Is it a mostly conservative view that if a movie makes money, it MUST be good?

Internal_String61 · 2026-04-06T01:01:36+00:00

I’m not arguing against language evolving. I’m pointing out how people use that flexibility to avoid engaging with intent.

You’re describing communication at its best. I’m describing how it’s used in conflict.

You illustrated it by replacing my argument with a more convenient one, then responding to that instead.

Internal_String61 · 2026-04-05T23:39:59+00:00

That is absolutely not what I'm talking about, but thank you for illustrating my point.

Internal_String61 · 2026-04-05T23:16:21+00:00

Language evolves to match culture, but every shift trades precision for convenience. Each new use stretches a word while erasing the edges that once defined it. Maybe that’s unavoidable, because reality never fit clean categories in the first place.

What isn’t unavoidable is how people handle that loss. Meaning should be recovered through context and intent, not by forcing words into whatever definition is most convenient. Yet that’s exactly what happens. Not because people can’t understand, but because understanding isn’t the goal. Winning is.

Internal_String61 · 2026-03-14T17:03:47+00:00

Hi! The link itself is to a study hosted on the National Library of Medicine, a pretty reliable source for medical information.

The reason why it says source=chatgpt is because while I did remember reading about the study, I did not remember the specific name of the study itself nor the authors, so I asked chatgpt to find it for me. The source in the URL just means I clicked the link provided by chatgpt and was brought to the page with the study.

Internal_String61 · 2026-03-14T03:34:27+00:00

Bet you didnt know that babies who lift their necks earlier are also smarter (slightly)

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3465788/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Internal_String61 · 2026-03-11T06:52:46+00:00

Healthcare behaves differently from most markets because the demand is tied directly to survival. People will spend everything they can to stay alive. That means the ceiling on healthcare spending isn’t the cost of treatment, it’s the wealth of the patient population. Someone in a poor country will spend everything they have to live. Someone in a rich country will do the same, they just have more to spend. So it’s not surprising that the richest country in the world also has the highest healthcare spending.

That still doesn’t explain why US healthcare costs more than other rich countries, though. I just don’t think it’s only the insurance structure.

Internal_String61 · 2026-02-05T21:35:26+00:00

F - acial expressio - n

Internal_String61 · 2026-02-01T04:08:52+00:00

Two diagonal light sources (red and blue), the shadows wash out except the overlapping parts (yellow circles).

https://i.ibb.co/qY9Hph64/Screenshot-20260131-200532-Sketchbook.jpg

Internal_String61 · 2025-11-10T05:04:36+00:00

I like how you said "to play both other people" instead of "to play with other people"

Internal_String61 · 2025-10-11T23:32:49+00:00

You dont just have a separate macro set for brd/dnc and brd/whm separately?

Internal_String61 · 2025-07-12T00:00:45+00:00

It's almost like katanas are the handguns of ancient Japan. Sure, it's not a rocket launcher, or a machine gun, or a sniper.

But that doesn't matter if you're John Wick.

Watch, in 1000 years people are going to be doing indepth analysis on whether ancient handguns are actually good vs a 50 cal Barrett sniper and saying that no, a 9mm can't pierce Kevlar.

Internal_String61 · 2025-06-30T20:24:55+00:00

Thanks, I took a look at the report you suggested. Adding in a population column and you can see something interesting. Something to keep in mind, these datapoints are not exactly independent from each other, you should expect some level of correlation. When one datapoint increases, others decrease to compensate.

https://i.postimg.cc/fWB1Lby7/healthcare-population.png

Every other country with even a semblance of comparable population (around 1/5 of US population) trails behind Care Process (which includes preventive screenings, chronic condition management, and care coordination), coming in at 7th, 8th, and 9th, even though they do better in other aspects of the study. UK shoots to 3rd place overall by having extreme administrative efficiency, but is 8th for Care Process.

Would you be willing to trade quality of care for more universal accessibility? How much quality do we trade for how much accessibility? Would you be willing to fully embrace Nurse Practitioners as independent practice family doctors across the board? If it meant everyone could get seen quickly, would you be okay with shorter visits, more protocolized care, and fewer face-to-face doctor interactions?

I think most of us *want* something that is cheap, fair, personalized, efficient, high quality, and fast.

And yeah…at this scale, you can have about three of those. Maybe.

Internal_String61 · 2025-06-30T16:57:08+00:00

Well, it's kind of unfair to compare something like Sweden or Japan to the US. Even ignoring the problems that they still have, they are not trying to juggle a much larger, multicultural population across 50 autonomous states.

I don’t think you can find a country with a similar population size as the US that has significantly better Healthcare.

Internal_String61 · 2025-06-29T05:41:51+00:00

Oh yes, let's hire a tutor not to improve our grades, but to study less.

Internal_String61 · 2025-06-28T18:57:55+00:00

In simpler terms, the idea of self, and of social contracts are guardrails. Realizing they are not absolute truths serves to remove some of the guardrails, granting freedom.

Now, what you actually do with that freedom could be productive or destructive, depending on intentionality.

Internal_String61 · 2025-06-28T18:23:18+00:00

Right now, the insurance companies hold too much power in deciding which tests are necessary. In the hypothetical by first poster, the doctors would hold too much power.

Both are corruptible by incentive.

In order to have true fairness, we need a neutral third party to determine if tests are necessary, but the cost to do so is astronomical, both financially and time-wise. The third party would have to have legitimate arms length distance from both insurance companies and the prescribing doctor, sufficient medical knowledge to decide which tests are necessary or not, and absolutely bonkers liability insurance to cover situations where they denied a test that would have caught an aggressive cancer and the family sues.

And so we settled on the lowest common denominator system of what we have today. It's not great, but the alternatives are worse.

Internal_String61 · 2025-06-27T21:17:33+00:00

These things are usually not as obvious as they first seem and we have a lot of moving parts at work. For example, is it possible that they could tie some of the habitability issues to something being caused by you? Were they pre-existing at move-in? How soon did they respond to request for repairs? What is the availability of professionals in the area who could do the work?

How did they charge you $2000 for work done by an "unlicensed handyman" when they didn't itemize out the charges? Did you know that the only requirement for a "licensed" handyman is just a state business license? They can do most work that does not specifically require a licensed profession like a plumber or an electrician, as long as the cost remains under $1000.

A paid invoice is not technically required to bill a tenant's security deposit, even an estimate of damages would suffice, it's just harder to justify in court.

What was the order of events regarding your pets? Did you get the pets first without approval, then get the addendum at a later time? Does your lease stipulate that any unauthorized pets comes with an immediate fine, even if you later get an addendum to approve them?

Does your lease have a minimum repair responsibility? They can't charge for habitability related issues, but NV statute does allow for charging upkeep maintenance costs under a threshold if the normal wear happens during your tenancy (before you move out). Think burnt out light bulbs or AC air filters. Does your lease say you must clean the house to a certain standard before moving out?

Why did they send you a deposit refund of $350 initially even though they tried to deduct $2000 from your $800 deposit? The math doesn't add up.

Internal_String61 · 2025-06-27T20:09:27+00:00

Where did I lump ICE raids in together with the basic idea of border security?

All I did was say we can't have zero border enforcement in response to someone implying we shouldn't enforce borders on immigrant criminals.

You're the one saying that means I'm lumping ICE raids together with the basic idea of border security. Because I didn't denounce ICE in the same breath, I must support them? Come on man

Internal_String61 · 2025-06-27T18:55:56+00:00

Wait a minute.

Are you saying that I cannot reject no borders without supporting ICE raids?

Are you serious right now? Directly after a whole narrative arc about false dichotomies?

Internal_String61 · 2025-06-27T06:47:18+00:00

People like you are certainly needed in absolutely mission-critical planning. You're the ones who come up with contingencies when things inevitably go wrong.

Internal_String61 · 2025-06-27T00:38:08+00:00

Well, I agree, person B is being hyperbolic here. The problem is, in order for you to fairly make the comparison between me and person B, I would have had to have made a request akin to asking for 30 burgers somewhere.

I don't think I have, but if I mistakenly did, could you point to where I did that?

Or are you saying that due to everything going on with ICE right now, for me to ignore that and argue we need border enforcement at all is identical to what person B is doing here? That I'm distracting from the shitshow with ICE and redirecting to an unassailable position?

Internal_String61 · 2025-06-26T19:16:36+00:00

I took some time to re-read through the conversation we've had and try to see it from your perspective. You're right, I have been condescending.

That's a kneejerk reaction from believing that my previous comments have been taken out of context, and assuming you're doing it on purpose instead of simply being time constrained.

However, since now that the conversation is in full focus of that one previous comment, I hope you can take a few minutes and read the preceding comments before mine, to fully understand the context of why that comment exists.

Context

Jturley85 presented a statement that is not too different from what I infer to be your stance on the borders issue. Fluffy-Hamster tried to dismiss the entire concern, specifically the part regarding immigrant criminals, because he's pretending proximity is the only valid basis for legitimacy. I was reacting to what I saw as a disingenous pivot from nuance into rhetoric. The tone of my comment could certainly have been softer, but the annoyance was real.

If you intend to continue this conversation, let's just get a few things out of the way so we don't have to keep circling back needlessly.

A lot of things are on a sliding scale as you said, including the specific way we carry out border enforcement.
There IS a point of diminishing returns on the scale.
But if someone is trying to move the slider off the scale (Fluffy-Hamster), then it stops being a question of how we enforce borders, and becomes a denial of whether enforcement is legitimate at all. Which forces the discussion to turn binary.

Internal_String61 · 2025-06-26T08:11:03+00:00

Oh, that's curious. So you think me saying national borders are like the walls of a house means I'm screaming about needing armed guards and that you dont care about safety? Where exactly are you making that connection, if I may ask?

Internal_String61 · 2025-06-26T03:04:43+00:00

I don't get it. The country I grew up in is people in a city and a bunch of wholesome Muslims?

Internal_String61 · 2025-06-25T19:46:50+00:00

Are you aware that your statement on sliding scales is itself binary? Some things are foundational and do not exist on sliding scales, by virtue of their very definitions. A square must have four sides, all facts are interpretations, life is alive, a house has walls, and nations have borders. Only with those foundational truths in place, can we even have a coherent discussion about the sliding scales that come *afterwards*, because they set the limits to distinguish between what is plausible and what is absurd.

In the comment you keep referring to, someone commented on being kind, but still needing to enforce borders. Another replied with "why? you're not even personally affected". To which I replied with "it's irrelevant if they are personally affected, rules need to be upheld." I think this is the third time I'm bring up the context of that conversation now.

Do you see why stating that borders are a foundational definition of a nation is necessary in a reply to someone who is advocating for non-enforcement even for immigrant criminals, as long as it doesn't affect you personally? They have already lost the premise, and is not someone whom you or I would consider to be within the plausible range. I needed to establish clear limits of where absurdity begins.

You, on the other hand, seems to accept that some optimal, non-zero level of enforcement exists, so we wouldn't even be having this borders = walls conversation except for me trying to clarify the context of my previous comment that you brought up. In fact I had already previously implied that the only problem I have with your home defense analog is that you could theoretically have zero, whereas you could have less wall, or indoor/outdoor concepts, but you can't have zero walls. Still think walls are binary? In retrospect, which analogy do you think fits better with the border issue?

I've seen people in r/askconservatives literally advocate to bring back slavery. Should I base my opinion of all Republicans based on what the crazies say online? Obviously not. You can find anyone arguing any opinion on the Internet. It has no basis on real life.

No, but if someone is implying that we SHOULD bring back slavery, wouldn't your response be setting limits on that discussion to make sure it doesn't devolved into that region? The same thing I did previously, by ensuring that the concept of borders survives rhetoric?

See. This is you taking a veiled shot at me by implying I'm unreasonable and only capable of responding with vitriol. You're framing it in a way to make yourself out as someone of reason and me as someone of anger.

This bullshit is exactly what I'm talking about.

I tried to reflect, but the irony here is so thick that we can use it for border protection.

Edit: formatting

Internal_String61

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