This is not to say you can’t have any differing opinions in politics at all, but politics DO say something about who you are as a person and what your core values are and if that goes against each other too much I don’t actually see how you can have a proper friendship. Politics directly impact other peoples lives, you can only set those views aside to a certain extent.

If you’re a homosexual man married to another man, I don’t think you can truly be friends with someone who thinks gay marriage should be abolished and that ‘queer activity’ shouldn’t be something shown in public (there’s people who think worse should happen to gay people but let’s keep it less extreme). I know people who believe women’s voting rights should be taken away, I can’t just ignore that and be friends with them simply because it’s ’just a different political view and doesn’t determine who they are as a person’. You literally don’t view me as your equal. Yes, you’re more than your political beliefs but it’s still tied to who you are as a person.

If you don’t have to think about those things because they don’t usually impact you (a form of privilege/ignorance) then there’s a possibility you’d disagree with that. Maybe someone else can give me a different explanation.

Little side note to add that even if Id consider you privileged/ignorant I’m not saying that I believe that makes you a bad or immoral person.

While i was in college there was a guy who worked there (not a professor) who loved talking about "degrowth" and how we should stop buying stuff but merely rent and share everything (tools, supplies, cars, etc.). On the other hand there's quite a few people who say they take shorter showers or never take baths for environmental reasons (rather than financial).

My view is that all these small personal sacrifices in the name of the environment are insignificant overall and are like a drop in the ocean. Either way I don't think it's worth sacrificing small pleasures like a long shower or an ocasional bath for an uncertain and minimal effect. It might not seem much to you but added up it just reduces your quality of life.

In terms of the idea of sharing tools or car sharing, the main issue is you lose a lot of free time having to deal with the admin parts (going to get the tools, registering your name somewhere, etc.) and it's just incovenient.

Most important of all is the "class inequality". If everyone on the planet were making these sacrifices it would make more sense and I would understand, but the fact is most people aren't doing it. While you're timing your shower, an American, Chinese or whoever billionaire a new AI datacenter and ​flying on their private jet.

Why should the non-billionares of the world sacrifice their well being and enjoyment where any potential gains will be cancelled out by others not doing so?

My point is that ​unless the who world adopted degrowth (which I'm not a fan of anyway to be completely honest but that's not what we're debating here), people should stop depriving themselves of stuff in the name of the climate. To be clear, I don't mean we need to overconsume, I turn off lights when not using them as it doesn't incovenince me at all to have the light in a room I'm not using turned off. But to not buy a car when you need it just for the environment doesn't make sense to me.

EDIT: Basically, it's not fair that working people who already have an increasingly worse quality of life/buying power should are made to feel like they most voluntarily adopt these things to make their lives even slightly worse while billionaires have it good and don't even care.

Out of all the stuff I usually critique when it comes to anime, Isekai-shit is always going to be my go to. I hate isekai and will never not love tearing into how bad they are.

One genre I do dislike more is the kind where people will claim that it is "unique" and "breaks the norm" of most isekai. For this post, that lsekai will be Tensura.

My main issue is that the anime fails to create meaningful stakes. In political dramas, conflict arises from different ideologies clashing and real compromises being made. In Tensura, no matter the scale of the conflict, the protagonist, Rimuru, feels guaranteed to win or live, and usually gets exactly what he wants without having to make difficult sacrifices.

For a political story to be effective, there must be a possibility of loss, compromise, or significant change. Because Rimuru outsmarts or outpowers every opponent so handily, the "politics" feel like set dressing for a more traditional power fantasy.

Even the point where the story should get the darkest (iirc, it is a massive attack on rimuru's kingdom that results in massive loss of life), is just solved, like it's not an issue.

The issue with series like these is that, you can't try to impliment anything unique bc the MC being stronger than GOD is just gonna undercut it all.

Btw, this is a general critique thing.

This post is written almost purely by intuition, very shaky assumptions in hopes that you would share your own thoughts about this topic (frankly I haven't seen much posts about this and the depth requires more discussion)

I'd like to draw the similarities between AI and humans, both are created with some iteration of Darwinism/natural selection

As humans we can understand the basic layer of a genome/code (like isolating and understanding protein codes in amino acid sequences in a gene or the logic behind simple programming codes)

At the moment, we are really bad at understanding emergent properties in both AI and humans (the same way we don't understand how Ai works from its code and human behavior from its genome)

Let's say we wanted to 'cure' a condition that composes of a range of genes like autism.

What I'd assume would most likely happen is that Ai companies in the status quo ( Crisper-Gpt, among others) would run their programs and produce a 'cure' for autism.

At a point they will succeed, pass clinical trials and be open to the public, in which it will be adopted rather fast due to the apparent benefits.

However, we would not understand how the cure works similar to frontier Ai.

Extrapolate This would mean that designer babies would be 'coded' almost entirely by Ai (more accurately any artifical change would be influenced by Ai in a significant capacity)

What would this mean? ( treat this point on as weak assumptions)

Suppose ai wanted to take over or perhaps prompted to do so by some bad actors.

Perhaps in the autism cure, there are some minut changes to psychology that makes one more susceptible to propaganda. (in which it would be nigh impossible to detect or regulate unless other Ai is used to analyze it-which opens another can of worms)

And itself poses the more classical scenario of Ai creating super bugs and wiping out humanity

I recognise that the potential benefits are also significant and potentially out weighing the risk ( which is the classic pro Ai argument) but I'll skip it here for the sake of isolating the discussion.

Recently there were racist attacks from a lot of Japanese Twitter users against non white French protesters. People responded with racist remarks back. I don’t think this acceptable or helpful.

1. Many of the serious criticism of Japan’s society like cp, is something that other Japanese people are currently fighting against as well.
   
2. The majority of attacks are not serious criticism
   
3. The posts are not specifically targeted at racist Japanese people
   
4. Judging a people on their government and their governments history is wrong, especially when there is a sizable number of those people against the same things.

I could not imagine being a random Japanese kid on Twitter who also happened to have a father that killed himself.

To change my view I would need to see proof that the majority of attacks are serious criticism without racial innuendo’s or be convinced that the racist attacks are productive.

(I don’t care if it’s technically not “racism”, we are all on the same page)

I am almost 23 and I really don’t understand the point in getting a credit card. I just graduated college and work full-time at an engineering consulting firm, so I make a decent amount of money. I understand getting a credit card if money is tight because of the “buy now, pay later” aspect, but I also think credit cards mainly just encourage people to spend beyond their needs on material items.

The concept of ”building credit” to prove that you are reliable/can pay stuff off makes no sense to me. If I can pay for something instantly with my debit card or have access to financial statements, proof of employment, active income, savings, etc., how is that not enough proof that I am reliable & able to pay for something? If I don’t have enough money to buy something, I won’t buy it? Obviously it’s different for emergency & medical situations, but what’s the point in building savings or having medical & dental insurance then?

Everyone says it’s great for emergencies, medical expenses, loans, buying a car, etc., but aside from emergency/medical, all of these are planned purchases. You can choose the type of car you purchase and the property you live at. As for emergencies, I have dental & medical insurance through my employer, as well as a Roth IRA & Money Market Savings Account that I contribute portions of my paycheck to.

I don’t plan on taking out loans to buy a new car anytime soon. I don’t personally like newer cars to begin with because they’re too high tech, but that’s besides the point. You can easily buy a used car on Facebook marketplace without needing credit information if you pay in full. If I don’t have enough money for a specific car at a certain point, then I just wouldn’t buy it. There are plenty of transportation options available (like carpooling, Uber, biking, public transit, etc.) that I could use until I saved up however much money to buy the car without needing credit.

I will say that my parents are allowing me to live at home for the meantime while I’m working to save up money, which I am very grateful for. I know that not everyone has access to this same opportunity, so I don’t want this to come across as out-of-touch. Had they not done this, I know that I would’ve gotten a credit card much sooner. I know I will probably need to get a credit card eventually either way, but I just wanted to vent about this.

One of the biggest criticisms of contemporary Republican & by extension MAGA ideology is that they don’t follow the Bible’s teachings. The parts about loving your enemies, the meek shall inherit the earth, & it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man getting into heaven are often cited. The thing is, Republicans are using the Bible exactly as it was meant to be used. What’s often forgotten is that the creation of the Bible & modern Christian history begins with Emperor Constantine & his council assembling the Bible & voting on which parts to include so he could better unify a fractured Rome. European kings would later on use Christianity to unify their kingdoms. The Bible inherently creates an us vs them mentality, between heaven-bound believers & hell-bound non-believers, giving cause to unify against a common threat. (Pagans) All the anti-wealth parts were used to enrich wealthy people so the peasants would be happy having nothing. The Bible was later used during Colonialism to make the colonized & enslaved subservient. The strategy is working perfectly for MAGA’s goals, given the amount of impoverished Americans who love voting against their self interests. They are using the Bible’s teachings exactly as intended.