Funny events in anti-woke world

[BrawlMan]

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[Silvanus]

But what are they going to do with said money? I suspect most of that money will go toward mansions and yachts.

Then earmark it, ringfence it, what-have-you. It's not actually hard to provide funds with a few basic strings attached-- countries do it all the time.

And if that money stays in the US, then it's even more likely to just get funnelled towards rich assholes, because that's quite high on the priority list for US government.

 

[Silvanus]

You missed the logic. It isn't that none of those things have value. It's that all of those things are downstream from reproduction. Art doesn't exist without people, and people don't exist without reproduction. The value of all of those things is transitively carried by reproduction, because reproduction created the humans within which that value exists.

Uh-huh, but reproduction on a species level doesn't require every individual to reproduce. When you take ethical rationale intended for enormous groups and then apply it on an individual level, it falls through almost immediately.

 

[Buyetyen]

None.

So you have less value as a person because you're not fulfilling your "purpose."

 

[SilentPony]

So Trump's taxes for 2015-2020 came out and the big twist is...its nothing. Not that its meaningless or not worth looking at, he filed nothing.
The report reveals that Trump on his federal tax returns declared negative income in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2020, and that he paid a total of $1,500 in income taxes for the years 2016 and 2017. On their 2020 income tax returns, Trump and his wife Melania paid no federal income taxes and claimed a refund of $5.47 million. And the mandatory presidential audit seemed to have missed.
Somehow he pulled reverse taxes and got millions back. So the next question to ask is is Trump or his organization blackmailing someone in the IRS?

 

[Thaluikhain]

So Trump's taxes for 2015-2020 came out and the big twist is...its nothing. Not that its meaningless or not worth looking at, he filed nothing.
The report reveals that Trump on his federal tax returns declared negative income in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2020, and that he paid a total of $1,500 in income taxes for the years 2016 and 2017. On their 2020 income tax returns, Trump and his wife Melania paid no federal income taxes and claimed a refund of $5.47 million. And the mandatory presidential audit seemed to have missed.
Somehow he pulled reverse taxes and got millions back. So the next question to ask is is Trump or his organization blackmailing someone in the IRS?

Huh, on a totally unrelated note I was watching a Kevin Costner movie the other day.


(I dno't think the baby was in that much danger, didn't seem to be going that fast. At least not as much danger as the civilian and 2 sailors that got caught in the crossfire and seemingly killed)

 

[Dalisclock]

Huh, on a totally unrelated note I was watching a Kevin Costner movie the other day.


(I dno't think the baby was in that much danger, didn't seem to be going that fast. At least not as much danger as the civilian and 2 sailors that got caught in the crossfire and seemingly killed)

Arguably the best homage to The Battleship Potemkin ever.

 

[thebobmaster]

So Trump's taxes for 2015-2020 came out and the big twist is...its nothing. Not that its meaningless or not worth looking at, he filed nothing.
The report reveals that Trump on his federal tax returns declared negative income in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2020, and that he paid a total of $1,500 in income taxes for the years 2016 and 2017. On their 2020 income tax returns, Trump and his wife Melania paid no federal income taxes and claimed a refund of $5.47 million. And the mandatory presidential audit seemed to have missed.
Somehow he pulled reverse taxes and got millions back. So the next question to ask is is Trump or his organization blackmailing someone in the IRS?

The most interesting thing to me is that the IRS is also getting dinged by Congress for not paying due diligence. So this isn't just a case of "oh, rich people know the loopholes". It shows the same problem of any government agency: no amount of power is enough if you are too scared to enforce it.

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

Prominent anti-vaxxr who was banned for encouraging ppl to die over the pandemic is now back to speak even less sense.

 

[SilentPony]

The police want to talk to Elon Musk’s security team over the alleged “stalking” incident

Musk used the “stalker” claim to ban several Twitter accounts.

www.theverge.com

So it turns out that "stalker" Elon went ape-shit crazy over and banned anyone tracking his plane from his little kingdom?
Yeah turns out his toddler's chauffer hit someone in a parking lot and then drove away and he was tracked down by someone who saw the event and tried to get the license plate.
Rich fascist uses the crimes committed by his cronies as an excuse to crackdown on the speech of his political rivals. I feel like I've heard that from somewhere before...

 

[tstorm823]

So you have less value as a person because you're not fulfilling your "purpose."

Nope, that does not follow.

Edit, since there's no way you're gonna understand.

Imagine if I said "teaching has value", and you people responded "oh, so people who don't teach have no value?"

Uh-huh, but reproduction on a species level doesn't require every individual to reproduce. When you take ethical rationale intended for enormous groups and then apply it on an individual level, it falls through almost immediately.

I guarantee you believe reproduction has inherent value. That is the initial claim here you are arguing against, regardless of how much you've contorted that statement to turn it into "reproduction is the only thing of value".

 

[Baffle]

Prominent anti-vaxxr who was banned for encouraging ppl to die over the pandemic is now back to speak even less sense.

It's sort of good that they let her back because reading the replies to her made me snort.

 

[BrawlMan]

Prominent anti-vaxxr who was banned for encouraging ppl to die over the pandemic is now back to speak even less sense.

She'll encourage people to die, yet won't perform suicide on herself. A true greedy and petty coward to very end. Biatch must be living the good life.

 

[Buyetyen]

Nope, that does not follow.

Edit, since there's no way you're gonna understand.

Imagine if I said "teaching has value", and you people responded "oh, so people who don't teach have no value?"

But teaching isn't an essentialist value like the one you're describing.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Yes, I do understand all that. But here's the rub: if you remove "sex" as a concept referring to physical categories, then "cisgender" loses all meaning. In fact, the entire above paragraph cannot function without acknowledgement (on some level) of the existence of sex.

That is true, but I think it evidences my point because the "sex" being acknowledged in this case isn't limited to biological processes. Without the acknowledgement that sex is a social and legal identity, concepts like cisgender still don't mean anything.

My point here isn't actually that the world would function better if we all just got rid of the concept of sex tomorrow. If nothing else, that's not really how concepts or language work. If we did get rid of the concept of sex, we would still need another concept to take its place and fill in the gap left behind in reality. I think, in fact, that we both agree that is already happening.

We live in a transitional point in the understanding of sex in which the rationalized and pre-rationalized ideas about sex can co-exist. The difference, if I'm reading this correctly, is that you would view a rationalized understanding of sex as the "real" meaning of sex because it more closely corresponds to reality, whereas I would argue that most people's sense of reality is (at least in part) created by culture. To those who live in a gendered society, gender identity often appears to be completely real and absolute. There is no reason why producing one type of sexed gamete should translate into the awareness of being a fundamentally different class of human from those bodies that produce the other type outside of the specific area of reproduction, and yet it does. In fact, it's incredibly ingrained to the point most people struggle to even imagine a distinction between body and identity.

That "in a way that makes them compatible" bit refers directly and definitively to sex.

True. I could have referred to the two different types of gamete as "male" and "female" respectively, but I deliberately did not because I wanted to emphasize that if we treat sex descriptively, nothing about this difference denotes an identity. These are arbitrary terms that describe differences between types of sexed cell, differences that have very little intrinsic meaning because these cells only exist in relation to each other. In animals, male gametes tend to be motile but this is not necessarily true in plants. The only thing that actually makes these cells fundamentally different is that they are able to combine with the other type but not with cells that resemble them.

While a bit more abstract and elaborated, neither is it necessarily intrinsically wrong to designate members of monosexual species by the sex of gametes they produce. Hence, we can say that an individual who produces male gametes is is "a male". We can also, at risk of abstracting even further, extend this to other physical features. In humans, male and female gametes are produced by distinct types of gonadal tissue so we can categorize individuals by the prevalance of gonadal tissue. Gonads also produce sex hormones the volumes of which correlate to the type of cells that predominate within them so if you're comfortable with an imprecise and highly abstract definition of sex you can describe someone with physiological structures created through male hormones as "morphologically male". None of this is actually wrong, the mistake is to assume that it means anything, that this is anything more than a physiological generalization, that is carries any more intrinsic importance than the shade of an individual's skin or whether they have lobed or unlobed ears.

The shade of a person's skin may matter in specific contexts. If we're talking about their ability to endure sun exposure or obtain vitamin D from sunlight. Again though, we can recognize the physical difference without assigning it unearned meaning, without assuming that there must be a point in the range of human skin shades where people cease to be one "type" of person and become fundamentally different. We can describe without prescribing, but that is not easy in a world where skin colour or the exterior appearance of the genitals has aquired as much social meaning as it has in ours.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Ya hate to see it

 

[Silvanus]

That is true, but I think it evidences my point because the "sex" being acknowledged in this case isn't limited to biological processes. Without the acknowledgement that sex is a social and legal identity, concepts like cisgender still don't mean anything.

Only insofar as any other physical descriptor can be an "identity".

My point here isn't actually that the world would function better if we all just got rid of the concept of sex tomorrow. If nothing else, that's not really how concepts or language work. If we did get rid of the concept of sex, we would still need another concept to take its place and fill in the gap left behind in reality. I think, in fact, that we both agree that is already happening.

We live in a transitional point in the understanding of sex in which the rationalized and pre-rationalized ideas about sex can co-exist. The difference, if I'm reading this correctly, is that you would view a rationalized understanding of sex as the "real" meaning of sex because it more closely corresponds to reality, whereas I would argue that most people's sense of reality is (at least in part) created by culture. To those who live in a gendered society, gender identity often appears to be completely real and absolute. There is no reason why producing one type of sexed gamete should translate into the awareness of being a fundamentally different class of human from those bodies that produce the other type outside of the specific area of reproduction, and yet it does. In fact, it's incredibly ingrained to the point most people struggle to even imagine a distinction between body and identity.

I still don't acknowledge the relevance of this to the existence of sex. Everything has cultural baggage, or deeply ingrained ideas and associations. They simply do not undermine or even impact that thing's existence. They're not inherent to the thing-- they're not required or necessary.

True. I could have referred to the two different types of gamete as "male" and "female" respectively, but I deliberately did not because I wanted to emphasize that if we treat sex descriptively, nothing about this difference denotes an identity. These are arbitrary terms that describe differences between types of sexed cell, differences that have very little intrinsic meaning because these cells only exist in relation to each other. In animals, male gametes tend to be motile but this is not necessarily true in plants. The only thing that actually makes these cells fundamentally different is that they are able to combine with the other type but not with cells that resemble them.

How exactly is it "arbitrary" to have terms to describe two different types of gamete? You may as well be saying that the terms white and red blood cell are "arbitrary" because they merely apply to cells with different functions. Well, yes, that's what we have terms for. That's the very opposite of arbitrary.

And then, if we're talking about animals, then there're clearly other correlates. The sex dramatically affects the likelihood of numerous physical and hormonal characteristics, and is vital for understanding husbandry and the science of reproduction, not to mention medicine. It's not rational or reasonable to pretend these aspects don't exist just because they're not 100% corollary or because other people have decided to attach unnecessary social baggage.

While a bit more abstract and elaborated, neither is it necessarily intrinsically wrong to designate members of monosexual species by the sex of gametes they produce. Hence, we can say that an individual who produces male gametes is is "a male". We can also, at risk of abstracting even further, extend this to other physical features. In humans, male and female gametes are produced by distinct types of gonadal tissue so we can categorize individuals by the prevalance of gonadal tissue. Gonads also produce sex hormones the volumes of which correlate to the type of cells that predominate within them so if you're comfortable with an imprecise and highly abstract definition of sex you can describe someone with physiological structures created through male hormones as "morphologically male". None of this is actually wrong, the mistake is to assume that it means anything, that this is anything more than a physiological generalization, that is carries any more intrinsic importance than the shade of an individual's skin or whether they have lobed or unlobed ears.

The shade of a person's skin may matter in specific contexts. If we're talking about their ability to endure sun exposure or obtain vitamin D from sunlight. Again though, we can recognize the physical difference without assigning it unearned meaning, without assuming that there must be a point in the range of human skin shades where people cease to be one "type" of person and become fundamentally different. We can describe without prescribing, but that is not easy in a world where skin colour or the exterior appearance of the genitals has aquired as much social meaning as it has in ours.

I find it extremely easy to describe without prescribing. And, in fact, doing so is borderline essential for the functions of the medical and biological fields-- not to mention anyone with a sexual preference.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

 

[Trunkage]

Nope, that does not follow.

Edit, since there's no way you're gonna understand.

Imagine if I said "teaching has value", and you people responded "oh, so people who don't teach have no value?"

No, they were specifically asking if you felt people had no value. because that would be ridiculous. You know, just like the term purpose being reduced to just reproduction.

I guarantee you believe reproduction has inherent value. That is the initial claim here you are arguing against, regardless of how much you've contorted that statement to turn it into "reproduction is the only thing of value".

No, reproduction does not HAVE to have intrinsic value. For example, if you reproduce into an overpopulated area, all you are doing is damage to everyone. The whole species noticed this during the last century and quickly, without anyone needing to tell or organise anything, we reduce the rate of reproduction. Because we naturally selected the best course of action - it's generally ingrained in us. Reproduction without responsibility is a recipe for disaster. Before the time of the pill, babies were deliberately starved, burned and poisoned a few days after birth. By the millions and that was the way of things for millennium. I can't see any value there, except for maybe a small exchange in goods. Reproduction is only a very small part of purpose of our species. Another part of purpose is looking after those born. Another is having a good life (whatever that means for you). Getting to childbearing age doesn't mean you mandatorily need to reproduce. Or that you even can

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

I gotta say, banning the banned book display is a little on the nose

Huntsville Public Library (TX) Privatized After Pride Display

Huntsville Public Library in Texas becomes privatized following the city manager's disapproval of two book displays.

t.co