1

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Bye Bye Abortion

« on: June 30, 2022, 07:37:42 AM »

It sounds to me like you're completely misunderstanding Tom's argument. You claim that secession in the USA is illegal. He presented a route which would lead to secession, and which is not covered by your argument. Whether or not it happened is utterly irrelevant to what you're trying to propose.

To be blunt: Tom is right and you are wrong about the legality of states' secession in the USA. It is possible to establish a process for secession that isn't unconstitutional (within SCOTUS's current implementation).

Similarly, it is perfectly possible to create legislation to protect abortion rights at a federal level. It is difficult to accomplish, and that's by design. Roe v Wade was an attempt at circumventing that design.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Bye Bye Abortion

« on: June 30, 2022, 07:06:29 AM »

Your argument seems to be that they could have done something different. Whatever. They chose not to take the path you outlined. And that is that.

And how, exactly, does that affect the legality of that path?

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Bye Bye Abortion

« on: June 29, 2022, 09:09:30 AM »

Unremarkably, the perp would face TWO counts of homicide. Are you arguing the charge for the second should be dropped because no human was killed?

No sockpuppet accounts, please. You can continue the discussion from your main account.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Bye Bye Abortion

« on: June 27, 2022, 09:01:28 PM »

Why have just about anything Federally mandated? Why not turn it all over to the States?

You know, there once was a group of people who felt that way, and they got violently suppressed.

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Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Locking AR threads because mods think they belong in another board is silly

« on: June 27, 2022, 07:57:14 PM »

The member cannot be meaningfully separated from the thread, I'm afraid. When an individual tries to invent ways to circumvent the rules (and the individual in question has been doing so for a long time, ignoring polite requests to stop), he leaves few alternative choices. AR has its purpose, but it is not a way to circumvent the forum rules.

In other words: no, starting a random thread in AR is not an issue, and no threads were locked "because mods think they belong in another board". Starting serious threads in AR regularly because you think it will make you exempt from the forum rules means you default to the "moderator discretion" section of the manifesto. Doubly so when you're on your final warning after multiple bans, alts, etc. etc.

So, your general statement stands unopposed. It also happens to be irrelevant, because this is not something that happens outside of the context you specifically chose to ignore, and because it never happens for the reasons you've outlined.

More generally, if you think you're very clever and found a way to totally own us by circumventing the rules, it probably won't work.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: The Texas GOP

« on: June 27, 2022, 10:35:51 AM »

I think the majority got it wrong on Brexit but I don't feel I've been discriminated against.

You don't, being presumably British, but there are large groups of people that do. A slim majority dicating whether the rights of others should be taken away is a deeply flawed system, too.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump shill accounts are resurfacing

« on: June 26, 2022, 05:26:36 PM »

2016 not 2020?

Yeah - it was relatively dead around 2020.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Trump shill accounts are resurfacing

« on: June 25, 2022, 11:10:43 PM »

It would seem that many of the pro-Trump YT accounts from 2016 are preparing to resurface. Here's one example:



Call me cynical, but I don't think these are just Regular People™ who happen to love Trump. I wonder what's in store for us.

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Flat Earth Community / Re: Assessing "Kings Dethroned" by Gerrard Hickson

« on: June 25, 2022, 11:09:13 PM »

It’s unclear what my dwelling has to do with anything.

Right. Now that you've confirmed you're trolling, let me make one thing clear: If you're not ready to be sincere in the upper fora, please be ready not to be in the upper fora at all. If you do not make the decision by yourself, one will be made for you.

Have a splendiferous day!

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Flat Earth Community / Re: Assessing "Kings Dethroned" by Gerrard Hickson

« on: June 25, 2022, 07:13:14 PM »

You missed the bit about a "valid perspective".

I didn't miss it at all - in fact, I addressed it directly. Did you misread, or are you just really driving the point that you don't have an ounce of honesty in you home?

I was previously aware of the existence and benefits of self-reflection before you mentioned it. I'm pretty sure you didn't come up with the concept.

What on Earth does this have to do with anything? Have you already forgotten what you're being chastised for? Impressive!

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Flat Earth Community / Re: Assessing "Kings Dethroned" by Gerrard Hickson

« on: June 25, 2022, 06:18:49 PM »

Sure, if it's a valid perspective from a respected individual it would trigger self-reflection.

I see. So, even though you've immediately conceded my perspective, you will not reflect on it, because of the individual who made you aware of it - me.

That's terrible. You've definitely cemented yourself as intellectually dishonest.

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Flat Earth Community / Re: Assessing "Kings Dethroned" by Gerrard Hickson

« on: June 25, 2022, 05:43:03 PM »

I imagine it would be pretty bad if that were the case.

Indeed. Will that perhaps trigger a little bit of self-reflection for the future?

Fortunately, I'm not intellectually dishonest.

That remains to be seen. The question above could be a good start. Unfortunately, the statement below is a terrible start.

But thanks for backing me up and agreeing that I was right about who is one of the worst representatives of FE.

I didn't back you up on anything. More intellectual dishonesty, I guess it's a habit.

To clarify: it is you who thinks Action80 is a representative of FE at all. I make no judgement on the matter, but I think it's extremely poor of you to take one member of a group (as per your perception) and decide that the whole group should be judged by their behaviour.

Do better. Be better. Introspect.

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Flat Earth Community / Re: Assessing "Kings Dethroned" by Gerrard Hickson

« on: June 25, 2022, 09:42:31 AM »

Definitely gives FE a bad rap.

Imagine how bad RE's "rap" would be if we were as intellectually dishonest as you are and judged a group by its worst representatives.

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Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Attachments

« on: June 22, 2022, 06:47:26 PM »

In any case, if it will help I'd be willing to fire of a few $ to xasop to help pay for costs.  I encourage others to do so too.  Do you have a place/email address where donations can be sent?

That, too, goes directly against our principles. We started this site with a pledge that it would be free, and I don't think we have any reason to back down from that pledge.

Even though we accept no money from anyone, we're repeatedly accused of profiting from the FE movement. Imagine how much worse that would get if we did accept money.

To recap: the argument isn't that you, personally, shouldn't use attachments (indeed, we did our best to enable you to do so for the foreseeable). It's just that if everyone did that (which, luckily, is not the case), we'd probably eventually hit a point where deleting things might be necessary. It might take another decade, but the risk is there. If lack of control over your content is your issue (as you claimed), then taking that control yourself is your best solution. Alternatively, you can keep using the attachments feature, which is now once again available to you.

The problem is if I decide I don't want to do that anymore.

If you choose to stop hosting your content... well, I can't help you with that.

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Flat Earth Community / Re: Assessing "Kings Dethroned" by Gerrard Hickson

« on: June 21, 2022, 09:47:16 PM »

I mean, in my first "so what" I did elaborate somewhat. Let's concede that this dude did believe that the stars were infinitely distant. I don't see why that it's claimed in Kings Dethroned to be such a "gotcha".

What is proposed in Kings Dethroned is that a substantial portion of science was directly based on this misunderstanding, rather than that it existed coincidentally, and that the misconceptions stemming from this were never corrected. That's why Longitube wanted to "nuh uh" his way out of it early.

Longitube's claim is not the most important claim in the world, but he did make it, and truth is good.

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Flat Earth Community / Re: Assessing "Kings Dethroned" by Gerrard Hickson

« on: June 21, 2022, 07:30:11 PM »

Ok. And so what?

C'mon. It was Longitube who started this pointless line of inquiry (which, for stack's benefit, can be found early in this post). If you're gonna "so what?" someone repeatedly, at least pick the right target.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Bye Bye Abortion

« on: June 20, 2022, 09:00:24 AM »

I certainly think they should.

I'll leave the "but that's just your opinion tho" quip open for our resident opinion-haver.

They are elected by "the people". What's the point in having a representative democracy if the government doesn't make laws which represent what "the people" want.

Right. But we have the mechanism for this. It's voting. If the elected state governments do not represent what the people in these states want, they should get booted. I think it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to expect elected officials to create policy against their conscience - if they are as massively at odds with the electorate as you claim, they shouldn't be elected in the first place.

So, by my intuition, something in the picture you drew makes it fall apart. My guess would be that most state legislators don't actually thump Bibles on the table while incoherently babbling about Baby Jesus (I'm sure some do). It's probably more nuanced than that.

This seems like a particularly poor system, they're placed by the incumbent president and are there till they die, right? So a president who happens to be in when a certain number of them die can back the SCOTUS with people who reflect his (or her!) own views and they're there till they die, or become incapacitated, no matter how public opinion shifts in the meantime.

Not as bad as hereditary Lords, but yes. That said, in this case the decision is whether or not states should be prohibited from passing certain laws. Revoking this prohibition doesn't, by itself, impose anything on anyone. The reason people are twitchy about it is that they want to impose their own views onto everyone for much longer than anyone's lifetime.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Bye Bye Abortion

« on: June 20, 2022, 05:03:57 AM »

What they fail to grasp is that his morality is also simply opinion.  All morality is.  Sometimes it's an overwhelmingly agreed upon opinion, sometimes it isn't.

Uh huh. And you got the idea that Rushy doesn't think morality is subjective from *checks notes* this post:

What is and isn't "morally bankrupt" is very much up to debate.

[...]

I don't think it's shallow at all. It's a completely valid moral stance (just the same as the one where someone might think abortion is allowable in all cases).

I know you said you didn't bother reading the thread before jumping in (sigh), but at least do us the courtesy of reading the posts made after you've joined.

BUT, as you say we live in a society and an increasing number of people don't believe it is an authority, so that must be taken into account by any government claiming to represent the people they govern.

Must it, really? The government is elected - that's where they get their mandate, and not from vague and largely impossible arguments about representing everyone.

Meanwhile, SC justices are not elected, because they're supposed to be above the electorate's random whims.

So, if SC decides that stopping states from banning abortion is unconstitutional, it will be down to individual states to decide what actually happens (or Congress could propose an amendment, but let's be serious now). The only thing they "must" do is not get voted out and have the opposite party reverse their decisions in their state.

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Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Attachments

« on: June 20, 2022, 04:52:40 AM »

Relying on those beyond your influence to maintain your content is just .. well I can't find any positive adjectives that match my real life experience.

The problem with your logic is that if everyone tries to rely on our upload capacity, we'll run out of space again in no time (luckily hardly anyone ever does, because most Web forum users are not used to the luxury of having it at all). Maybe we'd double it again then. However, eventually, this would likely mean deleting old attachments to make space, and... welp.

I should highlight that this is not a controversial position - we were simply informing you of the status quo. As Clyde points out, most forums don't allow uploads at all because storage is limited. It's a debate that's been largely settled back when forums were, well, popular.

If you really care about broken links, you can always throw a tiny bit of pocket change at your own storage solution. That way, the people responsible for [that part of] your content are entirely within your influence.

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Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Attachments

« on: June 19, 2022, 06:10:21 PM »

It's too bad though that there is no interest in resolving the issue.  It might of course just be an anti-BillO thing.

For what it's worth, I can assure you that's not the case. We're spread a little thin right now, but we'll get to it when we can.

However, I'd generally agree with Clyde Frog's opinion here - uploading images to something like imgur or imgbb is generally preferable.