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Voat Is Shutting Down

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Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#651

Post by esperent »

lukeramsden wrote: post #381
esperent wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can we discuss if overweight people should pay more for sits in a plane? Can we discuss if a trans male who identifies herself to be a woman should be allowed to take part in female sport competition (box, running)? I am afraid we no longer can discuss such "uncomfortable" topics You can debate those things on reddit without being censored on a lots of subreddits. However, the reason these are such contentious topi…

> The last 1% is people who legitimately care about these people and want to discuss their wellbeing and rights. But I'm putting that in to be generous, I don't think I'm ever seen these topics discussed in good faith. Or do your existing opinions mean you view all discussions on this topic as bad-faith, exactly as the parent comment describes? > However, the reason these are such contentious topics is that 99% of th…

> Or do your existing opinions mean you view all discussions on this topic as bad-faith, exactly as the parent comment describes?

No, I'm quite clear about what would constitute a good faith argument. For example, regarding obese people on planes having to pay for extra seats, a good faith argument would involve genuine discussion about the impact on these people, whether it's prejudiced to do so, whether it's within the rights of the airlines to charge them extra, and so on.

A bad faith argument is where this topic is brought up as a strawman when the real topic of conversation is censorship or some such.

I'm fully aware that this entire comment thread, including my replies, constitutes a bad faith argument, BTW. We are not genuinely discussing the plight of obese people, we're just using their plight to further our own discussions.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#652

Post by yakireev »

pstuart wrote: post #649
yakireev wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, it wasn't about him, it was about the soldiers. It wasn't. But a bit of a context wouldn't hurt, right? Why did Koreans choose to return the remnants, out of the blue? You wouldn't have guessed it unless I told you, right? Given the general atmosphere, it certainly feels like there's a deliberate omission. Yay for the best journalism the U.S. has to offer. I'm aware of T's conduct, I don't like him and I wouldn…

Suppress what? He was acknowledged for that tiny win. Just because you have an article that doesn't praise him directly you build a case of suppression. There's not a whole lot positive to say about the man, so far you've offered up the tiniest sliver. You're clearly more informed on this wonderful information that is being suppressed so tell me more. I've already accepted that the NK remains was a good thing and he…

> More please?

Like I said, I'm not his supporter, go ask them if you're actually interested. As a foreigner, I'd mention that he did not start any new wars around the globe, the first U.S. president since... Carter, I guess? I wasn't even alive back then. But this is offtopic.

Also, fascism is one of those words which lost its meaning. Every person has their own definition of it, the only common denominator (usually) being "something I don't like and neither should you". For constructive conversation it's better to avoid this word, I believe.

> You're scared of the wrong things.

Am I? I've seen the rise of (state-backed) censorship and silencing of dissent in Russia, and this is one of the reasons I emigrated. I've seen the rise of (society-backed) censorship and silencing of dissent in Ukraine after 2014, and this is why I did not emigrate there and now have to learn a yet another foreign language. Now I see the rise of censorship and silencing of dissent in the U.S., and I don't like what I'm seeing - unfortunately, what happens in U.S. often has world reach. Meanwhile, I'm yet to see any hunters for liberals for sports in these places.

> As for de-platforming, yes I'm 100% ok with Alex Jones not making money.

I don't care about Alex Jones either, that guy sucks. But are you OK with you not making money? Are you OK with subreddits you visit being banned? Are you OK with websites you visit being deplatformed? Are you OK with topics that you are interested in being purged from YouTube?

That's the thing, people usually want those things for others, never for themselves. Do you think that you should have more rights than those 45% who believe in ghosts, or what?

If you don't like a website, or a subreddit, or a mailing list - unsubscribe and never visit it again. I had /r/the_donald removed from my /r/all for years, and it did not bother me.

But if you find yourself wanting to "deplatform" some website or some subreddit - i.e. to disrupt or suppress communications of other people between each other (because you don't like them) - are you sure that it is that different from wanting to make your religious beliefs the law of the land?

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#653

Post by dragonwriter »

yakireev wrote: post #652
pstuart wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppress what? He was acknowledged for that tiny win. Just because you have an article that doesn't praise him directly you build a case of suppression. There's not a whole lot positive to say about the man, so far you've offered up the tiniest sliver. You're clearly more informed on this wonderful information that is being suppressed so tell me more. I've already accepted that the NK remains was a good thing and he…

> More please? Like I said, I'm not his supporter, go ask them if you're actually interested. As a foreigner, I'd mention that he did not start any new wars around the globe, the first U.S. president since... Carter, I guess? I wasn't even alive back then. But this is offtopic. Also, fascism is one of those words which lost its meaning. Every person has their own definition of it, the only common denominator (usually…

> As a foreigner, I'd mention that he did not start any new wars around the globe

Unless you count the US-Iran conflict he started, sure. (And if you don't count that because you want to claim it as a continuation or mutation of a preexisting conflict, a number of other Presidents also haven't started wars, just participated in such evolutions of preexisting crises.)

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#654

Post by AnimalMuppet »

dragonwriter wrote: post #653
yakireev wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More please? Like I said, I'm not his supporter, go ask them if you're actually interested. As a foreigner, I'd mention that he did not start any new wars around the globe, the first U.S. president since... Carter, I guess? I wasn't even alive back then. But this is offtopic. Also, fascism is one of those words which lost its meaning. Every person has their own definition of it, the only common denominator (usually…

> As a foreigner, I'd mention that he did not start any new wars around the globe Unless you count the US-Iran conflict he started, sure. (And if you don't count that because you want to claim it as a continuation or mutation of a preexisting conflict, a number of other Presidents also haven't started wars, just participated in such evolutions of preexisting crises.)

That's not a war (at least, not yet). It is a conflict, but it's not a war.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#655

Post by yakireev »

dragonwriter wrote: post #653
yakireev wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More please? Like I said, I'm not his supporter, go ask them if you're actually interested. As a foreigner, I'd mention that he did not start any new wars around the globe, the first U.S. president since... Carter, I guess? I wasn't even alive back then. But this is offtopic. Also, fascism is one of those words which lost its meaning. Every person has their own definition of it, the only common denominator (usually…

> As a foreigner, I'd mention that he did not start any new wars around the globe Unless you count the US-Iran conflict he started, sure. (And if you don't count that because you want to claim it as a continuation or mutation of a preexisting conflict, a number of other Presidents also haven't started wars, just participated in such evolutions of preexisting crises.)

Like the other guy said, that was not a war. The casualties were minimal, and Iran is still where it used to be. That was a scary moment indeed, but luckily nothing serious came out of it.

Also, I'm quite surprised that someone else is still reading this conversation. Wow.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#656

Post by zapzupnz »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #179
zapzupnz wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really a reply to the whole tech debt bit, but the ~ symbol is called a tilde in English. I suspect spelling it with an a at the end comes from another language?

No, the symbol is called a tilde in Spanish , where it's part of the writing system. It's unused in English and therefore doesn't really have a name, but people who have learned Spanish may call it a tilde. If you were studying Greek, you'd call it a "circumflex". (Or, if you were Greek, you'd call it a "perispomene".) Spelling it as "tilda" just reflects the fact that a reduced vowel in English may be spelled in any…

> It's unused in English and therefore doesn't really have a name

No, it definitely has a name. Tilde. Heck, it's even the name used for the ~ symbol in Unicode, which famously names all characters with upper-cased English words. Just because it's not used in English orthography doesn't mean that there isn't a name for it, even if it's merely a borrowing.

> If you were studying Greek, you'd call it a "circumflex".

I suppose I would. Somewhat off-topic, though.

> Spelling it as "tilda" just reflects the fact that a reduced vowel in English may be spelled in any number of different ways (and "e" is particularly unlikely)

Or, as GP explained, they just misspelt it.

Responding to a later comment:

> you could easily go your whole life without ever using the word

That doesn't invalidate the word's existence in the language.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#657

Post by zapzupnz »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #236
schoen wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fair to say that, even though it's not part of the English writing system, "tilde" is the standard name of the mark in English now when English-speakers who are familiar with it want to discuss it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilde This includes lots of detailed discussion of the mark under the name "tilde", including names of Unicode characters that include this term. Wiktionary also views it as an En…

> Wiktionary also views it as an English noun borrowed from Spanish. Sure, but it's not live in the same way that most words are. It doesn't refer to anything in an English speaker's normal experience; you could easily go your whole life without ever using the word.

It's very much live. It's the name of the symbol. It's sometimes used as a symbol to mean 'approximately', as in "~100 BC". It's used in IT as a symbol for a home folder on Unix-based systems and for pattern matching in other languages.

Regardless of the symbol's function in different domains, the symbol's name remains 'tilde'.

Maybe you don't use the word much but that really has nothing to do with the price of fish.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#658

Post by TeMPOraL »

sneak wrote: post #617
novok wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a big risk of causing permanent damage and significantly reduced lifespans by creating drug league, which has its own ethical issues. It would create incentives for people to push naive children or newly-adult into taking many drugs that will destroy the rest of their lives. Drug league could have people dying mid competition, as they took too many drugs that they had a heart attack when trying to go all out…

As long as everyone involved consents and isn't coerced, it sounds ethical and entertaining to me. I imagine that many of the people who would participate are already taking these things (these are not the people competing professionally today). Perhaps mainstreaming it would incentivize more research into safety and sustainability around artificially pushing humans beyond their current physical limits.

> As long as everyone involved consents and isn't coerced, it sounds ethical and entertaining to me.

Given the extreme competitive and monetary pressure already involved in sports, as well as expectations of audience, I question how much we can talk about consent and lack of coercion. If a drug league would exist, players would be pressured to take part to the very limit of what's legal, health be damned - as they already are in regular leagues.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#659

Post by TeMPOraL »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #516
tpxl wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, but this is a choice. When _some_ make this choice to be at the top, _all_ must make this choice to be at the top. At that point it's a roulette of who will dare take the most drugs and live to win. > I see no reason why not to give them all the opportunities. Some are way more harmful than others, and we should take that into account. EDIT: > I know but since it looks like the gender is becoming a mater of ch…

> Apart from some radical groups thinking so, gender is not really becoming a choice. Transsexuality, non-binary etc. are facts. They are more or less legalized (it depends on the country) but I think that at some point it is not the genome that is going to decide but a personal choice. I do not want to discuss whether this is good or bad, just the fact that quantitative biological data are not absolute measures anym…

That's why it's time to stop talking about all of this as a bulk category. Different situations care about different aspect of sex/gender.

In sports, it isn't really relevant what a person thinks about themselves. Gender is used as a proxy for expected performance envelope - you don't want to mix people with radically different characteristics, because that would not make for fair competition. I'm guessing that eventually we'll stop talking about "men" and "women" teams, and figure out new terms that directly reference the relevant biological characteristics.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#660

Post by dragonwriter »

yakireev wrote: post #655
dragonwriter wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a foreigner, I'd mention that he did not start any new wars around the globe Unless you count the US-Iran conflict he started, sure. (And if you don't count that because you want to claim it as a continuation or mutation of a preexisting conflict, a number of other Presidents also haven't started wars, just participated in such evolutions of preexisting crises.)

Like the other guy said, that was not a war. The casualties were minimal, and Iran is still where it used to be. That was a scary moment indeed, but luckily nothing serious came out of it. Also, I'm quite surprised that someone else is still reading this conversation. Wow.

> Like the other guy said, that was not a war.

“Was”? It isn't over.

But, sure, if we arbitrarily exclude some international armed conflicts between military forces of one country and those of another from “war”, then, ok, you can rescue the claim that Trump hasn't started any “wars”, but at the cost of weakening the case for excluding other Presidents from that same description.

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