/townhall/ - Townhall

An internet celebrity recently posted an edited image from a larger piece of child pornography on Twitter accompanied by a statement that was condemning the action and warning others not to look at the broader work. This celebrity was banned from Twitter. He was then, promptly, brought back. Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, personally intervened to make this decision.

Personally, I viewed this as terrible, and it was a 'last straw' that made me decide to leave the platform. I don't want to be a part of an online community where I have to go through child pornography based social debates when I simply don't have the mental and physical health ability to discuss that issue. It's too much for me. Twitter just is.

I do wonder about the three key points in this controversy, though:

>Is it generally acceptable to share explicit media that shows something that you're opposing as a matter of education, or does this simply function as an excuse to post highly immoral media as long as one throws in a 'Don't do this!' at the end?

>The general rule aside, what specifically should happen with media relating to child sexual abuse shared on Twitter or elsewhere online?

>Is it fundamentally damaging to you to witness this media in any context, which means that it should never be shared ever?

>Do you relate to people like me that just find it all too much to debate about, specifically maybe agreeing with me leaving Twitter?

I apologize for bringing up an issue that maybe is too fundamentally contentious to even have talked about here. I understand if this conversation has to be shut down before it really begins. I really do.
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Do you feel safe here?

This is maybe a dumb thought process, but anyway.

I see a growing concern about contact between LGBT people and minors.  (Wikipedia calls this the LGBT grooming conspiracy theory).

So let's say, LGBT people said, "fine, we'll stay away from kids."  All LGBT identity parents give up their kids.  All LGBT people whose job involve minors (teachers, daycare, etc.) quit.  Maybe even, any space where an LGBT person might work or live becomes designated "adults only" by law.  Obviously children themselves are prevented from having LGBT identities.

Is everyone happy, then?  Do adult LGBT people cease to be hated?  Do they get to be secure in their human rights going forward?

Or does it become: "Now we're concerned with impressionable young adults, adults with disabilities, and the elderly."  Or maybe it would be better for society if all LGBT people were in prison or [euphemism for dead].

Debate assertion: You can get more human rights if you don't interact with children.

This is an idea I've been developing.  I think it can keep people safe sometimes.

View-harm, I will define, is the psychological harm done to another when they view a body or a photograph of a body.  Some parts of the body are especially potent, therefore laws require covering those parts in public and standards forbid showing those parts on many websites.  But people may be offended by any part of any body (eyes, nose, teeth, hair), or offended by the fashion of bodily display (hair style, make-up).  I don't believe in objective beauty or ugliness, so there is no, I suppose, defense against view-harm there.  A good person must not use their power to hurt those around them.

I think, though, fursonas or pony-sonas help defend against view-harm.  Perhaps we can share other ideas for keeping those around us safe.

In a surprise move, the Biden administration's Department of Education seeks to forgive something like $6 billion dollars in student loan debt for individuals in a specific working situation.

Story: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/student-loan-forgiveness-disabled-borrowers-150036471.html

The U.S. student loan crisis is an interesting problem. While I've got more opinions on different issues than I can manage, really, I'm on the fence when it comes to this. Should the government keep going through situations piecemeal? Should all student debt just be ended? If so, what about the economic consequences... isn't there a kind of ethical dilemma when it comes to those who did pay things off?

I don't really follow politics super closely although I am addicted to Facebook, but I feel I ought to generate threads at some frequency and this is trending on Facebook now.

Context:

Jason Aldean produced a song called "Try that in a small town" that talks about how violent action such as armed robbery or rioting, unpatriotic behavior such as flag burning, and disrespectful behavior such as using profane language toward a cop will not be tolerated in a small town.

According to CBS news, Alderan "performs in front of the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee. This is the site of the 1946 Columbia race riot and the 1927 mob lynching of an 18-year-old Black teenager named Henry Choate."  I gather, however, these are not major historical events.

The song's lyrics, which you might find at any site that has the appropriate permissions from the publisher to copy them, does not mention race.

My question: is this song political, problematic, or even dog-whistle support for lynching, as some say?  Or are people too quick to judge, or perhaps inappropriately associating rural American solidarity and or small-town culture with racism?

Sometimes I wonder if the left, generally, could be more tolerant and kinder to the right.

I keep going back to LGBT+ issues, but they are a main issue right now in politics, I think.  Some Christians prefer to not be part of the LGBT+ agenda, and the left might say that's transphobic or homophobic, but perhaps we should just accept that excluding these kinds of gender or sexual expressions is what some need to practice their religion.

And in the same way some people have negative opinions about races and/or ethnicities, and rather than attacking, we should just let people have opinions.  Maybe we can respectfully disagree, but nobody should be called "racist" if they don't prefer.

I guess maybe much of the political anger is caused by left-leaning people getting upset and calling people names, and if things cool down maybe stuff will get better.

This is a peaceful thread for those without political opinions.

Perhaps for those who don't have opinions about the LGBT agenda and pedophiles or groomers.  Or climate change.  Or which drugs should be allowed.  Or about the Jewish ethnicity.  Or Christian freedom and family values.  For those who have nothing to say about the poor or systems of economy. For those with don't comment on feminism or whether someone's appearance is valid.  For ponies who are not woke, but also don't need to have wokeness banned.

When you don't have political opinions, you can think critically and evaluate with reason and rationality.  You can be respectful of all the various opinions that exist without offending others.  It is a very nice goal, I think.

Are Americans, who we might define as all living or having lived in the jurisdiction of the government called The United States of America, the most free people?  That is, does the range of freedom experienced and being experience by all humans meeting this definition exceed the range of freedom possible outside the jurisdiction of the United States of America?

Or would you say Americans are equally free or have at any time been equally free, to at least one other human living elsewhere?

Do you agree with today's Supreme Court ruling that it's illegal for federally-funded universities to racially discriminate in admissions?

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf

Why are Japanese cities so safe and low in crime?

Don't you ever wonder why you would't go out and try to get rich pulling blatant scams on a lot of people with no risk on repercussions?

Are people idiots for working in call centers off shores pretending to be Microsoft engineers?
Or are we all the idiots for not seeing the lucrative business model in parting money from some gullible elder somewhere?

Overall, what do you think of scammers who keep getting away with it?

One of my projects involves finding the location in space of something like a cell phone.  Google has been playing with various ideas that might get the precision down to 10 cm, although that's best-case and widespread adoption will likely be slow for a lot of reasons.

While I deal in the technology, do you think a 10 cm precision milestone would mean anything politically, as in the power to gain deeper insight into people's patterns of life might have effects beyond giving individual users more precise information about themselves?

Let's say you spent your whole life being an atheist, or maybe at least a good chunk of your life, and then some events happen that make it very difficult to sit with that atheist mindset and be comfortable there. Or, to put it another way, you have seen or experienced too many things that you tried, and failed, to simply explain away with anything rationale. And let's add another layer to this.

Let's say that even if you get to this point, and one day someone or a few people come along, that have the answers to those experiences and can perfectly replicate them or explain them and make them rational for you. But because you had your belief system shook, you now, even with the evidence, still wish to believe in something other than atheism.

Do you believe that you have a moral obligation to still uphold science and modern medicine, psychiatry, and basically the 'best that we got at the moment' tools to deal with our struggles and problems first? Or do you believe it's okay to go full force into this new belief and suggest to other people to say, just for an example, pray instead of making a doctors appointment. Or pray before going to a doctor.

Do we have some kind of moral obligation, in essence, if we want to believe in something that science can't explain, or can't yet explain?
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So that's the prompt. My own personal feeling that I'm willing to discuss if others want to, is that yes I do think we have a moral obligation to use science and the tools that we have either first, or equally as alongside, whatever spiritual beliefs we may have. I have formed this opinion based upon the countless years of history that have shown how much damage religion or spiritual beliefs CAN cause, when not handled carefully or used to fuel a fire. I also feel like there should be a similar checks and balance with science and modern medicine, but that could be a discussion for another thread. I would like to focus on this aspect for the thread first.