Grue's recent activity

  1. Comment on Voters in Ohio reject GOP-backed proposal that would have made it tougher to protect abortion rights in ~society

    Grue
    Link Parent
    The restriction on non-profits' political activities is only applicable to supporting or opposing specific candidates. Supporting or opposing specific issues is allowed....

    The restriction on non-profits' political activities is only applicable to supporting or opposing specific candidates. Supporting or opposing specific issues is allowed.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_Amendment

    Unfortunately, it's totally legal for churches to try to legislate their morality on you, at least from the non-profit point of view.

    13 votes
  2. Comment on Scouts sue MLB for age discrimination, claiming the league had a ‘blacklist’ in ~sports.baseball

    Grue
    Link Parent
    The final quote of the article: The job reinvented itself. These guys were no longer all that qualified for the job and demanded high salaries for a position that no longer provided the value that...

    The final quote of the article:

    “It’s kind of hard to reinvent yourself at 60,” Ragazzo said, “when you’ve spent 30-plus years in a career.”

    The job reinvented itself. These guys were no longer all that qualified for the job and demanded high salaries for a position that no longer provided the value that it has in the past.

    2 votes
  3. Comment on No more freebies: Companies crack down on customer perks and rewards in ~finance

    Grue
    Link Parent
    +1 on the Starbucks' program being trashed causing me to significantly go less/buy less. It compounds significantly too in that the bonus star events feel less worth it and I'm going less anyway...

    +1 on the Starbucks' program being trashed causing me to significantly go less/buy less. It compounds significantly too in that the bonus star events feel less worth it and I'm going less anyway so I never finish those so I never have enough stars for anything.

    I feel like they could have just removed it completely and it would have felt better.

    19 votes
  4. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~tech

    Grue
    Link Parent
    If he wasn't so arrogant, that might make more sense. Instead, it's just blatantly obvious he thought he could do it better. Now that he's actually confronted with doing it better, he's throwing...

    If he wasn't so arrogant, that might make more sense. Instead, it's just blatantly obvious he thought he could do it better. Now that he's actually confronted with doing it better, he's throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, thinking his dumb ideas are better when they are anywhere from non-consequential to disastrous. He's had great success at taking others' ideas and helping make them happen, but it makes him feel like he's the "brains", when that's just not the case.

    20 votes
  5. Comment on Can we get an ~ai? in ~tildes

    Grue
    Link Parent
    I think it's probably better as a modifier than category. There are some articles about ai in general, but usually they are more focused on the application of AI to some area. In those cases, it...

    I think it's probably better as a modifier than category. There are some articles about ai in general, but usually they are more focused on the application of AI to some area. In those cases, it makes more sense to have the post in the category that the AI is being applied to.

    Basically, go down the list of categories, and add ai to it. Most of them makes sense. They wouldn't necessarily have a ton of content, but would an article about applying AI to analytics in baseball belong more in "tech.ai" or "sports.baseball"? I'd argue the latter. Something just talking about how AI works? Depends on the article's target audience. could be ~comp, ~tech, ~science...

    So, ~creative with ai? Absolutely if the article is talking about how AI is being used for "Arts, crafts, and other DIY-ish things."

    4 votes
  6. Comment on 'Barbie' review: Sometimes corporate propaganda can be fun as hell in ~movies

    Grue
    Link Parent
    That may have been intentional/the desired outcome. Barbie's challenge as a product is that it has been historically pretty sexist and was out of touch for awhile. By Mattel as an org taking some...

    That may have been intentional/the desired outcome. Barbie's challenge as a product is that it has been historically pretty sexist and was out of touch for awhile. By Mattel as an org taking some punches publicly like this, they can reposition the product to drop/move on from that history to a degree.

    16 votes
  7. Comment on Any hardcore leftists here? in ~talk

    Grue
    Link Parent
    Second hand smoke has been proven to cause respiratory diseases, including cancer. I believe everyone knows this. If a parent frequently exposes their child to significant second hand smoke, they...

    Second hand smoke has been proven to cause respiratory diseases, including cancer. I believe everyone knows this.

    If a parent frequently exposes their child to significant second hand smoke, they are exposing their child to significant risk. It shows a disregard for the health and safety of their child. If a person does this, it's not unreasonable to be concerned they are risking the health and safety of their child in other ways.

    Being concerned about a child frequently exposed to second hand smoke is reasonable. You imply that this isn't and is just anti-smoking virtue signaling. Do some people overreact? Sure. Do some children die of lung cancer due to second hand smoke? Sure.

    A responsible parent would not risk it.

    5 votes
  8. Comment on Fewer in US say same-sex relations morally acceptable (64% in 2023, down from 71% last year) in ~lgbt

    Grue
    Link Parent
    Absolutely. They basically lost the war on mistreating gay people, so they refocused it to trans. They had success with trans, but really, it was the same thing to them the whole time. They...

    Absolutely. They basically lost the war on mistreating gay people, so they refocused it to trans. They had success with trans, but really, it was the same thing to them the whole time. They basically equate any lgbt person the same, as morally corrupt deviants, and the fact they were able to openly criticize and legislate against trans people, to them, basically meant it was ok to hate gays again, which was also unfortunately reinforced by the current supreme court. Don't want to interfere with their religious right to persecute people! That's a long held tradition!

    7 votes
  9. Comment on Any hardcore leftists here? in ~talk

    Grue
    Link Parent
    There was not clarification by the OP, just the implication that those people calling CPS for smokers are bad cuz our parents were fine. My argument is that modern science lets us know it is...

    Today, it is not uncommon for people where I live to say that CPS should investigate a mother if they see her smoking near her kids.

    lumping together parents who take their cigarettes outside and tell their kids never to start with those who chainsmoke in their sealed car, backseat full, is at best fallacious.

    There was not clarification by the OP, just the implication that those people calling CPS for smokers are bad cuz our parents were fine.

    My argument is that modern science lets us know it is dangerous to chain smoke in a car with your children, so "calling CPS for people smoking near their children" is not necessarily invalid. I am in no way saying a person should lose their children when they make significant, effective effort to minimize risk. I'm not really even saying one way or the other that a parent should lose their children when they do put their kids at risk. I'm saying that parents who don't effectively minimize risk are disregarding the wellbeing of their children is in the same category, but not severity, as parents who are physically abusive. Of course, abuse can have severity as well, and certainly can be less severe than a parent who chain smokes in a car with an infant. A person could call CPS for a parent being "rough" with their child in ways that aren't really significant abuse, just like a person could call CPS for smoking that aren't putting their child at risk. In both cases, the person's judgement are wrong, but their reasoning wasn't necessarily wrong. There is valid reason to believe that smoking can harm children, which is not something our parents generally knew, but is truth.

    4 votes
  10. Comment on Any hardcore leftists here? in ~talk

    Grue
    Link Parent
    It's extreme to say that most people consider physical abuse and smoking at the same severity. It's true that smoking near a child is dangerous for the child and can be indicative of otherwise...

    It's extreme to say that most people consider physical abuse and smoking at the same severity.

    It's true that smoking near a child is dangerous for the child and can be indicative of otherwise poor parenting.

    Category vs severity. There's a difference.

    5 votes
  11. Comment on Any hardcore leftists here? in ~talk

    Grue
    Link Parent
    I didn't. It just overlooked the fact that the paradigm has changed. Our parents were ignorant. These parents are willfully putting their child at risk. They are being bad parents for...

    I didn't. It just overlooked the fact that the paradigm has changed. Our parents were ignorant. These parents are willfully putting their child at risk. They are being bad parents for unnecessarily risking the respiratory health of their children. It could be just a really bad example they were using to defend their point.

    But I DO think it implies a weakness in the main point the person was trying to make, in that they were using practical examples with valid reasons to make their point that people being judgy using religion isn't necessarily bad because people are just judgy. It doesn't really hold that well though in that religions cause a judginess to an extreme that becomes more dangerous than anything else, and often is used to boost the dangerousness and validity of others, like nationalism.

    It allows that judginess to be easily not based off of facts, unlike something like second hand smoke can cause cancer or other respiratory diseases. It allows judginess for bad reasons to masquerade as good reasons. "GOD SAYS WOMEN SHOULD NOT SHOW THEIR FACE!" so we can decapitate women who do. Well, ok, you can't argue with what their god told them, so let's accept it. That's the fundamental difference that the poster needs to ignore to say that it's anywhere near the same. You have to ignore WHY someone is being judgy about cigarettes and the severity of how far they're willing to go, to pretend it is anywhere near as severe that people are willing to involve CPS in the modern world as it is that people are willing to discount human life for not following their tenants. "God favors our nation and wants us to go to war against the enemies!" can't be countered by logic. The comparisons of the OP are just not close to the same scale.

    2 votes
  12. Comment on Any hardcore leftists here? in ~talk

    Grue
    Link Parent
    First, I think it's extreme to say that many would put it at the same level as abusive parents. Second, it IS in the same category. Our parents didn't really know better. These people do and don't...

    First, I think it's extreme to say that many would put it at the same level as abusive parents.

    Second, it IS in the same category. Our parents didn't really know better. These people do and don't care. They are knowingly putting their child at risk for their selfishness. They probably do love their children, sure, but a lot of physically and emotionally abusive parents would also "love their children, that's why they do it!"

    If a modern parent is willing to accept the risk their child will get cancer or have other respiratory issues from their smoking, you have to wonder what other risks that parent will accept and if they are fit to parent.
    Basically, our parents did it out of ignorance, not disregard for the child's safety.

    16 votes
  13. Comment on Any hardcore leftists here? in ~talk

    Grue
    Link Parent
    Yeah, the smoking bit is a bit weird of a defense. Like, "I grew up in a world where eating lead paint chips was a thing, and we were fine!" "My father spent his whole life dedicated to one...

    Yeah, the smoking bit is a bit weird of a defense. Like, "I grew up in a world where eating lead paint chips was a thing, and we were fine!" "My father spent his whole life dedicated to one company, refused to let mom work and would have considered it "sissy" to say he loved me, but I turned out swell!" "Life expectancy has barely increased by 10 years over the last 60 years of progress at making society safer, so why care about people who want to endanger others like we used to!?"

    9 votes
  14. Comment on Any hardcore leftists here? in ~talk

    Grue
    Link Parent
    The classic case of the Affordable Healthcare Act being more popular than Obamacare shows how easy it is to get people to work against their best interests. When presented with details, they...

    The classic case of the Affordable Healthcare Act being more popular than Obamacare shows how easy it is to get people to work against their best interests. When presented with details, they approve. When presented with it packaged in a way that their "handlers" have demonized, they think it's destroying everything they care about and will vote to make sure that doesn't happen.

    9 votes
  15. Comment on Any hardcore leftists here? in ~talk

    Grue
    Link Parent
    From a practical perspective, religion is a tool for mass manipulation. Sure, it could give constructive morals, but as has been proven for a few thousand years, very few manage to keep it purely...

    From a practical perspective, religion is a tool for mass manipulation. Sure, it could give constructive morals, but as has been proven for a few thousand years, very few manage to keep it purely constructive. It becomes combative, with people accepting a tenant that others are lesser in some way, justifying atrocities. Sure, you can argue that "religion is good if it didn't do that", but the problem is that it does that and can pivot to do that pretty quickly, so someone acting on personal agendas can manipulate the masses to something very counter productive very quickly.

    I also would adamantly argue religion's absolutely not needed for people to be moral en masse and that's a fallacy that the religious tend to push out of an undue sense of "righteousness". In fact, it's easier to see "others" as not others, but one of us, when you aren't religious, IMO, and reason that working together and helping others has immediate and long term rewards that aren't reliant on some extra bonus reward when you die, and it especially means you shouldn't be willing to tolerate inequities because "suffering leads to rewards after life" or "that's the plan" just isn't viable anymore.

    That being said, I don't believe you can extract religion from people. It's instinctive. It's emotional. People dedicate their lives to it even though there are obvious fallacies that people just take as "tests" or whatever to justify how it makes them feel. You would basically have to lobotomize society to make it go away. We just have to hope that religions keep on adapting enough to having a realistic world view and dropping the "we are superior" and "accept life being kind of sucky" aspects that are the root of most of the issues they cause.

    36 votes
  16. Comment on Any hardcore leftists here? in ~talk

    Grue
    Link
    I would not consider myself a "hardcore leftist" but I, like many others here, would be considered that by the current Right in the US and other locations that have been brainwashed by the likes...

    I would not consider myself a "hardcore leftist" but I, like many others here, would be considered that by the current Right in the US and other locations that have been brainwashed by the likes of Murdoch and Putin trolls, among others.

    I grew up pretty centrist, voted for some Republicans in the past, but will probably never again.

    Anyway, as for your points, #3 like every ism, wouldn't work well in its pure form. Whether its Social, Capital, Commune, or Anarchy, the concepts always take for granted why #2 still exists: apathy vs greed.

    Basically, there's an assumption people will look out for their own best interests or will accept when others do. That just doesn't happen on a large enough scale to overcome how greed can lead some to manipulate perception into having people actively working against their own best interests.

    People will be too apathetic to really investigate issues. They rely on trust chains to get condensed information. Greed will infiltrate those trust chains and be willing to package the information in a way that's more appealing to people than facts are, not surprisingly, often using greed to do so.

    People are sourced from animals. We have all those built in instincts. We're different in that we have a higher functioning brain that can out reason anything else on the planet. BUT, people often don't do that. They go on "gut instinct" of not trusting or out right fearing "others" and wanting to protect their own at the cost of those "others". This makes manipulation easy either through intimidation or misinformation.

    So, you're forced to use the higher reasoning arguments to fight against apathy and instinct, and convince a large enough mass of people that that is the right thing to do. Incremental progress has been made, but it's not easy, and it's easy to have setbacks, like European immigration stoking fear and greed and chipping away at the progress the EU has made over the last 10-20 years.

    And time's running out, really. IMO, with AI and robotics, we're heading towards a future where 8 billion people can't really be productive in a way that a modern society requires them to be, and our overly-Capitalistic societies are fragile to "consumer confidence" and quarterly profits and could easily spiral in a way that's going to cause vastly more wide-spread issues. This could boost people into being more socialistic and allowing people to live good, modern lives while not "giving back" much. It could also cause insane levels of poverty and the rich building terminator-like robots to protect their assets from the hordes.

    I used to have confidence that "we'd get there". I also believed that post-apocalyptic stories where society breaks down ala Mad Max was just not realistic because people know cooperation and community leads to better results. I no longer believe the latter. It's been proven again lately that a large percent would forsake others for their short term benefit, including being violent about it, and all those apocalyptic shows/movies/books are feeling pretty realistic. I also similarly don't have confidence that the upcoming chaos won't lead to a world settling into a "comfortable" dystopian have-lots and have-nones with the vast majority in the latter. Maybe we'll still "get there", but we may have to go through some Dark Ages first, and we're more than capable of wiping ourselves out at this point.

    11 votes
  17. Comment on Indiana Jones 5 could be Disney's biggest box office disaster since John Carter in ~movies

    Grue
    Link Parent
    Indiana Jones has held proof of Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, aliens and the ability to time travel, and apparently brought none of that to light.

    Indiana Jones has held proof of Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, aliens and the ability to time travel, and apparently brought none of that to light.

    6 votes
  18. Comment on What are the best cover songs that reinterpret the original into a different genre, style, or mood? in ~music

    Grue
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    He just has incredible pacing and emotion on his songs.

    He just has incredible pacing and emotion on his songs.

    1 vote
  19. Comment on What's the most enjoyable part of your work? in ~talk

    Grue
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    Software engineer/Dev Ops. I really like when it's basically just a big puzzle that I have to solve. Pulling in experience, creativity and attentiveness to solve something that is either...

    Software engineer/Dev Ops.

    I really like when it's basically just a big puzzle that I have to solve. Pulling in experience, creativity and attentiveness to solve something that is either perplexing or adding a lot of value.

    39 votes
  20. Comment on San Francisco’s downtown becomes a wake-up call for other cities in the US in ~finance

    Grue
    Link Parent
    Really, the traditional downtown is primed to be some great living conditions. Tall buildings with the design and facilities to handle larger populations. Transit to easily get to other parts of...

    Really, the traditional downtown is primed to be some great living conditions. Tall buildings with the design and facilities to handle larger populations. Transit to easily get to other parts of the cities. Common areas with artistic flair. A good mix of commercial and residential, assuming a good chunk is converted.

    3 votes