Violence is never* the answer.

*except in cases where violence is used/threatened against you

Right. Privacy isn’t a concern in those spaces. Surveillance is typical.

What makes you different?

My man, I just don’t want pedophiles needlessly occupying my attention. Shit doesn’t even affect me. I have no kids. I know no kids. I’m just a grumpy old man shouting at clouds if I decide to be angry all fuckin day. You go be the change you wanna see in the world.

Plenty of people are angry. Anger is not the thing we’re lacking. I don’t want to think about pedophiles while I work. They’re gonna keep existing whether or not I get mad at em while I try to read a document.

This shorthand ruined my job for me. Can’t open a .pdf without thinking about terrible things happening to children. I don’t understand how everyone is just okay obsessing over this shit when all it gets you is angry.

Magic tricks

Well, now that I’ve got the long and short of it, what you’re saying makes sense. Thanks for expanding. I didn’t have that context.

I don’t have any disagreements. I think a decision like whether or not to have children is ultimately up to the individuals making the children. I do think there are many oft overlooked factors that can make having kids unethical, but I’m drawing my line well before suggesting having kids is always evil. That thought heavily implies that humanity itself is unethical and should be ended, and I say it’s not our place to decide that (though we could obviously stand to be so much better than we are now).

I appreciate the food for thought. Cheers.

Are you seriously suggesting that people who don’t want to bring kids into a world where they don’t see a path towards ensuring their well-being…should kill themselves if they’re serious about it?

Thanks for speaking up for the people like us!

Exactly what things looked like pre-big bang, if you could believe it.

My legacy is a bunch of data on a server 🤷🏾‍♂️. My value lies in how good I am at putting it there. A job’s a job. If they like it and aren’t hurting anyone, I’m not judging.

I actually don’t think violence should coincide with justice. It just does because violence is enforcement, and we don’t have a better way laid out for peaceful coexistence (at least, not in the US at present). Violence exists, and one of the most reliable methods of regulating violence has unfortunately been to meet it where it is, with greater violence. Beyond that, we have a tendency to go to great lengths to justify violence against one another, so much so that it’s an art in and of itself. I’m well aware how idealistic I’m being in wanting peace as a baseline, but nothing worth doing is without challenge.

Private property is a can of worms I can’t touch right now. But I have ancestors that were considered private property, and existence itself is being claimed by the highest bidders with little that can be done to resist it. You won’t find me arguing that private property isn’t at the very least directly supported by violence. I’m not quite sure why I’d have to preach about it to substantiate my desire for peace though? I’m engaged in a system I didn’t choose, and I find my rebellions where I can. It’s hard to exist in these times without a bit of personal dissonance.

Back your words up.

My situation right here. Condoms suck, vasectomy is too much, and birth control isn’t on the table. Please give me a pill already.

I don’t think we have yet. Not for this guy, at least. He called a kid hot, in front of colleagues who were amused by it, and the proof is undeniable. I’m sure enough local pressure could get him (and maybe his colleagues) fired, and a black mark on his character would be even better. People should let him know what they think of him everywhere he goes.

That said, the president and his ilk…tbh that’s where I struggle to find the peaceful option. Can’t find a better representation of institutional failure. Violence won’t necessarily make things better, but I can’t shake the feeling we’ve been backed into a corner.

Violence is a circle. You do it to someone, they do it to you. The only way to stop that cycle is to kill your target. Now murder’s on the table for anyone who thinks a type of person is unacceptable, which is only sensible until it really, really isn’t. Operating under the assumption that violence is a reliable deterrent will ultimately get you killed, man. Unless you plan on being the only guy with the nuclear option at your disposal. Good luck with that one.

Peace should be the standard, even when it’s hard. Don’t get me wrong, there are people I won’t shed a tear for when they get hurt. But I would consider the best case scenario to be “a problematic person course corrected before they hurt anyone” and the next best to be “a problematic person learned from their mistakes”. That’s what accountability looks like imo, and we don’t always meet that mark. That’s a shame, but not big enough that violence is the only answer we have. We can and should be better than that.

Damn, that sounds trippy. Like you felt threatened on an instinctual level. I had a similar experience star gazing, but not in a threatening way. I saw a star moving around and dancing in the sky for me. Unreal stuff, I couldn’t not see it, even if I looked away, closed my eyes, squinted, anything. It was clear as day a dancing star, twirling and bouncing. My buddy had a telescope, so I used it to take a closer look and figured out what was going on. Turns out I was looking at a cluster of stars twinkling in a sequence that gave the impression of something akin to animation. I was also on shrooms, so I was primed for an emerging pattern. Made for an awesome experience.

Wasn’t on a whim. And you totally can. Whether or not it’s a good idea or without consequence is a different story. However, it’s not a stretch to suggest that most people who deal with road infrastructure have dealt with unsafe conditions that could be avoided with restructure. If conditions were unsafe, nothing was being done about it, and the community did something about it to make it safer, power to the people. No one is suggesting a precedent should be set by this, but I would suggest that if we don’t want a repeating pattern, there ought to be a better, more expedient process in place than breaking the law to make this action unnecessary.

It really is. Slippery slope fallacy. Letting one neighborhood collectively decide to make an intersection by a park safer for children to cross is not the same as letting all people make their own decisions regarding signs and intersections. We are capable of handling individual situations as context-sensitive instead of assuming universal application is the only option.