Tachanka

just manufacturing consent for the future most destructive war in human history, no big deal

CW: Vegan meat

long off topic monologues

the sad thing is this is indistinguishable from something a wrecker or a cop would do, but I could also see it being completely sincere behavior. Perhaps institute some kind of time limit.

That's true, space could be ruled by giant bats

Funny joke but consider:

thesis: I should organize and lead because the world needs a white savior

antithesis: I should grill because the world is tired of my kkkrakkka shit

synthesis: I should organize in a non-leadership role because the world is tired of my kkkrakkka shit

this is badposting and therefore i will not reveal whether the pun was intentional or i am bad at spelling

yeah, "workers of the world, unite" should not have fine print

CW: Discussion of transphobia

This is a very pop-cultural explanation that looks specifically at a few random bourgeois actors and their interactions with traditional and social media. I think a better explanation for why TERF island is so transphobic has less to do with New Atheism (i.e. Dawkins et al.) and JK Rowling (who are symptoms of the underlying problem rather than the source). It has to do with the fact that the UK is fundamentally a dethroned world superpower. The UK lost all its colonies and became a vassal of the United States, and for a while was just an appendage of the EU. The same thing that is behind British transphobia is the same thing behind Brexit. It's the same old reactionary "we used to be a REAL country. We used to be an EMPIRE. But now we have FALLEN FROM GRACE and we need a nonconformist scapegoat to blame for our current geopolitical irrelevancy!" And what better scapegoat than trans people, who have been undergoing a civil rights struggle similar to the struggles of other marginalized groups. When a marginalized group is actively undergoing a civil rights struggle in a dethroned empire like the UK, they become a convenient scapegoat for why the country is no longer powerful. This is especially true of trans women, who are seen through a transphobic lens as "biological men who refused the call to be masculine revanchist imperialists."

TL;DR transphobia is ~~just~~ another genre of "the west has fallen, billions must die"

EDIT: Not "just" since transphobia exists outside of empire, but it takes on that flavor in the imperial core

Fahrenheit or Celsius?

nip the problem in the butt

umm sweaty it's "nip the problem in the bud", it's a florist analogy

she’s not someone who is ever going to stop using, because deep down she doesn’t have the desire to.

I have a hard time wrapping my head around this issue. addiction really alters your neurochemistry such that you behave and think in ways you otherwise might not. Some people say your "true self" is revealed when you're on substances, i.e. if you become an asshole you were really just an asshole all along, unlikely to ever change, and not deserving of additional chances, while other people say you "become someone else" on substances, not liable for your actions, and fundamentally absent from reality for the duration of the substance's effects, and I think neither of those ways of thinking is exactly correct for substance abuse, anymore than it is for medication, especially given the variety of substances and the different interactions they have with our brains and bodies, which aren't even consistent each time we use them, but highly dependent on stuff like mood, food intake, etc... Fundamentally, it's a shame that someone took advantage of a mutual aid community, thereby decreasing its effectiveness. That's really the heart of it. Whether she's capable of change is more of a philosophical issue. u/happybadger made a good post in this thread about the pitfalls anonymous online mutual aid. You either sacrifice privacy or you sacrifice stability. You either make your users vulnerable to doxxing, or you make your community vulnerable to sabotage by bad actors. I'm wondering if there's a way to engineer a resolution to this so you can get the best of both options?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSnA2FdDYfk

skip to 5:51

Some commentary: Would a dyson sphere really appear "dark" and only be visible in infrared? Wouldn't a civilization manipulating a dyson sphere still want to be able to see what they're doing outside of the sphere? Wouldn't they have tons of light pollution from their advanced civilization existing around their dyson sphere? Unless they've somehow evolved past the need to see things, it seems like a dyson sphere is an unlikely explanation for these 7 stars