I am pretty sure that if we don't mistake 1) the reality of today and mistakes of yesteryear for 2) a set of carefully chosen ideals, then there isn't a culture in the entire history of the world that fails to look great!

What is and what was is infinitely more important than what could be and what could have been.

But what could be will ever rule and take us there when greatness has its day!

Sure. That is why you should change your location and citizenship to Pittsburgh.

Will i be granted a Pittsburgh left or i will be the one helping instead?

Someone tried to pull a California left here (left to me right to them) today on moving traffic (not even beginning to move) and had my heart accelerate a bit before he stopped. Hmmm. You have to balance between slowing down enough to avoid some crazy entry just in case it finally happens for real to your direction and causing an accident on the one behind, that was too close, by braking excessively.

I have convinced myself that some aholes enjoy trying to pose as if entering into traffic vertically and braking hard at the last minute knowing well that the other person has no idea how it will develop and getting a high by the scare they pull. Feels connected to online behavior in some way.
I can tell the difference from the setting between someone genuinely absent minded that noticed the error at the last minute and someone in full control that simply goes for the scare. I have spotted about 4-5 such events in recent weeks usually by cars of a little bigger size if you know what i mean.

OK, well in that case, why aren't you learning from the Bantu? Or the Zulus? They are millenia older than the Greeks.

Or perhaps your claim "learn from all history a culture developed from ancient times to today" is bull****?

Greece was an interesting place for a very short period 2000 years ago, when philosophy flourished in a couple of towns. Apart from that it's a cuckshow compared to the more refined and intelligent parts of Europe. What did Greece have that compared to the salons of France, for example? To Russian high society and Russian literature? Greek thought is a snorefest post Aristotle.
So one city in Greece was great 100 generations algo, for a brief period of time, like a historical accident, and we should attribute this magical quality to all Greeks for all time? lol.

Cultures that too strongly respect elders are backward and bigoted. Human progress has largely been the history of a series of acts of disrespecting the views of elders.
So you've given everything you own to Africans, then? Or Philippinos?

Also, if Greek culture doesn't care about money, and wants to help others, why are they stealing vast sums of money from Germany?
Everyone knows how to eat well. Greek food is sub par, imo.
Nearly everyone prefers quality to quantity. This is not a Greek quality either.
Well, Greeks and Eastern Europeans have lots of education. And they're moving away from Greece and Eastern Europe. Maybe you are dead wrong? Maybe excess education is ****ing worthless, and a cancer? If they're so educated, why are 50% of youths unemployed? Didn't all their education help them figure out to be entrepreneurs, and give back to their societies? Most of these former socialist countries have free education, and the people this education produces are largely unemployable morons. Education is a huge negative if it's not honed against reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...volving_Greece

Greece is one of the most bloodthirsty countries in Europe. Way more than US. Their sick culture has made them economically and militarily weak, and even with that they've been in tons of wars. Greece's last civil was in 1946 and lasted 3 years. That's literally Greeks killing each other because they couldn't internally agree about ideas. When was the last time the US did that? Hundreds of years earlier, after which peace reigned. It seems the Americans kick the living **** out of the Greeks in terms of peacefully resolving internal differences.
Is this a true statement? I don't think it is.
I'm extremely secure. As for aggression, you rant and rave like a lunatic about Trump. Get massively insecure when I say that one of the most brilliant women in Europe (Merkel) might even outdo you on credentials.
And 50% youth unemployment.
Comparing medicine with your average Stanford first year is a bit silly, don't you think?
It's not "free". The money is taken from working people. Excessive education is a huge drain on society, and university numbers are already far past the point of negative return, imo.

Your lack of critical thinking and education is tragic. But this is precisely the kind of people that think Trump is a great person given all that has happened to this day. What do i dare expect coming from this? Its always about smearing the truth, rewriting history and finding the most mfing simplistic ignorant position to take on important topics.

Sometimes the best attack on a post is to let it stand on its own and be read by many over and over again. Nice job!

Care to offer any info about your current place of living or ethnic origin?

You and Trolly are so close to being ignored permanently.

Good advice to yourself?

The truth is that I completely demolished all of your nonsense - which is really just lower brain ethnic pride which has no basis in reality - and you have no clue how to respond.

Who is smearing? The only thing controversial above is my views on tertiary education today being well above the volume at which it has negative returns. I should start a thread on this, it's an interesting topic.
Sure. I am of Jewish and German ethnic origin (with a bit of Irish and French mixed in up the line). I've lived in Europe for the last 2.5 years, in various places, mostly the south of France as a base but another 10+ countries on top of that. I am widely traveled. I am currently in Serbia for another couple of weeks.
Like religions, people get all ****ty when you point out the flaws in what they're proud of ethnically. It's so lower brain stem it's utterly pathetic. And it's the cause of most of the world's problems and wars. A thinking man should be above such ancient lower brain stem nonsense, but you're caught right in the middle of it.

This is just comical the more I read about Greece in WWII. For example:
Excessive pride led to Greeks in the resistance fighting each other while a nasty enemy occupied their country. Wow. Just wow. Greece is like the total opposite of what you claim/believe it is.

What the Greeks can teach us: how not to be so irrationally proud and set in our own ideas that we fight each other during wartime. Jesus.

Really is astonishing. Merkel effectively loans the Greeks 100's of billions of dollars at less than 1% interest and instead of being grateful, they're screaming and calling her a Nazi and demanding bigger handouts. Really, all of that aid should have gone to third world nations that might make use of it instead of lighting it on fire and handing it over to corrupt bureaucrats.

Ain't nothing like the real thing. Whatever the thing is.

Zeno, maybe you should open the politics thread again, so we can have a bit of fun itt.

PairTheBoard

Yeah, sorry, low content thread. I'll leave it be. Masque started it though, your honor.

Hard Pineapple Steel Reserve. Greatest Buck Fifty $1.50ish Ever IMO

Tooth, do the Australian young women at home act like they do when they are vacationing in the US?

One? Pft.

Depends. Australia has a large number of "bogans" in some of the cities. Think Manchester or Liverpool girls - I'm not sure you have an equivalent in the US, half of your women are sluts but they're a little more cultured about it. Still, Australians traveling abroad are marginally better than Americans traveling abroad, who most people hate.

The Australian upper middle class are very civilized though.

Overall I'm embarrassed to see and hear Australians out (just like I'd be embarrassed to see and hear Greek males if I was Greek). The accent is cringeworthy. I never had much of an accent and speaking French for so long I now have none, which I'm happy about.

You do not understand anything. You have no idea what you are talking about. F*ck them for fighting each other for sure but you are a loser for labeling this the war of all the country. Only a fraction of aholes fought another fraction or similar aholes at times and poor people in the middle witnessed it.

The civil war is 100% because of the German occupation instability. Some Greeks (like some 1%) helped the Germans and exploited for profit the situation like it happens in all situations of that kind. The others the majority stayed and suffered or resisted in any form they could without putting at risk their families. Some created the resistance in a vigorous manner. The left resistance and the conservative resistance emerged. They sometimes fought together against axis forces but eventually as it became clear the Germany would lose everything they started fighting each other in order to win the future control of the country. That happens almost everywhere in such situations when there is polarization in the population in the direction of the country. Guess who was supporting each side from the outsiders in other countries in order to have their proxy war. F both sides here and all the other great powers external agents of disaster that made it easier to happen.

How the f*ck can you be so moronic dense to not get it how it works and insult an entire group of people you never met? My grandpa on one side and my other grandpa on the other and all their brothers sisters and cousins in various parts of the country didnt kill anyone in their villages and didnt participate in any atrocity.

All this happened between some 500k communist party members and far less in active violent activities say 1/3 and government forces of similar small size but better equipped. The other 85% watched in terror unable to do anything to stop it. There was also local militia groups that did horrible things to each other but were not even 5% of the population.

The civil war is the reason the system went to hell for the next few decades because the one side never forgave the other even those that didnt fight anything but supported mentally (ideologically) one side and that lead to endless animosity and lack of cooperation in governing with the common interest in mind.

Germany created this mess and also stole a ton of money, gold and goods it never gave back. The cold war exploited it further. The same way US destroyed Iraq and Syria but US at least had better intentions.

Sounds familiar about civil wars? US civil war was 10x worse.

All civil wars are horrible.

And the other dildo trolly needs to f*cking get into his skull that the money Germany and EU is giving is used to pay other expiring loans to avoid default in their own f*cking banks, they are not used to pay salary to people or for operating expenses of the public services. So they serve their own economy!!! The entire system is balanced for years now in that sense. The government would be just fine without deficit if it didnt have to pay all kinds of loans all the time that were ballooned because of unreasonable interest rates in the past and focused instead in growth. So they are protecting their asses in Europe when the problem is not even 1-2% of the entire GDP of the continent and by the hard line they selected it will cost Europe 10x that in real and opportunity costs.

They never came and gave anyone say take here 10 bil or 20 bil pay your people. It is given in steps and in order to repay other loans to avoid defaulting. It is given in such a screwed up pace month after month under permanent extortion uncertainty (good luck investing in such environment of endless fear) with endless conditions and pressure to pass even more austerity measures that kill further the economy and tax people in insane ways.

Again this money is not given to Greece in order to pay for its own needs as in operating expenses of the country. If it was ever used for that (to the size of 1-2% of the total) it was because they had used all their available money to pay loans due and not default. But currently in the past 2 governments the system is almost balanced and the money received is not used to do anything but pay the other loans due.

Greece needed to give Europe a giant finger with all this treatment that is designed to liquidate the national treasure of the country and award it to all kinds of private interest motherfackers and exit the European whorehouse and tell them to go f themselves and forget all money forever and block all their businesses also in the country but only after first offering them a plan to avoid all this and pay everything back in a sensible manner that would focus on rebuilding the economy and rewarding any improvements in laws and processes with even more investments that would end instantly if the Greek side didnt operate properly.

Greeks would gladly pay back everything fair (after calculating the true ethical value of the debt) if the entire system was designed to be viable and had as intention to improve and create a strong economy investing in the rebuilding of the system demanding only hard work but with security in its sustainability and fairness in how business is conducted in terms of local resources. Greece in effect right now is occupied. Welcome to modern day invasion without tanks.

When you owe a lot of money that exceeds the GDP like that the important thing is to stop paying back anything for a period of time or pay very little and fix yourself first and then restart repaying back the loans as your economy has room to do it. The so called default is a mfing unreasonable concept in such extreme stress situation. Big f*cking deal if you do not pay for 6 months anything. You the collector can simply wait and not get any money for a few months or a year until the system is operating properly again. In fact you should care to get this to happen as soon as possible. But of course no this will never happen that way. Because we need to be exploiting every opportunity to have the perfect firesale. A big spit on your grave to Wolfang motherfacker Schäuble and his ideas and to all of you that side with these galactic size a$$holes. Part of these a$$holes is also a ton of Greek politicians that made it possible with their bs choices and a solid 10-15% of the population that are losers like in every other country and decide elections choosing always the perfect morons with mathematical certainty.

So the large number of Greeks who fought each other 70 years ago, while an enemy ravaged their country, and then had a 3 year all out civil war after the Germans left, are pushed aside because they're "a fraction of all Greeks".

But the five genius philosophers that existed in a tiny Greek city 2000 years ago for a brief period, they represent the entire Greek people.

Do you think you might be committing a logical fallacy or two?

This is a false statement. Many countries were occupied by the Germans and few descened into civil war. Thus it cannot be "100%" the fault of the Germans.
This is all false. What you describe above happened in every single country that was occupied by the Nazis. Yet they somehow managed not to devolve into a 3 year civil war and instead got together and rebuilt. Why? Because they had a culture that didn't have the kind of stick-up-their-ass unbending pathological pride that you're demonstrating right now.
I'm not insulting them. You have so much lower brain stem ethnic pride that you see it as an insult, though. This is what I'm talking about.

Again, stubborn dopey Greek pride tore apart their country and kept it apart. How is this not sinking in for you??? This is an enormous cultural sickness and the cause of their woes, now and before.

This is comical given that you said America could learn from the Greeks how to have a contest of ideas peacefully and have the beset idea win.

How do you think money works? Just curious.

Yes. And the guy who blew $300K at the craps table and is now in debt would be in a much better situation financially if his family members who mortgaged their house to keep him solvent wouldn't keep asking for him to stop spending more than he earns, and start saving so he can slowly pay the the money back that he borrowed.

How much have they been loaned? How much have they paid back? Where did the money go, then? Answer those questions and you'll understand why the above claim is ridiculous.

Greece is free to do that. Germany should then be allowed to invade this thieving country to take Greek assets worth hundreds of billions, just as the bank will foreclose on your house if you don't pay your loan. Do you understand what borrowing with a promise to pay back is?

Giving people hundreds of billions of dollars in money, with the single reasonable condition that they stop spending more than they make in order to get that money, is now "occupation". Greek ethnic pride is ****ing up your head up, dude.

Um, that is precisely what Germany has given Greece. With the condition that they stop spending more than bring in, so that they can start recovering. That is it the only condition!!! It is the purpose of the loans!!! Are you sure you have math degree? You're flunking grade 7 math here, dude, not to mention economics and law.

Giving money without that condition is like giving a compulsive gambler or spender fresh money every month without conditions on their spending. It's not going to end well.

This is a fascinating discussing. No less because me and Trolly are having it with a physicist.

The fascinating part is that you are so much vested in an anti-Greek campaign. That makes you very little actually. The fact you align with Trolly shows how both of you will do whatever it takes to bring your hostile primal instinct to a daily orgasm in an internet board.

I find a real life with actual people i interact with face to face a lot better than this troll gallery of soulless and gutless mfers. Your teeth wouldn't be at all safe if we had a close encounter. You really are a loser. I had better hopes for you at times. I may still have.


Ps: I take the best from all worlds i have known. My true ethnic pride is called mankind. What is yours? Picking fights?

I couldn't care one way or another about the Greeks. My interest is in your huge blind spot. I find flaws in thinking fascinating. When they're in a man who's capable of doing physics, it's even more interesting. You're at the lower end of redneck intelligence in your comments on Greece. It's absolutely fascinating to me that a head that can do physics is as swayed by ethnic pride as a redneck is.
ok.
This is SMP. We discuss ideas passionately in a way that you tend not to in real life, because it's politer. It's a feature, not a bug.
I'm laughing, dude.

War sometimes is the right choice. Wise men know when. You dont.