Things That Annoy You

[Ironchew]

Finnish independence day was yesterday and turns out that there was a rather big riot dowtown because of it. It was already rare enough that rather than have the president's independence party in the capital it was at Tampere (where I live) but, though it is not uncommon for there to be some protest against the celebration (mostly complaints about it being for the rich and powerful only etc.) this time the protest turned violent.

Mostly just mindless anarchism, complaints about fascists and the occasional drunken moron. The thing that annoys me the most is that any legimite point against the goverment can be raised rather freely in Finland without this type of violence. Had the protest been peaceful they might have actually raised some discussion about their agenda but now we just have some morons complaining about the police being a bunch of pussies for not opening fire at the rioters while others are complaining that the police are fascists who have attacked innocent protesters and that only the police agitators did anything violent.

No one talks about WHY these people wanted to make a protest.

Bah.

Gonna put on my OWS-tested tinfoil hat for a second here...

Is it really that easy to turn public opinion against protesters, to the point that they start complaining that the police didn't shoot at them? If so, I wouldn't be surprised if the powers that be installed a few provocateurs in the crowd to mess with the whole non-violent plan.

[Askold]

Gonna put on my OWS-tested tinfoil hat for a second here...

Is it really that easy to turn public opinion against protesters, to the point that they start complaining that the police didn't shoot at them? If so, I wouldn't be surprised if the powers that be installed a few provocateurs in the crowd to mess with the whole non-violent plan.

Well I suppose I have no way of knowing wether there were agent provocateurs amongst them but it does not seem likely. And I don't think you need to do much to make right wing morons hate leftist/anarchist morons. Besides I chose two extremes of moronic comments on purpose. Still more people were against the violent protests that were for them. But my main point was that if there had not been violence people might have been more favourable towards this or at least might have listened to hear WHY these people were protesting. Since that's what has happened in previous years. Seriously, people protesting against "the 1%" being invited to presidential party is an annual event (though it has always been a very small group that is bothered by the party. Most either favour it or are ambivalent.) but this kind of violence is incredibly rare.

Apparently the majority of the protesters wanted it to be peaceful but the violent subgroup was part of it right from the start and the imagery and the fact that they armed themselves with hockeysticks and fireworks before the protest made it pretty apparent that things will get ugly.

Actually the most sympathy the police got was from the fact that the rioters (let's just separate the group into the "protesters" who were mostly peaceful and "rioters" who were the troublemakers) attacked a police horse and injured it. ( THEY HURT A HORSE! ) While some people (the "cops are nazies" crowd) on the other hand are furious over the fact that the police (or "cossacks" as they also call them) brought horses to do riot control.

Seriously though, the police handled the riots pretty well, they had decidedly avoided provoking the protesters and only used violence in self defense. After being bombarded with burning flags and fireworks or getting hit with hockey sticks.  The only scandalous event seems to be a police horse knocking over some protester. (The horse had been spooked a few seconds earlier when some other rioter attacked it and threw something at it. There is a video about the incident and the rides seems to have lost control of the horse at the moment when it knocks down a person.)

[chitoryu12]

It's only supposed to get up to 269 on Monday. I'm thinking of leaving the food in my refrigerator outside to save energy.

Are you using a backwards temperature scale, or....

[The Right Honourable Mlle Antéchrist]

Kelvins, because he's a smartass.

[Ironchew]

Kelvin actually isn't all that hard to get used to.

310 is uncomfortably warm, a nice room temperature is around 290, it gets chilly at 280, it gets fuck-cold at 265, it gets fuck-fuck cold at 230, a few exotic materials start superconducting a bit above 90, nitrogen gas condenses around 77, and the background temperature of the universe hovers a little under 3 K.

Sure, you might say, much of that scale is outside our awareness of temperature as humans, but the ideal gas calculations make it all worth it.

[The Right Honourable Mlle Antéchrist]

Man, it's almost like Kelvin and Celsius are two separate applications of the same units of measurement, with scales adjusted for their specific purposes.

[mellenORL]

Yeah, like, I only use degrees Kelvin to choose the right light color in florescent light tubes.

[The Right Honourable Mlle Antéchrist]

I only use The Rankin Family on vinyl. You probably haven't heard of it.

[Art Vandelay]

I only use a temperature scale that I made up. It's logarithmic rather than linear and uses random household objects instead of numbers.

[Witchyjoshy]

I only use a temperature scale that I made up. It's logarithmic rather than linear and uses random household objects instead of numbers.

So what's boiling point and freezing point?

[mellenORL]

Teapot and ice cube, I'd reckon.

[Sigmaleph]

I only use a temperature scale that I made up. It's logarithmic rather than linear and uses random household objects instead of numbers.

I wouldn't be surprised if some people used a logarithmic temperature scale. It has interesting properties, like placing absolute zero at negative infinity*, which neatly reflects the Third Law. I can't imagine any significant advantage for using random household objects, though.


*Assuming you're taking the logarithm over Kelvin or Rankine and not Celsius or Fahrenheit. That would just be silly.

[Art Vandelay]

Teapot and ice cube, I'd reckon.

Assuming he's referring to water, it's printer ink cartridge and negative flower pot, respectively.

[Witchyjoshy]

Awesome.

On a more frustrating as all hell note, this happened in Mass Effect:



The reason?  I have a modern AMD processor.  That's the entire problem right there.

Best part?  I get to look forward to dealing with this on Ilos, too.

*sighs* If it weren't for the fact that Mass Effect 2's Shepard starts with some decisions I don't like, I wouldn't even bother with Mass Effect 1 anymore.  This is intensely frustrating and quite depressing.

[The Right Honourable Mlle Antéchrist]

Looks like the silhouettes of Juggernaut, Nosferatu and Bignose the Caveman. I'd play the shit out of that.