Kwakigra @ Kwakigra @beehaw.org

Posts

32

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536

Joined

2 yr. ago

It's a classic trolley problem. For many American voters it's a choice between their family members being murdered or more of their family members being murdered. Pull the lever to set the trolley on track to kill fewer of your family members.

The thing about the trolley problem is that it is far from unanimous how people react to being put in that position. There are many people who will not pull the lever to deliberately endorse the murder of their family members even if it means that more of their family will be killed. It is more for politicians to react to the sensibilities of their constituents than it is for constituents to conform to the desires of their politicians. It's Kamala's election to lose. Fortunately and unfortunately she's very flexible and reacts to pressure. Never let up.

You know, Hamas is coming after the US next, and once they start attacking Americans, there’s no turning back.

This is a scary comment. The comment this was in response to indicated it was wrong to commit genocide on Palestinians. Instead of even making an attempt to redefine or minimize the genocide, this comment instead argued that the genocide would be functional. It is functional to commit genocide on Palestinian people to prevent "Hamas is coming after the US next." Nevermind that this doesn't even make sense to argue at all, just the fact that it was offered as a justification for genocide should create a moment of pause for anyone following along.

The same way to deal with depression about anything. Depression is an illness that renders one incapable of helping themselves or others and debilitates people from contributing to the solution to the problems which contributed to the depression. Depression should be treated as an illness to be cured before anything else.

As far as being not being depressed by events beyond one's control, it requires effort since even being aware and concerned by such problems of this magnitude is highly unnatural and highly unintuitive. It is necessary to consciously come to peace with the world and humanity as it is. The universe is chaotic and we have as much control over the collective will of billions of completely ignorant and afraid people as we do over natural disasters just with less ability to predict when issues will occur. Although it is the case that we have a good grasp of the environmental issue, we have absolutely no grasp of how get plutocrats not to behave like plutocrats having no care for anything or anyone other than increasing their personal fortunes meaninglessly or to get the majority of people to understand the degree to which it is a problem that we continue to allow this. Being upset that humans are failing to achieve stable societies just as we have always failed for the entire 10,000 years we have been trying to achieve them is having unrealistic and unfair expectations of our species. Everyone is trying their best and no one knows what they're doing really. It may be scarier to consider how much less agency people have than they believe they have initially, but it does allow one to have the comfort of more consistently helpful expectations of oneself and others.

Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis is one of the best tactical rpgs I've ever played. I was shocked how short it was when I finished only to find I had been playing for over 40 hours.

Is it voters' fault for not voting correctly, or is it Democrats' fault for directly spiting voters and asking for their vote anyway? Democrats may never know...

If there's an impasse, spending millions of dollars trying to get conservatives to vote for Democrats has proven to be a losing strategy. Even the series of hints the Kamala campaign is dropping at wanting to do the right thing is getting voters riled up especially among younger people. It's worth taking the risk of being less corrupt.

In many circumstances the placebo effect is superior to common medical environments. I was completely dismissive of homeopathy until I came to understand its actual appeal. Obviously there is no proven physical mechanism of the substance itself; the water is just part of the ritual. The ritual of being cared for and being paid special attention to by another person who cares that you get better and can do nothing for you but give you that attention you need is 100% placebo oriented medicine and 0% drug.

I was dismissive about crystals as well, but the reality is that if you are aware of them they are in some way altering your awareness by being present. The way they alter your awareness could be as simple as noticing an interesting looking stone, a reminder that there is a vast unknown and many others trying to find their way as you are, or a meditation weight and focus. I don't know about crystal effects on vibrations other than to know that mass is literally energy and different compositions of molecular structures could have effects on the immediate environment beyond our ability to yet measure. I'm most comfortable saying that crystals definitely have some effect, definitely have assisted others in their healing journeys in some form or another, and beyond that I do not know many specifics.

Cars are going to have an advantage over pedestrians most of the time.

For no particular reason I'll leave a parody of one of my favorite poems here:

Trump’s presidential campaign wasn’t racist.
\ And if it was, it hardy had any effect on the election.
\ And if it did, it was really more about class than racism anyway.
\ And if it was actually about race, I wouldn't obfuscate that.
\ And if I did, I’m not racist.
\ And if I am, it’s only because you talk about racism so much.

There are variations such as your British style "all coppers are bastards" and the style I'm more familiar with which stands for "all cops are bad."

Donald Trump sure did in 2016.

Never forget that when you are speaking to someone who strongly identifies with American Conservatism, you are speaking to a child in an adult body. You can't have the same expectations that you would have of a mature adult. The fact that anyone would see this as an effective "attack" who is over the age of 8 is embarrassing.

I am feeling the Kamala campaign like I was feeling the Biden presidency up until October 2023. A series of pleasant surprises.

I have been on a Cure kick recently and this is a favorite. This is the way goth sounds to me.

There's weird as in unusual, which I appreciate. Then there's weird as in creepy.

If you see two people in a park and one is an adult skipping around catching butterflies and the other one is trying to follow women around without them noticing, that is two totally different genres of weirdness going on. I'll happily skip around with the person following their passion without fear of judgement, but the other weirdo needs to be kicked out of the park.

This comment is beautiful in every way. I wish being strong didn't have to be an obligation. Thanks for the support!

This is my other reason for framing it in Dnd terms. If it's experienced in a game hopefully more people are going to understand the real dynamics of stuff like this. I sure wish I was able to understand this decades ago.