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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 10th, 2023

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  • Opposition to genocide isn’t an option on the ballot, you can’t vote for it, especially not for president. And not voting sends a very clear message whether you intend it or not: “I don’t care”.

    Do you value minimizing harm? If you care most about genocide, Harris seems to be the least-worst option. But if you care more about ideological purity than harm reduction, you can vote for a non-serious candidate like Stein, or none at all. Nobody will ever solve this kind of problem at the ballot box, that isn’t how democracies work, but if letting things happen instead of exerting what little power you have eases your conscience, that’s your right. Doing so does mean a greater risk of a Trump presidency, especially if you live in a swing state.

    I would rather minimize harm, so I’m voting for Harris, and encourage others to do the same.







  • I’ve been thinking about this for a minute, and I think a good standard here is making a list of (relatively) non-overlapping causes of death that have claimed over a billion human lives.

    Infectious disease is almost certainly at least one entry on this list, primarily secular war as well, starvation/famine probably a few times over, cancer and heart disease are probably distinct entries, and death attempting to grow/hunt food. I suspect deaths by religion could be on that list as well, but it’s the entry I’m least confident in.

    In every sense of the word, this is a bad list to be on, but I don’t think religion is near the biggest culprit on the list, even if you do a lot of special pleading, and group all deaths by religious cause together, but split each disease, war, etc up for some reason.






  • Or even if they showed up outside of an electoral context. The green party has some local elected officials in a few places across the country, none of them very close to me so it’s hard to inform an impression of them.

    But it doesn’t seem like, at least outside of those few folks, that the green party is very interested in any aspects of politics besides running in elections. If Jill Stein was criticizing Biden or Harris for the last four years, trying to get them to move to the left, or organizing groups of people to accomplish anything other than voting every 4 years… Her rhetoric points towards making real systemic change, but her actions suggest someone only invested in being a presidential candidate within the status quo. And the green party keeps nominating her for some reason. That doesn’t seem like what a serious party or candidate would do, or should be doing.



  • Even the most skilled money saver in the world, when their income is barely above their necessary life expenses, will fail to save much. Savings is a luxury only the rich can afford much of.

    But you’re right, putting money into the hands of people living paycheck to paycheck, or barely able to save is great for the economy as well as those people personally. Even if they save 10% and spend 90%, it’s tremendously more beneficial than that money going to a wealthy multimillionaire who won’t even notice saving it. For everyone except the multimillionaire, who really isn’t negatively impacted.