Here’s my weird perspective on it, first of all it’s not a word in my vocabulary, so I wouldn’t say it anyways, and I don’t normally listen to rap/hip-hop or other styles that use the word, so accidentally singing it also isn’t a problem for me. But I think the most important point for me is that I’m not from the USA, and besides some random movie I have never ever heard the word being used in a racist manner, so to me it doesn’t carry the same weight as it does for people who have suffered it directly.

Personally I think it’s all related to the fact that a black saying that word implicitly has no racist connotations, whereas with non-black you can’t be sure. That being said, while I understand wanting to conquer the oppressiveness of it by incorporating it into your slang, if you prevent others from using it in the same way, the oppressiveness is still there and you haven’t removed power from the word. Think on how Gay used to be offensive, and things like the Gay Pride and similar reclaimed the word, to the point where even if heterosexual people use it nowadays it’s not necessarily offensive.

That being said, like I mentioned at the start, I don’t live in a place where people use that word, nor am I black, so I can’t possibly understand what hearing that means to someone who’s actually heard it as an insult, so me saying they should be more open with non-blacks using it in a non-offensive manner as a way to diminish the power of that word in the asshole mouths might feel insensitive. And at the end of the day I don’t care because it’s not in my vocabulary so I wouldn’t use it even if blacks were okay with me using it.

Yes, from some experience even on those fields you sort of need to proof that you tried to find someone in your own country and couldn’t find one.

Just remap it to something more useful, Colemak remaps it to backspace.

No where. I like America.

Fair enough

What are my other options, realistically?

Lots of them really

Britain which just banned porn?

No they didn’t, they just force age verification, which is also common in the USA. So you have the exact same “problem” there, but are missing the free healthcare, and other benefits from the UK in relation to the USA.

Australia which banned Hentai?

Yeah, Australia is weird, they also banned several games and similar stuff because they have a government that’s very focused on moral problems, much like the right wing in the USA, so I don’t think it will be long before the USA goes down this same rabbit hole of “won’t somebody please think of the children” and bans the same things.

Canada, which is just America but cold and sky high housing costs?

I don’t even know how to reply to this, the fact that you think that a country that consistently picks the complete opposite policies from the USA is the same means you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. It’s like if someone told you they don’t want to stop eating deep fried chicken because salad is just the same thing except cold and more expensive.

As a US citizen you have right to work in most of those countries.

No you don’t, you need a visa to be able to work here, depending on your area of expertise companies might sponsor your visa.

I’ve lived in multiple places, so I’ll talk about all of them.

Brazil

I lived in two places there, essentially you can choose between public or private systems.

Under the private system you would book an appointment with whatever doctor you wanted, usually one or two weeks in advance, pay them (which is relatively expensive depending on the doctor), have the consultation, they might ask for some exams (some of which are paid, others included), possibly get a prescription (that you would have to pay for yourself), possibly go back for a follow up appointment (included in the price you already paid).

On the public system you book an appointment, wait some time (months in some places, days in others), have your consultation (if the doctor is in that day), possibly get a prescription (that you would likely get for free), possibly go back for a follow up appointment.

Ireland

There’s a public system, but you have to be below a certain income level to use it, otherwise you have to go through the private system. You have to register with your GP (most of which don’t have available spots), for anything you first need to contact your GP (which usually takes a week), and pay €60, explain your problem and if they choose to forward you to and specialist (even if you go and say I need to see a cardiologist they might say “no, you do not”, although that’s unlikely), then they send an email to the specialist who only then accepts that you book with them (usually for a week or so later), then you have to pay the specialist (which is usually >€300), they might ask for some exams (which you have to book and pay on your own, some blood work I did was €700), they might give you a prescription (which is paid but there’s a €80 cap on medicine per house per month, which is the only nice part of the whole system), and if you need a follow up it’s usually €150. If you have health insurance (or at least mine was like this) they give you back 50% of all your expenses up to a certain limit.

Spain

I’m not too familiar with the options here because I have private insurance through my work and as you’ll see I’ve had no reason to look elsewhere, but I’ve been told the public system is fairly similar. Whenever I need an appointment I open my insurance app or call a doctor office and ask if they take my insurance, book an appointment (usually for a week or two in advance), go there, show my id and insurance card, go to the appointment, if they ask for some exams I do them, if they give me a prescription I take it to a pharmacy and pay it out of pocket (this is the only part I know public system exists and is somewhat better because you get the drugs for free, but since I don’t take any recurring prescriptions I haven’t bothered to check), if I need a follow up I book it and go back. Never had to pay one cent for anything other than medicine. I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop and getting billed for all of the Dr appointments, but so far it hasn’t happened hahaha

I’m currently learning Catalan, doing Duolingo until I find some class (which there should be one in a couple of months). It’s relatively easy for me since I already speak fluent Spanish and Portuguese and understand almost everything in Italian.

Nope, just extra dimensional cause for creation, no higher purpose required, for all we know whenever two rocks collide in that scenario they create a universe.

Also no, you’re completely missing the point, if God is omnipotent he could have made humans to never suffer and still be free, in theory most Christians believe that Heaven is free of suffering, do you cease being yourself when you go to heaven then? Just because you or I can’t imagine a world where humans are free but can’t hurt one another doesn’t mean that’s beyond the realm of possibilities, and if your counter argument will be that then we wouldn’t really be free, I tell you that humans can’t explode someone by looking at them, so he already imposed some limitations on the amount of harm we could cause to each other, yet you don’t see this as less freedom because you just accepted that’s the natural state, I propose there could be a natural state where humans can’t cause harm to each other and are still free.

Yup, eventually believers reach the same stopping point but instead of saying “I don’t know” they go “God did it”, until science explains how that happened, so believers go to the next thing and say “well I don’t know how this happened, therefore God”. That is called “the God of the gaps” and it’s a terrible argument, it’s okay to admit we don’t know something.

And no, I’m not talking about Abraham, I’m talking about Jesus, the whole reason why Jesus is crucified is so that his blood can clean the sin of mankind. The basics of Christianism are the following tenets:

1. God can’t (or doesn’t want to) coexist with Sin
2. God requires blood sacrifices, usually animals, to purify Sin
3. God offered a loophole, by sacrificing an innocent person anyone can point at that sacrifice and say “I’m using this sacrifice to purify my sins”.
4. Because there are no Sinless humans he had to come down in human form to sacrifice himself so that he could charge the innocent blood price for the Sins of mankind

Otherwise why would God need to offer himself as sacrifice to purify sins? Couldn’t he just say “all sins are gone”? However you look at it he asks for a blood sacrifice, however he allows you to cash in his own blood sacrifice in its place, and if you don’t he sends you to Hell, very loving fellow.

Foundation is great, have you also read the Empire trilogy? Also after reading Empire + Foundation you should read The end of Eternity, it’s an amazing book whose impact is only felt if you’ve read the other books.

I rarely get into these sorts of debaters because they’re almost always pointless, however a few of the things you said made me want to answer this.

You’re completely missing the point for the first argument, people can’t choose to fly or kill each other by staring, so if humans were created by God then any flaws in humanity, including but not limited to ability to suffer and cause suffering, is part of God’s design that he could have removed. In other words, if God gave people the option to cause harm knowing they would (omniscience, remember) then he’s directly responsible for everything bad that happens, it’s like a father that gives a sharp knife to a kid and tells him to go run and play with his friends. God could have prevented suffering to begin with, therefore the fact that it exists proves that suffering is part of his plan. If that’s the case then yes, you being bullied and your bully being in an abusive home is all done by design, which is very twisted if you think about it.

As for the second argument you admit that things exist outside our universe that can affect it, if that’s the case you don’t need God to create the Universe, we could be the result of a collision between two extra dimensional rocks. And that’s sort of the point of that argument, i.e. that you don’t need God to explain the beginning of the Universe because whatever question you have about the origin of the Universe can also be directed at God (e.g. and what caused that) and whatever answer you give using God can also be used for a non-God answer (e.g. extra dimensional causes)

Those two arguments are very biased. The first one is only a problem in Christianity, and like you said it’s a silly argument, God can be malicious and that solves that issue.

The second one is a bit trickier, because you’re making the same mistake you accuse others of making. There are two possibilities, either something can come from nothing, or it can’t. If stuff can come from nothing God is not needed to create the Universe (and while physics have been able to prove this, let’s look at the other possibility just in case). On the other hand if stuff can’t come from nothing then stuff must have always existed, otherwise you will get the problem of where the stuff that did that came from, and that applies to God too, so of you can ask “where did the Big Bang came from if there was nothing” you can also ask “where did God came from if there was nothing”, so in this scenario you also don’t need God, because if it can come from nothing then other stuff can also come from nothing so we’re in the other scenario.

Also those are two of the weakest arguments against God, and they specifically go after the Christian God of the gaps. Better arguments against the existence of God are usually about pointing at contradictions in the definition, similarly to how you said nothing can come from nothing but made an exception for God, another example is omniscience vs free will (if someone knows what you will do then you’re not free to do different), or omnipotence in itself (can God microwave a burrito so hot that even he can’t eat it?), and if we’re talking about the specific Christian deity the fact that he needs an innocent blood sacrifice to forgive people should be a clear indicator of the type of being you’re dealing with, and it’s not an all loving entity.

“Who goes there?” and “It’s only a model” could work without any more context. But I think I would go with “Oh, don’t be such a baby” even with context I think lots of people won’t immediately recognize this.

I don’t consider myself hardcore, but I haven’t posted to Reddit since the API thing, I read stuff there because there’s lots of content, but I strongly dislike the official app so I refuse to use it, which means posting would be a hassle.

One of my favorite games is a hidden gem that I never see people mention. It’s called Out of Space and it’s a couch co-op game similar to Overcooked with two major differences, it’s less frenetic so you can play it to chill out, and it’s procedurally generated so you have lots of replayability. For me and my wife it’s the perfect game of “let’s play a round of something”, yet I never see it mentioned anywhere.

I would agree with you but I don’t think women are marginalised in my society.

Then you don’t agree with me, and you should look closer at your society, it’s easy to overlook how certain groups are marginalized if you’re not part of them. I recommend you read some posts in some women only communities (instead of trying to tell them how they should feel) to see the sort of thing they have to go through.

I get where you’re coming from, on paper our society treats women equally, there are no written rules or outlandish inequalities, and some of what feminist complain is not even real, such as the gender pay gap. However that’s not the same as saying there aren’t any inequalities nor that it’s even comparable. Yes, men do have issues in our society; Yes we need to address those; No, we shouldn’t laugh at me for opening up about their issues; Yes, men can have safe spaces where they talk about their issues without having women judge them for it. And all of that is the same for women, there are lots of ways in which our society treats women as inferior and if you can’t recognize that there’s really nothing else to tell you than “pay more attention”, but there’s no worse blind that those who don’t want to see, so I’m sure there’s nothing I can tell you that will make you stop and listen and look around, talk to your mom, sister, or some women you know and trust, listen to their stories about that time their boss slap their ass or their ex-boyfriend forced himself on them, or even the time the creepy guy started following them around.

As someone who opposes lots of what feminist theories claim and what some feminist groups preach and do my answer is: Yes, obviously, you have to be a special kind of stupid to not realize that women are marginalized in our society. Next you’ll tell me that outside of black live matter no one thinks blacks are marginalized.

Rhapsody, the band all of their songs progressively tell an epic story that I would love to see in movie form.

Alternatively Nightfall in Middle-Earth from Blind Guardian, love the Silmarillion would love to see a movie about it.

Honestly Scenes from a Memory would make a great movie, and now I have to go listen to it again

I walk, it’s not ideal but I take one for mother earth and walk the whole 10000 cm to the store when needed.