fireweed @ fireweed @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

I remember reading in a Portland newspaper that the one time antifa didn't organize a counter-protest, the Proud Boys (many of whom had driven in from out-of-state) started driving around the neighborhoods terrorizing random folks on the street who looked like they might be LGBTQ+. That was a "never again" day for sure.

Thank you for the clarification. I thought you were making a "let's all learn to civilly agree to disagree" argument, which is just capitulating to extremism by normalizing it.

From the conversations I've had with friends and family in conservative areas (along with my own experiences), people want to believe that most people around them are decent folks who can be reasoned with or perhaps have different values but are still good folks at heart. I think that's partially because it's easy to see the "good" in people when you live in a homogenous or segregated community because there aren't as many opportunities for people to show their ugly sides to the "out-group", but it's also because it's terrifying to acknowledge that your community is compromised of hateful, bigoted, xenophobic, ignorant, and/or selfish individuals. It's like approaching a member of the KKK or a neo-Nazi and thinking you can have a respectful conversation: plenty of "bad" people can become "good" people (thinking of the Black dude who befriended a bunch of KKK members), but you have to go into it with a completely different mindset and strategy.

"OK to disagree"

Dude, if someone tells me refugees deserve to drown in the Rio Grande, that climate change is a hoax, that the only good gay is a dead gay, or that Trump needs to be reelected so he can be a "day one dictator" and rain punishment upon his enemies, I am not going to be fucking OK with that.

That sounds like rent control with extra steps

I've been to Singapore. You would have to pave every square inch of the island just store all the vehicles if everyone owned a car. The problem isn't that cars are too expensive: it's that the government pussy-footed around the issue and soft-banned vehicles through high fees rather than the more equitable approach of outright banning them for most private use. It's like the saying: if the only punishment for breaking a law is a fine, then that law only applies to the poor.

Being a dense city and tiny island, life would be much improved for everyone if vehicle ownership and use were limited to businesses/workers that can demonstrate a work-related need for a vehicle, taxis, and people with disabilities that prevent them from utilizing public transit and/or taxis.

In terms of "pigs have comparable intelligence and awareness to dogs, and thus if consuming a dog is wrong because they're intelligent then so is consuming a pig," or "a life is a life no matter the species," yes this tracks.

However a single nureongi (a common dog breed in the Korean dog meat industry) only weighs 40-55lbs whereas a single pig will usually weigh 250-325lbs at slaughter. After the butchering process, the amount of edible meat is reduced for both, but proportionally speaking much more is lost per-animal from the dog.

"Amount of suffering/number of lives per pound of meat" feels like a crass discussion, however given that a majority (and in many countries, a vast majority) of people consume an omnivorous diet (and are highly resistant to switching to strict vegetarianism/veganism), it's perhaps an unavoidable discussion.

Also, security should NOT take 10+ minutes to arrive in a hospital. This sounds like something to take up with the administration, nurses union, etc. Medical centers are host to all kinds of of sensitive information, expensive equipment, and most importantly vulnerable individuals, and as such should be places where potential threats are removed expediently.

Sure some habitat loss is due directly or indirectly to climate change, like polar bears, seals, and penguins losing the ice they need to breed and/or feed. But other instances are completely unrelated. For example, monarch butterflies in North America have experienced huge decreases in population due to an increase in herbicide use that destroyed massive numbers of milkweed plants, the only plant they lay eggs on, as well as destruction of the trees the monarchs over winter on in Mexico (eg through clear-cutting for avocado farms). Climate change has also hurt monarchs in various ways, but the specific issue of monarch habitat loss is generally unrelated.

So is there not a crosswalk at the bus stop itself? I'm struggling to imagine a bus stop in the middle of literally nothing: there has to be some destination for them to have a stop there, right? If there's a destination, there should be a crosswalk so you can get to and from the bus regardless of which direction you're going or coming from. Otherwise what you have is one-way transportation.

You should not have to backtrack nearly ten minutes to get to a crosswalk. That's just terrible urban design.

Also I don't know where you are, but in many US States every intersection is a legal crosswalk unless signed otherwise. It just may not be a marked crosswalk.

Kill la Kill was a prophecy?

Agreed, the 90s marked a major improvement (and expansion, thanks to cable) in television compared to prior decades. Children's television in particular flourished, especially educational programs. I'd consider it a stepping-stone era, however, as like I said things improved substantially again in the following decade.

I want to disagree, but the reality is that most TV shows from the 90s and before have aged pretty poorly (certainly way worse than movies of the same age have). There are a few reasons for this, but I think the big three are: TV used to be lower budget and lower prestige (going from being a movie actor to a TV actor was shameful), TV had to be episodic due to the nature of broadcast (this improved once TiVo entered the scene, but it was streaming that really made multi-episode storytelling possible), TV episodes were extremely exact in their length (had to stick to the broadcast schedule, which sometimes caused major pacing problems).

Sci-fi TV especially seems to have aged terribly. Part of that is it used to be a niche genre that did not get the resources it needed to not come off at least a little campy, but I suspect the biggest issue is that of audience: shows like Star Trek or X-Files tried to have mass appeal in a way that TV nowadays doesn't need to. I think Firefly's (eventual) success really helped the genre turn a corner, and subsequent hits like BSG showed that "serious" sci-fi was feasible on the TV model. These two series also really ratcheted up viewer expectations for what "good" sci-fi TV should be.

I appreciate the classics like TNG for keeping certain franchises alive and the genre as a whole stumbling along until it could really hit its stride in the '00s, and I do think the shows have some watch value even today, but honestly most of it is rooted in nostalgia and historic importance.

They missed "environmental catastrophe unrelated to climate change that is getting ignored because it's unrelated to climate change"

Soil depletion, micro plastics, habitat loss, fertilizer runoff, invasive species, heavy metal contamination, light pollution, etc etc. Yes climate change is a big fucking problem, but if it were to magically get resolved overnight we'd still wake up to a mountain of other human-created environmental issues. But because everyone is so focused on climate change specifically, we're standing still (or even moving backward) on other issues. For example: electric cars are heralded as an environmental solution, but they: still require a lot of mining and resource extraction, still pollute through tire and brakepad wear, still produce a mountain of waste at the end of their lifespan, still use asphalt roads that require salting in winter, and still promote poor land use that creates all kinds of domino-effect problems (environmental and otherwise). Similarly hydroelectric is promoted as a sustainable energy source, but they wreak absolute havoc on river ecosystems.

There's plenty of Christianity-as-a-source-material media out there. The obvious example is the Narnia series, but LotR was also highly inspired by Tolkien's faith. Many pre-20th century Western works are based in Christianity (when the world was less secular). It's fallen out of favor recently so most Christian works that make it big are Evangelical, like the Left Behind series.

As another comment mentioned, there actually is a Bible stories manga/anime, but it's pretty old.

If those count, we should also toss in Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan, Heaven's Lost Property, Blue Exorcist, and Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne.

Or Qwaser of Stigmata! Only issue is that it's Eastern Orthodox Christianity, but as long as you're cool with that...

I'm going to second this opinion. You're not going to find an anime that's Christian in philosophy/religious doctrine. There are a decent number that use Christianity as a motif or setting however. Chrono Crusade is maybe the closest you'll get. Or you can go the Maria-Sama ga Miteru direction, which takes place at a Catholic girls school (but all the characters are lesbians, and it aired in an era when the Catholic Church was very anti-LGBTQ so.....)

Edit: Kids on the Slope has Christianity (or rather, being a Christian in Japan) as a minor theme, and it's historical fiction so it might be one of the most accurate portrayals of Christianity in anime.

My comment was referring to Cloud Atlas while comparing it to Haruhi as another piece of media with dramatic (and controversial) time skips.