“I want to believe as many true things and as few false things as possible.” - Matt Dillahunty (avatar and banner “Owl Factory” by Gaba Jordan is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 CC)

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • We did it for four years. Washington state in the Seattle are is very nice. We met a lot of great people and we have fond memories.

    Having said that it was clear early on this was not going to be permanent. Imagine taking your kids to the local park and seeing a sign that said no guns allowed in this park. Wait, guns are allowed in some parks? WTF. That was just a head scratcher. I found it genuinely hard to be in a place where I was decidedly middle class and so many people were so poor and with no benefits at all.

    I remember once chatting with a cashier at the grocery store over the weeks as she was pregnant. One day I stopped seeing her and figured she had her baby. Two weeks later she was back. No maternity leave. She took her full two weeks of vacation and that was it. Shit.

    Or the conversation I had with a cab driver who talked about still being in debt because his FIL was sick and avoided getting medical attention because none of the family had medical coverage until he had to be admitted.

    The medical system is a confusing shambles of insanity. That’s if you have good coverage. Once our daughter was sick and the childrens hospital directed us to a closer clinic. We went. There was a discussion about possibly admitting her but in the end she went home. A few days later she was worse so we ended up going to the children’s hospital and she was admitted. Turns out the near by clinic was not in our medical coverage group and it cost us nearly $1000 out of pocket. Not fun but doable. The thing is, she was two nights in the hospital where we were covered. If we had admitted her the first day at the wrong hospital it would have cost us at least $10 000.

    The whole system is a fucking nightmare of land mines and no one has any clue what any particular thing will cost you.

    I just couldn’t be happy under those conditions. Side note I’m not happy with the slide in equality here in Canada either BTW.

    My job is in high tech and they pay was no better, just even. We lost money on selling buying houses, but that’s just timing. I kept track of taxes paid. After medical expenses it was only a 5 percent savings and one medical emergency would too that the other way. Yes, I had great medical coverage.









  • But the reason we’re talking about this is because anti-trans protestors want children to feel it’s dangerous and bad to be queer.

    Indeed, which is gross and makes me very angry

    Such a bubble seems workable to me, with the caveat of “during classes” or the like. If teachers are on strike, then there aren’t classes in session and thus it would be okay. And for BLM, a student-led rally could take place after classes, and a community-led rally during school hours would probably be much more effective if held elsewhere.

    I like it. Nice. That could be a workable solution. I was concerned by phrases like: no protests against human rights. I manage understand what that means but I have zero confidence that police forces or conservative governments would ever do the right thing with that definition.




  • I agree that such protests are not a good thing to expose kids to but to creating a protest free bubble around every thing doesn’t seem practical. As an example it would stop a rally in support of black lives matter as well. Or teachers striking.

    Suddenly someone has to say what topics are allowed to have rallies and which are not. We don’t want to live in that country.

    I’d say the police should handle these differently. For example if the protesters are threatening to anyone in the location but I don’t see any evidence that they would make even remotely good choices.

    Having said that, the police do need to do a better job. It seems to me that if skuffles break out it probably means there is not enough separation between the protesters. I would also like to stop seeing the police helping fascists too but I doubt I will get that wish.



  • work in a context where the person exercising their speech feels some necessity to use it responsibly

    Nice phrasing

    However there are people with legitimate ( beliefs and ideas honestly held that they wish to discuss ) views that I worry are going to be silenced and further marginalized.

    Sounds kind and charitable. It is not clear to me how universal this is given your opening paragraphs. I would agree that is they way it should be but I don’t think that reflects how it is. We need to react based on the actual reality we live in.

    However if these are honestly held beliefs that they are willing to engage in civil discourse around I don’t think it’s right to actually block them.

    But what if there is a significant number of people who are just awful humans, or don’t have a thought for learning, or are not being open or honest etc.

    I support the idea of engagement and discussion but let’s be honest there are people who aren’t interested in that. There are people who are racist. There are people who really do think you and I are going to hell and they are happy to know that. Sorry there is a reason I don’t associate with people like that in real life and I don’t want to on line either.

    It is not my mission to discuss this kind of thing with all those people. Trolls and awful humans sometimes do need to be ignored. Otherwise we cannot have interesting or productive conversations with anyone.

    I say, let those that want to engage and learn find a server or community with standards that we can tolerate. Any community that doesn’t have standards to keep reasonable order we should block.