ZanarkandAbesFan
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User ID: 2935
ZanarkandAbesFan
8mo ago
I wouldn't be surprised if it depends a lot on how you define those terms. If we use maximalist definitions i.e. no abortion even in cases of rape/danger to the mothers life, or abortion being legal up to birth, the number of women who support either position is probably both similar and quite low, with most people's views falling somewhere between the two.
ZanarkandAbesFan
8mo ago
My money would be on Gibraltar first.
ZanarkandAbesFan
8mo ago
Who has behaved this way apart from the UK? France certainly hasn't.
ZanarkandAbesFan
8mo ago
Sweden's population density is comparable to the UK's population density if you treat the British Antarctic Territory as actually belonging to the UK. In an alternative timeline where the UK annexed the British Antarctic Territory in 2019, do you think this will have reduced the transition rate of COVID?#
The population of Sweden isn't concentrated in a region that makes up only ~13% of its total landmass, as the British population would be if we were to include its Antarctic Territory in its land area.
Sweden, Finland and Norway owning a bunch of tundra does not affect the population density that the average person experiences. That tundra cannot perform spooky action at a distance and affect what happens in Stockholm.
People living in the middle of Stockholm, as well as in Sweden's other two core urban areas, will experience a high level of population density, but most Swedes are spread out in the sparsely populated regions between these cities, and they will experience a much lower population density than most people living in the UK.
I don't have strong feelings about lockdowns either way. But as someone who's lived in both countries we're discussing, the much sparser nature of the population in Sweden compared to the UK is very obvious no matter where you are in the country.
My question is why doesn't the board or president or whoever just launch a crackdown on pro-Palestinian protestors?
Because the administrators and people in charge agree with the protestors. I honestly think it's that simple.
"Genocide" has basically become a vibes-based term over the past few years, so questions involving the word have become increasingly meaningless.
What seems beyond question is that white South Africans are facing extensive race-based persecution.
I don't have much sympathy for this band but I'm curious as to why the Met are bothering to prosecute one of their members over any of the hundreds of people waving similar flags during near daily pro-Hamas protests in London over the last year and a half.
ZanarkandAbesFan
8mo ago
Sweden and its neighbours are much less densely populated than most of Europe, meaning the virus generally has a lower transmission rate in those countries. I'm not sure lockdown lessons from Sweden can necessarily be applied to e.g Germany.
ZanarkandAbesFan
9mo ago
Quotas can be good or bad.
Quotas can be bad or necessary, is how I would put it.
ZanarkandAbesFan
9mo ago
That's fair.
ZanarkandAbesFan
9mo ago
Is it true that Starmer doesn't like this sort of thing? AFAIK he only started acting tough on the sentencing council once it became an awkward political issue, and on a more abstract level he seems to believe any outcome is sacrosanct as long as it's been determined by a legal body of some description.
ZanarkandAbesFan
9mo ago
It baffles me that these tribunals have the power to just dictate what jobs should pay.
I think this is the part of the story that's more important than wokeness or whatever; that ideological judges have such power in determining policy.
ZanarkandAbesFan
10mo ago
What if what they're doing is organised crime?
ZanarkandAbesFan
10mo ago
I actually think if there's a court order preventing the government from taking the black guy's phone, and the government knowingly grabbed it anyway, then the government should return it back to him. Yes, even if it seems counter-intuitive.
This sort of argument quickly leads to absurd places. Should the government return a kidnap victim to her kidnapper, if she was only found because a racist cop didn't like the look of some black guy who they later found out was hiding stolen children in his basement? Should the government refuse to act on the knowledge that a massive terrorist attack is being planned, if that knowledge was acquired by a racist cop roughing up a shifty-looking Arab?
ZanarkandAbesFan
10mo ago
Corbyn's only redeeming feature is being honest about how terrible he is.
Much of what the DR calls ‘based’ is just retarded antisociality rooted in the idea of either machismo or offending as many people as possible.
lol I enjoyed that bit.
ZanarkandAbesFan
10mo ago
There seems to be serious protests going on in Turkey just now, does anyone know much about the particular details of what's going on? What the protesters want, how likely they are to get it, the political situation that led to it etc?
ZanarkandAbesFan
10mo ago
Possibly - but then would a person susceptible to such explanations be likely to become a somewhat esteemed rationalist?
ZanarkandAbesFan
10mo ago
IMO (which is also unprofessional!) it's the opposite. It's the autistic person who shouts out that the emperor has no clothes, after all.
ZanarkandAbesFan
10mo ago
While it's obviously not a good thing for natsec group chats to involve unintended participants, I suspect there's a heavy partisanship element to all this. There wasn't such grave concerns being expressed by allies (or even the domestic US media) when a Biden staffer leaked intelligence to Iran, but it's much more politically acceptable to publicly criticize Trump, so there'll be a lot more grandstanding about worries with sharing intelligence etc.
ZanarkandAbesFan
10mo ago
This gentleman is autistic. I'm sure we have more than our fair share, but that's a condition that predisposes a tendency to take things at face value without considering how much of it is virtue-signalling or social fiction.
I'm skeptical of this as an explanation in this instance, if only because of the fact that if he was predisposed to believe in such nonsensical ideas (whether due to autism or anything else) I don't see how he'd ever have gotten to the state of being taken seriously as a rationalist in the first place. After all, the topic of men vs women in sports won't be only contentious issue he's come across where there's a strong social incentive to take one side over the other.
Also, I know you're the psychiatrist, but wouldn't being autistic make it less likely you'd have the requisite cognitive machinery in place necessary to delude yourself about the state of the world for the purposes of social signalling?
ZanarkandAbesFan
10mo ago
Touché.
Still my sense is that Turkey is substantially more democratic than Russia (I haven't heard of Erdogan's opponents being thrown out of windows). I'm no expert though, so will defer to those who are.
ZanarkandAbesFan
10mo ago
Or even Turkey.
Erdogan was democratically elected.
ZanarkandAbesFan
10mo ago
Very interesting. I'd have expected China to be way more centralised because it's, well, China. Maybe the much larger population plays a role?
The most interesting suggestion I heard (perhaps here? Can't remember) was that Spain would allow Gibraltar to be used as a processing center for migrants on their way to the UK. Not sure why that would be much of a bonus when the UK could use Gibraltar for that reason right now, but then I'm not sure what the UK is supposed to be getting out of paying Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands either, so who knows.
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