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Comment Re:Even using the word "incel" (Score 2) 31

Maybe not blaming people on a self-help site would have helped them not to radicalize

They self-radicalized long before the word "incel" entered the common parlance. Which is what happens when you create an echo chamber of a bunch of angry lonely men and base post visibility on engagement.

Comment Re:WTF? (Score 2, Informative) 177

Why do I care what the UN's preferred wording is?

You made a false claim about the origin of the terminology. You should care about being factually accurate.

The correct and proper legal term in the USA is "illegal alien"

It literally is not. That term, while it exists in the US code, is incommon. The most common term in the US code is just "alien", and when specifically discussing the undocumented, "Unauthorized Alien". I didn't include a discussion of US code just so you could pretend it didn't exist.

And I'm sorry if you don't like being called out for wanting cheap, exploitable labor to pick your damn cotton,

I'm struggling to understand what your argument is. You seem to be declaring that any job involving cotton is inherently slavery, even if the people are free to come and go as they choose and are paid for their labour. If that's not your argument, then please clarify, as otherwise, I'm baffled.

Democrats want cheap labor they can exploit.

Democrats (aka, the party that is constantly pushing for bills for higher minimum wages and mandates for better working conditions, while the Republicans do the opposite, pushing deregulation) want above all a regularized system with rules and oversight to prevent abuses. Most also want a path to citizenship for people who work for a given number of years with no criminal record (7 years is a common number suggested, though even decades would be better than "never"), though this is secondary to the primary issue. What Democrats do not want is a masked gestapo kidnapping people who want to be in the US working, from in front of their children, and throwing them into "Alligator Alcatraz".

These things are the exact same thing that the immigrants themselves want. You can't sit here and pretend to be an advocate for immigrants when arguing for policies that they are opposed to and opposing policies that they support.

Comment Re:It's bad enough people get experimented on (Score 4, Interesting) 34

Self-driving vehicles aren't perfect, but that isn't a reasonable standard.

What matters is that they have a better safety record than human drivers.

These trucks are even safer than other SDVs because they're driving fixed routes that have been mapped, with every sign and marker in the database.

They're also safer than human drivers because they drive slower. Human-driven trucks usually drive the speed limit, which is 75 mph on the Texas portion of I-45. A self-driving truck will go slower to minimize fuel consumption, so 55 mph. A truck going 75 has nearly twice the kinetic energy.

Comment Re:I don't care about Direct File. I care about (Score 2, Informative) 146

"I don't care about Direct File. I care about direct audit for poor people"

Most audits are for people with Sched-C or K-1 income.

Those aren't "poor people"

Top income brackets are ten times more likely to be audited than people at the bottom.

What triggers IRS Audits?

Comment Re:WTF? (Score 2, Informative) 177

First, why not just admit you want slaves to pick your cotton?

I had no idea that slaves were free to go at any time. And if your concern is abusive employers, then the solution to that is regulation and oversight.

Undocumented migrants to the US go through great risk to get employment opportunities that, while terrible from the perspective of US norms, are far more than they have available at home. That's why they come in the first place. What they DON'T want is, just to pick a random example, a masked gestapo kidnapping them in front of their children and throwing them into something its creators lovingly refer to as "Alligator Alcatraz". They came to work.

Second, they are a net drain on the economy because they send more money back home than they add to GDP.

Asserting things flatly in contradiction with the research does not make it true. Once again, to repeat: the economy is not a zero-sum game. Labour creates wealth; it does not redistribute from some fixed pool. Their labor creates wealth in the US, but they are given only a tiny fraction of that. And on that they pay taxes for services that they are barred from receiving. From the pittiance they have left, the majority furthermore gets spent within the US.

Total remittances from the US amount to $98B; this is a mixture of remittances from undocumented workers and documented. Documented immigrants are vastly more common than undocumented (14,1% of the US population vs. 3,2%) and tend to earn much higher salaries (though they remit a smaller % of them), so only a relatively small fraction of that (a few tens of billions) is from undocumented workers. In terms of the share of the workforce, 6,7% of the workforce is undocumented and 18,6% are all immigrants combined. Keep these numbers in mind when you look at the next number: the US economy is 30 TRILLION dollars. E.g. the value that undocumented workers remit is in the ballpark one-thousandth of the economy, yet they're 1 in 15 workers. The value that all immigrant workers remit is in the ballpark of 1/300th of the economy, and they're one in five workers. And remember that it is work that creates wealth.

There simply is no comparison: the amount that undocumented workers contribute to the economy is vastly, by orders of magnitude, more than they earn, let alone remit.

Third, the correct and legal term is "illegal alien". "Undocumented migrant" is a BS euphemism invented by left-wing reporters to support a political agenda.

"Undocumented migrant" is not modern, did not originate in the US, and has its roots in academic and international discourse. It is the preferable language of the UN since 1975, aka half a century. Alien" is a perfectly valid legal term, although "illegal alien" is rarely used in the US code (the US has a wide range of alien categories referenced in the code, including "resident and nonresident", "immigrant and nonimmigrant", "asylee and refugee", etc aliens). "Unauthorized alien" is probably the most common adjective phrase, although just "alien" is more common still (for example: 18 U.S.C. 1325, "Unauthorized Entry by Alien"). "Migrant" and "alien" are not synonyms, and require unique terminology - migrant is much more specific, and "migrant worker" more specific still. "Illegal" is malformed terminology and commonly inaccurate. For example, a large fraction of people who are in the US without authorization did not enter the country illegally, but rather overstayed visas. It is also illogical to refer to a person as illegal, rather than an act.

(This is also a good time to drop a reminder that being in the US without authorization is generally a civil, not criminal, violation)

Comment Re:Even using the word "incel" (Score 2) 31

Also, just to be clear, if you wrote your post coming from a personal perspective:

Don't define yourself relative to others. If you do, you will never be happy, in a relationship or out of one. I mean, sure, you may get the initial "sugar rush" from a new relationship, but you will be doomed to destroying it due to overdependency on the other person for your happiness and self-esteem, which is something that cannot be sustained. You need to be able to find happiness and respect for yourself on your own.

But if that's not about you, then just let this stand as an aside to anyone who needs to hear it.

Comment Re:Even using the word "incel" (Score 4, Informative) 31

Nobody means "single men" when they talk about incels. Incels - to both the general public, and to self-identified incels, refers to "...member[s] of an online subculture of mostly male and heterosexual[2] people who define themselves as unable to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one [who] often blame, objectify, and denigrate women and girls as a result."

To be clear, the movement did start as a website and mailing list that was basically just for people who were chronically single, but with no connotations beyond that (it was actually a woman who started it). But it morphed beyond all recognition from its founding. To quote Alana (who started the original): "It definitely wasn't a bunch of guys blaming women for their problems. That's a pretty sad version of this phenomenon that's happening today. Things have changed in the last 20 years" and "Like a scientist who invented something that ended up being a weapon of war, I can't uninvent this word, nor restrict it to the nicer people who need it".

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