Ben Mann

I'd call that +47 since "neither positive nor negative" is just the correct absence of bigotry. They're... people. It doesn't matter if your birth certificate says the other thing.

It's a badly worded question really. Something like "are trans rights a necessity or a problem?" would work better.

"Open in new private window" (may be called something else) which means all those cookies will get deleted once it turns out not to be worth looking at.

That "socialism" is what I'd call "social democracy". In Marxist socialism, there is no capital. Neither controlled by rich people, nor the state. The means of production are controlled by the people who use them, not by rich people, not by the state, even if it claims to "represent workers".

My instinct is that a good way to predict whether a group can be relied upon to fight fascism is how it treats trans people as well as immigrants today.

Girl and man walking past a giant spiral fossil in the background, with rows of spherical jugs in the foreground

Angel's Egg.

I've had plenty of powerful experiences with art which I've never shared, some which I couldn't even put into words. Losing the connection with the artist(s) seems more of a problem to me. Not just having your own ideas reflected back at yourself.

I find what it does with the low-level supernatural stuff fascinating.

Simoun. A story of faith, love and war. And yuri-ish-powered mecha drawing patterns in the sky.

"Tinskin" suggests that measuring entities by the nature of their skin is a generally sensible idea.

The first thing you need is a test for computer sentience.

Which seems to me already like an impossible problem to solve. Both "sentient" and "not sentient" seem consistent with any computer behaviour imaginable.

I don't even know if the opposite of "real music" here is supposed to be fake music or imaginary music or what? I think I have actually heard a song by Taylor Swift, and it seemed like real enough music to me. (Competent but unremarkable.)

Google you should be able to avoid helping just by having no regard for their advertisers I think, (and feeding them false/misleading info sometimes,) their products are just a way to get you to see their adverts.

People should decide for themselves who they want to listen to, not relegate such key things which help determine your worldview to a computer algorithm.

If true, this implies that the economics and structures involved tend to bring (financial) success to people like that. Which becomes the place to look for a deeper understanding of the problem.

Radio 4, or The Spinners or Gilbert and Sullivan. Definitely preferred the musical options, never had any interest in The Archers and Any Questions/Answers went over my head back then.

Liberty and capitalism are incompatible, so liberals need to stop identifying with "the law" of capitalist systems.

Any time I see "smart X" I immediate substitute in "traitorous X".

It looks like the US is still supplying Ukraine with military aid and levying sanctions on Russia. The Trump administration might be doing some bizarre and awful things there, but you still have to put the US closer to "oppose" than "support".

What should have precedence depends on what you are doing. If you are pressuring your government, and your government supports some genocides and opposes others, it's best to concentrate on the ones it currently supports since that's what you want to change.

There are quite a lot more than two, unfortunately. There are two which the news regularly reminds people of.

That was written on executioner's swords to absolve the executioner of murder. Though if this is relevant to the anime, I never figured it out.

Giant spiky metal head seen through a large spaceship window with controls and a man at the bottom

Gunbuster. Just for this shot, really.

I have autoplay and gif animation turned off, so I'll just be seeing the first frame.

You look at whether someone speaks out against every single speech arrest or whether they seem to be prioritising this one to check whether that is actually their "take". I'm sure it's that sort of bullshit in this case, but that's thanks to extra contextual information.

It is perfectly possible to be against someone saying a thing, but also against the government having the right to use force on someone for saying things. (Not saying that's the case here. A good test here is whether someone is also condemning the recent arrests of Palestine Action supporters.)

16-18 is a transition period really, where you've crossed some of the legal lines dividing childhood from adulthood but not all of them.

A brain isn't a calculating machine though, calculating is just a thing it can do, poorly. Mostly, it does different stuff.

I think the word here is "emulate". Either can theoretically emulate the other, but ridiculously inefficiently.

A key difference here might be that traditional British television and anime are both rooted in theatre, whilst American television, and modern British television which has been following its lead are more rooted in cinema.

Well, the media I know best is television, live-action I'd say was best in the 70s and 80s before the BBC was gutted and the regional ITV franchises merged, and the golden age of anime I'd say starts in 1995 until 2012. It's neoliberalism and lately social media algorithms doing the damage though.

I think I've only seen about five American movies from the past 20 years. Certainly no American superhero film post-Adam West and Christopher Reeve. There's this idea that everyone should be into American live-action, but to me it's like many people and Japanese animation.