If you’re ever wondering why something in the US is bad, it’s almost always racism. Sometimes it’s corporate profits.

I think we agree, then? What I was saying is you have to talk to people like your family. You have to have bonds with people, whether that’s from being a family or just spending time together.

I just to debate them enough and provide them with the necessary examples that they can form their own actual opinion.

This will be fruitless if they don’t trust you. That’s another way of saying you’re in-group.

In-group pressure and trauma are the only things that change minds. Traumatizing people is often rude, and maybe a crime, so it’s safer to try to get people to see you as trusted in-group and then work on changing their minds.

There are people at google, people with names and addresses, who have collectively made the world incalculably shittier. I hope they get what they deserve.

Ed Zitron wrote a long post about some asshole in particular who shit it all up: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

A lot of Americans have shitty, immature, views on sexuality and the human body.

I remember some coworkers and I chatting about it, and two of them both said they’d rather their kid watch a movie where someone got shot in the head than one where someone received oral sex.

Humans are emotional creatures. We’re stupid that way. It’s faster to just go with feelings and accurate enough that it must have been a pro survival trait.

But it’s stupid. It’s destroying the world because people follow their emotions into conservative policies.

It sucks for everyone but the people in charge are too stupid or apathetic to change anything.

I applied to an internal role like 2 months ago and they’re just ghosting me. Like, I see them on teams. I send them follow up messages. Nothing. Bunch of AI brained assholes.

This is a joke, right?

At the lowest level, it is possible to pull people in your peer-group out of shitty world views. It’s slow and difficult. But like I got an old coworker to be way less homophobic through our chats at work.

At the larger level, nah, fuck em.

WTH is a beat cop going to do though?

Enforce hierarchy

I remember once on a forum a big cis het guy was saying that he’s never seen cat calling on the street. Never him, and never at any of his friends. Someone pointed out that since he’s a big dude, he’s probably not going to be catcalled, and other shitty dudes are likely not going to bother people near him because of patriarchy.

To everyone’s surprise, he came back and was like “ok that makes sense. And I asked my women friends and they told me a lot of stories”

Rare to see someone change their mind like that.

I thought the conservative stance was that there’s no systemic racism.

I mean, there’s no limit to how stupid people can be. But I think a lot of conservatives like to say that the racism of the past doesn’t matter anymore. That a family that was enslaved 160 years ago (just beyond living memory now, but potentially someone’s great-great-grandparent), and then subject to Jim Crow and other cruelties through… generously the 1960s but realistically the 1980s, that family has no long lasting effects.

But really it’s important to remember that conservatives just say things. They don’t care about facts or truth. They care about power, and their emotions. So even if you proved that racism was systemic and had measurable effects (eg: The Color of Law), it won’t matter. They don’t care about facts. They care about feelings.

This is funny because many conservatives say things like “facts don’t care about your feelings”, but it’s well known that conservatives project more than movie theaters.

I was just told today that ai usage is a factor in hiring and promotion. They didn’t say the AI usage had to be smart.

My boss, to his credit, reportedly said something like “well, if someone is already good at python they might not need as much AI to do a task than someone who isn’t”. I don’t think management cared.

People are stupid emotional creatures. They don’t calmly evaluate if the thing is useful or practical. They see the in-group doing it and don’t want to be left out.

This was probably an advantage in pre-history. Our brains haven’t kept up with our changing environment.

Usually they have

• multiple approaches
• reactive world and NPCs
• the world is more interactive than decorative

So the game might say “get the laptop from the 2nd floor office”. An immersive sim will try to allow as many things as you could imagine doing in real life to achieve this

• talk your way in. Convince them you work there or something
  • maybe forge or steal some ID
  • or hack their network to give yourself creds!
• find a back entrance
• find a back entrance directly to the 2nd story
• just shoot everyone
• sneak in and take people out like a ghost
• sneak in and don’t get seen
• set off a fire alarm and go in when people are outside
• do any of the above after hours

Contrast this with a more traditional game like Mass Effect. There’s typically going to be like one path, with maybe like one choice. You go in where they want, shoot the baddies, and get the thing.

I see this sometimes from a distance, even with children. The boys are wild and loose, the girls on a tight leash.

Unfortunately, trying to address that with the sledgehammer of The State is not easy to do safely.

I have a somewhat vivid memory of sprinting through NY Penn Station around midnight to get the last train home, back before I lived in the city. Was a deciding factor in me moving. Had to leave my friend’s Halloween party at like 10 to get the last train.

But public transport won’t make a handful of people rich, so that’s a non starter for many.

And you might have to reckon with living in a society, with other kinds of people. You’d really ask someone to ride a bus with a {slur of your choice} just sitting there, like they’re entitled to peace and dignity?

In other words, conservatives are fuck heads who make the world worse for stupid reasons.

Edit: fix autocorrect mistake

Also your local public library has a lot of stuff