Oh yeah, I forgot to mention how amazing the music is...

Here's a recent performance of the main theme, it seems they'll be using it in the remake (thank god)... Well worth a listen.

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

In my opinion, the original 1995 film is the best. It's really fucking good, incredible animation and a great plot. Watch it with subtitles.

I've read the manga that inspired it, I've also watched the second film (GitS 2: Innocence) and both series of the anime that came after (Stand Alone Complex & SAC 2nd Gig).

They're all pretty good, but the original film is the gem in my opinion. There was some more stuff made after SAC (Arise?) but they weren't so great.

As for the sex robots, well I think that idea predated the GitS series by hundreds of years, philosophers have pondered this question a lot. That's actually one of the interesting concepts in the film, the "Major" appears to be a sexualized, feminine character at first, but as the film progresses we learn that she is really just a normal person, albeit with the capabilities of an advanced cyborg. One of the final scenes portrays her facing off against a weaponized tank, and it's gut-wrenchingly emotive and extremely compelling - can this "woman" overcome a mass of armoured metal and guns, even with her supreme cyborg abilities?

I would recommend watching the original 1995 film, then if you enjoy it (you will), watch "GitS 2: Innocence". The sequel has beautiful animation but a weaker plot, and gets up its own ass philosophically (much like The Matrix sequels). The series' are good too, they incorporate some other elements from the manga, such as the self-aware Tachikoma tanks and some of the secondary character's backgrounds.

Actor Tom Truong, are you a bot?

A yes or no answer would be fine, but do you fancy attempting the Turing Test?

You post a metric fuckton of bullshit, but never engage in discussion; I find that interesting...

Beautiful photos man, that's some cool shit right there. In before "hurr durr CGI urr!!" 

You're an idiot, but that's some funny shit. "Luciferian Pumpkinhead"  

I think it's weird how there's this overlap between religious/biblical beliefs and the flat Earth theory, but even the most religious guy on this forum (BADecker) thinks that you guys are full of shit. That says something to me about your credibility...

I can't watch your video right now, but your arguments sound similar to the idea of us being in a simulation created by a super-advanced intelligence. Or even a simulation, within a simulation within a simulation... etc.

One issue with that idea (and yours) is that technology won't necessarily keep advancing at the same speed, and there's nothing to really say for sure whether such things could be possible.

As for Universes coming into existence randomly, well there is a lot of evidence for the Big Bang, but no-one really knows why, or how it happened. It could have been random, or it could have been created by some super beings - we just don't know. Similarly, we don't know what's beyond the observable universe.

Regarding the chances of us "being in the first Universe", well we don't know those either. You say they're incredibly slim, but we don't have any other data points (other universes) to study and find the probability. We could be in the first universe, we could be in one of a number of universes, even an infinite number.

One thing we do know, is that the universe, and space itself, is expanding at an accelerated rate. So it would seem that our current universe will probably die a heat death. What happens after that, again no-one knows 

I'll watch your video when I get a chance.


You're delving into extremely deep philosophical questions here, the answers aren't as clear as you make out. No-one really knows for sure. While on the macro level, the universe seems to be deterministic, things get stranger when we observe things on a smaller scale.
For example a couple of things that do appear totally random are:

• Radioactive decay
• The collapse of the wavefunction in quantum mechanics

But we have no way of knowing whether they are truly random, or whether there are hidden variables that we haven't discovered yet, making them deterministic. We have similar problems with any test for randomness - if there are unknown variables, then how can we possibly incorporate them into our randomness test?

Not to mention a truly, 100% deterministic universe has compatibility issues with "Free Will", which opens another can of worms...

New "Ice Age", AKA "Winter". 

I actually checked out one of the few facts in the article, which was that there was "the coldest orthodox Christmas in Moscow for 125 years". Hmm, seems pretty crazy. So I checked the temperatures for January (orthodox Christmas is Jan 7th).

http://www.accuweather.com/en/ru/moscow/294021/january-weather/294021

As you can see, there was a really cold period for about 5 days, between the 5th and the 9th January. The coldest day was the 7th, and it was -30 C. However the rest of the month so far has been surprisingly warm, nearly every other day is well above the historical average temperature. In fact, looking at the forecast for the rest of the month I'd expect January as a whole to be much warmer than average.

These sort of cold weather events happen quite often in places like Russia and Eastern Europe, freak cold spells normally caused by certain air currents and atmospheric conditions.

One cold week in one place =/= Ice age.

  Let's start with a picture from 1893 with angels in the corners, and censor anyone who disagrees with such compelling evidence.

This flat/hollow/concave/ Earth shit is starting to get on my nerves. At first I found it entertaining, and enjoyed reading the creative explanations the non-believers had to explain their flat/hollow/concave Earth. Now it's just getting boring and silly. Ah well, back to the reptilians and illuminati theories i guess...

Then who created God? If your answer is "magic" then a scientific proof of god is impossible.

The original 1995 Ghost in the Shell movie is showing in hundreds of cinemas across the UK on the 25th of January, and the USA on February the 7th and 8th!

I highly recommend anyone who hasn't seen the original anime film to watch it on the big screen, before the remake releases. It is a masterpiece of animated film and inspired many more recent films such as The Matrix. One of my favourite anime films, it's gonna be a blast to watch it in a cinema!

UK: http://gitsmovie.co.uk/#latitude=51.508531&longitude=-0.125741&zoom=11
USA: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/ghost-shell-anime-film-returning-theaters-962573

USA screenings can be found here: http://www.funimationfilms.com/movie/ghostintheshell/

Me too, they don't keep logs (as proven by multiple failed subpoenas by the FBI), they have countless servers in many countries (useful for circumventing regional blocks), and best of all, you can pay with Bitcoin!

Don't donate to the church, they save millions in tax every year. If you want to donate to something, maybe donate to charities that help the homeless, starving or charities that research cures for deadly diseases. The church doesn't need your money, they have plenty of their own...

Edit: On topic, I would throw 1/2 a million into bitcoin, probably 1 million into a secure/low risk investment portfolio that would earn me dividends to live off, and spend the rest on a small house and a few nice cars. Probably not mental cars, I'm thinking an Audi Quattro, new Mustang GT and maybe a fully modified Land Rover Defender for adventuring.

First, we need to define "successful".

Some people might define success as making lots of money, others by pursuing a career that stimulates them. However making lots of of money in a boring career is not necessarily better (or more successful) than making less money in an interesting career.

Some people might define success as simply being able to spend time with friends/family. Some might think having children is a successful achievement. Others might think the exact opposite.

Success is defined not only by our own ambitions, but by the society we live in and the values they indoctrinate upon us.

A muslim jihadist would consider himself "successful" if he blew up a bunch of innocent people.

Sorry to get philosophical on your asses, but "success" is extremely subjective.

No, it doesn't mean that, just that it's probable. Anyway we've gone to 925 now, so it's looking bullish imo.

We can only speculate on probabilities, no-one knows the future. But the charts are looking rather healthy.

No chance.

If an altcoin becomes better than Bitcoin it would take years to reach the same sort of adoption as Bitcoin due to the network effect.

And if bitcoin fails (or its value drops significantly, let's say to the $200 or less level, people are going to be even more wary of buying an altcoin, however more advanced it is.

If Bitcoin fails, I reckon we'd be looking at 5+ years at least before another altcoin achieves a similar market cap. People would be very scared of "magical internet money" if the first iteration failed.

Hitting the resistance level at ~ $920.

With a little bit of buying we could shoot past this level into the $940 range. Then either bull run back up to $1000+ levels, or sell-off back to the $850 levels. I think this is the most likely scenario [edit, I mean the breaking of the 920 level to the upside is likely], then... (perhaps 70% chance of bull run, 30% chance of drop to ~ $850, if the $920 barrier is broken to the upside)

If the resistance level at $920 isn't broken (but I think it will be), we could see a further drop, perhaps to $750-800.

That's my feeling looking at the charts, anyway.

It looks bullish to me. keep hodling, hodlers... lets keep this rollercoaster climbing!

In retrospect, you should have saved your money on your CPU and RAM. If you are using your computer for gaming you could have got an i5 6600k and overclocked it, and got no more than 16GB of RAM (even 8GB is sufficient for the vast majority of games).

That would have saved you enough money to get a gtx 980/1080, which would have given you amazing graphical performance. Number 1 rule of building a gaming PC is spend as much money as possible on the GPU.

That said, with your current setup and budget, I would shell out for a GTX 1070 (or 970). It might be a little over your budget but it will be worth it in the long run. Personally I would save up for a 980/1080, but they are a lot more expensive.

I have a rig with an i5 6600k overclocked to 4 GHz, 8 GB of fast RAM and a GTX 970. It plays most games in 1080p in max settings and generally doesn't drop below 60 fps.

If you want good 4k performance you're gonna need at least a GTX 980/1080 or SLI config, unless you're happy with dropping graphics to medium/low settings.

Edit: Oh yeah my GTX 970 is also overclocked, don't know the speeds off the top of my head but it allowed me to play Witcher 3 in ultra settings with not much obvious drop of framerate from 60 fps - before I overclocked the GPU the framerate would drop a little every now and then, especially with the "Nvidia hairworks" on. But I love that hairworks effect, especially on the hairy monsters when they charge towards you!!

No, fluoride does not "clean and whiten" your teeth, it strengthens and remineralizes the enamel.

I'd be interested to see some sources on your other claims, regarding normal levels of fluoride. Obviously too much fluoride can be dangerous and unhealthy, but this is well known (and I addressed the main symptoms of excessive fluoride in my first post, namely dental and skeletal fluorosis).

The dose makes the poison - anything can be dangerous in excess. That's why you don't swallow a whole tube of toothpaste.

Yeah, some people think fluoridated water is dangerous and causes people to be "dumbed down and make them stupid" or some such bullshit, whereas a cup of tea has much more fluoride in it than most other drinks (such as fluoridated water under the minimum legal levels), and people have been drinking tea for thousands of years, with no obvious ill effects.

It has been scientifically proven to combat tooth decay (It remineralizes damaged enamel).

The only scientific evidence for dangers of fluoride are in extreme cases of far too much fluoride (normally in areas where the drinking water is naturally very high in fluoride). This can cause dental fluorosis and even skeletal fluorosis in extreme cases. In fact, many countries which introduce fluoride into drinking water, also remove it in some areas, where the natural fluoride content is above certain limits, to prevent these problems (eg the USA)

So basically, it seems that a small amount of fluoride is beneficial, but larger amounts can cause fluorosis. There is no solid scientific evidence (or even evidence for a hypothetical mechanism of action) for people being made stupider by fluoride, even in large amounts enough to cause fluorosis.

Sick man, yeah it's some funny shit - It's like when you watch a film from your childhood but instead of being a bit lame, it's 10 times better than you remember it! I especially like the scene at the beginning where the "tracking" on the VHS player goes out of sync, and the scene jumps to totally different locations when he's fighting the arcade machine. Such a great concept.

When I watched it for the first time I had a 24 year old Bulgarian girlfriend and I had to explain what VHS tracking was, and why it was funny that they put it in the film. SHe'd never owned a video player, and didn't know what the fuck I was on about...
"Why does it keep going fuzzy?"
"It's a joke, a play on the shittiness of VHS!"
"I don't understand, why is the robot on top of a crane now, when he was on the ground before, and what's the point of the fuzzy lines?"
" VHS baby, analog distortion, it's beautiful right?"
" "

Aaah, kids these days, don't know art when they see it... 

I have been dabbling in producing synthwave style music recently, here is a work in progress I made the other day... It's only half finished, it fizzles out befire the second drop, but I plan to finish it properly soon and maybe add some vocals or a live flute lick to it, as an experiment. It's called Overlander, named after the Amiga game:

https://soundcloud.com/dobbo-1/overlander