war1025

You've got some sort of vendetta going on here, so I'm sorry for whatever burr you have in your britches.

When someone says "you are misinterpreting what I said" perhaps you should consider that you are misinterpreting what they said.

Great. Restrict the handouts to Type-1 diabetics. They certainly didn't get the disease by choice.

> I keep hoping one day folks in the US will get tired of being screwed on their healthcare and living in fear of getting sick... shrug

As someone with good but very expensive health insurance, any time I bring up health insurance prices, the response from people who get cheap health insurance through their employers is basically, "F* you, got mine"

Unfortunately, the block of people with stable corporate jobs also tend to have a lot of political power and are in no hurry to see their perks upended.

You mean like that time four Republican Congressmen were shot during a baseball practice in 2017? [1]

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/congressman-steve-scali...

Even if by some crazy implausibility it was the "greatest threat to our democracy since the Civil War", that's like saying, "Man, I just got a paper cut and that is sure the worst injury I've had since that accident where I was paralyzed from the waist down"

It was an insurrection in the same way that any other large scale protest was an insurrection.

It was not, however, "the worst attack on our democracy since the civil war" like Biden, other Democrats, and the media at large have claimed. [1]

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/right-wing-erupts-af...

Perhaps in the future you could avoid leading with things such as:

> that's about as useful as a story of how someone prayed and their mom's cancer went away.

All I did was comment and say, "Hey, we did this and it worked for us" and you replied with the equivalent of "Go fuck yourself, I don't want to hear it"

Of course modern birth control opens many doors, I don't think that was ever in question. It's a highly personal choice and I don't think there is anything wrong with that.

Anyway, cheers. Hope you're having a good day.

> IMHO, I think a flag-waving socially-conservative socialism could be surprisingly successful in America, if someone could get it off the ground.

I think that's basically Trump's base to be honest. Politicians just haven't figured out how to wrangle them into something useful.

> This is a wild misrepresentation of the opposing perspective.

I think that's currently how the game is played. You can try to be better than that, but then the other side wins because they are still happy to play dirty.

> You're being downvoted because these arguments are so bad as to almost clearly be in bad faith.

I'm being downvoted because some subset of people here view down vote as "I disagree". I used to be bothered by it. I don't think much about it anymore.

Edit:

I'm also fairly certain I've got some followers who take it upon themselves to go through my comment history and start downvoting other posts of mine just for good measure. You know, really sticking it to the man or whatever.

> The divide is on topics like anti-vax, nonexistent election fraud, et cetera. IE, actual lies.

It's funny that the party of "my body my choice" is so against people wanting a say over what goes into their bodies. I am personally vaccinated, but I think it's reasonable to let individuals make that choice.

Also regarding election fraud, when on election night you see charts like [1] with enormous one party spikes, it is entirely natural for people to be suspicious. Those people then asked for audits and were told to go to hell. If you want to undermine trust in the election system, that is exactly how to accomplish it.

None of this is "you aren't allowed to lie" it's "You aren't allowed to ask questions"

[1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/jo.nova/politics/us/2020/michigan-w...

It's weird to think of Facebook as the reasonable people in the room.

The left wants to own online political discussion in the US, and they are very bothered that the right finds a ready audience when they are allowed to compete.

> Either everyone has been blind for decades or the current narrative about racism is a lie meant to achieve some political purpose.

I think it's a bit of both. As the saying goes, "I can tolerate anyone except the outgroup" [1]. Part of that is racism, sure. A lot of it is people being uncomfortable with outsiders in general.

But also the left has found that words like racism, bigotry, xenophobia, etc. are very big sticks, and a big stick is a fun thing to hit your opponents with.

[1] https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/I-Can-Tolerate-Anythi...

My understanding is that it's pretty common on the US coasts (i.e. the major metros where housing is super unaffordable).

I imagine it's a self feeding cycle. Young adults can't purchase homes, so their parents cosign and give a big down payment. Then sellers are able to ask more because wealthy parents are backing the sale, which just makes housing even more unaffordable.

I agree with everything you said.

I guess the point I was trying to make is more that doing these things is not impossible. It is just a matter of being properly informed (which is in itself a difficult task).

> It has everything to do with their income being 80% of their essential bills.

There is some truth to that, but there is also a fair amount of truth to the fact that a lot of people list things as "essential" that really aren't.

For many it's a trade off of being poor or looking poor, and they would much rather be poor than look poor.

Money isn't that different than dieting. It's a pretty simple equation.

Money in >= money out => Broke.

Money in < money out => Not broke.

With dieting, yes exercise more, but for the love of God, stop eating so damn much.

With money, yes get a better paying job, but for the love of God stop buying so much stupid shit.

You can gain the acquaintance of quite a few strangers by joining groups.

My town has a general discussion Facebook page. I don't know that any of the people would recognize me on the street, but there are quite a few names I recognize now. This has been really handy since I didn't grow up here, and in small town America that often means people just won't get to know you because you "don't belong".

Also my wife is involved in several interest based groups. Mainly related to sewing and thrifting and such.

I don't know that it makes the world a better place, but it certainly can expose you to people you wouldn't otherwise ever have interacted with.

Fair enough.

> I would wager good money that most modern conservative US Christian families have a male alcoholic relative not too far removed.

I think that has more to do with the pervasiveness of Christianity and alcoholism independent of each other.

> How to reduce social division in America in the long-term: ban private schools, fund public schools at the national level, and do it quickly, utterly, and irrevocably.

We tried this to tame the savages [1], and I don't think people really look back kindly or positively on that choice.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_American_Indian_sch...

> Although I hope you are ready to meet lots of Christians and a few alcoholics every year.

Always good to lump the Christians in with the alcoholics.

I don't have a side project, but this is basically the approach I take at work. Try to do one useful thing each day. Doesn't even have to be a big useful thing. It adds up.

I guess that's really the whole point of the tortoise and the hare, now that I think of it.

> In your other comment, you wrote in a kinda magic-wishful-thinking way "you can only get pregnant if you really want kids".

I really think you are all just intentionally misunderstanding me.

I am not saying "You can only get pregnant if you want to get pregnant"

I am saying "A couple in a committed relationship can fairly easily and reliably avoid having kids without the use of contraceptives if they don't want them."

People don't like the government telling them how to live their lives. They especially don't like the government telling them how to parent. And they extra especially don't like the government going behind their backs and telling their kids that their parents don't know how to parent.

The wording is "stop vaccine outreach to kids" not "stop vaccine outreach to parents"

This really doesn't seem that surprising to me.

I am not up on niche keyboard lingo and assumed this was advertising a keyboard where 40% of the keys were mechanical.

Really was wondering what advantage that would have since mechanical keyboard people seem very opinionated about the inferiority of all other key styles.

I get wrist pain typing on normal keyboards, but I've found my main issue is negative wrist angle. I have been using those silicone roll up keyboards [1] for almost two decades now.

At first we got one because our keyboard broke and it was all they had at the Radio Shack in our small town. Then I grew to like it because it is nearly silent to type on. And as I've gotten older, I've found that I don't get wrist pain when using it, unlike every other keyboard I've tried.

I know people go on about the greatness of split ergonomic keyboards, but if you are like me and those just don't really do it for you, I'd suggest giving one of these a try. They are sort of love it or hate it, with a heavy skew towards hate it though.

[1] Not this model, but similar: https://www.newegg.com/p/0GA-03F8-00014

> Having kids when and only when you want them? Sure. "Only have sex when you want a kid" has always been an option.

> Having kids when and only when you want them, and fulfilling your biological urges? Not so much.

Unsure if you're being obstinate or ignorant, but we've been married a decade and I assure you we have had sex several orders of magnitude more than the three times we conceived.

Baby = Egg + sperm. Keep those two apart and no baby. Not exactly rocket science.

> it certainly doesn't mean that you're somehow more intelligent or competent than the people for whom similar methods of family planning have failed.

I personally think it is a sign of modern hubris to assume that effective family planning didn't exist prior to 1960s and the advent of birth control.

All forms of family planning can fail. I don't think that's contentious.

Personally, the bigger issue I see among my peers is inability to conceive at all. They squandered their fertile years and are now going to enormous expense to start a family.

> Conversely, what about infant death

Now that I have kids, I think back every now and again to when I was in high school and my math teacher's wife miscarried fairly far along into the pregnancy. Looking back, I'm sure that was absolutely devastating for him, but as a class I don't think we gave it a second thought.

I feel bad about that. Kids just have no concept of how big a loss that is. Hopefully the staff was more sympathetic about it.

> the choice to not have children meant giving up much of heterosexual sex.

A bit personal maybe, but my wife has never been on birth control, we don't use protection, and have never had an "oops" baby. We had kids when we wanted kids, and haven't had kids when we didn't want kids.

It's really just... not that hard...