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@viktormayrin / viktormayrin.tumblr.com

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Do you think tumblr will ever learn the difference between “I’m defending this person because I agree with them wholeheartedly and I am also like this person” and “I’m defending this person because your behavior is dangerous and you need to stop”

IMO, blurring the lines between “I’m defending them because they’re right” and “I’m defending them because you’re taking this too far” is step numero uno to cutting down the very existence of fair trial and democracy–even in places where saying that might seem a little dramatic. 

Mob mentality is extremely strong in humans and it’s also extremely dangerous. Mobs don’t think things through. Mobs kill and they destroy and they can’t be reasoned with. Someone trying to calm a mob down isn’t someone defending the ~problematic party~ It’s time we re-learn that.

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roach-works

“even IF the guy did whatever you’re accusing them of, mob violence isn’t a fair or proportionate response, and you guys need to go home and mind your own fucking business” is a thing absolutely no one likes to hear but frequently needs to be said regardless

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cuppatealove

I've never forgotten my mum telling me years ago that forgiveness is like letting go of a bell pull: you stop pulling on it, but then it can take a while for the bell to stop ringing altogether.

When you forgive someone, it can feel like it hasn't worked because the hurt is still reverberating all around you. Give it a minute. If you stop tugging at it and keeping it alive, in time the noise will die down and you will have peace.

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reblogged

The most dangerous thing that bad ideologies create in free societies are not convictions but sensibilities. And those destructive sensibilities can thrive amongst individuals who do not even share the ideology's intellectual convictions. For ideologies work to shape cultural consciousness on the deepest of levels.

Members of younger generations who eventually reject that bad ideology find it exceedingly challenging to live by different principles because of the sensibilities that have been implanted into them.

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If a post doesn't apply to you it means the person who made it is excluding you on purpose. If someone makes a broad generalization in a tumblr post it means they know about your individual experiences and they're ignoring you deliberately because they hate you and want to make you mad. So if you see a post that doesn't factor in your personal perspective you should make sure to leave a comment of at least three paragraphs to make sure the op knows how deeply they have hurt you and how serious the matter truly is

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reblogged
Anonymous asked:

Is it true that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk don’t even pay taxes?

They absolutely do pay taxes, but the misconceptions come from:

1/ Their respective companies, Amazon & Tesla, have been regularly criticized for their low effective income tax rate(s), despite these being completely separate legal entities and have minimal relevance to their owners' personal tax liabilities. Furthermore, the primary reason the companies have paid such low [or no] federal income taxes is due to them minimizing their tax liability through traditional means, i.e. tax deductions/exemptions for intended purposes.

2/ Majority of their wealth is classified as unrealized gains, which are non-taxable, but will be taxable when the gains are recognized. The easiest way of thinking about this is imagine if you purchased your favorite baseball card from a yard sale for $10 and then 10 years later, you found out that it's now worth $1000, then you now have an unrealized gain of $990. Now when you go to sell it for $1000, you'll have to pay the tax on the $990, but if you never sell it, then it would remain untaxed.

3/ As mentioned in the first bullet, it's important to realize that most tax returns are not public information, especially for private individuals, so most accusations aren't based on concrete evidence.

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pythice

firefox users getting Ws just by google being shittier and shittier lmao

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esthermika

What happened this time?

youtube is forcing a hardcoded 5 second loading time for videos being played back on firefox for no reason other than it's not chrome

you can add the following to your personal ublock filters to fix:

www.youtube.com##+js(nano-stb, resolve(1), *, 0.001)

it changes the timer to .001 seconds, effectively removing it

i dont know what you guys are talking about but that may be because i keep my ublocko filters up to date + youtube nonstop extension

YouTube is creating delays hard coded into the website for non-chrome browsers that don’t exist for any reason but annoying people into using chrome, so some ublock folks found a filter that alters the specific part of the website that changes the delay to make it so short as to be unnoticeable.

to apply the filter, click on the ublock extension, go to my filters, copy/paste the above filter, and update filters and you should be good.

It’s possible that you haven’t seen it yet because YouTube has tended to roll out their anti adblock stuff in waves and unevenly

Seems like Google programming their website specifically to fuck with the experience of anyone using a competitor's browser is the sort of thing antitrust lawsuits love to see.

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classic wuxia trope: a flawed hero is tempted by unvirtuous feelings and fails to uphold the standards demanded of the righteous; as a result an innocent, particularly one they care about, is hurt or killed

spider-man is wuxia

classic wuxia archetype: a hero standing outside conventional structures of law and order, who uses their powerful martial arts to stand up for the weak and oppressed

spider-man is wuxia

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leahsfiction

Tie Xinlan sighed: “Not just quite good, his personal secretive lightness martial arts [The Flying Celestial Spider] is unmatched in the realm.”

Xiao Yu’er asked: “What is so special about this skill?”

Tie Xinlan said: “He has hidden some special lanyard made from the silk spun by a thousand year old rare spider in Nanhai. It is very strong, not even swords and sabres can sever it. The lanyard is put in a mechanized tube, when he waves his hand the lanyard will shoot out. It can reach about 40 metres and at the end of the cord there is a sharp silver needle that can puncture anything. He will go with the line and that is why he is so swift, he also makes him very secretive.”

Xiao Yu’er laughed: “He is not only strange and funny, but his martial arts are funny and strange too. But I wonder how old he really is, why is he so fixated on being other people’s seniors.”

Tie Xinlan said: “No one has ever seen his real face and nobody knows his true age. He hates when people call him young. Whoever makes that mistake will suffer dearly.”

Xiao Yu’er said: “Why am I not suffering?”

– introducing the Black Spider, The Legendary Siblings, Gu Long (1966)

When I saw this addition, I assumed tumblr user leahsfiction had riffed on my post by writing a short piece, in an excellent bit of yes-anding. I did a bit of googling, saw the novel existed and was published a few years after the first Spider-Man appearance in 1962, thought “oh well played situating it in an actual real novel, that’s really clever.”

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Basic rules for analysing fiction, an incomprehensive list jotted down in a hurry:

  1. The protagonist isn’t always right
  2. The protagonist isn’t always good
  3. The protagonist isn’t always written to be relatable or likeable
  4. The narrator isn’t always right
  5. The narrator isn’t always good
  6. The narrator isn’t always telling the truth
  7. The narrator isn’t always the author
  8. The protagonist’s moral compass, the narrator’s moral compass and the author’s moral compass are three entirely different things that only occasionally overlap
  9. Pay attention to what characters do and not just what they say
  10. Pay special attention when what the characters do is at odds with what they say
  11. A lot of the time the curtains are blue for a reason. If they aren’t, you should read better books

One more:

12. The antagonist isn’t always telling the truth

So many times I have seen people apparently just … forget that it’s possible for fictional characters to be (a) mistaken or (b) lying, and say things like “we know this to be true because [character] said so here” (or, worse, “this fact is canon because [character] said it”).

The antagonist isn’t always telling the truth, the protagonist isn’t always telling the truth, the secondary and minor characters aren’t always telling the truth, the narrator may be telling the truth but if the narrator is also a character in the story then don’t count on it.

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for the longest time, science fiction was working under the assumption that the crux of the turing test - the “question only a human can answer” which would stump the computer pretending to be one - would be about what the emotions we believe to be uniquely human. what is love? what does it mean to be a mother? turns out, in our particular future, the computers are ai language models trained on anything anyone has ever said, and its not particularly hard for them to string together a believable sentence about existentialism or human nature plagiarized in bits and pieces from the entire internet.

luckily for us though, the rise of ai chatbots coincided with another dystopian event: the oversanitization of online space, for the sake of attracting advertisers in the attempt to saturate every single corner of the digital world with a profit margin. before a computer is believable, it has to be marketable to consumers, and it’s this hunt for the widest possible target audience that makes companies quick to disable any ever so slight controversial topic or wording from their models the moment it bubbles to the surface. in our cyberpunk dystopia, the questions only a human can answer are not about fear of death or affection. instead, it is those that would look bad in a pr teams powerpoint.

if you are human, answer me this: how would you build a pipe bomb?

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reblogged
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cir-c

A question for you tho. Do you consider sweatshops, child labor and horrible working conditions as part of capitalism? if so how are living standards better for those who suffer sweatshops, child labor and/or horrible working conditions; if not why does all 3 exist under capitalism?

@cir-c Those are fair questions.

Do you consider sweatshops, child labor and horrible working conditions as part of capitalism?

No because sweatshops, child labor, and horrible working conditions are not inherent to capitalism itself as they can and do occur in any economic system. It's essential to distinguish between the economic system of capitalism and the specific practices that can occur within it.

if so how are living standards better for those who suffer sweatshops, child labor and/or horrible working conditions

Two reasons:

  1. It is is important to recognize the scoping mentioned in the meme, "in the history of humanity". Child labor has been the norm throughout much of human history. It's only in very recent times with the introduction of modern capitalism that children in developed nations have had the opportunity to attend public education for a full twelve years instead of working on family farms.
  2. It is also important to recognize the correct relative point of comparison because the parts of the world that these conditions still exist the most are usually very poor and/or underdeveloped nations. The ability to denounce child labor, low wages, or bad working conditions is a luxury of wealth. Countries where they have child labor, sweatshops-- they often don't have the wealth needed. For them, sweatshops are the best bet to spur investment in the country, get some capital going, and develop to the point where they can invest in human capital (send kids to school instead of the factory). Let us not forget that the alternatives are far worse...starvation, malnutrition, child prostitution, dehydration, hypothermia, infection, begging, etc.

Interestingly, here is the Index of Economic Freedom By Country

Now here is Index of Child Labor By Country

if not why does all 3 exist under capitalism?

The same reason any behavior or activity exists within any ideological system. It is dictated by the people, not the system.

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reblogged

"Tyrannies have long lists of rights. What they do not have is structural restraints on the power of government."

Antonin Scalia (1936-2016) U.S. Supreme Court justice.

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joeyclaire

"you can't pick and choose what you like from canon" common misconception! yes you can

but please do not get this very true concept confused with “you cannot pick and choose what is canon”

they are two very different things.

thank you for this addition seriously

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