pinkdrunkenelephants @ pinkdrunkenelephants @sopuli.xyz

Posts

17

Comments

1,109

Joined

2 yr. ago

If you've seriously never heard of it before, look it up, it's fun

Why would you waste money on something that bores you?

What was it called?

People don't read popular science books? 🤨🤨

Okay, I admit, I am deeply perplexed by everything everyone is saying in this thread. Do people seriously keep books on bookshelves not for reading, but for decoration or to pretend they're well-read? Why wouldn't they just read the books?

I'm not an atheist and even to me, that's a really transparent dig at people who believe something you disagree with. You don't need religion to be altruistic as you are implying.

People can just enjoy them for stories and not actually believe in what the writer wants them to believe.

I can personally attest to that as I have to do it with most fiction, including Ayn Rand stuff.

People don't read Fahrenheit 451? Or 1984? 🤨

So how would you know which blong is which? 🤔

Why would you need to ask some stupid chatbot that when you could have asked any one of us?

No, rights are natural qualities, principles or states of being we are born with. They're either endowed by you by the creator of your choice or they exist through natural laws. They almost always can be derived from natural law and/or natural observation.

No human being dictates what rights another has, period. That means no, you don't get to tell people they don't have the right to smoke.

Grow the fuck up and accept that other people smoke and stop obsessing over things you can't control.

I am so glad to be a native English speaker... although I would have been a lot happier to have been Canadian. Everyone blames us Americans for the way English is without giving a thought to Britain. Or Australia.

Just memorize them by rote. There's nothing actually connecting them via spelling; they're completely different words with completely different backgrounds and that's a thing you have to get used to in English.

Remember English is a creole of a bunch of different languages and that's why it is the way it is. It doesn't really have rules like that aside from some basic grammar.

That's one of the facets of rights, is the freedom to do things. Rights aren't only freedom from things.

And you might not like smoking, but other people are going to make choices and live their lives in ways you don't agree with, even that you abhor, and rights means you have to put up with that for the betterment of all.

So people, young people, are going to smoke, and you're going to put up with it.

Nah dude, literally everyone does have to be able to read. You can't do anything in life unless you can read, especially using the internet, and abusers specifically use the inability to read to exploit victims financially -- if you can't read, you can't sign contracts or consent to anything, you can't learn anything (and no, videos are not enough; most of the things they teach you require reading) and you can't effectively communicate with anybody who isn't directly in front of you.

I agree with you about the respect part. Respect is BADLY needed and the lack of it is part of the root cause of the collapse of the education system. People just don't think education or learning is needed, and I think deep down inside you suspect as much, which is why you were talking about victim agency.

I don't really disagree with you, I'm just informing you of the reality of the situation. I just read on the World News reel here that 54% of American adults read below a 6th grade level -- that alone shows us that Americans at least really don't have any agency and I assert this is part of the reason why abuse and exploitation from all sides is so goddamn rampant here.

Stopping abuse is a fight that will have to be done through multiple methods, but the only way to do that is to restore our agency as a people, and the only way we can do that is by first recognizing that most of us really don't have it.

It's up to us who are educated and who therefore do have agency to lift the others up. We need to make government force people to be educated -- offer free remedial classes at community colleges, enforce a high-school level reading standard and if you can't meet that, you legally can't be gainfully employed. Anonymize testing and tie results to social security numbers. It can be done.

Yes it is.

Because attributing any blame to a victim is always a sleazy attempt to shift all responsibility for a situation away from the aggressor and onto the victim. It's a common abuse tactic.

Plus, most people really aren't capable of doing what they need to do in life-threatening or abusive situations. Adults really don't have as much agency as they like to pretend they do, and I personally am tired of being dishonest about it.

I say that as one of the people who has been abused partly through their own failings and iniquities. I don't call myself a victim. I'm also not an average representative of people in abusive situations -- I have always been and always was capable of doing far more than most other people, and so I am telling you from that experience that you cannot attribute any responsibility for a situation on a victim like that. Most people are just NPCs and you need to respect that.

The right to smoke and be unhealthy.

Also bodily autonomy. That kind of action, if accepted, could be used to impose incremental bans on anyone for any reason, so long as the majority is authoritarian enough to agree.

Like access to hormones for trans people. Or abortions. Or birth control. Or weed.

It's always wrong to blame the victim, yes. You just genuinely don't believe they actually are victims, and if you want to have that debate, be honest and have it. But you don't get to recognize their victimhood and then invalidate it by implying their suffering is partly their fault.

When you advocated having a government with a constitutional policy to regulate what children eat, overriding the autonomy of families.

I don't get what you don't get about that. Why are you unwilling to see your own policy for what it is?