There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

admiralteal

@[email protected]

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

admiralteal ,

The whole "retail theft" wave is a moral panic anyway. It's not backed up by numbers. NYC and LA saw some elevation because of a small number of actual criminal organization that largely got rounded up and prosecuted. Most other "organized retail crime" stories are utter nonsense.

Most of the rise in theft that people cited was based on a completely bullshit statistic which came from the NRF citing one of its own members testimonies in which that member cited an incorrect number. It was actual dogfooding being passed as statistical analysis and even they have backed down on it.

admiralteal ,

Also the DoL is perpetually under-resourced and short staffed. They aren't one of the "good" law enforcement agencies that get bipartisan support -- only the ones who beat up protestors get that kind of universal appeal, somehow. Even though funding to places like the IRS and DoL have insanely good return on investment.

admiralteal ,

We can't claim to know it left them with "bad" employees. I think there's vanishingly little evidence that recruiters actually go after the "good" employees effectively -- I'm pretty skeptical that a pro recruiter actually gets you better employees, they just make the process of getting employees way less stressful. We also have no reason to assume that a good or bad employee is correlated in any way with caring about not returning to office -- it's possible very bad employees are just as likely to quit as very good ones. How do you even tell good from bad, anyway?

What this "return to office" stuff definitely DOES do is preferentially retain the most obedient/desperate employees. Which may be part of the goal, along with low-key downsizing.

admiralteal ,

You mean Half Life: Full Dive, followed by Half Life: Full Dive 2. The second in a trilogy never to be finished.

admiralteal ,

I, for one, could not be made to care one iota about what Jack Dorsey has to say. He's a weird little fuck, and only getting weirder.

Time long past to be a lot more honest about these tech billionaires -- pretty much every one of was just immensely, immensely lucky, and until they can talk honestly about how nearly everything to do with their success compared to any other mid-level software developer was just blind luck, we should assume everything coming out of their mouths is pure grandiose delusion.

admiralteal ,

Google loves to have entirely ai-driven moderation which makes decisions that are impossible to appeal. They are certain that one AI team lead is more valuable than 20 customer service agents. Meanwhile, YouTube shorts is still a pipeline to Nazidom and death by electrical fire.

Might be the worst customer service in the tech industry, though that's a highly competitive title.

They also don't offer replacement parts (even major parts like the charging case) for their headphones. So I guess they're intended to be a disposable product. Evil shit.

If you've ever had an entirely positive interaction with Google customer service... you'd probably be the first.

admiralteal ,

Musk told workers that Tesla "will continue to build out some new Supercharger locations, where critical, and finish those currently under construction."

Sounds to me like the plan is to finish what is already under contract and do no more. I sure am glad the US authorities committed to that north american charger standard... what's even the status on getting a full specification for it including third-party development at this point anyway?

I can't pull a quote for the new vehicle development team's situation because Tesla basically just keeps making the Model 3 with barely even incremental improvements to it, and even that one has totally inconsistent build quality vehicle to vehicle. Unless someone thinks the Cybertruck is going to save them -- hah.

admiralteal ,

The user above is just one of those guys who looks at anything the dems do and thinks, look at this bitch eating crackers.

Nothing good can ever be celebrated or praised. It has to always be bad.

admiralteal ,

I think you may be forgetting that weed is illegal, federally. The product you're buying is for tobacco -- officially -- because if it weren't it would be a federal crime to ship it across state borders.

Windows 11 Start menu ads are now rolling out to everyone (www.theverge.com)

Microsoft is starting to enable ads inside the Start menu on Windows 11 for all users. After testing these briefly with Windows Insiders earlier this month, Microsoft has started to distribute update KB5036980 to Windows 11 users this week, which includes “recommendations” for apps from the Microsoft Store in the Start menu....

admiralteal ,

Not really. With the super easy, friendly distros it basically just goes.

I switched to Linux Mint Cinnamon a while ago expecting to just fool around a bit but mostly boot back into windows to do stuff. I've now found that the ONLY thing I need to go back to windows for is when I'm forced by dumb policies to use an MSOffice product, which fortunately doesn't happen to often (and no, LibreOffice is absolutely not a sub for MS Office. The spreadsheet app is worse than google docs, and I'd rather work in typst than have to deal with the libreoffice writer -- especially as soon as I need to display an equation/figure/table of contents. Of course, I'd rather work in typst than deal with MSWord too...)

That said, I don't really play games anymore. Games may still require frequent windows visits. But... I've been looking forward to a complete edition of horizon forbidden west and all accounts say it's linux compatibility is near perfect, so maybe things aren't so bad these days on the gaming front.

admiralteal ,

Out-of-date iFixit Article

Follow up where Sony made the good ones worse

But Fairphone does always give us hope

admiralteal ,

I had it briefly up and running and can only say... it's a bear, at least if you are trying to use it as a drop-in replacement with existing hardware. I'm sure I'll go back and sort it out at some point, but it left me just feeling tired and frustrated even when I had it doing most of what I wanted.

If you were thoughtful about hardware from the ground up, maybe it would be more straightforward, but I tried getting it running on just an old workstation with ubuntu installed on it that I use for very basic stuff like syncthing and it was just painful. Mix of Kasa/Wyze/Philips devices that are just what I've somehow collected over time.

It would be nice to see better first-class add-on support. I found myself needing to SSH into a VM to get stuff into it, and even then it was twitchy in all the wrong ways. Would also be nice to see better support for the containerized version, because that's so much easier to distribute and execute compared to a VM. Next time I'll probably just try to do it all with docker and see if it hurts less, since I don't think any addons I was using were critical to begin with.

That said, if you're doing HA, get a dedicated piece of hardware for it. I suspect it vastly simplifies things.

admiralteal ,

That was the point that hit my limit, now that you mention it -- getting it to show up on a duckdns address on the https public internet. Not being able to make that work after fiddling with all kinds of contradictory guides nor with 2 or 3 completely different reverse proxy tools just left me mad. Especially since a regular ngix reverse proxy manager container works fine on the same computer, but for some reason was just refusing to connect to HA (SSL issues, I think).

Having HA just working locally didn't really make it a replacement for the big tech solutions that already work fairly smoothly. I'm sure I'll go back to get it the way I want one day, but the learning curve on any selfhosting is still pretty rough.

If you're selected for jury duty (US), should you give up your anonymous social media accounts?

I have old Facebook and Twitter accounts, maybe some others. I’m old so there’s a MySpace account out there. But I’ve mostly been using reddit the last decade or so, and have migrated to Lemmy. Now, Lemmy is the only social media i use. Recent news got me thinking about this question.

admiralteal ,

Good answers here, but ignoring probably the most realistic and practical truth of the matter in my opinion.

You won't immediately be sent to the stocks for saying "I don't want to answer", the worst case scenario is that some officer of the court informs you that you must answer the question even if you don't want to. And even that is only going to happen if the attorney asking the question insists. And I struggle to imagine a situation where a competent attorney would do so.

Being hostile towards your prospective jurors, making them feel exposed and uncomfortable, is not a way to march to victory in a trial. They want to ensure you aren't prejudiced against their client/case. Making you dislike them personally IS prejudice. Causing prejudice is a bad way to eliminate prejudice.

They will ask questions, mostly yes/no ones, that you need to answer honestly. They may ask for clarification. If you don't want to answer and say so, it's unlikely anyone will press you because that unnwillingness to answer is just as clear an indication of who you are as anything else.

admiralteal ,

This technology existing would essentially be the end of all knowledge-sector jobs, instantly. It eliminates the value of your time, which means the labor market would almost definitely use it to pay wages VASTLY below minimum wage-per-perceived hour. People would take that bargain. You only have to work ONE day a week and we pay you a million dollars a year! ...that one day a week will be time chambered up to 15 years, though.

Why pay one ace coder a bigshot salary when you can pay a whole village in the developing world to spend as much time as the problem could possibly need the same price and they'll still finish by Thursday?

The economic ramifications are just beyond my fathoming, but I know it cannot possibly work in a society which has any kind of resource scarcity.

admiralteal ,

The argument for drive-by-wire in personal automobiles is basically that it's safe enough for airplanes, so it should be safe enough for cars.

I mostly buy that. But there's a glaring omission in the reasoning.

In airplanes, there's a full incident investigation for EVERYTHING that goes wrong. Even near misses. It's an industry that (mostly lol boeing) has a history of prioritizing safety. Even at its worst, the safety standards the airline industry and air transportation engineering are orders magnitude more strict than those of the automotive industry and road engineering.

In real terms, automobile incidents should be taken just as seriously. Even near misses should have reporting and analysis. Crashes should absolutely have full investigations. Nearly all automobile deaths are completely avoidable through better engineering of the road systems and cars, but there is mostly no serious culture of safety among automobiles. We chose carnage and have been so immured by it that we don't even think it's weird. We don't think it's weird that essentially everyone, at least in the US, knows someone who died or was seriously injured in a car accident.

So yeah, we should have drive-by-wire. But it should also include other aspects of that safety culture as part of the deal. "Black box" equivalents, for example, and the accompanying post-accident review process that comes with it. A process that focuses not on establishing liability, but preventing future incidents, because establishing liability is mostly a thought-killer when it comes to safety.

...of course, if we actually took road safety that seriously it'd be devastation to the entire car industrial complex. Because much of that industry is focused on design patterns that, in fact, cannot be done safely or sustainably.

admiralteal ,

Sounds like a compelling argument for why we need better safety standards for cars and traffic engineering.

admiralteal ,

I think the most remarkable thing about the Musk takeover of twitter is just how entirely capricious it has been.

We all knew he was going to do all that crypto-and-noncrypto fascist and narcissistic stuff. That's just his nature. We knew he was going to be arbitrary in enforcement of his "free speech absolutism" -- that it would just be weaponized, as it always is, to favor certain political viewpoints.

But it's REALLY remarkable just how seat-of-your-pants it all is. He's just waking up, deciding he wants something changed, and then snapping his fingers in the air until some stooge walks by and asks what's wanted.

Even the acquisition itself seemed like kind of a whim that went too far. There's clearly no plan whatsoever.

Why do we have to do the health insurance company's job for them?

Just so tired of almost every time a doctor submits stuff to insurance, we have to be the ones to make multiple phone calls to both the doctor’s office and insurance to iron everything out, figure out what the issue is (it’s always a different issue), and basically be the go-between for the office and insurance. What am I...

admiralteal ,

And what might be the most important part cannot be elided over: market capitalism is HIGHLY efficient at solving optimization problems, but it only responds to incentives.

So if you can create the right incentives to reward the result you want and punish results you don't want, a market solution is going to do a marvelous job. It's great at, say, price discovery. But if the incentives do not align with the desired result, it's going to grind you under heel.

The incentives the insurance companies are responding to, frankly, are the ones you have outlined and essentially no others. Collect more premiums, make fewer payouts. There's no "breaking point" here because they have an absolutely vast customer base that has no choice to opt out of the system for a variety of reasons (ranging from the ACA individual mandate to the fact that it is not possible for an individual to make fully-informed financial decisions about their health even WITH advanced knowledge and training that nearly no one has).

Health insurance is pretty much a textbook example of the kind of service that shouldn't be on private markets.

So over time, market capitalism is going to make them collect endlessly-increasing premiums and pay out less and less. It is going to continue to get worse because the incentives of the system have defined 'worse' as being the optimal result. Period. It will eventually get nationalized. Period. All the argument in the meantime is just over how long we want to continue to let people be sick and broke before we apply the only fix.

admiralteal ,

Particularly goofy because ChatGPT is hardly the only bot and you can use the free version of e.g., Claude and get those better results now, for free.

admiralteal ,

Also known as a SASSS

admiralteal ,

If you put a TV in a Faraday cage that blocked the relevant radio spectrum, would there be no static on it? I expected the answer to be a quick Google, but it wasn't.

admiralteal , (edited )

This entire question is completely distorted by the poor-qualtiy postwar urbanism that is rampant everywhere.

The reality is, there shouldn't be much difference. Lowrise cities -- 2-4 story buildings/townhomes, small apartments, walkable neighborhoods/mass transit, corner groceries, all that stuff that people think can ONLY exist in big cities should be the norm for nearly all towns.

I don't think many people would describe a place like, say, Bordeaux as a "big city". 250kish people in 50 square kilometers is hardly Paris. It's a small city, or maybe a big town. And it has everything you can want from a city and more. Shows, museums, beautiful multimodal neighborhoods, a robust tram system, restaurants and cafes and bars. All this kind of stuff.

The problem is we've all been mentally taught you can either live in island, R1A zoned suburbs which require driving to do ANYTHING or else you need to live in a huge metropolis like NYC. Or else we've been trained to think of a "city" like the bullshit they have in Texas, where it combines all the worst features of those island suburbs/car dependence with all the worst parts of city (crazy prices, noise, exposure to nearby-feeling crime, etc).

While a lot of the US big cities are trying to sort out the knots they've tied themselves in, your best bet to find beautiful, livable urban-ism is in those much smaller <500k cities that don't even show up on the typical lists of cities. Especially if they are historic, since the more historic a place is the less likely it got bulldozed in the 60s to make room for more highways (destroying local neighborhoods in the process) Some kind of a big university also tends to be a plus, though it's a mixed bag. Check for places that do not have an interstate carving through the middle of the city.

admiralteal ,

Big cities let people find their community because therefore a lot of different ones to try.

You should read the horror stories from so many of those NYC co-ops. Some would make even the most jackbooted HOA presidents blush.

I don't really think this is unique to cities of some specific size. I definitely agree that it's going to be harder to find a perfect fit in a smaller town. But it's also harder to meet people at all in an anonymous metropolis where you have to work 75 hours a week just to make rent.

If you take away anything from what I have written, it's that I think this dichotomy is bad. We need a compromise. The lowrise old-world city is what worked for our species for at least 5 millenia -- it's only in the past couple of decades we decided to rethink it and force a schism between the fake rural aesthetic of the suburbs and the productive, efficient downtown -- and in so doing we destroyed both city life (by making it ungodly expensive thanks to the immense financial drain the suburbs and lack of continuing infill development represent) and the peaceful countryside life (by putting to death small towns in favor of the interstate highway big box store commercial strip). The only lifestyle that has weathered and still works pretty well in this day and age is the homesteader life, and to say that way of living is not for everyone is definitely an understatement.

admiralteal , (edited )

I'll never argue with someone who wants that true, rural/countryside/homestead life. The appeal is there for me too, even if my own calculus says the cons wildly outweigh the pros.

I'm pretty skeptical you're going to find it 5 miles from a healthy town, though.

California set to hike wages for fast-food workers to industry-leading $20 per hour (www.cbsnews.com)

Starting Monday, most California fast-food workers will earn at least $20 an hour — the highest minimum wage across the U.S. restaurant industry. Yet the pay hike is sparking furious debate, with some restaurant owners warning of job losses and higher prices for customers, while labor advocates tout the benefits of higher...

admiralteal ,

It's widely reported that Panera does not qualify as a bakery under this law.

admiralteal ,

If Panera doesn't qualify as a bakery under this law -- which it is widely reported that they don't -- Taco Bell certainly doesn't. This whole meme is likely a right wing misinformation campaign.

admiralteal , (edited )

It didn't get scratched out. It was never true in the first place. I don't know why the bakery exemption was in there -- apparently no one who isn't on a confidentiality agreement does -- but Panera apparently never would've qualified as one under it. The disinfo game from the right on this was on point.

admiralteal , (edited )

No, it is not "less clear cut" than you thought and there is not an argument on both sides.

On one side you have the guy who actually owns the Paneras in question, saying they would not even be attempting to use this exemption because it does not apply to them.

On the other side, you have the Newsom administration and the California labor agency BOTH saying that Panera could not benefit from this exemption because it does not apply to them.

That's the only "side".

This is to whom the "bakery exception" applies:

Restaurants that operate a bakery that "produces" and sells "bread" as a as of September 15, 2023, and continue to do so are exempt from the new law.

“Bread” is defined as a single unit item that weighs at least ½ pound after cooling and must be sold as a stand-alone item.

The following types of fast food restaurants do not come under the exemption:

  • Restaurants that sell bread only as part of a sandwich or hamburger, but not as a stand-alone menu item;
  • Restaurants that sell stand-alone items weighing less than one-half pound after cooling, such as most muffins, croissants, scones, rolls, or buns, but do not sell bread weighing at least one-half pound after cooling; and
  • Restaurants that do not “produce” bread on the premises of the restaurant location where customers purchase the bread. Producing bread includes making the dough (typically, flour, water, and yeast) and baking it. Baking pre-made dough, i.e., dough that was mixed or prepared at another location, does not constitute “producing” bread at the establishment where the bread is sold.

This exemption applies only to restaurant establishments that produced and sold bread as stand-alone menu items as of September 15, 2023, and have continued to do so.

This exemption does not require that the restaurant be primarily engaged in the sale of bread as a stand-alone item. The exemption may apply even when the sale of bread as a stand-alone menu item constitutes a small portion of the restaurant’s total food sales.

That third bullet point disqualifies Panera from the exemption, and moreover it seems to be specifically targeted to disqualify a chain faux-bakery like Panera from the exemption. It has been there from the beginning.

The only "side" that is spreading the argument that this was a corrupt political favor is the right wing disinformation campaign using it to attack Newsom specifically and pro-labor policies in general, and those in the media who failed to do basic dilligence to discredit the complete nonsense that this story was.

Even on places that seem as progressive-leaning as lemmy.world, we dance to their tunes.

Some state lawmakers want school chaplains as part of a 'rescue mission' for public education (apnews.com)

Lawmakers in more than a dozen states have proposed legislation to allow spiritual chaplains in public schools, a move that proponents say will ease a youth mental health crisis, bolster staff retention and offer spiritual care to students who can’t afford or access religious schools....

admiralteal , (edited )

So what you seem to be saying is that schools should have some kind of staff of full time social workers. People who can give counseling and guidance to students who may be struggling. I wonder what we should call those faculty?

We can be real, the goal is to convert children to be part of the army of christ here. This is all about grooming and indoctrination of minors and undermining separation of church and state. No one promoting it gives a shit about the social value of these chaplains.

admiralteal ,

Felons shouldn't be disenfranchised in the first place. Not to mention the guy at least had a plausible belief that his probation had ended; it's not news that the criminal justice system is designed to be complicated and cruel for offenders.

I do appreciate the irony that I am defending a wannabee fascist using progressive logic, though.

admiralteal ,

"Some random people on the internet are saying ___" is not news and it is not journalism. It never has been. It never will be.

Yellen says China's rapid buildout of its green energy industry 'distorts global prices' (apnews.com)

Yellen, who is planning her second trip to China as Treasury secretary, said Wednesday in Georgia that she will convey her belief to her Chinese counterparts that Beijing’s increased production of green energy also poses risks “to productivity and growth in the Chinese economy.”...

admiralteal , (edited )

Outside of the US, you can get a 10k or less electric mini-van, mini-truck, or mini-car which would serve 90% of most peoples' needs. Most US trips are under 3 miles after all and giant fast luxurious vehicles for those bike-range trips is just totally silly.

Meanwhile the cheapest new car in the US is what, a Mitsubishi hatchback for $18k? It's ridiculous. The US Automakers are in a tacit conspiracy to squeeze us as hard as they can by refusing to sell anything affordable -- by inflating sizes and bloating features to justify way higher MSRPs. Meanwhile the French have access to cheap ICEs like the Skoda Citygo and even ultralight city EVs like the Citroen Ami for half that price while still being easily 90% as capable for most people.

Or for roughly the same price as that bottom-of-the-market US ICE car you can get a totally workable EV like the Dacia Spring.

The US subsidizes huge vehicles in a million pointless ways. I absolutely refuse to believe that vehicle inflation is just caused by some cultural woo. It's mostly just that we create giant roads, giant parking spots, giant highways, and have automakers that intentionally go as big as the market can bear because bigger means more money. And sprinkle on some bullshit tax loopholes and state agencies/NHSTA being ultra-conservative and you have a disaster. Smaller cars thrive in the old world because the old world doesn't make it as convenient as possible to have a goddamn road yacht. They'd go big too, but it would just be a nightmare dealing with those huge cars because their governments don't prioritize making way for them in every way possible.

And that's not even getting into the frankly fine $2-3k EVs you can get in China. This is all just Europe.

admiralteal ,

They are very useful for outlining and similar "where do I start" writing projects. They help break the dam and just get some damn words on the screen, at which point it's often easy to continue and flesh things out to a complete thought.

admiralteal ,

The entire reason notepad still exists is that it edits and saves to plain text files. I do not see how an opt-in spellcheck or autocorrect interferes with that -- though honestly, I don't see who the possible customer is for those features either. It's a waste of time, but it doesn't undermine the application.

What reason, honestly, did Wordpad have to exist? Who was clamoring for an RTF editor but thought any of the free the full-featured ODF editors or online service a la Google docs were not up to the task? Seems a lot of people are salty that Wordpad was dropped, but I just don't get who was using it. This from someone so frustrated and annoyed by pretty much all WYSIWYG doc editors that I've lately been doing more stuff in latex despite how irrational I know I am being.

admiralteal ,

I did the same thing twice.

Two different employers that really deserve to be absolutely thrashed but as soon as I got to the point where it was asking me my true identity I realized there was no hope it wouldn't come back to bite me in the long run.

I understand why in their business model they want to be able to verify employment. I'd even say it's reasonable. But the Privacy implications of it are just too tremendous and they I've never been practically or systemically trustworthy.

And knowing this about them means they aren't a reliable place to be warned off of a bad employer either. The primary purpose of their site is completely undermined by this bad policy.

admiralteal ,

There are no US roads I am aware of where the speed limit is over 80mph.

Why can a stock US car go faster than 80mph, then? Why does NHSTA approve of cars that can go double, triple that speed? Makes no sense to me, for sure. Especially when similar agencies are doing idiotic and pointless shit like banning Kei Trucks for "safety" reasons when these vehicles are objectively safer and better for the public than any current-model "light truck" 120mph+ road yacht.

Europe approached this same question with a pretty straightforward answer: Intelligent Speed Assistance. It'll be mandatory relatively soon for all new cars, as far as I am aware. It's already mandatory for new cars in the EU. There's some nasty privacy implications of it, obviously. Very possibly nasty enough to bring me to a "no" overall on the idea. But the safety considerations are without doubt correct.

admiralteal ,

Assuming the label isn't inaccurate, there is at minimum equal parts of the honey and corn syrup. The list must be in descending order by weight. I'm not sure what the rule is for equal quantities; I'd assume alphabetical, but there may be no such requirement.

admiralteal ,

Every non-NATO state on the border will be targeted and incorporated either directly or by being turned into a loyal authoritarian state a la Belarus.

And if the US leaves NATO, that undermines confidence in NATO. The alliance will fall. At that point, either the EU will have to step in and supplant it -- in which case the US will no longer be even be PART of the mightiest diplomatic alliance in the world, much less influential in it -- or else there's no reason to think Russian aggression will stop endlessly escalating until all-out war between nuclear powers is on the table.

admiralteal ,

The moderate/centrist position between "kill the gays" and "don't permit the killing of gays" is "kill some of the gays."

That's all there is to it. If you are a moderate on this issue, you're a violent bigot.

admiralteal ,

A centrist on gay rights likely sees that marriage is legal, culturally it’s acceptable, so why should they fight for more rights, they’re already equal?

But they factually aren't equal. It's legal to discriminate against gays in a variety of ways -- including in employment and, apparently, when selling business services. They are not a protected class in most places. They are directly targeted by hostile, criminalizing legislation all over the place. They aren't fighting for MORE rights, they're still fighting for equal rights and are far, far away from winning them.

Which means the centrist position, by your logic, is that gays should remain second-class citizens because they already got everything they need, even though it's still factually legal to discriminate against them? That's not actually different from the far right's position that it should be illegal to be gay. It's far, far away from the liberal position that people have a right to not be discriminated against. There's no moderation in that position. It's still the "kill some gays" position.

So no, I'm not incorrectly simplifying. I'm cutting away the bullshit. If you or anyone you know is a "centrist" on gay rights by the logic that they "already" are safe, those people are monsters. The only way to be a "centrist" in the way you have described is to be upsettingly ignorant. And if the entire philosophy of centrism is that these people are too ignorant to form a cognizant moral position, what are we even talking about?

admiralteal ,

It's also the logic of TERFs. Somehow, tolerance and acceptance are a zero sum game to them. Giving basic dignity to one population somehow requires taking it away from another.

It's utter horseshit, but they believe it firmly.

Florida teachers can discuss sexual orientation and gender ID under 'Don't Say Gay' bill settlement (apnews.com)

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Students and teachers will be able to speak freely about sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida classrooms, provided it’s not part of instruction, under a settlement reached Monday between Florida education officials and civil rights attorneys who had challenged a state law which critics...

admiralteal ,

The entire purpose of this law is to define being anything but straight and cis as "sexual" in order to diminish these groups as part of an overall genocidal campaign against queer.

The criticisms you are making have been made since before it was even proposed. But the enforcement was ALWAYS intended to groom children to only know and believe in "traditional" values.

That's part of why the complaints sort of have to flow from parents in these rules; they trust the open-minded types aren't going to report Mrs. Johnson for talking about having a husband, but they know the Moms for Liberty folks are their loyal foot-soldiers and will be out with torches and pitchforks the moment Mr. O reveals he has a husband.

The long view of these laws is to continuously criminalize any kind of identity other than the tribe of straight white christian conservatives. Continue pushing the overton window over, a little bit at a time, until all ideas of civil tolerance and acceptance are dead.

admiralteal ,

The word "fat" is not a slur any more than the word "black" is. Sure, someone can use it with an intent to hurt, and if the only thing you know about a person is this single adjective you probably shouldn't be talking about them, but the word is just a description. And just like for "black", all the euphemisms offer nothing helpful and are largely spread by people who have not lived and understood the experience.

If you're worried about being fat-phobic the thing to be worried about is treating fat people like shit based on their physical appearance. Up to and including shaming them for "not putting in the effort" or lecturing them about how unhealthy you think they are based on the single point of evidence of their apparent weight.

And I have to say, I'd be WAY more fucking mad at someone calling me "rotund" then fat. Holy shit you have missed the mark on this.

admiralteal ,

Here would be an almost textbook example of what I mean when I say shaming people for not putting in the effort, for any onlookers that are curious.

Of course, the actual clinical data shows that it is nearly impossible to make permanent lifestyle changes that reduce weight for normal people -- all diets studies have almost hilariously high dropout/failure rates -- and that nearly all people who are not fat are not putting in any special effort to not be fat. But this guy's an expert.

admiralteal ,

Cool, that's nice. I'm on a different instance than you. It took hours for your comment to even federate, so the implication I'm trying to gotcha you through a self-correction made within 3 minutes of my original post and over 10 minutes before yours is totally bad faith and you know it.

Let's just be clear about what happened here though. I posted something correct about the entire idea of fat-phobia. That is, the way you avoid being fat-phobic is by just not feeling a need to whip out a soap box and tell fat people it's their fault and they've behaved badly to become that way there while knowing nothing about them.

And what did you do? You replied to me, immediately whipping out your soapbox to say that fat people are not "actual" vulnerable groups because anyone who's body doesn't doesn't match your subjective standards can "do something about being fat".

Then started this absolutely moronic verbal diarrhea about how being respectful of other people is somehow a zero sum game where if you treat one population with basic respect, it somehow waters down another group's need to be treated with dignity? Idiotic. Just idiotic. That's the "logic" used by TERFs.

Next time, just shut the fuck up. Seriously, all you had to say was nothing. This is a personal characteristic about someone and you just don't have expertise in it. You don't know what effort they have or haven't made. You don't know what other medical issues may be linked or causal. You don't know whether it's negatively impacting their health, and even if it were, it's still none of your fucking business. All you know is what you can see. Don't worry, the fat people already know you don't like looking at them, so this kind of signaling is unnecessary. Instead, leave them alone and don't preach about their lives of sin.

You want to talk about addressing things with "external stimuli"? Let's talk about the entire skin-bleaching cosmetics industry in SE Asia. The vast apparatus of plastic surgery in places like South Korea designed to change Asian-presenting eyelids to more culturally preferred western features. And don't even get me started about hair care products targeted at Black Americans. The long histories every country and population has pursuing goals to "pass". Telling people they must change to match the subjective standards of idiots for their own good, irrespective of what harm might be done to them along the way.

But what, all that kind of shit is bad and bigoted, but telling an otherwise-healthy but fat person they should get medical interventions because they look fat is fine? Leave people the fuck alone, dude. If there's medical problems going on, that's between them and their medical provider if they so chose.

admiralteal ,

Only if NATO agrees it happened. Nations just have to find pretext or plausible deniability to avoid escalation -- which they will when the alternative is inevitably nuclear escalation.

Russia is proving that the systems of NATO are highly vulnerable to a bad faith and cynical actor's aggression. NATO needs to change to prove Russia wrong. And the USGOP, among others, are proving him highly right.

Biden backtracks on climate plans and ‘walks tightrope’ to court both young voters and moderates (www.theguardian.com)

Joe Biden, touted as the US’s first climate president, is presiding over the quiet weakening of his two most significant plans to slash planet-heating emissions, suggesting that tackling the climate crisis will take a back seat in a febrile election year....

admiralteal ,

The IRA is a fantastic overall piece of legislation that gives us a fighting chance. Most policy experts agree that it has a lot of very achievable goals -- thanks to its structure that offers uncapped subsidies for certain beneficial productions that are estimated to represent well over a trillion dollars in real investment, on top of the fact that renewable energy already out-competes fossil on NEARLY all financial metrics.

And if Biden loses, huge amounts of this progress can be undone by executive action, inaction, and feebleness by a Trump administration. Which he, I remind everyone has pledged to do.

If the bill lasts more than a couple of years, it will build its own constituency a la medicare and become VERY sticky and hard to remove. But it's very vulnerable right now.

So yeah, as someone who thinks climate is the top issue everyone should be caring about since it represents an existential threat to our entire human race, I think it's fine for Biden to focus for the next year on winning that election. If he wins that election, most of the very significant progress will get 4 more years to cure -- it will be pretty well locked in and indeed many growing industries will be craving more. Rural states seeing major investment for the first time in decades in the form of renewable energy industry will want more. It has the potential to be really transformational.

Plenty of solid reasons to criticize Biden. Climate is not one of them. He's made progress that is difficult to fathom for people who only have cursory knowledge of the US energy economy.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •