Replacement in what?

How about Arwen? She’s charismatic, has no hate for anyone, and needs a place to live. I’m sure she’d be a great candidate.

My ‘favourite sport,’ by means of being the only thing called a ‘sport’ I don’t find utterly boring, is sepak takraw. It has elements of hacky-sack which I like, and while I wouldn’t do them myself, pros regularly do backflips as part of the game, so it’s actually not painfully dull to watch either.

My favourite ‘exercise’ is just walking. When it’s not overly hot out, it’s quite pleasant but quite good for you in comparison to the amount of effort it takes.

Layers of depth in a fluid is the best metaphor I have.

The ‘top’ ‘layer’ is the ‘loudest.’ It has the word-thoughts. If I want to solidify ideas and plans into an expressible form, it happens here. Almost everything that comes out of my mouth is formed into word-thoughts first, and then repeated aloud. If I want to ‘rubber duck’ a problem, I do it here. Sometimes ‘bubbles’ come from below and disrupt the structure of these thoughts.

The next ‘lower’ ‘layer’ is the image space. Things I am actively imagining are here. Images, 3D forms, music, conceptual mapping, etc.

The next ‘lower’ is the semi-conscious. Thoughts I haven’t established fully into expressible thoughts or images are here in half-graspable form. Sometimes it feels like something lower pushes elements up into this space as ‘important.’ Sometimes those things are pushed up strongly enough they press into the layer above.

I can sometimes sense things happening deeper down, parts that are processing inputs in ways my metacognition can’t perceive.

Across the whole space is a certain turbidity representing emotional disruptions and physical mental hindrances like lack of sleep, etc.

It takes a bit more effort to engage with people using language that will be more likely to reach them but if you want to get someone to understand, and are capable of it, speaking to them in their native tongue is more effective. When talking to someone who has never been given a basic understanding of communism, or who has been given an intentionally misleading false understanding, while you have, you can say things that do not translate because you are effectively speaking a different dialect of English from them. When you say ‘I’m a Stalinist-Marxist Communist,’ that translates as ‘I am a genocider-terrorist mother-fucker.’ They are less likely to understand you than a person from Kazakhstan because at least the Kazakh hasn’t been trained to hate you. Learning to say things in the local tongue is the only way to bypass the filter long enough to get them to learn the better definitions of all those words.

We’re in the tail. The cold warriors are dying, but not dead. Their legacy will remain for a while longer.

Or because they recognize that optics affect the reception of the message and with America pumping out decades of anti-communist propaganda during and after the cold war, using Marx’s language will get you ignored at best by a lot of people.

Do they still make the ones you warm up in water and push in to custom fit your ears? I knew someone who had one like that and it was apparently quite comfortable.

Hey, Boss. I need to call in dead. … No, but I will be in the next 24 hours. … Yeah, you should probably leave the office too. … Yeah, have a good weekend. Bye.

Bees or ants. I wish to taste the hive mind.

Perhaps because the other dress code constraints are for more universally accepted reasons while the question of things like the hijab/niqab are tied to an inherent contradiction within one of the standard political camps, disrupting the placement of the (un)acceptability line. Wearing a uniform is a sign of responsibility. (If you wear the fuel station attendednts’ uniform, you are responsible for the fuel station, etc.) Wearing a minimum quality of clothing is related to the service provided. (Showing up to a black tie restaurant in board shorts and flip flops ‘lowers the tone’ of the restaurant, which is often more the product being sold than the actual food. In that kind of restaurant, you are paying more for the exclusivity of the space than the chef’s produce.) However, Muslim women’s headjoys are more fraught because they simultaneously occupy two symbolic spaces, one as a symbol of Islam itself, which is coded as evil by one broad sector of politics and, because of that, something to be protected by the opposition, but the other as a symbol of Muslim patriarchy, which has the exact opposite coding by the standard broad political binary. Resolving the hypocrisy would require abandoning one set of symbols or the other and taking a position currently held by the opposition. Most people aren’t willing to do that.

I do not want to meet James. I enjoy his portrait though.

No.

The technologies were/are not grifts. They were used as buzzwords to enable the grift of spending investor money.

Assisted suicides do not consent to die. They request to die. They initiate the process themselves rather than allow the desire of others to dictate events. There is a subtle but important distinction.

Assisted suicide is suicide, performed by the dying individual. Assisting in a suicide is enabling a killing, but is not murder if done correctly. The one performing suicide is the active party, not simply granting consent to the actions of another.

To bring things back to the original point, rape and murder are covered by different ethical principles. Consent has no bearing on murder. Consent is definitive for rape.

The moral standing of a killing is completely unrelated to consent for most people. Most would say murder doesn’t become moral because the victim was suicidal. The killing itself is the basis for the moral stance, not the desires of the victim. The act is valued. Consent is neutral.

Sexual interaction is different. It does not necessitate a state change. It can be done to positive effect if done with consent. But animals, much like children, are viewed as insufficiently capable of granting consent. The consent is the basis for the moral stance, not the act itself. Consent is valued. The act is neutral.

Sexual morality is rooted in consent. Mortal morality is not.

You know the only visible difference between someone who truly enjoys their solitude and someone who is lonely but making the best of it? You see the lonely one.

The contemplative is too busy with their efforts to talk to others most of the time, and when they do talk to others it’s about the work, not the solitude. The solitude is unremarkable, a side effect of the work.