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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: October 17th, 2023

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  • Sport is such an unfair world, trying to find equality and justice in it is futile. We don’t want kids taking growth hormones to boost their chances of making it into the NBA. But that also means we crush the dream of plenty of people. Athletes with asthma can’t use their inhaler under certain circumstances. A few years ago an UFC fighter with Asthma got his win overturned because he used an inhaler inbetween rounds.

    There was a huge discussion about allowing prosthetics in “regular” competition. Turned out at the time that proshetics weren’t advanced enough to give an advantage. But I think we all know that this is only a matter of time. And eventually a hard ruling needs to be made that dictates in which direction sport goes.

    Banning athletes who take as many hormones, hormone blockers, and other mediaction as transwomen usually take is 100% something that needs to happen. Especially considering that in certain leagues the usage of these substances is the only reason that transwomen are allowed to compete. That feels against the spirit of sport and TUEs. But untill more data exist, I doubt a useful ruling can be made.

    What I don’t like about the whole discussion is going for the “They aren’t real women” argument. That feels degrading and hurtful for everyone involved. I don’t want cis or transwomen to have to undergo inspections to determine their gender.


  • Changing the design of a beloved character was always met with criticism and skepticism. When James Bond was made blonde by casting Daniel Craig there was as much of an uproar amongst the fan base as when Ariel was made black.

    If a movie is good, people will accept the design changes, if the movie is bad people will blame the design changes. And some people just never get over the design changes and will refuse to give it a chance.

    The discussion is just a bit more heated because of the current social and political climate. But that’s mostly by people who don’t even care about the movie and just use the topic to stir the pot.



  • There is no better alternative than turning these offices into housing. Forcing people to work in offices again is worse and keeping them empty is also worse.

    A big advantage of converting them is there is already a lot of desirable infrastructure in place. Public transportation, shops, restaurants, everything is there already. Building apartment complexes at the edge of town might be cheaper but there usually is nothing there.

    I also doubt that it’s actually cheaper to raze and rebuild for that many buildings. The only real trouble is upgrading the plumbing. Everything else is definitely offset buy using the existing shell.

    Some buildings have a floorplan that doesn’t really work for residential but there is also no need to convert all offices. Pick the ones that are best suited and keep the remaining to satisfy the reduced need for office space.

    The only real issue is that the current owner of the building obviously prefer just forcing people back into office since that’s more profitable. So it would take government subsidies and incentives for them to make the switch more profitable. And then we are once again putting hundred of millions into the pockets of already rich people. But it’s cheaper for the city and better for the people so while a tough pill to swallow, it’s still beats any alternative.


  • No, not really. But that’s more because the government and economy of China and the USA works fundamentally different. The US does a lot of foreign investment. But it’s done by the private sector. Chinese companies aren’t allowed to do foreign investments without approval of the Chinese government. So everytime a “private” Chinese company does an investment abroad, the Chinese government is directly involved.

    The closest would probably be the landlease to Ukraine. All/most of the aid packages have to be paid back. Not necessarily with direct payments but by awarding (re-)building projects to US companies.

    And obviously there is the IMF where the US pays the highest quota to and therfore has the highest voting power in how the money of the IMF is distributed.