This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
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Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
Page 2!
teehee
Well I’m surprised to see that the FTBullies hashtag is still a thing. Kept alive by five, maybe ten, truly obsessive people on Twitter. It’s….interesting. In a morbid way, that makes you lose a little more faith in humanity. Maybe if we found a way to turn their hate into energy, we would find an infinitely renewable energy source. Until then, it is just a source of infinite tweets saying essentially the same thing over and over.
Shit, anteprepro, why do you do this?
You’re criticizing the people who think we’re bullies for thinking we’re bullies? What kind of definition are you using here? The kind that of definitionalizing that EL uses for “ad” to mean “post” such that “ad hoc” ==> “post hoc”?
You definitionalization is a perfect example of violence (or threats of violence, I’m not sure at this point). Moreover:
to intimidate is
Which, of course, makes the definition of bullying itself irrelevant, as “intimidate (someone), typically to force him or her to do what one wants” just means “intimidate”.
You are a classic example of someone who compels or deters by threats of violence, anteprepro. You’ve ever done babysitting? Had kids of your own? Get left along with a sibling or younger relative when you were a child? Supervised a person at work?
Fucking bully. Almost by definition!
Those are noble truth-tellers on that hash-tag, those twits are!
Someday, I swear I’ll get tired of this mockery, but …
…not THIS day!
Any help with this Really Annoying Thing on my Windows system would be appreciated…
Every time I boot my computer up, an empty folder named ‘Desktop’ is created on my Desktop. I delete it, and all is fine til the next reboot, when a new version is created. (I’ve checked in the recycle bin, and the previously deleted ones are still there; so it’s not the same folder being restored, but a new one made.) I’ve run antivirus and anti-malware scans and nothing seems amiss.
(The OS is Vista, if that makes a difference.)
Isn’t that redundant?
And thus, almost by definition, violence?
A German biologist who offered €100,000 (£71,350; $106,300) to anyone who could prove that measles is a virus has been ordered by a court to pay up.
@brianparsky
It’s not a small probability. Over a large enough population over a large enough period of time, it’s a guaranteed certainty.
If you know that before you take an action that your action is going to kill someone who otherwise would not have died, and if you take that action, that is intent to kill. I do not understand how it could be otherwise. That’s what the word “intent” means in terms of moral responsibility and informed consent. It means acting with foreknowledge. Of course, they also have intent to save thousands or millions of lives who would be severely injured without the plan, which includes preventing many deaths, but that does nothing to detract from their intent to also kill a very small number to make that happen.
…
@Gregwills in 493 (previous page)
Under the definitions of violence given to me thus far, and under IMHO the best logically consistent definition which maps to common usage – yes.
Alternatively: Change our formal definition into the Humpty Dumpty “whatever appeals to our intuition”.
Alternatively: Change the definition to include some ad-hoc conditions that if the violence is rare enough, or justified enough, then it doesn’t count as violence. I don’t think that’s intellectually honest though especially in the context of this conversation. The very rare deaths from complications from vaccines is violence, and it is something we would all love to stop precisely because it is violence. However, the tools in our toolkit are limited; because we can save so many more lives than the very few we destroy, and because there’s no alternative plan that can, we rightly decide it’s totally worth it. This is my go-to example of the kinds of tradeoffs that involve violence that are part of being human in the real world.
…
@Crip Dyke
Notice an important change in your standard which you subtly introduced. I used the standard:
* People died as a direct result of the plan, and
* they would not have died otherwise, and
* the people who enacted the plan knew that the above two bullet points before they enacted the plan.
You introduced the new standard:
* People died as a direct result of the vaccination plan, and
* they would not have died otherwise, and
* the people who enacted the plan knew that the above two bullet points before they enacted the plan, and
* the people who died from vaccine complications would not have died in a hypothetical world where they did not receive the vaccine, and where someone tried to maliciously infect them with the disease of the vaccine.
I think the first is much closer to any reasonable standard for deciding what public health policies should be enacted. Yours is ridiculous.
Under a reasonable standard, the first thing that comes to mind is the Cutter Incident. Killed 5 or 10 people. Paralyzed about a hundred or two. It was directly responsible for doubling the number of cases of Polio in that year. Considering that it doubled the number of normal cases of Polio over 5 states, I’m pretty sure that at least one of those few hundred people that was paralyzed to some degree would not have been paralyzed in the hypothetical world without the Cutter Incident vaccination.
Otherwise, I don’t care enough to troll the medical literature, but if you look hard enough I have no doubt that you will find a death from a vaccine from allergies, or from contamination in the needle, or from something else, when the disease of the vaccine itself is rarely fatal, which means it would qualify even under your ridiculous standard. I think it was Giliell who rightly noted a few pages ago that human bodies are not mathematical equations, and any sort of drug you put inside of them cannot be harm-free. I think vaccines qualify under the intended meaning.
Friggin’ ‘ell. I will admit that at a very, extremely, hyper-literal level, this is kinda correct. But jebus christ, you didn’t just go out on a limb for that one. You planted the tree, waited twenty years while a limb grew strong enough to take your weight, sat on the limb while it grew for another century, and then build a fuckin’ pier on the end of it.
PS: I realize in my zeal that I might have wrongly answered Gregwills. Because we’re including “intent” in our definition of “violence”, then almost all cases of parents giving candy to their children does not count as violence because they never considered the possibility that their child might choke on it. They never made an explicit or even implicit cost-benefit analysis which includes the possibility of choking. Thus intent is missing.
I am sympathetic to the view which includes ad-hoc provisions for “justified enough” or “rare enough” to exclude certain acts from our understanding of “violence”, but I think those are just artificial and not intellectually honest. It impedes our ability to have a meaningful conversation about the real costs and benefits of public policy, such as vaccines. Because of the dogmatic opposition to acts of violence, several people are now refusing to admit that vaccination programs do kill people (a very, very, very small number of people) who would not have died otherwise, and the people who implement these programs act with foreknowledge and premeditation. Denying these facts is just silly, but that’s what this dogmatic opposition to violence has lead some of you to.
EL @9:
Yes, because every time a doctor administers a vaccine, xe does so knowing that it’s going to kill the person being vaccinated.
My god you are one dishonest fuck.
You actually think the INTENT of doctors is to kill people when they administer a vaccine?
You actually think they KNOW they’re going to kill someone when they administer a vaccine?
Given that people die in car accidents, do you think it is the INTENT of a parent to kill their child when driving them from point A to point B? After all “It’s not a small probability. Over a large enough population over a large enough period of time, it’s a guaranteed certainty” that a child will die being driven from point A to point B.
Do you think it is the INTENT of a bartender to kill a patron of their bar when serving them an alcoholic beverage, knowing that people have died while driving drunk? After all, “It’s not a small probability. Over a large enough population over a large enough period of time, it’s a guaranteed certainty”.
You’ve now moved from the realm of “unreasonable person” to a dishonest asshole.
WHO STILL HAS NOT PROVIDED A DEFINITION OF VIOLENCE, YET CONTINUES TO USE THE WORD TO ENCOMPASS ALL MANNER OF ACTIONS.
@Daz
Because this dogmatic opposition to all things violence, no matter what, no exceptions, is downright silly, naive, counterproductive, and harmful. It’s the same problem libertarians have. Crip Dyke et al solve that problem by just being in willful denial of reality.
EnlightenmentLiberal,
If I tell you: I passed a kindergarten this morning on my way to work. A couple of parents were quite violent with their children, while taking them in.
.. Can you reasonably expect that I saw parents somehow hurting/harming/abusing their children or do you expect that I saw a parent taking their child’s hand while crossing the street, or tugging them away from too closely observing a snarling dog?
If I tell you: The violence at the football game last Sunday was overwhelming.
.. Do you expect that there were clashes between the attendees or the police and attendees, with people needing medical help and getting arrested? Or do you expect that there was police in attendance, taking care that no trouble erupts, keeping the crowd in control while still keeping their distance?
@Tony
I never said doctors. I said those responsible for implementing public policy to increase vaccination rates, especially for those two (IIRC) states in the US which require all schoolchildren to get certain vaccines, no religious exemptions and no conscientious objector exemptions. Because of truancy laws, that basically makes it mandatory for all poor children.
But as for the doctors – is it violence to force a child to play a one-off game of Russian Roullette? What if we don’t get the barrel with the bullet that time. Is it violence? Perhaps no. Now what if the community acts in concert to play this game with every child. Does this count as community violence? The W.H.O. uses that term. I say yes. Adding more barrels without bullets doesn’t change the fundamental nature of what is transpiring.
I’m glad I have to go to work soon, bc I’ve gone from being mildly amused at EL’s ridiculousness to pissed off at EL’s blatant dishonesty.
Case in point:
Really? Point to someone who has refused to admit that vaccination programs do lead to a very, very, very small number of people dying.
Show me the person who said this you fucking lying asshole.
Most of the people here recognize that vaccines do have some risk, and among those risks exists the possibility that someone will have an adverse reaction and die from the vaccine. I don’t think anyone here would dispute that.
What I *DO* think people would dispute is the idea that doctors administer vaccines to an individual, knowing the potential risks, and do so with the INTENT to kill them.
EL
For starters, a willingness to risk a very small number of deaths in the name of a huge number of lives saved is not intent. It is willingness. ‘Intent’ implies that the purpose of the action is to kill. Your command of the English language is, frankly, fucking abysmal.
For second, if you want to talk about vaccination being any kind of violence at all, the natural place to look would be at the act of stabbing people with a fucking needle. At which point, as I mentioned elsewhere, yes technically that might be considered violence, but I would suggest that it is such a small harm that even then we’re descending into pedantry if we call it such.
So where’s your goddamn definition of VIOLENCE EL? You’ve thrown the word around for, let’s see…8 days now, and have yet to provide a definition.
Come on. Put up or shut up.
At this point I’d love for you to just shut the fuck up.
@EL, #9, this page:
Okay, I’m wrong about what you intended to communicate. Fair enough EnlightenmentLiberal, but I didn’t “add” a criterion.
You said:
“otherwise” here is not “if this one person was the one person excempted from vaccination and everything else was held in steady-state”.
Otherwise is, **according to your own writing** “without implementation of the plan”.
“Without implementation of the plan” means “no vaccine at all”. There really is no other valid interpretation of this use of “otherwise”. when what you actually wrote – NOT your rather more restrained summation – was this:
“without the plan”
These are your words. Not, “if this one child we’re exempt from an otherwise widespread vaccination plan”
You say, that these children
I may very well be wrong about your intention.
I may also be very well be wrong about some other assert ion I’ve made, explicitly or implicitly.
But I very definitely did NOT
an
When I quote your exact words and then openly, for all the world to check my work, interpret “without the plan” to mean “without the plan” and not “without this one child receiving the vaccine” I’m doing nothing subtle or dishonest.
You seem to think that any paraphrase of your position is unreasonable (by definition).
I think “without the plan” where “the plan” is “a plan of widespread vaccination” not “a plan to find one kid in Los Angeles who has a first name picked out of a hat, Oh! here’s one! Alex! and then vaccinate that one child”
…actually reasonably requires…
thinking about what the world would be like “without the plan”.
I will certainly concede that I am wrong about your intended meaning.
I certainly do not concede that I did anything subtle or dishonest or that “without the plan” plainly and nakedly means “if the doctors had happened to fail to vaccinate this one particular child, but nothing else about the world was different”.
EL is the only one with a consistent definition of “violence”
EL is using the WHO definition of violence, which is plainly conceded by WHO to be intended to include vaccination, and, indeed, all medical treatment generally, since in the course of medical treatment you do things like kill microorganisms when you put a band aid on skin and then later pull it off…which allows the glue to remove microorganisms from the source of their nutrition.
I’m quite sure that WHO includes all vaccinations, aren’t you? I’m quite sure that when WHO introduces its campaign to prevent violence that the first thing they do is shut down all the medical clinics.
Right?
That’s a reasonable interpretation of the WHO position, right? And the definition used by WHO is the one that EL wanted to use to adjudicate all these decisions about what does and what doesn’t count as violence, right?
Regarding my #17 and ‘willingness.’ I realise that’s a simplification and that the ethics of causing harm by inaction versus action and so on are a lot more nuanced than my rather cursory statement might imply.
Just to be clear, when EnlightenmentLiberal takes brianpansky to task for misusing the word intent, he actually does provide us with a clear definition of at least one word:
Intent, according to EL, means:
which is actually nothing at all to do with the legal definition. But let’s see how the common folk use the word, according to people who actually study this stuff for Merriam-Webster:
See? He’s dead on about this.
EL @15:
Oh yeah, I totally think the WHO report would treat vaccination programs as community violence.
::facepalm::
Again, it sure is curious that in their efforts to address and find solutions to the problem of violence around the world, the WHO doesn’t talk about reducing taxes, eliminating vaccination programs, or eliminating government.
I wonder…what’s the source of this definition of intent? It’s probably the same place EL’s definition of taxes, government, and violence come from-their ass.
You have got to be shitting me. By the same asinine illogic you’re using regarding mandatory vaccines, you could say that allowing children to learn to walk is ‘violence’ because they might fall, hit their head, and die. It’s very unlikely, just like death from a vaccine, but it’s possible. Stairs are also violence. Swimming pools are violence, even if the child is taught to swim. Owning a cat is a violent act upon a child as a bite can easily become infected and can even require amputation or result in death. Giving a child food is an act of violence, because you never know if they’re going to choke! So therefore, we can’t make it mandatory to not starve your kid to death, because feeding them is violence!
EL, hyperbole (asinine variety) specialist
One chance in six? I don’t think so Tim. One chance in tens to hundreds of thousands. Not the same odds, and one must also look at the EVIDENCE (you know, that which offends your mental wanking purity), that shows that overall, vaccines are beneficial. Without evidence, you are nothing but an idiotlogue liar and bullshitter.
Either cut back on the emotional arguments, or quit pretending to be rational.
EL
1. What the fuck is your thing with “ad hoc”?
Can you please explain to this person who wants to understand what you’re actually saying what you mean by “ad hoc”. “Ad hoc” merely means “for a specific purpose”. If the purpose is definition violence, anything we do is ad hoc, but anything we do is also exactly what we should be doing. Saying it is “for the purpose of defining violence” doesn’t have anything to do with “artificiality” or being “intellectually honest”.
How am I, your reader, supposed to understand how “ad hoc” relates to “artificiality or intellectual [dis]honesty”?
2. About the entire passage of yours I quoted at the beginning of this comment:
**YOU YOURSELF** at one point in this conversation pointed out that words don’t have “natural meanings” There’s nothing in the laws of physics that requires the sounds that make up “violence” to carry a certain meaning. There’s nothing in our genetic code that makes it inevitable that we will understand the sounds that make up “violence” to carry a certain meaning.
Therefore ****all definitions**** are artificial. To say that the definitions of Grewgills are artificial is to say that the definitions of Grewgills have one of the intrinsic characteristics of definitions.
As for “intellectual honesty,” have you ever read any scientific research at all? In scientific papers people will, quite routinely I assure you, create their own definitions that are only useful for the purpose of reading that one paper, and then use the defined term within their paper according to the idiosyncratic definition the paper authors have just invented.
I swear to Captain Marvel I am not making this up:
Biologists have defined “masculinity” as “placing forelimbs on the back of a rat, resting weight on that rat through the forelimbs and direct support of the belly of the studied creature by the back of the rat, and thrusting the pelvis repeatedly into the ass of the rat below”.
I’m pretty sure that there are human beings on this planet who would be shocked at that as a definition of masculinity, and yet when the paper authors write out
and then **actually use X to mean Y**
that is the apex of intellectual honesty. It might grate on me to see psychologists and biologists define “masculinity” that way, even in the limited context in which such a definition might be used. But it is in no way dishonest. They define masculinity in such a way for the purpose of being able to communicate clearly about how a particular rat experiment was conducted, what data were derived rom that experiment, and what conclusions can be supported by that data. Then they go ahead and do that.
Grewgills adopts a particular definition of violence for the purpose of communicating. Grewgills includes intent, meaning “for the purpose of” in the manner of Merriam-Webster’s “aim, goal” definition in the process of defining violence. Then Grewgills ***actually considers intent when attempting to determine whether a nurse injecting a vaccine is committing violence***.
This is the height of intellectual honesty.
It is certainly also “artificial” but that in no way makes it different from the definition issued by WHO, which you support [until those cases where you don’t]. Nor does it make it different from whatever definition of “violence” you might use.
Finally, it in no way makes it “ad hoc” in a sense that might conflict with “a good faith effort to provide a definition for the purpose of actually communicating what one intends to communicate”.
I just don’t understand why you ask people to provide a definition and then call them intellectually dishonest for actually using the definition they’ve supplied.
Rowan @25:
Yeah, it’s gotten that bad.
EL has jumped the shark.
“acting with foreknowledge” to me sounds more like, say, bringing an umbrella on my walk because I can see that it will shortly start to rain outside. It won’t start to rain because I brought my umbrella, though. “acting with foreknowledge” sounds awfully passive to me (with the possibility of being active), while “intent” is rather active and pretty much never passive.
But maybe that’s just me?
EnlightenmentLiberal, #9
Oh dear, I had made my post #432 in jest, but turns out you really do agree. You do, don’t you? Read it and tell me so I can laugh at you more.
Intent is what you actually set out to do. Not what can also happen in some rare cases over a long enough period of time in a large enough population. You really do not understand that? Are you telling me whenever you get in your car to drive somewhere, you are intending to kill someone?
The intent in doing things like vaccination is not to kill.
A serial killer intends to kill. A pediatrician injecting a kid with MMR does not. You’re a fucking joke.
Tony,
I’m thinking very successful troll at this point. In that case, I don’t look as bad as others here in that I didn’t make more than just a few posts seriously addressing xer “points”.
EL’s doing to English what ISIS is doing to ancient statues.
1.
Violence2.
Intent3. ???
What’s next?
Tony @28
I think EL has been riding the shark all along.
But does the shark consent to this violent riding?
Neither the shark, nor the English language consent to the violence being perpetrated upon them by EL, who is clearly intending this violence and is therefore a bad person and must cease and desist immediately.
Lofty
Probably not, but EL is being violent also to themselves, as the shark could knock them off and hurt them at any time.
And I’m pretty sure the shark not consenting would be violence against EL.
Rowan vet-tech,
You can just conclude that because something is violence it must be bad.
Good things can be violence and violence can be good. Pulling a person from in front of a speeding car is good violence, no? Even if it’s actually removing a person from one place to another without their consent (=kidnapping=violence).
can’t
that was supposed to be can’t conclude
God there’s so much wrong here, I don’t know why I try.
But let’s take an entirely new tactic:
Here is YOUR standard:
Can I point out, in a way that I hope comes across as friendly, that we do not have a hive mind?
One person at CDC can fund a study that another tests that leads to another recommending a voluntary vaccination program that leads to another to propose a study of that programs drawbacks and benefits that leads another to conclude carrots and/or sticks should be used beyond just making the vaccine available that leads another to introduce a bill to that effect that leads another to vote “aye” that leads another to sign it that leads another to challenge the constitutionality …
…and blah, blah, blah…
and in this myriad of human actions, you never have one person injecting a million people all at once. Everyone knows that any decision of their could be overridden or overtaken by circumstances or what have you …right up until the moment a nurse (usually) delivers a dose of oral or injectable vaccine.
on the individual level, we’re not vaccinating “millions” we’re vaccinating one at a time, and one person may vaccinate no more than thousands in a life time. Moreover, that person doing the injecting has no way of knowing she won’t die tomorrow, before she ever causes a single episode of harm or death through administration of a vaccine.
You can say, in some sense, that the larger community “intends” to commit violence because the community “intends” to vaccinate millions. But you can’t say that any individual vaccinated millions knowing the inevitable consequences. Nor can you say that any individual decision maker knew at any point along the way how many people would ultimately be vaccinated.
“Intent” of a community is not he same as “intent” of an individual.
When you say:
Who is the individual that knew that a specific action taken – writing a slightly more persuasive adverb in a report to the CDC for instance – was going to kill anyone at all? Even one person?
If ***no one knew*** about
that that
then no one had intent …according to your definition. Am I wrong? Where is this logic bad?
You’re the one that requires knowledge about a specific action leading to a death. A president’s veto can be overridden. A whip count in congress might be wrong, so no particular congressional person can say that voting “yes” on a particular thing will necessarily lead to widespread vaccination and death.
Intent isn’t a feature of group psychology. Intent is a feature of minds, and our minds aren’t telepathic collectivities.
sorry, I should have specified that my #39 was directed towards EnlightenmentLiberal and was quoting from EL’s #9.
Carry on.
@rq, re: acting with foreknowledge:
No. I think you’re giving the phrase too much credit.
Is all that’s required for acting with foreknowledge.
Hmmm.
EL says that taxation is violence, xe wants to reduce violence, and thus wants lower taxes and smaller government even though taxes fund programmes that reduce violence.
EL says that vaccinations are violence, EL wants to reduce violence, which, I guess, means eliminating vaccines or making them completely optional, even though the vaccines prevent untold suffering (would that be violence?).
Anyone else noticing a trend here?
I hung the laundry outside to dry.
No sheets were harmed by this.
chigau,
You expose them to direct sunlight for a prolonged time while denying them water. For mercy’s sake, you hang them. If you did that to a human, that would be violence.
QED
chigau
DID THE SHEETS CONSENT?
Crip Dyke
You are so right, I’m sorry for threatening violence like that. I’ll leave the umbrella at home and just be foreknowledgeable about walking, never mind the rain.
Not letting your sheets hide under the blankets is, I dunno, premeditated summat, what’s that word again?
rq, #45
They probably waved.
Chigau, direct exposure to sunlight causes fading, the very act of washing is highly violent and causes untold stress upon the fibers, even to the point of BREAKING THEM after enough washings. How DARE you be so violent!
If they waved consent whilst three sheets to the wind though, their waving should be ignored.
Ignore my last. Makes no sense.
Daz,
does
Does?
Oh good.
I thought, hold on that makes no sense, then got lost in a spiral of double-negatives. My Friday night tipple seems to be going to my head more than normal.
Don’t care.
They smell sooooo gooood!
Daz
Did the tipple consent?
Dunno. It beerly said a word.
Daz
You’re just assaulting the English language, as seems to be common these days. But I’m not going to wine about it.
It’s a rum old do when a chap cant take a drink without people making pint-ed remarks.
dammit
I wanted to do the ‘rum’ joke.
something about ruminating…
A-salting the language is bad but a-peppering it is worse.
A-salting, together with liming, is the best way tequila language.
Yer all just so ginerous with the puns tonight.
Dammit rq!
I wanted to make a gin pun.
Just ’cause it fits the mood. (and ’cause I’m stumped for puns. I’m running dry…)
I’m stuck on trying to find a pun for Blue Curacao.
Why do y’all get the easy ones?
All these darn false rape allegations
Because x isn’t evidence for x or whatever.
CD:
I have it worse.
I am behind the bar (bored) & I have all this liquor to choose from but cannot come up with a good pun for most of them.
CD
Because even feeling blue can’t cure a cow. You have to make the mojit of it.
Saad:
are you on FB?
CD
But I can always sherry some ideas with you.
Oh, hell yeah!
Nice one Daz. I had completely forgotten about he existence of that song, though not that it’s played I remember listening to it with some friends many years ago (one of them was a roommate. We listened to the song more than once – quite a few times actually – or I might not even remember it with the youtube reminder.)
So, “Hot Lips” Page – Is this Page’s song? Or a song Page made famous? Or a standard that Page simply happen to do enthusiastically and well such that it later became associated with Page? Or is it a song that isn’t particularly associated with Page and that’s just the version you happened to link?
Cauze it’s been a long time, but that recording sounds really familiar, the singing too. It might be the version or at least the same singer that I heard years ago …but that would be quite a coincidence and I’m more likely to be wrong (about it being the same voice & thus singer) if Page was merely one of many people to record good versions of it.
Here’s an interesting article about a brave academic who goes where the evidence takes her: http://chronicle.com/article/Reluctant-Crusader/228377
Any thoughts?
From Saad’s link:
The rest is despicable, but I have no words to describe the part I bolded.
I’ve got no puns at all.
Ah’m a wreck o-ver this.
Close?
No cigar?
We no cigar rules out my favorite Scotch whiskey, which is (apparently) made by dropping burnt cigar buts into the casks before aging…
Right. Islay just show myself out.
EL, your reply doesn’t change what I said about:
-it being a sorities paradox
-the scaling of the harm being a factor. Low percentages don’t stop being low percentages just because you are using a large population. (this is similar to having a lot of sand arranged in a 1cm high square that is 4 meters by 4 meters. It is a lot of sand stacked on top of other sand… but it isn’t a heap)
-Intent doesn’t work the way you are saying it does. The intent is to build immunity in the population, the unfortunate negligible side effect piggybacks on this plan, but it is not intended. It is not a goal. If they made a vaccine that had zero possibility of killing someone, they wouldn’t go “wait, we intend to kill 0.1% of the people….so this vaccine does not work as intended!”.
The lager this goes on, the worse the puns.
I am. How do I tell you how to find me without giving out my info? As you can see, I’m not too knowledgeable about these sites.
CD
Yeah, according to discogs, page wrote it.
(The whole of the EP pictured in the video is good, if you can get your hands on it and have taste that ranges across many ’50s genres.)
*sorites, whatever
CD
Well, don’t wait around – I’m not Baileyng you out of this one. This ain’t no sham pain I’m feeling on your behalf, though.
Ooh! That’s a corker!
As you hennessey, my wit is beyond camparison. I am not merely la pragmatiste, as you may have previously grogged.
(I am, at this point, toddying off to bed now, though, so y’ale have a good night!)
@ahilan, #71:
Since you asked, this is what I posted on the other site:
It’s listed there as posted by “Della Street”. This is also not my real name. This is someone who was a legal genius AND able to do her own laundry… and thus a better hero to whose quality one might aspire than a mere Perry Mason.
@Saad:
You give out a non-machine interpretable/searchable version of your e-mail, and then share more info privately over e-mail.
OR your conversation partner does that for you.
OR, if you two both must maintain more privacy with your e-mail accounts AND mutually trust the same person, you have that third party disclose their e-mail and then each of you separately e-mails that third party who then connects the two of you.
OR you make up a bullshit e-mail account that you only intend to use once ever in your life, give out that e-mail here. Make contact. Then delete that account. It’s more work, but it’s quite confidential.
rq, don’t absinthe yourself from the discussion!
CD & Saad
If there’s a blog you both comment at (ahem), the blogger will already have access to your email addresses. If you were to contact that blogger…
@Daz, #84
sure, but
a) I’m not the one with whom Saad would like to make Facebook contact (I don’t do Facebook, ever).
b) PZ is a busy guy. Traditionally the Horde have handled this amongst ourselves.
Pah! Trash my thinking why don’t you! I feel all violenced now.
(Glad I’m not the only non Facebooker around here.)
I said earlier that my Disqus account was in the name of Della Street.
I have taken the time to find my account page and change that. I almost never use Disqus, but now that I have, I can keep a consistent ‘nym across wordpress and my rare disqus comments.
I don’t really grok facebork but Tony! is there, couldn’t Saad contact him?
Possibly using a supersekret code phrase?
On another (I really don’t know how this works) tentacle,
Daz has webpage.
Wanna be a go-between?
Why is it that when I am having a ‘cannot get to sleep’, everyone else is elsewhere‽
I’m home, it’s been a beautiful autumn day in Adelaide, the late afternoon sun is shining in the window and the cats have just been fed. Speaking of cats, here’s one that doesn’t throw up on the carpet and shred the furniture.
I’ve started on William Gibson’s latest, The Peripheral. Seems good so far. Also, someone here, on some thread or other, recommended A People’s History Of The United States by Howard Zinn. Just finished it, and highly recommend it.
—————————————–
Re chigau’s #89. Yeah, if needed, I’d have no problem with that.
Daz
re: The Peripheral
I hope it’s a good read, please let me know how it goes – I’ve been looking for it in stores here, but I would like to know if it is worth the effort in the end. :)
RE: A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn…
It’s available for free online: here.
rq
Will do. As a recommendation from someone I’ve never met though: It had been returned to the ‘Awesome’ shelf in my local library. (When staff return books to the regular shelves from that one, they place an ‘Awsome’ label on it, by way of furthering reader-recommendations.)
——————————————
Re SOM’s link, for anyone worried about legality:
Really enjoyed The Peripheral. I thought the end a bit weak but I’ve had that complaint about a number of his books and it doesn’t stop my enjoyment of his writing.
FossilFishy
Funnily enough, I’ve had some issue with the endings of his books, too. But then, sometimes I think about the story, and I wonder if there really is any good way to end them. :P
*sigh* I guess my biggest gripe is that his books are virtually unavailable in my geographical location, except for occasional random Neuromancers popping up. Thank all the goodness for the internet.
rq #97:
<blockquoteBut then, sometimes I think about the story, and I wonder if there really is any good way to end them.
I’m not even sure it would be possible to have a particularly strong ending to novels whose background-world is as much part of the story as the main action is. Some of Ken MacLeod’s work comes to mind, for much the same reason.
↑ Oops
Daz
I will confess that I have not read anything by Ken McLeod. Am I missing out?
rq
Depends what you like. He’s quite political and very left-wing. I’d recommend the Engines Of Light series as a starter. The Night Sessions is, IMO, his best standalone.
Daz
Thanks for the recommendation, I will definitely take a look!
Okay, so I’ve been pulled into a discussion with an asshat over at Chronicle of Higher Ed. [The evil person pulled me in. My own siwoti is in no way to blame.]
But it did lead me to find “LGBT science”. Mostly its a website that I hadn’t found because I could care less. Nature? Nurture? Whatver. [Moreover, the vast, vast quantity of “T” could almost float a leukocyte.]
As irrelevant to my life as most of it is, there was a short rewrite of a Truth Wins Out comment on an academic fraud whose latest wonder is this:
Oy, vey.
But then I looked at the video of another theocrat using magnets to prove …something. The video is on the same page, accessible through this link.
If you watch the video – you can just advance to a minute in to see the magnets joined at 1:04 – you see the magnets start like so:
(= =)
Now, these are horseshoe magnets, so imagine the parens only joining the top and bottom lines, not passing them by.
That’s right. Bring them closer and closer. Now they touch, locking, like the last thing they want to do is stop bumping up against each other.
Yep, that’s right. Theocrats have proved that the only natural and desirable form of sex based on real attraction, and God approved attraction at that, …
…is scissoring.
Though I suppose oral-vaginal sex might look somewhat similar when represented in magnets.
Queer women are obviously God’s chosen people, a hypothesis initially presented based on our exceptionally low rates of HIV infection, which we all know is the standard God-punishment for immorality. Now, however, this is confirmed by experimental evidence from physics. Anyone who takes delight in scissoring is beloved of God. Anyone who celebrates God’s greatest gifts of joy through vaginal-oral sex is quite alright in God’s book.
Anyone else can engage in rimming or go to Hell.*1 That’s what the Christians insist upon.
*1 …although, that cavity-bumping-up-against-cavity experiment might lead one to believe that there’s a substantial reason why Christians don’t talk about anal intercourse and instead insist that a frequent sexual practice of gay men is “butt sex”. I suspect that if we ever do get good numbers, it will turn out the vast majority of people who choose to bump bums will turn out to be God-fearing heterosexual Christians.
CD
The German equivalent of CHS is on record for objecting to inclusive sex ed with the phrase “lesbians, they lick each other and I don’t want my daughters to learn that!”
Which makes me think that if she believes that oral sex is an exclusively homosexual activity I’m genuinly sorry for her. Maybe her sex life is so boring that she doesn’t need contraception because she’d never think of having any unless for procreation.
Giliell,
Funny, just yesterday I ran into this song by Denise Lasalle Lick It Before You Stick It
(NSFW warning for lyrics)
@Giliell:
You know what the most shocking part of that story is?
Did that theocrat from the CHS actually get something right about queer behavior?
My goodness, wonders never cease.
Crip Dyke
But she never specified where they lick each other.
Perhaps all over, like grooming cats? :P
@rq:
Okay, embarrassing admission time:
With our kitties? I’m not willing to lick their fur, but I do bend my head down to their fur and stroke them with the tip of my nose as if I were grooming them.
I just always thought that that might feel to them like a momma grooming them, and thus be good/reassuring (while keeping my tongue from getting dirty and furry and gross). And what do you know? They do like it.
And yet… my kids think I’m weird. What’s with that?
Oh, also?
Beatrice that’s an awesome song. I love it.
Crip Dyke
Huh. Kids, I guess. I have this whole head-to-face rubbing process with ElderCat, esp. when he’s settling down for a nap on my chest.
And I also like sticking my nose in their fur, barring any out-claws in the vicinity.
Since both science fiction and music seem to have come up a lot of late…
Me daft old puddy tat and I have mutual snuffling sessions all the time. He gets to taste my toes and I get to snuffle his head and tummy fur. Purrpurrpurr.
Just don’t snuggle the cat when you’ve recently applied lip balm. Do not ask how I know this. Suffice it to say that cats, in my experience, have excellent lip balm detectors and a wicked sense of humor.
Ah, cats. I have fond memories of falling asleep next to my girlfriend and less-fond memories of waking up with a cat’s asshole in my face…
don’t look like no “Thunderdome.”
cats n shit./
Ooh, look what the cat dragged in.
Unmoderated, chas. The whole point was to have no standards: they even let puppies and kittens in the place.
or, well, the barest minimum of standards.
Hmmm, I like burying my nose deeep in the rabbits’ fur. It’s so soft and they smell so nice.
Not just kittens, puppies and rabbits…
Not forgetting the hairy-eared dwarf lemur!
What do they smeel like and will they tolerate my noe in their fur or is that likely to give me a piercing I never wanted?
From my limited knowledge, I can say with surety only that they smell like hairy-eared dwarf lemurs.
Conceiving and bearing a child is even worse violence, because it makes it (as far as we can tell) absolutely certain that someone will die, who would not otherwise have died.
Begin: rage induced flailing;
I just found out that a 12 year old was raped by an 18 year old “friend” and is being effectively forced to carry twins to term in my husbands hometown.
The entire town knows who she is, knows who he is, and are so goddamned deep in euphemism that my husband didn’t even realize it was rape until I flat out said “so it was rape, then.”
It’s a catholic/über conservative Christian town, so even though they have a hospital, abortion for twin featus has not even been put forward as an option. For a 12 year old.
Oh, and the town is so far in denial of rape that he isn’t being charged and it is unknown if he is going to be required to provide child support.
Fuck you bumfuck nowhere towns in Texas that let the churches rule you.
Rawnaeris, Lulu Cthulhu: Jesus fucking Christ. Every day, somehow, my faith in humanity dwindles even more.
Rawnaeris, too often I find myself without adequate words.
@Rawnaeris:
Cops don’t need the participation of the victim in many cases to move forward with a case like this.
The morality is complex. It’s almost certain that the 12 year old, if asked, would say she doesn’t want a prosecution.
However, if there’s not a prosecution now, custody may come up as a greater issue in the future. While she may even find herself in love with the 18 year old in the past or right now, that’s not to say that she’ll never get to a point where she’s feeling rage at what’s been done to her. The assault, the betrayal, the deliberate lack of support.
When that hits*1, someone as poorly supported as this may not handle it with wisdom and grace from the point of view of a 55 year old lawyer sitting on the bench. Then she gets hit with “bad mother” because she’s not super-conciliatory to her rapist. It’s ****awful****. And if primary custody goes over to the rapist, you end up with her making child support payments. Although the money is for the kids and you **never** have any normal person making payments that cover the full cost of doing the kids (or 6/7ths the cost for someone taking every other weekend), assisting someone in raising your children is very different from assisting your rapist who used your childhood as an opening vulnerability to raise your children, with the rapist having direct power over the kids behind closed doors!.
Most of us, fortunately, have never had to witness that, to feel that. But that’s the kind of thing this poor kid is being set up for with the lack of a prosecution now.
Again, the ethics are murky at best. It’s easy for indecision to stand. But think very seriously about reporting to the state police. If you decide to do that, see if you can get some free advice from a texas criminal attorney on what standard practices are.
Well, excuse me, not what standard practices are, but what the standards of practice are – that’s different. It may be routine to fail to live up to ethical and professional requirements, but the standards still exist. Use the existence of the standards and the local prosecutor’s deviation from the standards (there will certainly be some deviation) to help argue your case to the state cops that they should be involved.
Further, make sure you note that the rights of the child are being violated here. There are limited cases where you don’t want a child to have to take a stand. However where a pregnancy results, the same blood testing of the child and the newborn (in this case, we’re hoping for 2 healthy newborns if she carries them to term) for all kinds of other things can be used for the creation of a genetic profile. Technicians can testify to the source of the genetic evidence. She doesn’t even have to show up.
Note further that prosecuting the rapist does not necessarily mean the rapist has to go to jail, but whether the rapist does or not, parole and probation can be used to acquire additional tools to help make sure child (aw, fuck, “newborn”, I hate it when the world makes these kinds of distinctions necessary!) support is paid and the rapist does not use the child’s children to do further violence or harm to the child. Anything less is going to put the child at much greater risk of further abuse down the road. From the rapist, yes, but also from her parents. (“I’m taking care of these children for you, and now you want to come home late for school because you want to play a flute in the band??? Not a chance young lady!”*2) Remember that i said “not necessarily”. That decision will depend on state law and on the prosecutor (who, we already know, isn’t doing so hot right now), amirite?.
This isn’t advice on which of many paths to take. This is just some info you can use **if** the path you choose to take is trying to kick texas law enforcement in the ass. And some info about consequences
===================
*1…and it usually does, which is part of why we still outlaw rape of children, even if we’ve abandoned the original, “You damaged my chattels,” rationale
*2 …note of course that the parent is taking care of her grandkids “for the victim”, not “for the rapist, and for my reputation so that I didn’t have to tell my friends when you suddenly turned up no-longer-pregnant that I permitted an abortion in my household. They’ll forgive me if I allow a rape in my household, but an abortion????
Rawnaeris
Wow fuck. She’s 12, that means apart from everything else, twins mean high high risk pregnancy and very early premies. If everybody survives this means a fucking high likelyness for her being a 13 yo mother to disabled or at least developmentally challeged children.
Something similar happened here recently. Thankfully the girl is not pregnant, but the whole thing came out when her rapist “boyfriend” was caught driving while drugged with her being under drugs next to him. Because drugging a child and having having “sex” with her is frowned upon even here that bastard is going to jail. But during a conversation about this somebody ventured a “the poor kid, such a young life ruined” talking about the rapist. I deliberately missunderstood and answered “yes, how terrible for her. She was raped and drugged. Heavens know how she’s going to cope with that”.
Stunned silence followed.
But let’s not forget that the guy is a poor victim of multiple forms of violence, like speed limits, prohibitions of DUI, laws against giving children drugs and laws against raping children. Won’t somebody think of the poor rapist?
Does anyone interact with EnlightenmentLiberal in other spaces?
EL pissed me off, especially with the repeated use of “esoteric” and the first-strike insistence that I was doing shady and dishonest things in my argument. Mockery of bad arguments here in TD is also quite common. But I tried to spell out how EL could stop losing good will. I tried to make it easier to have a normal conversation. And EL being gone for a few days is most likely just life, y’know? But it is a little bit weird to be gone multiple days in a row after being so active. So if you know EL in another space, just drop a note here.
If EL’s just feeling like making EL’s arguments here and having them laughed at is too bruising, that’s fine. Laughing at silly argument is not a crime. EL gets to read here or not. And if EL’s on vacation, great. If EL is actually thinking about why those comments came across as so mockable, and in some cases hurtful, to not just me but almost universally on the thread, then yay for introspection. But if EL is just plain hurt emotionally, that’s not good.
Oh well, whatever the reason, if hope that if EL ever chooses to come back, they choose to come back with better reading skills, more careful quoting and citing skills, and an appreciation for the need to actually concede the point openly if you are going to proceed with a new, more limited, modified claim. One is, “Yes, okay, I completely respect you and you’ve done well arguing your position. That does shoot down the proposition I was making, but it doesn’t shoot down the idea that I wanted to talk about. I should have worded things like this: …” The other is, “Ha, I will move the goalposts and you will never know that I think you’re too stupid to notice that my excluding children after saying kidnapping is by definition violence is a completely new claim, but instead of feeling like you’re in a dialog where your words matter so I’ve learned something and want to make a considered new claim, all those people will feel like there words never mattered at all because it will look like no matter what they say, I’ll just dismiss the argument by defining it out of existence as part of the matter under discussion! Bwahahahahahaha!”
I don’t think EL gets that right now, but I know a ton of people here didn’t take the latter too well.
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
I fucking hate people. Kudos on the way you reacted to that. I don’t know how I would have. Might have been stunned silence. Or angry sputtering. Or angry vomiting. No idea, it would boil my fucking blood.
Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden #130.
You’re lovely!
@Ogvorbis
Yes.
As a general principle, yes, but not an absolute principle which overrides all other considerations.
False. I’ve argued in what has to be about 20 posts now that I want an increase in taxation on the rich, including heavier progressive taxes and heavier estate taxes.
…
@brianpansky
And to others. I’m sorry – but in my world of moral and legal accountability, if someone acts with foreknowledge of the likely effects of their plan or actions, that meets the legal and moral requirements of informed action, with premeditation. It meets the legal and moral requirements of “intent”.
The Sorites paradox may apply to individual doctors. However, I’m not talking about individual doctors. I’m talking about the legislature and their advisors, acting in concert, passing a plan which they know will kill people. For example, I might not know how soon someone will die and who it will be when I pass a law requiring the police to fire their guns into the air every day, but I know eventually someone will die. Such a plan is morally reprehensible. Of course everyone here will call that an act of community violence to pass such a law and/or to take part in such behavior. I see these two scenarios as completely comparable and analogous. The only relevant difference between the two scenarios is that firing guns wildly in the air doesn’t also have the life-saving effects that vaccinations do. (Oh, and I expect more deaths from firing guns wildly into the air than from accidents and such with vaccines. Adjust number of shooters as necessary to achieve desired comparison.)
…
@Crip Dyke
And fuck you too.
Crip Dyke
EL pissed me off because xe just happened to dismiss you and other commenters making clear, definite points as if you were not addressing xir arguments at all – when in fact it was quite clear (from here) that you all were addressing the arguments, and doing so in a far more logical and understandable fashion than xe was themselves.
Xir comments to me weren’t hurtful only for the reason that they weren’t addressed to me, but I can see how they could have been – from my seat, they were infuriating because they were so fundamentally dishonest, and I don’t like it when people pick on my friends (honestly, EL calling you dishonest is the only reason I decided to participate, as sad a contribution as that participation may or may not have been).
Rawnaeris
Words absolutely fail me – she’s 12, and people won’t call it rape? She’s pregnant and 12??? I wish she had a far smarter and more supportive environment to grow up in.
Also, if you end up using the smartness in CD’s comment, you have my full (though, unfortunately, only moral!) support and all the spoons via internet.
Giliell
I think around that same time (I believe you mentioned that incident in the Lounge, go you!), there was that case in USAmerica where an 18yo young man went on a crime spree… with his 13yo girlfriend. And the media labelled it romance.
Revolting.
To continue, there is moral and legal intent, and there is intent in the context of purpose and goals.
If you ask an abusive husband what their intend is when they abuse their wife, pretend this one answers that it’s not that he wants to inflict injury on her, but he wants to get a sandwich. In the context of purpose and goals, he doesn’t have intent to inflict injury – he merely has intent to get a sandwich. Of course, under the context of the definition of violence and legal and moral responsibility, the abusive husband acts with foreknowledge, premeditation, and knows that striking the wife can and does cause injury, even if that’s not his primary intent. In the context of violence, of course the husband has intent to do violence, regardless of whatever particular goals he may be trying to achieve.
*sigh*
Vacation’s over, I guess.
Oh for fuck’s sake
Huh. I was about to back up Crip Dyke and hope that EL didnt feel chased away but also note that EL is stubborn and seemed deliberately obtuse which why people objected to their shit so vigorously. But apparently words of sympathy summoned EL back, as stubborn and deliberately obtuse as ever. I withdraw my tentative pity for the egotistical asshole.
Violence isn’t bad. But we should reduce violence. Despite it not being bad and including all sorts of things like raising children and having taxes.
Hey, EL: maybe dont use the fucking example of a man beating and abusing his wife as a fucking detached emotionless thought experiment to further your asinine mental wanking about whatever pointless vague point you are on about now.
Jesus fucking Christ already, Spock.
I guess that whole bit about exerting power and control and ‘teaching a lesson’ in abusive relationships just comes down to… wanting a sandwich?
Fuck you, EL.
Beatrice
But violence is also bad, except when it’s not, and even when it’s good, it’s bad because it’s violence. And should be reduced, except in cases where it is good, in which cases it is still bad and should be reduced.
Am I making this clear?
Oh god.
I’m gonna stick my neck out here, and try to reduce EL’s verbosity to a sentence :
‘Violence is bad, but unfortunately at some level, I agree that it is necessary.’
EL, could you please, without taking fifteen paragraphs to say what you could say in a sentence, confirm or deny that the above is your position?
rq,
You are almost violently clear.
Have you argued this yet? Because if you have, can we end this now that you’ve met your end goal?
Or is your real end gold not to argue, but to convince us who share this thread with you to agree that you are correct?
Because if you were accurately portraying your end goal, you should be done.
If you weren’t accurately portraying your end goal, maybe you could give us a new goal so the rest of us are aware whether or not there’s a point to this conversation beyond rhetorically beating people until they give in.
Umm. EL, I set out that basic proposition in bullet points fucking ages ago, and we were in fact discussing it prior to your last re-emergence, when you muddied the water by bringing up all sorts of bullshit about imprisonment being equivalent to rape and gawd alone knows what else. I’d even made a case for why it’s more than mere pedantry.
Y’know when I said you trolled your own post? I meant it.
You know, when moving in the same space as others, sooner or later, no matter how careful you are, you will step on somebody’s toes, which can be very painful and even break bones.
Therefore, when you’re moving the same space as others, you clearly intent to hurt them. Can I just shoot everybody and invoke stand your ground laws because obviously everybody else is out there to get me?
@ EL
So…do you actually exist in the real world or are you just a brain in a jar which gets all its information about human existence from the internet? You’re interacting with people who have actually experienced this kind of shit in their actual lives, asshole. It’d be nice if you could make whatever arcane point you’re after without trivializing the suffering of real people with fucking “make me a sammich” jokes. Jesus fuck.
Wow, that’s what I miss when I skip EnlightenmentLiberal’s comments for redundancy.
FUCK YOU, EnlightenmentLiberal.
EL, until you stop your emotional argument that somebody telling you what you should do is violence, you may as well shut the fuck up. Nobody is doing anything other than laughing at your inane rationale, which isn’t rational.
You are obviously a spoiled egotistical person used to getting their own way and not giving a shit about others. You lie and bullshit to get what you want. You have lost all credibility. The only left to do is to point and laugh.
*points at EL*
Bwahahahahahahahahaha
EL
The act of punching someone shows clear intent to hurt them. How hard is this to understand?
There may also be intent to use that pain in order to make the person being punched* do something else, but that doesn’t change the intent behind the punch. Clear thinking, EL, you may want to try it.
*And why the hell do your analogies have to constantly involve rape, domestic abuse and other highly triggering scenarios? Do you enjoy hurting people, EL?
Yeah, not really laughing at EL anymore.
1. You’re a complete, despicable, utter asshole without a shred of decency or empathy.
2. There is NO fucking direct line from abuse to sandwich as there is from vaccination to not getting sick.
3.You’re a complete, despicable, utter asshole without a shred of decency or empathy.
4. Of course hurting is done with intent. He’s not accidentially stepping on her toes. He is inflicting pain in order to make her do as he says.
5.You’re a complete, despicable, utter asshole without a shred of decency or empathy.
6. See points 1, 3 & 5
The most violent thing known to man is a dictionary.
By definition.
Humans. Known to humans. Damn it.
louismorelli [elsewhwere]
Translation: A big number of years ago, the Big Bang occurred. This has since been bowdlerised to ‘the first marriage,’ because the thought of universes banging is kinda icky.
Translation: Empress burble tomato-fusion cataract!
We all knew what was coming next when we saw the name ‘louismorelli’ at the top of the comment.
Translation: Quantum mating! When a daddy quantum and a mummy quantum love each other very much, they do the dance of quantum charm involving up-quarking and down-quarking, and a teeeensy little quantum spermatazoa enters a teeensy little quantum ovum, and nine nanoseconds later, a teeensy little quantum baby falls out of quantum mummy’s quantummy.
Translation: And the universe exploded in a multiple orgasm.
Translation: And this is called the Pauli-playground exclusion principle.
Translation: And after the ‘big bang’ (teehee!) the universe went to sleep for a little while. The location of the Cosmic Wet Patch is still much-debated.
Fuck it, someone else can tackle the rest if they feel like it.
Saad
What’s a thesaurus, then? Violent by comparison, probably.
So to settle once and for all the question of who is always right, which spin became male and which one became female?
rq,
They’re synonymous.
rq #157:
I think I’d be very afraid to ask.
Daz
I am a bit, too – after all, one of them will end up sinister.
rq
A very dextrous pun.
It’s been a while since we had a banning.
Refreshingly violet.
n
This is like the old days.
Well, I for one will take silence over “make me a sammich” “jokes” any day of the week.
If you have a particular topic in mind, though, I could always try to help.
Seedy
Yes.
That sketch covers pretty much everthing.
EL:
Is it violence to allow children to learn to walk, as we know that there is a good chance they will fall and hurt themselves at some point due to walking?
Is it violence to allow a child to eat or drink, knowing that there is a not insignificant risk of them choking to death on what they eat or drink at some point in their lives?
Is it violence to own a cat when there is a child in the household, as it is known that young children often do not understand the intricacies of feline body language which can easily result in them getting scratched or bit, especially when cat bites have such a high rate of infection that there is a good chance that said bite would require hospitalization, and in rare cases can go so far as to require amputation of a limb?
Seriously EL?
1) No we don’t know that a single child will die due to vaccines that would otherwise not die due to the disease vaccinated against. It is possible, as some children will have adverse reactions, but there is no way of knowing that those children would have lived absent the vaccination program.
2) Your overly broad definition of violence includes almost every conceivable act by any remotely knowledgeable human. Every time we do anything there is a chance that harm will come to someone, even if that chance is tiny. If we do it enough times it will happen. If I feed my child often enough she will choke and so is violence. If I deny her food that is deprivation and so violence as well. If I send her to the bathroom often enough she will fall. Building roads for cars guarantees auto accidents. Allowing air traffic and boat traffic guarantees accidents and so is violence. Denying any of those deprives people freedom of movement and thus by your terms violence. There is almost nothing we cannot define as violence by your criteria. That makes your criteria pretty damn near worthless.
Let the chance of an unvaccinated person being harmed by catching a preventable infection (e.g. smallpox) be x.
Let the chance of a vaccinated person being harmed by complications arising from that vaccination be y.
We know with certainty that x > y.
But lets go further. In addition to the basic chance of harm arising from either scenario, we can also look at the severity of that resultant harm, which can be measured by looking at total work hours lost, monetary cost to the health system, mortality, or similar.
Let the average harm caused by contracting the illness in question be a.
Let the average harm caused by a vaccination complication be b.
Again, we know with certainty that a > b.
Therefore, ax >> by.
That is, when we combine the severity of harm with the chance of that harm occurring, we see that not having a vaccination program is significantly more harmful than having one. We can multiply that with the population of the region in question, and we see that more lives are lost without vaccination than with. Implementing a vaccination program is a reduction in life lost. Engaging in airy speculation as to whether this person or that person would have escaped the illness and thus didn’t reeeaaly need the vaccination is not only impossible but is also utterly pointless. The intent is to reduce harm, and vaccination programs achieve exactly that.
Incidentally, people with smugly superior names such as yours putting forth smugly dishonest arguments such as yours with such reliability is why I now immediately think less of people with smugly superior names before they’ve even said anything. If you really were so enlightened, you could just have a mundane name like Dave and people would notice without need for it to be proclaimed in your name.
Mmm, the lovely smell of a banning… Though I always imagined it with a touch of brimstone.
@ Holms
To be fair to EL, I don’t think xe’s arguing against vaccinations as such. Xe just really, really, really, REALLY, REALLY wants to file vaccinations (and taxes and more or less all possible human interaction) under the heading of “violence”. Xe’s consistently said xe considers some violence unavoidable and even necessary. Xe just desperately wants a definition of “violence” that’s so broad as to be utterly meaningless.
It seems to me that the confusion/frustration here is due to the inconsistency between xir stated positions and this libertarian definition of violence. EL doesn’t need to define “violence” this way for their positions to make sense but xe’s doing it anyway, for reasons best known to xirself.
EL
See this is just ridiculous. I’ve been paying taxes all my adult life and not once have I been threatened with violence by the tax office. I actually don’t mind paying my fair share of what it takes to live in a just society. Your repeated trotting out of this ass-exertion just makes you either incredibly dumb, or incredibly selfish. In any case, you haven’t written anything new for weeks so perhaps it’s time for you to find a forum full of rubes to push your bullshit in. Who knows, they may even pay you for your dribblings.
Seven of Mine
Don’t forget “intent” Intent to cause violence is now being defined as “knowing that there’s a small possibility that this might happen”.
I now intent to commit suicide and kill my neighbours in a fire. Also known as drying my hair. Hey, I know that people have died of malfunctioning hairdriers and and started fires that way. It’s probably better you call the police.
Not closing tags probably. Almost by definition violence.
Mixing up probably and properly.
Definitely violence.
As is the second I in “definitely “
@ Giliell
True, we’re into “intent” now but that’s just in the service of fitting taxes and vaccination etc. into the definition of “violence”.
Knowledge of the remotest possibility of X = intent to X. Violence = intent to harm (simplified obv). Everything you could ever possibly do has some non-zero chance of causing harm, therefor everyone always intends to harm, therefor everything you could ever possibly do is violence. Therefor libertarians are not actually wrong when they say taxation is violence, therefor EL is the only person to ever argue against libertarianism properly. Or something. Almost by definition.
#170 Seven
Agreed, but the point was not ‘stop objecting to vaccination’ but rather ‘vaccination doesn’t qualify as violence, because it is the intentional reduction of harm’. Something that is bleedingly obvious to all except EL, giving us this amazingly silly conversation.
@ Holms
EL will just argue that less harm is still harm and, because the slightest glimmer of knowledge of the remotest possibility of anything equals intent, vaccines are less violent but not non-violent. Because nothing is non-violent. Almost by definition.
Raising a Messiah poses certain difficulties…
EL’s philosophy is simply that of the spoiled brat.
“Waah, don’t wanna!!!”
Daz
I always liked Moses’ morning ritual.
(Also, he was a bad fishing partner.)
Most words we speak were not intelligently coined by some clever grammaticist, but show a clear developmental heritage of having been invented ad hoc to fit a need for a word to sum up a new idea or thing, or to have been borrowed from an older language, itself made up of words that are ad hoc inventions or borrowings from older languages, and so on back into the undiscoverable past. It would be something of a mistake to think words can jump to our needs and behave scientifically like precision tools, knowing how clumsily they were refined and defined.
Giliell,
Yeah, this is SO ridiculous. I’m glad we can have this discussion anonymously, because I would not want to be associated in real life with a discussion so absurd that it would look like a Monty Python sketch.
It’s also telling that the harm by not doing shit is never mentioned, probably because it doesn’t neatly fit into the narrative.
The kid who is harmed by vaccination and who would 100% not have been harmed without it only exists in a world where everybody else is vaccinated and therefore providing herd immunity for the child. It’s almost as if in the real world people are already trying to find out which children are at risk from vaccinations and who should therefore not be vaccinated.
Nick
Yep, we already mentioned that some 100 comments or so ago. They are acting as if there was no colour in this world that could be legitimately called “blue” by one person and “green” by another person when both of them have the same colour vision.
183
Saad,
So true. Otherwise you might be mistaken for a member of Congress.
Actually I would much rather be in a Monty Python sketch than Congress right now.
Holms @176:
Thank you. That is the phrase that I kept dancing around as I tried to deal with EL’s approach/avoidance thing with taxes and violence.
EL:
You are correct. You have come out in favour of higher incremental tax rates. At the same time, you have also equated taxation with violence and appear to want lower taxes to reduce violence. I guess I’m just not bright enough to understand the contradiction. Or I don’t believe enough.
@ogvorbis, #186:
My #68 on page 1 this TD was exploring this.
My #337 from that page, this TD was an earnest attempt to get EL to engage with this.
a few comments later, on #346 of that page, this TD, EL quotes me and then attempts to explain:
Of course no one has only one goal. I have a goal of making brownies this afternoon. It doesn’t mean that I suddenly don’t want to reduce violence because I’m a one-goal woman. Charitably, what EL is saying here is, “Yes, reducing violence is good, but there are times when i wouldn’t want to reduce violence because in that context X is more important to me.”
But again, this is trivial. One can’t act to reduce violence every moment. One must stop to eat and sleep, for instance. And even if sometimes you are telling yourself that you’re going to sleep only because it is necessary to make you more effective at your anti-violence efforts (eating also, given that we are less effective at many tasks when dead), at some point you’re actually going to go to the store when there is still food in the house because you really want potatoes.
Even in the public policy realm this is inevitable.
EL seems ignorant of the ethical debate framed as “harm reduction vs eradication”. EL could clearly say, “I’m not an eradicator, I’m a harm reducer” and we’d actually know a lot more than EL’s statements give us (without a lot of persistence and a lot of careful parsing).
EL continues:
It’s really unclear what EL was trying to say. (Trump card? In what sense? I had already said I support the right of violent self-defense to violent aggression, but that I want to reduce violent self-defense **by reducing violent aggression**. EL also never asked things like, “Would you rather save one life once or stop one 7 month old from biting one nipple one time?” where you could actually explore the “trump card” idea.)
I responded with:
In hopes of getting a clarification, I concluded with:
broq quote =cat’s fault
CD
Don’t be too hard on the cat. It’s good that s/he is even trying to do HTML.
HypurrText
Mega-cuteness!
Came across this, which gives some background, and then this longer, even more cuter video.
@Daz
Never said that. I again invite you to try and quote me where I said that. It’s all in your head.
Correct. I’ve also said this in a sentence or two many, many times, and so you’re being unreasonable when you say I haven’t been exceedingly clear in my position.
…
@Holms in 168
You’re new here, so I can understand going with the groupthink rather than actually reading my posts. Note that I have already made the same argument that you just made, at least twice now, up-thread (perhaps on a previous page of comments). Don’t believe the groupthink. Of course the harm prevented by vaccines is much, much, much greater than the accidental and incidental harm of vaccines, and I am completely supportive of vaccines.
…
@Crip Dyke in 187
Great. If you understand this, then how do you fail to understand how I can be both for having a government and having taxes, and simultaneously for labeling taxes as violence? That’s what started this whole multi-page discussion – isn’t it? I’ve explained this position many times in many different ways, and now you’ve repeated the basic principles back to me, and even agreed with it. This has been my position from the beginning. This is just another example where you have been dishonest or willfully obtuse.
Please notice how this trivial and completely basic notion of cost benefit analysis still continues to completely elude some people, such as #42, #139, #186, and more.
…
As for everyone else, I don’t see anyone worth replying to. They cannot read, or have not read, or have a problem with reading comprehension.
PS: It’s not a small probability of harm to the people who implement the public policy of vaccination. For them, the probability is close to 1 (e.g. 100%) that someone will be killed who would not be killed in a hypothetical world without the public vaccination program.
PPS: And which is it? At one point, Crip Dyke wanted to know my contact information and/or wanted me to come back. Except for a few people, I think this is a wasted exercise because of the clear lack of good-faith honest engagement from almost everyone here. Just from the last day or two, there’s a half a dozen bald-faced quote minings and other posts who seem to don’t have third grade level English reading skills. Ex:
16: “Point to someone who has refused to admit that vaccination programs do lead to a very, very, very small number of people dying.”. How about Gregwills in 167, and many others. I’m pretty sure Crip Dyke did the same either at the top of this page, or on the previous page.
18: “You’ve thrown the word [violence] around for, let’s see…8 days now, and have yet to provide a definition.” I have agreed to use the WHO definition for quite a while now. Surely that should count. Note that this is fundamentally different than declaring that the WHO is the sole and final arbiter of what qualifies under the definition.
26: Where the next sentence or two after the quotemine is a response to the argument made. Classy. But it’s Nerd, so inability to read is expected.
145: “[EL stated:] imprisonment being equivalent to rape”. I never did.
#150: “The act of punching someone shows clear intent to hurt them. How hard is this to understand?” You’re probably responding to post 135. I made that exact argument in 135. I think you’re confused.
152: Classic quotemining, when a sentence or two later addresses the point.
168: Already covered.
172: Strawmanning my position and refusing to engage with my actual arguments.
For that, I am close to done. It’s just not productive or interesting for anyone now.
Grewgills. It’s considered respectful to spell commenters’ ‘nyms correctly, instead of repeatedly misspelling them.
EL
Creationist reality denying bullshit level. We know the morbidity and fatality rates without vaccination. They are freaking high. That’s why we’Re having vaccination in the first place.
Jezzus
+++
CD
You’re making brownies and I don’t get any. That’s what I call violence.
EL the liar and bullshitter:
For the number impaired, meaning EL, fatal reactions to the measles vaccine is one in one million. Fatal measles cases are two out of a thousand. Which means if a million children receive the measles vaccine, one dies. If one million children catch the measles, two thousand die. THE EVIDENCE SAYS THAT VACCINES ARE BENEFICIAL TO THE CHILDREN. QED
Your argument is stupid, emotional, and non-rational. You are a fraud, liar, and bullshitter.
Now, how do YOU point out which children will live and which will die under both cases? You can’t. It is all statistical.
Since I didn’t get any either, it’s violence on a particularly large scale – something like genocide.
EnlightenmentLiberal #192:
Disingenuous bullshit. You quite clearly implied on at least one occasion that if an act is more aggressive than a punch in the face it should be lumped together with rape and other highly abusive crimes; and that long-term detention is more aggressive than a punch in the face. Quite why you can’t imagine that there may be a huge gap between those categories, and that imprisonment could fit quite easily into that gap without being anywhere near rape and battery is beyond me, but they were your words, and I have to assume that you meant what you said.
Or, of course, you’re just a really shitty communicator.
Well, to ape you: I didn’t say you hadn’t. I was merely hoping that if you must keep going with this, you might take the hint and try building an argument from plain, non-rambling, points. Your basic premise really is very easy to state without all this bullshit you keep saddling it with, provided you can be bothered to think for two seconds about the meanings of the words you are using—which I would think anyone would, who actually cared about communicating their ideas.
NO. It’s really not.
I snarkily commented,
after you said,
Then the Thunderdome blew up. Note that this doesn’t say that I fail to understand how you label taxes violence.
It says your definition is fucking bizarre. I understand how Calvin & Hobbes get the rules for Calvinball, but that doesn’t make Calvinball any less fucking bizarre.
I have walked you through how we can agree with a certain conclusion (tax enforcement has historically always involved some level of violence, though today in modern democracies the level of violence is always very small compared to the level of non-violent tax transactions) without changing our minds about your statement, “Government is violence by definition.”
You have conceded that all you really meant by that is, “tax enforcement has historically always involved some level of violence, though today in modern democracies the level of violence is always very small compared to the level of non-violent tax transactions,” but nonetheless you see “government is violence by definition” as a reasonable phrase – not merely a reasonable piece of rhetoric, but a reasonable use of these words that reasonable people should accept as literally true.
At issue then, is not my ability to understand X or Y.
At issue is, permit me some lingua fraca: “What the fuck is your bizarre definition of violence?” You have still, not once, put your own definition of violence on the table. You’ve said that your definition, for the purpose of this thread, is the definition granted by WHO. Then you’ve said you get to ignore them when you don’t like their definition. You’ve critiqued others definition. You’ve called my definition “esoteric” despite the fact that my definition seems to comport well with the intuitions of the vast majority of people on this thread, and pretty much all of the relevant dictionary definitions, while your definition cannot yet be tested against them because you haven’t given even an attempt of your own.
i note with particular frustration:
To the bold quote? Bullshit. If you did you wouldn’t be trying to use vaccines as an example of violence.
Therefore, it doesn’t count: you are dishonestly **claiming** to have accepted the WHO definition, but you don’t in fact accept the WHO definition if WHO has negated your arguments.
If you agreed to use if for the purposes of this discussion, then we don’t need your definition. But you can’t agree to use it for the purpose of this discussion and then say, “Ooops, I get to ignore them if they’re peddling that stupid crap!”
You get to ***go home or go elsewhere*** and use some other definition. But if you agree to use that definition for the purpose of this argument and someone shows that you’re wrong about something according to WHO, then what you do is say very very nicely,
But, if you really wanted to solve the original problem that produced this long discussion, you cannot rely on the WHO definition to prove “Government is by definition violence” non-bizarre. WHO doesn’t consider government in and of itself violence, so you can’t point to them as a reasonable and large group who would agree with your position.
If you wanted to solve the original problem, you would have the adult capacity to admit error and say,
OR, IN THE ALTERNATIVE
You could write down your own definition of violence and prove that it is non-bizarre.
This wouldn’t immediately involve conceding error, but if you do so without being willing to concede error after people for and against the proposition of the bizarreness of your definition each have a chance to chime in, THEN you would be engaging dishonestly (or at the very least futilely).
That’s what it would take.
Or, finally, you could just say,
Or, you could stick with your own original “end goal”
Are you saying you haven’t even made that argument yet?
if you haven’t, please do. If you have, then you’ve reached your end goal, so shut up already.
Bwahahahahaha:
I am, right at this moment, leaving my computer having finished an earlier bit of essay writing and a brief foray into TD.
Why am I leaving the computer?
TO MAKE ALL THE BROWNIES!
And with whom will I share them?
Well, since my family is away until Saturday, the brownies will probably be gone by then, meaning I will be committing genocide against he whole world ***including my family***!!!
Take that, Yahweh, you amateur. I’ve got your genocide covered AND then almost literally decimated the population you left behind.
Crip Dyke >> Yahweh, baby!
I am the violence-est!
I finally get it. Taxation etc is homeopathic violence.
Wait! That is a bizzare definition of the word brownie … because I don’t get one!
@EL #192
Things like this are why people are calling you dishonest. Yes, some very small number of people will die due to vaccines in a large enough scale program. MANY more will die without a large scale vaccination program. You (or anyone else) has absolutely no way of knowing the overlap in these two scenarios. That overlap could be complete, ie no one dies from the vaccine program that would not have died from the disease absent the program. The probability only approaches 100% for a child dying that would not otherwise die if you conveniently exclude the possibility that that child would have died from one of the diseases vaccinated against. This also completely ignores the fact that the majority of the VERY rare deaths associated with vaccination occur among the immunocompromised, thus people more likely to die from the disease if there is no vaccination program. The one thing we do know is that MANY more people die without the program.
Characterizing vaccination programs as violent is about as ridiculous as characterizing free school lunches as violence. Give out enough free lunches and someone will experience some harm* or even death. Everyone knows that going in, yet no reasonable person characterizes setting up school lunch programs or soup kitchens as violence. You apparently do and that sets you apart from the set of reasonable people.
*Someone will choke or have an allergic reaction or be burned etc
Just for the record: EL simply dismissed all of the criticism regarding the insensitivity of their spousal abuse example. Ignored it all with what has become a pretty typical form of dodging for them. Just for those who are taking notes.
EnlightenmentLiberal
Your comment #97 on the previous page of comments:
You have quite clearly implied that imprisonment can be equivalent to rape. You probably owe Daz an apology now.
I fail to understand what you are actually trying to achieve, here. You stated an end goal at one point. Crip Dyke helpfully pointed out to you how you had achieved your stated goal. And yet, here we are. Why?
EL, you douche, Holms has been around for quite some time.
::snort::
EL sez:
Because there is absolutely no good reason to call taxation violence, or government violence, and this entire argument is fucking pointless? And you acknowledge this because Why is that so hard for YOU to understand?
EL out one side of mouth:
EL out other side of mouth:
Cost benefit analysis is necessary and important for ye, but not for me!
They were worried that you felt chased away. They made the mistake of imagining you might have the capacity for embarrassment. I also was fooled into thinking that was possible. I should have known that you were immune to such things.
And the fireworks:
EL vs. God knows how many people.
EL sez: “Blabbity gabbity blabble gabble blab”
Almost literally everyone to enter sez: “WTF?”
(Repeat five thousand times)
EL sez: “Everyone of you must be some sort of liar or have a hearing problem!”
EL, maybe while you are playing Super Logical Philosopher, maybe you could see if you could apply Occam’s Razor to this scenario, and see how that turns out.
Or just stop fucking projecting and, somehow, despite all expectations of what is possible in this world, making yourself look like even more of an ass.
———————————————————————————————————-
Arren:
I think EL meant new to this thread/conversation.
The douche assessment is still accurate.
Welp, I sure fucked up that first paragraph.
Did someone anticipate this thread?
In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There’s a dyin’ voice within me reaching out somewhere
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair
Don’t have the inclination to look back on any mistake
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break
In the fury of the moment I can see the Master’s hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand
Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay
I gaze into the doorway of temptation’s angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand
I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer’s dream, in the chill of a wintry light
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face
I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand
I’m impressed. SIWOTI is strong with you considering how blatantly EL is trolling you.
Al Dente: Wouldn’t it defeat the purpose of SIWOTI if you decided that it doesn’t matter if someone is wrong on the internet if they are just being wrong on purpose? No, it doesn’t matter, error must be corrected!!!
(I suppose honestly that EL isn’t trolling but is actually suffering from SIWOTI themselves. They are obsessively trying to correct an error that doesn’t matter. And, also, might not even exist anyway, but appears to from their angle. Just because you have SIWOTI doesn’t mean you aren’t also wrong on the internet.)
I was thinking ‘overthink overflow’ rather than siwoti.
This statement seems flatly wrong to me, unless “good-faith honest engagement” means “concede everything and join with me. Together we will rule the galaxy as EnlightmentLiberal and Scions!”
For the record, I never asked for EL’s contact info and would not do so from anyone other than EL.
“contact info” isn’t anywhere in anything I typed, EL.
I simply asked if people interact with you elsewhere on the net, and if so to say so. Period. That is not a request for contact info and cannot be reasonably interpreted as one.
You constantly interpret others’s confusion as dishonesty. I take that to mean that you aren’t ever confused and are merely repeatedly mendacious.
Am I wrong?
If so, perhaps you ought to give others the benefit of the doubt. You are not the One True Philosopher whose ideas are totally consistent, clear, and awesome who happened to stumble on the least intelligent, least educated corner of the English-typing internet.
Oy.
Third time’s the charm:
Yeah, um. For the record, I don’t see myself asking for EL’s contact info from EL, either. The above was a morally proscriptive statement, not a description of my intended actions…
If faced with the possibility that dozens of people are either unable to reason logically or are engaging dishonestly or that maybe you are the one failing, it is time to take a good long look in the mirror.
look in the mirror
Worst. Morning. Ever.
AlexanderZ
ohdear
I haven’t even gone to bed yet.
Am now.
*hugs*
It must be nice living in a world where you can brush off the anger, hurt and pain of abuse victims and rape victims as “not worth listening to”.
No, it can’t be the fact that you just declared that the horrors they suffered are in fundamental character the same as vaccinating a child, with the difference only being in degree.
Englightenment Liberal @192
And @135:
In bold, the abusive husband’s intent. In italics, what you attribute as additional intent.
Um, you did not make that same exact argument. You seem to be using a different definition of intent, one that not everybody is agreeing on. You seem to be, in the bold instance, conflating ‘intent’ with ‘goal’, while the second italic parts are those that seem to make the most sense, probably because you are differentiating between ‘intent’ and ‘goals’.
That stuff in the middle about foreknowledge, premeditation, etc. is just weird. One’s primary intent in punching someone is, usually, to cause injury and/or physical harm. I’m not sure what other primary intent punching someone can have.
Also, what Giliell said to you:
Your lack of empathy reveals that you are, indeed, an asshole.
EnlightenmentLiberal
Millions of parents put their children on school buses in the morning every week. Is this an act of intentional violence?
I hope this can be a simple yes or no question for you.
Actually I was violent to my children today. First, I told them we had to leave the playground – and yes, we went to the playground in the first place! – and then we biked home, part of the way along streets. This is exactly like that one time that drunk girl tried to beat me over the head with a beer bottle. Exactly equivalent.
Oh,come on now, rq. EnlightmentLiberal never said that they were the same in severity!!! Y’know, they’re just exactly the same in all the important ways that would influence a decision to call it violence. But still, not in severity. So he’s totally not equivocating the two.
It seems that everybody’s favorite group of science deniers, Answers In Genesis, published an especially enlightened article about Trans people.
You know it is real well researched because the argument boils down to, the big sky daddy invented gender for a reason!
Republicans got to Republican:
https://medium.com/a-balanced-budget-for-a-stronger-america/strengthening-health-and-retirement-security-6709b31481ac
The Budget Committee came up with the Republican budget plan. And what is the plan? Froth at the mouth about the evils of “Obamacare”, including frequent accusations that it “raided” Medicare, and saying that the budget plan will completely defund Obamacare. Which is like saying “I know we couldn’t repeal Obamacare via voting in the actual legislative process, so let’s just write it out of the budget instead”. Typically Republican way of dealing with things.
Though this article puts the problems way better than I could
How the fuck do people take Republicans seriously? As anything but the most cynically evil or ridiculously incompetent among the already demonized class known as politicians? I don’t get it.
Crip Dyke
Well clearly you’re just being dishonest again, because I clearly meant exactly what I meant, and if you didn’t read my comment the way that I meant it, well, then I clearly can’t have a good-faith conversation with you anymore.
On the other hand, I did mean to equivocate, so you’re right in calling out my equations.
And these mosquitoes are being violent.
I handed a paper to a co-worker knowing full well that paper cuts happen.
I passed by a glass jar of orange juice in the store…
…and I DIDN’T wrap it in bubble-wrap!
I took a taxi this morning even though I know that car accidents happen.
I grated all the zest off a lemon, squoze all the juice and threw what was left in the compost.
Everyone here is so violent. I’m wrapping myself in cotton batting and canvas for safety.
Damn it, now I’m hot and uncomfortable. I think I’ve violenced myself.
Grewgills
Since it’s possible to suffocate when wrapped in cotton and canvas, you are definitely violencing yourself.
+++
I just put some water on to boil, even though I know scalding is a thing.
chigau #218
Thank you :)
_______________
Giliell #219
I’m sorry, but I wasn’t following this discussion closely. Where did EnlightenmentLiberal say that?
AlexanderZ
At 192, esp. referencing xir previous comment 135, and people’s response to it. Commenter issues with the problematic example are dealt with the statement:
The relevant phrase actually reads ‘not worth replying to’ rather than ‘not worth listening to’, but I don’t think it makes that much of a difference.
Are hiccups violence? The certainly hurt like the dickens , though I can honestly say that I didn’t intend to have hiccups. Ouch .. ouch … ouch
I am scared to drink water – people have been known to drown in that stuff!
I certainly was violent to my students today – I handed out packets of paper (papercuts!) for their term projects that require them to do math ! (I know that they consider being expected to do math some form of violence – the complain about it all the time.)
rq #235
Wow. Thanks for the reply. I’m speechless. I’m currently catching up with the previous Tdome page and I thought EL‘s problem was just fuzzy thinking and bad very communication. I did not expect this level of assholeness (assholitude? assholery? there really needs to be a word for this*) from EL. This is simply over the top.
* Don’t say “violence”!
AlexanderZ @237:
I vote for ‘assholery’ (I’ve been using that as category of posts on my blog for several months now).
@rq
Saying you don’t see any positions or arguments that need to be responded to (because you think you have already addressed all arguments present) is not the same as saying rape victims aren’t worth listening to. Not even close.
EL @192:
Groupthink?
What groupthink?
All I see are individuals from across the planet who agree, by and large:
• that your communication skills in the last week leave a lot to be desired
• that you’ve been condescending, smug in your arrogance, and ignorant
• that you’ve defined ‘violence’ so broadly as to apply to any action that a human being can take (something you’ve not addressed as yet)
*That* constitutes groupthink?
Or is it groupthink bc we all refuse to see the ::coughcough:: wisdom of your enlightened (and liberal) words?
Sooo, given that you pestered me about the is kidnapping violence bullshit, howzabout you answer my original question which got this whole ball of wax rolling: Where did you acquire your bizarre definition of ‘government’?
For a follow-up question, how about answering Crip Dyke’s query (paraphrased): Where did you get your bizarre definition of ‘violence’?
NEW THREAD.