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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 6th, 2024

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  • Depends. Have you ever had a passport in your dead name? That is the critical question. If so, then they can see it in your records when you go for a passport renewal. And if so, you’ll receive a passport back under your birth sex.

    As far as the effects of having an incorrect passport gender marker? It can get you in a lot of trouble. I’m a trans gal myself. There’s no easy way for me to even prove that I am trans. I could strip naked in front of someone and it wouldn’t be obvious. Yet under these rules, when I update my passport, I’ll end up with an M marker. This will make it nearly impossible for to travel internationally.

    This can cause big issues when crossing a border. It can mean you’re pulled aside for extra scrutiny. It can get you outright turned away from countries hostile to lgbt people. It can make border agents suspect your entirely legitimate document is fake. Hell, the same conservatives who would give me such a document would argue I’m committing some act of fraud for dressing and looking a way that doesn’t match my documents.

    Just imagine what trouble you might encounter if any basic info on your ID was clearly wrong. Imagine your passport says your height is a foot different from your actual height. Can you not see how that would obviously cause you problems when trying to cross a border?





  • Why, in the name of all that is good and holy, should we require someone whose dream it is to be a carpenter, to take calculus to graduate high school? In what universe will that requirement be doing any good in their life? What will it serve other than a potential completely arbitrary barrier to simply graduating from high school? And a carpenter is actually far more mathematically inclined than most career paths people pursue.

    Yes, learning calculus can be a revelation in mathematical beauty. But the same is true for a thousand potential fields of study. In terms of practical use to most people, they would all be equally frivolous. A case could be made that a thousand fields of study are something that people simply must be exposed to. I’m more in favor of letting people choose their own path. We shouldn’t be piling on arbitrary barriers on to a diploma that is only meant to signify basic competence.









  • We should legalize period-accurate piracy on the high seas. You can legally loot and pillage your way across the ocean…as long as you’re willing to do so using entirely 18th century tools and equipment. I just want to see a bunch of maniacs in a tiny wooden sail boat try and capture a giant modern cargo container ship.


  • 2040: A group of Neo-Bolsheviks seize control of Russia, fully intending to literally make fully automated luxury gay space communism real. Imagine a publicly owned vast automated supply chain that produced goods at scale with little human effort. Go full tilt on automation of all kinds, but direct all profits to the general welfare. Maybe do away with money entirely. It would start with a genuine utopian dream.

    2060: Neo-Stalin rules over what was once Russia. Its human population, long since more trouble than they were worth, were largely done away with. The population of the country is approximately 2300. Yet the combined industrial output of the automated leviathan that sprawls over what was once the Moscow-St. Petersburg corridor now exceeds that of the PRC. And a frightening fraction of that is directed towards military purposes. Their population reduced to a handful of oligarchs still controls the first, second, or third most powerful military in the world, depending on form of measure.






  • Because in the US, you only exist in a democracy if you are in the top 10% of the income distribution. This has actually been proven empirically. The opinions and preferences of the bottom 90% of the population has zero influence on what legislation Congress eventually passes.

    This is why Democrat’s plan to run on defending democracy or simply not being Trump has failed so hard. Only 10% of the country has ever actually lived in a democracy. You cannot ask people to defend a democracy that they themselves are not members of.