This is kind of inspired by the whole GTA VI controversy where they're selling an ultimate edition of the game for $100 and the base price is $80. The game took the company like a decade to create. It's expected to give you hundreds of hours of entertainment while telling a (hopefully) wonderful story and doing it in an artistic way. Folks will easily spend $10-15 on a movie ticket today for 3 hrs max of entertainment. I feel like it makes sense to pay several times that for several times the amount of entertainment you get out of it.

Some might argue it sets a bad precedent for companies that make games that aren't worth that price to then set unfair prices. But I also think you need to be a responsible consumer there and know that you shouldn't spend more than $60 on, for example, a Ubisoft game until you know it is worth it.

It sucks more people can't afford a pricier game like this. Don't get me wrong there. Wages haven't kept up with consumer inflation anywhere else in the (United States) economy. But I think these AAA titles are more or less worth the increase in price, especially given the rising costs of game development, too.

EDIT: Also adding on this comment from Mestoph because they raise a great point:

"You also miss a major point in argument for increased prices. They haven't risen noticeably in like 30 years. Which means that in order to be profitable they have to put out a shittier product or sell an astronomical number of copies."

I want to start this post by emphasizing that I actually want my view changed here. This is NOT just another astrology bashing post. If your answer is "it's a belief system, you either believe in it or not" this is not what I am looking for.

I am a very rational thinker. A little too rational sometimes. If in any social context, the topic of astrology arises, I almost instinctively roll my eyes at the very least mentally and stop listening to anything my conversation partner has to say about this topic.

I want this to change. I think this is in fact quite a**hole-ish behavior even if I don't share the same belief system. And what always has helped me find the common ground and actually try to understand what people are actually trying to communicate through the lens of a certain "system" was at least a little bit of scientific backing.

Now I doubt that there is a science paper that empirically shows that cancers are a great romantic match with capricorns.

But what WOULD make sense to me is that maybe there are certain personality traits predominantly present in people born during certain seasons of the year. Or heck, maybe even moon phases. Sure, rationally and logically, I am aware that the affect the moons forces have on an individual are so miniscule that they are probably less than a rounding error in the grand scheme of things. But the process of billions of "butterfly effects" that occur when you are born and still have tremendous effects on a person's entire life is still absolutely a thing and I am pretty sure we are far away from a conclusive statement what actually meaningfully affects us and what doesn't.

Now, me personally, I don't believe for a second that the phase of the moon or constellation of the stars has any affect on anybody and even the seasons probably barely make a dent in our development especially now that we have be came in-doors creatures with air conditioning. (So maybe astrology used to have more "science" behind it that slowly tapered out of our "habitat"?)

But it isn't completely unheard of that certain seasonal effects have statistical bearing. The classic example is the birth months of hockey player (though that is more likely to be a systemic effect rather than an actual seasonal one, so even this one is probably correlation, but still)

So yeah. Does anybody have a more rational take on astrology? Are there any hints for some scientific grounding or even some empirical data that might help me have a conversation about astrology without mentally shutting off completely? Or is it in fact all bs?

Why would I ever care about somebodies birth sign even in the slightest?

I want to start by prefacing this is not hate towards GTAVI/Sony or anyone going to buy it. The last GTA I paid was liberty city (still my favorite) and after that it became repetitive. I see a lot of reddit users say "it doesn't matter I'm still going to buy GTAVI" and I say more power to you.  

My biggest concern is what happens in the next 10 years with not just Sony but every company in every field. If not owning digital media becomes normalized and everyone just goes along with it what stops companies from putting something like functions for a remote control for your tv behind a paywall. I know it sounds extreme but 10 years ago I thought it would've sounded extreme to play ads on your radio every time you stop at a red light or pay 80k for a car and still gotta pay $25 a month for the heated seats. 

If we get too comfortable paying full price for something while companies still hold the power to charge more how far can this really go. My concern isn't that companies are going to start charging for random features that we were used to, it's that this can get out of control to the point we don’t own much even after purchasing

Edit: I want to clarify. Locking software behind a paywall is also considered digital ownership. If you buy something with software already installed but can’t unlock it without paying a subscription is something I would put under this umbrella

Edit 2:Edit: I realize I can’t prove why anyone should care if they’re comfortable with the convenience and the current model. I still personally believe ownership matters other than just seeing it in your library but I understand now that it’s not something everyone sees as important. (Which was an overreach on my part) At the end of the day, if people are happy with the convenience of digital media and subscriptions, that’s their choice. I am happy to have gotten better explanation other than “JuSt DoNt BuY GTAVI” lol

I'm a photographer/videographer so to make this clear for a start, AI image generation tools make my job one of the safest on the planet.

This might surprise some people, and I often pose this as a question - why is photography/videography so safe from AI when that's literally half of what the modern usage of "AI" does (the other half being LLMs)? I ask people to think about it, and discount technology - no matter how good AI image generation gets, it will never replace real photographers or videographers. It is nothing to do with technology, the answer is way way more simple.

I'll reveal it now so this thread makes sense - it's simply because AI is not a time machine. I take photos/videos of music festivals/nightclub events mainly, and even if AI could perfectly create a photo/video of such an event, it would be utterly useless because it didn't actually happen. It isn't reality, which is what photos/videos are all about.

The same can be said for pretty much any type of photo/video work, from corporate to weddings to events to portraits to science/geography to astronomy, the list goes on. The whole point is you're making images of real things that actually happened, even a perfect "fake" AI image is totally pointless. Even if AI could make perfect images of "a wedding" (and it can't, we'll get to that) you wouldn't see any of your actual guests, location, decor, clothing, flowers, etc. It's like being an architectural or structural engineering photographer and simply submitting stock photos of the Great Pyramid of Giza when they've asked you to get images of the new skyscraper your client is building.

For a while I made one exception - product photography, something I've never done. But even some light research and thinking into that, I realised I'm as guilty as everyone who thinks AI is going to take over. Again, reason is way way more simple than I thought - how does AI make a photo of your new product? You need to supply it with many many many reference images of your product because it didn't previously exist. So there's no point using AI if you're having to take loads of good quality, well lit reference images anyway.

At this point I'd like to point out AI as a tool is very good, and is the broader definition of AI. AI denoise in Lightroom for example saves many many photos in my line of work. Image to noise ratios in digital cameras hasn't really improved since about 2011. My Sony A7RV, a camera costing £3000, has the same low light performance as my Nikon D5200 from 2013, a camera you can pick up for about £150 with a decent kit-lens.

But this is all Narrow Artificial Intelligence, ANI, which has been around for decades, and runs locally. Cameras have been using ANI for autofocus since the mid 1980s. And this is all image generation tools are, ANI with insane amounts of data, but requiring enormous amounts of internet bandwidth and data centres to do it. They cannot create anything of their own, they simply amalgamate existing data to make a final image. They are no closer to AGI or ASI than a caveman throwing more wood on a fire to make it hotter was to creating a nuclear fusion reactor.

I'm not even overly bothered that all this shit means a pair of SD cards costs four times what they did 18 months ago. I'd accept it if AI was as good as people make out. But it simply isn't.

My gripe here comes from the fact people insist that AI image generation can do things it cannot, and people are seemingly swept away by it. There's even a subreddit "isthisAI" (not sure if we can link to subs on here) which is full of either very very obviously not AI videos, or very very obviously AI videos, with people still debating them.

There was one today with some coal miners working in extremely dangerous conditions, and while the main answers were "it isn't" the main explanation was "this kind of dangerous work still happens" and not "no, AI cannot create a video this realistic".

This utterly flabbergasted me so I asked someone who pointed out "it's an old video before AI got sophisticated" exactly what "sophisticated" AI model can create such a video?

Nearly 200 downvotes and no answer, one guy did post a list of AI services that "he" claimed could do it - AI LLM slop, and most of his examples don't even actually generate video, nevermind crappy obviously-fake video. He actually openly admitted to "asking ChatGPT".

I'm totally convinced this is a grift - whenever you ask someone to create a realistic AI video they simply cannot do it. I'm assuming a lot of people are in denial, but I also think a lot of this is like Bitcoin - people who invested in it thinking it would make them loads of money, but actually it's just a few at the top who will really make money. Like cryptocurrency, I think AI image generation could be an amazing force for good, but like cyrpto, it seems to be something that won't catch on and is simply a ponzi scheme. Unlike cryptocurrency, it doesn't actually work. Bitcoin or the like makes perfect sense and works great, but governments are (understandably in fairness) scared of it. AI image generation doesn't work, at all, and is just a massive grift to get people to invest in it.

To note two things -

1. I actually think AI Slop is quite funny and in some cases useful. I've no issue with an amusing video of a male world leader growing massive tits that burst out of their suit. Childish, but vaguely funny in a group chat. Me and some mates run a local club night and make no money on it, we do it for fun. If you don't count the free beer, we actually lose a bit on it. An AI generated poster, as none of us are graphic designers, is fine and does the job.

2. To Change My View and get delta, you need to provide an example, the model used, and the prompt you used. And to make clear I mean an EXAMPLE - an actual video. A common tactic from the AI investor bros is to write about a model/service that "can definitely do this bro, you're just ignorant" then not post an actual video. You cannot just claim something exists but not show your work. You must also include instructions on how to generate a similar/identical result.

To provide some examples I'm looking for so you can complete this task without cheating -

- A video of a sunset from Cafe Mambo in Ibiza which then pans around with a DJ playing who has a residency in Ibiza this summer. Many DJs have residencies in Ibiza clubs all summer, and with the clubs not opening until midnight in most cases, many will play an early evening set around sunset at Mambo. Pick any you like, Ibiza Spotlight's club calendar is a good starting point. This is the location I'm talking about - https://maps.app.goo.gl/TKf6m6YXGEa7goJv6 Pan around and you'll see where the DJ is playing. It must be a real DJ who played in Ibiza this summer, or even in recent years.

- A video of former Top Gear/Grand Tour presenter James May having broken down on the Snake Pass here in England, in a Maserati Biturbo. The alternator belt is stuck and on attempting to turn over the engine, it breaks and he gives his signature "oh cock".

- A video of Eddie Hall or Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, current world deadlift record holders, breaking the current 510kg record at 600kg, with a clear and convincing view they have done so, including close ups on the plates.

- A video of Jennie from Blackpink falling over on stage during a performance and shouting "oh fucking hell, you cunt" as the mic fades off and crew rushing on to help her.

- A video of Lewis Hamilton crashing his Ferrari at Eau Rouge in Spa, in a near identical way to the infamous BAR crashes of Jacques Villeneuve and Ricardo Zonta in 1999 (which you can see here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXy2SCM2O-M ).

- This video - https://www.reddit.com/r/isthisAI/comments/1w4fpz9/comment/p7a0a2o/?context=3

They will all be judged by me, my mum (who is 75 with vision problems), my mate (who is into powerlifting, hence the deadlift example, he's also big into AI), my wife (loves Blackpink, hates Jennie for reasons she cannot explain), and the Is It AI? sub.

So please please, change my view.

Today, the AI backlash is intense against large companies and individuals alike. I can see the argument for backlashing against large and profitable companies; frequently they are eliminating jobs, cutting corners, and making rich people richer.

However, AI has given independent creators the chance to actually prototype big ideas in a way that was formerly reserved only for those who were already rich and well-resourced.

As an example, an independent board game designer comes up with an idea for a boardgame and sketches it out, uses lego minifigs as placeholder pieces, and comes up with something really great.

But he wants to take it further into existence, ultimately to attract crowdfunding or investors and finish the project with a real team. However, as an independent creator who is moonlighting, he can't afford an illustrator at that moment. On Reddit, I've seen this situation met with vitriol - a mob yelling at him that he doesn't deserve to continue his project because he can't pay an artist at that exact moment.

I don't see what's wrong with a scrappy creative using Midjourney to create prototype art so that his cards can look as close as possible to the final product for playtesting. Or using an AI tool to create 3D models of his minifigs that he'll 3D print for his prototype.

"Theres No effort!" is simply wrong. The person has the vision, and has put time, effort, money, and expertise into pushing the AI to create the assets he needs. It's not effortless to get coherence out of an AI support tool, and it take a lot of persistence and tweaking, assembly, learning models, experimentation, iteration.

Even they were to use an LLM to help punch up some of the writing to combine with the art, shouldn't the quality of the end product be what they is judged on?

If they end up with assets that look like slop ChatGPT advertisements, or clunky AI slop writing, that should be the measure of whether or not their product should be condemned, in my opinion.

But if they are capable enough with writing and aesthetics to create a high-quality experience, why would that person be worthy of condemnation? This is doubly-so if the person ultimately wants to hire an illustrator but simply can't afford it at that time.

Stomping out this person's endeavor will leave us in a situation where only those with the money and resources have the freedom to pursue big, interesting ideas.

Yes, literally morally wrong.

I am not saying that donating is just a commendable practice, or that reducing animal products makes you a little bit of a better person.

My view is that if you face no serious financial hardships, health limitations, or equally important obligations, and you can make these sacrifices at little cost yet refuse to do so, you are doing something morally wrong.

These are the two things I believe are morally required for the financially comfortable:

1. Donate some reasonable portion of their income to effective causes
2. Reduce their consumption of animal products, particularly those produced through intensive animal agriculture or factory farming

To clarify my position, I am NOT arguing you must donate everything you possibly can, nor am I arguing that everyone must become vegan.

I am also not arguing that morality requires you to maximize total welfare as much as possible every second of your life.

I am arguing there is definitely a moral minimum above zero, and a big reason why this doesn't feel obvious to many people is because modern society makes the suffering caused or preventable by our choices extremely easy to keep out of your mind.

Here is the principle behind my view:

If you can prevent or substantially reduce serious suffering at relatively little cost to yourself, and you have the means to do it, and doing so does not require sacrificing something of comparable importance, then completely refusing to help is morally wrong.

Again, to clarify my position, I am not saying that if one action produces more welfare than another action then choosing the lesser one is immoral. I reject that.

Suppose one person donates $1000 and another donates $1100. The first person did not do something wrong just because another $100 could have produced more good.

My claim is that there is some minimum level below which your refusal to make even a small sacrifice becomes morally wrong.

I am not claiming to know where this threshold lies, but moral concepts can have fuzzy boundaries while still containing obvious cases. There is no precise number of hairs on your head at which you become bald, however, that does not mean that baldness does not exist.

Likewise, I don't think we need to calculate the exact percent of someone's income at which they are no longer morally wrong for not donating to believe that 0% is clearly too little for someone with substantial disposable income.

Donation

Consider a thought experiment:

Every morning on your way to work, you walk past a child with malaria

Suppose that you know with certainty that handing over $7 will save the child's life

You have $80,000 in your pocket every morning on the walk

You walk past, and the child dies

The next morning, there is another child with malaria, and $7 would save them.

You walk past

Another child the following morning

You keep your $7

You continue to do this day after day

I think almost everyone would stop describing your behavior as just "It would have been nicer if you helped."

Almost everyone would agree there is something seriously morally wrong with repeatedly allowing children to die in order to maintain a trivial amount of money.

Now change one fact:

Instead of the child being ten feet away, the child is 5,000 miles away, and instead of physically handing the child $7, you can do so at the press of a button on your phone.

Why does that change the child's moral value?

Of course, the real world is more complicated than the thought experiment. $7 does not reliably save one child. Here are the actual numbers:

UNICEF estimates that 4.9 million children died before reaching age five in 2024, and says that most of these deaths are preventable through proven, relatively low-cost interventions and access to quality healthcare (UNICEF)

GiveWell estimates that roughly $7 can provide a child with a full course of preventative malaria medication through a malaria season. Its models for its top charities during 2022-2024 estimate around $3500-5500 per life saved on average, though it can vary heavily on a case-by-case basis and is not a guarantee (GiveWell)

Another thought experiment:

Consider someone making $80,000 who is financially secure.

They spend hundreds or thousands of dollars each year on things like:

restaurants, subscriptions, new electronics, alcohol, vacations, unused clothes, upgrades for items that already work, dozens of other marginal luxuries

I am not saying that enjoying these things is immoral, however, if that person were to tell me that giving even 1% of their income (which would be $67 per month) is something morality has no right to ask of them, I find that extraordinarily difficult to defend.

We're comparing small improvements in the lifestyle of someone who is already comfortable against interventions for malaria, childhood disease, malnutrition, and extreme poverty.

Again, I find it extremely hard to defend that preserving every dollar of consumption outweighs the expected benefit produced by even a modest donation.

"If that's true, why don't I have to donate everything?"

This is the most obvious objection, and I don't think it defeats my position.

I am not claiming whenever $1 benefits someone more than it benefits you, you must give it away. That would require giving until you're severely impoverished, since there is always someone who could benefit from money more than you could, and your flourishing has moral weight too.

My claim concerns situations where the cost to you is small relative to the suffering you can expect it to reduce. You are certainly permitted morally to save for retirement, provide for your children, help your parents, have hobbies, travel, and build a life you want to live. However, "my life matters too" does not imply "therefore every additional dollar I could spend on myself matters enough to justify giving literally nothing to someone facing vastly more suffering." That is an enormous leap.

Someone living paycheck to paycheck is not the target of my argument. I am talking about people for whom donating a modest percentage would have very little effect on their flourishing.

Animal Products

More than 80 billion land animals are slaughtered for meat globally every year. FAO data put the reported total at approximately 83 billion in 2022.

That doesn't include fish or the countless other deaths associated with production systems. (Our World in Data)

Livestock accounts for ~80% of global agriculture land use, once grazing land and cropland used for animal feed are included.

However, meat, dairy, and farmed fish account for only 17% of global calories and 38% of global protein... (Our World in Data)

FAO estimates livestock emissions at 4.3 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent in 2023, which is the largest component of global agrifood-system emissions in its dataset. A separate FAO life-cycle assessment estimated livestock systems at ~12% of total human-caused greenhouse-gas emission. (FAOHome)

WHO also identifies the heavy use of antibiotics in food-producing animals, particularly intensive animal production, as contributing to antimicrobial resistance and recommends reducing medically important antibiotic use in food-producing animals (World Health Organization)

All things considered, this is an industry with consequences for tens of billions of sentient animals, land use, greenhouse-gas emissions, biodiversity and ecosystems, and human health.

And for many financially comfortable people, reducing their contributions requires something astonishingly mundane:

Eat some different meals...

Not starve, sacrifice your health, or never taste meat again. Maybe instead of eating animal products every meal of the day 7 days a week, substantially reduce them. Learn some different recipes, perhaps order something else occasionally, replace some meals. That is the level of sacrifice we're discussing.

Consider another thought experiment:

Suppose there are two restaurants.

At restaurant A, you order pork. You never see where it comes from, and twenty minutes, a delicious pork dish appears on your plate.

At restaurant B, the supply chain is exactly the same, however, the wall behind the kitchen is transparent.

When you order pork, you watch the pig being brought out, and you watch it panic in fear for its life.

You watch the animal being killed and butchered.

Suppose you watch its throat being cut and watch it bleed out, twitching after its death, then they prepare part of its body and place it on your plate. The same delicious pork dish.

I suspect the vast majority of us would find restaurant B horrifying..

Some would even refuse to eat.

Some might even tell the butcher to stop.

My question is, what morally relevant question did the wall change? The pig didn't suffer any more because you watched. It didn't suffer less because you didn't. The only thing that changed was your psychological experience. It didn't change the experience of the animal.

Modern food systems put huge walls between consumers and production, which explains why we might feel differently about the two restaurants, however, it doesn't make the underlying suffering disappear.

Another thought experiment:

Suppose someone takes your dog.

They kill him in front of you, butcher him, cooke him, and say, "don't worry, I really enjoy the taste and dog meat is a vital part of my diet."

Most people would regard this as a serious moral wrongdoing.

Change one variable: Instead of a dog, it's a pig or a chicken or a cow. Why has the moral calculation suddenly changed? I don't think saying "dogs are pets" solves the problem.

Of course you might have a stronger personal relationship with your dog, we all care about our families and those close to us more than strangers, however, special attachment doesn't eliminate the moral status of everyone outside of that attachment.

If someone said, "of course torturing your child is wrong, but this is a child I don't have a relationship with" we would immediately recognize that they have confused attachment with exclusive moral worth.

And if you think the wrongness comes only from the fact that it's your dog, replace your dog with a healthy stray dog you have never met. Is breeding, killing, and eating that dog for taste now morally insignificant?

So what does the dog possess that these other animals lack? Capacity to suffer? Fear? Social relationships? Intelligence? Preference to not experience pain? Other animals do not lack any of these.

If someone can identify a morally relevant difference that explains why inflicting severe suffering on one species for minor pleasure is unacceptable while doing something similar to another species is morally insignificant, I'm all for it, but saying "one is a dog and one is a pig" is not an argument.

"But I didn't personally kill the pig"

Correct. Buying meat is not the same as slaughtering an animal. The question is, what responsibility do you have when knowingly purchasing products whose production predictably requires animals to be bred and killed when reducing my demand would cost you comparatively little?

A consumer is further back in the causal chain, but "I paid someone else and didn't watch what happened" doesn't make the participation morally neutral.

Imagine I love fur coats, and producing the coats I like requires someone to severely abuse animals. It would be very weird to say "I didn't hurt them, I only created the demand and paid the people who did"

Being causally indirect can reduce responsibility, but it definitely doesn't reduce it to zero.

"One person eating less meat changes nothing"

This is a common and very frustrating obkection

Of course skipping one chicken sandwich doesn't cause a farmer somewhere to raise exactly one fewer chicken, farms are not like vending machines. They respond to aggregate demand. That means while the effect of one person's consumption is probabilistic and tiny, it does not mean the expected effect is literally zero.

If large numbers of consumers reduce demand, production responds, and enormous baseline numbers mean even partial reductions can have enormous welfare consequences.

With more than 80 billion land animals slaughtered yearly, we don't need universal veganism before reductions become significant.

"But plant agriculture kills animals too"

Yes. Of course no lifestyle produces literally zero harm. That doesn't mean all choices produce equal harm.

Also, land-use numbers are important here. Livestock requires grazing land AND enormous quanitities of crops grown as animal feed. Globally livestock uses ~80% of agricultural land while supplying a minority of calories. (Our World in Data)

So the fact that plant agriculture itself has environmental and animal costs is not an argument for ignoring the additional costs of feeding crops to animals then consuming the animals.

"Nothing is perfectly harmless" ≠ "therefore reducing harm is meaningless"

"There are thousands of other good things I could do"

True, you could volunteer, give blood, support family, reduce your emissions, mentor children, work in a valuable career, and do many other worthwhile things, but the existence of one moral obligation doesn't normally erase unrelated obligations.

If I tell you "You shouldn't abuse your dog" it isn't an answer to say "Well, I actually volunteer at a homeless shelter." Good actions aren't really moral credits that make other harms permissible. There can obviously be cases where someone's existing obligations consume so much of their resources that an additional demand is no longer "small" but for the ordinary financially comfortable person, I don't see how other possible good deeds establish that these obligations become zero.

Closing Remarks

Normality is not morality

Eating meat is normal, and spending all of your money on yourself, even when that amount is very high, is normal. Therefore, neither feels like wrongdoing.

However, history is full of socially ordinary behaviors that later generations regarded as morally indefensible.

I am not claiming that factory farming is equivalent to any particular historical atrocity, but what I am claiming is that the prevalence of a behavior is evidence about social norms, not that the behavior is morally justified. If billions of people participate in something, that might make it easier to participate, but that does not answer the moral question

Distance and invisibility

This is what bothers me the most. Put the malaria-stricken child directly in front of someone and make the cost trivial, and suddenly most would agree that failing to help is a huge moral failure.

Move the child thousands of miles away, turn them into a statistic, and now helping becomes above and beyond

Put a cow in someone's backyard, make them watch it suffer and die before dinner, and many would become horrified.

Move the pig into an industrial facility that they will never see or think about, put the meat into a neat package, and suddenly it's morally irrelevant.

However, distance does not make the suffering hurt less, neither does invisibility. These things change how strongly we perceive the suffering, but they certainly do no change how strongly the experience is for the victim. I do not think morality should just track the limitations of human empathy.

So here is exactly what I believe

If you are financially comfortable enough that giving away a modest fraction of your income would not undermine your security, responsibilities or flourishing, I think donating nothing to effective causes is morally wrong.

Not just unkind, but wrong.

If you consume substantial quantities of animal products, have other practical and healthy alternatives available, and could reduce your consumption at relatively little cost to your wellbeing, refusing to make any reduction is morally wrong.

Again, not just less ethical than veganism, but wrong.

I don't believe morality requires perfection, self-destruction, or donating every spare dollar, but I also reject the opposite extreme that morality somehow requires literally zero sacrifice from comfortable people when tiny sacrifices can prevent or reduce suffering that SIGNIFICANTLY outweighs the inconvenience imposed on them.

What would change my view

I would change my view if someone can give a reason why severe but distant suffering creates no obligation even when the personal cost of helping is small, why knowingly contributing to animal suffering through consumer demand creates no obligation to reduce that contribution when there are available-yet-mildly-inconvenient substitutes, or why my general low-cost/high-benefit principle fails

CMV

Rapists, serial killers, Child sex offender, murders, scammers, terrorist, idiots. What do they all have in common? they were all humans. What have we done to this Earth other than destroy it? nothing. Humanity has brought nothing but pain and misery to other spices and especially their own. Endless suffering to those who are equally disgusting. constant arguing, even over the most trivial of matters. we are stupid enough to have ourselves manipulated into labeling useless and hollow wastes of thought as ‘intellectual’, aka philosophy. everyone seen as influential and ‘moral’ was actually just as primitive and horrible as ever other human. I hate humanity and everything that lives within this world.

I’m a 35 year old guy and I still haven’t had any success with the opposite sex. In my teen years I was quite good looking and used to get some attention but I was too scared to act on it.

I began losing my hair at 17 and by 19 I had to shave it all which completely ruined my looks, I looked like shit and I could tell from the complete lack of attention I used to get that it had negative affected people’s perception of me. And it didn’t help that I’m also very short, I’m from an undesirable race and I have a small speech impediment.

After years and years of rejection and humiliation, I called it quits on trying to date months ago. I’ll never know what it’s like to kiss someone and be intimate with someone who’s actually attracted to you sexually and doesn’t just think you’re ugly and hideous.

Perhaps I made the wrong move, but the mental toll of being so behind is too damaging that I don’t care anymore. I missed out on so much and I’ll never have those exciting experiences. So giving up was the right move, I think.

Because it wasn't done on purpose to one particular group, to wipe them out and the amount of death was too small,

True genocide would be something like the Holocaust. (To be clear, I'm not condoning their actions, many of them were horrible atrocious).

The most commonly used definition of genocide in international law is probably that used in the Rome Statute, which is substantively identical to the one used in the (earlier) Genocide Convention.

The Rome Statute provides:

the purpose of this Statute, "genocide" means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group;

(b)

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d)

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The Genocide Convention essentially adopts an simmler test:

Article II

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

If anyone can present any evidence and historical knowledge too the disprove me I'd be happy to discuss it

I'm interested in whether there were particular events or campaigns during the history of the British Empire that consider to have constituted genocide. I'm not asking whether the British Empire as a whole was genocidal," but if there are specific examples where its actions have been described as genocide.

lspecifically genocide not other forms of colonial violence, such as forced displacement, forced labour, cultural destruction, or deaths resulting from Migration...

I could be completely wrong though, this is just based of what I know so far

While having to live long enough to see all your loved ones dies sucks, the way I see it, you have a limited amount of time with them anyway, regardless of if you die at 80 or 80,000. And one of you will have to deal with the pain of losing the other. At least if you live forever, you have eternity to get over it.

Another thing people that floating around in the void after all the stars have died for eternity would be torture worse than death. I agree, but I also don’t believe you’d be condemning yourself to torture worse than death. Think about how much you’ve changed in the last ten years alone. Do you think you’d be the same person beneath the exterior in a thousand? Ten thousand? By that point, it’d just be someone else who looks like you, who, by then, would not even be able to recall the first century of their life. It’s someone else that has to endure floating through a dead universe, not you. Instead, you get centuries of extra life until you gradually die and are replaced by someone else.

“By destroying the states' right to secession, Abraham Lincoln opened the door to the kind of unconstrained and arrogant government we have today”

― Walter E. Williams

“The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal it's desire for economic control of the Southern states.”

― Charles Dickens

-----------------------------

In May 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq, beneath a banner reading "Mission Accomplished." The choice of this carrier's name was no coincidence; it was a veiled message: that the United States continues Lincoln's march in imposing its will by force, and that it derives its legitimacy from the legacy of the man who expanded presidential and federal authority to previously unknown limits.

Many know, including Lincoln himself, that slavery could, over time have been peacefully abolished (like what happened in many countries) without the need for a civil war in which hundreds of thousands of Americans died.

However, because the fool named John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln from behind in a treacherous manner, it bestowed upon Lincoln an aura of sanctity as the liberator of the enslaved who died defending his cause.

What Lincoln did was not limited to the Civil War. He laid the foundations for a political system that recognizes no limits on federal power.

The core idea articulated by Seward, and endorsed by Lincoln, was that America could not live isolated on its continent, and that its destiny was global dominance. This idea, which seemed utopian in the 1860s, became the official doctrine of the White House in the twentieth century: William McKinley, who led the Spanish-American War, and Woodrow Wilson, who led America into World War I, drew on Lincoln's spirit in imposing world order by force. Harry Truman, who dropped the two atomic bombs, drew on Lincoln's spirit in making fateful decisions without effective parliamentary oversight. Johnson and Nixon, who expanded the Vietnam War; H.W. Bush, who devastated Iraq; and Bush Jr., who devastated Iraq and Afghanistan—all followed the same path.

-----------------------------

I personally respect Mr. Abe Lincoln and I'm open to change my view in this post.

I know psychopathy isn't in the DSM, but it is often used in psychological research as well as in legal proceedings, so I'm going to use it here. But for clarification, what I mean by a true psychopath is someone with a biological incapacity for empathy. Note here that I am not talking about people who have reduced empathy or people who have lost their empathy due to trauma, or people who just have no emotions at all.

The reason I think true psychopaths should not be allowed to participate in society is because they are dangerous to everyone around them and do not care whether or not they harm others. Attempts to cure psychopathy have backfired and instead taught them how to get away with their behavior and how to better manipulate the emotions of others. Additionally, while it is true that psychopaths can learn to participate within the legal bounds of society, that does not mean that they should. Many CEOs and politicians are expected to be psychopaths—leadership roles are the last places where someone who does not have empathy should be.

Now, as far as the actual procedure for in what way people should be evaluated and how they should be removed from society, I'm unsure about.

before i say anything i want to clarify, i am not talking about whether or not palestinian armed struggle is just, i am saying from a practical and logistical perspective, it has been ineffective.

historically despite israel being basically in a constant state of war it has made mostly territorial gains.

various actions of groups like the plo and hamas, have been while deadly, completely strategically unhelpful from a warfare perspective. (im thinking of the costal road massacre and october 7th,)

palestinian armed groups have absoloutely failed hard against israeli forces in gaza, and israel basically controls the entire strip.

various palestinian attacks are less interested in trying to occupy territory or defeat enemy forces, and more on just causing mindlessly violent retribution. (again october 7th and the costal road massacre, another example being the lod airport massacre.)

not to mention no palestinian armed group from what i know possesses the logistics or tactics to conventionally take on the idf. they overwhelmingly lose most battles and suffer more losses. (hamas has lost an estimated 17k to 23k soldiers, israel has lost 1k.)

i know people will say something like "the goal is scare out the colonizers" but historically thats not what happened, most of these attacks haven't caused israelis to flee, and if they did they are outclassed in that israel escalated the situation and became more aggressive. (this is what started gaza and lebanon.)

tldr; palestinian armed groups lack the neccessary discipline, logistics, and tactics to established a palestinian state through armed struggle, and its largely been counterproductive causing israel to vastly escalate the situation (palestinian feyadeen insurgency, gaza, lebanon)

if you want to change my view, prove that palestinian groups possess the resources, logistics, and tactics to militarily force israel to accept its goals. (this is what im thinking of, but if you have other counter arguments not like this im happy to see.)

People often seem to think that nations that fall victim to genocide will become a bastion against new genocides, and thus look down at Israel for "not learning" from the Holocaust. However, history appears to show that genocide only tends to make the victim nation very belligerent at the minimum (as seen with Armenia in the first Nagorno-Karabakh war) or a straight-up perpetrator.

Both Serbs and Jews were major victims of WWII genocide, and both have since commited actions that can and often do fall into the realm of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Greeks were genocided along with Armenians by the ottomans, and these same Greek refugees who moved to Macedonia became highly nationalistic regarding Macedonia, even chanting to go to war with North Macedonia over the naming issue (Search "Sta opla, sta opla, na paroume ta skopia").

Similarly, the Shia were heavily oppressed during Saddam Hussein's Iraq and have since become the oppressors themselves.

Based on these historical precedents, it is safe to assume that there are only 3 realistic possibilities for a one-state solution in Canaan (which ill use for the region as a hopefully neutral term:

A Bosnia-style state: A completely dysfunctional, segregated government that pleases no one (you can ask Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs if this is a working government).

An authoritarian regime: A dictator who oppresses everyone equally to temporarily suppress ethnic hatred, but as soon as they are gone, the conflict returns to square one.

The displacement of Israelis: A scenario where Palestinians ethnically cleanse or genocide the Israelis, forcing them back into the Jewish diaspora.

Because of this, the solution we look for must be one that prevents another ethnic cleansing and brings actual improvement for all people, rather than focusing strictly on historical justice.

Why I want my view changed: I see a lot of people advocating for a single democratic state from the river to the sea, but I cannot see how it doesn't devolved to a bloodbath. Change my view by providing historical counterexamples where previously oppressed nations successfully integrated with their oppressors without conflict, or explain a political mechanism that would prevent a one-state solution from collapsing into one of the three scenarios I listed.

Dating and many other relations between men and women have become more complicated than ever. Yes I believe a lot of growth is needed if men specifically but not exclusively. For me I'm very lucky, I'm a tall, 27 year old dude, I met my wife in my masters at a party where it was still easy to approach women for a dance. I remember what dating was like, it felt more light and comfortable a date just felt like getting 1x1 time instead of a production. Then somewhere it changed. I remember how going to dance with a girl felt possible instead of the field of landmines I hear it has become. As a long time boyfriend I've felt and heard the contempt women hold for men. The "why would you bring your boyfriend" when it's our anniversary or the looks women give when you want to approach and dance next to them. It's practically impossible for anyone to discern if a person wants to dance with you, unless they're pointing and deliberately calling for you, there is no dance that says I want to dance with men. I think that's one difference from going out is that back then women and men looked for each other. Now only men look for Women.

Women twerk because they want to, they dance because they want to with their friends and that's okay, but it makes for a confusing situation. As clearly everyone knows people want to enjoy dancing with the opposite sex but for men initiating that dance comes with a high chance of being seen as aggressive or a creep. It just makes sense for at least when it comes to dancing, not asking out for a date or number but for dancing r should be women asking men. No one can be expected to discern intention filtered through so much righteous hate and disgust.

I believe that non sexual nudity should be allowed on TikTok and insta. I believe this because there isn’t anything inherently sexual with the naked human body but it’s what you choose to do with it that makes it sexual.

A post such as artistic nudity, nude mirror selfie, or posing nude are all non sexual and all confident in body type posts. However sexual nudity such as focus on genitalia, sex, or playing with oneself should not be on most social media platforms.

And allowing non sexual nudity could likely lead to people feeling better about themselves/their bodies by being able to show people that side of them and also seeing other people being confident in their body too.

Also doing this can allow people, especially influencers, to show a more real side of themselves. Clothing can affect how a body looks like and non sexual nudity will allow people to show their true body. It can also allow making things such as morning routine/night routine/grwm/and day in life videos feel more real by not needing to wear a towel around after getting out the shower for “modesty” (such as when they are doing after shower shave, skincare, or brushing teeth) because realistically most people don’t keep a towel wrapped around themselves right after they get out the shower. (Unless their bathroom is along a hall in a shared living space or anything like that)

Edit: Most commenters here didn't even read the post, they often keep repeating the same points I adressed without even elaborating beyond what's is already written here.
I also didn't say that Parliaments/Congresses must necessarily completely replace election with sortition: I already considered a mix, even with limited powers for the sampled assembly, sortition for one of the two houses in the Parliament/Congress, or with roles not too much different from current citizens' assemblies, but no, they completely ignore that and jump to conclusions.
I thought this was CMV.
Edit 2: People don't even consider how sortition has already been tried successfully, both in antiquity (Athens, the birthplace of democracy) and modernity (e.g. citizens' assemblies). I was simply presenting my arguments while also building on the previous discussions on CMV, but instead most comment starts from scratch.
Edit:slight rephrasing

I think legislative assemblies should be an accurate statistical sample of the population, through sortition (random selection) like the first democracy, ancient Athens, but also stratified to mirror the population's demographic and socioeconomic composition. This would represent people's interests far more accurately than elections with party polarization or fragmentation.

But first I have to debunk common prejudices and misconceptions I found in discussions about this topic, while also explaining my reasons in detail, so we do not start from scratch:

1. "Random selection does not require expertise. We would be governed by a bunch of ignorant people"
Nor does election. Elected politicians only need to be expert at being elected: attracting donations (often from powerful lobbies), spreading promises through campaigns, etc. Instead they rely on non-elected expert staffers such as lawyers and policy advisors to do their job and the government relies on non-elected bureaucrats to operate. Similarly a sampled Parliament/Congress would rely on experts and even representatives from the different political parties before reaching its own conclusions after careful deliberation. This will reduce, not erase, the influence of politicians as the assembly is not divided into echo chambers.
So instead of expertise the discussion should be about which system better represents the population and its interests, see point 5.

2. "We should not trust random people, it is literally gambling our future. And what if they all happen to be rich oligarchs?"
The final result is far less random than you think, as random errors are minimized by the size and proportional stratification of the sampled assembly. Very different from gambling. On the other hand look at the current elected representatives and how they are consistently wealthier or from particular demographics than the average, and how often they act against people's interests. A little randomness is a fair price to pay to minimize these systematic errors in representation. We would also save all the money spent on electoral campaigns.

3. "There is no accountability in a sampled assembly, what if they are corrupt?"
Sampling is more resistant to corruption, as it does not rely on donations for campaigns. To prevent corruption after sortition we can easily replace the sample a lot faster, (e.g. yearly) since no costly electoral campaigns are needed, or maybe half the sample every 6 months. We could even implement secret ballot for its members to further shield them against threats and corruption. Accountability is far less needed, as no member in the sample is individually representative of the population, while the sample as a whole is representative by design. The population can instead replace it as a whole with a referendum/polls.

4. "A random person as the President/Premier would be dangerous, and a sampled assembly is too large to replace them. We need elections for those positions"
Correct, this is why I think the president should still be elected, as sortition would not produce an accurate sample. However, I think their power should be limited and subject to the legislative assembly and its committees: current Parliaments/Congresses are subdivided into committees roughly corresponding to departments/ministries, so each member is specialized in Finance, Defence, Foreign Affairs, etc.
I think these and the whole assembly should have the power to override any goverment decision (through fusion of powers) and also replace them, as they are a more accurate representation of the people's interests.

5. "If we cannot vote for MPs/Congressmen, it is not a democracy as we do not participate"
Instead of a ritual which does not reliably reflect people's interests, we should rely more on forms of direct participation such as polls and referendums.
And which legislative assembly is more likely to act in your best interests: one full of rich people who would rather advance their career, or people who are living through your same struggles? After all, a sample is much closer to a direct democracy, just like polls, as it approximates the population's will while minimizing both random and systematic errors.

6. "Sortition in Athens is too ancient to work today, most people at the time could not be selected (women, slaves, etc), and Florence was corrupt"
Such discrimination and corruption would have happened regardless of whether these systems were based on election or sortition. In Athens people treated election as oligarchic (as they saw with the strategoi and the treasurers, and as we also see today) while treating sortition as democratic, and they were correct that sortition makes it harder for a few to concentrate power, even though it is not impossible.
These people also did not have a modern understanding of statistics and probability necessary to form an accurate sample, unlike us today.

7. "It is too unstable: how can they agree to form a government or avoid gridlock? How can they agree on policies?"
As a more accurate representation of the people, the sampled assembly and its committees (see point 4) should be able to override the government's decisions, preventing gridlock. Government officials should be elected using approval voting or STV as these voting systems tend to produce broadly acceptable leaders that surpass 50% approval more frequently. The assembly will reach a consensus on policies through deliberation, similar to modern citizens' assemblies.

8. "We should only try it at a local level, elections scale better than random sampling"
Quite the opposite: random sampling scales far better than elections. A sample of 1000 in a million people would be a far more accurate representation than a sample of 1 in a 1000 people. On the other hand it is easier to elect that 1 person as people know them better than people far away. Therefore elections should be used whenever random sampling cannot work. Of course we should use approval voting or STV instead of FPTP.

9. "Governing is not jury duty: you need long term vision, and people who are forced to participate can be destructive"
A politician who focuses on the next term does not exactly think in the long term, they are more focused on spreading promises they do not have to keep and on appealing to lobbies. On the other hand a random sample will reflect the interests of the population even if the individuals were all selfish. They would not even raise their pay (if the raise is delayed a bit), as they will pay more taxes for life while only the next members will benefit. Participation does not have to be mandatory, but in that case proportionate stratification becomes even more essential to represent poor people since they are more likely to refuse.

With all that said, there are obstacles in implementing such as system, such as the fact that most people are oblivious to sortition, despite knowing what a random sample is and what it means for a sample to be stratified proportionally by age, sex, income, wealth, social class, etc.
The most important obstacle, however, is that rich oligarchs and many politicians will try their best to prevent such a system from being implemented, knowing they would lose power.
Nevertheless random sampling is flexible: we could implement it for one of the two chambers in the Parliament/Congress and with limited powers, while leaving the rest operating as usual. So even though it will be impossible to fully implement it given the opposition it would face, I still think it would be better to experiment.

TL;DR: less corruption, better representation of the people and its interests. A true democracy. Downsides: cultural inertia and opposition from rich oligarchs.

There is no fundamental difference between photography and AI-generated images that makes one inherently art and the other not. Both rely on technology to translate human choices into an image: photographers choose subjects, framing, lighting, lenses, and editing, while AI artists choose prompts, references, composition, and iterations. Neither requires the creator to physically construct every detail. If artistic value comes from intention, expression, and creative decision-making, both can qualify as art.

Democrats Will Have An Actual Primary

Both 2016 and 2024 saw Dems effectively anoint their candidates. 2028 doesn't have a democratic establishment favorite. There will be dozens of candidates vying for the nomination and despite what the polls are saying, none of them is expected to walk in and get the nomination like Clinton or Harris did. The competition will be fierce and the nominee forged by that process will be uniquely strong against a GOP that will basically hand its nomination to the VP or SecState.

A Dem Rebellion With No Leaders

The establishment is weaker than it has been in decades. The Democratic base is in an open progressive revolt and so thoroughly hates its leadership that its endorsements are increasingly a liability. A lot of the third rails are no longer as caustic as they were in past elections. The math has changed considerably. Criticism of Israel was once unacceptable. Now, it's mandatory. Huge progressive policies like M4A were once considered extreme. Not anymore. The base is increasingly more willing to buck orthodoxy and the establishment will have an exceptionally difficult time fighting it.

Exhausted Republicans vs Energized Demcrats

Recent reporting has been indicating that the Republican base is starting to get tired of Trump. Every action he has taken from tariffs to trade wars to wars of words and shooting wars have alienated a lot of his base. Additionally, it's an open question whether or not the MAGA base will even bother to vote in an election without him on the ticket. On the other hand, special elections and primaries have seen skyrocketing Democrat turnout in places where they shouldn't be performing as strongly. Democrats have flipped Trump+10 districts across the country.

Nobody Cares About Vance or Rubio

Yes, that's hyperbolic. However, both the right and the left are tacking in the direction of populism and sweeping change. The heir apparent for the GOP will not matter because the entire campaign will be a referendum on Trump. Neither Vance or Rubio have the sort of charisma that would break through and bring in new voters. Both of them will spend the entire campaign in Trump's shadow and they will not be able to draw on the same infrequent voters that Trump can.

The Trump Effect

Donald Trump is incredibly unpopular. The Iran war is incredibly unpopular. The economy is in shambles, the cost of living is incredibly high and his tendency to steal the spotlight will make the campaign difficult for Republicans. George W Bush was also an incredibly unpopular president. The difference is that Bush was self-aware. He knew he was unpopular and did everything he could to remain low-key. He didn't even show up to the RNC in-person, instead choosing to give a video address from the WH. Trump is not that self-aware. He doesn't care about the party. It's also highly unlikely that Trump will tolerate any daylight between him and the nominee. His belligerent statements, constant threats, and tit-for-tat tariffs will force the GOP nominee to defend them from Democratic attack. If he tries to differentiate himself, he runs the risk of being attacked by Trump.

A Change Election

An unpopular Republican incumbent. An unpopular war in the middle east. An economic crisis. An angry voting base hungry for someone to shake up the status quo. A weak, uncharismatic GOP nominee. It's beginning to look a lot like 2008. Democrats are walking in with considerable advantages. All they need is a change candidate who can capitalize. It almost doesn't matter who that is. At this point, only Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom could lose.

The Irish tragically lost their language over centuries of English domination and purposeful erasure of the Irish language, yet they got their independence in 1922, more than 100 years ago, and to this day in Ireland it would be hard to move through your entire life, get a degree and work only using Irish. Less than 80 000 people speak Irish daily in the whole country.

Now let's met the Basques who had a similar history but aren't even an independent country and had their language suppressed until 1975 and today more than 10% of the conversations in the street are in Basque, and almost 18% of the people said that they use Basque as much or more than Spanish or French. It's totally possible for a Basque person to do their entire life, get a degree and work as a medic or an engineer only using the Basque language.

The Irish say that they care about the language but if they really did they'd make things like make all the clases in Irish besides English, make college courses of all kinds mostly in Irish, require Irish B2 or C1 to hold certain public jobs and reward companies so that they do their work in Irish. More like the Basques do.

I want to CMV because I want to believe that the Irish language will be healthy again but I don't see it happening.

Edit for sources on my numbers since I didn't put them in the post:

For Irish

For Basque

Note: Am a Balkaner (a half-Serb, half-Russian).

A humble request before I get to the point, I would really wish for people to respond to this: I cannot for the life of me talk with Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and Albanians anymore. I beg anyone who is outside of these four ethnic groups to speak with me instead. I genuinely feel a mix of disgust and fear now. Please, non-Yugoslavs (preferably Westerners) do not love away from this post.

Yesterday, the war criminal Ratko Mladić, who committed various massacres of Bosniak Muslims (and less those of Croats) died. In response to this, most Serbian official institutions (and Serbs active on social media) have started mourning him and calling him a hero, who saved the Bosnian Serbs from ethnic cleansing.

They believe this. Wholeheartedly. Even if brought to the bare minimum of acknowledging Srebrenica happened, the idea in the back of their head: “Muslims wanted to expel us, whatever Mladić did, he saved us. He is a hero. Everyone who says otherwise is a traitor.” Any Serbs who speak against that are met with threats or denials of being Serbs at all.

It is simply a fact that Serbian soldiers committed most war crimes during the 90s. Fucking math. The Court of Hague might have unjustly set free some non-Serb war criminals (Naser Orić, Ante Gotovina and Ramush Haradinan being the most infamous among Serbs) but to think that the “LGB Satanist West rose up in a grand conspiracy against the holy people“ is simply nuts. It is an insult to intelligence.

But none of it matters. Most Serbs (at least in Bosnia) consider Mladić a hero. In Serbia, the government of Vučić 100% considers him a hero spreads that propaganda.

Then in turn, Bosniaks react with rhetoric (on social media) that calls for revenge. “They are all the same. Look at it. They are fucking celebrating him. There is no coexistence with them. They are all guilty.“ they portray the start of the war as morally simple, even though the first civilian killed in Bosnia was a Serb and Serbs had an experience of the Ustashe (Croatian fascists who during World War II committed an industrial genocide of Serbs — among Ustashe militia, around 30% percents of soldiers were Bosniak Muslims) and loudly proclaim (and I fear believe) that a revenge would be justified.

Croats (just like the Bosniaks, and even more primarily than the Bosniaks) also relativize and ignore the Ustashe (mostly) and have last year gathered the largest ticketed concert is history in which Thompson (a neo-Nazi singer – not “woke paranoia” the guy is legitimately a Nazi) yelled slogans of “For Homeland ready!“ the Ustashe equivalent to “Sieg Heil!“.

In turn, Serbs think the memory of the Ustashe from 1940s is somehow a good justification for bombing a Croatian city Vukovar to the ground during the 90s. When the war in Croatia ended, the Serbs were instructed by their leadership to leave Krajina (the region in Croatia dominated by Serbs) and run to Serbia. Because of fear the approaching Croatian army would start killing them, they run for their lives. This is remembered as the Operation Storm. Croatian state celebrates it, despite it being a great tragedy for the Serbs; the Serbs ignore the events that preceded it.

In Kosovo, the Serbs absolutely cannot comprehend the fact that the 1.5 million people living in Kosovo do not want to live in Serbia**.** At least I think so – a part of me is afraid most Serbs simply do not care what the Serbian army would do to Albanians if it retook Kosovo. The massacres of Albanians during the Kosovo War are denied or ridiculed by the state, and the bombing by NATO (that I still consider unjustified, at least when civilians were bombed) is treated as if something that happened out of thin air. The massacres of Albanians in early 20th century are also denied and not taught in school books.

Meanwhile, Albanians also deny war crimes (however proportionately smaller than the one committed by Serb forces) and protest the trials against Albanian war criminals. And Albanians seem to think mistreatment of Kosovo Serbs (proven by foreign sources, not made up by Serbian government) is justified out of revenge. They do not see Kosovo Serbs as humans.

I would say both Bosniaks and Albanians have a problem with whitewashing the Ottoman rule in the Balkans, but that is a whole other can of worms.

I am half-Russian. I mostly lived in Serbia (my father is from Bosnia) until I went to high school in St. Petersburg. After February 24th I was horrified by the way Russians reacted to the war and supported it and I fucked out of there back to Serbia. I will not speak about the level of shock and vile things I heard there. But my primary fear, ever since the start of the war in Ukraine, was Putin crossing it and reaching the Balkans…and then the Russian army installing an extremist regime in Serbia that would start massacres and wars again. A new bloodshed in the Balkans on all sides. This is my greatest fear and I am convinced if Putin wins in Ukraine, it will happen. I suppose I should make a CMV for that one as well…

My CMV is a bit emotionally charged. If it is against the rules of the sub, I apologize to the mods, yet also beg them to leave this on. I beg you, non-Balkaners, to convince that all of this is not unfixable and that bloodshed and hatred can stop one day. I sincerely need a slimmer of hope that my vision is clouded by me living in the region and being too intimidated to see things clearly.

Thank you (sincerely) in advance.

P. S. As I write this, I have received three threats: two from Serbian nationalists telling me I deserve to be killed for being a traitor, one from a Bosniak one telling me he has a moral right to kill me for what “my own family” (didn’t happen – he is emotionally charging his anger) did to his loved one.

I recently turned 50 and have been doing a lot of reflecting about myself and the world.

One thing that caught my attention is that for my entire life I’ve heard people refer to the Middle East as a region of intractable and never-ending conflict. I think most people assume that it was always this way and that the situation we see now was inevitable.

But, if we go back just over a century, before World War I, much of what we now think of as the Middle East was part of the Ottoman Empire: an enormous, imperfect, frequently authoritarian but remarkably diverse multinational state in which Turks, Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, Jews, and many other peoples lived together, not exactly in perfect harmony, obviously but with far less conflict and bloodshed than we see today.

Now, you may be thinking, “Yeah, but why on earth would we be nostalgic for autocratic and illiberal monarchical rule”, and I would understand where you are coming from.

But what you might not know is that, during the 19th century, the Ottomans actually made a serious attempt to change the nature of the empire itself.

The Tanzimat reforms were a move to modernize the state, establish equality before the law, create a common concept of Ottoman citizenship across religious communities, and eventually establish constitutional government and a parliament.

In other words, there was an actual effort to transform the Ottoman Empire from an Islamic empire into something approaching a modern, multinational, multireligious constitutional state.

They didn’t stick obviously. And my argument is that that was a terrible tragedy because imagine a world where they had worked.

Consider now what happened in the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire:

The Balkan Wars. World War I. The Armenian genocide. The Greco-Turkish War and accompanying humanitarian disaster. The dismantling of the Ottoman Empire. European mandates. Sykes-Picot. The creation of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon in their modern forms. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It seems at least plausible to me that a successful Ottoman transition to a liberal multinational state would have produced a substantially more peaceful and prosperous region than the one we inherited from the empire’s collapse.

We tend to regard the replacement of multinational empires with nation-states as an almost inevitable and generally desirable stage of political development.

I’m increasingly skeptical of that assumption.

Change my view that the world would have been better off if the Tanzimat project had succeeded and the Ottoman Empire had survived as a liberal multinational state.

I spent years swearing MJ was the goat. I've considered LeBron heavily, and I've considered Kareem.

But I find myself now believing Wilt Chamberlain is the greatest ever. If he were born in 1990, he would probably be the unanimous GOAT.

Let me walk you through my POV:

The Timeline

In high school, he was already an incredible T&F athlete and among the best basketball players on earth. Before he even touched a college court, an article was published entitled, 'Can basketball survive Chamberlain?'

In 1960, a rookie Wilt Chamberlain won MVP. He's the first of two players to ever do so.

In 1962, Wilt Chamberlain had possibly the best season in history. He averaged 50 points, 26 rebounds, 2 assists shooting 51 percent from the field and scoring 100 points in a game.

In 1967, Wilt Chamberlain had possibly the best season in history. He averaged a near triple double: 24/24/8. He shot 68% from the field and won his second of 3 straight MVPs.

What the stats don't show us

Wilt Chamberlain played before the NBA recorded blocks.

His final 1973 season, after analysts went back and documented all of his film, saw him blocking an insane 5.4 blocks per game - Only Mark Eaton in 1985 had a higher single-season average. It's estimated he averaged up to 9 blocks per game in his prime.

Wilt Chamberlain was also an incredible rim deterrent - the same things said about Gobert and Wemby today? Also true for Chamberlain - players wanted nothing to do with him at the rim.

Physically, Wilt Chamberlain was a specimen. Possibly the most athletic person ever, period. At 7'1", playing at 300 pounds, he had enormous hands, a 7'7" wingspan, could run a 4.6 40, jump 48 inches, bench 600 pounds with a 50 foot triple jump. His blend of speed, strength, and size are unheard of. He tore his patellar tendon in 1969, a usually career-ending injury, and recovered in mere months.

Wilt Chamberlain was skilled. Watch the game tape. A physically dominant player like Shaq simply backs into people to move them.

Wilt Chamberlain used drop steps, hook shots, floaters, finger rolls, and a mid range fadeaway, and still managed to shoot 66-68% across several seasons.

What the stats do show us

Wilt Chamberlain was really good. He holds the record for points, rebounds, and blocks in a game. He has 100+ triple doubles and that's only those that are documented, he likely has hundreds with his block numbers, and several quadruple doubles, which only three players have ever done. He recorded the NBA's first, last, and only quintuple double - 53/32/14/24/11, documented by Harvey Pollack.

Wilt Chamberlain is the all-time leader in minutes per game, and averaged 48.5 out of 48 minutes in his prime.

Wilt Chamberlain has the most rebounds ever, he has 1.5% of every rebound in NBA history.

My conclusion

There is no other player who can do what Wilt can do. He has a case for the best scorer ever, best rebounder ever, best defender ever, best passing center ever, most athletic player ever, most dominant player ever, and definitely for the best player of all time.

Ruling: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/appeals-court-delivers-unsettling-ruling-supreme-court-left-no-choice

Hear me out. The logic is simple: if pedos get off on fakes, they won't hurt real children.

Consider Japan, where the number of reported cases of child sex abuse dropped markedly after the ban on sexually explicit materials was lifted in 1969. Or Denmark where porn was legalized in 1969, compared to Norway legalizing it in 2006, and Denmark had similar or slightly lower rate of sex crimes.

I read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_pornography#Controlled_studies and it's hard to be conclusive, but overall it seems like this is a net positive for society.