someuser2345

Democrats actively fought against voter id laws. Instead, they should have supported those laws, but with an amendment to make it easier for people to get an id.

Sort of. As far as I remember, his primary motivation wasn't to get treatment (he actually doesn't want to get treated at all at first), it was to leave behind enough money for his family.

Isn't that true of all doctors?

So, you're basically running DynamoDB on top of a sql server?

Regarding Koko, it isn't really clear if she really was able to have complex dialogues, or if that was wishful thinking on the part of her trainers.

In general, I don't think there are any animals that are as intelligent as adult humans. After all, if there's nothing special about human intelligence, why are we the most dominant species on the planet? It's not like other animals had the opportunity to take over and rejected it.

Asians were negatively impacted by affirmative action, so its no wonder they support the candidate that opposed it.

Because that adds an incentive for the president to try to hold on to power.

He should not be punished for the 6ft guidelines or the mask mandates (I agree that it's better to be safe than sorry). However, Fauci did promote the idea that the lab leak theory was a racist conspiracy theory, and he denied that the NIH was funding gain of function research in China.

> we, as humans, have a right to our likeness and to be protected from it being used in ways we disapprove of.

I don't agree with that. For example, it should be perfectly legal to make caricatures of someone in order to make fun of them (i.e. political cartoons or memes), even, or especially when the person being made fun of doesn't approve. I do agree that this probably does not apply to porn though.

> Which effected almost no one, yet here you are talking about it. So you think the FDA was wrong to recall it? And yes, I'm talking about it because plenty of people were skeptical of the vaccines because they thought they were undertested. And given the recall, they were absolutely right.

> Imagine if an early covid vaccine had killed thousands. That would have had a massive chilling effect on vaccine uptake. You're making it sound like the chilling effect would be a bad thing, when it would actually be the correct response. There are plenty of examples in the history of medicine of the cure being worse than the disease.

Something did go wrong; of the 3 vaccines the FDA approved, 1 of them had to be recalled due to causing fatal blood clots.

That's a strange definition, because it excludes the majority of the world's dark skinned population. If only the descendants of slaves brought to the Americas can claim to be Black, then there are no Black people in Africa. Hell, even Barack Obama can't claim to be Black, since he is a child of immigrants, not slaves.

It seems to me that this practice is just another example of putting white people on a pedestal. If all other racial groups have "a shared sense of identity and community", then it implies that being white is the default; that the world is split into white and not-white.

What exactly is the difference between your "self organizing communities" and the cities and towns we have today? Nobody is forcing you to live in a city, you are free to move to any other city in the country.

Because if there is someone who is at fault, their reaction will be to throw someone else under the bus. So you may end up with a situation where the person being blamed isn't actually the person responsible for the accident.

If it's your first time in a new city, you probably just want to get to your hotel as fast as possible instead of learning the transit system.

I agree about fire, but I'm pretty sure you can count bees making honey as cooking.

That's exactly what happened in the latest movie, where Goku and Vegeta missed a phone call so Gohan had to take care of the bad guys.

Why not? Are you afraid of riding a train, since none of the passengers have been screened?

What's wrong with environmental determinism? Obviously our civilizations are influenced by our environment; that's why Egypt formed around the Nile delta, instead of forming a hundred miles west in the Sahara.

> We cant even be civil with people of different skin color and eye/nose shape.

Sure we can; obviously racism exists, but generally speaking you can travel to most other countries without any issues.

You're right, these companies do have the right to censor speech that they disagree with. However, if they do that, then they are responsible for any speech that they do not censor. So for instance, if someone posts a libelous statement on Reddit, and Reddit doesn't remove that statement, then victim of libel should be allowed to sue Reddit directly, instead of just suing whoever made that post.

> Of all people to loose faith it would be Luke? Riiiight.

Yes; Luke never really dealt with betrayal. He only ever knew Darth Vader, so he wasn't betrayed by Anakin the way Obi-wan and Yoda were.

> And Han and Leia just have to be divorced? Ok.

Your son switching over to the side of the people who blew up your home planet would put a strain on any marriage.

> And their son just has to be evil. ... Ok. I'm actually with you on this one; Anakin's final transformation to Darth Vader was rushed, but at least the seeds were there from episode 1. As far as I remember, Kylo just turned evil because the Force wanted him to.

Nah, Luke's story in the TLJ was actually interesting; he lost his faith, and had to be reminded of it by the next generation. It kind of mirrors Obi-Wan's story in the original 6 movies, where he no longer believed that Anakin Skywalker could be redeemed. It's the pointless side quest to space vegas, and Holdo's pointless refusal to tell anyone her plan that made the movie crap.

> We effectively pre-chew our meals with our hands, breaking everything into a nice bite-sized pieces, with mashing or grinding of what would otherwise be too hard to eat

Crows use cars to break open nuts they would otherwise not be able to eat; eagles drop turtles to break their shell.

> We will sort through thousands of tiny berries carefully, to make sure we don't eat something unpleasant

When orkas kill sharks, they only eat the liver of the shark and leave the rest alone. Wild civets also choose only the best coffee berries, which is part of why we make coffee from their poop.

> We will go hungry even when edible food is around, because we know it will be even more ripe later.

I don't think we go hungry, we just look for better food elsewhere until that edible food is fully ripened.

They might also have just been bored.

Harm prevention is definitely not new; books have been subject to censorship for centuries. Just look at the U.S., where we had the Hays code and the Comic Code Authority. The only difference is that now, Harm is defined by California tech companies rather than the Church or the Monarchy.

English is a descriptive language; if enough people say something, it automatically becomes correct!

It sounds like by "base needs", you mean basic, or foundational needs. Like, making sure that people have food, water and shelter. Which makes sense, if the foundation is strong, you can build a lot on top of it.

Because a lot of people hate nuclear energy, and don't support building new plants. So it's not really a choice between nuclear and renewables, it's a choice between renewables and fossil fuel power plants. Besides, I think there's definitely a benefit to decentralizing the power grid, and to learning how to tap different energy sources. I imagine that there are places in the world where nuclear is not appropriate, but tidal energy is abundant.