Why doesn't the site ban the obvious spam and bot accounts on here?

Hematomato · 2024-04-21T06:54:55+00:00

They are banned. They come back under new names. We don't have a sophisticated system for pre-emptively blocking them.

And like another user said, new accounts should be limited to how much they can post in a single day.

Maybe that would be a net positive, but it would have a chilling effect on actual new people. When you show up to a forum for the first time and post a few things and then it says "no more," you tend to kinda move on and forget about that forum.

Hematomato · 2024-04-21T06:53:05+00:00

The article bases the claim that Remain in Mexico is "what the people want" on a Fox News poll that found that "31 percent of voters in the poll said that immigration and border security was the administration's largest failure."

...surely you see the problem here.

Hematomato · 2024-04-21T06:44:55+00:00

Einstein's discoveries have had only a very limited impact on humanity thus far.

Fritz Haber is likely the reason you're alive.

Hematomato · 2024-04-18T05:46:32+00:00

The best strategy, honestly, is to find out who their male friends are and then make friends with them.

Anything that starts with an introduction by a mutual friend is like 50 times more likely to succeed.

Hematomato · 2024-04-16T19:45:49+00:00

Well, contrary to the refrain of the Fallout series, war is changing.

That said, even if you believe that war never changes... there's a long history of soldiers returning home from battle, telling their wives to get their asses back in the kitchen where they belong, and hitting them in the fucking mouth if they disagree with that plan.

So maybe women shouldn't be too eager for an all-male draft.

Hematomato · 2024-04-16T19:29:03+00:00

Sure, maybe in small-town elections for county comptroller. But nothing in the city I live in has ever been decided by a single vote, or even by a single-digit number of votes.

Besides, I believe that 1) It's foolish to cast an uninformed vote for any candidate you don't actually know personally; and 2) You generally can't actually vote for policies, and even if you could, the correct policy usually lies in the vast nuance between the two talking points.

Hematomato · 2024-04-16T03:16:08+00:00

You want to sit by and be TOLD what to do.

Oh, quite the contrary. I'm not particularly law-abiding. But more to the point, I don't like to be told what to think.

And you know what politics is? It's people telling you what to think.

So I'm not playing. There are plenty of voters out there, and my vote was never going to change anything anyway. No one will even notice that I've decided to just watch quietly.

Hematomato · 2024-04-16T02:50:37+00:00

No, I mean not registered. I cancelled my voter registration entirely. I don't vote.

Hematomato · 2024-04-16T01:38:32+00:00

Yes, there are too many rules, and no one can possibly follow them all, and as a consequence everyone commits crimes.

But of course, you don't get "put in jail" for committing crimes. More than 99% of all crimes go unpunished.

You get put in jail if you piss off someone in power. Then they identify the crimes you've committed.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T22:22:26+00:00

It'd be nice to see that 17-year range tightened a little, because... no one really expects people in their twenties to be buying homes. That hasn't been common for like 75 years. My whole life I've never personally known a 23 year old homeowner.

But if you're in your thirties and starting a family, yeah, it'd be good to be able to do it in a decent house.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T22:08:13+00:00

Yeah, that's a perfectly cromulent point.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T22:07:12+00:00

Well. He was also a paranoid schizophrenic, a meth addict, and an LSD enthusiast, so... I'm not sure we can narrow it down completely.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T22:04:35+00:00

Yeah, it's a group of people who left Reddit, not because they were censored, but because they were horrified that spez was trying to make money for the corporation.

They're, like... turbo-Redditors.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T19:39:36+00:00

It appears that China and India will dominate the globe and the world will return to a pre western era.

No, China's collapsing, too. Its fertility rates are terrible and the one-child policy has been an abject disaster. China is entering a phase where there will be less than one working person to support each elderly, retired person.

Countries flourish when their population pyramid looks correct - when there are tons of people in their thirties supporting far fewer people in their seventies.

Based on that single data point, the new world superpower might very well be... Mexico.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T18:41:37+00:00

Nah. I already went through the trouble of cancelling my registration.

I don't want to be a partisan. I don't want to play the game. I just want to bystand. I'd rather try to accurately chronicle the way the world burns than subject myself to groupthink and pretend I can stop it.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T18:25:22+00:00

Yep, that was it.

Saidit can be kind of fun but the NPC dialogue is just way too predictable.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T18:24:25+00:00

You want to hear my hot WallStreetBet?

DJT is going to sink, sink, sink until August 31.

On August 31, take all the money you can and buy as much of the stock as you can. It's going to skyrocket.

Then as soon as it does - don't hold it. Fucking sell it immediately.

...I take no responsibility if this doesn't work, though

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T18:20:46+00:00

I've tried at least a dozen Reddit alternatives and this is my favorite.

Ruqqus was pretty good but it imploded.

Squabblr could have been good but it imploded.

Discuit is very anti-free-speech.

Most of the rest are too small to be worth mentioning. Like two or three people sharing links with each other.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T18:11:56+00:00

There hasn't been a draft in fifty years, and there probably won't be another: modern wars are fought by machines and their operators, not by conscripts with boots and rifles.

But if there were ever to be another draft... there's a very strong chance the government would decide "yeah, women have to go, too."

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T18:04:50+00:00

I assure you that you've eaten plenty of food that's been fertilized. And so have your parents.

A lot of wealth came to exist because food was so abundant and we needed far fewer people to work on procuring food. Elon's family wealth may never have existed without Fritz Haber.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T18:03:14+00:00

Nah, I'm not registered to vote, and I definitely wouldn't be inspired to register by the candidacy of some unqualified pimp.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T18:00:03+00:00

Well, without Fritz Haber, chances are that neither you nor Elon Musk would exist.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T17:49:06+00:00

Oh, just the guy who figured out how to pull nitrogen out of the air.

When he was born, there were 1.4 billion people on the planet. Today, there are 7.9 billion people on the planet. That's because of Fritz Haber. His invention is estimated to provide the food for half of the planet.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T17:46:19+00:00

Only a insulated lunatic would think it's ALL Jews. My high school ex-girlfriend scrapes together a modest living writing books about marketing. She doesn't control the world.

But there's one thing the conspiracy theorists have right that the ADL falls over itself to deny and just adds fuel to the fire. And that's that: nearly every American broadcast media corporation and bank is run primarily by Jewish people.

That's actually not entirely by their choice. In much of 18th century Europe, Jews were only allowed to do work that Christians considered unholy or undignified. That included moneylending and entertainment. No one likes a loan shark, and no one respects a clown. So the idea was: make the Jews do it, they're going to Hell anyway.

And when they immigrated to the United States to get away from that prejudice, they brought the family businesses with them. And continued to grow those businesses over the centuries. Which means that today Jewish people have disproportionate control over both 1) the money supply and 2) mass media, and therefore the news.

They aren't all colluding toward some master plan. That's conspiracy nonsense. But whenever any group has more power and control and luxury than their raw population numbers would suggest that they deserve, of course there's going to be resentment, and conspiracy, and anger.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T17:16:10+00:00

There's no fucking way we're going to know that for another century.

But the greatest man of the 20th century was, without question, Fritz Haber.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T17:03:43+00:00

Yep. Knew you were going to say that. And I know what the next one will be, too.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T15:51:32+00:00

We will be in the weirdest legal waters if he gets convicted, sentenced to a year in prison, and then still wins the election.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T15:35:02+00:00

Why would there be anything else? I already know what you have to say about everything, because you're just a Brandon Guy.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T06:32:04+00:00

During the last ice age, the concentration of atmospheric CO2 was, on average, 180 ppm. Today it's 423ppm.

The last time it was about 4,000 ppm (which is 10x higher, not 100x higher) was during the Ordovician. That was 500 million years ago, and the surface temperature at that point was an average of 120 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to 59 degrees today.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T06:14:50+00:00

Well, he especially won't respond because he got banned four hours ago...

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T06:00:37+00:00

Why should the forests of Europe be so powerful as to change the world's climate? Isn't that just one of those silly "blame everything bad on white people" tropes? 12% of the world's population on 6.8% of the world's land covering 2% of the surface of the planet and it was the slow and primitive manual labor tree felling that started climate change. That sir, is absurd.

Like I said, the change due to the deforestation of Europe was tiny and not noticable by human beings without instruments. But it was measurable with modern instruments. Why Europe? Just because it was the first continent to be deforested. And losing 1% of the world's trees does change the ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide in a measurable way.

What is the actual mechanism by which humans control the climate?

Our activities change the ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T03:57:41+00:00

There is truly no need to post to multiple subs. Everyone sorts by new, so everyone sees everything you post twice.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T03:47:21+00:00

Studies show that measurable anthropogenic climate change began with the deforestation of Europe in the Middle Ages.

It was nothing anyone would notice without instruments, though. It's accelerated vastly since the widespread use of oil as a power source.

has it not been in constant flux since the planet formed?

It has, but never this quickly without a supervolcano or asteroid in the mix.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T03:41:37+00:00

Honestly, every cliché bothers me a little. Like when people say "Looks like someone's got a case of the Mondays!" It's like you're not even talking to a person. It's the way a GPT would talk.

And that's kind of what partisans are. Just bots. All saying the same things, using the same words. Every one is indistinguishable from every other one, so if one of them fell off a cliff, everything would be exactly the same.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T03:24:22+00:00

Not a Democrat.

Whereas you... just use whatever words your betters are using. As soon as Bill Posey and Greg Abbott and Jeff Duncan started saying Brandon, you were just clapping along like a trained seal.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T03:03:02+00:00

Yeah, using "Brandon" is a pretty clear sign that you have no interest in ever thinking for yourself. You'll just let your betters tell you what to believe. It's easier and it's more comfortable.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T01:51:36+00:00

I'm not sure why anyone would go to bat for people who are here obviously to undermine and destroy this website... they're not even having a conversation in good faith, they're here to make a huge mess and the post history shows that.

The whole reason I'm here is that I go to bat for unpopular people. When Reddit would start a "Brock Turner is the DEVIL" thread, I'd point out things in the record that suggest he's really not that bad a guy. When they'd start a "Peter Cvjetanovic is the DEVIL" thread, I'd point out that I've seen his interviews and met his friends, and he's not a violent or evil guy.

Naturally, they banned me.

I'm the child of a defense attorney. Maybe sticking up for unpopular people is in my nature. As a consequence, the Internet wants me to fuck all the way off and die. And that is why I post to your site almost every day.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T01:41:30+00:00

Well, it's your call. But 99% of what I see him post is just "incel revolution now" and "the blackpill is right" and "roasties go to hell" and "I hate tall men"...

...I mean, to my eyes it's kind of your typical radical incel. Depressed, mentally ill, and screaming into whatever void won't ban him.

He's certainly not making the site better. But that's where you have to ask yourself where you stand philosophically on the question of free speech. Should you ban someone because they just suck and make the site a little worse for everyone? Or should society give them a space to suck and make everything a little worse for everyone.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T01:29:59+00:00

Magnora7 banned you because he thinks you're a shill trying to bring down the CloudFare protection in order to destroy the site.

For what it's worth, I don't share that belief. I think you're just a depressed, kinda stupid kid who can't get laid.

But it's entirely possible he has more information than I do.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T01:27:04+00:00

My understanding of climate change isn't based on "them" or "their motives" or "who is and isn't an expert."

It's based on reading data. A combination of reading both the scientific publications directly and reading sources I trust to summarize papers without partisan editorializing.

Anthropogenic climate change is happening. It's real. The planet is warming and the oceans are rising.

It's also quite slow on the timeline of a single human life. It's not something that "hasn't happened but is going to." It's been happening for centuries and it will continue to happen, so slowly that any given individual person can barely notice it.

It's also global, and therefore our system of national governments is probably profoundly helpless to stop it.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T00:59:13+00:00

It's our site just as much as his.

No, it's really not. It's his. If you want to make one, it's not that hard. Several people on here have their own site. But this one is magnora7's.

He's made you a place where you can say all your incel shit and not get banned; you don't pay him one dime for his trouble; this all comes across as really fucking ungrateful and entitled.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T00:46:50+00:00

Saidit isn't a corporation. Magnora7 runs the site because he believes there should be a free-speech site out there. He turned on an aggressive CloudFare setting because the site was being spammed and it was the simplest way to deal with it.

He listens to criticisms, but not to aggressive whining; and he just doesn't have that much time to spend on site issues. Because this isn't a business. It's someone's side project.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T00:43:40+00:00

No, man, no one here but you is interested in killing a bunch of women for no reason.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T00:41:07+00:00

Karma throttling has its own problems. It leads to people mass-downvoting just to suppress opinions they don't like.

Account age throttling is another option, but it also has its own problems. It leads to people joining, realizing they can only post once every ten minutes, and then never coming back.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T00:32:52+00:00

ok maybe not that but the reverse I would refuse

Yeah, that's called the Ultimatum Game, and in fact most Americans would refuse one hundred dollars if it meant someone else got one million. It just seems fundamentally unfair.

There are "debt" cultures, like Pakistan, where one person says "Hell yeah I'll take the hundred dollars" and the other person says "I refuse the million dollars, I'll be in his debt for life."

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T00:31:10+00:00

I think Hamilton, above all, was an attempt by liberal New Yorkers to reclaim the concept of patriotism.

For decades, they'd been told "If you don't support the War in Iraq, you're not patriotic. You don't support our troops and no patriotic person would object to what our troops were doing."

So in 2015 they made a musical with a diverse cast celebrating American history, and, you know, that gave the New Yorkers a big ole giant hard-on for a while.

It's just culture war stuff. And yeah, it's not that good. It's okay, but nothing special.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T00:28:42+00:00

Yeah, we did relax it, a couple months ago. The spam got unbearable, immediately.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T00:26:59+00:00

It is so because it is so.

It is so because we can measure it. Sea levels have risen about 8 inches since 1900. That's not an ideology. It's an observation.

The sea level rise propaganda claims that catastrophic sea level rise will happen in the near future, and that is just not true.

It all just depends on how you define "catastrophic" and how you define "near future."

Miami will be suddenly submerged in 2028? No. Ridiculous.

The Maldives won't have any natural land above water by 2150? Yeah, probably.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T00:23:57+00:00

On Saidit, everyone thinks I'm aligned with Democrats. On Discuit, everyone thinks I'm aligned with Republicans.

When your brain has been infected by partisanship, anyone who isn't similarly infected feels like the enemy.

Hematomato · 2024-04-15T00:22:40+00:00

What if you like all four?

Hematomato · 2024-04-14T19:23:21+00:00

I'm not a partisan or even a registered voter. People with political parties can't maintain their objectivity.

even if he did conquer Eurasia, so fucking what?

And, yeah, I'm sensing you're definitely not an adult in the room.

Hematomato · 2024-04-14T18:38:01+00:00

Yeah, I gotta agree with Biden on this one.

It was obviously humiliating to Iran that almost every single one of their missiles got shot down. It makes them look weak and incompetent.

No real good can come from retaliating. Either Israel steamrolls Iran, which just makes them look like an overpowered bully, or they do worse than expected, which suddenly makes Iran look much less weak.

Hematomato · 2024-04-14T18:22:31+00:00

Here's the actual study:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17538947.2024.2329816

Of over 13,000 islands examined, approximately 12% experienced significant shifts in shoreline positions. The total shoreline length of these islands approaches 200,000 km, with 7.57% showing signs of landward erosion and 6.05% expanding seaward. Human activities, particularly reclamation and land filling, were identified as primary drivers of local shoreline transformations, while natural factors have a comparatively minor impact. Moreover, the ongoing rise in sea levels is identified as an exacerbating factor for coastal erosion rather than the primary cause.

In other words, the study found that between 1990 and 2020, reclamation and land filling had a much larger impact on island size than rising sea levels.

Which is not remotely surprising and certainly doesn't "disprove" claims of rising sea levels. In fact, the study fully accepts that sea levels have risen. Because they have.

Hematomato · 2024-04-14T18:15:02+00:00

Marjorie Taylor Green pisses off pretty much all of the people. Almost every single one of her Republican colleagues think she's a cunt.

Hematomato · 2024-04-14T18:11:09+00:00

Yeah, people really get the vapours when you speak a truth they don't want to hear.

On most of the Internet that gets me immediately banned. I like saidit.

Hematomato · 2024-04-14T18:10:01+00:00

In the '90s and early '00s, the parties had distinct ideologies.

Now, they really don't. Now they're not held together by any unifying principle beyond "the other party sucks."

Twenty years ago, the left would have been casting the principled "protest vote" against war. Today, they feel like they're the only adults in the room and if they don't stand up to Putin, he'll just gleefully conquer all of eastern Eurasia.

their own country has homeless people on the streets and people dying of hunger.

We have a lot of homeless, but they tend to be mentally ill and/or drug addicts who are simply not capable of maintaining a residence.

No one is dying of hunger. That isn't a thing.

Hematomato · 2024-04-14T18:01:17+00:00

It's the most evil country in the world

It is not. It's impossible to rank "evil" objectively, but I think anyone who was informed and fairminded would rank the U.S. somewhere in the middle of the pack.

It's a country that's done a lot of harm - but also a lot of good. It's not as simple as "them's the bad guys."

Hematomato · 2024-04-14T17:58:28+00:00

That's almost always the case.

Not in my experience. Pretty much everyone I know was horny all the time as a teenager and knew full well what they wanted. Sometimes that was to have sex with a legal adult. I know both men and women who made that decision as a teenager and never regretted it.

Incidentally, you're defending paedophilia, seriously!?

Pedophilia is a mental disorder which causes an attraction to prepubescent children.

Prepubescent children should never be touched sexually. They have a genetic aversion to it and it causes them massive trauma.

But when our culture insists that a 16 year old is the same thing as a 6 year old - sweet, innocent, and unable to know what they do and don't want - yeah, I'm gonna be the one to stand up and say "That emperor's not wearing any fucking clothes."

Hematomato · 2024-04-14T02:39:38+00:00

Pretty much our entire west coast is due to an actual invasion of a nation. We marched into Mexico and took one third of their country from them by force.

And we took part of Panama by force, and invaded the Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico and Guam and took those for ourselves as well.

Hematomato · 2024-04-14T02:00:24+00:00

America has never won a single war in its existence

What??

Revolutionary War: U.S. victory.

American Indian Wars: About 40 U.S. victories.

Barbary Coast Wars: U.S. victory.

Mexican War: U.S. victory.

Second Opium War: U.S.-allied victory.

Cortina Wars: U.S. victory.

Las Cuevas War: U.S. victory.

Anglo-Egyptian War: U.S.-allied victory.

Garza War: U.S.-allied victory.

Spanish–American War: U.S. victory.

Philippine–American War: U.S. victory.

Boxer Rebellion: U.S.-allied victory.

Banana Wars: Several U.S. victories.

World War I: U.S.-allied victory.

World War II: U.S.-allied victory.

Lebanon Crisis: U.S. victory.

Korean DMZ conflict: U.S. victory.

Grenada invasion: U.S. victory.

Cold War: U.S. victory.

U.S. Invasion of Panama: U.S. victory.

Gulf War: U.S. victory.

Kosovo War: U.S.-allied victory.

Operation Ocean Shield: U.S.-allied victory.

International ISIS campaign: U.S.-allied victory.

Hematomato · 2024-04-14T00:22:51+00:00

Sure, I could use an easy, well-paying -

squints at your username

hey, wait a minute, Ice-T warned me about you.

Hematomato · 2024-04-14T00:21:25+00:00

Russia occupied Crimea before the invasion, but not the Donbas. That was taken during the invasion.

Hematomato · 2024-04-14T00:20:48+00:00

The findings suggest former President Trump's calls for more border security — and perhaps his anti-immigrant rhetoric — are registering even among people who may have ties to immigration.

Or maybe - just maybe - the findings reflect the fact that most of the Latinos in the country are Mexican, and the ones trying to enter the country are largely from El Salvador, and "Latinos" don't tend to think of themselves as one single group.

Hematomato · 2024-04-14T00:14:54+00:00

But the plan is for them to gain new land. The Donbas, plus formal ownership of Crimea.

And then on top of that, to give Putin something he wants even more: an assurance that Ukraine will never be allowed to join NATO.

Hematomato · 2024-04-13T23:55:33+00:00

The word "appeasement" springs immediately to mind.

Hematomato · 2024-04-13T23:46:04+00:00

I think the blackpill is designed by people between ages 15 and 21, for people between ages 15 and 21.

Many of the blackpill's claims hold true for people in that age range. For example, "only looks matter" - well of course only looks matter when you're in high school. Because nothing else makes you special. You own nothing, you've proven nothing, you've achieved nothing, you are fundamentally the same as everyone else. Except maybe you're attractive. Or not. And everyone's judging everyone else on their looks because everyone's brain is just a mushy soup of hormones at that stage.

But once you're in you're mid-twenties and beyond, you can see that the blackpill has become a steaming heap of bullshit and doesn't apply to adult life at all. The monoculture of school is gone, replaced by microcultures of friends that don't think about the world, let alone sex and romance, in remotely the same way as each other. There is a huge diversity.

Trying to explain what 17 year old girls want and how they act has some merit. Trying to explain the same for 32 year old women is an exercise in futility.

Hematomato · 2024-04-13T19:50:50+00:00

Being locked in a cage isn't going to make a kid any less suicidal. It'll probably make him more suicidal.

So what's the plan, then? Just keep him locked up forever? Feed him through the bars three times a day, dump his chamberpot, and be content that even though he has no future and no prospect for happiness, at least his heart is still beating?

Hematomato · 2024-04-13T19:44:29+00:00

I'm autistic too, that is a medical condition and not a demon.

Says who? The American Psychiatric Association recognizes "Gender Dysphoria in Children" as a medical condition. And there have been many autistic children subjected to exorcisms because their parents thought it was a demon.

God bless your kid. And may God never let you snip his bits off.

I have zero desire to snip anything off of my son.

If he came to me and said "I need a body part removed, it's really really important," I would listen to him carefully. I would talk to his mother. I would talk to our doctor. I would read studies and perspectives from other people who have been through it. After a lot of time and consideration, his mother and I would come to a decision.

What we wouldn't do is throw him in a cage and say "You're not getting out of there until you're normal."

Hematomato · 2024-04-13T19:30:01+00:00

I do have a kid. And, in fact, I have a special needs kid. He's autistic and still mostly nonverbal at age eight.

And since I love him, I did hundreds of hours of research about what's best for him and changed my intended parenting style. I play to his strengths. I work with him to help him become the best "him" he can be, whatever that ends up meaning. Maybe he'll be able to get a job and live independently one day. Maybe he won't. Either way will have to be fine.

I don't seek the services of a priest to cast out the autism demon and then just lock him in a cage until he learns to be normal, shouting at him that autism is BAD to have.

Because I'm a dad. Not a sociopath.

Hematomato · 2024-04-13T18:50:24+00:00

You typed "white women" but I think you meant "white zoomers."

And that's just their culture, you know? In the 1980s all the women grew up on love songs. In the 2020s they're growing up on songs about how men fucking suck and they want to punch them all in their smug mansplainy faces.

Hematomato · 2024-04-13T18:48:41+00:00

So this girl enjoyed having sex with U.S. servicemen so much that she repeatedly contacted them and insisted she was 18 years old.

And yet our culture still says "Minors are so INNOCENT! They don't KNOW what they want! Anyone who touches them, under any circumstances, is taking advantage of them!"

coughbullshitcough

Hematomato · 2024-04-13T18:45:24+00:00

I see. So if you ever have a trans child, your solution is: try exorcism, and when that fails, resort to life in prison at the taxpayer's expense.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but: please don't have children.

Hematomato · 2024-04-13T15:41:03+00:00

I really enjoyed The Menu a couple years ago.

I've got a friend who's really into film, and he assures me: awesome movies are being made every week. But it's the same as the video game industry. High-budget stuff is garbage now, so you have to go indie.

Hematomato · 2024-04-13T09:02:56+00:00

Thirty-six dollars is indeed rather cheap for a prostitute, but I dispute your claim about them being the "most desirable."

Hematomato · 2024-04-13T08:59:13+00:00

Fuck, your post is sad. It's just brimming with so much sadness and so much resentment.

Anyway, to answer your question: I raise a kid, and I'm trying to have another.

That's pretty much it. I'm perpetuating the species. I have four billion years of ancestors, and they all had kids, and I don't want to be the one fuckup who breaks the chain.

I spent ten years trying to cure human aging, but I failed. I'm quite certain it's possible at our current level of technology, but I won't be the one to do it.

Hematomato · 2024-04-13T04:16:49+00:00

Basically any of the office jobs, especially government and university jobs.

You can work, for example, for the state Comptroller's office. Or for the office of the Registrar at your school.

Hematomato · 2024-04-13T04:14:37+00:00

A REAL exorcism, not the garbage those protestants do. I mean the real thing.

Yes, of course REAL exorcisms by REAL Catholic priests have been attempted. Do you seriously think that various Catholics haven't resorted to trying to cast out the demon?

It's "outcome" is destroyed genitals. It doesn't fix the gender dysphoria. The brain is still completely sick.

Its outcome has been shown to be a lower risk of suicide and higher self-reported life satisfaction.

And that is more than can be said for electroshock, drugs, lobotomy, or, um, exorcism.

Hematomato · 2024-04-13T03:02:13+00:00

What about exorcism? Has anyone tried that?

Of course.

Anyways, mutilating yourself to cheer yourself up doesn't count as real surgery any more than a lobotomy for depression does, so it's not justified.

Despite the bizarre claim that it "doesn't count," it's the treatment with the best observed outcomes.

Hematomato · 2024-04-13T01:31:22+00:00

By the way, the pope agrees with me about the mutilation thing, he just wrote a document about how wrong it is.

Yeah, the Pope always lags about a century behind the culture. That's why Pope Francis is the first Pope to ever say "Well I guess it's okay to use condoms in some circumstances."

No, I'll just tell him he's sick but we love him so we're going to the doctor to help.

Do you think doctors are wizards? If there were any known cure for gender dysphoria, everyone would take it. But there isn't.

And that's not for lack of trying. Trans people have been subjected to talk therapy, every kind of medication, behaviorism, aversion therapy, electroshock, lobotomy. Nothing has worked.

Hematomato · 2024-04-13T00:38:42+00:00

Such a weird question. Christianity isn't a race. It's a system of beliefs. And a lot of Europeans hold it. And this has been true for nearly two thousand years.

Hematomato · 2024-04-13T00:28:09+00:00

That said this is why I'd tell him he's "mentally ill" rather than "disgusting."

Really not much better, and if you feel disgusted, your kid is going to know.

Don't drop the soap.

You know, getting ass-raped is a small price to pay for not letting my family starve.

Therefore it is "doing evil that good may come of it.", and it biblical

I'd encourage you to read Matthew 22. Or even specifically Matthew 22:30: "At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven."

In other words, God isn't resurrecting us with our dick and balls and sexual urges and a wife. Chances are, we don't have anything we'd recognize as "gender".

Romans 3 is about how a lie in service of spreading Christianity is unacceptable. It isn't some Kantian declaration that all lies are reprehensible.

And then you've got Ephesians 4:29: "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen."

...only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs.

Which is probably not "You're mentally ill and delusional, kid."

Hematomato · 2024-04-12T23:47:56+00:00

Any statistic to back that up?

How do you compile statistics on that? But isn't it common sense? Maybe you don't have kids, but you've been a kid, right? You can imagine what rejection by your parents feel like? If your parents make it clear that they don't believe you and don't respect you and are kind of disgusted by you - well, fuck, you'd have to be pretty autistic to not be able to understand what that would feel like.

Robbing a bank to feed your family isn't Ok

We don't agree at all. If my kid is starving, and I've exhausted all other options, you bet your ass I'm robbing a bank.

Christ will resurrect you as a man at the end of time.

And this is where atheists come from. When your dad starts ranting non-Biblical stuff about how his god agrees with him, kids think: obviously this religion is bullshit.

Hematomato · 2024-04-12T23:39:33+00:00

Our justice system is so fucked. For that speech? 16 felonies and $2M (I'm reading $2M) bail?

Fuck, you might as well just charge everyone with the death penalty and a trillion dollar bail at that point. It's obviously not serious. The government's starting point is always "your life is over" and then they settle for "probation and a thousand dollar fine."

Hematomato · 2024-04-12T23:19:12+00:00

No, it's much more likely to get you a dead son. When a kid says "I need to transition" and a parent says "you're just a delusionally psychotic boy," suicide becomes very likely.

It might shock you to learn that kids take it pretty hard when their parents don't respect them and tell them they're delusionally psychotic.

Hematomato · 2024-04-12T23:08:27+00:00

Also, it's never OK to lie.

Really? Are you a strict deontologist or something?

Personally I think if armed goons come to the door and say "Are you harboring any dissenters," it's fine to say no.

And if a woman says "Do I look fat in these jeans," you just say "of course not."

And if someone you love needs you to go along with a lie in order to be happy, well, you can grind their face into the dirt in service of integrity, but what does that get you at the end of the day?

Hematomato · 2024-04-12T22:57:54+00:00

Yeah, I'm kinda glad I bought a house when I did. I'd probably be fucking hurting otherwise.

Hematomato · 2024-04-12T22:57:11+00:00

Ah, it's the old Chris Rock style "black people vs. niggers" distinction. Not really in fashion right now, insofar as I can tell, but you do you.

Hematomato · 2024-04-12T22:55:43+00:00

I think if you are a fag abusing your kid with chemicals to destroy their puberty, you should be thrown in jail by force

I mean... cool? I personally think that we should throw fewer people in jail by force, but I'm guessing that if the U.S. adopts a "throw more people in jail" policy, you'll be one of the first against the wall.

u/hematomato, if your boy thinks he's a lady from the first instance of his life, that means nothing. It just means he's a delusionally psychotic boy.

And sometimes the recommendation is to play along with a delusion. For example, with people with Alzheimer's, it's not typically recommended to say "No, that's wrong, it's not thirty years ago." It's easier on the patient if you just play along.

Sometimes when you love someone, you prioritize what's helpful to them over what you believe to be true.

Hematomato · 2024-04-12T20:21:02+00:00

You mean, like, by sitting at my computer playing video games all day?

I already do that, man.

Hematomato · 2024-04-12T19:53:47+00:00

So, to me, the question isn't "should I put my kid on puberty blockers." The answer is no. He's a boy and he's never shown any sign of anything else.

To me, the question is: who decides.

My position on that has always been clear (and honestly I don't even know whether this is a liberal or a conservative position anymore): my son belongs to my wife and me. We decide what's best for him. He doesn't belong to the Federal Government of the United States of America. He doesn't belong to the State of Nevada. He belongs to us.

So if there ever comes a time when I know in my heart he needs or doesn't need something - whether that's puberty blockers, whether it's vaccinations, whether it's psychotherapy, any of a thousand things - you know who I want to be in charge of that decision?

If you said "some state senator trying to shore up voter turnout among his base," well, you were wrong.

Hematomato · 2024-04-12T19:46:13+00:00

They're legitimate fears. But they're also the kind of fears incompatible with building a community that reaches the kind of critical mass where people want to check in regularly.

Unfortunately, this is a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too situation.

Hematomato · 2024-04-12T19:26:00+00:00

There are rare, but documented, cases where a child insists they're in the wrong body from about the first moment they can form that sentence, and never wavers from that.

In a case like that, hormones before puberty are almost certainly necessary for that child to live a happy life.

When kids first start questioning their gender during middle school... there's a very strong chance we're just looking at kids responding to culture. And medical treatment is very likely to do harm.

Ultimately, parents and doctors - not politicians - should be able to tell the difference.

Hematomato · 2024-04-12T19:17:13+00:00

So it seems that we can agree that "it's never the right call to interfere with nature unless it's a life-saving measure" isn't the real principle here. It's something else.

I agree that it's important not to give children hormones in service of a fad.

I do think it's possible to distinguish between "this child was obviously born trans" and "this child got interested in trans culture during middle school."

Hematomato · 2024-04-12T18:48:11+00:00

Then your site will never have more than one or two regulars.

Hematomato · 2024-04-12T18:47:33+00:00

Why the Internet isn't fun anymore: Everyone left all the cool small sites to go to huge heavily-moderated corporate sites run by algorithms.

The obvious solution: Don't use those sites.

Hematomato · 2024-04-12T18:26:47+00:00

Nah, pedophilia is a very old concept that humans have been grappling with for thousand of years. It certainly isn't "the next big thing."

There is no substantial movement pushing for legalizing sex with prepubescent children. 99.9% of human beings, of all political ideologies, find that abhorrent. It's going nowhere.

There are, of course, endless questions about late-adolescents. Questions like: who can legally sleep with a 17 year old? Only another 17 year old? An 18 year old? A 20 year old? A 22 year old? Anyone they say yes to? No one at all? Does the sex of the 17 year old matter? Does the sex of the person having sex with the 17 year old matter? What if a 17 year old has sex with a 14 year old - what do we do then?

Right now our culture frames this as a debate about "pedophilia." It isn't. Pedophilia is a mental condition causing an attraction to prepubescent children. Age of consent issues are something else entirely.

Hematomato · 2024-04-12T18:20:21+00:00

Well, you know, the Jews. With the torture and starvation and every conceivable kind of abuse one human can inflict on another.

Being lonely and angry all the time is no picnic, but it's not that.

Hematomato · 2024-04-12T18:17:28+00:00

I think the next "abomination," as conservatives will see it, is virtual girlfriends.

Within a decade they'll be very popular. At first it will just be video chat. We don't quite know what shape it will take after that - whether it will be VR or robotics or some third thing - but men will have access to women who are physically perfect, who never say no to anything, and who want nothing but to please us in every way.

Only thing is, they won't be human.

And, um, society's gonna get really angry, paranoid, disgusted, etc.

Hematomato · 2024-04-12T18:13:56+00:00

Oh, I definitely disagree with that. Nature made me nearsighted. I interfered with it by having eye surgery. It wasn't a life-saving measure. But now I can see fine.

I'm confident that was the right call.

Hematomato