Integration does involve change, but change is not the same as cultural loss. Throughout history, immigrant communities have often preserved their language, traditions, food, religion, and values while also participating fully in the societies they joined. Integration is about learning to function within a shared civic framework, not erasing one's identity.
In many countries, cultures have evolved and become richer through the exchange
of ideas, customs, and traditions. The real challenge is balancing social cohesion with cultural diversity, not choosing one at the expense of the other.

One passage is doing more than talking about "culture", it is primarily arguing for representation, familiarity, and a sense of belonging. Notice the examples the author gives:
- Reading books by Black authors.
- Watching films made by or about Black people.
- Attending a historically Black church.
- Making Blackness feel like "home" rather than something encountered once a year.

Their culture from Africa was already taken from them, by the slave owners. What is considered black culture, has only developed during that period and what came after. The black church is Christian, a religion that was forced upon them. Gospel music comes from slaves who were singing while doing backbreaking work, to make it more bearable. Their food traditions ("soul food") comes from the skill of making animal feed edible.

The article says: "Please, for the love of all things holy, don’t let your child’s exposure to Black culture begin and end with Black History Month.". I agree with that. They should be represented every day of the year.
Meanwhile, your administration is trying to erase not just Black History Month, but every book by a black author or with a black character in it. You are trying to erase their history in your country. Your administration is kicking out black people from all leadership positions and trying to make it impossible for them to elect black representation.
You want to completely erase their own identity, while you simultaneously expect them to accept that they don't have the same value as you. You want them to accept that American history is WHITE history. That's what you mean with "the loss of their culture".

We have discussed this enough for you to know better.
Even the Bible is a manual for how to treat slaves of your own tribe
and how to treat other tribes that you enslave.

Reparations are surely a sore spot for you, but for someone who wants equity,
it's simply a duty to lift up the ones who need it. That's best for everyone.

You're just flipping it around.
I don't blame companies for doing what profits them most either,
I'm blaming the working class for not standing up to them.
We didn't get good contracts, retirements, investments in employee development, etc, because companies cared about us, we got that, because we forced them to provide it.

Explaining to boomers why company loyalty no longer exists
only registered users can see external links

Diary Of A CEO Is Making You LESS Successful
only registered users can see external links

Neal Brennan | My Problem with Guns
only registered users can see external links

The story about why Grok started calling itself "MechaHitler"
only registered users can see external links

And a nice preview of how asshole tech-bros might eventually kill all humans.

Clearly a video created with AI, but the story is accurate.

Where do you think that I think that slavery started?
The 'occupation' of slave might be older than the 'occupation' of prostitute.
I don't think that where it started is an argument for anything.
I just see the end as a huge step in the development of humanity.
The ones who gain from distorting the truth, are very likely disagreeing with me.

Communism means centralized government ownership.
Socialism means publicly controlled and publicly owned.
Capitalism means owned by a small minority of wealthy people.

Ownership means power. Why do you want to give all the power away to wealthy people?

The last remaining systems that are any good in your country are publicly funded.
Almost everything that has been privatized has turned to shit for the users and a
tool to extract money from the pockets of the users into the pockets of the owners.

"before it gets out of control." OMG you crazy person, there is hardly any communism
or socialism left. Almost everything has been capitalized.
You are lucky that you don't have to pay some company for the air you are breathing YET.

Have you considered how capitalism could get out of control?
Tell me what that would look like. Show me that you have the mental exploration power.

Because life cannot be just a grind, every day, until you die.
Well, actually it can, but I'm of the opinion that it shouldn't.

I don't know your experience with digital video games, but some are the opposite
of mind numbing.
- Games require active thinking, not passive consumption.
- Players solve problems, make decisions, and adapt to new situations.
- They develop cognitive skills such as planning, memory, attention, spatial reasoning, and strategic thinking.
- Many games promote deep focus ("flow"), a state of intense concentration rather than mental disengagement.
- Multiplayer games build social skills through teamwork, communication, and coordination.
- Creative games encourage design and experimentation, allowing players to build, invent, and explore.

The effects depend on the game and how it's played. Some games are intellectually demanding, while others are more relaxing or repetitive.

Research doesn't support the blanket claim that video games are mind numbing;
instead, benefits and drawbacks depend on the type of game and the amount of time spent playing.

That Mitchell and Webb Look - God, protect us from your worshippers.
only registered users can see external links

Sheep solar
only registered users can see external links
Farmers are reporting healthier sheep and improved pasture quality after grazing livestock beneath more than one million solar panels. The results highlight how agrivoltaics can boost agricultural productivity while generating clean energy, demonstrating that farming and solar power can successfully coexist.

BYD's $20 Battery Just Killed the Last Argument Against Renewables
only registered users can see external links

Why the Rest of the World Thinks Americans Are Brainwashed
only registered users can see external links

If Cops Ask "Know Why I Stopped You?" - Say THIS (Simple Phrase)
only registered users can see external links

Who knows a better phrase?

If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.
only registered users can see external links

📜 Barack Obama (2009–2017): Modernization & Green Energy
Obama focused on preparing the power grid for renewable energy integration.
• $4.5 billion in federal stimulus (via the 2009 Recovery Act), which was matched by private companies to create a total investment of over $8 billion.
• This funding went directly toward deploying digital "Smart Grid" technologies, including installing smart meters in millions of homes.
• He fast-tracked federal permitting to build massive, interstate transmission lines designed to carry wind and solar power.

🛠️ Donald Trump (2017–2021): Fossil Fuels & Grid Stability
Trump completely shifted the focus toward traditional energy sources and repealed Obama's climate regulations.
• He introduced no major new federal multi-billion-dollar funds specifically for green grid expansion.
• Instead, the administration focused on deregulation and financial support to keep aging coal and nuclear plants online to protect the grid's "baseload" (baseline capacity).
• Federal permitting processes were redirected to accelerate traditional fossil fuel infrastructure, such as oil and gas pipelines.

The administration views energy through the lens of policy, while the market views it through the lens of profit. The Trump administration uses federal policy to keep older, traditional power plants running because they provide steady, 24/7 power. However, private companies and utility providers are driven strictly by the bottom line. Because wind and solar are now the cheapest forms of new energy ever invented, the private sector keeps building them anyway, not for political reasons, but because they make the most financial sense.

This misalignment is precisely what causes severe, systemic stress on the power grid. It creates a structural mismatch between where electricity is being made (the market) and where the physical infrastructure is being built to move it (government policy).

The market is flooding the system with cheap solar and wind proposals, but because federal approvals for large interstate transmission lines have been slowed down, there are not enough physical wires to connect them. This has created a massive 2,600 gigawatt backlog of energy projects waiting in line just to plug into the grid.Clean energy developers are facing average wait times of five years (and up to 12 years in some regions) to get a connection. The market wants to supply cheap power, but the infrastructure is physically legally bottlenecked.

CONCLUSION:
Just like you once proposed, the market is solving climate change. The problem is that your shortsighted administration is trying to keep financially obsolete technology alive.

Here's a fact check of your hit piece:

Claim ----------------------------------------------------------------- Verdict
NYC's grid faces serious challenges --------------------------- Supported
Heat waves expose reliability issues --------------------------- Supported
New York needs major infrastructure investment ---------- Supported
Mamdani alone "helped cause" the grid's problems -------- Poorly supported / overstated
Mamdani is responsible for decades of underinvestment -- Not supported
Mamdani is against investing in the grid ----------------------- Not supported

The article argues that because Mamdani supported New York's 2019 climate law and other progressive energy policies, he bears responsibility for today's grid problems.

There are several problems with your article:

1. The timing doesn't fit.
The grid is old because much of it was built decades ago.
New York has underinvested in transmission and modernization for many years under governors, legislatures, regulators, utilities, and market operators from both parties.
That cannot reasonably be attributed to one assembly member who entered office in 2021.

2. The 2019 climate law was passed before Mamdani took office.
The article says he "defended" the law. That's true.
But he did not write or pass it as a legislator, it became law BEFORE he was sworn into the Assembly.
Supporting an existing law is different from being responsible for creating today's infrastructure.

3. Grid reliability is influenced by many actors.
These include:
- the state legislature
- the governor
- the New York State Public Service Commission
- Con Edison
- New York Independent System Operator
- federal regulators
- local permitting
- utilities' capital investment decisions
Assigning primary blame to a single state legislator is an oversimplification.

Question: "Is Mamdani investing in the power grid?"
As mayor, Mamdani does not directly control New York's electric grid.
Most major grid investment decisions are made by:
- Con Edison
- NYISO
- the Public Service Commission
- the governor
- the state legislature
- federal agencies
The mayor has only indirect influence through:
- permitting
- city-owned buildings
- climate planning
- advocacy
- zoning
So asking whether Mamdani himself is "investing in the grid" is a bit like asking whether a mayor is personally expanding the interstate highway system. He can support projects, but he doesn't control the primary investment decisions.

Question: Is he advocating for grid investment?
Generally, yes, but not in the way the article implies.
Mamdani has consistently argued for:
- expanded renewable energy,
- building electrification,
- public investment,
- cleaner electricity,
- public ownership of some energy infrastructure.
Critics argue these policies increase demand before enough supply is built.
Supporters argue they require more grid investment, not less, and that public investment should accelerate transmission and clean generation.
So it's inaccurate to say he opposes investment in the grid. The disagreement is over what kind of grid should be built and how quickly the transition should occur.

The article is an opinion piece, not a news report, and its central rhetorical move is to connect a real infrastructure problem to Mamdani's broader political agenda. There are reasonable criticisms one can make of his energy policies, for example, that aggressive electrification should be paired with faster additions of reliable generation and transmission, but saying that he "helped cause" New York's longstanding grid problems overstates both his role and his authority.

By the way, they grid problems in Houston and Dallas–Fort Worth are worse.

Across much of the U.S., one of the fastest-growing sources of electricity demand, and a major source of new grid stress, is the rapid expansion of AI and cloud data centers.

In Northern Virginia, Dallas–Fort Worth, and parts of Ohio, data centers are indeed among the biggest drivers of new electricity demand.
In New York City, Phoenix, and Los Angeles, peak air-conditioning demand during heat waves remains a larger source of grid stress today, although data centers are adding to overall demand.
Nationally, grid operators point to a combination of data center growth, electrification (EVs and heat pumps), population growth, industrial expansion, aging infrastructure, and increasingly frequent extreme weather as the main pressures.

I remember you saying once: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", related to your third world electricity grid.

When Joe Biden campaigned for president and originally introduced his legislative proposal in early 2021, the comprehensive program was called "The American Jobs Plan". The original program proposed a massive overall investment of $2.3 trillion. It was designed to be a sweeping transformation of the U.S. economy, heavily focused on climate change, green energy, and the electrical grid. This included $100 billion specifically to modernize the power grid to allow the transition to clean energy.
Because of a split Senate and pushback from Republicans, who objected to the high cost, the bill had to be heavily watered down to gain bipartisan support.
The compromise law was named the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), commonly known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. It provided $1.2 trillion in total spending ($550 billion of which was brand-new federal spending).
The Power Grid ($65 billion): This survived as the single largest investment in clean energy transmission and electric grid reliability in U.S. history, designed to build thousands of miles of new high-voltage power lines to connect wind and solar farms to cities.

Immediately upon taking office, President Donald Trump aggressively pivoted away from Joe Biden’s green energy policies to favor fossil fuels and nuclear power. He issued the "Unleashing American Energy" Executive Order, which froze billions in undisbursed funds from both the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Following this, his administration passed his signature tax legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which effectively dismantled or accelerated the expiration of most Biden-era clean energy tax incentives.

Private Sector Data Center Pressures: While federal funding for a "green" grid has vanished, the massive energy demand driven by the Artificial Intelligence (AI) boom has forced tech hyperscalers to continue heavily investing private capital into regional grid upgrades.

Basic Maintenance Appropriations: Under the power of the purse, Congress preserved bare-minimum funding for fundamental, non-partisan physical grid repairs and grid-hardening against extreme weather, though heavily divorced from any zero-carbon goals.

CONCLUSION:
You are blaming ONE mayor who you hate, for something that is a NATIONAL problem, which is mostly created by Republican's refusal to invest in your electricity grid.

THE BOOGIE MAN OF SOCIALISM! | Armageddon Update
only registered users can see external links

OMG, that's funny. All his tamper tantrums are about HIM!!!
He doesn't care about you or anyone, but himself.

Donald Trump is too emotional to be president
only registered users can see external links

Good point, although somewhat crudely communicated.
Lots of petty men said that women are too emotional,
and that's why they couldn't vote for Kamala Harris.
Trump has about 10 temper tantrums per day, 100 if you count his nightly tweets.
I've never seen Kamala Harris be that emotional, even once.

Oh sure, NOW it is getting addressed in congress, but that was AFTER your side's attempt to do it through your corrupted Supreme Court has failed. So far, they are just not corrupted enough. It looks like most of your justices still care just enough to NOT be remembered as complete traitors to The Constitution.

You keep thinking of immigrants as abusers of the system, but they are mostly hard working people, who are looking for a future for their children. Your country was built on the backs of them.

If enough people agree with you, it could be easily changed.
That's democracy; you don't always get what you want.

Your assuming incorrectly that I was talking about shooting someone.
You were making it sound like upsetting the apple cart is good and that people
doing that always have good intentions. That's what I was reacting to.

You're assuming that liberals don't want to upset the apple cart, which is only true in the current little piece of history. When your liberal democracy was created, it very much did upset the apple cart. Many violent wars were fought over creating liberal systems. Seeing how politics is moving, it looks almost inevitable that more horrible wars have to be fought to maintain some of those liberal systems.

Once there is a liberal system, you are probably right that liberals want to maintain it, and therefore don't want to upset the apple cart.
However, while some forms of liberalism prioritize economic stability and market freedom, other liberal traditions accept substantial economic disruption, when it is necessary to protect rights, competition, or democratic values.

It's however also a symptom of capitalism. The main people who don't want the profitable apple cart to be disrupted, are the ones who profit from it the most.

People can react violently, when someone is trying to take something away from them.
That could be the profitable apple cart, power or rights. People who don't upset the apple cart are mostly not a danger to anyone's income, wealth, power or rights,
so it stands to reason that they're less at risk of being murdered.

It depends who they were upsetting the profitable apple cart FOR.
Kennedy did it for the average American.
Reagan did it for the wealthy and corporations.
Trump did it to get accepted by the elite and worshiped by stupid people.

When a bridge was built in 6 months, while other similar bridges take 2 years, does that mean that construction codes must have been ignored?
I am explaining that such a bridge would normally be constructed by 50 workers, but because it had collapsed and it was a very important transportation route, they allocated a crew of 350 workers, reassigned from lots of other projects, to get a new bridge in working order in 6 months, while 20 inspectors were on site 24/7, reacting to all issues immediately to not keep the workers waiting, and to make sure everything was constructed safer than the last bridge that collapsed.

In my opinion, the American FDA is the best agency that Americans ever created. I'm not saying that they are perfect, but I've seen their professionalism and knowledge first hand. Pharmaceutical companies shit their pants when they walk in unannounced. When the Covid vaccines were ramped up and tested, they were on top of that. That delayed other clinical tests, but the world needed them to act. It was similar for the pharmaceutical companies. All of the effort and money went into getting those processes on-line, leaving other manufacturing processes on just life-support. All other projects were on-hold, with full priority on the Covid vaccines. Personally, I got the workload of 3 FTE, because many colleagues left to the Janssen vaccine plant. All people with ambition, who wanted to join the most important project in vaccine development in years or even decades. Why? Because this was a pandemic hitting the developed countries. There were stories about shipping containers full of dead people in Italy. That made people feel differently than when it was people in Africa dying from Ebola. Actually, the development of an Ebola vaccine was put on hold for the prioritization of the Covid vaccine.
Do you understand now why the Covid vaccines were available so quickly?
And no, I don't just trust the FDA. All countries have their own scientific evaluations. We have both the Medicines Evaluation Board (CBG College ter Beoordeling van Geneesmiddelen) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) doing very similar assessments. Pfizer-BioNTech is partly German and AstraZeneca is developed by the University of Oxford in the UK. The FDA was not the main regulator there.

OK, you found one mistake; "My 4 year old brother" was a typo, he is 4 years younger than me. I'm explaining that everyone has their anecdotes. Only the government has access to all the data.

"they can still lack common sense" If you mean logical reasoning, I agree.

"do you think it actually jumped from a wet food market into humans?"
I told you, IT DIDN'T!!! Corona viruses have killed people for tens to hundreds of thousands of years. Neanderthals probably had it already. SARS is 80% identical to COVID-19. Viruses mutate like crazy. They survive long periods in animals, but they hop on to humans any time that people come into contact with animals too closely. Those food markets are very much a risk of it. That doesn't mean that I BELIEVE ANYTHING. I'm an atheist, I don't believe ANYTHING, accept some claims with certainty, when they are supported by overwhelming evidence and I accept other claims with much lower certainty, when they are supported by less evidence. both the wet market and lab leak scenarios are plausible to me. The idea that it was intentionally done by China is ridiculous to me. They only hurt themselves more than any others, and they are incapable of that incompetence. I wouldn't say the same of the US, because their incompetence knows no limits.

Patriotism is a feeling of love, loyalty, and commitment to one's country and countrymen. That very much includes sacrificing a bit of risk to your own life or health, to save the lives of your countrymen, or to reduce the burden on your hospitals, who are trying to save the lives of your countrymen. People who call themselves 'patriots' didn't even want to bother themselves with a fucking piece of cloth on their mouths, so they don't cough the virus into grandma's lungs. How much do you love your country, if you distrust it that much?

Yes, I had the app, and I got fully vaxxed when they asked me. I was very careful to not get infected and then infect any others. I was fully vaxxed, when I finally did get it. Then I went to get officially tested, and I was in self-isolation, until I was safe again. We both were, because I got it from my girlfriend, who got it in the hospital she works in, from colleagues who were not being careful. There's no saying how many weakened patients died because of their behavior. I protected my family, friends and countrymen. Did you?

Google was never left or right. It absolutely NOT hiding conservative content, it may favor mainstream sources, it's blocking criminal websites that are only out to scam you. People like you are an easy target for scammers, because you'll believe anything. Just like Christians are easy targets for people who sell essential oils and other bullshit.

U.S. congressional hearings and lawsuits have repeatedly examined allegations that Google censors conservatives. To date, no investigation has definitively established that Google has a company-wide policy of suppressing conservative viewpoints in search results.

Since Google bought up YouTube, it has been actively helping conservative channels and actively suppressing left-wing channels. Right-wing channels with hardly any views end up with millions of subscribers, while left-wing channels with hundreds of millions of views hardly get any new subscribers. Also, right-wing or even downright hateful comments are much less often deleted than lift-wing comments with numbers or facts. Racism is allowed to almost the extreme, but saying something negative about Israel can get you banned, quickly and without any explanation.

X blocked the "Donald Trump Portfolio Tracker" account, which was showing all the insider information and other corruption of Trump.
There were NO claims that the information was incorrect.
It was just blocked by X, without ANY reason given. A clear First Amendment violation, because the president's finances and potential conflicts of interest are within the main reason for the first amendment, which is allowing citizens to openly hold their leaders accountable.

The following 'liberal' media platforms were bought by right-wing/conservatives in the last 10 years and turned more right-wing:
- Twitter (X)
- CNN
- The Washington Post
- Los Angeles Times
- CBS News

There are now not just less left-wing opinions being voiced, there is lots
of evidence of ACTIVE suppression of the TRUTH which might hurt your administration. ACTUAL First Amendment stuff.

These are HUGE outlets, while you are probably referring to the website of some bigot in his basement, making up hateful bullshit.

What your thinking is literally the opposite of reality.
Give me your list then.

Well, maybe it's a cultural issue then.
Dutch people are direct by nature, as you probably might have heard.
We think that it's impolite to be dishonest or say something you don't mean or to expect people to read your mind. You might be blunt in tone, but you are being cryptic as hell about your opinions on what actually matters in the world we live in.

The Birth of America - Part I | Claysplained
only registered users can see external links

In honor of your 250 years of independence.

I really don't understand your thinking.
Who are you fooling by thinking that those two t-shirts are funny?

The first t-shirt: Very accurate, but what a dumb reason.
How about picking a president who will improve YOUR life?
Why would ANY Americans be pissed off, if America actually IMPROVED?
Is YOUR LIFE improved by pissing off people?
How about pissing off people who didn't want a war with Iran?
How about pissing off people who like to be able to afford food and rent?
How about pissing off people because they cannot afford health insurance anymore?
How about pissing off people who wanted Trump to end the Russia–Ukraine war?
How about pissing off people who wanted the Epstein club investigated?
How about pissing off people who want a president with some class and intelligence?

The second t-shirt: You HAVE free speech.
The only speech that was not/never free was:
• Incitement (advocating imminent lawless action)
• Defamation (libel and slander)
• Fraud (perjury and false advertising)
• Obscenity (hardcore pornography meeting the Miller test)
• Child sexual abuse material (CSAM)
• Fighting words (face-to-face insults likely to cause violence)
• True threats (statements meant to put someone in fear of bodily harm)
• Intellectual property violations (copyright and trademark infringement)
• Speech integral to criminal conduct (solicitation, conspiracy, and extortion)
• Commercial speech violations (misleading commercial claims)

Freedom of Speech was intended for protect political dissent, prevent government tyranny, and allow citizens to openly hold their leaders accountable. No Democrat ever restricted your side to criticize them. Even the dumbest lies were completely free to you. The only times that your side got in trouble for it, is when you BROKE THE LAW. For example; when Dominion sued Fox'News' for clearly and intentionally lying about the voting machines, causing them a lot of damage. That was clearly DEFAMATION.
Was Fox'News' shut down or threatened by the Democrats? NO!

George Washington: "For if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences... reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter."

Thomas Jefferson: "Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."

These are some of Trump's Anti-Free Speech actions:
• Massive Defamation Lawsuits against the Press: Filing multi-billion-dollar lawsuits against prominent outlets—including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the BBC—for critical coverage or unflattering investigative reports.
• Financial Retribution: Forcing media and tech companies into multi-million dollar settlements over unfavorable reporting, creating an unprecedented stream of personal revenue from media litigation.
• Restricting Press Access: Barring major news organizations like The Associated Press from the White House press pool and restricting media access at the Pentagon.
• Threatening Broadcast Licenses: Publicly threatening to revoke the broadcast licenses of major television stations over critical or satirical coverage.
• "Jawboning" Private Entities: Coercing private companies and entertainment executives using the threat of government consequence to cancel shows or suppress critical content.
• Targeting Academic and Protest Speech: Threatening to pull federal funding from universities that allow specific protests or student activism he deems anti-American.
• Sanctioning Legal Opponents: Issuing executive orders and using federal channels to penalize or target law firms that legally represent his political adversaries.
• Punishing Dissenting Lawmakers: Threatening to leverage federal agencies to investigate and pull grants from members of Congress who vocalize opposition to his administration.

Because you are pretending that Democrats are worse on Free Speech than Republicans,
then you should be able to give me multiple examples of situations in which your freedom of speech was restricted by a Democratic administration, and that was NOT a clear case of a violation of the law by Republicans/MAGA/Conservatives/ the right-wing (media).

how about a CO2 concentration rising from 300 ppm in 1950 to 430 ppm today?
It's basic physics that CO2 absorbs infrared light from the sun.

I understand that many people want protesters to shout in their basement about it,
but that doesn't really help to get anyone to listen and do something, now does it?
If you can tell me how people can best communicate the urgency of doing something
to prevent the worst of climate change, so that people will actually support action,
I'm open to suggestions. I would actually be able to use good ideas politically.

If you, my biggest fan, is saying that, I will try

If the gays disappear, it will be the doing of your side.
If women will be reduced to incubators, it will be your side.

There are a lot of similarities with Rome felling apart and how the US is doing:
- Political polarization
- High government debt and fiscal pressures
- Large military commitments
- Economic inequality
- Questions about institutional trust

Freedom of speech is one of liberalism's core principles. Liberalism argues that people should be free to express, debate, and challenge ideas, including liberal ones. If an ideology fears free speech, it's moving away from liberalism, not toward it.

You are the one acting like a snowflake, I'm not.

If you call the labor party 'socialist', you're on the right, because they have been very centrist and neo-liberal for a long time now.
I don't see you defend any progressive ideas or values, which means that you are a conservative. If you were on the center of progressive and conservative, I would expect you to at least defend some progressive ideas or values.

If you don't want me to label you, or you think I'm labeling you incorrectly, then you could explain what you actually stand FOR, instead of spouting your grievances.

If they don't raise taxes on the rich, they WILL raise YOUR taxes.
They are not crooks, they are doing what you are voting for.

You think that America needs to wake up because a Muslim was voted in for mayor? He's mayor now, are you seeing him do anything that you consider 'Muslim'?

There is this ONE guy, who is ACTUALLY doing what his voters want him to do.
You don't see that, because they are distracting you with fear-mongering.

Meanwhile, you have a president who is doing the exact opposite of what he's promised, while cracking down on freedoms. I hope you are objective enough
to see at least some of that.

Rory Sutherland on the unwritten rule that held businesses together for 150 years.
only registered users can see external links

The Christian Nationalism viewpoints are pretty damn similar to Sharia law.
There are more Americans every day arguing that being gay should be illegal.
Maybe not slavery, but techno-feudalism isn't much fun either.
The manosphere considers women subservient to men.
They think that serving their husband is their only right.

Trump himself couldn't care less. He was pro-abortion for his whole life, until he needed the votes of the Christian fundamentalists.

"He's not Muslim" is a very low bar for a country that shouts FREEDOM from the rooftops.

By the way, there are lots of Muslims who care about freedom more than you.
That's why they protest their horrible regimes at the risk of death.
I don't see you fight for your freedoms like that.

Most definitely, Bella is respected and liked by most members, including me, because she doesn't engage in the 'factionalism' as much as others.

I'm not getting personal, I'm addressing opinions.

- Addressing someone's opinions means responding to the ideas, arguments, evidence, or conclusions they present. The focus is on what they SAID.
- A personal attack (an ad hominem attack) targets the person's character, intelligence, motives, or identity instead of engaging with their argument.
The focus is on who they ARE.

Fun is what originally attracted me to this site, but what I found was lots of heated discussions, about every subject imaginable. The original use of sharing nude photographs is made impossible for me, because of the site demanding registration for that. The discussion about sexual subjects are not getting much interaction. The things that mostly keep me coming to the site are topics around politics and science.

Of course it is directed at you, I am answering your comments.

I'm referring to this:
bella! 27d ago
This is definitely not questionable, it’s the truth. WAKE UP AMERICA!
only registered users can see external links

The person in the clip is saying that you cannot trust Zohran Mamdani, because he is a Muslim. He is clearly linking him to 9/11, ONLY because he is Muslim. How would you react if I said that Gidi Markuszower, a Jewish person, shouldn't be trusted with his Dutch House of Representative seat, solely on the basis that he is a Jew, and Israel keeps mass murdering civilians in Palestine? Would you call it antisemitic?

I agree with you that one person's asshole/bully is another person's funny person. There's a lot of Factionalism going on in these forums. People tend to defend other people from their 'faction' and I'm not claiming innocence on that.
I feel differently about the blacklisting. I am here defending a certain world-view. I care about my freedom of speech and blacklisting someone feels to me like taking away their freedom of speech, even if only towards me. I have done that only once ever, and I don't like to do it again.

No, I do not understand where you're coming from. Your country is NOT your family. Your Constitution is written for allowing critique of your country as one of your most important rights. It is the same for the Constitution of my country. As soon as you see your country as immune to criticism, that's when democracy dies.

It's a little bit of a hassle for me to get my ideas printed in a book
and get them in your local library.

I saw it in the list of recent topics.
I understand that the person who started this is no longer active.
That doesn't stop me from venting my opinions. They need to be out there.

A growing share of the world's heat records have been set in recent years,
and many countries have broken all-time national heat records within the last decade
as the climate has warmed.

The current record for the highest global annual average surface temperature is 2024.
It surpassed the previous record set in 2023.

The ranking is currently:
#1: 2024
#2: 2023
#3: 2025 (based on major global temperature datasets available so far)
#4: 2016
#5: 2020

The global instrumental temperature record is generally considered reliable from about 1880 onward. Considering that 145 period, the probability that the five warmest years would all fall in the last 10 years (2015–2024) is 1 in 1,000,000 (= 0.0001%).

I'm just addressing an inconsistency between the TOS and the status quo.
See my long comment.

I'm trying to only start political discussion in the topics that are intended for it. If someone starts a political discussion in a topic that is NOT, then I'm just joining in.

You seem to think that googling something is cheating?
You first need to know something exists, before you can google it.
More people should check their facts, before they put it out there.

I might get a bit exuberant with the arguments sometimes, but as I pointed out before:

That discussion has come up before. People consider an account “fake” when it's full of photos that do not belong to the person who made the account. It's very difficult to determine that, so there is no clear 'who and how', but it has been done in the past, by using the Abuse panel.
My personal definition of an “asshole” is someone who keeps personally attacking a member with extremely vile language and very personal insults that are on and even over the legal limit of even your First Amendment protections. As you know, in the US there is no Absolute Free Speech.

When you read my whole comment, do you come to the conclusion that I want to ban those "fakers and people who act like assholes"? Why do I say "Just one problem"?
Didn't I say: "if the site starts policing more strictly, it's possible that it loses the very thing that makes it great"?

I'm doing the OPPOSITE of what you think I'm doing. I'm addressing the Terms Of Use, which says that people should be polite here. That is NOT the status quo. I'm not in any way polite, I'm very direct, sometimes insulting. Almost everyone her is doing the same or worse. I usually don't deal the first punch, when it gets downright nasty, but I can get nasty too. Maybe you even think that I'm being an 'asshole' sometimes or often, but I actually don't engage in my own definition of continually "personally attacking a member with extremely vile language". I hope you see that. I have called some Americans "traitor" before, if they CLEARLY completely disrespect your own Constitution. I have called someone a 'racist' before, if they CLEARLY make racist remarks. Meanwhile, I have been called much worse, repeatedly, for no reason whatsoever.

At one point, the verbal abuse towards me exceeded every limit of what is described in the TOS. That was the only time ever that I used the Abuse panel. No one agreed that the verbal abuse was out of line, so I’m using that as the standard of what is ‘acceptable’ here. However, that means that the part in the TOS that deals with ‘aggressive behavior’ is in my opinion completely useless. I don’t see it being applied consistently, so I cannot judge what is the standard for the Abuse panel. That’s why I don’t vote, when members report members for deletion. In the case of ‘fakers’, the TOS is saying: “However, administration of this site does not have any authority to make background checks on every member of the site. Therefore any member of this site may be not who they claim to be”. If admin doesn’t have any authority to make background checks on members of the site, then certainly members don’t have it either. Therefore, I don’t vote for Abuse panel claims about fake accounts. I expressed agreement with the person who said they don’t like it. It’s possible that people are doing revenge porn, but as you just argued yourself; it’s very difficult to recognize. That leaves under@ge pornography, which is the responsibility of the site administration. Do you now understand why I don’t vote in the Abuse panel?

I agreed with the person who didn’t like ‘fakers’ and ‘assholes’. However, I clearly said that more strict policing could hurt this site. This is now a place of almost Absolute Free Speech, and I am using THAT privilege. You are doing the same, even if you don’t realize it. You just posted a comment related to the Muslim faith, that if a similar comment was against the Jewish faith, would have been called Antisemitic by everyone here. You CAN criticize a religion, but that is different from expressing dislike and distrust towards a specific person, based ONLY on the fact that they belong to a religion. That’s called ‘prejudice’. I dare you to find one post from me where I do that.
Still, this is done by lots of people all the time, so it’s allowed. Like I said; “This is now a place of almost Absolute Free Speech”. I might be happier with a little more policing,
but I’m all about democracy. It looks like most people here would like an even ‘more Absolute’ Free Speech. That means that there is an inconsistence between the TOS and the status quo. That is calling for rule being applied inconsistently. I don’t like THAT.
It means that some people can break the law without consequences and others are being punished under the same law. That’s when I say; either apply the law consistently OR CHANGE THE LAW (to something that DOES fit the demand of the people).

That's because of money in politics. If they need lots of money from billionaires
to win an election, they might promise to do something for you, but as soon as they try, they get a phone call from their wealthy donor saying:
"Who the hell do you think you are working for?"

If their career only depends on your vote, their "what's in it for me" question
is the same as "what's in it for my voters". Of course, you also need to end their ability
to trade in individual stocks and end the 'revolving door'.

Best Democrat Ad Yet
only registered users can see external links

That's horrible. The most dangerous animals in my country are probably wasps or bees, with about 4 deaths per year in total.
I would not be swimming in any water that looks like there could be gators in it.
She looks like Phoebe from friends. Sad!

When do some people connect the dots between
"Damn, I have NEVER experienced heat like this!"
.
.
.
.
and
.
.
.
.
Something that scientists have predicted damn accurately, for decades now.

(If the first thing doesn't apply to you right now, it will soon)

When the public wants one thing, and both party elites want something else...
What's the difference?
only registered users can see external links

Don't agree? Argue why he's wrong.