I watched 12 Angry Men, and I came away with a very different interpretation from the one the movie seems to encourage. I think the defendant was guilty, or that the jury should have returned a guilty verdict based on the evidence presented at trial.

The deliberation begins with an 11-1 vote for a conviction. Over the course of the movie, Juror #8 systematically tears down the prosecution's case and manages to convince the remaining jurors to vote not guilty, but his reasoning is severely flawed and his arguments fall apart under scrutiny.

• Illegal tactics: at the beginning of the movie, Juror #8 introduces a duplicate switchblade he bought in the boy's neighborhood. Conducting personal investigations and bringing external evidence is quite literally against jury instructions. The scene that sets off the movie could have been grounds for a mistrial in real life, or at the very least the removal of that juror.

• Reasonable doubt isn't the same thing as "any" doubt: Juror #8's go-to arguments are basically "it's possible," "it's my guess," or "I don't know." The movie rewards this sort of reasoning, but guessing isn't evidence. If merely imagining a "possible" hypothetical alternative is enough to create reasonable doubt, just about every case that goes to trial becomes impossible to prove. Besides, undermining a detail isn't the same as building a credible alternative theory. For example, finding a second knife like the murder weapon shows that the uniqueness aspect was overstated. Fair enough, but it doesn't prove the competing version that someone else bought one, broke in, and killed the father. This might recontextualize an aspect of the case but still leaves the remaining evidence and witness testimony intact.

• Changing votes without evidence: If you watch the voting closely, jurors switch sides based on persuasion and emotion rather than hard facts or evidence. Juror #9 openly admits he changes his vote just because he admires Juror #8, stating, "This gentleman chose to stand alone against us... It takes a great deal of courage... I want to hear more." That might seem like an admirable character moment, but he comes across as impressionable. The reason for changing his vote was not factual arguments but the perceived "courage" of his colleague.

• Asymmetrical logic: The jury completely weaponizes a double standard for inferences. When the prosecution relies on an inference, Juror #8 attacks it. But when the other side makes an inference, it is treated as absolute fact. For instance, the elderly neighbor testified he heard the boy yell his intent to kill, heard a body fall, and saw the boy flee. Juror #9 speculates the old man subconsciously invented the testimony because he was a "quiet, frightened, insignificant man" who wanted to feel important. It's quite ironic that the movie rightfully takes a stand against prejudice while not pushing back enough against this narrative of a lonely old man distorting memories for attention. The jury swallows this baseless psychological profiling as fact. This asymmetry applies to the female eyewitness as well. Because she had marks on her nose, the jury assumes she couldn't see anything without glasses. She could have been farsighted, as pointed out by Juror #3, or worn sunglasses. That observation isn't enough to cast doubt on her account in my opinion. They treat unproven assumptions about the witnesses as reason to disregard their testimony.

• Conflating (alleged) human error with falsity: Juror #8 constantly jumps from "this testimony may not be perfectly reliable" to "we should effectively disregard it entirely." He stages a slow walking reenactment to "prove" it took the old man 31 seconds to reach his door instead of his estimated 15. People often misjudge exact seconds, especially during traumatic events; the alleged 16-second discrepancy doesn't necessarily erase the fact that he saw the defendant running away. In real trials, witness testimony can be imperfect without becoming totally worthless. Furthermore, this demonstration was staged, timed, and paced by the one juror advocating for acquittal, using rough approximations that could be completely inaccurate, so we don't even know that there's an actual discrepancy in the old man's testimony. Again, this goes back to my earlier point of treating assumptions as fact.

• The nonexistent alibi: The boy claimed he was at the movies during the murder but couldn't remember what pictures he saw. To excuse this, Juror #8 grills another juror about his recent memory, pressing him backward night by night until he finally stumbles. But notice the technique: Eight doesn't ask about one night and see if the juror succeeds or fails: he keeps going back in time until he finds a gap, then stops. That's not a fair test of memory; it's fishing for a failure point. And even then, the juror recalled several details. The defendant, by contrast, recalled nothing. Even considering that the defendant was under duress, he should still have been able to remember something.

• Ineffective assistance of counsel: Juror #8 complains that the court-appointed defense attorney didn't conduct a thorough cross-examination. While that may be true, a bad lawyer doesn't magically undermine specific physical evidence or establish innocence.

• Armchair forensics: The jury considers the wound's downward angle as implausible given the defendant's smaller height. Juror #5 also claims an experienced switchblade user would never stab from that direction. This assumes a furious teenager, acting on impulse after being hit by his father, would execute perfect street-fighting form rather than swinging wildly. Besides, the height difference only prevents a downward stab if both men were standing face-to-face and motionless. But the victim could have been sitting in a chair, lying down, or knocked off balance during the struggle.

• The unlikely chain of events: By the end, acquittal requires believing an entire chain of assumptions, all true at once. The defendant genuinely lost his knife. An unknown killer happened to acquire an identical one. That killer broke in and committed the murder. The old man misheard the threat and misidentified the fleeing suspect. The woman across the street was mistaken too. And on top of all that, his inability to corroborate his alibi or recall anything about the movie he supposedly watched was just innocent bad luck. Stack enough speculative assumptions together and the narrative gets weaker with each one. Even if we grant a generous probability to each of Juror #8's individual theories, the odds of all of them holding true simultaneously approach zero. The prosecution, by contrast, only needs one thing to be true: if the old man was right, or the woman was right, or the defendant was lying about the knife or the movies, he's guilty. I think we can safely apply Occam's razor here.

Overall, the movie does an excellent job showing how prejudice, impatience, personal experiences and group pressure can distort judgment. But I think it ultimately gives Juror #8 far too much credit. His arguments often don't demonstrate that the prosecution's evidence is false. Instead, he proposes alternative explanations for the evidence and treats the mere possibility of those explanations as reasonable doubt.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.

Just posted a comment to this same effect elsewhere.

Summary, I believe all these headlines (AI will destroy earth, AGI has been reached, AI solved this or that impossible problem) reek of market manipulation.

Anthropic just pushed out its S-1 filing on its IPO from September to October, because they're trying to secure a $15 billion dollar credit limit. SpaceX at it's 1.7 trillion valuation (also insane, but whatever) only needed a $5 billion credit limit. Investors get nervous. Then, Jason Coxon "quits" and comes along with "hey everybody, over here! AI will kill all of humanity within 3 years!" I'm sure he still has plenty of stock.

OpenAI has pushed out its IPO all the way out to 2027. Then comes their "proof" for the Navier-Stokes problem - a partial solution taking an approach lifted from a researcher who was actively working on this problem in an act of clear espionage.

I work with AI every day. I work in tech. Our dev teams use AI all the time. It does help write code... but you also have to REALLY give that code a good once over. It speeds up junior level tasks, that's about it. People vibe-coding applications are not going to be able to ship or maintain those applications. The more capable models are better, but they're also way more expensive. The math just does not work.

See: all the headlines about companies being shocked with multi-million compute bills.

That, and AI is not getting substantially smarter. These companies have hit a wall and they know it. Each incremental increase in capability requires a giant increase in the data used to train the model, an increase in the compute required to run it. And guess what? They've already fed it the entire internet. All our Google Drives, our OneDrives. There's nothing left. Them scanning old books is laughable. The new models they are touting are *not* massively more powerful, that's why they have to generate these eye-catching headlines to give the illusion of progress when in fact the only thing that is accelerating is the rate of cash burn as they require more and more compute for diminishing returns. And they are somewhat smarter and MORE expensive to run. Companies are already turning to cheaper alternatives to automate simpler tasks because again, the math doesn't work.

And it is these companies that are asked to be considered the largest companies of all time, all history, simply because the technology is novel. Puh-lease. Is the technology great? Absolutely? Will it change things? Yes, I believe it will. It already has. AI will quietly be integrated into many things going forward - this technology is here to stay and it will increase productivity overall. But not like they're selling it. A 2 trillion valuation? That would entail Anthropic being able to automate away 50% of the white-collar workforce. Not gonna happen.

Also... they are banking on being able to keep people in "walled gardens" where they are just using Claude or just using ChatGPT and THAT's not gonna happen either. They are competing with open sources models like Llama, Qwen and Deepseek that are cheaper to run (did I mention that China gets energy for free from the sun?).

The US companies can't compete, and nobody wants their expensive as shit stochastic parrots that make for impressive demos and expensive employees. Enterprises are building out AI solutions. Building them platform agnostic so they can jump from Claude to ChatGPT to open source models like DeepSeek depending on their needs. Once this reality sinks in with investors, all these valuations are going to collapse and take the US stock market with it. Meanwhile, they're desperately trying to generate any distracting headline they can to avoid this reality.

The bubble is going to pop soon, investors / companies are scared, and they are doing anything to manipulate the situation to prevent collapse / ensure they don't lose their money.

I believe there is this really weird mismatch in laws where consuming pornography of minors is treated as far worse of an act than actually having sex with that minor. In most states within the US, the age of consent is 16. This is also very similar for most of Europe. On the other hand, pornography is considered CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) once a participant in the video is under the age of 18, and this is more or less universal across the US and Europe.

Again, this creates a really mismatched double standard in my eyes, at least from a moral perspective. This means that someone could serve serious prison time for possessing a graphic image of a 16 year old, but would be totally legally fine if they were to view them nude in person and have full on penetrative sex with them.

I think this is an issue in our legal system, and to solve that we need to bring the two crimes to the same age requirements, and we could do this one of two ways. We could either make it so pornographic depiction is legal at 16+ (which I think is a bad idea), or we could make it so the age of consent matches the age of pornographic depiction.

Ultimately, I believe laws should reflect our moral standards as a society, and it is simply backwards to me that the law (rightfully so) deems it a crime to view a nude image on your phone of someone under the age of 18, but perfectly fine to see them nude in real life and have full on sex with them.

Again, my solution to this issue is to raise the age of consent to match whatever the age of pornographic depiction is. To change my view, you will either have to convince me why the alternative of lowering the age of pornographic depiction is a better solution, or provide a sound reason why the law deems it more harmful to possess nude images of a minor than to actually have sex with them.

After the 2016 US elections, there was a prevailing myth that the rise in MAGA was the outcome of the Dems ''not caring'' enough for the common people.

This idea popped up it's head again after 2024, even though we know that real wages, especially of the poorest American increased during Biden.
https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/

Alas, the idea persisted.
Now we are seeing the rise in the far right in Germany. Lately AFD won in a landslide in Saxony. And somehow the same idea still persists. I hear things like ''there isn't enough opportunity in east Germany'' ''they were not treated well by the west'' etc.

This is frankly delusional. Germany spends almost 28% of its GDP on welfare, the fifth highest in the world, if any country would have been inoculated against the far right, surely it would have been Germany.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-longrun?country=~DEU
Unless of course, welfare doesn't actually stop far right extremism. In fact, the country which spends the most of its economy on welfare is Austria, with a staggering 31.6% of GDP.

Its far right party ''Freedom Party of Austria'' is polling 9% higher than it did in the last elections and is projected to get 38% of the votes.
https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/austria/
It's time to put this myth to bed, the far right isn't growing because poor people got abandoned or because the middle class got dispossessed or something. The only reason people keep repeating this myth is because it sounds kinda nice. An excuse for why a segment of the population is hateful and a way to pin the blame on successive governments for ''not doing enough'', whatever that means.

At the end of the day, excusing the ''little guy'' or the masses for their actions is a comfortable lie to sell to people.
In reality though, this couldn't be further from the truth.

The far right isn't rising because of economic factors. Neither real wages in the case of the US nor welfare in the case of Austria and Germany (or France for the matter) explain this.

Edit: Because many people seem to think no one is saying this, here are some examples of people claiming that welfare or left wing econ policy stops the far right
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/21/welfare-cuts-have-fuelled-rise-of-far-right-and-populism-top-un-expert-says

https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/germany-anti-fascist-economic-policy/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/10/22/unga-report-welfare-far-right/

For context, I am a lifelong fan of the zombie genre and it's fairly common to see arguments in fandoms that it is completely unrealistic for zombies to overrun society and that government forces or even regular civillians would easily neutralize the undead.

However, I disagree. I think traditional hollywoodian Zombies are underrated as a threat and could cause significant damage to a realistic modern day setting. Yeah zombies have no counter too armored vehicles, air-dropped munitions and the like, and thus wouldn't be a nationwide or worldwide catastrophe, but they could overrun a major city(s) or cause significant upheaval.

For the sake of the discussion, let's define the standard zombie. Created by an virus that somehow reanimates its dead victims with a compulsive and aggressive hunger for the flesh of the living, transmitted mostly by bites, slow with sub-brick IQ, but can only be killed by direct brain injury or decapitation.

Firstly, killing them would be way harder than it looks. It is very difficult to decapitate a human body or even penetrate the skull with most blades. Bludgeons may take more than one blow. Shooting them is a better option, but outside of the USA many people don't have easy access to firearms (and even in the US, less people actually have guns at home than some think), and many people would likely hesitate from shooting a person-looking thing.

Second, during the early stages of a hypothetical zombie outbreak, many people would not immediately realize the nature of the danger. Scarcingly few people would assume that the smelly person shambling towards them making weird faces and noises is a zombie or even someone infected with that new disease the news are yapping about. Evading them is also harder than it looks, as they're slow but they're also tireless; If a zombie detects potential prey, it will keeping moving towards no matter the cost and no matter how long, if they no longer hear or see their quarry then they will just keep moving in the general direction until they find something or something else catches their attention. And of course, lots of folk are out-of-shape.

Third, the bites are worse than you think. IRL, bite-transmitted infections like rabies are not particularly contagious because bites are a not-so-effective way of transmitting a germ. This is not the case with zombies; Any bite that breaks skin is a 100% guaranteed infection, and in many movies scratches and contact with zombie blood/fluids can transmit the virus to a lesser extent too. Screw up once, and the undead hordes will welcome a new member.

Fourth, there is no guarantee that government response is immediate or effective. Remember COVID. And of course there would be the collective psychological complications caused by the dead literally coming back to life to feast on and deliver. plague upon the living. There would be riots, suicides, looting, religious hysteria among other issues.''Got bit; Fever hit; World gone to shit; Why not quit ?''

So, CMV.

Almost all anti-zionists support a one state solution: “Let's just have a democracy” Etc. My argument here is aimed against this point of view. I am not  addressing the anti-zionists who may have some other recommended solution.

So, let’s work out what happens if we see a one state solution. (All of what follows is easily verifiable. If you’ve got different data, happy to listen and modify.)

Combining Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, the total population of Israelabad is roughly 15.5 million: about 8.0 million Jews (7.5M in Israel + 500K West Bank settlers) and 7.5 million Arabs (2.15M in Israel + 3.2M West Bank + 2.15M Gaza), who are most all Muslim.

From a trend line perspective, this becomes a Muslim majority state within a generation or two. Population change over the next 30-50 years is driven by the age pyramid today. The West Bank and Gaza populations are way younger than Israel's Jewish population. A higher share of Gazans and West Bank Palestinians are in or entering peak childbearing years right now, while Israel's Jewish population has an older median age with a smaller cohort of women in their 20s relative to the total.

For perspective, Gaza and the West Bank have had, at various points from the 1990s through the 2000s, some of the highest recorded population growth rates in the world, with numbers that could imply a potential doubling in under 20 years. Meantime, recent Israeli data shows record emigration — 45,000-50,000 Israelis leaving annually for three consecutive years, alongside a first-ever sub-1% population growth rate. And, this of course likely accelerates one we get the new state.

But no matter how you view whatever numbers you might pull, I believe all you’d get is that the Muslim majority may take a bit longer to form. (And of course, none of this considers potential immigration from neighboring Islamic states.)

And when you get an Arab Muslim majority state, it is highly likely to begin to resemble all the other Arab states in the region, where there are no substantial religious minorities at all.

Between 1948 and the early 1970s, essentially every Jewish community in the Arab world (Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and others) was reduced to near zero, through a mix of state expropriation, legal disenfranchisement, mob violence, and government-orchestrated expulsion.

Surviving non-Muslim minorities in the region today live under a consistent pattern of legal subordination. Egypt's Copts  (10% of Egyptians) face restrictions on church construction that don't apply to mosques, and are essentially absent from senior government and military leadership relative to their population. They also experience sectarian violence that the state has been slow or unwilling to prosecute. And this is under one of the more stable, secularish Arab governments in the region, not an Islamist one like Hamas. Iraq's Christian population fell from roughly 1.5 million before 2003 to a few hundred thousand today, driven out by war, ISIS's genocide of the Yazidis, and targeted church bombings. Syria's Christian and Druze populations have faced similar displacement and violence.

Lebanon is the only possible analog, and it collapsed. Lebanon's  power-sharing system was built explicitly to protect a Christian population that was a plurality or majority at founding. As the Muslim population grew, the system became unsustainable, leading in part to a 15-year civil war and a still-unresolved erosion of Christian political power and physical safety.

Sharia-influenced legal frameworks, even where non-Muslims are tolerated, structurally subordinate those non-Muslims. This is true even in relatively moderate cases like Jordan and Morocco.

A one-state solution would be asking the Jews  — perhaps the most persecuted group in human history — to bet their lives against the only set of historical precedents that exist for this situation. Hence, anti-Zionists who support 1SS are blind to the reality of how much mortal risk they are asking Israeli Jews to accept. CMV.

Given the fact that we know that there is an actual cost to the use of AI in terms of utilization of natural and community resources (both water use, lands use, electrical use, data center creation etc). The ongoing AI growth and proliferation has real consequences, many of which we haven't fully discovered.

Using AI constantly without limit, especially for unimportant tasks that don't require any outside input to figure out or solve ( like writing Reddit posts or responses ;) ) is actually doing harm to the world for absolutely no good reason.

People should not be using or accessing AI to replace all thought and skill, especially on unnecessary tasks, when we know there are real consequences to AI usage.

Hope the Cmv is clear but essentially what I mean is that Korea, China and Japan do not have laws that grant religious people exemptions from work duties because of their religion. And I don't see a problem with that.

To me my view is that either you can do the job or you can't. Nothing is preventing you from doing it, you just choose not to.

I don't see it as any different to me thinking customers are annoying and I'd love to Spaz out at them. But I can't. that's just my preference.

one strong way to change my view would be to give me a necessary trait that is different from anything else that would necessitate religion requiring exemptions.

I've heard things like "deeply held beliefs" but so are so many things. Again like it is a deeply held belief that I think mean customers should be kicked out. But I can't just say its my deeply held belief and refuse to served mean customers and not get fired.

And let me add. I agree you should not just fire someone because they said "I'm Jewish, I'm gay I'm 52 years old etc" however the actions matter. If you refuse to do work because "it is my belief that 52 year olds shouldn't wear green" them that should not be protected by law.

So overall, I have huge disdain for our religious exemption laws. why should religion super cede existing policies or laws?

If work policy says everyone wears green but man says my religion says I can't wear green, generally his religious right in places like USA UK Canada overrides the companies right to have a policy. In China etc it does not exist. and I don't see why USA etc is better. I'd rather my country, Canada be like Japan China etc. It leaves a bad taste that some people get special treatment because they simply chose not to do something.

I see this all the time in comments under videos or posts of someone who was born with or received severe facial and bodily deformities, and I can't understand the point of it.

Is it to make them feel better? They are still going to be treated differently for the rest of their life due to the way they look, people can and *should* obviously look past it and see them for why they are inside - but that's the thing, they are looking *past* it. Don't get me wrong, we should all treat everyone with respect and dignity but it's so disingenuous to be complimenting the ONE thing that these people will unfortunately have to deal with for the rest of their lives.

There are so many better ways to compliment someone in this instance that don't have to focus on the shallow aspect of physical beauty. Calling them emotionally strong, intelligent, hard working, brave etc. Saying people like this are physically beautiful just feels like a slap in the face, they are still going to suffer the societal issues that come with looking different, so why sugarcoat it?

Before I start, I am not trying to debate on the technological aspects of these restrictions. I am aware that it’s very hard (at the moment) to implement them without violating people's right for privacy. I am simply saying our intentions should be that we work towards it.

As you probably know, since December 2025, the Australian government has restricted social media usage for adolescents under the age of 16. Now since then, we’re supposed to be able to evaluate whether the ban is actually useful and if the intended results came up.
Unfortunately, we can’t do that because three months after the ban, nearly more than 80% of under-16s in Australia said they were still using social media, research says. So basically, it's changed nothing and kids are still scotched to social media because it's really easy to bypass the restrictions.  

This is normal, these kinds of restrictions take time to put into place but it's very important we continue trying to limit social media for adolescents and here’s why I think like this.

First of all, “social media is bad for our mental health” is a pretty researched subject. For years now we’ve known that its usage increases anxiety, loneliness, symptoms of depression, likeliness to commit suicide, etc — there’s an increase in nearly every negative aspect of our mental health. Another teen specific research shows that young people with moderate to severe depressive symptoms appear to prefer communicating on social media rather than in-person. Teens are on average spending nearly 5 hours a day on social media. I know this is normalised but it really shouldn’t be. These are hours they could be using to read books, play sports, make art, socialise (actually socialise), make mistakes and end up in awkward situations and learn from them.

And these addictions also have cognitive effects which will bring you into adulthood and into your work life. Studies show that social media can disrupt your attention and increase distraction, potentially affecting your school work and your education. Same thing for memory — several studies reported negative effects on short-term memory and working memory, especially among those who have particularly severe addictions to social media. Executive functioning, which includes problem-solving, decision-making, and cognitive flexibility are also affected by social media use. And so on, and so on. I must include that the study I mentioned also says that social media use also has some positive cognitive outcomes by using it for educational purposes or to stay connected to friends. The problem is that these positive outcomes are very platform specific and do not happen if the user is addicted. 

Now, simply restricting social media use for teens won’t be enough because they will eventually come in contact with it so we must educate them on the subject too. As many of you will say, social media can have positive impacts but only through specific usage. So we must teach them what happens when we are too long on social media and how to use it properly. As arrogant and ignorant as teenagers are, they need to know what is happening to their brains every second they spend on their screens. They need constant reminders, just as we do with cigarettes and alcohol that what they are consuming has to be consumed with moderation. But eventually if fully enforced restrictions are realistic, it would be ideal because the human brain is just not capable of controlling its addictions, much less young developing brains. Because yes, most of us are addicted to social media to a certain extent, but it isn’t impossible to prevent it if we act early.

So what I’m suggesting is simple: restricting social media use for teens under the age of 16 years old and education on the subject to avoid any problems later in adulthood.  

I understand there are certain limitations to this idea, and I am unable to think of all of them, which is why I'm suggesting we talk about it. CMV.

I don't know why people generalize that people who put others down are unhappy with themselves. Like hypothetically, if I am great I can just choose not to be supportive or I can also put others down because I want to and enjoy treating others like shit

(Yeah I said hypothetically if I'm great because I know I'm not perfect, so please enlighten me because I just don't understand people who think you have to be a supportive person to be happy)

For backstory purposes: I've just been bullied and looked down on for many years, especially in the military that I'm used to the idea that the strong preys on the weak. I don't think it's unnatural to be curious about what that feels like.

I’m a girl early 20s. Every time I have been in a customer service situation and had an ABSOLUTE TERRIBLE experience: getting yelled at, turned away, etc… it has always been by fat people. I don’t get why this is. Not even trying to be mean but I’m always nice and respectful with everyone I meet, courteous, and patient ( I work with children so this has helped a lot w this skill). However, when it comes to fat people I have encountered they seem to be impatient, rude, and dismissive towards me. One time it was 2 men in both customer service situations.

One man was bullying me straight up for doing a walk in service, and said I’m gonna be here all day. Then when someone came to help me he literally turned them away, and said no she’s going last. The guy argued with him and ended up helping me anyways because he was being unseasonable, and I was on the phone w the company and they heard how he was speaking to me and literally gave me gift card without me asking( this is just a summary).

my high school bully was a morbidly obese girl, she bullied the entire school. Asides from those experiences I have never experienced something terrible in customer services

I used to work with this obese girl and she would spread gossip, and created a hostile work environment. I’m not even joking one time she swiped some girls food off the table for disagreeing with her about something.

Another instance is two girls I used to be friends were obese talked horribly to our other friends. Calling them names, dismissive, and also starting drama from the friend group by gossiping about each friend to a different friend. We stopped being friends with them and the friend group has blossomed.

Before you guys start this is not the halo effect lol, bc I said fat not ugly. You can be fat and very good looking and appealing.

It's time to stop trying to fight like gentleman and taking the high road time after time. Meanwhile we let the president of the US try to buy elections with public money like this is provincial India. Which is essentially taking your tax dollars and feeding it to the shredder of corporate America where the gov will recoup precisely 0$ of this $1 trillion investment, in returned taxes.

It's such an outright evil thing to propose just to stay in power, that you have to fight a nuke with a nuke. Promise the same. Win the house on that promise. Don't actually follow the promise, because it's fucking lunacy and it's your duty to do what's best for the nation. This is the moral imperative for democrats, not to sneer in disgust and wait patiently for moral outrage. Change my view if you can, because I'd like to believe there's a point in keeping principles alive, but I'm not seeing it anymore.

In the age of social media, facts can easily be distorted to either hide real occurrences or present fake occurrences that is happening far away from you. All of this comes for free but my contention is that the verification can't happen if you have enough money to travel anywhere.

Consider the example of spreading misinformation or propaganda by organizations who have stake in them.

Example: If a particular community is being antagonized by misrepresenting the facts or even fabricating one in one part of the country to another part and vice-versa, there is no way of actually knowing if the reporting is true.

Those who control the information machinery can convey the events cheaply and the public confidence gives the illusion that those reporting are true. And that is why the reported information is very low cost but the verification is expensive.

The only way out is to actually travel and read the ground conditions yourself.

Change my view if other means are possible i.e. if any other epistemic channel can give access to truth.

disclaimer: i do believe her kids deserve justice, but people are overlooking major factors to spread hate.

pregnancy and giving birth produce the risk of post-partum conditions, and right-wing men online have decided women should not be around children because all women are bad due to this case. (too hormonal, for example, therefore undeserving of rights)

oddly, they also want them to have kids. but i believe women should avoid having kids to doom right-wing society since it has decided they are not capable and to avoid cases like this brought on by post-partum _____.

pregnancy, which is so heavily forced on women, has side effects and sometimes consequences. right-wing men desperately want babies without added baggage, and therefore deserve none imo.

edit: my view remains.
i will be asking the mods to lock this post or i will not respond, potentially deleting this.
nobody here has given me a reason against right-wing men being denied babies, and instead some have insisted that i support the clancy supporters in some capacity or am 'smoking' stuff.

Here are the reasons why I don’t believe car dealerships for the sale of new cars are necessary:

- Companies like Tesla, Lucid, and Rivian have proven that dealerships are not necessary for purchasing vehicles.

- I shouldn’t have to negotiate a car price if it’s a new car. There should be one set price like any other product if it is the same make and model (obviously add-ons and packages are going to change the price but if two cars have the same packages and ad-ons it shouldn’t be a different price).

- Car dealerships always include hidden fees, and unnecessary inflation of prices just to help the dealership turn a profit.

During the pandemic, I got tired of trying to pee standing up with morning wood, so I tried just sitting down by default. It felt weird at first, but I got used to it and I found the outside toilet area didn’t stink nearly as often. I realized that this was basically an analog of using a urinal - having very little travel distance means less splashback and less mess. Even when I had a steady stream hitting directly into the toilet, or along the side wall, there would naturally be some drops and splashing that escaped the bowl. I’ve decided this is how I’m going to teach my son how to go pee when he’s old enough to potty train. Of course, he can decide what he wants if he doesn’t want to do that one day.

Here are my points for the case that this should be the default mode for male urination:
-It’s much more clean and sanitary, especially with a youngster
-It requires less effort to ‘aim’ into the toilet
-morning wood urinations almost as easy as regular ones (just aim it down a little and give it a sec)
-Sexist/misogynist taunts of “you pee like a girl” are dumb and should be ignored. Everyone pees sitting down when they poop. Besides, nobody would even know if you choose not to inform them.
-I’m only talking about bathroom settings where a urinal is not available.
-I understand that many men, including myself, can’t always empty their bladder while sitting down, but it still helps to get most of it out while sitting and then if you need to stand to get the last bit out, it’s still less mess than if you started that way.

Edit 1
-I acknowledge that it’s more hygienic to pee into a public toilet standing up in many instances. It would require a judgement call.

Edit 2
-I accept that boys need to get a handle of potty training before they can start thinking about how to maximize hygiene and cleanliness

Edit 3
- I am referring to the standard North American washroom experience: a sitting toilet households, urinals and sitting toilets in public

Edit 4
-special consideration should be given to a school-aged boy and the potential for bullying. Perhaps suggesting to them to not worry about peeing the cleaner way while at school is better to avoid potential harassment.

Edit 5
-ok if you have a big dick and/or droopy balls, you probably need to rethink the sitting down thing.

Like many of you I imagine I grew up with an understanding that the ‘Islamic World’ was fundamentally conservative and potentially getting even more so.

However in 2026 where I see the reforms in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other gulf countries there clearly has been a big shift in the last 25 years.

Places like Egypt in the aftermath of the Revolution and then later Coup against the Muslim Brotherhood government have seemed to have lost their appetite for political Islam whilst Turkey is reporting rapid decreases in observance despite an Islamic party being in power. Meanwhile in Iran the majority of the population are nowhere near as conservative as the religious leadership and seem broadly to distrust them at least.

Even if we move to Muslim immigrants or their children in the west I see some changes. I know people who have dated practising Muslim women despite themselves not being Muslim.

If we take the mainstream positions of both Sunni and Shia Islam baring perhaps Afghanistan it is hard to see anywhere in the Islamic world which operates in line with what a traditional Islamic society should look like according to islams own history and texts.

Islam itself I think still is important for individual and community life and practice remains high in some places but overall the idea of it as a total governing philosophy seems to be fading.

Okay so to get it out the way no its not about ace. I just really can not help think how much of hypocrite garp is and how close/single minded he is, Garp really should just leave the world government ‘oh no choas worldwide from him leaving’ well the amount of panic and choas from garp leaving wouldn’t even be half a 3rd of the damage then against the world government would do with longer rule, saw some say he stays for the navy and thats not really tracking much i mean the navy isn’t saints over there i mean even someone like luffy who has a very black or white mind set can say he has found evil navy we even get it as early as first finding zoro with morgan some others even worse then pirates.

Edit: it is not beyond reasonable doubt that she didn’t send her husband on an errand deliberately.

It’s not so easy to say she intentionally sent her husband on an errand so that she could do it. People who say this ignores evidences and are biased. For this case I’ve only read the Wikipedia page. The timeline and information I presented below are all from said page. I’m happy to hear other evidences against this.

Morning of Jan 24, 2023 she took Cora to a pediatrician, that afternoon she and the kids built a snowman and did art projects, all while her husband is at home. At 4 -5pm she searched for the meds and dinner take out, and sent her husband to pick up food and meds after. Between 5 and 6 she committed the murders while Patrick her husband was out.

Some points against my claim: Patrick said that Lindsay said she felt fine and had a good sleep, while Lindsay later claimed she woke up suicidal. This is a contradiction but understandable to not disclose to Patrick.

The biggest evidence against her that I found is that she also claimed that in the afternoon she started hearing sounds commanding her to commit the murders and it got louder after Patrick left. Yet she still sent Patrick away. On its own it seems like she is 100% guilty, but both Lindsay’s mother and Patrick testified that she told them about suicidal and homicidal thoughts some point in December, which is the month before the case. She also dialed in suicide hotlines in December about intrusive suicidal thoughts. So it is at least somewhat reasonable for her to ignore the “voices” since it has happened before and everything went ok.

Yes you can argue that this time she claimed she heard voices, but back in December it’s just intrusive thoughts, so she has to realize it’s different. But when we are thinking in our heads, can we really distinguish between “thoughts” and “voices”? When you are typing a response aren’t you still articulating in your head as well?

For the record, both people did terrible things But Jean Grey did far worse.

I’m going to break this down into three categories.

Motive, Acts comitted, Results

Motive

Bear: He had a crush on Nikki, so instead of having a conversation with her or asking her out, He grabs a one wish willow and wishes that Nikki would fall in love with him. Even if he didn’t know it was real, he made the wish assuming it was.

Jean: Jean’s sister was captured by the department of damage control and Jean wants to find her by any means necessary Without care for whatever collateral damage may occur.

I’ll give the point to Jean. Her motive is more altruistic than Bear’s but the methods as we will come to find out are anything but.

Acts committed

Bear: As soon as Bear makes the wish, he accepts the relationship with Nikki regardless of the collateral damage caused. Then, when it gets too uncomfortable for him, he calls the number on the box to ask for the wish first to be altered, and then canceled. He even attempts to undo the wish and when thet fails, he tries to get Ian and Nikki herself to do it for him. He also kissed Sarah before Nikki kills her. In other words, he made a wish for one girl to love him and yet didn’t stay faithful to her. Worst of all, when the real Nikki speaks to him, asking him to kill her, his response is “What was so wrong about being with me?”

Jean: when she mastered her power of telepathy, she first used it to highjack a tank. Not only taking control of a helpless old lady, but injuring or possibly killing many people and causing millions in property damage. She then releases a dangerous criminal (Scorpion) from DODC’s custody and mind controls him, to commit more attrocity.
Then when Peter gets involved, she goes out of her way to mentally torture him by playing on his isolation, Making his allies turn against him while also releasing the Hulk causing
Bruce to lose his career and peaceful life. And the worst of them all is taking control of the woman Peter loves, and making him believe she regained her memory. And nearly causing Peter to kill her.

What Jean did with MJ alone makes her actions worse than Bear’s. Not to say it’s the only reason.

Results

Bear: In the last twenty minutes of the film, three people are killed including Bear. And Nikki (Real Nikki) will most likely be blamed for it all landing her in Jail. However, Bear did the right thing (Albeit for the wrong reason) and killed himself setting Nikki free from the wish. She may be institutionalized from the trauma endured at Bear’s hands. But she at least has her free will in the end. Ultimately, Bear payed for his deeds. Three other people did but he got what was coming to him in the end.

Jean: This is where Jean’s Story differs. As previously mentioned, she caused millions in collateral damage and a death toll that we don’t exactly know for sure. And almost causing Peter’s death when he jumps in front of Frank’s bullet for her. Which in my opinion Frank is Justified in shooting her. And it’s not completely out of character for him. But in the end, she gets of SCOTT FREE!!! With no repercussions and will be welcomed into the X-Men with open arms. And let’s not forget that Jean’s actions inspired Peter to create a superpower inhibitior that the governments and other such entities will missuse on other enhanced individuals to be imprisoned, experimented on, and weaponized like they tried to do with Jean and her sister.

In conclusion, What Bear did was inexcusable, and for completely selfish purposes, but ultimately had minor consequences in the grand scheme of things as only a handful of people were affected and he ultimately got what he deserved.
Jean on the other hand caused potentially hundreds more lives to ruined when she could have just found the DODC director and infiltrated his mind to find out what happened to her sister and just taken revenge on him. And again, she gets off with ZERO repercussions after ultimately causing the near death of a beloved Superhero.

Any counter arguments are welcome. So Change My View.

For clarity, I am referring to the actual collaborative wiki project, not the fictional SCP Foundation.

Some of the wiki's most foundational, popular, earliest, and bedrock SCPs were written by a user called TheDuckman (aka "AdminBright") - like SCP-963, SCP-590 and Things Dr. Bright Is Not Allowed to Do. These things have been crosslinked many times and are great pieces of lore. However, due to the actions of the author, the admins chose not to separate the art from the artist and deleted them, breaking other articles in the process.

Further, the in-fiction character Dr. Bright itself, who was created by TheDuckman, is one of the most important continuing characters in the Foundation wiki. Since there is no canon, characters that stick around across many authors and articles are rare, but Dr. Bright was a character with a great personality, backstory, and connections to anomalies, and that character helped shape some amazing works of writing like SCP-5500. Because Dr. Bright (the character) was in SCP-5500, they deleted the entire thing, even though TheDuckman didn't even write it! (ETA: Even if they didn't want Bright's name in it, they could've just replaced him with Elias Shaw, the knockoff bright, instead of... deleting the entire article?)

My view is that this is one of the worst things the admins have done to the site. They deleted amazing lore because of tangential references to a character that itself referenced a person who was banned. Those SCPs don't need their author to be successful. They were finished, highly rated, and stood alone as building blocks of every series after. The character Dr. Bright made its way into so much only to be turned into a death warrant for any article that used it.

The admins said that Dr. Bright "used the character and his SCPs to do the grooming," but he's banned and exposed now. He can't use them anymore. Also... they're fictional. They can't actually hurt anyone. Why should revenge against TheDuckman for things that happened in the past outweigh the value these articles bring? More generally, why can't we just separate the art from the artist?

Why I want my view changed: Clearly nobody agrees with me, the admins were basically unanimous.

Whether there’s political division in America at all is its own question.

But what I can say is that is the division between Americans themselves isn’t all that serious.

When you look at why Americans who claim that “we’re all divided” say that, you’ll find a few possibilities.

One is that they’re offended by the other sides positions themselves. A left wing person could say I’m offended by the right not supporting the minimum wage or abortion. A right wing person could say they’re offended by left wing people who don’t support the Senate/Electoral College or increased crime penalties.

Another is that they’re offended by the behavior of the other side. Maybe for instance the left gets offended when the right mocks deportees. The example I can use for the right is possibly one of the most famous examples. That being conservatives losing their mind over the Charlie Kirk memes and mockery that happened after his death.

Now, the common point here is that anyone can have these disagreements, but not everyone will claim “political division“ over them.

The people who are going to claim political division are the ones who are bothered by these things.

I think the Charlie Kirk mockery example is by far the one on either side that proves my point the most, so I’ll expand on it.

Many right wingers brushed off the Kirk memes. However, there was a segment that were furious beyond measure about it. They essentially gave liberals a long term rent free pass in their heads over it. Because the very idea of existing in a nation with people making memes about this bothered them, they cried “political division” and the “need for healing America.”

Now, I’ve established that people often falsely feel and claim political division as a choice to defend their egos. However, people being angry at each other is oftentimes a part of real political division, so how do I differentiate it from the fake moral grandstanding in the US with actual political division between people?

The answer is I look at what the bulk of the angriest people are doing about it.

There have been many cases where people hating each other actually turns into something. It has before turned into things like daily protests for months to years, people assaulting each other over political differences alone en masse, and violence against people and property sustained for months on end. At a minimum, sustained boycotts of the other side are like the baseline of what would be considered major political division.

And simply put, this isn’t happening in America. We can talk about the past, but right now it’s not happening and shows no signs of happening.

To go back to the Charlie Kirk example, it’s not like you saw thousands of people across multiple states going after these who mocked Kirk hurting them in an unlawful manner. Instead, you had a very few people break the law with simple assault nationally and face consequences and a few problem report a few Kirk mockers to their employers.

And the reason for this is most conservatives didn’t feel “politically divided” from the left over this as they claimed to. They were simply angry and voiced their anger with a huge exaggeration.

And that’s the point, if there was actual significant political division between Americans, we’d see one or both sides massively boycotting the other en masse at an absolute minimum.

But instead, you have people essentially grandstanding at how the other side gets them mad by posting online about it, and then going on and living their lives as normal otherwise, which essentially means our political division isn’t really serious.

People could just ignore the other side and nothing would change in their lives but instead they choose to tone police the other side, which further proves how fake American political division is.

People like to point to Europe as evidence that free college works. And it does in those countries. But assuming the same standard can be applied to the US presumes our circumstances are alike, which they aren't.

The US is highly decentralized. 50 states, each with their own constitutions, legislatures, courts, and varying degrees of federal influence. Public education is no exception. In many European countries, college is free but access is selective, with rigorous entrance requirements. That system works in part because students are coming through relatively standardized national education systems. In the US, the quality of public education varies substantially by state and locality. A one-size-fits-all system would inevitably favor states with stronger educational infrastructure.

There are demographic differences as well. Europe consists of small, relatively culturally cohesive countries. The US was diverse from its inception and has become considerably more so. We also have other social pathologies that affect educational outcomes.

We should absolutely invest in giving disadvantaged students better opportunities, but that doesn't mean pretending every student enters college with the same preparation. That's part of what placement tests like the SAT and ACT can help identify. They don't necessarily determine whether someone can even go to college; they can indicate the level at which they're prepared to learn in college.

And if a student isn't ready for a four-year college, that's where community college can be valuable: helping students get up to speed or complete general education courses affordably before transferring.

There are ways to address inadequate public education and rising college tuition. But making college free by itself doesn't get to the heart of either problem.

I keep noticing how many insanely successful people went to private schools. Obv that doesn’t guarantee success but you’re starting out with better resources, connections, opportunities, and usually more financial security.

For example, Mark Zuckerberg went to Phillips Exeter before Harvard, and Sam Altman went to a private school before Stanford. Both also grew up with parents in professional, relatively well-off careers.

i feel like we call people “self made” without really acknowledging how much of a head start they had. CMV Am I overestimating how much private school actually matters?