I read this comment thinking it was satire, then got to the end and was disappointed it wasn’t a joke.

I could go without for a day… but if I had dependents, I’d be worried for not just the day, but every day after that too

No. Rent and mortgage are two different things. One is a fee for service and one is a loan.

If your home that you own doubles in market value and you decide to sell it, you pay off the mortgage (loan) and keep the profit (capital gain). If you are renting and the home is sold, you gain nothing.

If your home that you own burns down, you still owe the bank the money you borrowed for purchase (mortgage). If you are renting the home that burned down, you don’t owe anybody money. There is to service to pay a fee for anymore.

Like sure, fuck capitalism. But we don’t need to misrepresent how these systems work.

I’m not sure how much the kingdom was involved in Al Qaeda’s early years, unless you count American-Saudi-British funding of MAK/other Mujahideen during the soviet-afghan war. However, it’s clear Al Qaeda was already declaring against the kingdom a couple years before the USS Cole in '98. But sure I’d see Al Qaeda being a child of SA in a way similar to the KKK being a child of the US

You forgot the part where Saudi Arabia started courting American aid and literally expelled Bin Laden for being anti-American. That doesn’t make SA “the good guys” but it makes a huge difference in how your framing paints SA’s position and involvement with Al Qaeda during the 2000s. Their history is long and complicated, but during the war on terror, SA was much more aligned with the US against Al Qaeda and Bin Laden

You forgot the part where Saudi Arabia started courting American aid and literally expelled Bin Laden for being anti-American. That doesn’t make SA “the good guys” but it makes a huge difference in how your framing paints SA’s position and involvement with Al Qaeda during the 2000s. Their history is long and complicated, but during the war on terror, SA was much more aligned with the US against Al Qaeda and Bin Laden

I heard he was a democrat in the past and looked up some of his ads/debates during the 2004 election. He criticized tax breaks for the rich and advocated for affordable education and equal opportunity for minorities. Jesus it’s like he got replaced by a lizard person.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?183616-1/louisiana-senate-campaign-ads

You could curve the proportion to income to scale impact to something more equitable. How you decide what’s equitable would be another problem to solve, but I imagine it would involve benchmarking around the middle class and poverty line. Right now fine rates are okay for the middle class, so keep the proportion similar, fine rates really fuck up poor people, and fine rates mean nothing to the upper class. So imagine you you feel would be a fair impact for a fine and scale it accordingly.

China’s EV’s putting brakes on oil demand

I appreciate your statement and generally agree. However, there is nothing complicated or contradictory about the harm caused in rape or the need to protect children from predators.

Ukraine is doing fine building their own drones. They seem to have a fast iteration cycle with their growing drone industry. Their priority for foreign aid is artillery shells, missile systems, and vehicles/planes which is harder for them to produce en mass

Her PhD is in investigating the cultural/social context and implications of women in breakdancing. It’s not PhD in performing breakdancing.

Well yeah, they asked for a simple example, I gave one. What’s wrong with that? The discussion is already in the realm of “military dictatorship” which aren’t exactly known for respecting human rights/freedoms of non-citizena. The question was about the sustainability of such systems for those deemed citizens.

It’s not that they throw a ball around really well, it’s that the NBA brings in over 10 billion in annual revenue because of these players. How much are you willing to pay someone to bring in that amount of money?

Looking at it a different way, that would be like a photographer taking a photo of the sandwich and proclaiming “I’m an artist” or a director telling a chef what to make, telling a cinematographer/camera operator how to shoot it, and an editor how to cut it to create a short film of a sandwich and proclaiming “I’m an artist”. Art can be made from a series of creative and purposeful decisions that result in a piece of expression. It might not be good art, it might not be effortful art, it might even be unethically made art, but it’s not not-art.

Again, if we read it as he literally said that, then sure I’d agree the behaviour is not okay. Given the context of the quote, I’d want more evidence to take that quote literally.

It just reeks to me of him being jealous of people who don’t have kids and/or him regretting being a parent?

Perhaps. I don’t think there’s much here to substantiate that reading though, even with the context. I’d want a bit more evidence if I were to incorporate that into my appraisal of him.

You can judge someone to be morally repugnant without interpreting everything they say/do as an extension of the things that make them repugnant. It doesn’t lessen the repugnance.

This has nothing to do with going easy on JD. It has to do with the things we chose to criticize on principle. It’s about who we choose to be. You gave two great examples of things we should judge him for. I’m happy to focus on those and the next oppressive thing he says. If you want to be someone who criticizes parents for getting exasperated by their kids, that’s your perogative, but that’s not me and I don’t think people should.

Might be an unpopular opinion While JD has said plenty of horrible things, this reads more like someone relating how they felt in the moment than reciting what was actually said. I’m sure most parents have felt this way at some point. We don’t need to make this mole hill into a mountain. There’s already a whole mountain range of his shit that’s actually egregious.