TL;DR: We can’t hold them accountable for their crimes, because they might try to hold us accountable for the same crimes.

It that’s true, and we’re afraid Iran might use them, then it seems like a bad idea to attack it.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: I believe in due process, so any Republican making a lot of noise about protecting children should in, a just world, at least be probable cause for a search warrant.

It’s the New York Post, though. 100% intentional.

That just makes it worse! (From my point of view here.) People behaving reprehensibly because an authority figure asked them to do it? That’s just the Milgram experiment, but without any apparent hesitation!

The Milgram experiment. The Zimbardo prison experiment. The bystander effect. At the end of the day, humans are just monkeys with smart watches. As social primates, it’s really hard to be the one to stand up against the crowd. Our brains decide how to act based largely on the reactions of other humans around us.

It’s disheartening.

I hear a lot of talk about guillotines, but I feel that wood chippers are the sleepers here.

Best President since Jimmy Carter is a low, low bar. We forget that Carter was a neo-liberal who threw labor under the bus. Because the Presidents since have been so right-wing, he looks like a leftist in the rear view. And throwing the working classes under the bus is one of the major reasons we’re here now.

Can we start delivering those 2,000lb. bombs that the U.S. gives to Israel one by one, to Netanyahu’s house, by airmail?

Fascinating how the subtext is always that we should feel comforted because a mass-casualty event that’s a normal part of the system that kills and injuries people every day isn’t terrorism.

“Oh, that’s just the machine crushing orphans. It’s supposed to be doing that.”

All logic breaks down at the grocery store.

One of life’s profound truths!

I used to think that as well. But what if it turned out that over-showering was actually the thing that makes you stinky?

I’m picturing testicles wearing a cowboy hat.

Simple: Visibility and speed. You look at a parking spot, and if it’s empty, it’s definitely empty. It’s virtually guaranteed to stay that way as you back in, so you don’t need to monitor what’s in it. No cars, cyclists, pedestrians, emergency vehicles, et cetera, are going to enter the parking stall as you back in. That’s not true of a street or lane when you back out into it. It’s often difficult to even see traffic coming, as backup cameras don’t have the wide-angle coverage, and there’s always the possibility that you didn’t see somebody.

As a result of both of those factors, with practice, backing in can be done in seconds, and pulling out is a breeze. Pulling in forward is a breeze, but for most people, backing out is a slower, more nerve-wracking maneuver. (At least that’s my assumption from watching how long it takes.) On the other hand, the people who just YOLO it back out into traffic are psychopaths.

You can use UTC, right now. Nothing’s stopping you.

I would go further. Most cars don’t belong in places where people live. They injure and kill people on the regular, the noise pollution causes mental and physical health problems, the light pollution disrupts sleep, the particulate pollution causes cardiovascular disease and dementia, as well as damaging ecosystems, driving adds to obesity and issues related to a sedentary lifestyle, the physical space they take leads to sprawl and ecosystem destruction, and the sprawl also bankrupts cities and towns. As well, driving in traffic just plain sucks as an activity, and makes people angry and miserable.

And you should back in.

That’s the leftist ideal. (Which, true, few people fully reach.)

It’s a good question, though people tend to treat it as a thought-terminating cliché rather than exploring the implications. Why should murderers be punished, actually? Enacting punishment is an external incentive, a stimulus, supposedly structured to make the cost to the potential murderer higher than the benefit they hope to get by killing. Belief in punishment, therefore, is consistent with the non-free will position. But if there’s no free will, then why not instead try to “solve” murder, and not have murderers anymore, by discovering the root causes that drive people to murder, and mitigating them? We’d all be better off!

On the other hand, free will implies that the mechanism of punishment may or may not be punishing to the murderer. We don’t know what they feel in response to stimulus; they have free will! Like in the story of Br’er Rabbit, trying to determine a foolproof method of punishment that’s hateful to the murderer is an exercise in futility, since we can’t know their mind.

Conservative spaces are not encumbered by pesky things like facts. Setting things their way doesn’t make one correct.