Stupid people exist.

I mean this actively: stupid people aren't theoretical brings who exist outside this discussion we are having here. Many people in this thread qualify. There's regular stupid, which is just most people. That's the benign kind of stupid which maybe is indicative of a lack of training or bad circumstances for learning in earlier life. You can also find double down stupid in this thread. The flat earth conspiracy, "consciousness" mysticism, and can barely craft a sentence kind of stupid.

The general public is even worse.

People are all willing to admit that stupid exists, but most won't point the finger. Close your eyes and point and you'll hit someone, bless their hearts.

Somewhere around the majority of people employed in academia are absolutely useless.

I say this as an academic.

Being mtf or ftm trans is conforming to gender stereotypes with extra steps. Abolishing gender stereotypes and letting everyone express themselves however they want would be far better for society overall.

I don't mean that in a negative way and fully support respecting self identification because that has the best outcomes in the real world.

Apartments and big cities are hell. People shouldn't be shoved together like sardines.

Following "if it isn't harmful, it's not a problem" as a guideline, incest isn't immoral if it doesn't involve large power imbalance (e.g.: parent and offspring) and doesn't produce offspring.
If the relationship, be it purely romantic or otherwise is mutually desired and fully consensual (usual requirements), then I don't see how it would be different from other non-standard relationships.

I hope that's plenty controversial.

No state that is in the Eastern Time Zone is a part of the Midwest.

Plastic straw pollution doesn't have a measurable impact on the environment.

The entire thing about banning plastic straws comes from some high schooler using back-of-a-napkin math to guess how many straws are in the ocean in what was clearly a successful attempt at starting a science fair project the night before it was due. Some news station picked it up, and then a bunch of science-illiterates ran away with it.

You can't determine the impact of pollution by count. Straws are tiny and weigh almost nothing. If you skip buying one pair of sneakers in your life, then you've successfully reduced your plastic use by almost a lifetime of plastic straws.

Removing plastic straws is probably the single least impactful way to reduce plastic pollution. It's pure virtue signaling: it's about presenting an image of being environmentally conscious while doing effectively nothing to help the environment.

I support Age Verification

(Not to be confused with: I like Age Verification.)

For a few reasons.

• 1. The government already has all of your info and is spying on you from any device with a camera or microphone and wireless connection and without a warrant or meaningful accountability. We know this objectively because the FBI, desperate to look competent, inadvertently publicized footage obtained illegally in the Guthrie case that shouldn't have existed.
• 2. It's not 2014. We have enough information now to know definitively that social media (and increasingly, use of LLM's) is harmful to children's mental health, and that its negative effects are more pronounced on developing brains. (Though they affect adults as well.) These systems harm a person's mental health and cognitive abilities, and while this bit is anecdotal, I know several teachers who struggle to teach kids because they're no longer able to focus on anything for more than sixty seconds. (And the question: "Why do I have to know this if an AI can do it for me?" is becoming a common refrain.)
• 3. Private entities also already have your data. Go look yourself up on spokeo.com or some other background check site if you don't think so. (And be sure to put in a request there to have your info deleted while you're at it.) Or sub to a deletion service that will remove it for you.
• 4. People say that to cut kids off from social media will isolate them, but I grew up in a world where we only had email, chat rooms, snail mail, and land lines, and somehow we magically made friendly connections anyway. It's a nonsense argument, and ignores that social media itself is isolating people to a much greater extent.

Essentially, I think Age Verification is the lesser of two huge evils, and I don't expect the government in my country to force social media companies to disclose and change their algorithms to eliminate the harm being done to kids, so Age Verification becomes a necessary evil. (Hopefully a short-term one, but we'll see.) The social media companies have too much money for any civil suit to meaningfully impact them financially.

Human beings should stop reproducing and walk towards extinction, we've done enough and irreparable damage to the nature

People have gotten way too comfortable with censoring speech. I understand the fight against intolerance and propaganda and how hopeless that fight can feel, but we've sometimes taken things too far and that's only going to hurt us in the end. The left is not going to be the one that will take these compromises to the limit. We will be the most hurt by every bit of erosion we allowed to happen.

Specifically, I'm referring to efforts to get right wing platforms taken down not by being banned by a Facebook or Twitter or something, but by attacking the infrastructure on which a right wing website it run (such as attempts to get Truth social shut down by going after AWS, ISPs and other basic Internet infrastructure). It's a similar approach as is sometimes done when they target payment processors and trying to shame them into banning these platforms from processing payments.

These types of attacks on speech should never be allowed no matter if it's the left or the right. We can ban people from our private business or gathering place, but we shouldn't be able to stop them from creating their own. And no, basic Internet infrastructure shouldn't get to play the 'private business' card. They are effectively the roads, utilities and other generic infrastructure of the digital age.

Those attacks are no different from the right's constant attacks on abortion clinics by attempting to subject them to needless and pointless regulations meant for full hospitals. Or as if we'd allowed a water company to start selectively shutting off water to places they don't like.

We need more protections for the neutrality of infrastructure (both physical and digital) and keep the fights firmly restricted to end user platforms. Lest we find that someday our enemies have taken these tactics and beat us with them with far greater ruthlessness than we'd ever use.

I both thing people have a right to dignity, which by extension means they should have a day of how to live their lives. I also think that the general population shouldn't vote. Against Democracy is a really good read if you haven't read it.

For the record, I literally will drive people to the polls (since our current system creates better outcomes if more people vote) but I do really wish that most of them wouldn't XD.

I've got a few that I can't really separate:

Dental hygienists are greedy charlatans who convince us we need an expensive hygiene appointment every six months when we really don't. That used to be true before the invention of the electric toothbrush but not now. I stopped going 7 years ago and I make sure I brush properly daily for two minutes with my electric toothbrush. I occasionally use inter-dental brushes for a deeper clean and my teeth are perfect. No soreness, gum bleeding and certainly no cavities. It's lies I tell ya.

AI is the most incredible development in human evolution since the invention of the wheel. I think it is the beginning of our next evolutionary step. It may even save us from destroying ourselves. It has brought me personally incredible results that have enriched my life in countless ways. I can't wait to see where it takes us. People who are angry about it are dumb (you did say "controversial opinion" lol).

Money is basically the ring from Lord of the rings. You can't have it without it changing you. I've had the dubious pleasure of knowing a great many millionaires and they're all miserable bastards pretending that they're not. Their families hate them, most of them are alcoholics and drug addicts. They hate themselves even more and their money doesn't mean anything to them so they use it to impress others or hurt them, just so they can feel something. It's all a disgustingly wasteful, tragic act.

You should always look in the oven before turning it on.

Seems simple to me. Before making the oven hot, make sure there's nothing in there you don't want to get hot (and that the racks are in the right place.) Takes maybe a second.

But a lot of people seem to find the idea that they (or anyone in their household) would ever leave something in the oven, when not cooking, to be deeply offensive.

im fine with trans people and non discrimination but my whole life sex and gender terms were one and the same for me and most folks in everyday language. The idea of identifying pronouns for myself seems laughable to me. Im a big believer in simple solutions. Got some temp work at a place with genderless bathrooms that had the full floor to ceiling doors. Its a bit wierd to wash my hands with girls but its not like im naked. There is all sorts of language things going out of fashion (online) and folks are like just learn it but look despite decades of school my spelling and grammar are atrocious because habits don't change easily and no one is even forcing me to study or anything now. On top of it, like it or not for the internet folks, it has no bearing in the outside world which is still basically jugging along at its own pace. It will over time for sure but it won't happen as quickly as early adopters would like. Also I pretty much don't like any type of censorship of fictinoal things. Reality and fiction are two different things to me. Although modern ability to fake things is making identifying something as real as tough. I don't want claims of it being high end fakes as letting folks get away with crimes.

Armor-piercing ammunition should never be banned.

You really want one?

Okay:

Race-Based Affirmative Action is harmful discrimination against Asians and I, as an Asian American, don't really like it, particularly in the context of it being used as a deciding factor in college admissions.

(Affirmative action based on other factors like income or disability is fine, but using race is kinda weird to me... too arbitrary)

to me, the Super Nintendo was the worst Nintendo console. so much of the library is games that either had better NES prequels or N64 sequels if not both. despite having a buttload more colors than the Mega Drive, so many of the games ended up looking bland and lifeless, with the notable exception of Super Mario World which looks like a Fisher Price product. the sound chip sounds like someone is sitting on it, and that washed out sound is admittedly nice for RPGs but it ruins everything else

and this isn't me being a bitter SEGA fan! i think the NES and the GameCube were both signifigantly better than their SEGA contemporaries. just considering Nintendo consoles, i rank the Super well below the Wii U and Virtual Boy- those at least offered unique experiences

It takes just as much faith to believe that the universe came into existence out of nothing as it does to believe a higher being created it.

There's no ethical way to kill someone who's done nothing to you and doesn't want to die.