I did more research and I found out it actually isn’t standard where I live now, I am misremembering probably because I haven’t had many interactions with police here. This is a somewhat standard practice in major cities though which would explain why I was familiar with it. I will admit copaganda probably reinforced that though, most media I’ve seen does depict 2 officers. But whatever, I’m always happy to learn a new reason to hate cops.

No, I am thinking of what I have seen in real life. In my area there is almost always 2 cops per vehicle. I was unaware this was not standard.

I haven’t seen that before. I guess they really are just using a laptop and driving at the same time.

I don’t want to be the guy defending cops, but there is usually more than one officer in a squad car. There is no rule against a passenger being distracted.

I use pomade and it surprised me how often its branded like that. I have seen at least three brands that unironically use flaming skeletons. Also I have to say dapper dan is not great (at least the modern kind).

Edit: Apparently the modern kind is the only kind. O Brother just made it up, and someone took the design and made it real in 2011.

Well I don’t know what that is but my educated guess is 3.5

My public school in Louisiana had very similar toilet paper. I’m not sure if its actually the same, but it certainly looks like it.

So you do know what I’ve been talking about, you just purposely ignored it because you think its invalid? You could not have possibly done a better job at demonstrating to me that you are arguing in bad faith.

I don’t care that you think we should switch to metric, you said that Americans aren’t switching purely because they hate change, and they don’t care about the potential benefits just because they hate change so damn much. This is what I’ve been arguing against. I honestly have no idea how you could have read all of that and come to the conclusion I’m arguing against the metric system. Every word of it is about why Americans don’t think the switch is worth it.

By continuing to act like this you are preventing any actual conversation from taking place. You might as well just say “you’re wrong, no I will not elaborate”. If you’re not interested in having a conversation then don’t respond, no one is forcing you to do this.

If you would like to have a less sarcastic and rude discussion, I’ll be here.

American are willing to change things, we just pick what to change, and we aren’t being inconvenienced by this nearly enough to change it.

We are used to 2 liter bottles, so we still use them. We run 5ks because its been a standard distance to run for a long time. Other countries also do similar things, old habits die hard.

We use metric for science and medicine because the benefits of metric are much more pronounced for those use cases.

Honestly, using both really isnt that hard. Its only really an inconvenience if you aren’t already used to it. We aren’t changing it because we’re getting along just fine the way things are, and there are much bigger problems to be solved.

I had that problem with half life, but they supposedly fixed it in the 25th anniversary update.

I don’t have a strongly held belief regarding the existence of any gods.

The strongly held belief I’m referring to isn’t a belief in a god or lack thereof, its a belief that religion is a net negative for society.

I’m surprised you’re not aware of this.

To say I’m not aware of this is again to argue in bad faith. I have mentioned myself that religious indoctrination of course still exists, and is a problem.

As for the assessment of benefits, there’s a great deal of research into what people do with their lives and why.

Yes there is research into how religion affects society, but it isn’t very useful for this purpose for multiple reasons. There is no instance of a society without religion, so the difference between a religious and non-religious society can’t be studied. There can be no consensus on what is beneficial and what isn’t, as morality itself isn’t objective.

There is not and there never will be definitive evidence as to whether or not religion is beneficial for society.

There is nothing to suggest we need religion for any of the benefits that religious people say they obtain from it,

There is also nothing to suggest the opposite, because this can’t really be determined. You would have to so create a set of all the benefits religious people claim to get, which in and of itself would be a monumental task. Then, you would have to demonstrate that nonreligious people can achieve all of the exact same benefits.

This is why I’ve come to the conclusion that this argument is pointless, and neither of us know anything beyond our personal experience.

I stand by what I said and painting it as absolutes is arguing in bad faith.

This I agree with. Looking back, you were more careful than I thought you were to specify you were not talking in absolutes.

I will however double down that you are still making a fundamental assumption that your option is the correct one, and you make it more clear by arguing that all benefits of religion are possible without religion. If all benefits of religion can be attained without risking the detriment, then religion is the worse option by far.

However, thinking of this made me realize I’m just making the opposite assumption. Just like you, I’ve constructed a strongly held belief about religion based on my life experiences, which are entirely anecdotal and effectively meaningless.

How would you even get evidence that most people are manipulated into becoming religious? How would you get evidence that most people don’t? How would you get evidence that religion does or doesn’t benefit people? How would you even define benefit in the first place?

This argument is meaningless.

That makes more sense to me. Although, I would contend that people in real life can also just put on a role to varying degrees of success depending on the exact circumstances. Presumably when you said “personally” though, you meant people you already knew well enough to verify their claims to some extent.

Maybe you’re right, that sounds possible. I would think if that’s their intention they wouldn’t have written that “everyone” is everything, and would instead say “someone” or something to that effect. At that point I’m probably just overanalyzing though.

They are drawing that distinction for a reason. They literally said everyone is everything on the internet. I don’t how else you could possibly read that.

What about the internet makes this easier to lie about? I could tell you the same thing to your face and you still couldn’t fact check it.

Your understanding of their reasoning comes from a fundamental assumption that your choice is the correct choice for every person. They willingly made the wrong decision, therefore they must have been manipulated into doing so.

Many people do just become religious without outside influence. On a large scale, every society will create its own version of religion without fail. Clearly, they have something to gain psychologically by doing so.

While religious indoctrination obviously exists and obviously is a problem, it doesn’t discount the actual benefits that religion seems to have, and by extension the reasoning with which some people become religious.

We all do.

When I said “start”, it was in reference to the process of changing your religious identity, not your life as a whole.