If someone claims something happened on the fediverse without providing a link, they're lying.
Evidence or GTFO.
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truth=facts. facts are objective. it’s a fact that the USA is a country in north America. there is no disputing that.
Not trying to say that everything is subjective, but that in particular is kind of a bad example.
Countries are socially constructed. The US is something that only exists so long as people agree that it does. There is no objective, material way of determining where one country ends and another begins.
In fact, there was quite a bit of disputing that historically. Prior to the American Civil War, lots of people said that the US was not a country but a union between countries, they were called "states" after all, and it was common to say "The United States are" rather than "The United States is." There are still successionists today who argue for that interpretation. To say that the US is objectively a country means that there must be something in material reality that we can point to to prove that one interpretation is correct and the other is incorrect. What is that thing?
Whatever that thing is would have significant implications for how we see the world and look at other disputes, whether we're talking about Spain and Barcelona, the UK and Scotland, China and Tibet, or Israel and Palestine. For example, if you say that historically, most US secessionists supported slavery and therefore they lacked moral character and the position is illegitimate, then it follows that what states exist is a function of the moral character of their supporters, and that seems to be adding lots of assumptions and moving away from any sense of objectivity.
"The US exists" is much more subjective than something like "This chair exists." With the latter, you could argue that grouping a collection of atoms into the category of "chair" is arbitrary and there's no way of determining when an atom stops being a part of "chair," but that's much more pedantic than socially constructed concepts that don't really have a physical essence.
Unfortunately not, this was a long time ago. But I'm sure if you ask them they'd be happy to explain.
In terms of politics, which is mostly what I discuss on here, I once read a Cowbee post that actually made something click for me that I hadn't understood, basically, that a socialist system should seek to nationalize industries primarily once they've become sufficiently developed that incentives for growth are no longer necessary or useful. Previously, my framework had been more along the lines of state-run for necessitities and private for luxuries, without consideration of the level of development, but Cowbee's explanation clicked for me and connected the concept of enshittification to the question which transformed the way I looked at things.
Um. Other than that, for all the discussions I've been in, not a lot else comes to mind. I find it really difficult to have high level discussions with people I don't already broadly agree with, because people just aren't interested. Whenever I attempt to pose a real question, or pick people's brains in a meaningful way, it just gets ignored. People just really like screaming at each other over the same like three topics forever, everything gets reduced to team sports, and those categorized as being on the other team get completely dismissed. Like honestly, that weird cult of "Soulism" that we have on here is at least more thought provoking and mentally stimulating that the 10,000th shouting match of "tankie!" "lib!" "tankie!" "lib!" "Genocide denier!" "Genocide enabler!" blah blah blah, it all gets so boring.
Sometimes I really miss being in school and writing essays, where I could know that someone was going to read it, think about it, and provide feedback. Trying to talk about anything high-level on here is shouting into the void. But everywhere else I know of on the internet is even worse! The only spaces where people actually engage with the sort of questions I'm interested in are spaces where everyone broadly agrees with my perspective already, which also gets boring.
Sometimes, I just need something interesting and challenging to mull over while working an understimulating job, and it's hard to find that.
Someone is “sick” and takes FMLA. Abuses it. Comes back just long enough to reset the clock then gone again for another 12 weeks.
Oh no! Someone's "abusing" their unpaid sick days! The horror! What are you, a cop?
I meant "off the beaten path" relative to places like Tokyo or Kyoto. Fukuoka is still a good sized city, but my experience is that most Westerners haven't heard of it. Japan is a homogeneous country in general, so outside of big tourist destinations, you're unlikely to just bump into another foreigner on the street, and occasionally like a little kid would stare at me in awe (I did also stand out because of my height, and found it amusing). Like I said, beautiful city, and definitely recommend it.
Do you know if the shop is still around?? I might be going for work next month, and I’d love to get some good shawarma.
Well, I got curious and did some googling. I'm pretty sure the place I went to was called Pasha and unfortunately it closed down. However, there's actually a place that looks pretty similar (I thought maybe it was the same one at first) called Kafe Toruko that you might check out.
Oh, I have A Story.
I studied abroad for a year in Fukuoka, Japan (beautiful city, off the beaten path for foreigners), and the options where I was were pretty limited in terms of foreign restaurants. However, at some point, us international students discovered this little Turkish shawarma place hidden away somewhere, and it was absolutely delicious, very filling (in a way Japanese food generally isn't), affordable, and unlike any of the other options. The word spread quickly through the I-house, and many of us became regulars (although it seemed mostly ignored by the locals). We were there so often we got to know the owner, who spoke English, he was ethnically Turkish, but had actually come from Germany and decided to move to Japan and open a restaurant. Over several months while we were there, we watched the place get noticably nicer, more decor, the guy started importing Turkish rugs to sell out front, etc.
Unfortunately, as our second semester came to a close, we went there one last time to say goodbye to the owner and his delicious shawarma. He said like, "Damn, you're leaving? I don't know what I'm going to do." I'm pretty sure we were almost single-handedly keeping his business going, and it would take several months for the next exchange students to arrive and no guarantee they'd find the place or fall in love with it like we did. We didn't really have a way of leaving a message for that next group, to say, "Hey, check out this shawarma place," and I never did find out if the business survived us leaving.
Funny enough, this was how I learned what shawarma was, just before the first Avengers movie came out (dating myself here).
I literally just addressed these points.
I don’t care if people don’t want to use ai, but this precedent is not sustainable. One person on the team decides that their religion does not permit use of a computer. What the hell do you do? You can’t fire them for observing a religious practice (according to the ai thing) so what?
Completely wrong. If the job necessitates the use of a computer, then being unable or unwilling to use a computer is grounds to be fired. That in no way conflicts with this precedence.
Maybe I have a religious exemption from thinking about anything but god.
Seems like you'll get fired very quickly then.
All this does is makes work difficult for anyone else without an exemption.
No it doesn't.
You seem be having trouble understanding what the "reasonable" part of "reasonable accomodation" means.
Yeah. I guess he hypothetically decided to tear down the West Wing of the Whitehouse, without permission, where he was just a tennant. Hypothetically speaking.
This isn't a statement from the Trump admin, it's a lawyer who was presented with a hypothetical by the courts, asking if their logic would hypothetically extend to the Statue of Liberty. You have to do some incredible leaps of logic to get from there to thinking that the Trump admin has any intention of tearing down the Statue of Liberty.
Dude. You tear down a part of my house
It's not "your house," lol. The government doesn't represent the people.
That's not how anything works.
That's like saying "We can't do anything about hiring discrimination against people in wheelchairs because what if one wants to be a firefighter?" Employers must give reasonable accomodations, which, if provided, enable an employee to do the job. If you have a tech job and have a moral objection to computers or the internet, you won't be able to do your job and that is not a reasonable accommodation.
All this means is that a manager can't force you to use AI so long as you're able to meet performance standards without it. It's incredibly reasonable and your argument is completely disconnected from reality.
What an absurd, right-wing article. The author clearly doesn't understand it either.
But even where working-class voters nominally agree with a Democratic policy goal, they don’t trust the institution being asked to deliver it – a distrust decades in the making.
This undermines the entire thesis that the Democrats "moved too far left" and that's what alienated the working class. How can it possibly be the case that that's the problem, if the Democrats are distrusted even when they align on policy?
The idea that Democrats are too focused on class, or have been historically, is just ridiculous, and relies on cherry-picking to an absurd degree. A handful of Democrats have recently begun talking about class, which is highly controversial within the party and goes against the party establishment. The article even goes so far as to cherry-pick Graham Platner, who hasn't even been elected! How is it possible that this recent trend in rhetoric could be responsible for "a distrust decades in the making?"
Meanwhile, the author's approach of moving right to appeal to this perceived silent majority has been the accepted, conventional wisdom during the very decades that the distrust was made! If this approach was actually effective, then where are the results to show for it?
Oh no, did Lockheed Martin and the Pinkerton Detective Agency not change to a rainbow Twitter logo? The horror.
All shit like that accomplished was letting brands pinkwash their image, while the association caused harmed to queer people around the world. It's hard to promote LGBT rights if your country is staring down bombs with rainbows painted on them. Meanwhile, those same companies would often materially support conservative politicians, while offering purely symbolic support for queer people.
"How does the Murder Factory feel about gay rights?" is looking at things with completely the wrong priorities. The world is better off with that bullshit image stripped away, even if it's happening for the wrong reasons.
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This is the issue with antiwar discourse primarily focused on US troops. The troops are volunteers, and there are plenty of ways that harm to them can be minimized or negated while continuing to slaughter people, like through drones.
The actual victims of imperialism, the Iraqi people, did not volunteer for any of that shit. But to focus on them means treating them as human beings with moral worth, which, in US politics, is such an extreme far-left idea that it's basically relegated to the "lunatic fringe." The furthest "left" mainstream critique of the war is this stuff about the poor troops, which, yes, it's still bad to send them into conflicts without reason even if they volunteered and even if the risk is mitigated. But it's hardly the worst thing about the war, and it falls flat for a lot of people.
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Oof, that's rough.
For temporary relief, you can find stuff on YouTube that plays sounds at different high pitched frequencies. You'll still be hearing the sound but having it come from an external source can provide relief (at least for some people). Noise machine apps have options for different "colors" of noises, so you can experiment and try to find something that works. Also, I can't explain it at all but for some reason this music does something for me.
Don't assume that it'll get worse or that it'll always be as bad as it is now. If it's still there when you're 40, let 40 year old you deal with it. If it sticks around, you'll learn to live with it. My experience was that it's worst when you first get it because you're not used to it, you don't have any tools for coping with it, and you can't accept it.
Take it day by day. If you can deal with it for just one day, then you can apply that to every day. So all you have to worry about is today.
But I'll tell you, shit sucks. There's an herbal supplement in the US that's marketed as helping with tinnitus. It doesn't work, and I knew it wouldn't work, I saw the word "homeopathic" on the label and I knew exactly what it meant. I bought it anyway. My dad suffers from it too, and I saw the same one in his medicine cabinet.
I think my case is relatively minor, too, but I can remember being that desperate for a moment of relief. But for me it's faded into the background and I usually don't notice it. Tbh I've come to find it almost handy, in that it's a way of my body providing feedback to tell me when I'm stressing myself out. Kinda like that thing with old folks where they can tell a storm coming because it makes their joints ache. The sensation itself is just a sensation, it's annoying and unpleasant, but my experience is that what makes it really bad is when you have other thoughts attached to that. And the good news is that it's possible to change the thoughts you associate with the sound even if you can't change the sensation. It just takes time and mindfulness.
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I don't understand how there's ever a business model since people can just run their own models locally.
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It's wild how ideas like this continue to exist despite being so contrary to evidence and reason, just because it shifts blame away from systemic issues and the ruling class.
The kind of atmosphere a planet can have in the long term depends on having enough gravity to keep gas particles from floating off into space. Mars' gravity is smaller than Earth's, which means that even if it had oxygen, that oxygen would be lost over time. Mars likely once had a dense atmosphere heavy in carbon dioxide, it wasn't lost in one specific event, but gradually losing it over a long period of time.
Meanwhile your quote highlights the fact that Orwell thought that being honest about the Soviet Union and its critiques in political discussions is a mark of intellectual honesty, which isn’t really pro-fascist, since you can critique the United States and still be anti-communist after all.
In that case, you reject the reasoning in the initial quote.
When the Soviets were fighting the Nazis, criticizing the Soviets was either pro-fascist or it was not pro-fascist. If it's pro-fascist, then Orwell was a hypocrite for doing so. If it isn't pro-fascist, then the reasoning in OP's quote is wrong.
Somehow this "our side or their side" broke down for him when considering the Soviets fighting on the same side as the Allies.
If a crazy guy attacks you on the street, would you just stand there and let him kill you because of all those societal consequences that are working against him?
No, because I'm not a pacifist. But what I'm saying is that this "with us or against us" argument is reductive and wrong. The question of whether pacifism is correct is a separate question from whether the "with us or against us" reasoning is valid.
If someone asks you to fight back to save yourself and your neighbors…no…they aren’t the ones doing you harm.
I think you and I have very different understandings of what the term "forcibly conscript" involves. It's not "asking."
Not only that, but there are an enormous amount of assumptions that you're making here. Not every conflict is between fascists and non-fascists, as I said, WWII is an exception and you can't make a rule from that exception.
Provided that neither side is exterminationist in nature, the conflict may just be a question of which oppressor rules over you, and in that case, you are not fighting, "to save yourself or your neighbors" but to preserve the power of one oppressor over another.
WWI provides a very clear example of this, and historically, the pacifists had the second best take on that conflict, better that virtually anyone else in the West. Likewise in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran. Every one of those conflicts was framed as being "defensive" and "if we don't fight them over there, we'll be fighting them over here," again, pacifists were much more correct than anyone who participated in those conflicts.
People? Which people? If I get a bunch of people and declare a micronation within what the US considers it's borders, is that objectively a country or not? Or suppose I convince a bunch of Americans that Germany isn't really a country, does it then cease to be a country despite what the Germans themselves believe?
In any case, I would think that if something falls under the standard of, "This is true because a bunch of people say it is, even though there's nothing physical you can point to to prove it" then it seems somewhat absurd to call that an "objective fact" What do "objective" and "subjective" even mean, then?