• 6 Posts
  • 150 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

help-circle

  • Cuba (country right next to the US) aligned itself with the USSR after Castro’s revolution, and the US has attempted to coup them, invade them, murder their leaders, then sink them in isolation and starvation. I’ve always defended that Cuba had the right of self-determination for their own foreign and domestic policy, and that the US was in the wrong for retaliating against them.

    It would be extremely hypocritical of me to defend that Ukraine has no right to self-determine whether they want to be in a defensive pact or not, and whether they want to join the EU or not, just because a third country would like them not to do so - just as it’s extremely hypocritical of tankies and campists to say that Cuba had the right to choose their own future but Ukraine doesn’t.






  • Giftedness easily becomes a social disability if your environment isn’t good for it. The education system isn’t ready to handle you constantly being ahead of the class? Get ready to sleep in school as the best years to take advantage of it pass by. Your topics of interest are too complex for everyone else around? Have fun enjoying your friendships less than everyone else. You don’t mask your intelligence? Here, have 10 lottery tickets to get bullied, no, you can’t return them. Congratulations, you graduated from college. Do you have the money for a masters degree? Oops, guess you studied for nothing. Got into debt and got a masters, but the job market isn’t booming? Do you have rich parents, or rich friends? Aw shucks, guess you couldn’t network your way into the type of job you would have liked.

    Being intelligent helps, if you’re patient, hard-working, and have the means to look out for the less conventional options, but not so much as one would instinctively think.





  • If “God” is indistinguishable from the natural world, unable to be differentiated from it, to formulate or express thoughts or to influence existence in any way, it is a redundant idea, a zero to the left, and something so alienated from what the vast majority of people consider God is, that the meaning of the concept has already been twisted. It doesn’t deserve epistemological effort, because our understanding of the world wouldn’t change one bit: rather than it being a wilful intelligence, it would be a carcass over which we happen to live in, which the Universe already is. Even if you were to prove the existence of such a devoid concept, it would be equal to asserting “The Universe exists”.




  • Sounds like the BBC’s explanation on their use of language regarding Hamas is relevant here:

    John Simpson responded to the criticism in a post on X. “British politicians know perfectly well why the BBC avoids the word ‘terrorist’, and over the years plenty of them have privately agreed with it,” he wrote.

    "Calling someone a terrorist means you’re taking sides and ceasing to treat the situation with due impartiality.

    “The BBC’s job is to place the facts before its audience and let them decide what they think, honestly and without ranting.”

    He said: “It’s about making sure that all audiences trust the information that we’re giving them, that they don’t think the BBC is coming at this from one side of the conflict as opposed to the other, and that we steer a course though this in very difficult circumstances in which our journalism can continue to be factual, accurate, impartial and truthful.”

    The corporation’s editorial guidelines say the word “terrorist” can be “a barrier rather than an aid to understanding”.

    They say: "We should convey to our audience the full consequences of the act by describing what happened.

    "We should use words which specifically describe the perpetrator such as ‘bomber’, ‘attacker’, ‘gunman’, ‘kidnapper’, ‘insurgent’ and ‘militant’.

    “We should not adopt other people’s language as our own; our responsibility is to remain objective and report in ways that enable our audiences to make their own assessments about who is doing what to whom.”

    Hamas is a terrorist organization because they use violence against civilians with the goal of imposing their political will, this is, they commit acts of terrorism. Now, if you use this standard, the Israeli government also uses violence against civilians with the goal of imposing their political will, this is, they commit acts of terrorism, therefore the Israeli government is also a terrorist organization. Would David Cameron be okay with the BBC maintaining their neutrality and describing both sides as terrorists?



  • Turns out the dude reported OP’s wife because she rejected his sexual advances at a party. Honestly, it would be cool to be at the turning point of history where assholes like him are the ones who get put in jail, rather than women who happen to have weird artificial porn. Sounds like she has a decent shot.





  • Ok, serious answer. Reproduction taken out of the picture, the main issue with incest is relationship dynamics, and the idea that your blood family is a group of people who were fundamental pillars of the development of your personality and identity as you grew up (or you are to them), which means that a sexual or romantic development falling out could shake those pillars at best, or there could be an almost inherently abusive power imbalance at worst. You could find situations where a technically incestuous relationship wouldn’t be a terrible idea (for instance, step siblings related due to half of their parents getting divorced and marrying someone else, who have only met each other after their adult persona already has solid foundations), but it generally almost always is terrible.