phoenixvoice
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Communism…
Is communism an economic system or a system of government?
We conflate the two regularly.True, well-publicized attempts at communism have all been a small group trying to force “communism” on a larger group. As is typical, coercion doesn’t usually produce pro-social results!
Were historic monasteries economically communistic?
For a modern representation, does Cheran, Mexico have communistic traits?
Are nuclear families practicing the economics of communism?Communism is regularly compared with capitalism, which is clearly used to represent an economic model. Capitalism is said to have arrived fully with the bloody French Revolution, which didn’t just murder French elites, but eventually began devouring itself and resulted in Napoleon and war in Continental Europe. The altruistic goals of capitalism were to bring liberty, equality, and brotherhood. Capitalism has largely failed in this endeavor, which is what prompted Karl Marx to bend his philosophical training towards economics, utilizing the preexisting terms of socialism and communism.
Capitalism utterly failed to bring about the tripartite goal of the French Revolution. Instead, paired with the Industrial Revolution, it has super-charged human capacity in production and trade, brought prosperity to a subset of the world population, exploded the human population, and created wealth gaps among humans that are off the charts. So much for “equality!”
Could the Industrial Revolution have occurred with a different economic system? It is hard to determine. A different economic system would have different priorities and values, so the forces spurring technological innovation would be different. Perhaps we would simply have different technologies?
Too late for the vaxxed
A client in her 70s who had a bad reaction to the 2nd Moderna injection (some myocarditis and lessened kidney function) was generally unwell for over a year. She followed the regimen specified by her naturopath (I don’t know the regimen), took no boosters, and is now energetic and symptom free.
Another vaxxed, boosted elderly friend I am worried about as I haven’t had any communication from him in a month — we usually communicate via text or email. I’m going to call him on the phone this weekend, see if he answers. I hope that he has simply been busy with family.
Socialism post
Valid experiment. However, in life, when principles are applied, there is never perfect application.
A classroom could be graded on a pure curve, where 59% of the class fails, and students are vying in a cutthroat way for their position in the class. This would also cause many students to “check out,” do little work, and fail, while some would work hard, compete and make the grade. The competition would likely be greatest in the middle — the middling students might actually be working the hardest for their grades, while receiving low, or failing, marks. This sort of experiment bears some striking similarities to pure capitalism.
Neither experiment can be fully reproduced in life because in life there are more forces that come to bear than exist in a classroom. We have ties and priorities related to family, friends, community; we have ethics, morals, religion, and codes of conduct.
All we can do is find the trends from these social experiments and others and look to find a mix that, when added together, gives results that are reasonably beneficial to all involved.
And try playing a cooperative game some time with a group. Watch how the social dynamics of the participants adjust to the new environment. It is fascinating.Talking about “voting with feet”…
I was picking up lunch for 2 kids yesterday at McDonalds. I decided to use their app. I declined allowing the McD app to location services (I.e. my geolocation data.) — it is no great trouble to have to input my zip code into the app to find the intended location for the order. I arrived onsite, and touched the button in the app to indicate arrival. I received an error message, and a code to give the restaurant. Apparently, the McD app does not transmit the order to the restaurant until it receives confirmation from the geolocation services on the device that placed the order that the device has arrived, with no regard to whether or not the user touches the arrival button. With great irritation I turned on location services for the app — then turned them back off a few minutes later. I told the McD manager that the app was pointless — I saved no time by utilizing the app — I was not frustrated by him, nor his staff, I told him, as I recognized that they had no power whatsoever over the functioning of the app. “We hate the app,” he told me. I thanked him for his candor — I weary of employees who defend their employing organizations when the policies and actions of such organizations are obviously problematic. My kids’ high school district has decided to only sell event tickets through “GoFan” which collects an extra dollar fee for every ticket sold for its own profit, and means that everyone has to use digital means of payment. About 10 days ago as my parents were struggling to get the credit card info into my mom’s phone to pay for tickets to watch my daughter’s wrestling event, one of the coaches confided that he hates the new district policy of using GoFan, “We all hate it,” he said.
I won’t be using the McD app in the future.
There *is* beginning to be pushback against the “digital everything” world.
@ boilingfrog
In order to reference a photo, it needs to be hosted somewhere on the internet, not at TAE. Think of how YouTube videos are referenced — the video is uploaded to YouTube and the commenter posts a link. Images work the same way. Here is a Lifewire article that gives information about various places for hosting images, as well as their features: https://www.lifewire.com/free-image-hosting-sites-3486329. Then you can use the IMG button to enter the URL of the hosted image.
Dr D: Now you know why the farms in Arizona are polite but annoyed about why no water’s reaching them anymore. Choices like this
And the climate change folks here want to “solve” the problem of a few big players over-drawing wells by extending the regulations that govern wells in the most populated areas of AZ to the entire state. They believe that this will help the tiny properties relying on wells. It is hard enough (and costly) in rural AZ to drill a well in the first place — in most areas the water is very deep. Big players over-drawing wells needs to be addressed, but it needs to be done in a way that addresses the problem directly, not by restricting ground water access in the entire state to only those (with deep pockets) who can navigate an expensive permitting process. (Expensive permits often ultimately serve the interests the big players.)I am finding myself starting to make excuses for others’ ill health or mental foibles with the thought: “Oh, well, this person is probably vaccine-injured.”
Lake Mead
The CAP (Central Arizona Project) is the local canal system that utilizes the bulk of Arizona’s agreed allotment of water from the Colorado River. I attended a lecture a few months back by a local politician who had been on the CAP board from my county for the past several years. He explained that the data used around a hundred years ago to divvy up the Colorado River water was of relative short duration and there had been some unusually wet years included. Due to this, the water was over-allocated. We now have many more years of data. California’s rights to Colorado River water are older and legally trump Arizona’s rights — he stated that Arizona is willing and capable of reducing its draws on the Colorado River in order to increase the water levels of Lake Mead and Lake Powell, but that unless California agrees to do the same, the water that AZ voluntarily left in the system could be used by California, and Arizona’s purpose of not taking its full water allotment could be frustrated.
This particular politician has mostly held non-partisan positions (like CAP), however, from his rhetoric I could tell that he leaned left. He, too, placed the primary blame on climate change…but based upon this article shared by Dr. D and how the politician mentioned the original data for the allotments to be insufficient…simple over-use seems to be the explanation more in line with Occam’s Razor.
This leads me back to humanity’s problem of general mismanagement of the natural resources in the world around us. The climate change hype seems designed to simply get people fearful enough to accept pat, technocratic “solutions” while their thinking minds are partially paralyzed with anxiety, rather than cogitating deeply on the problem and addressing it in a calm, measured fashion. Yes, with such a large human population we need to pay attention and be mindful of how humanity is affecting and interacting with the natural world. In order to do this we likely will need to move beyond capitalism — we need an economic system that takes the natural world into consideration, and that seeks to utilize resources in a measured fashion, rather than prioritizing quick exploitation. Does that mean really existing communism or socialism? No. And I don’t think that technocracy in any form is the answer (despite the Venus Project) — technology and data should be servant, not master. I don’t think any of us know exactly in what way our economy needs to transform so that we retain at least the level of economic freedom that we currently have with really-existing capitalism (but I’d prefer an expansion of this freedom — at the very least we need ideals that champion economic freedom,) and respect the finite capacities of the planet.
(However, there *is* a problem in the Rocky Mountains generally with pine trees being stressed and succumbing to beetle infestation — I’ve seen this in my travels through Colorado. That issue is not explained by the charts on Colorado River basin rainfall.)
GPTChat, AI, algorithms…
Which returns humans to face-to-face, in-person communication being the only medium that we can have confidence in — not that humans are always honest in person, however, our minds have developed over millennia to be able to function with other humans in face-to-face interactions, which means that our innate bullshit detectors — while certainly not flawless, and capable of misdirection — work at their best in that environment.
@ dbs
Lol, I suppose. My allowance ended at age 10, when I got to watch the younger 3 sibs when my parents went out, and was paid $1/hr. At age 12, I began watching other people’s kids for $2/hr, and my parents stopped paying me for babysitting services — however, I watched others’ kids before my own siblings, and I think that they then had my brother watch our sisters for $1/hr.
It isn’t a complaint, my parents were wonderful when we were kids, and I remain close to them. It served me well that from age 10 on all of my spending money came to me through my own efforts.Microchips in hands
I don’t understand why it isn’t OBVIOUS that it is easy to duplicate the settings for some microchip embedded in a hand. Digital items and pure data is very, very easy to replicate, if you have the correct tools, and it is all available on a server out there connected to the internet and able to be hacked or compromised by the alphabet soup of federal agencies. My front door is more secure — secured by a mechanical code known to the residents of the home and able to be changed whenever we please. This code is not stored digitally and not written down — there is nothing to hack.
Big Mac
I think that the 50c sandwich in 1980 was the lowly hamburger, and the $8 Big Mac today would be a Big Mac meal with a large fries and large soft drink. Which begs the question: why is the creator of this graphic trying to deceive us, gaslight us, and trying to yank on our emotions?
Sure, I was age 6 in 1980 and my allowance was 40c a week — but we went to McDs sometimes and I know that the Big Mac cost more than a dollar, and that my hamburger was less than a dollar.“The pace is picking up”
Another older person who frequents the weekly open mic died. That is three deaths in 3 weeks — all elderly. The wife of one of the group’s founders opined to me last night that she hoped that would be the end of their deaths for a while. I agreed that would be nice, but pointed out that it isn’t just older people dying, it is younger folks, too, people are dying all across the board, and the younger ones are according to actuarial data.
I didn’t mean to open the can of worms…but I forgot that although the data about increased deaths of the young and employed covered by group term life is readily available to any who look for it, it isn’t covered by the mainstream media, and most people are ignorant of it. I explained that when the pandemic hit I had to find a way to find reliable information about what was going on…it took a few months, but I finally did, largely due to TAE. I sang the tribute song to Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Aaron Swartz at the open mic, which of course I found due to TAE. She said that she would look up TAE today. If she does, and reads these comments, she will recognize me.
The pace is picking up…
I have friends, clients, two siblings and their spouses and teen children who are jabbed. I worry…but life has to be lived, so I push it from my mind and focus on what needs to be done today.@ tboc
I enjoyed your analysis, and agree with your conclusion.
I believe that the CO2 concentration information is relevant, and merits further study. We do not know to what extent fossil fuels use belching CO2 is affecting the climate, environment, etc. It is foolish to believe that human activities have no measurable impact; it is likewise foolish to attribute all shifts in climate to human activity.
I suspect that ever accelerating use of natural resources by humans is problematic at best. Humanity needs to learn to live in harmony with the natural world. We don’t accomplish this in a moral way by subjugating the majority of the populace and restricting their resource use to bare minimums (with the attendant misery and death that brings) while a minority of elites continue to consume natural resources at an alarming rate. The moral way to learn to live in harmony is to create (or rediscover) myths that champion living in harmony with the planet, casting this in a positive (heroic) light, and raising in value the foundational principles that promote this outlook. When this happens, people have the opportunity, gradually over time, to adopt values that appreciate living harmoniously with the natural world, and will gradually adjust their lifestyles to align with their values — this is a bottom-up, lateral way for change to spread. Reporting widely and accurately about natural devastations that are directly due to industrial activities is a means to support this change that is non-coercive. (Climate change is not obviously attributable to human activities, while devastation due to an oil spill, or plastic inside of ocean creatures or a dead zone just past the Mississippi River delta full of chemicals from industrial farming run off are obvious.). If an elite cabal tries to create these myths, they will be shallow and hollow, and most people will sense this. Such changes have to come about organically. Many of these principles and myths already exist in our social structures or the archived canon of our institutions — but they are drowned out by advertisements, entertainments, etc., that keep people separated from each other and separated from the planet, from the flora and fauna. I sometimes wonder at the resurgence in the last decade of keeping urban chickens…urban chickens provide eggs, they are not *just* pets, not usually “feather babies,” and they rekindle an association with fauna as individuals interact on a personal level with an animal to help fulfill the human need for protein. (If they try to make me eat bugs, I’ll feed the bugs to my hens and eat eggs!!)The 49% results of poll asking about belief on whether or not jab was the cause…I didn’t realize that the belief was already we so widespread.
TAE informal poll —
One person close to me I believe passed from jab-related causes: my institutionalized, schizophrenic aunt. Her physical health deteriorated after the jab-fest commenced. My mother never asked for the medical records (she had POA for my aunt) so we don’t have as much data as I’d prefer. However, after the first series she stopped walking. Her health would stabilize, and then it would rapidly deteriorate, and then stabilize again. We suspect that the jabs may have been involved in at least some of the rapid deterioration phases. (Although one was not — she was moved to a new floor and the new nurse somehow didn’t notice that she was supposed to be taking metformin as well as her antipsychotic meds…she was slipping into a coma before anyone noticed! But she recovered from that, and was doing well again for a few weeks…and then mysteriously her health deteriorated over the course of a week and she was gone.)My 39-year-old cousin had a massive heart attack days after his first mRNA jab, which shattered his health and finances. Another younger cousin suddenly developed cancer after his first jab series — he recovered. A jabbed teen nephew missed nearly a month of school in November due to 3 strong viral infections.
This past Monday, at the open mic I frequent, one of the two founders was grieving because a good friend had suddenly passed. He mentioned something about so many people dying lately, and that the young people didn’t understand how unusual this is. The prior week, we recognized the passing of a frail, elderly man who had often attended the open mic. A couple of weeks before that, an older woman who frequented a different open mic was honored due to her sudden passing.
Dr D — federal government shut down…no one notices…
Nah. When the tax refund checks stop coming and the SNAP EBT cards don’t refill and the Lifeline phones get shut off and the states don’t get their allotted Medicaid funds and the Social Security checks don’t arrive and the bankruptcies don’t proceed forward — the people will notice, and very quickly.
Of course, it was very, very foolish for states and counties and cities and citizens to pawn off their responsibilities toward the vulnerable in society onto the federal government. But the feds made it so easy to do. Capitalism does not value the souls who get lost in the musical chairs shuffle, but human compassion could not permit the sufferers to be permanently blotted out. So, instead, we pay out federal taxes and soothe our consciences by telling ourselves that the feds are taking care of it now. Don’t bother feeding the panhandlers, say the new little signs in the nicer commercial districts of the City of Phoenix — donate to proper charities instead! Meanwhile, the services for the indigent are hopelessly inadequate for the scale of the problem, and individuals and families in crisis are more likely to get aid through pleas on Nextdoor.com than by calling 211.Oxymoron
Is this where we are headed?
YES.
I know, I know — it is crazy.
I was raised Mormon. There were taboos in the home and in the Mormon culture. As a child I noticed that in the greater world it seemed like “anything goes.”
(I was naive…there still were taboos out there, but they were less concrete in most areas.)
Now…
I play one video game — I unwind with it before going to bed — a Boggle word-finding game. A couple of years ago the words “ass” and “rape” were suddenly no longer recognized by the app. Gee, whiz, these are three and four letter words! In addition, the app does not recognize “slut,” or “gay.” Um…”gay” means “happy” and has for centuries…it is banned for a slang meaning with only decades of traction? It recognizes “goy” and “gey”….but not “gay.”Hedges is a member of the Left who critiques the Left. He is often myopic when talking about the Right. It is very important for factions to have members that perform and utter criticism of itself. He has had career hell to pay because of it. Jimmy Dore does this as well. However, in Hedges’ case, for whatever reason, (I don’t know enough about the details of Hedges’ life to guess why,) he has not turned his critical eye towards the architects of Covid and fell, hook, line, and sinker, for TDS. This is too bad — because the Left really needs as much internal criticism as can be shoved towards it these days.
Dr D:
In the age of computers, they just take the stats from any drug, event, etc, and can ask the computer what is the closest correlations in the data set.Which explains perfectly what I discovered in this NYT article yesterday: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/15/opinion/how-reduce-carbon-footprint-climate-change.html?unlocked_article_code=sEcTfb1jGkDNyqSTdn4S4t259XEBi7zms8Nb3pULMn6_rZJOVTRzIcPiNG1knFdpMY9iyQOp_rjNM7285VJx2k4e7nMajirrselSgyVJtsHVLdYAyGYiQckRQYguC3siCpiiCVlWK0K8nql9HXxJfnsirL4srK1Sm3GOcB8GYUbTP0r86oitWbKTdLHS66xbSHs80k_UKj-_PlvfLpdkB68NArRgsQs_yD6SNdP9MV1rubcqimU5JzAQjNzyIqdkNXxP_Mh-K5IepLRhA2CrSwNamzyEdOxAmtf2Uyz-go-5rqp5wns5Q7PQ5RcasR8LnTU_tOJyMNwn3hfRWgfjNHVTXOgS6ULjBxztxqdJ0anmqU8lWVLOM6eTlma4HqyhBYUJ7w&smid=em-share
When the quiz is taken it is discovered that the “preferred” actions to reduce the carbon footprint are
– no air travel
– no car travel
– vegan diet
– renewable energyIf you struggle with those, perhaps you can at least
– be vegetarian
– eat organic
– install a heat pumpAnd the following are not worth the effort — they’ve been deprecated:
– carpooling (if no one has a car, this is irrelevant)
– recycling (cities that manage waste might find this frustrating)
– energy efficient appliances (they break so easily now that you replace them every few years anyhow)
– lowering the temperature (sorry, Europe)
– buying fewer things (go, capitalism! Buy more!)Interestingly, the article is devoid of any information about the methodology used to arrive at these “carbon footprint truths” (TM). It reads like a religious sermon, naming virtues and vices, exhorting the faithful to be virtuous.
Ectopod
Oh, great.
The women of the elites are soon no longer going to bother going through pregnancy. Why bother? It makes you tired, causes stretch marks, limits alcohol consumption…(although it can increase the bust.)
Coming soon to a nation near you…clone wars.Marketer
“ The mainstreaming and corporatization of the LGBT+ movement, I have been saying since 2005, will not only lead to ferocious backlash and violence, but eventually it will put us several steps back from where we were before Stonewall in 1969.”
I agree. Society can tolerate and co-exist with those who live non-mainstream lifestyles. Society can see those who follow such lifestyles as good people who do some innocuous, odd things. (Like Mormons and their funny underwear, Jehovah’s Witnesses who don’t celebrate birthdays and holidays, etc.) But when the fringe starts taking over the levers of power and communication and begins attempting to remake the status quo in their own image? (Drag queens lauded for reading sexualized stories about drag queens to pre-schoolers??). That is going too far, and stepping dramatically over the line.I was at an open mic last night. One person asked, “Who was raised in the north, where there is a *real* winter?” Several hands raised up. He continued: “They don’t call them snowstorms any more: they are ‘snow events.’ Since when did it become news that there is snow in winter?”
“And, they have names,” a woman called out.
Naming storms used to be reserved for tropical storms, which have a penchant for becoming dangerous. Snowstorms are not terribly dangerous — as long as one is home (or another place capable of keeping the storm out) and snug with sufficient heat, food, supplies and no reason to venture out until the storm passes. Naming winter storms makes them more psychologically significant.Kunstler is on fire today!
Hot/cold causing heart trouble
Uh…you mean, hearts are more likely to fail when under stress? Well, sure, but that isn’t the underlying cause, it’s the tip of the iceberg. Healthy hearts don’t fail under conditions a few degrees hotter or colder than usual. This will be spun by pop-sci to get people to double-down on so-called plans to reduce climate change in order to reduce sudden deaths, all the while pushing endless vaxes to “keep everyone safe.”
I read a book a couple of weeks ago (Dopamine Nation) that was talking about overcoming addiction, written by a psychiatrist (one who actually does psychotherapy, go figure.) One of the treatments that worked for some addicts was taking cold showers and/or ice baths. It invigorated the system, released natural dopamine giving a natural high, and allowed them to function without giving into their addiction. The author’s clients doing this did not suffer any cardiac event. (Of course, this was likely before the C jabs.).
This is “science” on a fishing expedition while ignoring the elephant dangerously weighing down the boat.@RIM
Your comment “ I still don’t know where the focus on nitrogen came from. Wasn’t it always CO2? spurred me just now to look it up. I am a bit floored. Up until a few years ago, I was pretty fluent in the complaints regarding climate change.
Now, there appears to be an obsession with “nitrogen pollution” — and the word “nitrogen” is used endlessly with little description of the science behind it. (For example, most simply talk of nitrogen, with little mention of N2, nitrous oxide, ammonia, nitrites and nitrates.). Nearly all of the rhetoric is about reducing fertilizer use and animal husbandry. (Hmmm…all about food production….I wonder why.) I remember from years ago reading a little about problems with nitrates and nitrites getting into waterways, causing algae blooms and “dead zones” at the mouths of some rivers — those articles were heavy into the science, used proper terms, and I don’t recall suggestions of widespread discontinuance of fertilizer — only that we needed to be aware and make adjustments. (No specifics on what those “adjustments” should be.) It appears that “the science” around reduction of animal husbandry is more based on “pop-sci” than rigorous science. Of course, animals give off CO2 and methane, and their feed cultivation and transport releases nitrogen, therefore we all become vegans! Another article has the platitude that “plants can’t use the nitrogen in the air” — which is technically true — but legumes (etc.) with the aid of soil bacteria DO utilize nitrogen from the air and fix it to the soil, making the platitude disingenuous at best.I have a slim hope…the public schools of late have been obsessing over teaching students to understand technical writing, analysis, persuasion, essay writing, etc. I hope the lessons stick well enough for most students that as adults they will recognize the strategies in use in the writing around them and will be able to see through it and recognize it as fluff and nothing more than a writing technique.
Meanwhile, most of my garden beds are happily sporting 4” tall pea plants right now. I’m curious how all of this nitrogen fixing will affect spring crops — especially the corn!
Afktt: thank you for the grammar lesson! Most of my grammar know how comes from avid reading, with little formal instruction…I had never thought that one through before! :). (I secretly have enjoyed helping one of my sons with his English grammar worksheets this year for the same reason.)
Oroboros
Something is poisoning our metabolism and causing us to gain weight because Obesity rates are up 30% in the last 20 years even though total caloric consumption hasn’t changed.Now, that is an interesting observation. I had assumed caloric consumption was also up, considering how cheap calorie rich, nutritionally lacking food is all around us.
@ Bosco
I don’t know if you can hear the difference, but Mack Wilberg is an amazing conductor and has vastly improved the tabernacle choir….I read references to the “violent” Jan 6 riot, and the thousands of Capitol police officers “assaulted” and I think…hunh? Is there something about the Jan 6 event that I missed?
So I do a quick search on Google — knowing that the result will be propaganda — but I’m looking for actual video footage from Jan 6, footage that will briefly explain to me why the words “violent” and “assault” and “heavily armed” are being used. I found this: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/capitol-riot-hearings-prime-time-1.6483847, I turn off the sound, and there is a warning about graphic language and scenes.
As I watch I think: this is some type of sick joke, right?
What violence? I mean, sure, I can see how viewing that great mass of people marching towards the Capitol would induce anxiety. Yes, as the crowd pressed towards the Capitol, it did resemble — towards the front, where the people were determined, rather than sightseeing — a military assault upon a fortified place…except that the crowd had no weapons. The only actual weapons displayed were in the hands of Capitol police: a gun at an officer’s hip, batons being used to beat on protestors, and use of pepper spray. The closest thing to a weapon in the hands of protesters was a baseball bat. Yes, there were protesters with flag poles and walking sticks and sign posts and selfie-sticks, and water bottles, and phones, etc. — when Capitol police obstructed protesters and hit them with batons, the protesters used what they had and hit back. (…Because the protesters had no actual weapons with them…suggesting that they didn’t intend to attack anyone.). There was a protester group with clear plastic shields, which suggests that there may have been a few protesters with prior thought about disobeying Capitol officers, expecting baton blows, and preparing for them.
Violent? The BLM riots in the summer of ‘20 were more violent. There is more violence on the shows streaming into televisions and devices every minute of every day in the US.
Officers assaulted? A few protesters technically assaulted officers with sticks and fisticuffs and the like. Such things happen at protests sometimes, there would be bruises to nurse, maybe a broken nose or broken bone. So…prosecute those who committed the assaults, just like would be done at any other protest.
Protesters heavily armed? Were the protesters’ own arms “heavy” with thick coats and all the water bottles and signs that they carried? I saw no formal weapons in the hands of any protesters — they only questionable item was a baseball bat (no legitimate reason to bring it to a protest,) but there was no footage of it being used as a club.
This was specially compiled footage, designed to make me feel outrage at what happened. They wanted to convince me that the protesters committed violence, and this was ALL that they could come up with?? I’ve been watching The Witcher with my daughter lately — we like the fantasy storyline, but we dislike the graphic violence, looking away during those scenes — which is much more violent that the cited 11 minute video. Instead, the Jan 6 video compilation makes me feel like the people pushing the Jan 6 narrative are a bunch of pansies, and that most of those in the crowd were essentially duped into participating in something that was not what they thought it would be.
Only a fascist would seek to impose free speech on humanity.
Is it certain that this line didn’t get pulled from 1984?“Extremist religious views”
Actually, it seems to me that Justice Barrett’s views are pretty common religious views — not fitting the “extremist” epithet. They are not my current views, but they were taught to me long ago. At the same time, I was taught not to condemn people who didn’t live like me, didn’t think like me — what was more important was whether people were honest and trustworthy and kept their agreements — not their marital status nor sexual orientation nor religiosity.@ aspnaz
Thank you and I agree.
I *like* being strong and independent. But I run up against situations where I haven’t the strength to handle it alone — and the typical male does have the physical strength. A couple years back I removed a heavy, tumbled seat from my car — and sprained my thumb. Oh, how it hurt! I couldn’t play guitar for weeks. My spouse asked me — why didn’t you ask me to do it? He is much stronger than I — and I exercise more than he does! I smiled sheepishly and told him that he was right.
The differences between men and women are not a problem that needs to be fixed or ignored. Rather, they encourage us to come together, giving and receiving. From that giving and receiving we develop strong social bonds that knit families and communities together.Twitter, free speech vs. absolutist free speech
I’ve been mulling this over. I am for free speech, but I recognize that in some rare instances it may be appropriate for there to be a few brakes on absolute free speech. This is akin to the “shouting fire in a theater” issue. As a society, we generally value safe-guarding children — preventing them from abuse and exploitation, parents having the authority to strongly regulate what they come in contact with, as children can be strongly affected by their experiences. It is appropriate to block child pornography, etc., from Twitter, even though that is technically a violation of absolute free speech.
It looks like the idea of Twitter users paying a small fee for a verified badge backfired…but that may in the future have a comeback. In a “Wild West” free-for-all of ideas, it helps to have some sort of mechanism to determine whether someone is who they claim to be — of course, if a tiny fee is all that is required, then the verified badge is useless for this purpose. A verified badge must require some sort of transparent vetting process, and it is logical that some fee be involved to cover the costs of the procedure.
The most reasonable curb to planning to commit a crime on Twitter is that everything tweeted be transparent and in the “public record” and therefore admissible evidence in court. If users want to be stupid enough to plot a crime publicly…let them.
Adults need to start acting like adults. When my ex started using the family court system to come after me, the situation became an enormous trigger for the PTSD that I was suffering from the former marriage. It was very challenging to face what was going on when I kept having debilitating emotional flashbacks. I do not like the terms my first attorney used to get me to stand up and face it — I’m not sharing them — but I recognize that she was correct in what I had to do. I felt like a victim — and I *was* being victimized — yet I had to stand up and be an adult. Yes, it is very uncomfortable when social media is used to bully other adults, to spread lies, etc. However, as adults we need to act like adults, and face the issues. Perhaps there needs to be an easy way for anyone accused of something on Twitter to refute the accusation. However, in order for free speech suppression to actually meet the threshold of “shouting fire in a theater” the bar has to be held very high. Social media is in the “virtual world” — which means that like the “sticks and stones” nursery rhyme, what occurs there does not cause immediate bodily harm, and does not meet the bar of “shouting fire in a theater.” Does that mean that culturally we embrace cyber bullying? No, not at all. It is appropriate to educate users about what cyber-bullying is and how to recognize it. The best way to curb cyber-bullying is not to retweet it.
It seems that during pandemics (and scamdemics) that humanity is doomed to make stupid collective choices whether or not there is a powerful cabal controlling the media of the day. During the Black Death, people thought that the disease came from witches and killed the cats that could have killed the rats whose fleas actually brought the plague. They also practiced bloodletting with dirty fleams. In the Covid Age, people donned useless masks and lined up to be repeatedly injected with toxic substances that damaged their immune systems, among other things.
Over two years ago I was scared of contracting Covid (by summer 2020 most of my fear was centered around concerns of passing it to my parents or the kids passing to my ex’s household and dealing with possible fallout from that.). But it came…and went. Two years have passed and I haven’t had another cold or flu since Covid — I’m guessing that Covid must have amped up my immune system. I am not complaining.
Red:
Control is the game, so be uncontrollable in a civilized way.Kudos for that statement. I like it. 🙂
My teen nephew is finally recovering after weeks of illness with the flu, RSV, and pneumonia.
Wait — a TEEN was very sick with RSV?
Yes.
That sister told her teens that they should pray and make their own decision about whether or not to get the Covid vaccine. Fortunately, by the time they came to jab her younger kids she had been exposed to enough information about the C vax dangers that she chose not to vax them. (I think I may have had a part in that.)I watched Died Suddenly. That was my first introduction to the idea that there is a clear signal of death + presence of amyloid-protein strings in veins and arteries occurring 5/6 months after the initial jab. My now 90-year-old friend and client suffered a “mini stroke” six months after her first 2-dose series vax in late June 2021. When I expressed concern that it was related to the vax, she pushed the thought away, citing that it was impossible because “that was six months earlier” and proceeded to go out and get boosted. In July of that year, a younger client (around age 60) experienced blood clots in his leg, and his now-wife had some sort of sudden swelling in her brain that affected her vision.
Dr D:
This is the same as solar or wind. If they worked, they would be cheaper and come into the economy voluntarily. It’s only if they don’t work that government need be involved. So the very fact government wants them is proof that it doesn’t work. If it doesn’t work, and we’re paying someone to install it, isn’t that just fraud and theft?
Technically, internal combustion vehicles were also subsidized by government decades ago. In Phoenix, AZ, the streetcar rail was torn out by government, and countless roads paved, to facilitate autos. Without streetcars, the people were more inclined to purchase autos.The stupid part is how people expect solar/wind to directly compete or supersede fossil fuel use in *all* areas. There is a reason why satellites and the International Space Station primarily use solar PV for their electrical needs!
