PostmodernPythia @ PostmodernPythia @lemmy.world

Sapient liberation now.

---

Read more

Posts

0

Comments

316

Joined

2 yr. ago

Human medical experimentation on prisoners is cruel and unusual in and of itself. However well you personally think execution by nitrogen would go (and I doubt you’d volunteer), people on death row have a right to know we’re not trying novel execution methods on them. Maybe if what we’re doing doesn’t actually benefit anyone more than prison would and is considered so barbaric that European manufacturers won’t supply us with the drugs we need to do it, we should stop.

The mania for execution led Arizona to refurbish its gas chamber and reverse-engineer a Zyklon B equivalent.* That’s not the kind of country I want to live in. How about you?

*https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/28/arizona-gas-chamber-executions-documents

The long appeals process we use to try to not execute the innocent costs a lot. It would be cheaper to just imprison them.

Glad to have it straight from the moral arbiter of the universe, someone who feels they can personally determine, from a safe distance, whether someone has forfeited their life. Otherwise I’d be seriously worried the state was carrying out a horribly immoral practice that regularly results in murder of innocents in order to deliver, at best, the short-lived false victory of vengeance, for the low priceof permanently extinguishing of a human life. Which I’ll remind you doesn’t bring back their victims.

It’s human medical experimentation as a punishment that’s cruel and unusual.

It’s experimental. No institutional review board in the country could ethically ask this guy to volunteer for such an experiment, simply because of the coercive power dynamics inherent in asking such a thing of a prisoner. But the government can, by fiat, decide to experiment on him, and you’re ok with that? Even if “nitrogen asphyxiation is a comparatively peaceful way to go,” human medical experimentation qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment; otherwise, what’s the point of banning cruel and unusual punishment?

Maternal mortality rates (especially Black maternal mortality rates) are sky-high for the OECD, and a good chunk of the country has banned abortion. Maybe people who can bear children also want to minimize their chance of death.

Edit: Also? Climate change. People want a better future for their kids, not a smoldering hellscape.

One-note support of a regime with talking points rather than actual arguments? Smells like a govbot to me…

For non-bots: No one I’ve seen here is arguing that America hasn’t done shitty things. If you want to have China be your imperial masters, you have every right to make that decision, but imperialism sucks no matter who’s running it (hint: it’s not just a yt people thing), and China’s international relations strategy isn’t being run for the good of poor countries, but the good of the Chinese state. I think things tend to go better for the poweless when power isn’t unipolar, so poorer countries can play competing interests off each other, but every sovereign nation gets to make that call for themselves.

Well, OP certainly got me. There’s no way I’m watching a whole video by someone who still thinks capitalism is good in 2023.

Chicken and egg.

Why does this feel all Fugitive Slave Act…?

In surveys like this, I find it most useful to look at what Black people think, you know? Since they’re the ones getting shot by the cops? I’m as interested in white conservatives’ views on racism as the Taliban’s views on feminism.

Words with contested meanings are also really hard to get info on through surveys. Some people are thinking structural racism, and some are thinking “public accommodations are integrated, what more could be needed.” Of course they’re going to answer differently. They’re effectively answering different questions.

Me, apologizing profusely to an underpaid, much abused intermediary on a call to the insurance company where I beg for the meds I need to live. God, those poor people are being used as human shields.

To be fair, they knew the territory better than the US did. Which is probably not the case here.

I mean, if I stay in the subway, I should be safe from them, right? 😛

Every time a popular vote loser wins the presidency, convincing people that voting will get anyone out of power becomes harder. Definitely vote if you’re in a swing state, because it can be harm reduction for the most vulnerable, but don’t pretend getting the Dems in will improve things much for most people. Our entire system is moribund, we just haven’t figured it out yet.

I live in NY. Which bus I personally take in this analogy has no impact on where we end up, so I’ll follow my conscience.

The two American parties are basically the Far Right Nutter Party and the Coalition of Everyone Else Who Bothers to Go to the Polls. While there are a few leftists in the latter, it’s not a “left party” unless compared to people who want to shoot unhoused people for sport.

I love nerds.

Silence is not the only way to be complicit. Cheap talk without action will do the job.

This is exactly my approach, except I usually use Cap’n.