On the flip side, imo there are some brilliant people with good ideas, and thier persuasiveness is hamstrung because they just can’t stick to a word count that appeals to thier audience.

If you know that your audience has a 6th grade reading level… avoid a long form essay.

“When did neighborhoods become full of strangers?! We gotta get off our phones and get to know each other in our communities. We should be able to borrow a cup of sugar!”

Check it out, you can pitch socialism in a way that’ll amp people up in like 3 simple sentences.

If you can’t or won’t do it yourself, by all means ask AI to help you lower your barrier for entry.

Basically all left (or even neoliberal) discourse happens in such an echo chamber people have forgotten how to talk irl.

The very first line. You are asserting that if you throw away a genetic argument (which in every single post I’ve made, you’ll see that I am encouraging everyone to do) that “all that is left” is hating poor people. This dichotomy that you introduced leaves no third option of behaviors being transferred via concious or unconscious emulation of parental figures.

It’s incredibly one dimensional to say that people wanting to shop in a place where patrons extend basic human decency to one another would be only be popular because people want to … crush the poor.

If your only cognitive tool is a hammer, ever idea is going to sound like a nail.

I feel like you think I’m not understanding your position. I am. I hear it ad nauseum.

I’m challenging you to consider if your approach is so narrow that you can’t even comprehend the premise. “I don’t want to get mashed up by a cart” necessarily translating to “I want to suppress the poor” should be setting off warning alarms that you’re not engaging in the idea or discussion with a full toolset.

I could get behind you on this if the post was saying that all grocery stores must have that limitation. In the subway example, it’d be like saying that the only labour that exists is being a subway driver. The calculus changes when, like you said, it’s mandatory.

Oh my god I’m still stewing over that exact same post. It’s been like a week.

Fine. The person operating the subway train. Should they be drunk? Should they have needed to demonstrate competency in operating a subway?

That’s entirely true.

But that’s still a double-edged sword we’re playing with.

If you want to run towards a an “inevitable conclusion” in the one direction (resegregation… undesirable… are you even alluding to genocide?)

I think it’s fair to do the same in the opposite direction too. Is there no lower bound for human interaction and behavior? Is it wrong to set boundaries for how people treat you?

I like how hyper aware people are for things that could be turned into an avenue for bad things. I think that’s actually more than half the battle. Doesn’t always mean you toss the idea outright, you just know that you gotta watch out.

I, for one, am in favor of a minimal demonstrated set of awareness and capacity to operate a motor vehicle. I also am in favor of not letting people drive drunk. Someone might say this will inevitably turn into a tool of racism. And guess what, THEY’D BE RIGHT! But, the solution probably isn’t to ban cars, or to let anyone drive with no rules of the road and drive drunk.

That’s an interesting perspective.

In the “nature vs nurture” debate, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone so emphatically proclaim: “Niether!”

This is exactly why I explicitly said you should reject the explanation of genetics, even if learned behaviors have a tendency to be passed from primary caregivers to children.

I don’t subscribe to the doomerism mentality and I think it’s counter productive precisely because of the argument laid out in Idiocracy

But people sharing your memes doesn’t mean they are smarter.

I went to great lengths in my previous point to say exactly that. Was that still unclear?

I’m maybe being unfair to say idiots are having more kids.

It is a growing case where people who score relatively higher in awareness of world events to choose not to have kids at all. Between the environment and, well, gestures broadly that group of people is choosing to not have kids.

Calling people idiots or not, that’s overly broad. I understand that. There are material negative pressures felt by people who value understanding the state of the world, that are not felt by those who don’t.

It only bothers me when people are hung up on the genetics aspect.

People (broadly statistically) tend to grow up to be similar to thier parents in terms of values. Not so much because of DNA, but because of how they were raised.

The premise holds even if you toss away anything to do with biology. (Which you should)

Idiots tend to have idiot kids because they raised them in idiot households, and idiots tend to have more kids.

It blew my mind to learn how valuable some city bikes are. Worth much more than my car.

You’re right. I edited my post to make the words more accurately capture my intention. Thanks for the vibe check. I was out of line.

If you don’t feel like you need to move your feet when you accidentally drop it (to avoid a toe smack) , it’s too small.

The fact that 3.5" floppies were self-sealing to make handling irrelevant (put your greasy fingers on any surface you fucking want) is another obvious advantage.

There are more. Before putting something on blast, really run it through forwards and backwards. You might be surprised at how many pros/cons fall out of a genuine consideration.

Sorry for the wording of my original post… it WAS needlessly adversarial.

Oh, I couldn’t tell you what the 2 things are. I don’t have a keen eye. I’m just waiting for someone who does.

A keen eye would pick up 2 subtle but clever additional references in the background and related to the specifications of those particular drives.

In university my entire dorm floor was in on insisting to my ex that it wasn’t “Big Bird”, but instead “Big Bert” (as opposed to regular sized bert)

It came up for the 100th time at a party, and I was like “go ahead, look it up” and was able to get in an edit JUST before the page load. “Big Bird (Or “Big Burt” for Canadian rebroadcast)”

It lasted for maybe 20 seconds, but it was all we needed.

60-90 cents a liter was such a short time frame that I imagine I could guess your age with pretty reasonable accuracy