In a pure debate sense, this would be true, even an unpopular or suspicious person is still capable of making a valid point. It should be considered, however, that internet arguments are not formal debates. They can at times use the form and language of them, but most people are not skilled in that kind of formalized arguing, and most people are not arguing in an actual attempt to use the debate to identify stronger vs inconsistent positions (rather than just trying to push people towards ones own ideas or to put down ideas one finds reprehensible).

Now, I dont personally tend to find much point in looking through profiles, it takes too much time for little benefit in my view, but it can sometimes tell you if an account is not worth the time and emotional investment to interact with, or if it has signs that it might not be. The nature of social media is such that there are always far more user’s trying to get your attention, than you have attention to spare. As such, if theres even a notable red-flag that an account isnt worth the time and potential frustration to engage with, it can make pragmatic sense to move on (depending on how much one is willing to put up with, I guess).

From that perspective, telling other people what it was that seemed like a red flag to you lets them consider if that thing makes that account worth their time or not, without them having to find it too, and therefore potentially does those other people a favor. That sounds a bit harsh (at least to me) because plenty of things others might consider suspect, like a new account, cant always be helped (everyone starts off new after all), and being ignored, or having other people call out that thing as a reason they might want to ignore you, is frustrating, but that’s just the nature of giving massive numbers of people the ability to talk to everyone else; most people wont want or have the time to listen to you, and you’re not entitled to their time, however unfair their reason for dismissing you might be.

I mean, that doesn’t really fix it if you have an actually omnipotent diety though, because that diety would be responsible for, well, everything, to include what the results of rejecting that diety would be.

If he was truly defending the right not to pledge an allegiance to a stage symbol, then surely he’d not appreciate being used as a prop to guilt-trip a kid into doing so.

So, what you’re talking about (the past and future appearing different to different observers) sounds like a different concept to what this comic was about; if im understanding your meaning, that’s something that comes up from relativity, and as such has a bit more grounding to it than any position on if other points in time exist somewhere else along a “time axis” already or if the future is truly unwritten. Either position on the nature of time will result in a universe that looks exactly the same from our perspective, and therefore can only be speculated on, but relativity makes physically testable predictions that can be experimentally verified. I can’t really explain it adequately as I only understand the basics myself (though from what I know, nobody ever actually observes the future, its more that different observers see the time between connected events compressed compared to others).

This sounds like an idea called “eternalism” or “block time”. I tend to suspect it might be the case just because it requires assuming fewer unique properties for the time dimension that aren’t shared by space dimensions, but obviously that’s not really evidence for it as such. It can be an interesting idea to think through the implications of though, whether true or not.

On the one hand, sure, the people there should watch out for the possibility that the US or similar tries to get a government satisfactory to them installed if the current one falls.

But on the other hand, it’s not like there’s any mechanism, in a revolution, to collectively declare “you’re not allowed to support us” and have it stick. So if all it takes for a revolution to be illegitimate is the US to declare itself in favor, then the US has the power to delegitimize any revolution it wishes without recourse, which doesn’t make much sense.

not these days, I did once, but nowadays I have a lizard because they’re a bit more interactive for a scaly animal.

Wasnt really planning to draw tonight, but you know what, sure, Ill try something, Ive been needing something to distract me from my anxiety problems today anyway.

That logic would make sense if we were talking about, say, someone writing or drawing or animating a fictitious depiction of rape or something. To my understanding though the controversy here is the AI being used to produce images of real people in a sexualized context, or transform images of them into that, which isnt quite the same thing as a depiction of a fictional character (or for that matter, a portrayal of a fictional act by consenting actors). The reason its getting called sexual abuse content isnt so much that the images are pictures of sexual abuse, but more the notion that the creation of the images is a form of sexual abuse, because the people depicted did not consent to be portrayed that way.

I managed to slip on some ice about a year ago and hit my back like that (albeit not as hard I wouldnt think as I wasnt running). Ended up feeling rather sick for several days starting that evening, I presume because of the my immune system dealing with dead cells or something. In any case, might be a bit more than just sore from a fall like that.

Honestly, I don’t really think that an armed population really affects the ability of the ruling elite to maintain power one way or the other. A population pushed far enough to revolt both tends to find a way to arm itself and poses a threat to the power of the ruling class regardless (because things just don’t get done without their work), and singular armed people aren’t very difficult for an organized military to deal with. How restrictive gun laws should be is mostly just a cultural thing in my view.

While not super relevant to earth, black holes are thought to slowly convert their mass into energy and radiate it off over a very long time (slower the bigger the thing is). Since what they are made of can’t really be described as atoms anymore, this isn’t really a nuclear process, and as far as I’m aware, this isn’t driven by the universe’s continued expansion either.

“Not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor”? I guess hes going to have to give Alaska to Canada or something if he wants to achieve that.

Honestly I think his ideas for the country fit right in about 100 years before that. Considering the end of the 19th century in the US is mainly known for imperial expansion, rolling back of civil rights, corrupt political machines, monopolistic corporations run by a handful of rich people, anti-immigrant sentiment and laws…

There’s also not a lot of willingness to roll things back whenever the Republicans lose power for a time. Like, for the sake of argument, lets say Trump and his allies fail to sufficiently gerrymander or rig or cancel or just win the next couple of elections, and manage to lose control of both congress and the presidency. Does anyone really expect all those new ICE agents they hired to be suddenly fired, rather than just continue to do what they’re doing without as much media attention driving public ire against them once the president isnt going on rants about deporting people all the time?

Ive noticed a general tendency, which exists to a pretty large degree in every place and group to be fair- but which I’ve noticed even more than usual on lemmy, to treat everything as if it exists on a moral binary. Like there’s only good things and bad things, and all bad things are equally bad things with no room for “X is bad and Y is worse than X, therefore X is better than Y despite both being bad”, and if something is opposed to a bad thing it must be good regardless of whatever else it involves, or conversely, if something apparently opposed to a bad thing is also worthy of criticism, then it must not truly be opposed and is only pretending because they’re both on the side of bad things. I’m sure there’s a word for this kind of thinking, but I’m too sleepy at the moment to recall or look into it.

“The 500 boots of MAGArtholomew Cubbins”

I suppose the rate at which nobel peace prize winners start wars is probably quite a bit higher the rate at which non-nobel-peace-prize-winners start wars, if only because that prize has been given to a few heads of state that have gone on to do that, while most people simply don’t realistically have the capacity to start one if they wanted to.

I thought that fire inheritly pushes things, and that all you needed to do to make a rocket, was to take a sizable flame, like a campfire or something, flip it upside down so that the flame pointed down instead of up somehow, and attach it to the bottom of something.

Maybe we’re reading things differently, but I thought their sign implied that fairly strongly, just that they wanted to tack “Trump is a criminal” onto that without drastically increasing the wording.