What does destruction of Israel as a genocidal settler-colonial ethnostate look like to you? Does it look like Oct 7 writ large across all of Israel? Does it look like the massive bombing campaign, displacement, and destruction of capacity for civilians to live that Israel has perpetrated in Gaza?
For context, the total length of high speed rail in the world is 59,000km. So China, which makes up 17% of the world’s population contains 2/3 of the world’s high speed rail.
The closest comparison would be Europe, which has about the same land mass and half the population of China has around 11,000km of big speed rail.
Just because not everything needs to be political doesn’t mean things that are inherently political stop being politically consequential when you say it doesn’t have to be.
Elon in particular has used his wealth to overtly become a political figure. His political power comes from his wealth. Therefore supporting his wealth through your economic choices inherently supports his political activity.
On comment threads, every day.
This reflective exercise has saved me many excessive fixations. And yes, sometimes I do need to make that snarky overly-researched comment that nobody will see.
No. Rent and mortgage are two different things. One is a fee for service and one is a loan.
If your home that you own doubles in market value and you decide to sell it, you pay off the mortgage (loan) and keep the profit (capital gain). If you are renting and the home is sold, you gain nothing.
If your home that you own burns down, you still owe the bank the money you borrowed for purchase (mortgage). If you are renting the home that burned down, you don’t owe anybody money. There is to service to pay a fee for anymore.
Like sure, fuck capitalism. But we don’t need to misrepresent how these systems work.
Not defending Subway overall, the price increases are nuts. However that experience of yours is definitely an individual franchise problem, not a “corporate culture” problem.
Looking at it a different way, that would be like a photographer taking a photo of the sandwich and proclaiming “I’m an artist” or a director telling a chef what to make, telling a cinematographer/camera operator how to shoot it, and an editor how to cut it to create a short film of a sandwich and proclaiming “I’m an artist”. Art can be made from a series of creative and purposeful decisions that result in a piece of expression. It might not be good art, it might not be effortful art, it might even be unethically made art, but it’s not not-art.
“Don’t we try to categorize everything though”
That sounds like a you problem :P
Enter constructivist relativism
You need an editor!
“You like to watch actors act, why don’t you go act.” Or more generally “You like to watch X performer perform Y, why don’t you go perform Y.”
Spectating and performing are two categorically different activities.
Or simply “Don’t yuck my yum, asshole.”
“Lmao no sympathy for anyone who buys expensive shoes”
^this you?
When you mature as a human being, whatever age that may be, you develop kindness through a willingness to understand and empathize with perspectives that conflict with your own. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to accept it for yourself. For many people, clothing is not simply a means of pragmatic function. It’s also a source of self-expression, joy, and beauty. Now for me, $600 for a pair of sneakers is exorbitant and ridiculous no matter who designed it. But it’s not a product for me. And if someone with the means feels great buying and wearing them, I don’t see the harm. I don’t usually pay more than I have to for footwear, but I would pay a premium for certain kitchen tools I use all the time if I like the design, enjoy looking at it, and feel good using it. What I do sympathize with and would like to see reduced in harm is the consumerist culture that pressures people with less means into feeling like they have to have such things for fulfillment.
Don’t you mean appreciating the beauty in imperfections?
For most things where the person you’re talking to should know better than you, e.g. marginalized groups, field experts, professionals, etc. I might go with something like “Sorry, I don’t quite get it. Can you look up a definition to help me understand better?”
People get butthurt over things others do that don’t affect them all the time.
People also get buttgurt over things others do that indirectly affect them or violate their ethical principles.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell them apart and sometimes there’s a bit of overlap when worldviews conflict.
We live in a society.
AAA games are turning into luxury/super cars. At the top end, they’re just not made for average consumers anymore where you need money for infrastructure to even drive the thing. But then you also have plenty of Indie/AA studios creating games that surpass AAA from 10-15 years ago with much smaller teams cause tools and skills make it feasible. Of course there’s also the starcrafts and the counterstrikes that are over 20 years old and will never die, the Toyota Camrys and Honda Civics of games, they just get perpetually refreshed
Imagine there was a group of people in your school, in your workplace, in your city who for some reason feel that Kazakhspy should not exist. They’re not allowed to kill you, that’s against the law, but they would if they could. Instead, they say fuck Kazakhspy, go kill yourself Kazakhspy, I can’t stand you Kazakhspy. Hearing that kind of thing on a regular basis might be a little hurtful. Now imagine some game studio heard about this and thought hey, let’s include Kazakhspy in our game. And then that group in your community was like “what the fuck is this! I hate Kazakhspy and now they’re shoving Kazakhspy down my throat in a videogame? I will not stand for this.” And goes through the effort of making a mod to remove you from the game and puts it on the website. You hear about this and see that it’s up there with a few downloads. You might be a little hurt to know some people hate you so much they’ll mod a game to spite you just because they don’t like your existence. Then the website owner is like, “Wow, this is weirdly hateful and doesn’t belong on my website. Let’s not perpetuate hate against Kazakhspy.”
That’s why. In context it’s hurtful to people because the intention of creating it was to hurt people through hate.
First, I am not on Israel’s side in this matter. I denounce their historical and ongoing oppression of Palestinians to say the least and generally see a two state solution as an ideal outcome, along with the outcomes you mentioned, dismantling apartheid and establishing self-determination for Palestinians. However I would not condone atrocities to achieve this goal. Just as I am in support of Ukraine’s resistance against Russia, I would not condone any war crimes if they were to commit them. How we achieve our goals matter.
Sure, neither of us are directly affected won’t be the ones deciding, yet here we are expressing our opinions and hopefully having a worthwhile conversation about it. Perhaps all of social media is just political noise, yet us humans seem to like to weigh in on world events.