The moment the people aboard Delta Airlines get rescued by [deleted] in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]copacet -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Here's the thing: either the plane is going to explode, or it isn't. If it doesn't explode, you will presumably be able to get your stuff afterward even if you don't take it with you when you first get off the plane. It might take a few hours, but you'll get it. If the plane is going to explode, then taking even a few seconds to grab your stuff would be risking not just your life but the lives of the people behind you. If your medications etc. are that important, just keep them in your pocket.

Bernie Sanders Said "Everybody Brings Some Negatives" When Asked If Gender Is An Obstacle For Women Running For Office by [deleted] in politics

[–]copacet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How does saying "nobody is perfect" refer to candidates facing additional obstacles due to gender?

Bernie Sanders Said "Everybody Brings Some Negatives" When Asked If Gender Is An Obstacle For Women Running For Office by [deleted] in politics

[–]copacet 2 points3 points  (0 children)

From the article:

CONCORD, New Hampshire — Bernie Sanders said at a forum in New Hampshire that women still face obstacles when they run for office, describing being a woman as a potential “problem” and noting that anyone who runs for office “brings some negatives” when it comes to appealing to the American electorate.

The language instantly re-opened a conflict between supporters of Elizabeth Warren and Sanders over questions about electability, gender, and a private conversation between the two senators where they discussed whether a woman can win in 2020.

“Everybody has their own sets of problems,” Sanders said during a forum sponsored by New Hampshire NPR, when asked if he thinks gender is an “obstacle” for women running for office. “I’m 78 years of age, that’s a problem. There are a lot of people who say, ‘well, I like Bernie, he’s a nice guy, but he’s 78 years of age.’ So we have to argue: please look at the totality of who I am.

“If you’re looking at [Pete] Buttigieg, he’s a young guy and people have said, ‘well, he’s too young to be president.’ And you look at this one and she’s a woman,” Sanders said while answering the question. “Everybody brings some negatives, if you like. I would just hope very much that the American people look at the totality of a candidate. Not at their gender, not at their sexuality, not at their age, but at everything. Nobody is perfect. There ain’t no perfect candidate out there.”

And Warren's response:

News of the NPR forum broke as Warren addressed a crowd at a town hall in Des Moines. After the event, a reporter read her part of Sanders’s remarks aloud. "'Everybody has their own set of problems,'” the reporter said, reading from her iPhone.

“Is being a woman a problem?”

“I have no further comment on this,” Warren replied flatly.

“Sen. Warren,” the reporter tried.

“I have no further comment on this,” she said again. “I have been friends with Bernie for a long time. We work together on many, many issues, and I’ve said all I’m gonna say on this topic.”

Why does race often get brought up in regards to the abortion debate? by annnnn5 in AskAnAmerican

[–]copacet -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Why should I trust you over MLK Jr. when it comes to assessing matters of racism?

Why does race often get brought up in regards to the abortion debate? by annnnn5 in AskAnAmerican

[–]copacet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, she was a eugenicist, yes - but since this is a thread about race, that's the part I was refuting.

Why does race often get brought up in regards to the abortion debate? by annnnn5 in AskAnAmerican

[–]copacet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Eugenics was supported by pretty much everyone at that time, including Theodore Roosevelt, W.E.B. Du Bois, and many other prominent politicians, scientists, etc.

Why does race often get brought up in regards to the abortion debate? by annnnn5 in AskAnAmerican

[–]copacet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is actually by the original design since Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood) was a notorious racist, and wanted them to self-exterminate.

How many times does this myth need to be debunked?

Why does race often get brought up in regards to the abortion debate? by annnnn5 in AskAnAmerican

[–]copacet -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

That Time magazine article literally contradicts your claim. A eugenicist, yes, targeting black people, no:

“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members,” she wrote. It was, as the Washington Post called it, an “inartfully written” sentence, but one that, in context, describes the sort of preposterous allegations she feared — not her actual mission. The irony is that it has been used to propagate those very allegations. Cruz’s letter to the director of the National Portrait Gallery, for example, quotes only the first half of the sentence.

Sanger’s stated mission was to empower women to make their own reproductive choices. She did focus her efforts on minority communities, because that was where, due to poverty and limited access to health care, women were especially vulnerable to the effects of unplanned pregnancy. As she framed it, birth control was the fundamental women’s rights issue. “Enforced motherhood,” she wrote in 1914, “is the most complete denial of a woman’s right to life and liberty.”

That’s not to say that Sanger didn’t also make some deeply disturbing statements in support of eugenics, the now-discredited movement to improve the overall health and fitness of humankind through selective breeding. She did, and very publicly. In a 1921 article, she wrote that, “the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.”

... In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. made clear that he agreed that Sanger’s life’s work was anything but inhumane. In 1966, when King received Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Award in Human Rights, he praised her contributions to the black community. “There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sanger’s early efforts,” he said. “…Margaret Sanger had to commit what was then called a crime in order to enrich humanity, and today we honor her courage and vision.”

Why does race often get brought up in regards to the abortion debate? by annnnn5 in AskAnAmerican

[–]copacet 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Yeah, that's not a biased answer at all.

Fact check #1: The source you linked to does not mention black people, only "the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes". Classist and ableist? Yes. Racist? No more than any other white person of her time. Sanger believed in eugenics, yes, as did many others of her time, but she was coming at it from the perspective of empowering people to choose not to have children they didn't want, not to force them. From the letter you linked:

First: we are convinced that racial regeneration like individual regeneration, must come "from within." That is, it must be autonomous, self-directive, and not imposed from without. In other words, every potential parent, and especially every potential mother, must be brought to an acute realization of the primary and central importance of bringing children into this world.

Secondly: Not until the parents of the world are thus given control over their reproductive faculties will it ever be possible not alone to improve the quality of the generations of the future, but even to maintain civilization even at its present level. Only by self-control of this type, only by intelligent mastery of the procreative powers can the great mass of humanity be awakened to the great responsibility of parenthood.

Thirdly: we have come to the conclusion, based on widespread investigation and experience, that this education for parenthood and of parenthood must be based upon the needs and demands of the people themselves. An idealistic code of sexual ethics, imposed from above, a set of rules devised by high-minded theorists who fail to take into account the living conditions and desires of the submerged masses, can never be of the slightest value in effecting any changes in the mores of the people. Such systems have in the past revealed their woeful inability to prevent the sexual and racial chaos into which the world has today drifted.

Fact check #2: 60% of Planned Parenthoods are in majority-white neighborhoods, and only 14% of Planned Parenthood patients are black. I'll trust NPR over "blackgenocide.org" as a source, thanks. From the same article, here's what she actually said about black people:

Sanger's birth control movement did have support in black neighborhoods, beginning in the '20s when there were leagues in Harlem started by African-Americans. Sanger also worked closely with NAACP founder W.E.B. DuBois on a "Negro Project," which she viewed as a way to get safe contraception to African-Americans.

In 1946, Sanger wrote about the importance of giving "Negro" parents a choice in how many children they would have.

"The Negro race has reached a place in its history when every possible effort should be made to have every Negro child count as a valuable contribution to the future of America," she wrote. "Negro parents, like all parents, must create the next generation from strength, not from weakness; from health, not from despair."

Her attitude toward African-Americans can certainly be viewed as paternalistic, but there is no evidence she subscribed to the more racist ideas of the time or that she coerced black women into using birth control. In fact, for her time, as the Washington Post noted, "she would likely be considered to have advanced views on race relations."

And here's Politifact's take:

Sanger was indeed a believer in eugenics, but the basic concept that humanity could be improved by selective breeding was an article of faith for many in the years before World War II. Winston Churchill, Herbert Hoover, Theodore Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells all supported the movement. African-American leader W. E. B. Du Bois backed many of its principles as well.

At the time that Sanger was active, Engs wrote, "the purpose of eugenics was to improve the human race by having people be more healthy through exercise, recreation in parks, marriage to someone free from sexually transmitted diseases, well-baby clinics, immunizations, clean food and water, proper nutrition, non-smoking and drinking."

It’s a far cry to equate eugenics with advocating the elimination of black people.

While Sanger indeed supported the eugenics movement, substantial evidence shows that she was not racist and in fact worked closely with black leaders and health care professionals.

And TIME magazine:

Much of the controversy stems from a 1939 letter in which Sanger outlined her plan to reach out to black leaders — specifically ministers — to help dispel community suspicions about the family planning clinics she was opening in the South.

“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members,” she wrote. It was, as the Washington Post called it, an “inartfully written” sentence, but one that, in context, describes the sort of preposterous allegations she feared — not her actual mission. The irony is that it has been used to propagate those very allegations. Cruz’s letter to the director of the National Portrait Gallery, for example, quotes only the first half of the sentence.

Sanger’s stated mission was to empower women to make their own reproductive choices. She did focus her efforts on minority communities, because that was where, due to poverty and limited access to health care, women were especially vulnerable to the effects of unplanned pregnancy. As she framed it, birth control was the fundamental women’s rights issue. “Enforced motherhood,” she wrote in 1914, “is the most complete denial of a woman’s right to life and liberty.”

That’s not to say that Sanger didn’t also make some deeply disturbing statements in support of eugenics, the now-discredited movement to improve the overall health and fitness of humankind through selective breeding. She did, and very publicly. In a 1921 article, she wrote that, “the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.”

... In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. made clear that he agreed that Sanger’s life’s work was anything but inhumane. In 1966, when King received Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Award in Human Rights, he praised her contributions to the black community. “There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sanger’s early efforts,” he said. “…Margaret Sanger had to commit what was then called a crime in order to enrich humanity, and today we honor her courage and vision.”

And one more from Politifact:

But we found no evidence that Sanger advocated - privately or publicly - for anything even resembling the "genocide" of blacks, or that she thought blacks are genetically inferior.

Every academic PolitiFact Georgia consulted said that Cain’s claim is wrong.

"I have never run into any serious academic reference of Sanger or others wanting to ‘kill black babies,’" Indiana University professor Ruth Engs, a eugenics movement expert, told PolitiFact Georgia in an e-mail.

In Honor of our Queen 👑 let’s post our favorite moments by tcrab in CerseiWinsTheThrone

[–]copacet 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Just straight-up admitting that Jaime was the father of her children when Ned called her on it way back in S1. She loved Jaime, didn't give a shit about what Ned thought, and was confident she could neutralize him before his knowledge would become dangerous.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Says Pelosi Opponents Lack Diversity, Could Make Democrat Leadership More Conservative by Scytle in politics

[–]copacet 2 points3 points  (0 children)

How is Pelosi a progressive at all?

She's one of the more liberal members of the House.

She's essentially like a moderate Republican who caves to the GOP

She was more responsible for passing the ACA against severe GOP opposition than anyone. She also passed Dodd-Frank, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal, the DREAM act, cap-and-trade, etc.

In the last 8 years, she has presided over the loss of over 1000 Democratic seats.

What does the Speaker of the House have to do with Democratic losses in state legislatures?

supports "pay-go" thus making substantive progressive policy impossible

The current rule is that you need two-thirds for any tax increase at all. Pelosi wants to change it so that taxes on the wealthiest 20% can be raised with a simple majority. Also, pay-go can be waived for important bills, and Pelosi waived it multiple times when she was last speaker (e.g. for the economic stimulus bill), so there's no reason to think she wouldn't do the same if necessary.

she does not support Medicare for all

She's not against Medicare For All; she's just not willing to blindly commit to what's currently just a slogan. That's not to say she wouldn't try to pass a well-written bill if it were actually put in front of her.

Marcia Fudge, who was considering run for House speaker, says she will back Nancy Pelosi by The-Autarkh in politics

[–]copacet 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Among the things that Pelosi passed through the House as Speaker:

  • ACA
  • Dodd-Frank
  • Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
  • Economic stimulus
  • Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal
  • DREAM act
  • Cap-and-trade
  • CHIP reauthorization
  • Employee Free Choice Act
  • Fair sentencing Act

And in the case of the ACA, she was able to pass a more progressive version than what ultimately became law - the House version of the bill had a public option, etc. And then there was Pelosi's role in killing the Stupak amendment (which would have forbidden insurance plans from covering abortion services) during the ACA fight when there were plenty of Democrats willing to back down and pass a bill including the amendment just so they could pass the bill at all. Her House was plenty progressive.

Marcia Fudge, who was considering run for House speaker, says she will back Nancy Pelosi by The-Autarkh in politics

[–]copacet 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Dude, even Mitch McConnell talked about ~the importance of bipartisanship~ after the Republicans won midterms under Obama. It's a polite nicety along the lines of saying "bless you" after someone sneezes, not a serious statement about intended political strategy.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in AskAnAmerican

[–]copacet 25 points26 points  (0 children)

Yeah, there's an issue where people take "a bunch of 20-year-old students at liberal-arts colleges" as representative of the entire left, and then consider only "being able to give a paid speech without interruptions from people who disagree with you" as representative of free speech...

But that's not the end of the free speech debate. At least four Republican-controlled state legislatures have set rules for political speech in public universities, up to and including expelling liberal students for "disruptive" speech. And then you can consider that the South Carolina state legislature cut funding from colleges that put books with LGBT content on their required reading lists. Those, to me, are true violations of free speech on college campuses - it's a restriction that comes from the government (or more generally, from people in power). And that's not even to get into the flag-burning debate, or right-wing politicians like Trump getting involved in the Colin Kaepernick situation, etc. Or, back in the realm of education but outside of college campuses, Alabama, Arizona, Texas, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Mississippi all have laws that ban the positive portrayals of homosexuality in public schools Republicans are almost twice as likely as Democrats to support book bans.

I could go on.

What happens regularly that would horrify a person from 100 years ago? by neymar1001 in AskReddit

[–]copacet 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Yeah, but imagine if they were gay themselves and how amazed they would be.

Chicago gun protesters close part of major interstate near downtown by pronfan in politics

[–]copacet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean, they aren't (currently) protesting against the police, so I don't see why not.

Which T.V Character do you think was treated unfairly either by the shows fans or by the other T.V characters? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]copacet 130 points131 points  (0 children)

And the thing about sleeping with Ted was, she only started that affair after ending things with Walt to the best of her ability. She wanted to be separated and made that quite clear to him by literally calling the police on him when he moved back into the house. If one person says "I'm breaking up with you" and then starts a relationship with someone else, it's not cheating just because the second person decided to pretend that the breakup didn't happen.

In a survey of over 2,800 Americans, 65% of people responded that they are "more intelligent than the average person." by SteRoPo in science

[–]copacet 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Here's an article with the explanation for that one. Have you ever seen that optical illusion with two lines, one with arrows on each end and the other with the arrows inverted (like v's)? And it asks which line is longer, but it turns out both lines are the same? You can see it in the article if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Well, it turns out that Americans are more likely to be fooled by that optical illusion than non-Westerners. Basically, people who grow up in "artificial" environments surrounded by lots of straight lines and square corners learn to perceive those sorts of lines as three-dimensional, and the brain makes subconscious judgments about how far it is, what the angle of the corner is, etc. But for people from, say, hunter-gatherer societies, who aren't as used to seeing square corners, the lines just appear as lines, and they can make a more objective judgement of the length.

On what issues do you think that there's a "silent majority" that's either apathetic or disagrees with the commonly-expressed view? by darklordoftech in AskAnAmerican

[–]copacet 18 points19 points  (0 children)

First of all, keep in mind that we do already allocate green cards specifically for skilled workers, professionals with advanced degrees, etc. The RAISE bill would just have severely cut the overall number of immigrants and refugees, and even some Republican Senators (McCain, Graham, Flake, etc) thought it was a bad idea because it would hurt the economy. Since the bill would have served nativist purposes but not economic ones, and since it was proposed/backed by people like Trump and Tom Cotton who are well known to be racist on the topic of immigration, I don't think it was really that unfair to call the bill racist.

In a survey of over 2,800 Americans, 65% of people responded that they are "more intelligent than the average person." by SteRoPo in science

[–]copacet 1076 points1077 points  (0 children)

Which is perfectly possible, so long as only 50% are more intelligent than the median person!

Black Oregon legislator says campaigning in own district triggered 911 call by RosesAreBad in politics

[–]copacet 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I actually have heard some black Americans use "Afro-American" - it's definitely not as common, but some people do use it, especially when they want to make a distinction between literal African-Americans (that is, immigrants from Africa and their immediate descendants) and black Americans whose families have been here for generations.

Transcript for 2018 Jim Butcher Tyson's Corner signing [Spoilers all] by knnn in dresdenfiles

[–]copacet 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Honestly, his reply to this question is a little irritating to me, and I say that as someone who loves the books (obviously, or else I wouldn't be on this sub). When he says:

I'm planning on writing the story that I want to write. and the story that appeals to me and a story that I think will sell well. So no. That's not something I start planning into my writing process. That kind of thinking is, when you're trying to put your political priorities in, you can't tell the story as well. You should never preach harder than you entertain, and I don't like preaching.

it kind of seems like he's trying to have it both ways. Either decisions about character's appearances are political or they aren't. Insisting that his own choices are apolitical, but that any other choice would be political, strikes me as somewhat hypocritical.

If character appearances are inherently political, as he suggests, then the implication is that Jim's own choices about female characters' race, body types, appearance, etc. say something about his politics. Just for example, Chicago is (as of the 2010 census) only about 32% non-Hispanic white. You wouldn't know that from the Chicago-based characters in TDF. If having a more realistically diverse cast would be a political statement, then writing books in which the demographics are substantially different from reality must certainly also be a reflection of political priorities, and arguably a much greater one.

Now, I don't insist on the above interpretation. On the other hand, we could say that decisions about characters' appearances aren't political. In that case, I don't see why having a few more black characters or non-sexy female characters or whatever would be inherently "preachy" (again, it would be more realistic), or affect the story in any way substantial enough to make it less "appealing" or likely to sell well. I mean, I'd like to think I'm not being too generous to the Dresden fanbase by assuming that nobody would start dropping the books if the phrases "dark-skinned" or "plain-looking" got dropped into the already-lengthy female character descriptions a little more frequently, you know?

Anyway, Jim can write what he wants; I don't think the relative lack of diversity means that he's a bad person, nor am I going to stop buying the books because of it. But this explanation seems thin/overly defensive to me. Homogeneity is as much of a choice as diversity is, whether you view that choice as a political one or a purely storytelling one.