TIRM
11mo ago
I don’t know why drug rights advocates don’t just admit that yes, if all drugs were confiscated and a very strict licensing regime was put in place drug overdoses would likely drop substantially
Multiple people die smoking fentanyl on the LA rail system every month. Over 100k Americans died from drug overdoses in 2021. Drug issues have massively spiked since then so who knows how horrifically high 2023's numbers will be. Drug overdose deaths outnumber gun homicides around 5 to 1.
These drugs are completely illegal and have been for a long time. The police spent decades confiscating these drugs. Drug deaths are currently very common.
I have as much hope for an effective War on Guns as I do for the War on Drugs. Unless you have a magic wand that destroys all guns forever, I dispute the efficacy of this proposal.
TIRM
11mo ago
The only ingredients you need are to levy an accusation and wait for your target's inevitable protest.
And a crucial third ingredient: have the intended victim of this trap be Donald Trump. Other people in other situations, such as Hillary Clinton defaming the women who accused Bill Clinton of raping them, are not dragged into civil cases.
Are we to interpret this as a consistent principle that judges would apply to prominent Democratic politicians when they deny accusations? Or just a weapon to be used on Trump and then put away?
TIRM
11mo ago
I believe that Christine Blasey Ford was not lying about Judge Kavanagh sexually assaulting her. I believe she has extremely vague memories of being grabbed and groped by a drunk guy 40+ years ago and believes Kavanagh did it.
My best estimation is that she is factually wrong, but indeed not a liar.
TIRM
11mo ago
Hillary Clinton defamed those women and then did not get dragged into civil suit.
Bill Clinton indeed got impeached for lying about a consensual blowjob. But that has nothing to do with Hillary defaming his rape victims.
These are separate matters so let's not blend them all together into some composite for comparison.
According to my high-school history teacher: the British would actually do this in the 1700s. Accuse someone of a crime, force them to testify, find them guilty, then punish them for lying since they just claimed they didn't do it. Providing a robust defense was merely lying to the court and punished accordingly.
TIRM
11mo ago
To go one step further: she wasn't raped by anyone in any circumstance. She was grabbed and groped. Which is scary and bad, but not rape.
She was never raped and the man who didn't rape her was probably not Kavanagh.
TIRM
11mo ago
Yeah. The year and location of the incident is quite slippery in her memory. She barely recalls any details and they change from one memory recall to the next.
A drunk guy grabbed her once. I believe that happened in some manner at some point in her life. I don't trust her for any other detail or fact from recalling 40+ year old memories.
TIRM
11mo ago
If my coworker buys a condo that's a two hour series of public transportation transfers to our work, should he get to work half days every day?
And me paying much more for my house and car that affords me a 20 minute commute. Shall I work a full day to pick up his slack?
TIRM
11mo ago
So he's going to get paid the equivalent of half a senior engineer's salary to wait two hours each way each day because he bought a condo in the city and takes public transportation.
I will work as much as him but not get paid that extra 50% total pay amount because I chose to buy a place reasonably close to work.
Choose to live near work or choose to burn personal time traveling to work. If someone values their own time so very little that they get a place far from work, then no one owes them any money. We certainly don't need the perverse incentive of paying people to have extra long commutes.
TIRM
11mo ago
I've lived in various suburban towns. They have enough tax revenue to pave the streets and pay the cops. The public parks are quite nice.
I've seen assertions that suburbs are not financially sustainable. But decade after decade I live in them and somehow their finances work out.
TIRM
11mo ago
Expanding will enable people to further satisfy their powerful preference to live further from work. Congestion and total commute time will of course remain approximately the same. And that's a good thing.
If we had the technology for Blade Runner style flying cars or something I would support them. If helicopters were quiet, affordable and reliable I would support them. I would certainly not accept an argument along the lines of "mini super helicopters are bad because they let people live in single family homes outside of the urban core". Just as I don't expect the government to hand out free helicopters.
I'm not asking for the government to buy me an SUV. I am going to vote for a very small portion of my taxes being used on basic infrastructure such as light rail in the urban core and a robust freeway network.
TIRM
11mo ago
Why do people always want to build towers?
Sometimes I wonder if this is largely aesthetics. Some people like open spaces and trees. Others like brutalist dystopias the hustle and bustle of good urban planning, which needs big towers for the correct feel and density.
TIRM
11mo ago
It was years ago that Romney correctly pointed out that around half of Americans are net receivers of federal spending. They pay no federal income tax or so little that direct benefits make them net receivers of cash from the feds.
And of course the revulsion and horror showed by major media outlets in response to his statement.
TIRM
11mo ago
Reading a bit on it, around half of households don't pay federal income tax. So we're not unfairly including babies who don't file taxes.
TIRM
11mo ago
I would not define whiteness that way. But the good anti-racists down at the University of Maryland sort of are. They sort incoming freshmen into the two racial categories:
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People of Color (not including Asians)
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whites and Asians
TIRM
11mo ago
When my wife was pregnant she was pretty weepy. She'd cry over sad news stories, etc. She'd never do that normally.
Maybe this woman is a "Karen" performatively crying as a means of social control. Or maybe in that forceful confrontation after a work shift and far into pregnancy, she honestly cried.
TIRM
11mo ago
I'm an American. I've never seen something like this in person. In a nation of hundreds of millions of people you can find endless, but actually quite rare, examples of anything.
TIRM
11mo ago
I'm am American. I don't deal with even the mildest version of this almost ever, much less daily. My unfortunate interactions with racial politics are rare and have no negative impact on me. Occasional HR BS, very rare mentions of white privilege. No attacks or "canceling" or anything.
As a white guy I'm actually pretty well treated.
TIRM
11mo ago
and hallucinate, when imagining the event, things that did not actually happen
Not to call anyone out, but this community in particular had egregious problems with this when discussing the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. Some people would start describing the situation and then add in a larger fictional context that would justify shooting a burglar.
TIRM
11mo ago
Getting to selectively let in good immigrants is a great advantage for the US. Just opening the gates would result in the global south median person coming in in enormous numbers. Not exactly modern skilled workers. Our per capita GDP would drop, though some "numbers go up" people would correctly point out that GDP would increase because there's more people.
Snow Crash has a bit about open borders former US in a perfectly globalized world looking like prosperity from the point of view of a Pakistani brick layer. And it looks like living in a Brazilian favela from the point of view of a formerly prosperous American.
TIRM
11mo ago
I second this. I recall as a kid that the term Holocaust was thrown around to mean everyone killed in Nazi camps. A bit more than half of which were Jews.
It seems like something switched and now it is only referring to the Jews killed and not the other 5 million plus non-Jews killed.
TIRM
11mo ago
Any crime at all? A young Swede with immigrant parents rides his scooter so fast and recklessly that it counts as a crime and we're going to deport him over it?
And deported to where? What if Syria or wherever says they don't want him? He was born in Sweden, he's your problem now.
I regularly see old signs about mandatory masks, etc. No ones cares these days.
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