Zombie-Mantis

You’re on it now, bud. It’s here, you’re in it. Welcome!

Neither Amazon nor Google are not part of the Fediverse. If you use their suites of software, you’ll be part of their non-federated, closed systems.

Lemmy, Mastodon, Pixelfed, Threads, and many, many others are Federated, but not the big corporate entities… Except Threads, stretching out from Meta’s own little digital fiefdom.

I think this comment has gotten the most responses out of any I’ve made in the time I’ve been on this platform. It’s also the comment with the most negative reaction.

I’m sorry, I understand there are significant cultural differences between Europe and America, but my conscience demands that I dig in my heels with this one: The age of consent must be at least 18 (with much lighter penalties for minors, and exceptions for near-age relationships, the aforementioned "Romeo & Juliet Laws), if not a little higher, as high as 21. I do agree that American law is distressingly inconsistent, and there are some states (notably southern/Republican-controlled states) where the age of consent and marriage is disgustingly low. I comdemn them as well.

My foot is down. 18. No lower. In fact, for every negative reply from some European defending this morally repugnant practice, I’m adding another year!

I wholeheartedly agree about abstinence-only education being an absolute failure of a policy, though I should also point out that it’s a state policy, and states outside of the deep-south generally have at least basic sex-ed, and some states are fairly comprehensive.

Funny enough, when living in Tennessee, it was the class teaching the course, because the teacher was unable to tell us about condoms, how to use them, or where to discretely get them for free. She didn’t stop up us, I think because she wanted the class to know, but wasn’t allowed to teach us proper sex-ed by law.

I do also think there’s a meaningful difference between juvenile criminal law and adult criminal law, in that we treat children’s ability to make informed decisions differently than that of adults’.

You’re old enough to stand trial

Generally, you don’t get charged as an adult until you’re 18 in America, so, not applicable.

I’m having difficulty parsing this first dotted point… Here, we don’t generally prosecute minors who have relationships with each other, as while the law (and culture) does discourage that, it’s primarily there to protect minors from sexual exploration by adults; hence our “Romeo and Juliet” laws, which protect relationships between minors and adults of similar age (such as for people born within 2 years of each other, but this varies by state).

The rest of this seems nonsensical to me, even America’s laws around adulthood (16, 18, 21) are more clear-cut. I think there’s a very fundamental difference in how law is conceptualized here, so I can’t really understand how or why you would have a law saying 14 years is old enough for sex, but 18 for porn, but 21 for prostitution, as a premise.

Dunno if I’d call 16 “surprisingly high”, here in America, at least, it’s 18. To the extent anyone thinks we should change it (it’s not a common point of discussion, except that there’s legal inconsistency between ages of consent for sex, smoking, drinking, driving, owning firearms, etc.), they think it should be 21. We also have Romeo and Juliet laws, which protect relationships between minors and people of very close ages (such as between 17 yrs and 18 yrs) from the same level of punishment as an adult assaulting a minor.

It’s 14 in Germany? Yuck.

I didn’t know that, thank you for informing me! Hopefully the new government can succeed in undoing any damage done by the previous government.

Oh, I didn’t know this! Thank you for that information. I hope the new government can materiality improve the lives of the public.

Some comments have pointed out that Finland already had a right-wing government going into this election, and I’ll admit that I was entirely unaware of this.

Again, I congratulate the Finnish public on rejecting right-wing and authoritarian politics, especially after having to suffer under it at home.

The Finns are all too aware of what far-right government means, they’re living next to it, and it’s threatening their very existence.

Congratulations on the Fins voting against barbarism! Here’s to hoping the upcoming election here in the USA follows suit, and continues to reject reactionary nationalism.

They would lose their representation, not their statehood. There is no legal mechanism for a state to leave the union.

I assume you mean that we let Israel strike Palestine? Yes, that’s been true, but neither Hamas, nor the Palestinian Authority, or any other Palistinian group, have nuclear capabilities. That’s the concern with Russia, that they will respond with a tactical nuclear strike, or worse. Whether that fear is founded or not is a different question, of course.

And we’ve got 49 more where that came from

I’m getting the impression that a lot of foreigners think the American public generally supports the current healthcare system. We don’t.

Complaining about our healthcare is practically a National pass time. We all want something better, but it’s also one more problem in a burning pile of problems, which we have few tools to fix.

Some good news, is that we’re making some small progress on that front. We’re finally begging to rebuild our unions, which were dismantled decades ago, and the American public is becoming more politically engaged. Hopefully, these trends continuing a positive direction, and are resilient to being torn down again.

There is some small progress in that direction, but the organizations which would allow us to actively act have long ago been dismantled. We’re only just recently begging to rebuild our unions here. I hope this time, organized labor is more resilient.

In our defense, the Republican “half” of the country aren’t actually half the country. They’re the smallest of the 3 major political affiliations among votin-age Americans: “None”, “Democrat”, and then “Republican”. In that order.

“None” is the largest single political affiliation in America, and that has been a kind of negative feedback loop in our politics. People are disenfranchised and feel disconnected from the governance of our country, so they don’t (or can’t) vote, and because they don’t vote, they’re not represented in government and are easier to disenfranchise. This, and rampent legalized bribery, have created a great deal of our problems.

Not to say voters are the source of the feedback loop, it’s being actively driven by autocratic politicians and moneyed interest.

sorry I eated them

Replaceable battery, micro SD card slots are hard to come by these days, too.

200€ is Euros, about $212.

Crazy Train, Mr. Crowley, Bark at The Moon, Scary Little Green Men… Really any of Ozzy Osbourne’a better songs.