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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • That’s definitely also true, but republicans genuinely want everyone to hate taxation as well, so their interests very much align with the companies that want to fleece you.

    Lots of countries have pay as you earn schemes where your income tax is deducted but your employer and sent to the government and you don’t have to even lift a finger, likewise the price on the item at the shop, by law, includes tax and it’s completely seamless for you. Republicans will never like such schemes because they want taxation to be hated by all so that they’ll go along with tax cuts that primarily benefit such folks.


  • This is great, but republicans are gonna hate it. They want everyone to hate taxes with a passion, so they make it difficult, time consuming and expensive to pay your taxes, and make government services as bad as possible so even poorer people who don’t pay much tax feel they get a bad deal out of taxation.

    If ordinary people found it easy and convenient to pay taxes they might notice that they get more out of government than they put in and that rich people are bearing more of the cost than they are. If they thought that, they might support tax increases or things that horrify republicans like medicaid for all.






  • Well, whilst I abhor the violent terrorism that Hamas have committed and abhor the overwhelming overreaction and horrific vengence that the state of Israel have, as usual, immediately begun, it’s just not accurate to call what preceded recent events “peace”.

    The people I know who have separately and recently visited Israel and Palestine variously called it “viscious apartheid”, “appalling”, “military occupation” and phrases like that. No one called it peace.

    I think you erroneously assumed that because it wasn’t in the news, violence was not occurring, whereas I think it’s more accurate to say that it wasn’t in the news because the violence was so everyday and constant that there was nothing new to say about it. A child getting run over by a car won’t make the national news either, for almost exactly the same reason.


  • OK, let me put it another way. I don’t think there’s a safe amount of incel writing to read and I think that the phrase “involuntary celibate” is loaded with resentment from the start.

    I think it’s OK for any of us to be unhappy that we’re not in a sexual relationship, but I strongly believe that categorising onesself as having celibacy imposed is, at the outset, inventing a fictional collective will and conspiracy on the part of a large and nebulous group of people, who are individually and collectively not even slightly responsible for any individual’s or group’s happiness or sex life. As a self-label, it inexorably leads to blaming others.

    It’s true that some teenaged girls can be powerfully cruel, dismissive, hurtful and nasty to boys who take an interest in them, and at those times, those girls are guilty of psychologically damaging the teenaged boys they have emotionally attacked, but they are still not in any way whatsoever responsible for anybody’s sex life nor in any way whatsoever for the lack thereof.

    It’s also an oxymoron. The word celibate is only correctly used for someone who has chosen to abstain from sex for some reason (usually religious). It’s logically impossible to involuntarily abstain, because abstinence is a choice but definition. For example, if you are ineligible to vote or someone prevents you somehow from boring, you aren’t abstaining. You are only abstaining if you can vote but choose not to.

    So, in summary, involuntary celibate is a phrase that deliberately twists meaning and twists morality, placing responsibility and blame on a group of people who are neither responsible or to blame.

    You claim that involuntary celibate has a real, obvious and clear meaning, but I disagree with everything in that assertion. Involuntary abstinence is meaningless as a concept, lacks clarity of thought and obscures meaning. The actual real, but hidden and non-obvious meaning in the phrase is (erroneously and fictionally) that women are to blame for men’s lack of sex, so in fact the meaning of the phrase is far from obvious and real, as evidenced by your mistaken belief that it’s a neutral term. It’s a term born in hatred and designed to foster blame and hatred.

    You might well believe that you’re using it innocently and I’m good faith, and if so, please realise that you’re very much at risk of being drawn into a hate group.

    You are, I’m afraid, deluding yourself if you think that you’re one of the non-racist MAGA fans, just as you’re deluding yourself if you think you’re an incel who isn’t incorrectly blaming other people for your lack of sex or that you aren’t on the road to toxic misogyny with that way of thinking.

    There are many things wrong with society, with gender relationships, and with dating expectations, but women and men’s absulote freedom to not have sex whenever, wherever and with whomever they feel isn’t one of them.





  • In his notes, Roszak wrote that Google’s search advertising “is one of the world’s greatest business models ever created” with economics that only certain “illicit businesses” selling “cigarettes or drugs” “could rival.”

    Beyond likening Google’s search advertising business to illicit drug markets, Roszak’s notes also said that because users got hooked on Google’s search engine, Google was able to “mostly ignore the demand side” of “fundamental laws of economics” and “only focus on the supply side of advertisers, ad formats, and sales.” This was likely the bit that actually interested the DOJ.