Sounds like you just aren’t going far enough back to find the true monsters

Many people are not freedom absolutists. They are ok with giving up some small freedoms if it means a better society. Smoking, besides being dangerously addictive, also negatively affects lots of people around you, and it negatively affects the health of children who grow up with smoker parents.

I think ideally it would not be banned outright, just severely limited (no smoking in public except very specific, closed off spaces. No smoking in an environment that children inhabit, etc) but people will just do it anyway, especially because of how addictive it is. So I can definitely understand the motive to just ban it for future generations who are not addicted yet.

Yeah, it’s more like “mildly interesting, a study suggests French could potentially become the most widely used language by 2050”

Larry the Legend

While it is definitely car centric in some ways, it also has quite good public transport, and usually also has good bike/pedestrian paths, depending on the area. I’ve lived here for almost a decade now, and for 8+ years of that I didn’t have a car.

I agree, though you’d need to make sure it isn’t something that a human could notice and mistake as a PR convention for your repo, and then mimic

Yes it is obvious that it is flippantly dismissing others opinions, but do you seriously think that no people might want to justify it anyway, to rebuke the person acting flippantly? Or else why respond at all?

Whether meant serious or not, the topic the original comment brought up was the justifiability of the event linked in the post. I see no reason to assume that someone directly responding to that comment, was not responding to that topic.

Even if you think they weren’t justifying anything, can you at least recognise that it can certainly look like they were?

The reason I thought they were using it as justification, was because their comment was a reply to a comment that said something like “justify that tankies”

I mean that’s clearly very bad, but the bad thing in particular in that scenario is separating you from your language, which afaik isn’t happening here? At least not yet?

That’s fair, but it assumes that mandating one language means that the other language will be defunded. Is that happening here? I think ideally both languages (national language, native language) would be funded and studied

So call out the journalistic bias, or hypocritical behaviour of the BBC. But if the topic in general is brought up in conversation, just pointing to the US as some kind of justification, is definitely whataboutism. It sidesteps actual critical thinking by playing to familiarity: “well if this country does it, then it must be fine!”, which is clearly a logical fallacy.

All countries actions should be criticized equally. No countries actions should be justified by being the same as another country.

If the autonomy of these states are being infringed by this law, then that is a problem. In that case, I think the reduction of autonomy is far more concerning than the particular curriculum change.

Did you read my messages at all? As stated, I very much oppose the colonisation and forced subjugation and assimilation of native peoples, including in Australia. But I do not think that English being a mandatory subject in Australia is a bad thing.

Is the idea of someone knowing more than one language, so foreign to you?

You are making some wild jumps in logic.

Learning another language is not “destroying a culture”, this is a dog whistle of hardcore conservatives who are afraid of diversity. What would be destroying a culture, would be forcefully restricting the use of the native languages, such as forbidding the use of the native languages in schools. But I am not aware of this happening, nor was I arguing in support of that in any way.

Also, justifying a curriculum choice in schools is a far leap from justification of colonialism. I am very much against the forced subjugation of native peoples, but that is not the topic.

I’m not ML by any means, but I don’t really see the problem here? Schools are for learning useful life skills, etc. Surely learning the official language of your nation is a very useful life skill to have? Mandating that kids be taught a language does not mean forcing them to unlearn their native language.

While I don’t actually think that mandating the official national language as a class in schools is at all a problem (or a new idea), your argument is blatant whataboutism. Something cannot be justified merely by comparing it to somewhere else (especially the US, I might add).

I mean, I’m aware I can just not murder people, but I still want murdering people to be banned. (Admittedly this is a false equivalence but the point stands)

Should we be so lucky

I don’t think I’ve heard of “radical left” outside of the US? In Europe I only recall “far left” and “far right”

It seems to me to be a good thing if MAGA is fracturing? I’d be more concerned if they were unified in hiding behind one scapegoat, to avoid repercussions from the Epstein files