First I’m hearing but that doesn’t surprise me; it’s probably better than most companies you could give your money to but, in any way they could, they don’t do anything truly groundbreaking such that I can justify to myself giving money rather than just keeping said money in my pocket (and, in turn, much more likely to go to mutual aid, charities, non-profits, or coöperatively-owned or union-banned businesses).

They could have done a more traditional coöp, open-sourced their infrastructure (even if it was just the app.!), or really emphasized a particular stance or message they as a company would stand by…but they haven’t done any of those. They basically are just offering up YouTube but as a streaming service. But that doesn’t solve the myriad of issues that make a streaming service a business that (like most businesses) prey on their customers.

Don’t threaten me with a good time, Mr. Paul.

In the Chicago black community

I’m sorry, what‽ As a black Chicagoan, no the Hell we aren’t.

I feel like we’ve run this meme further than is useful; there’s absolutely criticisms to be had about how the separation of church in state operates within American government but it’s hardly the only “developed” (hate that word but you know what I mean) country to have a government that takes for granted Christianity as default; Britain, after all, has a state church – for (pun slightly intended) Christ’s sake – that definitely bleeds into the way its government thinks about what a religion is and how much “religion” gets support.

I’m not saying I wouldn’t prefer (and hope we move towards) a more strict and complete separation but let’s not pretend America is astonishingly unique…

Still one of the absolutely best things I’ve ever read; always reread in full.

Yeah; this is exactly what I was trying to get at.

which includes the Nazi strategy of Blitzkrieg

I mean, that was a Nazi war strategy, not how they consolidated power.

The difference is that Nazis didn’t care that the citizens might oppose them, because they were fully prepared from the beginning to ruthlessly eliminate all opposition by any means necessary.

Sure but they absolutely understood that necessitated plausible deniability; every further reach of power had a cover. There’s a reason the suspending of civil liberties only jumped to effect under the cover of the Reichstag fire (and Hitler finally moving to remove Röhm was to appease army and business leaders, because he needed their support) or that Hitler waited until Hindenburg passed before finally assuming complete power.

I’m not too familiar with his record before running for the Senate, I’m afraid, but, presuming it was sufficiently different that people had wanted to vote for him and no one had been sounding the alarm, part of me wonders if something had happenned when he had his stroke.

It’s, obviously, not a given but brain damage can cause personality changes. I have very little evidence beyond speculation but I do wonder, from time to time.

I’ve been telling my husband, since he won, that he’s been given a near perfect opportunity for a fascist takeover (his horrendous first term whitewashed, more popularity than ever, more or less unchecked power in the current system) and he’s basically been pissing it away (though I don’t want to underpresume his capability at failing upward…).

A smart autocrat would have slowly broken norms while justifying himself by bending current rules; he’s gone straight to crashing the economy and smashing expectations people relied on faster than than anyone can keep track. Those who are in favor are denied plausible deniability that nothing has changed and those who’re hurting so bad they may not’ve cared can’t take hope that he’s making their lives better.

It’s incredible.

This is the answer.

For whatever complaints one might have about Discord (and they are legion), it does a really good job of packing a bunch of different functionality in one place and with a UI that’s super easy to grasp and understand what does what and how that requires very little foreknowledge of what the thing is or its underlying mechanisms.

If I am completely new and pretty blank of what it is, Discord’s pretty good at me being able to catch up quickly; it’s got a good UI and, following that, functionality for a bunch of things related to communication. And, if I need a quick solution that just gets me going…that’s gonna be pretty painless.

Yeah; of course. Ze’s referencing supporting Palestine (as the watermelon became more widely recognized as a symbol for them due to recent events).

For a second, I read your fruit predilection literally and was like, “Is…watermelon controversial, now? Are they [the people who banned you] cartoonishly racist?”

I follow you, now; sucks but expected…

There’s a reason MLK called us the “most racist city in America“!

😞…

That’s self segregation not mandated segregation.

Lynching was often not mandated segregation, as well; 🙄. This is the problem when you don’t listen to the lived experiences of and lessons learned by marginalized people.

I want to buy everything from this but also get the impression that my financial information would immediately suffer identity theft.

The first time I read your comment, I thought you said it won’t be fixed through primaries and was genuinely flummoxed as to what you thought primaries were for.

Having read what you actually wrote – now –, the world is much more coherent.

We already assess people for mental health issues.

And, again, – if you had even passing familiarity with disability circles – you’d know that there are many people who have criticisms of his this currently works. This isn’t remotely a perfect system and its existence doesn’t suddenly make it so.

You have an idea of a system that has already gained a complete understanding of human psychology and, also, is able to assess it without fail or error.

We in fact should select for the traits that we want/don’t want

Think very hard and long about what that sounds like…

Even shitty customer service jobs use these tests

And disabled people have discussed, at length, of how jobs like these are heated towards abled people!

How can that possibly be a bad idea?

I have you that answer, in my first response. Can you guarantee that these tests won’t get highjacked or used by opportunists? Can you ensure they won’t unfairly exclude those who shouldn’t be there (gay people had to struggle with the psychiatric community to get them to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; https://daily.jstor.org/how-lgbtq-activists-got-homosexuality-out-of-the-dsm/)? And these tests are not perfect, even right now (again, it isn’t surprising you don’t know this as many people don’t; but continuing to ignore the erased disabled voices which have pointed this out isn’t going to make them a smart idea).

Respected people in the psychology field have already said that trump is mentally ill in such a way that he’s unfit to rule.

And many people pointed out that this was wildly unprofessional and irresponsible (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/16/health/analyzing-donald-trump-psychology.html). It’s common amongst psychiatric professionals to not do armchair diagnosis since there’s no way you can get accurate assessment from that position. But it’s a great example of the way even professionals can exercise bias and poor judgement! Again, how will you ensure this won’t happen with a system you’ve now put in charge of gatekeeping what change is even possible?

The problem is that now he’s manoeuvred himself into a position where he can’t be removed, and soon even us talking like this will be illegal.

That’s a problem of other systemic issues, not because we didn’t use an assessment of human psychology that’s far from as black-and-white or accurate as you are presuming it is.

Stealing from cancer kids charities would be a no, no matter what disability that person had.This could be summed up as ‘no tolerance for intolerance’ or ‘no kindness towards cruelty’.

There are other means of detecting this than using psychiatric tests. And, while you’ve adjusted your requirements to include sympathy, can you guarantee that others will? Autistic people struggle with cognitive empathy, too; can you guarantee that a fear campaign won’t start up, that influences those running these tests to just, well, play it safe and keep these people out of the decision-making, for now? I have no interest in spending another century arguing with people who don’t belong to a marginalization while the supposed findings of psychology is used to justify civil restrictions and criminal proceedings while those groups don’t get a say because, well, didn’t you know that psychiatry has found those people to be antisocial and unproductive?

The eugenicism is because of the tests; not the politicians.

https://www.tumblr.com/dovewithscales/714693265828478976/very-much-so-the-early-comics-were-written-during

You think this would work because you assume we could write such tests with such accuracy as to evade bias (or that such requirement for testing wouldn’t be exploited by opportunists to place metrics much more aligned with whom said opportunists would like to eradicate).

I’d point out that you say the tests should test for empathy but Empathy Deficit Disorder exists and, as EDD people often point out, the lack of being able to feel empathy doesn’t stop them from wanting to help people and making choices based off that desire. They just don’t feel empathy when they do it.

Of course, you’re not using that word to mean literally understanding and relating to others’ feelings; sympathy would certainly qualify.

But how do you ensure that? Who gets to implement these tests? And what stops it from being someone who just sees Empathy Deficit Disorder and goes, “Eew…keeping them away from this….”

I always feel to like I sound like I’m being condescending but (and I mean this as genuinely as possible) you should try selling out writing and theory by disabled authors. Because of the way disabled people are erased from both culture and society as practically a matter of function, it can be really hard to even realize the ways in which our assumptions don’t factor them in. Stuff covering ability and autonomy are incredibly interesting in the ways they think about concepts due different lived experiences.

Not to mention the eugenicism this would ignite.

I’m pretty certain they already consider canola oil in the bad™ group.