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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: March 13th, 2024

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  • That’s a good point. It’s just kinda funny because my reaction to it is basically “wow. maybe he actually used to be a real human.”

    I think probably this just illustrates that he’s not genuine. That said I like your reflection that past behaviour should not be used as evidence against who a person is currently. That’s probably a good baseline, even if the past evidence could actually be viewed in a positive light.

    Anyways. Thanks for the thoughtful exchange.


  • I basically agree with you, but the subtext is a little different.

    I don’t think this photo is damning in any way. It looks like some kids having fun in a pretty typical way. It’s pretty normal for kids to “joke,” and play around with gender. But this dude had some fun as a teen and now he’s trying his damnedest to ensure no one ever gets to express themselves in a way that is incongruous with their agab. It’s worth pointing out that that’s shitty for some specific reasons.



  • Say that’s true. Do you then actually believe that if you’re not smart or you “don’t have drive,” you somehow deserve to be unhoused or starve, to be unable to access healthcare?

    I’m all for people improving their lives, but as a baseline I just don’t believe that certain people deserve the consequences of horrible poverty just because they didn’t or couldn’t perform academically.

    Also what’s the justification for having a system that allows employers to exploit workers by paying poverty wages while materially benefiting from that labor?





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    3 months ago

    A lot of Americans do actually support some gun control measures. A lot of Americans also don’t actually know how insanely hard and effectively the NRA has organized and opposed any remotely reasonable gun control measure. They basically ensure that any hearing on the subject is flooded by their members to oppose it. They just go and many sane Americans don’t.

    I’m not American, but I actually support sane firearm ownership. I look at the lunacy over there and I am almost shocked. I really do think, from hearing about this as much as I do, that many Americans support sane measures. But the NRA is a huge problem. It prevents people from even being educated on this issue.



  • This is not a very good article.

    It’s full of very weird qualifiers: “not a programmer,” “studied computer science,” “tech writer.” This person is not an average user, and they kind of do everything they can to make sure the reader knows that. Then, while trying to say Linux is for average users, the author suddenly is claiming to be just that.

    Linux is easier to use now than when I started using it, a little over six years ago. But it does require at least a basic curiosity to learn.




  • The only comfort I can find in this is that in a constant battle of consolidating an individual’s power, it is very difficult to maintain a cohesive political movement in the long term.

    In other words, I think these people are too selfish to build or maintain any society at all. This is bound to crumble sooner than later, but it is sad to see underprivileged and stupid people be taken on this shitty ride. And it really fucking sucks that the rest of us get swept in their shitstorm.



  • So this is a horrific stereotype, and it has an even more sinister historical precedent.

    Back in the era of slavery (that is specifically in the US, the slavery of Africans abducted from their home countries), there were specifically slave “breeding farms” where slavers would commit massive amounts of sexual assault of captive slaves in order to produce slaves they selected by their own arbitrary metric for specific physical qualities… and to save on what can, again horrifically, be referred to as “import costs.”

    I’m not saying this “worked” or produced the results that slavers wanted. What I am saying is that this specific way of subjugating and dehumanizing people has had lasting effects in both perception of black folks and in the ways that systemic racism works.




  • Tragically, no. I thought so too until quite recently. They did improve things but it’s pretty rough

    Since a viral load can be reduced to zero through medication, HIV-positive folks can be non contagious. The use of condoms, even if the viral load is not suppressed through medication, seriously reduces the risk of HIV transmission. They don’t ask questions about condom usage. To be clear I’m not suggesting that HIV-positive folks should be donating blood, just that the actual factors for transmission are way more specific than “butt stuff = AIDS” the way that they imply. The result of this is still excluding queer folks end up getting excluded with language that’s less overtly hostile and more implicitly hostile.

    The screening doesn’t exclude people based how many partners a person has slept with, or whether they have used protection (both of which are massive risk factors for transmission) and instead basically forbids anyone who engages in anal sex from donating blood.