Somewhere around the majority of people employed in academia are absolutely useless.

I say this as an academic.

Nudity alone - without the intent to shock or arouse - shouldn't be taboo, criminal, or censored.

I'm sure I have a bunch, but for the fediverse I think the most controversial is that I think neopronouns are a bad idea. DISCLAIMER I support queer folks, and I also use neopronouns when requested (because there's zero reason to be a dick about it), but I think everybody would be better off without them.

The entire purpose of pronouns is to offer a quick, generic (i. e. non-individual) way of referring to people or objects without using their names. Using neopronouns which have to be communicated and learned first is the opposite of that. So in my view they're not really pronouns, just additional names one has to learn for a person.

I think the most sensible way of accommodating all genders is using whatever pronouns are present in the language (usually male and female, or a generic pronoun), plus a non-binary pronoun if needed, like singular they in English.

Being mtf or ftm trans is conforming to gender stereotypes with extra steps. Abolishing gender stereotypes and letting everyone express themselves however they want would be far better for society overall.

I don't mean that in a negative way and fully support respecting self identification because that has the best outcomes in the real world.

Plastic straw pollution doesn't have a measurable impact on the environment.

The entire thing about banning plastic straws comes from some high schooler using back-of-a-napkin math to guess how many straws are in the ocean in what was clearly a successful attempt at starting a science fair project the night before it was due. Some news station picked it up, and then a bunch of science-illiterates ran away with it.

You can't determine the impact of pollution by count. Straws are tiny and weigh almost nothing. If you skip buying one pair of sneakers in your life, then you've successfully reduced your plastic use by almost a lifetime of plastic straws.

Removing plastic straws is probably the single least impactful way to reduce plastic pollution. It's pure virtue signaling: it's about presenting an image of being environmentally conscious while doing effectively nothing to help the environment.

Everyone (including kids and teens) should have full bodily autonomy. This includes how they express gender. Parents should not be allowed to circumcise/mutilate their kids' genitals for reasons that aren't medically necessary, nor should they be allowed to lay their hands on their kids in a violent way (and yes, that includes "only" spanking). Parents who hit/spank their kids should be charged with assault and child abuse.

Kids and teens having basic rights might not be controversial here, but in the rural area that I'm from, it certainly is.

The US isn't the great Satan, they are quite contemporary satan. Russia, China and Iran are all imperialist, anti democratic and have even worse human rights violations.

You don't have to pick a side, these are all asshats, some more than other though.

Following "if it isn't harmful, it's not a problem" as a guideline, incest isn't immoral if it doesn't involve large power imbalance (e.g.: parent and offspring) and doesn't produce offspring.
If the relationship, be it purely romantic or otherwise is mutually desired and fully consensual (usual requirements), then I don't see how it would be different from other non-standard relationships.

I hope that's plenty controversial.

Suicide should be a human right. You should have to prove that you're of sound mind and that you've considered and tried all other options. But once you've proven you're not manic, psychotic, intoxicated, being coerced, etc and no other option will reasonably bring you peace you should be able to do it and get help making sure you don't get stuck halfway or receive comfort care only until it's over. Also every psych unit I've worked requires suspension of a DNR which terrifies me for involuntary admits.

• Some people absolutely need to be killed for the greater good of society.

Some people shouldn't have kids, and some children probably shouldn't be born.

Not a serious one, but my hot take is that helping people move is fun!

Alot of people complain about it, but think about it. You get to spend quality time with friends or family, get a little exercise, teamwork, and usually at the end of the day you get to share a well-earned meal together

Religious indoctrination is child abuse.
Sending your kids to places of worship or a religious school, or telling them "this is our religion", is child abuse.
This includes christofascists and oppressed minorities.

I'm on the fence as to whether telling your child they are a girl or a boy is similarly harmful.

Apartments and big cities are hell. People shouldn't be shoved together like sardines.

Sunny weather fucking sucks. Overcast is by far the best weather. You don't have to deal with sun in your eyes, or glare or feeling like your skin is burning after 30 minutes of standing outside. You can still see everything just fine.

I got to live in San Francisco for a few years and going outside to 10 C cloudy, foggy or overcast weather (almost) everyday was amazing. It was literally the most perfect weather I have ever experienced and the only thing I miss about that city.

People have gotten way too comfortable with censoring speech. I understand the fight against intolerance and propaganda and how hopeless that fight can feel, but we've sometimes taken things too far and that's only going to hurt us in the end. The left is not going to be the one that will take these compromises to the limit. We will be the most hurt by every bit of erosion we allowed to happen.

Specifically, I'm referring to efforts to get right wing platforms taken down not by being banned by a Facebook or Twitter or something, but by attacking the infrastructure on which a right wing website it run (such as attempts to get Truth social shut down by going after AWS, ISPs and other basic Internet infrastructure). It's a similar approach as is sometimes done when they target payment processors and trying to shame them into banning these platforms from processing payments.

These types of attacks on speech should never be allowed no matter if it's the left or the right. We can ban people from our private business or gathering place, but we shouldn't be able to stop them from creating their own. And no, basic Internet infrastructure shouldn't get to play the 'private business' card. They are effectively the roads, utilities and other generic infrastructure of the digital age.

Those attacks are no different from the right's constant attacks on abortion clinics by attempting to subject them to needless and pointless regulations meant for full hospitals. Or as if we'd allowed a water company to start selectively shutting off water to places they don't like.

We need more protections for the neutrality of infrastructure (both physical and digital) and keep the fights firmly restricted to end user platforms. Lest we find that someday our enemies have taken these tactics and beat us with them with far greater ruthlessness than we'd ever use.

Apparently saying new Star Trek is trash writing is enough to get banned from certain instances.

Vegans shouldn't have pets. If the ethos of veganism is consent for the things others give then it should be thought of as slavery for them to own any, especially if they feed a carnivorous animal a vegan food alternative.

People get mad at me for thinking it's morally better to adopt than to jump through hoops to concieve your own child. There are actual children already alive who need a home. It's wasteful to bring new people into the world when there are already children in need. If you can't love someone else's child as much as your own, you shouldn't be a parent. I'm not saying nobody should have their own children ever. If you get pregnant and you want children, by all means, keep it. I just object to going to great lengths to conceive your own child when you could give a home to someone in need.

This is a tricky subject to approach, since it can be reduced to a really hurtful or even misogynist slogan, but I'd like to see more physical comedy in media involving women. Think running into walls, smacked by a spinning plank, or depending on the cartoon believability of the media, crushed by a falling piano.

I started a longer writeup of why that's "important" to me but before I bend over backwards to defend it I'm curious what others think.

"Money" isn't needed and there are enough resources available on earth so no one goes without.

There is no moral way to raise a cat.

Either they live inside and live an entire life in a few thousand square feet at best for 16-20 years, or you let them outside to hunt and they kill tons of wildlife and are exposed to becoming roadkill/coyote food etc.

My personal dodge is to adopt old cats that have already been indoctrinated into inside life and who could never be let out anyway.

It's controversial in countries like Australia...

We need to standardise English, and we need to accept the US won in spelling.

Conversely, the US needs to accept they lost the metric/imperial war and start changing their shit to be less stupid.

What the fuck is 90 stone? How long is 2.5 miles? Pounds = lbs? How? (Okay US doesn't use stone)

Don't get me started on the "19 hamburgers is equal to 5 eagles" memes.

Also, everyone needs to accept the ISO date format.

YYYY-MM-DD

You're objectively wrong if you think any other format is comparable.

Also also, you can keep using feet and inches for your own height as long as you're between 5-6 feet.

Otherwise I get confused.

No state that is in the Eastern Time Zone is a part of the Midwest.

You should not expect your native culture to follow you when you move abroad.

Adapt or leave.

Euthanasia should be legal and encouraged for people with terminal diseases like dementia. Suicide should be legally available to all citizens too

You should always look in the oven before turning it on.

Seems simple to me. Before making the oven hot, make sure there's nothing in there you don't want to get hot (and that the racks are in the right place.) Takes maybe a second.

But a lot of people seem to find the idea that they (or anyone in their household) would ever leave something in the oven, when not cooking, to be deeply offensive.

Cold drinks that have to be cold to be good, are bad.

If you want your drink to be good, it has to be competitively good at room temperature, first.

Aight I got one, I believe the elderly are less valid than the young and should have a lot of their privileges taken away. No voting once you hit retirement, no more driving, they should be entirely at the mercy of public infrastructure and if it's not good enough for them then too bad. They had their entire life to build a better future and look where we are now. The senior vote has practically enabled fascism and they deserve more hatred for the way they think and behave. Especially since they are dependent on the young to bring in enough taxes to pay for their pension.
Anyways, let's see who this upsets most 😅

ITT people posting lots of things I don’t find controversial at all.

Ranked voting. Fined heavily if you don’t. Politicians need to reveal their donors and sponsorships and lobbyists at the start of every speech like a YouTube reviewer does when they receive something for free. We shouldn’t need sites that reveal who is owned by AIPAC, etc.

Stupid people exist.

I mean this actively: stupid people aren't theoretical brings who exist outside this discussion we are having here. Many people in this thread qualify. There's regular stupid, which is just most people. That's the benign kind of stupid which maybe is indicative of a lack of training or bad circumstances for learning in earlier life. You can also find double down stupid in this thread. The flat earth conspiracy, "consciousness" mysticism, and can barely craft a sentence kind of stupid.

The general public is even worse.

People are all willing to admit that stupid exists, but most won't point the finger. Close your eyes and point and you'll hit someone, bless their hearts.

I support Age Verification

(Not to be confused with: I like Age Verification.)

For a few reasons.

• 1. The government already has all of your info and is spying on you from any device with a camera or microphone and wireless connection and without a warrant or meaningful accountability. We know this objectively because the FBI, desperate to look competent, inadvertently publicized footage obtained illegally in the Guthrie case that shouldn't have existed.
• 2. It's not 2014. We have enough information now to know definitively that social media (and increasingly, use of LLM's) is harmful to children's mental health, and that its negative effects are more pronounced on developing brains. (Though they affect adults as well.) These systems harm a person's mental health and cognitive abilities, and while this bit is anecdotal, I know several teachers who struggle to teach kids because they're no longer able to focus on anything for more than sixty seconds. (And the question: "Why do I have to know this if an AI can do it for me?" is becoming a common refrain.)
• 3. Private entities also already have your data. Go look yourself up on spokeo.com or some other background check site if you don't think so. (And be sure to put in a request there to have your info deleted while you're at it.) Or sub to a deletion service that will remove it for you.
• 4. People say that to cut kids off from social media will isolate them, but I grew up in a world where we only had email, chat rooms, snail mail, and land lines, and somehow we magically made friendly connections anyway. It's a nonsense argument, and ignores that social media itself is isolating people to a much greater extent.

Essentially, I think Age Verification is the lesser of two huge evils, and I don't expect the government in my country to force social media companies to disclose and change their algorithms to eliminate the harm being done to kids, so Age Verification becomes a necessary evil. (Hopefully a short-term one, but we'll see.) The social media companies have too much money for any civil suit to meaningfully impact them financially.

You want co controversial?! Ok
I think we should be able to decide our own deaths if we want too, and that should be law. Depresion is real, yes, but a lot of people want to LITERALLY impose life into others. Not only talking about end stage or crippling disease but also psychological issues so bad living with it is torture. You reading this and disagreeing are doing it becuse you afe either religious, and you are imposing your religion into others, or someone else would feel bad, regardless if the person lives in agony, they have to live to not make someone else sad. "I don't want my son to take his life" YOU YOU YOU.

Of course I think there should be procedures and controls in place, like +21, 1 or 2 years mandatory psychiatric follow up, if you have youngs kid you also can't. But if you are an adult, no kids, fuck your opinion dude, it's their life their choice.

David Bowie is overrated.

Children and teenagers shouldn't access social media

You really want one?

Okay:

Race-Based Affirmative Action is harmful discrimination against Asians and I, as an Asian American, don't really like it, particularly in the context of it being used as a deciding factor in college admissions.

(Affirmative action based on other factors like income or disability is fine, but using race is kinda weird to me... too arbitrary)

Sending humans to Mars is evil.

It is impossible to have people anywhere without gazillions of microbes. Once humans land on Mars we've at the very least corrupted any evidence of life, and possibly destroyed an independent genesis of life.

Since all life on earth comes from a single progenitor, this is both an incalculable loss of potential knowledge, and also a greater extinction than all earth extinctions combined.

I propose a moratorium for say 200 years or so, or at least until we've explored more than a few square kilometers in detail.

Memes made the world a worse place.

Free will does not exist in the way we think of it, as this divine, magic thing that is above anything. Most of your success is more due to chance, and your environment, than your effort.

If you get taught wrong by your parents and/or peers, you are almost guaranteed to be locked into your bad behavior. So it was decided for you that you would play the role of a "bad person".

Pretty much related to Nietzsche's quote: "some men are born post-mortem".

There's also been a study showing monkeys unable to learn certain things, because it goes against the wirring of what they already learned, regardless of motivation, effort, reward.

It takes just as much faith to believe that the universe came into existence out of nothing as it does to believe a higher being created it.

Passive income is just labour appropriation and deserves the death sentence.

Consciousness is fundamental to reality. Science-based thinking (but not science itself) has put matter as the fundamental element but actually has never been able to prove it. To be able to prove that matter gives rise to consciousness, you'd have to step out of consciousness and point to matter. Which you cannot do. Not talking about individual consciousness where you can just point at someone's brain: that experience of pointing at someone's brain is happening inside consciousness, how else would you know about it.

Not to be confused with Solipsism, that's the thinking mind. I'm talking about Idealism, the raw state of pure experience before thought.

I have no issue with chatgpt. Or any other LLM based platform. I use it and many other llms in my daily life. They're solid applications that provide real world problem solving.

Humanity can't be fixed, will always be selfish, greedy, discriminating against other people who differ enough, since a bunch of these things are pretty much hard coded. You might not be, some people you know might not be - but statistically, the majority of humanity will happily watch others get oppressed (or worse) for various reasons. There will always be people who manipulate others for power/wealth, disregarding law, morals or the environment, and there will always be a fuckton of gullible/dumb/mean people who happily buy the propaganda for reasons above.

Therefore, no matter what kind of society you try to form, with enough time we will get back to where we are now, and humanity will never be able to break out of this downward spiral, due to its inherent fault.

...which leads to my main controversial opinion, based on the above: the only cure to the mass extinction and the worsening climate happening today is the eradication of the human species. Yes, it would be such a shame saying goodbye to all the great things we have achieved, dad jokes, poetry, the Backstreet Boys; all this means nothing if everything dies on a scorching/freezing planet. At least if we take out humanity, other forms of life could survive, and life as we know it isn't really found on every other planet.

Obviously there will be nothing wiping the human race off of the face of the Earth, and if it somehow ever disappears, it will be by its own doing - but chances are that will also take all other forms of life with it.

Looking at all the awful things humans have been doing to each other, all the pollution, all the ignorance, all the destruction, I wouldn't hesitate a bit if there was a red button in front of me that could magically make them disappear (including me, of course). In the blink of an eye. I would slam down on it as fast as I can.

That religion is for gullible people.

Rust is for little baby devs who can't handle a little uncertainty and unsafety.
(signed, a JS dev)

Obsessive monogamy is usually super fucking toxic, and "cheating" is way less of a betrayal than a dozen other things people put up with in relationships.

People will literally throw away years or even decades of stability and companionship over a single moment of weakness, like some weird sexual martyrdom, but they'll turn themselves in circles to forgive actual ongoing abuse.

And to be clear I have never cheated on anyone, though I have been the third person. This is just a general observation from my many years in the game.

I both think people have a right to dignity, which by extension means they should have a say of how to live their lives. I also think that the general population shouldn't vote. Against Democracy is a really good read if you haven't read it.

For the record, I literally will drive people to the polls (since our current system creates better outcomes if more people vote) but I do really wish that most of them wouldn't XD.

Making out and fucking are basically the same and I don't get why one is tolerated in public and the other is not.

Cruelty and violence against vulnerable individuals like farm animals is morally indefensible.

We are breeding idiots.

A lot to unpack here, but the primary reason is that "everyone" survives, is led into adulthood, and encouraged to start a family. From an evolutionary standpoint, we don't have any sort of filter who gets to live and breed, and no "survival of the fittest". This is not only about childbirths, but also about who breeds (and raises) children.

Eugenics is not bad in of itself, but people consider it bad because they fear it will be forced upon them by racist/ableist powers. (Remember, a mother (and father) who chooses to abort if there is something bad unveiled through tests are also doing eugenics.)

Not saying we haven't had this "problem" in the past, nor that we have to do something about it. It's more a statement that we have a lot of idiots around...

It's pronounced "gif"

Hot take? Maybe. Conspiracy theory? Probably a better description for what i am about to say.

I truly believe that the reason the "No Child Left Behind Act" was made/passed, at least in part, was to try and make kids "blind", so to speak, as to the wrong/evil that the government is doing.

Or at the very least, that's why book bans are a thing.

You-know-who needs to go you-know-where

Children are a distinct category from adolescents (and shouldn't be lumped together), and both categories should have more autonomy over their own lives, bodies, and education. That includes being able to not consent to child genital mutilation (whether biologically male or intersex, female is already illegal), being able to consent to immunisations against the wishes of their parents/guardians - and likewise for puberty blockers/HRT later on, if they're trans - and having autonomy over their schoolday, which school they go to, and what their schedule looks like.

Our ancestors might not be "from" Africa.

There's huge gaps in the historical record because of that whole ice age cycle thing.

Sapians may have evolved somewhere else, but either slowly migrated to Africa as safe haven or just died out everywhere else as glaciers bulldozed all traces of evidence.

It doesn't really change anything, we'd still all be descendants of the same people. I just don't think we know enough to for sure say the absence of evidence is the evidence of absence.

It's not that long ago we thought all our ancestors lived in caves, just because evidence was most likely to be preserved then

im fine with trans people and non discrimination but my whole life sex and gender terms were one and the same for me and most folks in everyday language. The idea of identifying pronouns for myself seems laughable to me. Im a big believer in simple solutions. Got some temp work at a place with genderless bathrooms that had the full floor to ceiling doors. Its a bit wierd to wash my hands with girls but its not like im naked. There is all sorts of language things going out of fashion (online) and folks are like just learn it but look despite decades of school my spelling and grammar are atrocious because habits don't change easily and no one is even forcing me to study or anything now. On top of it, like it or not for the internet folks, it has no bearing in the outside world which is still basically jugging along at its own pace. It will over time for sure but it won't happen as quickly as early adopters would like. Also I pretty much don't like any type of censorship of fictinoal things. Reality and fiction are two different things to me. Although modern ability to fake things is making identifying something as real as tough. I don't want claims of it being high end fakes as letting folks get away with crimes.

The Beatles were nothing special.

The placement of pineapple on pizza is subjective

Humans don't deserve pets.

I am very, very progressive. Here are my hot takes:

Transgender participation in sports can lead to unfair advantages. I hate that I believe this, as I do not want anybody to feel ostracized or as if they are discriminated against. But I think it’s true nonetheless :(

Reading smut does not count as reading. Listening to audiobooks does not count as reading.

The US was never the land of the free.

Music needs to broadly adopt alternative musical scales.

State-sanctioned suicide is essential to a developed nation.

Pinball is grossly under-appreciated, and its progression is a great example of doing new things with old ideas.

Any nation that wants nukes should be allowed to develop them.

Luigi’s Mangione’s eyebrows are off-putting.

Eating breakfast is stupid if you have a job that isn’t physical.

I’m sure there are more. FIGHT ME!

to me, the Super Nintendo was the worst Nintendo console. so much of the library is games that either had better NES prequels or N64 sequels if not both. despite having a buttload more colors than the Mega Drive, so many of the games ended up looking bland and lifeless, with the notable exception of Super Mario World which looks like a Fisher Price product. the sound chip sounds like someone is sitting on it, and that washed out sound is admittedly nice for RPGs but it ruins everything else

and this isn't me being a bitter SEGA fan! i think the NES and the GameCube were both signifigantly better than their SEGA contemporaries. just considering Nintendo consoles, i rank the Super well below the Wii U and Virtual Boy- those at least offered unique experiences

Cars 2 is the best of the series.

William Shakespeare was a pseudonym adopted by Sir Francis Bacon whom was also Queen Elizabeth 1st’s son.

I think all land should be returned to my county's indigenous people. I'm descended from the colonizers.

No one should feel obligated to be an organ donor. And telling someone they must because they "aren't using their body anymore" is fucked up. If a person has to be coerced, guilted or bullied into giving the "gift of life" they aren't doing so freely. If they have to be manipulated into it then it's not a gift. It's theft. Nevermind the fact that corporations make big bank off the organ and tissue trade by piecemealing out donors and sellings the parts, but no one talks about THAT because lives are being saved.

(I'm not against organ donation. I just don't like that we use manipulation tactics to procure body parts and that there isn't transparency about who is profiting).

COVID-19 was a lab leak.

Now let me be clear I think Fauci is a god damned saint and national hero for putting up with the shit he did. We don't deserve someone like him.

The Maginot Line wasn't a waste. It did exactly what it was designed to do: Make the Germans go around to the west. The failure was political, in that the 2nd part of this defense was that France and Belgium would coordinate to set up a proper line in Belgium, but this never happened when Germany invaded.

And Chamberlain had no choice but to accept Hitlers claims on Sudetenland (part of then Czechoslovakia). Any other treaty would've required an enforcement mechanism, and Britain was in no shape or form ready for even a limited war at that time.

Communal anarchy is as valid a political orientation as any other

if you stopped eating animal products, you'd actually like it.

Home ownership is not ideal for everyone.

Obviously, all humans deserve to have a home. Not all of us want to own a house. I would rather have the flexibility to move around, and much prefer to leave repairs and maintenance in the hands of the person I'm renting from.

I get that it's not fair for rent money to passively make someone else wealthy, while they get to have the equity of a house. I'm not suggesting we keep that system. Housing (at least a portion of it) should be available as a public good.

• Supporting the death penalty.

• Rape is worse than murder; murder can be justified in some cases, e.g self defense, but rape never can. Therefore on average, rape is more evil than murder (it's a question of 100% versus like 98.5% on the evil scale)

I think the first one is more contentious - yes it's mainstream but it genuinely gets people riled up. The second one sounds shocking but is mainly just hard to articulate.

Voting requires citizenship. But citizenship itself should require more than just existing.

If we look back to Greek and Roman democracy, it was true that every citizen got a vote. But the people who were citizens was much more stringent.

The basic idea of the ars liberalis or Liberal Arts translates literally as "The work of freedom". Exercising your right to partake in a democracy required that a person be knowledgable about history, civics, rhetoric, politics, philosophy. Without that knowledge, you were not allowed a vote in how things are run.

Essentially, you had to know what you were voting on.

Unfortunately, that meant that in essence only the rich landowners could be citizens because they were the only ones with the time and money to get educated while the underclasses were too busy working to suvive.

But in the modern age, where public schooling is a thing, we should be able to figure out a way to make such a thing work. Nowadays, the only thing keeping people ignorant is choice. And if you make the choice to be ignorant, you should forfeit your right to have a say in the governing of your nation.

I've got a few that I can't really separate:

Dental hygienists are greedy charlatans who convince us we need an expensive hygiene appointment every six months when we really don't. That used to be true before the invention of the electric toothbrush but not now. I stopped going 7 years ago and I make sure I brush properly daily for two minutes with my electric toothbrush. I occasionally use inter-dental brushes for a deeper clean and my teeth are perfect. No soreness, gum bleeding and certainly no cavities. It's lies I tell ya.

AI is the most incredible development in human evolution since the invention of the wheel. I think it is the beginning of our next evolutionary step. It may even save us from destroying ourselves. It has brought me personally incredible results that have enriched my life in countless ways. I can't wait to see where it takes us. People who are angry about it are dumb (you did say "controversial opinion" lol).

Money is basically the ring from Lord of the rings. You can't have it without it changing you. I've had the dubious pleasure of knowing a great many millionaires and they're all miserable bastards pretending that they're not. Their families hate them, most of them are alcoholics and drug addicts. They hate themselves even more and their money doesn't mean anything to them so they use it to impress others or hurt them, just so they can feel something. It's all a disgustingly wasteful, tragic act.

You can't support Ukraine and other victims of military aggression, without having a strong arms industry yourself.

Most controversial opinion I'm willing to share:

I think we should replace incarceration for certain crimes with corporal punishment, such as canning. Ideally we would build the agony booth from the mirror universe of Star Trek.

Incarceration is overly harmful to the future of the offender. Incarceration is expensive for society. Authorities hesitate charging people with crimes for these reasons. Corporal punishment solves this.

As long as there is no long term damage, I believe the physical pain is more human than the lasting harm going to prison can cause.

IDK how controversial this one is, but I'd say Batman Beyond is a near perfect "I am the new Batman" type sequel series. Rather than having a series where it's all future versions of the villains facing off against future Batman, they either made new villains or reinvented one you never really saw anywhere besides a few old comics.

From what I've seen/heard of the non tie-in comics, they aren't as good, IMO, for the introduction of characters such as a future Catwoman and a few minor changes to some original characters, like turning that one Joker gang member into some sort of hybrid Joker and Two Face.

Very similar reasons as to why I think Loonatics s1 is vastly superior to season 2. Hand me original villains for a series over rehashed versions of old villains.

Watching porn on Pornhub or any other large mainstream porn site (all owned by essentially a monopoly) is being complicit in child abuse and rape. They made money knowingly hosting CSAM and should not be allowed to be in business. Even the stuff that involves people who are of age is often trafficked Eastern European women.

Rice and sauerkraut go well together

Unless you extensively have knowledge and experience with another country's politics, you shouldn't comment on anything besides humans rights violations or similar. You're likely to make a grossly ill informed assessment or opinion that you're regret. As well stereotyping is abound with such situations.

I have a bunch. I think the biggest one is that some people are naturally dumber than other people and can't be fixed by education. I don't think this broadly applies to any specific ethnic group or anything, but I do think that there is likely a genetic component to intelligence. I also don't think that we should prevent these people from breeding or treat them as inferior, but I also think that sending these people to college is a waste of time and expecting them to do well on college either waters down the college education experience or puts unfair expectations on them. I worry a lot about how these people will fare in an increasingly automated world and the answer is not good at all.

There's no ethical way to kill someone who's done nothing to you and doesn't want to die.

Heterosexuality is not natural.

We should riot and Kll all billionaires

I have two!

1. willful procreation is morally bad

2. if you aren't vegan, you can't be anarchist

Everyone who can should live vegan. If you don't live vegan and call yourselve an animal-lover, you're a hypocrite.

7-11 was a Part Time JOB!

I don't think Bin Laden was killed. The fast disposal of his "body" was suspect and his family was too wealthy.

Also, people over 75 should not vote or hold public office.

Armor-piercing ammunition should never be banned.

According to my employer that workers rights are important.

I don't think Epstein was a spy for any government. What kind of idiotic spy leaves thousands of emails as written proofs of crimes? I get it that he'd use gmail to seem inconspicuous, but you can easily delete your own emails. You rarely hear of spies, because they're very good at covering their tracks.

I think he was just a degenerate rich guy hanging out with other degenerate rich guys.

UK Rock bands and singers are galaxy away from US Rock bands and singers.

People are animals, apes to be specific, we act on instinct and adhere to the animal nature of our species. There is nothing grand or divine about us. There is nothing special to us, other than our ability to survive in different climates and environments, and there is nothing that separates us from the animals. We are the equivalent to over abundant irresponsible beavers with thumbs. The only reason we, as a species, think otherwise is purely delusion and wishful thinking.

Also, mothman did 9/11.

Depends on your definition of "controversial", for which I have two.

• In the sense of controversial meaning "a mainstream opinion that a large portion of the population finds morally reprehensible": The death penalty.

It's pretty much my singular strongly held conservative viewpoint, and as such one I've been open to frequently challenging throughout the years. I've heard out all the arguments against it: it costs the taxpayer too much money, sometimes people sentenced to death were actually innocent, the state shouldn't be granted that amount of power to begin with, etc etc...

But to me, it's always come down to an argument of morality. "Is it right to take another life, even if that life may endanger or harm others?" And this is usually where I would insert a thoughtful and nuanced philosophical paragraph or two to support my viewpoint...

But ever since all this Epstein shit has gone on to continuously spew out each day I've pretty much just been taking a well-deserved victory lap lol (Btw, I'm out of the loop... did Jizzstain ever end up successfully petitioning for her release after a few months of hugging puppies in max security?)

• In the sense of controversial meaning "what have you been smoking and can I have some": A very, very niche conspiracy theory about the nature of UFOs.

Warning to alien enthusiasts: This is the Santa's-not-real equivalent of ruining your childhood (so if you love the idea of little green men, just keep your mystery)

---

So a long time ago, I read a really obscure publication discussing the nuances behind famous "alien sightings", that halfway through makes the bombshell reveal that a majority of the so-called UFOs were mostly Russian spy technology, which coincides with a lot of certain historical events, ie. things like Roswell at the start of the Cold War, as well as "what they're hiding" in Area 51... etc. Essentially, the whole "little green men" / "the grays" mysticism can be chocked up to a cover-up government conspiracy. "Oh no, you can't go in there! There's uh... secret aliens!! And UFOs!! Top Secret."

The only time in my personal life I can ever recall having experienced a genuine UFO sighting (where I saw round lights rotating in a circle above cloud cover right over our building in broad daylight) was once as a kid while visiting my relatives... in Donetsk. So yeah, it kind of checks out. And going off of US history in general, I wouldn't put it past them that it's far more likely that most UFO "abductees" with PTSD were actually abducted and brainwashed by the government, especially since they've done that sort of thing before...

It's kind of a shitty reveal. But hey, don't let me ruin aliens for you, as even though little green men may be a complete fabrication (and seems way more obvious once you stop and think about how simplistic their design is lol...), that doesn't necessarily equate to disproving all possibility of alien life. Just like with religion, you can't really prove a negative. Fermi's Paradox and all that.

So there's technically no real evidence that extraterrestrial life couldn't exist... Even if there's a 99% chance that any strange things you've personally encountered wasn't actually aliens, lol

I think you should be able to hit any able bodied person once, without being charged with a crime.

You can’t just beat someone to hell. You’re still on the hook for any civil damages for serious injuries that occur. But if we just let anybody hit anybody else just that one time, I believe society would be a kinder place.

Johnny Kitagawa's child sexual abuse was confirmed in a trial over gossip magazine reports.

Johnny & Associates, which continued to have him involved with minors for over 15 years, engaged in organized child sexual exploitation and should be defined as a mafia.

Therefore, all organizations that did business with the company, including ISPs, universities, UMG, and Nintendo, should be defined as affiliated with the mafia.

That intervention in wars on other continents is bad.
Most people don't find this controversial, until I mention that this applies to the Ukraine war, too,

Beer at the weekends makes life more fun and booze generally makes life better for lots of people.

Children should be treated as human beings and deserve autonomy.

"I don't like how it looks", "it scares me" or "it's annoying" aren't a good enough reasons to kill an animal. No, not even that one.

Israelis and Palestinians have a right to a peaceful home. Outsiders have no right to dictate their policy (i.e. "death to <political entity>).

A: America and many other nations will soon need to create economic systems from the ground up. Capitalism and the rules we have to govern it, are just inertia with bandaids being used to keep it from hurling itself over a cliff. Socialism, Autoism (AI), and other ism's we don't know, will start outright replacing what we knew. The process will be chaotic and painful.

B: The death penalty and quicker judgments should be a thing, at least for America. The wheels of justice are too slow - and explicit terrorists like ICE are allowed to roam freely. They should be rounded up and put to the rope. Should the good guys win a 2nd American Civil War, all members of ICE and MAGA should sway in the wind, so that their ideas and character are not passed down to future generations of humanity. The mistaken mercy granted to the Confederates and Nazis, should not be given to the Dogey.

C: Peter Monyleux's best games are Magic Carpet 1 & 2.

D: AI is good, but we will need it to be publicly owned by society, freely available, and open-sourced to ensure that it remains that way. The social problems with AI largely stem from the wealthy exerting their influence over the poor, as they do in all things.

E: The hardware drought for RAM and GPUs will pass, and we will have much better hardware choices for our local gaming and AI.

Lunch should be at 1300

You want the truth? YOU WANT THE TRUTH?

You can't handle my ban record.

Nice try, sitting this one out.

Here's one, threads like this are a cynical attempt to generate discussion on quiet days

Because with time, this light is also putting an end to not just itself but every other form of life around it.

Whether the positives outweigh the negatives doesn't really matter when there's nobody left around. Once we get to the point where the climate disaster is bad enough and irreversible (it might have happened already), it doesn't even matter if humanity suddenly falls back into the middle ages and gets primitive enough to not do any harm anymore: certain processes won't just suddenly stop.

Intelligence is a pathogen. Wherever it develops in the universe, it rapidly spreads and consumes everything, wiping out most other life forms and eventually itself. It has probably developed over and over again over time all over the universe including our own galaxy. It may be relatively rare, but there would still be millions of instances. The fact that we have found no evidence of intelligent life elsewhere is not because it doesn’t exist or is too far away, but because we have missed the band of detectable transmissions from these societies that existed closer to us. There will be others, but we may be gone by then. We should definitely not be working to spread to other worlds. We should perish here from our own behaviors as we are meant to.

Han Solo shot first.

Deleted. Somebody else already posted this one.

Bloodmouths and cheese breathers should be factory farmed

The only people who actually have a claim to the argument of “abortion is murder” are biologists.

Everybody likes ranch, and if you say you don't, you're lying to try and seem fancy.

All the suppressed and secreted emancipatory technologies should be released, giving everybody interstellar spaceships of their own, in as little time as an afternoon.

Big bang for the hole universe is bs. It's just our galaxy doing breath in (black hole building up) and breath out (black hole collapse).

On Lemmy? Probably "God exists, and to God we will return on the Day of Judgement". Or something like "there are marked, easily observable personality differences between the sexes on average" (think Big Five traits, like agreeableness and neuroticism, for example).

Outside of Lemmy? Probably my dismissal of the hadiths (narrations regarding/involving prophet Muhammad), or at least my acknowledgement that (for Muslims) the Qur'an should be taken as an "axiomatic" message since it's the word of God and everything else is up for debate (and, evidently, if the hadith contradicts the Qur'an, you should disregard it). Idk, seems pretty obvious to me but the ummah is quite sectarian, ritualistic and afraid to make their own judgements (when God, as seen in the Qur'an, exhorts people to think!).

drunk driving is a skill you can get good at.

This place isn't liberal enough for me to express them. And that is a problem in itself.

Cis men aren't lonely enough

Toxic masculinity killed Dale Earnhardt

all human conditions are chemical imbalances of the brain. schizophrenia? imbalance. DID? imbalance. ASD? imbalance. gay? imbalance.

my point is, that we selectively treat certain imbalances because as a society we have chosen certain traits to be desirable or manageable.

if studied, I'm sure a drug could be made to "treat" homosexuality no different than ADHD. Same goes for heterosexuality.

fundamentally, we are computers that run chemical "programs" and react very specifically depending on which "interpreter" we have.

edit: post said controversial, not popular.