I always took the phrase “She is someone’s [whatever]” not to suggest that the recipient isn’t thinking of them as a person, but that they are thinking of them as a stranger. As in, “How would you like it if you knew someone was treating your [person you care about] like that?”. It’s still a criticism for the recipient, but it doesn’t go as far to accuse them of dehumanizing anyone. Instead, it suggests you should treat them like you would someone you are close to and care about more deeply.

Mr. Bean energy https://youtu.be/4JwBaLrgzUY

I frequently see people get negative scores for politely expressing an unpopular political opinion. And people at c/UnpopularOpinion get downvoted for it all the time. Reddit is probably worse though

Op discovers fiat currency.

I always recommend Aldi if it’s a local option. It’s where I do most of my shopping and I honestly have no idea what people are talking about with increasing grocery prices. It’s probably gone up there too, but not enough to notice when I get my receipt.

Non-interference is a good default position to have, but we are capable of acting on behalf of others when we have a certain threshold of confidence for what they would want in a situation. Otherwise, we would consider it wrong to give CPR to an unconscious person.

When it comes to life, people overwhelmingly prefer to continue existing when they have the power to choose. So it makes sense for us to presume that a hypothetical person would choose to be born given the opportunity.

For general rape, the victim is typically capable of giving consent but chooses not to, meaning we know the rapist is violating them. For situations where the victim is incapable of consenting, it is true that we are assuming a position for them. As a society, we have observed that being made to have sex in a vulnerable position is a negative experience, so it makes sense to extrapolate they would be opposed if they were capable of choosing.

For life, the observation is different. Once people have the power to knowingly “opt out” of existing, they rarely do. Most people instead prefer existing and consider it to be positive. So we should assume a hypothetical person would also choose to be born when acting on their behalf.

I took it to be a coyote. They go after sheep sometimes. Also, they are associated with being trickster figures in mythology.

Is that saying meant to cover baseless assertions about someone’s actions? Hillary Clinton was involved in enough shady shit to not need to make stuff up. If someone says that she donated to her opposition’s campaign they should have evidence to back that up. Otherwise they just give ammunition to people convincing others to ignore real, substantive criticisms against Trump.

That article mostly describes her campaign focussing on criticizing stronger and more likely candidates early on when the Republican nomination was still up for grabs. That just makes tactical sense. Otherwise you might as well also accuse her of being involved in a conspiracy to get Vermin Supreme in power too.

You can say the fact that Hillary is a woman contributed to her loss. You can even argue that it was enough to make the difference in Trump winning. But the main reason she lost is because she was still otherwise a weak candidate overall.

For free speech, that would be similar. A company can have a social media account or make broadcasts or advertisements, and having to have an individual as a proxy would just be cumbersome. And yes, that includes things like lobbying. Otherwise, you could have a company pay for private individuals for the service of lobbying on their behalf and essentially have no cap or regulation. Formalizing what they are allowed to do also allows you to go after them for things they aren’t, again without needing to prove individual culpability. And if we decide they have too much influence in politics, it gives us a lever to pull to reign them in.

Corporate personhood is mostly for convenience. Otherwise a company would need an individual to buy and sell corporate property, and they would have to rearrange stuff like that whenever that person dies, retires, or does something else that restricts property use. And it means an individual wouldn’t be able to be a tyrant for everyone else working at the company just because everything is in their name.

Importantly, it makes it much easier for customers to sue, since they only need to show the company wronged them in some way rather than an individual being personally responsible. Usually they would have no way of knowing who makes which decisions and has which responsibilities, and by suing the company as a whole. they don’t have to. The same applies for governments, police departments, school boards, etc.

This is a TF2 reference.

https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/ÜberCharge

When games go too far with this, it can encourage exploit or cheese strategies, or at least strict adherence to a meta build. This can actually mean resorting to a solution with less skill needed, since the game has already been effectively solved. A still-challenging situation that doesn’t demand perfection can be reasonably done with unoptimized preparation and adaptation.

That’s not really how these stories went, at least for the ones involving mortals. The gods used favored mortals or demigod children as proxies instead. So maybe you could interpret Athena turning one of Poseidon’s lovers into a hideous creature as her way of punishing him.

Depending on the telling, Poseidon/Neptune had sex with her in a temple dedicated to Athena/Minerva, and the latter transformed her as punishment. Then she may have just been chilling until Perseus came along to behead her for an unrelated situation.

Cool, thanks!

This meme’s text has figures about “now” but doesn’t note that it is mostly a paraphrased quote from Deus Ex, a video game set in a fictional dystopian version of America in 2052. The speaker is not in fact talking about 2024 America. But even for the past figures, I would want citations.

The first part seems to be talking about tax sources as a portion of total taxes raised, which isn’t easy to search for. I did find a table that cited whitehouse.gov and recorded income collections compared to total GDP at least. It did peak in 1945, but only at 7.1%.

The US Bureau of Labor doesn’t seem to have records on self-employment before 1948. The only thing I could find talking about self-employment in 1900 was a blog post that said it was 50%. 90% self-employment sounds like a lot of subsistence farming and odd-jobs work, which isn’t exactly the ideal economic model.

The Deus Ex part is part of a longer conversation, but here is the relevant section:

JC Denton: Just answer the question.
Leo Gold: Don’t believe me? It’s all in the numbers. For a hundred years, there’s been a conspiracy of plutocrats against ordinary people.
JC Denton: Do you have a single fact to back that up?
Leo Gold: Number one: In 1945, corporations paid 50 percent of federal taxes. Now they pay about 5 percent. Number two: in 1900, 90 percent of Americans were self-employed; now it’s about two percent.
JC Denton: So?
Leo Gold: It’s called consolidation. Strengthen governments and corporations, weaken individuals. With taxes, this can be done imperceptibly over time.

That sounds great, where do you get it?

If you had lived at an earlier point, there’s a good chance your eyesight would have been better. Not just because of natural selection for genes or whatever. The modern spread of nearsightedness is primarily attributed to greater time spent indoors, looking at things close to you like books, and particularly during childhood. It is largely nurture instead of nature.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220927-can-you-prevent-short-sightedness-in-kids

The taste of their food and the beauty of their women made the British the best sailors in the world.