this place is only good for reading about topics that don't get opinionated coverage from the media. otherwise, you just get regurgitated diarrhea from people who are incapable of forming their own opinions or keep their existing opinions in face of adversity, when the overton window shifts.
crypto got heavily bombarded with bad press at some point during COVID era - I remember seeing 2-3 articles per day on the front page here, for weeks, about how le bad it is for the environment, etc. and that was enough to change the public sentiment here from indifference to knee-jerk, Pavlovian reaction to anything related to it.
>Between the unfairness to make an adult pay for a child who isn't theirs and the unfairness to throw an innocent child into financial distress, protecting the child takes priority everywhere I know of.
I wonder how would you react if you received a notification that half your paycheck will be henceforth withheld to support some random kid.
this comparison is not entirely fair, because in this scenario, the kid's mother did not deliver a grievous, unforgivable insult to you - which is the case with those poor souls who got scammed into paying child support for some whore's bastard whelp.
the state doesn't give a flying fuck about the child's 'financial distress'. the state simply doesn't want to support it.
That's where French law actually makes sense: after 5 years, it's your kid, even if not biologically, not a random kid. I don't think I would be chuffed, but I understand it's not the kid's fault, too, and I'm not so narcissistic as to think that them having my genes is so important. My anger at the mother should not reflect on the kid.
This 'random kid' stuff is absurd. The child is five or older. For all these years you have been calling it 'my son' or 'my daughter', and it has been calling you 'papa' or 'dad'. You've changed its diapers, sang it to sleep, fed it, clothed it, played with it, taught it words, hugged it after a bad dream. You are its world.
If after all that time it turns out to be not genetically yours I'm sure that hurts. Probably hurts a lot, if it's a betrayal by your partner.
But to pretend that it is in any way the same thing as the government assigning you 'a completely random child' is an absurd hyperbole. Five+ years is a decently long time to be (or think to be) someones father, but for the child that is literally its whole life.
So tell me, if it turns out after 5 years your child isn't biologically yours, you would just abandon it? It's been a nice few years but now it's over, leave to buy cigaretes and never return? And you think remaining its father is the un-manly thing to do? That sounds completely insane to me.
>my brother in Christ, people abandon their biological children all the time without anyone clutching their pearls about it
I'm pretty sure a father abndoning a child like that is one of the most taboo social nonos a human can commit I'm almost any culture? Where I am from in rural america physical vigilante violence is reserved for such types. So yes very pearl clutching
to those people, "normal" is abhorrent. desiring normalcy means you are a (insert an appropriate accusatory pejorative). expressing opposition to any degenerate behavior inevitably draws ire from the bourgeois folx.
I understand what you mean but there are multiple issues with that statement: it assumes there is a homogenous group of "those people", that they all react in this way (I find this vocal always-offended-by-anything minority equally irritating), that "normalcy" is something defined or even defineable, and that it is static.
These all are important issues but need e very balanced approach. Skewing things both left and right will have negative consequences to the society as a whole.
>And when they start conscripting in big cities, maybe those "poor" "innocent" Russians will finally do something about their government.
no guns. and that's why your benevolent overlords want to take your guns away too.
I see these snarky reddity comments all the time, and you people seriously fail to grasp the difference between authoritarian shitholes like Russia and China and your glorious liberal democracies, where your cities burn while cops stand around doing nothing because the local government is terrified of bad optics. in Russia, civil unrest gets put down with extreme prejudice.
a regime like that can only fail when even its eunuch servants and attack dogs aren't getting paid and fed. otherwise, your imaginary revolutionaries with sticks, stones and molotovs will get mowed down en masse, the survivors will get 15 years in gulag, and all without a peep from the local media.
You have a point but I don't think it's black and white.
There is a spectrum between full scale revolution / civil war and targeted assassinations. The number of guns is also a spectrum and Russia is on par with many European countries (according to Wikipedia).
Belarus has fewer guns and they were very close to overthrowing the dictator. Unfortunately, as you said, in the west, it's enough to make yourself look like a victim and the optics will often force the oppressors to cease action. Belarusians chose to imitate the west without understanding why it works. We saw reports of police officers putting down their weapons instead of turning them on the oppressors.
Shinzo Abe was killed using a completely home made shotgun. You don't wanna go to war with one of those but it's entirely sufficient for killing a single target. You will never get close enough to a high profile one but as you said, there are many servile people in the chain of command. Russia no doubt has many parents who lost their only sons and shouldn't have much to live for, yet we don't see targeted assassinations.
I've heard reports that the rebels in Myanmar started with homemade weapons and muskets and they're getting progressively better armed as they steal weapons from oppressors they kill. But they're also predominantly young and willing to act. What I see from Russia is lethargy.
I also don't know how well the serviles in Russia are getting paid, we see reports of soldiers making appeals to Putin after not getting paid (showing that they still believe in their glorious leader).
It's all very hard to judge but the best way to get neutral "apolitical" people to act is to put them between a rock and a hard place and if they still refuse to stand for good against evil, they seeing them mowed down in infrared is a good alternative for me. Better than seeing innocent people killed.
> that's why your benevolent overlords want to take your guns away too
And this is a very worrying trend. What is more sinister is the tabooization of violence. Ultimately all real power comes from violence (usually just the credible threat of it) but the chain of logic seems to be too long for common people to understand. And when one side gives up (or is gradually slowly but systematically deprived of) their access to violence, it will lead to oppression.
> my brother in Christ, you should've broken up with her on the spot
After she told me she wanted to be with me for life? I had hoped the poly issue was going to be in the past
I was in my early 20s, I was in love, she was my second girlfriend, who happened to be my high school crush, "the one that got away" but I got a second shot with her and took it, I was living the dream
How that relationship ended screwed me up for a long time. I'm better now, and I have a very loving stable partner
>After she told me she wanted to be with me for life?
well, as you saw, it wasn't really the case, was it? I don't mean to rub salt into the wound, but she's been fucking that guy long before that conversation with you.
I'm glad to hear that it had all worked out for you in the end. never second-guess your decision to reject that suggestion.
> After she told me she wanted to be with me for life? I had hoped the poly issue was going to be in the past
You hopefully learned that girls lie, like to avoid conflict and keep their options open. Once you accept these 3 facts they become much easier to understand. Guys care less about point 2.
Only judge someone by their actions, not words. And your gf fucking other people is a pretty clear statement of her feelings for you and her intention for your future.
Someone said something like this to me recently about a story I related where I was told an ex boyfriend would be at a falsely framed "party" the partner was literally driving me to when she told me.
My new friend said to me, "you should have gotten out of the car". I replied that if I had I would have had to been prepared to walk away from the relationship on the spot when it happened. That is easier said than done in a moment.
crypto got heavily bombarded with bad press at some point during COVID era - I remember seeing 2-3 articles per day on the front page here, for weeks, about how le bad it is for the environment, etc. and that was enough to change the public sentiment here from indifference to knee-jerk, Pavlovian reaction to anything related to it.