FriendOfDeSoto

I don’t think this is genetic though. Critical thinking is something you should learn how to do. It’s a failure due to chronic underfunding in education.

I do agree with you that the people who can do it, often despair and withdraw from public discourse out of frustration. But they could be making babies like rabbits at the same time.

Is this déjà-downvote I feel?

I disagree. I find teenage super hero stories the only enjoyable ones. I don’t want my heroes to have to deal with quotidian grownup issues like paying the mortgage, having to work overtime, or worrying about their octogenarian parents. I want the biggest issue in their universe - apart from saving Earth from total destruction by a comical villain - to be the history paper that is due next Monday or how mom reduced their pocket money. I prefer the simplicity of interpretational relationships in a school setting. There is the bully jock and the nerdy girl who when she takes her glasses off becomes instantly attractive. Give me all the tropes. And I don’t need or want an R rated version of all of that.

In closing I just want to take a moment and applaud your personal growth. In showerthought after showerthought you’ve struggled with people dating much older people. And in this one you’re quite open to and positive about a twenty-something dating somebody twice their age! Well done you.

Seek professional help before somebody dies.

This. You shouldn’t get one if you asked for it.

It’s not perfect training data. Being encouraged to add alt text and actually doing it are two different things. Writing good alt text is another matter all together. And anything that’s on the internet is training data whether people want it to be or not. The only difference is ethical whether the scraper accepts and respects a version of robots dot txt, i.e. “do not scrape,” that communicates the training data’s holders’ intentions. And if they torrent books you can guess how respectful they are.

But how would you feel if one of the two from the same income bracket was much older than the other one?

What is your obsession with people fucking people, legally, as it stands, who are much older? It seems to me every other of your shower thoughts revolves around that. Who hurt you? Did they fuck a pensioner to cheat on you or something?

Really? I don’t think he’ll let anybody die just because there wasn’t a convenient phone booth around to get rapid changed in.

It’s not a competition.

You have just unlocked your “discovered a simplified issue in a culture war” badge🎖️

So-called AI steals everything, including punctuation.

Good choice

No, I don’t know which one. And I don’t want to watch people get hurt so I won’t seek it out either. There are incidents in this world that fit the theory of the bystander effect. That is not what I question. I’m questioning your calculation of odds regarding intervention. There are enough examples of “heroes without capes” that did intervene as well, also within groups of people.

A shower thought doesn’t have to be well thought through. On the flip side, you don’t have to double down on it when folks point out the flaws.

The bystander effect is a theory, not fact. It can explain after the fact why people in groups feel less responsibility to do something. But it isn’t universally applicable to all assaults in public. There are many variables at play. So “highly unlikely” is an exaggeration in my view.

We can all agree kids shouldn’t be watching porn. We do not agree on how to achieve this.

That’s not universally true. Necrophiles may be past that, according to preference.

But everyone deserves a threat and if you live in the USA, then tip is required…

That typo is more apt than intended.

We must hang out in very different circles then.

I don’t think it will be a big win for the Palestinians. One reason why this hasn’t happened in the past is that there is no reliable, functional government in place that governs over all of the territory. You had Hamas in Gaza and the PLO in most of the West Bank and they don’t see eye to eye. This hasn’t changed. It will be difficult for these established governments to cooperate with a a fractured non-functional one so the benefits for the Palestinian people will only be patchy and homeopathic.

So I fear recognizing a Palestinian state is actually an impotent, diplomatic gesture - like: “we see what’s going on there, it’s horrible, and we don’t have the resolve to do anything else to bring Israel back to the status quo ante.” It’s finger wagging at Israel more than actual support for the Palestinians. It’s a gesture that can easily be reversed as well, like the orange one moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. And I think that’s why these announcements of recognition fall on very deaf ears in Tel Aviv. It’s political theater for the audiences in the countries whose governments have announced this. “Look, we are doing something! (But we’re doing not that much really, we could do other things as well, isolate the Israeli government and/or cut it off palpably from necessary economic and military supply chain support. But we won’t. It’s a complicated conundrum, that Middle East. And we’re not quite ready to jeopardize the existence of Israel over this.)”