WoodScientist @ WoodScientist @sh.itjust.works

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1,198

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6 mo. ago

We need to send these people to Gitmo.

I don't have to worry about being drafted, I'm officially morally unqualified to serve in my nation's armed forces!

Have red pandas just been little people in fur suits this whole time???

Frankly, I do want Iran to have nukes. The region is so unstable precisely because there is one aggressive expansionist military power in the region, with no other nuclear power to balance them out. Iran hasn't declared war on another country for over two centuries. Israel is currently invading, occupying, or bombing the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran. And they're led by a radical religious movement explicitly hellbent on expanding Israel's borders from the Nile to the Euphrates, gobbling up entire nations in the process.

You're damn right I want Iran to have nukes. All evidence suggests they will be far more responsible with them than Israel is.

Finally a killer app for AI. Create social media profiles and use AI agents to populate them with bland uncontroversial drivel.

"If we can't name streets after racists, we won't name streets after anyone!"

Eh. We can use some of the good things from the past without using the bad as well.

We're living in a post-truth world. We really haven't begun to process what that actually means. The president is so confident in his abilities to lie to and propagandize his base, that he feels he can invent entire cease fire agreements from whole cloth. Just claim that an agreement has been reached. Then, when Iran proceeds to ignore the imaginary agreement, accuse them of breaking the cease fire, and use that to justify further attacks against Iran.

It really is striking how different the lie campaign is with Iran vs the lead up to Iraq. With Iraq, the traditional media was still powerful and legitimate enough that the Bush administration felt an elaborate prewar propaganda campaign was needed. They held numerous hearings in front of Congress, speeches in front of the UN, etc. It took months of propaganda before the Bush admin thought they were ready to launch the war. It was all ultimately a lie campaign, but the fact that they felt the need to do it is telling.

Now? No such campaign needed. Just launch a war, lie through your teeth, and rely on individual social media bubbles to convince the rubes. The effectiveness of propaganda has increased manyfold over the last two decades. They don't even feel the need to concoct convincing lies anymore.

I like this look. It has this aura of beautiful golden light about it. It has that aura without going the full gaudy gilded look like you would find in something the president built.

If nothing else, at least the new Iran war will make all us Millennials feel a bit young again. Time to relisten to American Idiot, at the very least.

Or maybe I'll just feel even older, as I can't believe we're still doing this shit.

As another trans person, I say the best thing to do now may be to avoid the typical liberal "protest and vote" advice. Protesting simply isn't as effective as it used to be, and voting should not be the foundation of your political activities. Voting is useful, but especially in a firmly blue or state, it's mostly a symbolic gesture.

There are trans people in your local area who are being hurt by this administration. Forget protesting. Focus on helping the actual material needs of the community. Every blue state currently has trans refugees coming into them. Often these are young adults showing up with few resources, often ending up homeless. There's likely a population of homeless trans kids in your own community. These are the people you should be focusing on helping right now. Join a local trans support group to help out your brothers, sisters, and siblings. If an organization doesn't exist, start one. Things to focus on:

• Housing and access to housing
• Job assistance.
• Food and other essentials (one group in my area runs a trans specific food bank, as many trans folks have had bad experiences with church-run food pantries.
• Medical assistance. Provide recommendations to local providers. Educate people on safe DIY use. If there are local HRT homebrewers in your area, help organize distribution and mutual aid.

*Traditional gender support groups for newly transitioning folks.

• General mutual aid and emergency assistance.

Honestly, for trans people, it's completely valid to just laser focus on the material needs of our own community right now. We're being targeted by an organized campaign of state persecution. There's hundreds of thousands of us that are internally displaced refugees within the borders of the US. There's a lot of people hurting, and a lot of people in need. Protest if you want, but personally, I've found focusing on direct material needs and mutual aid to be a much more productive and rewarding path. The Trump regime is trying to destroy us. Simply helping your brothers, sisters, and siblings is an act of political resistance and defiance.

Your goal is not to bring down the Trump regime. That is not your responsibility. For those most targeted, simply surviving these years is your primary act of resistance. Take care of yourself, and take care of your brothers, sisters, and siblings. That is how I as a trans person have found meaning in this time. I voted, but that was only symbolic. And I'm not currently participating in protests. I'm focusing on actually directly helping people instead. Survival is resistance.

Nobody wants Iran with nukes.

Frankly, I do want Iran with nukes. Iran hasn't declared war on anyone for over 200 years. They're stuck in the same neighborhood as a rogue nuclear state that engages in frequent wars of expansionist conquest. The region is incredibly unstable precisely because there is no military counterbalance to Israel. Iran getting nuclear weapons would be an immense boon to peace and stability in the Middle East. I trust the Ayatollahs with nukes a lot more than I do the Israelis with them. At least the Iranians don't believe that their deity gave them the right to annex entire nations.

Good thing we demonized all those people who pointed out Kamala's likelihood to change nothing on Israel policy but still held their nose and voted for her anyway. Those that speak out against the Party must be denounced and purged.

Why should Canada get involved in defense of a bully who is threatening to invade it?

Precisely so it doesn't end up on the wrong side and end up getting invaded.

I'm at the point where I think we should peacefully dissolve the Union entirely. Just grant all 50 states full independence. Let the states come back together in whatever new nation or combination of nations they want.

Look at the current state of our politics. Step back and really look at it. Every political system relies ultimately not on a constitution, but on the good faith of the people actually governing. Look at how the current president is wiping his ass with every check and balance built into the system. Words and laws don't matter, there's always a bad faith interpretation that can allow the president to seize more and more power. And the Supreme Court is openly giving broad sweeping authority to Republican presidents while severely curtailing the power of Democratic presidents. Bribery is legal, and both parties are completely captured by the wealthy. Oh, and every last scrap of freedom, privacy, and autonomy are being torn down in the path of an ever-expanding surveillance panopticon.

I'm sorry. But by the time your political culture decays so far to allow this level of dysfunction, there's no saving it. Our constitution is a woefully out-of-date obsolete document that should have been scrapped generations ago. And it was made difficult to amend by people who had no idea how important amending it would later be. It was built for the compromises of the 1780s, not the compromises of the 2020s. We need to go through a new process of Constitution creation, potentially multiple such processes, and come back together based on new compromises that reflect the reality of the 21st century.

This nation cannot be saved. We need a peaceful national divorce. The alternative is likely something far worse, as we hurdle inexorably towards a second civil war.

Note: obviously there are practical difficulties with dissolving a nation. When this comes up, people love to hand wring about the national debt or how military assets will be dissolved in this kind of scenario. These are important but obvious concerns. But national myopia blinds us here. Nations have peacefully divided countless times through history. These matters are always handled through some negotiation process. American exceptionalism blinds us to our possible futures, simply because we are unwilling to look beyond our own borders for inspiration.

Except if you print a Cthulu, then those kinds of errors happen spontaneously.

Drug smugglers have figured out ways to not only hide drugs inside statues, but to actually make drugs INTO statues. I remember reading about some Columbian drug gang that figured out a way to embed cocaine in a plastic in a manner that could be chemically separated once smuggled across the border. They were sending shipments of religious statues made out of cocaine. So I suppose that Cthulu statue could actually be 30% coke.

Trump lies.

https://medium.com/@ashwinjitsingh/the-trolly-problem-utilitarianism-vs-deontology-bd624a8e321e

If one were to take a utilitarian standpoint, the means are justified by the end, which from a utilitarianist perspective, is the maximization of benefit. Hence, for a utilitarianist, whatever option guarantees the outcome of the maximum benefit is what is moral. Therefore, in the trolly case, a follower of classical utilitarianism would say that it is morally permissible to sacrifice 1 to save 5.

The deontological perspective in contrast, advocates for the means justifying the end. This, for a deontologist, the morality of the action should be based on whether the action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules, rather than being based on the consequence. In this light, a follower of deontologism would argue that it is morally impermissible to sacrifice one to save five because making the choice of having to kill someone is inherently wrong.

Again, this is the entire point of the trolley problem. No one actually give a shit about the hypothetical trolley. The whole point is to explore how different ethical systems can lead to different outcomes. There is no "right answer" to the trolley problem.