Seriously, one of the few remaining platforms they seem to rally around is delegitimizing trans people, fearmongering against drag queens, and censoring any books that acknowledge gay people exist. The Log Cabin Republicans have big Jews for Hitler energy.
I wish people would stop going on about Brexit. It was what the people wanted. Literally every single brown “”“person”“” has left the country and we don’t have any EU overlords shoving their rules down our throats. Every other aspect of our life bring worse and facing food shortages is a small price to pay
“what the people wanted”? I’m going to assume you dropped the /s tag since the morning AFTER the vote the biggest Google searches in the UK were “What is the EU?” and “What is Brexit?”
There are people who actually believe what you had posted, so without additional cues that it’s intended as sarcasm (like starting with Hur Dur or ending with /s), it’s anyone’s guess what you actually meant. In person sarcasm works better because we can easily add physical cues, but on the internet it’s best made very obvious imo.
There are people who actually believe what you had posted
No they don’t. No racist person would ever say that “literally every single brown ““person”” has left the country”. If you’re not neutron star level dense, it’s pretty obviously sarcasm.
A recurring theme with hard brexiteers was that making “short term” sacrifices was worth it for “reclaiming sovereignty”, which would magically lead to more prosperity in the “long term”. To some, (others) being worse off than before, is a price they’d gladly (let others) pay if it would allow “their team” to score a victory.
In the Usa there’s people cheering for Russia, for the downfall of USA democracy and for Trump to be king. These are such extreme standpoints that it’s hard to believe that they would be serious, but when you see them on camera, then it’s obvious that they are true believers and that they’re not being sarcastic. If those people are real, then I can easily imagine some spiteful british person saying unironically that being worse off now, is a sacrifice that they’re willing to make for “reclaiming sovereignty”. Especially if it’s online and they actually live and work in Sint-Petersburg.
In a world where The Onion cannot make up news that is crazier than the actual news, irony is always going to have hard time.
At least then you can take the money out of the cartels and despotic regimes. You can then use the tax money raised to offset the harm these drugs absolutely do through social policies and rehabilitation programs that actually work
Also helps ensure the drugs are clean. The US marijuana legalization process has absolutely not been perfect but the regime of testing for pesticides and mold is very effective.
If cocaine were legal and regulated you wouldn't be hearing all these stories of people dying of fentanyl overdoses from doing shitty cut coke.
It does make me wonder where they swiss government will acquire their coke. With weed, it’s fairly easy to grow it wherever you need to, but with coke, you pretty much have to be in certain regions, yeah?
If that’s the case, is this still going to be supporting those same cartels? If more countries legalized, we could maybe hope to see legally grown, harvested, and processed coke without all the slave labor and shit. Could be a real boon for South American countries, too, if the cartels lost power, and the cocoa plantations could be nationalized.
I just woke up, so I may be just talking out my ass, though
I'm honestly totally ignorant to whether they can be grown indoors at scale outside of their normal growing region, but that's a good point to bring up.
If you go to Peru, you can buy coca leaf tea, grown by legitimate companies, sold entirely legally. It’s amazing for adjusting to high altitudes, if you ever go to the Andes, I highly recommend you drink the tea.
There’s huge illegal growing operations, but there’s legal ones. It’s not that hard to grow - I think it likes high altitudes and moisture, but although it’s not as easy to grow as “weed”, I’m pretty sure it’s easier than coffee
Yeah, drinking a large amount of liquid is what I’d call “leg work”. You can’t just do a bump or smoke something, you have to pace your tea intake… Much harder to overdose or go on a bender
That's only true if you believe the lies that the "war on drugs" was actually about drugs. It never has been, it was always about having an excuse to incarcerate and beat down groups they didn't like; minorities, the poor, and the left.
When you look at it that way, it's obvious that the war on drugs is actually a really successful means to an end. Just try not to have a heart and think of the countless lives they ruined to keep a boot on peoples' neck.
No, we keep it illegal and go the Ollie North strategy. Invent a more addictive form of cocaine (crack), and sell it to minorities to fund secret wars for oil in South America.
As someone who owns my own home, let me just say…me too. I don’t care if my house value goes to zero. I still have a house. I don’t know how anyone in the middle class can get into house ownership without crippling debt.
The only ones who should cry are the home-hoarding investors and landlords. Fuck em.
Double ditto. My mortgage is less than rent anyway, and my costs will go down if valuation does (lower taxes). I don’t even like where I live right now (I bought what I could afford and got in with a low interest rate, but it’s a poorer neighborhood) but I’d be so happy to see my friends who’ve been struggling manage to have something for themselves.
you do not like where you live right now and still own a house in that neighborhood?
This is actually something I’ve discussed with my wife and we came to the conclusion that we only buy/build a house if we find the right one or the right spot. For me it just wouldn’t work to own a house just for the sake of it because a house has to last and since we live in an awesome flat in the center of Bonn there is no need to rush for us, except a baby but then we just would find a bigger flat for us.
Same. I was apparently got lucky and picked up my place in 2017 before everything went crazy. Even though my home value has doubled, it doesn’t really help if every other house out there has doubled in price too and finding a home is harder than ever.
Except now you need even worse debt to buy a house. Two years ago interest rates were around 1%, now it’s over 4%. So the house is 10% cheaper, the interest more than tripled.
Some user at a .ml community the other day was mocking the idea that Russia was trying to destabilize Europe, comparing someone else’s depiction of Russia as if it was an EU4 country. This is another piece of evidence that Russia has been financing far right politicians, parties and think tanks in several countries, including Germany, France, Italy and Spain.
Despite being on .ml, there’s a real issue with Tankies here. They hate the USA which…like fair enough, not exactly a paragon of virtue them. But then they go waaaay the other way and think China and Russia are utopian meritocracies, it’s fucking bizarre.
There’s a very common mental trapping in humans where, once you’ve identified a serious problem or antagonist, you immediately become more sympathetic to its opposites or declared rivals. A lot of them had a genuine, valid concern with a capitalist society that was screwing them over, turned that into an identity, and ended up in echo chambers where that fallacy wouldn’t be called out. It’s difficult to get them out of there because they feel like they have to defend their identity and their social group, so in the rare cases where they meet someone who does understand and share their valid anti-capitalist positions but is capable of reasonably calling out their campist bullshit, they immediately jump to think it’s just “another lib” and refuse to engage.
That tracks. Though I’d say it’s often less “refuse to engage” and more “refuse to engage in good faith”. They definitely engage enough to yell things with fingers in their ears.
There’s a very common mental trapping in humans where, once you’ve identified a serious problem or antagonist, you immediately become more sympathetic to its opposites or declared rivals.
Which is why I’m very proud of the World News community not to let the justifiable Israel hate go overboard into Hamas support. Most, if not all, of us appear to be smarter than that and know that the Palestinian people are who need to be supported.
Think about this for a second. Hamas has an interest in accurate internal head counts for e.g. tax purposes - they were the de-facto government of the strip, after all. Their public statements cannot be trusted.
So they wouldn’t want to know what their head count is now? Or they’re just lying about it now but weren’t lying about it then? You’re not really making much sense.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are not just deliberately doing the old "just asking questions" thing and are legitimately having difficulties with understanding relatively simple concepts.
There is a difference between their internal numbers and their outside communication. It's quite easy to keep an accurate head count during peace time and they did that, for taxing purposes alone - and to maintain the level of control that they wanted as the rulers of an oppressive police state. Just in case you didn't know what kind of place Gaza was before the war.
However, they actually have no idea right now, because it's war, it's chaotic, with shifting front lines, people being displaced, caught under the rubble, disfigured bodies with no identifying marks, families getting torn apart and not knowing what happened to their loved ones, etc.
You know, the same chaos as in every other war. You can't keep accurate records under these conditions, especially considering that everything even remotely resembling an official Hamas government office has been bombed to smithereens or overrun by ground troops - but Hamas pretends that they do, with precise casualty figures published incredibly frequently. That's not how this works. Israel needed months for an accurate count of their deaths from just October 7th, despite the fact that the fighting within Israel lasted only for a day or two. Ukraine has huge "unknowns" about their population in occupied areas and where there has been or is fighting.
Yet Hamas of all people somehow are omniscient record keepers - and barely anyone is willing to question it. We then get a game of telephone of increasingly reputable parties repeating Hamas numbers to one another, until people can naively say that "the BBC" or "the UN" is reporting something, oblivious to the actual source of the information. It's as if nobody learned how to properly trace sources at school or university.
Conflating the Gaza Ministry of Health with Hamas is a very common propaganda tactic. The truth is that they operate under the de-facto government of Gaza, which is Hamas, but they don’t work for them as in pushing their agenda. Your statement of the numbers being “provided by Hamas” is entirely false tho.
Yeah, the Hamas support is weird. Hamas isn’t a popular front or anything, they’re also fucking over the Palestinian people. They took power and stopped holding elections many years ago.
The people I want to succeed are the Israeli and Palestinian people seeking to build a positive peace and a constructive cohabitation. That’s the anti Zionism I was sold on. And yes the first step is for Israel to stop massacring civilians.
Turns out Russia sucks pretty bad at real war but they’ve been excelling at these shadow ops for quite some time. The fact that they’ve bought so many plants in the US government is a sign of the success they’ve had.
He is their dictator. When people say the name of a country they generally refer to their government. For example: Iran is violently misogynistic. The Iranian women who riot against the government’s misogyny are not, I’ve met multiple militantly feminist Iranians in fact. But people understand what I mean when I say that Iran is misogynistic.
I think it’s easy to read between lines that I mean the Russian government, currently led by Putin, rather than personally accusing all Russians of being assholes.
And Hitler was not Nazi Germany?
Believe it or not, but Putin is not the sole doer of all of Russia. There are a lot of people directly and indirectly involved in all of this shit and even more so are complicit by inaction. Many Germans knew what the Nazis did to the Jews and "traitors", but they still kept their mouth shut, ratted out their friends and neighbors, or had positions directly involved with the Nazis, so that they themselves could continue living a comfy life while others suffered and died by their own country.
No, Putin is not Russia. But Russia still has a collective responsibility, and with that guilt, painting all of their hands in blood. And this type of debt will not be forgotten until a certain price has been paid.
It basically “was” proven through exposes through Cambridge Analytica, Arron Banks, and their ties to Russian benefactors. There are also strong ties of Russian influence to notable political influencers like Nigel Farage, alongside those that provided funds to the Conservative party.
I don’t think it’s really possible to get more proof outside of Vladimir Putin literally stating on the record that he was involved.
They had a serious investigation going, but that was during Boris Johnson’s time as prime minister (BoJo = the Trump-impersonator with the silly hair), so it was pretty handicapped and when the investigation stopped, well:
Johnson’s government refused to release the report to the public before the general election in December 2019.
By June 2020, the report had still not been released, and the Intelligence and Security Committee had not been convened, the longest gap since the committee’s creation in 1994.
People. Cocaine is not maryjanes. You can get addicted badly to cocaine. There’s tons of neurological effects that will cause you to not function proplerly in society. By all means smoke your ganja but don’t equate hard drugs with it.
Lots of highly addicting stuff is legal, I don’t care if people do cocaine. Make it legal and safely accessible so drug addicts can participate in society and not have to fund cartels
Yes, light and legal drugs are not okay as well. They too may cause severe health (including mental health) issues, as well as addiction.
THC, alcohol, nicotine and even caffeine cause significant and measurable harm, and you’ll be much better off by restricting them long-term, unless you have medical indications to consume them.
If you need any of them to relax or to have a good party or to stay productive, remember it is NOT sustainable and actively harmful and something has to be done about the way you organize your life. You can’t go on like this forever, it will get you eventually
Yeah it’s always the same thing. “Guys, you can smoke cigarettes, but weed will fry your brains and leave you completely useless to society. Legalizing would be a disaster”.
Idk, it seems like a pretty big jump in addiction potential. I don’t hear of too many people going into sex work to support their alcohol and cannabis habits.
I do support at least decriminalization of all drugs though. As long as it coincides with adequate education, harm reduction, and therapy resources.
I have a completely different problem with cocaine. Namely that it is extremely exploitive to the people who grow the coca. It takes about two acres of coca plants to produce just one kilo of cocaine. Obviously, that means the people who farm it are paid virtually nothing and live on starvation wages. If it’s really cheap in Switzerland, that makes it worse.
On top of that, coca plantations are responsible for huge amounts of deforestation in an area of the world that should not be deforested.
However- hundreds of thousands of people are working in coca plantations and own small coca farms and if this all ended, they wouldn’t even have the meagre wages they make from coca farming. So I don’t know what the solution here is.
Nobody is saying that people should start taking cocaine. Just that you shouldn’t get your life ruined by having it / using it.
Also, knowing that what your getting isn’t mixed with mdma, amphetamines, ketamine and being able to properly monitor your dosage instead of guesstimating the purity and doing brain arithmetic is very helpful.
There’s a major difference in having the person who sells it to you wanting you to quit vs wanting you to consume more.
What consenting adults do with their body is their own business.
Bodily autonomy is an all or nothing thing. Whether you’re talking about abortion, gender affirming surgery, taking a dick in the ass and in the mouth at the same time, or shooting meth into your dick. It’s all the same thing.
I don’t necessarily disagree, but this brings up the next round of tough questions:
If your bodily autonomy is absolute, fine, but what happens when your choices and their impact start to spill beyond your own personal life?
If you want to go wild with hard drugs, okay fine, whatever. But when you need medical attention because of that decision, should insurance providers or the state be obligated to spend in order to treat you?
When your addiction costs you your job and support network, should the collective taxpayer have to subsidize your poor life choices?
I don’t mind the notion that individuals should have final say over what happens to their bodies, but that sort of assumption of responsibility, at some point, cuts both ways…and the flip side of some of these decisions would suggest that the individual should bear all consequences of their decisions…which seems unlikely in practice. We’re not going to see an addict rushed to an ER and the hospital toss them out into the street saying, “This was your decision! Sorry!”
And the mitigation measures seem equally unlikely to fly with the “strict bodily autonomy” crowd: increased insurance premiums or exception clauses in policies in order to keep expenses reined in for the rest of the policy holders/taxpayers who aren’t using their strict autonomy in a way that adversely affects others.
While it’s fine to conceptually discuss these decisions in a vacuum where it only affects the individual, in real life application, these decisions have impacts outside the individual in almost every case, which fundamentally shift the discussion.
I struggle with this line of thinking because there are so many legal things people can do to increase their probability of being a burden in the national healthcare system. Alcohol, junk food, working too much, gambling too maybe. I can’t wrap my head around a system that would be “fair” and not fall into a black mirror episode dystopian “good citizen” points system. I’d rather just pay more than my fair share, knowingly subsidise people who make bad choices, and not live in the dystopian society.
Theres a separate argument about the drugs increasing crime probability that I also don’t buy entirely. Those crimes are crimes already, so making these other “precrimes” also crimes seems a bit weird - not to mention wildly ineffective at reducing harm or use of the substances in question. I’m sure we can identify books and films that increase future criminal probability too.
Bodily autonomy does hold some water for me as an argument, but for me it’s more about finding a way to minimise societal harm while maximally hurting the businesses profiting from these dark economies we have created through prohibition. But this brings up another round of tough questions: do we do this for all substances? Forever? Is this really the path of least societal harm? (I honestly don’t know)
There are plenty of “hard drugs” you can do with very little damage to your body. Cocaine is not one of them. In fact, it’s one of the worst things you can do for your heart.
Sure, you want to go to bed but can you really sleep? The first few times I couldn’t sleep at all and had to usually wait until the following evening. I am used to it now, so sleep isn’t a huge issue like it once was.
Well things are about to get a whole lot worse. That raised fist is going to be printed on all the right-wing crazy stuff and they will use this to justify violence against anyone opposing Trump.
Isn’t it illegal to transport a child to commit a crime? Human trafficking? Kidnapping? What a can of worms. I feel like there’s too much money in fertility treatments for SCOTUS to let this stand.
If you’ve been hurt in a bemder accident you deserve compensation. Contact James Jameson and Co. We will stand up -for you- when you fall down. Call 1800thisisamemefuxyou
This is revisionist, that sequence of events was what caused him to start to play footsie with the idea of buying Twitter, the SEC saying that’s a big no-no is what made him actually make the offer to buy it and then he was forced by a court to finish the deal after a long legal battle to not buy it
Don’t forget the part where Dorsey literally conned him by playing to his ego. Jack cashed out almost a billion in cash to himself even though Twitter was close to bankruptcy. It was brilliant.
What cracks me up the most is that Jack already had a Twitter clone in the works, ready to be released once Musk burns down the old plattform and people wish for Twitter but without Musk back.
Genuine question: given that running a platform like that costs money, and that money must come from somewhere, what would you actually do if you were in charge of running it? You either take money from advertisers, or you charge users directly, and I'd hazard to guess that if you'd nuke your account upon seeing ads, you probably wouldn't pay actual money to use it.
Not the person you were speaking to, but get nationalised or run on donations as a non-profit.
But I do pay more than my share for most fediverse instances that I use (which reminds me, I use this one enough - should probably make my donation regular)
Honestly, I would love to see a Wikipedia-style social media platform take off, but I really don't know if the finances could work out. Wikipedia already struggles, and it's obscenely useful. I don't think nationalization is really feasible for social media - at least in an American context - because it would be subject to the government's legal limitations on regulating free speech, which are extremely minimal. A federally run platform would not be able to remove literal unironic Nazism, which is probably going to be a bit of a turn-off to normal people.
Not really, no. Freedom of speech is very strongly ingrained in our Constitution. The only legal restrictions on it are essentially direct threats or incitement of violence.
"Go kill this Jew" - Absolutely illegal.
"Go kill the Jews" - Illegal
"The Jews should be killed" - Borderline based on circumstances
"The Jews deserve to die" - Borderline, but probably protected by the Constitution
"The Jews deserved the Holocaust" - Almost certainly protected by the Constitution
Thank you for the breakdown. I had some vague conception of American free speech protections being pretty intense, but this illustrates the individual distinctions well
Just an endless slew of clickbait “China bad” headlines all the time. Really makes you wonder about if there is some sort of systemic problem with western media.
It’s going to be hilarious in a year or so when we’ll have LLM bots churning these types of articles out even at respected news outlets, and all critics of this narrative will still get smeared as being bots themselves
Lol all states are bad. “China” as a concept can barely represent the true diversity of the people living in that across and around that huge chunk of land, as much as “USA” can barely represent each individual there.
Everyone is a little bit authoritarian. It’s the intent and end result that gives it meaning. You don’t see France being criticised these days do you despite their citizenry being vocal about their regime’s mismanagement. We’ve even seemingly had a Western media blackout effectively on it for the past month (they’ve had riots/protests).
When was the last time France massacred protestors by using tanks to turn them into red paste?
When was the last time France rounded up its citzens based on ethbicity and religion and put them into reeducation camps?
Western media blackout? Maybe in your bubble mate, though I tend to follow these things deliberately so I’m not best placed to say. Western media is a joke regardless - owned and controlled by a few wealthy and powerful individuals, who sadly almost all hold similar politics beliefs.
How much control do you really have over a government that only has two parties? FPTP is a failure. It leaves government without accountability, pisses on the principle of equal representation, and shifts power towards the few areas that may actually flip.
If you lose this federal election, so what? Eventually, people will get angry enough at the current ruling party to flip.
If you vote, so what? Unless you’re in a swing state, your vote might as well not exist for the presidential election.
What about representation in the house? Well, again, your vote doesn’t really matter unless you’re in a swing district (which tends to be suburban). If you’re urban (liberal) or rural (conservative), you might as well not vote either.
China is bad. Really bad. You’d know if you could afford to travel instead of being some poor idiot experiencing the world through propaganda on the Internet.
telegraph.co.uk
Top