What about as a political statement? Isn't that still protected speech? You republicans made masking/not masking a political act, don't blame me.

“My child is going to grow up to be a happy adult. He’s not going to be one of those kids that doesn’t come to see me or doesn’t bring my grandchildren around or doesn’t have anything to do with me as an adult because I forced them into a box that they didn’t fit into.”

This guy parents!

Old internet was absolute anarchy and it was better for it. There was a lot of fucked up shit out there but there werent algorithms manipulating you, sites tracking you, and purposely trying to sow discord for engagement. It was a more like a marketplace with a seedy section that you could visit if you were brave/stupid but you could happily just chill on your niche RC airplane forum if you wanted. The modern internet is more like a pushy used car salesman following you around telling you where to look and a cop following you around too.

Rather than banning social media for kids, we should be banning sites from implementing algorithms on them and tracking them. Frabkly, I'd like to see that for everyone, but its an easier political sell to protect kids from the predatory practices.

I remember the old internet as a refuge from the real world where I could be a sensitive nerd and I wouldn't get bullied for it. Cutting off access to outside ideas and communities for youth is a mistake. It also breaks any semblance of anonimity on the internet; how do you do age verification without having to upload an ID?

Either:

Embryos are people and they should never be destroyed, so IVF and abortion should be illegal.

OR

Embryos are not people and your right to choose what happens to your body is paramount. Therefore, abortions and IVF should be legal.

Which is it?

Quiet quitting is just middle management's manipulative language for people doing their jobs adequately but then not putting in a bunch of unpaid extra effort. When there is no incentive to go above and beyond, why should anyone? It is the job of management to create those incentives, but if they are unwilling to pay for that, complaining about people's work ethic to try to guilt them into doing unpaid work is their next strategy. It isn't very effective.

This has nothing to do with bathrooms, privacy, or "protecting women." The entire intent of laws like these is to attack trans people and make it effectively illegal to be trans in public. Fascists need a minority enemy in order to maintain power and we are their latest favourite punching bag.

Fear and Loathing should be required reading in schools. A lot of the meaning gets lost in all of the drugs, but in the midst of that haze one can find a lot true things about America.

Advertisers: OK. Call.

I wonder if Haley is vegan. She seems willing to expand the definition of what is a life and what is sacred. Which is more alive, an adult cow or a single cell human embryo? Are either acceptable to eat? Why or why not?

"anarchists looking to consolidate power"

What?

It's just capitalism. Longer work hours. So-called "news" agencies that profit off of fearmongering and division make us mistrust our neighbors and strangers. Streaming, TV, and gaming companies make money from us spending time at home looking at a screen. Our modern economy forces many people to leave their he towns to find employment. No support network for parents so parents become incredibly isolated and burnt out by having to do everything themselves whereas preindustrial people had a whole tribe to raise the youth.

"today the ugliest danger is gender ideology, which cancels out differences"

Well I'm glad he said the misogynistic part out loud. In a religion in which only men can hold power, blurring the lines between who can be a man undermines their power structure. They see women as inferior chattel and the strict gender binary allows them to enforce their hegemony. I suppose the pope thinks that LGBT* people around the world being murdered and persecuted is a good thing as long as the cis white straight men get to stay in power.

Your position is a joke, and everyone with 2 brain cells can tell that it can only exist by enslaving half of the population and trying to murder another 2%. Like any good tiny dictator, you don't inspire respect for people to follow you, you reach for the cudgel of violence, and make no mistake, your words inspire violence just as much as if you lit the torches yourself. Your god will judge you accordingly.

I thought he was a "free speech absolutist"

EV weight is a legitimate concern both in terms of road and tire wear. However, this is a problem more generally given the current market trend towards driving a siege tower around to go grab some groceries.

If he cared about the grid he'd put solar panels up.

So your stance is essentially: "queerphobic culture exists therefore queer people should hide to be safe"?

Rather than question the legitimacy or merits of transphobia and fascism, you are placing the burden on the marginalized members to hide and just accept the unjust status quo. Just because something is the status quo does not make it right and it doesn't make it immutable.

No one is arguing about the existence of consequences. The consequences of hate are painfully clear to everyone. We are saying instead that there ought not to be deadly consequences for being different. It's unjust.

By your logic, African Americans should have just stayed in the back of the bus and in separate facilities. After all, they got sprayed with firehouses and killed for seeking equal treatment. Consequences amiright? Similarly, American colonists should have just bent the knee because England sent literal armies when they dared to declare independence. Oh well, they should have been aware of the consequences.

Transphobia and fascism isn't natural law. It can and should be fought. "Aw man that's just the way it is" is apologetic and defeatist at best.

Punching down on trans people rather than punch down inflation at the gas pump and grocery store.

Then we agree that children shouldn't have to fight these battles. Unfortunately, the "adults" in Oklahoma and many other states are either failing them or actively participating in their persecution.

I assume you're a grown-ass person like me. It is my job and your job to make this a safer world for people like Nex. Until then, they are indeed fending for themselves. I vote for the least-bad candidates, contact my representatives frequently, and give to charities who help queer people; admittedly I need to do more. The relevant question isn't what Nex should have done; they died for being. The question is what can you do such that people like Nex don't have to fight hate groups alone?

Look no further than the world's militaries for this. They drill drill drill until soldiers react automatically without having to think about how they will react in a hostile situation. Its not enough to learn what to do once if you want a fast response.

I always have to talk my folks down from shit they heard on Fox and Newsmax. They have called me frantically panicking that:

-There is a new gender neutral bathroom in addition to the M and F rooms at their gym!

"So you haven't been inconvenienced in any way?"

" They are going to take the women's room away! I don't want to change next to a MAN!"

"... Are they taking the women's room away and forcing you into the gender neutral one?"

" well no..."

"So you haven't been inconvenienced in any way. This sounds fine. Why are you calling me again?"

-The government is going to force them to switch to electric cars and they don't have a convenient outdoor outlet to charge a car!

"Did you get a letter that they are going to seize your car?"

"No not yet but they are going to do it soon!"

"Okay, well that sounds like it probably isn't imminent, why dont we wait to see of you get a letter and then we can react then; worst case we take it to court. Also, someday you will have to replace your old car and an electric one might be a good option for you guys. Dad is getting too old to get under the car to change oil and you know he's too stubborn to take it to a shop. You don't need a lot of range, you only go to church, the grocery store, and your craft club. There are incentives to put in a charger anyway."

My dad has a heart condition and these fuckers are driving both of them to an early grave for cheap political points. Fuck these fear profiteers.

Birth control, education and empowerment of women, and secularization. Not genocide. We either do that or we continue on thoughtlessly growing our population until we exceed what the earth can support at our given technological level. Then people will starve, thus decreasing the population with maximum suffering.

At worst it is about a wash. Combined cycle power plants are very efficient, much more efficient than even the best ICE engines. You pay for that efficiency with space and equipment weight which is why you don't see that in vehicles. Even with transmission losses and power train losses in EVs your miles per unit of burnt fuel is about as good or better. Mix some green energy in there and you are coming out positive.

Have they tried NOT making schools a hostile work evironment where teachers are one baseless accusation of being "woke" away from getting fired and getting death threats from the community? Have they tried not censoring speech and burning books such that teachers can do their jobs? No? Good luck with that then.

I consider book banning to be obscene. Checkmate fascists!

This gives me gender ew-phoria

Logging in on the weekend reinforces this norm. If people see you are online, it lessens any cognitive dissonance they have with the voice in the back of their head saying "this is some bullshit, this is my day off."

Just because the path for manhood was laid out for you doesn't necessarily mean that it is the correct choice. It might be, and if it is, great. However, don't assume that the default settings are necessarily the best settings just because they are default. It sounds to me like you aren't happy with cisnormative manhood but are afraid and unsure. At the end of the day only you can decide what will make you happiest and accepting default manhood is just as much of a choice as deciding to reject all or part of it. Both choices come with a cost and a benefit. From what you describe, it sounds like full manly conformity comes with the benefit of built -in social acceptance but with the cost of being uncomfortable with your body and always wondering what could have been. Transitioning or even just deciding to identify as not-totally-cis comes with the benefit of self-actualization but may come with social costs; however sometimes people surprise you and are way more accepting than you might expect.

Also realize that gender is a spectrum and that people can be anywhere along that from man to non binary to woman and some people have identities that are ever-shifting and changing. There are a whole lot of ways to have gender and I encourage you to do a little reading to see if anything fits. You always get to change your mind if you identify one way and decide that it doesn't fit later. If you decide that cis-man was right after all, that's fine too but then you will know for sure having tried on a different identity. At 18, you have a lot of life left to figure it all out and university is a great time to explore gender.

https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en/

Good luck and we are rooting for you.

History will remember them the way we remember the racists who upheld Jim Crow in the American south.

Assuming that there will be history of course.

I'm happy for you. I also remember the weight that was lifted from my psyche when I finally put a name to what I was feeling.

As for your nation and state, the best thing to do is to get politically involved with other local LGBT folks. There's nothing that makes one feel more helpless than sitting around and dreading the future!

A "fun" game when reading quotes from bigots is to swap out "gender ideology" with "bodily autonomy" to realize how absurd, hateful, and fascist the message really is. That's really what we're talking about; being trans isn't a choice but expressing your true gender is somewhat* a choice you make with your body and aesthetic. Fascists don't want people to have freedom, they want to have power over you for power's sake. The pushback against "gender ideology" isn't the reasoned philosophic debate that they want it to sound like, it's a war against already-marginalized people. It's "a boot stamping on a human face" because power is both the means and the ends for these fucks. Anyone supporting these assholes should ask themselves what happens if they finally succeed to stamp out the queer menace. Fascists' continued existence requires another group to persecute and if history is any guide it will be religious minorities, racial minorities, political rivals, etc. until the world is empty and there is no "fruitful ‘tension" that Pope Franky states that he values so much aside from the powerful and those that they decided to keep as slaves.

*somewhat because for many the choice is transition or suicide

So what you're saying is pogo sticks and stilts are fair game?

That's weird because all except prusa are Chinese made. My issue with Bambu is that it is a closed ecosystem, but they are undeniably very capable machines.

Voting is the bare minimum participation in politics. The groups that want to exterminate queer people are well funded and highly motivated. They sure as hell do more than vote once every four years and hope for the best. Their propagandists never sleep; right now they are kicking the left's asses in the sheer volume of propaganda they produce and its having an impact.

It is malicious...

No. Being politically active is of the upmost importance to me right now. I'm exhausted, but this election year is a matter of survival for queer people.

I think slinging mud about how much money one's opponent has is a little tactless when so many Americans are struggling financially. The Dems get accused of being deaf to the problems of the rural poor enough without leaning into the rich urban elite stereotype.

Also, where are the "lock him up" chants?

1. Tracking via bluetooth, wifi, cell signals, nfc, etc. Does one trust airplane mode?
2. Seizure of the device if one is arrested. There is legal debate about what methods law enforcement can use to get into the phone. One is exposing both whatever pictures and video was made at the protest but everything else going on in one's life too.
3. If one has a unique case or model, one can be doxxed.

Action cameras are cheap, durable, and many come without any radios that can be used to track someone. They all look the same. Using a brand new sd card means that the only data on there is the pictures/video taken at the protest. The major downside is that if they are seized, they are an open book for law enforcement since they are unencrypted. If the sd card is taken or destroyed then one loses any evidence along with it.

Hybrids: am I a joke to you?

Not all trans women pass. It takes a combination of the genetic lottery, a lot of money, time, and work to pass. Not everyone has that luck nor those resources. Nonbinary folks are also put in a no-win situation.

What kind of names are Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Judas, Jesus? They are all just the sound of meat flapping around.

For real. It really is a statement about the quality of that school of their philosophy professors can't understand the non-agression principle, or bodily autonomy, or where one persons rights ends and the other's begins... Apparently don't send your kids to school in Texas.