[-] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 64 points 9 months ago

We just want to live god-fearing lives and raise good families.

And the main difference between us is that I don't really care if you do that, while your friends will label my future family with two dads as a gross perversion that calls for state intervention in order to prevent the terrible abuse of a child having two loving parents that happen to both be men, as if it's not abusive to raise a child under the terror of thinking that they're always being watched and will be tortured for all eternity if they wind up being attracted to the same gender. But ultimately, that's your life and I'll leave you to it. I'd just ask for the same courtesy.

[-] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 70 points 10 months ago

That would require getting elected, which would require them being broadly popular.

[-] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 78 points 10 months ago

Hell, he literally stole money from another Republican Congressman and his wife.

You almost have to respect it.

[-] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 67 points 11 months ago

It's also a very deliberate strategy to give a little bit of space for people who've identified as Republicans in the past but refuse to follow Trump. He's saying that you don't have to identify as a Democrat, or even necessarily drop the Republican party as a whole, but rather you simply have to recognize the obvious fact that Trump represents a major departure from the Republican party of the past and refuse to go along with it.

Of course, the part that isn't being said is that the old Republican party is well and truly dead and buried, but speaking diplomatically like that is very good politics and can help him net some more moderate votes in tighter margin states.

[-] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 89 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Sure, criticize away, and you absolutely should. It's just important to not get so carried away that you wind up contributing to an outcome that you openly know to be objectively worse at the ballot box.

[-] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 102 points 11 months ago

Let this be a reminder to anyone who hasn't liked Biden's handling of the Gaza situation that this is the alternative.

[-] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 85 points 11 months ago

Seriously. Trump is advocating turning Gaza into a parking lot.

And it's not like Democrats have exactly been shy of their general support of Israel, if you've paid any attention at all. They just also happen to acknowledge that Palestinians are people, unlike most Republicans.

[-] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 552 points 11 months ago

https://medium.com/brain-labs/why-spotify-struggles-to-make-money-from-music-streaming-ba940fc56ebd

For anyone wanting to rage at Spotify, I'd remind you that Spotify has never actually turned a profit. They lose money on every single paid user, and even more on free users. Tl;dr of the article (sorry for the account-wall) is that Spotify is contractually obligated to give around 70% of every dollar it makes to the labels, who then eat most of it and give a few crumbs to the artists. If you want to support artists, buy their merch, their physical albums, and go to their shows. If they're independent, they may actually see some non-trivial revenue from streaming as well.

Spotify may also be contractually restricted in what level of access they can offer for free - licensing can be very messy - and they also do need to create enough incentive to actually make the paid tier worth it. Given that a month of access to essentially all music ever costs about as much as a single CD did back in the day, it feels like pretty incredible value to me, personally. Yes, you can of course always pirate if you want to deal with the hassle of that, but you should at least keep it in the back of your mind that, if everyone did that, we wouldn't have any music to enjoy at all. If the cost of streaming or buying music is genuinely a burden, I wouldn't blame you that much for pirating, but if you can afford it, I do think the value really is there, if only to avoid the sheer hassle of pirating and managing a local library. And if you really think that streaming is just uniquely corrupt and terrible, CDs haven't gone anywhere.

But if you can easily afford to pay for music and you still refuse to, at least have the honesty to just admit that you want to get things for free and you don't care about anyone involved in creating it getting paid for it, without dressing it up as some kind of morally righteous anti-capitalist crusade. It's normal to be annoyed about having to pay for things; we all are, and we all want to get things for free. Just admit that instead of pretending your true motivation is anything deeper.

[-] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 76 points 1 year ago

Strictly speaking, it's the governing body of Gaza, which hasn't held elections in well over a decade. The West Bank is governed by the party Fatah, which is much less militant.

There is, however, the awkward truth that the West Bank has also not held elections in a long time, precisely because Hamas would probably win them.

[-] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 71 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

For anyone who's not aware, some of the "other shit" is an extensive series of screenshots of texts where he's soliciting sexual interactions with teenage girls. Such excerpts include:

  • “Why are you such jailbait? What’s wrong with you in that regard? You should just grow older you dumb bitch.”
  • "Is it cool being a jailbait?"
  • “Does the FBI follow you around arresting all the men you sleep with?”

https://humanevents.com/2023/01/25/read-the-texts-ousted-rick-and-morty-co-creator-justin-roiland-allegedly-to-sent-young-fans

Just so we're clear that this isn't a "petty jealous ex" kind of situation.

[-] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 104 points 1 year ago

I really think this narrative is counterproductive. It's not like corporations produce greenhouse gasses because they think it's fun. They're doing it to produce goods that people want at the absolute minimal price possible.

No corporation is going to choose more environmentally friendly practices out of the goodness of their own hearts unless those practices are cheaper. And given that that is very rarely the case, we have to look at things like carbon taxes to actually price in the externalities of climate damage. But that is going to increase the prices of some goods, and that requires a level of political will that has proven very difficult to come by. "Just make corporations pay" to fix things, whether that's a carbon tax or taxes on oil company executive pay or dividends or whatever else the proposal may be is always going to mean "increase prices to compensate for climate-related externalities".

That doesn't necessarily mean that all costs of addressing climate change must directly fall on consumers; government subsidies to reduce the costs of environmentally sustainable practices can also be extremely beneficial. But ultimately, this is a problem that we've all created, and we're all going to have to be part of solving it. Blaming corporations, even if partially accurate, doesn't actually get us any closer to solving things.

[-] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 90 points 1 year ago

People left Facebook because it got overwhelmed with their parents and grandparents, not because they ever cared about privacy.

26

The justices settled a question left open in 2018: whether businesses open to the public and engaged in expression may refuse to serve customers based on religious convictions.

view more: next ›

BraveSirZaphod

joined 1 year ago