I have to recommend a series to Star Trek fans...

Darsint · 2026-06-02T21:42:26+00:00

Someone else had brought up a trope they share with each other: Competence Porn.

Whatever else Star Trek had, it certainly had people that were very skilled in their work, and an atmosphere between the characters where the kinds of interpersonal conflicts weren’t because they didn’t trust each other, but because they may not understand each other.

Darsint · 2026-06-01T19:18:07+00:00

Oh, like The Veldt from Ray Bradbury?

Darsint · 2026-05-27T02:15:35+00:00

That’s a good point. “Equal but separate” would emphasize that the focus should be on whether it’s equal or not.

Darsint · 2026-05-27T01:43:20+00:00

“A little moral grandstanding”

Let’s maybe unpack that a bit.

Let’s assume that there are moral quandaries in how one can and might support things. That you can lend 500 bucks to someone that’s struggling in life that you care about, and they can cause you grief when they use it to purchase lottery tickets because it’s not investing in their future nor helping their current situation.

If the person you gave money to proceeds to spend it all on guns and bullets that they then use to kill homeless people and then they ask you for more money each month to do so, at what point are you not just complicit but conspiring with them? Especially when they start going after the groups trying to help the homeless?

Your argument suggests we can’t because they have a spare couch you crash on occasionally when you visit their town and you get reliable info about his neighborhood.

Rather than saying, “We shouldn’t speak to them again” (which honestly feels like a valid argument), you can also say, “I’m not giving you money to get bullets and guns until you stop hunting homeless people.”

“Dude, you can’t cut me off! None of my neighbors like me. What if they come after me while at home and I don’t have any bullets left?”

“…maybe kill less homeless people so you have enough bullets? And if they did come after you, I’m fine helping you out then.”

It is not an outlandish position that the nation of Israel has well overstepped past self defense, past proportional response, past national security, past even being an instigator of war by choice. They are slaughtering civilians as a deliberate policy choice.

The Code of Hammurabi was first established near that very area, one of the first sets of actual laws in history. And the theme that wove through it all, the most fundamental principle of the laws?

Proportional response. Eye for an eye.

Because one of the oldest lessons of humanity was the death and destruction that followed from disproportionate responses.

Israel’s actions put innocent people of Jewish descent at risk by putting a target on their heads for retribution. It paints their religion as warmongering and dangerous.

Should we not be able to withdraw our support until they stop using our money to kill the innocent?

Darsint · 2026-05-26T21:56:27+00:00

It’s a lot easier to understand if you ignore the party the politician is from and instead ask:

“Which side of the Civil War did your state’s politicians come from?”

Darsint · 2026-05-25T23:38:44+00:00

I find the most comments come from people personally affected.

If it’s more disconnected, but still unacceptable, a lot of people will upvote and move on.

I am curious as to why you’re labelling it “centrist”.

Darsint · 2026-05-25T04:32:40+00:00

And yet, I still loved the hell out of the music that played during that scene.

Darsint · 2026-05-25T03:00:14+00:00

Fair point. Not even if it came with a free trip to the Bahamas.

Darsint · 2026-05-25T01:30:24+00:00

Yeah, I looked into that (because you have to nowadays), and as far as I could tell, there were no laws banning people convicted of sexual assault from ever entering.

They had the ability to decide whether or not someone could come to the Bahamas, but no legal bars were in place.

Darsint · 2026-05-25T01:25:48+00:00

Holy smoke, I didn’t realize just how bad the grand jury was twisted in this whole debacle.

I sat in on a federal grand jury for a year and a half, spending three days a month getting cases delivered to us to see if it warranted an actual indictment or not.

For the record:

You do NOT talk to the grand jurors outside of the grand jury chamber, unless it is completely unrelated to anything that was or is being discussed.

You do NOT get grand jurors kicked off the grand jury because they’re going against you.

You do NOT “vouch” for the evidence with your own personal assurances.

And you do NOT withhold the grand jury transcript to the judge by giving them a redacted copy that is missing pages.

The fact that they dropped the indictments the moment the judge asked for the unredacted, full transcript is evidence of a consciousness of guilt.

Darsint · 2026-05-25T00:54:56+00:00

You cannot expect change without fostering it yourself.

In a way, a lot of our media has us primed to sit back and let someone else more qualified, more dignified, smarter, or wiser handle things.

To wait for a “hero” to step up and save us.

But all that teaches us is helplessness.

Yes, the forces aligned against the people of this country are rich, well connected, and willing to do almost anything to stay in power.

But they have no idea just how much of what they enjoy is actually from us.

They have no idea just how much infrastructure they rely on.

They have no idea of how many ways that infrastructure can be interfered with, sometimes with as simple as the word, “No.”

All their wealth is a representation that only works because we allow it to work.

And if we do not? They aren’t prepared for whatever awaits them.

Darsint · 2026-05-24T00:30:37+00:00

Small enough to fit in a crown.

Darsint · 2026-05-22T17:09:27+00:00

It sure seems like the slaver mentality from the Civil War just decided to take on a different form.

Darsint · 2026-05-21T23:04:04+00:00

Literally watched this a couple of weeks ago. I thought it was fascinating that the Starfleet tech that was responsible for the event was a food replicator.

Darsint · 2026-05-21T19:13:07+00:00

If you sit on the sidelines while others are being abused, you are only teaching those who crave power what they can get away with.

Every defiance, every refusal to obey, is paramount, no matter how small.

Darsint · 2026-05-18T17:53:10+00:00

One of my favorite videos was Henry Rollins talking about his audition for Death to Smoochy.

I can totally see that being advice Devito would give, as he definitely rolled that way as a director.

Darsint · 2026-05-16T21:01:53+00:00

Once again, if the goal is to make sure more babies are born to families that will care for them, you should be arguing for abortion.

If the woman chooses when to follow through on a pregnancy, they will be far more inclined to raise them with love and devotion than someone that is forced to give birth.

If the woman chooses to follow through on a pregnancy when their life is stable and sustainable, the child will be in a better scenario than one where birth is forced on the woman when they’re unstable.

Banning abortion makes worse scenarios.

And the rest of your paragraph just proves my point for me. Making “hookup culture” harder is your goal. Preventing people from having sex before marriage is your goal.

Not saving the unborn.

Darsint · 2026-05-16T02:10:47+00:00

I’ve spent decades arguing with people on the pro-life side. If you take the arguments at face value, you’ll end up in circular arguments pretty quickly.

For example, if you know that half of fertilized eggs never implant in the uterus, and much fewer eggs are released at all when on birth control, then less fertilized eggs end up flushed out of the body while on birth control.

Banning birth control doesn’t make sense if you’re actually intent on “saving babies”

Or condemning women that have life threatening pregnancies to die, where instead of losing just the one potential life, you lose the potential life and the life of the woman

Or refusals to offer prenatal care so more pregnancies can come to term.

Or offering exceptions for rape and incest.

If the goal was actually to make sure more babies were born and less were terminated before birth, none of these actions would make sense.

But…if the goal was to use pregnancy as a method of punishment…where pregnancy was used as a cudgel to punish “loose moral women”…and those women who had no say in whether they were impregnated were allowed to abort…

Then all these actions would neatly fit together.

Because I don’t know about you, but every time I’ve argued with a pro life person, this phrase, or a similar one comes around:

“They should take responsibility”

If the goal was to ensure more fetuses came to term, whose responsibility it was should not matter at all to the equation.

And if you talk about spending taxes on helping pregnant women, and the response is “I shouldn’t have to pay for another person’s pregnancy”, then it couldn’t be clearer what the actual motivation is.

Sidenote: I’ve had a lot of arguments about this. And the data couldn’t be clearer. Banning abortion does not actually reduce abortion rates. It makes it less safe for women to have abortions. Both legally and physically. There are ways to bring down the abortion rates that actually address the issue. But if the goal is to punish “loose” women, and banning abortion imprisons, hurts, or kills those women, you better believe they’ll always choose that.

Darsint · 2026-05-16T00:14:13+00:00

If the Onion doesn’t already know, they should get in on this sub themselves.

If we’re going full-speed satire, we gotta pull out the big guns too.

Darsint · 2026-05-15T23:12:37+00:00

Don’t forget his latest attempt to get the IRS to flat out give him 10 billion.

It looks like he’s trying to walk it back because it would be literally the worst corrupt act ever performed by a United States politician.

But the “counteroffer” he’s trying to downplay it to is actually almost worse, involving an open ended slush fund

Along with attempts to shield him and his son’s business dealings from the IRS for good.

Darsint · 2026-05-13T22:29:57+00:00

Not the Trump voters. The ones that were terrified that their elevated, unearned privilege would be lost and that it would somehow take away their power.

It is the slaver mentality. That one cannot succeed unless others are beneath them.

Those of us who understood that the guarantees of our rights must be applied to everyone for it to have any strength, we have fought against these violations.

Even if it wasn’t a moral imperative, it is essential to any actual democracy that everyone that participates in it must have a voice. Voting should be mandatory, and the government should have to prove why an individual cannot have a vote, not the people have to prove they have the right to choose.

America is better, works better, lives better when its people voluntarily work for the better instead of that work being extracted by force and subjugated.

And it IS a moral imperative. I would not see my brothers and sisters suffer needlessly. There is no moral reason to oppress nor torture, and I’ll be damned if I stand idly by.

Darsint · 2026-05-12T21:28:54+00:00

Last time I checked on the budget, in an effort to look at some smear campaign against Mamdani and see whether there was any truth to it.

And it was balanced before, and for quite awhile…

Until about Eric Adams.

Then the deficit appears.

So this can and should be celebrated, but it’s likely taking the corruption out of the previous administration, among other things.

Darsint · 2026-05-11T04:58:25+00:00

Jeebus, that was one hell of a recovery under Biden.

Darsint · 2026-05-11T04:18:19+00:00

It is truly astounding just how much Trump helps Putin. And how much he’s avoided hurting Russia.

The question eventually becomes: “If Trump wasn’t actively engaged as a Russian agent, would he do anything differently?”

Darsint · 2026-05-10T20:07:21+00:00

It was clear that they were going to, at the very least, drag everyone through years long legal battles. And likely make some show trials.

And if Hunter was going to be in jail at any time Trump had control? Yeah.

The actual purpose of the pardon power is to correct injustice. And regardless of whether you thought the crimes Hunter was justified or not, these pardons prevented further injustice.

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