I know it's a joke, but I've actually found cats great for keeping mammalian pests out of the garden. Squirrels or whatever eating my shit is a big problem unless I throw meat scraps or something out near the garden to lure the stray dogs or cats around. No interest in my vegetables, and their scent and occasional presence seems to deter the worst of them.
That was me. Nothing made me see that feminism is not about equality, that many people deserve and openly beg for their bad lots in order to wallow in victimbuxx and attention, than working in a DV shelter and for a social service agency.
What college teaches you and what reality shows you regarding recipients of social services are the most educational contrasts possible. It helps you see through the media bullshit of what we're all trained to see so we toss tax dollars at it. But the truth is we throw tax dollars at problems so we don't have to deal with the god awful people themselves. We figure; 'I pay taxes, I do not have to help this annoying person or deal with them and their refusal to help themselves, I can toss them at a shelter or a social worker and consider my duty done!' kind of like how whenever someone's depressed people throw out 'therapy!' like a magic word and jump ship ASAP.
You're getting downvoted to hell here, but you're absolutely right. Most people happen to think the faith they were raised in is the 'right' one, and coincidentally most religions that are dominant in the world are ones who hold up certain fundamentals that make for a peaceful society (respect authority and your elders, don't kill, don't steal, cherish family and breeding, have self discipline, etc.) and for the most part many within these cultures just kind of ignore the ones that are inconvenient or not constructive to a society. For example, Polyester or Shellfish, in the Old Testament. Part of Christianity's big appeal was its shucking off some of the old Jewish rules that weren't so conducive to society and survival anymore (such as eat pork products as sanitation and food management made it a lot less likely to kill you than it did in the OT times).
Those who adhere to those things most people have shuffled away and ignored can be dangerous. And people don't like cognitive disonance ("believe the bible/koran/torah"/"some parts of it are just impractical") so they may do an awkward hem-haw lip service. Those people must decide where they fall on it---are they going to approve of terrorism in the name of their God or have to find a new way to justify morals that they otherwise have an intrinsic understanding of the value of, but have never had to think too much beyond 'holy book says so'?
So does the Muslim religion have the text to encourage dangerous extremism? Sure does. Is the faith practiced in cultures that may encourage this interpretation? Sure does, when politically expedient. So does Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism... find a major world religion without a kinda bloody history to it. But most of them are also the majority religion of a reasonably prosperous nation or region, too.
(I am inclined to think Christianity and maybe Shintoism as practice by the Japanese merged hodge-podge with Buddhism are the two 'best' in terms of 'least likely to hurt anyone, while upholding some moral fundamentals' in the present day, but that's because Japan and White, Christian nations are overwhelmingly the most peaceful. And the fact that we've still got a boot on Japan's neck keeping them from having an outward facing army might be a bigger part of that than anything. Shintoism was basically a call to war for the Emperor for most of its history, and their practice of Buddhism was used to undercut Shintoism's Emperor worship and justify wars for warlords usurping the Emperor's reign and power.)
"One of the great joys of being vaccinated was being able to hug [his grandchildren]."
If you're not going to hug them because they might get a mild flu, you don't want to hug them very badly. When parents and such get the flu, they come home, use the facilities of the household with everyone, etc. like normal.
We were tough on China. We were selling them rice. We were openly declaring them the source of the virus.
Now we call their human rights abuses a "cultural difference" and call it a win when they spend 4x the allotted speech time calling us a bunch of racist pussies and daring us to do anything about it.
There are practical reasons, too. I'd prefer people who don't want kids not have them. I'd prefer people who can't afford kids not make them for my tax dollars to support.
But the practicalities don't change that it's killing; the only moral justification I see is essentially self defense.
I'm one of the few Pro-Choice people on here, and even I see the irony on that. But I think my stance answers their point: I'm pro-choice because the only way for the woman to be free with her own bodily autonomy is to kill the baby. I do agree that, at some point probably sooner than later, it is a baby, not "a clump of cells." It is killing. It is not ideal. It's just she cannot be forced to share her body and there is no peaceful means of eviction.
There are peaceful means of maintaining bodily autonomy with regards to vaccines. You can choose to wear a mask. You can choose to avoid going out in public where you might be exposed to someone who exercises their freedoms in ways that you find too dangerous. You can choose who you associate with. None of this requires the oppression of anyone else's rights.
I cannot see any reasonable way for a person to be pro-choice but also pro-forced vaxx.
I'm sorry to hear that. Dementia is a painful thing to watch. I wish I had enough insight to offer you some scientifically validated comfort; the best I have to offer is maybe she didn't think those things because before she had enough cognition to take whatever she was critical of and think about it in the context of someone she loved. For example, my first girlfriend was a sloppy kisser, we were both each other's first kiss and I could still tell, but I sincerely loved being the one she was 'learning' with and her enthusiasm. Even now I look back on it fondly. But I wonder if with dementia I'd forget that emotional element and only remember "wet and sloppy" and that would be what I would say of it.
Dementia is the death of the person while their heart and organs still function. I am so sorry you have to watch that.
No, no, that employment law was put in place because non-Christians were being discriminated against. You can discriminate if it's against Christians, because they have been accused of doing very bad things in the past, unlike Muslims, Jews, Atheists, etc.
What 15 year old girl is ever going to choose to have a period?
Puberty sucks, especially for girls, they'd put that off forever if they could. Boys would want to get bigger and stronger and deeper voices, but women benefit from neotany and would have very little incentive to actually grow up.
Why does she think it'd be cool the bird is suffering?
Trans people would presumably prefer to be in the body of the sex they transition to. Birds don't have nearly as complex a social system with a concept of gender. Why would she wish they had enough of one and complex enough of brains to have angst over their biology? That enjoyment of some other iving creature's suffering is hard to parse with someone who doesn't like violence.
If you're cooking for yourself, the difference between cooking for one and cooking for up to five is pretty minimal. Around 5 it can start to get a little hectic, say, if you want everyone's steaks warm and served at the same time and you have a normal sized grill, things like that.
Cleaning up after kids when they're at the diaper and spit up age sucks but once they're about 7-8 you can train them to do the worst of the day to day stuff. Once they're 10 or so they can pretty much take any chore you want to throw at them: laundry, dishes, vacuum.
The difference between living alone and having to tend to your own house, and living with a spouse and the typical 2.5 kids is pretty minimal unless the kid's very young, or you're home schooling. Which you should be, but yeah, that definitely makes it a full time job beyond the stuff you'd have to do for yourself if you lived alone (and also had no day job).
I honestly don't care that much if we start busting down doors and fuckin up people who have unpopular opinions in this country and it turns out some of them were "only" of the wrong opinion and not "fully" domestic terrorists. Did "wrong opinions" become something we were trying to keep around?