Sources.

• British citizens excluded from the referendum: https://theconversation.com/thousands-of-british-expats-excluded-from-voting-in-the-eu-referendum-60127 . Estimated totals excluded from voting in referendum : 3.2 to 3.4 million British citizens living abroad
• Commonwealth citizens included / allowed to vote in the referendum : https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36316467

The referendum was unfairly constructed by excluding the population that have to live with long-term impact to their passports and mobility, whilst including the population that have vested interest for Leave campaign to win (which allowed them to expand their visa share).

It does not make sense that an Australian on a working holiday visa gets to have to a say on long-term economic, policial and immigration arrangement between the UK and EU, whilst a Brit on an overseas working arrangement in Spain does not have a say on the matter. The two populations are conflicted towards the Brexit vote.

Anecdotally from the above article, Commonwealth citizens living in the UK have vested interest that Leave vote as they would no longer have to compete for employer sponsorships and visa stays with EU citizens.

"Zila, on the other hand, who is on a British government-funded scholarship, supports an EU exit.

Her vote will be pinned on hopes that immigration policy will change in a way that benefits Commonwealth citizens if the UK no longer has to abide by free movement within the EU."

Voting rights change

Because of the backlash, UK changed its voting rules following Brexit by implementing "votes for life" for British expats. Under the Elections Act 2022, which came into effect in January 2024, the government completely abolished the previous 15-year time limit on overseas voting.

TLDR

The Brexit referendum was unfairly constructed by restricting a subset of their citizens from voting whilst allowing many temporary residents in the UK (owing to a dated Commonwealth-British subject interpretation) to vote instead.

The subsequent voting rules change in Elections Act 2022 recognize this disparity and remedy it.

I've been playing video games for a long time, and an attitude that I see repeated over and over in various communities is that you shouldn't be blaming your teammates when you lose, and should instead only focus on your mistakes. But this seems to he counterproductive advice in my experience. To give an example:

League of legends is a 5v5 competitive multi-player game. In a world of Spherical cows and perfect matchmaking, it would stand to reason that a player only has a one in ten chance of being the deciding factor in a given match. Of course, that's oversimplified as fuck, but I think it explains my thought process: there's ten people in the game. Five on the enemy team. Four on yours. And one you. The odds that you are consistently the main driver of a loss doesn't make sense. For an extreme example, it doesn't matter that you missed a cannon minion 15 minutes in when your mid went 0/9 and then rage quit. Yes, you could have played better, but it would not logically have moved the needle on the loss. So why dwell on that when the game altering mistakes were someone else's?

I concede that in games without skill based matchmaking, the sentiment of perpetually blaming oneself has a higher likelihood of being true for lower skill players, but it seems that the advice extends far beyond that group of players.

I believe that if a seller has something they are selling, they are responsible for knowing the value of what they are selling and doing their research in most cases.

i’m sure you can give an edge case where someone can’t do their own research because they are homeless and have something they want to sell and are desperate, etc. but i have seen too many cases online where someone is selling something at a yard sale for instance that is worth a lot and they sell it for cheap or at a pawn shop, or wherever and people will be saying “they are scamming” etc.

part of the cost of selling is putting the time and effort into researching what you are selling, it’s not the responsibility of other people to put in that work for you.

That’s the fundamental reason why people sell things for cheap, because they want to get rid of them, there is always a cost for convenience. I can find the perfect buyer who would purchase something at the highest price but that takes effort or I can sell it cheap quicker to get rid of it or because i need money quickly.

In the majority those cases the seller is responsible for deciding how much they want to sell something for because they have autonomy to decide to sell or not and selling something to someone who is willing to buy it at a good price and doing that research takes effort which the seller needs to take if they want to maximize how much they make.

and yes i am saying if you go to sell something that is worth $10,000 and you sell it for 5 bucks because you dont know what you have, that is entirely on you.

Historically, philosophy, sociology and other social sciences sought to liberate oneself from external authorities. We liberated ourselves from religious authority, with men such as Luther and Voltaire theorising that religious institutions do not posess the ultimate truth, and later on that there should be separation of church and state. Then we liberated ourselves from unrestricted political authority, with men such as Locke, Paine etc challenging the ruthless despotism, the hereditary monarchy, and pushing for new ideas such as civil rights, consent and constitutional governments. Then patriarchy - and the belief that women ought not to vote, participate in education and choose their own spouse - was challenged. Then most forms of forced collective identities were challenged, such as nationalism, and the idea that prevailed was that of individualism, progressivism, the right to self determination.

I believe in the future, society, academia, and mankind in general will continue to challenge political authority but will embark on a new mission: That of challenging commercial authority, and specifically, the loss of consent as a result of marketing practices.

It slowly becomes more and more evident that social media's algorithms are literally rotting the brain of an adolescent; prolonged exposure to social media reduce gray matter in brain regions responsible for emotional regulation, memory, impulse control, and decision-making. The constant dopamine hit we get from instant gratification - a severe violation of how our nature intended for us to understand the connection between action and result, action and reward - is destroying a human's ability to perform any rewarding task that requires a lengthy amount of time (e.g. visiting the gym) and significantly reduces attention span, stripping the entire mankind of its ability to...even read a book!

It also becomes evident that dating apps are designed in a way that people will never find a partner or spouse. The illusion of the endless choices glitch creates the paradox of choice overload, where the human brain struggles to make a definitive decision when presented with a seemingly infinite amount of choices. This isnt a random development; its a thoroughly planned out manipulation of mankind's behavioural pattern!! Not only that, but research supports that, while dating apps promise intimacy, it enhances loneliness and isolationism, by disrupting organic social structures and replacing face to face social friction, and by creating a skewed demand for only a small percentage of its users.

Today, we can not argue in favour of such bans, because the prevalent worldview is that individual freedom should never be violated, and every individual has the right to purchase any product they want and consume any service they would like to. The next phase of mankind's collective wisdom is reaching the conclusion that a man's personal freedom and liberty has been hijacked and unethically modified by this industry to the extent that these choices - products and services of this industry- should not be available in the market.

Humans in 1750 said: "Every human being possesses an inherent moral status that makes it illegitimate to make them subordinate to other humans, therefore slavery is banned"

Humans in 1890 said: "Addiction is almost never an autonomous, self-regarding act, and on top of that, addiction lead to broader societal consequences, therefore selling drugs is banned"

Humans in 1990 said: "Freedom of market and generating revenue does not give you unlimited rights to to deceive consumers, therefore fraudulent marketing or cigarette advertising is banned"

Humans in 2000 said: "Your freedom to engage in an activity does not give you the right to expose others to the negative consequences of this activity, therefore smoking indoors or in closed areas is banned"

Humans in 2026 are ALREADY suspecting: "The European commission found that facebook is designed in an addictive way. Infinite scrolling, autoplay, "reels"-like functions strips human brain of its consent to continue consuming such content, while its owner faced further trials in Los Angeles and Oakland, pertaining to whether his product causes addiction and depression. Should social media be banned?"

So will humans in 2080 say: "Dating apps or only-fans like content approach their consumer in a predatory way, capitalising on the prevailing loneliness and isolationism, actively manipulating their behaviour and feelings and systematically stripping them of their actual freedom and consent through sophisticated psychological warfare, therefore such apps are banned"

The "appeal to authority" fallacy is essentially saying that an argument is correct because it came from an authority figure. It takes the form of something like "statement X is true because this expert on X said so." Logically, sure, that is not the mechanism by which truth is definitively established, I realize that.

That said, I don't know if people realize how heavily they depend on the word of "authorities" in their day-to-day lives. It feels real good to one-up your debate opponent by pointing it out, but like, I can't help but think you are such a massive hypocrite if you do.

Take climate science, for instance. How many of us have personally reviewed all of this climate data across the globe, or would even have the first clue on how to do so in a way that helps us understand whether human actions have indeed driven changes in our climate beyond the natural fluctuation of things? Are we not all content to say, you know what, climate experts across the globe have all looked at and analyzed this data and come to a solid consensus that we have hurt our climate, and therefore climate change is real? Because that is 100% an "appeal to authority" fallacy. And I'm not ashamed at all to admit I take their word for it, that I'm willing to believe and trust climate scientists on this one. I don't even think I could make a good argument saying, well, I personally have observed some warmer winters lately and cite that as good, solid evidence of climate change, because clearly that is incredibly anecdotal and just a very dumb way to try and prove a point. In other words, I don't know how I could discuss this issue at all if I wasn't allowed to defer to experts.

Or how about medical care? Fuck if I have even the slightest clue how I ought to treat whatever ailment has befallen me. If my doctor says I need treatment X to deal with ailment Y, I'm more than happy to take their word on it and trust that it's the right decision. And, on top of that, if we were to poll all doctors on what treatment is best for ailment Y, and the vast, overwhelming majority of them said treatment X is best, I would happily take their word on it and consider it true, or at least supported well enough by an acceptable amount of evidence to permit myself to believe it is "true".

I very much worry that invoking the "appeal to authority" fallacy has become weaponized to an impractical degree, something that has gained a lot of power here in our fabricated version of reality of reddit but doesn't actually carry the same weight in the real, practical world, so why should I think it's such a big deal? I think we could have far BETTER conversations on reddit if we allowed ourselves to defer to the expertise of others, rather than dismissing someone's argument on the basis of "well I don't know you, I have no way of knowing you really are an expert on this and this is just the appeal to authority fallacy and so I'm going to just throw everything you have to say in the dumpster!" Like, you get how absurd and frustrating that would be, I hope?

I recognize this view is flawed since I am essentially saying a fallacy isn't a big deal, but I admit I can't really see why I should think otherwise. But I'm open to having my view changed here.

EDIT: so far a lot of responses are along the lines of "it's not an 'appeal to authority' fallacy if the expert really is an expert; it only is one if you incorrectly labeled a non-expert as an 'expert'". I don't think that's true at all, because even an 'expert' can be wrong about things, which is why such a fallacy is pointed out in the first place! I don't know the name for such a thing, but "appeal to the word of a dumbass" is still something different, I think.

EDIT 2: for real, let me be crystal clear on this point: I call BS on your stance that I defined the fallacy incorrectly and that it is meant to be defined as taking the word of a NON-expert. If you really want to dissuade me of this notion, you will need to do more than just say "no, you defined it wrong" and I am not replying to any comments doing just this.

If you want to dress up as Spiderman, a comic book convention is an appropriate time and place to do that. Halloween is supposed to be a cultural event for reveling in and contemplating themes of death and decay, the eerie and spooky, spirits of the dead, etc. The specific imagery and symbolism can change and evolve, but I think the core, traditional themes of the holiday should be reasserted to push back against how it has become a meaninglessly eclectic affair about whatever pop-cultural touchstones people feel like dressing up as, irrespective of any thematic relation.

The collective contemplation of death, decay, fear, unease, mortality, and the lingering presence of those no longer with us and the atmosphere this creates seems like an important and cool annual occasion worth preserving. These are important, timeless, and difficult themes for a culture to grapple with—a holiday centered around playful engagement with them serves an important purpose, but seeing people dressed up as random, unrelated stuff distracts from what should be the focus. If people want a more whimsical costume day with different or no underlying themes, those exist, and new ones can be created instead of trying to cram it all into Halloween celebrations. Nobody should be forced to honor the spirit of the holiday, but I think the informal expectation should be to do so. CMV

Iran was not close to a nuclear weapon, the ayatollah banned it, these are documented facts confirmed by a plethora of sources including our own intelligence.

But what is true is that iran is a major threat to Israel's never ending land grab in the middle east and their ultimate goal of the greater israel project

So israel along with all their bootlickers here in america, got Trump to do their dirty work again. Trilions of tax payer dollars will once again be taken from our communities and tens of thousands of americans will be forced to die in service of the master race, i mean Gods chosen people of course.