• 0 Posts
  • 16 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 18th, 2023

help-circle




  • People with currently-known genes for conditions like Tay-Sachs (recessive gene, if a baby gets two copies they are a normal baby the first several months, then get progressive nerve damage until they die around three), or Huntington’s (relevant gene is dominant, but condition manifests in adulthood) may choose not to have kids, or use technology like PGD to select embryos without the relevant genes, or in the case of recessive genes may refuse as spouse any potential partner that also has the gene.

    Those are complicated decisions, and nothing should be forced, but it’s important to be able to talk about. There shouldn’t be a taboo on talking about how parents’ decisions affect their children, even if those decisions involve genetics.




  • Churches and other religious congregations in the US are NOT funded with taxpayers money (at least, pending Supreme Court decision on the Kansas taxpayer supported Catholic school), and pastor salary and building upkeep are very real costs. If a family values the community having employee(s) and a building, and doesn’t want the hassle of other payment options, automatic debits are a good option to have available.

    Things that actually are funded with taxpayer money, yes, they should be free. The Project 2025 plan to kill NOAA so weather forecasts will only be available to subscribers of private companies is incredibly destructive to such a huge number of people, and yes, this broadband decision is in that same awful category.



  • There is deeply emotional resistance to the idea of topics being too complex for the average person to understand. The “experts” promote something that superficially contradicts our lived experience? They must be corrupt liars! Down with the experts!

    The economy had, on balance, positive trends in 2024? We felt poorer, so economists should be lynched! /s

    Feels scarily like America is moving towards something like China’s Great Leap Forward https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward

    The Great Leap Forward stemmed from multiple factors, including "the purge of intellectuals, the surge of less-educated radicals… Mao was dismissive of technical experts and basic economic principles…

    Higher officials did not dare to report the economic disaster which was being caused by these policies… Mao did not retreat from his policies; instead, he blamed problems on bad implementation and “rightists” who opposed him…

    …dozens of dams constructed in Zhumadian, Henan, during the Great Leap Forward collapsed in 1975 (under the influence of Typhoon Nina)… with estimates of its death toll ranging from tens of thousands to 240,000.

    The failure of agricultural policies… suppressed the food supply… The shortage of supply clashed with an explosion in demand, leading to millions of deaths from severe famine.




  • You can’t logic someone out of a place they didn’t logic themselves into, but they got to that place for reasons, just not logical ones. If you can figure out the underlying drivers for their position, it’s possible (although still really difficult) to address those underlying needs in a way that enables the person to loosen up on the unreasonable position.

    Not sure that approach can get traction over the internet, though. Discussions on social media are more for the lurkers than for any chance of the posters changing each other’s minds.




  • I think no more than two parties would dominate, even in a ranked choice system. But they would evolve more representatively: party platforms are shaped by issue polling, with the ballot box being both the ultimate poll but also obscure on what exactly the detailed driving issues are.

    Ranked choice voting would give single-issue parties a real seat at the ballot box, and enable the two big parties to more accurately adjust their platforms to target voters who first-choiced a little party and second-choiced one of the big ones.