Likewise, although the question about cows doesn't literally mean that you enjoy one of the two options, by implicature it does.
Are you speaking a completely foreign dialect of english than me? I checked merriam webster and none of the definitions for "rather" imply that you must objectively enjoy the subject being discussed-- merely that you must prefer it against an alternative. Yes, the person you're speaking to could then make the argument that if you prefer A to B the only possible reason must be that you like A, but that argument would be obviously fallacious unless they can prove that you like B.
Meanwhile, the overt meaning of "stop" is that you are ending an action that would otherwise continue. Given the context of the conversation, the only continuing action that could possibly be referenced would be "beating your wife." You can't just think up another continuing action in your head to reference and then answer "no" to that instead. That would be a falsehood within the context of the conversation. Imagine a polygamist and domestic abuser on trail for beating his first wife, who when asked that question decides it refers to his second wife and then answers "no." He could construct an imaginary context in which that answer was truthful, but that would not be the context of the conversation.
I can imagine a modified variant of the cow question designed to imply that the person answering must be a pervert... "Which one would you love more, fucking a dead cow or a live one?" for example. But the exact formulation of the question by Aella was, "If you had to have sex with a cow would you rather it be dead or alive? Why?” and that seems like a fair framing to me. Especially since it is explicitly not a yes/no question.
Look, all this should be obvious from first principles simply by changing the incriminating word. If you switch "beating" to "building" or "reanimating" or "electing" on any other valid word that implies an ongoing action that isn't ongoing, the question is just as incomprehensible. That remains true even if the word is positive, like "petting." Meanwhile, the cow question still makes perfect sense with "have sex with" modified to anything else you can do to a cow. "pet," "eat," "build" elect," "beat," etcetera.
The reason that some people who ask the cow question don't mind answering it themselves is because they are weirdos who like transgressing against society by implying that they like nasty things. They are still aware that other people don't like doing this.
It sounds like the reason you think the cow question is a trap is because you're exactly the kind of person who would fallaciously use it as a trap. That says more about you than it does about Aella.
GBRK
2d ago
They are not asked in good faith.
What??? Are you so low-decoupling you consider any discussion about an unpleasant topic a personal attack? I am genuinely baffled by your perspective. Do you sincerely think that people who ask the trolley question want to "gotcha!" you? You can trivially disprove this by just asking the question back. Nobody who would ask the wife-beating question would reply to it, but I can guarantee you that virtually anyone who asks the trolley question (or the cow question) is just dying to talk about the philosophy that underpins their own answers. I'm not speaking in the abstract here-- my friend group plays Aella's Askhole game as an icebreaker at parties and the cow question (well, in the askhole formulation it's "would your rather fuck a dog or your own mother") always starts interesting spirited discussions.
Actually, let me administer a quick test about your ability to deal in hypotheticals... "How would you feel right now if you hadn't had breakfast this morning?"
GBRK
2d ago
"would you rather" questions are not at all the same as questions that smuggle in unsupported assumptions. The cow question doesn't force you to say you enjoy either dead or living cows, it merely asks you to decide what you prefer-- with the goal of getting you to examine what your moral rules and foundational assumptions about the universe are. Not being able to answer the cow question is a red flag in the same way as not being able answer the trolley question. It's entirely reasonable to distrust people who either refuse to analyze their own system of morality and apply it in self-consistent ways or else refuse to describe and stand by their morals for fear of social sanction.
GBRK
7d ago
Nearly every anime girl is designed to be impossibly hot. With such an abundance of superstimuli, it's easy enough to look over the hot and crazy women for the merely hot ones.
That being said, I think you're operating on bad priors. There are still plenty of fans attracted to aqua, and dedicated kazuma/aqua shippers. The same goes for darkness.
GBRK
7d ago
Okay if we're verbal creature then cops can constantly declare detainment status. None of this Schrodinger's detainment nonsense, where you don't find out whether you are until you try to walk away and get tackled for "resisting arrest." None of this, "if they run, they're VC, if they stand, they're well-disciplined VC" bullshit where the cop can get around your right not not be detained unless under reasonable suspicion merely by putting you into a situation where doing anything other than acting submissive to them gives them exactly the suspicion they want.
GBRK
7d ago
Why are you still ignoring the part where the cop ignores the initial brushoff and moved to directly impede the person walking? It wasn't just a matter of walking toward the guy.
GBRK
7d ago
It may help to know that When I Win the World Ends is specifically a fanfiction of competitive pokemon, inspired by the author's onetime league of legends obsession and smogon/pokemon showdown/vgc. Pokemon-as-sports-movie rather than pokemon-as-adventure-story, with all the megalomiania, pressure for victory, and strategic complexity that entails.
...of course if you already read and dismissed the first few chapters it probably just isn't for uou.
GBRK
7d ago
“Am I being detained” is not a self-incriminating statement.
You're asking someone whether they're forcing you to stay somewhere, with the implication that you will leave unless they threaten force. In the context of a society that says things like, "if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear," it very well can be a self-incriminating statement, and citizens shouldn't be required to say it.
How is a cop suppose to know every situation where a citizen might be curious if they are being detained? Should they just say “I am not detaining you every 5 second” in case someone might be confused that they are being detained?
Should citizens have to ask about their detainment status every five seconds? You're telling me this would be too much of a burden on cops, and yet in effect declaring that citizens should have to bear it.
No, I don't think either party should have to use the magic words. But that means that situations where a reasonable citizen might suspect they're being detained have to count as detainment even if the cop doesn't explicitly say "YOU ARE BEING DETAINED." And that very much describes the situation at hand-- where a cop ignores an initial brush off to move ahead of someone and physically block someone's path.
GBRK
8d ago
A reasonable human being is able to make conversation.
A reasonable human should not be obliged to make conversation with a cop. That's what the "no self incrimination" amendment is for. The government should not be able to compel ANY kind of speech.
(Yes, I know subpoenas exist. I'm not happy about them as applied to private individuals.)
And I disagree with the characterization of “am I being detained” or “get out of my way I’m walking home” as some kind of magic versus normal human conversation. It’s not some priestly class words that only a few people from a special caste know how to do.
"I am not detaining you. This is not a search." aren't magic words either. I don't see why we should put the burden on citizens, instead of the cops, to clarify the law.
GBRK
8d ago
Mildly entertaining grimdark Madoka Magica fanfiction: Fargo DX
If you didn't already know this, the same author (Bavitz) wrote "When I Win the World Ends", which is probably my #2 pokemon fanfic.
GBRK
8d ago
My understanding of cloudflare is that they aggregate information about how your browse the internet from the sites that use their service to see if you browse in a humanlike way. Having any sort of adblocking, scriptblocking, cache deletion, history deletion, vpn, cookie blocking, etc might interfere with their ability to verify that you're a human. If they fail-safe and block access... There you go.
That being said, your description of trying different browsers makes me think the above probably isn't your problem. So maybe Cloudflare just thinks your ip is from a region with a lot of bot traffic? Especially if russian, chinese, korean addresses get into america through fiber lines and DNS hops in the bering straight... Maybe try a VPN instead? You can start with one of the free ones online just to test (though fyi those will 100% harvest your data) then get a real service if it works.
GBRK
8d ago
I think a reasonable person can asks “yo am I being detained”
I don't think the standard for due process rights should be knowing which magic words to use. Not unless we're going to make public policy of educating people about which spells they have in their spell slots (c.f. Miranda Rights) and force cops to proactively tell people about their detainment status or lack thereof with every interaction.
GBRK
8d ago
You know, this is the most interesting idea I've heard in weeks. I've never paid much attention to the idea of instating mandatory national service to replicate what mass conscription did for previous generations because I just couldn't think of what we could possibly do with that labor pool that outweighs the deadweight loss of corvee labor. Now. However, I see the vision: a sort of labor that by its very nature instills pro-social behavior. I can imagine even just having college age students take one or two days out of their week to serve as effectively glorified security guards in return for a small stipend/scholarship/government healthcare wouldn't be obscenely expensive while still instilling a respect for public order.
GBRK
12d ago
I occasionally mask when I'm sick but have some sort of unavoidable social event. I also interact with people who clearly mask as a sort of fashion statement and/or to obscure their gender. (Perils of being a furry and occasionally being around YNs.) The N95 wearers are definitely hypochondriacs tho
GBRK
12d ago
I don't know about a "significant" amount but I definitely benefited as a very mixed Latino by getting a full ride to my state college a decade ago. I would have gotten most of it paid for by scholarships anyway given I auto-qualified for scholarships based on GPA, residency, and high ACT/SAT score, but my race was worth something like $5-10k in the end. Probably the biggest effect was that the full ride convinced me to spend 4 years in college instead of 3-- I had an insane amount of AP/college credits going in so it would have been easy to drop a year, especially if I decided to single-major instead of double-major. But I figured since I had a full ride anyway I might as well make use of it.
This scholarship was a little funny though because it was for specifically mixed-race students, and that was defined broadly enough to where one of my best friends in college ended up being a white/ 1/32nd native american dude with the same scholarship. The DEI seminar we all had to take had like one lightskin black kid and a lot of white-passing kids.
Overall I think it was pretty stupid since none of us were the kind of underprivileged youth that needed a scholarship, but obviously I wasn't going to turn it down. Cash money baybay!
(I do need to specify that I'm Latino, NOT hispanic.)
GBRK
13d ago
It's funny that you mention Iowa because I went to school in Des Moines and the system there absolutely DOES segregate based on intelligence. While local high schools do have AP classes, the students who score particularly highly on the statewide standardized tests get put in separate math classes starting in 5th grade and by 8th (or rarely 7th) grade start getting bussed to a magnet high school for part of their days to learn through an accelerated math/reading/science curriculum. Though that still means time spent at the source schools for certain electives and non-accelerated courses (music, foreign language, art) the smart kids are still pretty well insulated from the average kids for all the rigorously academic subjects.
(Though I would be remiss to not mention that Ames Public High School still dominated all the math competitions anyway...)
GBRK
15d ago
A New Jersey legislator has submitted a bill that would ban sex in state, county, and municipal "government facilities
This will make illicit bathroom sex in government building even hotter. Approved.
GBRK
21d ago
It's not about fixing problems, it's about giving the sufferer the a quality of life better than being dead. And I feel like that shouldn't be a super high bar because people regularly persevere through absolutely horrible circumstances instead of choosing death
If the person is truly braindead, then the drugs aren't any WORSE than euthanasia. The point is to avoid deliberately killing someone who would have otherwise preferred life-- even in the meanest sense.
GBRK
21d ago
Well the fentanyl isn't going to make things any worse for them, then. It's a little more expensive for the parents or society that keeps them alive, but not THAT much more expensive. Drugs is cheap yo. Especially as they wouldn't be alive for that much longer in proportion to how much fun they're having.
GBRK
21d ago
I think fentanyl addicts prefer their drugged state to their undrugged state, and prefer it also to being killed. If either of those things fail to hold, then their problem is insufficiently fun drugs. Now, it's hard to say whether the epileptic braindead child would prefer drugs to death, but I feel confident enough guessing that insofar as they have preferences, they would enjoy fentanyl as a little treat. The problem with fentanyl globally is that it prevents people from living full, healthy lives in other ways... But I don't think that's a concern in this incident.
GBRK
21d ago
Euthanasia is a solved problem and the only explanation for its advocates call for it is that they have insufficient care for the lives they're ending. There is no circumstance, NONE, where it is necessary to actively end a nonthreatening person's life. Not when you can just give them the fun drugs in quantities sufficient to render their suffering moot. This kid should have been on fentanyl, not murdered. (If the drug kills the patient as a side effect that's unfortunate, though predictable. At least they had the best available time beforehand.)
GBRK
1mo ago
So I bet a college kid on reddit that I could find an upcoming edm or metal show in their town because they were whining about how nobody throws parties any more. But the joke's on me because their college town is Damascus, Syria. My US-defaultism strikes again...
Given that I stand to lose a substantial amount of izzat if I can't substantiate my boast, do any of the esteemed members of this forum know how I can get hooked into the syrian underground music scene without actually flying there? My AI-and-google-fu has only got me to the facebook pages of bands/DJs that went defunct pre-2025 at the best and pre-covid at the worst.
GBRK
1mo ago
Reviewing your earlier comments, I see a examples of how you think learning doesn't work, e.g.
I don't really think that reading is valuable in itself unless you are reading something worth reading.
I do not believe that you can learn to expand what you like by reading more of what you already like.
I also don't think that the tactic of reading garbage is likely to lead to appreciation of actually good literature
...but I don't see a positive model of how you think reading comprehension is built and how people learn to love reading.
GBRK
1mo ago
I feel you man... Gearing up for my last round of agent submissions too. (I'll also have to send it out to a few smaller presses that take direct submissions, though I'm even less hopeful there...) Good luck to us anyways! And in the likely event that it isn't, we can swap shoutouts on royalroad.
The quick test was to see whether you would interact with me on the object level of the question being asked or on the level of the rhetorical point I was making by asking you the question. Since you did the first, and furthermore ignored all the other points I made, I realized that you had neither the interest nor the capability to discuss in general whether provocative hypothetical questions are useful or interesting. That's essentially isomorphic to getting you to answer the cow question anyway, since it implies your answer wouldn't have any interesting reasoning behind in. Consequently I lost interest in our conversation.
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