This was specifically in response to a post about Mike Johnson that called him a creepy dude with incest vibes for involving his daughter in a purity ball (fair), and immediately went on to talk about how he must have a Grindr account and love cock?? Absolutely no reasonable connection, just straight up ‘guy I hate = degenerate, degenerate = gay’ ideology. I see it on fedi an unfortunate amount, and people are defensive as hell about how ‘it’s not actually homophobia!!’ to say shit like that.

Another version of this is people, even left-leaning people, thinking we shouldn’t respect the identities of people in prison, or that prisoners shouldn’t have access to gender-affirming care or not.

You either respect the legitimacy of trans identities or you don’t. Yet even many left leaning folks treat gender identity as a privilege that someone earns, something that can be revoked if a person commits a crime or has bad opinions on some issue. When someone does this, they are proving that they don’t actually respect trans lives, no matter how many times they use the word “valid.” If you oppose trans care for prisoners, you are intrinsically saying that you don’t actually believe in trans healthcare and that you see it as somehow apart or anything other than the life-saving treatment it is. You don’t get to deny medical care to someone just because they’re in prison. Yet many, even those nominally in favor of trans rights, reveal their true colors when the rights of prisoners are brought up.

Sorry, I’m dumb. What is this in reference to?

If you’re not woke, you’re asleep.

Sure, but no need to engage in bean soup discourse.

Not really the same. There’s a reason most folks don’t stick to sex toys and actually go through the effort of finding a partner. Hell, people do that even if they have no intention of forming a long term relationship. One night stands are a thing. For most people, vibrators and flesh lights clearly leave a lot to be desired. They can get you the O, but they lack the intimacy. I would say a robot could never provide that, but people are already falling in love with LLMs. As in, literal romantic love. When they change their models, OpenAI gets death threats from people acting like they just killed the love of their life. Because, well, they kind of did.

We have been using mechanical sex toys, but there is a difference between a simple machine and a robot. Assumedly, a robot could fulfill the intimacy needs of a flesh and blood human, not just facilitate a climax. Sex robots and vibrators will fulfill fundamentally different human needs.

Here’s one way to imagine it. Some insecure guys object if a woman uses a toy while she and he are intimate. But what about a robot? Assuming you’re a straight male, would you sleep with a girl that insisted that her (male) sex robot joined in? And this thing doesn’t just perform basic mechanical stimulation. Imagine all of the words, touches, and caresses you like to use. Imagine all the ways you like to touch a woman while intimate. Imagine all the things you say to her. Imagine it all. Then imagine there’s another dude next to you doing all those things and more. And he’s better at them than you. He just happens to be a literal machine. If you want to sleep with this girl, you need to let this other guy join in.

Having a robot join in would be like having another human person join in. Sure, if that’s your thing, go for it and live your dream. But most people don’t live like that and don’t want to live like that.

You have to post anything a fascist would hate. Fascists love undesirables killing themselves.

Homebrew T is as illegal as growing marijuana is in a state where it’s not legal. It’s controlled, but it’s hardly fentanyl.

I just use the browser, even on mobile. >:D

(what would they check? you don’t have any ID, you’re not required to provide an ID, there’s no crime being committed).

There is actually a crime committed. Giving a fake name? Obtaining services with no intention of paying for them? Legally speaking that’s no different than doing a dine-and-dash at a restaurant. Legally speaking, this is theft or fraud. And the cops could absolutely get involved.

Once the cops are involved, finding your identity will be trivial. Cops find people in situations like this every day. It’s not like the people who rob liquor stores tell the clerk their real identity. The hospital will have video of you, they’ll have your full identifying information - height, weight, sex, race, plus medically identifying info like scars, blood type, etc.

It’s not really about DNA. Deliberately using a false name to escape money owed? In any other context, no one would consider that anything other than fraud. It’s only understandable here because of the unique dysfunction of our medical system. But unfortunately, legally speaking, it’s no different than any other fraud. Obtaining a good or service with no intention of paying for it is legally simply theft or fraud. It’s no different than if you dine and dash at a restaurant. The hospital can absolutely report you to the police in that case. And it’s not like the cops are inexperienced with tracking people down of unknown identity. The hospital will have a lot of details about you - your gender, height, weight, age, ethnicity, etc. And your medical treatment may leave behind identifying marks or scars, your blood type, etc. that could make you easily identifiable once caught. And above all else, they’ll have video of you in the hospital.

Even if you were a complete unknown in the system, the police could easily track you down. They catch people who rob gas stations with far less info than what you give to a hospital, even using a pseudonym.

Now, if you were actually charged with fraud or theft, a judge would likely go easy on your for this type of crime. Juries would be very sympathetic to someone who did this. So you would probably avoid jail time. But at the very least the court would still order you to pay the hospital what you owe them.

What if I disassemble Cogsworth completely, set the parts out on a table, come back in ten years, and then put him back together?

In Beauty and the Beast, what would happen if you gradually and systematically replaced every piece in Cogsworth’s body?

8 and 8 fell on the floor, picked it up, it was 74.

Or, more generally:

Taking X percent of something is the same as multiplying by X/100.

X percent of Y = Y(X/100)=(YX)/100

Y percent of X = X(Y/100)=(XY)/100

(YX)/100=(XY)/100

Percentages are indeed reversible.

It’s really easy for individual homeowners to end up with unsellable properties. It happened at a massive scale after the late 2000s housing crash. All that has to happen is that the price declines to the point that your mortgage balance + transaction costs are now worth more than the home’s value. If you’re in that situation, unless you have the tens of thousands in cash needed to make up the difference, you’re trapped in your home. You could mail the bank the keys and default on the mortgage, but that wrecks your credit and the bank will keep tacking on fees, charging you for maintenance, etc. Your choice is either to stay in the home or declare bankruptcy. Selling isn’t a choice you actually have.

Gavin Newsom: As a liberal, I oppose subjecting trans people to forced medical investigations and research. I only want them detained.

Yeah, realistically, what household doesn’t have a few extra blankets lying around? If I awake to my neighbor’s house on fire, and them standing naked in the yard, the least I can do is hand them a blanket to wrap themselves in. And that’s one of the few situations where being completely naked in public is perfectly socially acceptable.

Yeah. This is really the most terrifying version of aliens. Not ones that want to take over the world in a grand dramatic fashion. Instead, I find truly indifferent aliens to be far more terrifying of a concept. We are literally animals to them. Or, more they view us as we view other animals.

Imagine being abducted by aliens. Instead of showing you the universe or trying to communicate with you, they don’t even bother. They just proceed to vivisect you. They dissect you alive, without any anesthetic. They only give you a paralytic to keep your from screaming or resisting. They’re doing the equivalent of wild animal research and they’re simply indifferent to your suffering. You are not a person to them. Your pain means nothing. Your family will never know what happened to you, and the aliens don’t even bother trying to justify their actions to you. They make no attempt at communication. They slowly take you apart piece by piece, silently going about their work. You’ll never know who they are, where they’re from, or why they’re doing this. They do not owe you an explanation. To them you are no different than a plant.

I want the safety announcement at the start of the flight to say:

“You are in a flying metal coffin. Now imagine this coffin filling with smoke and fire. This plane only passes safety regulations because we simulated unboarding it with everyone behaving perfectly, leaving all of their crap behind. In an emergency, you MUST leave your stuff behind. Your life depends on it. The lives of everyone around you depend on it. If you see someone trying to take stuff with them, you MUST use whatever level of force is necessary to stop them. Even lethal force is justified. You must be prepared to tear someone to pieces if they don’t leave their stuff behind. The lives of you and your family depend on the asshole in front of you letting their laptop burn.”

That’s the kind of boarding announcement I want to hear!

Honestly, unless you can quickly find who it belongs to, you should just eat it. If it’s addressed to your nextdoor neighbor and you can easily get it to them, fine. If they don’t know you enough to trust you, they at least know where you live and know that you’re probably not messing with them.

But think about it. Let’s say you order a cheesecake and it gets delivered to a random stranger’s house. They call you up and tell you that they have your cake. Would you still want that cheesecake, after it had been in some randos house? You have no way of knowing what they may have done to it. And you can almost certainly get a replacement easily ordered.

So really, unless it was my neighbor’s cake, I would just eat it. You can’t legally be billed for any unsolicited goods mailed to your house, and I didn’t order the cake. I’m not going to have to pay for it. And even if I did succeed in tracking down some complete stranger to give them the cake, they’re likely to just throw it in the trash. Really, at that point, I’m the only one likely to actually eat the cake at all. So why let it go to waste? I’m eating that cake!