Raleigh

White Lotus is a prize an actor wins. If you do enough good character parts that highbrow critics like you but regular tv watchers don’t know who you are, Mike White takes you on vacation

The siblings on White Lotus season 3:

If you’ve ever taken the oath to uphold the Constitution, this is the time to live up to it.

the single most un-american and anti-constitutional statement ever uttered by an american president

The innies are an oppressed people. But their oppression is (not precisely, but nearly, pragmatically) a necessary condition of their existence. When they fight back against their oppression, they are effectively fighting for their own death. #severance

It'd be cool if people acknowledged that "we value our alliance but want to bring everyone to the table for peace negotiations" and "we should destroy Palestine and turn it into the Riviera of the middle east" are not equally genocidal platforms.

I figured we’d go to war with Canada eventually, but for the fresh water in Great Slave Lake. Not whatever this is.

sorry if I'm being a little annoying about violations to the constitution, but damn it feels weird to be on the side making a fuss about that

I honestly believe our most powerful position in a toxic time that feeds on cynicism, apathy,& despair is to genuinely care and act for a better world.

Cynicism is our enemy. We should check it, incl. on the left. It’s not intellectually superior. It’s the virus they’re trying to infect us with. NO

Is the government more efficient yet?

I'm 35 now, and I'm trying to convey and express how I feel every second passing very acutely in a way that maybe many other people don't yet feel

i think it is important to say that the open and explicit racism of the president and the vice president isn’t just uncouth or “controversial” but a direct attack on tens of millions of americans and a dereliction of their duty to represent the entire country

There’s been a kind of…fashion of late to view anti-Trump libs as lame and cringe and just annoying, aesthetically. I remember this exact same aesthetic judgment in the run-up to the Iraq war. The earnest libs were right then and they’re right now.

Someone I don't trust in this coffee shop

I don't wanna die, I just wanna sleep a while, maybe forever

"hippo vs..." hippo wins.

how often do i think "c'mon bucko, just gotta make it through 40ish more years without ruining everything. you got this."

Oh, another solution is to make the harmful thing illegal.

The problem: Everyone is X-ing and it's causing C.
The solution people like: I shall stop X-ing.
An actual solution: Let's develop an X that doesn't cause C.
But, also, totally fine: X is illegal now sorry folks.

Also, the "they" in the original post refrs to the sentences/beliefs. not to the clear thinkers. I.e., I want to believe these things, but I feel prevented from doing so on the grounds that something must be wrong about them.

I really might *believe** them. Ugh. without fail there's always one truly embarassing typo.

(j) ascetism and shaming are sideshow acts.

(i) innovation that is directed at this specific dynamic in human consumption and quality of life is core to the project of society-level moral advancement.

(h) nothing of moral importance hangs on whether your particular hands are clean. Moral evolution at a cultural and societal level reckons with the fact that people want pleasure, and they want security, and they will seek those things regardless of the consequences to the world.

(g) but what I'm wholly unmoved by (when i'm occupying this provocative, probably wrong belief) is the idea that individuals should get the ball rolling by abstaining from the practice.

(f) so maybe the most virtuous job is the scientist trying to grow tasty lab meat, or the software engineer trying to create real alternatives to Meta that people will like. Maybe they're the only ethical ones in this argument.

(e) A meaningful, impactful endeavor to prevent those, must proceed by way of innovation, a way to find an acceptably cheap, easy, convenient or pleasurable way to enjoy the benefits, without incurring the harms.

(d) But the population will not forgo cheap, easy, convenient and pleasurable. Not in a sustained way, not in consistent way, not in big enough numbers to undo, prevent, or mitigate the harms of the widespread practice.

(c) The practice is probably widespread because it is cheap, easy, convenient, or pleasurable. Thus, the principled abstainer is a hero or saint (or, if one has a rigid ethics, they are the only person who isn't morally reprobate.

(b) This is something you're supposed to do "out of principal", because everyone knows your individual abstinence will have no discernible effect on those harms. Stick to beans your whole life and you probably won't save a single cow's life.

(a) Many people believe in an individual responsibility to abstain from a widespread practice if they believe that the practice has widespread harms.