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Other people can be hard to put up with but most of 'em mean well. When folk get me down, I try to remember the words of Marcus Aurelius:

"Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not only of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same intelligence and the same portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him, For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away."

Which I usually condense to something like, "some of the people I meet today are going to act like arseholes, but that doesn't mean I have to join in."

Hope you can keep your chin up, Hawkie. You are a being of infinite worth and potential, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Apologies, the above should read, "You know that you could break this cycle by going to Option #3?" Sorry for any confusion this may have caused.

[you could break the cycle by avoiding (5).]

I refer you to my previous answer?

See, I've accidentally started a new cycle of The 5-step Shark Problem by posting a stupid video which you're now defending as if your life depended on it.

To answer your general question: no, I see no value whatsoever in watching bullshit videos from the Internet - whatever snake oil they're selling. No discoveries of alien life (unless it's presented as fiction), no secrets of Area 51 (although the Internet Historian has a great video about that), no climate denial or Covid denial, no flat earth, no Dem-pizza parties, no Truth of the Twin Towers poop, no Bill Gates be nanoprobing your dawg and none of the stuff about the Sky God Death Cult - none of it.

Just to be super-clear, my advice stands: you could break the cycle by avoiding (5).

So... why did you post what you consider to be (and mostly is) a bullshit video? Do you think that I trawl the interwebs looking for bullshit videos and articles at random? Your core argument is circular, you get that, right? "I know that's bullshit because you only post bullshit." 

I'm also not defending the video, all I did was watch it and give my opinion. And now, because you think everything I post is bullshit, that opinion is also bullshit. Circular reasoning. You know that you could break this cycle by going to Step #3? It does, after all, take two to tango. If you don't want to dance, why take to the dance floor? Seriously, why? All you do is upset yourself.

The video you posted in your Step #1 had questionable veracity yet contained a core of truth and taught me something amazing that appears to be real. If I'd dismissed the video out of hand (and I suspect you may have chosen it for that very purpose) I wouldn't have learned anything due to wilful ignorance.

All the other bullshit from that video aside, do you not think it's at least interesting that extrasolar material may have been found on Earth?

Hell, Pops - he couldn't afford me!

Which part (of your) last post (was relevant) then? The bits (in parentheses) or (the other) bits? Is (everything) you (bracket) irrelevant? How (are) we to (tell)? 

Also, a speedy recovery to you and everyone who's suffering. I hope you all get better soon.

[USA Today]

Funt, for the purposes of this exercise, I am going to pretend that you posted that link in all good faith because you found it interesting. As far as I can see, I have three options for responding...

Option #1:
I'm not even going to click that because it's obviously rubbish and only a complete fool would post such blatant nonsense. What you really need to do is accept what I tell you because I'm smart and go with the flow and you're just dumb so why don't you simply shut up, already?

Option #2:
Thanks for posting that video. I find no need to delve into the person of the "Angry Astronaut" at this stage because it's his claims I'm assessing, not the man. Although I cannot find the latest paper he cites (without any links or references provided), I did find two original papers from 2022 (A Meteor of Apparent Interstellar Origin in the CNEOS Fireball Catalog) and 2023 (Discovery of Spherules of Likely Extrasolar  Composition in the Pacific Ocean Site of the CNEOS 2014-01-08 (IM1) Bolide) which suggest that an extrasolor object hit the Earth in 2014. This is amazing news, if it's true.

However, the AA's claim that this is "UFO wreckage" appears spurious. The second paper puts forward several options for the unusual composition of the spherules found on the ocean floor, including supernova remnants, a fragment of the highly differentiated crust of a planet with an iron core outside the solar system, or that this "unfamiliar abundance pattern may reflect an extraterrestrial technological origin." That's a long way from evidence for alien vehicles.

In contradiction to the AA's claim that the mainstream media isn't reporting on this, I also found several mentions of the subject in the msm (although not very many), including USA Today, which goes with the headline "Alien technology? Harvard professor finds fragments that could be of otherworldly origin". That's a clickbait headline, but not exactly a lie because alien technology is a possible explanation but by no means the only one. I for one would be overjoyed if actual alien wreckage had been found, but so far it has not.

Most of AA's video is filled with speculation based on this spurious claim of alien wreckage and so, while I am indebted to you for bringing IM1 to my attention, I cannot agree with AA's conclusions without further, more concrete data. But why do we need it? Isn't the possible presence of extrasolar material on the Earth amazing enough? The possibility of studying the composition of exoplanets and stars without having to travel billions of miles into space has extraordinary scientific potential in its own right.

So, thank you, Funt, for posting that. I think it's mainly bollocks but the kernel of truth the video presents is fascinating.

Option #3:
Not interested. Didn't watch. No comment.

[Gods of the Deep (2023).]

Gods of the Deep (2023). Unmitigated piffle from start to finish.

Bring him to Me (2023). Under orders from a ruthless crime boss, a getaway driver must battle his conscience and drive an unsuspecting crew member to an ambush execution. There is a long drive - and a really good film - ahead. Enjoyed this one a lot.

I posted the video that way because I couldn't embed it from where it was. It was only after I watched it a couple of times through the embedding that I noticed the view counter click up. I didn't do it this way "Solely to eventually pull the 'Ha! Caught You!' card," although in retrospect the stats are interesting. The video is saved as "unlisted," so maybe that makes a difference to how the counter works. (Those atrocious Christmas songs I posted to the Advent Calendar were hosted in exactly the same way, unlisted and linked solely here, and they all have multiple view counts - amazingly.) 

I am certainly willing to entertain the possibility that YT isn't giving me correct information - perhaps everyone who commented watched it and YT didn't get the stats right. If that is the case then I apologise unreservedly for my assumption.

A lot has happened in the last five years, and a lot is happening now. I think what I may be projecting is an increasing frustration with the Punch and Judy show of mainstream politics which just serves to turn as many people as possible against one another and deflect attention away from the real agendas going on in the background. Agendas that are killing people all over the world, maybe by accident or maybe on purpose, maybe both. 

Don't worry, though, I'm not going to go all Rambo. I don't believe any human being should ever harm another, except in the most extreme defensive circumstances. Violence is seldom the answer and never the question, so don't be upset about me turning to that because it's never going to happen. Perhaps my "troubling tendency" is to poke holes in the mainstream narratives, in which case, relax. That's not a troubling tendency, that's a moral duty.

You know I love you Hawkie, and I always will. It's sad we don't talk any more.

No worries.

Hi Lorenzo. I get that the goal is to prevent run-off into protected areas but buying up and shutting down farms seems to me an extreme solution that will negatively impact rural economies and communities. Istr that the Dutch farmers had already decreased their nitrogen use by around 50% over the last few decades so it's not as if they haven't been trying.

Barry, I'm with you on the treatment of animals and the cruelty in intensive farming. Rolling back to smaller herds might alleviate much of this unnecessary animal suffering. However, while we continue to labour under this stupid money-based economic system we've saddled ourselves with, cruelty (to both humans and animals) will remain, sadly, cost-efficient. 

met with pushback from, again, all the usual suspects.

This is what breaks my heart, and baffles me.  That wanting to expediating the destruction of our species among all the other ones we're detroying, versus not wanting to, are seen as two sides of a political divide, and that the former has anything close to as much validity as the latter.  That they're seen as opposing opinions, rather than observable facts versus bullshit, is a genuine mystery to me.

In my view, this is one of the symptoms of our current political system. Every argument has to be simplified and seen through the left/right paradigm.

My point isn't that the livestock industry should be either preserved as-is or eradicated completely. It is an industry with problems, of course it is, but those problems do not justify the political actions of the Dutch government to eradicate farming and rural economies. That's an extremist action. And sure, one day it might be feasible for everyone to eat factory produced munce but, until all that research, development, testing, cost, energy, and infrastructure can be realised and phased-in, it's much more convenient, natural, and simple to just grow a cow.

Too many political solutions these days rely on fearmongering and end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I think having disfigured characters to contrast with Rogue helps sell how powerful an advantage he has not needing any protection from the toxic, corrosive environment, as well as his superior skills as a soldier.

I think that's a great observation and could also lend an edge of bitterness to the TG's character. "The freak lives in that crap. I was in it for five seconds and look at me. Six months in a med-pod - and he just walks away. He's only one grunt, he can't change anything, but I will destroy him nonetheless. Because he deserves it."

...and we're still wondering if this is a thing at all.

Just to be clear, I'm not. Climate change is a thing, and a big thing, but it's not the only thing. As you said earlier, it's a holistic problem, of which I believe climate change is just a part. I do not dispute that. 

I dispute the validity of the political and corporate solutions, and the validity of the political and corporate arguments in their favour. For example, the Dutch government tried to introduce green measures that involved buying out and shutting down livestock farms. Farming in many countries faces similar threats. If climate change is going to disrupt food supplies, what sense is there in actively shutting down farming to help the climate? We can't eat wind. 

And yes, I am aware of cow farts and nitrogen - but is the answer really "no livestock farming"? Can't we start with something a little less destructive, like maybe "cleaner livestock farming"?