You should be mad at both, really, but when it comes to allocating effort, the present threat is the more important one. Whether or to what extent the Dems would do the same doesn’t matter anywhere as much as the things actually happening.

If by some stroke of fortune an actual progressive party should gather enough support to be more than a spoiler, then they’ll be justified to attack the Dems: “We’re what you should have been.” But outside of that, the focus should rightly be what is happening, not what should have or might have happened.

I mean, depending on the predator it can probably divide you lengthwise. Does that count?

I don’t know where I got it from, but I like the quote “See that tree? Go apologise for wasting the oxygen it produces.”

“China runs it? I want nothing to do with it!”

Stupid, to be sure, but he’s not running on rational, but emotional reasoning.

You can block them, btw.

I just love how this whole affair and people* using autism as an apology just makes it seem like autists are all braindead, naive and entirely unaware that the way we behave and ourselves communicates something about us. We might not always know just what it communicates or how we ought to behave to communicate, but I’m pretty sure it I did my best impression of some figure I adore, I’d do it in the full knowledge that it communicates “I like this figure and I wish to be like them”.

*not you, I understand your comment to be a parody, but the pattern it parodies obviously exists

One day, I missed a train. The next one had to stop one short of my home station due to “personell damages” or something similar, which I didn’t really grasp, but I was annoyed that I had to take a detour to get home.

I later found out that a guy at my home station jumped in front of the train I was supposed to get.

Not as far as I can tell. It’s really just an indicator “some people thought your comment was dogshit”. Whether you take it seriously is up to you.

Ethanol with grape flavouring

Honestly, that sounds dope

That doesn’t mean I believe in Android or Samsung

You do, in the sense that you believe they know what they’re doing.

Humanity doesn’t understand why the expansion of the universe is accelerating, but that doesn’t make the reason for the acceleration a matter of faith. It’s simply a gap in knowledge.

But you do believe that it expands and that there is a rational, scientific explanation for that. You believe in a reasonable, explainable universe.

So do I, don’t get me wrong, but I’m trying to point out that there is a premise underpinning our theory of knowledge that is ultimately unknowable: That we can know at all, and that the methods of rationality lead us to that knowledge.

First, no, not all science is empirical. You can’t empirically test historical hypotheses, and some psychological ot sociological theses would be very much immoral to test.

Second, whether we accept some results (or any other information) as “knowledge” is an epistemological issue: What do we classify as knowledge? When can we be sure that it’s not just an assumption sustained by bias? What burden of proof applies where? Can some assumption be useful even if it doesn’t rise to the level of knowledge (yet)?

Third, the post says “I believe science”, meaning: I trust their results. That is a subjective thing and beyond any empirical or epistemological scope. No matter how sure you may be that a given thesis is knowledge rather than just speculation, whether someone else shares that conviction is a separate question not fully dependent on yours.

You can call that ignorance, but that doesn’t make a difference either way: If I don’t believe you in the first place, calling me ignorant doesn’t have any more weight either.

Hence: “I believe that science confers knowledge” is a valid assertion and fundamental premise for working with scientific results in the first place. Whether or not you’d phrase it that way, “Science is not a matter of belief” is a matter of belief too.

That said, I believe in the importance of tempering assumptions with evidence, empirical or otherwise, in order to constantly test and refine our understanding of the patterns and principles that govern the physical world and our social behaviour within it. I believe that we may not have all the answers, that some things may be fundamentally unanswerable, and that raising assumptions to the level of fundamental truths (like beliefs about the afterlife) is intellectually dishonest. I believe that it is better to say “We don’t know” when that is true, and that we should acknowledge this limit to our knowledge (which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to push it).

In short: I believe in science.