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Phi for All

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Everything posted by Phi for All

  1. Perhaps this can be attributed to American hubris on the right? AFAICT, many on the right are proud of only watching one news source. They don't stray from those sources, taking them almost like gospel. So they actually believe the left wrecks the economy while the right fixes it, despite the Clinton surplus that Bush II destroyed, and the job Obama did with the economy after Bush II ended in a huge recession, and of course TFG made history with how bad he messed up a booming Obama economy. The American right seems inordinately proud of closing their minds.
  2. And this is the mistake many folks make when trying to interpret complex issues by using single words to define them. I know a LOT of people who think the way you do, that "liberal" means "anything goes" and conservative means "responsible". I also know a LOT of people who think conservative means "fearful" and "ignorant" and "stuck in the mud", while liberal means "progressive" and "hopeful" and "forward-thinking". This is the problem with using these terms with each other. It's hard to know how a person has been influenced when they use such broad terms. I'm not sure hubris is the problem in the US. In trying to focus on capitalism to the exclusion of any other ownership principles, we're allowing our leadership to pretend to care about us when their re-elections are really up to big corporations. We may find it hard to give up what we think we've earned, but I don't think it's out of pride. If the American public had any pride at all we'd gather to stop these stains on humanity from exploiting us even further (the CEO of Kellogg's recently claimed that if we're worried about the high price of food, we should eat Frosted Flakes for dinner). We make very little investment in The People. Everything goes to keep big corporations in business, including bailing them out with tax dollars when they mess up. I think we should focus on better social spending and representing the will of The People, and maybe then we can better assess whether this is a matter of hubris or not.
  3. Where were you all those years women and minorities were suing Microsoft for gender and racial based inequities and getting nowhere? https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/4/11/18304536/microsoft-women-discrimination-harassment-complaints
  4. Don't forget many of our prisons are run by private concerns, where every cell filled means profit. Corporations get tax credits to use prison labor that exceeds what they pay the prisoners. There are so many private interests involved that justice always takes a back seat to profit. Neutrality hasn't been a concern in US courts since the Civil War.
  5. No, but then nothing I said had anything to do with a Biden voter preferring TFG.
  6. ... and this seems quite a bit different, unless you think tarot cards are a modern technology. I also think being concerned about one's health is different than wishing you were rich. In discussion, I'm not a big fan of "Your question is dumb" responses. Why treat someone's concern that way when you can provide some evidence that may help?
  7. ! Moderator Note Please define who you mean when you say "West". Are you talking about NATO countries? Also, "listen" is rather vague, but "support" is better. As it is, your title is vague and meaningless. Also also, if this is just going to be another thread where you insult other countries without actually providing any evidence for your arguments, let me know so I can close it quickly. We want science discussion among adults.
  8. ! Moderator Note And that ends the civil part of this discussion. Thread closed, please don't open topics with arguments you aren't prepared to defend. We usually look for evidence instead of playground games.
  9. I hope that one isn't held on the same weekend as the "Focus on the laws broken no matter who breaks them" convention. That would be awkward.
  10. I agree, it was definitely a missed opportunity, especially since she sort of bridges the gap for a lot of folks interested in a tough-on-crime stance. And that's where I lose interest in her, since I think it's important for the US to get out of the prison-for-profit quagmire that currently makes our entire legal system suspect. She has a plan for prison reform, but most of the problems are at the state level so I'm not sure how effective it will be. I don't really know her stance on police reform yet, but that's something else she'll feel a great deal of pressure from the states on. And isn't that weird? Why would anyone want a president/PM of either sex that they couldn't describe as "strong"? Is it better for a woman president/PM to be inoffensive and proper? You only kept a female PM for a few months. Was she "strong", or was she a "proper" PM? We're almost there in the US wrt electing a woman president, but it's our conservatives who stand in the way. They still revel in their misogyny and love to pound their chests, but they're also having daughters and the dim recesses of their ape brains are telling them there's a problem with the way they've been behaving. But the age of the candidates, that's what we should be focused on...
  11. Great example! A woman tells it like she sees it (and we all saw the "basket of deplorables" attack the Capitol, right?) and gets labeled "nasty", but TFG gets props for insults that don't even hit the mark. Well, it's not my assumption, but I do think many Dems today don't believe one of the female candidates can stand up to TFG. They may be conflating them with Hillary, or they may feel women in general are more vulnerable targets on the campaign trail, but I haven't seen much support from Dems for anyone but Biden. So we're stuck arguing between too much experience and too little experience, but the ones with all the experience are also heavily invested in our current political system. If we want to see any meaningful change, I don't think it's age we should be looking at. I'd vote for Bernie Sanders again and he's 2 years older than Biden. The rest of the candidates from both sides are already beholden to the billionaires.
  12. Did you put stronger in quotes because their best candidates are women? I think that's how many people think of Harris, Whitmer, Klobuchar, and Warren: they can't beat TFG because they're women, and TFG has already beaten a woman. I also think the DNC thinks this way. Despite being more liberal towards women, they'd still rather have Biden or Newsome or Cooper because they're men, and men appear "strong" when they're confident, whereas the perception is usually that confident women are "pushy" or "troublesome" or even "nasty". More important to me than age is rejecting corporate PAC donations. It would be great to have citizen representation in this country again. It's been so long.
  13. ! Moderator Note You were warned about posting these videos instead of engaging in discussion. Do it again and I will ban your account.
  14. ! Moderator Note This is a science discussion forum, not a blog, not a recruitment center, not a pulpit. Stay if you want to discuss this topic, but please don't soapbox about it or spam us with links. This thread is closed.
  15. ! Moderator Note Please stop posting videos to make your points. This thread is called YOUR THOUGHTS on Islam, so please give us yours. Also, it would help a great deal if you could be less glib and vague when trying to discuss complicated subjects where the participants might already be struggling to understand the language. Quoting comedy sketches is particularly unhelpful wrt discussion as well.
  16. ! Moderator Note Please stop posting videos to make your points. The thread is called YOUR THOUGHTS on Islam, so please give us those, and don't expect anybody to watch hours of video to figure out what your arguments are.
  17. Here's a similar thread from a few years back: Round rock, makes a rattling noise
  18. ! Moderator Note That's not what we do here. We're a science discussion forum. You need to find a publisher.
  19. Go into your Leg settings and turn on Fibulove and Patellamour....
  20. WalidKhan has been suspended for a week for continuing to spam links to a commercial site after being warned.
  21. Try not to be embarrassed by this. Many people these days don't understand complex subjects and end up making asinine statements like this. Blame your government for the education system!
  22. Not that the individual level has much to do with the aims of corporate America, but I sold products on commission, and I/we wanted my wife to stay at home for a few years after my daughter was born, so yes, making as much money as I possibly could was my primary goal. I just can't pretend things haven't changed since I entered the workforce. Today's corporate greed is worse than anything we've ever seen. Young people are hamstrung compared to how it was when I was their age, and it keeps getting worse. We can't solve many of The People's problems when We have no political representation, and so many folks are struggling to make the corporations even wealthier while slowly dying themselves. It's time to stop letting them whitewash all the corruption (which they've become so good at, since 93% of all paint and paintbrushes used in the US are made using prison slave labor).
  23. I disagree. Every business model I've ever seen has the goal of "making money by doing/making X". They may also have other goals, but the need to maintain an increasing profit margin overshadows all else. It overshadows any moral or ethical considerations that doesn't revoke their corporate charters, and it practically guarantees that stupid, destructive decisions will be made in the name of profit when the choice between money and doing the right thing inevitably comes up. And who's funding many of the private space ventures? I agree with this wholeheartedly. Again, I disagree. Any modern US examples of "public enterprises" have been so tainted by private concerns that they're unrecognizable from past efforts that didn't rely on them. And I think public endeavors can be more easily designed to remove corruption and greed from the process, as long as we can keep politicians and lobbyists in check.
  24. Exploring the space around us is going to require a better motive than naked greed and profit. Find me a corporation that puts anything above profit and we can talk about them. OTOH, when the focus is on exploration and advancement, and all the actors are using the same basic script to regulate their behavior, then perhaps we can avoid taking all our bad habits into space. Greece just signed on to The Artemis Accords, dedicated to the peaceful uses of outer space. Hopefully the world as a whole can realize that in space, cooperation and reason beats competition and aggression.
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