karaddin

2 minutes ago, Jace, Extat said:

It's one thing to report or opine on the news of the day, it's another to use charged terms like "martyr". Martyrdom is an intoxicant that has caused untold amounts of human misery, dressing violence in the language of love or selflessness is not the way.

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.

2 minutes ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:

I said a month. Do you not get the phrase here today, gone tomorrow?

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?

1 minute ago, Jace, Extat said:

I regard the social contagion risk of such an action as an accute danger.

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.

5 minutes ago, Jace, Extat said:

I've been a soldier: trained to kill with guns, grenades, and my arms and legs. 

Yet I'm the one making the argument that no cause not imminent to oneself is worth suicide. Not even one life.

I beg you to rethink which of us is acting less humanely here.

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.

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...

2 hours ago, Paxter said:

And I really don't think the deaths of these two guys is on NSW Police. 

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.

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.

12 hours ago, TrackerNeil said:

If Biden were to step aside, I think it's likely a Wesley Clark would be selected to replace him, and without a primary to test that candidate, they will lose. 

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.

1 hour ago, fionwe1987 said:

Spiritual incest, I suppose.

Aang-Korra would be... Mastrubation?

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

8 hours ago, polishgenius said:

To be fair, I can understand them removing Aang and Korra's romance.

Including a romance between someone and their future reincarnation would be a bold direction for the live action :p

Another positive thing relating to Zuko

9 hours ago, Rippounet said:

I'd say that, if anything, perhaps this adaptation takes the original too seriously - more seriously than it took itself - and it ends up going against the very spirit of the original

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.

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.

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

It's lazy to say that insisting on a name that, for many, is not associated with positive leftist ideals or even the concept of uniting workers etc but with a repressive and, in many nations, brutal, authoritarian regime, is unhelpful in getting those leftist ideals across? Come on. 

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.

4 hours ago, Conflicting Thought said:

Big farma doing a lot of good is a byproduct, is a happy accident. They are in the medical business, so its going to help no

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.

4 hours ago, Rippounet said:

You're confusing medical research with Big pharma.

To thank Big pharma for vaccines is like thanking the GAFAM for the internet: completely deluded.

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.

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. 

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

3 hours ago, Rippounet said:

France has had 5 republics/constitutions, and we're not doing any better than other demoracies.

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.

Oh the earthquake part isn't a major concern, I'd just want it to be a big difference to uproot everything when I do love Sydney. And yeah, only a big city is an option, I could possibly go smaller but Brook really needs it.

Thanks for the translation! That makes sense as a slogan.

15 hours ago, Crixus said:

Yeah, still unresolved. They did everything they possibly could to stop this happening:

I knew the election was about to happen due to seeing this on Reddit last week: 

Struck me as weird to be doing political advertisements in Aus like that, but I guess there are a lot of expats and there's no restrictions on their ability to do so.

5 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Never! Not until Australia concedes flat whites and pavlovas, and takes back all it's unwanted immigrants ruining our country (possums and wallabies).

I don't see how we could possibly deny their re-entry to the country, they are our citizens after all. You'll have to gather them up and deport them though!

I was trying to decide my ideal city to live in to escape climate change making Sydney too hot like 8 years ago and thought Auckland might wind up with a similar climate to what Sydney had before. These days I've realized the extremes are much wilder than just the sample increase of +2C so Auckland will probably still wind up too hot. And NZ will probably cop more cyclones than Sydney AND has the bonus earthquake risk. And I think its also following the unaffordable housing path too?

So I'm probably resigned to just sticking here and relying on wasteful AC to survive.

I'm a big fan of compulsory voting so there's one thing that I think would improve NZ's system. I think there would be issues with the proportional model if we tried to do it in Australia, but they're mostly relating to our very large geography with population so heavily focused in the major cities and I'm not sure they're applicable to NZ. I think most of those concerns (for Australia) could be mitigated by having multi-seat electorates and then using proportional within those electorates but one draw back of that would be needing to have a lot more seats and therefore it being more expensive than the current model.

I was thinking after reading this thread earlier that the real issue is all the democracies are essentially "1st generation" in the sense that none of them have had a major overhaul and upgrade based on a prior-democratic system in the same country. Or at least that's true for all that I'm aware of and thinking about, which is admittedly heavily dominated by the anglosphere.  Maybe we'll start seeing some improvements once someone takes the big jump of doing that.

9 hours ago, TrackerNeil said:

Sure...and a continued Biden administration is how you get that.

My point was that Biden being the candidate isn't mutually exclusive with cultivating younger talent, and in fact it really needs to be happening during a 2nd Biden term if he wins. It should have been happening more over the last 4 years.

As for your question on why the concern about Biden's faculties but not Trump - it's quite simple. People who are voting for Trump don't care about his job competence, merely that he's an asshole to the people they don't like and that's within the wheelhouse of a senile asshole. Trump is absolutely in worse cognitive health than Biden and that should matter, but it doesn't so we just need to accept that.

As for the concern about Biden - the press conference with questions just being yelled at him is absolutely disorienting but it seemed to effect him more than it used to, but mental assessment aside just look at how he's walking now. He's gone from old to elderly. It's not a criticism of him as a person, it's just something that happens to everyone lucky enough to live that long... But once you've crossed that line you're more frail than you used to be. It's reasonable to have concerns about whether you should be putting someone in for another 4 years when they're already across that line. Especially for a job that seems to cause people to age 2x faster than they were otherwise if they care even a little about the job. That's true even of GW Bush. Trump has the dubious distinction of being the only one that clearly didn't age much from it because he didn't give a shit.

And just to repeat - concerns about Biden's health do not mean I'd ever consider not voting for him in the general if I was American. I'm criticizing the Democratic party's failure to have more fresh faces, not suggesting accelerationism.

Whether or not Biden is the best candidate they've got for this election, they really need more promising leaders coming up the ranks for "tomorrow". Part of cultivating that is going to require some of the experienced hands to make way for fresh faces - as Ty said, take the gold watch and thanks and be part of the healthy cycle of life. Obviously you don't want to jettison all the experience, it's got to be a mix.

6 hours ago, Kalbear said:

My point is that you were wrong, that most people at the time didn't think slavery was wrong or a sin or anything bad, that human being are pretty amazingly good at rationalizing shitty behaviors to other humans if it gets them something or if someone tells them its okay

Rationalization is something we do to make ourselves feel ok about things we know are wrong. So I'd say that they didn't accept it was wrong, but a deep down part of them knew it was and wilfully pretended otherwise - I think that's what spocky was trying to say. Not that they'd go around being all "yes slavery is evil, and I love it".

5 hours ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:

Since this is the US politics thread and we've been without a Civil War debate for a bit

Get with the time, we're onto the debate prep for civil war redux.

What are some of the board lawyers feelings on the Hawaii supreme courts pot shots at SCOTUS?