and complex analysis and digital logic gates are something we didn't have even wet dreams about before.

However fun learning and watching movies may be, they are not actually "having fun". Nothing you do at the computer is. Well, except ShellScript, Python and breaking your neighbour's wi-fi's ancient WEP-encryption and trolling on religious people forums can be remotely amusing, but that's just because the outside world has become dead.

There were 0 schoolshootings in my country at 80's and 90's. Wars (like Falkland at 80's) didn't affect us here in any way, unlike terrorism. Violent crimes going down? In the old days, if someone was being an asshole, you smacked some sense into him. End of problem. And you were pals with him maybe already the next day. Today, it's a police matter. And so called "victim" needs a therapist, I mean... come on!

In early 90's, people laughed at the idea that you couldn't smoke cigarettes in an airplane, of course you must be able to smoke in cars, inside homes, planes... you could smoke everywhere except certain parts in a hospital. Now you can't smoke anywhere, not even in a nightclub and price is ridiculous, so I had to quit. And without cigarettes, booze doesn't hit you like it used to and people are not even drinking like they used to, let loose their wild side. And instead, everyone is smoking weed. No wonder, because it's magic is solely that it makes it okay to feel bored, i.e. to live in this current sorry excuse for a reality.

All rules and restrictions are 1000x harder than they used to be. No way I could take couple beers, drive a moped without helmet carrying an air rifle and drive to have fun. I would immediately have 10 patrols of polices after me. It used to be completely normal. There wasn't even seatbelts in backseat of cars when I was young. We were not in danger there, we were having fun wrestling. And after year 2000, people wouldn't dare to go even to the nearest forest without mobile phone. Even thought about it scares them. Everything scares them.

And Socrates, Aristotle, Platon, my father's generation and my own knew how to use a knife without hurting ourselves! :D

@real-cool-cat I'm going to use numbers to address each of your paragraphs separately.

1,2: Well, if you don't consider that fun I can't help it. Personally, I'm having a lot of fun expanding my horizon and watching movies/series/reading books I wouldn't even know of without the Internet and that made me cry and laugh.

3: Your first sentence is incorrect. There was a schoolshooting in Finland during the 80s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raumanmeri_school_shooting). Wars might not have affected you but they affected a lot of other people much more than you're by terrorism today. As for that, googling "terrorism attacks in finland" I could only find one from 2002. Is that the only one or do you know of others? If it's the former there doesn't seem to be such a problem in your country.
Your "smacking some sense into them" might work with friends who had one too much (I mean it's not like we don't do it today if all else fails) but certainly not with, say, an armed robber. You can't "smack some sense into" someone you don't know especially if they're ok with hurting or even killing you to achieve their ends.
Regarding your last point, nobody is being forced to go to a therapist but sometimes one might be needed. If you aren't one of those who'd need one fine, it's still a good thing the option exists for those who do.

4: What you couldn't smoke in hospitals? That's crazy? In all seriousness, there are still places where you can smoke. If you're so intent on smoking and getting drunk, buy some cigarettes and booze, drive somewhere remote (preferably with a few friends) and "let loose your wild side". Oh, and the price is so high to keep people like you from smoking ;) Your lung will thank you. Though, you probably already know that. Can't say much about weed. It all robs you of parts of your consciousness, so some might say they're all just there to making living for the unhappy more agreeable.

5: Yes, safety rules are stricter. I don't know if you're implying you'd like to drive drunk but if so you should know yourself why that's not a good idea. I don't see how a helmet is limiting your fun. And yes, you were in danger without seatbelts in the backseat although you wouldn't notice without having an accident. Seriously, there are other places where you can have fun.

This all just sounds like you're unable to find fun things to do. The world is huge and possibilities are far greater than even a decade ago. If you can't see the good in that, then I have to say it's your fault, not the world's because everyone else is having fun.

P.S.: Try going to a LAN-party. That's the equivalent to going to an arcade hall, not flash games.

'@Criculann'

1: There is a difference, what is "fun", what is "worthwhile/nice" and "interesting". It's like comparing sex, sauna and playing chess. I have rather complex system before something is "fun". Something that is fun, can very easily turned into "not fun" by small changes. Some things are fun only with right kind of person and something rather mundane can be fun if many small things are correct and there are no annoying side-prerequisites.

3. It depends what you call schoolshooting. To me, in schoolshooting, person is trying to randomly shoot everyone he sees. Incident you are referring to, was a bullied kid who wanted to vengefully kill just two of his bullies, and no one else. Fact that shooting just happened to take place in school was only logic, since that's where the bullies are quite certainly at a certain time. Outside schooltime, they can be anywhere, especially in 80's, when there was no internet.

4-5: This is precisely what I am talking about, what is "fun" and in what conditions. Everybody's started being a serious "that's dangerous/that's unhealthy" -Marge Simpson kind of people, lets just use the word "Maggie". You see, it's not even fun anymore to let loose your wild side, since modern times have turned everyone around me maggies. They don't want to party like they used to, because they are maggies. You can't anymore smoke anywhere inside, not in a home or a car, because of maggies newfound awareness that's it's unhealthy. And that takes the fun out of it. It's like using condom, kills all the joy. Or seatbelts at the backseat or not being able to talk to cellphone while driving. Fun is gone. Little by little, all the fun is killed from everything. I quit smoking not because I couldn't afford it, price of joy got too high and especially because joy was taken away. Try doing anything that you like doing indoors by going to cold dark balcony freezing your ass off. Let it be eating, sex, reading or whatever. What, no fun anymnore?! Well, neither is smoking. I quit bicycling for the same reason, maggies destroyed the traffic (and I don't like helmets). Just like in fireworks, it's nice to shoot friends with fireworks while they shoot back, fireworks war! :D But putting a goggles on, safely putting the little cracker on steady ground, lighting it up with safety lighter and moving away 12 meter and watching it say "pop" is not fun, that is just totally gay! :( (in the sense of lame, not homophopic way..) All fun is yet again killed. Like from everything in this sordid world.

In childhood, we just run and did stuff that was fun, in waterpark, in any parks, we didn't even notice that we are losing calories and getting in shape. But then, my friends grew up and turned into maggies. Nowadays, every sport is like being a hamster in a wheel. Swim back and forth X times and go to shower. Pump iron X times and go to shower. Run around the track round and round and go to shower. Trying to beat the own score last time... that is boring shit! Utter shit. No fun at all.

Oh, and you haven't seen the even the pictures of arcade hall if you think some f*cking gay little LAN-party with autistic nerds is "equivalent". There were giant machines, car games had actual seats, giant monitors size of a windshield, gearstick and steering wheel... machines with huge robotic arm to do the arm wrestle, pistols to shoot zombies in a big screen with a friend. It was heaven! Heaven, I tell you! :)

That's true that thanks to this changed maggie-world, where all fun is either forbidden or rendered so that all fun is killed, I am unable to find fun things to do anymore. I wonder when maggies forbid me walking on the street without safety poles and helmets, probably in 20 years. New laws are most easily passed when you say it's for safety. I don't want to be safe, I want to live. Living is dangerous and ends up in death 100% at time. There are no exceptions so far.

Robs parts of my consciousness? :) You know, that almost every major creative person in history was a drunk, pothead or a coke-fiend? :D Some partially, some utterly, like Karl Marx, who was in a little gentlemen's club, where there was a rule that every member must get in every meeting as drunk as they possibly can. Friedrich Nietzsche was one of those few very genius teetotalers, and hated alcohol, but he was unsuccessful in his lifetime and had a nervous breakdown and was mostly different ways sick all his life, and died at age 55. Winston Churchill died at age of 90 and he drank whiskey every day, smoked fat cigars every day and every now and them used amphetamines. Sigmund Freud was a morphine addict, died at age 83 to cancer (morphine is not carsinogen). No maggies were there to tell them how dangerously they are living.

I am not so "intent of smoking and getting drunk", it's not fun anymore. Neither is weed but sometimes it takes you through the rainy days and it can sometimes boost your verbal thinking. And sometimes mathematical thinking too, I never really understood Cauchy's integral theorem, before i took a fat joint and lay on the couch and had a serious mind-race.

I usually just stick to coffee. But South Park displayed it best, only thing that alcohol is good for nowadays. It's entering the matrix, where everything doesn't look, sound feel and taste just shit anymore. A couple good swigs of Jameson and everything feel warm and fuzzy and nice, music these days start to sound like music and even Adam Sandler is funny. :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=780X5DS1Saw

@real-cool-cat about 3: you got a point there. If you define school shootings like that there really have been only two school shootings in Finland (according to Wikipedia), both during the 2000s.

Other than that it really boils down to personal opinion. I can't really say much if you don't enjoy what the world has to offer these days, it's your opinion. Though I'd have to add that some of the things you mentioned do still very much exist, it's just that it's usually kids and teenagers who do them. Kids still run around, adults do sports. I know enough teenagers who regularly get drunk. In fact, I sometimes feel like their entire existence revolves around alcohol (that's probably a bit of a hyperbole, though). At some point people tend to grow out of these behaviors (well, to a degree at last) and become, well, responsible.

The only thing I can recommend you is to find people that are the same kind of crazy like you. After all with 7 billion of us you're bound to have some luck ;)

'@Criculann' What the world has to offer, is deadly cold (-24 celsius at the moment), dark, black and empty void with freezing gales when I step outside my apartment. When I breathe in, hairs in my nostrils freeze immediately. No people anywhere, I might see a couple if I could walk there for an hour. Couple big lumps of walking winter clothing that is. And this is not countryside, this is a city. There's 3 hours of daylight per day and that's grey and cloudy. Still freezing.

You try to live here for the whole winter, and then when it's coldest and darkest I'll give you a nice glass of finest body&soul warming scotch, you'll be sexual intercourseing kissing my toes and testicles in humble gratitude. :D

Well seriously, couple swigs of scotch really keeps you warm and sane in dark wintertime, survival trick. I used to drink the whole bottle and then 10 beers to wash it off and keep on rocking when I was younger, but you get calmer when you get older. :)

And there's not so many people "kind of crazy" like me or like Jack Black. :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjYwuL4FLO4

@real-cool-cat Haha, sounds like you should move south ;)

'@Criculann' Not gonna! But you're kinda right. :D

I belong to here. My heart is here. But it's sure is really nice to visit canary islands and see the palm trees. :)

'@Criculann' And going to a giant 80's - 90's arcade gaming hall with a friend with 100 playable machines is something that any play-crappy-bird-or-some-shit-like-that dot com -online flashgame website cannot ever replace! :(

'@Criculann' And one, most dangerous drug that really robs your consciousness, kills your brain cells and possibly give you brain tumor is television these days. Nothing has gone more shitty than that. I unplugged my own telly like decade ago. Devil's eye that rots brains. I've seen that many people have done the same, I think only ones still watching it are people eating antidepressants, i.e. tho who have had a chemical lobotomy.

Once in my friend's place I watched couple minutes of big brother. I started to yell that "Turn it off, turn it off!!". It felt like my face was melting and I started smoking from the edges, I was afraid that I will experience spontaneous combustion. :D

@real-cool-cat LOL so true!

"Everybody else are having fun"? No, everybody else is having fun. You wouldn't say "every body are", now would you? "Everybody" is singular. This is not the first time you've made this error. I'm severely disappointed in you.

@Kaltio WE HAVE A CRAZY ONE, SIR!

@Kaltio You'd hate Polandball.

@Teh_Googly SATW cannot into grammar correctinngs

@FrederickII polan of the cannot intoinks of the spacings

@Kaltio Groups are not treated as singular in most variations of English; you're likely more familiar with American English, in which case you're right. In the UK (and, presumably, Ireland), groups are treated as plural. "The crowd were excited," "The team are doing well this year," etc. American English is the exception to this pattern, not the rule.

@kimosaurus "Everybody" is not a group. "Everybody" is talking about every body. Think of it this way: "Every person there are a vampire". Would that make sense? No, you'd say "Every person there is a vampire". Similarly with "everybody". "Crowd" and "team" are groups, but "everybody" is not.

@kimosaurus Actually, as a native Brit, I have to step in here and say that you're incorrect about the treatment of group nouns in British English.

"The crowd was excited" and "The team is doing well this year" are more proper precisely because multiple individual people when treated as a single group thereby become a singular item. Multiple groups can potentially be pluralised again - "there are far too many decent teams out there" - but that's because the number of groups themselves is plural rather than singular. Other than that, though, a group noun such as "crowd" is always treated as singular, unless it is being broken up again into constituent parts - for example a sentence talking about the MEMBERS of a crowd can use plural verbs depending on their structure ("The people in the crowd are becoming boisterous!") because in doing so the subject becomes the people rather than the crowd as a whole ("The crowd is becoming boisterous!"). This is the proper British grammatical form, not just the American form.

To put it simply, the easiest way to decide whether to use plural or singular form when unsure is to try to work out whether the subject itself counts as a singular or plural subject.

"Everybody" is a collective pronoun which incorporates a group of subjects (in this case, people) into one larger subject (like a crowd or a team). In this case however, the group isn't explicitly named or stated, but is a product of the use of "every" or "each" as a concept implying that "every person involved" is part of a large grouped subject to which the term relates. It therefore counts as a singular subject and requires singular verbs and pronouns in British English as well as in American English (and to my understanding, this is common to most variations of the language). The same is true for nobody, anybody, somebody, each one, everyone, either, neither, and no one!

@Kaltio I assume they use that because of Ireland's accent. The Irish accent pronounces English terms funnily sometimes.

@Kaltio I hope this was you trying to be funny. If it was not, then you've just nominated yourself to be one of the most arrogant and pretentious commenters anywhere on the internet I've seen for a long long time.

"I'm severely disappointed in you."

Who do you think you are?

@NorseWinter dude, stop being so sensitive. I'm just correcting those whose English abilities are inferior. They'll learn from it.

@Kaltio Or, you know, you could be more polite? Helping people improve their English is fine, being a total jerk about it isn't. I could correct your English, and say you didn't capitalize your first sentence, and I could do it in a polite way, OR I could say "Oh, you didn't capitalize your sentence, I'm severely disappointed in you."

OR, I could just be a fine human being and ignore it, like 99% of people did with the is/are. It's a little webcomic done, in English, by a non native English speaker. That's good enough, don't you think?

I take it you speak another language though, - pray tell, what is it?

@Blobikins "I take it you speak another language though, - pray tell, what is it?" Ööö, mun profiilikuvan alapuolella on Suomen lippu? Eikö se ole päivänselvää, että puhun suomea?

Maybe for a non-Indo-European that mistake would be permissible, but for a native Germanic speaker? Nah. I mean, I'm Uralic and even I could see how wrong that was.

@Kaltio Les personnes ne parlant pas toujours la langue principal de leurs pays. Example: Mon Grand-Pere parle Italien, mais il habite dans Canada, et Italien n'est pas une langue principal du Canada. Donc... seulement un drapeau sous ton nom n'est pas une bonne indicateur de quelle langue tu parles.

I've been speaking French almost my entire life, but I still find myself making small mistakes, like conjugating verbs wrong when I write them. It is good to correct people, but there was no need to be a jerk about it.

Yeah, those laws don't prevent fireworks in the slightest.

A few idiots hurt themselves and the nannies go nuts. If you believe in evolution act like it and let the stupid kill themselves off.

@Slowburn

The problem is not that much idiots killing themselves but idiots losing control of their fireworks and killing ME, who isn't even watching the damn thing.

@Slowburn Evolution isn't a good principle to base your own life decisions and morals on.

'@Offe' Ignoring it won't make it go away though, and fecundity currently negatively correlates with intelligence down till legal retardation cuts off the curve. The nanny state is applying evolutionary pressures, even proudly so, and humanity is evolving differently to fit the resulting environment. The implications are beyond disturbing.

@Nephandus Evolution doesn't work like that. The "nanny state" isn't applying selective pressure on an isolated population.

'@ShoggothOnTheRoof' It's applying sufficiently massive and intrusive selective pressure across a largely semi-captive population, especially considering the phenomenon infecting and re-purposing global monoculture thus swallowing continents. Most people still don't move more than a few miles from the birthplace, especially the ones profiting the most from the nanny state and shitting litters. RELATIVE gene erosion and outbreeding depression of subpopulations is a problem resulting in too many people having too few of certain genes. "Smart" genes are many and require many to count. Spreading them thin makes them mostly worthless and decreases their reproductive desirability even more. I doubt you'd like the temperaments that many successful sperm-donors are spreading among the relative idiot population either.

Why do you think isolation is always a requirement? White people evolved in Africa while still in contact with blacks (not to imply general improvement). Egyptian "red" did too, right next to Ethiopian black. There was more difference than skin color in both cases. Isolated populations have remained stagnant for millennia, check mountainous Central Asia or the old Yid sub-population in Europe, while mixing ones have managed to significantly change relative to those they mixed with. Hell, look at Y haplogroups in general. They get around yet change quickly.

@Nephandus Isolation is a requirement because large populations keep genetics sufficiently randomized that absent sufficient selective pressure, the randomness of sexual reproduction will insure that there won't be significant changes to the population genotypes.

Also, humans have an extremely low reproduction cycle, which means that it takes a long time to see any significant evolution in a population.

But all that's irrelevant because all you're doing is trying to plaster a thin layer of scientific credibility over your own political opinions.

'@ShoggothOnTheRoof' Everything I mentioned is verifiably not random. The fitness landscape for reproductive success has been warped to hell and back. Evolution hasn't stopped. Pressures are enough to've already altered the saturation of certain genes, which is already having a direct effect. Your pseudo-liberal, pseudo-intellectual dogma is irrelevant to reality as it contradictory to itself. Reality wasn't suspending when this misbegotten social engineering experiment ensued, and you don't get to insert your own. Massive pressure is being intentionally and proudly applied. The present results are actively being ignored, much less the inevitable future, if it's not stopped. Flynn's left the building already.

@Nephandus You can dress you xenophobic libertarian BS in scientific language all you want, but it still doesn't make it true.

'@ShoggothOnTheRoof' Speciation occurs even in adjacent regions and different niches with a region, which aptly fits what current intentional social pressures would eventually produce though that's not too important in immediate terms. Distribution of existing genes very much is. You're flagrantly conducting human husbandry, just in a blind idiot manner while lying about it, via layers of massive social programs with stolen resources. You punish competence and reward incompetence, even as the latter increasingly outbreed the former.

Your politics doesn't dictate to reality any more than the religious right's religion. Your policies aren't magic, and you ARE responsible for their fallout. You don't get to ignore reality and substitute your own as much your type loves to pretend. Shove your sacrosanct authoritarianism back into the diseased abscess it came from. You don't know shit about evolution or breeding.

@Nephandus Actually, I have a degree in evolutionary biology. Which means I understand how it really works instead of an excuse for xenophobia. Keep lying to yourself as long as you want, but your views don't represent anything close to an accurate understanding of science.

@Nephandus Not to mention that genetics and intelligence don't exactly play nice with each other. There is a base potential that humans are born with, but intelligence is determined by more than just nature. Epigenetics are just as important. The term refers to how changes in the expression but not contents of the gene can affect the organism. A number of things can cause these changes such as environmental factors or the presence of a different gene. It explains why identical twins don't grow up to be exactly the same.

'@ShoggothOnTheRoof' Since I can't reply further down... Parapatric and sympatric speciation must have been missing from your BullShit degree since they've plenty of extant and extinct-but-well-documented examples.

' @Rioluman' Environment within and around the lifeform is actually part of the problem. It's like embedded, embodied cognition. Decent's easy. Better's hard. In the case of intelligence, epigentics is pretty much only bad though, damping potential. Non-functioning intellects won't help the worsening political environment, even if some smart genes are just hiding. At least everything I've ever read indicates it's easier and more probable to switch the genes off then on. The actual absence is far worse for the future, and I doubt stealthed off-genes will save us in some future reversal.

As for environment, twins have shown significant heritibility of intelligence, temperament, and other mental traits, even in different environments. We can't make an absence of genetic-based-intelligence-potential intelligent. As I said elsewhere in this thread, the Flynn effect has stalled, and, while I don't know how Europe treat similar cases exactly, here the "no child left behind" program in education intellectually cripples even the mediocre, all for small improvements of the incompetent. We're making it worse, just to make the worst feel better.

The population drift seems aimed at some mutant bastard hybrid of Idiocracy and the Borg. The social programs just continually ratchet into the incompetence and authoritarianism, while spouting platitudes and daring to claim such as rationality and science. When "the People" are idiots, targeting them with programs just profits idiocy and tends to select for it, while punishing and increasingly abnormalizing even the few eggheads needed to keep the stupid "civilization" running. The stats show they're not only unlikely to breed even once, they're ostracized and demeaned for existing. Claims to the contrary are facially obvious lies. Compare Jobs vs. Wozniak when people praise the creation of Apple. Actual engineers never count, just the marketing sleaze, who even manage personality cults. "Geek chic" is just hipster trash miming stereotypes to pretend intelligence/specialness. Nerds are still freaks to be kept out of sight until exploited by "real" people; then, they're supposed to mimic their ignorant "betters" while performing.

@Nephandus I'm well aware of the phenomenon. The problem is that you're just engaging in a Gish Gallop of terminology without demonstrating at any point that it's actually occurring in humans. Lacking that, all you have are hot air and petty insults.

'@ShoggothOnTheRoof' You made a false claim regarding evolution as a whole. I called you on it. Deal. If you want to make a counterpoint, you actually have to make one. You just spouted non sequitors, a appeal to authority, and at least 1 strawman. Again, your politics doesn't constitute any truth about reality.

@Nephandus I made no claims about evolution. I pointed out that your claims are bullshit. You still have offered nothing of substance.

4th of July wouldn't be the same without some idiots with fireworks shouting "here, hold my beer and check this out".

@Delsiana yup
My neighbor would do that

@Delsiana "here, hold my beer and check this out!" are probably the most common last words.

A fireworks comic and Iceland isn't in it? Come on, we're fireworks mad over here. :o We even have tourists come over just to watch the madness.

I'd like to add that we have PSA's for fireworks safety, and our local rescue service sends fliers for free safety goggles to kids. Fireworks can be fun if you don't mess with them.

true dat im kinda scared of em doe owo but we are having a big ass fucking explosion at my friends house. i wouldn't be surprised if you could hear it heh XD ( auðvitað með mömmu hennar í kríng dýrin mín verða snar biluð öruglega hahah lol )

@IcelandicAnimalLover One of our neighbors accidentally turned a cake upside down. Huge fricken' KABOOOOOOOM!!!! and the thing flew up in the air, Team Rocket style. Fortunately no-one was hurt.

@Melkorka Well, technically Iceland /is/ in the comic, as we are in Europe!

@Puppee Eh, that's true. Still, I wanted Iceland there, lighting sparklers with his sparkles. There could have been a comic about how we eschew professional fireworks displays in favor of letting a bunch of nutters loose at Hallgrímskirkja to just shoot fireworks and light cakes all over the place.

I'm a rare American who is opposed to people being able to buy fireworks (a fact that baffles me, since dogs freak out to the point of hurting themselves over the sound, and 1/3 of Americans own dogs; it's like saying, "A majority of Americans support owning this stick whose sole purpose it to poke their children in the eye"). That's why I've taken to referring to them as "consumer-grade explosives." That same American who'd buy a 12-pack of Mega-Buster-Cluster-Bombs if it came with a free child-poking stick, will actually see your point on the unnecessary hazards and danger of publicly available fireworks if you refer to them as "consumer-grade explosives."

@TuxedoCartman This American is equally opposed, to deploying fireworks within city limits (and wildfire danger zones). I'm less concerned with agitated pets, and more about property damage. I have no wish for my New Years (or July 4th) to be ruined by stray ordnance, and the inevitable wrangling with claims adjustors over the damage. There is a time and a place for colorful explosions. Urban environments, when alcohol and other intoxicants are readily available, is definitely not one of them. The 2011 NFPA report cites 32 million USD in property damage from firework related fires that year. The 2014 CPSC report lists a 76 year old couple dying in a house fire caused by falling firework debris, launched by one of several different people in their neighborhood that night.

What a great way to ring in the New Year, by negligently shelling one's neighbors with "consumer-grade explosives."

Gosh, I hate fireworks and all that. I would make it illegal here too!

Australia's just fuckin dead

China lost his nose, USA lost his eyes, Ireland lost his joy, EU lost his arms & Australia lost his life.