its from the DMX track "X gon' give it to ya". it came out in 2002.

this is not "think of the children". its "tens of thousands of children have died, and will die, as a result of the actions of the Israeli government". we aren't appealing to the potential harm that might come to children, we are recognizing the current and ongoing slaughter of children and adults happening in Gaza.

beardown

did... did you make this account just to insert racist bullshit into the bear meme?

people do nothing unless motivated

this is an assumption worth challenging. the evidence suggests, in fact, that people are almost always doing things!

they didn't die "because of the October 7 attack". they died because the IDF has been indiscriminately bombing civilians after the attack. nothing about the actions of Israel are an inevitable consequence of October 7. they are the deliberate actions of a far-right government. i am not ill informed, i know the facts of the situation, i have family in israel, i am a jew. your failure to recognize forced migration and mass killing of palestinian civilians as fundamentally the same as what the jewish people were subjected to is appalling. never again for anyone.

the scenario you're imagining doesn't exist. this isn't a rock paper scissors thing, where Israel either shoots through hostages to kill insurgents or dies themselves. if Hamas is hiding amongst civilians, they aren't attacking Israel, they're hiding. if they're attacking Israel, they aren't in a crowd of Palestinian civilians. the IDF does not need to have a shootout with civilians in the crossfire to protect its people. the IDF does not need to bomb civilian residences to wage war against an insurgency.

you are so willing to conflate the two, assume that Israel must kill or be killed themselves. that is a fucking falsehood. there is so fucking much a military force can do to defend against attack that doesn't involve shelling apartment buildings, shooting into crowds, and otherwise being monsters.

that's far from what the study says. there is no research on the effects of plastic chemicals in human beings cited in the study, the vast majority of the data is in rats and mice. saying that its responsible for trans people requires some very large leaps of logic that aren't supported by the data or the conclusion of the study.

we have a great deal of anthropological evidence that other cultures conceive of sex and gender in wildly differing ways, both through history and in the modern era. gender identity is a complex social and cultural phenomenon, not some essential trait of the human body with a basis in endocrine function. maybe i'm just sensitive to this shit, but i can't see somebody making a claim like this without just fundamentally misunderstanding what being trans is.

ugh. i barely want to respond to this, but "deserve" in this context is wild. substance abuse is a medical condition, not a moral failing. its disproportionately affects people who are poor, mentally ill, or otherwise disadvantaged, and many unhoused people start doing drugs while on the street, because if fucking sucks to be living on the street.

the actual utility of "locking people up" as a response to drug abuse is not positive. prisons are miserable places, and people often aren't given the kind of care they need to get clean and stay clean, and relapse when they get out, because their circumstances haven't improved. as it turns out, locking people in a cage for years does little to address the underlying issues that cause substance abuse. nobody "deserves" prison. its ineffective generally, and particularly ineffective at actually getting people off of drugs. all it does is punish people who are suffering.

But not having copyright law doesn’t fix that, it makes it worse. Without copyright law if you make music, a big label can grab your music and sell copies without paying you anything. Sure you can try to sell it yourself and try to educate customers that they should buy it from you. But the big label can easily out-advertise you and get into the top spots on streaming services, online and physical stores etc. and get 99% of the sales.

this is... really not a good example of copyright stopping this sort of stuff. seriously, look into streaming platforms, they are essentially pulling this exact stunt, down to the part about grabbing artists' music and not paying them anything, and its been extremely profitable for the record companies, who have been found to deliberately manipulate streaming numbers to ensure they get the top spots. most independent artists make very little off of streaming, but are compelled to participate because its captured so much of the market for music. i really can't exaggerate here, the situation you're describing as what would happen without copyright law is happening right now, and is being facilitated directly by copyright law as it currently exists.

If a musician doesn’t have the right to their own work, it’s because someone offered to pay them for the rights and they accepted.

Is that in their favor? I think so, considering the alternative is to not get paid and not have rights to their work.

i mean, if you aren't at least peripherally aware of the ways in which people can be coerced into accepting contracts i don't know what to tell you. record companies are pretty notorious for exploiting musicians, and musicians have been complaining about it for many decades. same thing with writers, and vfx artists, and game designers, and on and on and on.

If you want a clinical trial that proves a particular drug can actually help patients, you will need to find a company to pay for it. The government almost never pays for clinical trials (I think the COVID vaccine might have been an exception). Clinical trials are far more expensive than basic science, and patents are the carrot to get the private sector to pay for them.

i'm aware of how it works, but it's now how it has to work. i would prefer they did do all that publicly, and there is nothing that prevents them from doing so. the cost in human lives that comes with entrusting life-saving medications to profit-motivated executives is immense, especially for drugs that treat illnesses that are endemic to poorer nations. in any case, US tax dollars funded every new pharmaceutical in the last decade, and i don't really care who foots the bill for what part of drug development when exactly zero new drugs would exist without public scientific progress serving as the foundation for these new technologies.

i mean, that's still way more wealthy than most people. i don't think i know anybody who had 28,000 buckaroos of money to burn on their child's business venture. and the article that you linked does say that musk's dad made around 400,000 dollars off the emerald mine, which is... still more wealth than most people will see in their lifetime. according to Errol, he sent money he made off the emerald mine and by selling his yacht to Elon and Kimbal to pay for living expenses while they were studying in the US.

i really don't like this attitude, and i see this it pop up around here fairly frequently. its kind of elitist? classist? i'll try to articulate myself here, though its not like... directly aimed at you, so try not to take it personally.

computer skills are just like being illiterate, but not in the way you're presenting. if somebody grows up to adulthood and they are illiterate, that isn't some sort of personal failing, its an indication that the people responsible for this person's care neglected their obligation to properly educate their child, or did not have the resources to provide such an education, because nearly everybody can become literate if somebody teaches them. the reality is that every single person on earth comes into this world without the ability to read, write, use computers, or do fucking anything at all, and its the responsibility of the people who do know these things to be open and kind and helpful so that they can learn. did you have the option to take computer skills classes in school? maybe? in a lot of places, no. did you come into technology effortlessly good at everything? probably not. lots of people aren't given the opportunity to hone these skills, or aren't given motivation to pursue them for themselves.

it's a problem in tech spaces. there is this subset of tech dudes who got in early and have made this weird, toxic culture of competition and exclusion that makes pursuing these skills actively difficult for newcomers. no. open source tech is for everybody. computer skills are for everybody. respond kindly and with understanding to those who do not already know these things, please. as much as it seems obvious or natural, it really really isn't. people need to be taught this stuff most of the time. i don't mean to be hostile, its just... the comparison to being illiterate is absurd to me, even if it was just a joke. when have you ever met a person who's illiterate who hasn't been systematically let down by their educators??? have you ever met somebody who's illiterate? they aren't that way because they're stupid, or don't want to learn, its usually something that happens to people who have been profoundly neglected by the systems supposed to protect them, who are poor, disabled, or otherwise marginalized. the stigmatization of illiteracy is cruel to people who have already been deeply wronged, denied full access to language and our vast inheritance of knowledge by systems and people which find it inconvenient to teach them.

i sorta agree with you, it's a bummer that people don't have these skills, that so many don't have a strong grasp of how the machines that are so important to their lives even work. but that isn't their fault, it isn't their responsibility, and our response should be kind and accommodating. it should be a call to improve public education and provide resources to expand access to this knowledge, to build open source and demystify what has been mystified. that's part of why there are so many free educational resources for coding online. because this is a field of study that is not being taught to students by default, as it rightly should be.

i don't mean to go off on you specifically. lots of people don't think very deeply about this, you haven't committed a social justice crime or anything. but this is not a "people are dumb" problem. its an injustice. its a failure that we should do everything in our power to correct.