token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
No bio...
User ID: 1737
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1d ago
That sounds like nonsense. The Democratic organizational base has been Black women for decades. That's why the party hasn't moved left as much as the very-online contingent of progressives want it to. Those Black women are a lot more conservative (both in the "further right politics" sense and in the "less willing to shake up the status quo" sense).
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1d ago
Chuck Schumer no doubt is theoretically very progressive
Said no one, ever.
Chuck Schumer is a generic liberal who has repeatedly acted to limit the influence of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1d ago
What do you think they'd be accomplishing by such protests? Surely protesting Trump shutting down the Department of Education by occupying the Department of Education so it can't function would be counter-productive. Are you suggesting the individual federal employees that are fired... keep working, treating their firing as illegal and asserting they still have jobs?
There's certainly been calls from the left for the Democrats to do more. But obstruction and destruction of the federal government is what their opponents want; it very unclear what they could do that wouldn't just be helping the Republicans. Maybe physically obstructing DOGE employees and thereby forcing arrests, to make it look more serious? That's still just handing more power over to the Republicans (by reducing Democratic congressional votes), as discussed down-thread.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1d ago
The immediate question I have is how are Korean universities funded? My understanding is that research grant overhead is a significant chunk of the total funding of US universities. Do Korean universities get more funding for their general administration and capital costs from other sources?
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
5d ago
Thanks. I do remember hearing about that now that you mention it. I don't have anything to add past the links you provided, though.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
5d ago
I'm sorry, I don't understand the question. Wikipedia tells me "debanking" in the United refers to banks freezing crypto assets dropping Muslim clients? Neither of these I'm familiar with and I'm not seeing them mentioned in the top-level comment I replied to, although there's a lot of links, so I may have missed something.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
6d ago
Are you implying there's some objective definition of "the country's goals", distinct from its democratically elected leadership? Where does that definition come from?
... yes? Sorry, I'm not even seeing how there could possibly be disagreement on that point unless you completely do not believe in the concepts of corruption or embezzlement.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
7d ago
It's interesting to see this written from the opposite perspective since it's a constant complaint on /r/politics that Republicans falsely accuse Democrats of doing $BAD_THING and then later actually do $BAD_THING themselves claiming they're just reacting. Of course, that interpretation relies on the belief that Republicans were actually lying.
To be concrete, you mention the example of the IRS targeting conservative organizations under Obama. The Democrats' narrative on that is that it's a misinterpretation of the facts: there was no targeting of conservative organizations, those organizations were just bad at doing their taxes due to a combination of the grassroots part of the Tea Party movement just legitimately being new to running organizations and getting things wrong and anti-tax advocates unsurprisingly not being the best at actually paying their taxes. I'm sure there's been plenty written about which side is right, but my point is that the author of the article probably actually believes that those examples are not symmetric.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
9d ago
Surely the question is whether those political goals are aligned with the country's. The claim is that Biden was furthering the US's political goals while Trump was furthering Trump's political goals. Needless to say, there's some room for interpretation on exactly which political goals are in favor of the US vs. only the president, but that distinction is essential to determining whether an act is corrupt. That fuzziness is a contributing factor to why corruption is often just an accusation against political opponents purely in the realm of public opinion and not actually tried in a court of law.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
17d ago
Not sure why you think there aren't checks and balances. The Republicans just control the majority of the House, Senate, and Supreme Court in addition to the Presidency. Balances don't impact consensus policies. There's some court cases about things the Trump administration has done so far and maybe that will have some impact. But it's misleading to claim Trump is doing anything without the approval of Congress. Congress can't pass legislation quickly, sure, but also they would rather stay out of sight and let Trump take the fall for anything that goes wrong.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
21d ago
(although by that measure, 2000 is way more likely)
The plurality of voters cast votes in favor of Gore in sufficient states to pass 270 electoral votes, and yet Gore did not get 270 electoral votes or become president. "Stolen" seems like an accurate descriptor.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
29d ago
Pidgin is what you're thinking of. It does that for instant messaging services, including apparently having a plugin for Facebook Messenger that has recent issues on GitHub, so it seems to still be working for some people. There's also XMPP and it's modern competitor/replacement Matrix which have a concept of bridges which means you log into your one Matrix account but have that account bridged to other protocols (so similar concept, just putting the multi-protocol support in a different place in the architecture).
Needless to say, none of this is terribly user-friendly, largely because none of the companies running these services want third-party clients to work, so there's a continual arms race of protocol changes. For similar reasons, there will never be a commercial product because third-party clients are likely explicitly against the terms of service. Back when MSN and its ilk were popular, the arms race was less heated and they were more usable.
Also, this is all about instant messaging. Maybe that's all you care about, but if you want to keep track of non-chat-structured posts, then the closest I know of to a similar multi-protocol client for social media posts is setting them all up in an RSS reader. And for similar reasons, social media companies make it difficult to access posts that way, although it works for some / has worked for others in the past (e.g., I used to follow Twitter feeds via RSS).
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1mo ago
How? I don't see how it prevents you from getting a passport that states your biological sex.
Trans (or intersex) people may not have or be able to acquire identity documents that state their "biological sex". And if they do, photo IDs showing a mismatch between the sex marker on the ID and the gender presentation in the photo (or in person) are at risk of being rejected as valid ID.
The other effects you list also have some pretty awful consequences, but I don't know anyone directly affected by them, while I do know people who failed to renew their passport in time and will be left without one, and therefore be unable to leave the country, at some point in the next 4 years.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1mo ago
Looking at just the effects of the executive orders Trump has made so far:
-
Direction to State Department to not recognize trans gender identities. Unclear exactly what this means in practice, but this will likely make it difficult or impossible for many trans people to get/renew passports. I know many trans people renewed their passports early expecting this (and the Biden State Department literally worked overtime to fulfill those requests before January 20th).
-
Less serious, but Return to In-Person Work at best inconveniences many government workers. The intention is almost certainly to encourage federal workers to quit (just like tech company RTO policies are interpreted as stealth layoffs).
Those are the only two that I see that have immediate impact on the lives of people I know, but many of the others will likely lead to noticeable effects.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1mo ago
That's a rather strange reading of what he said. Nowhere in there was any mention of her returning to prostitution.
How did you interpret
cheating on him when she wanted more spending money
then?
You think she'd be showing him undying loyalty otherwise?
No, but believing your partner is fundamentally a bad person sounds like a poor basis for a trusting relationship.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1mo ago
I know a guy who married a prostitute made good
That wording makes it sound like a relationship with an ex-sex-worker, not a current sex-worker. Or at least the guy thought they were no longer a sex-worker and turned out to be wrong about that.
If the guy believed being "good" requires not being a sex worker, then I can see how the relationship went poorly.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1mo ago
Then when she's ready to settle down after having had her fun and marry a Western or local man, she can just pretend she was an angel all along.
You do realize sex workers are capable of having relationships while also being sex workers, right?
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1mo ago
Surely too much debt is a problem, but cashflow issues be solved by either reducing spending or increasing revenue. And when you're talking about a government's budget, increasing revenue can be some combination of increasing tax rates and increasing tax base/GDP. Obviously, much of political disagreement is over exactly which policies will maximize GDP, and Republicans routinely state they believe things like DOGE will increase economic productivity by getting the federal government out of the way. On the other hand, the Democrats believe better regulations, which require funding the federal government, will maximum GDP. And they're in favor of raising taxes.
Additionally, it's unclear the current situation is "too much" debt. The Total Public Debt as Percent of Gross Domestic Product and Federal government current expenditures: Interest payments charts don't look great. On the other hand Federal Outlays: Interest as Percent of Gross Domestic Product looks high, but nowhere near a historical high.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1mo ago
it's clear that most "age gap" stuff is just older women being angry at older men not finding them attractive as they once did.
While this may be true, my only exposure to the "age gap" discourse is 40-something women posting on Tumblr about how the teens/20-somethings policing age gaps are talking nonsense.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1mo ago
I too wonder why prostitution or sex tourism is still so shunned. It's clear why the far left and far right hate it
Does the far left hate it? Maybe I just don't have any exposure to the group you're calling "the far left". I understand it's not a normie view, but I somewhat often see pro-sex-worker sentiment in places as diverse as the leftist Tumblrs I follow, my IRL friends' Facebook posts, and Ars Technica comments (mostly when in comes up in the context of anti-sex-worker laws like FOSTA-SESTA).
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1mo ago
There's certainly liberal content on most (if not all) social media websites. But the impact of their algorithms is almost universally to push users in the direction of right-wing content. Reddit's algorithms are theoretically transparent (i.e. officially what is highlighted is controlled by the votes of real people but there's regular claims of fake accounts being used to mess with the vote counts), so it may be one of the ones least affected by this.
But also, the nature of social media being a customized feed for every user means that it's very difficult to judge how liberal the median (or whatever) view of a site is. From my perspective, Tumblr is very woke, but I somewhat often see discussions of the conservative views being espoused elsewhere on the site.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1mo ago
You seriously think social media is making teens more liberal? That sites known for right-wing QAnon conspiracy rabbit holes are somehow increasing support for trans rights?
The media has been talking about how surprisingly conservative Gen Z is (that is, the people young enough for social media / smartphones to be a major part of their teenage years but old enough to actually be 18+ for a survey). Wikipedia references social media as an influence making them more conservative.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1mo ago
Starbucks closed more than a dozen locations, primarily located in downtown spots, citing safety concerns.
The universal response on local comment threads whenever this is mentioned is to laugh at the audacity of the claims that Starbucks closed their coffee shops due to "safety concerns" that somehow don't affect the multiple other coffee shops on the same blocks as the ones they closed. Specifically due to those coincidentally being the same Starbucks locations that were pushing to unionize.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1mo ago
I was confused reading your post because I was thinking "surely there's browser extensions to do what you want" until I got to
And I could always go for a dumb phone.
I'm one of those weird people who doesn't install social media apps on their phone. (Don't worry, I'm plenty capable of wasting my time scrolling on a mobile web browser.) And, yeah, I'd support legislation to ban companies from blocking third-party apps / pushing users to apps instead of web sites. That is, companies should not be allowed to take technological measures to prevent users from controlling their experience of social media (defined broadly) websites.
Sure, men tend to be more conservative than women. But community organizer types are mainly women not men.
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