You’re being rude for no reason

I think it’s a strange position to take that giving birth is like handling radioactive material.

What do you think about “altruistic surrogacy”, mentioned in the article? Presumably if someone is volunteering that avoids the exploitation angle?

Approaching from another angle, do you think sex work should be legal? It’s another area where exploitation and abuse are a concern. But if we expect someone can earn money using their body in one area (sex work, or even just physical labor) then why should it be illegal to earn money by carrying a baby to term? Exploitation should be made illegal, not the act itself.

Lastly, my understanding is that surrogacy is more often used when a woman is unable to carry the baby, than when a man is unable to impregnate.

I hear you that rich people are selfish and causing any number of problems. That said, I think your approach misses the suffering of many normal people who want to raise a child and would be unable to otherwise.

Even if this was an activity that someone thinks should be restricted, should it be punishable with jail time? I don’t think so. The law in Italy seems clearly designed to target LGBT people.

I don’t know whether Gulen was good or bad, but I do remember thinking it was funny when Erdogan was denouncing him after the coup attempt and wouldn’t say his name, instead the release said something like “the Turkish people don’t take orders from Allentown” like it was a foreign capital.

For reciprocal holidays like Christmas, giving cash maybe gets a little too close to exposing the pointlessness. I give you cash, then you give me cash, what are we doing here? And what if I gave you less than you gave me?

A gift card does indicate I thought a little bit about what the recipient might like, even if I know it would be impractical for me to make a choice on the recipient’s behalf, or that my gift wouldn’t be sufficient to cover a typical purchase in whole. (Thinking like gaming systems, expensive handbags etc)

All that said, I generally agree, I’m not crazy about gift cards.

I just switched to Reaper. This was a couple years ago so maybe it’s better now, I don’t know.

Lol spending hours and days is correct but for me it was spent on trying to get the signal from your interface to actually reach the program and then figure out why there’s so much latency.

Nothing because I would punch the nerd bookseller and take the book rather than answer a riddle

I remember seeing some of this stuff when it came out and thinking “why are they doing this?” A bunch of it I never heard of, and a handful I wish had seen success (Firefox OS). Not sure how this counts as a hit piece, it didn’t seem mean spirited and definitely didn’t seem to be misrepresenting anything.

Idiots

If you run your own server (like a country would in this case) you’re the one deciding whether things are allowed to be posted. Of course that doesn’t stop other people from blocking you. But the whole idea is as a sovereign country a private corporation shouldn’t have a say over which posts are seen.

I’ve seen a few people shit talk discord without expanding, so I will: it’s a proprietary “public space” that’s not web searchable. I don’t mind something like a community/subreddit oriented around a physical place, but I try to avoid supporting spaces that are owned by private capital. Of course that’s nearly impossible, but there are degrees of enclosure.

I appreciate that this seems to be an actually informed opinion of international law, rather than random internet commenters asserting it is or isn’t a crime.

I like and use signal, but of course the problem is convincing someone else to start using it in order to send you a message.

It could be a career, or religion. For me I was planning to become a pastor, but then became an atheist. It really did throw me off. In my case I think I’m much happier than I would have been, but do kick myself because I could have been positioned much better if I wasn’t making plans in this other direction.

If Chinese companies really are unfairly competitive because their government backs them, how about Western governments back their own electric car manufacturers? Instead of just making other products more expensive…

Just like there’s no such thing as an unbiased person, there’s no unbiased instance. Better to know what you’re getting into than to assume what you’re reading isn’t coming from a particular point of view.