Probably not the ideal way to go about it, no.
OTOH, I have serious questions for anyone that could raise a child to be a white supremacist that's trying to start a racial holy war. Or I would, if the suspect hadn't already murdered them.
- Posts
- 3
- Comments
- 1222
- Joined
- 2 yr. ago
- Posts
- 3
- Comments
- 1222
- Joined
- 2 yr. ago
No judge in the US? Or no judge in the EU?
Bear in mind that Finland, for instance, has day fines, and a speeding ticket in 2023 netted a businessman a €121,000 fine. So expensive fines are not unknown in EU countries.
...Huh.
Right idea, wrong motive, I guess?
Spoiler: I see the left doing it all the time as well. Shit, I see vegans trying it too.
It never works.
Well, yeah, it would be.
We would need to drastically increase taxes in order to have UBI for the poorest people in the US. Right now, across the board, all of us are paying some of the lowest income taxes since income taxation was introduced. After you consider things like the EIC, a lot of poor people have a negative tax rate. As it is, we're running a budget deficit every single year, and most of that deficit is entitlement programs (I'm not using that in a pejorative sense) like social security and Medicare.
(No, social security is not fully funded; people pay in far less than they end up getting paid back, and the system relies on a constantly expanding pool of people paying into it to fund the people that are currently drawing from it. To fix that, we would need to increase social security taxes, end the cap on those taxes, and probably set the retirement age higher.)
Even if we took every single penny that every billionaire in the US had, that would fund the federal gov't for something like eight months. Total. And then it would all be gone. (Plus the stock and bond markets would crater, but eh.)
Yeah, we need to bring back the highest marginal tax rates for sure. And we need to increase corporate taxes and eliminate a lot of the corporate cash giveaways. But we also need to increase taxes on the middle class. I'm saying this as someone that's at the lower end of middle class; I'm not paying enough in taxes for what i think this country should be doing for the citizens of the country. But man, if you told me my tax bill was going to go up by $8k, but I'd also get national single payer health care? And national public transit, and free public universities? I would cream my panties.
Unfortunately, it probably doesn't take many Brian Thomspons before Republicans start saying, huh, y'know, maybe gun bans are okay after all...
I live in a small town in the rural south.
The 'community patrols' would very quickly turn into KKK lynch mobs going after anyone that was 'woke'.
Yeah, ACAB, but the alternative that would happen in most places is pretty bad too. There's gotta be a 3rd way to keep people safe without using either cops as they exist now or vigilance committees.
Related to this - all fabrics used by the military need to be both Berry-amendment compliant, and NIR compliant. What that means is that, first, they need to be made in the USA (because you don't want to outsource military equipment if you end up going to war with the country that makes shit for you), and second, it needs to not show up like a sore thumb under infrared light, A lot of fabrics and dyes will show up as hot spots under IR, which means that they show up great with night vision. NIR-compliant fabrics will still appear camouflaged under IR.
That's why those nylon-cotton blend Crytek combat pants are something like $450, when the Chinese knock-offs made in poly-cotton are about $70.
Cops don't like fair fights. And they really don't like it when people are carrying guns that will send bullets straight through their lvl III plates.
What up, fucko?
You're making a ton of straw-man arguments.
- You don't have to be the best. You do have to be good enough to get scouted by a professional team if your goal is to play professionally. I never at any point said that it wasn't worth playing if you couldn't be the best or do it professionally. I spend a lot of time shooting competitively; it's likely that I will never make Master or Grandmaster in anything, and as a result I'm never going to be sponsored or be able to earn a living at it. (...Not that the money is very good anyways.) So what? I still have fun.
- In sports, playing professionally is a meritocracy. Socioeconomic class matters insofar as having more wealth and privilege means that you'll have access to better training prior to becoming a professional. But the child in question already has access to training, through a parent that plays professionally. But that's all the farther that socioeconomic class gets you in sports. People from poorer backgrounds often get to go far in sports, if they have the skill.
- Yes, OP could be wrong. On the other hand, OP is claiming to be a professional in the field, and is therefore more likely to have an informed opinion.
- Success is a combination of directed effort, an inherent capability; it's not one or the other. If you lack certain inherent capabilities, then all the directed effort in the world won't get you where you want to be. You can have all the gifts to achieve greatness in a given field, and yet fail completely if you don't carefully direct your ability in that area.
- See above. The kid already has access to top-tier training, and is not making the grade necessary to perform at a professional level. Ergo, the part that is lacking is capability. ...Which is why my anecdote is relevant; it's not my unwillingness to work my ass off that has limited my power lifting aspirations, it's my physical capabilities. (And yes, I really did work at power lifting. And will again once my shoulder finished healing, even though I'm never going to be competitive at any level.)
- Of course the kid isn't going to be at the same level forever. But he's not on track to be at a level where he's capable of playing professionally. A 16yo that's capable of going pro--esp. when they have access to high-level training--would be expected to be performing at a certain level. According to OP, he isn't. The probability is that, while he will continue to improve (up until age catches up with him), he is not going to be at a professional level in time to make a career of it.
- You're drawing a false dichotomy between being honest/realistic with your children, and having a relationship with them. I'm gathering, from what you're saying, that you don't believe that the parent should give their child a realistic assessment of their performance, and should simply be encouraging; it that correct? It seem like you believe that putting all of your effort into a goal, and failing to achieve that goal would not cause deep bitterness on its own; am I reading that correctly?
- "It’s my opinion that it’s better for parents to encourage their children in their dreams [...]" I partially disagree. I think that parents need to encourage children to set realistic goals in life, and goals that can be stretch goals. Maybe that looks like going to school to become a biologist, and going on to medical school if biology ends up being fairly easy for them. Maybe that looks like going into a trade if they're good at working with their hands. Playing professional sports--or being a touring musician that makes enough to live on, etc.--is like winning a jackpot in the lottery. Sure, you gotta play in order to win, but for every person that wins there's millions of people that don't. I would hope that you would say that anyone planning for retirement by buying lottery tickets was a fool, even if that person was your child. But even so, you can play sport for fun.
Fun fact: it doesn't take very much gasoline in a diesel engine to wreck the engine fast. Diesel fuel lubricates the cylinders, while gasoline will strip lubrication off. Rebuilding a diesel engine that's seized because there was no lubrication in the cylinders is a very expensive process. Diesel engines also rely on the compression of the air and fuel to ignite at the correct time, so a low-octane gasoline that was less resistant to pre-ignition in the compression cycle would cause severe engine knock that would also trash the engine.
So the moral of the story is, be very careful that you never put low-octane gasoline in you diesel engine, because you might end up needing to spend tens of thousands of dollars to replace the engine.
if he’s not great at football even though he’s living with a pro, that shows me how little you value him.
Some people simple don't have the ability to be good at some things, no matter how hard they work at it, no matter who mentors them. Very, very few people have the ability to be a Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart regardless of what kind of mentorship they have.
Let me give you a concrete example.
I've had a major shoulder surgery after tearing the shit out of my supraspinatus and the labrum. The supraspinatus passes through the acromium process on the scapula. The acromium process has roughly three different shapes, which are largely determined by genetics. A type I acromium process is smooth, and allows the spuraspinatus to pass through easily. Type II and type III acromium processes have pronounced 'hook' shapes--type III significantly more so--that make injury to the supraspinatus much more probable. I have a type II acromium process. Had Mary Lou Retton been my mother and coach, and I'd tried to be a gymnast, I would have destroyed both of my shoulders long before I was ever going to be going to nation-level events; the limits of the shape of my scapula would have made success impossible, given that a strong and stable shoulder is required in gymnastics, regardless of sex/gender. I would likewise be unable to be a competitive powerlifter, for much the same reason; working up to a nationally competitive snatch would have also destroyed my shoulders. (And, in point of fact, it was working on push-presses that killed it.)
People are not a tabula rasa, only needing the proper encouragement to become paragons in a given field.
Save a forest, shoot a ...
Wait, where's the line where what I say gets me banned again?
Satanist.
Raised Mormon, was a Mormon missionary. Had a nervous breakdown, and religious leaders said that I must be sinning, and needed to pray more, read my scriptures more, and repent. But... What sin? And how was I supposed to pray/study more when I had already dedicated two years of my life to preaching? E.g., there's 24 hours in the day, and I'm already spending multiple hours doing that stuff, so where am I supposed to fit that in?
That was the first crack in the foundation. Took a while, but once you realize that religious leaders are just men (and yes, it's always men in the Mormon church), and that despite their claims they don't have any prophetic powers, then you start questioning a lit of things, like how you can even know truth. (Spoiler: you can't know truth without some kind of objective evidence, and all religions' truth claims are based on subjective evidence and "see?, it says so, right here in my book!")
Atheist is a label that says what you don't believe. Satanist is a label that says what I do believe. So I eventually settled on Satanist.
10,000 acres of land in the northern mountains, with all associated rights (mineral, water, etc.).
I really, really, really don't want to have neighbors. I already live in a rural area, and I still have neighbors 1/4 mile away that blast their music at 11pm loud enough to make out the lyrics. I want to be able to see the stars at night with no light pollution, and see wildlife that's barely seen people.
Exploitation is certainly an issue. However. A large part of the problem with the porn industry such as it is, is the stigma that's associated with women--not men--that are in the field. Women that are in the field are not treated particularly well by anyone not in the field, and part of what makes the industry so problematic is that once you're in, it's really hard to get out and have any kind of meaningful career.
...Kinda like the mental problem that trans kids have almost entirely comes down to the way they're treated by people around them...
I mean, yeah, you can totally give up on changing minds and write conservatives off if you want. That's definitely a choice that you can make. And sure, no one is responsible for doing the emotional labor that it takes to change minds.
But if you don't, will anyone?
I would rather have conversations aimed at changing minds than write people off.