Did you actually do your research on that “deworming drug”? It’s been used to treat a hell of a lot more than parasites. That is just its most common use.

This has always been funny to me as someone who actually works in healthcare and regularly reads scientific studies. Of all the things you could choose to hate Trump over, the example you give is one that plenty of people in the scientific community considered to be a treatment avenue worth researching.

Damn, the media propaganda machine is effective. Trump could run into a burning building to save a litter of puppies and they’d still find a way to make everyone hate the guy. It’s impressive.

They probably would have just called you names instead of openly engaging with your ideas. That’s the norm in my experience. I sometimes wonder why I bother posting at all.

Then again, I do get some traction, and some representation of ideas outside the common narratives is better than none. But it does seem like if you aren’t in lockstep with the popular narratives, you get a cascade of downvotes just for entertaining unpopular ideas.

People don’t want you to think for yourself. They just want you to parrot their beliefs back to them and give them affirmation.

Who isn’t fascist/racist in the eyes of the left? You can be a moderate libertarian with a couple of populist beliefs and they’ll throw those labels at you.

Shit, if all conservatives had that nice an ass I wouldn’t mind listening to their opinions.

This is a semantic argument made to ignore the issue. The reality is that social media platforms effectively have become the “town square” where ideas are shared. Stifling legal speech in that environment is very effective censorship of ideas.

You can argue that corporations have that right because they own the network. I disagree. Curation of what can be said on their platform turns them into a publisher, not a communications provider. Any lawyer active in that space could tell you how insanely detrimental it would be for that distinction to be made, at least in the U.S.

Imagine your phone company deciding you can’t say certain words to other people using their service without facing dropped calls, suspensions of service, or being banned. All because your legal speech goes against the morality of the majority.

That’s essentially what social media does at the moment. They are legally defined as, and receive the benefits of, a communications service. But they are acting like a publisher, deciding what is and is not allowed to be said. It’s a serious problem.

Do you believe they should receive immediate massive military aid? Because we’re basically in a Mexican stand off with Russia and China right now. As soon as we pass a line for what intervention Russia is willing to tolerate, we will start a cascade of events that will lead to WW3, and possible nuclear war. Most of us don’t want to see the planet nuked into extinction over a small war on the other side of the planet.

Granted, I think war is inevitable. But that doesn’t mean we should rush into it. The bloodshed will get exponentially worse the minute this war becomes bigger than Russia v Ukraine, and we’re already very close to the tipping point in my estimation.

Why should a creator be responsible for the voiced opinions of their fans? That standard makes no sense no matter how you slice it. A creator’s job isn’t to police their audience, it’s to provide information/entertainment.

Just because he has the power to censor people you don’t like doesn’t mean he should, or that it’s a reasonable ask. Instead of passively alienating you by not acting, censoring those people would actively alienate them. He’s much better off letting individuals take responsibility for their own comments, rather than joining any given side’s thought-police.

As soon as you create the standard that you are responsible for what your fans say and do, you’ve lost. You can immediately be held accountable for the speech of the worst of them, and good luck regulating that.

We’re always finding ways to interact with the world and perceive it from a different dimension/angle. This comic isn’t so much inaccurate as it is exaggerated.

I’m pretty sure this is exactly how scientists felt the first time they developed microscopes, electron microscopes, and other technology that lets us experience the world in a different way. A mixture of “woah” and “mind-blown”.

If they offer an invitation right now, then this is no longer a war between Ukraine and Russia, it will be a war between NATO and Russia. How do you think that ends?

WW3 may be the last world war. No one is eager to start it.

I own property, and I’m 33. You can get there if you want it. I had to go back to school at 29 to start a new career, but it was worth it to put myself in a good financial position.

I think we need to stop being so focused on the past. I was born in Canada, and instead of complaining and trying to change the world to suit my needs, I accepted the way the world is now, and used it to my advantage as well as I could.

Do I have all the same cultural elements of my ancestors from 500 years ago? No. Do I still own the land my ancestors did 500 years ago? Nope. But I’ve got a career, a home, a car, and a smartphone. It’s more than a lot of people have.

Sometimes you have to accept that this is the world you were born into. You can either choose to complain and be miserable, or make it work for yourself.

We all use labor to meet our survival needs. Humans were just smart enough to specialize in different tasks, and we had to find a way to quantify our labor so we could trade it for different goods.

We don’t all need to be farmers, so a doctor will pay a farmer for food, and a farmer will pay a doctor for healthcare. It’s a much more efficient way to aggregate expertise in different areas, which means more services are available for your labor without you having to be capable of all of those different kinds of work.

A chimp may be able to feed themselves with their labor, but they aren’t making themselves smart phones or performing advanced healthcare. Indigenous societies in North America pre-British are a good example of what humans are capable of without a complex market system to trade skilled labor.

Imo Genshin is a decent game at its core. The problem is that the gacha elements make it really hard to enjoy.

There are plenty of valid criticisms of capitalism. Especially the current state of capitalism in the west. It doesn’t mean I want to go full communist, far from it. But I’m a mixed economy man. I think certain things should be highly regulated or even owned by the government (and, by extension, the people).

Healthcare is one good example to me. I think private is fine to an extent, but I would never want a fully private system. I think the model in Canada is a good place to start, where public is the go-to option, but private exists if you want to skip the queue and can afford it. The dynamic between insurance and private healthcare in the states makes for a toxic experience for patients, and that serves as one of the primary reasons why I would never want to go fully private. Doctors shouldn’t have to fight tooth and nail to get your medication or diagnostic procedure approved when it’s medically necessary, assuming the system can reasonably absorb the cost.

Mixed economies are the way.

That sounds like too much personal accountability, I don’t think people will go for it. Actually, it sounds like something a conservative would say, and if there’s anything social media has taught me, it’s that personal accountability and conservatism are the stuff of bigots and bootlickers. /s

But really, I don’t think people will go for this. It’s easier to play the left/right game.

That’s not an entirely accurate perspective, but you’re not far off. The problem is that fixing this requires hard decisions, and it requires people in power to act against their own interests.

You want wealth inequality to get better? You need to increase the value of labor. You do that by eliminating free trade deals, bringing production back to the west, increasing prices on goods, and severely limiting immigration. Do that, and the value of labor will soar.

You should also severely limit the ability for the wealthy to own properties to rent. One of the main reasons the middle class existed was that the family home was simultaneously shelter, and an investment vehicle.

The whole structure of investment and shareholding has to be rethought as well. Its built of the concept of infinite growth, something that isn’t possible, and ends with businesses destroying themselves while trying to meet this impossible demand.

This isn’t the reason piracy is coming back in my friend group. That reason would be the diversification of streaming sources. There’s no way I’m paying $100 a month for streaming from all the major players, especially if they include ads.

When Netflix was all you needed, streaming was great and reasonable. It quickly became more trouble than it was worth over the last decade.