WoodScientist
@WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Royal Fuckup 2 days ago:
Constitutional monarchs are even worse. They’re slimy, mincing predators, scavengers sitting on the sidelines.
Modern royals remember the power their ancestors have, and they yearn for that power back. They play pretend that they’re happy being ceremonial monarchs. But really, they’re just biding their time. Monarchies are used to thinking in centuries. So they sit there, waiting on the sidelines, waiting for some crisis of democracy, something that causes people to lose faith in the system. Then they’ll step in and reclaim real power. They’re a bunch of mincing pedophiles just waiting for someone to lose sight of their kid.
- Comment on Royal Fuckup 2 days ago:
Being a royal of any kind is a crime against humanity. The French and the Bolsheviks knew the right way to treat monarchs. Every last one of them deserves to have their head rolled into a basket.
- Comment on Restricted data once again leaked on War Thunder forums 6 days ago:
- Comment on I want these walls back 6 days ago:
Eh. We can use some of the good things from the past without using the bad as well.
- Comment on I want these walls back 6 days ago:
I like this look. It has this aura of beautiful golden light about it. It has that aura without going the full gaudy gilded look like you would find in something the president built.
- Comment on Oh to go back... 1 week ago:
If nothing else, at least the new Iran war will make all us Millennials feel a bit young again. Time to relisten to American Idiot, at the very least.
Or maybe I’ll just feel even older, as I can’t believe we’re still doing this shit.
- Comment on So um, america just started another war in the middle east. We're going to need a shit ton more memes to distract americans from the nightmare they are enduring. Thanks in advance... 1 week ago:
As another trans person, I say the best thing to do now may be to avoid the typical liberal “protest and vote” advice. Protesting simply isn’t as effective as it used to be, and voting should not be the foundation of your political activities. Voting is useful, but especially in a firmly blue or state, it’s mostly a symbolic gesture.
There are trans people in your local area who are being hurt by this administration. Forget protesting. Focus on helping the actual material needs of the community. Every blue state currently has trans refugees coming into them. Often these are young adults showing up with few resources, often ending up homeless. There’s likely a population of homeless trans kids in your own community. These are the people you should be focusing on helping right now. Join a local trans support group to help out your brothers, sisters, and siblings. If an organization doesn’t exist, start one. Things to focus on:
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Housing and access to housing
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Job assistance.
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Food and other essentials (one group in my area runs a trans specific food bank, as many trans folks have had bad experiences with church-run food pantries.
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Medical assistance. Provide recommendations to local providers. Educate people on safe DIY use. If there are local HRT homebrewers in your area, help organize distribution and mutual aid.
*Traditional gender support groups for newly transitioning folks.
- General mutual aid and emergency assistance.
Honestly, for trans people, it’s completely valid to just laser focus on the material needs of our own community right now. We’re being targeted by an organized campaign of state persecution. There’s hundreds of thousands of us that are internally displaced refugees within the borders of the US. There’s a lot of people hurting, and a lot of people in need. Protest if you want, but personally, I’ve found focusing on direct material needs and mutual aid to be a much more productive and rewarding path. The Trump regime is trying to destroy us. Simply helping your brothers, sisters, and siblings is an act of political resistance and defiance.
Your goal is not to bring down the Trump regime. That is not your responsibility. For those most targeted, simply surviving these years is your primary act of resistance. Take care of yourself, and take care of your brothers, sisters, and siblings. That is how I as a trans person have found meaning in this time. I voted, but that was only symbolic. And I’m not currently participating in protests. I’m focusing on actually directly helping people instead. Survival is resistance.
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- Comment on So um, america just started another war in the middle east. We're going to need a shit ton more memes to distract americans from the nightmare they are enduring. Thanks in advance... 1 week ago:
Nobody wants Iran with nukes.
Frankly, I do want Iran with nukes. Iran hasn’t declared war on anyone for over 200 years. They’re stuck in the same neighborhood as a rogue nuclear state that engages in frequent wars of expansionist conquest. The region is incredibly unstable precisely because there is no military counterbalance to Israel. Iran getting nuclear weapons would be an immense boon to peace and stability in the Middle East. I trust the Ayatollahs with nukes a lot more than I do the Israelis with them. At least the Iranians don’t believe that their deity gave them the right to annex entire nations.
- Comment on Republican Senator callously says 'biblically, we are supposed to work' to millions set to lose health care 1 week ago:
Biblically, this man should be stoned to death for wearing cloth made of differing fibers.
- Comment on So um, america just started another war in the middle east. We're going to need a shit ton more memes to distract americans from the nightmare they are enduring. Thanks in advance... 1 week ago:
medium.com/…/the-trolly-problem-utilitarianism-vs…
If one were to take a utilitarian standpoint, the means are justified by the end, which from a utilitarianist perspective, is the maximization of benefit. Hence, for a utilitarianist, whatever option guarantees the outcome of the maximum benefit is what is moral. Therefore, in the trolly case, a follower of classical utilitarianism would say that it is morally permissible to sacrifice 1 to save 5.
The deontological perspective in contrast, advocates for the means justifying the end. This, for a deontologist, the morality of the action should be based on whether the action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules, rather than being based on the consequence. In this light, a follower of deontologism would argue that it is morally impermissible to sacrifice one to save five because making the choice of having to kill someone is inherently wrong.
Again, this is the entire point of the trolley problem. No one actually give a shit about the hypothetical trolley. The whole point is to explore how different ethical systems can lead to different outcomes. There is no “right answer” to the trolley problem.
- Comment on So um, america just started another war in the middle east. We're going to need a shit ton more memes to distract americans from the nightmare they are enduring. Thanks in advance... 1 week ago:
Yes, France, the country, and France, the nation also share the same name.
Whenever I see people talking like this I get white nationalist vibes.
- Comment on So um, america just started another war in the middle east. We're going to need a shit ton more memes to distract americans from the nightmare they are enduring. Thanks in advance... 1 week ago:
There are different levels of bombing. This wasn’t the US assassinating a single general. This was a strike on strategic assets comparable to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. We just did a Pearl Harbor against Iran.
- Comment on So um, america just started another war in the middle east. We're going to need a shit ton more memes to distract americans from the nightmare they are enduring. Thanks in advance... 1 week ago:
Has Kamala come out yet to denounce a single one of Trump’s Israel policies? Unlike a lot of other Democratic lawmakers, she has yet to publicly condemn the strike on Iran. From what evidence we can actually observe, it seems she supports the current strike. Or at least she doesn’t oppose it. There’s little reason to think she wouldn’t have ordered the exact same type of strike Trump just did. She would spin it as “being the tough cop on the international scene.”
- Comment on So um, america just started another war in the middle east. We're going to need a shit ton more memes to distract americans from the nightmare they are enduring. Thanks in advance... 1 week ago:
A good chunk of Kamala’s platform was also actively supporting Trump.
- Comment on So um, america just started another war in the middle east. We're going to need a shit ton more memes to distract americans from the nightmare they are enduring. Thanks in advance... 1 week ago:
The problem with this line of thinking is that it encourages short-term rather than long-term thinking.
From a purely utilitarian perspective, the absolute good to the absolute greatest number of people - we would have been better off if Trump won in 2020. He would have had another lame duck term in a continuation of an administration where he had a lot of restraining voices in his cabinet. He wouldn’t have had the four years to regroup and come back with an entirely different organizational structure.
A Biden win in 2020 guaranteed a Trump win in 2024. It was eminently predictable and it was widely predicted. Biden wasn’t going to do anything to address the actual causes for Trump winning. Biden was only ever going to be a temporary speed bump to fascism. He simply lacked the character to properly confront a fascist movement. He’s not morally capable of it.
Even if you stick to a purely utilitarian framework, even if you believe that harm minimization is all that mattes, sometimes voting for the lesser of two evils is the option that’s going to get more people killed.
- Comment on So um, america just started another war in the middle east. We're going to need a shit ton more memes to distract americans from the nightmare they are enduring. Thanks in advance... 1 week ago:
Christ, do they not teach the trolley problem anymore?
It’s honestly quite funny and downright sad that you would quote the trolley problem. There’s a reason it’s brought up in ethics courses. The whole point of the trolley problem is that there is no correct solution to it. Different ethical systems arrive at different conclusions. But here you are, going, “fuck how it’s actually used, I’ve decided the trolley problem proves that utilitarian ethics is the correct answer!”
In a utilitarian ethics framework, you would choose to run over the 1 guy or choose to vote for Kamala. In a respect for persons ethical framework, you would take no action and would refuse to vote for either Kamala or Trump.
You’ve completely failed to learn the core lesson of the trolley problem.
- Comment on So um, america just started another war in the middle east. We're going to need a shit ton more memes to distract americans from the nightmare they are enduring. Thanks in advance... 1 week ago:
Exactly. You know how many countries US trans people can get asylum in? Zero. None. Zilch. There is not a country on Earth where a trans person in the US could qualify for asylum, even considering the vast rollback of trans rights currently underway. And if a member of a targeted minority group can’t get asylum status, then forget about nearly anyone else.
- Comment on no way right 1 week ago:
Reminds me of a joke scenario that really tickles me. Trump’s going to make a grab for power. He knows he needs to have a “Reichstag fire” moment. However, he’s too stupid to actually understand the meaning of that. So he indeed has his Reichstag fire moment. He arranges arranges to have the real Reichstag, the actual modern German parliament building, set ablaze. He burns down the modern Reichstag and is then befuddled when it fails to produce the political effects he wants.
- Comment on no way right 1 week ago:
I would say specifically Jewish lawmakers, both Democrat and Republican. That would fit their narrative well.
- Comment on no way right 1 week ago:
The easiest attack to false-flag would be an automated drone attack against a stateside US military base. Remember that Ukraine Spiderweb drone attack from a few weeks back?
Ukraine built shipping containers with attack drones and retractable roofs. They contracted hapless Russian freight operators to deliver these shipping containers close to Russian air force bases. Then they remotely activated them, retracted the roofs, and had the drones take off to attack Russian airplanes just a few miles away.
This kind of attack would be trivially easy to false-flag. At least with a false flag in-person terrorist attack, there are people involved. You can dig into the backgrounds of the actual attackers and maybe uncover links to intelligence agencies.
But an automated drone attack? Just drop off a shipping container near a military base at night. Have the drones fly out in the middle of the day and attack some noncritical base or military infrastructure. Maybe have them blow up some planes that were set for decommissioning soon anyway. Maybe kill a few expendable soldiers in the process. Then fake and release some shipping manifest to tie the attack to Iran.
It’s a fantastic false flag attack method. It would be nearly impossible to prove as a fake. And it’s the kind of attack that military planners are already shouting the alarm over, as we’ve seen just this month how effective such an attack can be. Hell, the CIA could probably even be able to get a hold of some Iranian drones for the project. Russia has used a fair number of those in Ukraine, and I’m sure a good number have been downed or captured reasonably intact. The CIA likely already has actual Iranian drones. They could simply use some of those in a false flag attack.
- Comment on no way right 1 week ago:
Simple. Let’s let them just have their nukes, on the condition that their program be run entirely by female nuclear scientists!
- Comment on Call me an uber 1 week ago:
Girl: this is my house, my name’s on the fucking deed. GTFO you weirdo.
- Comment on Add it to the pile of reasons to hate 'em 1 week ago:
“Aluminium” sounds like something a fantasy writer would call aluminum in their novel just to make it sound magical.
- Comment on A Completely Natural Conversation in the NYC Reddit 1 week ago:
Pfft. You’re Turing test fails. I’m not an AI. I was just going to do that anyway!
- Comment on A Completely Natural Conversation in the NYC Reddit 1 week ago:
Eh, for a lot of businesses, the few percent they pay in card fees is worth it to avoid handling large quantities of cash. Cash is a pain in the ass to actually work with on a large scale. Collecting it, counting it, securing it, keeping employees and random criminals from stealing it, etc. Plus lots of cash allows employees to steal from both the employer or the customer by giving bad change deliberately.
Not that businesses shouldn’t accept cash, but there is a reason a lot of them don’t want to mess with it. It’s an enormous hassle.
- Comment on Horses go brr 1 week ago:
They evolved there and spreaded to asia but went extinct in america around the end of the ice age.
They were too tasty for their own good.
- Comment on Anon likes trains 1 week ago:
It could be carbon neutral. It’s all about how you do it.
- Comment on Anon likes trains 1 week ago:
And what’s wrong with that? Who says the coal has to be a net source of power?
Synthetic fuels are actually a pretty viable method of decarbonizing, especially for hard-to-decarbonize applications like aviation. Sure, you don’t get net energy out of them, but who cares? Thanks to dirt cheap solar, our civilization has stupidly abundant access to energy. It’s only portable energy or energy when we want it that costs a lot. But people have seriously proposed making even gasoline from atmospherically derived carbon. Sure, it’s just a fancy battery. But the Joules/dollar you get from the grid is so much cheaper than what you get from gasoline that it may be worth it.
- Comment on Anon likes trains 1 week ago:
- Comment on Anon likes trains 1 week ago:
In theory, you could make a carbon-neutral coal-burning steam locomotive. You would need to make synthetic coal out of atmospherically-captured CO2. But in theory it would be possible…
