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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 19th, 2023

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  • I don’t think it’s just a US thing. Even in places with more limited free speech, people can get away with saying ignorant and heinous things as long as it is technically within the letter of the law, or if the law is not strictly enforced.

    It’s against the law in China to threaten violence or use hate speech, for example, but in practice, I think the law may as well be reworded to clarify that such language is only really illegal when aimed at Han Chinese people.

    Not enough countries care about protecting anyone other than their primary in-group.






  • Governments can and have just branded people and organizations as terrorists to justify conflict. That is typically why third-world countries like Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. have been so heavily devastated by the west. Stopping “Nazi terrorists” is why Russia is invading Ukraine right now as well.

    Be careful of when a country’s media starts throwing out the label “terrorist regime” to describe countries that would be convenient to invade. “Terrorism” is just as much made by fear, instilled by a country’s media, as it is the practice of creating fear directly.





  • Nobody is aborting 9 month old fetuses outside of exceptional medical emergencies, and denying women bodily autonomy is incredibly authoritarian.

    Nobody is aborting 9-month-old fetuses at all. Unless that fetus is already dead or dying, 9 months is well past the point of viability.

    24 weeks (5 months and some change) is when a fetus could viably survive outside the womb with medical intervention. 9 months is at the point of being fully developed, even if it is a couple weeks premature.

    Almost all abortions happen at 10 weeks or less, well before the point of viability. Almost no abortions happen after 24 weeks. Definitely none happening at 9 months.



  • Communism as drafted by 19th and 20th century thinkers will never work, predicated on the idea that labor is inherently undesirable and will not be performed by humans without immediate incentive.

    We will need to rethink our approach towards communism with consideration for the growing spread of automation. Like it or not, automation is going to lead to the end of capitalism when the majority of jobs we have today are rendered obsolete and the unemployed masses are forced to subsist through some sort of UBI.

    The goal is to keep the automation out of the hands of billionaires, however. If a society begins to approach post scarcity, which will finally render capitalism obsolete, the oligarchs will do whatever they can to re-engineer scarcity and bring us back to feudalism before they’d ever consider giving power to the people.


  • I think I understand what you’re getting at but just keep in mind that there are two sort of separate discussions in regards to that.

    The WHO and the health organization of various countries are usually pretty specific in their definitions. The “public health emergency” of COVID is over because:

    • There is no longer a need for a coordinated international effort.

    • The population is no longer largely at risk due to vaccinations/immunities.

    • The mortality rate has dropped significantly.

    But I don’t think anyone would deny that COVID is here to stay on a global scale. It’s just that the health systems of most countries are now equipped to manage it without all of the lockdown precautions.