Without terrestrial light pollution a person is struck by wonder simply by looking up at the night sky and experiencing it in its natural form. If that doesn't qualify as "important" to you then I'm not sure what could.

Somehow I don't think moving to inhabit some hellhole, after reducing our given paradise to an even worse hellhole, will count as much of a victory.

I ride my bike tyres until they fail - not what the manufacturers recommend but they have a vested interest. The front lasts a lot longer than the rear: less weight, no traction load, and it never skids.

I like to swap the front and rear tires of my bike when the rear starts getting worn for that reason. Prolongs their use.

It's interesting that you can go through all that, yet still be too much of a coward to face the simple truth.

If you're really curious, why not read The Communist Manifesto and find out?

Whenever trying to visualize the build blocks of matter as either particles, waves or both I like to think of it like this... They're waves. Waves that at moments act like particles. But the thing of it is, the world as we experience it is made up of those moments.

It's sort of like Plato's Allegory of a cave where he imagines people chained to the wall of a cave, and the only experience they have of the outside world are shadows they see cast on a blank wall they are facing. Since that's all they see, they come to believe the shadows are all there is to reality, while really it's only a limited view - much like our own senses provide.

Now, with experimentation and reason we've come to understand that there is a whole other world behind particles of our experience, and they're just the shadows cast on our wall.

By the way we learned this week that the antinuclear movement has an annual budget of at least 2.3 billion in just the United States. Who benefits from that? Well the fossil fuel industry of course.

Hmmmmm... I looked up the 2.3 billion antinuclear movement budget you were mentioned, and it looks like you're talking about this.

The article lists the specific groups it includes for the $2.3 billion estimate, which is great. Still, the whole premise sounds a bit misleading. In the beginning he's saying, "There may be as many as 1,000 groups in the United States with an agenda that includes opposition to the nation's largest source of carbon-free energy." The "that includes" part deserves attention, as the companies are opposing nuclear power to various degrees. (Again, you can see details in the links).

You can be confident though, that the revenue of these companies are spent on much more than just opposing nuclear energy. Citing their full profits and giving the impression that $2.3 billion dollars is being spent annually to oppose nuclear energy is a bit disingenuous.

Stupid gym bros know more about microbiology and nutrition than my college biochemistry professors did. I've met gym meatheads and martial arts buffs, with blue collar jobs (vs the health/biotech field) who know more about mitochondria than professors did in the late 90s when I was taking biochemistry classes in college. They seem to know a lot more about the nuances of metabolism than my actual PCP doctor does.

This doesn't argue against your overall point at all, but I wonder if your example gym bros (or any other brand of amateur self-researchers) do know more than your PCP. Sure there are a lot of facts available to people, but I constantly see other quoting a multitude of facts without any context, focusing on unimportant details, and using bad reasoning to come to faulty conclusions. Best I can tell, we're in a point in history where people are familiar with far more facts than in the past but their understanding is no better, if not worse.

- Video screens that blast you with CHEDDAR NEWS! or other advertising crap.

That would be the big one for me. It's like they're saying, "Goodness me! It seems like you might have had a spare moment of quiet reflection like a bad consumer. Let's fill your head with mindless crap instead."

Granted this is just an anecdote as well, but I remember when the digital dashboard on my dad's Jeep Cherokee went complete blank during a road trip. Good luck knowing non-trivial things like what speed you're going until you can get it back to the dealer.

Just one of those things that makes you think, "Gosh but this is an inconvenience that has no reason to exist."

You mean other than the trans (and the diversion/inclusion community) themselves, right?

No, not really. The more extremes of the diversion/inclusion community ideology makes me roll my eyes (the danger here being eye-strain), but the anti-trans reactionaries sound downright unhinged in comparison.

And let's not pretend that this was an incendiary topic manufactured by the right.

This has absolutely turned into the rage-inducting distraction of the time for the right. The whole "grooming" terminology is pretty transparent.

It's a human/biological response to a movement that viscerally, deeply disgusts them (because it cuts at the core of who people are).

Wow, the fact that someone else doesn't feel comfortable with the sex they were born with disgusts them? They might try to learn to deal with that. I mean asparagus disgusts me, and yet I find a way to get along with people who enjoy eating it. (Well, for the most part).

Honestly, the more I listen to the actual opinions of the right on transsexuals the more unhinged they sound.

Extremists never give up. Keeping them from taking over is part of the basic maintenance for a capitalist democracy.

And that the most frustrating thing really. Horrible people have boundless energy to make things horrible. But for a reasonable person, it's exhausting to expend a lot of energy just to keep things sane.

Whether or not the motivation is really of no matter, someone going out of their way to lie about their motivations (to themselves or others) is.

Because it tastes good.

Sure. But the point is, how do you still appreciate the good taste if sweet is all you're going to drink?

Sure, drinking that much diet soda versus actual soda takes care of a lot of actual calories. But the real question is, why in the actual fuck do so many demand food be so sweet to enjoy it?

Honestly, to me drinking one super-sweet soda drink (diet or otherwise) per day is extreme. Soda should be a rare treat (and by that I mean a once a month thing - maybe) not a go-to for hydration. If a person demands that much sweet stuff regularly then it doesn't matter if they're using sugar substitutes for their soft drinks. The rest of their diet will tend to be absolute shit.

Best bet is to learn to appreciate the taste of regular food without needing the constant extremes of sweetness, saltiness, or whatever.