Post a controversial opinion

wait which one, branko's or mine?

last time i came out in favor of modernity on ilx shakey called me an idiot and hurt my feelings

no memory of this, but I apologize for hurtin yr feelings

thank you

xpost yours!

and actually, i guess you can deduce the % just by what's on the graph. if weekly earnings for 10th percentile workers went from 245 to 260, then they increased by...6%? so the weekly wage increased by 6% for both 10th percentile workers and people making 200% of the median income? i'm probably fucking something up.

yeah it's a weird graph cause it's levels on one axis and a share on the other, i was inspired by the graph in this blog post http://crookedtimber.org/2015/08/12/up-and-down-left-and-right/ but i don't have gini (and i don't really like gini) so i used high earners' income share. i just finished cleaning the data for this project and that was one of the first graphs i shot out. pretty pumped to dig in

i do love a good graph! just wanted to make sure i was interpreting it correctly

can't stand stevie wonder's harmonica

adult people probably should not care about star wars

deep dish pizza is good

I don't care about Star Wars that's for sure.

Marc Maron is a better comedian than Louis CK

The US Constitution really does guarantee the individual right to own firearms so even though it leads to the deaths of thousands we're stuck with it

can't stand stevie wonder's harmonica

Insufficiently controversial tbh.

All of Lindsay Buckingham's songs on Tusk, except for Tusk, are underworked coke-addled sketches that go nowhere. the raspy banjo sound is horrible.

Better.

It say controversial, not scary.

Stevie Wonder's harmonica is tolerable. He doesn't use it on every song. DYLAN, on the other hand, should have given the harp a rest more often.

In health care, rationing/death panels are not only good but necessary. I'm down with single-payer health care being provided for all, but you can't get there without triage and rationing. Collectively we pay like a gazillion dollars a day to keep oldsters alive for slightly longer. A fraction of those dollars could be vaccinating children / feeding hungry people for far more long-term benefit. Kill granny. Yes, even mine.

OTM

Ask me again in 40 years, but I think I would volunteer to live until a certain set age, at which point I'd be "sent to live on a farm". I don't want to be an ornery oldster tenaciously clinging to life out of spite. And having an endpoint in sight would significantly reduce anxiety about when the sweet embrace of death would finally claim my shambling, decrepit shell of a body.

we should have an auction. the highest bidders get to avoid kiling their grannies

you've got it backwards

Their grannies get to kill the highest bidders.

'death panels' not overly controversial depending on your country and how often they get referred to as 'death panels'.

'Death panel' sounds awful and it's so misleading. It's not really a panel so much as a giant pit that they throw you into.

Of course they already exist and they're called "insurance companies," but why not get it out in the open?

over here they're called NICE

there should be plenty of money for the government to help old people longer AND help children and impoverished people. but it doesn't work because taxes are evil and when the government helps too many people we teeter on the edge of communism and the apocalypse.

Wealth really only has meaning when others are living in the dirt.

just make euthanasia non-taboo idk

All of Lindsay Buckingham's songs on Tusk, except for Tusk, are underworked coke-addled sketches that go nowhere. the raspy banjo sound is horrible.

― ledge, Thursday, December 10, 2015 5:55 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is what makes them so good, though

most stand-up comedy is lame and not very funny

not remotely controversial

understatement maybe

definitely

I really annoyed a normy with that opinion a few months ago, had some jibe about how I must not have a sense of humour or something stupid.

i think even stand-up comedians would agree? my impression is they generate an awful lot of material that gets discarded bc it doesn't work when they try it out on stage.

what's a 'normy'?

https://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/norm3.jpg

a normy is someone who wears nonbranded clothing with solid colors so the world's most hated tech companies can't use algorithms to identify their fashion preferences and sell them to other companies without the normy's knowledge

i think we can all agree on that

http://www.bedlammag.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Angus_Black_and_White.jpg

those are norms

normys are people without substance abuse / mental health problems

I didn't mean that brimstead, I meant "normal" aka dull, though it would also work with that other definition tbh

lol brimstead

there are no conspiracies

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts.

nonsense, when walking on stilts, actually becomes true

living past the age of 40 when you have no kids is pointless

I think I agree with both Sanpaku and man alive.

That is, I agree that an ostensible natural right is pointless if it isn't able to do you any practical good. I have no use for a right that doesn't do me any practical good - either because it's not recognized by the rest of the world, or because it isn't backed up by something with worldly force.

If the "stilts" in the metaphor correspond to practical real-world systems of persuasion, compulsion, and protection, I agree that stilts change the situation.

A baseball player who has hit a home run has the "right" to run around the bases and score a point for his team - not because he is endowed by his creator with the inalienable right to do so, but rather because his right to do so is enshrined in the rules of the game he is playing, and both the teams and the umpires generally agree to respect those rules.

Let us say I assert that I have a natural right to not get eaten by my co-workers. Because there are laws in effect, and people generally respect them, this right has achieved some valence in the world. This "right" is helping me NOT because it is self-evidently endowed to me by my creator - I'm utterly agnostic about whether or not that's true - it's helping me because of the way the "right" has been enshrined in law and custom.

But let us say that a cow on a farm were to suddenly achieve a heretofore unseen level of intelligence, communicative ability, and moral sophistication. She could argue that she has the natural right to not be eaten. Maybe she could persuade people to not eat her, but they wouldn't be doing so out of respect for her natural rights. Because her natural rights are not enshrined in law and custom, they have no "stilts."

the "loose meat sandwich" is an abomination against god

I'm hoping I'm really hoping that's not slang for anything