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Global warming isn't real.
If it is, it's not serious.
If it is, it is not man-made.
If it is, there is nothing we can do about it.
If there is, it's too expensive.
If it isn't, change the...

O salty ocean
how much of your salt
are tears of Portugalt*

* made to rhyme in translation

Let us enjoy the beauty of the moon.

Kiss me, Harvey.

What she can't carry, she can drag.

I think the US was on the right track. When most of us were young the US had actual institutional racism - racial laws and policies. It has been trying to fix it since then:

Equal civil rights -...

Like I said, conceptually it is problematic. The past is full of sins. Most victims are long gone. Descendants are scattered and intermarried.

This iteration is particularly bad. Addresses...

Come on. I support more radical "unproven efforts to improve society" than most people. Universal minimum income, health care, and K-12-college education. 30 x 30 and nature needs half.

I...

Will Erdogan be re-elected after the earthquake?

I wonder how many people out there are great-great-great grandchildren of slaves without also being great-great-great grandchildren of slave owners.

You could probably trace the DNA and figure out...

People too.

Because they are generalist predators living in complex environments, and have an incredibly plastic body which they can control very precisely.

Octopus, tasteless? Unfortunately for them, no.

Where's Joe to tell us about polipo? :d

Because they are selling endangered species under unhygienic conditions?

Why are octopuses vulgar? The joke tells itself.

I'd rather be frozen alive than slowly crushed under a mass of bycatch in a trawl net, or left flopping on a steel deck until I bruise myself senseless.

Come on. It's an urban wet market. I bet wildlife is way more expensive than factory chicken or pork in downtown Wuhan. This is urban well-off idiots practicing conspicuous consumption, just like...

Probably not worth my time.

Since people continue to eat octopus, each octopus killed at the farm represents one less taken from the wild and killed. Less pressure on wild ecosystems.

As for...

Why would octopus be in a fish farm?

They have also been dying of simple infections for lack of antibiotics for 3000+ years.

Octopus are not fish.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03/genetic-data-links-sars-cov-2-to-raccoon-dogs-in-china-market-scientists-say/



Can someone explain to defenders of Chinese traditions that:

1) Raccoon...

Yes, but how? Some families only have one parent. Some have parents that are best absent. Some have parents who could be present but choose to make more money for the family.

I think society...

Can any punishment be moral?

I think of punishment as a necessary evil. Very necessary, and very evil.

But we are not talking about clothing. We are talking about stuff like slavery. Cultures change, but slavery is obviously always wrong, because no one ever wanted to be a slave.

I think of the dumbest two or three people I ever met, out of a few thousand I have met. They might well fall for this stuff.

With online scams, if one in 10,000 are dumb enough the fishing is...

If only oil kleptocrats kept their fortunes in Africa...

If it was a house in Kensington, an estate in Provence, and a bank account in Geneva I might believe it.

So, flexible ethics, changing with the times.

Very useful, and very useless.

Am I? Did Jesus not say several times that anyone who didn't follow his way would be gnashing their teeth for eternity?

That he then contradicted himself is part of the act, isn't it?

I think there is a broader principle at play. You can't rewrite history, and you can't fix the past. You can only improve the future.

Reparations is like toppling statues. A symbolic act,...

Parole or conditional?

You are very naive, sandy.

I suppose you think Israel also has no security guarantees from the US because there is no formal treaty.

Samaritans? Jesus condemned everyone who didn't share his faith to everlasting hell.

For being a radical middle eastern preacher?

Or for being a communist?

What if a family, because it didn't have the opportunity for education or experience with personal finances (except as a debtor), squanders away the reparations? Do you pay again to the next...

I don't know. Jesus was pretty intolerant with people of other religions. He also did a lot of hate speech directed at certain professions.

Like this one?
...

That scene looks like it belongs in a forest clearing in France.

I stand by what I wrote, sandy. Costa Rica has de facto security guarantees from the US.



I thought VFP was one.

You could be part of the volatiles that escape.

Hitler had one too. Appropriate.

Wait until August. You'll enjoy my annual Hiroshima was a war crime thread.

Well?

De facto, sandy, who do you think could attack Costa Rica and not provoke an immediate response from the US?

Yes, sandy, human societies can be quite varied, and there are even pacifist ones sometimes.

But you never get all human societies to be peaceful. Some will be aggressive and expansionist, and if...

Divesting from crap companies feels good. But the market arbitrages. The ultimate effect is negligible.

So they can run out of ammo before the heavies attack?

Really, sandy? How is it not inevitable?

Let's say the US vanished from the planet. How long do you think before someone else starts throwing their weight around? Who do you think might be more...

ESG = greenwashing = irrelevant

In the direction that the world is a Hobbesian competition among states, and that those who are strong enough try to become hegemons? No, when the US arrived on the scene it had been going on for...