I enjoy the idea that some shitass mason hated whatever king hired him, built all the stairs as quickly and poorly as possible, and then to save his ass later had to be all “oh hmm yes the stairs? That’s a feature actually” and somehow it winds up catching on

If “shouted in Klingon” is redundant, then is “said in Klingon” an oxymoron?

Weird to segue directly from arguing that cluster munitions are illegal into claiming that the legality of weapons doesn’t matter, but okay

Yeah this seems common. I had a friend who grew up with parents who alternated between English, Portuguese, Italian, and French, and he told me he wound up not being able to speak at all until he was over 2 years old. It didn’t affect him badly later on, and he always insisted it was worth it

I know he’s a liar. But lying about those things can’t resonate with his supporters the way this could. This was almost a core campaign slogan, it’s a downright meme. A denial that he supported it ought to be a much more obvious lie than the others

This is a new tier of cognitive dissonance, even for Trump. I mean he literally got crowds chanting “lock her up!” Hopefully this is the icing on the cake of his felony convictions and gets a few more people to break out of the cult.

Trek tends to fudge the dates on purpose. It’s supposed to take place In The Future, and you’re supposed to be thinking about whatever philosophical concept the episode is about, not the exact timeline of events. From Wikipedia: “stardates were originally intended to avoid specifying exactly when Star Trek takes place.” I hate linking to Fandom wiki pages, but I’ll say the page on stardates goes on at length about how inconsistent Trek time is.

Jumping around within a single episode is a little funny, but doesn’t surprise me. Some writers try to be consistent, but maybe only for a few connected episodes, and some don’t try at all. Sometimes a character will die, but an earlier episode or a flashback with a clearly later stardate will see them alive. There’s all kinds of technobabble about where they are in the universe, and light speed relativity, and so on, but at the end of the day the show isn’t trying to hide any serious messages in its timeline so long as the story of the episode makes some level of sense.

Taiwan is a ridiculously valuable tech asset. If China can seize control of TSMC, it’d be in an incredible position to make tons of money and potentially spy on the rest of the world. If the factories wind up inoperable for whatever reason… well, most of the chips they produce aren’t being sent to China anyway, so while it wouldn’t be good for anyone, it’d be much worse for the rest of the world. And with TSMC making efforts to offshore its talent and production anyway (even if it has been with very limited success so far), China wants to make a move sooner rather than later.

It is not a place for nuanced debate.

Why not? Compared to other social media it’s way better equipped for reasoned debate, with an easy-to-read layout designed for mountains of text and ease of linking sources. Maybe c/memes isn’t the right place but considering how serious the rest of this thread is I’m pretty sure my spiel was worth it.

Maybe the people in my social circle are just a lower caliber than yours, but I can’t remember the last time I got asked to source an opinion irl. Most of my friends already agree with me. Hell, offline, most people aren’t willing to discuss politics at all. Even saying you have opinions on politics is basically a faux pas…

I’m gonna say some stuff that most of the people here probably know on some level, but considering this thread, I think it needs to be explicitly said.

Very few of the people who post comments on the internet are highly educated in whatever field they’re making a claim in. Getting challenged by people who know next to nothing and receive all the upvotes anyway is an exhausting experience, so many well-educated people keep their debates private. If they are here, you probably aren’t enough of an expert to recognize them. The simple, easy to understand takes are what get upvoted, and in-depth, nuanced ideas are almost always ignored or ridiculed. Most forums are full of people who know just enough to feel confident in making calls for radical action without any knowledge of how that action could be implemented or would play out.

Look through this comment section. Lots of vague, single-sentence arguments about being “capitalist,” “communist,” or “socialist,” along with “leftist,” “liberal,” or “conservative,” but I don’t see a single one acknowledging that each of those words can individually encompass vast groups of conflicting ideas and have wildly different meanings in different parts of the world; a serious problem considering at least a few of the people posting in this thread aren’t in the US. Very little discussion of substantive ideas like “people should be given a universal basic income of $15 a day,” or “food stamps should be granted without application to anyone under a certain income threshold,” or “social media servers should receive public funding and be administrated by an elected body.” It’s almost never more specific than “universal healthcare,” or “abolish the police,” Those might be the right direction, but when was the last time you saw people discussing things like whether experimental treatments should be covered, or the number and type of professions that should replace the current myriad of roles police are expected to fill? I seriously doubt if you randomly selected two self-described communists (or whatever ideology) on Lemmy and had them start making decisions together, that they would agree with each other on exactly how society should be run even half the time.

I’m not saying these conversations shouldn’t happen, vague as they are. I certainly don’t have the energy to write out long arguments 99% of the time. We all have to make our own way to finding deeper knowledge, and building a knowledge base of buzzwords can be a useful stepping stone. But far too often people stop once they feel they have a sufficient understanding of the buzzwords and then start talking like they know the answers. it’s important to temper the depth of your convictions based on where you’re having the discussion, where you’re getting your knowledge. Are you watching youtube videos and reading unsourced comments, or are you reading research papers from institutions with a history of making accurate claims? Are you reading news articles from ad-supported papers, and if you are, are you checking whether those articles are making sources available for readers check on? Should I have bothered writing several paragraphs under a meme of a glowing red bird, and am I really qualified to tell people to be more careful with their discussions?