It looked cool but please tell me why this was impressive. It looked like thrusters, which are cool - but does this have real world implications? This is an expensive car that was able to do a soft landing after a monster-rally stunt.

This feels like a downsizing of the SpaceX thruster landing from a few years ago, which was genuinely impressive and feels like it would have real-world applications (as an ignorant).

Why should I care about this tesla stunt? Why does anyone care? If this was an Apple event-esque unveiling new applicable tech I would temper my disappointment, but there is a lot of meat-riding over this that I just don't understand.

Please CMV

For most of human history, we really did live under scarcity. There wasn't enough food, housing, medicine, technology, or productive capacity for everyone to have everything they needed.

I don't think that's true anymore. We now have the ability to feed, house, educate, and provide basic technology and necessities to essentially everyone. And AI and automation are likely to make that abundance even greater.

So if we are capable of providing basic needs to everyone, why wouldn't we?

It seems like the answer has to be some combination of greed, wanting to have more than other people, or believing that people need desperation and pressure in order to work, create, and innovate.

And maybe some people really do need that pressure.

But maybe there are also people capable of changing the world who would do better if they weren't spending so much of their energy worrying about food, rent, healthcare, debt, or becoming homeless.

Maybe desperation creates one kind of ambitious person, while security allows another kind to flourish.

And if someone is perfectly happy just having their basic needs met and not accomplishing anything extraordinary, I'm not sure why that means they should go hungry either.

CMV.

Yes AI data centers do consume water and do release emissions, and that is harmful for the environment. However, it's a drop in the bucket compared to everything else in the world.

70% of all freshwater is used for agriculture and livestock. Thermoelectric and nuclear energy consumes over 100 billion gallons of water daily. Textiles are extremely water intensive, with an estimate of about 2800 gallons of water for a single pair of jeans.

Not to mention golf courses, beverages, automotive or mining industries all use excessive amounts of water that when you compare Data centers to them, it is insanely small.

There are a plethora of reasons we should argue against AI as a Society. Job displacement, creative theft, societal intelligence lowering, discrimination, and just in general soulless slop.

Unless you are an environmental engineer or scientist, we as a people do not need to be arguing against AI because of environmental impacts. It is easy to counter which degrades the rest of your argument and won't be convincing. It's like asking a local business that kills puppies not to open up because it could damage the land when there's 10 walmarts in town. Yeah it will harm the environment, sure, but there are better reasons to argue against having that business open than that.

In some sense, Reddit should be an excellent place to get information about the state of AI technology and its potential to replace jobs across different industries. Why? Well, I can't think of another platform where you have people from all sorts of professions (e.g. programmers, lawyers, doctors, accountants, consultants, professors) sharing their personal experiences. Unfortunately, I think Reddit is actually a pretty bad place to get this information for two reasons.

First, a large portion of Reddit seems to be anti-AI for various reasons, and I suspect one of them is simply that people don't want to be replaced by AI. So it is in their natural interest to downplay AI's capabilities. Meanwhile, people who are seeing enormous productivity gains that their coworkers aren't seeing might be wise to keep their mouths shut. Why would you announce that much of your (and your coworker's) work can be easily automated, especially when doing so might threaten your job security or competitive advantage?

Second, and more importantly, I suspect that only a tiny percentage of people within each profession are actually utilizing AI anywhere close to its full potential. Without going into details, I happen to be one of them in my field, and the productivity gains have been eye-opening. Yet I see people within my same industry in Reddit just saying something that is totally off about the capability and usage of these models and I suspect that many people just haven't seen the light. And these being upvoted by other users who also do not know what is possible. And from the outside looking in, you might get a false sense of how much damage the CURRENT AI models with right workflow can do to wipe out many of these jobs.

Now, you might argue that these outliers should not be representative of the state of the technology within these fields, but I would argue the opposite. I think these extreme outliers are actually a much better indicator of the current state of AI capabilities than the average worker. Tools like Codex, Claude Code, and the necessary scaffolding for agentic workflows are available to practically everyone and can be set up relatively quickly. Yet, you have a majority of people using mediocre models, entering a few prompts, getting disappointing results, and concluding that AI sucks. They then go on Reddit, find hundreds of people agreeing with them, and this becomes the consensus.

So I think Reddit is a great resource for understanding what different industries and jobs are like. But when it comes to AI and its potential to replace jobs, I think there is a systematic underestimation of its capabilities that makes Reddit a particularly unreliable source of information. CMV.

I was born in 2000, so relatively young, but I still remember experiencing blockbuster as a kid, and I know the cultural significance of it. I know how memorable it was to take a trip to that store, sift through movies and video games, and spend that time with family or friends. And I know how back then it was a nice date idea or otherwise something fun to do for couples.

But people saying blockbuster needs to come back and how going to blockbuster is way better than using streaming services or on-demand services now? I don’t believe that at all. That to me is just nostalgia blinding people as it frequently does.

There are still video stores. There are still libraries that have a strong collection of films and video games. You can still buy DVDs at Walmart and other grocery stores. But who tf is doing that? Definitely not as many people as there used to be. Because streaming and on-demand is simply better, more cost effective (usually) and more convenient.

If blockbuster actually came back it would probably be a popular fad for like a month and then die out. It was fun for the time it existed, but we now have much better options. Again, if you truly think blockbuster is more ideal than what we have now, I think that’s just nostalgia talking.

For context, I am Australian and recognise that I am speaking from a fairly limited perspective.

There is a lot of talk on Reddit about how Trump is just a symptom of a deeper problem in America that has now been uncovered, and that getting him out of office won’t restore that lost trust, with all the allies moving away from the US, and how this damage to America’s reputation and soft power will last for generations.

Call me cynical, but I don’t really agree.

My view is that once Trump is voted out of office, political relations with the US will be normalised pretty quickly, regardless of whether deeper structural or cultural issues remain in America, provided that the new administration is not gunning to be Trump 3.0 and is actively taking steps to make amends.

Even now, countries around the world including from Europe and Australia, are more or less trying their best to keep to business as usual with the US, with the occasional inconvenience of waiting out another tariff announcement (that may or may not be reversed next week). Just this morning I saw that EU seems to be unwilling to take a stand against Trump and would side with him over Zelenskyy. Australia is hanging on for dear life to AUKUS and is completely willing to cosy up to Trump so he won’t sink it (pun intended).

As a hypothetical, imagine that a Democrat wins the presidency in 2028. They are prioritising repairing relations, going on apology tour 2.0, reviving USAID programs cut under DOGE, removing the ridiculous tariffs, and making overtures for new trade agreements to replace the ones Trump shredded.

Yes, there will probably be some talk about ‘how will we know the US won’t tank the agreement again in four years?’ etc. But on the whole, I believe the world will welcome the US back pretty easily. I just can’t see Australia, as an example, refusing to engage with the US if they come to us to negotiate a trade deal or a security pact because they are now ‘unreliable’.

Even Canada — despite the sense of betrayal they must be feeling at US’s threats against their sovereignty and Carney’s strong stance against the Trump administration — would probably recognise that it would be in their best interest to normalise relations with the US as quickly as possible, due to geographic and economic reasons. Again, I have trouble picturing Carney refusing to engage with a hypothetical new US admin if they come bearing apologies and offers for new trade deals, until the US abolishes their electoral college or break up Fox News or whatever other structural problem needs addressing to prevent another Trump.

I’m focusing more on the international stage (country-to-country relations), but even ‘on the ground’ I don’t see distrust of US’s current administration stopping people from accepting them back under a new, more reasonable, administration.

People have short memories, and politics in most countries go through 3-5 year election cycles. People are more concerned with cost of living and fuel prices, and won’t care too much about whether the US is expanding the number of their Supreme Court judges or prosecuting former ICE agents. If the new US president ends the Iran war, negotiates and restores access to the Strait of Hormuz, and comes looking for a free trade agreement to lower costs of doing business with the US — well, I reckon that most people will accept that pretty easily.

Change my view!

——-
Edit: Thanks for the engagement so far!

I have awarded deltas to two commenters who shifted my view. It sounds like I have underestimated the ‘momentum’ (away from US) that is building, which would require a fair bit of time and effort to reintegrate US back into the fold — so relations won’t be normalised “pretty quickly” even if there was willingness to engage.

I also saw countries striving to continue their BAU engagement with the US as a tactic to “outlast” the chaos of the Trump admin until a new admin is elected and relations can be normalised again. But if this is instead a strategy to more carefully decouple their security and economy from the US for the long-term, I can see how a new US admin won’t be able to jump back into good relations quickly.

There are some other comments I’ve been reading and am considering, and I will award more deltas as I make my way through the thread.

Nothing in my life, no physical characteristics I have, have been more detrimental to my mental health and self-image than my below average penis size. And it’s like I’m physically gifted elsewhere, I’m fat, not tall (5’8), and not incredibly good looking. But none of this ruined my mental health like my bottom 1% penis.

It’s not hard to find accounts of other small/micro men with horrific dating experiences, terrible mental health and body image, and severe depression, all stemming from their penis.

For me, it completely ruined my confidence. Even though my length is average, my circumference is not. And that was enough to kill me. I’ve never dated, have no experience etc and have no intention to as a result. I’m 22, and can only see myself being alone forever. It’s just too embarrassing.

Now I know there are some physical characteristics worse. Like being really ugly, or some awful life changing conditions, but I still think a micro/small one is up there in terms of how significantly it impacts your life. It’s such a small part of your body, but it changes how you experience intimacy to such an unparalleled degree.

And I do believe it is a big deal. Women would (typically) like something average or around that. When you’re so far outside the norm either side, it’s not good. It’s not shallow to value your sexual experience and so people like me are normally not desired.

I’ll continue to reject women and not pursue women for my entire life.

Change my view.

EDIT:

Thanks guys, I’ve got a lot of interesting perspectives from many people.

I won’t lie and say I’m fixed, and feel confident in my body again. I won’t lie and say tomorrow I’ll wake up and start asking women out. The reality is I’ll still be insecure about my size.

But this post has made some cracks in my views. It’s definitely not the worst thing a man could have (albeit definitely not good), and it’s definitely possible to date with it, although I’m a long way away from that.

I’ll try to lose the weight (apparently 190lbs at 5’8 is near obese) so maybe it’ll help me feel more confident. I’ll keep socialising and mingling with people.

Some people mentioned therapy and BDD. I just want to say that I did try therapy about half a year ago, but it didn’t work. The woman I think was out of her depth, she didn’t really seem to understand how to help at all. Just let me vent. I have also been referred to see a psychologist for potential BDD, but I never went, which I know is probably stupid.

I guess I just wanted to say thanks. I’m a little less insecure about my mini friend. My life won’t drastically change but I at least can stand a little bit straighter. Maybe one day I’ll feel confident enough to date and show it, but it’ll be a long road.

Goodnight.

This may be a controversial take, so I'll try my best to explain my position as clearly as I can. I believe is considered moral of immoral is largely dependent on circumstance, societal and personal beliefs.

For instance, Stealing (by most people) would probably be considered wrong, yet stealing from the rich and giving to the needy is usually considered a bit less of a bad thing, or morally grey. You could argue that this example that was a wrong followed by a right, so I'll provide another one.

The consumption of animals, or eating certain types of animals in some religions is considered wrong because the animal has a life of it's own, or that it is special in some way that makes it wrong to eat, while plenty of other people see absolutely no harm in doing so, because animals are a source of food just the same as plants.

Providing care for your parents in their old age is considered a moral obligation by some, and that not doing so would be wrong because of how much care they put into raising you for decades of their life , while others would argue that you have no obligation to do so.

Let's take a more extreme example. Murder, by most, is considered wrong, but there are exceptions to be made for self defense or protecting others.

We can even take into consideration situations where lives are guaranteed to be lost, and only some can be saved. Difficult choices have to be made.

COUNTEREXAMPLES:

Some people cause others to suffer for their own pleasure. We generally call that cruel.

There are those who absolutely would steal, or hurt someone else to get something they want. I'd call that selfish.

And then there are situations where people would go against their own moral code to ensure their own survival, which comes from desperation.

Even so, selfishness, desperation, and even cruelty aren't inherently morally wrong.

Someone can be selfish by eating the last chocolate bar even after knowing their friend really wanted it, but that's not necessarily wrong.

Another person's desperation may cause them to beg for help from others.

It's also possible that someone could be deliberately cruel towards people who they believe where monsters. The cruelty describes their behavior, but whether that behavior is morally justified is another matter entirely.

CONCLUSION:

I believe our ideas of 'good' and 'evil' are shaped by individuals, societies, and the circumstances surrounding a situation, even when we're discussing the most heinous actions imaginable. The rule I personally follow is to avoid causing intentional serious harm to anyone whenever possible, and you can feel free to come up with your own sense of right and wrong.

And most importantly, you absolutely can stand by your moral convictions and act on them. I just don't treat morality of any kind, even my own, as objective truth.

Israel left Gaza in 2005, it uprooted all the settlers, and left the Gazans to self rule, and they had decided to democratically elect the terror group Hamas as their government and start launching unguided rockets at Israeli cities, instead of developing a real worthwhile place to leave and proving that Israel could (and should) leave the West Bank as well, as the Palestinians are capable of being peaceful when given freedom, they chose violence

The infrastructure left behind which at the time was sufficient for the amount of people in the strip, was completely neglected and not maintained well, while the population grew at rapid rate, forcing Israel to provide electricity and water to the strip as the power stations kept degrading and the aquifer was polluted

Despite receiving more humanitarian aid per capita than anyone in history, they didn't develop the city and instead opted to create the biggest terror tunnels the world has ever seen, system that is bigger than the UK's metro

I don't know what is the solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict, I frankly don't believe that there is a good one, but a Palestinian is certainly a solution that has proven itself to be bad

For clarity, this is us trailing the migration of Fresh Topic Friday to Saturday.

Have a post you'd like to do on a novel topic? This is your sign!

Every Saturday, starting at 12am Pacific Time (PT), posts are withheld for review by the moderators and approved if they aren't highly similar to another made in the past month.

We do this to reduce topic fatigue for our regular contributors, and encourage people to post about topics that aren't as frequently discussed. If you have a take about something that doesn't overlap too much with the most commonly discussed issues in the current zeitgeist, we'd love to see it here then!

See here for a full explanation of Switch-It-Up Saturday.

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This is not about AI's merits as a technology. This is about the current financial environment surrounding it.

To the best of my knowledge, currently AI buildouts are being funded by circular debt.

AI Circular Deals: How Microsoft, OpenAI and Nvidia Keep Paying Each Other

Which will only work if there is never a break in the chain of "I invest in your buildout of a data center, you buy my chips to build it."

Even ignoring that, the companies do not appear to be making enough money to cover their debts.

CoreWeave's slump puts spotlight on debt behind AI boom | Reuters

There are some companies like Microsoft that seem to be funding things with less debt:

Why Alphabet and Microsoft Suffer Less If AI CapEx Goes Wrong

But they are still spending a lot more than the AI seems to produce for it in revenue.

PYMNTS | AI Is Fueling Microsoft’s Growth. Can It Sustain the Costs?

Put this all together and it seems financially that the technology has potential value, but not as much as it costs.

I love ghost stories. They are my favorite kind of novels. I'd love for ghosts to be real but unfortunately I don't believe they are.

Ghost: A non-corporeal entity derived from someone that used to be alive, that living people can sense. (Please don't let your argument just be trying to poke holes in my definition. You should know what the colloquial understanding of a ghost is).

There's no empirical evidence for them. People have been claiming to experience them for millennia yet we've never once been able to capture evidence of one in a controlled environment. We have been able to prove the existence of things that are impossible for us to perceive with natural senses, so it's hard for me to believe we can't prove the existence of something we supposedly can experience with our natural senses.

Of course there are unexplained phenomena. But I think it's such a leap to believe it was caused by the spirit of a dead person. What about a chair moving across the room makes it so obvious it's grandma saying hello from beyond the grave, and not say, a magical invisible leprechaun with super speed? They both have the same amount of concrete evidence backing up the hypothesis which is to say extremely little.

With that, please prove me wrong! Show me what you got ghost hunters! Happy Halloween!

Asking when the United States “peaked” is a tough question, as there are many variables to consider and the answer may be different depending on who you are or where you live. But if I had to decide on a specific year, I would chose 2000. (Or 1999, but 2000 is a nice round number). I’ll break this down by subject.

Economy: The economy was generally solid. The labor-force participation rate reached its all-time high, unemployment and inflation were low, and the government was running a budget SURPLUS (completely unthinkable today) and was on pace to completely eliminate the national debt by 2012.

Foreign Affairs: The Cold War was over, and America was the undisputed global power. The USSR was dead, Japan was falling behind after a close race in the ‘80s, and China’s economic boom was in its infant stages. 9/11, and the War on Terror that resulted from it, had yet to come.

Society: After some turbulence in the ‘90s, race relations were fairly good by 2000 (and would remain so for a good dozen years or so). This was kind of a post-Rodney/OJ, pre-BLM sweet spot. America was also strong demographically, with a healthy birth rate and a relatively younger population than other developed nations.

Technology: The Internet was in common use by this time, and social media wasn’t yet a thing (I think the latter’s effect has been negative on the whole). Similarly, there were cell phones but not smart phones. I think this created a good balance beteeen enjoying convenience but still needing in-person interaction.

Culture: This is obviously more subjective, but I think that at the very least movies were better. The biggest box-office hits were actually great films like The Sixth Sense, Saving Private Ryan, or LOTR, not endless CGI superhero slop and soulless live-action remakes of animated classics.

Overall, the sense of optimism was palpable and people weren’t nearly so cynical and distrustful as they are today. Unfortunately, a series of events, starting perhaps with Bush v. Gore, led to where we are now.

I have personally observed a dominant sentiment that shames men near-unconditionally for having physical insecurities. The insecurities they are shamed for having are usually to do with their muscles, height or the size of their penis, oftentimes comparing to other men or previous partners of their current partner.

The response (which is an accurate one) that they usually get is to be told that women do not care about penis size, and that their insecurity is one that is stemming purely from themselves and that they need to deal with it. I however do not believe that women get the same ridicule when they themselves having these same exact insecurities, just in different areas.

If a man is insecure that his girlfriend's ex has a bigger penis than him, he's basically branded as an insecure loser who needs to get over himself. However, if a woman sees a picture of her boyfriend's ex and sees that she's more toned/fit than she is or has bigger boobs, that insecurity is oftentimes met with a more empathetic, caring, or even validating response.

Overall, my main premise is that both men and women frequently have socially-instilled insecurities about their bodies, especially in comparison to other people, however, men seem to be the only ones who are usually ridiculed for it. I believe that we should start treating men's insecurities with more tenderness and empathy like we do with women who are experiencing fundamentally the same types of insecurities, as opposed to going right for the throat.

To change my mind here, you would have to convince me that either A, women receive equal or more ridicule over their physical insecurities compared to men, or B, concede that men receive harsher criticism, but convince me that the relatively harsher criticism is valid or deserved.

I promise I'm not writing this as a response to that controversy at that famous university everyone is talking about.  

I had this idea a long time ago.  I just had not gotten around to writing about it yet.  In fact the impetus to this post dates back to a work retreat I was at during the World Cup this summer. 

While I was having lunch with some colleagues one day, the World Cup was on TV and one of my female coworkers (probably around 40) remarked about one of the players, "Ohhh, he's barely legal but he looks yummy!"  

The table just erupted into laughter. One person even got up and high fived her.  And I was thinking to myself, "If I had made that exact same remark about a woman athlete, I doubt very highly that people would have had the same reaction.  In fact, I bet people would find that to be very creepy and inappropriate, and I might even get reported to HR". 

Now I'm not some kind of incel gender warrior person who has no sense of humor and I know how to mind my own business, so I just let it go. 

But afterward, I started wondering whether there was something unfair about the whole thing. And the more I thought about it, the more I found myself bouncing between three different explanations.

Theory 1 -  There is a double standard and it is truly unfair

What that woman said is not OK.  She objectified a person who has dedicated his life to the pursuit of talent and sport and reduced him a sex thing. A man would surely have been called out in today's culture if he had said the same thing. 

More broadly, I wonder whether we have developed a cultural attitude in which male sexuality is treated as inherently suspect, while female sexuality is treated as relatively harmless or even empowering.

I also wonder whether this contributes to men’s difficulties forming romantic relationships. If men increasingly feel that expressing sexual interest is likely to get them labeled as creepy, predatory, or entitled, might some of them become more hesitant to express interest at all?

Could that be one contributing factor to what people call the “male loneliness epidemic”?

Was I therefore a coward for not calling that woman out, making an example of her and reporting her to HR?  I feel like maybe I was.  

Theory 2 - There is a double standard and it is fair 

It makes sense that women can make comments like that and men cannot.  

Why? Because Men commit a disproportionate share of sexual violence, and women have legitimate reasons to be more alert to unwanted male sexual attention, that’s why.

The same words can carry different implications depending on who’s saying them, the circumstances, and the broader social context.

A man making an equivalent remark might be perceived differently because women have good reasons to be more cautious about male sexuality.

Perhaps insisting that men and women must be judged identically in every such situation ignores real differences in risk and power.

Theory 3: We’re making too much of all this.

Maybe the problem isn’t that women get away with something men shouldn’t do. Maybe the problem is that we’ve become too uptight about ordinary expressions of sexual attraction.

Young athletes are attractive. People notice. Anyone who thinks anything is wrong with that is gaslighting us.

Not every expression of sexual attraction is an act of objectification, and not every mildly inappropriate joke needs to become a referendum on someone’s character.

The world needs to lighten up again and just chill out.  

Conclusion

I’m open to changing my mind on any of these points, and I’ll award a delta if you convince me.

I’m particularly interested in arguments that distinguish between explaining why people react differently and establishing whether those different reactions are justified.

Can you change my mind? About any of this?  

TlDr: Restorative justice advocates only believe in restorative justice until it relates to an issue they feel an emotional connection with. Then they are as bloodthirsty as any retributionist.

I'm going to preface this by saying that I do not believe in or support restorative justice. I'm pro-retribution and I have been for a long time. But I am going to try and take the perspective of a restorative justice [I'll call it rest-just for the rest of this post.] And the response that I've seen from people who are normally pro rest-justice has been things like:

From what I've seen majority of people who are typically pro rest justice has been that Geller should be outcast and isolated, and that he be forever marked with 'I'm a rapist.'

But like, that's not rest-justice. What's the whole point of rest-justice? Anytime you talk with their advocates the core of their philosophy is, ultimately "how can we make sure this never happens again?"

Well, it never happened again.

Unless I'm mistaken, what we know is this:

Geller raped someone.

Geller owned up to this and acknowledged it as rape.

Geller faced consequences most of us (me included) consider too light.

Geller never raped anyone again.

Like, despite what you or I think of being suspended as a punishment for rape, whatever else occurred (and we don't know the details of what the victim said or wanted) this worked. You may not like it, but unless I'm mistaken about this, the slap on the wrist (and whatever else may have happened) made it so Geller understood his transgression, and never did it again. Not only that, but he's supported anti-sexual violence organizations and charities, right?

This honestly sounds like a success case for rest-justice. And I feel in my heart of hearts that if Geller had of committed an act of non-sexual violence, then this is how it would be talked about. Most of the people who want him completely deplatformed would be saying "we need to allow for rehabilitation. Offenders are not subhuman monsters, we should not dehumanize them. We can be better than that."

Yet it's not because apparently rest-justice doesn't matter for crimes that we consider 'bad.' Therefore it's useless idea that most people only pretend to support.

Some definitions:

credible evidence: An actual statistical analysis based on hard data by a named individual with training and expertise in a relevant field. Could be a university professor, cybersecurity professional, etc. (Bonus points if it’s based on open source data with replicable analysis.)

substantial impact: a reduction by at least 25% of a relevant metric in the days following the airstrikes, without an alternative explanation.

propaganda bots: Bots that manipulate social media by posting, commenting, or voting on user content. (i.e.: NOT the CloudFlare data about web crawlers that’s been pushed as evidence.)

US social media: Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Ryan McBeth, a YouTuber and intelligence analyst who has actually advocated that the US should kinetically strike bot farms, put out a video explaining the rumors and why he thinks there’s no good evidence for a reduction in propaganda bots.

BBC Verify concludes similarly:

While there is no evidence to conclude the strikes on Yandex's data centres have had an impact on Russia's influence operations, they have disrupted internet services for many.

This post is illustrative of the bot-driven campaign:

11k+ upvotes in 3 hours. The sub is 6 months old, yet regularly hits r/all. OP of the post is 2 month old account with 4.5 million karma, also a mod of the sub.

More are easy to find. These posts tend to be Twitter screenshots or similarly unsourced claims.

I heard of a controversy some time ago on the Grindr dating app; many users' bios expressed strong racial dating preferences, demanding, for example, that "no Asians" message them. Grindr has subsequently been denounced as a cesspool of racism.

I don't think there's anything wrong with having a racial dating preference, though! These kinds of preferences are very common. Some people only date white guys. Some people really like black guys. Some people find most races attractive, but one or two don't do it for them. What's the issue?

Of course, when preferences extend beyond dating, it becomes a problem. If your racial dating preferences lie downstream of broader value judgments about a given race, then you might be a little bit racist. And, of course, you shouldn't really have racial preferences in terms of, say, who you hire. For me personally, I do have some racial dating preferences, but they're 100% about how people look. Different races have different features, bone structures, etc, and different people arbitrarily find different looks attractive. No biggie.

A common concern with these kinds of dating preferences is the idea of fetishization. I think I more or less get that; if you're a black guy on Grindr, and every message you receive is going on about BBC this, BBC that, you might end up feeling like your racial identity is a) all that matters about you, and b) just something others want to use for their own pleasure.

I don't think the core of the issue there is about race, though. It's more about basic respect and not being an oversexual pervert with someone you've just met. I am a racial minority myself, and I really wouldn't mind someone getting off on my racial identity - if they were someone I was comfortable with and attracted to. Random people catcalling me and mentioning my race, on the other hand, would be uncomfortable. But catcalling is uncomfortable even without specific identity-based comments. Seeking relationships with, say, lots of black people because you find that type of person attractive is fine, as long as you treat them like people first.

In summary, I think that when it comes to dating, people are generally allowed to prefer what they prefer and dislike what they dislike. They're allowed to express these preferences privately and publicly as long as they remain respectful. We generally shouldn't ask people to change or repress their dating preferences to make other people feel more comfortable.

To change my view, highlight the potential harms of these kinds of preferences or their expression that I might've overlooked, either through a personal lens, or an objective, utilitarian lens.

It seems giving ultimatums in a relationship has a bad connotation, but boundaries have a good, healthy connotation. I find that odd because i believe they ultimately function the same way. When people point out the difference between them, I find that it’s usually just semantics. “I will not be in a relationship with someone who sleeps with other people” functions the same way as “if you sleep with that person we are breaking up.“

I don’t think many would argue against that particular ultimatum but in general ultimatums seem to have a bad connotation that you should avoid in relationship conflict whereas boundaries are considered healthy. In both cases you’re making it clear to your partner that if they take an action there will be consequences.

To change my view I think I’d need you to show how they fundamentally differ in function beyond semantics. Maybe I’d change it with an outlier case but I’d prefer an explanation as to how they are all inherently functionally different.

Edit: At the gym right so only reading the smaller replies at the moment while I rest between sets. However I skimmed some longer ones that look like theyd had good points so I’ll try to really digest them and dole out some deltas later.

I'm not trying to discount how significant of a victory this is for gun rights advocates.

But I think that the political capital used to accomplish this feat might have been better used to adjust the Pittman-Robertson Act.

For those who don't know, the Pittman-Robertson Act was passed in the late 1930's and levies an 11% tax on firearms, ammunition and archery equipment in order to fund wildlife conservation efforts. As a result, about $1 billion a year is taxed and used for wildlife conservation efforts.

I believe that we should be able to either reduce budgetary expenditures in the federal budget and use those budget savings to contribute a similar amount of money to wildlife conservation, we could also place taxes on other items instead like luxury items or we could do a combination of both.

Almost every gun owner buys firearms and ammunition while only a small minority of gun owners own NFA items. Ammunition in particular has significantly increased in price in the past few years and while firearms haven't seen a similar and lasting price increase, guns can still be a significant expense for the poorest of Americans.

Pistol braces have not been legally classified as stocks recently and they're a lot like stocks and are used a lot like stocks, so SBR's are kinda pointless with that in mind. Shotguns themselves have become a pretty niche category of firearms, and short barrel shotguns are an even more niche category within that. According to some estimates, there are about 6.5 million registered suppressors, 1.2 million SBR's, and 210,000 SBS's. That is still a lot of NFA items in use, but considering how almost 100 million Americans own a gun, NFA items are not owned by a significant majority of American gun owners.

I understand that reducing the tax stamp for $0 has opened up the possibility of certain NFA items being deregulated all together. For suppressors, this could be huge as it could possibly allow a valuable piece of noise reducing personal protective equipment to become more widely used and affordable.

But I feel like my previously mentioned points are worth seriously considering.

TL;DR

Making guns, ammo and archery equipment cheaper for everyone would have been a better move to make first than making SBS's, SBR's, AOW's and suppressors cheaper.

Rather than trying to benefit all gun owners, Congress threw a bone to the more passionate and well to do gun owners to keep single issue gun rights voters satisfied.

I’ll start off by saying I’m very pro Palestinian but that I would like to create this post as it Israel is 100% in the right today. It’s a debate on the efficacy of pro Israeli PR strategy, not morality.

I think we can all agree that Israel has gone way down in popularity over the years. Zionists will essentially blame what they deem "blood libel." Pro Palestinians will blame the IDF's actions in Gaza and treatment of Palestinians in the WB.

I lean pro Palesitnian but the truth is that it's neither. I'd love it if Americans were able to get angry about the suffering of Gazans and WB residents, but in reality, I don't think there's anything the IDF could do that has caused or would cause a serious drop in popularity for that alone. And alone is the key word there, so what do I think Israel did that caused such a precipitous drop in their favorability?

I think it more has to do with the way they opinion policed Americans with such an iron fist.

The one thing about Zionists is they love to claim they don‘t care what people who oppose them think but it’s horrifically untrue. If they didn’t care, the ability to accept our disagreements and move on was and is there.

And what I’ll say is that I do think all things equal, if you de-identified Israel and Palestine and just discussed the situation as is, most would indeed support Israel. The logic here is that most people support an overwhelming defensive response to an attack.

Now, if you add the history to it, I think that a huge portion of people switch, but it would remain as most people in favor of Israel.

I think what happened is that the fact Israel cared this much about perception alone started to cause the massive drop in perception. I think it’s important to think about our own culture, which is one of an exceptional free speech.

We (from an American perspective) have one of the world’s broadest, if not the broadest, free speech protections and also free speech cultures in the world.

And the fatal mistake of Israel’s official and unofficial PR team is that they underestimated that. On top of that, regardless of if one thinks the focus on Israel is fair or not or the criticisms of Israel are unfair or not, people are much, much less willing to entertain the idea that criticism of a foreign nation is either “unfair” and/or “bigotry.”

People at a baseline just have a very high bar, if not insurmountable, to being open to the idea that being against a country is bigoted, which is a huge issue when Zionists’ claim, and Israel itself’s claim, is that being against the country is bigoted.

A lot of it comes down to the fact words are just that, words. Me or anyone else wanting anything from no new settlements to one state solution isn’t actually changing Israel’s capabilities. Therefore, if Zionists come down hard on words, it’s very hard to find a reason for this except their own insecurity.

A good example of this could be Tom Brady. If Tom Brady started going after randoms and tabloids that insulted and name called him, he’d rightfully look insane 99% of the time. Sure, there’s that 1% of the time where Brady might sue you if it’s demonstrably false, but a) it’s an exceptionally high bar and b) we all know even the most conservative of justices aren’t going to take the case of “Nation of Israel vs random tabloid.”

So, then, the question becomes “why do Israel and Zionists care if we accuse them of apartheid and/or genocide?”

Literally, that’s all you have to do.

If Israel and Zionists truly believed it was not a genocide, they would just ignore us. Israel is already very powerful militarily. There’s no reason they should care about whether you or I think it’s a genocide or whether the WB and settlements are a form of apartheid. But, they very much do care, like a lot, so we have to ask why.

And while I can’t mind read Zionists, the likeliest reason is that they know we’re right, so they lash out at us in a form of moral insecurity. Because remember, ignoring us = them genuinely not believing it’s genocide and apartheid (even if they’d be very wrong about that from our perspective). And they are doing just about the opposite, so you can do the math.

To be clear, Israel can use their own microphones and they tend to have stable PR when they do that. It’s when they start taking/trying to take others’ microphones away that their PR suffers.

It’s essentially a perfect Streisand effect. You have this pro Palestinian minority that are somewhat silenced, but generally left alone in an “agree to disagree” manner. Then, Zionists use an acute increase in intensity of the conflict to try and end that “agree to disagree” attitude people had towards pro Palestinians, and you have a rebound effect where people actually start agreeing with some pro Palestinian points.

In terms of what I think the actual conflict has done for Israeli PR, I’d say the war in Gaza has probably had minimal effect and the WB settlements probably have a “somewhat noticeably negative” effect, but nowhere near the effect Zionists’ direct treatment of Western dissenters has caused. The settlements cause some negative PR but ultimately, much like how gas prices and elections work, many people look at Zionists’ treatment of Western dissenters first and foremost in terms of having an opinion on Israel itself.

Recently, I’ve seen so many people online arguing that sex scenes in movies or tv shows are entirely “unnecessary” at best, and “disgusting” or “should be banned” at worst. Maybe this is just a case of the internet being the internet, but it seems like I’m in a minority of defending the artistic merit and value of such scenes.

I believe that sex is a normal and very emotionally significant part of the human experience. That being the case, it’s only natural that sex is something that would be represented in art. Not every piece of art is going to be created equally, but I have seen and often enjoy seeing that part of life depicted. If it was no longer present in movies or tv, I would miss it. The scenes often represent moments of union, emotional intimacy, desire, etc. They’re not usually there just to make you horny.

To be clear, I’m not saying that all sex scenes are good, obviously. Many are tasteless, gratuitous, sensationalist, or otherwise artistically bad, but that doesn’t taint the entire concept. I also don’t argue that everybody HAS to enjoy watching sex in movies, just like many people don’t enjoy violent films, but they shouldn’t discredit the artistic merit of those things.

Basically, I just think that a very puritanical and repressed perspective on sex scenes has taken root recently, and I find it concerning. Sex is a normal, healthy part of adult life and adult media is going to depict it. I think that people that don’t like it should stick to the tamer stuff that already exists without it, instead complaining about works that aren’t sexually sanitized

(I'm not 90 I promise.)

It seems to me like modern youth Internet memes (like "six seven", "italian brainrot," etc) are popular and viral purely because they don't make sense and are weird. Nobody actually knows what they mean, they just pass it around because everyone else is doing it and when asked what it is they just shrug. Occasionally, things have very vague meanings, like "skibidi" generally meaning something... good? But it can also mean something bad. And generally the meanings of these words don't really get more specific than that.

I feel like this is actually the purpose of these memes. People like them because they're incomprehensible. Obviously group psychology 101 plays into this too, and that's been true since the dawn of time - if everyone else likes this, I do too. But as for how these start, and why some perpetuate while some die, I think kids just equate weird = good these days. In earlier times, jokes (and often people) would become popular because they're witty and funny, and slang would become popular because it filled a common and important role in speech. "Rad" meant something was cool. That's already 900% more specific than "tung tung tung sahur", which literally means nothing.

I know the immediate response is that it's like this for every generation, we are all doomed just to not get it. I think that's probably true to some extent, but I really think especially due to Internet, AI, and social media culture, plus just people growing up on iPads and not recognizing good humor anymore, memes actually are worse in this way.

Change my view that the reason people like "six seven" and friends isn't just because they make no sense and that's the point, or that making no sense is good enough to pass as comedy.

This does not apply to criminal law or civil law. I'm not saying you can't sue a senator for slander, or that the government shouldn't be able to arraign a representative for robbery. But when it comes to administrative suits, where there's no victim per se, without impeachment proceedings there should really be no government action taken. For example, if a representative were discovered to have committed immigration fraud in such a way as to potentially invalidate their citizenship, the government should have to just ignore it completely as long as they remain in office. Newspapers could report on it and embarrass them, as long as they aren't papers that take any government money which could plausibly make them state actors. Congress could choose to impeach, although in practice Congress rarely impeaches Congresscritters. But if Congress doesn't impeach, then the remainder of the government should have zero power to do anything to a sitting Congresscritter if the basis is administrative.