• 9 Posts
  • 488 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • Kentucky’s state constitution has uniquely strong protections for public school funding, and amendment 2 nullifies all of them in one go.

    Here’s the wording:

    To give parents choices in educational opportunities for their children, are you in favor of enabling the General Assembly to provide financial support for the education costs of students in kindergarten through 12th grade who are outside the system of common (public) schools by amending the Constitution of Kentucky as stated below?

    IT IS PROPOSED THAT A NEW SECTION BE ADDED TO THE CONSTITUTION OF KENTUCKY TO READ AS FOLLOWS:

    The General Assembly may provide financial support for the education of students outside the system of common schools. The General Assembly may exercise this authority by law, Sections 59, 60, 171, 183, 184, 186, and 189​ of this Constitution notwithstanding.

    I genuinely think most KY voters don’t know what notwithstanding means, if they even bother to read that far.




  • I believe a large portion of the electorate that vote Democrat are liberals who weren’t fans of Biden but hated Trump, and intended to vote for Biden only to prevent Trump from winning. Kamala would not lose this contingency of voters even if they think Kamala is too progressive, but she would gain new voters who previously felt unrepresented. Only anti-Trump conservatives (a tiny but admittedly growing voting bloc) might jump ship.

    Kamala chose to appeal to conservatives to steal votes from Trump and because it gets her more wealthy donors. It’s possibly a winning strategy, but it is not the only one, and this one abandons the progressive voting bloc in favor of conservatives in a time where younger people are trending leftwards. This is a move that will have long-term consequences.







  • Narrative-driven games give players the illusion of choice. To me this seems like it would lend itself to being even more effective than traditional propaganda because it’s capable of tricking the player into thinking they came to a conclusion on their own.

    Don’t get me wrong, I love Disco Elysium, but it is very effective communist propaganda. Propaganda has a negative connotation but is not inherently bad or dishonest, though it certainly can be.





  • I might be reading into the subtext a bit too much, but I got the impression that the human society shown in the background was ecofascist. Hear me out, starting with the large-scale rewilding. That is a process that would require the displacement of millions (perhaps billions) of people from their homes. Whether that was driven by climate change or forced migration we don’t know, but the implications are fairly grim. In addition, the geodesic dome we see doesn’t contain a biosphere, but a monoculture carefully maintained by robots complete with over-the-top security robots for dealing with “pests,” and the helper robot commercial we see (which heavily implies a capitalist society) shows a city with well-mowed grass lawns and trimmed hedges. From this it seems that humans didn’t engage in regenerative practices, but rather allowed nature to reclaim parts of the world on its’ own. This shows a humanity that has not embraced nature, but rather fully separated themselves from it.


  • I don’t even necessarily disagree that it’s counterproductive, I just don’t think it’s fair to attack someone for using esoteric or unconventional language. Yes, it inconveniences the listener - or in this case the reader - but in this context no one is being forced to engage with OP. By using some Old English letters OP is just having some innocent fun at no one’s expense, which doesn’t warrant the harsh response they’re receiving.

    If you were talking to someone and they casually used xe/xey pronouns (or any neopronouns for that matter) to refer to a friend who isn’t there, would you go out of your way to lecture them about what an inconvenience it is to you to have to learn something new?



  • You’re right, it is. But language shifts in populations in ways that enhance communication. One person using letters pronouns that nobody else uses makes communication of ideas more difficult.

    Not only that, but they’re only choosing to use some Middle English letters english pronouns, and not any other rules of Middle English grammar or spelling different types of english pronouns.

    They can use whatever language pronouns they want, but if it’s too much effort for people to understand, they’re more likely to be ignored.

    Doesn’t sound so reasonable now, does it? If language that mildly inconveniences others is an acceptable way to express your gender identity, then why not also to express yourself creatively?



  • I vaguely recall you saying you were Jewish in an earlier comment, if you’re actually black then I apologize. If not then perhaps you can try asking someone who is African American if they find what I said “highly offensive.”

    You see OP’s use of Old English as worthy of derision, so you interpreted my comparison as belittling towards AME. I don’t share your aversion to esoteric forms of expression, so my comparison is entirely without malice.