• 5 Posts
  • 159 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • A mixture of emotions. In my case,

    1.) I live in Illinois and bought a home in 2020 when the interest rate was 3.2% as a first-time homeowner. If I were to sell and look for a new home, the interest rate in Canada would be somewhere around 4%, plus the cost of living is higher compared to where I live. That’s ignoring the complications that could come from obtaining a permanent work visa as a foreign citizen.

    2.) I love my job as it is now and it may be difficult to find a job in the same field. Also, my wife recently found a job in her career field and for the first time wants to stay at her employer for the foreseeable future; working in public health and helping the people this horrible healthcare system is failing to care for.

    3.) Family and friendship ties to the area.

    4.) There’s some semblance of hope if we stay. I do still want the best for everyone that I share this earth with. Even if it were financially viable for me to leave, there’s millions that aren’t so lucky. If I pack up and leave that’s one less person voting for progressive policy and advocating for empathy in a country that has real projective power in the world.

    5.) Illinois, as a blue state, is temporarily insulated from damaging policy that Trump is trying to enact. JB Pritzker has remained steadfast in his opposition to Trump and regressive political action.

    I liken it to French opposition during the period of Nazi occupation. (Clearly it’s not a 1:1 comparison.) The french resistance hampered Nazi wartime efforts just enough to keep Nazi logistics from being able to cross the channel and occupy Great Britain. If that were to happen, the United States wouldn’t be able to set up any sort of staging area on the other side of the Atlantic ocean. Amphibious assaults would have taken place on the western coast of GB where there’s cliff faces rather than the sandy beaches at Normandy. Maybe Germany is then able to allocate more troops to the eastern front in that scenario, who knows. But thankfully that’s just a hypothetical and isn’t something we have to ponder.





  • That’s great and all, but taking away an option and saying “the other option is good so why bother getting upset about it” is minimalizing the core issue. International tariffs are going to reduce consumer options and artificially raise prices.

    That’s totally ignoring the ethical sourcing issues with coffee as well. Specialty coffee companies have been working directly with growers in countries like Colombia, Peru, Uganda, Indonesia, etc. to give them fair wages and to combat monopoly pricing in the industry. I’ve spent $100 on a drum roaster to be able to buy green coffee from responsible companies that pay farmers a living wage. In the end, my home-roasted coffee costs less per pound than Great Value brand pre-ground coffee from Walmart. So now if buying green coffee gets too expensive, I’m expected to go from roasting for my own taste preference, grinding fresh beans, and brewing espresso…to instant coffee. Which in the United States is almost universally bitter dark roasted coffee with no regionally distinct tastes.









  • Okay, but if you were even slightly informed on the situation they’re presented with or read the article, you would know that this Rumspringa you want to introduce to their society would kill them. They don’t have immunity to common illnesses like influenza and it has previously decimated about 85% of other indigenous peoples.

    Not just that, they’re in contact. They have an agent of Funai that they are able to contact if they so choose. They’re offered metal gifts to prevent them from stealing metal from farms and putting themselves at risk. They’re aware of outside presence and actively lay wooden spike traps to dissuade people from seeking contact. Funai protocol is to only allow communication if it is initiated by the indigenous people.



  • You claimed that you would be the last to defend him, then defended him? Like what?

    Being in your thirties and having sex with someone nearly half your age is wildly inappropriate. There’s so little that you would have in common as far as life experiences go. The years from 18-25 are some of the most influential in life and leaves people vulnerable to grooming. Experts claim that the brain hasn’t even fully developed in most adults until 25 years old. Finding people in that age attractive as a 35 year old is fine. Watch porn to your hearts content, but pursuing a relationship or sexual encounter with someone in early adulthood is just weird. It doesn’t need to be illegal to be fucking weird or predatory. In Gaetz’s case it just so happens to be all three.


  • Evolutionarily speaking: If cooperation did not give advantages, why the fuck did we become a social species? Going for anti-cooperative strategies only ever makes sense in zero-sum games and practically nothing in life is.

    In game theory cooperation does give advantages.

    Both co-op: +1/+1 Both defect: 0/0 Defect/co-op: +3/0

    That’s just one interaction. When you expand the experiment, predictability becomes a positive trait and risk is avoided. So by more often choosing cooperation, you become more predictable, avoid the risk of not gaining any points through mutual defection, and more people are likely to interact with you. More interactions=higher potential for points. When you adjust the rules of the game to not define a set number of interactions with each player and you can choose the frequency of interactions with bad reputation players, cooperating is naturally selected for. Conversely, as the pool gets collectively nicer, defection will net more benefits and the pendulum will start to slowly swing the other way.