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Here's one perspective: https://archive.is/yaFoo

Ask yourself: what would an official diagnosis bring you? And what would self-identification bring you? Are there specific issues?

Going through similar things right now, I feel like I'm probably autistic but I just have zero confidence in choosing that label for myself so I would like some actual confirmation. I have a suspicion I may have subclinical autism or something so that may not help at all.

Is there a game mode where you answer using a dropdown instead of a geopin?

But why does that line of reasoning not apply to rich YouTubers and Twitch streamers?

If influencers stopped working, their revenue would go down drastically, which can't be said of Rowling. So in a sense they have to work for a living, but they're also so rich that they could stop working if they wanted to. It just seems like they're similar situations.

If you can call an athlete or a movie star labour aristocrats, it seems like that label would also apply to successful authors and influencers. They're all propped up by the industries built around them.

Good point. A rough estimate would be she gets 10% of each of the 600,000,000 $15 Harry Potter books that have been sold worldwide. That comes out to $900,000,000.

A lot of that value came from the many workers involved in the publishing, marketing, translating, printing, shipping, etc. of the books. Did she get the surplus value of their labour? Does intellectual property count as means of production? How is that different from Youtubers and Twitch streamers benefitting from the labour put into their respective platforms?

If intellectual property is valid in at least some sense and she deserves monetary compensation for the sale of Italian translations, why does that not transfer to the licensing for movies and theme parks?

Btw I'm neither defending Rowling nor am I being antagonistic / trying to pull a gotcha or anything. I just think it's interesting.

I live in France.

Looks like 81% of the US population got at least 1 dose, and 17% got an updated (bivalent) booster dose.

81% of the French population got at least 1 dose, and 56% got a booster.

Wack. But I was talking about the attitude of the doctors and pharmacists I've met.

Sorry that happened to you but I'm not sure what that has to do with my comment. We should study the negative side effects of vaccines and take them seriously but two anecdotes outside of a clinical trial is not much more meaningful than a single anecdote. If everybody is vaccinated, you'd expect a bunch of vaccinated people to die or get weird symptoms even if it's completely unrelated to the vaccine. We see patterns everywhere.

In that case, did JKR become a billionaire by being a worker?

The fact that vaccines help prevent the spread of disease is offhandedly mentioned at the very end. This is so wild. Isn't herd immunity a concept most people understand? That vaccines aren't just about you personally?

I'm not high-risk at all and I got my latest booster a few weeks back - upon learning this very shocking fact my GP asked me why in a pretty judgmental way. Same deal when I had to jump through hoops to get my previous booster even though the official government policy in my country was that anyone could get it. Different pharmacies had different interpretations of this very clear policy though and nobody agreed.

I don't live in constant fear of what COVID will do to me personally, but the vibe I get from practicing health workers I interact with is that I'm weird for caring about getting vaccinated and it's getting to me. Like, am I wrong? I don't think I am.

No idea which comments you're talking about, but maybe they just disagree with you? Just repeating the same stuff isn't necessarily going to convince someone - is reciting Leninist theory supposed to be a magic spell to force people to agree with you? If you think it's impossible for somebody to be a communist and oppose Russia in the war, you live in an online bubble.

Yes. The minimum retirement age is going from 62 to 64 for most people, and from from 52 to 54 for cops. Although, and don't quote me on this, it appears that most cops keep working past 52 anyway so few cops would actually be inconvenienced by the reform.

Edit: They probably have a secret union exemption ready to go so that they're not affected at all.

Well, I'm vegan, so I don't think the distinctions make a lot of sense.

Only in the sense that forcing these animals to spend their whole lives in a slaughterhouse does not exactly foster a wild and colorful personality. I can assure you cows and pigs have personalities, like, scientifically speaking.

Cows and pigs definitely have personalities. I agree that Pokémon express emotions in a more human-like way, but if you consider that cats and dogs have personalities, so do cows and pigs. They've just been commodified to an extreme degree. The only difference between cats/dogs and animals farmed in the West is just cultural habits. u/ssjmarx put it well: "People have an aversion to eating dogs for the same reason - if your culture hasn’t gotten you used to the idea of seeing an animal as food, your empathy will naturally kick in at the thought of killing and eating it."

I don't use "it" to describe animals mostly for this exact reason.

Farm animals sometimes have names - some dairy capitalists even enjoy telling you which specific named cows were exploited for your milk. But I suppose this is a pretty standard marketing thing - corporations love to simultaneously humanize animals and bring attention to the fact that they're exploited.

Human-like intelligence then? :p

Sure. It's pretty common. Still worth pointing out the contradictions, sometimes that's all it takes for people to want to go vegan. Well that or they will go the opposite direction - "if Pokémon can be eaten, that means real animals can be eaten - there's no longer any contradiction, yay".

That's what I thought when I was a kid. We had a rabbit at home, but I would occasionally eat rabbit too... Faced with this apparent contradiction and forced to resolve it, I decided that if I could eat cows, I could also eat rabbits... I guess it's the much easier solution.

Some of them are dumbasses but I think I get the point that they're more human-like (they often have anthropomorphic traits) than real animals. Well, except for like, Muk, Xurkitree, etc. but I don't think this conversation includes those lol.

Are they really different types of cuteness? Maybe cows and pigs aren't as cute as Pikachu, but rabbits exist... Not to mention Farfetch'd is pretty much just a duck, and the article is about Lechonk which isn't much cuter than a real pig beyond perhaps the name. And then there's the fact that many real animals killed for food are babies which tend to be viewed as more cute. I just don't really get it.

And a lot of people have favorite animals too, but you'd be hard-pressed to find an animal nobody has eaten - and not rarely, some of these animals can be regularly eaten by humans without significant outrage from people who love those animals (rabbits, horses).

(I'm operating under the assumption that we're not discussing the merits of veganism but simply whether or not it should be surprising that people view animals and Pokémon differently - I don't think cuteness or indoctrination are relevant factors when it comes to justifying animal exploitation but they can explain mindsets for sure)

But some carnists will readily admit cows and pigs are cute and still eat them

What always confuses me is why people who aren't vegan are shocked at the concept of people eating Pokémon.