Schadrach

@Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org

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Schadrach ,

I'm sure they do, in an academic sense.

But it doesn't fit the mental structure they've built to justify anti-trans bigotry, which is assembled on an scaffold of nominally trying to protect women from perverts.

Current right wing anti-trans sentiment is built on much of the same underlying ideas as the anti-trans part of 2nd wave trans-exclusive radical feminism:

  • All men are dangerous, likely sexual predators.
  • Sexual predators will do whatever they have to to pursue their prey.
  • You cannot change your sex, and wanting to is either mental illness or a ploy.
  • Women have a right to spaces that exclude men.
  • Women in such spaces are likely to be in a more vulnerable position than elsewhere.

Therefore, sexually predatory men will play dress up and pretend to be women to get access to women's spaces as a means to pursue prey.

If you accept all five of those points, then their view makes total sense (but at least half of those points are wrong, which is why it doesn't make sense in reality).

Schadrach ,

That said, while it may have been a reasonable point of ID in the 90s, I don’t believe that remains the case in 2024.

It's useful for quickly disambiguating between multiple people with the same name though - the odds that two people with the same name and date of birth are using the same provider on the same day are low enough to consider it useful.

Schadrach ,

I think you underestimate how common the most common first and last names are. In an even small city you are likely to see repeats of the most common names.

Schadrach ,

tools to combat drunk driving are not entirely based in science

To the point that the accuracy of breathalyzers has been challenged so many times in CA that it's to the point that if the cops in CA have you breathe into a machine and that machine returns a number that would constitute a DUI if that were your BAC then it's a DUI, regardless of what the machine actually does or whether the number in question is actually connected to your real BAC in any way.

Schadrach ,

So, Judaism?

But seriously, most of the bloodthirsty bits of the Christian Bible are bits carried over from the Torah. Hell, a lot of them are specifically about Joshua conquering everyone around.

Schadrach ,

You mean with a magic potion of dirty water that should not by any mechanism cause an abortion that doubled as a paternity test because God would only cause the abortion if she cheated.

Realistically this probably mostly served to cow men into accepting that their wife's child is theirs regardless of any suspicions because God said so. There's a reason being Jewish is matrilineal.

Schadrach ,

Someone should look up the maximum sentence for what he's been charged with. The current biggest hold-ups are not being able to make someone appear in multiple trials in different places simultaneously, and avoiding the appearance that the court is trying to interfere with an election.

You don't want the court to not care about the appearance of interfering with elections, or else you'll have the GoP trying to get Democrat politicians on dubious charges that they'll definitely not be guilty of but will definitely bury them in scandal and prevent them from campaigning effectively.

Schadrach ,

(And/Or with a fine that required us to do more than lift up our couch cushions.)

That's a problem with the amount of fine being set by law and despite likely not being as wealthy as claimed, Trump still has enough money that $10k isn't going to hurt him.

Jailing him for contempt has all the same logistical problems imprisoning him is going to, but at a smaller, less secure facility.

Schadrach ,

I mean, he doesn't want them to cancel his class if someone skips so he needs an alternate to ride the bench just in case.

Schadrach ,

Does anyone remember that Bill Clinton got impeached for a fucking blow job in the oval office and lying about it on national television?

He didn't lie about it. He was very, very careful to make them define all their terms and then answered truthfully based on their exact definitions.

He "did not have sexual relations with that woman" because he made them define what counted as sexual relations, and by their own definition a blowjob did not.

Schadrach ,

Honestly surprised his lawyers didn't shut down most of the parts of her testimony that are getting the most media coverage. Stuff like him saying she reminded him of his daughter, him not using a condom, etc are embarrassing for Trump and hopefully cost him votes but are mostly not related to what he was actually charged with.

Schadrach ,

It's a trial, not an election. Whether or not you support him and whether or not he's guilty of falsifying business records are two different questions.

Schadrach ,

Nobody believes that he didn't have an affair with her. But he wasn't being impeached for having an affair, he was being impeached for lying under oath. Which he very carefully did not do.

Schadrach ,

That last bit is the actual crux of it. Whether the deed was a crime or not, it’s the coverup that gets you the time.

The coverup gets you the time because in this case he's being charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records, not for paying a pornstar as part of an NDA.

I can almost see Trump's point on this though - the specific details of their sexual encounter (like whether or not he used a condom) are more or less irrelevant to what he's charged with. That the sexual encounter occurred and that she was being paid not to disclose it is the only really relevant part from her.

Schadrach ,

So, what you're saying is it's not sexist for women to say they're afraid of men, and if you are that means you're a dangerous sort of man. And of course the fear is acceptable because statistics say men are more likely to do violence than women, justifying that it's not sexist - just statistics.

Now as a hypothetical, imagine white folks looking at FBI violent crime stats (UCR Table 43 if you're curious) and saying they're afraid of blacks. You can see how that's racist, right? Even though statistics say black folks are more likely to assault, rape or kill you than white folks? Still racist, right? Should black folks be upset or insulted by the white folks in this hypothetical, and if they are does that make them part of the problem?

Schadrach ,

Being completely serious about the laptop, the most serious allegations against Joe Biden from all their obsessing over Hunter Biden is a claim that he had been engaging in essentially pay-for-access while in office (as VP and/or as a Senator), using family as intermediaries to facilitate it.

Replace "family" with "hotels" and you've got something we're all pretty sure Trump was also doing as president.

Schadrach ,

and there are many who believe that it was Trump who purposefully gave top secret information to his master.

Being able to prove this last part beyond a reasonable doubt is the key and important part. Like the line at which you can start genuinely talking about charging him with treason.

Schadrach ,

You guys should really think about changing your voting system.

Single Transferable Vote, Preference Vote, basically anything works better than FPTP.

This is something that could be fixed at a state level no less, since the states run the elections subject to a handful of federal requirements none of which mandate FPTP voting.

Schadrach ,

US elections basically come down to turnout of Democrat voters.

The GOP has baked in voting as a civic duty and party loyalty as core values, so GOP votes mostly change one casket at a time.
Dem voters are a lot more flighty, and a lot more willing to refuse to vote or vote third party if the Dem candidate isn't everything they want. There are more Dem voters than GOP voters, but fewer of them actually vote in any given election.

Which means that GOP turnout is pretty stable and Dem turnout is all over the place.

A big part of why Trump lost in 2020 is that Dem messaging was all about inspiring terror in their own voters that Trump might win again, so get your asses out and vote or else! Same as now, and it might hold as a tactic until there's a GOP candidate they can't successfully work the fear angle on, and then the GOP will win and if the US isn't destroyed in the ensuing four years Dems will have a hard time winning again until they find a new tactic.

Schadrach ,

Not all of those were even really "supporters" of Trump.

You have a whole segment of folks who are going to vote red regardless of who is running, who've been doing so their entire lives and aren't about to change just because this Republican isn't what they want - at least he's not a Democrat. They literally check the straight Republican ticket box if there is one and move on, they don't know much about politics and vote GOP because they were raised to vote GOP.

I've met more than a few GOP voters who outright wish the GOP candidate was someone else because they can acknowledge Trump is an idiot, but are going to vote for Trump because he's the GOP nominee and for no other reason.

Schadrach ,

And why are these bureaucrats obsessed with a perception of fairness for Donald Trump when they were so cavalier with the treatment of a guy like Steven Donziger or Aaron Swartz or Brandon Mayfield or Leonard Peltier?

Because those other people don't have the MAGA cult behind them. We dot every I and cross every T with Trump, give him the beenfit of every doubt and be as transparent as possible so to avoid the appearance of it being a political attack via the courts as much as possible. To limit the protests (which will of course likely fall into the "fiery but mostly peaceful" category in terms of damage done and lives lost, but will definitely be reported on in a less forgiving way except on FOX, OAN and RT).

They’re running out the clock until election day, so they can throw out the case.

Of course they are - the best and likely only good defense Trump has is getting elected.

Schadrach ,

And it still hasn’t worked. No more than the Ken Star “Independent Investigation” washed Republicans’ hands clean of the Clinton Impeachment.

The point isn't to wash their hands of it, but to limit the scope of the inevitable protests. If the case is fucking airtight, and Trump has been fully allowed to engage in every possible defensive argument he and his lawyers can think of, and a jury that definitely isn't just a bunch of Democrats who already hate Trump unanimously agree that the evidence proves he did it and all of this is thoroughly transparent and public then the resulting pool protests will draw from will just be the really fervent members of his cult. The more it has the appearances of just being a political attack, the larger the scale of the protests will be, and the bigger the protests are the more destructive and larger scale any violence from them is likely to be.

Schadrach ,

If I'm reading this right, the groups themselves were peaceful, but individuals which may have been just anti-Israel instead of pro-Palestine or outside agitators taking advantage of the situation stirred things up towards violence.

Something like this is always the line used when there's protest violence and you really want to support the cause and so feel a need to minimize or disregard any violence.

Schadrach ,

And what’s wrong with TikTok besides the government trying to ban it because it’s pro-palestine?

Talking about banning TikTok started before the current round of Israel/Palestine violence. And the short answer is Chinese ownership, and that the CCP is so far up the asses of every major Chinese corporation that even the US government thinks it's a bit much.

Schadrach ,

Doesn't change any of the entirely valid complaints about the DNC. They've been running on "vote for us because the GOP should scare you shitless" for a good long while now.

They don't have to do any better than not being as horrible/scary as the other guy and they know it. And the GOP usually gives them an awfully low bar.

Schadrach ,

It wasn’t within reach; republicans control the house; before midterms, the decisive vote in the senate was Manchin. Democrats introduce bills to legalize weed, but unless they get a big majority those are not passing, and a law from Congress is needed for legalization.

This is the best you can expect until more progressives are voted in.

Changing drug schedules, including removing a drug entirely from the schedules is a process that can be started by the DEA, HHS, public petition or Congress. Congress can just do it, while any of the others it involves DEA and HHS coordinating via the FDA and the DEA making the final call. IOW, literally the same process used to put pot on schedule III could have been used to deschedule pot entirely but they decided on schedule III instead.

This wasn't the act of the legislative branch, this was the act of agencies under the executive branch. Specifically the DEA and FDA which fall under DOJ and DHHS, respectively. Who in turn are headed by the Attorney General and Secretary of HHS, who are appointed by (and ultimately report to) the President.

When people claim that Biden could legalize pot, they aren't talking about something he has to negotiate with Congress and never have been - they've been talking about him ordering his direct appointees to push through the required bureaucratic process to do it themselves. And he eventually did, but only as a half measure.

Schadrach ,

I mean, cocaine hydrochloride (aka powder cocaine) does have medical uses. No, seriously. In the form of a nasal spray before certain kinds of nasal surgeries as a local anesthetic. According to my wife it also opens your sinuses like nothing else, as she's had a couple of such surgeries.

There is some evidence suggesting there's a higher risk for abuse and dependence when cocaine is injected or smoked as opposed to intranasal use, but the research there is kinda limited. While the racial angle is certainly relevant, that there is no accepted medical use for cocaine base (aka crack) but there is for cocaine hydrochloride probably also plays a part in why crack is in the "no medical uses" schedule and cocaine hydrochloride is in the same schedule as fentanyl (you know, the one for highly abusable drugs that do have accepted medical applications). The laws calling out crack specifically as opposed to merely referencing the drug schedules are all about race though.

Schadrach ,

Usually that's the highly related compound called esketamine, which is stronger and is administered in smaller doses nasally and has fewer side effects. Sold under the brand name Spravato. The commercials for it have some things listed as side effects I don't think I'd seen in a drug commercial before: "can cause ... feeling disconnected from yourself, your thoughts, space and time"

Schadrach ,

This is like some boomer saying "All feminists are easily offended lesbians that just like to shout out people"

Then smugly being like "haha you proved my point" when a femininst rightly takes issue with that statement.

Worse than that even, as feminists are less than half the population and an ideology you choose to belong to, rather than a demographic you are born into.

Schadrach ,

Remember all the women getting angry about the Pence Rule (never be alone with a woman who isn't your wife) and some men saying they follow it because it's a good idea because while most interactions aren't going to result in false accusations any of them potentially could and the stakes are too high to leave it to chance? Remember all the claims that that is wildly misogynistic?

This bear thing is essentially the same.thing with the genders flipped.

Schadrach ,

The issue with your example is that black men are not in a position of power in society

Power by demographic association is bullshit. Cletus in the trailer park does not wield societal power because a majority of members of Congress are the same color and sex as he is, because they don't work to protect his sex or color - they work to protect their own economic class and that of their donors/owners.

The trick is that you can't take each demographic axis and declare that there is a hierarchy there where one group is the "oppressor" and thus has power over all members of the other groups who are deemed the "oppressed". And usually the whole point of doing so is to try to fit it into a model of Marxist class conflict, which is only really a passable model for economic class (and accordingly only works for other demographic axis to the degree that they correlate with economic class). There are lots of areas where reality violates the fuck out of said hierarchies, and it leads to either attempts to excuse it or bullshit around it that I like to liken to the epicycles and deferents once used to shoehorn geocentric models of the solar system back into line with observations.

, while men (as a whole) are the dominant gender in society.

Hell, look at criminal justice - for nearly every measure where the system appears to favor white over blacks and you would probably call it racist, it also appears to favor women over men (usually to a similar or larger degree) but you would likely not call it sexist because that violates the hierarchy by putting women over men.

Education is similar, there are studies suggesting that teachers preferentially grade in favor of girls (specifically showing that girls get better grades for similar work but that difference vanishes in standardized testing where the grader cannot consider the sex of the student). Girls outnumber boys in both entering higher education and getting degrees, and have since something like the early 80s - yet we still maintain preferential scholarships and recruitment opportunities for women as opposed to men - usually by just deciding the only fields worth worrying about are the few that remain male dominated.

Schadrach ,

If we're going that route then Manos: The Hands of Fate.

Schadrach ,

It is right up there with the same people arguing for abortion because one should be able to decide what medical procedures (including drugs) should be done to them also arguing for COVID vaccine mandates, i.e. arguing that people should be forced to take a drug.

But then that's one of my biggest grumps about pro-choice arguments (and I am pro-choice) - there's a tendency to argue that supporting abortion is just an application of some broader principle but also to have abortion be the only controversial case where that principle actually applies.

Schadrach ,

...only under the push over the last 15 years or so to treat sex as wholly irrelevant, ot the point I was accused of transphobia for describing the TERF viewpoint as being about sex, not gender - essentially TERFs aren't concerned with whether you identify as a man or woman gender-wise but whether your sex is female (and thus you are good and safe) or male (and thus you are an evil, dangerous monster who preys on females, regardless of your gender identity).

Once upon a time (hitting a tipping point around 2010 or so), whether it was hetero- or homo- sex was definitely seen as being about the sex organs of the people involved and not how they identified.

Schadrach ,

Sorry Im taking so long to reply (had a rough couple of days including getting to play veterinary ambulance twice and getting my car fixed but whoops-not-really). Only now getting to look over the responses.

He's got the right general idea though - there were lots of folks calling for government COVID vaccine mandates (but were not successful in actually getting them) and most of those calling for it were also decidedly pro-choice because of bodily autonomy.

There aren't a whole lot of controversial cases for bodily autonomy outside abortion, but we did have one big obvious one that's not that old...

Schadrach ,

I haven't seen things saying he's good. I have seen it said, and said, that he's better than expected. It's just that the bar is too low.

He only needs to be marginally better than the alternative, so that's all the DNC will ever give us. Because giving us much better than the GOP might disrupt the donor money train.

Schadrach ,

Make them legally split into two entities - one that does the religious stuff and one that does the charitable stuff. The latter is a non-profit and can be treated like any other charity. The former should be taxed like any other corporation. The religious side can of course donate to the non-profit and get the accompanying tax break for charitable donation if it wants, but then that funding has to be used for charitable purposes.

Schadrach ,

I mean that they're our only real ally in the Middle East is probably enough on its own to justify the funding to Congress.

Schadrach ,

The right most lane is an exit and entrance lane

For fun, look up US Route 60 where it meets Chelyan Bridge just outside Quincy. The through lane is on the right, and the exit lane is the left lane because fuck all reason.

Schadrach ,

That's exactly what I was thinking. I'm totally fine with about half of the directions given, and the rest are baking in right wing talking points.

It must be confusing to be told to be unbiased, but also to adopt specific biases like that. Also, I find it amusing to tell it not to repeat any part of the prompt under any circumstances but also to tell it specifically what to say under certain circumstances, which would require repeating that part of the prompt.

Schadrach ,

We always have been, it's just that the begging started out looking like math and has gradually gotten more abstract over time. We've just reached the point where we've explained to it in mathematical terms how to let us beg in natural language in certain narrow contexts.

Schadrach ,

I actually had someone whose family member died of Covid tell me that his brother-in-law didn’t really die of Covid, he died of something else, because it’s all overblown and the hospitals are doing a similar scam to this myth (i.e. making it out as a bigger deal than it needs to be.)

That sort of thing goes around here a lot too, usually framed in terms of "He didn't die of COVID, but if you die from any cause whatsoever while you also have COVID they'll count it as dying of COVID to make the COVID numbers bigger." It usually falls apart when you ask why they want the COVID numbers to be bigger than they really are.

Schadrach ,

Yeah, regardless of what the final decision is about a third of the country would...be less than happy with you. I figure it's at least even odds we get a hung jury just because of political polarization.

Schadrach ,

Media presents time travel as just inputting the date and off you go, but really you need to input time AND space because the two are interconnected.

Alternately since we're Earthlings, someone designing a time machine might think it's a good idea to automatically calculate the location using the Earth as a reference point because that's likely to be the most common use case and doing so would prevent you from dying to the void of space if you make a tiny math error. At which point you would just need to input the destination time if the target is the same location relative to Earth.

Schadrach ,

Wouldn't matter, because the problem isn't about space or motion, but about position. If you jump backwards in time but your position in the universe doesn't change then you are probably no longer on earth because the Earth moves about the sun, etc. To land somewhere meaningful, you'd have to calculate the target location relative to some reference point with a predictable location and as Earthlings we'd probably pick the Earth itself unless this is a time traveling spacecraft.

Schadrach ,

When you daily-carry, the weapon becomes just like a key-ring, phone, or wallet.
...
Expecting someone to be ever-vigilant and ever-responsible is not the product of critical thinking.

If you can't handle your daily-carry responsibly, you shouldn't have a daily-carry at all. That's the long and short of it.

Schadrach ,

Arguably these are even greener than photovoltaics, since they don't require the same kinds of materials to make (mostly just steel) and last longer than photovoltaics are supposed to. They use a fair bit of water, but you probably aren't building them in places where water is at a premium.

Schadrach ,

You could make that argument for the whole thread, though. It's just that LGBT stuff is treated as always on topic across a lot of communities.

There were times where the atheism and LGBT subs on Reddit were practically indistinguishable.

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