Right, but we mitigate that harm (good) by depriving people of their freedom (bad). It is necessary to do it, for the exact reasons you suggest - to reduce evil overall.

I’ve been meaning to read some stuff about how to approach criminal justice if we don’t have free will, but I keep reading other stuff instead. So many books, so little time!

I still think prisoners should be treated well, no matter the crime.

Yes, absolutely. Even for the worst of the worst, their should be rehab attempts, whether it’s anger management, getting them away from gangs - whatever it is they need. I think there are only small numbers of people, if there are any at all, who are really irremediably violent and dangerous, but even for them I’m not exactly happy about putting them away indefinitely.

Prison seems the obvious one. It’s obviously (to me, that is) not desirable to deprive anyone of their freedom, but for persistently violent people I don’t think there’s a better solution, unfortunately.

• Sport and art
• low cost and free places to do sport and art
• linked together by public transit and clean, safe places to walk, run or cycle (or scoot or skate or whatever)
• a shorter working week, so people have time to do the above
• a higher minimum wage, so people can afford the (ideally low, if necessary) costs involved

So, e.g., lots of parks with publicly accessible five-a-side football pitches, ping-pong tables, basketball courts, skateparks whatever - that’s your sport. The parks also have bandstands or outdoor theatres, where there’s space for that.

Public libraries with rooms people can hire (or use for free) for book clubs, sewing circles, art classes - that’s your art.

Good thing about the above is that all these ideas already exist in lots of forms, you just pick whatever works best for your current situation.

You don’t need an uncritical belief in the Labour Theory of Value to think that human labour has a special value and dignity to it. The people who want AI to replace many kinds of intellectual labour just don’t believe that there’s a value to human labour, and I do think this is fundamentally an antihuman, misanthropic way of looking at the world.

People are already painting his face on walls.

Quite enjoyed the Chibnall era. Okay, it wasn’t peak Who, but it doesn’t deserve all the hate!

Also, to counterbalance my positivity, I was never that keen on Matt Smith as the Doctor. Never quite landed for me, though granted he had a huge act to follow after Tennant.

Heh. Yeah, I can’t really hold up a country backsliding on trans rights as an example of an effective constitutional monarchy.

I think taking a broad view, there are quite a lot of constitutional monarchies that are really great places to live (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, New Zealand, Canada, the Bahamas, Japan, to name a few). There are also quite a lot of republics that can claim the same. So, from a sort of human development POV, I don’t think it really matters very much.

[EDIT: Should’ve added that there are also plenty of republics and monarchies that are disasters, too. My point is that there’s no consistent pattern of one works and the other doesn’t.]

Sure, monarchies are a bit daft but I think ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ is quite a good rule. Especially since spending time on fixing things that ain’t broke is time you could be spending on fixing things that are broke. I live in the UK and we have a lot of major problems that need our attention. It’s better to focus on those than have a big argument about the King when, as we can see from international comparisons, the King isn’t really the issue.

You’re lazy and talentless, and you like how it allows you to steal the hard work and talent of others.

Yes. It can only exist through stealing the creative work of others.

Also, it looks terrible.

Yes, very useful for subtle distinctions like this!

Yes, it’s metonymy, as people have said. You also get it in similar contexts where people will name a building such as ‘the White House’ or ‘[10] Downing Street’ to refer to the governments of the US or the UK.

Doesn’t matter as long as they’re exactly as knowledgable as I am or, failing that, slightly less so /s

Some sort of libertarian socialism, basically. Markets with co-ops and a strong welfare system provided principally by highly democratic local governments.

You may already have seen it, but I’ve found Lemmy Explorer to be much more useful for this kind of search than the native Lemmy search function.

I don’t speak it super well, but I can get by.

Totally understandable. I hate a particular type of architecture because of a job I had in a building of that style.

Temu. No idea what scam they’re running but I will never buy anything from them.

No, only lovers or enemies. Very much a binary.