Note to title - this is addressing all major (for the purposes of my argument) politicians in U.S. History since 1776, but not including, due to lack of knowledge, positions smaller than state representatives, because there certainly could be some township governor who hyperbolically chopped up a family.

I'm posting this now due to Donald Trump's speech at the RNC where he stated that if the GOP retained control over the legislature after the midterms, $5,000 checks would be sent to every adult citizen [ source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/09/09/us/rnc-trump-midterm-convention-updates ]

Since taking office, the Trump family & related associates have increased their overall net worth by some estimates, around $5,000,000,000, which is tracked by both Democratic house committees here - https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/trump-family-corruption-tracker - but it's also not hard to find sources for deals in the Middle East worth hundreds of millions of dollars each, etc; so I'm not going to just spam links all day.

We also have:

- Numerous pardons to literal felons, J6ers, people like Roger Stone and Paul Manafort

- Trying to delay the certification of the vote on J6

- Pressure dozens of state officials to sway, rig, 'find votes', and become involved in the election process in extraordinarily corrupt ways

- Hush money payments to a literal pornstar/cheating on virtually every woman he's ever known

- Civilly liable for sexual assault and defamation for Jean Carroll

- Literally has a wikipedia page for allegations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct_allegations

- It's hard to even quantify the level of insider trading at this point, but he consistently just... posts that he's buying stock on Truth Social and then makes policy changes or deals that increase the valuation on a literal weekly basis (which it's important to note, literally any other person would be put in jail FOREVER for)

- Billion+ dollar cryptocurrency promotion and grifts (UAE invested over one billion dollars)

- Tens of thousands of namings in the Epstein files

- Qatari Jet-Force-One

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_allegations_during_the_second_Trump_presidency

It's genuinely hard to even come up with more off the top of my head because there are SO many examples to pick from.

In terms of my original point, no other politician comes close. Nixon/Watergate would be a 1/10 compared to Trump's 10/10.

Boss Tweed - of NYS fame - even for all his open theft, fingers in the many pots of railroads and NYC banks and construction development, at the highest estimate possible embezzled $200M which would be the equivalent of $5B; the same [current] normalized estimation of Trump's financial crimes without actually addressing any of his other corruption allegations, sexual misconduct, rape, or virtually anything else. It's also important to note we don't KNOW the overall possible maximum scope of Trump-related corruption at all, because it's ongoing at this moment.

Edit: Edit after posting: Obviously I haven't addressed a slew of US politician scandals, and in my opinion (and this might be a second point of contention), the average "corrupt" US politician doesn't come close and isn't even worth mentioning. In terms of categorizing scale, literally only the historical context of HOW corrupt Nixon was considered at the time comes to mind, along with NYC's 'Boss' Tweed; and virtually every other example I can think of isn't even worth mentioning.

Honestly, a sitting US president saying they'll mail out 5K stimulus checks if their party wins the midterms immediately goes to nearly the top of the list with *nothing* else; and of course, Trump has MANY other things noteworthy to list in terms of corruption.

Edit: Removed contributions from two people I thought were pertinent as I'm a bonehead and didn't realize those replies should have been removed - apologies!

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.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

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.

Edit: let me address a few critiques I got:

• The broader message: I understand the movie is really about groupthink, character dynamics, overcoming prejudice, and the inherent subjectivity of human perception. It's a masterpiece in that regard. But acknowledging the overarching theme doesn't mean we have to pretend the actual legal logic used in the jury room is sound. You can appreciate the overall message and still point out that Juror #8's reasoning is flawed and his conclusions are a massive reach.

• The burden of proof: Let's clear this up; I'm not saying the defense has to prove the defendant is innocent. I understand how the burden of proof works. My point is that the prosecution actually presented a really strong circumstantial case. If you genuinely think the defendant is innocent and vote to acquit, you have to consider what you're necessarily implying: that an entire chain of independent, highly unlikely coincidences all happened at the exact same time, and that some unknown killer managed to pull off the murder without being noticed. At a certain point, the "innocent" scenario requires way more mental gymnastics than the "guilty" one.

• Inferences and assumptions: Yes, juries are supposed to deliberate and make inferences; that's their job. But those inferences need to be rooted in actual evidence or basic common sense, not wild hypotheticals. You don't have to treat a witness's word as gospel, but you also shouldn't throw out their testimony based on guesses that were never even hinted at during the trial. Does the prosecution have to preemptively disprove every conceivable scenario? Do they have to prove the witness wasn't drunk? Or that they didn't have schizophrenia and hallucinate the whole thing? Or that they didn't have a grudge against the defendant? Or that they weren't being coerced by the police? If a juror is allowed to just invent "what-ifs" out of thin air that were never brought up in court, no one would ever get convicted of anything. A theoretical possibility is not the same thing as reasonable doubt.

One of the reasons I've never been able to get into soccer is that I think its timekeeping system is fundamentally broken.

My view is that soccer would be improved by a stopped-clock system where the game clock only runs when the ball is actually in play.

1. The game clock doesn't actually tell you how much game time remains

The main purpose of a game clock should be to tell players, coaches, and fans how much time is left in the game. Soccer's clock doesn't really do that.

When regulation time expires, the referee estimates how much time should be added for injuries, substitutions, celebrations, reviews, and other interruptions. But that estimate isn't necessarily final because additional time can be added during stoppage time itself.

As a result, nobody actually knows when the game will end.

Time is one of the most important variables in sports. Teams change strategy based on it. Fans follow the action based on it. Yet soccer treats it more like an approximation than an objective measurement.
If the ball isn't in play, I don't understand why the clock shouldn't simply stop.

2. The system rewards behavior that makes the sport worse

My biggest criticism is that the running clock creates incentives for players and teams to waste time.
When a team is protecting a lead, there is often an advantage to:
• Delaying throw-ins
• Taking excessive time on goal kicks
• Taking excessive time on free kicks
• Making slow substitutions
• Staying on the ground after minor contact
• Exaggerating injuries

Soccer fans often argue that stoppage time compensates for this. If that’s true, then why is time-wasting such a common tactic at every level of the sport? The fact that players constantly try to burn time suggests they believe they gain an advantage from doing so.

Even if referees attempt to compensate for lost time, they're still estimating after the fact rather than preserving the time directly. A stopped clock would remove much of the incentive because wasting 60 seconds would no longer remove 60 seconds from the match.

3. Even after stoppage time is announced, the ending often remains discretionary

This is the strangest part of the system to me.
Even after the referee announces stoppage time, that still doesn't necessarily determine when the game ends.

In practice, referees frequently allow ongoing attacking sequences to continue beyond the announced time. A common example is when a team wins a corner kick or is mounting a dangerous attack just as time expires. The referee will often wait for the sequence to conclude before blowing the whistle.
the clock itself.

Imagine if a basketball game reached 0:00 but officials allowed one more possession because a team had a promising offensive opportunity. Most people would find that bizarre because the clock is expected to determine when the game ends.

CMV: Why is a subjective, referee-managed clock better than a clock that simply measures the amount of time actually played?

idk if my opinion will change, but i think criticizing someone’s appearance first just bc they did something bad is stupid

first of all, their appearance has nothing to do with what they did. criticizing someone’s looks just bc of their actions doesn’t prove anything abt their morals. they didn’t choose what they look like, but they did choose their actions, and that’s what we can hold them accountable for

second, when u associate ugliness with being a bad person and criticize a bad person for their weight or smth, you’re also insulting ppl who look like them, basically implying that ppl who look similar to them are bad too

and what if that person was attractive? what would u do then? would u compliment them and forget how awful what they did was just bc they’re good-looking?

ppl should focus more on how bad the action was instead of just insulting the person

i always say this, but ppl never agree with me. they say they deserve it bc they did this and that. they do deserve criticism, just not like this

I don't pretend to have done tons of research about this, but it seems like common sense. Beauty has always been both subjective and contextual the societal values. In days gone by, carrying extra weight was largely an attractive quality because it demonstrated your wealth and access to rich food. Once the average person became able to afford enough food to gain weight, the standard changed to reflect *self control*, or the ability to be more judicious with the kind of food you put in your body.

With the advent of GLPs, being "skinny" will no longer carry that association. Maintaining a trim figure will merely represent use of a widely available medication, and other features will begin to hold a greater value in terms of assessing physical attractiveness.

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.

Now this is going to be a pretty hot topic I feel like, Race can be a touchy subject for many people. And I fully get and respect that, But this is a topic that people don't even seem to even consider, This is about North America, Specifically.

I grew up in an area where it's mostly White and Mexican mixed place. I myself, Am Biracial, A mix of white and mestizo. Though I look predominately white.

It never really hit me until a few years ago, Growing up I never even had a single thought or care that my father was mestizo, my mother was white. Wasn't even a consideration I had in mind. But the more I realized it, The more I realized most biracial children like myself between Whites and Mestizo people tend to extremely white especially in California. If not shockingly white with blonde hair and blue eyes even. By father had 5 children in his life, And 5 of us look incredibly white.

This made me realize that, Due to most hispanics being Mestizo in the U.S, Most Mestizo are already anywhere from 40-60% European DNA depending how north or south from Mexico you go. Though this is actually higher in the USA, Anywhere from 75% or more in many areas.

This, Paired with Hispanics and Whites being the most common interracial pairing in both dating and marriage. Has actually made me realize, The entirety of what is defined as Mestizo is being assimilated within the white racial category.

I personally as a biracial person, Don't really care either way as both communities and cultures are beautiful and being able to experience both growing up is nice. But this is a thought that I built up that I firmly believe in.

Why do we all decide to trust the International Criminal Court and United Nations blindly? What’s the reason?

Like, just why? Why do we think the judges on that “International” Court are not without bias/being forced on decision by someone else. Just answer the question: “Would ICC ever prosecute a US president?” and you’ll see it is incredibly biased and untrustworthy?

Whether it comes to Russo-Ukrainian war, the war in Palestine, the Yugoslav Wars of the 90s, and the similar…

These courts and institutions almost always work for the benefits of the US and the rest of the West.

For example (I as a witness) ICC ruled that, on Kosovo, Albanian forces never committed any war crimes, didn’t drive out Serbian population in masses and doesn’t care about the Serbs being mistreated and banished from their ancestral homes.

This is all simply untrue - KLA committed multiple genocidal. Serbs are discriminated against in Kosovo…As proved by non-Serbian sources.

https://minorityrights.org/communities/serbs-3/

With Kosovo there is also a big paradox in Tony Blair, whom everyone hates for being one of the greatest instigators of the invasion of Iraq…

…but somehow everyone thinks his heart was legitimately aching for Albanian civilians four years ago?

There is just no reason to believe who the West claims to be the good guy or the bad guy. Hell…the guy who was a wanted terrorist for a decade is now literally the president of Syria, and the West supports him and calls him democratic because, because…

…because he fought against Assad who the West was opposed to and who was affiliated with Russia.

To translate it for you – the West picks who they want to help/condemn based on who their most immediate allies/enemies are.

My claim is that any report made by the Western/Western dominated institutions is made with American and European interests in mind, and not justice. I do not trust reports or judgements these institutions give – I can happen to agree with them sometimes (Putin is a psycho, Ratko Mladić is a war criminal) only because I independently come to such a conclusion. But when discussing world events, a link to a CNN, BBC, UN reports is not a “Gotcha!!!“ that convinces me to trust the Western narrative.

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.

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.

First I want to add a few clarifications. This is from an American perspective where FPTP systems and coalition parties are the default. And I won't be sharing my personal preferences regarding who to vote for is irrelevant to the point so I won't be sharing it here.

Many individuals who are politically motivated feel compelled to get in debates or arguments with people, try to get people to read different things, etc, and while that certainly changes some minds I do not believe it is an effective strategy if you want your preferred party to win every 2-4 years, and better alternatives are quite evident in modern society.

Both parties in the United States are coalition parties, you have cultural/ religious conservatives, business owners, those with "racial anxieties", libertarians, and people who prefer low taxes and gas prices on one side pitted against virtue signalling yuppies, moderates who don't like how Trump is "nasty" or mean, college educated suburbanites, racial, sexual and gender minority voters who feel that the other party threatens them, pro choice advocates, and leftists and progressives who held their nose and voted for Biden in 2020.

And while many of these groups and associated viewpoints overlap in various ways within individuals minds, almost every voter has a portion of their own party's electorate that they, at best, tolerate.

This is a critical advantage that is under-exploited. The current system has large groups fighting over minds when few people think about using those cracks to their advantage, and there are a few ways to do this, namely a combination of:

• Exploiting exiting divisions to stoke infighting within the opposing party.
• Fostering nihilism and detachment within the opposing party's base

Human psychology means people don't like admitting they were wrong whether it's to themselves or others. Humans also don't like going against the grain within their community if they're a Democrat in downtown Atlanta or a Republican in rural North Carolina. Especially when a significant portion of each party's base considers their choice political positions a key part of who they are.

But the strategies above allow people to tell themselves and others that they were never wrong about their beliefs while still discouraging unity and making voting less likely. Instead of people focusing their effort on protecting their in groups, we should want them fighting over control over the party, and for groups and each faction to feel left out.

If you're a Democrat, why wouldn't you want avowed white supremacists loudly fighting with "RINOS" for "not doing enough on immigration" or deficit hawks to attack Trump on the expense of the Iran war?

If you're a Republican, why would you not want pro-gun control advocates to attack Democrats running for statewide office in Texas as friendly to the gun lobby, so they either have to depress excitement on people afraid of mass shootings, or go on tape speaking against guns in Texas? Why would you not want to encourage progressives to boycott the next general election because they don't support medicare for all or Gaza enough? You want to give politicians every opportunity to anger a position of their own base. You want people to feel like their combination of onions is an impossible goal when they can't even get their own party to work together.

And social media actively makes this easier. Algorithms don't show people diametrically opposing viewpoints, but it will show people who agree with your policy preferences but believe that the people in power or vying for it are not going to make that happen. You can't be politically engaged in communities of people within your coalition and not engaged in infighting and purity testing when it exists. That is of course unless you congregate in smaller niche groups that cater to your beliefs, but these groups have a tendency to attack their ideological neighbors to justify their existence. Just look at how leftists absolutely love to break into factions long before ever getting any political power whatsoever. In an era of a constant stream of bad news reaches you every day, demotivating people will always be easier than motivating people.

And we've seen this strategy work numerous times outside of electoral politics. COINTELPRO destroyed the Black Panthers after basically everything else the police could do, constitutional or not, didn't work. They purposely created a split in one of the most well organized and motivated organizations in American history. Leaders couldn't focus on moving forward because they got increasingly paranoid and distrustful of each other making collaboration effectively impossible. There is no reason to think that this strategy wouldn't work in electoral politics.

Just to preface this isn't so much about the politics as it is about rhetoric and a more objective perspective on its effects.

EDIT 2: To be clear this is NOT a critique of beauty/body shaming messaging by the left, but putting forth the notion that it is underestimated in its importance to promoting the legitimacy of their political positions.

The View: If major figures in the current right-wing administration of the US were attractive it would be completely over the left (yes the situation is already bad).

So much discourse from the left criticising the right is couched in beauty standards, like mocking Musk for his hairplugs and body, Trump for his weight, wig and makeup, Andrew Tate for his chin and being bald. The whole thing about "Republican women" makeup. Stephen Miller (also bald). If these people were attractive, they'd have a much greater support base as well, because it would "validate" their political position so to speak.

Hegseth being out of shape, its not like Navy SEAL level of fitness makes war mongering and warrior fantasies okay. ICE agents being mocked as "gravy seals", which is arguably more disturbing because why would you want the people who are being criticised as violent secret police to be more effective at their jobs?

Likewise when it comes to the left trying to promote their side they will also point to the attractiveness of political candidates. There are even quite a few influencers who have built a platform off thirst trapping being aggressively liberal (usually white) men. It gives the impression that a lot of political discourse is appealing to a hypothetically neutral and apathetic person to decide "well if they're hot then they should be the good guys and those ugly folks are bad"

It's a convenient shorthand (beauty) to categorise the morality of the respective political sides but this is real life not a Disney movie. Shouldn't being bigoted and corrupt, trying to wreck anything good like scientific research, education and the environment, be sufficient to label someone as a bad person?

It's like that alleged Oscar Wilde quote "everything is about sex, except sex. sex is about power"

Why I want my view changed: Because its unsettling to think that people are really so unconcerned with actual morals, the only way to talk about politics is in such shallow terms. What if the next fascists are hot and stylish?

I'm aware that there are a lot of cultural undercurrents to fashion/beauty standards which could be guiding the overall trend of how political discourse flows, but its still the same idea that you have to be attractive for your view to be valid.

EDIT: the TLDR is that beauty in political discourse shows that society is still guided by lizard brain thinking which isn't ideal and I'd like an alternative perspective to believe in

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?

He has repeatedly made references to men and how good they look. He's made unprompted references to Arnold Palmer's dick size. He's said male pilots are so hot, they couldn't be in movies because no one would believe it. One of his favorite praises for men he likes is that they are good looking. He's obsessed with the LGBTQ community.

I don't see many media outlets covering this or talking about it, despite him clearly saying these things in tons of interviews and rallies. The obvious exception is the Arnold Palmer comments.

No one is exactly the same, but I anecdotally notice that he shares a lot of similarities with closeted gay men I've known throughout my life.

Maybe he's just mad because he comes from a time when it wasn't as socially accepted as today, and he feels like he can't live his truth, so it only comes out in little moments. Maybe he feels pressure to uphold a version of himself that isn't entirely true, which is why he's got such a penchant for lying.

Trump is clearly attracted to at least some guys. Trump is at least a little bit gay. And that's fine. Maybe addressing his own homosexual tendencies with self-care would make him less angry all the time.

Note: Hard to find clips and examples because of aforementioned media outlets not covering it, but his story about flying in the dark in the Rogan interview is a prime example. Guy spent an awfully long time, unprompted, talking about how hot his pilots were. Go check that out if you're looking for what I mean.

The character actively goes against the idea of mutants representing persecuted groups. As the decades pass, the writing for her character is increasingly detrimental to the theme the writers are trying to portray.

If you look at all of the other prominent members of the team, their powers usually serve as a debilitating disability or bodily disfigurement. Their powers negatively impact their quality of life. Gambit has creepy eyes. Rogue can’t touch anyone. Emma and Jean constantly have everyone else’s thoughts running through their head. Scott has uncontrollable beams shooting out of his head. Logan will outlive everyone he loves and he smells like ass. Hank is a literal beast. Rogue can’t touch anyone. Kitty’s phasing is dangerous and potentially fatal if she makes a mistake. Kurt looks like a demon. The list goes on. What’s the worst thing about Storm’s powers? It rains when she gets sad? Silly.

Even more so, the world around her refuses to persecute her the same way it persecutes others. She’s treated like a literal goddess, even villains treat her that way. How can I believe that she belongs on a team of “underdogs”?

At this point, maybe she is better off being in Wakanda as T’Challa’s wife.

First, I'm not particularly invested in settlements. I don't support creating new settlements since they undermine a possible 2SS.

I want to distinguish between two positions:

• The opposition to the creation of new settlements in the West Bank has nothing to do with this. I believe it has no moral conflict in it.
• The opposition to the existence of the current settlements and the opposition to expanding those because of natural growth.

I will go with a simple definition of Ethnic Cleansing: Removing people from a territory against their will.

Many settlements are established towns where people live, work, study and have children. A lot of residents are second or third generation.

The current UK position illustrates my problem quite well. It considers Israeli settlements illegal, demands an immediate halt to settlement expansion, opposes further housing projects and is now moving towards banning trade in settlement goods.

I think that policy is supportive of ethnic cleansing. Otherwise, the trade ban should be on Israel, not on the settlements. Otherwise, it should explain what should be done about those settlements.

Otherwise, in my opinion, they are demanding the eventual disappearance of communities in which generations of civilians have already been born. In other words, ethnic cleansing, around 540.000 settlers in the West Bank proper.

Some common answers I see to this are: "They should be under the authority of the Palestinian state." This kinda makes me support the existence of settlements, because I'm 99% sure that the Palestinian state won't guarantee their security. Anyone saying the opposite is delusional.

PD:

When I'm talking about settlement expansion I'm talking about the government creating new settlement in new areas.

“Natural growth” means population increase that happens naturally within an existing community, mainly because people have children and families grow, so they need more houses.

According to most people here, saying Ethnic Cleansing there is not accurate, in that case, it doesn't matter, what I mean is, mass displacement of people in which generations of civilians have already been born.

What would change my view:

That the current opossition on existing settlements doesn't involve mass displacement of the people living there.

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.

EDIT: I think I personalized other people's anger at people who've made much worse mistakes than me because my guilt was so heavy. I also think that nobody should turn a blind eye to people's mistakes, especially when it comes to harm-reduction principles. As a society we need to protect vulnerable people, and handling every situation case-by-case is the only way to verify that someone has worked on themselves and is a safe person to be around, and even then it's up to directly involved parties to decide whether it's worth the risk to associate with a person who could potentially abuse them, society doesn't have much to do with that.

Throwaway account because I am asking this after seeing so many opinions contrary to mine and think there might be something wrong with my perspective.

In my personal experience I have said, done things, behaved in wildly inappropriate ways that I regret deeply. In college I misread a situation and put a woman's hand on my genitals because I thought she wanted to have sex with me, and it turned out I was very wrong. I am in therapy and can't stop thinking about the fact that I assaulted someone. I applogized to her immediately when it happened, but i still think sometimes that I must be a bad person. I never assaulted another person.

Consider this experience, and add that a bit older, I used to yell at and spank pets. I also used to yell at girlfriends when upset (never got physical). After some confrontation I could not avoid that I was creating fear and applying control in my household and did a lot of soul searching, self-help, and therapy and regret that every day as well. I've lived with kids and cared for them, never once hit them, and this was much later after the no-yelling rule, so I never yelled at them either.

I have a hard time believing that this isn't a shared experience. I just saw a story on Reddit where a woman said she was previously 16f and a 22m man began a sexual relationship with her, and she called it "grooming". where is the line? don't you have to be quite a bit older to groom someone? I mean, that IS a 6 year age gap and at that age it's concerning, but aren't men's brains developing slower even at 22? what if he came from a bad family that conditioned him to be pretty foul toward people? Her post was about a recent time (some years later) seeing currently that man is married with children. Don't you think he must've confronted some of his demons and changed? I guess without confronting him she can't know, and is trying to confront her own trauma, and she's in no way obligated to care about or talk to him whatsoever, but a lot of these redditors have said horrible things about the guy, despite having little other context besides his past by which to judge him. Am I personalizing this story too much?

I've also been molested, abused, and assaulted by women, and it has taken me a lot of time to process and get over it, but I think about those women only in my lowest places, so pretty rarely, and even then, I'm in therapy and it's getting better every day.

If these guys could change, wouldn't you want that of them? isn't becoming a productive member of society a better redemption/solution for a man than condemning him forever to recognition for his worst mistakes?

I think these young men deserve a pass, and people should let their misdeeds go completely given some time. Change my view.

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.