buh-buh-buh but what about when I refer to mechanical engineering! what about when I need to adjust my cam timing! oh no!

I dunno, I would broadly agree and I think that it’s probably not a good thing to be calling people, but I do have two complaints I would like to file with the official board that governs this sort of thing. Neither of them relate to the word’s banned usage, however. Of course, it’s still gonna be a little weird.

One is that I like -tard as a suffix, I think it has a kind of satisfying mouthfeel in pronunciation, I think potentially we need some more words that use it, and I don’t think that as a kind of, like, workaround, or way to say the slur more. I kind of wish the suffix was dissociated from the slur, so this was more possible. The only other word I can think of that does this is mustard, which apparently arrived at a similar pronunciation through a different etymological route. I dunno, I find it to be a kind of like, inherently hilarious word, or satisfying word to say. Unusual, maybe, maybe like an unusual morpheme pairing. Maybe I have some level of just like unprocessed shitheadery though, that’s very possible. I also kind of wish there was a way that actually worked to de-escalate the weight of a slur, to rob it of it’s weight. Obviously, taking it back doesn’t do much, because it’s just going to be subject to the same in-ground out-ground dynamic, a la the n-word, right. It’s okay if gay people call each other or themselves the f-slur, it’s not okay if some straight guy walks in and does it. More positive associations might work but then, you know, doubtful that would work in the first place, and also you’d probably not see a lot of people wanting to take the L and push it on that one because everyone would hate them for it, both the people insulted and those who would use it as a insult.

Also, I don’t like this kind of mentality more broadly of “oh you gotta be more creative when you insult people.”. Some people are so boring and uninterestingly fucked, that they aren’t worth the creativity you expend upon insulting them. I think it just kind of shadows the problem here. No, you don’t want to say the word because it denigrates an entire group of people when you use it in an insulting manner. There’s not really anything there about creativity, or lack thereof, that makes it a moral problem. Sometimes you do need a low-rent insult, it should just be one that isn’t a slur. Call someone a shitheel, or something, it’s easier than this, there are plenty to choose from.

Okay, thirdly, I think there’s also a broader, and interesting question here, of, how an insult being based on like, unchangeable characteristics makes it more mean or more of a slur, right. But then that sort of, leaves out things we might consider as being changeable, like, say, body weight, which I would also say is a dick move, to insult someone on the basis of their weight, or to constantly bring it up, or anything like that. On the other hand, insulting someone on the basis of their eye color is maybe like, very antiquated, still potentially mean, and potentially very mean in like, maybe india? But I dunno so much if it would be considered a slur, really, as much as just kind of a very weird thing to bring up. Insulting someone on the curliness of their hair, maybe, but then that could be seen as a proxy for other things, just like most traits. It’s hard to do this with something too obvious because most of them have been historically associated with like, eugenics and shit like that. Maybe if you were to insult someone based on how big their feet are or something, that might be a more socially acceptable or lighthearted insult, even if it’s still mean.

We also have, like, technically all characteristics are unchangeable, if we live in a deterministic universe, right? Insulting someone’s intelligence, even if they don’t have autism or down syndrome or what have you, is still insulting a deterministic aspect of their character, which was sort of unavoidable for them to stumble into. If you insult someone for even, their choice of boots, right, you are just insulting a characteristic about them which was ultimately inevitable, the result of many dominoes falling into place. I think perhaps when we attempt to understand the purpose of insulting someone, we give it this guise of free will and agency which I think ultimately makes it more mean than it would otherwise be. It robs it of its whimsy.

We view insults as some sort of like, vehicle for tough love, vehicle for change, perhaps, or we view it as maybe righteous, because you’re insulting someone on something they can change and by implication I think, should change. I think we have to be honest, though. Insults are not for the people who are being insulted. They are for the people saying them, they have always been. If that’s the case, it doesn’t even need to be really related to the person you’re insulting at all, or even necessarily directed at them. It doesn’t need to be such a mean thing, if it’s just for you. And if it is just for you, then I think it’s more valuable to do that assessment and figure out why you’re actually doing it, instead of just like, giving into mindless frustration and calling someone a mean name, like a child.

Yeah, I’ll moan.

I gotta say this is a little bit funny to post this and then also there’s another guy posting this in the same reply, it’s very botlike. no comment on the politics but I find it amusing as a response

but have you considered: what if I drain you of twelve gorillion dollars, or give you nothing, and that’s the negotiation? what then? have you considered that: what if I just like heedlessly extend the metaphor to the current political state of affairs in such a way that it reinforces my own biases and points, what then, what would you do then? surely, the logic doesn’t hold up if I tell you that the alternative is horrible, right?

wait, you’re telling me the logic does hold up still in that instance? how about no? have you considered what if I just said no, to that? what if I just denied the logic and decided to be obstinate, what then? what if actually, I like eating shit, huh?

Or or, if you wanna defend Tankies, I literally dont have time for you. Do I give Nazi’s time to explain the nuances of their views? No, same goes for Tankies

That’s what I said people should do though? Just ignore comments and move on if they’re not actually willing to engage with what’s being said

You could just tell them that supporting Russia and China is bad, or that those are authoritarian regimes, and cite sources, rather than dismissing them out of hand, based on what the surface level interpretation of their arguments are, you know?

We have more than a one word limit here on Lemmy, people can respond with thought out rebuttals, rather than one word dismissals. It’s just that the one word dismissals are easier to write and understand, so they’re more likely to get thrown at an argument early and then up votes after someone skims a long ass set of paragraphs.

There’s not like an either-or option there, I also really question your “well if we don’t discard tankies then we’re gonna have to discard all communists, and how would you like that!”. That doesn’t make any sense to me. Your “Pick one” is a false dichotomy. People are capable of more nuanced conversations, just labelling people and throwing around out of hand dismissals isn’t going to be helpful in actually working out anything, convincing those people, or convincing bystanders. Even if you were to convince bystanders with such a tactic, you’d be convincing them in a bad faith way where they don’t fully understand the usage of the term, so they’d be just as likely to throw it around as an out of hand dismissal without understanding what it means.

But then I suppose, you know, it’s probably gonna be easier for most people to just call me a tankie and move on, right, on the basis that my argument advocating for nuanced responses and more well-reasoned argumentation is actually carrying water and “providing a smokescreen for tankies”, so I might as well be one, right? Term gets stretched even further.

I have always been of the belief that if you are to respond, it better be with a well-reasoned and dignified comment, rather than just a kind of lazy dismissal. If people are doing shit that’s actually against the rules, then report them. If they’re engaging in bad faith behavior, you are more likely to reveal that by responding to them with good faith behavior than also responding with bad faith behavior. If you aren’t going to say something nice, don’t bother to say anything at all, or, put another way, don’t feed the trolls.

Dunno why internet rules 101 is becoming such an uncommon thing now.

Treatment was less bad in Cuba iirc but still included sending people to go work on sugar plantations, which is pretty back-breaking and horrifying labor. I mean, horrifying to the point that the Spanish colonial state were willing to force their slaves to do it, you know?

Luckily this isn’t an issue anymore as cuba has somewhat recently liberalized their constitution and legislated free medical care for trans people and decriminalized homosexuality, probably in no small part due to the “thaw” that Obama put in place (probably one of his small wins), opening them up for better tourism and money, that trump then reversed and Biden has maintained.

But shhh, you didn’t hear any that from me, Cuba’s only allowed to be evil.

yeah that’s too much singular linguistic prescriptivism for me. I’ve definitely seen a litany of people here called tankies. Lots of people just decrying US imperialism, particularly what’s happening in Gaza, lots of people criticizing Biden, that’s a classic way to get accused of being a tankie, I think I’ve also seen people advocating for basic shit like healthcare being called tankies. Prison reform is a big one that’ll get you called a tankie, as well as lots of anti-police takes, for whatever reason.

Yeah. It’s a term that’s like originating out of apologia for the suppression of the Hungarian revolution, it’s not used for that anymore. The definition has changed historically and from person to person over time. It doesn’t have this clear meaning that you seem to think it does. It can have that clear meaning for you, sure, you’ve defined your use case, but you can’t really guarantee that every other person using that term is going to use it correctly. It would be, you know, theoretically, pretty advantageous for some right wingers to pose as left wing and then just kind of throw around a term commonly used in left wing circles as a derogatory term to shut down discussions, with basically no coherence to use.

What does it mean when a middle aged man stars at you in public? Or, is starring at you? That sounds like some kind of situation in which you could probably call the cops.

By this same logic we will trick gay people into being attracted to women! No! The gay utopian future is slowly closing!

This. Have no clue where these people are living, probably in proximity to a larger city, but everywhere I’ve ever lived (mostly smalltown shitsville suburban america), your options are maybe a corner store that has your bare essentials, at an insane markup (mostly, I suspect, in order to exploit people who don’t own a car, forgot something on their way to the grocery, whatever. Capitalize on proximity.), or like, a 20 minute drive to the grocery store. 20 minutes both ways, plus the time you spend in the store, and parking, and traffic. That’s probably like an hour out of your day, at the least. Probably more, since you’re usually getting all your week’s worth of groceries at once, since you wanna minmax your time.

Being in a commercial district and not an industrial one, and, being as most people drive their cars everywhere, and everything tends to be spread out to meet parking minimums, you probably don’t end up close enough to the grocery store to pick up stuff on your way back from most of the other things you’re gonna be doing. It all leads to more dedicated trips where you want to plan out more thoroughly what you’re buying and what you’re eating through the whole week, there’s not a lot of spontaneity there. Even plan out what you’re doing for fun, which I think is kind of antithetical to the idea of having fun.

I have never lived in a place where all of this wasn’t the case.

Yeah, I mean, I don’t think the two groups are that dissimilar. I think both groups are also probably also fine with voting. I just haven’t seen anyone who actually thinks that voting is bad, I think at most I’ve seen people who think it’s a waste of time, or useless, maybe, but it’s kind of hard to make a convincing argument, generally, that taking say the, you know, at most like 7-8 hours to vote is a completely unjustifiable waste of time. That’d be a pretty extreme example and I don’t expect someone voting in that circumstance would realistically change anything, though, it’s more probable that someone could probably vote in like, just around an hour.

My point is more just that these people aren’t like, illogical ingrates, I guess. I dunno. I see both sides of this issue, I think people are mostly talking past each other and taking out mutual aggression because they don’t really have any other way to feel like they’re doing anything politically productive. Like in this thread the most disagreement I’ve seen is people who are like “Joe Biden isn’t ice cream!”. That’s not really a real disagreement with the core point being made, it’s like, a disagreement with the framing of the issue.

My other point, I guess, is that talking about these things in the abstract is a pretty quick way to get everyone pissed off. It sort of, “gets to the heart of the disagreement”, right, in terms of, oh, here’s where our worldviews diverge, but it doesn’t really do any of the work of convincing someone. I think in this case it’s a pretty narrow gap, to convince someone, it doesn’t seem like there’s that big of a divide. Anyone given to like, “Oh joe biden sucks I wish I could vote for someone more left wing” is probably going to mostly agree with everything else you might say.

Instead of like this argument in the abstract, it would probably have a higher success rate to argue about like, the NLRB not sucking right now, or the infrastructure bill and the amtrack stuff, or the student loan forgiveness, stuff like that, actual policies, and then I’d imagine people arguing the opposite would be like “oh well none of that stuff is really extreme at all or as extreme as we wanted”, or basically “too little too late”, and then, you know, I mean I’ve never seen anyone do this, but I think at that point you’d just have to like, give them the point of voting to maintain from a backslide, vs revolutionary action which helps actually make progress. Both are somewhat important and also somewhat contextual.

Like this whole thing is just a “dual power” problem, I guess. I dunno, I just find it really grating to like read through thread after thread of this same exact discourse happening when nobody’s goals are actually mutually exclusive, you know? It’s like neoliberal identity politics taken to the extreme, where everyone identifies as a revolutionary or as a reformist and everyone assumes and argues their own position instead of like just acknowledging their similarities and doing something about their common goals. It gives me serious COINTELPRO handbook vibes.

I thought I remembered pretty definitively during elementary school that there was like, a big red button next to the bus driver, that the kids were supposed to hit in an emergency, while you were supposed to also steer the bus and keep from crashing in the meantime. I could be wrong, though, or that could not be the case on public buses or buses of other types, I dunno.

Also, the buses did infamously have emergency exit doors, so you could always just open the emergency door in the back of the bus and jump out. That’s probably the other best option, relative to going over a cliff. Road rash can be pretty severe and bad, and you could get a concussion or snap your neck if you don’t know how to do the jump out sideways rolly thing. I dunno though, seems like you could do it probably.

damn, people really can’t read, huh?

I’m talking about the ones who are so proud of their principled take of not voting and telling others how that doesn’t change the system and how the actual change happens through other means. And then the other means they are doing are maybe some complaints on social media, which is just lol.

I mean, who are these people, though? I’ll take your word for it, but I haven’t really seen anyone IRL actually advocating for this as a strategy, and I haven’t seen anyone legitimately advocate for it in a meaningful way, like, in a way that actually matters. The most I’ve seen to that effect is like, protest votes from people in california, which, sure, whatever, doesn’t really end up mattering because their district is still going to overwhelmingly be blue. I haven’t seen anyone legitimately advocate for just like “nah I don’t wanna vote” as a legitimate strategy. The most solid stance I’ve seen people take is “I dunno if it matters, I would rather talk about local outreach” or whatever whatever.

I also don’t understand why the consistent instinct against voter apathy is just like. This, always, it’s always like, “oh you need to vote or else we’ll all get annihilated by freiza’s death ball” or like “you have to vote because not voting is for bitches” type stuff. I have very rarely seen the discussion go from like, this abstract talk to more concrete oh what has joe biden done positively, what might trump do very poorly, type of stuff, much less have I ever seen talk of actual interesting electoral politics about how people should vote, or who’s vote matters where, or whatever.

I dunno. It’s just annoying, I’ve seen this argument play in the abstract probably hundreds of time at this point, straight up, no joke, and also in real life. That’s only me counting this election season, too, and not the last 3-4 elections where basically the same set of conversations occurred.

Buses tend to have an emergency stop that you’re supposed to hit in the event that the driver has like, a heart attack, or something, right?

It’s not a good tool if one party is likely, but not guaranteed, to win without your vote, but is much worse than the other. You should only spoil your ballot if your constituency is has a large enough majority that your vote won’t matter at all, or none of the parties are less bad than the others.

The first instance is realistically the only case in which it would really matter that you spoiled your ballot, though. In the second example of when you might spoil your vote, it wouldn’t really matter at all, precisely because they have a large enough majority.

I’ve known about this for a while and it’s just been mundane to me. It never struck me how stupid it is until now.

Just buy the bungee corded one with the pull string that they make, that’s probably better anyways.