clairity

that's a strawman. we're talking about how to have dialogue with people who hold cognitively dissonant viewpoints (to you), and sometimes that means the dialogue is context- and time- dependent. if one person is literally attacking another person verbally or physically, well, then you should possibly step in or call for help. but that's not "taking sides" so much as intervening against violence.

frederick douglass espoused exactly the type of cross-racial and cross-ideological dialogue i'm bringing up here. if he can do it, being the subject of real subjugation and hatred, we can do it too sitting alone together in front of our little glass screens.

please don't simply "think of the children". think both openly and critically.

no, it absolutely is not, for a democratic republic like the US. the US is designed to have a minimal federal government that doesn't interfere in the individual life and liberty of its residents. this is very unlike governments that came before it and even peer governments now, like the social democracies of europe. our federal government was not meant to be a central planner, but rather simply an interstate and international arbiter. therefore, it cannot have any interest in population control in any way. that's up to the will of the people, and only the will of the people. it's not even a state concern because it would encroach our civil liberties, which are inalienable by the constitution.

because it doesn't help in the long run, even if it soothes the feathers in the short.

this is true, but that's even moreso why we need to have such conversations openly, especially with people different from us, to elucidate our blind spots.

and that's the crux of why diversity can be powerful. it's not about diversity of demographics, but diversity of perspective and thinking that strengthens societies (and companies and teams).

i mean, do you really believe that today, women are not considered equal, even if it's not perfectly spelled out by the constitution? more importantly, does that matter for using the constitution as a starting point? it doesn't have to be the constitution by the way; that was simply a convenient and relevant example of a starting point.

that's a false dichotomy for the rhetoricians. it's both, and more, and more complicated than that.

we spend the first 18 years or so of our lives empirically deriving those first principles together, along with the derivations of our ancestors in the form of documents like the constitution. since none of us are intrinsically perfect, we have a whole running population who nonlinearly superpositions our perspectives to create a common, if dynamic and imperfect, consensus of what's reasonable in a social context, and what's not.

it takes some mental fortitude to maintain this position, but you have to understand that 99.99% of the time, those other people think of themselves as good and reasonable too. and the feeling of violence is a direct result of identifying with your chosen "side", thus feeling personally affronted. rather, you can create space between who you are and what you believe, and in this way, someone can attack those beliefs without it affecting who you think you are. you don't feel it's violent against you because of that separation. you can similarly project that separation onto other people, so that you're not attacking them personally, but just discussing their ideas and beliefs.

while it's certainly biased by the thinking of the time, that stuff isn't enshrined in the constitution, not to that degree. the wealthy white dude framers knew they weren't perfect, so they allowed for changes by providing an amendment process to patch the rough spots. the constitution is a good start, not the final endpoint.

there's a whole body of political science literature that would heartily debate that stance. at most, political discourse and religious discourse grew up together and influenced each other, but to say one is based on the other is a rhetorical diversion at best.

gay marriage shouldn't be predicated on privacy either. two people want equal protection under the law as any other two people who have enjoined their lives together. that's basically it. certainly the gender/sex of those two people isn't the state's concern, because reproduction is not a state concern, but rather a private matter.

no, why should it? i want those things for disadvantaged groups as well. that doesn't mean that i've chosen a side and will defend it to the death against the bad ol' "others". everyone can be part of the same tribe. no other tribe needed. and it's ok if we don't all agree on the same things at the same time.

(i'm not going to pretend that i'm always cool, calm and collected in real life. far from it, i'm as flawed as the next person. but when it comes to thinking about this stuff, and striving to be more consistent with my own principles, this is the way i think myself out of all the partisanship i see around me.)

no, you don't have to think in sides. you can have a position and discuss your position with others. you don't have to think of them as your enemy, but rather your conversation partner, someone who can help you expand your perspective and perhaps even change your mind.

remember that the abortion issue, as a matter of law, is about the state's interests in the body. it does not litigate religious or social mores, but most of the "debate" is of this latter type.

i personally agree with the recent supreme court ruling that abortion rights shouldn't rest on privacy protections, but rather on a robust reading of the constitution that bodily autonomy is a fundamental right above and beyond states' interests (nation state or US state). i'd extend this to the issues of euthanasia and suicide as well. the state should have a very narrow and rigorously limited set of concerns (foreign relations and interstate disputes, in the case of the US federal govt).

no, stop thinking of sides at all, and especially don't start with a side first. start with reasoned first principles (the constitution is a good start) and continue to reason your way to a position on any given issue that is consistent with those first principles, sides be damned. the only reason you pay attention to sides is identifying with and wanting to defend a side in the first place. don't worry about defending and entrenching. have earnest conversations. if your position is constantly getting barraged with hard-to-argue counterpoints, then consider changing your position. it's not that hard.

the very point is that climate change and CO₂ are mediopolitical distractions, and your 'simpler' isn't better but rather materially worse. pollution is a consensus problem. we should directly tackle that problem, not the indirect, mediopolitically manufactured one.

* note that consensus isn't how media or political careers are made.

no, because the amount of carbon in each energy input doesn't directly correlate with the amount of pollution and harm, and it's a courser measure than taxing the polluting components relative to their externalized impact on health and wellbeing. we need to directly tax each of the things we don't want proportional to harm, rather than trying to simplify the problem and thereby creating unintended distortions and consequences.

or even simpler, stop being on a side, then you don't have to do mental tricks like "reversing the polarity". you can just see things for the way they are, without personal identity invested in the situation. this is exactly what being independent is.

climate change has become a culture war meme topic, which is why it's time to change the perspective and leave that inanity behind, so that we can make meaningful change in our lifetimes (lest our lifetimes and those coming behind us become shorter and more painful). framing matters, and we the people need to grab the mediopolitical bull (who try to do all the pre-thinking for us) by its horns before we get gored.

carbon taxes are the exact kind of roundabout measure that creates distortions and unintended consequences[0] rather than directly tackling the core issue. we need to tax pollution directly, as happened with CFCs in the 80s, because what we want to get rid of is pollution and that's how you directly internalize externalities while minimizing gaming potential (and we should use the funds for further clean-up efforts). carbon by itself is not a pollutant[1], but rather an essential component of life. things like dioxins, lead and other heavy metals, particulate matter, ammonium, radon, microplastics, pesticides, VOCs, ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, radiation (coal/fly ash surpasses nuclear waste, but both are relatively small), and yes, even a number of hydrocarbons, are directly pollutants, so let's target those things directly.

[0]: cap-and-trade is another oft-mentioned approach, but suffers from the same gaming potential as carbon taxes. in the ideal, it should work, but practically they've been shown to become regulatorily captured, just like most bureaucratic measures.

[1]: you could even argue that carbon dioxide is not necessarily a pollutant because it's essential to the cycle of life on earth. it becomes a critical problem when we have something like an order of magnitude more of it than we do currently, but so can anything be poisonous in high enough doses.

i'm with you that a tariff scheme is better than giving money to large corps, which always puts money in the pockets of the already rich rather than into creating customer surplus and driving innovation. there is a (mostly front-loaded) cost, but there is also a clear net benefit in the long run. the tariff scheme just needs to be graduated (both on and off) and based on industry milestones. if it isn't ramped down as soon as feasible, then it becomes a overly-depended-upon subsidy and a market distortion masking price signals instead.

because we know there is a large and likely growing demand for semiconductors, it's not a very risky bet for us to be subsidizing it via trade restrictions for some finite amount of time.

also note that CSR (corporate social responsibility) is public relations, not a moral or ethical position, part and parcel to the term 'greenwashing'.

in the same vein as the article, we should stop talking about climate change in favor of pollution. climate change is vague, pollution is not. we can see and feel the effects of pollution, which makes it more likely that we can create a coalition to address it rather than this unspecific notion of temperatures rising. pollution affected us yesterday, affects us today, and will continue to affect us into the foreseeable future. in the 80s this framing was used effectively against acid rain (sulfur dioxide) and CFC/HFCs.

coal plants are among the most impactful in terms of pollution, so if instead of arguing about 1 or 2 or however many degrees of temperature rise, we pour all that effort into getting rid of coal plants (principally with nuclear right now, some gas at the margin, and renewables gradually, as storage and transmission tech improve), we'd be able to make meaningful impact in the next few years, with a byproduct of also reducing carbon emissions.

nesting will be nice when it lands, but i'm most excited by far for :has() support. i know chrome and safari have initial implementations in place and firefox just recently started. :has() will be the biggest advancement in css since grid, moreso than nesting or container queries, because of the power it puts in the stylists' hands. unfortunately trying to track its progress is a haphazard gander into an opaque maze of different sites and bug trackers.

yah, i have a strong preference for the first option, and don't mind that it requires using an & token relative to scss that requires none.

the @nest always option seems overly verbose, and adding more brackets visually overloads them in a way that makes it harder to parse quickly when scanning.

what's also silly is using qualtrics for a single-question survey that has 5 screens, including the google captcha surveillance tracking injection.

i mean, the era of reagan was also the era of trickle down economics. it was all sorts of stupid--full of greedy, motivated reasoning, not reasonable, rational, or coherent thought.

as an independent, party affliation is a sure sign of vacuous thinking to me, where the cost of membership is leaving your brain at the door (and that's what thiel does btw). democrats are currently making this mistake with anti-federalism, trying to push through national laws that are squarely in the province of state control. this is expedient in the short run for their political careers but damaging to the foundations of the nation in the long run, as consolidation of power nationally is the quintessential threat to our democratic republic. it reeks of hypocrisy.

spirited away is amazing because of the chihiro's journey through the fantastical world of the kami, where she has to contend with not only her own present but generations past and all their virtue and vice. it's about the ever-present struggle to place oneself in a world built upon tradition and deference. this is a common theme in east asian tv and film, but miyazaki explores it in such an enveloping and actually rather gentle way, filled with symbolism and mysticism. the film's representation of coming of age seems to be external (overcoming spirits), but it's all about the girl's coming to terms with herself in relation to her parents and everyone who came before them. it's a blip in her life externally but internally, everything has changed. chihiro transforms in that little blip.

i haven't seen nausicaä yet, but all the ghibli films are great (except perhaps arrietty, as noted in a nearby comment). porco rosso was fun and more action oriented than most ghibli films. it's been a while since i've seen castle in the sky but it sits storywise between mononoke and howl's moving castle in my head.

to be clear, even though i ranked them, my bar for a good film is whether i'd watch it again or not, and all the ghibli films i've seen, except perhaps arrietty (i haven't seen earwig or earthsea, but the consensus seems to be against those as well), are well worth watching again and again.

grave of the fireflies is heartwrenching for sure, and absolutely worth watching again (when you have tissues and a loved one to hug nearby).

shape of water was good for it's ethereal scenery and underlying storyline, but for the 2018 oscars, i thought 3 billboards got robbed for best picture. that was the last year i paid any attention to the oscars (especially considering the thoroughly mundane green book won the following year). hollywood has nothing interesting to offer anymore.

yes, spirited away is hands down the best ghibli film, for that ability to grab your spirit and transform it alongside chihiro's (the young protagonist). it's probably one of my top 5 or top 10 films of all time.

i liked mononoke, but it felt heavy-handed in comparison, so it doesn't rate as highly in my book. it would have rated way worse had disney gotten its way with it.

edit: totoro would be #2, kaguya and grave of the fireflies would be tied for #3/4, then howl's moving castle at #5, then ponyo, mononoke, and kiki's delivery service would be among the remaining top 10 spots for me.

right, they should have put it underground right before USC/expo park.