Some people in cars get yeeted into non-existence, at least the alternate dimensions have cool moustaches.

If we all wiggle in the same direction we can probably put another coin into the money pile on the other tracks.

If everyone goes home happy, then it's a success. Leave the fierce competition for tournaments.

Expecting online gamers to have grave, a bold move Cotton

I know, It's getting so that you just can't trust unsourced images of alleged tweets talking about political topics on social media anymore.

smh my head

Ash Ketchum certainly has a different flavor in this version of the world.

I grew up in the age of Internet forums, in the ancient days of the late '90s-early-00's before the (Eternal September) Smartphone dumped every human being onto the landscape.

Having small communities is so much better. I often hear people complain that Lemmy isn't big because there are not communities with 3 million people like there are some subreddits. Much of the reason that Reddit is shit is because of how big it is.

On the old Internet, you could know the people who were part of the community. I have old friends, that I've known for 20+ years, that I met playing MUDs on BBSs. Now, I couldn't tell you the name of a single person that I've ever interacted with on social media in the past year.

Digg and Reddit came on the scene and pulled a huge crowd because we didn't have The Algorithm to recommend content and these link aggregation sites were the first time people got a taste of that kind of 'See all of the newest things from every corner of the Internet in a single place, curated by a process that produces good quality results' that we now just expect from recommendation algorithms.

The old communities were essentially starved of population. Nobody wants to take the social effort required to become part of a community when they can just scroll Reddit mindlessly.

There's very few people that even had a chance to experience the magic of spontaneous communities full of people working together.

If you still want a taste, check out the Something Awful forums.

The barrier to entry is higher: you have to learn the rules (read the rules), the social norms and there is a $10 one-time fee (so getting banned has some sting to it, read the rules).

In exchange you get an actual community of people. Many of the people posting there (or, in the various Discords now because that's a thing) have been on SA since they were edgy teenagers and are now professionals with careers. That isn't to say that there are not trolls and assholes, those exist in any community, but there's a much higher ratio of good to bad posters.

One of the interesting decisions that they do is that rulebreaking posts are rarely ever deleted. If a person is probated (temp ban) or banned, their comment stays up with a "(User was Probated/Banned for this post)" edited into the post so you can see, and hopefully learn, from the bad behavior. In addition, there's a 'Wall of Shame' section where you can see everyone who's been actioned against, who the moderator was and the moderation reason.

I've always hated the fact that comments on Reddit just disappear. You can never see what a mod removed and there is no reason why it is removed. This allows all kinds of bad and manipulative behaviors to be done by people with moderation access.

Yeah, it turns out that a system that rewards people for simply having possession of something leads to behaviors that are harmful for society.

The problem isn't landlords, that's just the group that most people interact with directly. The problem is that our rules (primarily taxes) are setup to reward that behavior and to add burden to people who actually do work for their income.

If you're a billionaire you can get your effective tax rate to single digits or zero. If you work for a living you pay way more taxes proportional to your income.

I got into computers when I destroyed a Windows 3.11 install on a PC we'd been given.

Nobody wanted to use it without graphics. So I started playing with it and typing words into the MS DOS prompt and reading the output.

I found qbasic and the gorilla and snake games. Then a text editor and so I learned how to make batch files. Learned how to edit basic by trial and error so I could make the gorilla's bananas blow up the whole screen

Found some DOS games, like scorched earth and a copy of wing commander which led to me learning to hate DRM and also how to operate an unguarded photocopier at my school.

Fast forward 30 years and I've picked up a few more tricks

With Proton it should perform just as well, or better than on Windows.

There are some pieces missing (NTSYNC, Wayland HDR protocols, etc) but there has been significant progress is Wine/Proton.

It's far more likely that there is a configuration issue or old software version than it simply being a "Oh, of course it works worse because that's Windows software" situation.

Ate the Onion, did we?

Unless there is significant evidence that having undergone male puberty prior to transition (this already doesn’t describe all trans women athletes) gives a significant advantage, fairness dictates that trans women should be included in women’s sports.

There is significant evidence that people who have undergone male puberty have an advantage. You can see this in the list of Olympic world records.

The question that has to be answered, and encoded into the rules of competitive sports, is: what causes this advantage to erased by transitioning, how can we verify that this is happening to an individual and what rules should exist to cover these cases in order to ensure fairness.

I don't get why this is controversial.

For example:

If HRT is responsible for lowering testosterone which removes the advantage, then how long does it take to become effective? Should a woman who started taking HRT yesterday be able to compete in women's sports, or should they have to wait for some period of time?

If someone stops taking HRT, does the advantage return? If so, how soon and to what extent? How can we verify that an individual isn't stopping HRT or abusing their medication to obtain an advantage?

All competitions have rules to ensure fairness and that includes things like understanding how medical treatments or genetics affect performance and rules. There are many medications and treatments that athletes simply cannot use while competing for the sake of competitive fairness, this should apply to all athletes and all medication or treatments.

Do you have any studies showing exactly when they lose their advantage?

Because, as I linked before, cis men outperform cis women. I'm assuming that you agree with this point.

If a person transitions to a woman then they, at one point, had the inherent advantage and now they do not. When exactly does the advantage disappear? Is it instantaneous? Does it take a week or a year? What blood tests and data points can be used to determine when this process is complete?

These are the questions that matter.

Obviously the people arguing that trans people should never compete are ignorant, I'm not supporting that position. From the point of view of fairness in competition there has to be an objective answer that's backed by objective tests.

Simply declaring that trans people are beyond reproach and that any attempts to quantify biological advantage are unfairly discriminatory and anyone asking these questions is a bigot isn't helpful.

I grew up in a conservative christian family and I am the only leftist atheist.

I very much understand the consequences and dangers of speaking up against dogmatic communities and the difficulty in explaining 'No, I'm still a good person, I just don't believe that specific thing' to people who see you as, literally, an agent of Satan. I've been physically assaulted, ridiculed, bullied, and excluded by people who let dogma lead their thinking.

Doing it online is a lot less intimidating some senses. However, there are a lot of young people who get trapped in these dogmatic communities and feel like there is something wrong with them because they have doubts.

To them I say: There's nothing wrong with you, it is okay to ask questions, to disagree and to expect people to justify their beliefs. The people who are trying to bully you instead of convince you are the ones in the wrong, even if they are otherwise good people or you otherwise agree with them on other topics.

If he only had a hawk-sized watch, we wouldn't have this problem

This isn't just an issue of the left (or of the right). It's a human weakness and we all suffer from it. It is very difficult to examine your beliefs individually and most people use this as a mental shortcut.

It becomes harmful when it scales up to an entire group or community where you have people (with power, like moderators) who enforce dogma through excommunication (banning) or social shaming (downvotes, dogpiling, cyberbullying, etc). This creates large groups of people who believe most of the things, but are also afraid to speak out on the other topics for fear of reprisal and social stigma.

That isn't healthy and it is up to every individual to speak out against dogma when they encounter it, especially when it is very unpopular to do so.

Currently, there is no direct or consistent research suggesting transgender female individuals (or male individuals) have an athletic advantage at any stage of their transition (e.g. cross-sex hormones, gender-confirming surgery) and, therefore, competitive sport policies that place restrictions on transgender people need to be considered and potentially revised.

This is side-stepping my point completely.

I said:

It isn’t an unfair statement to say that the physical performance of cisgender men is higher than that of cisgender women. This is why we have separate competitions for men and women.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_records_in_athletics

It is a fact that there are gender differences in the outcomes in competitions.

To what extent that these change when a person transitions is unknown and should be studied. It is simply dogma to believe that the moment a person has a prescription for HRT they no longer have an advantage.

Even among cisgender athletes there are genetic conditions and medications that disqualify them from competition. It is simply dogma to believe that the medication and treatments that transgender people receive have no effect on performance (and also, somehow, have the immediate effect of removing the advantage that cis men have over cis women).

It’s very simple. Are trans women really women, full stop, or not? If you think “Yes,” then there’s no debate: trans and intersex women, as women, belong in women’s sport. If you think “No,” then there’s absolutely nothing I can say that will change your mind.

Yes, this a wonderful example of dogmatic reasoning "If you believe this, then you have to believe this or else you're a heretic unreasonable and akin to a flat-earther. It isn't reasoning based on objective facts, nor does their conclusion logically follow.

As an example, I believe that cis men are men and also that cis men who use PEDs should not compete. It would be just as silly for someone arguing on the side of PED use to say that 'You either believe that men should be able to compete in sports, or you don't and there is no reasoning with you'. It's nonsense, it isn't reasoning it's intellectual bullying.

I absolutely support trans rights, that doesn't mean that I will allow another person to simply dictate my opinions. If a person unable to have a conversation and simply tries to dictate the things that I must believe then that person is wrong regardless of what other beliefs that they have which I agree.

You're confused. I said "this thread" and not "The OP".

If you read the comments, do you see a frank discussion of people attempting to locate a gender neutral term for a tech enthusiast or a bunch of people just riffing insulting terms?

Regardless, to address you specifically. You're trying to "win" an argument using rhetoric in place of reason. You're not winning the argument, you're just throwing a punch and declaring victory.

You win arguments by having better arguments, not by coming up with the best clever clapback so that you get more upvotes

No true scottsman fallacy aside.

There are sects of Christianity that believe that the conflict in Israel will help bring about the Rapture.

They support the conflict because they think it'll get them to heaven faster (the people in Israel and Palestine are simply unknowing pawns who will be destroyed in the resulting apocalypse anyway).

Trying to appeal to Trump's Christianity or the Christianity of his supporters is largely useless. Religious people have deeply indoctrinated defenses against external ideas that challenge their worldview, you're not breaching those defenses with a mean tweet.

This thread is basically "Please help me brainstorm pejoratives", a very toxic mindset to have.

We were all, at some point, just some really spicy clay.