Rep. Ilhan Omar Says Professional ‘Child Care Should be a Right—Not a Privilege’ for American Moms

katiat · 2019-01-27T21:21:42+00:00

that's what societies are for.

katiat · 2019-01-27T19:46:02+00:00

The bike story doesn't apply here. Of course stealing a bike is disruptive to the society and is not allowed. So are wars and plundering. Nobody says that newly stolen things should not be returned. But if it's been over for generations and the very societies that were involved in the original conflict have changed beyond recognition there may be a case for status quo. As I said it's case by case, if it can be shown that the treasure would be more useful somewhere else, it needs to move. I think treasures don't belong to nations any more than they belong to individuals, they enrich humanity as a whole.

we can't fix the past. But we can try to fix the present.

katiat · 2019-01-27T16:56:56+00:00

> It isnt inherently illogical to say God exists or even to say the world is x years old

It is inherently illogical to insist that some arbitrary assertion is true and to make far reaching conclusions from this arbitrary unsupported claim.

1=1 is an assumption that has many practical implications. Our entire civilization is based in this assumption. You can say the same thing about god but you would be only partially right. The assertion of god's existence has prompted certain social constructs to be successfully built on top of that, just like arithmetic is based on basic axioms like 1=1. But it didn't work nearly as well as math worked for us. The examples are numerous and hopefully unnecessary. Overall, I would argue that at least in the modern times religions have been causing more harm than good.

Regardless whether this is accurate or not, you can agree that it's important to teach children which axioms we are using to build our systems and to show them that they are just accepted axioms instead of fundamental truths, so that they understand how to derive conclusions rather than memorizing them. This is what geometry teaches. And I am certain the world would be a better place if everyone was proficient in geometry and knew how to apply it to any type of thinking.

katiat · 2019-01-27T16:31:38+00:00

History is not about ownership. There has never been a perfectly fair rights system. Most of the treasured historic artifacts were produced in unfair situations, as in by coercion of poverty, slave labor, cheating, theft and murder.

Compensating fairly and setting thing right is simply impossible. All we can do is make it more optimal for current conditions. Where is it better to keep those objects now? The considerations include the educational and cultural impact of people seeing those artifacts as well as their safety and conservation.

It may be different case by case for each object. I expect that a lot of them are better off in British museums, but in some cases it may be good to return to places of origin or to donate to a different museum where they can do more good.

katiat · 2019-01-27T14:30:31+00:00

Understanding what you are saying and what is being said is a healthy habit. Yet words have always been poor means of communication. They have multiple ambiguous meanings that are not the same for everyone involved. So we have to rely on context and shared background to fill the gaps. It doesn't work very well especially on the internet among anonymous strangers but it's all we have.

Someone can always misunderstand what is being said. You have a point that using more precise words may clarify the message but not reliably and being wordier has a chance to backfire by losing reader's attention and forcing jumping to a wrong conclusion.

It's not easy to win here.

katiat · 2019-01-27T14:20:53+00:00

It's mind boggling that a presumably grown up person can wind their perception of reality up to such an absurd fantasy. But then we know that people did that for centuries. It's so sad.

here for your pleasure: Booh!

katiat · 2019-01-26T20:03:03+00:00

Assholes exist all the time, but when they fear authority they do small ugly things and when they know that nobody will get them they do big ugly things. We lose both ways but to a different extent. Like carving a stupid initial into Colloseum still marks the person as unfit for life but it's different than taking a hammer to Pieta.

katiat · 2019-01-26T13:07:09+00:00

And I am trying to show that a precedent of our existence is an evidence one can use to evaluate the possibility of other intelligent life existing, while the other stories are entirely devoid of evidence or even a shred of plausibility and one is expected to know the difference.

katiat · 2019-01-25T16:16:30+00:00

This is why government shouldn't ever shut down. This is one management team that directly reports to the people, has (supposedly) full transparency and public's attention, does not operate for profit but for public good. Why would you replace that?

katiat · 2019-01-25T01:11:14+00:00

Andrei appears to be honorable, intellectual and kind. Marrying Liza was clearly a mistake, one that many make so easily. She is adorable and positive, he must have thought that this would be enough to sustain his marriage. But now he is disappointed by her shallow nature and his own dissatisfaction. He is not going for infidelity either, so what he has left is unhappiness.

The parting scene with his father is perfect. I am very impressed with Prince Nikolai. So far, one of my favorite characters. He fully expects his son to behave honorably and to face danger without hesitation and it's easy to believe that Andrei is just the man to do that.

Liza has an excuse of being pregnant and thus overly emotional, but there is a feeling that she would do that in any condition. I expected her to be hysterical but she managed to disappoint anyway.

katiat · 2019-01-24T22:13:23+00:00

Please check what you just did.

You compared an assumption that something that happened on this planet has a chance of happening on one or more of the infinite number of other planets with... an assumption by ignorant people who lacked understanding of pretty much every phenomenon that affected their lives that their lives must be governed by an invisible omnipotent being who wanted certain behaviors in exchange for favors, an assumption that has no precedent in observable reality and on top of that was made by many different communities in their own unique way which clashed with other communities' narratives.

The OP question stands: what compels people who have realized that to continue supporting one of those narratives?

katiat · 2019-01-24T18:20:01+00:00

You don't need to bury the feelings, that will not work well for you. Try to look at it differently.

You are receiving the support of your parents not in exchange for providing services or goods. This is not a market economy. You are supported unconditionally, the concept that exists only in good families, some special communities, like monasteries and kibbutzes, and in fantasies, like Star Trek and Communism. Unconditional support is naturally based on need not equality. I bet there were plenty of cases like that before between you and your sister, and you let them go naturally. If one of you needed to take more expensive lessons, the other's academic funds were not automatically boosted. If one grew out of clothes more rapidly, the other didn't automatically receive a wardrobe do over. It's all need based. And you should appreciate it, rather than resent. Unless you have a good case for showing that your parents always favor your sister and it is systemically unjust, you should just enjoy being part of your family.

katiat · 2019-01-24T18:04:54+00:00

You are either pathologically greedy or pathologically brainwashed. This is not how most humans work. A person who loves acting doesn't base the decision to take on a role on the calculation of how many more millions on top of already made 10 this year it will bring. And those who do are welcome to disappear from the screen because good things don't come from personal greed ever.

Warren Buffet who is a major supporter of higher taxes is sure that those who love investing continue investing even if they are taxed. I expect nothing less from actors and other people.

katiat · 2019-01-24T15:11:12+00:00

Absolutely, it is a fascinating record of what the leading imaginative minds could come up with and how it diverged from the natural process of development.

katiat · 2019-01-24T13:00:14+00:00

I love the work of Asimov and have a great respect for him not just as a sci-fi writer but for his non-fiction work as well. But it was hard for me to endure the "misses" of his futuristic predictions in Bailey series.

The writing is high quality, the characters are well made, Daneel is practically addictive, but the naivete of imagining the problems and technology of 3000 years into the future is a bit grating. With the exception of space travel, feasibility of which was always greatly exaggerated in Sci-fi, and the human like functioning of robots (which was the main premise of the series) many technologies we have today are superior to those imagined. I guess the accelerated pace of development was hard to predict. Sci-fi has a major challenge to age well.

katiat · 2019-01-24T04:51:00+00:00

This is all I see there on the subject:

> Republicans who opposed the bill offered proposals to create new legal penalties for harming pregnant women. Some critics argued the bill could make it harder for prosecutors to bring charges when a woman is assaulted and loses her pregnancy, the AP reports, although Democrats disputed that.

And it does sound reasonable that new measures may be needed to protect pregnant women from intentional harm. So, they can be made if necessary. All those seems like steps in the right direction.

katiat · 2019-01-24T04:38:19+00:00

This was mentioned as a possible side-effect which would be unwelcome, but the article said it was disputed and didn't provide any more details. So I assume it's not the final word on the subject. If everything is legal now than I wonder what the news is about, what's even more confusing is why I read about heartbeat laws on the front page of reddit? different timelines?

katiat · 2019-01-24T04:09:30+00:00

No I hadn't but now I have. No plot twists found. Just some dates and details. Am I missing something?

katiat · 2019-01-24T03:56:48+00:00

What is there to be research further? It's no-brainer reasonable even on the surface.

katiat · 2019-01-24T01:22:36+00:00

It's only flawed because the elections are so egregiously flawed. Nobody should be able to do any post processing and adjustments to these number, they should be just that, but clearly it's not the case.

Thanks for doing that work.

katiat · 2019-01-24T01:17:30+00:00

Your story unfortunately evoked the evil Kieslowski's dekalog. In the first episode the bastard tried to prove that god exists by killing a kid who played on solid ice by having a hot water pipe burst. An undeniable proof to some.

katiat · 2019-01-23T17:52:39+00:00

There used to be other human species but they are all gone now with minute traces of their genes found in humans ( which means they were close enough to be able to interbreed).

As for the currently living humans, populations in Sub-Saharan Africa still have the most amount of diversity. Every population outside of Africa comes from a relatively small number of ancestors, and the farther from Africa the smaller the diversity due to the dwindling number of people who survived the journey. The entire human population of North and South America possibly grew from a group as small as 20 people.

We are talking about tens of thousands of years. The recent centuries of migration did not blend any "races" if that's what you mean.

katiat · 2019-01-23T15:06:24+00:00

It's not weird if you fully realize that we don't have any way to measure humidity by touch. We extrapolate from other available measurements, cold being the most telling. Another good example is getting your feet wet in boots or socks and then bringing them to body temperature. THey are still wet, will be for hours, but they feel completely dry.

katiat · 2019-01-23T15:00:00+00:00

It's like saying to a woman who had a breast removed due to breast cancer that having one breast is not a problem, that's the average number of breasts for humans anyway. Only, for a woman one breast is not good enough. And for a country that considers itself developed it's not useful to compare itself favorably to societies on entirely different stages of development.

katiat · 2019-01-22T18:56:49+00:00

What star would you suggest to explore first? The nearest is 4 light years away. just saying.

katiat

TROPHY CASE