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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • And this statement makes even more sense when you realize that race isn’t a real, measurable thing, but a social construct to group people with similar physical characteristics into one easily reduced and stereotypical “enemy”. all races are nothing more than social statuses.

    (I recognize that in our modern world, after centuries of propagating the social constructs of race, it has sort of become a real thing insofar that we can’t pretend the idea simply never existed. it is impossible to “solve” the issue of race and have a society where benign physical characteristics simply don’t matter in day to day life without addressing the historical oppression and modern inequities of these groupings)



  • Libraries are safe spaces for minorities and the LGBTQ+ community. Books in general spread awareness and raise empathy and can also help struggling young people understand that they are not alone.

    That quote isn’t saying people of these communities read or use a public library more than those who aren’t; it’s pointing out that the erasure of public safe spaces and resources affects groups that benefit from their existence more.

    All of that doesn’t even mention the content that was likely present in those 500,000 books.




  • I’m no defender of AI and it just blatantly making up fake stories is ridiculous. However, in the long term, as long as it does eventually get better, I don’t see this period of low to no trust lasting.

    Remember how bad autocorrect was when it first rolled out? people would always be complaining about it and cracking jokes about how dumb it is. then it slowly got better and better and now for the most part, everyone just trusts their phones to fix any spelling mistakes they make, as long as it’s close enough.


  • This is becoming frustrating. We are on the same page that violence is the only answer; I’m only insisting that we understand that the violence has to be done against our fellow humans. It is a tragedy, but one that must be enacted because, as you say, there is no negotiation to be had here.

    Denying their humanity weakens the claim of righteousness and, moreso than enabling room for their bad faith bullshit, directly feeds into their bad faith claims of antisemitism as dehumanizing them removes genocide from the argument and all your left with is killing animals/barbarians/evil monsters. I don’t know about you, but that argument is wholly unconvincing to me. You can certainly claim that because they’ve engaged in genocide, that’s why they’ve lost their humanity, but again, it’s an unnecessary mental step that gains us nothing and weakens the argument for deploying violence against them.

    For the soldier / PTSD argument, I again disagree. Soldiers kill people. There should be no way around that fact. Dehumanization and making it easier for soldiers to mentally compartmentalize the taking of life is not a good thing and can easily be warped to make soldiers follow any order, regardless of the moral imperative. The soldiers can and should be made to understand that they are committing a traumatic amount of violence and death in order to stop an entire genocide. Violence is a tool and it must be wielded responsibly and with full understanding that the violence is both necessary and just.

    Also chill with the faux philosophical ramblings of simulations and video game analogies. I don’t care what you believe outside of this context, but this is a serious issue and talking about “disabl[ing] PvP flags for the middle east” belies that this is the real world (simulated or not) with real, serious consequences. It damages your entire argument and makes you come across like you don’t see the actual human pain and suffering this massacre has caused.


  • Yeah, I agree with everything you just said, but make no mistake, the monsters committing genocide are still human beings. Denying that blurs the line of the purpose of violence done against them and makes it difficult to understand that we must constantly be vigilant against rhetoric and propaganda that advocates for genocide as it is scarily easy for people to fall into patterns of thinking that can justify genocide.

    It is irresponsible to say that, because they are actively committing genocide against a population, they are no longer human beings and that is why they deserve violence. It’s an unnecessary extra step that opens the door for the very same genocidal thinking. They are people who have engaged in genocide with no signs of slowing down or stopping, and for that one reason alone, deserve violence until their threat is quashed. That is enough for me; I see no reason or benefit to dehumanize them to justify righteous violence.


  • No, they are people. Ignorant, hateful, and actively supporting a genocide, but people nonetheless. My comment was explicitly calling out and criticizing the impulse to dehumanize the “enemy”, real or imagined. Thinking of Zionist Israelis or Nazis as less than human not only perpetuates the mindset that allows these groups to carry out genocide, but at the same time denies how easy it is for average people to fall into such traps.

    It leads to thought processes similar to “If you have to be less than human to support a genocide, then obviously what I support can’t be genocide because I am definitely a human.”

    And I’m definitely not one of those “oh, we just have to talk to these hateful ignorant perpetuators of genocide because they simply don’t understand why they’re wrong”. I’m of the opinion that violence is absolutely necessary to uphold equality if the situation has been left to get as bad as it has. I’m mostly just railing against the idea that people who support genocide are somehow less human because of that hatred.



  • Listen to how a large portion (obviously not all) Israelis talk about Palestinians. They genuinely do not view them as humans and certainly do not value their lives. They speak of the ongoing genocide with gleeful anticipation. People will literally go to the border to taunt Palestinian parents who’ve lost their children or the orphans themselves.

    They’re not shooting a 4 year old kid, they’re simply shooting another “worthless” Palestinian. This way of thinking was and is specifically crafted to enable almost every genocide that has ever happened.



  • but it’s MUCH cheaper, so keeping with every other shitty idea he’s ever had, Musk was REALLY banking on Tesla engineers to make a crazy breakthrough so he could reap billions in reward.

    It worked at SpaceX because of a perfect concoction of all the best rocket scientists and engineers wanting to work at SpaceX, since it was one of the only space programs not owned by a government and could push the boundaries, the technology being possible and wildly practical to implement, and massive government subsidies.

    Tesla is in the car market, which is notoriously competitive and, while they do have massive government subsidies, they don’t have the best engineers and musk’s insistence that they “figure out” how to shove autonomous driving into a medium that simply doesn’t provide enough information drives even the better engineers away.

    I really wish my government would stop funding his ego and let his fantasy projects die already.


  • “War is Peace” is doublespeak; an inherent contradiction. Anybody can say it and still see the contradiction and believe that it isn’t true. Doublethink is the internalization of that doublespeak. A Party member says it and sees no contradiction. Deep in their hearts, they understand that to be in a never ending war is to experience neverending peace.

    All that to say that doublespeak was certainly a thing in the novel, as it labours on the distinction between doublespeak and doublethink.