Philosophy is not engineering, but neither is computer science, at least not the good bits. But that’s a bit of a sidetrack.
By making new universes I meant defining possible worlds, either on paper, or better yet in executable form. These can be humdrum, such as the world of Minecraft, made up of discrete cubes of material with certain laws of interaction, or much more abstract, like a distributed database system where there is no global clock to give a single unambiguous ordering of events, and it is a struggle to achieve a consistent interpretation of the current state for every observer. Or you can go even higher and try and define a dependent type theory that can unify mathematical proof and executable code, which is what we really need.
The interesting thing about these worlds is that we have direct access to the underlying laws and can address questions of object properties and identity directly. Most of them are not reductionist in the way that the real world is, so you can have a chair that literally exists as an independent object that is not made up of smaller parts, and lots of traditional reasoning about object identity then applies.
If we look at a reductionist universe like Conway’s Life, then I think there is not much to say about objects. The only fundamental entities in this universe are grid cells, and the absolute time step that updates them. Influences can propagate through the grid, and particular patterns of cells might be labelled as “objects” while analysing their behaviour, eg. gliders. But this is for notational convenience, we can’t actually learn anything at the object level that we couldn’t learn by studying the underlying cells.
You can create Turing machines in Life, and then you can analyse them as if they were abstract computing devices, ignoring the grid cells. But if a stray glider crashes into the machine, it will break, and the analysis will fail, just as if a chair in the real world caught fire: at some point your mental model would shift from chair, to burning chair, to smouldering remains of what once was a chair, or just pile of unidentified ash.
So there is clearly not much point for philosophers to debate the fundamental nature of Conway’s Life (right? I am assuming this).
The real world is still less well-defined, and there is behaviour we have not yet explained, and laws we have not fully worked out. But I have to draw the line somewhere, and if someone thinks that a chair has existence independently of the particles that make it up, well I don’t really know what to say to them. I mean, the question of what objects are was answered 2500 years ago by Democritus: arrangements of atoms in the void. Even I know that :)
Since there are no intrinsic properties of objects that can’t be dissolved into statements about their component parts, the only reason to have a theory of objects at all is for convenience in modelling and communication. But both of those have specific requirements, there is no single model of objects that will be ideal for every use case. You are going to need a very different model of chairs depending on whether you are talking to a furniture designer, a cafe owner, a Roomba, or a hunter gatherer.
I was speaking in a very compressed way about causal bundling just now, but I wasn’t joking.
A chair has qualities that its subcomponent parts do not, in terms of how it deflects the development of the world towards different directions/timelines vs a non-chair.
In this case, a chair is not an absolute definition, but rather a causal bundle - a cluster within the matter configuration space which has a high probability of producing certain related outcomes.
You can, then, learn something at the object level that you couldn’t by studying the atoms of the chair.
Yes, because it’s causally entangled with arrangements of atoms in the brains of a certain species of ape.
Most possible configurations of matter within the same bounding box are not chairs. And at the atomic level, if you take the same atoms, there are almost infinite permutations within the same macro-scale shape of any given chair that have nearly-indentical outcomes in interacting with the environment. Where we put the boundary around the fuzzy cluster is our choice and to some degree arbitrary, but the cluster itself is legitimate macro-scale information.
Philosophy is not engineering, but neither is computer science, at least not the good bits. But that’s a bit of a sidetrack.
By making new universes I meant defining possible worlds, either on paper, or better yet in executable form. These can be humdrum, such as the world of Minecraft, made up of discrete cubes of material with certain laws of interaction, or much more abstract, like a distributed database system where there is no global clock to give a single unambiguous ordering of events, and it is a struggle to achieve a consistent interpretation of the current state for every observer. Or you can go even higher and try and define a dependent type theory that can unify mathematical proof and executable code, which is what we really need.
The interesting thing about these worlds is that we have direct access to the underlying laws and can address questions of object properties and identity directly. Most of them are not reductionist in the way that the real world is, so you can have a chair that literally exists as an independent object that is not made up of smaller parts, and lots of traditional reasoning about object identity then applies.
If we look at a reductionist universe like Conway’s Life, then I think there is not much to say about objects. The only fundamental entities in this universe are grid cells, and the absolute time step that updates them. Influences can propagate through the grid, and particular patterns of cells might be labelled as “objects” while analysing their behaviour, eg. gliders. But this is for notational convenience, we can’t actually learn anything at the object level that we couldn’t learn by studying the underlying cells.
You can create Turing machines in Life, and then you can analyse them as if they were abstract computing devices, ignoring the grid cells. But if a stray glider crashes into the machine, it will break, and the analysis will fail, just as if a chair in the real world caught fire: at some point your mental model would shift from chair, to burning chair, to smouldering remains of what once was a chair, or just pile of unidentified ash.
So there is clearly not much point for philosophers to debate the fundamental nature of Conway’s Life (right? I am assuming this).
The real world is still less well-defined, and there is behaviour we have not yet explained, and laws we have not fully worked out. But I have to draw the line somewhere, and if someone thinks that a chair has existence independently of the particles that make it up, well I don’t really know what to say to them. I mean, the question of what objects are was answered 2500 years ago by Democritus: arrangements of atoms in the void. Even I know that :)
Since there are no intrinsic properties of objects that can’t be dissolved into statements about their component parts, the only reason to have a theory of objects at all is for convenience in modelling and communication. But both of those have specific requirements, there is no single model of objects that will be ideal for every use case. You are going to need a very different model of chairs depending on whether you are talking to a furniture designer, a cafe owner, a Roomba, or a hunter gatherer.
I was speaking in a very compressed way about causal bundling just now, but I wasn’t joking.
A chair has qualities that its subcomponent parts do not, in terms of how it deflects the development of the world towards different directions/timelines vs a non-chair.
In this case, a chair is not an absolute definition, but rather a causal bundle - a cluster within the matter configuration space which has a high probability of producing certain related outcomes.
You can, then, learn something at the object level that you couldn’t by studying the atoms of the chair.
so when are they going to throw the asexuals out of the military
“Never distracted by the baser instincts of lust or love, asexual aromantics are the perfect potential soldiers,” the man said to the gathered audience, activating his next presentation slide. “My company has developed a new generation three training program based on the analysis of double-A characteristics, and so far our test subjects have had great success.”
“But where will we get these asexual aromantics?” Asked a suited man in the audience.
“My company has arranged to purchase an old web 2.0 company, called Tumblr…”
I think this dust-up on transgender soldiers will actually burn some of Trump’s political capital.
I’ll let you in on something about his power - previously, a lot of these things where he got the media all fired up over something, he had at or near majority support from the actual citizens or it was something most people outside of politics just don’t care about.
This one’s gonna be a lot narrower. The opposition will be able to get some actual traction out of it.
I would favour the transition towards “henchmen” if it weren’t gendered. “Henchpeople” just doesn’t sound right.
Agreed. I think I’m going to go with “henchmen” for the time being, because my interest in language-neutering has frankly been long worn away.
My brief search for a gender-neutral version that was still #the aesthetic returned “cronies” and “toadies”, but I think those would make me sound more liks Richard Nixon than Doctor Doom.
“Underlings” also occured to me, but that puts one in mind of a Dilbert-esque CEO. Hmph.
I reiterate the excellent option of just going with “hench”
Although I am also currently considering henchgirl positions
Henchlings! Because underlings sounds like some kind of exotic lingerie.
In my old organization they were just referred to as “personnel”, because true evil is a faceless and impersonal, like a force of nature.
I’m on my own now, though, and there just isn’t a good word in English for a crew of repurposed salvaged mass-production gynoids held together by duct-tape and deep elastomer patches. I know a few good words for it in Channish, but it just doesn’t have the same ring when you know the audience doesn’t understand it and never will.
I’m not trying to sneak in positivism or anything, it seems entirely natural that if someone says “what is an object” that the reply would be do you mean in the actual world, or what people mean when they say object? I mean it is a strictly more ambiguous question than “what is a boat?”
- is it a watercraft as defined by various legal codes - is it what people intuitively think of when you say the word - is there some perfect logical definition of boatness
The first thing you would say is “why are you asking?” because the reason you ask determines what kind of answer is appropriate, and the question by itself is incomplete.
Boat actually causal probability cluster defined by worldpaths through the set of configurations of matter.
assigned human at birth, but determined to change that.
“I will die immortal.” - Eliezer T. Yudkowsky, possibly, maybe (Rotterdam Timeline)
His middle initial is S
The joke is that he never actually said that, but people would think he did. (As far as I know, he didn’t say that, anyway.) Notice the weird hedging (“possibly, maybe”) which makes no sense for a real quote. (Nor the Rotterdam Timeline. But Rotterdam is a weird timeline tbh.)
Therefore it’s entirely appropriate that the middle initial is wrong.
This was said by the Eliezer Yudkowsky of the Rotterdam timeline, whose middle initial is T, not the Eliezer Yudkowsky of our timeline. Rotterdam can be a pretty brutal timeline, but its civilization has not been lost to nuclear war.
When he died, he wasn’t immortal, but he was a hero.
Abortion actually *could be* pretty fatal. Nobody actually knows what happens to the unbaptized infants, though few people believe that they go to the Bad Place.
I’ve always wondered about much more complicated questions of soul mechanics which, as far as I’m aware, are both unanswered and unintuitive:
New clones from existing tissue.
Forks that somehow make one person into two people.
Actually, I’m reminded that the Ranma ½ anime is chock full of filler, and I’d love to see it get a gritty cyberpunk reboot, because I’m an evil person.
Can confirm from reading Feministe for some time in the early to mid-2000s that "Google it" and "I'm not here to educate you" developed in response to trolling and kind of... expanded outward.
“if you really thought that abortion was murder, you would be starting a civil war over it” ….orrrr, as someone who opposes abortion on the grounds that killing humans is bad, I think killing more humans would also be bad
the baby-adoption argument is the worst argument! people are not having abortions because of a shortage of adoptive parents! there are very, very few people who want to go through all the suckiness of being pregnant without the benefit of having a baby after, if they are not coerced into having an adoption
yes yes yes thank you those arguments make me want to scream every time
I hate the “if you REALLY think it’s murder you’d DO SOMETHING” vs “a doctor who does abortions was assaulted NOT SO PRO-LIFE NOW HUH” dichotomy
(not that it’s okay to assault doctors! obviously!)
abortion seems to be one of the worst issues for ideological turing test passing? “you know perfectly well deep down that you’re murdering babies” vs “you just want to Control Women’s Bodies” or maybe everyone is actually trying to do the right thing!
also, the “why aren’t you distributing contraception then?” argument (because a lot of pro-life people believe that contraception is ALSO morally wrong and that the ends don’t justify the means!)
and the ever-classic “if you’re REALLY pro-life you should be [opposing war/providing post-natal support/fighting malaria/etc]” argument (a lot of pro-life people do??? and also that’s a bad argument when people pull it out against any particular cause??)
[sigh] [/rant]
Agree with this.
Although, it is probably a pretty big testament to the strength of political norms against violence that there aren’t really more cases of violence occurring over this issue. Because the stakes are so high.
I don’t mean that in an “it would be the consistent/good thing to do” way, I mean it in the “I’m surprised that some idiot hasn’t yet given a violent pro life group enough tacit political support/cover to exist as a not completely fringe entity” way. Because politics makes people do stupid things (cf. the antifa types on the left, or the stuff that happened at Trump rallies).
yeah holy shit ‘if you were really pro file you’d go to war, not just trying to change legislation’ vs. ‘pro life person isn’t actually ust talking online and went and killed someone who routinely does abortions? wtf? they’re obviously not REALLY pro life because they took a life of someone who has previously in their mind killed people and plans to kill people in the future, you should do it peacefully’ what do you actually want people who are pro life to do apart from ‘admit that they don’t actually care about babies and one care about controlling women’?
If you’re going to point out contradictions between people’s action and professed beliefs, why not go the other way and point out that according to most of them being aborted isn’t even fatal because it doesn’t destroy the soul? I’m not sure where exactly you would go with that line of argument if you did, but it at least isn’t a call to violence.
Doesn’t matter - it’s against the Will of God according to most Pro-Lifers, and the same people that oppose both abortion and contraception do so for that reason.
Which, the last time I read about why contraception was considered unholy, I remember the reasoning being rather stupid, but if you get rid of that previous ruling it starts unwinding the authority of the rest of the church.
you are a legitimate, bona fide fascist. i bet if i wrapped you in Wonder Woman's lasso of truth rn and told you to vocalize your thoughts it'd be "meta levels of feminist sjw cringe last night when those feminazis got triggered over muh privilege; LUUUL" none of that witty counter signaling you train your rationalist housewife to do for you on normal posts
I know the US has been a global force for insatiable greed, corruption, lust for control, etc. I dont see how encouraging a more "progressive" or inclusive military matters in the grand scheme of things. We should be decreasing the military and discouraging "service," not encouraging everyone to contribute to it. Also, *choosing* to opt into such an organization is far worse than being forced to live in a regulated US economy where choice and alternative economic systems are suppressed by design
It’s an extremely common coastal/affluent american perspective to think it’s best to discourage military service in favour of some other vague alternative, with the idea that it’s inherently for the best with regards to any young man or woman seeking work.
But when the economic core of countless, countless US towns look like this:
How can one simply discourage service? For most communities, it is the only exit from poverty or the only guarantor of stability and planning to establish a family. For many towns the options are fast food, walmart and army. Which do you choose when you want to start a career?
like what are these alternative economic systems you envision without an organization such as the army in the meanwhile?
And then for most, say, transgender people from these communities who headass into the military (be it for muh income security or hypermasculine pursuits to deal with trans denial/awareness), before realizing AW sHiT IM A GILR/GUY, where the fuck else do they turn?
While alot of “progressives” are pissed about this situation, they too often forget that army service isn’t a choice but a necessity in getting out of places like this for reasons inherent to daily threats of violence or bigotry ON TOP of poverty, substance addiction and otherwise. Many people on the left misconstrue military service as a simple “queer rights” issue or something akin to fighting for representation in media when it is entirely more complex than that.
We should be decreasing the military and discouraging “service,” not
encouraging everyone to contribute to it. Also, *choosing* to opt into
such an organization is far worse…
The US armed forces is not an inherently evil organization. The evil arises from schemers in the political strata completely detached from the realities on the front line and the reality in these communities most recruits come from.
A military is a natural and obvious part of any organized nation state. That military doesn’t have to be constantly engaged in warfare. Yall are mad at the army and not the politicians that utilize it to fulfill their agendas.
I think @mailadreapta is correct that part of the motive on the conservatives’ part was to point out the contradiction in their progressive and liberal opponents’ actions. Up until this election, the progressive juggernaut had pushed so far forward (or ‘forward’) that it had started throwing white gay men under the bus, which, combined with the fact that the left/liberal plan is to import people of an ideology which is actively hostile to LGBT people wherever it rules, and at rates so high that it risks displacing the native population within a handful of generations, without doing what is actually necessary to defang and atomize that ideology, and constantly making excuses for it, created an opening for attack.
In this case it’s no different than left-wingers pretending they give a sht about countries or the army. The “lul fuck u army’s just an imperialism machine” response may be more honest WRT their actual beliefs.
For my part of course, I disapprove, much like I disapprove of terminating that military-service-for-citizenship program which is apparently ending soon.
It puts me in an awkward spot. Last administration, I spent a lot of effort trying to defend the Obama Administration even when it did dumb things for which there was no defense, and honestly after a while I gave up on that kind of party loyalty because pols will betray you every time.
So, uh, before we get mad about the army ban on transgendered people, can I get a rundown on what the ban actually consists of? It doesn’t look good, but I’m not going to rush to judgement here.
I mean we’ll see, but from the article I read it looks like it will be as simple and dumb as it sounds.
Speaking of the UN, someone I once knew IRL thought it would be a good idea to use it to enforce womens’ rights, apparently not realizing that Saudi Arabia is on the Human Rights Council. A rather sharp oversight considering the punishment for someone like them somewhere like Saudi Arabia.
Local Blogger Accidentally Reblogs Supervillain, Frantically Deletes Post to Avoid Becoming Reactionary Nationalist & Starting Robot War with UN for Control of Moon
The women entering biology statistics does make me a bit uncomfortable because it seems like it’s the classic jobs process for women where jobs are considered less prestigious as women enter them. I can draw the parallel between the wet lab component and other work that became traditionally female, like cooking or textile work.
That’s going to be a constant danger if the reactionary idea about (cis/het/blah) women wanting men who are higher status than they are is even one quarter true.
can’t understand why people spell unusual names wrong, wouldn’t an unusual name prompt you to slow down and doublecheck it?
all names that get fewer than NAME_HITS hits per NAME_TIMEFRAME get purged from the cache.
this is in the spec, Argumate. you are supposed to know this
just because the software is buggy and produces unexpected behaviors doesn’t mean you can just roll your eyes at the legacy code and ignore the documentation
mitigatedchaos said: local blogger baffled to discover that Chinese leader Xi Jinping secretly took Special Interest: Trains at character creation
I can’t see a river without wanting to dam it, I’d be a great hydraulic despot.
Local blogger secretly responsible for Three Gorges Dam, flees to Australia, adopts owl-based persona to avoid responsibility for subsequent earthquake risks.
You think your goal right now is to “Repeal Obamacare”.
But that has issues. Given your values, your goal should not just be to repeal Obamacare, but to prevent the emergence of a single-payer healthcare system in the United States, in which the US Federal government monopolizes 1/5th of the US economy in a botched attempt at recreating the NHS.
This does not mean trying to pass laws to sabotage the attempt. They’ll just get overturned, and that will be celebrated as a Democratic party victory.
You have to deflate the demand for single-payer healthcare. That is what is necessary for market-based healthcare to continue to exist in the United States. As long as the demand is there - and it is growing, as middle-class families come under increasing pressure - the desire for single-payer will re-emerge.
Yelling at people about how they don’t deserve healthcare because they haven’t worked hard enough will not help. You just picked up a bunch of rural voters that got laid off at the factories and can’t meet their deductibles. You have to focus on preserving the market-based allocation.
There is a simple way to do this.
Each year, every American receives a healthcare voucher for $2,500. (Maybe more - this is way below our per-capita healthcare spending - but even you can do this much.) You can hide this as an earned income tax credit for the poor, a tax deduction for the middle class, etc, if you have to.
The voucher can only be used to purchase valid medical services and medical insurance. We have licensing for doctors, so this shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.
Any of the voucher not spent rolls over into a no-tax/low-tax Health Savings Account, where it builds up.
Private money can also go into the account.
Tax is only assessed above a certain amount / on death.
By default, it goes to a zero-interest government account, but this can be changed by opening a suitable interest-earning HSA account at any American bank or credit union.
Hospitals are still required provide emergency care for the uninsured/poor, however, up to ½ of future vouchers can be garnished, proportional to the size of outstanding claims.
Vouchers and money from the HSA can be given to spouses or children for their HSAs, though not other relations (normally). It can also be disbursed in a will, but if so then it will be taxed as normal income.
Now, first objection is probably that this will bid up the price of medical care to the new floor. I believe that is unlikely - because the voucher accumulates and people don’t actually like randomly buying healthcare, it makes much more sense to save it up and spend it later as you normally would, or else just buy insurance.
Second objection is that people might launder the money to get it for themselves. In this case, the person they are screwing over is mostly their future self, so they have incentive not to do this.
Third objection, which I’m likely to get from my left-wing readers, is that this isn’t enough money. That’s probably true, but this is likely of more benefit than whatever the Republicans are currently cooking up. In the current situation we have some poor people buying the mandated insurance, but unable to actually get medical care because they cannot afford the deductible. Under this system, they can go get medical care tomorrow. Likewise, for pre-existing conditions, this ensures that at least the value of the voucher is available each year to pay for it.
Later administrations could raise the amount, but the benefit for the Republicans here is the preservation of the market mechanism. This is likely to be a popular program.
This could be coupled with a variety of other reforms to reduce overall healthcare costs, such as requiring hospitals to post information about their prices, success rates, etc. Don’t just cross your fingers and hope the market works. Education alleviates information asymmetry and lubricates markets. Create the right framework for suitable informed competition to take place in.
“Earth belongs to the Neanderthals. We homo sapiens have a duty to use our advanced science to resurrect them from trace DNA found in isolated tooth fossils, then voluntarily go extinct as a species, returning the planet to its true, destined inheritors.”
what’s right about it? If it were such a beneficial, sustainable and lauded system of civic management, you’d think it’d result in stability and mutual flourishment rather than misery and insurrection.
It’s hard to convey via just the photos just how hard they are trying to jam in as much 50s MURICA!!!! imagery and atmosphere as they can
like seriously
Bonus view from the outside:
Ok you might think, but what about the food?
well:
“Muricans like Hamburgers right? And they gotta be HYUGE”.
“They also like french fries. And big breakfasts. So french fries are for sure a breakfast meal in America. Trust me bro”.
“So we’re gonna make spaghetti too, but like, not normal spaghetti. We’re gonna make spaghetti like we think they make spaghetti like they think we make spaghetti, so you can have Italian spaghetti made to imitate American spaghetti which are made to imitate Italian spaghetti.”
“Speaking of pasta, know what else we should make? Mac and cheese! Muricans love Mac and cheese. Ditch the tiny maccheroni tho GOTTA GO BIG”
“Then you can end your meal with a nice milkshake for dessert!”
“…ok but I feel like this isn’t quite American enough. It must be bigger. It’s gotta have like 3000 more calories also. It is known that Americans thrive on like a 8000 daily calories diet”
“Ok so like a banana peanut butter milkshake with vanilla ice cream, oh and of course you pour liquid chocolate on the bottom of the glass before serving it”
“Much better!”
Bonus: it’s also a take-away and in some places you can get your food delivered by an Elvis cosplayer
The closest one is about a 6 hours 30 minutes drive from here …
Anime Girls (& boys, but mostly girls because we’re trying to sell manga here) of Rationalist/ Adjacent Tumblr
Discourse Suit Aries: Fires of Orion
@ranma-official: Argumentative girl thought to be flirting with protagonist in comedy filler episode 17, actually interested in protagonist’s love interest. Side plot is dropped entirely once she becomes member of ship’s crew.
@mitigatedchaos: Loyal officer of the season 1 main antagonist and mobile suitknightmare frame mech pilot. Actually believes in main antagonist’s plans to bring about World Revolution, and the Hard Choices this requires. Thought to have been defeated and killed by the protagonist ¾ through season 1, returns to investigate/fight the Mysterious Organization behind the World State in season 2.
@slartibartfastibast: Ship’s lab-coated biologist. Secretly working against the Mysterious Organization, as hinted in season 1.
@the-grey-tribe: Ship’s engineer. Keeps the protagonist’s Super Prototype Mech Discourse Suit functioning in between combat engagements.
@collapsedsquid: Journalist investigating the true motives of the season 1 main antagonist, thought to have been killed by the Mysterious Organization near the end of season 1, but revealed to be alive in season 2.
@kontextmaschine: Esoteric ‘hipster’ gets little screen-time, revealed as former member of the Mysterious Organization currently in hiding in season 2, annoying viewers as an underwhelming use of foreshadowing in season 1.
@xhxhxhx: Reasonable Authority Figure of World State District 11, origin point of the protagonist’s ship.
@wrathofgnon: Even more war-hawkish general of the main antagonist.
@silver-and-ivory: Handsome Mech Discourse Suit pilot from other battlegroup rescues protagonist twice in season 1, once in season 2. A fan favorite but doesn’t get much screentime.
@theunitofcaring: Peace activist focused on by plot but brushed aside by ludicrously destructive Discourse Suit war. Finally achieves goal in end of season 2.
@yudkowsky: Thought to be the secret identity of the main antagonist, turns out to be just a philosopher in one of the space colonies.
@bambamramfan: Additional philosopher on Earth. Encountered by the protagonist in season 1 to impart some wisdom with a few other philosophers before departing.
@slatestarscratchpad: Another space colony philosopher. Explains the goals of the Mysterious Organization in season 2 when Yudkowsky is found, but not actually a member of the Mysterious Organization.
@argumate: Generic owl-themed harem protagonist of the spin-off series.
[This article is incomplete. You can help by expanding it.]
@mailadreapta Is a gruff father, and an honorable loyalist colonel of the season 1 main antagonist. He is killed by a shady and corrupt member of the protagonist’s faction during the battle of Space Colony Alpha halfway through season 1, when the protagonist attempts to take him prisoner.
@thathopeyetlives is Col. Dreapta’s lieutenant, and somehow survives until the end of the second season, only to bravely die fighting alien invaders in the follow-up movie.
@brazenautomaton is the ship’s shy, stressed and anxious gynoid AI. The sideplot to fix her permanently burned-in pessimistic Personality Template is sadly dropped during season 2 due to budget cuts. ( :< )
wait but why am i a fan favorite who saves the protagonist. this is inexplicable.
The very fact that you don’t understand why you’re a fan favorite that saves the protagonist in the middle of Discourse Suit combat is part of why you’re suitable for the part of fan favorite that saves the protagonist in the middle of Discourse Suit combat. ☆
★
wait but why am i a fan favorite who saves the protagonist. this is inexplicable.
The very fact that you don’t understand why you’re a fan favorite that saves the protagonist in the middle of Discourse Suit combat is part of why you’re suitable for the part of fan favorite that saves the protagonist in the middle of Discourse Suit combat. ☆
★
He pays the city’s parks department $289,500 a year just for the right to operate his single cart there.
Without gov’t regulation who is going to charge someone over quarter million dollars to sell hot dogs?
When people talk about government hurting small businesses, this is exactly what they mean.
Small businesses are only hurt by their cruel owners/bosses the government has never and can never do anything wrong.
How much space in the parks and streets in the cities should be devoted to hot dog stands?
This is not a trick or rhetorical question. It says right there in the summary that they bid money to be allowed in Central Park. You have to limit the number of vendors or it won’t be a park anymore, but a market. Tragedy of the Commons and all that.
but like. i am american. i live in america. my experiences with american cops have all been rather pleasant. its just... odd to see such discrepancy between my experiences and the experiences of others with the police.
Google suggests that there are some 1 million law enforcement personnel in the US, so even if only 10% were total assholes that’s still 100,000 assholes that you might never meet, depending on where you live and how they are distributed.
In practice the assholish behaviour is more likely to be structural than personal, making the distribution even less balanced; so you would expect that some people will meet only asshole cops and others would meet hardly any.
Eclipse Phase is weird because they chose to make a market socialist economy as one of the factions but then decided “I’m not sure about the rest of this market stuff, but I think what we really need is accumulation. People using money to manage consumption or allocate resources is crap, the only use of money should be for individuals to exercise outsized control over the economy.“
I have mixed feelings about Eclipse Phase, including their RL gender politics policies on their forums, from what I’ve heard of them.
The good news is that Eclipse Phase is probably impossible.
Interestingly, informal men’s spaces seem to go for “a lack of people that we’ll be attracted to and/or that are off limits”, which tend to be inclusive of all men, plus less desirable women, Kinsey-6 lesbians, and women that are already taken and will remain so for the foreseeable future, so long as said women have masculine enough personalities to fit in.
Look. I get that you get off on being "edgy" and "controversial". It's kind of your brand, you're a contrarian, and it excites you to be going against the grain. But the chaos were the best thing about the Sonic Adventure series and I take any attempt to mitigate them as a personal attack, so sleep with one eye open, binch.
Reality check, Anon-san: Sonic doesn’t exist. There have never been any Sonic the Hedgehog games, there never will be any Sonic the Hedgehog games. No matter how much fanart and how hard you desperately meme, you blighted furries will never make the Sonic franchise a set of real video games.
