Annie

Agreed. We should also stop funding research towards all rare diseases because 2/100,000 annual cases for ALS is too rare for us to give a shit. Again, why are you just okay with creating victims of circumstance? Why should we just ignore when bad shit happens to people because it "doesn't happen often"? And what is "sapient" supposed to mean? If that's the single defining feature that makes a human fetus so valuable, that removing it even in cases of rape or incest is considered "murder", then how would you define sapience? There are also a remarkably small minority of Christians that live "according to Christ's teachings" so I'm not too terribly worried about the consensus on gay marriage. And it should be noted that "incidence" isn't entirely what's discussed in regards to what's "normal", there's no reason to discuss how many gay people there are per capita, so let's not act in bad faith here. "Normal" in a typical, good faith sense usually denotes a state of health, and whenever we colloquially refer to something as "not normal" we're usually saying, generally speaking, that something is wrong. Are LGBT people normal in the sense that there's nothing physically or mentally wrong with them? It's not a defining feature of being LGBT but being LGBT doesn't specifically denote being physically or mentally unhealthy, so maybe. Are LGBT people abnormal in the sense that something is "wrong with them"? Again, being LGBT doesn't denote having something wrong with you, so no. Are people suffering from anxiety or depressive disorders mentally or physically healthy? No, because if they were they wouldn't have a disorder. Do people suffering from anxiety or depressive disorders have something wrong with them? Yes, for the same exact reason. I feel like bringing up "normalcy" in LGBT+ related discussion denotes a certain type of homophobia/transphobia in addition to ableism. If you truly do, for some odd reason, only care about how common LGBT people are, then by all means you can ignore all of this. I simply have my doubts. A squeaky wheel still implies 25% of the population. Christians can be extremely annoying especially when paired with American conservatism, and that's the reality for LGBT+ people everywhere. The cultural push for LGBT+ acceptance has been met with resistance from religious groups nationwide and their reasoning for not affording that acceptance to them has been nothing but excuses. LGBPA people are mostly there, but it's hard for them to find excuses for why trans people shouldn't be given the same respect. I've been told I'll never be a woman because god made me the way I am and I should just be happy from myself, or been given passages from the bible that don't even specifically say being trans is wrong, just that "crossdressing" is wrong which has largely gone completely ignored by society EXCEPT in regards to trans people specifically. This isn't some uncommon occurrence with a loud minority, this is an everyday thing for me.

What all sucks? :^)

This is why nobody likes you, mate. You cop out and insult the other person when the pressure of an argument sets in. Don't you think that's more indicative of someone who isn't willing to listen? Why can't you just concede instead of being a condescending hypocrite?

Doesn't matter who it counts as murder to, the lack of consensus alone should make one err on the side of "not murder", along with the fact that it's effectively a parasite without the capability to speak or engage in deep or emotional thought. And before you try to argue that fetuses aren't parasites, do realize that I'm not arguing semantics here. Do note the use of the word "effectively". You're intentionally misrepresenting what I said. Very intellectually dishonest. I never said I wasn't talking about the morality of abortion, what I said was that I'm not discussing whether or not abortion is morally okay. I never gave an answer on whether or not it was because it truly depends on circumstance. HOWEVER, it's no skin off my nose who chooses to get an abortion and I find a certain moral hypocrisy in the anti-choice position, at least in the vast majority of cases. If anti-choicers want a seat at the table, maybe they should reconsider their very anti-life perspectives that food and universal healthcare aren't basic human rights. Maybe they should show more compassion to homeless youth rejected by their parents and by society often for being LGBT+. Again: it's not murder and I'm not going to argue from the perspective who draws moral equivalence between abortion and murder. And yes, bodily autonomy is quite literally stripped from you when a legitimate medical procedure whose effects range from ending pregnancy-related health complications to literally saving lives becomes illegal. I get the feeling you haven't been following along at all. We have reached a stage of capitalism where churches are run for profit by TV personalities with private jets, where money is no longer considered the root of all evil, where companies use figures who stood against capitalism in advertising. I promise you Jesus and your average Conservative would've had very different views between a homeless drug addict and Jeff Bezos, but Christians still do tend to be conservative. I don't want to come off as though peoples' faith is any of my business, but peoples' political views have direct impact on people, including me (not abortion laws specifically but conservatives tend to be socially authoritarian which I'm not okay with). When I find out people holding frankly evil political views also worship a figure whose teachings American conservatism directly contradicts, you best believe I'm going to call that shit out.

Also I feel that I should add: Abortion is not a particularly interesting topic of debate, because honestly, I truly feel it's one of those things that just isn't debatable. You can certainly try, you can argue the morality of it for days, but it's honestly futile because there's moral justification both for and against it. What it boils down to is less about morality and ethics and more about pragmatics and how libertarian you are. If you were to look at gun control from a similar standpoint, guns cause more death of fully developed humans than abortion does, and yet conservatives will gladly drop the question of ethics to speak strictly about whether or not gun control is actually effective and what alternative measures could be taken to reduce gun violence (albeit they are rather lazy on this one and typically default to 2nd amendment purism). That same energy simply isn't shared in the abortion debate. If you're anti-choice, you're most likely arguing strictly on ethics and not on whether or not abortion bans are actually effective, and the fact of the matter is, abortion legislation is simply not effective.

Let's get this out of the way first: Abortion is not the same as murder. Let's not muddy the waters by assigning moral equivalence between the two. If they were truly morally equivalent then we would treat them as such, but this largely isn't the case. There are a few exceptions, the Georgia bill for example carries a penalty of life in prison, however even this isn't truly congruent with murder in the same state as that can be anywhere from 10 years to a death sentence depending on the charge. The language the Georgia bill uses also defines miscarriage as an "abortion", so if we're being logically consistent with the language used here, that should probably make a miscarriage carry the same sentence as unintentional manslaughter. If that sounds hyperbolic, then honestly, you might want to re-evaluate what your issue with abortion truly is. Second: I'm not really even speaking on whether or not abortion is morally okay. I'm not "pro-abortion", I don't think anybody truly is except perhaps some odd edgy misanthrope who thinks overpopulation is an issue of concern. However, I'm not in favor of stripping someone of their bodily autonomy (including use of hard drugs, rehabilitation would be more productive than incarceration), and I'm not in favor of creating victims of circumstance. My point is that you shouldn't claim moral authority on a topic like abortion while also being a purveyor of perhaps the worst culture of excess on the planet. Abortion shouldn't even be a discussion in the country that invented the televangelist and megachurch.

I don't either, but it's been a specific point of frustration for me lately in light of the Georgia and Alabama abortion bills. I feel like there's a particularly frustrating hypocrisy in people seeking to reduce others' civil liberties on moral grounds when they're also proponents of a very immoral system (especially by christian standards). Obviously I'm in no place to say who's really a christian and who isn't, considering I haven't practiced christianity in a decade, but I doubt a lot of these people really take their christian values to heart.

I can't be alone in being disappointed with the average conservative christian, right? I have no clue how a significant portion of the christian constituency in this country can defend profligate consumerist culture, support a system that rewards greed and exploitation, uphold policies that oppress the needy and marginalized, and vote for violent, xenophobic sociopaths. These are more issues I have with American conservatism than christianity, but honestly, it absolutely baffles me how any christian can claim moral authority over anyone while also being a conservative.

just put on a fresh pair of programming socks fishing lvl?

I do love being too slow to read things properly

light brown Night elves or Blood elves?

Depends on what you mean by "the west". I hate to draw conclusions, but when I see someone evoke this concept of "the west" it's typically a right-wing idea that boils down to "the free world of rich capitalist nations" that may or may not include "also white people live here." I've always viewed the EU as an authoritative pro-corporate entity and, honestly, almost a striking image of what Mussolini would've wanted. By extension the EU seems completely western to me.

There wasn't a single insult in any of that post, not that crying "ad hominem" makes you correct at all. And honestly, you think I should be concerned about my optics? When you have a notoriety for being one of the most hypocritical, ignorant, and narcissistic people on this forum? I've never once seen you admit to being wrong on anything despite you putting your ignorance proudly on display being a regular occurrence here. The topic at hand was MCC possibly killing off Xbox as a platform, I expressed my disagreement and am simply standing by it.

No, there really aren't. If a game is good enough and popular enough it will still have seeders, and if it doesn't it's either free to download anyway or hasn't had seeders for ages anyway. I've found seeded torrents for obscure VNs and anime long before there were even official translations for them. You can find seeded torrents for the original retail version of TF2, and there's nobody fucking playing it. If you're really that insistent on keeping pirated files, you can do that digitally anyway. Or hell, why not just swallow your pride and fork over some money for something for once.

Because there's literally no fucking point in burning DVD-Rs of pirated games. You could hop on thepiratebay at any given time and download whatever the fuck you want to play, and emulation and virtual drives exist for everything else. The entire reason people seek out physical copies with everything intact is because they're collectors' items, like LPs or books. There's no other reason to own a physical copy of anything these days because everything is digital, it's mostly done because people like collecting things that are real and tangible. If you think a bootleg is an acceptable replacement for a genuine copy, then by definition, you have low standards.