iNow

Part of me wonders if Prigozhin may have been offered leadership/control over Belarus as part of his deal with Putin

Thank you for responding. One other part of my post was asking about mechanisms to determine "yes - reparations are appropriate" versus "no - reparations are not appropriate." I asked this bc you've been encouraging us all NOT to use skin color when making reparations decisions. I'm certainly open to using better metrics, but struggle to envision what those might be. Are you able to please elaborate on your thinking on this "threshold for reparations appropriateness" so I may better understand what alternative mechanisms may be workable here?

It does seem likely he’ll be found in a hotel room or airport lounge having died of “natural causes” in a soonish timeline.

Agreed, and it also seems to be a convergent trait across several distinct genetic lineages

I notice you never bothered elaborating on this despite being asked.

Are they no longer edible nor subject to standard predator optics when they’re no longer trawling the sand and are instead floating though much higher columns of water? The white bottom and dark tops were selected. Do you have an alternative / counter explanation for why this is so if it’s not simply to reduce visibility of prey animals in dark ocean conditions… conditions where down is darker and up is lighter?

This is the correct answer

Yes. Watching. Value of ruble c ashes last night. Putin military hunting him for coup attempt. He won’t be the last. When Putin is ultimately gone (whatever the cause and timing), we’ll be able to hear the sound of wind whooshing past us to fill the power vacuum.

Yes

You can perceive whatever you want, this persecution complex you seem to experience is limiting your ability to learn and correct errors in thinking. It's not personal when I or others correct you. It's a gift. I'm sharing with you ways you can be more accurate and better, and you're responding to that gift by pretending you've been attacked. That's a You problem, not a Me problem.

What mechanism would you propose then? We're dealing with often invisible unmeasurable daily injustices, both micro and macro-aggressions, due to how they look (skin color) and not who they are nor how they acted personally. We can perhaps detect and respond to some of those macro aggressions, but when considered in context and over the course of centuries, to me that seems horribly insufficient. If I stipulate your point, however, and wish to align with you to move this forward despite those concerns, it still remains unclear to me how we'd identify them. You suggest a different mechanism is needed here. What practical / useable / available mechanism might that be? I'm willing to be convinced, but honestly have my doubts any such mechanism exists. But I suspect you might acknowledge, at least if Mike were black here in the United States, that his daily experiences and the experiences of all of his similarly black family elders has been far different than yours as a white man if you also lived in the US. I'm sympathetic to the fact that you're not in the US, and I fully agree that our love and friendships ought to have nothing to do with skin color. I likewise agree that we must approach each other as individuals and not skin color based stereotypes. We are partners and allies there... But... the fact that you're NOT in the United States DOES mean that some of your points here miss important underlying truths about how the experience of black americans has been much different than the experience of non-black americans... and that's what most of us in the thread are talking about... the United States which has suffered from this original sin since our founding.

You certainly do No. It’s more complex than that.

Rest and hydration, but not necessarily in that order

I feel that way too, and I don’t find that marginal risk of marginal racist asshats to be sufficient reason for the rest of us not to proceed with a policy that would bring enormous benefits and equity of experience to enormous numbers of families.

Whereas others find the human tendency to see patterns where none actually exist and to draw false conclusions based on their limited exposure to the evidence landscape IS the simplest explanation.

I’ve been interpreting that 2nd part as “we need to end racism.” Where is my interpretation inaccurate? We ALL would like that, but it seems that only SOME of us see that as pollyannish or as unworkable, impossible, and almost useless to even attempt.

I see. Thank you. I believe there is not a single path which won’t lead some yahoos to feel MORE racist if reparations move forward. Therefore, I accept that some marginal increase in racism will happen and that it’s an acceptable risk given the overwhelming benefit reparations would provide. The tangible widespread benefits IMO far outweigh the small potential (even likely) social cost.

Ugh… It’s happened again! Another trans person… using the natural advantages of their biology went ahead and changed sex and beat another cis gendered person in competition. Why do we allow this to persist!?! https://gayexpress.co.nz/2023/06/worlds-first-trans-male-boxer-wins-third-fight-over-cis-man/ Born female

Reading this in context, it appears you thought my position was that we SHOULDN’T seek to end racism and racist policies moving forward and that we should instead ONLY focus on reparations? This is how you’ve perceived my stance in this thread, is that correct? That I want reparations but also for racism and racist policies to persist?

Makes sense. Why did you think I needed this explained to me?

It definitely did and likely still does. Doctors in the US were given huge bonuses by some pharmaceutical giants for prescribing more of a specific medication they produced and this exasperated the issue of opioid addition in the US

What, you mean the DeSantis controlled private army that he tripled in size despite the lack of obvious need or reason? Nah… nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

Or to ensure Putin and the Saudis and whomever else appoint him to be the figurehead of whatever extremist new world order they’re trying to buildout and supersede / circumvent local governance /NWOconspiracy /thisisbiggerthanUSA

In this case, we were discussing the elimination of racist thought so let’s stick with that There are better systemic approaches to dealing with homelessness than chunking a few bucks randomly their way. We’re talking about reparations for systemic racism in the past though, and that’s clearly a different subject. That’s part of the desired outcome, but is more of a stretch goal and isn’t the primary objective. It might assist in preventing new injuries but does nothing to heal existing past injuries (as we’ve already mentioned about 174 times already in this thread).