Friend, it’s not inconvenient to me. I just thought it was kind to alert you to the social blunder you’re committing.

You both largely agree with each other. The other commenter is advocating for police reform and admits that the police aren’t doing a good job of protecting the community. Doubling down on your stance while the person you’re debating is trying to work with you ultimately prevents cooperation, and neither of you needed to resort to personal attacks.

All cops are bastards, but abolishing the police isn’t something that’s going to happen overnight - it’ll be procedural and subject to reform. And if things go as you hope, and the judicial system is to find a way to solve societal problems, it would be a great benefit to use existing resources. You can dismantle the police while splintering them into more wholesome services that actually serve the will of the community.

Even if we end the war on drugs and criminalizing people due to their circumstance, there’s still going to be traffic. Traffic doesn’t have to be enforced by an armed thug, or threat of incarceration, but it’s too dangerous of a problem to simply ignore.

They keep bringing up reckless driving because that was the thesis of their original comment. They’re concerned about reckless driving because it results in violence, bodily harm, and death in their community.

You came stomping in here about police reform and the disproportionate rate of incarceration for non-violent offenders. And while those criticisms are valid, they’re misplaced here.

Further arguing the point is demeaning to everyone involved

Context kind of matters for me, but if I’m screwing any in, it’s both of them.

My monitors are on a swivel bar, and plug into the underside. Those get screwed completely in if the cable has screws. But on the desktop, since it doesn’t really move and I’ve never yanked a cable, they’re usually left loose.

I mean… it would have to be?

Is there even that much money in the global economy?

So imagine there’s three parties up for election. Party A gets 40% of the vote, Party B gets 30%, and Party C gets 30%.

In this scenario with first-past-the-post, Party A wins because they get the majority. This means 60% of voters (also known as the majority) had no impact on the election because their candidates are thrown away.

On the surface, proportional voting might look similar. But when you consider the highly gerrymandered state of voting districts, you start to realize that the deck is stacked in a very unfair way.

This is sort of how you wind up in a situation where a candidate wins the election despite not attaining the popular vote - although as I understand it that has more to do with the electoral college (which frankly, also seems undemocratic)

Isn’t how somebody votes one of the only things you can ethically criticize someone for?

Like, people often treat their party like it’s part of their tribe, but it’s not like you’re born into it. It’s not the same thing as race, colour, creed, gender, orientation, or any other prohibited grounds.

Voting is exercising a choice. If you can’t criticize someone because of the choices they make, what can you criticize them for?

At what point do you think it becomes ethical to break the law for the greater good?

I don’t like the idea of destroying ballots either. It’s so undemocratic. It’s a shame that other actors don’t have scruples about it though.

Is it truly better to wait for the fascists to come to power before we resist them? It seems that would allow them to enact much more harm.

Anyway, I don’t endorse destroying ballots. But I do understand why people would be so disenfranchised with a system that’s working against the individuals that they would feel compelled to take some sort of action.

I once sat in on a parent/teacher meeting with my brother. The teacher lamented that my brother could be doing so much better if he just applied himself.

He had a 96 in the course. You know how much better he could do if he applied himself? 4%. Doesn’t seem like it would be worth the effort, y’know?

A lot of people have a hobby that they can either recoup some costs of the hobby, or earn some beer money. Arts and crafts may have the occasional fair or flea market, or even an online store or ko-fi.

In my experience though, once you try to turn a hobby into a primary source of income, that becomes a job and is no longer as fun as it was as a hobby.

This looks like a screenshot from 7 Days to Die

This appears to be a farming plot that a player has buried into the terrain. Due to limitations in the engine, the terrain renders weirdly when it’s deformed this way. This creates a weird sort of edge in the terrain, which appears to be made of dirt, stone, and grass

The best phone was probably a landline that was shaped like a duck.
It quacked when you had an incoming call.

Do you think of life as being an ordered system? It seems pretty chaotic to me.

Anyway, if I relate my concept of a ‘natural system’ to biology, then I’d point out that there isn’t really an upper limit to how fast animals go. I mean, sure, they’re limited by their size or aerodynamics, but a cheetah doesn’t have a ‘top speed’ that it bottoms out at, it could push harder or be induced to move faster.

If I think of it as a force of nature, I’d think about how water flows. The speed of a river isn’t constant, and it could be manipulated or induced to move faster.

So from that lens, it just seems odd that there are universal constants, like the speed of light. You’d think some lights would move faster or slower than others based on their composition, because that’s the behaviour we seem to experience in nature.

This isn’t a serious debate or belief of mine. I accept the laws of science because they’re testable, demonstrable, and repeatable. But when you contemplate the unknowable (what does God look like, anyway?), it’s a fun diversion.

Also we’re such an infinitesimally small part of the universe that I’m inclined to believe that if we are in a simulation, we’re the bug that crawled into the computer.

I’ve often had the thought that the universe is a simulation.

Like, why are there hard physical limitations on things like the speed of light? That doesn’t make a lot of sense for a natural system. Also what kind of bullshit is it that if you move super fast time goes slower?

The universe is a simulation, but it’s not very well put together.

If there is necromancy afoot though, I’d suspect it might be at the world’s largest cemetery.

Do you know how many microplastics are in a full grown human? No thank you.

Maybe we ought to throw them in a pit, chain them to a wheel, and let them grind their own meal. Like the serfs in the good ol’ days they long for.

That’s Richard, he just likes to keep things casual.

My mom is in the middle of downsizing. I have some storage space, so I let her keep her stuff in my house. It gives her an excuse to come visit and we go through her things while she decides what’s worth keeping or donating. I’m involved in the process, and I’ve saved a couple heirlooms with sentimental value.

My mother-in-law likes to show up unannounced and drop crap off. So far she’s given me two lawnmowers, a bunch of rusty garden tools, and a leaky water cooler. I think she thinks she’s helping, but it’s getting to the point that I feel like I’m her dumping site.

You can be narcissistic and still like cats. It’ll give you both something to bond over.

But for real, there are people who keep their cats on vegan diets because their beliefs are more important than their pets’ health.

There’s also people who insist that you shouldn’t spay/neuter your cat and still let them outside to roam free. That might not technically be narcissistic, but cats have a tremendous negative impact on the ecosystem, and feral cats suffer greatly in the wild.

All that said, I love my fuzzballs. They stay indoors, both for their protection and the local wildlife.

Well your conversation with Lucas has it identify itself as Claude, so I’d be a teensy bit skeptical myself

It’s not great to be queer in China.

Depending on how things go in the next couple weeks, we might say the same of the US though. It’s already true for certain parts of the country