I guess I’ve been lucky. Although the majority of my extended family is poorly educated, lives in rural areas, and has a certain set of toxic political views, my close by family is well educated and lives in urban areas.

I haven’t had to share a holiday meal with one of the toxic people in probably decades.

This comic reminds me of how Captain Kirk has three ears. A left ear, a right ear, and a final front ear.

When I was in middle school, a girl who I didn’t know once confessed to me, and I turned her down. I haven’t told anybody this until just now, but literally the only reason I turned her down was that I didn’t drive a car, so I couldn’t see how we could go on a date. It didn’t occur to me until much later that literally nobody in middle school drives a car, and somehow they still date.

Nobody bases their political views rationally. I promise you, the foundations of your values are based on stuff you believe, but cannot demonstrate.

Some people are pretty strict utilitarians. So, they wouldn’t say that “society should help the vulnerable” or “society should enable the strong”, but that society should try to maximize utility, which is also often called “happiness”, but it shouldn’t be confused as being exactly the same as the layman’s term of “happiness”.

I am not a strict utilitarian, but utilitarianism can be a useful tool, and it absolutely can be used to rationally examine your example statements. The only part of it that is a belief is that it’s better to maximize utility, and then the question of quantifying utility, but there is much more logic in that than you seem to think exists in a system of values.

I don’t need to read that book in particular to know what you’re saying is basically true. However, it’s a misleading truth because it’s actually a huge scale, and not a binary yes/no as you’ve presented it.

You have people on one end who devote their lives to truth, like philosophers and scientists. Yes, their deepest underlying reasons are emotional, but they still generate truth. And then you have people all the way on the other side of the scale, who seemingly have no grasp on reality as presented, and rely solely on emotion, similar to an animal.

But when you turn a scale like that into a binary option, that’s the misleading part. Just because everybody’s basic motivation is emotional doesn’t mean that everybody is equally irrational.

He might think that, but it’s not always the case that people vote all one way or all the other. They’ll often go out of their way to vote for the other side if somebody has a lot of personality.

If you can radically change your political views like Fetterman has, based solely on a personal experience and not logical argument, then you never had a rational basis for your new views.

Even if everything Fetterman said was true, it’s still damning.

Also, he was elected based on the views he professed at the time of the election. Even if he personally changes, he still owes it to his constituents to act like the person who they thought they elected. It’s like he doesn’t even understand the most basic principles of representative democracy.

Start with Putin and Netanyahu. If they’re cancelled by everyone, that includes their subordinates. They won’t be able to wage their wars if people won’t follow their orders.

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It could, theoretically, be like this on purpose, not only due to things like cargo space on specific planes, but also because this sort of pricing can have a psychological effect.

People don’t really know what shipping is supposed to cost, so the way they decide whether a price is good is by comparing it to other prices.

90 seems like a lot, but if it’s cheaper than the “economy” rate, people might be more inclined to purchase it and feel like they got a good deal.

I save things expecting to reuse them, but then I am disorganized and often can’t find them. Often with little computer accessories. So, even if I do need to reuse a dongle or cable, I can’t find it and order a new one anyway.

I am glad that I am not the type of person who collects items thinking they’ll increase in value, or I’d probably become a full blown hoarder.

This is obviously the perspective from the side of the mirror dimension.

In an odd way, it sort of reminds me of those old paintings of noble women wearing giant dresses that they probably needed a team of maids to strap them into.

The hypocrisy is just the worst part.

I get the humor of the comic, but I generally think it’s a bad idea to compare two people in order to make a judgement, or even two groups of people. If you actually look at the groups, you’ll almost always find that each community has its strengths and weaknesses. They can actually learn from each other.

I was watching a video of a lady who escaped from North Korea. There was a real food shortage, and people were barely surviving. But she also said that she missed the feeling of community that she felt in her home town. That there was a certain kind of happiness that she felt living in a poor community struggling to get by that she couldn’t replicate.

That was necessary because for that toilet if you were misaligned, things could go very wrong. I don’t know if the newer toilets require the same training.

Astronauts have one of the weirdest jobs. How many prestigious jobs require you to watch a video of your own asshole?

If he was found guilty of participating in an insurrection, then Trump would be constitutionally prohibited from holding any federal office.

This idea in particular seems inconvenient to me, but there may be people who would prefer something like this.

I had a very small apartment when I lived in Japan, and honestly, I really liked it for the most part. It was a bit bigger than what I think they’re saying in this article, though.

Sounds like somebody’s got a case of the Mondays.

Also, don’t forget that Israel spends a lot of money to influence US elections. Until we have genuine campaign finance reform that disallows this, we’ll have to deal with politicians who treat Israel better than it otherwise needs to be treated.