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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: August 24th, 2023

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  • I am familiar with marxist theory. The problems lie in what you just said. As Marx said, it is the natural progression of a society that has progressed through the stages of capitalism and entered post-scarcity. People who advocate for other channels of achieving communism are misguided, as post scarcity is a pretty hard requirement and a lack of that aspect opens the mechanisms of resource allocation up to exploitation. And unless you can somehow stop shitheads from being born, someone is going to be enough of one to take advantage.

    Even the OG natural progression of society version of communism has issues. For one, you still have the shithead human problem. There’s always going to be people out there who want it all, and they’ll exploit whatever they can to get it. Communism, being stateless, doesn’t have particularly good mechanisms for dealing with that.



  • Then why don’t we let kids who can beat Super Mario Bros in their sleep (and thus from your perspective have demonstrated the skill required to learn how to drive) drive cars?

    Well for one they can’t reach the pedals or see over the steering wheel, and the safety systems in the drivers seat are built for adult sized humans. I totally believe the average 10 y/o possesses the mental capacity to operate a motor vehicle though. I was riding dirt bikes around town at that age. Now, their risk assessment abilities might be off, but I’ve seen plenty of people way into adulthood that don’t seem to have those abilities either.





  • I wouldn’t call it defeatist, nuclear should never be more than a stopgap to 100% renewables. if anything, it’s awesome that we’ve gotten far enough with renewables that switching to them entirely is now a viable proposition. It sucks that we spent so much time dependent on fossil fuels when we could’ve been using nuclear, but the past is the past and the future is bright.

    I will say, small modular reactors might have a place in the energy mix. They would be fantastic for more isolated grids where stability is difficult to achieve with 100% renewable energy. Think small island nations or remote areas. Also would be good for emergency and disaster recovery scenarios. We (as in the USA) also already have the supply chain to build them somewhat efficiently since we use them on our aircraft carriers. Just needs some tweaking to work well on land and for the regulations to loosen up to make it economically feasible.


  • Sure, if we could snap our fingers and have a bunch of nuclear plants it would make sense. But the tech is all ancient, and the regulatory structure is oppressive. It will take decades to build out the amount of nuclear capacity we need and cost inordinate amounts of money, and we’ve already passed the tipping point where renewables are the better choice.

    Just as an example, it took us 14 years to build a single reactor in the Vogtle plant costing over $30 billion dollars. We’d need massive reforms to the regulations and supply chain for building reactors to bring those numbers down and that just won’t happen fast enough.

    Even China, who is the world leader in nuclear power these days is slowing down building of new reactors in favor of renewables, and they do not have the regulations and supply issues we have in the USA.





  • It also really enforces the whole binary gender role thing which is not a great message. I’m a straight cis dude but I shouldn’t be locked into all the straight cis dude tropes, and neither should anyone else be wholly defined by their gender identity and sexual orientation.


  • I’m tired of seeing this worn out point. What exactly would you propose he do that is:

    1. Actually possible for him to do

    2. Not going to make the situation worse

    3. Not something he is already doing

    Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like what Israel is doing either but the US has painted themselves into a corner long before the Biden admin. We can’t stop supporting Israel without basically ceding control of the region to Iran, and I guarantee Iran will do shit that will make Israel look like Mr. Rogers by comparison.

    I’m not saying there’s nothing he could be doing better, but I don’t see any productive discussion from the people calling him Genocide Joe.

    And all that aside, he’s still by far the preferable alternative to Don Cheeto who would likely actually be a genocide enabler.