Phi for All

Here's an open link to the article: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/12/fusion-energy-breakthrough-by-us-scientists-boosts-clean-power-hopes/

The way things work isn't as simple as pointing out similar styles. The particular style you mention takes some time to develop before it fails the sniff test. It's similar to the way many neophytes post (which is obviously why the trolls copy it). If we had IP address matches, you wouldn't see more than a couple of posts from a sockpuppet, but the time-wasters have multiple ways to evade that basic test. I can't speak for the other moderators, but I'm unwilling to ban someone just because you recognize patterns that are reminiscent of a known time-waster. We need more than that to be fair. The poster in question falls within a suspect range of IP addresses, but it's on a very popular provider so there's an element of doubt that requires us to juggle between wasting your time and rushing to ban a new member. If you'd like to suggest a rule change that let's us ban trolls more quickly yet still accurately, let us know.

! Moderator Note This is a mainstream section, requiring mainstream responses. Whatever this is needs to be established in its own thread, in Speculations. Lightning/electricity is an event or process, and not a physical substance (can you wrap some up as a holiday present?). If you wish to argue this fact, please open another thread, also in Speculations.

I think that's simply how folks who identify as a flavor of Republican are being targeted. Extreme wealth has SO much data on what people like and don't like, and they use that information to achieve whatever their goals are, applying what works on various parts of the population. The white middle class is being told that minorities are jeopardizing the path to wealth, the working class hears that immigrants get better jobs, and the minorities are threatened with jail if they rock the boat. Progressives hear about what we should be doing, Liberals are usually asked to put themselves in someone else's shoes, Conservatives are usually told something dire is about to happen, and Libertarians get fed a daily diet of big-government overreach. Socialism and Communism are misrepresented then written off as historically failed economic structures, so Capitalism is the only solution most of these folks can imagine. We're all being manipulated to isolate from those who're being similarly manipulated so we don't share stories and realize the "boat" being described in all these stories is the same goddamned boat. Most of the information folks get is from entertainment sources, like FOX News and Facebook. The tone these outlets set is propaganda at its finest, and goes a LONG way to ensure that money is more important than votes or majorities or People's will. I wonder if the US has ever had a real democracy like our constitution describes, one where the idea was to raise up the People so their prosperity could gush upwards to everyone, rather than trickle down from a few?

Harm A Loan.

Ben put this in Book Talk, so maybe he's written a horror novel about the dangers of giving out bad credit loans? I'd call it Grizzly Bear Stearns.

Ah, so you're against corruption and abuse, and somebody somewhere tied the those two things together with "woke culture" in your mind (and a LOT of other people's minds). You now view attempts to correct the inequalities in the system as suspect. You have made the decision about being "woke" that many far-right personalities wanted you to make. And don't kid yourself, people like DeSantis represent the extreme right (the ones you say you're opposed to) in this country, people who don't give af about what minorities continue to experience in a system slanted against them.

This seems reasonable. Many folks have sensory issues where loud sounds, harsh smells, hot/cold/windy weather, and flashing lights take too much brainpower to process. We evaluate our environment almost constantly when it's not super familiar, and tons of input can slow us down.

This could be something as simple as habit. If you're used to writing things down so you don't forget them, you don't bother to remember them because you usually have a list. When you forget to make a list, you're also forgetting to memorize what you need.

To me, to be woke means you realize you've been doing things without question just because it's the typical way. When you question the status quo, you find there's all these solutions that are better for the majority. You wake up to the fact you're being skillfully manipulated by people who can afford what that takes.

To be fair, I define "anti-woke" as "blissfully ignorant". The arguments, to me at least, all sound like "You can't force me to see reality. If I want to drive with my eyes closed, that's my right!"

They may be using the same dictionary that defines "liberal" as "anti-American".

I thought removing colonial thinking was one of the most important things that humans should try to achieve, but you obviously disagree. By all means, start a thread on woke culture and tell us your take on it, I'll be sure to participate. I've been trying to wake up for 20 years.

As I look into the psychology, the Puritanical origins of the term stand out. You're judged by your productivity, and righteous folks don't mind hard work, so if you're struggling you must not be very virtuous. We've been taught to blame the victim for their struggles, and it's been going on for a long time. It's the same mentality that told us we're actually helping certain people by forcing them to work because they're basically lazy and would do nothing if we didn't beat them and chain them.

Ultimately, this part is completely up to you, but I have to ask why? You get an hour to edit/delete, so what's unsafe, even if you're past the time limit? I'm having a hard time thinking of how our editing rules are "unsafe". We aren't going to change, since we've actually experienced what happens when people can edit/delete at will. Talk about unsafe! In the distant past, we'd have people post one question, get a bunch of responses, then edit the question to make the responses look stupid, or bigoted, or some other manipulation. And of course, if someone makes a claim but can later remove it and say they never made it, a discussion forum becomes fairly meaningless. So, if you must go, perhaps you can first tell us what's so dangerous about holding people accountable for their part in a conversation? Edit to add: I see from this thread that you wanted to go back and edit your OP after others had responded and showed you how your idea was wrong. Can't you see how weird that would make the thread look, you removing errors from your OP that others comment on later in the thread? People reading that a month from now wouldn't be able to understand it.

Lazy is an accusation, a label, and a judgement all rolled up into one. Ironically, we often use the term so we don't have to work harder to find out what's really wrong. Lazy is a lazy conclusion. I'd start by acknowledging that if a person isn't doing something obvious to relieve a detrimental situation, then perhaps you don't fully understand the situation. In your son's case, putting on a few extra pounds may not be the problem. He may not understand what's bothering him, so even though he knows how to drop the weight, he may understand that it won't help the real problem, so he doesn't bother doing it. This may be a whole different problem. Your argument assumes all the problems involved are simple fixes, so if people aren't doing these simple fixes they must be lazy. The current population of the world is being bombarded daily with things nobody has EVER had to deal with before, in ways we never had available to us. We're more connected to others, but we've never been more isolated either. There is a ludicrous amount of resources being spent to confuse, obfuscate, and promote the kind of economic chaos that the extremely rich thrive on. Our kids see things daily that probably confuse the hell out of them, like politicians representing the People who vote down paid sick leave for rail workers when our supply chain problems are critical. Or that we do nothing to change our concept of masculinity despite the fact that men commit 90% of the murders worldwide. It's a bizarre, late-Capitalism, extremist era we live in, and our problems are many and diverse. Don't be lazy and simply label us all lazy. Some of us are rather flummoxed, unsure, uncentered, or we have too many problems competing for our limited time.

Good guess though!

I think you're beginning to see the problem with the term "lazy". Perhaps you're being lazy by only offering advice to help him physically. Your son is lazy for not exploring more solutions he's never explored before. Bunch of lazy people all over the world not bothering to deal with pandemics, mass shootings, anti-democracy extremists, poverty wages, cultural upheavals, authoritarian governments, religious extremism, and wealth disparity using the tools their parents gave them to cope. They should all get a little more exercise.

It depends on how much of this simplistic outlook you're willing to inflict upon a loved one. You insist your son is lazy when there might be any number of other reasons why your recommendations aren't working. To me, the complaints sound like there's a lot more going on. If it was simply about feeling a bit overweight, the extra exercise and focus on diet is a simple solution. I'm not going to advise you look beyond the "lazy" judgement, but I will say that kids today face a world unlike anything we had to grow up with. Their prospects aren't nearly as rosy, they face the judgement of millions of people on social media in addition to their parents and peers, and they see a lot of the lies about society that we failed to pick up on. The pressures they face can't always be dealt with by doing a few more situps, because they're more complicated and reach more deeply.

There are so many variation of this, and historically they all mean the same thing, that there is no evidence. If there was, the best way to reveal it is right up front in the opening post, but conspiracy never works that way.

What I see is young, strong, energetic people dropping the bullshit they've been force-fed like flies. They can see behind the curtain to where the uber-extreme wealth manipulators use "Democrat" and "Republican" as boogiemen for uninformed, fearful voters. They can see that worldwide there is an effort to prop up authoritarian governments and leaders in an effort to reduce the power of democracies. I see these people dropping the prejudices engineered into the system. I see them rejecting the hate and ignorance in favor of reason and clarity.

I agree, the evidence is clear in each of your posts.

Has any other supernatural event EVER occurred before? Supernatural means "outside of nature". I can't think of any actual events that have happened that had no natural explanation. I don't count stories in the Bible, since there are rarely any non-biblical writings to help verify them. That's not the way animal tissue works after death. We see decomposition effects, we witness what happens after a long time underground. We've long imagined that the dead can rise again, but the patterns of necrosis are well documented. Reanimating all the dead cells in a body is ridiculously expensive in terms of energy. And I suppose you believe that this magical reanimation is also going to make these resurrected people strong enough to push open a coffin with several cubic feet of dirt on top of it? At a certain point, faith in stuff like this seems quite silly to me, no offense. If it makes you feel comfortable, I hope it's worth it.

! Moderator Note We're not overly fond of conspiracy here to begin with, since there is rarely any evidence offered, but the real offense here is making these statements as if they're already known facts. I'm throwing this thread in the Trash, but you can start another one on this topic if you bother to back up ANY of your conjectures with actual evidence. For instance, Bill Gates predicted a coming killer virus because so were many leading immunologists, and of course we've known about vaccines and quarantines for centuries. If you wish to claim conspiracy, please support your claims with facts.

So what is ethical about judging whole groups of people based on the actions of some of them? By claiming all "athletes" and "players" are greedy and uncaring, aren't you discriminating against a LOT of people? Why should I expect help from anybody who is unlikely to be anywhere near my sphere of influence? And if Aaron Judge and I DID somehow find ourselves in a real tight situation in life (our lifeboat is leaking, for instance), what makes you so absolutely certain Aaron wouldn't help me out? Just because you have a jaded outlook on sports professionals, does that justify such generalized prejudice?