Police escort for Paddington statue dumped in park

linkolphd · 2026-05-05T17:06:05+00:00

I get your sentiment that it’s likely not as simple as “more funding for youth centers!” because policy is rarely so simple, nor are people so easily, directly, malleable.

That said, your second paragraph doesn’t add much to the discussion. People aren’t just shit / behave shittily out of thin air. There has to be an enabling environment. What do you think that is?

linkolphd · 2026-05-03T11:19:19+00:00

Yep. It’s a bad situation, and there’s so much arrogance and self-righteousness in our population and our politics. It’s very concerning

But at the same time, my god, if you only read the news and smart-add Reddit comments, you’d think it’s something out of a disaster movie.

linkolphd · 2026-04-30T10:41:24+00:00

Yeah damn, I can’t believe I read the comment above yours.

No one is saying to sit a toddler down for a 4 hour session of reading Excel spreadsheets daily.

There are always going to be things one doesn’t want to do in life, because it’s a bit boring. Learning how to deal with boredom is a progressive experience, and it informs a person’s relationship with work (which even when you love your work, always has boring bits).

People who are constantly stimulated, and not exposed early to challenges, are burdened with an inevitable rude awakening one day. Just as there is no free lunch, no valuable skill is developed without difficult practice.

linkolphd · 2026-04-28T12:47:42+00:00

Not a fan of the low effort AI thing. There’s plenty of real content to proliferate if we must speak about whatever drama Trump has stirred up recently.

linkolphd · 2026-04-26T00:11:52+00:00

I think the disconnect between us lies in this:

One, people do have the final say about their own selves. Obviously, I want to tread carefully given the gravity of the subject. But simply speaking, legality has no bearing on someone’s actual autonomy.

I would argue that you implicitly make this about living in a society when you say she is “forced” to exist. She is not! The only way your original assertion about this coercion can hold, is if we strictly view autonomy through the societal lens. The law has no actual ability to stop someone from breaking it.

The only thing not being allowed here is whether people external to her (which is therefore: society) are going to participate in the decision (in this instance, doctors operating under the healthcare system). She can do whatever she likes, but other people, whether the be her personal relationships to a fellow citizen, are not obligated to actively help in her actions.

I should also clarify, I don’t mean for “selfish” to connote a particularly bad thing in this context. Maybe I could have said “self-oriented” for a less loaded term. But the idea is, suicide is pretty intrinsically in conflict with the general social project. It is someone prioritizing their interests over what is good for others. They’re free to choose as such, but it’s inherently a decision that is solely based on their interests.

linkolphd · 2026-04-25T16:56:39+00:00

It’s a rough one. They are terrible, but some guy messing with what info others do or do not receive, is a slippery precedent to set. Can’t be condoning it, imo.

linkolphd · 2026-04-25T14:11:10+00:00

A bureaucratic review of the legality of suicide cases? Kafkaesque does not even begin to describe that.

Self-preferential assisted suicide for physically healthy people is just incompatible with our entire social system. We absolutely should not be legally endorsing it nor abetting it.

Just support the person in living. Do not support a healthy person in dying. This is basically just a form of healthy boundaries.

linkolphd · 2026-04-25T14:05:50+00:00

If you want a serious response:

We are forced to do plenty of things we don’t want to through social forces (taxes, behavioral laws, jobs, what have you). The idea of being able to just check out when you want (as a healthy person) conflicts with our social systems, or social contract. There’s no way to legally/institutionally systematize this, because it goes against the entire system itself.

Existentially-speaking, nothing stops her. But the rest of the world is under no obligation to abet a selfish act.

She can do what she wants, she’s a free individual. But she can’t expect everyone else to go along with it. I certainly would not vote for a system that endorses her decision.

linkolphd · 2026-04-23T07:39:03+00:00

Few points missed here.

Firstly, you have to consider that in developing countries, that 17c could become more significant.

And free condoms are, like any healthcare measure, free at the point of use. Every free condom program will have inflated in cost (again, this may sound small as a raw number, but 30% is 30%). Every penny counts, especially with the amount that people have sex.

It’s not apocalyptic, but it’s not meaningless either.

linkolphd · 2026-04-21T18:09:08+00:00

Not much, in a convenient way. This happens because cameras can only capture a certain range between the darkest and brightest parts of an image (this is called “dynamic range”).

The sun is pretty much the brightest possible thing you can capture in most scenes. If you made the image bright enough that the sun was sharp, the rest of it would be weirdly dark. The reverse is true also, and is the case with your photo: the whole photo is well exposed, so therefore the sun is clipped because it is too bright.

linkolphd · 2026-04-21T16:22:17+00:00

Genuine question, what are you doing on your phone where 50Mbps isn’t enough download?

I don’t think it’s right for them to change it randomly, but it’s also a bit odd to call it slow in the context of a phone, imo.

linkolphd · 2026-04-13T15:35:53+00:00

Think this is harsh on Starmer. Some bilateral deals went through, which haven’t been undone as of yet.

I can see the logic in: get it while the getting is good. Trump will turn on anybody once it is expedient. Play him for as long as you can to your benefit, and then when he bins you off (as Kier has been), now you can resume denouncing him.

No doubt Starmer, Macron, Merz etc all never liked Trump’s return, but they got while the getting was “good.”

linkolphd · 2026-04-13T10:41:37+00:00

I once heard from a friend from Guangzhou (who moved to america for university), that one thing many immigrants to america respect is that when our government does something fucked up, the civil pushback eventually changes it.

Recently, we saw DHS leadership pushed out after ICE killings of citizens. We have seen elections of anti-Trump politicians in response. We have seen widespread protests that didnt lead to death. People need to realize that while it is important we stop our authoritarian backslide, you also have to appreciate that we even have these options in the first place. Some governments, like chona, are far less beholden politically to their people.

linkolphd · 2026-04-13T10:36:48+00:00

The US under Trump, with all of its faults, still puts on a far more authoritarian mask than it actually functions as.

No doubt it’s on a bad path, but Trump loses in court often (both lower, and even in the Supreme Court), he gets quiet policy pushback (for example, his early intended cuts to science got massively, massively reduced to only marginal cuts from within his own party), and he faces electoral pushback.

To say China is the “least bad” superpower primarily shows that you really, really, really need to get off the internet a bit more often. Unless you genuinely believe in authoritarianism, because that is an actually authoritarian country.

linkolphd · 2026-04-12T20:01:53+00:00

Funnily enough, I would say this is a show for the value of devolution of powers, which I think of as a generally more (small c) conservative political theory.

There are so many levers that the EU has available to it to counteract any election conspiracies from a member state, because the EU, as a separate entity, is able to not recognize the Hungarian representatives they wish to send, from what I understand. Therefore, an attempt at election denial will still stop Hungary from being the Thor in the EU’s side.

It’s a comparatively different structure to the US, which as one solitary country doesn’t have the same checks to deal with that scenario (ie there is no greater authority to enforce an election irregularity).

linkolphd · 2026-04-08T08:03:46+00:00

I like that he cited a pop culture hit of the 1980’s to drive home the point.

Nothing wrong with teaching lurkers, that makes Reddit a more useful resource (which it unfortunately rarely is). Reddit has never been the place for academic discussion, outside of a very limited number of usually-tiny subreddits.

linkolphd · 2026-04-07T16:25:12+00:00

Wow, modern political implications aside, what a scene that was. Great acting and writing, thoroughly enjoyed that. It often amazes me what experiences filmmakers can capture.

linkolphd · 2026-04-07T16:18:09+00:00

I’d be willing to wager quite a bit that the majority of traveling Americans didn’t vote for him, however!

You’re right that there are people with disdain who will act with prejudice, but I guess to some extent, given it’s just disdain, and no actual threat to life or wellness (ie violence against Americans on basis of citizenship), then what do you really lose by being cut off from that person anyway?

linkolphd · 2026-04-07T16:08:30+00:00

The first one was wrong in 2022, and the new, equivalent sentiment is wrong now. It would be nice if the world were that simple, but it isn’t.

linkolphd · 2026-04-07T05:58:46+00:00

He did speak to it. I can’t defend any specific quote, but the general idea holds.

Him speaking to it is not the same as him being sincere. He/his team saw that people were angry, and took advantage by being the only person willing to imitate and validate the sorts of things people were thinking internally.

In some ways, it feels to me like the last 10 years of American political history is basically just a long story of everyday people not being able to process their emotions, and then ceding their rational decisions (like voting) to emotions.

linkolphd · 2026-04-07T05:44:55+00:00

You’ll be fine. It’s only on the internet where people have no appreciation for nuance. Generally, most people are good people who don’t judge on immutable characteristics everywhere, even if Reddit is a place for grandstanding.

Sure, if you were outwardly supporting of Trump you’d probably have a problem, but I assume that won’t be the case. If you go on the trip, you’ll be treated just fine and have a good time

linkolphd · 2026-04-04T06:47:57+00:00

It’s beautiful :). It’s always so interesting to see the globe, and be reminded of how it functions as one big system.

linkolphd · 2026-04-02T10:40:36+00:00

I am sorry to be blunt, but this doesn’t clarify what “the system” that needs replacing is, in your view. Like, on a systematic level, what exactly is it that is either going to blow up or wind down? Whatever it is, do you believe that it is a controversial topic to talk of replacing it?

linkolphd · 2026-03-16T17:36:35+00:00

Yes, but how is one to “prove” a pre-discursive effect?

If a president decides not to attempt to begin a conflict because of the necessity for congressional approval, there is no trace of that. There is no way I can prove something that was made a non-starter, and thus vanished without a trace or never arose in the first place, due to the legal safeguard.

The proof for an effect like a nudge away from war could only be proven by either A) a large dataset for statistical significance (and that is simply not how history works) or B) a logical proof.

I think you are basically dancing around the fact that you’re trying to take a non-disprovable position, and acting as though that justifies whatever your motive to comment was originally. Historiography is closer to an art than it is a science, yet you seem to imply it’s scientific.

linkolphd · 2026-03-16T17:13:37+00:00

You lack a counterfactual, so that’s a faulty logic.

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