token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
No bio...
User ID: 1737
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
2yr ago
That sounds like a major loophole. If "used" goods aren't taxed, why would anyone ever sell "new" goods?
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
2yr ago
Thanks for agreeing with me.
Okay, I know that's not what you meant. Gender-segregation of bathroom by sex-on-birth-certificate as opposed to apparent gender is new.
I regularly see claims like that with no evidence that anyone actually believes that. The closest I've seen is arguments over whether puberty blockers are appropriate for trans teenagers (and the pro-trans people like to point out that no one thinks puberty blockers are inappropriate for cis teenagers when medically indicated). I'm not sure exactly what age children are normally allowed to make medical decisions without parental approval, I'd assume 16? But it probably varies by jurisdiction. And it isn't a trans-healthcare-specific thing.
Why is it so important to you that middle and high schoolers do not learn about gender and sexuality? Understanding those things is important for children and adolescents to understand what abuse looks like and how to avoid it and report it. And for them to know what a healthy understanding of themselves looks like and what healthy relationships look like, which is important for any person's happiness and wellbeing.
I believe that you honestly want what's best for your children and somehow think keeping them away from such information is better for them, but I read your posts and just hope your children against the odds manage to become well-adjusted adults despite your efforts.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
8mo ago
There's been a few stories like that hitting /r/politics the past couple week. By "like that", I mean, some reiteration of some vague bad-mouthing of Trump over something that's not actually very important and was reported on years ago. As someone who is no fan of Trump, I also am unhappy with this news coverage, albeit for different reasons: there's actual bad things to say about Trump; no need to report on irrelevant gossip. Actually talk about his policies and fallout from what he did during his term. But news organizations don't want to do that because it involves talking about regulating business (e.g., the FDA regulating food production) in a positive light and their owners don't want that.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
2yr ago
Is "Luxury Beliefs" just the right-wing version of "voting against their own interests"? @hydroacetylene makes this more explicit:
This is partly because living progressive values is an impressively dumb decision that takes real and quasi-religious commitment, but still.
Have you considered in your disagreements with your political opponents about policy the merest possibility that they might be right (or at least correctly accomplishing their own goals which may differ from yours)?
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
2yr ago
(fanfiction is illegal)
The Organization for Transformative Works would disagree. That's the non-profit that runs AO3 and was pretty explicitly created to make sure AO3 can be run as a non-profit legally. The community is pretty aggressive about making sure fanfic they host is not even getting close to edge of "not for profit" (e.g. I see posts telling people to not mention on AO3 if a particular piece was commissioned and not to explicitly mention accepting donations), but they're pretty sure fanfic is legal even if charging for fanfic is not. Of course, there's plenty of sites that host derivative works that have ads that haven't gotten sued, so who knows where the courts would actually draw the line.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
2yr ago
A trans person who wants to be 'left alone' need only choose the bathroom or facility that corresponds to their biological sex and I daresay they will be left alone.
Back a few years ago I saw multiple social media posts along the lines of this selfie of a trans man in a woman's restroom with a caption asserting the absurdity of that belief. Following the hashtags in that tweet finds some similar ones (although mostly a lot of screenshots of that one as far as I can tell).
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1mo ago
Not to pick on you since this seems like a common category of problem... but the task is entirely artificial. There's no technical reason renewing a prescription requires you to do anything more than log into your pharmacy somehow and click a "renew" button. Any further complexity is because the pharmacy decided to waste your time.
I feel like I often hear people suggest using AI to navigate some unnecessary complexity like that, when what you actually need is systems that don't suck. Or at least being allowed to have third-party systems exist that work around them sucking. AI doesn't really have anything to do with it. If someone comes up with an AI bot that works around the poor design, people will come up with even worse designs to counter that.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1mo ago
The FairTax would make it so the truly rich couldn’t spend money without the government getting a quarter of it.
The FairTax proposal does not tax anything rich people spend a lot of money on.
The section of Wikipedia page on FairTax titled "Taxable items and exemptions" says:
Also excluded are investments, such as purchases of stock, corporate mergers and acquisitions and capital investments. Savings and education tuition expenses would be exempt as they would be considered an investment (rather than final consumption).
It also says that rent would be taxed. It's not specified there, but reading into the sources, I see buying a house would not be except for new construction (unclear exactly what that means if most of the price of the house is the land it is on? Is that amount re-taxed every time a new building is built on it?).
Sure, rich people spend more on food and other everyday expenses than poor people, but not a lot more. Many more expensive purchases (housing, education, companies) are exempt from the tax or could easily just be made in a different country (yachts, private planes) and carefully never "imported". Those purchases are currently made with money that's at least theoretically taxed as income.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
8mo ago
Surely you can see why an electoral victory for the anti-gay-marriage party might put a damper on the celebration of a gay wedding? Even if the Trump administration and/or Supreme Court doesn't revoke the federal recognition of gay marriage (as was suggested as a possibility in the Dobbs decision) or pass any federal level legislation to make it more difficult to exist as openly queer, they still live in a world where the majority vote didn't think those policies were a deal breaker. And "yeah, their policies are bad, but they're probably not going to manage to pass them, so it's fine" is not exactly reassuring anyway.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
This seems completely backwards to me. Preferred pronouns are if anything more useful when interacting between cultures because I often don't know what the implied gender of foreign names is. Sure it's also useful if gender-non-conforming people prefer "they" or not, but that's certainly not what I'm learning from the gender labels in my work directory info.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
This is where the narrator voiceover comes in to correct me that 2020 was not in fact a fairly normal year lacking in chaos or bad things for Americans.
I'm really not sure how we got the narrative that the liberals were crying wolf over the bad things Trump was doing, and then an actual catastrophe happened as a result, and somehow you still think they were crying wolf?
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
2yr ago
I want everyone to feel represented and like they are part of society. People who feel like they aren't part of society tend to make for poor neighbors and sometimes attempt revolutions.
And I think that politicians that feel like they have to convince more of the population to vote for them are more likely to enact policies that are good for everyone as opposed to a narrow section of the population. Even if I happen to be part of the narrow slice of the population my elected politicians happen to decide is worth listening to (I don't seem to be currently), I'll always live near people who aren't.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
2yr ago
I've been hearing "the new emissions standards are impossible to achieve affordably" all my life. Somehow they always manage to figure it out, either by changing the cars or changing the standards.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
5mo ago
You seriously think social media is making teens more liberal? That sites known for right-wing QAnon conspiracy rabbit holes are somehow increasing support for trans rights?
The media has been talking about how surprisingly conservative Gen Z is (that is, the people young enough for social media / smartphones to be a major part of their teenage years but old enough to actually be 18+ for a survey). Wikipedia references social media as an influence making them more conservative.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
I probably wouldn't know, since I use this site for news.
Well that's certainly a news filter.
One of the things I use this site for is trying to find some balance to news that sounds really bad for the right when reported by mainstream/left-leaning sources. Very few such news items have gotten any discussion at all here in the past several months. Of course, I could write my own effortposts to try to get the discussion going and I don't, so this is partially my own fault.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
I'm confused; notification settings aren't controlled within the app on Android, they're on the app info settings page which is identical for every app and allows you to disable types of notifications or all notifications for an app. Of course, the app might have overly coarse categories or lie about its notification categories, so you might have to disable more notifications than you intended, I guess.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
A lot of these people are simply in denial about how Obama treated republicans
I'm honestly not even sure what you're talking about. The story on /r/politics is that Obama's primary failure was working with Republicans too much.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
[...] Is there a need to exercise your immune system as well? Probably.
This is a complete misunderstanding of the hygiene hypothesis. I acknowledge that our understanding of the immune system remains pretty limited, but we are pretty certain that getting sick is bad for you.
I am constantly in contact with Covid positive people, I go to crowded areas all the time
And that seems like a reasonable trade-off to me. I have no interest in most activities that involve being around a lot of strangers where masking wouldn't work (e.g. bars/clubs/concerts), and I trust my friends I do spend time with unmasked to isolate when sick and be honest about exposures, so it doesn't cost me anything to wear a mask as I go about my normal daily life and it reduces my chance of infection to basically nothing. But I understand most people like gatherings with strangers, so the tiny marginal protection from, say, masking on the bus to/from such gatherings, is completely irrelevant to them. Just trying to explain why there's a minority for which masking is rational.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
Yeah, I don't see Trump winning without also having control of the House and Senate, although possibly by very small margins. And the past few years both parties have been filing down the filibuster, so it's possible a Republican trifecta would eliminate it in 2025 even though they were unwilling to do so in 2017, and therefore be able to push through more legislation. Unclear a narrow majority (of either party) could actually agree on much legislation.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
2yr ago
Why would a 19 year old ever get an mRNA injection, when they could get a shot of Covaxin?
Why is your example alternative vaccine Covaxin, which is not available in the US, and not Novavax, which is actually available in the US? Do you think the protein subunit technique used by Novavax is also not a sufficiently old-fashioned way of making vaccines? My understanding is that it looks to be on par with the mRNA vaccines for effectiveness while having much less in the way of side effects, while the inactivated vaccines like Covaxin work significantly worse.
Percent of New Yorkers ages 0-4 with completed vaccine series - 7.9%
This makes me think the vaccine could be seen as dangerous to parents. Keep in mind that all high-risk (on ventilator) children have probably been vaccinated, but some likely have not.
This is an incredible failure of public health messaging. While risk goes down for older children, COVID-19 is significantly more dangerous for children under 4. This CDC table shows triple the rate of hospitalization on somewhat fewer cases.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
2yr ago
Put frankly, nobody really cares about this man. Nobody really cares about the median CAF victims: poor people, strippers, general lower-class coded individuals. Nobody really cares about people jailed on bogus charges, put through the justice wringer for ill-conceived reason, or shot to death by trigger-happy psychopaths. It's the just world fallacy in full effect: they probably had it coming anyway.
I totally believe you're right about this, but it still frustrates me. Even from a purely selfish perspective, this should matter to people. Holding people in prison or putting them through the justice system for stupid reasons is a waste of my tax money. Ruining people's lives by sending them to prison for no good reason means they're likely not going to be contributing to the economy (or, worse, become criminals and contribute negatively). We do this at a really large scale in the US, so this isn't exactly a small effect.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
2yr ago
I assert that the linkage between the BLM movement and its activism and the increase in the murder rate, particularly for black men, is the clearest, most obvious linkage in social science in the last generation, and possibly since the invention of the discipline.
Surely the obvious counterpoint is that the BLM movement utterly failed at the ballot box, with multiple major cities having elections resulting in the side pushing for increased police funding winning (or not even having a serious candidate pushing for any kind of police reform).
But I'm guessing your claim is that the protests themselves discouraged the police from doing their jobs, leading to less effective policing (per officer/dollar spent). Which seems to just prove BLM's point that the current way we do public safety / law enforcement is bad for black people.
I'm confused at your response. The quoted claim isn't that crime doesn't matter; it's that crime matters both for people using public transit and for people not using public transit, so it's off-topic for a discussion of transit.
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