rational_lib
@rational_lib@lemmy.world
- Comment on What do you think the solution to selling progressive politics to young men is ? 6 days ago:
I get that this is upvoted a lot due to being constructive but it also reflects a lot of Republican media tropes about the left that aren’t really true - and that’s why trying to “fix” these things won’t work - because it misses the real problem.
Examples: No significant figure on the left is saying “men are rapists”, or telling men to be more like women, etc. Reducing suicide, safer workplaces, and reducing excessive prison sentences are all priorities for the left and not for the right.
I think the real problem is quite simple: Republicans have invested heavily in portraying themselves as the “masculine party”, and in driving the narratives I’ve mentioned. And because Republican leaders like the Murdochs and Elon tend to be men, they’re best at driving those narratives.
Which goes to the real underlying problem with the left as a whole - no ability to drive or counter a media narrative. The right has Fox news and Elon’s control over Twitter, which they can and do regularly use to create whatever narrative they want. Notice how for example they just made white south African farmer killings a topic all of a sudden. The left has a bunch of corporate media whose top priority is selling truck ads. Sure, maybe the reporters themselves are left leaning, but they have no top down guidance as to what narratives to build.
And until the left creates some sort of media capability to create and control narratives, the right will always have a leg up. And because of that, none of the well intentioned ideas here will actually work. If the left tries to appeal to men, the right will decide how those appeals will be interpreted.
- Comment on Tesla Full-Self Driving Veers Off Road, Hits Tree, and Flips Car for No Obvious Reason (No Serious Injuries, but Scary) 4 weeks ago:
To be fair, that grey tree trunk looked a lot like a road
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
Or vote against the one party (starts with an R) that continues to make the duopoly happen by banning RCV, and for the party (starts with a D) that’s far more likely to implement RCV.
- Comment on There is significant evidence that Grok actually inserted information about “white genocide” in South Africa into prompts that didn't appear to be related to this topic. 5 weeks ago:
The left is shockingly asleep about how bad this is. X still is the single most important platform for driving narratives about the news and politics. And it’s still important in part because Democrats and the left as a whole have been lethargic in leaving it. The fact that it’s blatantly being used to tilt the national political discussion in whatever direction Elon wants was probably one of many keys to getting Trump elected in 2024, and should be regarded as an ongoing emergency for Democrats and the left.
- Comment on Oof 5 weeks ago:
On the contrary it’s right, perhaps even acute
- Comment on Oof 5 weeks ago:
Assuming you actually believe I misunderstood their argument, perhaps it would be more useful to explain their actual argument that I’m not grasping?
- Comment on Oof 5 weeks ago:
So this version of the argument basically amounts to: people who have harmed society should contribute to social welfare that bolsters the economy and society collectively. Which while a solid effort and earning my upvote, 1) the_petty_auntie’s reply doesn’t show signs of making this particular argument and 2) in this particular case, it fails because society as a whole wasn’t harmed by her son’s actions - rather a particular victim was. And as the victim was a teen at the time of the incident, it’s unlikely that the victim would be able to take advantage of student loan forgiveness unless it happened many years ago.
- Comment on Oof 5 weeks ago:
The question asks why the audience’s student loans should be repaid now when hers were not. The response is that the reason is the same as paying for her son’s prison sentence for raping a minor, which is “betterment of society”. Let’s count the number of ways this fails:
- “For the betterment of society” is a justification that could be used for pretty much any defensible policy decision. It really doesn’t further the argument at all unless there is something specified about how paying student loans makes society better.
- RAPING A MINOR is in caps both to indicate shoutiness and to emphasize this aspect of the crime, which again, is hard to tie back to an argument about student loans
- The main failure - the fact that it’s a blatant ad hominem directed at the poster for having a son who raped a minor, which is an evidently successful attempt to hide the weakness of the purported argument by casting the OP as someone whom one would not want to be associated with by virtue of being a parent to a rapist. This implied argument, which is the real argument, is invalid in the absence of evidence that rapist-parents cannot have valid opinions.
- It’s also a particularly egregious example of an ad hominem because it relies on guilt/worthiness by blood relation, the same concept behind ideas like racism and even worse, inheritance.
Better answers might include:
- Education costs have risen to a degree that the fairness calculation is now different
- Student loan debt is a threat to the whole economy and just as bailing out banks sometimes makes sense, bailing out student loan holders might as well
- Financial inequality is out of control and we should dispense with antiquated notions of “fairness” to the wealthy when circumstances have been more fair to them overall than at any time in the past
But these answers would not get reposted on social media as much because they don’t play into tribalism and social drama.
- Comment on Oof 5 weeks ago:
All three people here are terrible
- Comment on Maybe Trump's Presidency Will Make Everything So Awful It Will Facilitate Actual Positive Change Nationwide 1 month ago:
The country was in decline for at least a decade before Trump took office.
Well 4 years of that decade was Trump being in office, and 4 other years was the result of people being willing to vote in literally anyone who wasn’t him. So really 8 years of that decade was Trump’s fault, and the other 2 years (before Trump) were so good they made us forget how important good government is.
As for the rest, Trump is cutting funding for research like crazy. That won’t just affect things today, that’s going to make stuff shitty for decades. And that’s exactly the kind of harm that the emotion-laden American news and social media simply won’t cover.
Of course future prediction is hard, so who knows what will happen. But I’m not seeing the path for this to turn around anytime soon. If I have to predict the future, I’d guess the EU becomes the new global leader, driven by relatively high democracy and pro-science policies compared to the rest of the world. This could even occur in a relatively short time frame, like 5 years.
- Comment on Paul McCartney and Dua Lipa among artists urging British Prime Minister Starmer to rethink his AI copyright plans 1 month ago:
I’m plenty open to questioning every part of copyright (has the idea ever actually been proven to be worth the enormous costs?) but the same copyright should apply to everbody. It sounds like this proposal gives a specific pass to corporations developing AI - anything these corporations can access should be accessible to the general public as well.
- Comment on Chances for the fediverse? Elon Musk takes hit as Europeans ditch X in droves 1 month ago:
I mean that’s a pretty easy choice for me
- Comment on What would this list look like for your generation? 1 month ago:
Always has been.
- Comment on What would this list look like for your generation? 1 month ago:
Hard to swallow pill: Skibidi Toilet is the modern Ninja Turtles.
- Comment on Chances for the fediverse? Elon Musk takes hit as Europeans ditch X in droves 1 month ago:
BlueSky may not be ideal, but anything is better than X.
X is just a machine for turning billionaire cash into political domination.
- Comment on How do I decrease acne after shaving my face? 1 month ago:
In addition to what everyone else says, I’ve done well with rubbing aloe on after. I’m not usually a natural goop guy but my ex bought it for me and I found it actually works pretty well.
- Comment on Elon Musk: your new Tesla will drive from the factory floor, to your house 'this year' 2 months ago:
Later this year: “I was right, but I actually meant to say ‘into’ instead of ‘to’ and ‘someone’s’ instead of ‘your’”
- Comment on Commerce Secretary Lutnick says tariff exemptions for electronics are only temporary: Lutnick said "semiconductor tariffs" will likely come in "a month or two.". 2 months ago:
Maybe you should blame yourselves for failing to convince the American people to vote for candidates who would cut off aid to Israel. Maybe, just maybe, camping in people’s public spaces, spraypainting people’s neighborhoods with “FUCK ISRAEL”, and oh yeah, helping get a fascist dictator elected wasn’t the best way to make those people want to side with you.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
Well to be fair, the social security administration denied the report.
In a post on X.
- Comment on I had no idea y cunt was this powerful 2 months ago:
It used to be a racial thing, like only white guys would do it. Probably has to do with the hyperactive degree of masculinity signalling in black and hispanic cultures, at least back in the gangsta rap era. Now we’re in the age of white Republican masculinity signalling, so I guess it’s their thing now.
I will say from back in the days of yore when a girl would let me anywhere near her it did strike me as a bit gross, but I did enjoy seeing her enjoy it. I think the fact that it’s a bit gross and she enjoys it means it’s kind of subservient, so you can’t be an alpha male if you do it. Says a lot about how so much of this sort of fundamentalist masculinity culture is pretending about what men want rather than being about what men really want.
That’s a much bigger topic though.
- Comment on Maybe it's just a human thing. 2 months ago:
3 of these are real examples things the people on the right did, the last is a meme made to make fun of feminists. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a level of feminism that goes too far, I just have yet to see an example of this in real life. There’s something about women in general that makes society dismiss them offhand as silly and ridiculous.
- Comment on What actually came first? The chicken or the egg? 2 months ago:
The chicken came first. Chicken-ness begins at conception.
- Comment on Is there a non leftist version of this website? 2 months ago:
Yes, lemmy.world
- Comment on Horses ARE Forever 2 months ago:
Horses, the original automatic braking
- Comment on FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado 2 months ago:
He’s been missing for two weeks but someone created a github for an academic homepage for him a few days ago and updated a branch on it 20 hours ago?’
Unless there’s something I’m missing and multiple XiaoFeng Wangs work for the Luddy School at IU?
- Comment on Horror 2 months ago:
Now I’m wondering why we don’t attach giant balloons to ships to reduce water resistance by cutting down how much of the ship needs to be underwater. Perhaps it’s because you would need more size for the balloon, and maybe the air resistance and water resistance needs to even out due to physical laws and such?
- Comment on 'X' Marks xAI's Spot: xAI has acquired X in an all-stock transaction. The combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion. 2 months ago:
It’s not all him, several other people invested in both. According to some article Elon owns 79% of X, and only 54% of xAI (barely enough to control it). Since the valuation of X in the deal is about $20 billion more what others have estimated ($12.3 billion), it definitely seems like it’s a corrupt bailout 46% funded with other xAI investors’ money, basically netting Elon $10 billion overnight.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
Miss Cleo was big in the 90s. And she wasn’t even the dumbest one. Americans have always believed in stupid bullshit. The CIA used to hire psychics too. Go back to the 1920s, and Americans pretty much took it for granted that fairies are real.
What’s changed recently is that the media went from being a mostly curated place where completely lunacy was hard to find, to a right wing clown show led by con artists. And don’t underestimate the degree to which this was done deliberately - Elon buying Twitter was a pretty clear example of the billionaire mafia taking a platform that was sort of trying to be more attached to reality and making it a lot dumber and more right wing.
- Comment on Terrorists 2 months ago:
Some guy improving Teslas with cool free penis art
- Comment on Why aren't there mass protests in the USA? 2 months ago:
Because protests don’t do shit. There were mass protests over police brutality in 2020. Didn’t do shit.