bancars

The first amendment only covers political speech. The government can and does censor things like profanity and pornography (there’s a reason why you can’t say “fuck” on the radio). Advertising isn’t political speech and wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) be protected. Considering that advertising is basically psychological manipulation to get you to buy products, especially products which directly prey on your lizard brain things like hunger, I see no reason not to censor junk food advertisements. It worked with cigarettes.

Follow the money.

“So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly......”

“....and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came...”

This is from the president. If telling four non-white American Congresswomen to go back where they came from isn’t white supremacy, then holy hell what is?

Honestly? We don’t even have to try. It’s a tragedy of the commons thing: life forms will reproduce and spread until they die off. Smear some bacteria in a Petri dish and the same thing happens. A lot of it has to do with reproductive healthcare (the lack thereof) in developing nations. Basically, people keep having unprotected sex. Biological reproduction is so fundamental that even if every nation in the world had a stable government, I’m not sure there’s anything we could do that isn’t super dictatorship-y. And even then..

It’s pessimistic, yeah, but we don’t have to even try to have babies. People will keep making that individual choice until we run out of food or energy or something and lots of people, most likely the poor, die.

I guess “the car slamming itself into highway barriers” is the bar for safety nowadays.

I don’t see anything in there about tents, though.

Do you have proof of this?

That’s an awfully easy position to take when you don’t have to work at an Amazon warehouse. How many times have you been fired for using the bathroom?

I’m really confused why “maybe make it impossible for this to happen” is so controversial. People fuck up sometimes. Kids are tough. And as peddlers of technology the onus is on us to make people’s lives better, not worse, which includes having the tiniest bit of compassion and maybe using some of those VC millions to prevent these kinds of things. Do y’all truly believe that everyone that this happens to was being careless? Is there no room for an honest mistake?

People say it isn’t practical because it isn’t, and that’s why we don’t do it. [1]

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/why-cant-we-extra...

Debt forgiveness punishes people who worked their ass off to pay their loans off.

So we should just continue burdening people into the poorhouse (or worse)? I feel for everyone burdened by ridiculous student loans (I am one of those people), but I would gladly take on everyone else’s debt forever if it meant people could have their education and be debt-free. Should we talk about my friends who have to decide if they pay their rent or their student loans every month? Does your righteous indignation do anything to help them? “I suffered so you have to suffer too” is toxic; it’s basically frat hazing.

As for why it’s okay to take out a ruinous loan, I was 17, and I didn’t fucking know any better. Everyone told us to go to college or else we’d wind up destitute. And they were partially right, at least if you managed to get a “profitable” degree. My high school-educated friends have shitty service jobs and alcohol addiction now. I have loans, and I’d rather not, but at least I have any hope for a future. That’s more than I can say for a lot of my other friends.

It is not morally justifiable to suddenly foist the collective horrible decision making of a generation onto the larger society.

That would be the Baby Boomers, right? Because I’m pretty sure they (and their parents) are the ones who all voted to end state funding for universities. They also voted for politicians with ties to the financial industry, so conveniently the same people making it necessary to take out loans are also shareholders of large financial institutions.

No, what’s morally indefensible is bankrupting someone for getting an education, and then berating them for making a bad decision when they were 17, a decision practically guaranteed by a rigged system. What’s also morally indefensible are the attitudes that this is someone their faults, because at the end of the day, we all still have student loans, and no amount of your pedestal-sitting is going to change that.

This is typically what laws are for. Sadly, those of us in the Land of the Free will probably have to wait a decade or two to get anything reasonable, so I fully expect this trend to continue as-is for now.

You’re incredibly fortunate then. Count your blessings but please don’t discount the experiences of those of us who have been victims of abuse by drivers on the road. Thank you.

We need to give this argument a rest. Cycling infrastructure has everything to do with availability and very little to do with hills. I don’t avoid biking to work because of the hills, I avoid it because it’s treacherous.