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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)PO
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2 yr. ago

  • If we have another pandemic, at least now we know the level of disaster to expect, yeah? Since people think masking is political virtue-signalling now. (I’m beginning to wonder if people call decency virtue signaling just because they don’t know what virtue looks like, based on how the term’s usually used.)

  • Rotating leadership in a military-ish context in deep space sounds like the material conditions for the creation of factions and potential mutiny. If getting rid of every hierarchy, even ones you freely volunteer for, is the only way a future counts as positive, there’s no point in writing sci fi. Ordinary citizens in the Federation aren’t in a military hierarchy, and it’s post-scarcity, so people aren’t facing economic coercion to join Starfleet. Not conforming perfectly to your personal idea of utopia isn’t a blind spot, though Trek has many of those, as well.

  • If you hear of a reasonable source with actual info on North Korean news, leave a link here. Otherwise, your concern is noted. Believe me, in the face of radio silence, most people are imagining much worse things of the regime than a shorts ban.

  • If you link to suicide hotlines, mention which ones can send cops (under the guise of EMS) to your door without your consent. (For instance, I’d never suggest 988 because of this.) That way, users know you know what’s up and that they can trust the group’s info. And given cops’ record of shooting mentally ill people in crisis, it’s pretty important.

  • Some search engines and social media platforms make at least half-assed efforts to prevent or add warnings to this stuff, because anorexia in particular has a very high mortality rate, and age of onset tends to be young. The people advocating AI models be altered to prevent this say the same about other tech. It’s not techphobia to want to try to reduce the chances of teenagers developing what is often a terminal illness, and AI programmers have the same responsibility on that as everyone else,

  • Basic rights for people who aren’t white dudes were mostly imposed by court order. That’s the reality. We have laws, it’s just that those laws were written at a time when personhood didn’t really apply to anyone who wasn’t a white man. And if no one who you consider a full person is capable of being pregnant, you’re not going to think to put in a right to abortion explicitly, even if it’s a basic requirement for equal citizenship for the female sex, because women (and trans people) aren’t really people…and so on.

    Edit: I realize this is mostly due to the weird semi-religious fervor Americans have for our Constitution and government system.

    TL; DR: We’re running Modern Democracy 1.0 with a Frankenstein covering of patches, while other countries just upgrade whenever they need you.