Comments by "Seven Proxies" (@sevenproxies4255) on "Metatron" channel.

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  47. The scientific reasoning is good. But some expressions you use aren't very scientific. When you say that the different genders have different "reasons" and "purpose" and "roles" it will ultimately make your argument scientifically invalid. Nature doesn't work on the principles of "reason" or "purpose". Reason and purpose are artificial concepts that humans have invented in order to categorize and relate to their surroundings. Nature works on the principles of evolution, and cause and effect. We are a sexually dimorphic species, yes. But if you would've said that the sexes exhibit different physical characteristics, which evolutionary speaking makes them better suited or better adapted for different tasks then your choice of words would've been fine. But when you use words like "purpose" and "reason", you are implying design, which is frowned upon in the discourse of natural science, since one of the most basic tenets and assumptions about the universe, evolution etc. (based on the available evidence) is that it is not "designed" but evolved through a long chain of cause and effect. We don't have a "reason" for being here, and we don't have a specific "purpose" of being here, or doing what we do, other than the ones we invent for ourselves. We're here as a consequence, of a long chain of chemical reactions and cause and effect, where we're the end product of a long lineage of survivor species that just happened to live, while other species died out. 99% of all species that ever lived on planet earth are extinct today. The ones still alive comprise a mere percent of all life that ever lived on earth. So talking about "purpose" and "reason" for well... Any of us (man, ape or fish or whatever) is somewhat inappropriate... Linquistically speaking, which I know that you have a professional interest in, which is one of the reasons why i'm being this nitpicky. :) So to summarize: your claims are clearly based on scientific facts, but some of your choice of words invalidates them since natural science does not support ideas of "reason" and "purpose" (only religion does that, usually), only ideas of evolution and cause and effect.
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  78. Well, if an alien civilization is still a planetbound civilization, their warriors would be similar to ours. Infantry, cavalary/mechanized, airforce (if their technological levels have progressed enough to make aircraft) and marine/naval (if their technological levels permits seafaring vessels). It's not very likely that all alien cultures are as technologically sophisticated as humans. In fact several might even be less technologically sophisticated. However, if the alien civilization is a spacefaring, interstellar civilization. Their warriors are likely to be more like scientists and engineers. If they are advanced enough to visit other solar systems, then their methods of warfare would either be to employ precision bombardment from orbit, employing engineered bacterial or biological warfare or they would be "robot jockeys" directing and sending robotic infantry, airforce and naval drones to attack their enemies with precision. The technological sophistication required to achieve interstellar travel will undoubtedly already have guaranteed that such a species have mastered fields of biological warfare and robotics. And even now in the human race we're seeing the technological progression towarda automated and remote controlled weapon systems like drones and robots (machine guns mounted on tracked, remote controlled platforms using mounted cameras to make threat assesments and aiming, small, remote controlled bomber and fighter aircraft etc.) Even fighter jets "piloted" by a physical human aren't actually "piloted" by humans anymore. The speeds and rapid changes in winds would make it impossible for a normal human to pilot a modern fighter jet without crashing. Almost all modern fighter jets and attack helicopters employ "fly by wire" systems where a computer handles 90 percent of the actual piloting, while the human pilot basically only directs the aircraft to where it's supposed to go (in most aircraft this could easily be handled remotely as well). The same goes for weapons systems. "Dog fights" are a thing of the past. Nowadays, fighter pilots don't even physically see the enemy they're engaging, but rather blips on a radar to send long range, self-guided air-to-air missiles at. To make an infantry analogy, modern fighter jets are more like "sniper aircraft" rather than regular infantry as their engagement distance have only increased over the last 50 years. It stands to to reason that an alien civilization capable of interstellar travel would've long since surpassed our current levels and have their navy vessels, fighter aircraft, artillery and even infantry almost entirely robotic and automated, only requiring engineers and remote operators to function.
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  109. A small question about using drawings as evidence for how the long bow was employed: Are there any drawings made by people who actually participated in the battles they depicted with their art? I'm not sayng i'm certain of this, but a propable reason for why archers are depicted in most art as shooting straight at their enemies rather than employng the "arrow rain" tactic of firing in an arch might be because the only practical examples of archery that most medieval artists came into contact with was during archery competitions and target practice. Therefore it's not unreasonable to assume that the artists didn't really see or have any practical experience with battlefield archery, and just assumed that archers would fire straight at their foes in battle rather than in an arch. Now while it is true that the arrow might lose some power by being fired in an arch with an angle to steep, the arrow will most certainly lose powrr by being fired straight due to gravity pulling the arrow towards the ground. If fired at a certain arch however, where the direction is more in line with the direction of gravity pull, the energy released at impact might actually increase rather than decreasing because the arrow carries the energy from the gravity pull as well as the energy of the velocity exerted on it by the bow, as well as increasing your range. From what I've read of battlefield archery, one method was that the commander of the archers fired a first shot, holding the bow at a particular angle so the other archers and the battlefield commanders could determine where it lands. Then the other archers try to match that angle and fire just when the enemy pass that first test shot, which ensured a maxmum amount of kills. There's also another advantage for archers to fire in an arch rather than straight forwards: and that is that you can deploy more ranks of archers firing at the same time since they fire over eachothers heads. If your archers all fired straight forwards, you could only have two ranks firing volleys of arrows (the front rank, and the rank behind them firing between the front rank) which isn't ideal sometimes.
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  141. I agree about the part about not judging ancient people's by our own moral standards. We tend to think that our moral standards and ideals are some sort of "ultimate human condition" to the point where some people can't understand how anyone would be capable of thinking differently. Like for example about slavery, equality, empathy and so on. But one has to understand and accept that our morals are not the norm in history. They are the exception. Our ideas have existed for such a short time as to be considered tiny in comparison to the ideas held by ancient peoples. Their civilizations lasted for thousands of years. Our modern day civilization has barely made it through it's first 150 years. And from the looks of the instability and chaos in the world right now, i'm not so sure it will last much longer without being significantly changed. One thing I have learned from personal studies of the way ancient people's thought, is that they had a more categorical mindset compared to ours. People were much more associated with their class and family and profession. There was no such thing as "equality" between classes or genders or ethnicities. This would be a very foreign concept to an ancient person. Some political activists today consider this to be evil. But how can it be evil? The reason we think the way we do about class, equality and human value is because we have the privilige of being schooled by certain prominent thinkers who were born many many centuries after ancient rome. So to dismiss romans or any other ancient people's as evil, is kind of like being religious and dismiss people not a part of your religion as evil, even though they had no way of knowing about your religion and it's teachings to begin with. We don't consider slavery to be evil today because the "yearn for freedom" is some sort of objective and intrinsic human trait that all humans share. We consider slavery to be evil because we have been taught to think that. The ancient romans weren't. They were taught differently.
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  148. As a scandinavian, i'm pleased with the accurate details mentioned about my ancestors. However, i'm a little curious about the part where you said that some historians claim that vikings attacked christian monasteries out of "revenge". As far as my knowledge of Swedish history, Christians never made any full scale invasions or conversion conquests of many Scandinavian villages at the time. The conversion mostly happened internally through the influence of scandinavian chieftains, by increased exposure to christian institutions. Like you said, the culture of ancient scandinavians valued two things above most others: force of arms, but also slyness. You'd earn respect by being a capable fighter but also a SMART person. This especially made manifest in the myth of Odin, seen as a chief of the Norse gods, and also the god to embody wisdom and slyness. And what I think ultimately consumed the pagan culture (or at least removed it from being the official religion in scandinavia) was it's own values of strength and slyness. Viking chieftans stood a lot more to gain and secure their own power and influence by converting to christianity than to oppose it at the time. Christianity wasn't just a religion at the time, but also an extensive trade cartel. Christians often avoided trade with non-christian pagans, so even if you stole silver and valuable commodities you'd find yourself cut out from most European markets regardless or how many riches you tried to sell if you couldn't present yourself as a good christian. Ancient scandinavians were a very practical people. Not very prone to sentimental preservation of things that didn't have much use for them. So these combined factors seems to have facilitated the transitioning to christianity, rather than actual conquest and violent conversions. They simply had too much to gain economically speaking to convert, than they stood to gain by sticking to their pagan ways. Although the sincerity of the vikings that did convert could most certainly be questioned (the truly pious scandinavian rulers didn't emerge until much later in history)
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  159. So you're suggesting that animal species that have been bred and domesticated for literally THOUSANDS or years to rely on humans for their survival and to feel safe around their human owners all really want "freedom" (meaning being let out in the woods to fend for themselves against vastly superior predators out to kill them and eat them)? Take a look at the average cow. Notice how it's built. How it's muscles and excessive fat just hangs of it's skeleton, and how swollen and impractical it's udder looks. Compare that to a close wild cousin to cows that hasn't been domesticated, like buffalo or even wildebeest. These wild variants are normally much better built in terms of body structure and more adapted to survive in the wilds and fend for themselves against predators, because they haven't been domesticated like cows. If you started letting all domesticated cows out of their pens and expected them to fend for themselves, you'd be doing the cows their greatest disservice of their lives. They aren't evolved to survive out in the wilds, they are DOMESTICATED. As in purposefully born and bred to favor certain qualities that are useful to humans (more meat, more milk, docile temperament etc.) but which would make them an inferior species in the wilds. So no, they don't walk around desiring "freedom". They desire safety, shelter, food and protection which they get from humans. And it would be downright irresponsible to deny them these things, since we humans basically made them into what they are now.
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  190.  @budibausto  Well in my view, I don't really see the point of dragging up and condemning something that happened long into the past. The way forward is that people need to let go of past grievances when the conflict is over and both victims and perpetrators are dead. Holding on to past transgressions "on behalf" of ancestors serves no purpose. It doesn't "honour" their memory, it won't bring them back and it won't "settle the score". And I do believe with firm conviction that the victims of slavery, regardless of what race they were or during what period they were enslaved would've much prefered that different races and ethnic groups co-existed peacefully and left eachother alone rather than continually fuelling social and even military conflicts when there's no good reason to. That's why people need to let go of the past rather than reviving the conflicts of it. It goes for black people and the trans-atlantic slave trade, it goes for the jews and the holocaust, it goes for mediterranean europeans and the Barbary slave trade, it goes for China and Korea in relation to WWII and Japan, it goes for the British and their victimization from the Norse and so on. No person alive today should feel the need to- or be compelled to apologize on behalf of their ancestors. No person alive today has any moral right to be offended "on behalf" of dead ancestors. Refusing to accept this is a guarantee for further racial and ethnic divides and increse of conflicts and will keep the pendulum of Vendettas swinging forever.
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  194. Also, I disagree with the idea that war only creates death and destruction. Mainly because it's historically incorrect. War is also the single greatest spur and motive for innovation. Take a look at the swords, armour and weapons you like so much. These are inplements of war. They weren't painstakingly researched, designed and created at a whim. They were created out of a necessity of being smarter and more well equipped than your enemy. And while you might argue that these inventions are only destructive in nature and could've been completely redundant if we just didn't wage war, you'd also fail to acknowledge the many, MANY civilian applications that inventions and discoveries made for warfar eventually had. For instance the knowledge and skill in metalworking to create swords and armour which eventually got adapted to make better buildings and machines. The innvention of gunpowder, also primarily an innovation of war, but which further lead into more advanced studiesof explosives that has helped humans shape the landscape and build better and bigger cities through the use of explosive compounds. Medicine has benefitted immensly from war. Even the horrible and unethical experiments made by characters like Dr Joseph Mengele of Nazi Germany, who were only possible due to the state of war and martial law, produced results that modern doctors and physicians use today to help people. And then there's the internet. Used by you to upload videos for the world to see. The greatest communications device in history. It actually started out as a military communications software developed by the american military agency DARPA, and it was initially called "ARPANet". And there's a very simple reason why war is such a great motivator for human innovation and achievement: In peacetime, if you're not more innovative than your rivals you risk losing, what? Marketshares? Money? In times of war however, if you're not more innovative than your enemy, you risk losing your life, the lives of your family and even the very existence of your society. So to everyone who consider war to be the worst thing in human history: you might want to take a step back and ponder over these facts and realize that while war does have some awful downsides to it, it doesn't make it all bad or destructive. War is a human behaviour that accelerates human evolution and innovation. Since nature has proven too weak to test our mettle, we're forced to test our mettle against ourselves as a species.
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  234. I remember seeing one of Skallagrims videos where he tried cutting the shaft of a historocally accurate spear. It took a good couple of whacks on a stationary spear, planted in the ground and he didn't actually "cut" it off, but rather made the wood crack/splinter. I think the reason why a lot of people believe that you can cut the shaft of a polearm or staff is because their experience with wood is usually with thin rods of pine or spruce (usually in the form of broom handles and the like). Now while pine and spruce is perfectly fine for mundane carpentry and as building material, it doesn't come anywhere near ash or oak. It's sort of like comparing aluminium to steel if we were to use metals as an example. A good analogy would be to look at a wood baseball bat. You'd have trouble cutting it even with an axe while it's lying on the ground, let alone someone wielding it, swining it around and in arms that will flex upon impact. That said, I don't know if I would completely discourage the tactic of hitting your opponents spear. Not with the goal of breaking the spear of course, but in order to break his guard. If he has a tight grip on his spear at any one point and you strike it with sufficient force, you could force him off balance. If his grip is too loose, then you might manage to disarm him. Hitting his spear to get the spear tip out of the way while closing the distance would also be beneficial to you since he'll have trouble employing the spear if you're basically in his face and the speartip is far behind you.
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  263. Stitchowi: You are projecting human sentiments and ways of thought to cows, which doesn't work since cows don't posess the same level of higher intelligence as humans do. Cows aren't contemplating advanced concepts such as "freedom" or the meaning of freedom, simply because they don't have the capacity to do so. Your problem is that you are anthropomorphisizing animals and their behaviour, which gives you an inaccurate perception of how the animal mind works. Second, you do realize that over 5 billion species (possibly even more since not all species had bodies capable of leaving fossils for us to study) have gone extinct on this planet throughout it's history? Today roughly 14 million species are still alive. That's 4,76 billion species completely wiped out, because of their inability to adapt to surviving on earth. And most of these species were evolved towards survival, unlike cows who have been forever altered to a state where they are incapable of survival in the wilds, but these other 4,76 billion species simply didn't manage to survive anyway. That should give you some perspective and completely destroy your false notion that "all species simply adapts and survives" when they CLEARLY do not. Only the very best adapted species manage to survice in nature. The rest die out, completely. Mother nature is a very cruel bitch that way, and if you try to send cows in their current state into that situation then there's no if's or but's about it. They will go extinct in less than five to ten years.
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  386. I think there's a distinction to be made between inciting hatred and expressing racist views. If you have racist personal views I think you should be able to talk about them without getting instantly deplatformed. Primarily for two purposes. The first being that if you agree with freedom of speech then it looks really bad when you censor someone because they have views you despise. And second: I don't think racism stops because you censor racist people It's an opinion and opinions never change due to censorship. They can only change through interacting with other people who have different opinions and who challenge racist opinions. Inciting hatred is a different act, since it's actively calling for and encouraging violence against people. And so it's more warranted to censor it because once you take the step to encourage violence, you demonstrate that you're not open to discussing views anymore. However this has to also be applied evenly to have any effect. You're not stopping incitement when you only punish white people who incite hatred towards non-whites, while giving free reign to, for example, radical socialists who advocate for violence against "the rich" or Palestinians who advocate for violence against Israeli people or the jews. The ban on incitement has to be a blanket ban on all fronts, regardless of whatever "history" may play in the issue. Furthermore I'm also convinced that the more you censor people with "pededtrian" racist views, the greater the likelyhood that you turn them towards inciting violence in the end. So tl;dr: I don't want to deplatform the racists. I want them to keep talking and having their views challenged in an open forum.
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  424. The scientific reasoning is good. But some expressions you use aren't very scientific. When you say that the different genders have different "reasons" and "purpose" and "roles" it will ultimately make your argument scientifically invalid. Nature doesn't work on the principles of "reason" or "purpose". Reason and purpose are artificial concepts that humans have invented in order to categorize and relate to their surroundings. Nature works on the principles of evolution, and cause and effect. We are a sexually dimorphic species, yes. But if you would've said that the sexes exhibit different physical characteristics, which evolutionary speaking makes them better suited or better adapted for different tasks then your choice of words would've been fine. But when you use words like "purpose" and "reason", you are implying design, which is frowned upon in the discourse of natural science, since one of the most basic tenets and assumptions about the universe, evolution etc. (based on the available evidence) is that it is not "designed" but evolved through a long chain of cause and effect. We don't have a "reason" for being here, and we don't have a specific "purpose" of being here, or doing what we do, other than the ones we invent for ourselves. We're here as a consequence, of a long chain of chemical reactions and cause and effect, where we're the end product of a long lineage of survivor species that just happened to live, while other species died out. 99% of all species that ever lived on planet earth are extinct today. The ones still alive comprise a mere percent of all life that ever lived on earth. So talking about "purpose" and "reason" for well... Any of us (man, ape or fish or whatever) is somewhat inappropriate... Linquistically speaking, which I know that you have a professional interest in, which is one of the reasons why i'm being this nitpicky. :) So to summarize: your claims are clearly based on scientific facts, but some of your choice of words invalidates them since natural science does not support ideas of "reason" and "purpose" (only religion does that, usually), only ideas of evolution and cause and effect.
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  429. dreyrugr: But then again, why does FANTASY GAMES always have to contain the obligatory european styled swords like they always do? I think you're selling the inclusion of asian weaponry into fantasy gams a bit short when you accuse it of tokenism. It kind of reinforces a stereotype that "fantasy" has to imply european medieval-styled weapons and warriors, as if the fantasy genre somehow "belong" to medieval Europe. I'm not gonna call it racist, because I think the word is thrown around way too lightly in this day and age. But I will say that it's somewhat (and probably unintentionally) chauvinistic to assume that a fantasy game has to be about knights in armour, European dragons and Merlin of Camelot-styled wizards combined with elements of British and Scandinavian folklore. Any culture could form a basis of an interesting fantasy-setting. Fantasy is basically just a made-up alternate history kind of fiction, that may or may not include fictional concepts and entities like magic, dragons and leprechauns. The fact that Bethesda tries to include elements of fantasy from a variety of cultures doesn't automatically make it "tokenism". It enhances the game and bring about an illusion that there are other cultures in the world of the Elder Scrolls that aren't all about. European knights and swords like pretty much. every other fantasy game is purely focused on. In fact, Bethesda sort of breaks with traditional European fantasy norms by modelling a lot of culture, weapons and armour on ancient Roman society in the form of the Empire, rather than going with medieval European culture. I think it's a bit more refreshing than sticking to making yet another Lord of the Rings-piece of plagiarism.
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  459.  @underarmbowlingincidentof1981  Anti-white racism is the biggest problem facing us today because it is the one form of racism going completely unchecked. You unironically have companies and even government branches, who in the name of "diversity" actively discriminate against white people in job applications. Even to the point where they flat out state "white people need not apply". AND EVEN THOUGH it is against the law in many countries to do so, none of them are prosecuted for it. Talk badly about any non-white race, or even suggest that white people also have problems and you'll get a violent, screaming BLM-hate mob breathing down your neck. You will also get instantly cancelled and deplatformed from public life by every silicon valley tech giant, and sometimes even get banned from credit card and banking services. You also have multiple instances of teachers abusing and mistreating white students in schools, singling them out and basically forcing them to apologize for their race in front of their class. You also have instances of college professors who openly admit that if a white student raise their hand during a discussion or seminar, they will refuse to let them have the word with their excuse being that it's more important to have "non-white voices heard" or some similar lefty bullcrap. So don't come and tell me that non-white people supposedly face the most racism today, because it is a complete lie. Also I can back up every single claim I make here with news articles and videos proving it. Racism towards non-white people in the western world is a non issue. In fact it's not even institutional as your lefty buddies like to claim. Whereas the racism towards white people is demonstrably institutional, with thousands of incidents to prove it. And no, your own race does not factor into my equation. Because unlike you race baiters, I don't argue from the position of race but from principle. So frankly I don't care if you're black or white because it doesn't matter to the facts.
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  478. One thing that comes to mind in a duel situation. What sort of fighting style or weaponry would a samurai have access to in order to counter a scutum? The scutum is one of the largest, man portable shields in history. As far as my knowledge, samurai didn't fight or encounter many foes using such large shields carried by infantry. Now I know that you've previously mentioned a type of shield that samurai used (although the name escapes me), but from the looks of it, it seemed to be more of a projectile protectin device, which the samurai employed primarily against archers by bracing it against the ground. But from the looks of the images it didn't look like something they would use in melee combat, whereas the scutum was designed to be used both in close quarters as well as protection against archers. Let's say the samurai use a yari. I have a hard time seeing the yari giving him an advantage, because the scutum looks pretty effective as protection against a spear. And as soon as the legionary manage to close the gap where he's well within the business end of the yari, the samurai would have increased difficulty in employing it. So the legionary would then be within sword distance, meaning the samurai would have to use a katana or weapon of similar length (a kanabo perhaps). In this situation the samurai blade would have a range advantage to the gladius. At this point I see a sort of stalemate happening. The legionary would have a blade too short to engage the samurai since he'd have to expose himself during a strike, where the samurai would be able to use the range advantage of his sword. But on the other hand, I don't know of any katana fighting styles employed by the samurai that could be used to counter the protection of the scutum. So it's quite difficult to ascertain which warrior would have the definitive advantage in such a duel situation. My personal view would say that the legionary has a slight advantage, because he could just slam into the samurai shield first and doing so still be able to protect himself from a thrust or cut from the katana relatively easily. But on the other hand: if the samurai keeps his wit about him and sidesteps in just the right moment, the bulk of the scutum would put the legionary at a disadvantage to turn quickly enough and defend against getting slashed or stabbed from behind.
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  540. I agree in the sense that I generally find samurai armour more interesring to look at. But when it comes to the psychological aspect of "knight in shining armour" vs "dark samurai warlord", I have to admit that I sort of find the deceptive nature of european knights in shining armour more intimidating. Based mostly on the fact that it was just a facade hiding a terrifying nature. Sure, there were examples of virtuous knights, but let's face it: most knights and nobles were basically murderous psychopaths. So when they appear outwardly as shining, beatiful crusaders of truth but then turn into bloodsoaked monsters who only enjoy carnage and butchery on the battlefield it's more terrorizing and menacing in kind of the same way as when you watch certain horror films where the protagonist ends up in some remote village where the inhabitants all seem to be good, friendly and meek christians, but in truth they're like a cannibalistic cult who sacrifice first born children and stray travelers to Satan on Valpurgis night. The television series Game of Thrones capture this menacing feel very well I think: where you have several characters who are nobles and knights and who are very articulate, well groomed and initially appear friendly and just, but then suddenly they murder or rape someone in cold blood without batting an eye at the act (Jamie Lannister, Ramsay Snow and a couple of others come to mind). This is what the concept and imagery of knights in shining armour from medieval periods means to me, and I find the deceptiveness of it more scary than the imagery of dark, beastly looking samurai armour. The design in samurai armour is interesting looking, but the design choices create an overall image that is a bit more honest and a little too "obvious" for me. That's not to say that Samurai weren't cold blooded killers and psychopaths because plenty of them certainly were. It's just that with a samurai wearing his armour it's more "what you see is what you get". Knights on the other hand make you more uneasy because they look and dress like a force for "good", but can just as well be despicably evil.
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  563. I've been asked this as well, even though I don't speak a language deemed "exotic" in Europe. Basically I look at three factors when determining difficulty in learning a language: the age of the student, how closely related the students native tounge is to the language he or she is trying to learn and last but not least: if the language is written using the same or a similar alphabet to the students nativ language or not. It goes without saying that if learning the new language also requires learning a new set of letters and how to read and write, it's going to increase the difficulty. Likewise, learning a language that isn't closely related to your natice tounge will also increase difficulty (if you speak a germanic language, then trying to learn a slavic language will be more difficult than learning another germanic language. Although slavic, germanic and latin languages together will be easier to learn than an asian language since there has been much more instances of lingual influences across germanic, slavic and latin languages than there has been across these Indo-European in relation to asian languages) Age might be the most puzzling reply. But the reason I take age into account is because of neurobiological studies that I've read where scientista have discovered that an average human being has different levels of receptiveness to learn a language in their lifetime. The most receptive phase is between infancy and roughly when we're 10 years old. We'll never grow accustomed to languages as rapidly as we do when we're at this age, because the brain hasn't developed most of the neural pathways in it's anatomy governing language and speaking yet so we're actually capable of learning 4-5 or possibly more languages at the same time during this period at a much faster pace than we are as adults. I want to stress the point though that neither of these factors makes it impossible to learn a new language, and they shouldn't be considered as valid excuses to refrain from studying foreign languages at all. Patience and dedication are still the ultimate determining factors to your success. These factors only give an indication of what difficulties the student should expect when attempting to learn a language foreign to them.
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  625. Zasumbadji: Median household income doesn't mean anything. It doesn't take personal choices into account at all. It's about as retarded as the argument that feminists pose about the so called "wage gap" that falsely present a picture that women are discriminated and paid less money than men are for the same work. Despite the fact that all the evidence shows that men pursue higher paying jobs than women, work more hours than women, don't go on maternity leave like women do and so on, which all INVARIABLY will affect the average earnings of men in a positive way. The same reasoning applies to median income of black and white people. It doesn't mean or prove anything because it doesn't take the personal life choices, education and so on into account. And it damn sure does not qualify as proof of "oppression" or "privilge". The same goes for your retarded statement about prison sentences and penalties resulting for being a criminal. And the same also goes for "black sounding names". I don't care whether you like it or not, but names tend to be chosen by particular people, so if anyone is to blame it's stupid parents who wilfully choose to give their children negative connotations by naming them shit like Laqueesha" or "Tyrone". All this proves is that maybe black people in the U.S should stop smoking crack and holding up liquor stores as much as they do if the want better, more wellpaid lives. The black community in the U.S only has itself to blame for it's current state. Because they all have exactly the same rights and opportunities as everybody else, yet choose to squander it on rejecting mainstream society and living as criminal thugs idealizing "gangsta"-culture above education.
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  630. Zasumbadji: I haven't used logical fallacies at all. But I realize that logical deduction comes across as "fallacies" to dishonest debaters like you, more concerne about political outcomes and implications rather than the truth. Yes, median income doesn't mean anything in the context of this subject. I've clarified exactly what I meant, even though i'm absolutely sure that you didn't misinterpret me by mistake but because you are desperate to misrepresent my statements and opinions. Because you're more afraid that someone might read what I say and agree with me, as opposed to myself who doesn't give a shit about what anyone reading this might believe. You are a disgusting, filthy activist with a vile "the ends justify the means"-attiude. Your only purpose for coming to this comment section was to spread cultural marxist propaganda. You are not a scientist. You are not neutral to the consequences of findings as I am. No, the "famous" PhD's clearly do not understand the idea of spurrious correlartions because every single joke of a paper they publish contain droves of spurrious correlations and politically motivated interpretations of statstics. We're at a point where they don't even try to hide it anymore. Which incidentally is why you see actual college professors in the "social sciences" joining up with left-wing terrorists like antifa, showinh up to political rallies with the sole goal of beating people up because they might have conservative views, and smashing store windows. Look up names like Eric Clanton and Yvette Fellarca. Both "social sciences" professors and staff, and BOTH caught and convicted for assault of political opponents with video footage evidence spread all over the internet for the entire world to see. These are the types of people you use as a "source". Their "scientific" work never held up to begin with, and you may note that actual scientists in the natural sciences and engineering collectively laugh at the methods and "research" of "social scientists". If they tried their flawed, politically motivated methodology in physics class, they would be laughed out of the classroom.
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  690.  @julietfischer5056  True. But not enough productions do. And second, being on friendly terms with a couple of historians and archeologists, I've got a bit of insight into the academic practices of these disciplines of study. The problem is that movie and tv-series producers often turn to academics as consultants. Now the academics often knows a lot about the specific fields they specialize in, but unfortunately... There's not that many academics who genuinely specialize in things like swordfighting, medieval and ancient weapons and armour. The truth is, most historians are excited by very... Well "boring" things about history. Just last week I was talking to a historian I know who had come back from a work trip to germany and she told me that she had to study german for the trip. Now if I had been a historian, I'd probably have wanted to look at exhibits of germanic armour, swords and historical reenactments of battles and such and learn as much as possible that way. But what did she do? Study old tomes from medieval times regarding trade relations and taxation between the kingdoms of germany and the baltic states... Now if you're really nerdy about the subject of medieval trade relations, it's probably very interesting. But most normal people are excited about knights in armour fighting in medieval battles. Incidentally this is also what most films and tv-series are about (I doubt anyone would be particularly excited about a film being produced that was basically a medieval version of the film Wall Street) But not many historians seem to want to study these particular subjects that interests most normal people. And even the few academics that actually DO specialize in arms and armour... Rarely care much for the practical details of fighting while using them. They have encyclopaedic knowledge about their origins, their manufacture, and sometimes even which people in history wore a certain set of armour or wielded a particular sword. But when it comes to the business of HOW they were used, many of the academics don't really care. Finding people who really care and are genuinely interested in the fighting and practical aspects of medieval warfare and culture, you're more likely to find them among the "sword and hema-nerds" (like Metatron, Skallagrim, Shadiversity, Matt Easton, Theing Trand and the others) than you are looking up various historians. But movie and tv-series producers don't understand that. They think that the universities are the proper place to find a person knowing about these things, when they really should be looking at youtube or various hema practicioner clubs.
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  834.  @stephenglazer4224  I know that Krav Maga is the taught hand to hand combat system taught by the IDF. And as you may have noted, i'm fairly certain I mentioned Krav Maga as an effective system, due to the fact that it is used by the IDF. I'm not saying that Muay Thai is useless in it's entirety. What i'm saying is if Muay Thai really was such a potent form of martial arts, then these armed forces would've utilized Muay Thai in it's entirety, rather than going with Systema or Krav Maga (the latter of which uses PARTS of Muay Thai, but replace the majority of the style with it's own or borrowed elements from other styles). This because the needs and purposes of the military are different to the needs and purposes of exhibition fighters. The armed forces of the world are focused solely on practicality in as many imaginable situations as possible. The reason why they only incorporate small parts of an exhibition fighting style, is because they had to trim a lot of "fat" from the fighting style (fat being elements that are deemed useless to their purposes). This applies to Krav Maga and it also very much applies to Systema. Now you may have experience with a lot of martial arts, but I humbly suggest that you'll have a difficult time convincing me that the style of a ring- or cage fighter would be more effective in a real world life and death situation than the style trained and utilized by a member of the armed forces. One practices martial arts for sport. The other practices martial arts to kill as well as keeping themselves alive in the line of duty.
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  855. People who claim that they could defeat a trained knight usually strikes me as people who haven't been in a fight at all (I mean not even bare knuckle fistfights). Due to a somewhat mispent youth in an inner city enviroment, I've been involved in a few. Even fights involving bats and knives. But I guess someone might argue that it doesn't compare to armored fighting, so I guess the closest analogy to that would be my years training kendo. Now kendo is a very simplified and sportslike version of japanese swordfighting with the goal of scoring points. All very formal and not very simulationist of real combat. But at least you wear armour, and your goal is to hit very specific parts of your opponents armour to score points. However, the points of contact are nowhere near as small as the weak spots of a knight armour. Kendo is about striking the head or "men" in japanese, the wrists or "kote", the abdomen or "do", or a piericing strike to the throat or "tsuki". And it is REALLY DAMN HARD to land a correct strike that will earn you points in kendo. Your opponent moves around constantly, blocks and even shoves and trips you to prevent you from landing a scoring hit (this is why kendo appealed to me a lot more than European fencing, because it's more "physical"). Considering that kendo is very formal and based around a lot of rules and you can expect where your opponent is likely to strike, I don't even want to think about what it would mean to fight an actual knight to the death. But if I were to attempt it, I'd likely go with weapons that i'm most familiar and comfortable with, which would be a dagger (preferably a long bladed punch-dagger or a stiletto) and I'd attempt to close the gap and basically be in the knights face, preventing him from being able to use the long reach of his sword. And even then it's extremely risky for me, since a trained knight is likely to have a lot more experience than me. In fact the only things I've got going for me would be the familiarity and preference with short blades and being slightly (but only slightly) faster and agile than a person wearing armour and holding a shield if I am not.
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  869. I don't think The Blades or Akaviri are that overtly Japanese-inspired. I'd argue that the Dunmer/Dark Elves are more intended to be an asian analogy (although more of a combination between Japanese, Chinese and Mongols). Not only do they run around with a crapton of Katanas, Wakizashis and Tanto's on Morrowind. The city of Vivec is pretty much entirely made up of Pagodas. You have a guild of assassins calling themselves the "Morag Tong". You have the Ashlanders living a nomadic lifestyle out of yurts, clearly inspired by ancient Mongol warriors. You also have several pieces of interior decoration that might made you think you walked into a chinese or japanese restaurant. You have "Opium dens" inspired by the real world kind. Morrowind also has a lot of wizard-, and hermit type characters with a strong resemblance to ancient chinese philosophers and japanese hermit monks. Their native gods, the Daedra, bear a striking resemblance to both Shinto spirits and indian hindu gods in many of the statues and portrayals throughout TES3: Morrowind. Morrowind itself is a volcanically formed archipelago (like Japan), but it also contains features typical of many tropical coastal regions in southeast asia like mangrove forests. Facial features of the Dark Elves if you look past the red eyes, pointy ears and blue-grey to dark grey skintone also contain elements of slightly slanted eyes and other east asian features in terms of bone structure. A lot of available styles of beards and facial hair also nods to prominent chinese and japanese characters in film. A lot of things I bring up here might not be "historical" of course while others certainly are. The rest are however pop-cultural and make a lot of references to east asian cultures.
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  893. Scott Burton: ALL feminists are about female superiority. The bullshit about "being for equality" in all brands of feminism is tied to a pretty significant disclaimer. Namely that AAAALL feminists assumes that all women in every society is at a disadvantage (even when they're not). Like the wage gap for instance, which is a proven and debunked myth. A wage gap simply doesnnt exist in any sexist, unwarranted sense. But ALL feminists assumes it does, because their ideological overlords say it does. Nothing will change their opinions, no matter how much proof or statistical surveys you present that logically and scientidically prove thw wage gap to be a myth. So they all run around with this assumption, and at the same time they demand financial and political actions and concessions to remedy this non-existant wage gap. Pretend that the wage gap exists, then these ideas might've been reasonable. Because if a group is proven to be disadvantaged, then granting them certain positive advantages will serve to offset the original disadvantage and create an equilibrium. BUT, what happens when you give a non-disadvantaged group advantages? That's right! They gain an unfair advantage over all others. And ALL feminists agree that this non-existant disadvantage (among several others non-existant disadvantages) exists and that it needs to be adressed by granting women priviliges. The whole "idea" about being "for equality" is nothing but a deception and a front to legitimize giving privilige and power to women (mostly middle- to upper class white women). They're trying to make people think "Hey! Feminists say they are for equality. And equality is nice! Therefore feminis must be nice too!" When in reality, feminists are about as good champions for equality as communists are champions for "fairness".
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  917. I wouldn't say that it's merely a victory of strategy, but also a defeat in strategy on the part of the french since they relied so much on armored cavalry. Yes, the armor helped their noblemen to survive, but when analyzing a battle and the equipment used, you also need to look at what usefulness it had during the battle. Imagine the costs of making that armor, and the costs of breeding and maintaining all those horses. Now imagine how many longbowmen you could've recruited and deployed for the same amount of money! The way I see it, the use and reliance on heavily armored knights is pretty much the same mistake that the germans committed during World War 2. They made these technologically brilliant tanks and warmachines, that were masterpieces of engineering. But this in turn made their upkeep exorbitant as well as difficult to produce in sufficient numbers and the logistics involved in maintaining them on the front lines faltered, which eventually lead to these tanks being a really bad investment on the germans part. Another great example of this is another of Hitlers monstrous Superweapons: The Schwerer Gustav artillery cannon. It was an artillery piece so large that it could only be transported on two parallell train tracks, and needed a souped up locomotive to pull it. While it also was an impressive and giant piece of artillery that could lob giant shells which could obliterate even subterranian, reinforced bunkers, it's net worth for Hitlers war effort was actually negative because the targets it destroyed wasn't worth as much as the upkeep and maintenance of the Gustav itself. So to conclude: I understand the fascination with advanced and superior arms and armour. The ideas and engineering going into constructing them is often quite ambitious and cool overall. And in a "fight" they will usually grant their user significant advantages. But what we need to keep in mind is that which might grant the user an advantage in a fight, might not do the same in a battle or in a war. In fact they may prove to be more of a detriment in a battle or a war.
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  918. I can also attest to the fact that video games and movies are much more effective att teaching a new language than books and schools will ever be. Especially videogames and movies with SUBTITLES! English is not my native tongue, but in grade school I was put in an advanced class of english at high school levels because I had exceeded so far beyond my peers that I wasn't learning much at all during regular classes. The reason? My mother didn't outright forbid me from watching science fiction, action, horror and fantasy for adults when I was a boy. So while my peers were only allowed to watch locally produced kids shows in our native tounge, I was watching films like Alien, The Terminator, Robocop, Conan the Barbarian, Star Wars, Predator and the like at the age of 6 or 7 years old. These films the characters spoke in english, but were subtitled in my native language. And I absorbed english like a sponge that way. I was entertained the whole time, and had that childlike fascination of these movies that I watched them over and over. Then video gaming came along for me, and I had even more incentive to learn more advanced words in written and spoken english. So when I got to the point in school where me and my peers were supposed to be INTRODUCED to learning english, not only could I pretty much read and understand an english newspaper, I could hold an adult conversation in english with near perfect fluency and even understood and could describe quite a few technical and academic terms. This is a big reason why I hate the practice of dubbing in video games and movies. Not only does it detract from immersion when for instance, a movie set in france where all the characters are supposed to be native french, yet they speak in english with some british english accent, but it also misses out on a golden opportunity to make the audience learn a new language without really realizing that they are. I wish they made more games and films with subtitles. It will only make their viewers and players better people.
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  922. On the issue of implementation in half-swording and murder strokes. How about reducing the number of directions you can strike from while half-swording or murderstroking? From what I understand of the current mechanics, your and your opponents first person views are essentially divided into segments. And depending on which segment of the screen you drag your mouse towards while performing an attack or parry, the attack or parry is going to be directed to that segment of the screen. This means that in order to successfully block an opponents attack, you have to parry in the corresponding segment of the screen to your opponents segment, or else your parry will fail and you will get hit. Now using a sword normally or a warhammer etc you can pretty much strike from any direction, represented by the full number of corresponding segments of your screen. HOWEVER! From my knowledge of murder strokes and half-swording, your angles of attack (especially against an armored opponent) are somewhat limited, compared to cutting with a sword normally. If you're gonna use a murder stroke for instance, then you're more likely to do an overhead strike or maybe striking from left or right side. Murderstroking from underneath your opponents guard would be somewhat awkward, and while I guess that it's theoretically possible to do like an "uppercut" murderstroke to the underside of the jaw of your opponent, it doesn't strike me as a very likely move. This could be represented in the game mechanics as a reduction in segments of your screen. If we assume that your field of view is game mechanically segmented into 12 segments (12 different angles that you can attack from, and which your opponent has to parry against), then when you switch to the murder stroke grip or half-sword grip, your segments are reduced (the bottom ones are removed completely since attacking from the bottom of the screen with a murder stroke is unlikely) to maybe 8 segments or even 6. This will of course give your opponent an easier time to parry your attacks (which would be realistic, since switching grips to murder stroke or half-swording is a very visual cue of what your opponent intends to do, so you'll know where to expect the attacks to come from), so the full plate armor will give you that advantage, but the sword user will also have a way to deal lethal damage to you despite your weapon being primarily intended for cutting and thrusting.
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  941. I could think of yet another reason why someone would prefer a bokuto over a katana. Namely: ease of use. Cutting with a sword isn't just a matter of hitting your opponent with the edge. It will cause a cut, yes. But to make the really lethal cuts (like decapitation, bisection or dismemberment) there is a significant amount of technique involved. Basically you have to both accelerate the blade towards your target, but also pull on the handle in the same motion so that once the blade bites into your target, you'll also have the blade running it's length, with force, along the striking area. Doing this is trickier than it may first seem. Even more so during the frantic and hectic conditions of mortal combat. No amount of training mock situations and sparring will truly prepare you for the encounter with a life or death situation and the effects it has on you mentally and physically, and what might seem like second nature to you during calmer conditions might become instantly forgotten when you're faced the the prospect of dying. A bokuto, on the other hand, isn't a cutting weapon. It's a blunt weapon. So, even with the stress of a duel to the death, you won't have to worry as much about cutting techniques as long as you manage to bash your foes skull in with the heavy wooden stick you've got in your hand. You only need to worry about hitting him, and avoid getting hit yourself. Which would be a significant stress relief and burden loosened from your mind, that might just give you the edge to win. Of course, Miyamoto Musashi is known for being an expert swordsman, and his expertise and muscle memory performing correct cuts would be second nature to him, so his use of the Bokuto was most likely the psychological aspect and getting his opponents to underestimate him. But I think that even Miyamoto Musashi himself would've agreed that the best weapon is the one that's the easiest to use on a reflexive and instinctual level. And this is a trend that seems to have held true even into modern times (which is why the Ak-47 automatic rifle and it's later iterations have proven to be so successful in warfare, since you can train an uneducated farmer to use it properly and lethally in under five minutes of training)
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  1007.  @-smp-scientificmethodpersp838  That certainly sounds like agenda-pushing to me. I mean, we barely even have any evidence of early African written language, much less symbols of advanced mathematical equations. Anyhow my point is that just because you make "early finds" of a discovery or invention, it doesn't mean that subsequent findings of similar discoveries or inventions in other parts of the world must have been "exported" to them from the first culture. After all, the need to be able to count and put up equations is a pretty omni-present need across all human cultures in every part of their history. Even the most primitive and isolated tribes in the world today have some sort of system of mathematics to aid them in things like construction work, trade or keeping stock of resources. Necessity is the mother of all invention. And since everyone needed mathematics, it's reasonable to assume that it developed independently in many parts of the world. So if one wants to make the claim that Africa gave mathematics to the world, one can't just cite "early finds" like your professor did. You also have to prove that there was some relationship and cultural trade between these early african mathematicians and other cultures. And considering that Africa was dubbed as the "dark continent" and "wild and unexplored wilderness" even up to the late 1700's, it's pretty safe to assume that not much in the way of mathematical exports transpired between Africa and the rest of the world.
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  1048.  @Yakub9000  Well my position is basically this: some individuals are naturally drawn to danger, and humanity in general does have deep seated urges towards the spectacle of violence. We are a violent species. And I don't believe that we'll ever shed that instinct, regardless of how much philosophy or indoctrination we get subjected too. And I think that in some instances it's probably more dangerous to try and shoehorn some naturally violent people into fitting into mainstream society than it would be to let them express their deep seated and inescapable urges in a more purposeful and controlled enviroment. Some people will simply be natural born killers and brawlers. This because it was biologically beneficent to have such traits earlier in mankinds history. To fend off predators or rival human tribes. Civilized society doesn't offer these people the means to turn their aggression towards meaningful and constructive ends, so they often end up very downtrodden on the lowest ends of the social ladder, and I don't think that is fair or the best way to deal with them. So perhaps in an arena, they could find the purpose and meaning they feel deprived of, to the point where they spend their days engaging in petty and violent crime for the sake of the "rush" they get from it. If you want to find out more about this mentality then I'd suggest you look into the topic of football hooliganism. They are REALLY into fighting. The sport of soccer/football is really just secondary to the brawling they engage in with eachother on the streets. So instead of relegating them to the streets where they put the lives of involuntary bystanders at risk, why not let them have an arena?
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  1087. Harry Pothead: No we cannot achieve global peace in due time. At least not without harsh oppression of factions, countries and cultures who oppose it. The only way to do it would be through a dominant, military or economic faction that conquers all others and beat them into unconditional surrender and full submission. Hardly the most ethical or morally superior course of action if one values freedom and democracy. I never said I'd "destroy" art or philosophy. I'm saying I'd throw practicioners of art and philosophy out from the academic world, because government funds spent on these pursuits are wasted money. If they go out and get real jobs and decide to waste their own salaries on "art and philosophy" then that's their prerogative, because at least they have contributed to society through actual labour with tangible, measurable results in terms of profit and financial growth. But not a single tax dollar should be allowed to be spent on a bunch of libertine parasites who run around thinking it's okay to have your life funded by government means because you decide to sit around, making "sculptures" or "paintings" that looks like some idiot scribblongs a four year old would make in kindergarten, or sitting in some anti-intellectual echo chamber rambling random thoughts based on nothing but your own, insular imagination and calling yourself a "philosopher". Science, actual science like chemistry, physics, mathematics and biology all have tangible benefits to society and humanity. Therefore they present utilitarian opportunities and substitute useful areas of research to spend government funds on. "Art" and "philosophy" does not. Because every dealer in these topics are quacks and charlatans. Entitled, parasite cancergrowths on society that needs to be cut off from government funding.
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  1106. Marxiavelli24: See there? Your master got his head smashed from behind with a glass bottle. That's the stuff brawlers learn (often painfully so). They don't teach you about getting clocked with a glass bottle in a dojo. They don't teach you about people jumping you from behind when you're not even aware of being in a fight. Now a brawler who takes up martial arts, stands a good chance of developing the knowledge from martial arts into practical usage. But if someone has never been in a fight before, a formal style of martial arts with formal rules and a formal setting isn't going to teach you being a practical fighter. The key to being a practical fighter is very nebulous. It's that undefinable trait or ability which only develops through real fighting. Being amped up and ready. Having the correct reflexes, like a veteran instinctively reaching for a gun and shoot back as soon as he hears a specific noise in the enviroment, or being watchful for details that no one with combat experience would even know to look for. Also, this nebulous quality somewhat contradicts the ideals of formal martial arts about living a peaceful and tranquil life, with "inner balance" and similar Buddhist-stuff. Maintaining this ability means being very on edge, and having a mindset that's anything but peaceful or tranquil. Just look at boxers that was previously mentioned. They gain a lot of their power through rage. And this isn't some myth, but there's been actual scientific tests where you could measure the amount of PSI a punch generated from a boxer when he punched being in a normal mindset compared to when he psyched himself up into a rage to the point where he generated enough force to crack a persons skull with a single punch. But ask any psychologist and they'll tell you why being so close to such rage is bad for your mental health (which also explains why so many heavy weight boxers end up in the news or in prison for having beaten some poor sap into a pulp) And unsurprisingly, most successful heavy weight boxers are also experienced brawlers from troubled youths.
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