A little about me - A belated intro

Hi guys, I decided to throw out an intro thread, just to kind of say who I am and what I think, and get my name out there a bit among the regulars.

I'm 23, male, and from Minnesota. I was raised on a farm, went to public school, and attended a protestant church (at the bidding of my parents) until I was about 14. I am now particularly atheist, though I have no problem with people's spirituality. Feeling connected, that's great. Rhetoric and dogma, not so much.

I'm not totally sure what makes an effective intro, but I have the idea that maybe I could just give a rundown on my "take" on certain recurring issues on ATS, as a bit of reference.

Gun control - Against. The constitution matters, and guns are inanimate. In my opinion, it's a slippery slope from getting rid of high powered small arms to prevent shootings, to getting rid of high-powered PCs to prevent hacking, and putting an end to free speech to avoid altercations that begin as verbal disagreements. The spirit of the 2nd amendment died in the labs that thought up and produced military technology that the general population will never have access to, but still, with that major concession already agreed on and set in stone, can we at least keep the small arms we have now?

Aliens/UFOs - Support, conditionally. I have yet to see a UFO video that actually made me feel like there is a good chance it is an alien craft. That said, the universe is a big, big, big place. We're not the one and only planet that spawned life. We've looked for life on such a tiny number of places. Imagine if your goal was to find out if anyone on planet Earth was named "Charlie". If you walked out your front door and shouted to the only 2 people you see on the street, and found their name wasn't Charlie, it would be way too early to say that person just doesn't exist. That said, the universe *is* big and old. Maybe we're really rural, you know? Or late, or early. Who knows. If there had only been 100 humans on earth since its inception, you certainly couldn't say you were the only human, but as a practical matter, you would be alone.

NWO/Global Elite - I think there are a global elite and we know who they are. I think they're the ultra-rich, the ones who control the resources we really need to live. I believe the UN would like to be the NWO and will probably succeed. That said, I don't really see it as a conspiracy or particularly nefarious. I think a global government would have its upsides and downsides. I don't think I would personally like it, but I doubt it would be some egregious plot to enslave everyone. Everyone already volunteers, competes even, to join the system and work. I find the global economy to already be basically a form of slavery, just merged with a bit of money laundering via the slaves themselves. Rather than being shown our living quarters and kitchen, we're given paper vouchers for the same. If the difference between freedom and slavery is only that I get to choose my master, then freedom isn't all it's cracked up to be. More likely, I think, that we've just missed the boat on freedom.

Global warming - I think it's real, it's happening. I don't think humans are causing it. I think that human activity and settlement probably prevents a lot of large-scale wildfires which would release a lot of co2 compared to our cars. Square mile after square mile of what would be grassland and forests is plowed black dirt instead. I think it's much more important to focus on accurately measuring climate, and adapting ourselves to continue to live on our changing planet. Resource depletion seems to me at least as pressing as global warming.

That's about all I'm going to go into for now.

As a parting note, if any discussion happens on this thread, I'd be interested in injecting a certain topic - Online commentary. Does anyone here have any particularly interesting information on Disqus? On news sites, I've seen repeated passing comments pointing out anomalies like repeating posts from different handles, disposable-looking handles (like "Margaret184394" and "John412398" or like "Boston-Sports-Fan") spouting extremely politically charged, often marginally-on-topic posts. Like industrial trolling. I personally was looking at a Dorner story on 2 websites when that was going on, and saw word for word the same comment on both pages from two completely different handles. Furthermore, one of the pages had a strange text failure: the "-" symbol in this persons post had been replaced by one of the "&###" looking codes. To me, that points to a strong indication of "insertion" of posts as opposed to that comment being actually typed into the comment box on that website.

Has anyone else noticed anything weird like that?

Anyway, thanks for your time.
Have a good day, ATS

reply to post by TheBlackTiger


Welcome TBT...


I'm not totally sure what makes an effective intro,


Your's does... I too did a belated intro - kinda like cheating.





Enjoy your time here and make the most of it...

Welcome to the community i hope to see a post soon

reply to post by TheBlackTiger


Welcome to ATS...nice intro....

Des

reply to post by TheBlackTiger


Welcome aboard, and enjoy the ride!

I still haven't made an intro thread.

Hello and welcome!

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kind of remids of of space above and beyond

Congratulations you are my 20 post. Meaning you get....to read my first thread
Welcome to the group We're all a little eccentric here.