I finally found a decent news website I can trust

[Subnuts]

Okay, people. Listen up. The people upstairs handed us this one and we gotta come through.

We gotta find a way to make this
(holds up a picture of a kitten)

fit into the hole for this
(holds up a giant garbage bag with the word "politics" scribbled on it with a magic marker)

using nothing but that.
(puts a laptop down on the desk)

[Jimbuna]

Positivity is always better than negativity.

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Positivity is always better than negativity.

At least one poet begs to differ:

Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. http://www.bartleby.com/235/253.html

I'm not sure that I'd want to live in a world where everyone agreed all the time. Though it's worth reminding ourselves that disasters (real and imagined) sell newspapers, and that pictures of kittens generally don't. Unless you are << hypothetical dictator of entirely imaginary country somewhere south of China redacted to avoid politics >> and people have to be happy all the time whether they like it or not...

[Oberon]

We could certainly do with the tilt of good and bad news being a bit more even than it is now. I recall an excellent interview on Danish television with Professor Hans Rosling, a chap who I have a lot of time for, and he brought an interesting viewpoint to the table to remind us that...actually...things are not as bad as we might think:



I hope that we can keep moving forward, keep making things better for everyone, and not succumb to our darker fears.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Positivity is always better than negativity.

No, realism.

Several empiric studies of the past 30 years or so show that if you compare claimed pessimists with claimed optimists, pessimists are the greater acchievers, being successful in greater numbers. this is because they tend to prepare better.

Of course, it already starts with whom and how and why you label somebody as "pessimist" and "optimist". For an euphoric optimist, everybody not agreeing with his optimism for realistic concerns, is already "pessimistic", a party-pooper. Most people in our entertainment and feel-well society are relatively optimistic, and since there are so many of these, you get accordingly many claims about somebody being a pessimist. Pessimists that indeed are just sober realists.

Realism leads to solid assessment and - at least by tendency, depending on other factors as well, like education, access to information and so forth - more reasonable decisions. Both increase the chance for success or achievement, however the individual may define "success" and "achievement" differently, some do it by money, others by other life qualities, like free time to spend for things you really are interested in, for example. Since so many realists thus get labelled as pessimists, this may explain the findings of such researches that more pessimists than optimists are "successful".

I am notoriously got claimed to be a pessimist, but I do not see myself as one, but as a realist. And I found a balance and a way to enjoy my life quite well, despite detoriating health issues, and anger on the world ways of goings and poltics , and lack of monuments and companies build who carry my name. The most important currency in our lives, is time, and there are no additional deposits and no returns. There is nothing wrong in being extremely choosey regarding what you pay for with these limited resources of time that you have. Its more precious than money, fame, reputation - more precious than anything.

[STEED]

All the news is the same old rubbish recycled re-written re-worded re-hashed re-vamped reinvented and so on..

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Skybird

I am notoriously got claimed to be a pessimist, but I do not see myself as one, but as a realist. And I found a balance and a way to enjoy my life quite well, despite detoriating health issues, and anger on the world ways of goings and poltics , and lack of monuments and companies build who carry my name. The most important currency in our lives, is time, and there are no additional deposits and no returns. There is nothing wrong in being extremely choosey regarding what you pay for with these limited resources of time that you have. Its more precious than money, fame, reputation - more precious than anything.

That's fair...I tend to swing between optimist and pessimist depending on the situation and subject, I think in a lot of circumstances given the inability of humanity to foresee the future with hard certainty then all we can do is hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
That being said, it's often said that a mood is contagious, so I think if you want to make change in the world then part of it depends on how you face it. If you want a more positive outlook for the world then you must take a more positive stance within it. Of course, deciding what change you want to see and how that change affects others is another thing entirely.
I guess that comes to the point where you have to think about how much of yourself you want to invest in the world, how much you want to expose yourself emotionally to it.
Eh, psychology...mind bending stuff.

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Positivity is always better than negativity.

Not in the case of STD results.

Originally Posted by Subnuts

Okay, people. Listen up. The people upstairs handed us this one and we gotta come through.

We gotta find a way to make this
(holds up a picture of a kitten)

fit into the hole for this
(holds up a giant garbage bag with the word "politics" scribbled on it with a magic marker)

using nothing but that.
(puts a laptop down on the desk)

Hats off to that reference!

[Tango589]

Originally Posted by Subnuts

Okay, people. Listen up. The people upstairs handed us this one and we gotta come through.

We gotta find a way to make this
(holds up a picture of a kitten)

fit into the hole for this
(holds up a giant garbage bag with the word "politics" scribbled on it with a magic marker)

using nothing but that.
(puts a laptop down on the desk)

Originally Posted by Nippelspanner

Hats off to that reference!

I don't get the reference, can someone tell me?

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Tango589

I don't get the reference, can someone tell me?

In the movie Apollo 13 there was a situation where the ground crew had to improvise a way to make a square air filter fit a round filter hole. The filters used in the LEM and the Command Vehicle where different shapes.

The ground crew had to use only the material that were already in the space craft (for obvious reasons)

The language used in the post above mimicked the working used in the movie.

Interesting metaphor. The square peg is an entirely hypothetical political outsider. The round hole is (again hypothetically) the office of President of the United States. And getting one to fit the other requires lots of duct tape. Could work.

[Tango589]

Originally Posted by AndyJWest

Interesting metaphor. The square peg is an entirely hypothetical political outsider. The round hole is (again hypothetically) the office of President of the United States. And getting one to fit the other requires lots of duct tape. Could work.

Are you suggesting we wrap Trump in duct tape? Cool plan!