Okay, no no no.

I’m going to illustrate something here, and I hope it makes sense. Please humor me:

Hypothetically, imagine a father, and he has a beautiful daughter. Now, as difficult as it is, just imagine that she’s kidnapped and brutally murdered, and he KNOWS who did it. The only ones in the whole world who knew it were the child’s father and the police. But for some reason, the (hypothetical) police didn’t do anything. The killer would remain free.

No matter what we think about such a situation, I think most people could sympathize with the father, and if the father decided to get revenge, people would at least understand it, maybe even find the father not guilty if he were ever put on trial. A father’s love for his child, and what had been done would justify his feelings. Understandable.

But in this hypothetical scenario, it wouldn’t mean that just anyone would be justified for wanting to kill the murderer, if they didn’t know the killer was a murderer. If someone just happened to kill the child’s murderer for no reason and had no idea that the child’s murderer had killed her, no one would say that this second killer had standing to justify killing that person.

To come back to the Christa Pike case, the death penalty can be debated, and there are honestly reasonable arguments on both sides of that case.

But failed executions are unacceptable. In any context. There should NEVER be a situation where the government takes an action to kill someone and fails to do it. The result of such a thing is INHERENTLY cruel and unusual punishment. It maims people, tortures them, et cetera. The fact that this could happen to someone who is a killer means it could happen to other people. And we know for a fact that innocent people have been put to death before, so a government that would have a failed execution and would still want to kill the person is a government that has announced that a failed execution is an option for that government. That it has the ability to commit that kind of cruel and unusual punishment against someone and then to do it again.

Government justifies its continued existence through the ethics of its actions. When someone has committed murder, it’s at least understandable that a given government would want to end the life of the murderer. Whether you or I or anyone else like the death penalty, it at least makes sense to want that.

The problem is that when that government fails to execute someone, the government itself is failing its first test. The test which justifies the government getting to continue to be government. At the point that a government is committing cruel and unusual punishment, for some reason, I lose interest in the question of whether a single convicted murderer deserves to die(and personally, I believe that answer is yes), but I become a whole lot more interested in why a government which has announced its intentions to have cruel and unusual punishment is now the one to ask questions about whether others should be punished in this way.

I have trouble focusing on whether a government should kill a given criminal when the government asking the question has the power to kill that person but itself lacks the ethical justification to be the one asking to do so.

I can think of a country that the world would be better off having a different president.

Or, and hear me out, the states that they move to could follow suit and completely negate the ridiculous argument to begin with.

If you believe that, I’ve got a nice giant golden bridge to sell you.

If there is any justice, some of the people doing this will sit before that court.

Gee, I can’t imagine why the ICC would target so many US citizens for war crimes…

I think it might make sense to call it “Augmentive Intelligence”, because it is not intelligence on its own. It has major issues when it comes to reasoning on its own, but for someone who actually is intelligent, it can add to that person’s ability to accomplish things. So it augments that person’s intelligence, instead of being an intelligence on its own.

I’m very concerned about this.

But I’m even more concerned that the jobs that AI kills are jobs that no one gets trained to do, and that no one will know how to do them when the computers stop working.

CBS is not a news organization.

They obviously do.

CBS is not a news agency.

It is inappropriate to word the headline like this when the author of the story knows damn well that that’s not what they’re doing.

it never falls below 35%

For ~1/3 of people there’s no bottom. There’s nothing he can do that won’t still have them supporting him.

Or either the polling system is flawed or the media are lying.

Or both.

If the world is lucky he might do one soon.

You did not even read what I said. You did not even read what I said. You did not even read what I said. You did not even read what I said. You did not even read what I said. You did not even read what I said.

FULL STOP.

I literally never advocated for the crap I was accused of.

Not ever. Not once. Never would.

I’m not going to edit my post, because it didn’t say what you thought it did.

Oh Jesus Christ. Neither of you have read anything I’ve written, have you?

It’s comical.

LITERALLY comical.

My ass has been to about 83 bajillion protests within the last two years, and I can’t even MENTION the things I’ve done to support transgender people. EVERY DAMN DAY I’d stand right next to someone whose kid was transgender, and we talked a lot about was going on with his child and the specific issues she was facing. It was and continues to be one of the things I’m concerned about. And I personally know A HELL of a lot of transgender people. I am very concerned for them.

NEVER in my entire time on this planet have I once advocated throwing transgender people under the bus, reducing any kind of protections or advocacy, or stopping trying to advocate for transgender people.

LITERALLY all I said was that right-wingers who are obsessed with transgender people are mentally ill.

How the hell am I being attacked by people who took it as me saying that non-right-wingers who advocate for transgender people are mentally ill?

IT BOGGLES THE MIND!

OH JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.

I NEVER SAID TO LEAVE TRANSGENDER PEOPLE BEHIND.

WHEN WILL YOU AND THE OTHER PERSON GET THAT THROUGH YOUR HEADS?

I SUPPORT FULLY PROTECTING TRANSGENDER RIGHTS!

I SUPPORT FULL RIGHTS TO TRANSITION INCLUDING CHILDREN HAVING ACCESS TO PUBERTY BLOCKERS!

I SUPPORT GOING TO THE MAT AND FIGHTING FOR TRANSGENDER RIGHTS!

READ WHAT I ACTUALLY WROTE, NOT WHAT YOU WANTED ME TO HAVE WRITTEN!

I AM NOT A LIBERAL AND I DO NOT SUPPORT PEOPLE LIKE HAKEEM JEFFRIES OR CHUCK SCHUMER!

I AM WAY THE HELL LEFT OF THEM!

LITERALLY EVERYTHING I SAID WAS THAT THE RIGHT-WINGERS OBSESSED WITH TRANSGENDER PEOPLE ARE MENTALLY ILL, NOT THAT TRANSGENDER PEOPLE OR THEIR FRIENDS ARE FAMILIES ARE MENTALLY ILL!

FOR GOD’S SAKE, READ WHAT I SAID! YOU THINK YOU’RE ARGUING AGAINST SOMEONE WHO WOULD THROW TRANSGENDER PEOPLE UNDER THE BUS AND I HAVE NO INTENTION OF DOING SO! I AM THE KIND OF PERSON WHO HAS BEEN OUT THERE GOING TO ACTUAL PROTESTS WEEK AFTER WEEK AND GETTING THE WORD OUT AND TRYING TO HELP! I AM FOR GIVING TRANS KIDS PUBERTY BLOCKERS AND LETTING THEM TRANSITION WHENEVER THEY ARE TELLING THEIR PARENTS THEY ARE TRANS. AND I AM FOR PROTECTING THE RIGHTS OF KIDS TO TRANSITION IN SCHOOL WITHOUT THEIR PARENTS’ NAMES, BECAUSE KIDS ARE HUMAN BEINGS AND ARE NOT THE PROPERTY OF THEIR PARENTS!

I DO NOT SUPPORT REMOVING TRANSGENDER PROTECTIONS FROM ANYONE’S PLATFORM!

I AM PROBABLY A LOT FARTHER LEFT THAN YOU!

READ WHAT I AM SAYING!

READ WHAT I AM SAYING!

READ WHAT I AM SAYING!

READ WHAT I AM SAYING!

READ WHAT I AM SAYING!

I do pay for the additional email features.

I came to strongly distrust Google, because Google scans your email and uses it to build a profile on you so they can know everything about you.

It gives them a lot of power, and they sell that information to others for marketing, but it’s particularly dangerous in the current environment.

Proton is worth the cost.

Okay, first off, no, I said something incredibly specific that was absolutely NOT what you accused me of saying. I’m going to quote it here:

If you see the homeless people in the streets, the unaffordable gas prices, and the moms who can’t feed their children, and you’re still thinking about transgender people, you’re either transgender or mentally ill.

In no way is this saying that people shouldn’t be thinking about transgender people. It’s just factually not saying that.

What it is saying is that if you see those other things and your brain still can’t help but focus on transgender people, then you’re either transgender yourself, or you’re mentally ill.

As someone who cares about others, when I see people starving, parents who can’t afford to feed their children, and people who can’t afford to pay for gas, I’m sorry, but transgender people are NOT at the center of my thoughts, and I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s justified for anyone to expect transgender people to be at the center of my thoughts when I see those things. The thing at the center of my thoughts is to make sure that everyone has their basic needs met.

But there are people who see all of that, and they STILL want to act like transgender women in sports is a big important issue that they need to be focusing all of their attention on.

Do you disagree that that perspective is mental illness?

And I’m going to ask you a serious question:

I’m assuming you’re transgender.

Do you assume that cisgender people who care about transgender people are focusing primarily on transgender people when they’re living their own lives and are unable to feed themselves, unable to pay for gas, unable to pay for healthcare, unable to meet their basic needs?

Because I’m going to tell you that no, they’re not.

You absolutely ARE a concern. We want you to be able to live. We want you to be okay.

But you are not the only ones in danger right now. There are A LOT of people in danger right now. We aren’t just focused on the small micro groups within the people who are in danger. We are thinking of THE WHOLE of the people who are in danger.

But you know who IS thinking of you? The people who keep making motions to create laws to hurt you, and the people who they’re brainwashing into supporting them.

And by the way, I am absolutely NOT a liberal.

You are wasting both of our time by trying to start a conflict with me. I am literally one of the people who would be the most likely to support you. I’m not transgender, but I absolutely AM autistic, and that group has A LOT more transgender people in it than the general population. And since I’m autistic, I am also one of the people who is in danger from the people in power right now.

Please stop attacking me and stop wasting both of our time. We both have much more pressing issues right now than attacking each other.

You drastically misrepresented who I am and then you doubled down on it, which is ironic, given the way that others have treated you. I am not someone who would treat you like that. I am sorry you’re suffering. I very sincerely hope for better for you in the future. But please have an understanding that you can be incorrect about who you’re interacting with. This interaction is the kind of interaction that the people who hate you will use to parody you and to make you look bad, and I very truthfully believe that you deserve better in your life than that.

LOL, as if you get to determine when is the end of this interaction. How pompous can you be?

You can choose not to respond, and that’s fine. But you can’t choose when to end the interaction.

I have a DIRECT history of providing VERY SIGNIFICANT material and financial support to transgender people, and working with them. You tried to portray this in a way that you were not justified in any way in doing.

I am an internet rando that you just decided to fly off the handle and attack because you had trouble reading and couldn’t admit it. You have literally NO FUCKING CLUE who I am, what I have done, who I’ve interacted with, my family members, my kids, nothing. You don’t know me from Adam. For all you know, I could be your neighbor, your sibling, your child, somebody you know and somebody you love. Stop with the self-righteousness.

What I said was in support of you. I was literally saying that people who are constantly thinking about transgender people in sports when people in the country are unable to support themselves are mentally ill.

You attacked someone who is and will continue to be an ally to transgender people. I am sorry for what you’ve gone through. And FYI, I have direct connections with people who are transgender, and I won’t fault you for that. But between the two of us, the one who made a mistake is you, not me.