No worries, I’ve also become super sensitive to this ever since the discourse started spilling out into actual healthcare legislation here. Before it was easy to give people the benefit of the doubt, or to shrug it off as strangers online who don’t know what they’re talking about, but now I feel obligated to speak up just in case. Thanks for your understanding and for having a calm discussion about it.

But what if your opinion is threatening to others? If you believe that white people are inherently superior to other races and it is right for them to be served by the inferior races, then expressing that opinion is inherently threatening to many non-whites.

Sure, I’ve given hyperbolic examples, because I wanted to demonstrate that you can use freedom of expression to make threats, but there will also be examples that are in more of a grey area. There’s nothing inherently threatening about the Confederate flag. If you had flown it in 1600 people would’ve just said “cool flag, what does it mean?”.

Now however, many people see it as a threat, a constant reminder of how things used to be for their ancestors. Expressing your opinion by flying that flag says to those people “I want your children to live as your forefathers did”

Now, not everyone who flies that flag is making a threat, but some of them absolutely are. So what do we do?

I’m not saying I have a one size fits all solution. Simply banning anything that neo-nazis adopt clearly isn’t practical and could also be easily abused by the government to quash dissent. I’m just pointing out that it’s not a simple fucking problem.

This sounds so good on paper, but completely falls apart without carefully defining free speech. Like, what if I hire actors with prop weapons to march around minority neighborhoods and scream that they’ll shoot any non-whites who try to vote?

You think that fun performance art is going to be healthy for democracy? Really?

What if I use AI to make convincing video footage of politicians I disagree with mutilating dogs and then graphically fucking their corpses? Do you think my commentary on their lack of support for dog shelters is going to foster democratic dialog, or do you think that maybe some voters will develop a viscerally unpleasant disgust and have trouble looking at them or engaging in what they have to say?

What if you buy a botnet and use it to convince both sides of the aisle that the other candidate is an authoritarian who will destroy democracy and try to control their life. Or to send death threats to people who publicly admit to being trans?

It is important to make room for marginalized voices to be heard, yes, that is essential for democracy, but there are also tons of bad actors who will try to use the very freedom you’re trying to protect to deny others that freedom. A completely laissez faire approach to free speech will ultimately serve to silence the marginalized and further empower the wealthy.

You have to be very careful with this. Neurodivergence is a spectrum and while some of the symptomatic behaviors are definitely mild things that society should probably just learn to accept and accommodate-- other cause real damage and make it impossible for the patient to live a satisfying life.

This is especially true with ASD, where the “highest” functioning patients might just be harmlessly quirky, but other patients with the same diagnosis on paper (important for insurance and legislation) aren’t able to express themselves and might not even be potty trained, or able to dress themselves.

Saying that we “shouldn’t try to change people with Autism, society should just adapt” provides cover for politicians and health insurance companies to cut the very expensive therapies that help mold young children and enable them to achieve what they want out of life.

The fact is that we all have to change a little to accommodate society. Humans don’t spring from the womb talking, wearing clothes, and using the toilet. Society isn’t going to adapt to allowing my wife’s patient who likes to rip off all of their clothes and masturbate at the grocery store to do so. And now, because of the online discourse of “Neurodivergence isn’t a mental illness”, politicians are trying to cut my wife’s funding. After all, why would you spend tens of thousands of euros per child if their illness isn’t even real?

John Oliver did a great dive into the Post Office, and I think that segment is up on YouTube for free.

It’s actually even more impressive than you think. The only reason it looks like it’s losing money is that conservatives passed a law that forces them to fully fund the USPS workers’ pensions today, rather than investing some money and letting it grow. No private companies fund pensions this way, nor does the rest of the federal government.

In 2022, PSRA was passed which removed this requirement and the postal service has turned a profit ever since. It operates better and more efficiently than any privately held parcel service, because it takes advantage of truely massive economies of scale.

And as an American living in a country that privatized their postal service-- god damn do I miss the USPS. It was both cheaper and more reliable than what we have here.

Good that the backend validated it, but why in god’s name would you ever lower the maximum password length?!?

!To be honest, I kind of wish they just hadn’t bothered with portraying the ending. They set up such cool lore, and I didn’t really need the avant-garde film at the end. A cut to credits would’ve been fine.!<

Where do you think food comes from that having fewer workers means more food for everyone?