Yeah, what a liar. There’s no cake!

This was a big argument for diversity requirements in universities in the first place (aside from trying to undo historical wrongs) : in brain work especially, having a diverse group of very different cultural experiences can provide valuable insights and ways of thinking and approaching problems that a more mono cultural institution might miss. In my experience this is true. There really is value in ensuring your human brain inputs aren’t all the same leading to the same brain work outputs.

Zen, though I think that’s basically Firefox under the hood.

I’ve wondered if it’s just straight up the latter. Entities like the CIA or FBI going rogue against elected government isn’t exactly unheard of…

Depends on the definition used. It can be used to mean both the legal terminology, or can simply be the concept of premeditated killing of a person. I would still say a slave plotting to kill his master is definitely committing murder, even if it’s justifiable.

Regardless, in that case the comment I’m responding to is just a straight up tautology (the killing of the CEO was bad because it was a murder [unjustified killing]; this doesn’t actually argue whether there’s no justification, just defines it that way in the premise), and I’m giving the more generous reading here with room to disagree.

Gee, could it be that murder is bad?

Always? In every case? I don’t think most people believe this. I think we have different opinions on what constitutes justified murder, but I think most of us have a line.

Which is fine, but flippantly brushing it off with this rings very hollow to me. Especially since you go on to make it sound like if it did somehow fix everything, it would be justifiable.

but surely you can’t believe this act contributes in any positive way to reform of the health care system?

Why not? We can argue about the morality of terrorism, but it has definitely effected change internationally in many different political situations and cultures. Almost never is it any one act as being effective though.

I’m actually not so sure here. Is this going to be the thing that instigates reform? Probably not. Did it galvanize more people and help many realize that even many of their political opponents agree that care is in an intolerable state? I don’t know, I kind of think it did, and I think that pretty likely does positively impact the movement.

Not sure what the last non sequitur is about. We all know insurance exists internationally, but the situations aren’t at all comparable to the US.

I misread this as horse belting and thought this was a Newcastle joke.

People have a legal location of residence in the US.

In California, if you’re homeless, you typically have to set your mail up as “general delivery” to your nearest post office where you go to collect mail every few days. You probably don’t have any other address.

Not sure how this interfaces with this specific law otherwise, but using a post office isn’t a bad idea generally because it isn’t a totally unexpected thing. A homeless person would probably list that as an address.

There’s also a lot of mail services that will give you an address in that state and will open/scan received mail for you… not sure if California specifically has one, though. But yeah, this doesn’t establish legal residency at all, but many entities don’t look too closely either… might be worth a shot.

My bet on why people don’t identify with that anymore is shifting social expectations and economy leading to having kids way later than in their day.

Which… I love my kids, wouldn’t trade 'em for anything. But they can definitely make you feel old both by just watching them age and the extra responsibility reducing the freedom/spontaneity you might have had more of earlier in your youth. If you had kids in your early 20s, this starts earlier. If you don’t start until your 30s, you’re probably already starting to settle a bit anyway just from being more established in a career and such.

I’d also be curious to know rates of messing around with harder drugs and drinking and such. My sense is those have gone down, and that kind of thing can be hard on your body.

Just spit balling here.

I’ll literally change banks over that kind of thing now.

@[email protected] these are both very good points, QFT.

I really am tired of people pretending like this kind of thing is purely an American problem and that Europe has no issues with authoritarianism. coughHungarycough (might be coming to an end, (maybe not, we’ll see) but living in 16 years of it… some stuff here would make Republicans blush). Incidents in the UK with pro Palestinian movements are similarly discouraging…

I did not use insults. I said your behavior is pedantic, misplaced, and obnoxious, which it is, and that you were being dishonest by pretending the communist world did not refer to themselves as communist (even though they were actually socialist), which you were and are continuing to do so while projecting your bad faith onto me. I’ve not made any criticisms beyond that narrow point, and it’s the one you refuse to engage with, I can only assume because you know it’s wrong. Maybe you should care a little more about how actual communist states referred to themselves before claiming using “communist” in lieu of “socialist” was western propaganda?

That being said, one thing I do agree with is it’s time for me to fuck off (you can say it) if you’re becoming this upset over so little. I’ll do you one better and block you and suggest you make better use of the feature yourself if you get this emotional so easily. Have a good one.

Addressing the point or not isn’t what’s obnoxious; pretending not to understand what is meant by a common, widely accepted usage of a word to shift a discussion towards semantics is. It’s similar to people correcting common use of “theory” to “hypothesis”; these also have distinct meanings, but the common use of “theory” doesn’t really get in the way of discussion… providing people don’t feign not knowing what’s meant when the person has made which they’re using clear. It’s the same here: you knew very well he’s not referring to a stateless, classless society, but rather the communist states of the world.

Again, using “communism” in this way is not purely a polemic and it’s dishonest to characterize it as such. Even here behind the old iron curtain, “communism” as shorthand for “aspirational communism under a vanguard socialist state” is and was extremely common use of the word. Members of the communist parties would refer to themselves and their states as communist all the time. It isn’t “adhering to US propaganda”… all sides used this. It’s really only young, contemporary communists causing a stink over this, honestly.

That I do agree with you on. For Trump criticisms and attacks… well, there’s plenty of meat on that bone that we don’t need to go gnawing for scraps, as it were.

Communism is a stateless society, where the economic basis of class differences has been overcome.

True in an academic sense, but his clarification makes it pretty obvious he’s referring to the Marxism-Leninism of the USSR since he referenced that directly. Using “communism” as a shorthand for that has been common in both western and eastern media and news since the Cold War. I live in a former satellite state of the USSR, and adherents here would use the same language, it’s not just an outside polemic.

Not really looking to debate the merits of it, but I think pretending not to understand what someone means when they use a very wide and commonly accepted usage of a word and instead pedantically clinging to only an academic definition rather than addressing the actual point is a little obnoxious.

More to the point though, what you call an obvious conclusion is nothing more than speculation fueled by hatred.

Mostly with you, but this, I think, is overplaying your point and just isn’t true. This makes it sound like something just made up because you don’t like someone, like Obama not being an American citizen or something. There is certainly circumstantial evidence that Trump has indeed had sex with minors. His role and behavior in underage beauty pageants, frequent trips to the island we know these things happened on, etc.

Not enough to convict someone, yes, but enough that even someone with no opinion at all of Trump (impossible, but hypothetically), if told of this circumstantial evidence, probably wouldn’t trust their daughter to be alone with him.

I think the point that there’s enough to tar him with that’s completely proven and on the record there’s no need to venture into such circumstantial accusations is well taken, but let’s also not pretend those accusations are baseless and purely from hatred. There’s a lot of circumstantial evidence that would lead even a pretty impartial observer to at least consider it.

Lower earners do get pretty good care in states like California with MediCal. The problem is a) it isn’t federal, so some states they don’t invest get worse care and b) you can fall onto a band of making too much for public health care and too little for real insurance.

Nothing I’ve written should be taken as an endorsement. Medicare should be extended to all. With no means testing.

Eh, that’s overstating it. It still is a stupidly rich country and professional working Americans tend to make more money than their European counterparts, even considering healthcare.

But yes, tying healthcare to employment comes with all sorts of problems and lets too many people not “poor enough” for Medicare to slip through the cracks. In my experience with a state Medicare system that gets good funding, the public system actually holds up quite well when looking at many of the European systems, at least here in central Europe where I live now… simply extending that to everyone would basically fix the problem. I’ve had good dental work, a fantastic pre natal and birth experience along with mending broken bones and such under a public system with no cost to me and honestly my experience was great.

There are also plants specifically adapted for wildfires. Sequoias (and I think redwoods) need them to open their cones and they can’t propagate in their own leaf litter, they need to be cleared by fire.