As humans we don't have to cook our food. I've known people who have eaten entirely raw food diets for many years. One reason we cook our foods is because it has become part of our culture to do so.

We also get to eat a wider variety of foods by cooking it. Some foods are made more safe by cooking. We also use cooking to break down some less digestible foods and make it more digestible.

The last sentence may be most related to your point:

Humans have been cooking food so long, we may have evolved to be _less_ able to digest certain raw foods than our closest primate relatives. But we haven't reached the point of being dependent on cooking.

Not the screeching crowds that I've come in contact with.

To them, she is a horrible, evil, oppressive, cultural appropriator, and genetics has nothing to do with it. Some of them see this being comparable to the use of blackface.

I agree with them that 'cultural race' is a different thing from 'genetic race'. But they make up their own rules to suit their own agendas when it comes to discussing exactly what cultural race is, and how we should relate to it.



Yes.

One's sex is real. Most humans are definitely either male or female, and there are a few who are not. Sex is relevant for medical reasons, for procreation, and a few other contexts.



Everything else is just culture. Gender is a fabrication. Gender is only as real as we make it, by believing in it and giving importance to it.

Gender is largely a means of making assumptions about other people, a mechanism for putting individuals into limited boxes. I see how this is convenient, but I also think is unfair to many people - not just supposedly 'transgender' people.

Yeah, I see nothing wrong with simply wearing a wig or changing your skin tone. As long as you aren't deceiving someone in order to con them, manipulate them.


It is very fascinating to watch the philosophical gymnastics some people will engage in, in order to say that _all_ transgendered people are simply 'being true to themselves', while _all_ people who represent as a different race as _not_ being true to themselves. Not anyone here, but its a very common belief in some circles.

I agree completely.

But the SJWs and today's racist anti-racists won't stand for this.

In their eyes: If you are black, you can behave however you like. If you are white, you must act like other white people otherwise you are engaging in 'cultural appropriation'.

Its not very important, but the first vowel in my name is an 'a'.





I appreciate your sarcasm. Your meaning would have also been conveyed by saying I was 'obviously biased', which is to say that there is a quality you ascribe to me, and that the claim of the existence of this quality is obviously true. You instead said I have 'an obvious bias', which is to say that there is a bias which exists and which is, itself, an obvious one. Therefore I misunderstood your actual meaning, and asked - if it such an obvious bias, exactly what that bias is. You are right that there is a potential overlap of meaning here, and you didn't mis-use language. But the first phrase doesn't speak to the bias itself (noun), only the quality you ascribe to the person (adjective). The second phrase includes the suggestion that the specific bias _itself_ is obvious, not just the condition of being biased. The two phrases can mean the same thing, but they need not mean the same thing, depending on context and intention. When people say that phrases 'mean the same thing' in situations like this, its one of my pet peeves. It tends to lead to equivocation fallacies, which is another pet peeve.


As far as the other thread of discussion, you and I are actually on different topics here. I think you would agree that it is wrong of people to go around declaring "The cop pulled a gun on a teenage girl!!" when, in fact, he did not.

Yes you are correct. You have not participated in that insane and dishonest propagandizing.

Why should I be interested in your question? Is there some way which the answer to your question might justify or explain the behavior of those who are manufacturing lies to support their agenda?

No, not at all. They cover some of the same territory, and you may have intended your phrase to be interpreted only within that shared territory, but the actual phrasing you used implied knowledge of a specific position. More importantly, to insist that the phrases themselves inherently mean 'the same thing' is to demonstrate a surprising lack of awareness of the relationship between language and meaning.

Now that you've demonstrated this, lets go back.

I said:



You responded by intending to claim that I am biased. How is this important?

There is an entire community out there - a very large and vibrant one - which is dedicated to projecting their own biases on events then manufacturing and promoting lies which support their false narratives.

How is the suggestion that I am simply _biased_ a relevant response to this observation?

You didn't say that I was obviously biased, you said I had an obvious bias. Do you know my bias? Can you name it, describe it?

Nothing that you say here is relevant to the lies being spread about how this officer supposedly withdrew his firearm on the girl; how he supposedly threatened a young restrained girl with a firearm.

What is my bias?

Exactly. This particular police officer, in this particular situation, had every reason to believe there was a threat to his safety. He holstered his weapon _immediately_ after that threat was removed.

The other commenters are changing the topic: Racists are fanning flames of hatred, fueling it with lies. He did NOT pull his gun on the girl, not in the least.

You are right on every count here, but the harm to our society is much greater than a bunch of old ladies gossiping over the clothesline.

A large group of ignorant people spreading lies that confirm their insane biases not only harms our entire democracy on levels no seen before the internet, it also leads to people getting hurt and even killed.

The rule of a mob mentality is becoming more commonplace.

I absolutely agree. The guy who ran up on the cop WAS way out of line.

The most interesting ransomware I've read about recently was the attack on iphones. Some kids in Russia exploited apple's failure to offer basic protections to their users, and remote-locked the devices of many iphone users.

The users were directed to send money to have their phone unlocked.

Social media is running crazy with a collection of lies about the what happened at that pool party in Texas.

One (of the many) lies which the 'anti-racists' are spreading is that the police officer pulled his gun on an unarmed teen girl and threatened her with it.

If you watch the video of that scene without bias, you can see that he only pulls the gun after he is surrounded, and after a young man runs up behind him and takes an aggressive stance.


This image presents an interesting interpretation:

Swipe away the apps?

Do you know which version of android it runs?

In many versions, you just hold down the home button at the bottom center of the screen, until the recent apps come up, then you just swipe them sideways.

I only do it to reduce visual clutter.

Well you don't really have to do any of that, though you might clear cookies to preserve your privacy, or delete other unused data to save space (or privacy), or you might kill apps which waste battery or slow it down.

Sometimes I like to swipe away unused apps just because it makes it even faster to find the apps I am using, to switch to them.

Yeah, you know as a kid I always heard these stories about how jesus rose from the dead, right?

Eventually I read the bible. I really read it, particular the gospels. I read it dozens of times, and read several different translations.

And one thing that really struck me when I read it, was how clear the gospels were about the fact that nobody had convincing evidence that he was dead!

They saw him collapse on the cross. They saw fluid come out of him. People poked at him. It's been years since I read it, so I don't remember the details now, but as an older child I was like - wait, what? Your own books basically show that no one knew for sure that he was dead! They took him down off the cross and placed him in a cave - its not even like he was buried alive. He slept it off in a cave.

I don't know who pushed back that stone, but seriously jesus obviously just went into a coma, or a trance, or a deep sleep, and eventually gathered his strength for an amazing (but not miraculous) recovery from a near death experience.

The way christians talk about it, I was fully expecting the bible to be really clear about some amazing alleged evidence of jesus' resurrection. Instead it was pretty clear about the fact that there was no evidence of actual death.