I keep my cat food bags inside an old pet carrier; its already designed for a cat to be unable to break through easily, and seeing as they associate it with the vet, they dont really want to go in there.

I used to see them every so often on people in stores and such when I lived in NC, I moved to MA sometime around the covid lockdowns and havent seen one in person since, though Ive encountered people that like Trump vocally enough that Id not be that surprised to see one.

Ive usually seen “Expat” defined as someone working in another country, but explicitly with the intent to be there temporarily and leave once their time at that job ends, rather than moving there with an intent to stay and join that society. Which, granted, doesnt seem to be what OP is actually talking about in this case.

from the sound of it, no, the article suggests that someone probably commanded them to fire back in the 70s while the thing still worked, and its just unclear when exactly this was and who did it.

honestly, you dont really come off as one to me, so I wouldnt worry, you come off more as someone who might have slightly different definitions or ideas regarding ethics, which can be mutually frustrating to argue around, but not the same as being malicious

Honestly, unsure. I dont think that you have a particular obligation to have sex with any sort of person, and I do think that you have an obligation (not necessarily a legal obligation, but a “being a decent person” one) to not be racist. It isnt exactly unusual for a person to prefer their partner belong to a specific category (for example, a gay man is likely to refuse to consider being with a woman, but I dont think they would be a misogynist for that). That being said, there isnt a particular difference between all white women and any other sort of women that would make for much of a reason to do this beyond just hating white women in particular, whereas for a woman, there is a notable difference between a man and, for those who would be attracted to them as well, a woman, as far as partners goes, because with a man, there exists a possibility of pregnancy, which could be dangerous in the current state of the country.

I dont really see it as a contradiction, tbh, as I dont really see sex as the same category of “thing” as something like money, and I think the difference between them is so fundamental as to be meaningful here. I’ll admit, I dont really have personal experience with how this stuff goes down, as I said before, Im asexual myself, but it was my understanding that it wasnt that unusual for a person who was interested in sex to change their mind if something resulted in a change in their mood that killed the vibe, and disagreeable actions by the other person could easily enough be the thing to do that. I’d bring up again though, that these 4b people havent, as far as I can see, said that they would have sex with any man in particular before, just that they for sure dont want to now, so regardless of your feeling on if this is contradictory, the “I suggest that I’m going to have sex with someone” is missing anyway.

I mean, what actually stops them? Like, if they just came out and said verbatim “yeah, we dont care about the constitution anymore, republican presidents can do whatever they want” word for word as their ruling, and the president and congress are occupied by republicans with no desire to impeach them for it or refuse to enforce the ruling, what do you suppose happens?

I am saying that if what is to be given and then not is money, then it is punishment, but if it is sex, it is not, because these things are fundamentally different in a way that makes it reasonable to take one back without justification but not the other

This is a different situation though, for a few reasons: first, I actually don’t agree, once you’ve promised the raises, people will reasonably make plans in anticipation of them, so I do think you have an obligation (maybe not a legal one, but that isn’t what we’re talking about) to give them once you’ve made those promises. I don’t recall the women involved in any of this 4b stuff promising a relationship to any man or group of men, it isn’t like they “were going to get it” already.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, the stakes for business and personal relationships are different. We don’t generally require continuing and revokable consent for giving someone money, the state can for example issue someone a monetary fine, and that’s considered an acceptable consequence for many things. If you promise to buy something, and they then come to deliver it and you decide “actually I’ve changed my mind, keep it, I’m not buying it from you anymore”, the other person can in a number of circumstances sue you for breaking your agreement.

However, if the state were to mandate that someone enter into a relationship, or have sex with someone, as a penalty for something, that would be considered a human rights abuse where the monetary fine would not, and if you were to tell someone that you found some type of flower super romantic, and then they came over with those flowers to give, but you then told them you weren’t feeling a connection, no reasonable person would take their side if they tried to sue you to force you into a romantic relationship with them.

To put it a simpler way, if you promise someone a raise, the default state once that promise is made is getting the raise, as in professional matters, honoring promises and agreements is fundamental, revoking it later is therefore taking something from them, because you’re changing that default state to something worse for them. Personal relations do not have the same dynamic. It is well known and understood that people sometimes change their minds on romantic and sexual relationships, or sometimes just aren’t in the mood anymore. Promises don’t carry the same weight, when there exists an absolute right to revoke consent at any point and have things not continue. As such, the default state is “not having a relationship/encounter with a particular person”, right up until it happens. If the person in question never decides to enter into that relationship, because they have decided that they don’t want to even deal with having one at all, they haven’t taken anything from whoever else might have been interested in them, because they haven’t changed that state. There was never a reason for a guy to expect one of these 4b women would date them in the first place, and no reason to expect that they wouldn’t one day leave again if they did.

I mean, arent they swearing off dating as well though, not just sex? You wouldnt even get that situation of going on a date and then telling the guy that if they arent even going on dates in the first place.

I do actually agree that this might not be the most mentally healthy reaction, at least for straight women that actually would otherwise want to date men, but I dont really think that it is really the fault of the women themselves, I think that it is the kind of angry or fearful reaction to being put in a dangerous situation that, while it might not really help, is at least understandable and not some failing on the women’s part. The problem, in my mind, is the situation that leads them to be this upset in the first place.

The way Ive have been thinking about this is to work backwards: I dont think that you can have a situation where someone is morally obligated to date someone (at least when dating vs not dating is the limit of the situation. Obviously, if you add more negative things, like a trolley problem where it was somehow the only way to save people, that would be another matter, but nobody has set up such a thing here), because a forced relationship is quite harmful to the person so forced.

I suspect that you agree with that, since you acknowledge that “nobody is entitled to anything”. I also think one has a moral obligation to not act in a bigoted manner (this feels pretty much self evident to me, since bigotry harms people). Third, I consider misandry a form of bigotry, pretty much by definition, since I would define that term as “bigotry against men”.

If we consider some other case that would be clearly and obviously misandry, such as, say, someone firing an employee specifically because they were a man, in a case where the man himself had done nothing to warrant the firing, and everyone involved knew this and just didnt want a man, it would seem clear that the ethical thing to do is to not fire the guy. Depending on how the law in the place in question worked, it may or may not be a legal right, but morally speaking, I would say that since the motivation is bigotry and there is no other reason to justify the firing, theres a moral obligation not to do it.

But, if we apply that same reasoning to the situation of a woman deciding to swear off dating because they want to punish men for many of them shifting to the right, and we assume that this is misandry, we would then have to say that, since misandry is bigotry and doing bigoted things is wrong, the “not dating” must be wrong, and therefore that there is a moral obligation to date. But that is a conclusion that, as I said in the beginning, I dont think makes sense. And since it seems like it should follow from adding the assumption that a woman swearing off dating men is misandry, I think I have to conclude that that assumption must be wrong. I cant necessarily explain how it is wrong, just that I think that it leads to a nonsense conclusion if it is correct, and so cannot be even if it appears that it should be on first glance.

the thing is though, its not really punishing all men. Not dating someone, or not having sex with that someone, is not a punishment. Like, I’m a guy myself, and I also happen to be asexual. Do you think that I am in some way punishing everyone around me by not dating them, because I dont happen to be attracted to them? Functional relationships cant really be forced, so if something leads someone to not feel safe dating, they’re not obligated to force themselves to go through with it when they dont feel up to it, just because not engaging denies other people the chance to be with them. I just see this as the state of the country leading some women to not feel safe, or just not enjoy, romantic and sexual relationships as much, because the real and perceived risk to engaging in them has increased. And if they dont feel up to it, and so decide not to do it, and then meet up with some other women that feel the same way and assign a label to it, why does that suddenly make them misandrist?

Would it really be (serious question, as I dont know a whole lot about legal matters)? My limited understanding was that perjury is lying under oath, and sarcasm, while it does involve saying untrue statements, isnt considered lying in everyday speech because what it actually communicates is the opposite of the literal meaning of the words. Since laws deal with humans and not computers, my assumption would be that it probably works in such a way as to depend on what message a person is actually communicating rather than the precise syntax by which they communicate it?

I mean, it isnt like it is the job of women to sleep with men in order to prevent them from becoming incels, that would be essentially like victim blaming at a population level. Im also not really sure that it would do much: most women arent going to do this, so the impact on average men’s dating prospects is much smaller than the total lack of dating for any women that actually go through with it, but nobody is seriously suggesting that doing so will turn them into something akin to incels.

I dont expect this would really help much, beyond the obvious personal benefit that not becoming pregnant in a state that is hostile to women’s reproductive health would have, but incels were going to hate and complain about women regardless of the sexual habits of those women, so I dont see it really making things worse in that regard either.

It wasn’t until this comment that I understood it was the windows operating system and I was wondering what aspect of the online left I had somehow missed that complains about being able to see out of buildings

Wasn’t he on the record criticizing Trump over j6 at some point? Might not have actually done anything about it, but that’s probably incentive to at least want to avoid letting Trump go full dictator, lest he eventually find himself targeted for past disloyalty

I’m sure some of them will still blame Obama too out of habit

Because having a revolver or a rifle or something is going to really do anything if the government comes after you personally.

Any actual resistance movement capable of achieving much is going to find a way to arm itself regardless of if the country theyre from allowed guns during peacetime or not, they seem to in other countries that such things have formed in after all. Could be through illicit purchases from elsewhere, or homemade weapons, or theft, or whatever else, it always seems to happen.

Not to mention, these are people that have proven that they’ll try to attack the government if made angry enough. Now, it was Trump that got them angry on his behalf last time, sure, and few if any are likely to eventually change their minds and turn on him, but if you’re about to be the government and dont need these people anymore, is having such people publicly pardoned really the precedent you’re going to want so set?