buddhabound

I feel the same way. For the purposes of government business, all marriages are civil unions, since it's the contractual part the government cares about. As far as marriage goes, that's up to each religion to determine according to its own standards and definitions, including who is allowed to conduct the ceremony and who is allowed to participate in the ritual.

The government shouldn't be able to dictate who I choose to share my assets and debts with, as long as they're legally consenting adults who can sign the contract. And if someone wants to get married to a same sex partner in a church and that church won't allow it, then they can find a church that better suits their values.

Everyone wins.

However, this is not what the theocrats want, which is why we have to deal with this shit. They want to be able to dictate what secular people do, and use the power of the state to force their religion on people regardless of church membership.

The 10 Commandments, iirc.

We all know this. We are all powerless to change it. Corporations and governments control whether or not it can be changed. Politicians worldwide are being fed by the pollution industry. The poors voting changes nothing until the corporations and politicians decide to do something about it.

Walkable cities? Great idea. Needs politicians to approve zoning restrictions. Don't drive cars? Great idea. Needs politicians to build public transportation infrastructure. Electric cars? Great idea. Needs corporations to produce them at an affordable cost. Etc etc etc.

There will never be a day when 10 billion people in the world get on the same page to demand the end of anything. We can't even get a tenth of that many to agree to stop killing each other over border squabbles.

Where I live, I have hills, big hills in every direction. I own both types of bike, a rad runner 6 for long, fast rides from my house, and then 20 miles up into the mountains along back roads.

I have a road bike that I bought when I couldn't really afford it, and paid about 1,000 for it. It's a tomasso. It's ok. I wish I had a trek, or a specialized hybrid road with the slightly thicker tires than the tiny ones my road bike has. I can't really afford those.

I use the RAD bike more for cardio, generally leave it in pedal assist 2 or 3 and just try to get a quick workout during lunch time. I take the other plain road bike out with a cycling club locally one or two nights a week. I don't own a car, and I work from home. Biking makes me happy, but I get lazy when it's really hot, so I ride the e-bikes more when it's hot.

I'm 45. It's not as easy as 45 to build muscle back up and get superfit in a short amount of time. The e-bike helps with cardio and keeps me excited about taking a quick spin without getting totally smoked by all of the hill climbs it takes to get out of my neighborhood, much less through the foothills of the smokies and Appalachians.

Even if you're going off to the side you're on, it's a distraction. It will draw my attention back to see if you've fallen, crashed, or gotten hurt. I will check my mirrors for you to see if there are additional dangers to me. I ride around bike-like objects all the time. Passing you isn't even going to be a thing that I notice. You'll get a "On your left, passing" from me when I'm about to go by so you know not to do any funny business in my direction. I don't expect you to exit the lane. Heck, if you're doing 15MPH, we might ride and bullshit with each other for a bit.

The wheelchair on a bus problem is a fairly clear example of where perspective and experience matters. It's also a thing that you don't really think about unless you've had lived or shared experience.

The same can be said about designing a doorway. How wide should the doorway be? Some might cite code for 32", but not know why the code requires that width, while others might say some number less than that based on their own perception of the doorway problem.

Likely, the only people who will answer "At least 32 inches to accommodate wheelchairs access" are people who have lived or shared experience with wheelchair accommodations, or have some expertise that would make them a subject matter expert in ADA compliance.

And if things are this muddy for the width of a doorway, imagine how complex it gets for things like gun violence prevention.

You don't think people who have experienced life from a completely different perspective have a different perspective of the way policy can have different impacts on various groups of people?

Take a minute to really think deeply about that. In America, do white and black people have the same approach to interactions with police officers? In America, do women walking home alone from work at night have the same concerns for safety as men?

To make it really simple, do people in wheelchairs have the same experience getting on a city bus as people not in wheelchairs?

You don't think that differences in experience inform the way people approach problems and solutions? Would an engineer have the same approach to generating electric as a nuclear scientist?

Would an urban mayor approach city planning the same way a rural mayor would? How would their approaches differ, and why? Would the experiences and needs of each community be different? Who would the mayors seek as subject matter experts in the case of urban planning, and of rural? What would inform their choices about who to seek out as experts?

If any of the above are true, then why wouldn't the race or sex of a leader make a difference in policy development?

Every Unity developer is under the same agreement. The changes were not announced to be "moving forward". It's a change to existing licenses to use Unity. For everyone. Everywhere.

I don't know that licensing changes have been retroactive in the past. How do lawyers prevent companies from retroactively changing licensing? My guess would be to sue after the fact, which is probably why these developers are hinting that they're going to suffer economic harm if Unity follows through with this. This statement may be their lawyers doing the work they'd normally do in this kind of circumstance.

That was me in 1996. My parents worked in factories when I was in elementary school, getting paid a piece rate for work. By the time I graduated from high school, their factory jobs had been sent overseas or to Mexico, and they were working as a handyman & selling shoes at Walmart. Combined, they made somewhere in the low to mid $30k per year range, and had 3 boys to raise. I had to take loans to go to college. I worked as much as I could to try and cover my bills while in college. I had the GI Bill from the national guard providing a couple hundred dollars per month.

I ended up dropping out of college after a few years because I couldn't keep up. I went back after my daughter was born, and used the max federal Stafford loans (~10k/yr) to help pay living expenses because I was working 2-3 part time jobs to work around my schedule and helping to pay rent, utilities, and food for myself, my wife, and a baby while my wife went to school as well. I worked so much that I barely remember my kid before she was in 2nd or 3rd grade. I don't think I could have worked more.

But now, conservatives say that I shouldn't have taken loans. I shouldn't have gone to school because I couldn't afford it. What is the alternative? A life of raising a family making minimum wage delivering pizzas? Relying on public assistance and tax credits? Or working my ass off for a few years, taking some loans, paying them back slowly with maybe some forgiveness at some point, and now paying 13-15k per year in taxes?

Kind of weird to be told to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps", do that, and then be told that you should have just stayed poor because your parents couldn't afford to pay for college for you.

The interest rate on my federal direct student loans is 6.8% on half of them (undergrad) and ~9% on the other half (graduate), iirc.

That's probably what she does with my mail when it arrives to her with the opinion of one of her constituents. Seems fair turnabout.

I'm just now learning about SimpleLogin. Something to look into when I don't feel like I've just exited a 10 hour nightmare after work.