TemulentTeatotaler's recent activity

  1. Comment on John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein to write Monopoly movie in ~movies

    TemulentTeatotaler
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    I've heard the D&D movie did a great job of capturing the player experience, but my player experience with Monopoly has been broken families, shady banking, and flipped tables. With one exception...

    I've heard the D&D movie did a great job of capturing the player experience, but my player experience with Monopoly has been broken families, shady banking, and flipped tables.

    With one exception during college when there was a blackout. What started as 8 players got down to two, with the rest ceding their properties to make the game close. A couple retired players moved into supporting roles as accountants and piecepushers so the players could focus on speed play. The rest became hype men you'd find in an alleyway craps game or Wolf of Wallstreet. Rounds were taking seconds, only slowed by celebratory pantomiming of caviar and champagne consumption after a hot streek. Somehow a monocle, a scarf with $$ embroidered along its length, and other appropriate apparel was manifested?

    They should go with the broken families and preferably stop the movie mid-play to be accurate though, otherwise the oldschool ttrpg fans are going to complain about inauthenticity.

    10 votes
  2. Comment on Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: Measles outbreak is call to action for all of us. MMR vaccine is crucial to avoiding potentially deadly disease. in ~health

    TemulentTeatotaler
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    For sure, it's better than the alternative!

    For sure, it's better than the alternative!

    11 votes
  3. Comment on Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: Measles outbreak is call to action for all of us. MMR vaccine is crucial to avoiding potentially deadly disease. in ~health

    TemulentTeatotaler
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    A common pattern for indefensible people is that they have a concession on some extreme position which attracts a lot of attention because its unexpected. Then it gets held up for years as an...

    A common pattern for indefensible people is that they have a concession on some extreme position which attracts a lot of attention because its unexpected. Then it gets held up for years as an example of them being reasonable. "If Trump is soft on Russia why did he sanction them?" -- after threatening to veto until it became veto proof.

    And I don't mean to be a hater--you're one of my favorite people on the site-- but I don't know how to fix this pattern outside of pointing out the extreme inconsistencies with his behavior that pretty much always mean this is not him having a change of heart. It's crisis management.

    With measles the agenda he's peddled for the past couple decades is coming home to roost and it's not a great look. Serving as the EP on a film for Wakefield and saying, "Andy Wakefield stands among the most unjustly vilified figures of modern history..." who was the victim of a global smear campaign?

    You don't lie under oath a couple months back about related stuff and suddenly start going with the scientific consensus. Instead the guy that uses a brain worm as an excuse to pay less to an ex-wife after cheating with at least 37 women is putting on a veneer of professionalism. For now. As much as he has to.

    He isn't letting his personal beliefs get in the way of doing his job as Secretary of HHS.

    At best he is fundamentally not qualified for the job he has. You can't resolve not having the skillset with accepting the position. If I accepted a position as a pilot because I've watched a bird or two I'd be letting my beliefs [that I'm qualified] get in the way of my job, even if a co-pilot can handle a rough landing.

    65 votes
  4. Comment on US President Donald Trump cuts short talks with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy after Oval Office blow up in ~society

    TemulentTeatotaler
    (edited )
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    Unfortunately it's the toupee fallacy to think it is obvious-- you notice the bad ones. Better usernames are trivial and AI is already at a point it is often preferred to student's writings in...

    Unfortunately it's the toupee fallacy to think it is obvious-- you notice the bad ones.

    Better usernames are trivial and AI is already at a point it is often preferred to student's writings in colleges. When that fails, on the cheap you can get a Floridian to put on a stunt with a cage and Hillary in a prison uniform, or Tim Pool and other influencers to push a foreign agenda.

    We're all susceptible, and by far the thing the makes us vulnerable to misinformation (recent meta-analysis) is whether we've seen a claim before.

    23 votes
  5. Comment on US President Donald Trump cuts short talks with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy after Oval Office blow up in ~society

    TemulentTeatotaler
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    Zelensky statement after leaving: Russian state media was present at the Oval Office, removed:

    Zelensky statement after leaving:

    Thank you America, thank you for your support, thank you for this visit. Thank you @POTUS, Congress, and the American people. Ukraine needs just and lasting peace, and we are working exactly for that.

    Russian state media was present at the Oval Office, removed:

    A correspondent for TASS, a Russian state media organization, was among a group of hand-picked pool reporters present in the Oval Office...

    The apparent gaffe comes three days after the White House announced it would wrest the choice of pool reporters from the White House Correspondents’ Association, breaking with decades of precedent.

    28 votes
  6. Comment on Antiaging pill for dogs clears key US Food and Drug Administration hurdle in ~life.pets

    TemulentTeatotaler
    (edited )
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    They may be inbred, but you can make a distinction between the sorts of issues you get from having a small gene pool and the kinds you get from selectively breeding for a particular trait,...

    They may be inbred, but you can make a distinction between the sorts of issues you get from having a small gene pool and the kinds you get from selectively breeding for a particular trait, sometimes to the exclusion or direct detriment of others. Some produce is selectively bred to be easier to transport or to look better at the cost of its taste, but that has nothing to do with inbreeding. Not sure you'd call it a genetic dead end, either, since you can start selectively breeding for a mixture of taste and those traits.

    Rapid growth causes health problems, and so does a larger size. That also applies to humans. Shorter people live ~2-5 years longer, need less food, are less likely to have cancer, heart, or joint problems. The world would be better if short kings knew their worth (or something like that).

    Until about a bit over a hundred years ago roughly 45-55% of children died before they were 15, most before age 5. Childbirth for humans is significantly more dangerous than animals due to our selection for intelligence. I think our ability to drastically reduce our child mortality rate with technology is a loose parallel? We didn't have to go back to being quadrapeds with smaller brains. Not that there is always a good or desirable technological fix, but sometimes it's okay to say glasses/LASIK are fine solutions to our bad eyes.

    14 votes
  7. Comment on The world Donald Trump wants: American power in the new age of nationalism in ~society

    TemulentTeatotaler
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    A giant golden tomb that took a million lives to build? A QAnon-friendly FBI head who goes after journalists who say mean things about him? It's much easier to be called the God Emperor by a...

    What's more glorious than to be remembered as one of the great american presidents?

    A giant golden tomb that took a million lives to build? A QAnon-friendly FBI head who goes after journalists who say mean things about him? It's much easier to be called the God Emperor by a favored in-group than it is to actually build a legacy, just like it's much harder to build wealth than it is to say the Trump brand is worth +/- a few billion depending on what is beneficial at the time. A narcissist doesn't want to earn praise; they're owed it.

    He doesn't want nuclear war, because he doesn't want to die.

    He's had two(ish) assassination attempts, so is he going to stop praising violence? Is he going to say he was wrong praising Gianforte for assaulting a journalist, or retweeting "the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat"?

    As for American exceptionalism, I mean, that's his entire brand.

    I think it's easy to argue the opposite of that. His brand is that America is not great, and that he's the only thing that can fix this trash, mistreated, weak country. In large part by abandoning any admirable qualities we have. That isn't the rhetoric a patriot has.

    13 votes
  8. Comment on The world Donald Trump wants: American power in the new age of nationalism in ~society

    TemulentTeatotaler
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    I think most of it is fine and at least a quick look suggests the author is knowledgeable and not a sycophant. The parts that put me off is the implicit acceptance that Trump wants to "leave the...

    I think most of it is fine and at least a quick look suggests the author is knowledgeable and not a sycophant. The parts that put me off is the implicit acceptance that Trump wants to "leave the United States better off," that he fears nuclear war, or that he has any belief in something like "American exceptionalism" motivating him.

    The evidence I've seen supports him being a narcisist who seeks praise, punishing sleights, and personal enrichment. He has a shallow understanding of geopolitics, economics, law, or really anything outside of dirty business. All evidence points to him furthering Russian interests whenever possible. The Mueller findings, Helsinki, threatening to veto sanctions until veto-proof, and really a few hundred pages of things you can point to as "this is real fucking weird unless you work with/for Putin."

    It feels like the author eschews the sort of personality-driven analysis he mentions, ignoring the most obvious explanation in lieu of some hypothetically plausible game theory of irrational actors. Which would be interesting! Not very familiar but I know I've seen looks at that sort of pragmatic irrationality before. So, "Flexible diplomacy ... could pay big dividends", but that isn't what is happening, and ignoring that gets pretty close to apologia/sane-washing.

    The simple explanation for Trump's handling of things like the Canadian tariffs--which are criticized by traditionally conservative academics-- is that he wants to weaken Western cooperation. Calling Zelensky a dictator with 4% approval rating and extorting/blaming Ukraine after our role in the Budapest Memorandum, scrapping the Iran nuclear deal, or things like hiring Bolton who openly called for regime change in Iran and the "Libya model" for NK isn't exactly making a case for the nuclear disarmament he is supposed to desire.

    He wants to kill NATO, tank our international standing (post 1st term iirc only Russia/Israel had an improved opinion), and make concrete that the promises of the U.S. are useless at worst and have a 4-year shelf-life at best. Err, and loot the country like it was children's charity, cash-light contractor, or crypto connosieur, too.

    15 votes
  9. Comment on Texas officials report that an unvaccinated child has died of measles in ~health

    TemulentTeatotaler
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    Drunk driving is very frequently harmless. Many people genuinely hold a belief they aren't meaningfully impaired. If they were involved in a fatal accident, a large percent of people would suffer...

    Drunk driving is very frequently harmless. Many people genuinely hold a belief they aren't meaningfully impaired. If they were involved in a fatal accident, a large percent of people would suffer great remose for what they'd done.

    Or, more to the point, if a parent is driving drunk and only kills their own kid should they not be sentenced because of their grief? Should a secretly reluctant parent who resents their child be punished more harshly? How should you handle split custody, where one parent blocked the vaccination? For me the intuition about whether suffering should absolve one of criminal liability is that it shouldn't, much. The kid ain't unkilled.

    It's a separate matter what sorts of parenting policies ought to be required or constitute abuse/neglect. You might find parents that raise kids with unhealthy diets lead to lifelong health issues or earlier death, but except in the extremes I don't think many people want the gov't deciding what their kids eat.

    15 votes
  10. Comment on If you sharpened a particularly stiff carrot, could you kill a vampire with it? in ~talk

    TemulentTeatotaler
    (edited )
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    Could a captured dracula be worked into some sort of blessing detector (eulometer, patent pending)? *Also seems like they could be used for property disputes? Have the claimants make a shed at...

    Could a captured dracula be worked into some sort of blessing detector (eulometer, patent pending)?

    *Also seems like they could be used for property disputes? Have the claimants make a shed at disputed boundaries and invite the dracula in. Maybe that's what Night Court was.

    8 votes
  11. Comment on Are we witnessing the takeover of a country right now? in ~society

    TemulentTeatotaler
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    Russell's teapot is about unfalsifiable claims. It is not possible to falsify "Satan planted dino bones to test your faith." The question of OP is not that. What do you think mens rea is? Oh,...

    Russell's teapot is about unfalsifiable claims. It is not possible to falsify "Satan planted dino bones to test your faith."

    The question of OP is not that. What do you think mens rea is? Oh, sure, the perpetrator had spent a year saying "I'm going to kill <victim", they researched extra-good stabby knives, and they followed the victim to an isolated alley... but we don't have the ability to read minds, therefore we can't say anything about whether it was premeditated.

    You can find supporting evidence or contradictory evidence for whether the current administration wants to take over the country, and any individual can decide on what threshold of confidence they need. Criminal courts need more than civil courts, and even there the public is free to say OJ is guilty.

    We hit the ridiculously high 5-sigma standard for anthropogenic global warming years back, but it made sense long before then to take action. If you're 90% sure you have cancer or 60% sure a coup is taking place maybe skip playing word games about literal definitions of "prove" when everyone understands we're using the colloquial one.

    35 votes
  12. Comment on US CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid’s origins in ~health

    TemulentTeatotaler
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    Also worth mentioning that unlike the framing, John Ratcliffe is not some new guy inheriting the report. He and David Asher are the source of many unsubstantiated claims, some in direct conflict...

    Also worth mentioning that unlike the framing, John Ratcliffe is not some new guy inheriting the report. He and David Asher are the source of many unsubstantiated claims, some in direct conflict with the IC.

    He has believed it was engineered by China from the start (claims he found out about sick workers in October 2019), and it would be putting it politely to say he has been shown to be unreliable in his career.

    He's also who the Heritage Foundation tapped for Project 2025's recommendations for reforming the intelligence community, the focus of which is unsurprisingly about countering China.

    18 votes
  13. Comment on More than a dozen US states have passed new laws that led to restrictions on pornography. Now, the Supreme Court will weigh in. in ~society

    TemulentTeatotaler
    (edited )
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    There are definitely sites for that (e.g., WorldStarHiphop / LiveLeak / the Chans / etc), but I'd guess it was a nod at media. Most recently that is violent video games, before that metal, slasher...

    There are definitely sites for that (e.g., WorldStarHiphop / LiveLeak / the Chans / etc), but I'd guess it was a nod at media. Most recently that is violent video games, before that metal, slasher movies, satanic DND, Elvis' pelvis, comics' seduction of the innocent. Going further back you'd get Hays Code banning miscegeny, novels making women adulterous Bovary's, or the Church saying you'll break out in boils and go blind if you wank.

    It's reasonable to have concerns. I know I would if I was a parent when kids were playing FPSs with maps of their school, ripping out spines in Mortal Kombat, or GTA. I'm in favor of parents being able to moderate their kids media habits, and having access to tools and information to better do that.

    That said, I think valid concerns are a starting point (and sometimes a moratorium makes sense) for trying to understand the issue and options. I think a fair summary of the research of violent video games is that about all the found is some mild short-term increases in aggression based on the gameplay mechanics, and that some people will be vulnerable to addiction or exploitation (ala loot boxes).

    A commonality with all the past moral panics is that people--even children-- are really good at separating reality from fiction. Otherwise a lot of German nursery stories would be... okay, actually some of those might be legit child abuse.

    Like others have said we have lots of data, and I'm guessing a good deal of research (that I know little of) on the topic. I'd like to see that driving policy. Some concerns I have are:

    • Would what is being suggested actually prevent access to porn? Or would it lead to riskier engagement on private or shady channels (e.g., 2ch, where the desired porn is in the splash zone of actual snuff/torture/CSAM and whatever politics led to Q-ANON)
    • Would it lead to a rise of content on the dividing line, like dodging mentions of suicide with "unalive". Things like simulated assault in Minecraft/Roblox, the weird fetish-y stuff from Elsagate, etc.
    • Is it possible without some very strong actions taken on things like e2ee or VPNs?
    • Are benefits of exposure to porn (before 18 or a real weird conversation with the folks) that would be missed out on? A previous thread pointed to a reduction in sexual assault/teen pregnancy as trends. I dated someone who had a conservative upbringing and that may have led to her being vulnerable for some bad things that happened the semester before I met her, along with some other anxiety-related issues.
    • Is the ban a wedge strategy to attack "immorality" and by proxy privacy, women, non Christians/conservatives, and the queer community?

    You can superimpose a map of the states with the bans with one for things like the worst rates of sexual assault, teen pregnancy, infant mortality, STDs, etc., and they're pretty much the same places. That doesn't necessarily mean that their policies are at fault, but it does worry me, since it makes it feel more like the motivation is coming from some ick or puritarianism (why they have trash sex ad) than from some real case that it would improve lives.

    19 votes
  14. Comment on Dungeons & Dragons shows that modish guff doesn’t serve diversity and inclusion in ~games.tabletop

    TemulentTeatotaler
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    What do you think of "clade" for a grouping by shared ancestor?

    What do you think of "clade" for a grouping by shared ancestor?

    4 votes
  15. Comment on Coinage and the tyranny of fantasy ‘gold’ in ~humanities.history

    TemulentTeatotaler
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    I was surprised to not see it in the wiki, so to add another bit of history, in music the Greek modes come from Lydia and it's neighbors. The economy of scale I've heard so much about

    I was surprised to not see it in the wiki, so to add another bit of history, in music the Greek modes come from Lydia and it's neighbors.

    dragons

    The economy of scale I've heard so much about

    13 votes
  16. Comment on Poll results show the percentage supporting the position 'let them burn' regarding American institutions in ~society

    TemulentTeatotaler
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    I've mostly been lurking this year, but I've seen you and other trans/queer members of the community, like Gaywallet. My heart and best wishes go to you and yours. And apologies again, I'm often...
    • Exemplary

    I've mostly been lurking this year, but I've seen you and other trans/queer members of the community, like Gaywallet. My heart and best wishes go to you and yours.

    And apologies again, I'm often not great with communication and this has been a frustrating year. I'd like to be able to wear the hats of supportive/empathetic while still expressing honest concerns as well as others in the community but I often struggle getting just one to fit.

    Part of the overhead of talking to anonymous strangers is you just have to check in sometimes because sincere and sea-lion and present the same at times.

    I'm usually happy to be corrected on my views and have pretty basic progressive/Star Trekian (well, as concisely described by others) values.

    nothing gets done to protect us nationally no matter who's in charge

    Not qualified to debate any of this, but over the last term I've seen at a number of efforts from the administration to support the trans community and the opposite from the GOP.

    Why do things like EO 13988, the recent nondiscrimination in health care safeguards, or simpler signaling of being in support of gender-affirming surgery for youth not count for caring, if perhaps inadequate?

    If you want to include some intersectional issues you can find more disappointments, but also a good number of successes.

    it's pretty hard to see a way that things will meaningfully improve

    Gay rights might be a success story? There have been massive strides forward in my lifetime, socially and politically.

    In 2008 Obama opposed gay marriage. 2010 he supported civil unions, 2012 same-sex marriage, and throughout his two terms protections were expanded to include gay people. This seemed to roughly track with changing cultural norms.

    Politics and society influence each other, and anything involving changes in the hundreds of millions to billions of people is hard to understand. Most of us just try to do our best by our conscience and intuitions.

    The curse of being a big tent party is sometimes you have many irreconciliable conflicts of interest. With Prop 8 a narrative I recall (not sure if correct) was it was going to either be that or pro-immigrant laws, depending on the amount of religious/conservative Dem Hispanics showing up.

    The question of what a pro-gay politician ought to do if they have a choice between a few stances with increasing benefit to the community but decreasing chances of winning an election is a difficult one. The follow-up question is then what should a pro-gay constituent do, especially if they don't actually know the values of that politician.

    I don't think I have any answers buy on the political front my intuition is:

    • Criticism is healthy and desirable when it corresponds to reality. When it's coming from vibes it's rewarding/penalizing perception instead of policy.
    • Protest votes or abstaining can influence a future platform, but only when that future vote is "cost-efficient". I've heard voters that voted two elections ago but skipped the last one are the most paid attention to because they're recoverable.
    • Compromise and solidarity are powerful. If nothing else Ted Cruz, Musk, or Lindsey Graham letting Trump humiliate them and having a career drive it home. The religious right got on board with the guy bragging about infidelity and sexual assault.
    • Even small steps in a positive direction can add up, and decades of progress can be lost in a week.

    On the social front most of us do our best on the daily to promote our beliefs and values in our communities. When relevant I'll point out de la Chapelle syndrome when someone wants to say "it's simple, XX = woman" or debunk the Chapelle Netflix claims of a community driving a woman to suicide for defending his bold comedy. Not losing her job and custody, ofc...

    How to "win a culture war" (read: trend Trek-wards) is something I've always struggled with, but especially recently. Which may be why I lurk (I regret everything, per usual).

    I can think of dozens of possible major contributors to the post-Obama zeitgeist, but I'm not confident in anything.

    Same with possible improvements. "Respectability politics" is a bit of a dirty word, and it's not hard to understand as it places an undue burden to placate or educate on the already marginalized or overwhelmed. "Ought implies can" and a lot of people really can't even.

    Sometimes I find an inversion helpful. "How do you ruin a relationship" can give you a nice negative blueprint for how to have a healthy one, and if you ask "how do you lose a culture war" or "how do we harm/marginalize the trans community" some horrible folks have done the legwork.

    Those 100+ member calls with alt-right influencers and conservative politicians. The troll farms of the country bombing child oncology wards.

    That's where a lot of my frustration comes from. I've seen far too many of the same talking points of alt-right-adjacent crowds and communities I ostensibly share values and goals with. Surely that ain't it.

    Thankfully my BIL is in MN where they've been killing it with getting a progressive agenda through, including trans rights.

    I get feeling abandoned or frustrated with the DNC. I'm a frequent critic, systemic or specific.

    At the same time why shouldn't Walz or Harris feel abandoned by the populace that looked at him and JD Vance and thought "no real difference"? Call your running mate America's next Hitler, refuse to say the 2020 election was lost, make up and double-down on a story about immigrants eating pets-- same deal, totally get sitting out this election.

    If I'm being honest I feel like more needs to change socially than politically. And that's harder. There may never be a bigger difference between candidates, or a more obviously immoral and incompetent person elected... and it didn't matter. Given polls showing complete ignorance on some measurable topics, I could make some guesses, but I'd checked out of politics before the postmortem. Intellectually a pragmatist, emotionally black-pilled for a bit.

    It's honestly baffling, and that is the impetus of the aforementioned soul-searching. Something clearly went/is wrong, and at least some of it resonates with me. I've got people I've known who are active and involved in their community and I'm not. I have no delusion of any moral highground. Voting in a deep red state, as you pointed out, doesn't make any direct impact, and I was swamped or drained and did a minimum.

    For me, some part of that is an admission that my preferred process is inadequate.

    When I see flame wars involving trans athletes part of me is like... I got this. Surely I can write just the right screed to win hearts and minds, this is what my decades of education and giving a shit were for. But it's fighting the culture war by committing to a pitched battle on unfavorable terrain. It's something next to no one needs to be talking about, a carefully-selected contentious issue that pertains to a very small fraction of a small fraction. In giving it attention is breaths life into it, and you wind up with someone hearing from a babysitter of a friend that kitty litter is a real problem in schools. And it doesn't matter if I'm "correct" or Rawls is my homeboy if it doesn't matter to whoever I'm communicating with.

    ...anyways, sorry, deleted things but this is either going to be deleted or stay a rant. So I'll end it here, with a slightly more positive anecdote I've kept with me that's germane (heh) to the feelings of ineffectuality of an individual wanting to change the world.

    There was an interview I caught with a researched who'd found that social media posts of friends, and friends-of-friends was better able to predict things like quitting smoking than the individual's own history. When asked if it bothered her that this suggested her free will was more a product of her community/environment than her own self-determination, she said that it also meant that she was able to have some positive influence on all those other people as well. We're small and inconsequential, but not alone. And our better moods or choices can go viral, sometimes.

    11 votes
  17. Comment on Poll results show the percentage supporting the position 'let them burn' regarding American institutions in ~society

    TemulentTeatotaler
    (edited )
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    I should reword that since it was unclear that the unfortunate thing was thev sentiment of the country. I'm a bit low on sleep, sorry. My now BIL is trans, and while I'm not especially close with...

    I should reword that since it was unclear that the unfortunate thing was thev sentiment of the country. I'm a bit low on sleep, sorry.

    My now BIL is trans, and while I'm not especially close with them they're looking at leaving the country. My former housemate asked me about secure communication because they're scared. I've been stuck in a deep red state for close to a decade taking care of a disabled parent, and as part of that I'm exposed to a good deal of the conservative antipathy.

    I'm not trying to make some sort of "I have black friends" excuse. I have people I'm very worried for in my life and frankly they're owed more than empathy, which is a given. They're owed better outcomes. I sincerely believe doomerism and both-sidesism is harmful.

    8 votes
  18. Comment on Poll results show the percentage supporting the position 'let them burn' regarding American institutions in ~society

    TemulentTeatotaler
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    Honestly I don't have time to reply right now, and probably won't later. I can point out all the pro-worker initiatives under Biden, or revisit the ACA public option and Joe Lieberman like...

    Neither party is pushing for universal healthcare, or paid parental leave. Neither is putting nearly enough support behind Unions not only retaining what power they have, but expanding into new industries and supporting workers rights into the future. Neither party enshrined bodily autonomy rights into law. Neither side protected the supreme court from becoming a biased, untrustworthy institution.

    Honestly I don't have time to reply right now, and probably won't later.

    I can point out all the pro-worker initiatives under Biden, or revisit the ACA public option and Joe Lieberman like NaraVara was.

    Fundamentally the issue is--and don't take this as negative or malicious-- magical thinking.

    If you want to make a valid heuristic for solving a puzzle you can just remove one of the constraints. Squares can move anywhere, or they can overlap. That is the core of accelerationist/abstain/burn-the-system thinking. If you want to fix American politics just rally the people to have a constitutional convention! Get the people to do <large political movement>, like the sub 1% of the population that was the hippies, convinced they could change the world with music and free love.

    When pinned down by pragmatism those options are far harder than just not rewarding bad actors. Democrats have actually accomplished some pretty significant things with the narrowest of margins in a broad-tent coalition with diverse preferences, and they got punished for it.

    Maybe there are some hidden background dealings with healthcare executes that scuttled the public option of ACA. It's not impossible. It's also possible a purple Democrat whose spent the last decade working for conservative interests was the deciding vote.

    12 votes
  19. Comment on Poll results show the percentage supporting the position 'let them burn' regarding American institutions in ~society

    TemulentTeatotaler
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    Which I understand, and if you'd like I could requote myself. It's not much of a mystery. I've got trans friends, had a former housemate who transitioned who'd been kicked out of her house and...

    I'm explicitly not advocating for not voting nor for accelerationist nonsense. I'm focusing on understanding why people feel alienated.

    Which I understand, and if you'd like I could requote myself. It's not much of a mystery. I've got trans friends, had a former housemate who transitioned who'd been kicked out of her house and living on the streets for years.

    What I'm saying is many people signal-boost a particular narrative which smooths out the sort of differences that make incremental progress possible at the same time as over-representing the feelings of rejection or hate.

    Focusing exclusively on the inadequacies of a party to address trans concerns instead of the progress of someone like Sarah McBride is harmful. Am I supposed to be thrilled about this sort of understandable political self-harm?

    If anything, and unfortunately, the DNC probably positioned itself more pro-trans than the average party member or country member and was punished for it.

    5 votes
  20. Comment on Poll results show the percentage supporting the position 'let them burn' regarding American institutions in ~society

    TemulentTeatotaler
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    That feeling is understandable, but it doesn't make them correct. Trump wants to turn Palestine into real-estate and arguably accelerated this situation moving the embassy and reneging on the Iran...

    Advocates for Palestine, including Palestinian Americans often express similar feelings.

    That feeling is understandable, but it doesn't make them correct. Trump wants to turn Palestine into real-estate and arguably accelerated this situation moving the embassy and reneging on the Iran deal.

    Life is awful in Palestine but there is a difference between a party that is trying to appeal to manage being a large-tent with ~80% Jewish constituency and one that is gungho about glassing Palestine. In one there is the most basic pressure to do less harm, and the most basic efforts to provide aid.

    Thank god we got voters to do what Netenyahu wanted! We sure... showed them.

    5 votes