DreamerofDays

For longevity, perhaps. Considering the Russian government’s penchant for poisoning people outside their territory, perhaps not.

All meaning is constructed meaning, and, to quote Shakespeare, “there’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

We decide, collectively, and as individuals, what is positive and what is negative. We invent for ourselves, whole cloth or adopting from our elders, meaning in life, the universe, and everything.

That doesn’t mean they are without worth. The world is altered daily through the things people imagine. Money is an invention, its value existing in the collective imaginations of those who use it. Maps are not the lands they represent, but their cartography influences where people live, work, and travel. Numbers and maths are inventions— languages invented to describe the universe and its movings, but the universe moves without needing to know them…

… nevertheless, with those invented languages we orbit distant planets with artificial satellites, and create the wonderful bit of nonsense that allows us to communicate here.

We choose to find meaning in the world, and then we choose the meaning we find there. Ultimately everything else can be winnowed away, but that. I believe we have value because I choose to believe we have value, and I weigh the good of the world with the bad because I actively choose to continue to see both. It isn’t easy all the time, and it doesn’t have to be one way or the other. But it’s what I want for the world, and what I want for me.

That seems like a convenient excuse for him to bear less, or none of, the guilt for his actions.

Does Agent Smith have autonomy?

Another way of thinking about it:

Numbers offer a sense of scale. As numbers go further left from the decimal, they get bigger and bigger. Likewise, as they go right from the decimal, they get smaller and smaller.

If I’m looking with just my eyes, I can see big things without issue, but as things get smaller and smaller, it becomes more and more difficult. Eventually, I can’t see the next smallest thing at all.

But we know that smaller thing is there— I can use a magnifying glass and see things slightly smaller than I can unaided. With a microscope, I can see smaller still.

So I can see the entirety of a leaf, know where it begins and ends, even though I can’t, unaided, see the details of all its cells. Likewise, you can see the entirety of the line you drew, it’s just that you lack precise enough tools to measure it with perfect accuracy.

I don’t have their numbers, but this isn’t the first place I’ve seen similar quoted. First one I found through some friends’ discussion was this, which puts us, at a quick glance, at around a third of last year’s total(still plenty bad).

so I just feel like I should be able to live my life and not have to worry about all this. Why can’t I?

Are you seeking permission or explanation?

Not a fan of them, but I am inclined to agree with you on this one. Appearance of corruption for sitting out and letting the decision default, or much stronger appearance of corruption by sitting for it.

Unless sitting for arguments and abstaining from submitting or signing on to an opinion is an option… but even then, sitting for the arguments of a case you’re a defendant of is a bad, bad look, comes with no guarantee that you actually will abstain from opinion, and might not even be a valid way around quorum rules.

They are the most orthodox of orthodox Jews and they are fucking nuts

The Haredi would like a word.

Is the ad revenue on mass transit actually high enough to support its operation?(ignoring even maintenance or expansion, or the replacement of unrepairable vehicles)

A dusting of sarcasm on that.

I didn’t take it that way— mine was a poorly worded agreement with you.

Murder is always fun until you’re the one getting murdered. Doesn’t apparently sour you on the idea of murder, though.

Eat the rich and become what you despise. No thanks. I’m happy to look for that third way

I was reading the “who cares” as “who cares what he has to say?” (being a furtherance of wondering why this person has a platform or is getting a headline) I read it that way rather than “who cares that someone is threatening to kill the President.” (Which I think how you took it)

That seems pretty bonkers, with the barest minimum knowledge of geography.

Like, look at a map level of bonkers.

And him dying from a stab wound is going to change any of that?

Username checks out.

I think this is ignoring the seas of dross that have fallen away in the past. There have always been bad movies, and unoriginal movies, some of them doing quite well at the box office(used as a metric to show that people were showing up to see them). We don’t hold a lot of them in popular memory because we don’t watch them anymore, and what’s left from those eras are the movies of sufficient quality or resonance that we continue to watch them.

The system has a number of issues that are well trod, and certain pitfalls which are inherent, but hanging a lack of quality or unoriginality entirely on capitalism is overselling it.

I would posit that a lack of moderation, or a form of monomania is a bigger culprit here. Too much focus on the business side can stifle creativity, but too much focus on the creative side can result in sprawling, unfinished messes. With too much focus on safety we can be stigmatised from action, but with too much focus on action we can lose our humanity in favor of feeding the gears of progress.

This accounts for the bean counters, but doesn’t grant them the power of being the one true reason for everything being bad.

It feels like everyone is so goddamned angry right now, and the anger just begets more of itself. Anger and fear, fear and anger.

No, he didn’t. But people get to want things. Sometimes they want things for themselves, sometimes they want things for their communities.

Nobody’s perfect