Libra00

By simple analogy. You can prove that there are white crows by finding a single white crow, but to prove that there are no white crows you must conduct an exhaustive search of every corner of the earth and never find a single one and somehow be absolutely certain that you didn’t miss one somewhere.
The only way to be absolutely certain that you didn’t miss something is to be able to look everywhere all at once, otherwise a white crow might evade your notice, and that’s impossible.

As such all you can say is there probably aren’t any white crows because we have lots of experience seeing crows and there has been no evidence of one yet.

My bad, perhaps the better word to use would’ve been paranoid. Had a similar ring to ‘they only come out when no one else is looking’, ya know?

That sounds… rather conspiratorial.

Also, just yesterday I posted a longish rant about doing what you want and not caring about what people think in a comment and the only reply I got was ‘This is the kind of pep talk I need!’, so… shrug Guess we travel in different circles.

Selection bias mostly, you only remember the negative interactions. I’m new here but I’ve not run into any particularly negative or rude people so they don’t seem super common, nowhere near like reddit.

Same, I’m engaging more often here than I did on Reddit because it feels less like shouting into the void. I just wish there were more active communities for philosophical/political/religious debate on lemmy.

Also I didn’t even realize there wasn’t a karma system here, but that seems like a good call. I never paid attention to it on Reddit either (I couldn’t even tell you off the top of my head how much I have.)

And the US isn’t? The US doesn’t exactly have a stellar record either, so if you think the US is some bastion of human rights you haven’t. been. paying. attention. And if you think LGBT rights are safe from that you’re delusional.

And that’s not even considering the many, many atrocities and war crimes the US has committed and continues to commit overseas (Yup, that’s a ChinaDaily link - if you believe US media reports about Chinese human rights violations then you must be willing to give the Chinese media the same courtesy about US violations, right?) So my advice to you is to hold on to that smug sense of US human rights superiority for as long as you can, cause once the illusion fades you’re in for a rough time.

There’s a world of difference between supporting the liberation of Palestine and praising it. I don’t think anyone is under the illusion that it’s a great place to live, but that doesn’t mean I want them to be murdered.

The problem is that there are also lighter elements (like astatine) that decay so fast we can’t make enough at one time to even know what it looks like. Randall Munroe of XKCD gave a google talk where he covered the problems you would have if you tried to assemble all of the elements, and the problems really maximize around the time of astatine, which he described as the element which maximizes the amount of paperwork you’d have to do. The explosion of heat and radiation from a chunk of astatine would be too large to sweep under the rug as a little woopsie, but not large enough to wipe out your whole neighborhood or city so that there would be no one left to submit paperwork to.

Indeed, I quite like it, cause I’m here for discussion not just shouting into the void.

I have to assume he’s working backwards, because if he’d gotten to Astatine we’d know.

Yeah it felt a little empty here at first, but then I realized I get way more replies on most of my comments here than I did on reddit where most people just scrolled right past it.

Oh they only care about tyranny that affects them. It’s not tyranny if it’s hurting the people they want hurt.

LOL, Chuck Schumer is really fucking ‘combatting’ the fascist takeover by appeasing and being complicit with it.

I keep seeing Democrats crying about how little power they have and how much their constituents are demanding that they do something and there’s just nothing they can do. But there is. In fact I’ve put together a short list, and I even numbered each step so you can refer back to it more easily later.

1. Resist. Every. Step. Boot Chuck Schumer out on his ass for voting for the funding bill. Doesn’t matter whether they needed his vote or not, collaborating with fascism = fascism. Make an example of him. Do not cross that line. Not one single Democrat vote on any Republican bill that harms people, tears them from their homes, removes their rights, or otherwise denies them the things they need to live. No exceptions. No compromise. Yeah, maybe they have all the power now, but one day soon that won’t be the case and they will need you and they will know that you mean business and aren’t afraid to spoke their wheels if they don’t fucking behave.
2. Tell every single American exactly what it is they’re doing and what the consequences will be. And I don’t mean ramble on about how they’re hurting America, I mean in specific detail. Build a website that is a point-by-point list of all the shit they’re doing in simple terms and with data to the extent that it’s possible, and make sure it’s accessible and easy to use instead of just an excel spreadsheet or some shit. Talk about it every time a camera is put in your face. Talk about nothing else in fact. You say you have no power so you can’t advance your own agenda, work on undermining theirs at every turn.
3. For the love of Christ can you please talk to the goddamned working class again? You know, the ones who your unwavering base before you walked back support for wage increases and undermined unions and weakened labor laws in the name of proto-fascist appeasement? Yeah, winning elections is important and that takes a lot of money, but all the money in the world ain’t gonna do you a damned bit of good when the working class goes fully right-wing because they at least talk a good game about it even if their policies are incoherent.
4. Shut your whiny fucking mouth about what a terrible burden you bear. You signed up for this job, if you can’t take the pressure and you can’t shut up, give up the seat to someone who can. I will hear not one more word of this ‘Well I spoke truth to power!’ nonsense. No the fuck you did not, you whimpered to power (your constituents) and kowtowed to authority and your little fucking hand-signs mean precisely not one goddamned thing. To misconstrue the one for the other is to fundamentally misunderstand what power even is and how fucking privileged you are.
5. And while we’re on the subject of what you’re doing with your mouth, it’s long past time to pull that oligarch’s dick out it and take a look around you. There is more important shit in this world than whether or not you have enough money in your campaign fund. People are dying and you’re over here all ‘Won’t someone please think of the economy?!’ (read: ‘my/my rich donors’ stock portfolios’)

You want my money? Then it’s long past time to learn that you work for a living and do your fucking job.

I mean maga has always had a strong religious component built into its core, as has the conservative party in general since like the 80s, so this isn’t new.

Yes.

Your first mistake is assuming that they care about educating themselves. You might find the rare one who does, but most conservatives are already certain about everything, and anti-intellectual in general to boot.

Inertia, convenience of what you’re used to, and all of your friends are over there and have never heard of ‘the fediverse’.

Iono, I would normally say a deep forest green, but I have recently been growing in appreciation of purple.