I wish the US had spent its efforts and resources towards completely eliminating the Taliban as an institution and ideology rather than kind of shoveling money around to opportunists with no skills for organizing people or maintaining loyalty. I think what happened instead was that the US was afraid of sparking a new movement that would eventually operate outside of its control so it funded what it thought it could control: rich assholes.

And now the religious fascists are back in charge. Wheee.

Just because they’re conservative doesn’t mean they’re publishing falsehoods. Just be on the lookout for bias, which you should for all media.

For example, the oppression of women in Afghanistan is probably being reported on more by conservative sources not because they are against the oppression of women, but because they’re hawks who disagreed with leaving Afghanistan, and there’s probably some anti-muslim sentiment motivating it as well. Likewise liberal media sources are probably ignoring it because leaving Afghanistan the way America did was largely considered to be a disaster which was finalized under a Democratic administration, and for all their talk of caring about women they did basically abandon half the population of an entire nation. It would probably not help their side of the current election cycle to shine light on the catastrophic fallout of one of Biden’s major international policy decisions.

I hope these IDF soldiers wake up. You can’t kill people without killing part of yourself.

This is basically Objectivism.

Wouldn’t it be cool if people who committed violent acts couldn’t actually be traumatized by those acts if they were unambiguously immoral. If people who did Evil were always consciously aware of it. If there was a moral order to the universe manifested in our bodies and in our works. One could then be sure that anyone who committed an act of evil and reported being traumatized by it was really lying.

Everyone has a choice.

There’s no such thing as a “correct” people to erase.

I feel bad for folks who are introverted and not particularly strong. Almost every job with a low barrier to entry demands a lot of physical or emotional labour.

Imagine a barista with a pin that says “Here are some of the soft skills that this job demands and which I lack.”

I feel like maybe research on medical implants like this should be done by the state.

It’s more likely there not because the employer wanted it, but because the union demanded it.

Cream is fat. I think a better fat to use with potatoes might be olive oil? Not the same flavor profile, but it won’t be sweet.

‘That statute prohibits state officials from “corruptly” accepting “anything of value from any person, intending to be influenced or rewarded” for an official act.’

This is quite literally the ‘textualists’ ignoring the text of the law. Creatively redefining what ‘rewarded’ means. Jackson’s dissent is basically ‘Did you read the text?’, ‘Do you think Congress knows what words mean?’, and ‘Do you own a dictionary?’

It takes a lot of education to make a ruling this stupid. It should be impeachable.

An Uber will never pick you up and tell you “My credit card reader is broken” at the end of the ride after driving you in circles.

Up front pricing is almost always going to be more attractive than metered pricing.

If you offer me metered pricing, I’m going to assume you’ll charge 20% extra.

And a transparent price up front.

It’s annoying enough to get in a vehicle and not know how much it’ll cost by the end of the trip (would you do this on a bus? Would you let an airline change the price of a ticket mid-flight?), but there’s something viscerally galling about watching some asshole take a longer route just to pad out the fare. Last I checked, when Lyft or Uber gives you a price, that’s the price.

Everyone has stories like this.

The hero we need rn tbh

It is kinda weird that real estate gets taxed just for existing and being held, but stocks, which supposedly represent a fraction of a mass of real wealth too, don’t get taxed while just being held.

Depends. Are you a Louisiana Republican legislator?

It’s so stupid. Like, if the protesters do something illegal (actually illegal that is) then even if they have a mask on you can arrest them and make them take it off for mugshots. Also medical masks don’t really cover enough of the face to prevent identification.