I’m already talking about that. Voluntary work in the situation where inmates will spend their wages on overpriced goods in prison is slavery with additional steps.

“damned commies” probably could work as a clue though

I was joking

Not saying it’s not true, but it was pretty much in the spirit of English legal tradition. This probably even wasn’t a huge point of contention when written.

If that part is changed, no kind of convict labor (or “public work” or whatever it’s called in Europe and elsewhere) will be legal. All the convicts will do is rot in the same building for many months and years.

Without some deep prison reform you’ll have an increase in suicides and mental health cases. I’ve spent only 10 days in a mental hospital (from medical commission for conscript service, I live in Russia), and every opportunity to go do something unusual was happiness there. Even to help nurses with carrying somewhere some vaguely piss-smelling bed sheets in bags. It was nothing like prison. It was nothing like a usual mental hospital even. Still boredom gets you.

Like I said, without a deep reform. With said deep reform - convict labor being allowed only with competitive wages somehow limited in use (say, only available upon release?), so that these wouldn’t go to overpriced prison goods or something like that to indirectly reproduce slave labor, - then yes.

Actually, about prison goods - I think prisons can afford to provide inmates with a free delivery service, while what they buy they pay for themselves. Prisons in general shouldn’t sell anything to inmates or buy anything from them, the power imbalance is unacceptable. Or maybe it won’t be a free delivery service, just prison authorities will be obligated to accept those deliveries.

I guess it became more egalitarian and less racist though? One can say they failed to end slavery, but they managed to end exclusively black slavery.

So it turns out that USA is actually not land of the free, but land of the equal. Seems what they like to accuse USSR of. Those damned commies.

There are a few sharia lands and a bunch of not-yet-sharia lands with like half the population dreaming of it.

Taken together - a huge chunk of the globe.

There are also a few countries where the Western concept of slavery wouldn’t work, but with pretty feudal-despotic cultural legacy, like, ahem, Japan and Thailand and what not, which may have something similar to slavery again in future.

So I wouldn’t say USA is that different.

And in Russia there are whole small towns functional because of prison colony facilities there where prisoners work.

Still, prisoners working for private companies with prisons collecting their wages, - seems kinda uncomfortably close. Because, yes, if they are safe enough to be let out into society, they are safe enough to not be prisoners.

Except in every step things can develop the ways you haven’t thought about.

And courtroom shows are kinda common enough in movies and even in reality. People will have strong feelings, but this doesn’t seem a major thing for many.

So - too much copium. I hope you are right and I am wrong, of course.

Yes, they are. It’s like demolishing dangerous construction. Guns to extinguish lives on firm trajectory to extinguishing yours are part of just guns to extinguish lives. When you solve this human problem with some technology or philosophy smart thing, let me know.

Some people think that situations where they can rely on others’ strength are normal.

Thus they may agree with need for weapons and self-defense, because “it’s a dangerous time”, but not when everything is in order again. Not even thinking that said “dangerous time” somehow happened and will happen again.

Guns are similar to fire extinguishers and defibrillators in that most of time they are not needed.

Campanella still didn’t fully embrace the globe Earth model: “I won’t say the Earth is a perfect sphere,” then said, after first admitting he was wrong.

Who the hell told him scientists consider it a perfect sphere? Maps for various satellite navigation systems are incompatible, among other things, because of different geoid approximations they use.

And his sun experiment, obviously, didn’t require traveling to Antarctica itself, he could just as well travel half the way, I dunno. Make the antique experiment with sticks in sand.

(I’ve spent half a year in a geodesy and cartography university before getting depressed after barely passing first exams and dropping out.)

In any case, he’s a fine guy and smarter than many people. He at least only accepted real proof. Most people around think they are smarter than flat-earthers because of being in other group than the stupid one. They are not unless they can prove that position. Most of them can’t, and still consider others stupid for questioning dogma, which is the whole fscking reason we know things allowing to build refrigerators, airplanes, radios, computers, and that Earth is not flat too.

Yes, my aunts, uncle and cousin live in a country reproducing “Animal farm” the last 6 years, with the end goal of being occupied and turned into a reservation. That book is more like reality than many would think.

Still, as a person not interested (usually) in agreeing with my counterparts, notice how this is a “good guy with a gun” situation. So maybe militia movement has a point. They just don’t know how to use their correctness outside of their one part of society’s fabric, but that’s up to those who know those other parts. Cooperation and collaboration, all that.

And almost any “good guy with a gun” can be called a terrorist formally. It’s an arbitrary separation.

So maybe gun rights really are human rights.

You’ve probably noticed how in any group the best decisions are made when every opinion is respected, and if it’s incomprehensible, made comprehensible with good and kind effort, and where aggression and expulsion are minimized.

It’s the same in politics.

It could have been a glitch in tax calculator tbh. Not my point. And I agree with you. “LOL. Cheap bastards” was my point.

I meant expensive for a kid. Of course, yes.

Kinda reminiscent of various Russian official events involving children.

LOL. Cheap bastards. I mean, PS5 is an expensive gift, but not for such an occasion, no?

Allies did too, actually. On lower scale maybe. USSR … did have its own stuff, but it was kinda even more unhealthy (leading to blindness sometimes) than what the rest had, so it was used in extreme conditions only, usually very low temperatures, very rarely.

I personally used high doses of German military marches and pr0n to “self-medicate” being 15-17. LOL.

And Star Wars soundtracks after that. And Warcraft II soundtracks.

In Russia they would say “how do you like that, Elon Musk?” as a mockery of something technical made in a really clumsy way. Without the mocking intonation it would mean that the thing should impress Elon Musk. Meaning Elon Musk had something resembling a cult of personality, a bit like Steve Jobs (interesting how these cults never form around people really comparable to bloody Columbus, say, Unix fathers, Bill Joy, Fabrice Bellard).

That’s not what we call meltdowns, but yes, autistic people should not be in positions of power and fame for their own good. There are speculations that Marcus Aurelius was one, but his notes start with a long list of people who have taught him how to avoid bad things, and despite that list we know that he’s done some unhinged shit before becoming the emperor we know from those notes. My dumb, dumb dad also caught his chance to prove he shouldn’t have anything resembling power over others.

I’m thinking of going stoic and dropping anything Android, but this would require setting up an emulator working good enough for WhatsApp, Google Authenticator, MS Authenticator and probably something else.