It's only cheating if you're breaking a rule to not sleep with other people. Swingers aren't cheating (assuming they're respecting any agreed upon boundary) when they're having an orgy for example.
A bi man with a wife and a family could very well be having sexual encounters with men once in a while with the agreement of his wife (who could well have her own stuff going on too) and it could be a very healthy thing in what is a fulfilling relationship for both parties.
You might be right morally, but in a lot of countries it is still the case that 'not having sex with other people' is a compulsory clause of the marriage contract. So legally it's a little bit murkier.
People have been advocating for marriage contracts that are a bit like the CC license, where you can pick the parts that you agree on.
Marriage is on its way out in many places. In my region of Canada (Quebec), less than 50% of couples with kids are married. That number keeps going down every year.
(There are some automatic protections in the event of a separation.)
I repeatedly see very intelligent and successful people outright reject the possibility that conspiranoids can be intelligent but misguided. I think conspiracy thinking ("conspiranoia") is orthogonal to educational attainment/quality. I think it's much more likely that we are all susceptible to conspiranoia thinking (we all have the same cognitive biases and we all use good-enough but imperfect heuristics to decide who/what to trust), but that some of us just haven't been introduced to one we are amenable to by a person of trust+authority. Given enough {theories, people we trust, exposure} we will all start falling for some or many of them.
Of course the dumbest of us will fall for more theories, including the more incredible theories, but to pretend like any one person is immune is to ignore the step 1 of a 12 step program.
At the onset of the Coronavirus, the media and medical advice was to NOT acquire masks for daily wear to prevent spreading. My knowledge from Asian nations encouraging masks wearing to spread the disease was counterfactual to what the government was saying.
The people at Star Slate Codex supposed that this was to limit a run on masks.
Dr. Faucci just last month admits, yeah we lied about it at the beginning to prevent a run on masks.
The conspiracy folks in this case were correct. I am not including myself in the echelons or intelligence the SSC provides, but smart people were able to suss our this was a conspiracy.
There are plenty of people with a high quality education who go around talking about how specific rich groups run a massive conspiracy to subvert democracy and promote bad political views. (Indeed, most politically engaged people I've encountered believe multiple such theories.)
I know enough not to do seek it out anymore but I will admit that some of the better conspiracy videos on youtube are pretty convincing if only because they take advantage of how your brain (system 1) decides truth. A lot of political documentaries work the same way.
After building 7 more tables they might actually ROI on the circ saw and orbital sander and consumable supplies. Then they just have to start working down the capital costs of the table saw, router, miter saw, and clamps.
I agree with the fitness argument, but the safety argument is a legitimate one. I live in a mountain town with a big mountain biking community, almost everyone who pushes themselves in that sport will be dealing with injuries at one point. It can be as benign as a torn ACL or a broken clavicle, but I'm also friends with a guy who broke his pelvis (he completely healed and is a great athlete, I've seen him do a 360 on telemarks last winter) and worked with a guy who's currently in a neckbrace after breaking 2 vertebra. Those last two people are both lucky they didn't die.
You don't need to be a great mountain biker to go dangerously fast, it's very easy to become overconfident, and the downhill nature means that you might also fall from certain heights on top of already carrying speed, and not necessarily on soft dirt, maybe onto rocks or into a tree. It's a gnarly sport.
The commentator you were talking to should at least go on some mellow bike rides or something.
> The citizens of the united states of america have a 2nd amendment.
The 2A's only role in US society is to allow some people to buy some small arms some of the time and otherwise doesn't have any place in America until the country falls (at which point all of the laws/amendments are not relevant). It's not like you can use your weapon on a government official and claim under the 2A you were protecting yourself against the government. You still get prosecuted for murder; only jury nullification would save you at that point.
> if they were armed the way americans are
You forget that our military is the largest in the world with lots of recent experience in {counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and psychological operations}. They also have some of the best tools for identifying where most people are and are capable of shutting off most mass communications within the US if they needed to.
In the end, the political polarization is such that those who own lots of guns tend to be the same demographics who revere police/military/order and are currently in the camp that overlooks / detests the protesters, saying their complaints are overblown. I'm pretty sure that's largely due to a sustained PR effort by the post-WW2 Defense Department including sponsorships of sporting events that are more likely to attract those same demographics.
> In the end, the political polarization is such that those who own lots of guns tend to be the same demographics who revere police/military/order and are currently in the camp that overlooks / detests the protesters, saying their complaints are overblown.
I'm steeped deep in gun culture in Texas, most of my friends online are in gun culture. We are all universally outraged by what happened to George Floyd and to others. The majority of us do not support looting and pillaging, but we do support the message of the protests. In fact, the gun community has been advocating for something to be done about police militarization and the negative side effects of the War on Drugs for decades.
It is this weird thing how political divisions work, because so many people on the Left in this country assume "gun owner" == "racist white man, thin blue line, thank you for your service".
The reality is a sizable proportion of gun owners in America are lumped into a generic "conservative" bucket because of some specific issue viewpoints, which have nothing to do with actual worldview. By and large, gun owners tend to be more Libertarian than conservative, and as such view the government and the police with distrust. They view people breaking the law with even more distrust, which is why they may often support the police, but they do not support police brutality and they have deep concerns about policing in America.
It was the Libertarian think-tank The Cato Institute that spent years collating every single failed no-knock raid in America and mapping them. It's Libertarian writers like Radley Balko who've published multiple books on police misconduct. These groups and people who are opposed to police misconduct on the grounds of preserving liberty are part of gun culture.
It's really weird to me being in the tech industry as I see it's shift Leftward politically and being inundated with utterly ridiculous caricatures of people who hold similar viewpoints to me. Gun owners aren't a homogenous group, and by and large your caricature of a racist Elmer Fudd is grossly inaccurate. I have most of my teeth, am educated, work in a knowledge field, am politically active in causes which matter to me, most of which align with the positions of the Left somewhat ironically, and yes I own guns.
The real reason gun owners aren't starting an insurrection is because we have too much to lose and very little to gain. The reason CHL holders are the demographic with the lowest crime rate in the US, and why most gun owners own many guns (which are expensive, by the way) is because as a cohort we are people who uphold order, make prudent financial and life decisions, and take our responsibilities seriously (because of course, we regularly handle deadly weapons). Insurrection has a nearly incalculable cost in human lives, has no guarantee of the end result being a better system, and essentially ends every positive thing that currently exists in your life in the blink of an eye. As you said, the 2A isn't an affirmative defense in court if you go around shooting government employees, so only people who are so thoroughly radicalized that they've effectively already distanced themselves out of society and thrown their lives away are willing to be the one to fire the first shot.
It has basically nothing to do with political affiliations and everything to do with common sense and basic prudence.
>The reason CHL holders are the demographic with the lowest crime rate in the US, and why most gun owners own many guns (which are expensive, by the way) is because as a cohort we are people who uphold order, make prudent financial and life decisions, and take our responsibilities seriously (because of course, we regularly handle deadly weapons).
I agree with almost everything you said. Just one small point - I suspect the reason why CHL holders are the demographic with the lowest crime rate in the US is because it’s the only demographic that actively screens for past crimes before allowing you to be a member.
In many states the only criteria is "can legally own a gun" (so not a felon). I think it's more a matter of contientiousness; people who bother getting the permit (where required) are affirmatively demonstrating the wish to follow the law.
Thanks for the long, nuanced post! I like HN especially because of these.
I'm also from small town TX and I consider myself more of a libertarian-lite than a "lefty" or a "righty" in the US political spectrum, so we have some things in common. I realize I tend to look down on "those who own lots of guns" (I'm not talking about just 1-2 per family) because I consider them to be my outgroup.
I decided not to post a lot of response-per-quote after a few drafts, but I'll just say: thanks for this.
The national police force in Canada rapes and murders native women with complete impunity. It might be a bit better in that there are less extrajudicial murders, but it's far from being great.
I've been a line cook, restaurant owners are absolutely untrustworthy and hostile. The food industry is one where exploitation, highly aggressive staff retention practices (making employees dependent on you for a visa, threatening to spread lies about you, etc.), crazy unhealthy hours and just a generally awful culture are standard.
I've worked in the restaurant industry in the US. It's nothing short of horrifying, and often traumatizing for those involved.
I've seen no overtime pay happen, lies from management to get unemployment claims denied, management not actually firing people but just giving them zero or reduced hours to mess with the unemployment claim process, the VISA fuckery you mentioned, harrassment. Intentional scheduling of conflicting days for people with multiple jobs. Being made to work 7 days a week for long periods of time. Being made to repeatedly close late at night / early in the morning and then open the restaurant the next morning, a few hours later, and work a double. Being made to work while sick (this happens a lot).
A gold comment I heard from one manager was "I don't pay overtime because these motherfuckers already take enough of my money" (referring to the employees). This same guy was shaving time slips to keep them below 40 hours.
Can vouch for the life science industry being like this as well. Management threatened to make us check in every hour of work. Spending an eighth of that hour writing an explanatory email was pretty toxic.
I'm canadian, I sure as fuck wouldn't want to emigrate to the USA. Warren Buffet has huge biases and blind spots when it comes to sociological analysis. I strongly doubt the man understands what it's like to be making 7$ an hour working at Dennys somewhere in the bible belt because the public school system left you semi-illiterate, or living in any heavily criminalized urban area, or picking fruits in california because you had to escape cartels in mexico/central america. None of the people in my examples or developing their full potential, and there's a massive proportion of americans in this bottom social class.
*And canada could be doing way better. There are glaring social inequalities here too.
> huge biases and blind spots when it comes to sociological analysis.
...apparently so do you since your next sentence is full of such incredible hyperbole...
> 7$ an hour working at Dennys somewhere in the bible belt because the public school system left you semi-illiterate, or living in any heavily criminalized urban area, or picking fruits in california because you had to escape cartels in mexico/central america.
Pew suggests about 50% of America is the middle class, earning about $78k a year. I'm not sure what fraction is in manual labor jobs but if labor means working then the rate is about 62%.
From BLS data, about 12.7% of the population lives in poverty, workers/children/etc. This group is disproportionately minority (non white) and an example of the social failing of the richest nation in history.
A bi man with a wife and a family could very well be having sexual encounters with men once in a while with the agreement of his wife (who could well have her own stuff going on too) and it could be a very healthy thing in what is a fulfilling relationship for both parties.