• 0 Posts
  • 29 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 21st, 2023

help-circle


  • I’m not saying it can’t be done, but getting a compromise from a debate is not a primary goal. For competitions, the goal is usually to demonstrate and practice debate skills and the topic and positions matter less. For more serious debates, it is meant to be a way to expose people to the strengths of your position’s arguments and expose the weaknesses of your opponent’s. It’s valuable as an opportunity to persuade an audience of people who haven’t been firmly entrenched in either position, or who may have only been exposed to one side’s arguments in earnest.

    The framework does presume both viewpoints are valid, since both sides are expected to believe in their position, be rational, and be reasonably well-informed. An invalid perspective would not be argued by someone meeting these criteria. It does not presume equality as that would be preemptively judging the quality of the argument. Either the debate platform or the other debater would presumably not agree to a debate with someone who cannot be expected to meet these criteria.


  • Wikipedia describes the first two songs as

    A 1980s-inspired downtempo electropop and synth-pop ballad

    and

    A synth-pop song

    Both those are still pop. I listened to the first few songs in the album. They’re not bad, and imo they’re more interesting than her earlier hits. You’re right that she has matured as an artist. But I imagine someone that disliked her earlier stuff would also dislike these. Music taste is something you can’t really be right or wrong about. You shouldn’t accuse someone of lying about listening to something just because they didn’t like it.



  • I am not a lawyer, but consumer protections should generally kick in when an issue is actually evaluated in a court. If you are being charged for things you believe to be unfair, you would need to refuse to pay, then see them in action after the business escalates it. Often, a predatory business will give up when it knows it doesn’t have a case. But it’s pretty hard to work on behalf of a citizen if they ultimately are convinced that they do have an obligation to pay after all.

    I agree with the other commenter on the first issue. If you have been paying the amount you were charged, and then hit with surprise retroactive charges, you would have a serious case in small claims. I expect a judge would favor you if it’s as described. $1000 for late fees is exorbitant, especially when the glitch was from their software and not rectified quickly. Unless you’re leaving out relevant details that explains the situation better.

    For the second issue, needlessly cumbersome cancellation processes are considered dark patterns and may be illegal in some cases. These cases are being enforced more recently, even against large companies like Amazon. For your pest control case though, if you face pushback when cancelling it’s pretty simple to tell them you won’t be using their services and will refuse to pay. If you already paid, you may be able to issue a chargeback after explaining the situation to your bank. Seeing as how you would be being charged for services not done, I don’t see how the business could contest that after being informed of the cancellation. You would still be on the hook for a (reasonable) cancellation fee, as lost business from a cancelled reservation does represent real damages.

    We are a country with a litigious history and we have recognized considerable rights for consumers. Just because you feel powerless doesn’t mean you are.



  • There doesn’t seem to be a pattern for whatever name politicians become known by colloquially, except last name is most common. Hillary makes sense to distinguish her from Bill, but I remember people generally using her first and last. Kamala is usually Kamala, but you see Harris too. Trump is Trump, but you’ll see people use his first name at times (like r/TheDonald). Biden is still referred to as Joe occasionally. Bernie was much more common than Sanders. For supreme court justices, it’s usually last name or first and last. I’ve never seen anyone refer to AOC as just Alexandria. Obama is Obama, but I’ve seen Barack in really informal contexts. Nancy Pelosi is first and last. Elizabeth Warren is either first and last or just last.






  • Non-interference is a good default position to have, but we are capable of acting on behalf of others when we have a certain threshold of confidence for what they would want in a situation. Otherwise, we would consider it wrong to give CPR to an unconscious person.

    When it comes to life, people overwhelmingly prefer to continue existing when they have the power to choose. So it makes sense for us to presume that a hypothetical person would choose to be born given the opportunity.


  • For general rape, the victim is typically capable of giving consent but chooses not to, meaning we know the rapist is violating them. For situations where the victim is incapable of consenting, it is true that we are assuming a position for them. As a society, we have observed that being made to have sex in a vulnerable position is a negative experience, so it makes sense to extrapolate they would be opposed if they were capable of choosing.

    For life, the observation is different. Once people have the power to knowingly “opt out” of existing, they rarely do. Most people instead prefer existing and consider it to be positive. So we should assume a hypothetical person would also choose to be born when acting on their behalf.



  • Is that saying meant to cover baseless assertions about someone’s actions? Hillary Clinton was involved in enough shady shit to not need to make stuff up. If someone says that she donated to her opposition’s campaign they should have evidence to back that up. Otherwise they just give ammunition to people convincing others to ignore real, substantive criticisms against Trump.

    That article mostly describes her campaign focussing on criticizing stronger and more likely candidates early on when the Republican nomination was still up for grabs. That just makes tactical sense. Otherwise you might as well also accuse her of being involved in a conspiracy to get Vermin Supreme in power too.

    You can say the fact that Hillary is a woman contributed to her loss. You can even argue that it was enough to make the difference in Trump winning. But the main reason she lost is because she was still otherwise a weak candidate overall.



  • Emojis are used very widely, including places meant specifically for young kids. These places would already censor words, but requiring emoji censorship as well is adding complexity to a problem that is already difficult to handle. Companies not on the ball with the release of sexual organ emojis would let kids see that until it’s added to their filter list. Kids wouldn’t know what it means, but it can lead to them googling for context or encourage a conversation with the predator using it if they ask about it.

    Honestly, I just don’t think it’s worth the headache. Eggplants and peaches and cats are already pretty easy to understand in context, and if you need more than the emojis we already have, we do have our old fashioned words.



  • That’s true, but the information age allows us to be more keenly aware of problems that aren’t just local. Our new ability to be online has contributed to an uptick in mental health issues.

    Fortunately, being able to shine a spotlight on problems in the world also puts pressure on us to improve. We do have issues like financial inequality and global warming that have recently gotten worse, but if you look at trends like violent crime, illiteracy, global hunger, extreme poverty, child mortality, or deaths to many longstanding diseases, it is hard not to realize that we’re actually collectively doing a good job of making the world better.