But it isn’t wrong. I’d like it to be wrong, and I can appreciate wanting to shift the Overton window, but that’s not where we are and it won’t change before November.

Cool, so which other groups are acceptable sacrifices for the sake of political convenience?

The rights of any minority are always precarious because the majority has the ability to fuck them over. The only way to protect ourselves is by banding together in solidarity with other vulnerable groups and drawing red lines and treating an attack on one as an attack on all. A group I belong to could very easily be the next in the crosshairs. “We will hang together, or we will hang separately.”

You want to convince me to support a third-party candidate, first we need to put Trump in prison, then we need to roll out Star Voting, and then we need some third-party alternatives that aren’t obvious Russian assets.

Oh, is Star Voting part of Kamala’s platform? Is that listed on her campaign website? Has she talked about it in speeches, rallies, or debates? Has she ever even mentioned it once?

Your plan is, “unconditional support of the Democratic party whether or not they provide any sort of voting reform, until they voluntarily choose to give us voting reform, in direct contradiction of their interests, and if they never do then just unconditional support to the democrats forever.” In other words, talking about voting reform is just a red herring to obfuscate that your actual stance is just unconditional support to the democrats forever.

You know who does support voting reform to make third party candidates more viable? Third party candidates. So if you wanna talk about voting reform, in order for that to happen, we would need to get a third party candidate to win first. Or, alternatively, we could say that our support for Democrats should be conditional on them supporting voting reform, so that when they do their calculations they realize that they need to incorporate that into their platform to have a better chance of winning. Because why on earth would they ever support it otherwise?

Right now, the Dems have decided that supporting Israel gains them more votes than it loses, and they can live with that.

I don’t see how you can say this and still not get it. We’re trying to make sure that this calculation is wrong. Because it’s only if that calculation is wrong that they would have any reason to change their stance. Voting for them regardless would mean that their calculation was easily correct and they should keep making the same calculation in the future. If you aknowledge that such a calculation is being made, then surely you can understand the rationale for making the decision more costly.

I’m a staunch pacifist and also 100% behind helping Ukraine.

Co-opting of pacifism is peak liberalism, it’s such a blatant example of liberals trying to paint themselves as “peace-loving” while being imperialists and accepting none of the flak that actual pacifists receive, and even readily engaging in that flak. “Oh, but I only support defensive wars,” motherfucker, it’s called the “department of defense” because every fucking side in every fucking war post-Ghengis Khan always frames themselves as “defending.” If you accept that you can still be a pacifist while saying war is acceptable if you believe it furthers the aim of peace, then you could be a full blown neocon and still call yourself a pacifist.

Actual pacifists may be cranks, but I have some respect for them for having actual principles that they will stand by even if it means incurring a personal cost. Liberals want to steal valor(?) for their own self-aggrandizement while believing in nothing and sacrificing nothing. And that’s not even getting into, “I’m a pacifist, so I just got out of the situation and called the cops.”

Omg guys I just got this idea for a prank it would be so funny I’d like trans my gender and get breast implants and like wax my legs and stuff and I would become like, really slender and petite and I’d go to like a motorcycle rally with all these big burly guys and they’d all start coming on to me because I’d be so attractive and feminine and everybody would think I’m a hot girl but then I’d be like, “Surprise!” in a really deep voice and they’d all get really mad and beat me up and it would be sooo funny right guys?

Guys?

Like, what makes it funny is that I’m not trans (obviously), but like, hypothetically I bet I could pass if I got some surgeries done, don’t you think? By the way, I was thinking about what name I should use for this prank, if I give you my top five do you think you could help me narrow it down?

One of them talked about a Marxist who will get rid of Israel within 2 years and wants to defund the police and give everyone healthcare and provide transgender operations to illegal immigrants, and the other talked about a person who hates the US military, admires China’s handling of COVID, and wants to defund the police and pull out of NATO, and I just wish I knew the names of either of those candidates because they’re both way better choices than what we’ve actually got.

I hate them.

I saw it in my college theater around when it came out. There were a couple scary parts at the end (enough to cut for the trailer), but for most of the movie I was just super bored.

Personally I’ve gotta go with Paranormal Activity. So much of the movie is literally just watching people do normal day-to-day stuff, which is supposed to “build suspense,” but I just found it incredibly boring. Nothing happens at all for literally half the movie. The plot is the same unimaginative slop of haunted house evil ghost of every generic horror movie of that era. I also hate the whole, “found footage” shakeycam stuff because to me it completely breaks immersion and suspension of disbelief. Does that do it for people who actually believe in ghosts or something?

There’s literally not a single interesting thing about the movie, and not even anything fun to critique or make fun of, it’s just boring. If you’re thinking about watching this movie, instead, go out and watch an empty pool for an hour, then watch the trailer, and you’ll have seen everything that the movie has to offer.

I can’t speak for Hinduism, but this Wikipedia article goes into some of the history of Buddhism in regards to sexuality. Generally, sex of all kinds, whether heterosexual or homosexual or sex with celestial beings, was seen as another one of the 10,000 things that could distract one from the path - but otherwise there was nothing particularly immoral about it. Monks and nuns generally had to follow rules that prohibited both, in order to remove distractions, but those rules were never meant for the general public, aside from the precept against the “misuse” of sexuality, which is ambiguous but thought to refer more to things like SA.

When we’re talking about modern China, or the present day state of other historically Buddhist countries, it would be reductive to say that their current attitudes towards homosexuality are a product of religion, because it ignores more recent events and currents, and other historical factors. China was also historically influenced by Confucianism, which was more homophobic, but it was also influenced by a bunch of other philosophies, and today it’s not very religious at all. Japan was historically very gay, and the 11th century Tale of Genji has a bisexual protagonist fucking everybody.

However, every historical tradition had to adapt to contact with the West during the age of colonialism. China at first tried hard to cling to its traditions and stubbornly refuse to adapt to new, Western ideas, but the “century of humiliation” happened and they realized they had to adapt or die. Japan was not directly colonized, but they still had a massive revamping of their society with all these new ideas coming in. Every country in Asia has a story like that. And then you have another 100 years of stuff happening after that.

China’s modern day homophobia does not come from a place of “The Buddha said this was bad,” rather, it comes from seeing homosexuality as a Western invention, and a symptom of “bourgeois decadence.” Sadly, such brainworms are common in many socialist countries. There is a stereotype many people have that gay people all live in cities and spend all our time partying at nightclubs, because that makes for better TV than the reality does. Ironically, there are many countries in the world that once had their own more tolerant traditions that were replaced with Western values during colonialism, who now hold those values up as their own against more progressive, modern day Western values.

I wish we could have a higher level of discussion, with an expectation that claims should be supported by evidence. Less ad hominem and conspiracy theories about everyone with a different point of view being a bot. And much less “I heard someone from [group I dislike] say [comically evil thing],” being accepted purely off hearsay with no source.

I think lemmy unfortunately inherited some toxic reddit traits in that regard. If you make something up, whole cloth, that tracks with what people want to believe, you get upvoted, if you make a case with strong supporting evidence but it doesn’t fit with what people want to believe, you get downvoted - it’s circle-jerk-y.

Also, people just seem generally incurious about the world and it’s rich, diverse history, and just want to rehash the same talking points over and over again. Too many big communities are focused on news or current events, not enough on broader historical context or philosophical discussion. I don’t really want to rehash the same discussions about the US election over and over again for the thousandth time. When history is discussed, it’s at a meme level, with a handful of historical events being referenced exclusively, oversimplified and weaponized to own your political opponents. The world is filled with color, depth, life, and wonder, but when site culture is so focused on scoring points, the result is everyone’s too guarded and defensive to appreciate that.

I’d much rather read people randomly gushing about some special interest or rabbit hole they went down, or even just rambling thoughts about whatever, compared to the latest story about the latest thing and discussions where everyone knows where they stand based on their camp. It gets boring.

Wrong.

Wrong.

Again, you don’t get to just say, “No it isn’t” over and over again without actually explaining why it’s not analogous. That’s how basic reason works.

Also, you can put multiple things in one comment so you don’t spam the thread.

i’m not making an argument. i’m contradicting yours.

Yes, you’re literally just disagreeing with anything I (or anyone else on my side) says, with zero supporting evidence or reason. It’s not an argument, just contradiction. It’s obvious that’s what you’re doing, but still hilarious that you would come out and admit it.

wrong. i said it is not causal.

Can you please explain what the difference is between an action being causal of another action vs an action… causing another action to happen?

wrong

Wrong.

Since you seem incredibly confused about both how to argue and basic facts about reality, let me walk you through this.

You claimed that purchasing meat has no effect on whether more meat gets produced, because “they make their own decisions.” This argument rests on the completely insane premise that paying people to do things does not influence their behavior or make you complicit when they decide to do what you paid them to do. If this were true, it would lead to the absurd conclusion that hiring a hitman to kill someone would not make you complicit in the act, because, by your logic “they make their own decisions” regardless of who’s paying them to do what.

If you want to dispute that, you have to actually find a fault in that chain of reasoning, not just say, “Nuh uh” over and over again.

An argument’s a collective series of statements to establish a definite proposition. Contradiction’s just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says.

Why did you make four separate one line responses to my comment, all at the same time? You realize you can put multiple things in one comment lol.

Also not only is that exactly what happened, but you’re literally doing it again. This is just the Monty Python argument clinic sketch.

Why not? You’re saying that market signals don’t matter, it’s individual choice all the way down. You’re paying people to produce meat and put it on the shelves, but according to you, that doesn’t have any effect on the amount of meat produced and put on shelves. How is that not analogous to paying someone to kill someone and then pretending that that doesn’t make you complicit?

You don’t seem to understand how analogies work. You don’t get to just say “Nuh uh” when I follow your principles to their natural conclusions. That’s just a basic form of logical argumentation.

No, it’s literally what you said. Is what I described not a counterfactual?

“Your honor, it’s true I purchased a hitman’s services, but I didn’t cause his actions. He made his own decision, it just happened to be the one I paid him to do.”

“Your honor, it’s true that the deceased died of blood loss after I stabbed them, however, the idea that they would’ve survived had I not stabbed them is a counterfactual and therefore cannot be proven at all.”

Literally a 5 year old could grasp this.

When you buy something, it tells the person who sold it to you to stock more of it, which tells the people making it to make more of it. Since meat production involves killing animals, it means that when you buy meat, it causes more animals to be killed. If you go vegan and stop buying meat, it causes there to be less demand, which reduces the number of animals killed compared to if you didn’t.