Phi for All

I think the same mindset that refuses to be vaccinated out of fear of X (chips, autism, Jewish space lasers, etc) causes these same folks to view wearing masks and isolating as an affront to their freedom. A guy asked me in the store the other day why I was still wearing a mask after they lifted the mandates. I told him I'd still be wearing it for COVID 19, but in this instance it's because I have a spring cold with a cough that I didn't want to spread to others. He just nodded at me, and had nothing to say. I think he was prepared to tell me how dumb it was to wear the mask for COVID-19, but he couldn't say the same about the spring crud. I think he realized he didn't want to catch it, and I hope it made him think better about wearing masks to prevent the spread of unwanted contagions. And communities have been performing successful draconian lockdowns on plagues and viruses for centuries. I'm not sure what makes some modern folks so blasé about pandemic illness and death. Do we see too much of it on TV? Have we become numb to it? I'm so appalled when I hear someone defending a relative who refused to get vaccinated, caught COVID-19, ended up in the hospital, and eventually died on a respirator. They sound proud that their mama/daddy/sibling went to their grave standing by their convictions, and they'll also tell you they don't plan to get the jab either. So tell me how to make universal vaxing seem smart when some folks think they're smarter by avoiding it?

Too late, you did that when you chose to link to politically biased reports. It's quite clear to me he DID read the assessments, and used the erroneous stances and faulty conclusions to form his opinion, not simply because the researchers use scare tactic language and GOP talking points.

My TikTok feed is mostly black women like Lizzo singing About Damn Time. I haven't seen a single one (other than the woman in koti's link) misrepresenting this appointment as an affirmative action hire, so I wonder how prevalent this stance is in the black community. She's got her opinion and I think it's wrong. If she wants to ask Judge Jackson whether she was "handed" her job because she's a black woman, I would encourage the young woman to do so. Then again, I've never seen a definition of "affirmative action" that wasn't crying about outright discrimination against white males, so perhaps it means something different to you.

It's challenging but interesting as well. Along the lines of removing "oriental" from your lexicon, I found out a few weeks ago that I've been abusing the Hindi greeting "Namaste" ever since I first heard it. Apparently some Americans went to India to learn yoga from the masters there, and brought the word back but used it poorly. It's supposed to be reserved for addressing the yogis, an honorific term, one that shouldn't be used for just anyone. People from India cringe when they hear us say it along the lines of "Have a nice day". I feel a bit silly now, like I've been mistakenly calling you "Your Majesty", and thinking you'd appreciate it.

Should this excuse you from pronouncing my name right, or learning any of my other preferences? If you were purposely offensive, we'd be having a completely different conversation. You gave strawman-worthy examples so you could show how easy "political correctness" can go too far. What we're talking about here, in this tangent to the Jackson SCOTUS appointment, is the disrespect shown to people when you mispronounce their name, or refer to their heritage by some offensive colonial term they've been forced to live with for decades. We're living in a time when our human capabilities for communication and cooperation are at their highest point. We're being exposed to many new ideas, peoples, traditions, behaviors, and processes. People are asking you to care about more than yourself, and part of that is simple respect for their ways. As more diverse people gain seats of power, it should be important to us that all can find representation and dignity.

And that's because you don't realize how offensive you can be to others, and instead of learning, you keep going on and on and on. Sure, it's a bunch of little things, but it's not that hard. You might want to start by realizing that it's relationship correctness, and has NOTHING to do with politics, unless you object to others asking for something different than what you asked for. Don't be like the asshats in right-wing leadership here in the US, who have whole staffs full of people who brief them on everything under the sun, yet still seem to have blatant trouble pronouncing any name that isn't white Anglo-Saxon Protestant in origin. Those dumbfucks can learn enough respect to get someone's name right, but they play to their dumbfuck bases and when right-minded people object, they claim to be victims of political correctness. Most of the Republicans questioning Ketanji Brown Jackson made no attempt to get her name right. People not fit to shine her shoes disrespected her that way. Correctness is much more respectful.

Faith is believing completely without any evidence whatsoever, so it's no mystery why nobody can move mountains with it. Using trust rather than faith, I never believe anything 100%, so I always have some leeway for skepticism and doubt. Still, the knowledge I gain from trusted sources is far more reliable than anything somebody wants me to believe through faith. Faith asks us to use our strongest form of belief on things that have nothing observable to support their existence.

I think it's because certain unscrupulous behavior is favored by the right to the point where it's expected of them, even lauded (use your pussy-grabbing power, step on the dark neck, hostile takeovers, ruthless beats nice, raise prices, lower taxes, guzzle gas, buy more guns, most people aren't worthy). If you also have the Christian god on your side, you get to treat people horribly if you don't like them, and do it in his name so it's legitimate. I also think many white people who peg themselves to the right of others are very afraid of how their own behavior might be judged in the future, and they hide that fear by objecting to things like the optics of letting your constituents know about your choice of nominations for SCOTUS. I can see where someone who's been more of an antagonist than an ally to black people might be afraid of giving them any kind of power.

Why do you think I don't want them to be less ignorant? Trying to show a better way to those who think the way you do about this SCOTUS appointment has gotten 11 pages of pushback, and you're not even close to the most toxic of your kind. Why do you want us to embrace these psychopaths like brothers? Why do you think we should accept the hostility and degrading behavior of racists and homophobes? Why do you insist on framing them simply as "opposition" when it's becoming more and more clear they're tired of not getting their way fairly so they want to burn our democracy down? Why do you think this is simple "butting heads" when this authoritarian approach to race has already ripped the US apart and left our allies vulnerable to even more authoritarian regimes? What evangelism, Trump, and QAnon have done to this country is criminal, and the mindset of the extremists that believe in them doesn't need coddling or acceptance, imo. There's nothing about it I think deserves to be salvaged, do you?

What if the "better way" involves NOT trying to unite with lying racist homophobes who don't believe in democracy anymore? Why isn't it noble to stand against oppressive, slaver mentality any more? Why would you think lying racist homophobes would look at anything to their left as "an example"? Aren't they too busy looking to Jordan Peterson for answers to everything?

Erector sets are still made by Meccano, still all metal, and have new models based on new technology. I believe Meccano makes an erector drone you can fly. They have animatronics and computer chips in them now.

And seeing men with glowing blue eyes during the day is common in both the Amazon and the Netflix regions, where people binge-watch Chris Pine movies instead of working.

I thought he said, "It's not a tomb!"

"I used to be a huge heavy metal fan."

For obligate cacaonivores, it's a question of whether they're red or dark meat.

I haven't had the willpower to leave the M&Ms in the ground once I plant them, so I can't verify this.

The same store that sells the phones and laptops that will disrupt the plane taking off and landing.

You have it ass-backwards. They didn't establish the thresholds first. They experimented until they found the thresholds, and they also list some factors that merit extra consideration. You make it sound like every single doctor for the last 200 years is incompetent, but the article is pointing out "pitfalls that merit consideration" when confirming the death of a brain stem. IOW, the thresholds have been tested in order to find them. The literature is documentation of the experiments, because that's how science works. The literature doesn't get written beforehand. Who considers this patient dead after a single instant? Not any doctor I know. According to you, they've all been incompetent for centuries. I knew you were going to try to hand-waive your way out of this. You're a waste of time and resources, and I'm sorry I tried to help you with your claims.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK551584/ I'm going to ask you now, how many scientific studies and reports do I have to show before you acknowledge that a LOT of research has gone into when someone is clinically dead, and that your claims ignore the evidence that show them to be false? So far, you just hand-waive away what you don't like.

You've ignored every single dispute that's been supplied for the last 5 pages. I don't think you understand enough about the subject to recognize a valid dispute. Every time you've made a claim that's disputed, it's followed by an explanation (i.e. why this isn't the Lazarus syndrome, why calling it a syndrome doesn't make it a medical certainty). The literature says that waiting 5-10 minutes after cessation of resuscitation is recommended, so don't you think more time was spent at some point in order to arrive at the 5-10 minute threshold? Another argument that hasn't been presented yet is simple probability. With so many people having lived and died on Earth, if your claim had any truth to it, probability would ensure that at least a percentage of people we thought had died would come back to life inexplicably. Part of the power of science is predictability like this. It you're right, we should be seeing evidence of it, but we don't.

The latest I've heard is that she and Macron are on course to have a runoff election. She's less than 5% behind him at this point. My impression of the French is that they won't let their ultra-rich take back undue control, but Le Pen's politics are much like Trump's, in that they're designed to erode democratic principals and make it easier to divide the electorate in other ways. I enjoyed watching participation in their election process while visiting because so many of their citizens are political. They've always had a strong left and right so compromise left them with politicians like Macron. It's a real shame to see that tilt so dramatically that they'd put Le Putin in the presidency. And she wouldn't care about what the EU says about leaving NATO and buying Russian arms, because she'll probably start organizing FREXIT as soon as she can.

Yes.

That's why I went on to give examples of how our views determine how we handle death. So your question is answered, yes?

It's no secret she loves Putin. Her party borrowed 9M Euros from a Russian bank to fund local elections in 2014: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/08/vladimir-putin-viktor-orban-eu-marine-le-pen If she could withdraw from NATO, she'd be forced to buy weapons from Russian arms dealers to plug the gaps in French defense. Like Boris in the UK, Le Pen seems to want to ruin publicly funded programs in favor of capitalist opportunities for the wealthy. As an American, it looks all too familiar. Russian will certainly use international hackers to pollute the French elections with praise for Le Putin.

The process of death is the same all over, but how we view death has a cultural context. Muslims believe their god ordains the time of death for each individual, and other cultures believe death can follow death unless certain traditions are observed (iirc, Russians cover their mirrors and stop their clocks when someone dies to keep the living safe). Society's rules don't have to follow scientific methodology. Most of those rules on death concern the transfer of possessions, public safety, and investigating irregularities. Science isn't always the template societies use. Btw - if you plan on copying your own previous posts and pasting them as replies to anything I've said (the way you just did with Peterkin), you can enjoy the conversation without me. I didn't join this discussion for the intellectual laziness.