This post was re-written twice before being posted. *sigh* This is a long post so it's prone to grammar errors, me being derpy at any particular point, etc. etc. etc. I was going to say that banning another member for having different opinions is wrong and you shouldn't have done that, but on second thought, maybe not so much. I still think that a permanent ban is too harsh, but it looks like StapleButter's already aware of it. I trust him and the staff to make the appropriate decision on this...mostly.

Now, I don't particularly like discussions like these, since they always get me a bit upset (and invoke my sesquipedalian loquaciousness in certain cases), but I feel like I might need to explain my personal logic here. I don't believe this to be a case of rebellious protesters destroying private property for the sake of lolz. Remember that (what I assume is) the protesters' main argument is that, in such a dire state (which I showed in my previous post that contained the xkcd comic), is that if investment for maintaining world economy is needed, why not invest in alternative solutions? They sure could use the help to improve efficiency. Instead, more oil is being uncovered to emit more fossil fuel. Not cool. And of course, this is even more personal opinion, but I care little about the state of the worldwide economy if the opposite means that we won't even be able to survive to maintain an economy in the first place. Now, for the near-future, situations certainly aren't "end of the world"-like yet, but they won't be good either way. A lot of land is reserved for food production en masse, and it is already known most nature is very sensitive to climate changes. It isn't difficult to imagine that a scenario like the Koppai in Pikmin 3 isn't too unlikely for us if we aren't careful. You might argue that investment on more resistant plants and seeds in already underway, but the thing is, if they are able to invest in that, why aren't they able to invest in green energy too? What's the matter here, exactly?

Alright, so that might not be enough to justify the protesters being "right", but it certainly justified them being in favor of green alternatives during the protest, no? Then let me get this straight, why on Earth did the authorities react so violently to them? It's already bad enough in a normal situation, in a situation where green policies are involved it's even worse! No human being deserves to have their life endangered, unless they endanger other's lifes in which case things get very awry and I prefer not to think about that, but it doesn't seem like that was the case. At most, physical property was being damaged, not anything near bad enough to warrant such thing. There's a point where enough ignorance to a situation is enough and it gets bad. This is where I see someone get yelled at, not necessarily banned though. Please for the sake of humanity, don't say someone deserves to have their life on the line because they are trying to make things better.

This reminds me a bit of the protests here last year (that had less violence, thankfully) about various public schools (of the american type, not UK) being closed down, affecting nearly 300K students and forcing them to move to even more overcrowded schools further away from their homes. Read it if you want to:

Posted by New York Times on Dec 16 2015

The response to the announcement was immediate. First, the teachers' union organized protests, but they were ignored. Then, students protested in their neighborhoods, hoping to raise awareness among community members. They were ignored. Finally, on Nov. 9, a handful of students decided to occupy a school in the metropolitan area of São Paulo. Within a week, nearly 100 schools had been occupied, and, a week later, 200.

Although they enjoy broad support from parents, neighbors, teachers and the wider community, the students have faced tough resistance from the state government. Initially, the state tried to have the police remove the students by force, but that effort was quashed by the judiciary, which suggested that the government sit down with the protesters to negotiate a solution. So far that has not happened. Instead, in an audio recording of a meeting with school administrators that was leaked to the press, the government can be heard devising a "war" strategy to discredit the students.

It did end with a success, but not without the state goverment lying multiple times about the protests and also a major public outcry. Of course, it's to be expected, they were closing down schools instead of investing more on education. There were students that still were unhappy because they still wanted better education. No progress was made, but some regression was prevented. There are documentaries about it, but I don't know if there are any with english subtitles.

...y'know, the area where I live used to be called the "land of drizzle" because it always rained lightly during early morning, but it isn't like that anymore for a long time now because of the urban expansion. I've seen how it looks like in the not too distant countryside here too when I visited a relative's house for a few weeks, and it's such a beautiful thing. It might just be that I like the rain, but still, it's sad to see most people just don't care too much about nature anymore.

Oh, and on another note, the reason I don't like this particular christmas theme is because it is glitchy. The background on the table cells keep disappearing and reappearing. If I had to guess, it's because someone had the brilliant idea to use fixed CSS backgrounds, which even though they should work fine in concept, they always break something. I believe another user has posted a screenshot before that demonstrates the issue in effect.

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"The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear." --Ram Dass