Unseen

@Enco

Free markets are overrated, or not every market even CAN be free.

The medical marketplaces are either not free or are distorted.

Explain how the pharma market is free. Well, it is free for Big Pharma. They seem to be free to charge whatever they want, and the reason is clear: They make products people must use but where there is no…[Read more]

_Robert_ wrote:

Yeah. I say it all the time. The US govt is just a weak extension of the boardroom and a divisive diversion at that. I’m told the “free (/s) market” is efficient. Yeah, efficient at concentrating wealth. So efficient you gotta have a giant reset every 10 years, LOL. Try buying homeowners insurance in DeathSantis’ Florida. What go…

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The populism that may plunge the country into a Christian nationalist/corporate fascistic oligarchic, plutocratic, dictatorship was born of the greed and inattention of the Democratic Party. They talked a great game and constantly failed to deliver. Of course, the GOP helped.

In the end, the voters wanted to clean house and even if they didn’t…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

The caliber of the candidates informs me that if enough of them get elected then America is in serious trouble.  Fuck Trump. You think he was bad? Wait until you see what’s coming next. He was just Phase One. He is history and he will be forgotten about if November results go their way.

People are saying that 2020 wa…[Read more]

Autumn wrote:

‘Microwave’ in ‘microwave oven’ is actually a noun (‘microwave oven’ is a compound noun). Verbing nouns is a common practice in English. Wholesale, random substitutions of words is not.

Part of the flexibility of language is that two people can analyze an expression two different ways with no way for one person to prove definitivel…[Read more]

Here’s how flexible language is using an example from our everyday lives. Do you have a blender? an air fryer? a food processor? a microwave? a coffee maker?

Hey, wait a second. A “microwave”? At one time, “microwave” was an adjective in the term “microwave oven.” The adjective became a noun.

What’s an adjective is something that’s used as an…[Read more]

Language is not inflexible. You can use my “pronouns” in the same way as one would use “he” and “him” by simple replacement. Claiming they are not real pronouns is grammatically narrowminded.

@One and All

My pronouns are “Your Majesty” and “His Majesty.” Or just “The One Who Can’t Be Seen.”

It is now your job to always use those pronouns when you talk to or about me.

@Enco

Having a gold standard only works if you stick to it. How did we finance WW2 even though we were under a gold standard? I know there were liberty bond drives but (I’ve looked into it) basically we temporarily forgot our commitment to the gold standard and went into debt.

@Reg

When Ethereum switches to proof of stake, it is predicted to reduce its energy footprint by 99%. And Bitcoin could follow suit, along with the other popular cryptos.

But why go crypto in the first place? To get banks off our backs with all of their fees and keep the government from looking over our financial shoulder. And, of course, to…[Read more]

@PopeBeanie

There is much truth in your post above… AND YET, changes come when it’s time for the change to take hold. There came the day, for example, when the majority of Americans realized that gay marriage wasn’t the end of the world and that a heterosexual couple wanting to marry had nothing to fear from same sex couples coupling up in the…[Read more]

@Autumn

I take your point that nature doesn’t care if we intervene, but it’s still an intervention, and we can discuss, perhaps, whether such interventions are natural . Nature doesn’t care or else the machinery of evolution wouldn’t work. Nature only says “You can’t do that” if a mutation actually turns out to be totally unworkable and causes…[Read more]

Autumn wrote:

Unseen wrote:

And yet, rising above all the gender wars political mumbo jumbo we have the simple fact that biology knows what a male and female is in a very binary way, noting that very occasionally there are sometimes hard cases. In general and in the vast majority of cases, the two genders have different plumbing.

In terms of…

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And yet, rising above all the gender wars political mumbo jumbo we have the simple fact that biology knows what a male and female is in a very binary way, noting that very occasionally there are sometimes hard cases. In general and in the vast majority of cases, the two genders have different plumbing.

Autumn wrote:

Are they? Comedians like Chappelle and Gervais seem to leverage the idea of getting cancelled into better publicity.

I think you’re right to the extent that the top comics are not likely to be put out of business entirely though I think they may still take an unnecessary and undeserved hit. On the other hand, some media owned by…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

Fellow Unbelievers, Things we are uncomfortable talking about can be things we need to talk about As long as no one is either extrajudicially or judicially fined, jailed, beaten, tortured or murdered (blah blah).

I think we can add triggered. Comedians are being denied a living over fears that their jokes might make…[Read more]

Autumn wrote:

Giving parents absolute dominion would enable abusive scenarios.

The last time I looked, child abuse was against the law almost everywhere.

_Robert_ wrote:

I think it’s such a non-issue as far as interacting with other adults…be true to yourself and I respect that. I am not as sure about minors receiving drugs or elective surgery without having mental health professionals involved.

As my Jewish childhood neighbor lady might have said, “And parents? What are they? Chopped liver?” Now…[Read more]