During the whole Olympic controversy on the Algerian boxer, Imane Khelif, questioning her actual gender, someone was making mental gymnastics that she still has testerone level higher than “vanilla females”.

Lol, vanilla females. That alone says a lot.

Shittiest take on this community by far.

It’s an myriad of reasons from what I can tell. Americans are conditioned to think along the status quo lines even if there is certain degree of freedom of thought. The American corporate media carves the political landscape to intentionally but subtly influence folks to pick either only Democrats or Republicans.

Another reason is that, I suppose rugged invidualism won out in the American society for better mobilisation. As you rightly pointed out, there just isn’t grassroots activism among American people (not counting civil and lgbt rights which are undoubtedly grassroots activism and successful ones at that). But this isn’t what it used to be. Before and in the early 20th century, there have been other third political parties still gaining respectable number of votes, the last one being the Socialist Party led by Eugene Debbs. He won a respectable 1 million votes as a presidential candidate while campaigning from prison during World War I.

Not sure what happened why political grassroots activism that could counter either Democratic and Republican parties died out, but my guess is that the proliferation of mass media in the 20th century may have had a hand to convince people to stick with two parties, as well as heavy emphasis on individualistic values.

The alpha/beta wolf notion doesn’t even make much of a sense, considering wolves tend to be loners but only make packs when they need to hunt.

Dan Schneider has not been convicted though.

The only conservatives which I give some healthy degree of respect are the European and maybe Japanese conservatives. I can’t comment on conservatives from other places as I don’t know much about them, but the American conservatives are bat shit insane. There are far and few sane American conservatives are drowned by loud crazy ones.

I had a friend who was never christened by her atheist parents and thus never had to be drilled to believe in any religion. Welp, it was rather refreshing to hear someone’s perspective that all the proselytising just sounds nothing to a person who had never been indoctrinated since infancy. Someone from another religion might still consider the stories from other beliefs; but hearing religious story by someond who was never baptised into any religion? For that person they would just say “cool story bro”. Even for myself who is no longer a believer, I still get some pangs in my consciousness brought by early exposure to Christianity. But I am lucky that I have never been extremely indoctrinated and therefore I don’t feel any fear of an eternal damnation in hell for leaving Christianity. Some former Christians, though, essentially have PTSD by being made to feel guilty for leaving, and have existential angst of the possibility hell (the original Torah/Talmud never even mentioned hell so why should Christians believe in one?)

I’m glad to hear it. I guess that the incursion into Kursk made Biden reconsider as Russia’s “red line” has crumbled.

I don’t work in healthcare but I know plenty of people who do. The industry is notoriously understaffed, and of course there are sudden emergencies you have to deal with. Therefore, they pretty much require 24/7 operations.

This reminds me of the current French politics. After the previous legislative elections were won by the left, neoliberal president Macron nonetheless appointed a conservative as his prime minister.

At the end of the day, it’s all about the bottomline.

Too many are accusing them already. Where there is smoke, there is fire.

I suppose my comment could have been phrased better, but by introducing I mean he wanted to forward UBI to be legislated/legalised by the house and Senate.

I admit that I haven’t finished the book “Utopian for Realists”, but the author showed numerous studies and practical examples that universal basic income works. And believe it or not, Richard Nixon was close to introducing UBI but his Friedmanite-advisors dissuaded him.

Oh man. The OG Rainbow Six was the most complex game I ever played as a child! Fun times repeating the first mission multiple times after all my agents or the hostages you’re meant to rescue keep getting killed.

Wired earphones are bound to more mechanical failures because they are susceptible to being tangled and yanked than wireless ones lol. I will pick wireless earphones any day.

While the major issue with wireless earbuds is that they could easily be lost, I’d prefer that over the old wired earphones which gets tangled up or yanked accidentally. If you also buy good quality wireless earphones, you would never lose sound on either left or right earpiece, unlike with the wired ones which often happens no matter the quality. But I still keep my wired earphones as a backups in case I lose my more precious wireless earphones or breaks.

I kinda realised that the less specialised you are, the more you really know. If you don’t branch out here and there, you won’t develop necessary skills that will help you in your own specialised area. For example, Albert Einstein is well known as a theoretical physicist, a highly specialised occupation. But were it not for his hobby of playing the violin and willing to work outside his main field and interest, he would not have been able to come up with solutions to some of the pressing problems in physics. He did say that imagination is more important than knowledge, and his track record speak for himself and his mindset.

Moreover, I think there is some harm not developing other skills. I find that some people in positions of power being ineffective, because they may only know their technical skills, but did not bother to learn people or time management skills. Going further beyond, a lot of people have ill-informed takes in politics or life in general, because they do not bother learning more facets.

While my parents aren’t bad, they’re just products of their environment that doesn’t teach or encourage critical thinking and being honest to one’s self. They are also bad with communication. They don’t have an iota of self-reflection or even if they do, they do not even attempt to change. But even if they change, it’s too late. My parents said and taught me a lot of things when I was growing up, which in hindsight doesn’t make sense and negatively affected my formative years.

My parents said they’ll be happy to take care of any of my future children; but I gave a disgusted no face and I reckon my parents did not even get the hint.

“Read theory and you would know what I’m talking about.”

That is a common thought terminating response to any critique of communism. That being said, I learned to flip the table. Tankies talk about theory, so mention empirical and practical results. They tend to either shut down or ban you.

Ffs I hate PragerU. The website “All Sides Balanced” quotes them as if they are a reliable and genuine university that does research, when in fact it’s a right wing propaganda machine that spews the already derided laissez faire economics and climate change denialism.

That’s good to know. But I can imagine the electricity bill.