Which “liberals” are you talking about? My circle of leftists complained about the CIA just as much during the Obama administration.

I understand that some people have trouble apologizing to children, but could someone help me understand why? I’ve been a parent for almost a decade now, and I can’t count the number of important teaching and bonding moments that have started with me making a parenting mistake and apologizing for it. I rely on it pretty heavily to teach my kid about emotional regulation. It’s such an important opportunity to just throw away. Is it an ego thing? Do people struggle to see children as people? I promise those are good-faith questions. I know some people struggle more with that sort of thing, and that’s fine. We all have our strengths.

A huge number of people come from families or even entire cultures where Father Is Never Wrong.

I’ve never seen Mother having an easier time. People don’t like admitting when they’re wrong.

How much is that needed? There was very little text on those buttons to begin with. Are there significant cultural differences in the iconography associated with them?

Why not address the actual problem: ability to drive responsibly? Otherwise you’re just creating another privilege for the wealthy. Licensure is already an established practice.

Edit: I do want to clarify that I’m not entirely opposed to taxing them if needed. There should be fewer of those vehicles on the road. I’d just rather explore ways that don’t further exacerbate wealth inequality.

With Roku built in as well as whatever ad pipeline(s) the TV manufacturer wants. These days my AppleTV is allowed to talk to the internet. My television is not.

I have a Samsung TV that I intentionally didn’t connect to the Internet for that reason. I occasionally get an annoying pop-up randomly, encouraging me to connect it to Wi-Fi.

I submitted a request for exactly that to my city clerk a few days ago. They confirmed receipt from the clerk and the local PD, but still waiting for anything substantial.

I’m not sure how to say this, so please know that I’m not trying to downplay the experiences you’ve had or the strength of the people involved:

I don’t think it’s fair to characterize parents of special needs kids that way. I guarantee they are not happy as they meet every challenge, and I worry that claiming that they are could discourage people from looking for ways to help. I know you’re sharing a story about personal friends, and I absolutely believe that they are wonderful people. At the same time I’m reminded of when people referred to retail employees as “heroes” during Covid. Many people seemed to hide behind that sentiment so they could stomach forcing those employees to work in unsafe conditions. Most of those employees would absolutely not have been there if they could afford not to.

I’m not trying to judge you. It’s important to acknowledge and respect the strength that people bring to tough situations. I also think it’s important to spend the bulk of our effort on helping and preventing tough situations where we can. We just be very careful about implying that those people have some innate, uncommon strength. In reality many of them are in a tough spot and barely getting by, but putting on a brave face. Treating them as fundamentally better people can make them feel like failures when they eventually need help or are at their limit.

I’m realizing now that I’m probably projecting some personal baggage here, but I hope my intended message is in that rant somewhere.

Are you close ( I mean really close. Often share meals close ) to any families that have special needs kids?

Just curious.

It’s sad that pragmatically adjusting quotas is never the loudest argument in the room. I’m in favor of greatly increasing legal immigration, providing paths for safe work and citizenship (when that’s the goal). I’ll admit that my idea of an ideal system is probably not palatable for many. But if we could start from anywhere near a sane baseline, I’d understand wanting to gradually find sustainable quotas that take all factors into account. I’m done with purity tests and letting perfect be the enemy of good.

I suppose by “all factors” I mean all factors aside from exploitation and xenophobia, but I hope we could at least move the Overton window back that far.

Okay. Let's choose a small random country as a basis for your immigration ideas. Ie., Rwanda (pop 14.8m) or Israel (pop 10.24m). What is the quantity of immigration flow that you want, who and from where and on what basis of admission over what time period. What are your intended demographic, social, and political shifts that you say are going to be "not palatable" for the people living there now? In fact, please expand on exactly how "not palatable" you expect your plans to be for them.

This strikes me as an unreasonable demand on the author of the comment. Part of the point of the current system was (at least at some point) to have knowledgeable people, armed with the available facts, figures and theories make some attempt at balancing the safety of the incoming people against (at the very least) their economic impact on the country. From there some rudimentary guard rails (quotas, visa type, etc.) would be set. I suspect few of us in this forum feel comfortable making these decisions from behind a phone, tablet or laptop.

My understanding is that many of us, perhaps including the author of the comment to which you are responding, would like to see at lease some small, inching movement towards such a system.

On the contrary, asking for well-thought out political thought is the most reasonable demand in the world. If you have an idea about health care, national defense, or trade policy, I expect thought and numbers, not vague platitudes.

For example, you want small inching movement. From what starting point? Inching movement from the near-zero flows of the mid-20th century? Inching movement from the mass flows of the 21st century? Both ideas would have major consequences, and if you are going to advocate for mass social change, you should think it out and advocate with care and thoughtfulness.

I’d take rapid movement, honestly, I simply think it unlikely. In terms of what kind of change, I was speaking of movement toward a rational system with clear goals, with decisions made by knowledgeable people. With that in mind any movement, I think, should be estimated from the present. We can’t change the past!

Agreed, care and thoughtfulness should be the rule, not the exception. Presently we are getting neither. I’m a software developer, I don’t work in policy; but I believe our immigration position should be aligned with policy goals and I’m not sure we have any of those, either.

In any case, re-categorizing so many legal immigrants in order to imprison them strikes me as pointless and fundamentally wrong.

> For example, you want small inching movement. From what starting point?

The obvious assumption is that they mean from where we are right now. We're not going to suddenly be at the mid-20th century again. This comes off as argumentative more than curious (as do your other comments in this thread, for what it's worth).

Advocating for small inching change to a rate is different from advocating from small inching change. Easy example: if you are in a car with an accelerator pedal depressed.

> Advocating for small inching change to a rate is different from advocating from small inching change.

No, it isn't. It is a change; whether it's acceleration or velocity is an implementation detail. Whether it should be changed suddenly or gradually is the spec.

Why do we need to quantify an exact quota to qualify as well thought out political thought? Some people think about this issue from the basis of fundamental freedoms. Innocent, productive people deserve the opportunity to move where they obtain the most prosperity.

If I advocated abolition in the 19th century, it would be missing the point to turn around and say "oh yeah? And how many slaves would you like to free per year, and what effects do you expect that to have? Include examples of past slave rebellions"

It’s a cool concept, but I can’t imagine what would make me want to frequent a message board that was explicitly designed to give wealthy users more of a voice. The wealthy have enough ability to project their influence as it is. The idea is considerably too capitalistic for my taste.

I totally get that! If it helps, my logic behind it is a mix of the following: - The 'big' social media platforms already do this (give wealthy users more of a voice). It's just done in a less transparent and more manipulative way. Between ads and targeted algorithms, you get force fed content by large corporations and have your privacy invaded. - Added based on user feedback, the 'message value decay' helps avoid both the situation you mentioned and more. Regardless of whether it's a politic message or an ad from a large corporation, if people hate seeing it, its value will drop quite drastically based on their reactions. Even an expensive message will be affordable to replace if it's disliked. There's no doubt it's quite capitalistic (on the message submitter's side), but my goal was more focused on making that mechanic fair, straightforward, and respectful of users' privacy when compared to how it's usually done. Of course, I'm extremely open to ideas/feedback on how it can be improved!

I believe whoever solves the emotional dysregulation that leads to some persecution complexes will genuinely deserve a Nobel Peace Prize. While I doubt this will solve the problem completely, I do see potential for it to prevent discourse from spiraling quite as badly as it tends to.

I predict that a feature like this would probably chase off some undesirable community members, while genuinely helping some people improve their ability to engage in good-faith discussion and debate. And if it eases the burden on moderators and the community at large who currently police these things, it seems like a clear win. I’m sure it could be mis-calibrated to tone policing, but I’m not one to let perfect be the enemy of good.

Thanks for this. This is exactly our viewpoint and what we are trying to do.