This is a good moment to also ask “do I want to understand the core concept?”.

This is a moment where I’m good with ignorance.

Well, without the files I’m going to assume worst case. Normal prostitution doesn’t need to go to a remote island that also has sex trafficked children.

The point is that, despite being in the same bill, they shouldn’t be. One is already covered in existing law, related to adult exclusive activities recognized as such the world over (porn for clarity). The other is defining a new phenomenon that has yet to be defined as being exclusive to adults and currently exists within spaces for children to the point of predation and is akin to existing child targeted products (loot boxes again for clarity).

Lumping even seemingly similar things is a bad practice that is more meant to poison pill bills (among other things) than actually execute legislative duties.

The inverse of Clark’s saying: sufficiently explained magic is indistinguishable from science (credit: Girl Genius webcomic)

Correct, I just don’t feel like pretending that that’s a thing they might do and that it isn’t the racism causing the problem.

Except adjusting for race is not appropriate. They are a significant portion of his constituent population. It may help explain a factor as to why it’s higher in his state. But I’ll bet being in a red state is also a factor given things like doctors fleeing, budget cuts, etc.

Additionally, such stats are prone to reflecting biases in the system rather than actual medically relevant information. Do black women have worse outcomes because of biological reasons, or because they are treated worse. This is one of those stats you have to be careful with because a nontrivial amount of time, it’s damn near proof of racism.

If only states were capable of doing things to improve the lives of their residents above what the nation as a whole can do. Clearly it’s impossible. Woe be this poor powerless state politician.

Your justification doesn’t hold within its own logic. And doesn’t address how blatantly racist the statement itself is.

A lesser point: the writing is pretty bad even by who standards. Trying too hard to check inclusion boxes when they would be nailing it with a little less effort. A random line in Gatwas second season about it being illegal for nurses to not know sign language, despite the presence of universal translation, was a hamfisted attempt to force inclusivity. Good impulse, heinously bad execution.

A larger thing that stood out to me was a recent episode (first of his second season). They go to the planet, find the bad guy, turns out he’s a literal incel (feels like they didn’t have to be so on the head, but that bit is whatever) stalking the new companion. In the end he unceremoniously dies. The Doctor and the new companion shared a laugh.

The Doctor doesn’t laugh at death. Granted I’ve never watched the originals, but the other Doctors have no shortage of hang ups about it. The tenth goes out of his way to give the bad guys a chance to end peacefully on his debut episode before killing them with a frown. The fourteenth chastised a person for trying to take advantage of the bad guy hanging from a ledge in her debut episode. The eleventh was a showman, but treated a good man going to war with proper, barely restrained rage. The twelfth has a sizable plotline about his issues with soldiers that interferes with his relationship with Clara.

It just doesn’t feel like the Doctor that I grew attached to, even Jodie Whittaker (who I argue was a victim of bad writing). I blame Disney.

As an American I also urge you guys to do that.

In theory, a really interesting (if it weren’t unethical) place for llms would be elder scrolls NPCs (not touching feasibility either). Give them a two sentence background and let the immoral magic do its work. Throw in some voice creation and you’ll be cooking with gas.

Not a parent.

Of course it will help in that case. It’s literally what it’s there for. Also, the age where you can get away with leashing your kids is also the age where they aren’t forming a ton of memories or where they have no social context to be embarrassed. They may be embarrassed when they’re older, but that’s just life.

Stop inflicting your feelings into random children.

Rights and freedoms are not unlimited. Freedom of speech ends at things that put people in danger (e.g. shouting fire in a crowded space). Guns are available pursuant to a well regulated militia (or should be, but let’s not open that can of worms).

I’ll grant the proactive/reactive in a sort of way. If anyone (not only old people drink the fox news poison) starts up with some hyper racist shit, is restricting them not reactive to their emergent behavior? Would it be that big a stretch to codify the effects of propaganda as a sort of mental injury that needs treated? (Yes it would). Point is, at this point we’re splitting this hair rather fine and getting away from the important bits.

So the real way to handle the propaganda is to punish fox and their ilk for being wildly irresponsible and setting up racist fascist bullshit. Corporations are much easier to regulate than individuals (theoretically). They should be sued into the ground for all they’ve done, but we live in an oligarchy so that’s not happening anytime soon. This shower thought emerges because free market capitalism refuses to have any morals whatsoever and people are desperate to stop the big companies from hurting everyone. And the thing that’s easiest for everyone to see is the people they love start repeating horrible things and being helpless to pull them out of the echo chamber.

No, the shower thought isn’t good. It shouldn’t get that far. But right now, the only thing we can affect is the people next to us because the rich are never held accountable, so we’re stuck with bad and worse solutions.

Not the gotcha you think it is. And also, big difference between bans and regulation, let’s not conflate them.

We install breathalyzers in cars and revoke licenses when people refuse to act responsibly. It’s a common requirement of probation and parole to remain sober. We do what you (/I) describe often. In fact, it’s kinda the basis of operation for law at large: we limit the behavior of individuals to reduce harm to people. Be it saying “stabbing people is bad, now go to time out” or “don’t drink raw milk, you’ll get sick”. So yeah, I’m OK with what you described. If people cannot mange their substances, we can and do force them to stop with punitive measures.

See the trick is this: does “mentally fit” apply, even in the case of otherwise mentally healthy individuals? Propaganda can affect anyone and the less tech savvy more so. We have no issues with limiting the physical behavior of the people we care about when they cannot handle it anymore (e.g. we’ll drive grandpa around when he can technically do it, but shouldn’t). While some do kick a fuss about it (for understandable reasons) ultimately, society at large is pretty OK with the whole deal.

Now we have them exposed to content that is arguably harmful to their health and the health of the people around them (e.g. voting). And this isn’t opinion stuff or debates. These are outright lies catered to them. There were no dogs being eaten in Springfield, and yet I could hear the old dudes at my gym discussing it while they walked the mezzanine. At what point does their right to play with their phone cede to their mental health? For anyone really? We cede rights to do things when they harm ourselves and others often. Why is this different?

Calling bad faith. The Rogan-stans tend to hide behind “he let’s anyone on his show regardless of his feelings”, while failing to acknowledge that he’s platforming some heinously evil and/or stupid people (apparently Andrew fucking Tate is lined up to be on there soon) and just signs off on whatever crazy they spout (looks at Jordan Peterson). He’s abdicated all responsibility for giving some awful people a platform and good PR.

It’s not about disagreement, it’s about responsibility for who uses your platform. If he grilled them like an investigative journalist or meaningfully debated them in any way, we could talk. But this fucker would have Andrew Wakefield on and just be like “oh yeah, vaccines are evil”.

We can influence the behavior of our loved ones, we can’t meaningfully influence sociopathic corporations. While not feasible, it still feels like the best of a bunch of shitty options.

He’s broken the departments investigating him and it isn’t fun anymore, he doesn’t have to be there at this point to win.

He did snub Vance, so it’s at least implied.

Not everyone has a passport and you use SSN to get one. Passports are relatively rare for a lot of people in the US.

Yes, sort of, but in a stupid way. The number is treated as a unique identifier of a person, but you don’t carry it around since it’s so insecure.