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[MacAnDàil]

Complaining about nuclear power is like complaining that the mask that stops you from getting Covid is itchy.

No, the latter is just a question of short-term comfort. Opposing nuclear waste or other negative aspects of nuclear power are clearly involved with more long-term and more serious issues.

For energy, we ought to reduce usage to what is actually useful.

We should of course keep an eye on energy usage, a lot more so than we currently do. Nonetheless, I doubt we can do any better than keep our power consumption roughly stable.

I think it's all too easy for power consumption to be reduced and for people to not even lose any quality of life in the process between lights left on when noone's in the room or building, overilluminated rooms and buildings, food, paper and clothes chucked in the bucket when they were perfectly useable etc And that's without mentioning the overuse of digital technology.

b) nevertheless people who oppose it have solid reasons that can't just be dismissed as 'scientific illiteracy'.

Yes.

And what happens to all the waste? How long before the world faces another environmental crisis?

You stick the waste in a containment facility and don't touch it. Reactor waste is not the kind of waste that really is going to go anywhere on its own - and it is small and rather self-contained in the bigger scheme of things. Contrast it with coal, which generates massive amounts of waste which gets spewed everywhere, putting large quantities of both radioactivity and heavy metals into our atmosphere.

And you wait for Putin to touch it?

And yes to Jonlang

[Travis B.]

From reading about Rosa Luxemburg, I find it very ironic that the DDR publicly venerated her, since she was against much of what it stood for; her most well-known quote was:

Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party — though they are quite numerous — is no freedom at all. Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters.

as she had other similar quotes such as:

Without general elections, without freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, without the free battle of opinions, life in every public institution withers away, becomes a caricature of itself, and bureaucracy rises as the only deciding factor.

[rotting bones]

Part of the solution may be to use thorium instead of uranium. Apparently it produces much less malignant waste.

I used to support Thorium power when I knew all the technical details involved. I'm afraid I may have forgotten too much to defend that position at the moment.

[Linguoboy]

his is probably the most gay place on the Interwebs which is not dedicated to things gay in and of itself I've been at, something our friend here has managed to completely miss.

FWIW, I think my intro sequence for linguistics at university had only one straight dude in it. Otherwise it was women and queers (and doubtless some queer women). Interestingly, though most of my professors were male, AFAIK, only one of them (the eminent Kartvelianist Howard Aronson) was gay.

[Travis B.]

I was reading Mayor Pete, Obergefell Gays, and White Male Privilege and found the attacks on Peter Buttegieg for not being "gay enough" by other LGBTQ+ people kind of alarming, as if to some LGBTQ+ people one cannot simply be homosexual and just that, without constructing a whole radical intersectional "queer" identity, without being rejected by them as a closet heterosexual. It is one thing to oppose Peter Buttegieg for his politics, but to attack him from an identitarian perspective just seems wrong to me.

[Linguoboy]

I was reading Mayor Pete, Obergefell Gays, and White Male Privilege and found the attacks on Peter Buttegieg for not being "gay enough" by other LGBTQ+ people kind of alarming, as if to some LGBTQ+ people one cannot simply be homosexual and just that, without constructing a whole radical intersectional "queer" identity, without being rejected by them as a closet heterosexual. It is one thing to oppose Peter Buttegieg for his politics, but to attack him from an identitarian perspective just seems wrong to me.

Except I don't really see how you disentangle the two: As long as gay rights are a subject of political debate, identifying as "gay" is a political act. Moreover, his politics informed how he constructed and presented his gay identity.

There's a name in the literature for people who are "simply homosexual" and don't construct a political identity out of it; they're called "men who have sex with men" (or "MSM" for short).

[Travis B.]

I was reading Mayor Pete, Obergefell Gays, and White Male Privilege and found the attacks on Peter Buttegieg for not being "gay enough" by other LGBTQ+ people kind of alarming, as if to some LGBTQ+ people one cannot simply be homosexual and just that, without constructing a whole radical intersectional "queer" identity, without being rejected by them as a closet heterosexual. It is one thing to oppose Peter Buttegieg for his politics, but to attack him from an identitarian perspective just seems wrong to me.

Except I don't really see how you disentangle the two: As long as gay rights are a subject of political debate, identifying as "gay" is a political act. Moreover, his politics informed how he constructed and presented his gay identity.

There's a name in the literature for people who are "simply homosexual" and don't construct a political identity out of it; they're called "men who have sex with men" (or "MSM" for short).

Consider it another way - there is no such implication with other categories such as being White, Black, male, female, etc. that they require one to adopt such a politicized identity; no one tells a Black person that they're not a real Black person because they are not a racial justice activist, for instance. Yet here we have gay people being accused of not being real gay people because they aren't queer activists per se but are mere "Obergefell Gays".

[Moose-tache]

no one tells a Black person that they're not a real Black person because they are not a racial justice activist, for instance.

Wutt.
This is, like, half of Donald Glover's comedy. It's why Black Twitter hates Drake. This is a big deal among African Americans, and always has been.

[Linguoboy]

no one tells a Black person that they're not a real Black person because they are not a racial justice activist, for instance.

Wutt.

You took the word right outta my mouth.

[Travis B.]

no one tells a Black person that they're not a real Black person because they are not a racial justice activist, for instance.

Wutt.
This is, like, half of Donald Glover's comedy. It's why Black Twitter hates Drake. This is a big deal among African Americans, and always has been.

Okay, I take that back, because there is the unfortunate concept of "acting White" which I had forgotten about when I wrote that. That said, is Black Twitter representative of Black people?

[Moose-tache]

no one tells a Black person that they're not a real Black person because they are not a racial justice activist, for instance.

Wutt.
This is, like, half of Donald Glover's comedy. It's why Black Twitter hates Drake. This is a big deal among African Americans, and always has been.

Okay, I take that back, because there is the unfortunate concept of "acting White" which I had forgotten about when I wrote that. That said, is Black Twitter representative of Black people?

If only there were a Black person we could ask, instead of consulting Platonic forms.
Here is a great video about the hip hop community's complicated relationship with Drake. F. D. never says Drake isn't a "real Black person," but he does a good job of laying out why some people think Drake is a hypocrit for claiming Black identity while cultivating a carefully apolitical public image. By the way, if you or someone you know or you, or even you Travis, is or am a white person who thinks "Gosh, I sure wonder what the Blacks are like," F. D. Signifier is a great place to start.

Long story short, any group that simultaneously has a) its own identity and culture, and b) a political struggle for equality, will also have c) gate keeping about how much of one you can have without the other.

[Travis B.]

If only there were a Black person we could ask, instead of consulting Platonic forms.
Here is a great video about the hip hop community's complicated relationship with Drake. F. D. never says Drake isn't a "real Black person," but he does a good job of laying out why some people think Drake is a hypocrit for claiming Black identity while cultivating a carefully apolitical public image. By the way, if you or someone you know or you, or even you Travis, is or am a white person who thinks "Gosh, I sure wonder what the Blacks are like," F. D. Signifier is a great place to start.

Long story short, any group that simultaneously has a) its own identity and culture, and b) a political struggle for equality, will also have c) gate keeping about how much of one you can have without the other.

My view of this must be biased by the fact that I see both gay and Black culture from without, so I personally don't see gay people as more or less gay or Black people as more or less Black based on the politics of the individuals in question, so it seems wrong to me for people to reject members of either groups over their individual politics, even though members of these groups may think differently.

[Linguoboy]

Must be nice.

[Moose-tache]

"Steve, I want you to know that I am the opposite of color blind. There is literally nothing that will make me stop seeing you as a black man."

[Ares Land]

I was reading Mayor Pete, Obergefell Gays, and White Male Privilege and found the attacks on Peter Buttegieg for not being "gay enough" by other LGBTQ+ people kind of alarming, as if to some LGBTQ+ people one cannot simply be homosexual and just that, without constructing a whole radical intersectional "queer" identity, without being rejected by them as a closet heterosexual. It is one thing to oppose Peter Buttegieg for his politics, but to attack him from an identitarian perspective just seems wrong to me.

I've skimmed through this article out of curiosity, and honestly it seems kind of stupid.

The author seems to hold a serious grudge against Pete Buttigieg -- I don't follow American politics closely enough to understand them, but they did seem a bit weird (he feels Elisabeth Warren was more competent and more experienced, which is fair enough, but she did better than Buttigieg in the primary so where's the problem?) and then steps down to irrelevant asides and personal attacks.

Overall this looks like yet another instance of the long-standing feud between liberals and their traditional enemy, other liberals.

[alice]

Long story short, any group that simultaneously has a) its own identity and culture, and b) a political struggle for equality, will also have c) gate keeping about how much of one you can have without the other.

See also: Fake Geek Girls, and Socialists/Democrats/Republicans In Name Only. And certain types of feminist.

[Travis B.]

"Steve, I want you to know that I am the opposite of color blind. There is literally nothing that will make me stop seeing you as a black man."

My point was that by not being in the Black or gay communities per se, I was never really exposed to the politicization of Black or gay identities in the way that Black or gay people are, knowing about this largely by reading about it from without, so I do not feel a need to deny Black or gay individuals' identities due to any sense of particular Black or gay individuals as being insufficiently political. Is this a bad thing? This is different from not being colorblind - there is a difference between seeing people as the same regardless of whether they are Black or white, male or female, gay or straight, etc. and telling someone that they're "not a real Black person" or "not a real gay person" because they have not constructed a sufficiently political identity.

[Linguoboy]

My point was that by not being in the Black or gay communities per se, I was never really exposed to the politicization of Black or gay identities in the way that Black or gay people are, knowing about this largely by reading about it from without, so I do not feel a need to deny Black or gay individuals' identities due to any sense of particular Black or gay individuals as being insufficiently political. Is this a bad thing?

No, it's just another benefit of privilege. You don't have to worry about identifying in advance which members of your identarian community will sell you out in return for acceptance by the elite. There's a long ugly history of straight acting/appearing white gay men throwing the rest of the LGBTQIA+ community under the bus in order to sit up with the driver.

[Travis B.]

No, it's just another benefit of privilege. You don't have to worry about identifying in advance which members of your identarian community will sell you out in return for acceptance by the elite. There's a long ugly history of straight acting/appearing white gay men throwing the rest of the LGBTQIA+ community under the bus in order to sit up with the driver.

Is attempting to normalize membership in your community throwing them under the bus? Because that is what I see Pete Buttigieg as standing for - being seen as someone, a politician, who happens to be gay, like any other attribute of a person, like being left-handed rather than right-handed, rather than as a specifically gay politician - and it is this that some LGBTQIA+ people appear to not like, because they want specifically queer politicians rather than politicians for whom being gay is an adjective like any other. Likewise, criticism of "Obergefell gays" seems to go along with this, because being an "Obergefell gay" is all about normalization - in effect, being able to get married and live a normal life like anyone else seems to be seen as throwing the LGBTQIA+ community under the bus because being LGBTQIA+, if I am not wrong, for so long has been associated with being different from the rest of society.

[Moose-tache]

The problem is, it's not up to Pete whether "being gay is just an adjective like any other." For anyone who remembers when Mathew Sheppard was killed, or any of the other high profile killings from that era, being gay and chill about it is like being that meme dog in the burning building, saying "this is fine." As long as violence against gays is ongoing, freindly gays doing respectability politics are at best trying to appease the perpetrators, and at worst ignoring the problem.

But I'm not saying Pete isn't "proper gay." Just that your idea of how gays can be "normalized" (which... ick) is naive and unfamiliar to real world gays.