dunstad

Thanks, this was a good and educational read.

Yeah, there are those who argue that conservation programs benefit from the money generated by zoos, but I still don't feel great about them. Ideally it would be nice if we could work out better ways to distribute our resources so that conservation could be funded without them.

Gonna be honest, it doesn't sound like you have a lot of relevant experience on the effects of incarceration.

I'm no expert either, but prison is a lot more than just making sure people can't commit crimes. I also think reasonable people could disagree about whether the treatment of some of our prisoners constitutes torture or not.

Robin Williams actually had a degenerative brain disease. I know a lot of the news didn't wait long enough for that information about his situation to come out, but it's on Wikipedia.

There's nothing wrong with it, I've been using it for ages.

quiet, neat, and über-efficient

I wish the same could be said for the Tokyo office I work in!

Hello, I'm a real boy! I happen to support both of these positions, but it is indeed possible to condemn ICE without feeling the same about the GOP in general, and jumping immediately from one to the next is exactly the kind of thing people mean when they talk about moving the goalposts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concentration_and_inte...

From the article:

In 2019, many experts, including Andrea Pitzer, the author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, have acknowledged the designation of the detention centers as "concentration camps" [227] [228] particularly given that the centers, previously cited by Texas officials for more than 150 health violations [229] and reported deaths in custody,[230] reflect a record typical of the history of deliberate substandard healthcare and nutrition in concentration camps.[231] Though some organizations have tried to resist the "concentration camp" label for these facilities, [232] [233] hundreds of Holocaust and genocide scholars rejected this resistance via an open letter addressed to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. [234]

Yeah, I would love that actually. ICE runs concentration camps. Not enough people treat them how they deserve.

If you liked this one, you might also enjoy reading about the mycorrhizal networks some plants can use to communicate between each other: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141111-plants-have-a-hidden...

We may not end up underwater, but ecosystem collapse leading to famine, and increased pressure on all sorts of support systems due to the need to direct aid to people from coastal areas, are both going to affect people everywhere.

You mean the 2018 midterm election?

Well, if we fail to develop solutions to clean up after ourselves, we won't need to worry about climate stability because we'll all be dead. So that's one way to handle things.

Holy hell, that must have been frightening. What was going through your head at the time?

You need to understand that just because there are upsides and downsides doesn't imply they're in any way equal, and pretending they are causes plenty of harm.

When you vote with your wallet, people with more money get more votes.

How awful. Imagine if the subject of this was a dog instead, it would anger so many people.

Leadership at top companies is disproportionately sociopathic compared to the population at large, as well. How admirable.

Wow, fuck that guy.

If having partners necessitates causing burnout in young people, maaaybe it's not a great way to structure things.

There are a lot of people who feel like the primary goal of what we call the criminal justice system is making the victims feel like criminals are treated poorly enough. While perhaps satisfying to some individuals, it results in high rates of recidivism, which makes society less safe for everyone.

A criminal justice system centered around reform results in a safer and more humane society for everyone.

I read this from my chair in an office in Tokyo, and found it to be pretty dramatic and kind of silly. There are definitely cultural differences, but I don't feel like this article does a good job of representing them. Some of the linguistic points are a bit misleading too.

Fossil fuels are a large contributor to climate change, which is forecast to, and in fact is already causing, great harm.

In order to profit from them you have to have some form of investment in them, which means in a small way you have contributed to the cause of promoting fossil fuel usage.

Exactly how morally corrupt people with an index fund are is a question I'll leave for philosophers.

Choosing not to profit off of fossil fuels may be a 'poor decision' from a financial perspective, but it's a good moral decision. The fact that our financial systems incentivize poor moral behavior makes them poor systems.

And in order to change that we would need to vote in the people that foreign powers are hindering the campaigns of.

You seem really relaxed about foreign powers interfering with our elections.

Obama isn't a foreign power.

If you can't see what makes him an asshole, then you probably agree with his opinions about all the groups he's insulting. There are a lot of them in there.

I do this at work to get around the company firewall. Pretty useful technique!

I'm not going to try to persuade you that the negatives of capitalism outweigh the positives, but if you're interested in learning why I believe what I do I'd be happy to direct you to where you can find out.