Phi for All

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.

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...

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.

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.

! Moderator Note You were warned about posting these videos instead of engaging in discussion. Do it again and I will ban your account.

! 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.

! 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.

! 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.

Here's a similar thread from a few years back: Round rock, makes a rattling noise

! Moderator Note That's not what we do here. We're a science discussion forum. You need to find a publisher.

Go into your Leg settings and turn on Fibulove and Patellamour....

WalidKhan has been suspended for a week for continuing to spam links to a commercial site after being warned.

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!

! Moderator Note This is a science DISCUSSION forum. What specifically do you wish to discuss?

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).

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.

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.

I think allowing anything offplanet that has as little compassion for humans as a corporation is a big mistake. We need to be able to trust them not to hold the whole planet hostage, and right now I sure don't. Ruthless business practices are so common on Earth, with corporations killing millions for profit, in "well thought out" campaigns of slavery, torture, and corruption. If they get offplanet and are allowed to keep those practices, there's nothing to stop them from gaining the upper hand for all time, nothing except their own altruism.

Not if we wake up and realize the private sector only needs to fool us one last time to get all the marbles. In the words of Grand Moff Tarkin, you're far too trusting.

I don't know what this means. I understand, and I'm asking where did you get the number for support services? Did you look it up independently, or was the contact number/link/email conveniently included in the email you received?

Was the number for "their support service" in the same email as the offer?

! Moderator Note Try this again, in the Speculations section, without religious references. As is, we aren't going to discuss this here, not at all.

OK. Thanks for just yawning instead of insulting me. I get the message either way.

Since we aren't aligned politically, are you implying none of our definitions have any meaning at all? By this reasoning, we'll never be able to define anything meaningfully. Are you sure about requiring our politics to align? Maybe our definition of "align" is different too. So how do you think making decisions for others has any meaning? My stance is that you can influence MigL's choices, you can berate him for things that make you uncomfortable, you can even work towards legislation that will force him to make more typical choices, but ultimately the decision to behave in a way that feels right is his, and his alone.

I hope you don't mind me isolating this sentiment. It sort of points out that "fit" isn't determined by anyone other than the wearer of the shoe. Style, color, and other aspects of the shoe can be judged by society, but how well the shoe fits the person is purely subjective. Perhaps one day we can view people going through a gender transformation the same way we view somebody walking around a shoe store trying on shoes to get the best fit possible. We don't assign some ulterior motives to those folks, we don't become convinced they're abnormal because they didn't choose the wingtips, and we don't assume they have some agenda wrt why their footwear choices diverge from the norm so much. On a side note, "If the shoe fits, wear it" is a specious phrase I'm going to make an effort to avoid from now on, like "Rule of thumb".