@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

xhieron

@xhieron@lemmy.world

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xhieron,
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

What on earth are you talking about? Joe Biden tried to give 20k to each of them who went to college. And he would have if the–let me check my notes here: oh, right–Nazis in the other party hadn’t sued to prevent him from giving away money.

I appreciate that Biden might not be some folks’ first choice, but if you think young people believe another four years of Grampa Joe is just barely more tolerable than the deliberate annihilation of the Republic by fascist traitors, you might need to meet one.

xhieron,
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

And a vote for either is a vote for Trump. But if you want to bury your head in the sand and condemn the country to oblivion on principle, well hey, it’s a free country for the next 12 months.

xhieron,
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

Workers of the world unite. Sit in. Strike. Seize the means of production.

Eventually enough will be enough, and that will be a terrible day.

No war but the class war.

xhieron,
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

I think Joe Biden is maybe the best president of my lifetime, and I’m going to vote for him with my head held high even though I live in a red state where it doesn’t matter at all. I wish things were simpler in the Levant, but I appreciate that Joe Biden is between a rock and a hard place with Israel. It’s not like he can just take Bibi out. He’s not Boeing. That said, even if I laid the entire genocide at Biden’s feet (which, while he’s not blameless, is absolutely not appropriate), he would still be head and shoulders an improvement over Donald Trump.

For that matter, I’d absolutely let my 12 year old run this country before I’d let Trump have a second term. My kid is brilliant, and more importantly, unlike Trump he listens to advice, can take no for an answer, and gives a shit about having a functional democracy four years from now.

A second Trump term is an existential threat to the nation. Hold your nose, hold your neighbor’s nose if you have to, but every able-bodied patriot owes it to their descendants and their patriotic ancestors to prevent a second Trump term.

xhieron,
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

Oh I know. Trust me, I don’t engage with these people with any illusions. There’s no arguing with the agitprop element here. The point of responding at all is just to identify them to the general public.

xhieron,
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

Then why are you campaigning for Trump?

xhieron,
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

“You don’t have to attend every argument you’re invited to.”

So no, thanks. I don’t owe you a defense, engagement, or an policy apologetics treatment of the current administration’s governance for the last four years. There are plenty of places to find that information if you actually care to find it.

So far you’ve managed to call me an idiot, a liar, and a coward in all of about fifteen minutes. Why on earth would I believe you’re capable of nuanced political discourse? We’ve nothing to discuss.

xhieron,
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

Lol, as if liberals have a right to speak.

Careful there, people might figure out who you really are. Tighten that mask up, Socko.

xhieron,
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

The nepo babies wouldn’t serve–same as always. And the political unpopularity of conscription has never changed. The last war draft is still in living memory, and US current military activity hasn’t been an improvement in terms of public appetite.

The US introduces conscription again, and there’ll be riots–and I don’t mean “some kids camped at college and the jackboots locked them up” protests; it’ll be government-building burning, widespread-looting riots.

If you want to do conscription, the kids have to trust the government not to kill them for oil.

xhieron,
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Record waiting times for cancer treatment in the UK whilst King Charles begins treatment within days of diagnosis (www.theguardian.com)

In other news: water is wet. I think we all knew that Charles wouldn’t have to go through the same pains us common British folk do in regards to accessing healthcare. But nonetheless I think it’s important to continue to highlight these ever growing class divisions in the UK, such as those between people who can afford...

xhieron,
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

Indeed. As a Yank who always has to pay for healthcare anyway, it’s easy to see the parallels in labor/employment, civil rights, and financial security: We’re facing a global regressive movement from the political right, and those people have no scruples. They absolutely want to claw back every single gain the general public has made in rights and benefits over the last 75 years, and making benefits unpopular is the first step to privatizing them.

Never forget the NHS, warts and all, is a thing that we Americans would die to have, and for want of it many of us too often literally do.

xhieron,
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

It’s a lot more complicated than that. The people pursuing these lawsuits are opportunists, to be sure, and may well be racists, but “Those who oppose affirmative action are racists” is far too broad a net. Targeting anything, whether a college application, job, housing, or grant, based on race and ethnicity as a sole or principal criterion–whether the outcome or intent is good or bad–is a problematic undertaking, and these lawsuits demonstrate why: If it’s good for the goose, it’s good for the gander. If a white person is disadvantaged in a program or process because they’re white, that’s a problem.

We have better criteria. People who are actually advancing the cause of DEI are going to use this as an opportunity to articulate what the real issues are, and they absolutely should: you shouldn’t get a grant for being black. You should get a grant for serving a historically disadvantaged community. Maybe that community is black–but maybe it’s LGBTQ, or Hispanic American, or even just poor. You shouldn’t need to target race, because if race is actually an indicator of qualification, you can just target the qualification and get the same pool of beneficiaries. If there is no underlying qualification? Well then maybe the grant is racist.

All of that said, on the actual merits here, I’m inclined to agree that a grant is qualitatively different than an employment or enrollment agreement. You should be able to give your money to whomever you want for any reason or no reason. Nevertheless, the broader issue of DEI isn’t just a matter of racists vs minority groups. It necessarily demands a confrontation of why it matters that black entrepreneurs, for example, might need redress for harm that their ancestors–real people–suffered at the hands of an inequitable and unjust state. We can talk about that without racist language and policy, and we must.

xhieron, (edited )
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

No, sorry. I try to be deferential when talking about this stuff, but this is pretty cut and dry, and I’m afraid you’re just wrong here. This is Greek–not theology. πίστις is the word we’re talking about. It shares the common root with πείθω–“to persuade” (i.e., that evidence is compelling or trustworthy). πίστις is the same word you would use in describing the veracity of a tribunal’s judgment (for example, “I have πίστις that the jurors in NY got the verdict right/wrong”). The Greeks used the word to personify honesty, trust, and persuasiveness prior to the existence of Christianity (although someone who knows Attic or is better versed in Greek mythology feel free to correct me). The word is inherently tied up with persuasion, confidence, and trust since long before the New Testament. The original audience of the New Testament would have understood the meaning of the word without depending on any prior relation to religion.

Is trust always a better translation? Of course not–and that’s why, you’ll notice, I didn’t say that (and if it were, one would hope that many of the very well educated translators of Bibles would have used it). But I think you can agree that the concept is also difficult for English to handle (since trust in a person, trust in a deity, and trust in a statement are similar but not quite the same thing, and the same goes for belief in a proposition, belief in a person, and belief in an ideal or value, to say nothing of analogous concepts like loyalty and integrity).

The point is that πίστις–faith–absolutely does not mean belief without evidence, and Christianity since its inception has never taught that. English also doesn’t use the word “faith” to imply the absence of evidence, and we don’t need to appeal to another language to understand that. It’s why the phrase “blind faith” exists (and the phrase is generally pejorative in religious circles as well as secular ones).

Now, if you think the evidence that convinces Christians to conclude that Jesus’ followers saw Him after His death is inadequate, that’s perfectly valid and a reasonable criticism of Christianity–and if you want to talk about that, that would be apologetics.

In any event, if you’re going to call something bullshit, you better have a lot of faith in the conclusion you’re drawing. ;)

xhieron, (edited )
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

The way faith is treated in the First Century doesn’t translate well to modern audiences. Having faith of a child isn’t an analogy to a child being gullible. It’s an analogy to the way a child trusts in and depends on his parents. Trust, arguably, would be a better translation than faith in many instances.

Faith for ancient religious peoples wasn’t about believing without proof. That would be as ridiculous for a First Century Jew as it is for us. Faith is being persuaded to a conclusion by the evidence.

xhieron,
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

We need more information. The fact that the details about the victim are currently lacking is a bit of a red flag here. There is a marked difference between “police observed a 17 year old approaching the middle school with an automatic weapon and several bandoliers of ammunition” and “an 11 year old tried to sneak a handgun into the building in his backpack.” Neither of those children need to be let anywhere near the school, but one of those situations you might be able to deescalate–maybe both. More pertinent to the subject at hand, if the case were the former, I would expect the police to be extremely forthcoming about it. The fact that those kinds of details are, to my understanding, yet to be revealed leads me to suspect that the cops want some time to get their story straight first.

It’s always a good thing when a school shooting doesn’t happen, but that doesn’t change the sad reality that police in the United States are not to be trusted. This is still a story about a child killed by police, and that deserves scrutiny. Hopefully the action was well justified, but I think anyone would be forgiven for exercising skepticism given the dearth of details about what happened.

Taylor Swift AI images prompt US bill to tackle nonconsensual, sexual deepfakes (www.theguardian.com)

A bipartisan group of US senators introduced a bill Tuesday that would criminalize the spread of nonconsensual, sexualized images generated by artificial intelligence. The measure comes in direct response to the proliferation of pornographic AI-made images of Taylor Swift on X, formerly Twitter, in recent days....

xhieron,
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

Hi, lawyer here.

Everyone’s opinion about the law matters, including what it covers, whether it’s vague, whether it applies, etc. This is Lemmy–not court. We’re in the town square here. Drinking yourself through three years of law school doesn’t imbue you with magical abilities to interpret laws as though they were religious texts. It’s just an education–not a miracle. If lawyers always knew what the law meant and laypeople always didn’t, no one would be fretting over hotly anticipated SCOTUS opinions, because everyone would already know the outcome.

But wouldn’t you know it, reasonable people sometimes disagree, and among those reasonable people, quite often, are non-lawyers.

As it turns out, non-lawyers often have an outsized influence on the law. Did you know that Donald Trump has never been to law school? Unbelievable, right? But hard to fathom though it may be, the big orange idiot hasn’t sat in on a single hour of L1 Torts. In fact he may have never even have seen the inside of a law library. Yet his opinion about the law has a tremendous impact, bigger even than Dr. Moose’s, because checking the “went to law school” box really doesn’t mean a hell of a lot outside of very limited situations.

Personally, I’m much more interested in Dr. Moose’s opinion on this law than I am Rudy Giuliani’s, or even Clarence Thomas’s (and both those guys went to law school), and it’s no bother to me that he’s not a lawyer. In fact, it’s probably a mark in his favor.

If you’re not interested in his opinion because he’s not a lawyer, well hey, that’s totally allowed, but you can easily ignore his comments without being pedantic. Or maybe you could just concede that there’s probably a bunch of strong opinions you also hold on subjects on which you’re not an expert. In fact, the whole lot of omg-not-a-lawyer! non-lawyers pitching little fits in this comment thread probably have strong feelings about war even though many of them have probably never put on a uniform. They might have strong feelings about healthcare despite never having darkened the door of a medical school. Shit, we might all even have strong feelings about politics despite never having gotten a single vote in a single election, ever. Can you believe it?!

Yeah. It’s just an opinion. If you’re gatekeeping ‘having an unqualified opinion’ you should probably just lock yourself in your house and bar the windows, 'cause it’s gonna be an uphill battle for you.

xhieron,
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

Say more about this? Why is it a worse profession? Anywhere I can get a layperson-friendly deep dive on this (that doesn’t require a graduate degree in mathematics)? I’m fascinated by the nuance between niche academic disciplines and the “politics” of academia.

xhieron,
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

Yup. Appeal it, drag it out, mire it up. If it’s good for the goose, it’s good for the gander.

xhieron, (edited )
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

I regret that I have but one upvote to give. Keep fighting the good fight against misinformation.

Biden has been a remarkably good president under incredibly challenging legislative and judicial circumstances. He didn’t do everything he promised? It’s a miracle he was able to do anything at all!

Give the man a blue Congress and watch.

xhieron,
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

It’s a bad idea. The reason it’s a bad idea is the same reason that the death penalty is a bad idea: the US penal system frequently gets it wrong.

xhieron,
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

She sure can’t. Sounds like all OpenAI has to do is produce the voice actor they used.

So where is she? …

Right.

xhieron,
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

Maybe not, but you know, just to be on the safe side, better vote against him just in case.

xhieron,
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

Look. Execution is inhumane. You can’t make it gentle, peaceful, or nice. All you can do is make it quick, which it sounds like they failed to do here. But if the good people of Alabama aren’t comfortable with someone struggling for half an hour and then dying, they shouldn’t execute people at all.

That said, the person quoted in this article is the executed’s spiritual advisor. If I was Smith’s spiritual advisor, I’d also be claiming the method was inhumane, violent, and awful. The reality is that it’s a lot more cruel that Smith went back into the execution chamber despite them botching the job the first time than that they half-assed the nitrogen asphyxiation. It was an untested method, but every method of execution has a first person to be executed with it.

If your society is bickering over which way it should kill the condemned, you’ve already ceded the moral high ground. We have already solved execution, and we’ve had it solved for decades, even centuries arguably. Hanging, firing squad, electrocution, beheading, lethal injection–every method has its proponents and detractors, but every method is to the same end. If you’re too squeamish for what happened in Alabama, an alternative method of killing people isn’t going to fix that for you. The solution is staring you right in the face, and it’s life without parole.

xhieron,
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

With whom? Harris and Newsom both poll losing to Trump. Harris is less popular than Biden, and Newsom isn’t an incumbent. Biden is the candidate in 24 for the same reason he was in 20. He’s the best candidate to beat Trump.

The people “ringing the alarm” are out of touch socialists and anarchists, and more frequently, Republicans, foreign operatives, and grievancers who aren’t voting anyway.

I would have loved to see a Sanders presidency in my lifetime. Well, it didn’t happen. Fortunately, Joe Biden has proven a remarkably effective president under phenomenally difficult circumstances, and his bad numbers are less a product of his administration and more the result of record voter unhappiness and the stranglehold of Trump on US politics. That’s not a problem that’s solved by pushing a new candidate on stage, because any other Democrat is going to have the same baggage or worse, assuming they’re not outright unelectable.

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