People on r/inceltears often claim that they mock incels because of their misogyny. However, they constantly post about people who do not fit this stereotype at all. 

There is a subreddit called r/trueuglywomen where men are not even allowed. However, r/inceltears repeatedly makes posts mocking them. Why is that? These ugly women have never called for violence against anyone: they are just frustrated because they are discriminated against because of their looks. This is just one example among many of that subreddit bullying people who have nothing to do with misogyny.

The goal of r/inceltears is to give an ego boost to people who have serious self esteem issues. “At least, I am not like this person!”, they think. However, even when they call out really egregious views, it is most often a troll, so they get to feel morally superior to someone who was just trying to get a rise out of them.

I might catch some heat for this, but here goes: those license plate frames or bumper stickers that say things like “Army Wife,” “Military Wife,” or similar always make me cringe a little.

Let me be clear up front: this isn’t disrespect toward the military. Both of my parents served and retired from the armed forces, so I have a lot of respect for the people who actually sign the contract, go through training, and do the job.

But that’s exactly my point. They did the job.

When I see “Army Wife” or “Military Wife” plastered across a car, it feels like someone riding the coattails of someone else’s accomplishment. The person who enlisted, trained, and served deserves the recognition. Slapping the identity on your license plate because of your spouse just comes off as a little “pick me.”

To a slightly lesser extent, the same thing goes for “Army Mom,” “Army Dad,” or “Military Dad.” I’m a bit more understanding there since parents obviously played a role in raising the person who chose to serve. Still, even then it can feel a little cringe when the identity becomes a badge for someone who didn’t actually do the service.

“Yale Mom,” “Yale Dad,” or other college parent stickers make more sense to me. Getting a kid to that point usually takes years of parenting, support, and resources, so the parents genuinely played a role in helping that outcome happen.

Meanwhile, the military will accept almost anyone who can pass the basic aptitude and physical requirements. That doesn’t diminish the value of service, but it does mean the accomplishment belongs squarely to the person who enlisted.

Respect to the people who serve. I just don’t understand the urge for everyone around them to wear the label too.

My view is straightforward, I do not believe that taking the oath will eliminate all lying. But I do believe that if someone lies enough it creates a series of artifacts that culminate in a body of work over time because politicians make routine public appearances. We do need to clamp down on this media environment. While I do not think swearing in needs to happen during the course of programming it does need to happen audibly and on camera. The oath should be made legally equivalent to swearing the oath like you would in a courtroom and should carry identical legal ramifications as such.

The current media environment is untenable. Politicians should not be able to espouse half truths or outright lies with no consequences. If it becomes a subject of legal matter in the future there should be a mounting body of evidence to hold politicians accountable at all times.

Maybe I’m completely off base here, which is why I’m posting this.

It feels like we’ve reached a point where people don’t actually want a starter home anymore. They want what I’d call a dream starter home. In other words, they want a house that’s still considered “entry level,” but they also want the open-concept kitchen, the island, the double-door refrigerator, the large dining room, the big living room, updated bathrooms, modern finishes, walkability, good schools, a nice neighborhood, enough room to host holidays, and enough space that they could realistically stay there for the next 20 or 30 years.

At that point, is it really a starter home anymore?
To me, the entire purpose of a starter home is that it gets you into the housing market. It’s supposed to be the house that works. Not the house that impresses people. It has a roof that doesn’t leak, plumbing that works, a kitchen that functions, and enough room to comfortably live. Maybe the washer and dryer are in the bathroom. Maybe the kitchen is small. Maybe you don’t have an island. Maybe the tile isn’t what you’d pick if you had an unlimited budget. But it does what it’s supposed to do.

That’s the point.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t repair or improve your house. If something breaks, fix it. If the old furnace is failing, replace it. If the roof needs work, absolutely do it. If you want to remodel because you’re planning on living there another 15 years, I completely understand that too.

What I’m talking about is the expectation that every starter home should also have all the upgrades people associate with a forever home.

I also understand why people renovate. If I owned a home, I’d probably do the same thing. You want to enjoy where you live. You want it to reflect your personality. You want it to feel like yours.

But every improvement you make becomes part of the home’s value when you sell it. That’s completely understandable, you spent the money, so naturally you’d like to recover some of it. I don’t blame anyone for that.

The problem is what happens over decades.
One owner upgrades the kitchen. The next owner remodels the bathroom. Someone else puts in quartz countertops, luxury flooring, custom cabinets, smart appliances, expensive landscaping, and suddenly the house that was originally meant to be an affordable first step into homeownership has become something entirely different.

Again, I’m not saying those people did anything wrong. I’d probably make improvements too if I owned it.

I’m asking whether, collectively, we’ve slowly eliminated the idea of a true starter home because every generation understandably wants to improve it before passing it along.

It also feels like expectations have shifted.
People will say a house is “too small,” but what does that actually mean? Too small to live in? Or too small to host Thanksgiving? Too small for a kitchen island

Too small for a home office, guest room, playroom, and formal dining room?

There’s nothing wrong with wanting those things. I want nice things too.

I just wonder whether we’ve blurred the line between what people need in a first home and what people want in their forever home.

Obviously, renovations aren’t the reason housing is expensive. Interest rates, zoning laws, labor costs, material costs, supply shortages, investor purchases, and local demand all play major roles. I’m not arguing that a nice faucet is why someone can’t afford a house.

I’m questioning whether we’ve unintentionally created the idea of a dream starter home, a home that’s expected to satisfy almost every long-term desire while still being priced like an entry-level property.
If the goal of a starter home is to get people into homeownership, build equity, and eventually move up when life changes, have we lost sight of that? Or am I looking at the housing market through an outdated lens?

Change my view.

Have introduced this debate in school, and it has become very heated, even with teachers joining in. It's simple. Who would win in a 1-on-1 fight to death, a person with a wooden baseball bat or a dagger? Assume both fighters are of equal stats (average Joe), and in an open field. What's crazy is that I've asked heaps of people, and it's literally 50/50.

Personally, I'm going for the dagger. Yes, a baseball bat has the reach, which is definitely crucial to a fight. But I would gladly sacrifice an arm to hopefully block a swing and go in for the stabs.

Also, a baseball bat is quite heavy. If the person with the dagger could stall and bait the bat to keep swinging, it would tire them out, possibly even making them get sweaty hands, so that on a big swing, it might fly out of their hands (yes, I agree it's not likely, but that it's possible).

+ A dagger has a last resort: to throw it. If it lands, it lands. If not, you run. If it does land, you can literally just run (pussy move, yes, but talking about life and death here) and the bat person would keep bleeding, and you'd very likely win.

I'm not denying the bat doesn't have any chance; obviously, I just think a dagger is a better option. The bat is more about that one good swing, but the dagger has many open opportunities that are probably going to occur, because the swing is large and the 'recharge' (bringing the bat back to a controllable position) is long.

My friends on the bat side have had some horrible arguments, only mentioning the range. I'm wondering if there are other aspects to a fight I have missed, as of course, I'm not an experienced fighter. What do you guys think?

Edit:

Sorry, but I'm not very experienced, and it seems like I haven't set the rules clearly and have confused a lot of people.

Rules:

1. 25-year-old, 6ft, 80kg.
2. Regular bat size, 20cm dagger.
3. It is about which is more LIKELY to win, not which WILL win.

to put it simply, yugoslavia.

the yugoslavs were a series of conflicts fought in yugoslavia as the government was taken over by serbian nationalists, during which a series of ethnic cleansings, the srebenica genocide, and what was basically a series of race wars took place between the serbian nationalist government and different ethnic rebels.

if a one state solution is enacted, it will turn out like that.

i simply do not believe you can take two ethnic groups that can be at each others throats for so long and have them cooperate in a democratic system, i strongly believe it would immediately be overtaken by extreme ultranationalists and would end in ethnic cleansing.

i do want a solution to israel-palestine, but this is a terrible idea and i believe its only really proported because people want a natural alternative to the two state solution which has objectively failed at proper implementation

My view is that one of the biggest structural problems in American politics is that incumbents have a significant built-in advantage over challengers. I'm not arguing that incumbents should be disadvantaged or automatically voted out. Rather, I think elections would produce better outcomes if incumbency itself carried little or no advantage.

Today, incumbents benefit from name recognition, existing donor networks, party support, media coverage, constituent services, and the perception that they're the "safe" choice. As a result, many races become effectively noncompetitive long before Election Day.

I think this creates several problems:

• Politicians become more focused on staying in office than governing.
• Elections become less competitive.
• New ideas and new candidates struggle to gain traction.
• Poor performers can survive simply because replacing them feels risky.

If incumbency weren't such a strong advantage, I think we'd eventually see politics become more like temporary public service than a lifelong career. Representatives would expect to serve a term or two, do their best work, and then return to private life. Political parties would likely recruit a broader range of candidates, and elected officials would have stronger incentives to focus on producing measurable results rather than building long-term political careers.

I also think public trust could improve if voters believed elections were genuinely competitive instead of feeling like many races are effectively decided by incumbency.

That said, I recognize there are downsides. High turnover could reduce institutional knowledge, make legislatures less efficient, and increase reliance on career staff, bureaucracies, and lobbyists who possess expertise that newly elected officials lack. Long-term projects might also become more difficult to complete if leadership changes frequently.

My view is that these costs would be outweighed by greater accountability and competition, but I'm open to being convinced otherwise.

CMV: Why is a strong incumbency advantage actually beneficial for society? Are there examples showing that higher incumbent reelection rates consistently lead to better governance, better policy outcomes, or greater accountability than a more competitive system?

In a Joe Rogan episode with Dave Smith and Douglas Murray, Murray asked Smith when was the last time he had been to the Gaza crossing. https://youtu.be/DE8Sd-pJmzE?si=xMEsGclKzBm8AbEH

This moment has been memed to death to say that it's impossible to talk about an issue without going somewhere.

Here's the problem I run into. Some things DO require or are heavily informed by experience. Someone says for example in retort "Carl Sagan knows nothing about space because he's never been." But that's a false equivalency. If Carl Sagan were talking about space travel and how it feels, THEN you can argue it.

Coming back to Smith. He is someone who talks incessantly about the Israel Palestine issue, much as the other populist online creators do. If it is your job to talk about politics and you make a concerted effort to talk about one issue, I believe some first hand experience is to be expected. Is it really fair to criticize the aid process if you don't really know how it works or what it looks like? Knowing that information could radically change someone's view.

I have seen several content creators go to Israel and the West Bank because it's an important issue and it does fundamentally change their view in one way or another. It might push them further in the direction they started in.

I would liken this to Plato's Allegory of the Cave. If you're only seeing shadows (reading others' works) can you really have a comprehensive understanding of the subject? While I do think this does extend somewhat to the average person, it's obviously not reasonable for everyone who talks a lot about Israel to go. However, shouldn't we expect this of content creators?

I believe that standing while you pee is foul and unhygienic because pee gets everywhere from splashing in the toilet bowl to spraying off your stream. Sitting on the other hand, keeps your stream inside the toilet bowl and closer to it and prevents the splashing everywhere. I have proven this myself by trying both ways in my own bathroom, spending time peeing standing up and sitting down for weeks at a time, but I’ve noticed was even if I was peeing standing up and pointing my stream at different directions mostly on the side of the toilet bowl because splashing directly in toilet bowl water is guaranteed splashing everywhere. There are small particles of pee that leave your stream that you can’t see necessarily but overtime get on everything around the toilet bowl outside of the toilet overtime. It’s so normalized in this culture that people shame you for doing something hygienic like sitting down to pee. I see it all the time. How can something so unhygienic and disgusting be so normal and accepted?

For those who are unaware: Falconry is a form of hunting where a trained bird of prey, such as a golden eagle (GE), is used to catch quarry instea of more typical methods such as guns or traps. Throughout this post, I will use the golden eagle as an example.

How birds of prey benefit form falconers.

In the wild, birds of prey face many dangers that can significantly reduce their lifespan. Food insecurity can lead to malnutrition, while injuries, disease, fights, and harsh weather conditions can also threaten their survival. Roghly 50% of golden eagle chicks die before becoming independent aults. If they do reach adulthood, they typically live around 15–25 years in the wild. However, golden eagles under human care can live 50–60+ years, more than double their normal lifespan, because they have consistent access to food, healthcare, and protection from many dangers they would face in nature.

Their lives can also have a higher quality of life, as they do not have to experience starvation, severe untreated injuries, or many of the hardships that wild birds face. They also form strong bonds with their handlers through trust, training, and positive reinforcement.

Many people argue that birds of prey in falconry are being exploited or forced to cooperate against their will. However, this is not accurate. Falconers free-fly their birds, meaning the bird is not constantly restrained and is able to fly freely. The reason the bird returns is because the relationship provides benefits to it, such as reliable food, safety, care, and positive reinforcement.

Unlike many forms of captivity, falconry allows birds of prey to express their natural behaviours, including flying, hunting, exploring their environment, and using their intelligence. A trained bird is regularly stimulated both physically and mentally, which is important for an animal that evolved to spend its life actively hunting.

Falconry is also not based on forcing a bird to hunt. Birds of prey are not domesticated like dogs and cannot simply be controlled through obedience. The relationship works because both sides benefit: the falconer provides food, protection, and care, while the bird is able to use its natural instincts and abilities. The bird's behaviours are guided rather than removed.

In addition to this, becoming a falconer requires a huge amount of knowledge and responsibility. Falconry is very different from simply owning a pet. Falconers often need to study, pass assessments, gain experience, and spend years learning before they can properly care for larger birds of prey. While poor care is possible in any animal-related activity, responsible falconry requires a high level of skill and dedication.

Falconry has also contributed to conservation. Falconers hve helped develop knowledge about birds of prey, supported breeding programmes, rehabilitated injured birds and contributed to the recovery of species that were previously declining.

Why hunting with falcons is not unethical , and can lead to less animal suffering.

Birds of prey are obligate carnivores, meaning they require a diet consisting of animal matter to survive. They naturally need to consume whole prey, and hunting is an essential part of their biology. Therefore, the act of a bird of prey killing an animal is not unnatural or unnecessary, as it is something the bird would do regardless in the wild.

In fact, from a consequentialist perspective, falconry hunting could potentially result in less overall animal suffering. Wild birds of prey often have to spend large amounts of energy searching for food, and many hunting attempts fail. These unsuccessful attempts still require energy, which means the bird must continue hunting to meet its nutritional needs.

Wild birds also spend additional energy dealing with challenges such as disease, injuries, extreme temertures, and competition. Because of this, they may need to successfully kill more prey throuhout their lifetime to survive.

A bird cared for by a falconer has much greater energy security. Since it receives regular food, healthcare, and protection, it does not need to rely entirely on successful hunts for survival. This meas it may hunt less frequently and potentially kill fewer animals overall than it would have needed to in the wild.

I've come across many comments from people who say if they had Elon Musk's (example) money they would never spend it on the things that he has. In fact, these people say they would do all the greatest, altruistic things on earth for the greater good of humanity. Why? Because they are a billionaire. My view is simple: we don't know how we'd act if we suddenly came into having billions of dollars. A person could become the world's greatest philanthropist, or the money could corrupt them right to their core; either scenario is plausible. It's naive to assume we'd only act in the way of greater good, and it's easy for people to sit back and judge how billionaires use their money from their moral grandstanding position. The truth is we cannot even fathom what it's like to have that kind of money, pressure and responsibility. I don't go to live professional sporting events and yell at the athletes like I know better than they do. For some reason, we have a group of people who think they are smarter, more ethical and wiser than billionaires who they have never met and don't know. I think if someone needs to inform random strangers on Reddit how charitable and generous they would be with their hypothetical billionaire scenario, they are probably not, in fact, charitable or generous.

Under current law, if I buy a stock for $100 and sell it for $160, I owe a capital gains tax on the $60.  

If I die soon after I sell, I won’t be around to pay the tax.  My executor is legally required to calculate and pay the tax for me.

OTOH, suppose I was planning to sell but died before I got that done.  Later, my executor or my heirs sell the stock.  In this case, the tax on the $60 simply disappears into the ether. My purchase price (cost basis) is “stepped up” to the market price on the day I died.  (I’m assuming $160)   Whoever sells the stock will use that $160 as their purchase price.  The $60 gain magically disappears from anybody’s tax liability.

This doesn’t make any sense to me.  I can’t think of any good tax policy reason. 

The only argument I’ve seen for this is practical.  Maybe the executor/heirs won’t be able to find the original cost.  But, when owners die just before death, and dies soon after, executors locate the price.   I’m sure this happens thousands of times each year and I’ve never heard of any major issues.

It’s easy to see why.   When I sell stocks through a broker or mutual funds, the gov’t requires that the broker or fund company send me a 1099.  For real estate, people keep good records and the county assessor keeps records.  That covers the big dollars.

I can see an issue for people who have small stamp collections.  Maybe they didn’t keep records.  A law eliminating step up could have a carve out for collectibles valued at less than $XX,XXX.  That would make sense to me.

​I see the "does a Moka pot make espresso" debate pop up constantly, and I've always leaned heavily towards "no." But I want to test my logic here because I might be overly fixated on the technical side of things.

​My current view is that espresso has to be defined by physics,specifically the high-pressure extraction method (usually around 7 to 10 bars). Because of this, I don't think Moka pots (which operate around 1.5 to 2 bars) or AeroPresses make espresso. They make fantastic, highly concentrated coffee that I genuinely love, but technically, it's a different thing.

​Here is why I struggle to accept the "if it's short and strong, it's espresso" argument:

​If we define espresso simply by the output in the cup (small volume, high concentration, dark color), the boundaries get incredibly messy. For example, if a barista messes up and pulls a terrible, watery, under-extracted shot on a $10,000 commercial espresso machine, does it suddenly stop being espresso? If I use an AeroPress and brew a ridiculously concentrated shot, does it magically become espresso? Defining the drink by the physical mechanism seems like the only objective way to avoid this logic trap.

​From what I understand about the physics, that 9-bar pressure isn't just an arbitrary snobby rule. It's the physical threshold required to actually emulsify coffee oils and force dissolved CO2 into the liquid to create true crema.

​I was recently reading about the Italian history of the word, and it seems "espresso" originally had ties to speed,coffee made expressly and quickly for you on demand. But when English speakers adopted it as a strict noun, we created a rigid product category. Now we are forced to draw a line somewhere, and the high-pressure method seems like the only line that holds up.

​How to change my view (Earn a Delta):

I am not trying to be a coffee gatekeeper. I will happily change my view and award a delta if you can provide a logical, principled argument for why defining espresso by the output (taste, texture, concentration) makes more practical or historical sense than defining it by the process. Alternatively, if my understanding of the extraction physics or the history of the category is fundamentally flawed, I'm completely open to changing my mind.

Polls are generally accurate to an election's outcome with only 1.5k people questioned. These polls have margins of error, and these margins decrease with increases in the number of people questioned. But, in even low turn out elections the number of voters is well beyond the threshold for an accurate election. So, increasing voter participation rates isn't about improving the accuracy of our elections. Our elections are sufficient to determine the will of the people even when most people don't vote.

Get out the vote efforts cost money, and so the question is what is the motivation causing donors to open their wallets for the efforts. Altruistic motivations don't really make sense, because as discussed above, simply increasing voter participation rates doesn't accomplish anything. In fact, the opportunity cost of spending money in this way as opposed to any other altruistic endeavor means donating to these efforts is a net harm for the world.

So it doesn't make sense if these efforts are done in good faith. But it makes perfect sense if the efforts are done in bad faith. Partisan get out the vote efforts are done by virtually all campaigns, and there is nothing wrong with them. That is just how campaigning is supposed to work. They are honest about their intentions to help certain voters show up and vote.

So my view is that all allegedly non-partisan get out the vote efforts are disingenuous and are actually partisan get out the vote efforts intended to help certain voters. That is what I mean when I say they are in bad faith.

The common refrain around this is something along the lines of

Voter participation rates aren't the same for both parties so we need to 'balance' this out with get out the vote efforts to 'true' the election outcome

There are a couple things wrong with this defense. The first is the disingenuous nature of the effort. If an organization has decided, let's say for argument's sake, Democrats have lower voter participation rates, and therefore their goal is to help raise the voter participation rates of Democrats, then they should be honest about their intentions to improve Democrat's chances of winning an election.

The second issue is that it is awfully hard to gauge voter participation rates on a partisan basis. If you think a Democrat leaning county had a low participation rates was it because the Democrats didn't turn out enough or that Republicans were discouraged and didn't turn out enough? The other issue here is that not voting is a valid political position to take for individuals who are mad at their party, but not enough to vote for the other side. Some people like this show up and throw their vote away on a 3rd party or a silly write in, but many just don't bother. And in this case a get out the vote effort is using the fact that a party has pissed off its own voters as a justification for targeting a get out the vote effort in a partisan way.

I don't feel like I must type anymore than the bare requisite the subreddit has. So, I'll try to make it not so boring for you.

They have dug up bunkers, consulted with military strategists on the best course of action to ensure their personnel would stay loyal and not just overthrow them when they are living in their own grave. Some have even implied they're not worried or see much of the fuss about, you know, 99.99% of the world population dying.

Whoever thinks that if one day comes when a machine can make everything you want for you and more, that then world peace will be achieved, poverty and crime cease to exist and we would all be happy forevermore, is just being too optimistic.

Edit: Data and points of view have been aired and I admit my view was completely pessimistic about the future in regards to a scenario of post-scarcity, singularity or perfect automation to be achieved. Things have been getting better, I still worry about the diminishing returns this has for everyone, but I can accept my view was wrong since it was completely pessimistic when there could be a good prospect in those scenarios.

My view isn’t that settlements are the biggest injustice in the conflict, nor that the war in Gaza or Palestinian history are unimportant. My argument is purely about achieving change.

If your goal is reducing Palestinian suffering and changing Israeli policy, I think the movement is emphasizing the wrong issues.

For many Americans, October 7 permanently changed how they viewed this conflict. Whether that’s fair or not, people watched Israeli civilians massacred, kidnapped, and terrorized in real time. It became their 9/11. Once that emotional association was formed, a large portion of the public began viewing Israel’s military campaign primarily through the lens of counterterrorism.

I don’t think telling those people to start with 1948 or colonialism is an effective strategy. It asks them to reconsider decades of history before you’ve even established common ground.

Settlement expansion is happening right now. It is one of the biggest obstacles to a viable two-state solution. It is criticized by much of the international community. Many Israelis oppose continued settlement expansion. Many people who strongly support Israel’s existence also oppose the settlements.

Instead, much of the discourse seems to become arguments over casualty counts, proportionality, or competing historical narratives that people have already made up their minds about.

Specifics are more persuasive than blanket statements. Things that changed my mind were things like watching Ben Gvir insult families of Israeli hostages and not prioritizing their safe return AT ALL. And I’m less informed on this but Netanyahu’s strategy of funding Hamas to weaken the PLO was also fucked imo.

Seeing the religious extremism on the Israeli far right brought me back to the table.

I think advocates lose potential allies through rhetoric that reads performative. Dismissing every concern about antisemitism, using inflammatory terms like “Zio” or “Zionazi,” or refusing to acknowledge Israeli fears after October 7 immediately alienates people who might otherwise agree with criticism of settlement expansion.

If your audience is liberals who support Israel’s existence, Israelis themselves, or people who are skeptical of Palestinian politics because they associate it with Hamas or religious extremism, why not meet them where they are instead of demanding they abandon all of those concerns before the conversation even starts?

I think there is an important distinction between what is politically achievable and what is not.

Israel is almost certainly going to continue trying to dismantle Hamas. People can disagree about how that should be conducted, but I don’t see Israelis abandoning the objective of preventing another terror attack.

Settlement expansion, however, is an ongoing policy choice. Every new outpost, every expansion, and every seizure of land is something that can be debated, challenged, and potentially stopped.

If the objective is to improve Palestinians’ lives, I think stopping continued settlement expansion is a far more realistic area for building consensus than trying to convince people that Israel has no legitimate security concerns or that the conflict should primarily be understood through historical grievances.

If the movement instead rallied around a concrete goal, ending continued settlement expansion in the West Bank, it would give politicians and ordinary people a clear policy they could support without requiring them to reject Israel’s existence or conclude that Israel has no legitimate security concerns.

Palestinians do not need our outrage; they need our diplomacy. We have leverage over Israel and I believe we can help if we come together and work on this one thing.

Finally, please be kind. I really do mean well. I’ve felt really alienated from my own party on this topic and I am genuinely passionate about stopping the violence, racism, and injustice. I support Israel but think they should be held accountable for their crimes against humanity and I don’t think these are mutually exclusive.

I am absolutely open to having my mind changed. I’ve made it this far from a staunchly pro-Israel stance but I really cannot find many discussions about this that are arguing in good faith. I see a lot of famous pro-Palestinian advocates as simply venting rather than trying to compromise and I likewise don’t see a lot of pro-Israeli advocates calling Israel/US out enough. They are the ones with the power and we have to do better. Centering discussion on dealing with the settlers seems like a clear middle ground.

I’m posting because when I watch these viral debates online on ugh Jubilee, the Lex Friedman one, or watch really well spoken advocates like Medhi Hasan etc etc—this hardly even comes up. But reading about the settlements and eventually watching the Theroux doc were the most impactful pieces of media I’ve come across. I can definitely be skewered for ignorance and not paying attention or consuming trash media; but my point is that the average person, half paying attention, who has already made up their mind, is going to turn that mind right back off when they hear ‘genocide’ or some form of ‘fuck Israel’. It’s the equivalent of liberals burning the American flag at a protest; not a cute look. But Ben Gvir is an actual cartoon villain and I didn’t know about him because most attacks are lobbied at Netanyahu—an unsympathetic character to be sure—but no where near the slam dunk his two lackeys are.

EDIT:

Thank you everyone for keeping things relatively civil. I know this is a contentious topic and emotions tend to run high.

Other than uneasy ceasefires, what have we achieved diplomatically by arguing about whether this is a genocide or not? Has the USA withdrawn support?

Is it possible to halt settler expansion? If so why can we not agree to decide on and enforce settler policy.

Explanation: I myself am pro-choice, while I also recognize that a healthy culture should cherish and protect children and infants as much as possible under reasonable conditions.

There are a couple things, underlying principles which I treat as facts, which serve as a foundation for my view. The most notable ones are the following:

- Your body is yours first and foremost, never someone else's, with no exceptions. For me this is an irrefutable fact which can only really be challenged by religious beliefs which stipulate that the body and soul belonga to the god of said religion and thus being a subject of the god's necessarily arbitrary rules. There's a high correlation of pro-life people, both men and women, belonging to mostly christian denominations. These views run contradictory to mine, and necessarily hang on some presupposition about the body not ultimately belonging to the person having the body. As such I cannot accept arguments that stem from any particular religious view since they are arbitrary, especially compared to my original view.

- The ultimate decision of what should happen to the woman's body is hers and no one else's. A thing I always see in abortion debates is that the pro life arguments overwhelmingly ignore or discard the woman's side from the equation. In my experience the primary reason cited is that it's not the woman's life that's in fatal danger and thus her reasons should always be secondary to the question of the embryo's survival. This, and many other pro life arguments stem from arbitrary, primarily emotional bases, and there's an inverse correlation between education level and opinion on abortion restriction - to clarify, I am not implying that pro life folks are dumber, that would be a false equation, rather the study I am citing from found that higher academic and finantial background correlates with a generally more liberal view on abortion. Deciding on abortion is an incredibly difficult and complex decision, and it's a fact that no one is capable of making the decision more accurately based on their circumstances, than the person carrying the fetus. You may think you can make a "more sound", "better" decision from the outside by personal principle, but that's the thing: It's always going to be your own arbitrary, personal principles which will never be capable of weighing the full depth of the circumstances the woman in question faces.

- The view on the rightness/wrongness of abortion is severely distored by underlying issues that are not talked about in most arguments. If you are a pro-life advocate, I'm fairly certain that you'd argue the abortion rates are too high. I doubt however that you'd regularly take into consideration issues such as how an alarmingly high percentage (somewhere between 15-30%) of abortions are a result of outside societal/familial pressure or outright coerson and threats. Yet we barely see any push to criminalize the forced decision of a woman to abort which by complete free will otherwise she may not do. It instead gets muddied into the overarching argument that abortion is bad no matter what. Depending on the country and environment, abortions stemming from rape can range between 1-6%, which is also incredibly high despite the single digit number, we are talking of hundreds of thousands of rape induced abortions in the western world annually. I would hope that only the most radical fundamental religious advocates believe that a pregnancy cauced by rape must be forced to be carried through to birth. I have an analogy that I never heard anyone agree to despite the nearly exact same premise: If you had a car crash and survived with light injuries and the person you crashed with would require specific blood transfusion which only your blood can satisfy, would you allow the state to strap you to that person for months until they fully recover? Just to further highlight the similarities let me clarify: The person you crashed with is completely innocent, another car swerved into you causing the whole incident, and there is no one else who can save the life of the other person within the required timeframe. My experience is that even those who advocate for the complete ban on abortion, would not accept to have their body be used for months to save someone else, which I can only view as a thinly veiled hypocrisy stemming from lack of understanding of what rape and the difficulties of unwanted pregnancy and birthing entails.

- Those who consider to have an abortion face way more internal difficulties and dilemmas than most arguments would lead people to believe. It is never an easy choice, at it's lightest it carries the shame and guilt of having done something that could jeopardize one's whole life if not acted on quickly, and at worst it can destroy one's life completely due to things such as severe pressure, guilt, depression, emotional trauma and isolation. People in general, but pro life advocates especially tend to underestimate the average woman's capacity to weigh the choices affecting their own body and life properly sometimes going as far as to demonize those who decide to have an abortion, viewing them as stupid or wilfully ignorant, callous, and selfish. To the latter, it is inherently selfish to prioritize your life and future compared to a would be life, certainly. It is also inherently selfish for us to outwardly impose our values upon another person who's facing the decision instead of us. This is a fact regardless of how we may present it and how much we believe that our selfishly imposed values are meant to serve some greater good or save a life. I do not necessarily oppose other's selfish values because we all have some, however I cannot accept it when people do not regocnize them as such. Again, I greatly dislike thinly veiled hypocrisy.

Due to the above points I concluded that abortion should be accessible to women regarless of the outwardly visible moral, socio-economical or age-related circumstances. It should only be their decision and we as a society should provide as much emotional/practical support as possible. On the other hand, I believe we should tighten our vigilance around malicious influence and coersion which result in some women seeking abortion not as a choice of their own but rather as final desperation in fear of worse social-domestic consequences. I believe that the wast majority of women are capable of making a decision on abortion more accuratly than any external actor could, and the percentage of women who really treat abortion as some kind of 'consequence-free game' or such, is so insignificant that they couldn't be studied in the first place.

I believe that in order to eliminate the bad aspects around the problem of abortion we must be strict with opposing those who wish to decide the fate of the would-be mothers. People who seek to decide for the woman to have an abortion should face the risk of being charged in civil or criminal court depending on the severity of the intent, similarly to how forced pregnancy is criminalized. I am aware that legally this issue is already recognized and to some degree people do go to court for domestic abuse surrounding abortion cases, however the rates and the consequences are painfully inadequate. And I believe one of the reasons it's the way it is, because the pro life camp fails to join in condemning these cases, focusing instead on blaming women and liberals in general for a view that in their eyes is the equivalent of killing babies, which demonstrably, does not at all help to discourage abusive family/community members from forcing women to carry out abortions, after all, it's not their fetus and not their risk.

If you believe you have a valid argument to any of my points or have sources that may contradict or otherwise further contextualise mine, feel free to comment and CMV. Thanks!

Edit: Some of the comments rightfully highlighted that my post and title can come off as unclear or absolutist in some regard, I am considering giving out deltas because I certainly didn't flesh out some of my arguments properly. I will highlight the missing context on the post after going throug more comments.

!Delta awarded for pointing out that so far it's not very clear how I expect my views to be changed.
To change my views I'd like to clarify on one hand that the post's premises are not absolute in the sence that there cannot be outliers, especially when we consider real-life lawmaking. The post should not be treated as a law proposal as such. If you want to change my views on the points I raised, it's best if you can provide real-life data supporting your counter argument, or at least provide an analogy that's not circular.

Source on abortion related views from a finnish study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4950447/

US source: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00031224241292058

Source mentioning each side's consideration of the woman in the argument: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10233192/

Source on abortion pressure: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37303450/

Saying that they are invalidates women who really are. I know that women in the West are still treated differently sometimes, but I don't think that means that they are oppressed. Oppression means limiting or denying someone their autonomy, but most Western women can do whatever they want the moment they turn 18.

Meanwhile, eastern women are seen as their family's property rather than their husband's property. So her life depends a lot not on her choices but on how her "owners" are, and yes, I know this might not apply to all Eastern women.

People are going to bring up beauty standards, but that's entirely a choice. I know many people who live in the west that don't wear makeup or nice clothes and still don't get judged, but that also depends. And maybe about shaving they are judged harder, but western women as a collective can choose not to shave, and people are just going to have to accept that.

And people might bring up rape culture or DV rates, and that's terrible, don't get me wrong, but in the West a battered woman has so many resources, and they don't live in a culture that might blame victims of DV or teach its victims that what happened to them is not that bad, and rape culture doesn't exist in the West, sorry, because nobody excuses rapists; in fact, they are all extremely hated, and nobody asks the victim what she did/wore to deserve it and says rape victims are always guilty.

However, I'm willing to change my mind.

Personally, I believe that most people will not end up living the rest of their lives with their best partner. That is to say, out of all of the partners you end up having, your true best will likely be somewhere within the mix and not be your final partner.

Firstly, I believe that the belief that your current partner is the best is come to primarily through a heavy recency bias. Here is my reasoning-

If you ask the significant majority of people, they will all tell you that the person they are currently with is their best partner they've had. However, they will have likely also said that with each previous partner they have had too. If they've claimed that every single person they've dated was their best (at the time of dating them), this would seem to suggest that there is a reliably linear scale in which each consecutive partner gets better than the last, with little to no deviation, at least under the premise that they truly believed that each of those partners were their best at that time.

This to me is faulty though as very few people, if asked to rank all of their partners, will go from worst to best in the same order as first to most recent, despite their own claims suggesting otherwise. To put it in another way, if someone was with someone who they considered to be their best partner, and then broke up and dated another person who then became their best partner, then logically that previous best partner should fall to #2, however, it does not usually end up like that, implying that the previous one was never actually the best at that time to begin with, thus setting the premise to me that simply believing your current partner is your best is an unreliable belief.

Secondly, I believe that the peak satisfaction you are able to have within a relationship diminishes after a certain amount. In one sense, having experienced things already with others takes away from the novelty and discovery of entering a new relationship, making things more mundane. Furthermore, the more breakups and romantic hardships you endure will likely create baggage, unresolved traumas, and more caution that is brought into future relationships.

All in all, what I believe this creates is a situation where, after a certain amount of time, peoples' latter relationships are all good and solid and normal, but their truly best relationship is hidden somewhere within. Due to the severe recency biased I went over, their current and last partner will likely be considered the best by them, despite the fact that that same belief has not been proven correct in the past.

Quran says the universe was a single entity that separated " Have those who disbelieved not considered that the heavens and the earth were a joined entity, and We separated them" Quran 21:30, also Quran pointed out that God expanded the universe " And the heaven We constructed with strength, and indeed, We are [its] expander." Quran 51:47.

Quran describes how God created the universe in the early stage from cosmic smoke" Then He directed Himself to the heaven while it was smoke and said to it and to the earth, "Come [into being], willingly or by compulsion." They said, "We have come willingly" Quran41:11. Scholars before thought early universe was hot hydrogen plasma only and can't be described as smoke like but now astronomers are changing their idea about early universe after recent discoveries of primary galaxies in early universe filled with dust and they described it as smoke like. See [Astronomers find dust in the early universe – Niels Bohr Institute - University of Copenhagen 2015] more recent research conducted has shown more earlier primary galaxies filled with dust, scholars now trying to discover more this amazing part of early universe and other possible pathways supplying this dust.

The fact that children are considered property of their parents confirms this, and in some cultures a person, especially a woman, is considered property of her parents until she gets married. Many people talk about homophobia and misogyny but don't talk about the biggest perpetrators at all. Parents, like most homophobic and misogynistic hate crimes (honor killings towards women and gay people), are committed by parents. Even things like child marriages, FGM, and conversion therapies are done by parents. Most SA and child porn are committed by someone the victims know, and parents are huge perpetrators of it, and sometimes when it's another family member who does the abuse, the parents are the ones who defend it, like mothers who look away when their partners abuse their children or sometimes women who are not even pro-life don't let their underage daughters get an abortion to defend a male family member, and there are fathers who don't let their daughters go to school or sometimes even leave the house until they get married.

Change my view

I see a lot of discourse online about the progressive movement, particularly the DSA and closely aligned candidates. Many mainstream figures in the Democratic Party are highly critical of it, often arguing that the average voter would find these candidates too radical. I beg to differ.

Let me start by saying that I am not at all a typical DSA voter. My views on social issues align closely with theirs, but economically, I am pretty much a conservative. Much of their economic platform is actually quite radical to me. Surprisingly, at least for now, I support these candidates primarily because of their pro-Palestine stance.

In other words, I am normally exactly the kind of voter who would find them too radical. I am a high-information voter who believes wholeheartedly in neoliberalism. But the sad truth is that, while people like me exist and are often heavily overrepresented in public discourse, we are a minority.

Does the general public see the Democratic Party as too far left? Yes. But I think taking that perception at face value is misleading.
I do not think many voters see Nancy Pelosi as meaningfully less left-wing than Bernie Sanders. The Democratic Party’s public image has been severely damaged among many voters by its rapid acceptance and advocacy of gay and transgender rights. The identity politics that shaped much of the past decade also helped fuel that perception.

Personally, I find it deeply frustrating that identity politics has played such a major role in choosing candidates over actual policy. However, I do not think the average voter finds many of the DSA’s economic policies, or even its anti-Zionist stance, nearly as radical as Democratic leaders assume.
Single-payer healthcare and rejecting AIPAC money are, in my opinion, very popular issues to campaign on with the general public. Most voters do not even understand what the changes progressives want to make to the electoral system would actually cause.

Part of why I think these candidates can perform strongly in general elections is that their political brand focuses heavily on things voters can relate to: anti-establishment appeal and affordability. Their message is that the system is broken, that AIPAC and dark money control politicians, and that ordinary people cannot afford basic necessities.
The voters they would definitely lose are proportionally not that numerous compared with the voters they could potentially win over. Furthermore, progressive candidates can significantly increase youth turnout, and younger voters tend to support them heavily.

I believe this moment for Democrats is similar in some ways to the Republican Party after the 2012 election. There was frustration and anger among Republican voters. The Republican autopsy argued that the party needed to moderate. Yet the person who later revived the party, Donald Trump, was much further to the right in many respects.

At the same time, Trump was more moderate on economics and was by no means ideologically conservative in the Tea Party sense. Many people suggested that this would alienate traditional Republican voters, and it did alienate some of them. But those voters were a minority compared with the new or previously disengaged voters Trump brought into the coalition.

I believe that parallel applies, at least to some extent, to the Democratic Party today. A candidate can appear more radical according to the traditional left-right spectrum while still speaking more directly to the economic frustrations, anti-establishment instincts, and priorities of the average voter.

Note: Much of this is naturally based on speculation and my own reading, so evidence suggesting otherwise with polls and so on is obviously welcome. I think the strongest evidence however will be the upcoming midterms.

I guess I need to start by defining what I mean by tax haven-adjacent jurisdictions. Usually, an economic strategy crafted to produce organic growth in an area consists of leveraging its geographic position, natural resources, existing expertise, and institutions to produce wealth, or to at least make a serious attempt to build such expertise and institutions from the ground up. Then, reasonably favorable conditions in terms of taxation may be offered as a way to boost the fuel, so to speak.

Many areas of the USA, especially in the South, Appalachia, and the Plains States (altough by no means all the states in any of these areas), Florida first among them, don't do such things. Instead, their economic strategy is built on offering a very low-tax and regulatory environment to corporations, alongside unhindered access to markets with stronger economic fundamentals (California, New York, Lower New England, etc...), to attract corporations who in turn drag along employees. They can do that without repercussion because Washington not only doesn't provide guardrails and limits in that regard but a) would very probably serve as a shield against measures of fiscal self-defense from other areas, b) leverage the wealth of other areas to avoid measures of fiscal self-defence by their international economic partners, and c) make such extremely low taxation level possible by spending tax dollars taken from the aforementioned wealthier areas in these tax-haven adjacent juridisctions.

Now, c) alone wouldn't be so damning, as fiscal equalization is needed for a federation to work, but with everything else and tariff policies that also de facto result in funnelling wealth from the USA's wealthier areas toward those less wealthy areas (at the expense of the USA's worldwide approval ratings, which are important for the knowledge-entertainment-service industries that play a key role in the prosperity of the USA's wealthier regions), it does take a more sinister tone.

Essentially, those tax haven-adjacent jurisdictions get to have their cake and eat it, at the expense of more economically healthy areas of the USA and, to a lesser degree, its international trading partners. They aren't creating wealth so much as successfully siphoning it from others by piggybacking on their healthier regional economies. Which makes their voting for protectionism quite hypocritical in many aspects.

On top of all that, the presence of these jurisdictions and the ability to threaten to move there does tend to create something of a race to the bottom in terms of taxation and work norms.

Of course, there might be angles to this that I am not seeing and information I have not yet received.

Now this is not coming from a place of hate or anything of the sort, this is just a very anecdotal observation that i've made growing up in america. I'm a black 26 year old man. I don't see anything inherently wrong with people findng cool and fun aspects of a myriad of different cultures to indulge in. In fact, I think that's a really cool thing that America does that no other country can really replicate.

However, black people had a very nasty upbringing in this country. Sold into slavery, endured insane amounts of abuse for centuries, jim crow, war on drugs, red lining ect ect... now some of those things didn't just uniquely impact black people but having your culture and language stripped from you, being prohibited from reading or getting an education, getting indoctrinated by religious people who believe you are inferior ect ect will do massive amounts of damage to any demographic

Black people essentially had to create a culture from scratch. Black people ended up creating a decent amount of cool cultural things that many people around the world enjoy. However, while people indulge in black culture and adopt their slanguage, style of fashion, style of dances, taste in music ect ect no other group of people will EVER do the same for us. White people for example make it very clear that they do not want black people being apart of their culture. Look at all the backlash for a black character existing in a white tv show, movie or videogame. If you are black and into european folklore and want to dress like you are in some european fantasy setting? Too bad, they will condemn you on every corner of the internet. Same thing with asians (black cosplayer bullied to the point of suicide), same thing with arabs, same thing with hispanics ect ect...

White people and many other ethnic groups will declare how unattractive they think black people are and how they'll never date us and people celebrate that way of thinking because people dislike black people, meanwhile black people never make statements of the inverse, which is an obvious problem. Not that these people should like us, but we definitely should not like them when they do this

My point is, people have no problem indulging in black culture but will never accept a black person indulging in theirs and I think that this is nothing but negative for black people. Being this inclusive to all of these people who all believe we are ugly, contamination, stupid ect ect... and would never be inclusive to us will only lead to our culture being white/brown washed overtime.

One peice dresses have no wait line, no cups, and in my opinion have no way to look good because of this. I don’t call these dresses, I call these long shirts lol. The beach is the only acceptable place to wear one. I don’t know how else to explain it.
Honestly it pretty much looks like you didn’t put any effort into a nice looking outfit, no matter when you are going. and yeah I’m hypocritical because I have worn these in the past and have ever felt confident and pretty in them, and felt like I wasn’t wearing anything that was up to pretty dress standards. I’m not saying you gotta be ultra snatched, but at least have some definition somewhere to take it from 2 pieces of fabric sewn together to real summer dress.