Everything that matters in life is subjective. Everything depends on infinite unknowns and unknowables truly beyond human comprehension. All morality, right and wrong, all action and thought, is inherently whimsical. You don’t need any reason at all. Therefore God both does and doesn’t exist.
Academia Is Not Law, especially when it comes to subjective things involving marginalised groups. There can be and are massive systematic and institutional failures that mean many papers are misleading.
Most people broadly agree that the treatment of people with mental conditions, black people, lgbt people, etc was shocking and unacceptable even 50 years ago… And yet some people assume we’ve “fixed” that nowadays and everything is above board and perfectly fair and ethical.
prosecuting hateful speech is a very slippery slope. It effectively gives the government the authority to decide what speech is allowed, which can’t end well.
Circumcision is genital mutilation.
I’ve got two.
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The US has arrived at the stage where an entirely new constitution/model of government, probably down to the very borders of the states themselves in the 48, needs to be implemented, just to let off the pressure of just how large a scale the US operates on in every dimension compared to what the original 13 were looking at.
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The two state solution has been rendered untenable by Israel’s settler shit, the best way to protect the interests of Palestinians is to break down the border entirely and make them voting citizens with a say in the Knesset, and at this point I am convinced the only way that can be established is with an occupation force from outside both nations ready and willing to haul off anyone doing anything to threaten the coexistence and execute them. They won’t coexist in peace, so let them coexist under the sword of Damocles. If I had my way honestly, Jerusalem would have a nuke installed under the temple mount, with a switch set to destroy the city entirely if they’re going to insist on continuing to try and total victory wipe eachother out.
If they can’t have the land together, they’ll have the ashes together.
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“I understand why terrorists attack the West.”
Having been in a long-time resident of a region of brown people that the West sees as subhuman, I don’t condone terrorist actions, but I sure do understand why some of them do it. Some people just see an action, read or hear the words, without context and judge a person based on that, but they forget that humans are the sum of their experiences.
Just like a small-town bumpkin in Australia might hate brown people for how they brought up, a refugee hating the West might’ve lived in constant fear of being bombed by a drone, seen the consequences thereof, and been pointed at a generic Westerner as the source of evil.People that I’ve talked to who have lived outside of Western countries understand what I mean, but many Westerners think I’m saying terrorism is justifiable or even good.
Often terrorism is “poking the bear”, some groups do it so that the “bear” totally messes up a country, so that the group can then gain power
Horse riders should have to clean up after their horses on trails.
I’m a big believer in leave no trace in the outdoors. To the best of your ability, everything should be as you found it when you leave the woods.
Wild horses have been extinct in north America for many thousands of years, in my local area as far as fossil and archeological records can show any native horses that might have existed here were long gone before the first native Americans set foot here. They are not a part of the ecosystem.
I don’t care if it’s biodegradable, I wouldn’t leave apple cores and banana peels behind either.
The environment in my local parks isn’t so delicate that a few entitled rich assholes leaving behind horse shit probably isn’t going to make a significant impact, but there are other places where it absolutely could, throwing off the chemical composition of the soil, contaminating ground water, causing algal blooms, introducing non-native parasites, bacteria, and pathogens, etc. and you should be following best practices across the board. Treat every inch of the outdoors as if it were potentially vulnerable and don’t try to bend the rules just because you think you can get away with it.
And it’s just an eyesore and detracts from the natural beauty.
The horse people fire back about how they can’t carry a shovel with them, or how they may not be able to safely get on or off the horse. This is the shit horses were bred for- to carry people and stuff, I can find you an avalanche shovel and a small folding step stools that will break down plenty small and light enough to fit in a backpack or lash to the saddle with some rope to pull the stool up after you get on, and it’s all gonna weigh a lot less than the armor, and rifles, bedrooms, etc. that people used to ride horses with for a lot longer and harder than the couple house you’re spending plodding along the trail. If you can afford to go horseback riding you can afford the hundred bucks or so for a shovel and a step stool. If that’s not enough for you to get on and off your horse safely on the trail, maybe you should take that as a sign that you shouldn’t be riding a horse there, stick to a dude ranch where some big strong cowboy will help you get on and off of the horsey.
I mean aren’t oil leaking and gas spewing motorbikes and four-wheelers just as bad for the environment? On top of the sound pollution. But yeah the horse people could have a buggy pulling the shovel for sure.
They absolutely are, and if there were any ATV trails in my area I’d feel just ash strongly about that. As it is though, a lot of these trails aren’t even open to pedaled mountain bikes (partially because they spook some of the horses) and with the ones that are, there’s some significant debate on whether e bikes should be allowed.
Another thought that crossed my mind, since most of these people don’t live with their horses within horseback -riding distance of most of these trails, so these people usually have to go hitch up a horse trailer to a gas guzzler of a pickup truck and drive sometimes a pretty considerable distance to take their horses out. Often the parking areas at the trail heads aren’t particularly well suited to accommodating a truck and horse trailer, and they end up being kind of a parking nuisance on top of that.
Agreed. I don’t care how big the shit is. If dog owners have to pick up their dog shit, horse owners should have to pick up their horse shit.
And the horse people will try to retort that dog poop takes longer to break down, smells worse, and is more likely to spread disease
Which is true, still doesn’t justify not cleaning up after your horse. Just because the horse manure is “less bad” doesn’t make it ok.
I mean forget trails, there’s horse shit all over my city centre every time there’s a football match :(
In physics lab we had 2 linear polarizers and by varying their relative angle, could polarize or block all light.
I also used a circular polarizer, but that didn’t feel as polarizing to me.
Burn the witch!
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An economy that relies on basic human needs being treated as an investment is a failed economy. (Housing)
I agree, but maybe houses can still be paid, but if you cant afford it theres also (smaller) free housing.
I would say the most polarizing thing I’ve ever said at least in an online community is that there should be spaces specifically for men to congregate where they can talk about their issues among like-minded men.
This was in response to me discovering that of the eight gyms within a 10 mile radius of my home, three of them are all gender gyms and five of them are women’s only gyms.
Of the associations in my area, places where people of like-minded orientation congregate, 4 of them are all gender, 12 of them are female only.
There are no male only semi-private spaces that I can find within a 25 mile radius of my home and I live in a city of over 500,000 people.
Of the multitude of homeless housing, homelessness support, soup kitchen, and other resources for the incredibly poor and disaffected, roughly half of them are explicitly female only, and all of the remainder are all gender with a preference for supporting women.
To me this is especially terrifying because of the homeless population that I have encountered only a vanishingly small fraction of them are women. The great majority by and far of the maybe 40 or 60 homeless people I have seen in the last year have been male.
If it is okay for women to have women only spaces why is it not okay for men to have men only spaces?
If it is okay for women to receive women only support, why is it not okay for men to receive men only support?
I overall agree that for some things it can make sense to have separate gendered spaces, shelters make sense, I can see gyms, etc. places where people are feeling particularly vulnerable, self conscious, dealing with trauma, etc. and being around the opposite gender could be a part of that.
But in other cases, I think the right move is to get over ourselves and be rid of pointless gendering in some activities.
A lot of my friends and myself are traditionally “manly” in a lot of ways, outdoorsy, cigar smokers, whiskey drinkers, a lot of us work with our hands, like guns, etc. That said, we’re a pretty enlightened group, we’re not out shit-talking our wives and engaging in demeaning “locker room” talk and such when we get together to have what could be loosely called our “boys nights out.” It’s happened from time to time that a female friend ends up tagging along and absolutely nothing changes about our behavior, the fact that there is a woman in the room in no way takes away from the experience, and if anything adds to it in a “the more the merrier” sort of way. Any woman who is willing to put up with the cigar smoke, fart jokes, peeing on trees in the woods, etc. is more than welcome to come along, it just happens that most don’t enjoy that.
Now of course you also run into a whole lot of complicated situations, the way men tend to interact with other men, and the way women interact with other women are different. I’m not going to go into all of the nature vs nurture, societal expectations, toxic masculinity, etc. involved but all of that certainly plays a big part. I’m no sociologist, but my overall impression (and I may be wrong)is that women can kind of mesh into the male social structure without making too many waves provided that the men aren’t assholes (which is far from guaranteed,) but it’s very hard for a lot of men to get themselves into the right kind of headspace to participate in the sort of socializing women want and need from their social groups without disrupting things to the point that the women aren’t able to get what they need out of it.
And circling around to shelters, men may need more shelters by sheer numbers, but on average each individual homeless woman is probably in a more vulnerable position than the average homeless man. Really more shelter space is needed across the board.
I going about the shelter thing, a few years ago they did a study and there was not a single shelter for men in the country.
And I get it, it’s important to take care of women, sure, but when somebody tried to start a support shelter for men there was a massive public outcry about it.
And even if you had the time and inclination to for instance start a men’s only gym, why would you risk all of that time and effort on the odd chance that you would offend a person who has a following and knows how to raise a Battle cry and next thing you know you’ve got a hundred angry protesters outside of your gym even though there are five female only gyms within walking distance because you have a men’s only gym.
It’s much easier to create a space that’s just slightly uninviting for the average woman and then let the chips fall where they may.
It’s easier to pass the buck and say somebody else will take care of the guys. We don’t need to build men’s only shelters. Guys are more resilient than women. Guys aren’t as at risk as women are. Guys are shitty people in general and life gives them so many breaks, they don’t need any additional support while there are still women who have needs.
Let’s not start a men’s only club because all it takes is one woman getting upset and suing us for discrimination and next thing we know we are out $250,000 in lawyer fees all because we wanted to have a boys space.
Let’s just let all of the men suffer in silence forever and ever. They’ll be okay they’ll just rub some dirt in it and move on.
I’m a little salty. But I can cope. But I still feel emboldened to express that I dislike the inequality and I wish things were a little better.
Agreed. The need for all kinds of mens-groups is probably higher than it has ever been. I’d love something where I could join a group of men and build / fix something together.
Free will, the sense, that you could have done otherwise, is an illusion.
We make choices based on either what we have to do, or what we want to do. There’s no freedom in having to do something, but you’re also not free to choose your wants. If you felt like having tea this morning instead of coffee, then having tea is the only thing you could have done. You wanted tea, not coffee. Now, if we rewind the clock back in time to the moment before you decided, you’d pick tea again, and again, and again. Everything else being the same, your desire for tea will override the desire for coffee every time. And you didn’t choose that desire.
I personally go a step further.
Everything in the universe is following the laws of physics. We don’t know all of the laws, and we’re limited in what we’re actually able to perceive and measure, so some of it seems like random chance. But at the end of the day, everything is playing out according to those laws.
Your thoughts, feelings, etc. are all just physical and chemical reactions happening in your brain, no different than iron rusting, water evaporating, unstable atoms decaying, etc. you don’t get any more say in what you think, feel, say, or do than you do over whether vinegar and baking soda are going to react with each other.
The only thing special about us is that we’re aware that things are happening, even if we can’t fully perceive the causes. We don’t really get any say in what the meat does, even if it something feels like we do, we’re just along for the ride, but the fact that we’re aware it’s happening is pretty cool. There’s a quote, I forget by who and the exact wording, that we are “the universe experiencing itself” and I think that’s all we’re doing, experiencing. We don’t genuinely have any agency, not even about what we think about the experience, because thinking is a part of what we’re experiencing.
If somehow you knew the exact state of every elementary particle that existed the moment the big bang happened, and had a complete rulebook of all of the unknown laws of physics we have yet to discover, you could theoretically trace out the paths those particles would take from there, what other particles they would eventually collide and interact with, how those interactions would play out as they come together to form nebulas, stars, planets, and eventually yourself and everything else around you, and you could keep going tracing out the paths of those particles into the future and see what becomes of everything in the universe and how it all ends (if in fact it does eventually come to an end)
I could be wrong, and if it ever turns out we do have an actual say in what we think, feel, and do, that would be even more amazing. If not though, I’m satisfied to just be along for the ride to see where I end up and what I can experience along the way.
It’s rare that I agree with every single point in a long post like that, but here we are. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Consciousness truly is the thing there that matters the most. The fact that it feels like something to be. Sam Harris says that consciousness is the only thing in the entire universe that cannot be an illusion. Even if we’re in a simulation and everything you’ve ever experienced has been fake, the sense of experience itself is still real.
Two space indent is better than tab indent.
This is the one i dislike the most in this thread, you monster!
Uh… If you insist, then four space indent. There is no “two space” indent.
But just use tab. Ugh… Monsters…
Jesus
Deganawida!
It hasn’t gone well the times that I’ve said that it is better to not feed stray pets if you are not going to take further care of them. In the sense that helping the chances of more uncontrolled offspring just means more suffering in the end.
You can do both. Getting stray pets, especially cats, spayed and neutered and returned to where they were found is very much a thing.
It’s such a painful choice. I can’t take in more pets, but I can’t stand to see one suffering.
The last true stray I adopted ended up giving me a litter of kittens before I could get her fixed, then ran away. Ever since all my pets (cats) have been from shelters.
To be fair I still feed opossums regardless.
Became an atheist and quit going to church. After decades of being very involved in church. My experience wasn’t nearly as difficult or traumatic as it is for many who go through this. But it still sucked. I pissed off some friends and family members. And some folks I really liked froze me out, which is not fun. Atheist friends were supportive, which was a big help.
Purchased a soft drink from a fast food restaurant. I have a few friends that, in their minds, it is never justified to buy a drink from a fast food place if you’re doing takeout because “you have drinks at home, they charge $3 for something that costs them $0.11 to make, etc.”
It’s become somewhat of a debate amongst our group of friends: I argue they have flavors I may not have at home, it can be a treat, and it helps keep restaurants in business since drinks are where they make their money. I’m told it doesn’t matter, the upcharge is too much to justify.
I’ve boiled my view on it to “There is a fine line between frugal and cheap.” But never thought the purchase of a soft drink would be so polarizing amongst people in my life, hahaha.
There’s also an ongoing moratorium on the board game Life simply because we cannot agree if it’s legal for one player to take out all of the bank’s loans on their first turn. It’s not explicitly stated in the rules you can’t, but many of us feel it defeats the spirit of the game.
Heh, well I can make it worse, prepare to be judged!
Soda is for suckers. It’s just extremely overpriced sugar water and it’s basically a direct route to diabetes town. Also enjoy all the extra dental work you’ll require.
Weirdly, I’m not against alcohol. While drinking a lot isn’t a great idea either, I do understand the appeal of alcohol. I still try not to buy it in bars or restaurants though, the 5x mark up has always felt unreasonable.
