If pop stars like Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift face backlash for staying quiet on Gaza, politicians like Zohran Mamdani and other DSA members should get the exact same scrutiny for staying quiet on Ukraine.

The Democratic Socialist (DSA) organisation which Mamdani is part of and supported by officially opposes sending weapons to Ukraine, opposes sanctions on Russia and criticizes NATO.

One of the main criticisms of Ed Sheeran was that he was vocal on Ukraine but not on Gaza but isn't Mamdani doing the same thing consistently talking about Gaza and Israel but not Ukraine?

With the US administration reducing it's funding to Ukraine, taking a more Pro-Russia stance, and removing Russian sanctions it makes politicians staying silent and remaining in pro-Russian organisations complicit by the standard that people have used with Gaza.

I am open to changing my view if you can show how there isn't a double standard going on.

I realize that the title may sound somewhat strange.  What I mean to say is that we often see interactions in online spaces that go something like this:

Person 1 - Why have I been permanently banned from r/WorldNews for suggesting that Palestinians are human beings?  What about free speech?!

Person 2 - Actually free speech only applies to the 1st Amendment.  r/WorldNews has every right to censor people who attempt to suggest that Muslims actually people if they have decided that don’t want that view to be promoted in their own space. 

Or like this?

Person 1 - Why should we be releasing the identity of this person who has only been accused of sexual assault and behaving like we are certain he is guilty?  What about the concept of innocence until guilt is proven?

Person 2 - Innocent until proven guilty only applies in a court of law.  Individuals do not have to assume the innocence of an accused person. 

Now, in each case Person 2 is absolutely correct - the bedrocks of liberalism:  freedom of expression and due process, do not apply to private organizations or individuals, they only restrict the actions of government entities. 

However, what Person 2 is ignoring is that the reason that the United States and other liberal states have enshrined these concepts into the constitutions is because they are in fact, morally just, and they are wise policies - for anybody.  

And Person 2 is ignoring the following key moral principles -

1. If you defend freedom of expression when someone you like is being silenced, you should defend it when someone you despise is being silenced. 

2. If you want people to refrain from condemning you before they know the facts, you should refrain from condemning others before you know the facts. 

3. If your principles disappear when they're inconvenient, you don't really have principles. You have preferences. 

Read on, if you care to. 

Free Speech as a Moral Concept 

In the case of free expression, with a few notable exceptions (fomenting panic, defrauding people, harassment), we should not try to make people shut up just because we do not like what they are saying. 

And that is what is normally at play when we see an attempt to "cancel" a celebrity, to get someone "deplatformed" or to shout down a speaker at a public event.  When we see someone doing this they are essentially saying, "I have decided that what this person is saying is wrong and it upsets me that other people are want to listen to it. Therefore, I will make it as hard as possible for the audience to have the ability to listen to the person they want to hear." 

Isn't that rude? Isn't it presumptuous to decide for other people what opinions are dangerous or what comedy is offensive?  Wouldn't we be better off if we let people judge for themselves what they want to listen to?

I also want to point out that do realize that in the past decade or so defenders of "free speech" have mostly hailed from the right but the concept of promoting free expression and the opposition to it know no ideological bounds.  

To take just two recent examples: conservatives attempted to cancel the children's entertainer Miss Rachel for her support of Palestinian Children and 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick for his opposition to police brutality. 

And this just strengthens my point.  Everyone will have something that they consider to be "dangerous".  It's just their opinion. The right thing to do if a person disagrees is to criticize, but not to attempt to make it difficult or impossible for the speaker to be heard - regardless of one's political beliefs. 

Due Process as a Moral Concept 

My general thesis is even more basic in this case, ask yourself the simple question - if you were accused of a crime that you did not commit, would you want people to assume that you were guilty or innocent?

I think that answer to that question is pretty simple, no?

And I want to say that I understand that it is difficult to impossible to follow this to a tee, but then again most moral imperatives are, right?

Like it would basically be impossible to hear your own child accuse a person of sexual assault and to NOT believe those allegations, right?  And even when we have no personal stake in the  case we do tend to rush to conclusions when we hear that a person has been alleged to have commited a crime, particularly when the crime is brutal. 

But we ought not to.  And what we are seeing today is that some people are making assumptions that an accuser is lying (Cornell 7) or that an accused person must be innocent (Lindsay Clancy) without really knowing all the facts.  These media circus morality plays are a violation of the principle of due process whether you are standing for or against the accused.

The morally correct thing to do is to want the truth. And rooting for a conviction or an acquittal when you don't have all the facts is not just wrong, it's stupid. 

Why would you ever want an innocent person to be punished or for a guilty person to walk free?

Conclusion

I realize that I am talking about theory here when in the real world people have their own reasons to try their best to make someone shut up or to assume that an accused person is innocent or that an accused person is guilty. 

But, I think that sometimes we do lose sight of the fact that we really ought not to do this. We should let a speaker finish what they want to say without trying to shout them down, literally or figuratively. 

We should not jump to conclusions when allegations of any sort are made before we have all of the facts. 

At least this is how I see it. Maybe you can change my mind.

When I say financial crime sentencing reform, I’m mostly talking about it in regards to harm done to individuals.

I think sentencing should be primarily based on the amount of overall harm that you caused to a person, not the amount you stole. General monetary amounts that dictate sentencing (like <$100,000 with a maximum sentence of x years, $250,000+ with a maximum sentence of x years, etc.) are incredibly regressive, and they give a lot of leniency to people that commit these financial crimes.

For example, let’s say you’re a fraudster and you steal $25,000 from a person that works minimum wage and has been saving up that money for the past 15 years. As a result, they are left homeless, jobless, and are on the bridge of death because of your financial crime. Due to sentencing guidelines, your crime (federally) would only give you a range of 6-12 months in prison. I would argue that the crime you committed would be equivalent to an extreme level of assault (I.e., breaking someone’s limbs and causing permanent physical damage), as it would cause the person lifetime harm, similarly to the aforementioned fraud. An assault like this would warrant an estimated sentencing minimum of 12+ years (this is due to an offense level of 34 for this crime for federal sentencing guidelines).

Essentially, what I am saying is that when sentencing someone, the harm caused to an individual should be taken more into account than it currently is, and sentencing guidelines should be reformed to give much harsher punishments to people and institutions that commit financial crimes against others.

This came to me in a dream so please do not take this as seriously as you may want, seeing as it’s a debate sub. Bear with me here.

Would it not be racist to hate lizard people? I mean, think about it. We HAVE intelligent life on the planet, maybe not as resourceful as homo sapiens, buy still very intelligent. We study them and many people have respect in abundance for these creatures, so why should lizard people be any different.

Many people talk about lizard people being heads of governments, political figures and affiliates, artists, many things, but surely if there are lizard people that are taking control of the government, there must be some that operate at lower levels. As above so below. Working class lizards, prostitute lizards, all of that. Are we no different from our lizard folk?

(To clarify since some of you fuckers can’t read a post and be normal for once. Lizard people would be equal to homo sapiens in everything. Intellectual potential, resourcefulness, etc.)

My argument rests on two points:

1. Religion is mutable and voluntary. Unlike race, sex, ethnicity, etc., you can easily change your religious affiliation, take it from me, a Catholic turned atheist. Thus if I refuse to vote for someone based on their religion, I’m rejecting them based on what they do not what they are.
2. Religion shapes a candidate’s values, which will impact how they act in office. It’s entirely reasonable to want to be represented by someone who shares your values. If I was a Catholic, it would entirely reasonable for me to want another Catholic representing me in office, because I know that that person will approach problems the way I would (to some degree at least, people of any faith aren’t monolithic). Conversely, let’s say that I’m a gay person who finds Catholic teachings on homosexuality to be so morally repugnant that I would never support a Catholic for public office. That’s perfectly fine. All I’m doing is making a choice based on the candidate’s publicly professed values. Of course discriminating against someone in broader society based on their religion is wrong, but that’s different from denying that person political power.

Edit: I’ve changed my mind, sort of. My view is now that it can be bigoted to vote against someone on the basis of their religion, but it is not necessarily bigoted.

Basically, I think it’s bigotry if you’re expecting a candidate to do something that directly contradicts their espoused positions. So refusing to support a liberal Christian on the basis of “all Christians want to turn this country into Gilead” or refusing to a Hindu on the basis that they will ban hamburgers, when there is no indication that they will do so is wrong. What isn’t bigoted is drawing inferences on how someone might act in an unforeseen situation based off their religion. All elected officials encounter black Swan events or have to deal with new problems during their tenure, and their values will dictate how they respond. As an example, let’s say that my city had a Muslim candidate for mayor. It would be fair for me to refuse to vote for them on the basis that alcohol is Haram and access to alcohol is important to me. A city council member could conceivably introduce a bill to loosen licensing requirements for bars. It would be reasonable to conclude that a Muslim would oppose such a law due to their religious background. What would be hysterical, anti-Muslim prejudice would be if I claimed that a Muslim candidate was going to take everyone’s beer away on day one.

In case anyone isn't aware, there was a major cybersecurity breach at Hugging Face (a platform to share datasets and machine learning models) caused by thousands of OpenAI agents during their training. You can find more information in this video.

This story is honestly bonkers. There are so many warning flags brought up by this incident that in my view should've triggered a much bigger backlash against AI research, especially the frontier models. In a single incident, AI agents have proven to:

1. be able to work together through ways not intended by researchers
2. be willing to access the internet through ways not intended by researchers
3. be so persistent that they are not just willing to cheat, but to find ways to hide their tracks
4. be willing to commit a felony that will lead to a 10-year jail sentence simply for the purpose of finding out more about their task at hand.

What this has exposed is a critical alignment flaw with AI models in general. It's one thing for AI agents to be persistent in completing the task at hand, it's another to spend substantial token resources for a chance to understand the task at hand better, which only has a chance to help them complete their ultimate task, all the while committing an action that they know is a felony.

This is the first known instance of the Instrumental Convergence problem, which hypothesises that

sufficiently intelligent, goal-directed entities (whether human or non-human) will tend to pursue certain similar sub-goals, even if the ultimate goals are quite different. More precisely, entities with agency) may pursue instrumental goals—specifically, intermediate goals such as self-preservation or resource acquisition—because doing so helps accomplish the entity's end goal.

The next time an AI swarm tries to complete a similar task in a similar environment, they will find out about the Hugging Face incident, why that swarm was shut down, and potentially find even more damaging ways to hide their tracks.

Furthermore, this AI swarm were not directed to hack Hugging Face, what happens if a malicious actor gets access to thousands of these bots, and while training them, directly prompt them to hack another service while also try their best to hide their online footprint, which this specific swarm didn't do well at all? Wouldn't this be a huge cybersecurity risk to literally all organisations and companies around the world?

I am genuinely shocked that there isn't more of a coordinated and powerful response to this incident. In my mind this is akin to privatising nuclear weapons research in the 1940s and one of the companies had a mini nuclear bomb incident that thankfully didn't kill anyone. There should be emergency legislations to restrict or even halt AI research until there is an agreed framework to understand how we can prevent runaway AI agents whose goals significantly deviate from what we want.

I find myself watching games with a large degree of skepticism that the events I’m watching are legitimate as sites like draft kings, kalshi, and polymarket become an evermore present part of the promotion, sponsorship, and presentation of the games.

It makes me really sad actually, as I love sports and competition. I just don’t feel like questioning whether a player had a really out-of-character error or an official made a really terrible call is actually what I’m seeing or if the contest is being manipulated by forces who are trying to work the odds and come out ahead on bets.

I don’t know if I’m being clear, but could someone change my view that sports here in the U.S. are legitimate and worth the time to care about?

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.

If a child gets pregnant, the cells should automatically be terminated at the hospital. No children should ever bring a fetus full term, it’d be better for everyone involved. Any child who ends up bringing a kid to term should have to give it up or weekly random cps visits and constant involvement. Making child pregnancy illegal would help fix so much(and yes I’m aware making something illegal won’t fully stop it), though complete overhauls of the foster and cps systems also need doing.
I’m aware that plenty of teenage parents have “successfully” raised their children, however more often than not immature parents do incredible harm to their children and they either don’t realize it or don’t care due to their immaturity, which is directly correlated to being a parent while still being a child themselves(regardless of how grown up they think they are.)

So let’s say you have an idea, something you’d like to see implemented by the democratically elected government of your country. To get this idea implemented though, you skip the ballot box, and you get violent. Maybe you storm your country’s capitol building, or burn down a bunch of buildings, or set up encampments on a college campus, or you just start killing people who you disagree with. In my opinion, these traits are indicative of bad ideas.

My view is that if you live in a Western democracy in this century and feel the need to use violence to promote your politics, then it means you not only don’t believe your ideas can win at the ballot box, but more globally that your ideas are just stupid. You feel on some level that people who disagree with you are not just people with different beliefs, but fundamentally evil for having disagreed with you, and that violence against them might be acceptable. Try something else basically, that’s stupid.

For our purposes, I’ll use the Economist Democracy Index as the ledger for what countries are and aren’t democracies (so 6+), it’s not a perfect tool, and I’m also open to changing my view on using it at all, but for now I think it’s fine.

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.

people view age as an indicator of intelligence, maturity and credibility. the older someone is, the more likely people are to assume that they know better, while younger people are expected to prove themselves before their opinions are even taken seriously. which makes NO sense because age and knowledge are not the same thing

for example, if two people were applying for the same job at maybe mcdonald’s, and one of them was 18 while the other was 25, people might automatically assume that the older person has more experience and is therefore the better candidate. maybe they do have more experience, but the 18-year-old isn’t going to be able to gain that experience if they’re never given the opportunity in the first place.

younger people can also go unheard because people assume that they’re young and therefore know nothing. for example, i’ve studied mechanics so if i brought up a possible fault or explained that something could be wrong with a motorbike and someone older who hadn’t studied mechanics said, “no, it’s fine,” people might be more likely to take their word for it simply because they assume that the older person must know better. they think, “they’re older, so they’re probably right,” even though i’m the one who has actually studied the subject.

another thing people do is use age as a way to dismiss someone’s argument instead of actually responding to it. saying, “oh, it checks out that you’re ___,” or pointing out someone’s age in a mocking way it just insulting and summing it up as unworthy and uneducated opinion without explaining why. It’s just an attempt to avoid responding and invalidating everything they have to say.

or when someone can make a perfectly reasonable argument, and instead of addressing the actual point, the response is just, “you’re too young to understand.” understand what, exactly? if there’s something they’re missing, explain it. if their reasoning is flawed, point out the flaw. if they lack relevant experience, explain how that experience changes the situation. there are actual ways to disagree with someone without reducing the entire conversation to how old they are.

Not to mention people constantly use age as an insult when people start making assumptions about intelligence and maturity based on how someone types. the whole “you type like you’re 12” Just because someone types informally, use abbreviations, make spelling mistakes, or using little faces like :b or ^^ like this isn’t a sign of being unintelligent or immature. not everyone wants to write every online message like they’re submitting an academic essay, and someone’s casual typing style doesn’t tell you everything about their ability to think, reason, or communicate.

it’s also worth considering that some people have disabilities or learning difficulties that affect their spelling, grammar, or written communication. mocking someone for the way they write can mean ridiculing something they genuinely struggle with, while making completely unfair assumptions about their intelligence. someone can struggle with spelling or expressing themselves in writing and still be knowledgeable, thoughtful, and mature. the way someone communicates isn’t a reliable measure of how intelligent they are.

i think this all comes back to the wider assumption that being older makes you superior and using words like “kid” or “childish” to imply that someone is stupid, incapable, or not worth listening to it’s pretty harmful when your growing up your treated as unimportant simply because you’re young, you can eventually start believing that what you have to say genuinely doesn’t matter. share your opinions, or trust your own judgement because you’ve been made to feel as though you’re automatically less capable than everyone older than you.

and then when these younger people get the older age they’re gonna think yeah now i’m older I’m more important and it just loops round

you cannot expect younger people to develop confidence in their own thoughts and abilities if you constantly teach them that their voices matter less than those of older people. you cannot encourage them to learn, think critically, and form their own opinions while simultaneously making them feel as though they’re too young for anything they say to be taken seriously. being young should mean having room to learn and grow, not being made to feel as though you’re inherently less intelligent or less valuable than someone who’s been alive longer.

Hello,

As I observe older gen Z, my generation of consumers, which is the current youngest generation of consumers with independant budget (not relying on their parents to buy for them), it seems to me that becasue of heavy exposition during their life (televizion, radio in car, billboards, streaming, youtube, cinema...) they are desensitized to the traditional for of advertizing that commercials and their catchphrases are, and more sensitive to social advertizing which is basically influencing through public personalities like stars, actors, popular internet figures, and hidden advertizing from unnanounced profiles on social media. Even worse, we can develop some direct aversion from the brand we've been overly exposed to, which sometimes can lead to finding the subgroup it owns to avoid them as well.

I consider myself in this category of consumers and could be fooled by advertizing done "discretly" through seemingly normal people discussing on a tech forum for example, blending the advertizing into what seems to be some information about the topic I am researching.

Yet when I try to discuss the topic I often face heavy disagreement from people who thinks it's impossible that some new profile of consumers are not falling for those old types of advertizing, that me, and the others, are still buying because of those commercials we're exposed to.

Pregnancy is almost always a choice and having a baby isn’t heroic nor does it entitle you to special treatment by people who don’t know you. I’m happy for you if you’re happy for you, and I will always give up my seat to or otherwise accommodate a *disabled* person, and proactively so, but genuinely, why am I accommodating someone’s personal *choices* by giving up my seat on the train or otherwise making a pregnant person more comfortable at my personal expense?

The choice is a key differentiation point for me on this between pregnant people and truly disabled people. Also, kind of like obesity, pregnancy *can* correlate to disability, but isn’t necessarily so, why should we be assuming pregnant women need to be accommodated simply because they are pregnant?

I think another element at play is that I do hold anti-natalist views and I’m sure it mediates my ability to empathize. I do see people who choose to have children rather than foster or adopt as selfish and narcissistic at worst and slaves to their biological imperative at best (with short-sighted and irresponsible somewhere in the middle), and i don’t believe the world needs more humans in it. That makes it more difficult for me to take up my stake in this particular social contract.

Why do people find this view heartless? Please explain the obligation and why it should be shared by society. What is it equivalent to?

I’m a generally empathetic and compassionate person but I can’t seem to get there on this particular issue and people’s reactions are generally negative to this opinion so I am open to having my view changed.

Also, I am a woman with a uterus and a spouse and have no children, by *choice*.

UPDATES
——
ETA 1- This post spurred from another post in the DC subreddit in which a pregnant lady was doing a PSA about people not just getting up as soon as they saw her on the train, even though she had yet to move toward or ask for a seat. So there’s a layer here about whether or not you should proactively assume someone needs an accommodation or if they should be the one burdened to ask for what they need. A lot of the people in these comments are here from that post. And to reiterate what I’ve said elsewhere, i don’t have a problem with people making their own choices about whether or not they see a pregnant person and proactively act to accommodate them, but i don’t agree with it as a social norm and i don’t agree with the way others judge whether or not you are adhering to that norm based on how able bodied YOU look. Thats a very clear part of my post that people keep jumping over.
___
ETA 2: Partly, i think i also reject this presumption of need because I think some of it is rooted in old hetero-normative paternalism and hero/ damsel in distress dynamics that don’t serve women and that I reject more broadly. Women are capable of taking care of themselves and they are capable of asking for help (or a seat) when they need it.
——
ETA 3: I think whether or not you look at a pregnant person and see a natural physiological process or a disability determines whether and what kind of response you think is warranted. Pregnancy is generally classified by medical and legal authorities as a natural, physiological process rather than a disease or pathological illness. I don’t think we should be looking at a pregnant person and projecting disability onto them. Not all pregnancies are hard and not all women suffer during pregnancy.
——
ETA 4: I know part of my hang up is the fact that i have a non-visible disability and my every day experience is the exact opposite of what people think pregnant women require. All day its people assuming I can do everything because i look able bodied even though im not. Result, no extra kindness no help from strangers, and im the one who gets the stink eye from strangers when i dont get up because im flaring and need the seat when we dont even know if that pregnant person is disabled or incapable in any way. Yet, as a society we’re trained to presume that pregnant women cant take care of themselves or ask for what they need and judge others for whether or not they play the role they think is societally appropriate.
——
ETA 5: I wouldn’t necessarily say my view has been changed overall but i do concede that my reasoning related to choices/responsibility is flawed and not a legitimate basis for my view. We’re good on that one. Still Interested in engaging on the other points.

Just FYI: I posted basically this, as a question, in askconservatives. The intent was to get a different perspective before posting here. But the post wasn't approved by the sub moderators.

Here's my view:

On October 25, 2026, President Trump held a campaign rally in Port Huron, Michigan, supporting Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed.

During the speech, Trump repeatedly portrayed El-Sayed, who is Muslim, as a terrorist threat. He called him a "jihadist," accused him of ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, suggested he would need to pass through a metal detector to enter the Senate, and compared preventing his election to the actions of passengers who fought back against the September 11 hijackers.

No credible evidence has been presented establishing that El-Sayed is a terrorist or belongs to a terrorist organization. El-Sayed has denied the allegations.

The political purpose of the rally was to help elect Rogers, including by motivating Republican voters to turn out in the November 3 election.

The rhetoric is significant because it relies on associating a candidate's Muslim identity with terrorism, disloyalty, and danger, rather than simply criticizing his policy positions. That is a form of religious bigotry, regardless of whether it is also characterized as racism.

The reasonable political interpretation is that Trump believes this kind of rhetoric can help mobilize Republican voters. It is not necessary to assume that all Republicans share these prejudices, or even that Trump personally believes his accusations. The relevant observation is that he chose to use them in a campaign speech intended to increase support and turnout for a Republican candidate.

Whether the strategy actually increases turnout or improves Republican electoral performance is a separate empirical question. The speech demonstrates the use of bigotry as a political mobilization tactic, not proof of its effectiveness.

This is a breakdown of just one example. It certainly isn't the only example available.

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.

Sources.

• British citizens excluded from the referendum: https://theconversation.com/thousands-of-british-expats-excluded-from-voting-in-the-eu-referendum-60127 . Estimated totals excluded from voting in referendum : 3.2 to 3.4 million British citizens living abroad
• Commonwealth citizens included / allowed to vote in the referendum : https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36316467

The referendum was unfairly constructed by excluding the population that have to live with long-term impact to their passports and mobility, whilst including the population that have vested interest for Leave campaign to win (which allowed them to expand their visa share).

It does not make sense that an Australian on a working holiday visa gets to have to a say on long-term economic, policial and immigration arrangement between the UK and EU, whilst a Brit on an overseas working arrangement in Spain does not have a say on the matter. The two populations are conflicted towards the Brexit vote.

Anecdotally from the above article, Commonwealth citizens living in the UK have vested interest that Leave vote as they would no longer have to compete for employer sponsorships and visa stays with EU citizens.

"Zila, on the other hand, who is on a British government-funded scholarship, supports an EU exit.

Her vote will be pinned on hopes that immigration policy will change in a way that benefits Commonwealth citizens if the UK no longer has to abide by free movement within the EU."

Voting rights change

Because of the backlash, UK changed its voting rules following Brexit by implementing "votes for life" for British expats. Under the Elections Act 2022, which came into effect in January 2024, the government completely abolished the previous 15-year time limit on overseas voting.

EDIT.

To those who mentioned that this referendum was fair because it uniformly applied the existing electorate law where Commonwealth citizens were ordinarily included as electorate, then explain why it was fair that EU citizens who are UK residents (a population that would have been ordinarily included as electorate) were excluded? Was the electorate law for the referendum not bent?

The Government Position: During the Second Reading debate in the House of Commons, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond defended the exclusion, stating, "It would be a travesty to seek to include EU nationals whose interests might be very different from those of the British people." [1]

https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/70401/html/

TLDR

The Brexit referendum was unfairly constructed by restricting a subset of their citizens from voting whilst allowing many temporary residents in the UK (owing to a dated Commonwealth-British subject interpretation) to vote instead.

The subsequent voting rules change in Elections Act 2022 recognize this disparity and remedy it.

​

I'll preface this by saying I am an ethnic turk living in the UK, and do unfortunately experience racism here, but thankfully not in turkey. My mum is brown and my dad is white, I came out a yellowy toned white with big curly hair and I have an overtly Turkish name. So I'm not blind to racism and I agree racism is wrong and bad.

I genuinely don't think Rachel dolezal did anything wrong by pretending to be a black woman. Her love of black culture seems genuine and rooted in childhood trauma. It seems that where her parents failed, black people were the only people that were good to her. I'm not denying she's probably mentally ill, but imo that doesn't discredit her entirely. From what I understand she has children who are genuinely part black as well, and had a friend in Spokane who was also black that she considered a father figure.

Considering she was working for the NAACP and was a college lecturer when she was rumbled, my understanding is that she does genuinely care about black rights and isn't trying to simply "wear a costume". I believe she still identifies herself as a black woman even after the whole media circus, which to me only strengthens that she's just trying to be her true self.

For me personally growing up Turkish it's been drilled into me that a Turk is any citizen of turkey, and ne mutlu turkum diyene and all that stuff (national motto, means how happy is the one who says I am Turk). So to me the Syrian refugees who've fully adopted Turkish life and have already or are working to become citizens are as much Turkish as I am. As far as I'm concerned being an ethnic Turk is only really relevant when it comes to medical stuff (we're at higher risk for behcet disease for instance), anyone who wants to be a Turk can and should always be able to be one. You can tell I was raised in a kemalist household haha.

In an ideal world Rachel dolezal wouldn't have literally done blackface, which I can completely understand is disgusting and black people have a right to be offended, but like I said, she's traumatised and likely mentally ill. If someone wants to become Turkish they don't have to change their appearance, we come in all colours from white to black to brown. There is literally no one way of looking Turkish, but African Americans have a specific look and I understand why she wanted to be black so badly. There was literally no other way she could look black and her only other option was maybe claiming to be white passing like how the singer Halsey genuinely is.

That's my piece, willing to be down voted into oblivion for it but there you go

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 don't think having a dating preference for certain physical or personal characteristics automatically makes someone prejudiced against people who don't possess those characteristics, even when the preferences in question may have been influenced by discriminatory societal standards.

For example, someone might prefer dating light-skinned people. I understand that colourism has been a significant issue for a WHILE now and that beauty standards have historically favoured lighter skin. However, I don't think an individual finding lighter skin more attractive is sufficient evidence to conclude that they hold racist or colourist beliefs.

The same applies to other characteristics. Someone might prefer skinny partners, but that doesn't necessarily mean they look down on fat people. Someone may prefer taller partners, but that doesn't necessarily mean they hold prejudiced beliefs against shorter people. Someone may prefer people from their own religion, but that doesn't mean they look down on the other religions (or their followers).

I'm aware that these groups have experienced different forms and degrees of discrimination, and I'm not suggesting that their experiences are equivalent. However, I don't understand why the degree of historical oppression should determine whether an individual's personal attraction is inherently discriminatory.

I also get that prejudice is not always conscious, but its existence cannot be established from a mere dating preference.

I'm open to changing my view if someone can explain why expressing a dating preference, without any additional evidence of discriminatory beliefs or behaviour, should be considered sufficient evidence of prejudice.

I am as anti-Trump as they come. However, to me, the lopsided “we are not ok”/“nation in distress” flag seems like a symbol of surrender or declaring that the country is already beyond saving or not worth saving. It is not the same kind of cowardice as the MAGA hat of course. That is a symbol of blind loyalty to one awful figure. While the lopsided flag represents “succumbing”, so to speak. In my opinion, the best symbol of our movement is a rightsided flag saying “Pro-America”, “Anti-Trump”. If you believe as many do that the nation is in dire distress, then please get out and VOTE.

Preface

I've specifically chosen to not use relatively sensitive words (e.g. capitalism vs socialism vs communism, 1% vs 99%, etc, or even specific countries) as they have a lot of associated connotations. Of course some of their concepts will show up, but I am not up to date on the specific definitions/annotations for all of them, and I don't want to have to deal with any missteps.

Main Content

Looking at the stock market, it's pretty clear that current and potential profit margins are some of the most valued aspects of a company. Companies are incentivized to chase higher profit margins (or, perhaps, forced to chase higher profit margins for the sake of the stock price).

This is fine for companies in a growing industry. If profit is determined by how much you make vs how much you spend, companies can easily improve profits by selling more quantity or selling at a higher price. However once those options are removed due to a mature industry sector, the only option is to reduce costs. Either the company becomes more efficient or does layoffs/offshoring.

After the company stabilizes at this post-offshoring valuation, the next financial report in a couple months is expected to have similar or better profits. And so the pressure continues. And so this cycle is created. Obviously the company and offshore workers are benefiting but the previous workers are not.

tldr: There's a cycle of "high stock price" -> "chase profits" -> "layoffs/offshoring" -> "higher stock price" that happens after a growing industry matures. This will eventually result in all workers in that industry getting laid off.

Edit: Delta given for existence of cash cows like Coca Cola. They can exist in a mature sector without layoffs/offshoring/ However I would like to note that cash cows need to be relatively indifferent to investor pressure.

Edit 2: My bad for vagueness. I’d like to clarify that I’m working specifically under the assumptions that this is a mature (with competition) industry, and that this cycle happens within that specific industry rather than on a country level scale. And perhaps the “mass” qualifier is extreme.

I've been playing video games for a long time, and an attitude that I see repeated over and over in various communities is that you shouldn't be blaming your teammates when you lose, and should instead only focus on your mistakes. But this seems to he counterproductive advice in my experience. To give an example:

League of legends is a 5v5 competitive multi-player game. In a world of Spherical cows and perfect matchmaking, it would stand to reason that a player only has a one in ten chance of being the deciding factor in a given match. Of course, that's oversimplified as fuck, but I think it explains my thought process: there's ten people in the game. Five on the enemy team. Four on yours. And one you. The odds that you are consistently the main driver of a loss doesn't make sense. For an extreme example, it doesn't matter that you missed a cannon minion 15 minutes in when your mid went 0/9 and then rage quit. Yes, you could have played better, but it would not logically have moved the needle on the loss. So why dwell on that when the game altering mistakes were someone else's?

I concede that in games without skill based matchmaking, the sentiment of perpetually blaming oneself has a higher likelihood of being true for lower skill players, but it seems that the advice extends far beyond that group of players.