That’s a hell of a lot of words that aren’t either “of course we should vote in every election for the best possible candidate” or “no, we should withhold our votes in the general if the Dems don’t nominate someone sufficiently progressive.”

If you mean the latter, say it. If you don’t, then say that, too.

So, you are in favor of “my guy or the Nazi” voting? I didn’t hear a “no”, there.

It isn’t “loser talk” to recognize the rules that elections run by, or to push back against the “both sides” rhetoric that lets the Overton window drift ever rightward.

Either you show up and vote in every election for the least bad candidate, be they good or great or only “not as bad”, or you are doing more harm than good.

What does that fight look like, in your mind? Standing and shouting for Bernie and then sitting out the general when Clinton wins? Or arguing for Bernie in the primary since he’s the best choice and then arguing just as hard for Clinton in the general since she’s the best choice then?

Primary-only voting doesn’t force anyone to do anything but ignore us harder in the primary.

And if that isn’t what you mean by your objection to framing all elections as choices for “least bad”, then why are you echoing the rhetoric of those who do?

I don’t know how you square the circle of asserting that ‘both sided are bad’ is what got us here and still echoing “less bad” to buttress their thesis

Waiting for the left to be “good” instead of “less bad” is what makes “both sides are bad” such an effective demobilization tactic.

Picture the clearest example in human history, where one side was absolute villains and the other a superman-esque obvious good guy.

Then explain to me how the good guy is not the “least bad” choice.

Because too many of us who had selfish political actions, and for decades kept saying “both sides are bad” while the side nearest facism kept acting in bad faith.

Democratic elections have always in the end been about picking the least-bad option. And, like it or not, elections and their consequences shape the rest of the world.

Who I am and who did the study should be irrelevant. An idea should stand on its own or not.

Or do you really want to be the sort of person who dismissed Einstein as “Jewish science” or who told the Wright brothers that heavier than air flight is impossible? (Or, worse, the sort of person who pays for a scam “bomb sniffer” after a terrorist attack, or assumes Donald must be smart because he’s rich?)

It’s perfectly fine to answer a question with “I don’t know,” especially when your other option is “no, the emperor must have clothes on.”

Since you read it, and don’t reference them addressing the fact pattern I mentioned, I’m not sure reading it would be worth my time. I’d love to be convinced, however, if you can answer one question.

How did she categorize a movement as “non-violent” or not?

It shouldn’t be. Asserting that “no non-violent protests have failed” ignores an obvious null hypothesis.

Tyrannical regimes attack non-violent protests that get large enough, and then call said movements “violent” to justify what the state did to them.

There are no such things as unreconcilable contradictions.

*: and by “common” I mean “as I believe most Christians understand it.”. I’m sure some don’t, and that there’s at least one sect that would call me funny names for saying anything.

Common* christian theology posits that God is a perfect judge of law and fact, seeing as she has both infinite patience, infinite subjective time, and accurate knowledge of everyone’s points of view.

“Why does evil persist on Earth then” comes down to either said evil being necessary for some unseen purpose, said evil being irrelevant to God’s plans, or said evil being the consequence of some mortal privilege. Or some combination thereof.

There has been a lot of christian thought about why evil persists, and settling on an answer to it is essentially the base of all persistent ecumenical schisms. Other religions add even greater complexity, because once you examine perspectives off the abeahamic tree you quickly find that not even “Good” is consistently defined.

The moral and philosophical questions don’t get much easier if you remove God from the equation, or even if you adopt a nihilistic “only the momentary physical now matters” perspective.

If you don’t believe me, try coming up with an answer to “why is killing bad” that you can get agreement on. (Not just “is killing bad,” but an actual casual why.)

According to snopes, it looks like you need either fraud, professional misconduct, or an interaction beyond an anonymous donation.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/woman-sued-sperm-donor-for-child-support/

'course, it’s easy to imagine a woman telling some guy she wants a “sperm donor” and then being awarded child support. Which, in fairness, is also usually a strong argument from the guy to have partial custody.

Graceful degredation is a choice, made in the negative by survivors of the dot-com bubbles that fiercely want to extract a level of customer loyalty that mere “actual companies” could never dream of.

Business software is a weird world. Made weirder than there absolutely are people paid by Intuit (not OP) whose job is to convince people who don’t currently pay for QuickBooks that paying for QuickBooks will solve whatever quickbooks-esque problem they have.

It’s worse in the IT side. I’m modestly sure that COBOL and Java are only still around because of IBM and Oracle sales staff.

(Maybe less so for Java than COBOL. Or maybe Oracle’s sales team is just better.)

Honestly, at this point I’d settle for just “AI cannot be bundled with anything else.”

Neither my cell phone nor TV nor thermostat should ever have a built-in LLM “feature” that sends data to an unknown black box on somebody else’s server.

(I’m all down for killing with fire and debt any model built on stolen inputs,.too. OpenAI should be put in a hole so deep that they’re neighbors with Napster.)

Clear reporting should include not just the incremental environmental cost of each query, but also a statement of the invested cost in the underlying training.

TY and YM.

Worth noting is that “transgender” is not a shortened form of “transitioning gender”, but instead itself derives from the same latin root as “transition”, as do “transfigure” or “transform”.

So, “transgender” is closer to “changed gender” than “gender in flux.”

(Which is similar to how “transphobe” or “homophobe” mean exclusion, as in “hydrophobic”, and not fear as in “arachnophobia”)

FWIW.

US patents only last for 20 years. Technically, nothing is stopping you from making a part-for-part copy of a good laser printer from 2005 and selling it the same way some companies do replacement toner.

It’s just that making a cheap and reliable appliance is HARD if there are dozens of distinct parts that all have to move together. Heck, id expect a near-clone of a Cuisinart stand mixer before I’d expect a printer.

(And, even then, i doubt it’d be much cheaper than just buying one used.)

Edit: patents, not parents.

Mostly closeted late-identified MtF non-binary here:

You’ve cleanly identified the central uncertainty behind a hell of a lot of “gender binary” discourse, but you’re also brushing against a flamewar about something called “transmedicalism.”

(Thankfully, neither one needs to be answered to get to the correct public policy outcomes of “let people be people” and “don’t be a sexist fart.”)

Transmedicalism can be defined as a belief that only those who medically transition are transgender, with anything short of full HRT and surgery as merely a compromise state and anyone not transitioning full time dismissed as a cisgender person playing pretend indulging in something less than.

Needless to say, there are strong opinions on both sides. Just as there are LGB cis people who dismiss T as a class needing respect and protection, there are T people who dismiss Q+ as a class needing protection or respect.

What makes the argument especially infuriating is the dearth of good statistics on non-cisgender folk at all. Between low sample sizes, huge variance between state law and ethnic acceptance, and often-insulting definitions, precise data is harder to come by for trans sexuality than f-on-m sexual assault.

For your specifics;

• Social expectations are a huge part of gender identity. If I had been born decades later I very well might have come out as non-binary in high school, or might have instead been a full-time trans girl. And if I lived in a redder state, or had a more right-wing partner, I might still identify as entirely cis.

• Maybe? Like I said, it’s really hard to know.

• Data point worth noting : the cis folk who are closest to me are definitely cis.

• With the.huge caveat about data noted above, my understanding is that trans men and women are about even on their split between which sexes or genders they are attracted to. The most prominent single group may be MtF trans women who were in a cishet marriage before they transitioned, but my impression is that about 25% are “gay”, 25% “straight”, 25% “queer”, and 25% “confused by terms.”