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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 16th, 2023

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  • So, obviously, people don’t generally change their legal gender for an advantage somewhere. But if they do, that’s a pretty good sign, not that it’s too easy to change your gender, but that there’s a gender bias in the law.

    So arguably, the easier it is to change your legal gender, the less of a problem gender-based affirmative action is. Conservatives must love this! End liberal overreach in one easy step!










    1. It’s a very progressive district, that’s how she got elected in the first place. This is not a surprise.

    2. I bet my politics fit closer to the other guy, but I’d still vote for AOC between the two because she has a national influence and disproportionate power in the Caucus. If you’re actually voting to influence Congress towards helping your district in particular, AOC might get that done even if it’s secondary to her national political project. Some moderate guy in a safe D seat would absolutely never get anything for your district.






  • I disagree with the implication that the Bible or even Jesus’ teachings as told by the New Testament, are left wing or right wing. It doesn’t map to modern politics at all because it’s ancient, their politics were just different, and also it’s not univocal, it’s hundreds of authors who all had different politics and different willingness to import their politics into their religious text.

    Because of that, you can easily read it to confirm your biases, no matter what they are. Apostles went out as married pairs to spread the Gospel in early Christianity, that’s in the Bible, so women are equals and should be allowed to be priests? But also women should cover their heads and be silent in church, that’s in the Bible too. So who should we listen to? There’s no “right” answer except whichever confirms your biases.

    Even if you are trying to read it historically, I’d argue the historical Jesus (from the Q source sayings and implications from what different authors added or subtracted from Mark) was remarkably egalitarian for the time but he was doing it from the perspective of an apocalyptic preacher, eg he said his followers should give up all their money to the poor, but it was because the world was going to end during the current generation… which was 2000 years ago. So does that even apply as a life lesson in the modern day if the world isn’t ending?

    So the religious right may well have read the Bible, and come to a different conclusion than you, and they’re not necessarily wrong, and neither are you.




  • Metric has been legally “preferred” in the US since 1975. We just don’t use it.

    Also while I was looking up that year I came across this wild factoid:

    In 1793, Thomas Jefferson requested artifacts from France that could be used to adopt the metric system in the United States, and Joseph Dombey was sent from France with a standard kilogram. Before reaching the United States, Dombey’s ship was blown off course by a storm and captured by pirates, and he died in captivity on Montserrat.