“Lmao no sympathy for anyone who buys expensive shoes”

^this you?

When you mature as a human being, whatever age that may be, you develop kindness through a willingness to understand and empathize with perspectives that conflict with your own. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to accept it for yourself. For many people, clothing is not simply a means of pragmatic function. It’s also a source of self-expression, joy, and beauty. Now for me, $600 for a pair of sneakers is exorbitant and ridiculous no matter who designed it. But it’s not a product for me. And if someone with the means feels great buying and wearing them, I don’t see the harm. I don’t usually pay more than I have to for footwear, but I would pay a premium for certain kitchen tools I use all the time if I like the design, enjoy looking at it, and feel good using it. What I do sympathize with and would like to see reduced in harm is the consumerist culture that pressures people with less means into feeling like they have to have such things for fulfillment.

Wrong, this is about all the excess lives lost due to misinformation and the moral culpability of those responsible, not your country’s PR image. Russia getting Americans killed through anti-vax propaganda and the US getting Filipinos and others killed through anti-vax propaganda. Both are responsible for their actions. The US has proved untrustworthy long before this incident anyway.

You don’t need to be a therapist or psychologist to not shoot someone having a mental health crisis

This framing makes it seem like Biden is going against the majority congressional sentiment, but he is not. The US congress, overall, is supportive of sending military support to Israel, as evidenced by their passing bills other aid bills, which is a slower process.

Understanding and explaining how people may develop a perspective is not a defense of those people or their perspective. Simply saying “They’re morons, end of story” is unproductive. Denouncing a nuanced examination of the problem of distrust in healthcare is counterproductive. You can humanize without condoning. And clearly the intention was to address the problem in a meaningful way.

Or maybe I’m mistaken and the solution is “Stop being morons. End of story.” /s

I would too. Unfortunately I’m pretty sure most places that check even half those boxes still fail in the market. You often have to drag consumers kicking and screaming towards something more equitable and less exploitative, even when they’re the ones being exploited.

Because they are reacting to living under the oppressive structures of late capitalism. Having been raised in a capitalist world, they naturally overemphasize economic systems and their alternatives and make assumptions about government.

So when they communism theyusually mean communism + some equitable government or just they mean socialist democracy.

Funnily enough, you live pretty well in China these days if you’re a good little capitalist.

Yeah well there’s cooking as in purely functional preparation of nutrients, and then there’s cooking as in a process of caring for others by creating a worthwhile experience of food that is needed, engaging, and delicious. The downside is this experience usually has a time limit dependent on time and others’ availability (eating hot food together). It’s sad for such effort to go to waste. The alternative extreme to this kind of nurturing is abandoning the idea that family time over meals is worthwhile and just shitting out nutrient bricks so the children don’t starve. I don’t think anyone really wins in the long run with that.

That’s not an insult, it’s a specific form of trolling/harassment called sealioning.

I’m all for having respect for other’s cultural belief systems. However if you’re going to invoke the argument of “proof” which is a scientific/rational one, then you should understand you can’t prove a negative, so “you can’t prove it doesn’t exist” is not a valid argument for anything.

No, they’re not saying that. They’re saying OP hasn’t encountered the complex conflicts of values inherent in such issues. Even if the outcome you’re seeking is noble, such sweeping attitudes invariably ignore the potential harm. Not sure what that looks like? Just ask the native Americans what it’s like to have their belief systems steamrolled by “superior colonial” ones.

Well this was because we grew up in the 90s, when anything was possible, you could be anything, do anything, if you just work for it. You can save the world through love and dedication. I still believe it I think, but my scope of realistic success in this is much narrower now.

“It’'s about a way of thinking that’s pervasive in society. Evidence and logic be damned, my feelings trump all of that.”

Yes and we have entire academic fields full of research, evidence, and argument about the sticky reality of how different belief systems, social identities, and cultural heritage interact both constructively and destructively. For example, how colonialism typically plays out cultural genocide in the name oclf “civilizing” the native population. Modern western positivist ontology and epistemology (which is where most atheists sit) is also laden with these socially constructed features and does not exist in some privileged position outside of them. The problem that people are pointing out, is exactly the smug superior attitude of some atheists, which reveals their lack of awareness about their own position and the risks and limitations thereof. I say this as someone deeply embedded in STEM and evidence-based practice.

The expert consensus of every human-related field from medicine to philosophy to engineering/design to sociology to neuroscience and on and on is that, like it or not, feelings fucking matter.