Turned it into a free back massage, very innovative!

Guess I don’t see it like that. To me both are serving the same function of fashion, but on the back is cheekily pretending it’s not and is therefore more disingenuous.

I also have a strong bias toward aesthetic over statement. There’s no reason my T needs to “say” anything any more than a striped or patterned shirt needs to “say” anything. I can just like how it looks or compliments my outfit.

I’m never going to wear some generic Coca-Cola or beer brand or “I speak sarcasm” shirt. If it’s an obvious legible statement (like a local band or charity) then that means it’s really important to me and I don’t mind looking like a trashy geek.

Counterpoint, wearing a graphic on the back feels shallow and self-aggrandizing. You’re never going to get to see the graphic you like in a mirror; friends and acquaintances you interface with all day won’t see it. It’s only for the benefit of anonymous observers behind you that you’ll never meet and won’t think about you twice.

It also is more antisocial. It’s natural to comment on a graphic when you’re face to face (pointing to chest, “oh you also like [Band]?”) and hard to broach a conversation from behind when they’re probably engaged with something else ("[Band]? Oh right, the shirt, yeah…").

It’s possible to pull it off, but in general I’d rather see someone confidently rocking a 3 wolf moon shirt than an incredible print drifting down the street on some anonymous back.

What if we paint a rainbow on all of these parasites and call it an ESG fund?

I get that a lot of this linked article is written to (correctly) change the narrative around slavery erasure but some of it delves into baseless hyperbole that can’t be anything but counter productive.

For example:

Evidence suggests that sexual abuse of slaves was so fundamental to chattel slavery that it’s reasonable to assume any histories of “kind” slave owners are complete fabrications designed to preserve the legacy of the masters.

That is either playing fast and loose with wording or an absolutely incredible claim requiring incredible proof.

On one hand, the “kind” slave owner is always a fabrication because the act of owning slaves is inherently immoral and reprehensible. This view makes the claim a borderline platitude; perpetuating an institution that enables rapists is very obviously unkind.

On the latter interpretation, you’re claiming that rape was so universal that any slave owner was almost certainly a rapist (especially if they claimed they weren’t). This would require some sweeping evidence, think studies on the demographics of mixed race slaves or on medical records tied to sexual assaults.

So what evidence follows? Excerpts from Frederick Douglas giving second hand accounts of rape and of Harriet Jacobs giving her first hand account. Nothing that incriminates slave owners broadly beyond Douglas’s phrasing “…in [rape] cases not a few,…”.

I don’t even deny that the evidence might exist, and I would love to see it brought to light if it does. But the thing about slavery, and specifically the USA’s commercial cotton slavery: it’s fucking awful enough if you just list verifiable facts without aggrandizing. Even if everything in this article were true, it doesn’t move the needle much farther beyond the baseline of American slave ownership.

If you’re going to broadly claim “America’s founding fathers were sex traffickers that raped children” then please, name names! Bring receipts! You can’t open with…

These facts are not debatable. [Child sex trafficking] happened.

…and then lay out a single link rehashing that Thomas Jefferson was a massive piece of shit. What do we know about the other 54+ Founding Fathers?

…???

Most games on steam are drm-free or have a very weak DRM which is easily removed.

Blatantly false. Take a glance at all the novice/low budget devs who tightly couple their game to Steam’s proprietary multiplayer api.

Lootboxes kinda suck, but at least they only use them for cosmetic items

That doesn’t mean they weren’t trailblazers for one of the most parasitic features of the 21st century.

Steam has parental controls implemented

The controls don’t even work for this. Even if you scrutinize every game before white listing, the devs can patch in loot boxes (or any toxic mechanic) at any time without your knowledge.

And putting that aside, “bad parenting” is such a shit cop out when Steam’s main page is devoted to high revenue [toxic] games. This is like blaming parents when cigarette companies made ads specifically appealing to children, as if the inability to legally buy their product absolves them from the damage done.

Weird way to “listen” by suppressing their voices. Zero Covid was the “right call” in a narrow lens of limiting direct disease transmission, but it was completely untenable as a true long term strategy and had no foresight.

The protests weren’t due to solely to the restrictions on personal freedom, it was also the total lack of sane administration and fallback plans. The enforcement, quarantine logistics and vaccine rollout were entirely scattershot. The government had no realistic approach to the problem beyond rigid policing.

When their authority to enforce the policy was stretched to its limits they did an about face and pretended the problem didn’t exist, leaving their vulnerable populations in the lurch with no offramp. The core problem of inept administration was completely unaddressed. I wouldn’t give them credit for “listening to the protesters” any more than I would give Tsar Nicholas credit for listening to his striking workers.

COVID lockdowns when minor protests broke out

“Solve” is an interesting verb for suppression of legitimate mass discontent at being physically locked into their apartments. That “solution” worked so well for those “minor protests” that they decided to do a 180° turn from the Zero Covid policy to no restrictions overnight.

Truly a bastion of free speech, except for any real discontent is labeled capitalist subterfuge so we’ll just disregard that.

I have! Have you been on it in China? Have you contrasted the foreign feed to a citizen’s? Have you seen the coordinated response to genuine spreading political discontent vs mundane petty scandals? Because it kinda sounds like you haven’t if you think that’s a killer response.

Never claimed to be any kind of China expert but it’s absurd to claim “much more open discourse” if you’ve spent any appreciable amount of time in the countries being discussed. You can literally just walk + talk in public and see the difference.

Like all these asserted freedoms it just magically happens better and free’er but you definitely can’t verify it because “media”. The open political discourse I see and hear in major EU/US cities pales in comparison to the uh… hidden… open discourse in T1/T2 Chinese cities? Definitely heard some first/second hand political discourse but it was never, ever, ever a public forum.

By all means, give me evidence to the contrary. Maybe I just keep catching China with a bad case of the Mondays. Have you been? Can you point to any discourse on domestic politics? Where is the asserted diversity of opinion on hotbed issues? Can you show me any strong opposition to the party line on a public stage?

Complete list of banned books in the US

Lmao what? Do you know what “banning” a book means? It’s just not on offer in schools or a library for that specific state. It’s completely normal to just buy it for yourself and there are even organizations dedicated to distributing banned books.

It’s hilarious to try and dunk on America with this of all things. Media restricted/censored in China is entirely unavailable. It’s actually very interesting how the censorship manifests in daily life, but I imagine any .ml reader will discard those anecdotes (or any verifiable reports) and try to redirect back to the West somehow.

I’ll take “things foreigners say when they’ve never been to China” for 500 Alex