The only free society we will get is an anarchist one where people agree to work together and create rules that they can all abide by. Those who don't want to abide by the communities rules can leave.
That's not anarchy. That's some form of democracy.
Any top-down system of governance will never be free by its very nature.
That's exactly the kind of logic bullies use to inflict their freedom on others.
Society only works by consent. If the people do not consent to the laws, they are authoritarian and should be resisted.
Real "I'm 14 and this is deep" energy here. Laws and governance of any kind are inherently rooted in consent to authority. Hell, even being a good citizen in an anarchy is about consenting to the authority of etiquette, basically the tyranny of empathy over free will. Authority invites resistance, arguing for resistance to authority simply because it exists is an empty nothing burger of a philosophy.
This all feels like a libertarian dog whistle to excuse politics lacking any empathy.
The only Star Trek or Star Wars shirt I currently own is black with yellow gold lettering saying "Star Trek" in the Star Wars font. I think it makes some people uncomfortable. My S.O. hates it. I think it's hilarious and I know immediately what type of "nerd" I'm dealing with based on people's reactions to it. I suspect most people don't realize it's a joke or they are worried that I don't know it's a joke.
They may have used the word wrong, but getting parodied by Weird Al is actually more prestigious than winning a Grammy. Not because Weird Al parodies are rare, but because he only parodies songs that are actually pretty good. I have trouble believing that if the song were actually bad, playing it on accordion with jokey lyrics would be an improvement. There's no Weird Al parody of a Nickelback song, that I know of.
Give em The Harkness Test
I don't ask people about their politics. I just act like true things are true, e.g.: human instigated climate change, COVID, the efficiency of a single payer healthcare system, a oblate spheroid earth, and the moon landing. I'm politely understanding of the flaws in their world view, but I NEVER pretend that any of it is even up for debate. You can balance not being rude with not backing down from the objective reality you live in by showing an genuine fascination with their weird cult beliefs.
Conspiracy theories, religion, myths, and magic are all very comfortable fantasies that wither in the face of the existential dread from understanding that the universe is horrific and absolutely indifferent to your personal suffering. Being excellent to each other and maintaining faith in the potential of humanity (tempered by knowledge of our depravity) is our only hope of survival both physical, philosophical, political, and spiritual.
Ok, sorry that turned into a rant. This shit matters though, so not that sorry.
"Sensors" sounds like a magical solution that hasn't been thought through, but the marketing guys already sold it and won't listen to the engineers explaining how difficult it is to actually build such a thing.
Similarly, there are a lot of really lazy bad maps out there that are trying to make some point about a statistic, but are really just population density maps. Give your up votes to the person that links the appropriate xkcd.
I feel your pain.
I edit the URL to remove the first part of the URL and replace it with "http://old.reddit.com". That still seems to work, last I checked, but I fully expect it to be killed any day now.
It's the gritty psychedelic dystopian cyberpunk movie we didn't deserve. Nintendo had no idea how to produce a movie and just let them run fucking wild. Hollywood should be encouraged to take more chances. Fucking electric bumper cars demolition derby style car chase. Dino-people. Devo (the concept not the band). Psychic fungi. And all the other fucking weirdos. It's not even awesomely bad, it's badassly awesome.
What's most surprising to me is how closely the latest animated Movie Bros. movie followed the very broad strokes of the plot of the original, like a sanitized and fully kitsch commercial reboot, which is kind of appropriate for the world we live in.
If I was about to go on tour with my best friend and he said something stupid that put us in danger from real life lunatics with guns, I'd fucking cancel the tour too because I cared about us both and our relationship. Besides, if you can't tell your friends they're wrong when they're wrong, they're not really your friend. This isn't necessarily the act of betrayal you're making it out to be.
I'm betting that making this statement publicly makes it easier to break the tour contracts, rather than backing out of the tour without saying why.
I'm no nationalistic fanatic of the flag, but is it really so difficult to understand that the flag is a symbol?
Obviously each flag, be they for nations or other groups, represents more than just a piece of cloth to many people. Taking offence at someone else's identifying with what a flag symbolizes is not okay. But, I tend to look skeptically at worship of any kind of idol, be it flag, cross, or text. That still doesn't mean it's okay to hate or persecute people for their beliefs, even if they appear silly to you and as long as they don't hurt others.
One group can demonstrate their respect for the nation by physically following some rules around the flag and others can demonstrate their loyalty to their ideals of the nation being violated by flying the flag upside down or burning a flag.
A flag or banner is not just a piece of cloth, never has been.