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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • If he comes back to the North, he would be tortured&executed with his family.

    Are you basing this statement on anything other than your impression that the North Korean regime is cruel for the sake of being cruel, and everyone in the military and government is incompetent?

    It might be true, but it’s also possible that the North Koreans would use it as the obvious propaganda coup it is and send him on speaking tours all over the country/world.

    It’s also quite possible that he’s mentally unwell and isn’t making rational choices. Or that he’s trying to escape an abusive situation.

    Don’t get me wrong, the North Korean government is not good, I’m just saying that the assumption he’ll be tortured and executed underestimates them.

    PS. When you say “comes back” it means that you are in that place. So your sentence implies that you’re in North Korea. I’m sure you meant “goes back”.







  • As a man, I think it’s the sort of experience that men struggle to understand because of patriarchal dynamics.

    What I mean is: if a doctor were to:

    • ask me if I have considered other forms of birth control
    • and then explain all the different birth control methods to make sure I actually understand,
    • ask if I’ve talked about the decision with my wife,
    • and then explain that a general impression of her opinion isn’t the same thing as sitting down together and reviewing all the data,
    • ask if understand how the surgery will affect my body
    • and then explain the hormonal changes my body would go through
    • etc

    before agreeing to schedule a vasectomy.

    Interpretting these questions through the lens of my lived experience:

    These are thorough but pragmatic questions. The doctor is trying to make sure I understand all the options. The doctor is a peer with special expertise and wants to make sure that I understand all the risks.

    But women too often grow up in an environment which tells them:

    • Women should trust the men in their lives too make the best decisions for them.
    • That having children is the most important thing they can do in the world.
    • A woman’s value is proportional to her utility as a wife and mother.
    • Women that have sex for fun are disgusting sluts.

    So when they get asked a barrage of questions identical to the ones I’dve been asked, they experience them very differently. Women are not irrational to hear the exact same questions very differently if they are interpreting them through the lens of their experiences. Maybe they experience those questions as:

    • “Why don’t you just stop having so much sec you slut?”
    • “Don’t you know how to have sex with out getting pregnant you dumb bitch?”
    • “Do you have your husband’s permission?”
    • “Does your husband know you’re a slut?”
    • “Do you understand that you will be destroying your value to society if you don’t have kids?”
    • “Do you understand that you will become any even crazier bitch after this?”

    And too often, the doctor really does mean that.

    Edit to add: I’d value other people’s takes too.




  • I understand your anger and agree that anti-vaxxers are stupid. I believe public health education should be part of the school system.

    I also agree that it’s responsible for a society to impose reasonable restrictions on members that endanger it.

    I think people do have an ethical obligation to take reasonable precautions avoid potentially exposing others to pathogens. Vaccination is an example of reasonable precaution. People have the right to bodily autonomy, do not vaccinate them against their wishes.

    I do not support the firing of workers for refusing vaccinations if they can do their job remotely. People shouldn’t have to decide between their religious beliefs and employment if their employment doesn’t bring them into contact with others. (Imo anti-vaxx is essentially a religion, this may say more about my beliefs regarding religion than about anti-vaxx sentiment).

    By all means exclude the unvaccinated from places where they can be reasonably understood to endanger the public, or others that have a similar right to be there.





  • I know a lawyer at Roper-Greyell. The firm specializes in defending/protecting companies around employment law. They probably also consult on best practices for companies to avoid suits.

    They are a law firm, but they are LMG’s law firm. Note that we’re reading what LMG wants to share about the report, not the report itself.

    It’s a legal strategy to say, “Investigators didn’t find anything seriously wrong, and we’re considering suing you for defamation”

    A lot of the other replies to your comment read between the lines in some insightful ways. I would just like to also add that “claims of bullying and harassment were not substantiated” means that the investigation didn’t find evidence. Not that the bullying/ harassment didn’t occur. It is kind of meaningless without knowing what information was looked at. What sorts of substantiation could reasonably be expected from the investigation?

    It’s possible that the person making allegations has evidence that the investigators didn’t.


  • (…) and would accomplish . . . what exactly?

    It would move China’s adversary further from its shores. Just like how America doesn’t like Cuba being right there, with its rival politico- economic system, China doesn’t like Taiwan being right there with its rival politico- economic system.

    China wants TSMC

    I agree that they want TSMC, but I think Taiwan’s semi conductor disablement plan has more to do with guaranteeing international support for Taiwan than reducing the incentives for Chinese annexation of Taiwan.

    What I mean is that Beijing can’t say to the world “this is an internal disagreement that doesn’t concern you” because if TSMC goes up in smoke the global economy is going to bottom out, it concerns everybody’s economy. The fact that Beijing can’t just seamlessly assume control of Taiwan means that the international community will not support that ambition. It’s like Real Politik, but with semiconductors.

    Ironically USA initiatives to protect itself from the vulnerability of Taiwan by (re?)patriating chip production will be bad for Taiwan’s security… if they ever actually manage to rival TSMC’s Taiwanese production. I say this because it will demote the conflict from one of global interest to just regional interest.

    But that’s all just my arm chair speculation, I don’t actually have any idea what I’m talking about.




  • I don’t think Jesse Owens was tainted just because Hitler congratulated him.

    I don’t think people that resisted the Nazis are tainted just because Israel thanks them.

    That’s why I disagreed with your initial comment.

    Just as we shouldn’t consider Jesse Owens to be tainted by Hitler’s endorsement, we shouldn’t consider anti-Nazi movements to be tainted by Israel’s endorsement.

    That’s all we seem to disagree on.

    Yes, we should be skeptical of Israel positioning WW2 heroes as champions of Israel’s interpretation of Zionism.

    Also for clarification: I’m opposed to Israel’s apparent genocide of the Palestinians. I think Israel’s crimes are more similar to the Americo-Canadian genocide of North America’s first nations than with the Nazi genocide of European Jews and other marginalized minorities. Ie Israel isn’t doing “murder factory” genocide, it’s doing “encroachment and suppression” genocide (and starvation, and persecution). Also similar to what Russia is doing to Ukraine.