I like the “formally” vs “formerly” suggesting Elon is never going to get away from Twitter in favor of X

Aiding the less fortunate in society benefits everyone, same as maintaining roads or building libraries.

For decades republicans have artificially raised the bar for that aid and lowered the aid actually received, for no reason than to appeal to the crowd that thinks taxation is theft but uses modern public amenities anyway.

The rampant cutting of those benefits and handing the rights over to corporations is one of the major reasons we have a nationwide health care crisis, just for one example of how those cuts end up hurting everyone.

Being self righteous about doing nothing is worse.

Despite your own brand of defeatism in insisting the outcome is the same no matter what, one side actually is better. Even if the metric of “better” pales on the grand scheme of what we deserve or should be doing.

I’m not trying to project self-righteousness by recognizing that there are only two real choices. I’m asserting that advocating non-action or pointless action is such a tired trope that what you’re doing is circlejerking for dopamine instead of applying what little influence you have as an individual to work toward the avoiding the actual worst outcome.

When the American populace as a whole is brainwashed into believing the only choices are red and blue, you have to accept that whining about it and voting green (or not voting) is going to accomplish nothing.

So make your colorful allegory and feel good about yourself on the internet. In the end, you are accomplishing less than the people you look down on who recognize the shitty reality of our situation.

And this is why my math teachers never gave multiple choice tests

I like the idea of an infinitely exponentially growing base of users seeking help from some poor call center

Antarctica is technically not a country

Obligatory “Sounds like Nightvale” post

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I start almost every comment I make on those instances with

I know this will net me a ban

to play a bit of reverse psychology with the mods there, who don’t touch my comments when the denizens there inevitablely say

Oh yeah you think you’re so smart well we don’t ban opposing opinions unlike some places

And the mods there have their hands tied because banning me would prove their own guys wrong.

It’s worked pretty well so far.

Same as it ever was

“Give me all of your money and god will cure your cancer!” obvious scam and a lie.

“Give me all of your money and god will make your credit card debt vanish” is another thing I’ve seen mega-church types say.

Incidentally, there’s a conjecture around Christian circles I’ve seen that says these kinds of actions are what the phrase “thou shalt not take the lord’s name in vain” actually warns against.

Not cursing, as it has become commonly associated with, but the literal act of using the lord for vain purposes. Like saying “Give me your money and god will cure your cancer”

There’s something so satisfyingly full-circle about 3d printing Megaman.EXE.

Thank you for this

Look, I’m not going to sit here and debate the ethics of a precautionary behavior with you because you, like many other men, misinterpret the behavior itself as a slight against men as a whole.

There’s no way I can do that without venturing into the realm of defending that kind of prejudice, which you’ll inevitably take as an invitation to just say is wrong on principle.

I’d probably say they are prejudiced but that might be out of fear rather than malice and rather focus on what to do about that.

Here’s the thing. The kind of person you’ll be responding to will cover their ears and say prejudice of any kind is wrong. You won’t convince anyone that way.

I literally had someone tell me the last time I had this discussion that the act of determining to do something based on the gender of someone is the very same as determining to do something based on their race. So it’s also racism.

There is no winning that. Once someone is bent on being against prejudice on any order, they will make false equivalencies to bludgeon their point.

that might be out of fear rather than malice and rather focus on what to do about that.

Let me ask you something: For a solution short of reeducating the world’s men, how come the onus is on women to be forced to take a chance with someone who they don’t know how they’re going to react?

Why are we looking at a situation where a woman might say “I shouldn’t walk alone from the gym to my car because there was this one guy staring at me and I saw him go out just before me” and saying “That woman is obviously a bigot, what can we do to correct that behavior?”

I honestly don’t think there’s anything to do about this. There’s no way to make women be less prejudiced against men in these situations that doesn’t also inherently raise their risk of being assaulted.

The only thing left is a man who will insist that a woman take the chance of raising her risk so that his feelings don’t get hurt. But here’s the thing. The worst that can happen to that man is his feelings get hurt because a stranger doesn’t trust him. The risk to a woman is an actual, physical thing.

How come?

I directly answered that in the same comment. Unfortunately, people who are offended will find a reason to take exception of the situation. There’s no amount of drawing examples that will satisfy the type who only sees that they personally are being attacked and not that it’s more about mitigating risk.

I try to illustrate the reasoning every time. As I have with the following example I made to you. The usual reaction is “well actually the woman in question is still a bigot for avoiding me on the street because she doesn’t know me”, or a similar sentiment in which the offended person runs head first into the point and still misses it.

I’m not talking about someone switching to another side of the street because of my gender or skin colour or any other reason one might discriminate, but rather the discussion that talks about a group as thing singular thing and makes it seem like it was all of of them. Not to mention going after people who obviously take offense to being labeled in such a way. I find it fucked up and I don’t see any reason to do that.

Well first, I’d like to congratulate you on being the only person I’ve encountered so far who’s interested in the discussion and not the reaction.

But also, I’d like to say that anyone who hears the reasoning “women have to be cautious around men because some men are capable of violence” and jumps immediately to “women think all men including me are violent and that’s wrong” is sorely missing the point.

No one is going after men who take offense at that line of logic so much as those men who are loudly voicing their misunderstanding of a concept which goes on around them all of the time that they have only just noticed. It seems that your concept of “going after those men” is just people who understand the situation trying over and over to explain it.

As someone interested in the discussion side of this issue and not the actual conflict, which you seem to understand, please tell me how you would handle someone strongly asserting to you that women are bigots because they avoid men or treat them differently when they don’t know how they’re going to react.

I’m interested to hear how you might improve an exchange with someone who doesn’t allow the reasoning that women should be allowed to cross the street 100 ft before crossing you in the interest of their safety.

You’re completely correct. Normally, I’m on the side of not assuming people’s gender and I’m of the mind that you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover.

But, because of the safety and personal ramifications crossing the wrong person can have, I think it’s important that we acknowledge a woman’s right to seek safety in a situation she perceives might possibly go south for her. That includes the prerogative of not putting herself in a situation that she perceives as risky to begin with.

Maybe that concept would be better accepted if it were expanded to “Anyone should have the right to avoid danger they think they might be in”

Easy solution would be to talk about it in a manner that doesn’t need a clarification that’s you don’t think all men are like that. That’s really the issue with the way this is discussed.

Believe me, that’s not the solution you think it is.

Nobody is denying the situation here, but rather taking offence to being labeled because of their gender.

Unfortunately, people who take offense will find ways to deny the situation. The fact is, if you’re walking down the street and a woman 100 ft out moves to the other side before crossing you, she understands that there is a slight chance you might be a danger to her.

That’s discrimination that you can neither control nor fight against as a man. It also doesn’t affect you if you weren’t planning on assaulting that woman. But just the fact that it is done rustles so many jimmies because the knee jerk reaction men have is “well I wasn’t going to assault anyone so that’s messed up”. But that line of thinking is a way of framing the situation to make it about you. It’s not about you.

What I’m saying is, women don’t think all men are like that. That would be completely ridiculous. But statistically, enough of them are to warrant not being immediately trusting of strangers that can biologically overpower them in every situation.

I’m sorry but receiving end of what?

Bro. I quoted you. The receiving end of “a negative blanket” against men

1 in 3 women experience sexual assault of some kind in their lifetimes. 99% of the perpetrators are men.

It’s not unreasonable for a woman to avoid putting herself in a situation that a potential predator can take advantage of or retaliate against her for. Talk to a woman you know about this. I’m tired of having this conversation with men who don’t understand and just get offended.

So this sort of shit feels wrong in that sense and of course hurtful when you’re at the receiving end of a negative blanket statement

You have been on the receiving end your entire life if you are a man, and 9 times out of 10, you have not noticed because it does not affect you. It’s not about you, especially if you aren’t a predator.

It’s not a hard concept to grasp. Thank you for saying it, and don’t pay the salty dudes here any mind. I readily tell the ones that argue on behalf of their egos to just talk to any woman they know about this, and I always get some half-cocked “well they’re bigots too” line.

Like yeah sure, every woman is explicitly taught by other women not to put themselves in a potentially compromising position with a man because all women are secretly bigots.

The male ego is such a fragile thing.

Woah now, you better not be insinuating that men and women are anything but exactly equal in their temperament. The salty dudes on Lemmy won’t let you get away with telling them otherwise.

I’ve been in a handful of conversations over the last couple weeks with men on this platform that don’t understand the concept that women have to treat men a specific way for fear of the few of them that can be violent.

Apparently watching out for your own safety as a woman by treating men differently is sexist and completely unacceptable.