DarthBueller @ DarthBueller @lemmy.world

Posts

4

Comments

588

Joined

2 yr. ago

The person you’re responding to seems singularly determined to ignore the legally-empowered social construct of borders to a point it seems ideological.

Elsewhere, Linux support areas seem more likely than not to have a large contingent of “WHY ARE YOU ASKING A DUMB QUESTION, you horror of a human being? Why didn’t you Search the site for words you don’t know using our broken search engine, instead of infecting us with your congenital idiocy?” folks.

2013 Dell XPS i7-4470 up in this jawn.

My ex-wife once got intestinal worms. The medicine to get rid of them, which has been on the market forever, and which is on the short list of medicines that the WHO says should be freely available to everyone as a matter of public health? $800 for Americans, literally free everywhere else in the world. Apparently intestinal worms are now so uncommon in the US that the drug is only distributed in extremely small quantities, which The Invisible Hand apparently allows big pharma to charge a fortune for. I brought in the worm in a jar in case the doctors needed to identify it, and apparently so many of the doctors and nurses had never seen one that they asked us if it was alright for them to pass around to take selfies with it. LOL.

Bruh, you are really going to stand behind the assertion that most folks in Gaza don't live past 40? You are just rediculously, stupidly wrong. There are NUMEROUS well-regarded sources of information that say otherwise. I only went with WHO because it was the first of MANY MANY NGOs that establish you are incorrect. "In 2022, the life expectancy in the occupied Palestinian territory was 75.4 years for females and 73.2 for males, and was slightly higher in the West Bank (75.7 years for females; 73.5 years for males) than in the Gaza Strip (75.0 years for females; 72.5 years for males)." Page 2. WHO - the very source you provided, in fact, coincidentally

I specifically took issue with him being called a slimeball. He's not a slimeball. Musk? Slimeball. DeVoss? Slimeball. Sweeney? Not a slimeball.

No, just defending someone that I know for a fact is a genuinely decent human being. He doesn't give a shit about burnishing his reputation through the philanthropy he does. He does it because he hates seeing billionaire mansions on mountaintops as much as anyone who isn't a fuck, because he wants everyone to have natural places to enjoy in the future. If you can't see the difference between someone like Sweeney and someone like Musk, DeVoss, etc., that's on you. He's not trying to make the world worse for everyone.

Do I have issues with the concentration of wealth and growing inequality in the US? Yes. If you gave me a list of billionaires, where I had to rank them in terms of their benefit to the world vs. negative impact to the world, would I put him high in benefit and low in negative impact? Yes. He's not spouting antisemitic nonsense, or trying to influence politics, or ruin education, or poison the minds of the American public. He's just running his business, treating his employees well, and preserving land. So if you want to call me a bootlicker for points, fine. Given the world we live in, I'd rather have our billionaires be like Sweeney instead of Musk or DeVoss.

You sound like someone who doesn't know much about philanthropy and falls prey to confirmation bias as much as anyone. The fact that you put money laundering ahead of tax-write offs is telling. He's not a mexican drug cartel buying US real estate.

Like I said, he's a stealth philanthropist to the degree that it does next to nothing to burnish his reputation. The only reason I know about it is because I'm in land conservation. He doesn't seek out any press attention at all, and the limited number of news articles about his donations are a testament to that. I am not saying that Epic business practices don't have issues that are common between his competitors, but I am saying that he himself is not a slimeball. His personality is about as far as you can get from a psychopathic self-enriching tech bro. Basically he hit the jackpot with Unreal, then fortnite.

Tim Sweeney is awesome. He’s one of the biggest conservation donors in my state and is personally responsible for permanently saving over 50,000 acres of land from development, protecting crucial habitat in a rapidly developing state, allowing public trail and nature preserves to get created. He lives in a normal house and drives a normal car and hikes the land he preserves when he’s not working. He’s a billionaire that lives a modest life, doesn’t mess with politics, and a true philanthropist. He doesn’t give to get press. The few articles out there about his philanthropy are because reporters stumble across it when reporting on whatever new nature preserve is opening in their area.

He might have some business practices that are problematic but are endemic to the industry.

Fuck, I lived in Israel for a year during the Second Intifada, when bus bombs and marketplace bombs and nightclub bombs were slaughtering civilians left and right, and when I came back, 9/11 happened and I stopped being able to get healthcare under my parents. If you could get over the nerves of being blown up, Israel was a paradise. I'll never forget how a pharmacist looked at me like I was crazy when I tried to pay for a drug prescription.

Ooooh baking soda!

Since 2000, they've used all-American steel vs. our quarters, which are copper at the core. PS: I don't really know if the Canadian quarter's steel is all-American, I just like the ambiguity of the statement.

You sound like a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Take your Coptic Christian harassing, LGBTQ-hating, tourist attacking butt out of here. Egypt is doing it because they don't want Palestinians waging war inside Egypt's sovereign territory. The Egyptian government is so brutal because the people you support want a freaking Caliphate. Egypt is for Egyptians, not just Arabs and Muslims. Go fly a kite.

The life expectancy in Gaza is over 70 years, according to WHO data. Go spread misinformation elsewhere.

I spent a year living in Israel during the Second Intifada, studying the conflict and talking to everyone I could, Jew, Arab, etc. I do a pretty good impression of a constipated Ariel Sharon giving a speech, "Anaaacchnu tzrichim [labored grunting] bitachon b'Israel v'hakol olam!"

You have a well-informed and factual view of the situation. Must be because you are an Israeli ex-pat and (let me guess) are secular. It's disheartening to see propaganda-fueled idiots who have zero idea what they are talking about arguing with you--who wants reform in Israel--all because they have a black-and-white view of right and wrong, see Islam as "the underdog" that is therefore allowed to commit atrocities, and had hiphop artists telling them to "free Palestine" since 1995.

How? Ranked choice voting and well-designed non-partisan redistricting are necessary reforms that too few people know about. We need a duo of liberal and conservative billionaires that make this their pet issue, a handful of country music stars, pop stars, and hip-hop/rap/RnB artists behind it and we'd get it in a heartbeat. Fuck, Elon Musk could distract people from the media nightmare that is his mouth and become a big advocate of it and we'd have Chads burning down the internet for these reforms the next day.

Until Dems unite behind ranked choice voting and well-designed non-partisan redistricting, DESPITE the fact that they might lose seats to rando third party candidates, nothing will change. I wish the American populous of all political stripes knew about these necessary reforms and were willing to loudly fight for them. It would change the USA as we know it.

Good take--hate on Americans while ignoring the Americans correctly explaining to you how the American electoral system is broken. Spend more time telling Americans that want viable third parties that they need to also support ranked-choice voting, and less time casting shade. If there's any truth in your words, its simply that people need to know that having viable third parties REQUIRES ranked choice voting. I'm terrified that the US "No Labels" party will hand the election to Trump, because under the current system, ANY third party is an election spoiler.

I love to compare conservative support for vaccines with conservative support for abortion. Now that the GOP caught the dog, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more conservative support for abortion rights than vaccines.

I’m not a physically violent person, but this is one of those rare moments where do find myself wondering when someone (not me) will start exercising their 2d Amendment rights (the way gun nuts see it) against Paxton and anyone else who is willing to make women legally second class citizens. I think the joy of seeing Paxton’s head turn into red mist on liveleaks would greatly outweigh the very strong tendency I have to barf at gore.

Granted it would open the floodgates of right wing terror and would be accelerating the coming of whatever horrors are down the road, so not a good thing to happen in reality. But FUCK