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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • Libraries are safe spaces for minorities and the LGBTQ+ community. Books in general spread awareness and raise empathy and can also help struggling young people understand that they are not alone.

    That quote isn’t saying people of these communities read or use a public library more than those who aren’t; it’s pointing out that the erasure of public safe spaces and resources affects groups that benefit from their existence more.

    All of that doesn’t even mention the content that was likely present in those 500,000 books.


  • I’m no defender of AI and it just blatantly making up fake stories is ridiculous. However, in the long term, as long as it does eventually get better, I don’t see this period of low to no trust lasting.

    Remember how bad autocorrect was when it first rolled out? people would always be complaining about it and cracking jokes about how dumb it is. then it slowly got better and better and now for the most part, everyone just trusts their phones to fix any spelling mistakes they make, as long as it’s close enough.



  • This is becoming frustrating. We are on the same page that violence is the only answer; I’m only insisting that we understand that the violence has to be done against our fellow humans. It is a tragedy, but one that must be enacted because, as you say, there is no negotiation to be had here.

    Denying their humanity weakens the claim of righteousness and, moreso than enabling room for their bad faith bullshit, directly feeds into their bad faith claims of antisemitism as dehumanizing them removes genocide from the argument and all your left with is killing animals/barbarians/evil monsters. I don’t know about you, but that argument is wholly unconvincing to me. You can certainly claim that because they’ve engaged in genocide, that’s why they’ve lost their humanity, but again, it’s an unnecessary mental step that gains us nothing and weakens the argument for deploying violence against them.

    For the soldier / PTSD argument, I again disagree. Soldiers kill people. There should be no way around that fact. Dehumanization and making it easier for soldiers to mentally compartmentalize the taking of life is not a good thing and can easily be warped to make soldiers follow any order, regardless of the moral imperative. The soldiers can and should be made to understand that they are committing a traumatic amount of violence and death in order to stop an entire genocide. Violence is a tool and it must be wielded responsibly and with full understanding that the violence is both necessary and just.

    Also chill with the faux philosophical ramblings of simulations and video game analogies. I don’t care what you believe outside of this context, but this is a serious issue and talking about “disabl[ing] PvP flags for the middle east” belies that this is the real world (simulated or not) with real, serious consequences. It damages your entire argument and makes you come across like you don’t see the actual human pain and suffering this massacre has caused.


  • Yeah, I agree with everything you just said, but make no mistake, the monsters committing genocide are still human beings. Denying that blurs the line of the purpose of violence done against them and makes it difficult to understand that we must constantly be vigilant against rhetoric and propaganda that advocates for genocide as it is scarily easy for people to fall into patterns of thinking that can justify genocide.

    It is irresponsible to say that, because they are actively committing genocide against a population, they are no longer human beings and that is why they deserve violence. It’s an unnecessary extra step that opens the door for the very same genocidal thinking. They are people who have engaged in genocide with no signs of slowing down or stopping, and for that one reason alone, deserve violence until their threat is quashed. That is enough for me; I see no reason or benefit to dehumanize them to justify righteous violence.


  • No, they are people. Ignorant, hateful, and actively supporting a genocide, but people nonetheless. My comment was explicitly calling out and criticizing the impulse to dehumanize the “enemy”, real or imagined. Thinking of Zionist Israelis or Nazis as less than human not only perpetuates the mindset that allows these groups to carry out genocide, but at the same time denies how easy it is for average people to fall into such traps.

    It leads to thought processes similar to “If you have to be less than human to support a genocide, then obviously what I support can’t be genocide because I am definitely a human.”

    And I’m definitely not one of those “oh, we just have to talk to these hateful ignorant perpetuators of genocide because they simply don’t understand why they’re wrong”. I’m of the opinion that violence is absolutely necessary to uphold equality if the situation has been left to get as bad as it has. I’m mostly just railing against the idea that people who support genocide are somehow less human because of that hatred.



  • Listen to how a large portion (obviously not all) Israelis talk about Palestinians. They genuinely do not view them as humans and certainly do not value their lives. They speak of the ongoing genocide with gleeful anticipation. People will literally go to the border to taunt Palestinian parents who’ve lost their children or the orphans themselves.

    They’re not shooting a 4 year old kid, they’re simply shooting another “worthless” Palestinian. This way of thinking was and is specifically crafted to enable almost every genocide that has ever happened.




  • but it’s MUCH cheaper, so keeping with every other shitty idea he’s ever had, Musk was REALLY banking on Tesla engineers to make a crazy breakthrough so he could reap billions in reward.

    It worked at SpaceX because of a perfect concoction of all the best rocket scientists and engineers wanting to work at SpaceX, since it was one of the only space programs not owned by a government and could push the boundaries, the technology being possible and wildly practical to implement, and massive government subsidies.

    Tesla is in the car market, which is notoriously competitive and, while they do have massive government subsidies, they don’t have the best engineers and musk’s insistence that they “figure out” how to shove autonomous driving into a medium that simply doesn’t provide enough information drives even the better engineers away.

    I really wish my government would stop funding his ego and let his fantasy projects die already.


  • My problem with your stance is that you seem very quick to jump at “bigoted hate speech from LGBTQ+ people” and to defend the so-called progress that religious people have made. You don’t seem interested in calling out Christians for the documented facts that they are championing the call to eradicate minority populations they disagree with, or the legislation they are passing in increasing numbers to strip rights away from women, LGBTQ+, and racial minorities.

    Firstly, while it may look like “both sides” are hateful and bigoted, it’s extremely important to understand that both sides are not saying anything close to the same things. On one hand, you have a population of people who have been directly and consistently harmed for their fundamental identity that they cannot change by people who identify with certain beliefs and their - admittedly, but understandably, quite vitriolic - responses to that trauma. On the other hand, you have a population of people who have not been attacked or harmed directly falsely claiming that the other population is raping their children and destroying the country. This fear mongering is reinforced every single Sunday when they go to their church and get told these things directly by their leadership that claims they are the literal mouth of God. A belief system is much more mutable than intrinsic characteristics like gender identity, skin color, and sexuality - as demonstrated by the shift towards the LG and B parts of the LGBTQ+ community. The oppressed only cry out about injustices they’ve experienced and plead for equal treatment, which is then equivocated to the calls for the wholesale eradication of their population.

    Secondly, you seemed more concerned with the optics of justice than justice itself. Who does trans identity affect other than the trans person? that’s a genuine question because I cannot think of a single person except for the trans person’s doctor who should ever be concerned with that.

    the Trans community lost some PR ground when it came out that schools were intentionally hiding gender transitions from parents.

    This is just blatant propaganda that reveals your bias. I’ll take the time out of my day to break it down for you. Starting with “gender transitions”, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you simply misspoke and meant “gender identity”. How would a minor begin gender transition without their parents knowledge or consent? are they taking school busses to underground, unregulated doctors that prescribe hormone blockers? and that brings me to the next point: there are literally no children that are receiving any irreversible treatments to aid in their gender expression. In some cases, minors below 16 may be prescribed puberty blockers, which have been used to treat various conditions for nearly half a century, are completely reversible, and demonstrably lower suicide rates in trans youth. Once a trans kid has hit 16 and has spent literal years with doctors and therapists, they may be prescribed hormones that help their body develop in a more comfortable way for their gender identity. These treatments are also decades old and again have demonstrably proved to be the most effective way to ensure trans people live long and healthy lives.

    Is “PR” (that’s actually just more lies and deception from the Christian right that purposely warps perceptions to demonize and vilify the LGBTQ+ community) more important than the literal lives of children? That question will remain relevant as I move onto my final point: if a child is having questions about their gender expression and their parents are vehemently opposed to that, to the point where it would put the child in imminent danger, often times lethal, if the parents were to find out, is it still morally correct to tell the parents based only on the inherently Christian idea that your parents are the sole deciders in the welfare of their children? to give a less politically charged example, let’s look at left-handedness. it was a hugely popular belief that left handed people were of the Devil and evil not too long ago. an extremely dogmatic religious couple who already verbally abuse and accost left handed people have a child who teachers discover is left handed. should the teachers be required to tell the parents about their child’s left-handedness, which will almost certainly lead to verbal and statistically likely physical abuse of that child? it isn’t like the teachers are secretly part of a left handed cabal set to destroy the world with their evil left handed demons.

    If you want to make progress on trans issues, I would suggest that the LGBT community take a transitional stance and then move again in the future, rather than losing their minds because they cannot force the whole population to share their views all at once.

    this is literally a call to sit back and placate the Christian right. what’s the transitional stance between “trans rights are human rights” and “we need to eradicate gender ideology from the public world”? should we only genocide half the trans community? that still wouldn’t satisfy the right and there would be less people fighting for justice. “don’t ask, don’t tell” was implemented after years of riots and demonstrations drawing attention to the rampant assault in the US military. it is not like clinton just woke up one morning and decided that the gays have been quiet long enough so maybe we should give them some rights. the only tried and true tactic when it comes to gay rights is violence and standing up for ourselves and people like us in direct opposition to Christians.


  • It is true that the Nazi regime was hostile to the Christian church - because they recognized the power the church held and knew they needed to be the one and only source of truth. Nazism needed to be above god (that’s the “fundamentally incompatible” part of your argument, since the church argues nothing is above god), but never sought to eradicate the belief in Him. When 95% of the regime identifies as Christian, and uses Christian ideology to suppress and genocide members of every other religion, that is a fundamentally Christian ideology, even if they fought for power directly with the Vatican. With many Nazi leaders wanting to treat Nazism itself like a religion - complete with divine rule - I’d even go so far as to argue that Nazism is a particularly embarrassing Christian sect.

    Some Nazis, such as Hans Kerrl, who served as Hitler’s Minister for Church Affairs, advocated “Positive Christianity”, a uniquely Nazi form of Christianity which rejected Christianity’s Jewish origins and the Old Testament, and portrayed “true” Christianity as a fight against Jews, with Jesus depicted as an Aryan.[14]

    Look Ma, I can cherry pick wikipedia too!

    Under the Gleichschaltung (Nazification) process, Hitler attempted to create a unified Protestant Reich Church from Germany’s 28 existing Protestant churches. The plan failed, and was resisted by the Confessing Church. Persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany followed the Nazi takeover. Hitler moved quickly to eliminate political Catholicism. Amid harassment of the Church, the Reich concordat treaty with the Vatican was signed in 1933, and promised to respect Church autonomy. Hitler routinely disregarded the Concordat, closing all Catholic institutions whose functions were not strictly religious.

    Seems like Hitler had more of an issue with the political power of the church instead of their beliefs and even tried making his own Protestant sect.

    But you seem to enjoy taking Nazis at their word (surely they wouldn’t lie, would they?) so sure, they were totally a secular organization that definitely treated Jewish people nicely. They were even socialist!

    roughly half of US Christians are fine with homosexuality now.

    And yet, when you ask about trans identity, they’ll show what they really believe. given the chance, even those who are “fine with it” would rather see us eradicated to please their special guy than for us to live peacefully by their side. Since I know how the Nazi comparison tickles you so much: if you asked the 1930s German population what they thought of Jewish people, more than “roughly half” would’ve said they were “fine” with them.

    The shift in Christian attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community is the direct result of opposition to the church - which was considered to be “out of bounds” and “pushing Christians to be radicalized” at the time. The church changed their stance because they seek power and control over any principles they pretend to have. The shift happened in spite of religion, not because of it. I see you didn’t even try to respond to how Christians were the main opposition to any and every single push for civil rights. If we sat back and placated them like you believe we should, only white landowning men would be able to vote or have rights.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_opposition

    If Christians are so progressive, why is it always Christian groups that oppose progress? wait, I can answer this one for you: “Those groups don’t represent ‘real’ Christianity”. Surely there’s nothing fundamental to the religion that makes oppression intrinsic.


  • The vast majority of Christians have spent your entire life moving more towards the middle.

    Huh, dang I guess you’re right. I mean, it certainly would be pretty wild for you to say that if the majority of Christians that I’ve personally met and the ones controlling my government had been organizing and campaigning to take away the rights of the LGBTQ+ community, women, and any racial minority since before my parents ever met. It’d be downright dishonest of you if, instead of moving more towards the middle, christians have spent the last 40 years sprinting to the far right as fast as they possibly could, to the point where a comparison to the Nazis doesn’t seem so far-fetched. Do you honestly think the women’s rights, LGBTQ+ acceptance, or the civil rights movement was championed by the Christian majority and they weren’t the primary opposition to those ideas?

    It’d also be insane if the “secular Nazi ideology” was actually heavily Christian and the Catholic Church spent centuries laying the groundwork for Jewish Genocide, helped the Nazis seize power, and continued to protect them long after their atrocities were well known. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Nazi_Germany

    I guess if you are part of the oppressors, they’re probably quite nice to you. Sorry if my words are what push you to finally be honest with yourself about what you believe. Didn’t mean to radicalize you


  • The paradox is literally what’s happening with you in this thread, genius. the Christian church has been out of bounds for centuries, and now that people are finally responding appropriately, you kick and scream saying “not like that! you can only respond appropriately if you follow all the rules laid out by the people who oppress you! you need to tolerate our intolerance because our imaginary friend says we need to hate you to stop the end of the world”

    There were “good” people who identify as Nazis. should we let that ideology thrive because a minority of its population put flowers on the graves their compatriots created?

    I get that you just want to hold hands and sing kumbaya, but I have trouble holding the hands that are covered with the blood of my brothers, sisters, and allies.


  • To be fair, wasn’t the vim codebase entirely committed by a single person? He did that with everyone and, while I don’t agree with that at all, it reads less like elitism / stolen credit than this particular story.

    I may be wrong about that, so feel free to correct me 😊 either way, people should be credited for the work they do! and preferably not in the footnotes of a commit authored by someone else that didn’t fix the bug