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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Maybe this is going to come across as just pedantry, but I really feel like some people are missing some pretty important things here. The thread started with this question:

    Honestly, how is it any better to send young men there? I’m not wild about sending pregnant women and children there obviously, but…are we indicating that men don’t matter?

    I thought it was wild to leap to “men don’t matter” on a post about pregnant women and children being sent to a concentration camp. That pivot felt misguided at best, and misogynistic at worst. I replied with a reminder that pregnant women and children are a more vulnerable group than men, as an alternative, *non-malicious explanation for why the article calls those groups out specifically. I was just trying to push back on the misguided notion of “media reports on group A, therefore they don’t care about group B.”



  • You’re either misunderstanding me or I’m not being clear enough, but I didn’t say any of that lol. I’m gonna go step by step here and try to be really clear, but if I’m misunderstanding anything please let me know.

    All people should be spared inhuman behaviour.

    Yeah, I agree with you, and I don’t think I’ve suggested anything to the contrary. I’ve just said that certain vulnerable groups sometimes require more protection than men. Because they’re more vulnerable than men.

    I’m sorry but “i don’t like equality” feels like nonsense to me.

    It feels like nonsense to me too, probably because I didn’t say that either. But what it seems like you’re suggesting is to ignore the circumstantial differences between groups, even when one group is more vulnerable than another, in the name of treating everyone the same, i.e, “equality”. But I take issue with that, because that sort of thinking leads to inequal outcomes. As in, if a vulnerable group is treated exactly the same as their less-vulnerable counterparts, the vulnerable group will experience more negative outcomes on average, thus experiencing inequality.

    Men should have every potection afforded to others.

    In general, yeah, absolutely, except in cases where a particular protection only applies to a group that excludes men. The same logic applies to every group. Maybe this is just semantics at this point, but I don’t see the point of affording a protection to a group that it doesn’t apply to. All that is sort of beside the point though, because at no point have I suggested that any one group have protections taken away, just that some vulnerable groups require more protection than others in order to experience equality.

    we should protect all people to the best of our ability.

    One hundred percent agree. In my view, we do that by trying to figure out what everyone needs as a baseline, identifying the more vulnerable groups by figuring out who that baseline doesn’t satisfy, and then figuring out what extra things those vulnerable groups need. That’s all I’m advocating for - protecting vulnerable groups by figuring out what extra protections they need, not taking protections away from less vulnerable groups.





  • No! Heathen! Download the source for every package and compile it yourself! Compile the kernel yourself, compile the compiler yourself! Never script anything, always do every step manually, every time! Using tools that make things convenient and foolproof makes you weak and unappreciative of the real hardship and struggle it requires to checks notes use a personal computer!



  • Saw Bob Vylan in the mud and muck last year at Louder than Life, and that’s the performance that has stuck with me the most by far from that fest. Such a high energy performer, and there were only maybe a couple hundred people in the crowd (early set, on one of the smaller side stages, so kind of expected). The messages in the lyrics are spot on too, but it was kinda funny looking around at all the rural Kentuckians there looking all uncomfortable and rolling their eyes when they realized what they were listening to lmao


  • Absolutely! Like I said, this is a topic I’ve always struggled with, and I’ve leaned both ways. I just so happen to be leaning on the side of recreational air travel this week lol.

    The example with Prague strikes me as rooted in capitalism, not so much tourism. Like, ideally governments (local or otherwise) in tourist-heavy areas step in and implement things that address those capitalistic problems you describe - penalize rental property conglomerates, enforce a liveable minimum wage, build affordable permanent housing and mixed-use spaces, etc. I hear your comparison between tourism and imperialism, and I get that some tourist areas are pretty awful where the local residents are treated as subhuman and that definitely sucks, but idk, it feels more like a capitalist/classist issue to me.


  • Do you think “having tourism” would do more damage than “not having tourism”? Because that’s what we’re really comparing here. Tourism may be a net negative, but if the absence of tourism is a bigger net negative, well, I’d argue that “having tourism” is the better option.

    Obviously making tourism into a net positive should be the goal, but that’s a whole different discussion (which your idea of “educational holidays” probably fits into). But I don’t think we get there with a blanket ban on most forms of air travel. Not to mention, making air travel more efficient/greener would have huge ripple effects across multiple industries. That seems like a no-brainer approach to me, at least in the long term.


  • Man, this is one I’ve tried to wrestle with multiple times. I feel like there are monumental benefits to trans-Atlantic/trans-Pacific recreational flights (really just most long international flights). Banning those would almost certainly increase feelings of isolation, and probably make the already-rampant xenophobia plaguing the world even worse. There really aren’t viable alternatives to flying for getting across a multi-thousand-mile-wide ocean - boats are too slow for the average person, and building trains over the ocean is impractical. Maybe the focus should be on making planes more environmentally friendly, instead of outright banning them?




  • You can save quite a bit by getting a refurbished Pixel - looks like the cheapest “Google certified” option (so it comes with a 1-year warranty) is a 6a for $250, which is nearly half off MSRP. I’ve been using my 6a since launch, so it’s been going for 3 years now and I have no desire to upgrade.

    You can definitely get cheaper smartphones, but $250 for a 6a feels like a pretty big bang for your buck.





  • Eh, splitting the party (or at least exposing the division within the party) is a long shot, but it’s really the only productive way forward if the Democrats want to actually change and fix things. Repeatedly exposing Democrats that vote against the people’s interests is the most surefire way to get those Democrats voted out and replaced with more progressive candidates. Failing that, breaking away from the Democratic party and forming a new more progressive party isn’t the worst long-term option, even if it (probably) won’t be very effective in the near-term.