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karaddin

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Everything posted by karaddin

  1. You disagreeing with the interpretation I was clearing reading doesn't make my usage of the phrase wrong, it means you disagree with me. And hey look at how I replied to polishgenius, I'm capable of listening to differing viewpoints and conceding points when someone doesn't act like a jackass. On an international forum you frequently run into English as second language individuals, or merely people from another country that doesn't use a particular phrase that you take for granted. When someone replies to my usage of a phrase saying nothing but repeating the phrase with a question mark I assume this is what happened, and try to explain in good faith.
  2. My point at least is that you can draw some conclusions about the type of person he was based on what he actually did, rather than a hypothetical worst case scenario of what he didn't do. And that the actual actions taken are at odds with that worst case scenario.
  3. Ok yeah, reading it again I think your interpretation is fair. Acknowledging that civilians exist doesn't carry much weight when you're viewing them as a legitimate target despite that.
  4. Oh come on, I said it wasn't particularly associated not it was incapable. How about responding to what I actually write instead of what you think I write? What percentage of mass shootings in the last decade have been motivated by right wing political beliefs vs left wing political beliefs? The majority are neither, but the scale comparing these two is going to be leaning pretty clearly to one side. On top of that and irrespective of his alleged (do we actually have confirmation these comments are from him? Genuinely unsure here) comments, we're talking about someone who sacrificed their own life asking for the killing of innocents to stop, its incredibly insulting to equate that impulse to be the same as homicidal suicide.
  5. I'm terrible at definitions so just going to copy an actual one This is both drawing a very long bow given the left-wing rabbit hole isn't particularly associated with people doing mass shootings as a form of suicide and pretty gross.
  6. I don't agree with that comment but I think 'There are no civilians' is a misreading of what he's saying there. I interpret that as saying that the civilians that do exist are still complicit in the oppression, not that they don't exist. Putting scare quotes around civilians like that does muddy the waters though so I don't think your interpretation is deliberately uncharitable.
  7. I want to preface this post by saying I absolutely believe Trump specifically, and the modern Republican party generally, is a genuine threat to democracy in the US. I've been saying that on this board for a lot longer than most here who hold that view, so what follows is not questioning whether that's true. From @Consigliere in the last thread: I think this raises a significant electoral issue for Biden that I haven't seen much discussion of. A significant component of the push to get people, in particular left wing voters, to vote for Biden in 2020 was that Trump is an existential threat to democracy and that if they didn't vote Biden they might not get to vote again. I agree and I think the record turn out says its a message that resonated with plenty of people. The problem arises when you need to use that same argument again. People are going to say "you said that last time, but what have you actually done to prevent this danger from future elections? Or are you just going to expect our unquestioning vote in every single election because the other side will take it away?". If the reality is the latter, then people will become apathetic to that argument sooner or later. It might still get across the line in 2024, but is it really still going to work in 2028? People will have had 8 years at that point to forget how awful Trump was. So you need to be able to point to things that you have actually done to mitigate the risk. What are they? Its possible I just haven't paid enough attention to the news, and there are some genuine things - in which case I'd argue the campaign needs to do a better job of communicating that while insisting there's still a long way to go so you can't relax yet. The big thing that would stand out to me would be actually addressing the supreme court sized elephant in the room, but at this point I have the impression Biden is never going to do that. And voters believing that could well be an obstacle to them accepting that they need to vote for Biden again to save democracy. Especially for voters that are thinking along the lines that Kal is talking about...
  8. The last thread was locked with the instruction that there was not to be another unless Ran himself created it. https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/163719-israel-hamas-war-xvi/&do=findComment&comment=9016282
  9. Yeah. I might agree with the idea that technically it fits the definition but I'm deeply uncomfortable with putting that label on it for exactly this reason. Also with declaring that it was successful - even if it is, you're treading a dangerous line.
  10. I can't speak for Kal but I certainly wouldn't have parsed this as meaning a month, if that's a common usage its not one I'm familiar with. Unless you mean you said a month separate and this was just meant to be a rhetorical flourish, not literal?
  11. And this is one subject area where the research supports this being a genuine concern which is why reporting on suicide has a lot of best practices around in. This story is rampantly breaching those best practices even if you don't elevate his message - just reporting on the method used is a risk.
  12. Did you read my post to the end? Because I have serious concerns about this type of protest as well and I articulated them later in the post. I think most of the rationale presented against the protest here are good arguments and that is the point of the comparison to the military. You claim that you'd be guaranteed to be getting something if you wind up sacrificing your life in combat in the military, but history is full of the graves of soldiers who believed that and whose leaders completely abused that devotion for absolutely no gain. There's no guarantee that your sacrifice would be defending your country compared to thrown away on some stupid pointless colonial expedition. This man clearly weighs the "pros" vs "cons" differently to you, so his equation delivered a different answer. I wouldn't make either of those choices though. His protest was legitimate, potentially effective but also potentially forgotten in a week, and deeply problematic/concerning in what it may inspire others to do.
  13. I don't want NSW police in the parade, however the individual cops are welcome in any other float they want as private individuals rather than as cops. That's my long standing view and nothing to do with the murders however so... I actually agree with this as it pertains to this being the catalyst for kicking them out of the parade. It strikes me as attempting to appease people with my stance while they think they have an excuse to get people with Pax's stance to accept it. That said I'm not willing to give the police a pass on culpability here, just not in any way that reflects on their relationship with the LGBTQ+ community. If they'd taken appropriate measures when he tasered a guy in the face a few years ago he might not have been in a position to do this now. If they didn't allow cops to take their service weapons home to use on the job when they're moonlighting as security guards he wouldn't have had his service weapon to shoot them with. Those are both issues I have with NSW Police but they've got nothing to do with MG.
  14. Isn't accepting the risk of sacrificing yourself for the sake of a cause you care about exactly what's going on when someone joins the military of a country? This man had already made that choice in a way that you're all entirely ok with, he just moved it from a risk of self sacrifice to a guaranteed choice and for a cause less universally accepted. Personally the choice to join the military seems pretty irrational to me, and while the risk of dying might be low most of the time, it's guaranteed to do harm to you/your humanity in the form of the training done to attempt to make you capable of taking the lives of the others. This is really the crux of the issue - it's already too late for what I think needed to be done which was to hold a competitive primary. In an ideal world Biden could even still run in that primary and probably win, but it would at least have given a platform for another attempt at increasing the profile of future leaders. In reality as soon as the incumbent is running in the primary a bunch of people aren't going to view it as a genuine competitive one anymore and it's not like you can instruct people to not treat him as an incumbent and have that actually work. So they've just got to try elevate the profile of others as much as possible under the circumstances and hope Biden keeps it together. --- My pithy response above about the military aside I do have serious concerns with this form of protest, specifically it's potential to influence others with suicidal ideation to go through with it in a similar manner and that risk goes up if this is treated as having been successful and accomplished something. There's a lot of kids struggling with doomerism and framing their suicide as "doing something good for the world" on their way out is a real concern. I don't think that was the case with this man, this was protest first and foremost - those I'm worrying about would be suicide primarily with protest as an attempted justification. But that could be the legacy of his protest even when you accept his protest as legitimate and altruistic.
  15. I believe the term typically used for this umbrella of this is selfcest lol. At least that's the one I see used for (Elden Ring spoiler) Even though that one is so clearly inspired by a lot of mythology
  16. Including a romance between someone and their future reincarnation would be a bold direction for the live action :p
  17. Yeah I'm thinking along similar lines to this. I was really hopeful for this and was impatiently waiting for it to drop on Thursday only to stop after 2. I watched the 3rd tonight and it was a struggle again. I can't help comparing it to One Piece and I think the difference can be seen basically at the start of the shows. One Piece is very faithful but also recognizes that it has to adapt the story, not just remake it and it has its own Identity as a show and this is demonstrated by doing a new score for the show. The music from the OP anime is great and for someone like me that's been watching it for 20 years it's got emotional weight that unmatched, the temptation to use it must have been strong but aside from careful utilizations of a couple of pieces in specific scenes they didn't. And even that wasn't the full piece, it's... The important pieces of the music incorporated into another... Melody or something. I don't have the musical vocabulary to actually describe it lol. But this ATLA adaptation just did spruced up versions of all the songs and used them in the same context as the original. Too scared or reverential to truly be it's own thing. That comes up again with the incorporation of other details as well, the cabbage merchant, Jet's band feel like they're trying to be the cartoon character rather than a person based on that character etc. And you're spot on about Suki and her mum, they were just acting normally and they felt so much better. The bad acting is pretty much everyone else so far, so I'm not inclined to blame the kid actors - it's got to be a deliberate style that they've been directed to follow. The writing of the dialogue also just isn't gelling for me and probably contributing to the acting issues as well. On the whole it's not offensive, it's just... Not very good? I'll probably still watch the rest of the season and hope they get a second one to improve. Oh Ripp - to answer your question about other animated shows being ambitious enough to tackle the themes that Korra does... One Piece haha. Its got the luxury of having the time and long term security though. I love Korra and am in the camp that thinks it lives up to it's parent.
  18. You're still not getting my point, none of what you are talking about in your reply to me is at odds with what I'm saying. I'm not wedded to the big pharma model, but there are a significant number of people that conflate the business model with the product and treat all drugs as a terrible part of big pharma. Those people would absolutely throw the baby out with the bathwater. I don't like vague complaints about big pharma because to those people there is no distinction between what you're meaning and everything else, so general public sentiment when exposed to a prevailing negative sentiment towards big pharma is to treat drugs as suspect at best and a moral failing at worst.
  19. I think this is fair, and I don't think I've ever had someone put it to me with this framing before. I don't know what label I'd normally put on myself, but my ideal world would probably go further than I'd typically associate with "socialist" so I'd be tempted to use communist at times - although a lot of people that do use that label tend to have massive willful blind spots to certain other issues that are pretty important to me. I'm swayed by your point here though and would steer clear of that particular label on those grounds alone. Any new attempt at it is going to need plenty of development in the areas of safeguards (to prevent immediately turning into corrupt authoritarian regimes) that would warrant a complete separation from the label communist anyway. Guess someone needs to come up with a catchy and unburdened name for it.
  20. It's a byproduct to the executives and owners - absolutely. It's not to most of the researchers, nor to the people whose lives are drastically improved by access to the medications. Again, I'm 100% in favor of a non capitalism model for this. But a lot of the railing against big pharma isn't just against the business model, it's the entire idea of the medications they produce and would damn the researchers along with their bosses. That's what I'm pushing back on, not defending the Sacklers or Shkreli. And this trend in aus has already restricted my access to some of the medication I need, it's not just some hypothetical.
  21. There are a lot of scientists doing research employed by big pharma and their work is consistently ignored and dismissed. Yeah the executives that run the companies are evil fuckers and you're misunderstanding me if you think I'm defending them, the world would be improved if we could flick a switch and change all the pharma companies into not for profits with exactly the same output. But we can't, and I really want people to remember just how important most of the drugs are so they don't decide to torch the whole thing when tearing capitalism down. I'd rather be dead than have to confront life without the medications that are so transformative to my quality of life. Most people that go into research do it with good intentions and very few of them actually climb the corporate ladder to become the leeches that are the actual problem. Don't dismiss the good that is done in spite of the leeches.
  22. Big pharma does a hell of a lot of good, the inability to see that is a major flaw of many on the left. And it's not just vaccines, even the much maligned painkillers are vitally important to many.
  23. Just a psychological preference for living in an area with high population, although personally I like to live in an area with a high number of out LGTBQ families as well - so its really both of us. Wellington is getting pretty small though, that's only 2/3 the size of Newcastle which definitely has a different vibe to it. And yeah, when we're talking about a home, that's your castle so the vibe is important
  24. I wasn't forgetting that France has had multiple attempts but I did think they hadn't had a real chance to iterate on the model and improve it based on learnings from the previous attempt - that's still plenty of room for my ignorance to be wrong. I think it came down to the assumption that previous ones were snuffed out prematurely without having had the chance to mature enough to provide those lessons. I will say the French people certainly seem to have a better grasp of the necessity of widespread collective action as soon as someone tries to erode their rights to prevent it happening via slow creep compared to the anglosphere countries which all seem to have swallowed the propaganda that protest which mildly inconveniences people is basically terrorism. That could be informed by the greater history with democracy and the losing of.
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