I’d probably accept the topic of nuance if alcohol hadn’t been involved. Once he introduced that, he’s pretty clearly a paedophile.

But yes - otherwise, I acknowledge there’s danger in too quickly labeling anyone and everyone a predator. Just like there’s furries that aren’t hurting people with weird stuff, if someone has genuinely kept distance and lack of forcefulness in what they do with a minor, it’s still BAD - it’s just not on the same vein as people who stalk and violently assault people. When I hear the idea of an 18-year-old being forever called predators/rapists for consentually dating 15-year-olds, it just sounds weird and wrong. Again, I’d call alcohol a form of forcefulness since a 12-year-old won’t be aware of its effects.

So now people are avoiding sweet drinks not because they cost too much in taxes, but…because they taste like battery acid.

That’s still achieving the overall goal.

I could be wrong, but it might be unintentional. The algorithm seeing a process by which rage and reaction generates more views (and hence more ad revenue) and tries to see if it can get it to spread. Same thing that lead to all those stupid “open mouth yelling” thumbnails.

It’s still irresponsible, and I’m all for assuming evil out of Google, I just don’t think they’d gain much from getting you specifically indoctrinated by Ben Shapiro.

Sure, daddy might beat me sometimes. But if you tell the cops to arrest him, he said he’ll get his friend to beat me harder.

Most people would be fine with this in the case of a home user duplicating one or two copies for his kids to watch and as backups. But we have seen whenever a rule permits something, someone will work out the MAXIMUM way in which they can abuse it for profit. Give them an inch, and they take a mile.

Ideally, we could have laws that are really finely built to be specific to that first scenario. But I honestly don’t know how you write those.

No, in fact they’ve been engineered to make sure that doesn’t happen. If you go to plaid way out on the ocean, it’s a horrific mess to clean up.

Thing is, you can find the most trustworthy politican in Afghanistan, dump a truckload of 4 billion at his doorstep…

…and then the next day, the Taliban knocks on his door with a gang armed with AK-47s, and they announce “Hello! I heard you wished to make a $4bil donation to the Taliban’s women-beating fund!” What’s he going to do in retaliation?

Hence why re-establishment projects keep the money on the part of the project (in this case, the US military) until they have places to spend that money (the infrastructure). Course, we can’t do that now.

It’s kind of similar to Russia right now; in order for the country to change - and it NEEDS to change - ordinary people would need to take drastic action. The USA in Afghanistan kind of demonstrates just how incredibly hard it is for even an ultra-powerful external force to do that.

Heck, look at formerly-Nazi Germany. It’s now a stupendous place to live, but look at what needed to get it there. In addition to multiple countries toppling the regime, they needed Germans to be active about their beliefs in the future of their nation, to the point they were willing to literally dismantle a wall.

I don’t claim to be able to give them a guidebook, but I definitely think when the Taliban does fall, it would have to come at least from heavy, confrontational, violent rejection of them from the locals.

It’d be fantastic evidence if we could actually look at documentation of how these small group trials have worked out. Honestly, it’s the first I’m hearing of them.

I don’t understand the word “paid” appearing in your third bullet point. Wouldn’t a communistic society operate without money? Generally speaking, what would a doctor’s motivation be to get 11+ years of medical school + residencies, then perform a difficult operation on a patient that has potential for complications and blame? (In a capitalist society, the motivation would be “Helping people” plus “Money”, tied with hospital-level protections against malpractice suits, but I’m curious about your answer)

I have heard that things like this lead to various accounting finagling to lead into statements like “Star Wars was not profitable”; also so that they didn’t have to pay actors as much.

That’s all a valid critique, but…I struggle to see how your explanation is that it relates to “population density”. We are talking about the cities, not trying to put trains in Montana farmlands.

In fact, within urban/suburban areas, the point of population density mostly relates to…investments. Because each home and commercial strip is separated by two miles of four-lane roads, parking lots, and clover highway on-ramps, everything is more spread out; hence, less density. So I feel like a lot of people disagree on which end of the chicken-and-egg explanation. America is big, and has areas that will never be covered by transit, but that’s not an explanation for why out-of-car transit is terrible in its urban centers. It’s generally caused by poor decisions in infrastructure investment.

I think a few others have mentioned how about 80% of the population, at least of the USA, lives in urban areas. So yes; generally the vast majority of people ARE traveling through heavily settled areas to get to work.

Everything you’re saying about 1-4 is pretty much correct; and that’s why in the end, I don’t blame most in the US for not waiting an hour for a bus going to a train. But 4 isn’t so often because it’s “impossible/impractical” to set up public transit for that area; it’s just that that area has, perhaps foolishly, invested more into cars, 4-lane roads, and parking lots than good bus/train systems, cycling lanes, and pedestrain areas. In the US cities that get it right (not so many, I’ll admit), it’s a really good experience, even taking a bike through large areas. Plus, the advent of smartphones helps people get to buses on time with minimal waiting.

Yesterday, I was headed somewhere, saw on my phone that a taxi would take 15 minutes to arrive, said “fk no, that’s too long” and biked to a subway stop. Given that it was rush hour, the trip was faster than if I’d taken a taxi.

Biking can quite often take you around traffic; in some cities, there are bus lanes that allow them to go around traffic too. Even just the ability to get off the bike and walk it up a one-way street can sometimes get you around some annoying obstacles.

Though it was hardly scientific, Top Gear once raced a car against three other forms of transit, the key being they had to go through the center of London during rush hour. First place was a bicycle, Second place was a boat, Third place was public transit, Fourth place was the car.

Thing is, I’m kind of settled with the idea that Reddit will still win out monetarily with this. 99% of users are going to take the path of least resistance, which is kinda expected.

So my goal is more around just having a good conversational community, and I kinda like the change in pace now that I’m using alternatives. I don’t really focus on “Reddit losing”. I just like having a good place to chat. It might be funny to see if they end up reversing course, but I’m not losing sleep on that turnout.