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Cake day: February 1st, 2024







  • Because a foreign power influencing an election is fundamentally different than a domestic campaign. The foreign power has their own interests, which are potentially at odds with the interests of the electorate.

    Ostensibly, if you campaign in country A and are a citizen of country A, then you’re “in the same boat” as the electorate. Of course, with economic stratification this becomes increasingly less true (fast food worker may live in same country as $$$ donor, but they are effectively living under different policies).





  • It’s completely context dependent; you’re right that using male/female is appropriate for humans in certain contexts, e.g., medical usage (“Patient, a 47yo female, presented with…”). But it is — for cultural and historical reasons — generally considered inappropriate to refer to our fellow humans that way in conversation.

    Re: mutt, fair enough. Bitch/stud are examples of how animal terms, when applied to humans, take on very different meanings. Purebred is afaik not specific to species, but it is wildly inappropriate to refer to people as such.

    At the end of the day, the logic behind what is and is not appropriate has history behind it; animal terms have been used extensively to refer to subjugated peoples; it may be scientifically accurate but that doesn’t mean that it’s inoffensive.


  • Of course we’re animals, but let’s use some common sense wrt cultural norms here. A dog of mixed lineage is mutt, but it’s completely inappropriate to refer to a multiracial person as such. A female dog is a bitch, a male is a stud; the sexism is pretty obvious when applied to humans. It’s fine to talk about owning a dog; it’s not ok to talk about owning another human (except perhaps children, in certain contexts).

    Yes, we are animals too, but that doesn’t mean we should talk about each other in the same way. (And I say this as a vegetarian who thinks we should treat all animals with significantly more respect than we currently do.)



  • UPS and American companies in general

    But this is USPS, which isn’t an American company, it’s a US independent agency.

    Their mandate isn’t (AFAIK…) to make a profit, but rather to serve the mail requirements of a very large country.

    Personally, my experiences with USPS have been generally positive, from passports for infants to free change-of-address forwarding service to tracking down quasi-scam products from Amazon. YMMV though.