In the US just peer through the crack between the door and the wall. Ensure solid eye contact with the current occupant. Determine how much time they’ve left. Adjust plan accordingly.
Extremely depressing, socially isolating, psychologically warping. I’m a responsible, intelligent, ambitious person, but I’m not a functioning human. I’m severely and permanently damaged by poverty, even though I grew up in Canada. I’m 40 but I just managed to start a career about two years ago because I’m borderline unemployable and emotionally unbalanced (I worked my ass off at careers for 20 years, and utterly failed, constant burnout and humiliation, social assistance, moving back into a parents’ tiny apartment). I work remotely which is the only way I can ever hope to maintain a steady job. I can’t maintain normal relationships because I was largely denied social interaction growing up, and my brain can’t cope with social things now. I stopped trying to force myself to learn because it was literally decades of torture that didn’t work. People keep telling me I’m autistic but all the doctors say “nope, you’re just fucked up” (actually they use words like “personality disorder” and PTSD and anxiety disorders and ADHD and other stuff. I have a long list of diagnoses for which no treatment was offered except pills which mostly don’t work, although I’ll admit that ADHD meds helped me get a bunch of work done and also straightened out my brain a little bit. I don’t take them anymore but the positive effects are still with me).
Now, it looks like I’m doing a lot of complaining here. But in truth I’m just describing my “no hope” landscape. Hope sounds like poison. I have things to do, and right now I have a pretty good life.
Yeah that sounds a lot like my current life. I’m 41, broke, can’t keep a job, socializing is painful, country upbringing. Whatever happened in my childhood did something like that to me.
But I was asking what it was like, not so much what outcomes did it have on your adult life. If it’s too painful to relive it you don’t have to, but I was curious. What was it like, when you were a kid?
We moved around a lot, almost always rural. I had a big family so they were always a close crew, but also always very strained and stressed. We had a Nintendo and bicycles. I usually had friends around until I was 11, but then we literally just moved out into the forest where there was nobody else. For 7 awful years I was like in a prison. I lost the ability to communicate, but not the desire. I dreaded the summers because I knew I wouldn’t see a single person outside my family. My parents were constantly stressed, always on a sour mood. The forest was hard on them too. I would mostly try to entertain my siblings amd read books. Depression became the biggest feature of my life. There was just nobody. Then I would go back to school in the fall and I didn’t know how to communicate anymore, and was constantly sad and lonely. But I denied those feelings because I didn’t want to be a bitch.
My very young life was awesome. Until I was maybe 7 or 8 we always had tons of family and friends around, including when we lived in rural villages. We were poor but so was everybody else. But we had to keep moving to chase work, and I always lost those relationships. And then as I described above we moved out to the absolute woods and my brain started to rot. I really have no idea what “hope” could even have looked like.
There were good times too. My siblings and I would explore the forest. We followed a river up a mountain until there was no river anymore (its weird to see it getting smaller and smaller until there’s nothing). We built sledding tracks. We found an abandoned cemetery from the 1700s just in the middle of the forest.
Mostly I just read books. And that’s still what I do.
Thank you for talking online. It might not appear to be much, but it is. You’re connecting and communicating your pain. Hopefully we merry chums can take on some of the burden you feel. Keep going; this is your one shot and it doesn’t have to be noteworthy to anyone but yourself.
The rich won’t be allowed to lose. The whole system is bullshit. You can do everything right, get sick cuz fuknature, have to sell everything off for medicine and still die, younger than you should, in debt and penniless. It’s not even necessary, the Cruelty is the point. That’s capitalism. It’s about control, and capitalists need to be looked at like they have a mental illness. Most our jobs are bullshit and don’t matter. The national debt doesn’t matter. Money isn’t real, it’s a vehicle for resource allocation, not a store of value, but try getting someone not ready to hear that to even think about our social systems as something mutable and not organic or ordained. Nope. Society was designed, by people, and it’s working exactly as it’s intended, which is, fucking great for them and fuck everyone else.
At the end of the day, your physical body has had just one goal. Survive. Everything I have to do to achieve that end is justified by existence itself. Building a system that puts itself in the way of people simply surviving is building a system to fail. When it comes to politics, and by that I mean, do-whatever-you-want-as-long-as-it-doesn’t-hurt-someone-else and then policies, and for policy I just ask “is this the best we can do?”
We have a living constitution, a living body of law. Current laws have been bought and paid for, just like judges, representatives, senators…
The deviation from where we started to where we are was a process of the living and still is for today’s legislators, or more accurately, today’s lobbyists who actually craft the laws and have them at the rest in case the Overton window moves to the point they’re feasible.
Millennials grew up in the 90s, possibly one of the “best” decades in modern history: good economy, closest we’ve gotten to “world peace,” comparative political stability and “quiet” (the biggest scandal in US politics was Monica Lewinsky), and problems existed but generally seemed to be getting better with time not worse. The 90s were an optimistic time, especially considering the snowballing disaster of a 21st century that followed.
Edit: also advancements in science and technology were bright and exciting, without the constant existential dread of “what calamity have we unleashed this time?” The biggest tech/science-advancement ethical debate I remember was about cloning people, which is a genuine sci-fi-esque moral quandary but ended up being generally moot in reality.
At least where I live as a millennial you could have had a really nice childhood - until you finished school. Most struggled to find a job. Businesses would hire you as unpaid intern at best, etc. All while your parents (the boomers) expected you to have house, car and family in your twenties.
Yeah, but us millennials were only teenagers at best, toddlers at the youngest. Not really enough time to do anything with it. So while we got to experience a cool time in our youths, we had it all ripped away as soon as the .com bubble burst, and then 9/11 hit, along with other mixed events, like the Unabomber, Columbine, etc. We were also the first in line to get sent to Afghanistan.
Meanwhile Gen X got to live their adult lives during the 90s and make a name for themselves.
Sure, some aspects of the 00s were shit, but that felt like a bump in the road: things were still on the up-and-up overall, and the general expectation was that we could change the future for the better, resolve the world’s issues, and live better lives than our parents. That all came crashing down sometime around 2010 with the Great Recession, failure of Occupy, and realization that Obama wasn’t the knight in shining armor we’d literally hoped for. So the difference is that Millennials remember a pre-9/11 world and the less-great-but-still-hopeful early 00s, whereas Gen Z doesn’t.
I’d say that we’re all fucked. There’s going to be at least one global population correction in the next century. Even if we are able to push it back through mitigation, new development, geoengineering, luck and pluck, the zoomers are going to see it by midlife and everyone’s life will be defined by it the way Dresden hit Kurt Vonnegut.
Someone recently asked why the devil admitted he’d lost the fiddling match with Johnny. They said “If he’s the devil why didn’t he just claim he’d won?”.
I’d never asked myself that before. It had never occurred to me that the devil might cheat in a contest.
It made me realize that the dominant view of how people operate has changed in our culture. We now tend to assume people are slimeballs. The shittiest, back-stabbiest, most underhanded dishonest stuff now seems like normal behavior. Not even consciously necessarily. We just assume everyone is a barely-held-together antihero just looking for an excuse to take the gloves off and do nasty shit, and that we’re only good to our tight inner circle while it’s okay to treat the rest of the world like garbage.
It’s our zeitgeist. I’m finally starting to grok that word’s meaning, after having lived through four decades.
Satan doesn't punish. Satan's whole job is temptation. Anyone tempted would technically be punished by god.
I assume the mixup has to be resultant of the constant game of religious Telephone. Not really surprising. It's pretty awkward to frame your spotless savior who is the living embodiment of Love as also doing deliberate premeditated torture, even when it's written right there. And comparatively simple to expect it from someone who's supposed to embody unpleasantness.
What’s hell all about, then? I always understood from Christian theology that it was a place controlled by Satan where Bad People are tortured for an infinite amount of time after death.
Our biggest environmental worry was landfills growing to cover the entire planet. We were all convinced this was our fate and that we had to recycle everything mainly to protect ourselves from having to live on ever-expanding waste dumps.
This is generally what I came to say, except to add that Gen Z is giving me (old millennial) some hope. We were frogs in the pot, but it's a rolling boil and zoomers like Greta, David Hogg, and the 12 year old who interrupted COP28 seem alright.
Ultimately, I'm determined to break the cycle of previous Gen calls current Gen lazy. These kids are alright and I wish we had left them better.
I am way, way, way more progressive than my husband but we both grew up before things got so polarized. It’s hard to talk to him about politics because he has gotten sort of propagandized and will spit out sound bites instead of arguing in good faith.
But in terms of what do I think? He’s a great guy, stays in shape, does the dishes, holds down a job, and our sex drive matches (which is a difficult thing to find at this age, more difficult than you might expect). He respects me, is loving and is easy to talk to about anything except political stuff. We are both adventurous in foods, like the same movies, his family likes me. We do not have a gun, live in the city now (he moved to town as I balked at moving to the suburbs). He is not at all racist as far as I can tell, we hang out with whoever and he lived around the world as a kid, one of his kids in interracial relationship, he did not bat an eye at that either. He’s a good guy in and out with some crazy ideas is what I think. Agrees on some things that I’d consider progressive (universal healthcare) but still thinks “regulation” is the root of all evil, as I think corporate greed is.
We just have really different ideas about what is wrong with society and what would help. Also I’d note - his ideas might actually help in some very socialist country, but here in the US and especially Florida they make no sense. He doesn’t see that, and I think that’s the root of the problem.
I can’t tell you what a right wing woman would think though. I do know some religious conservatives of various religions but they aren’t politically conservative exactly. The rest of our friends are maybe right of my politics but all our kids, mine and his, and their spouses and partners, are at least Democrats and some socialist/social democrat. So I won this generation and am satisfied.
I don’t think I would want to be with someone that went to the voting booth every few years and pulled the leavers to take my health rights away, because ultimately that’s what is happening. It would be a betrayal, it’s not benign and all the affable personality traits mentioned wouldn’t make me forget it.
For these rebuplican men, it’s saying “I respect you but regulation has gotten out of control, and your bodily autonomy is a price I’m willing to pay to fix it”.
The man shows no signs of sexism, of xenophobia or racism , or bigotry, but pulls the leavers for those things anyway.
You find his ideas crazy, note he has become propagandized, and is difficult to talk to about politics. I dare say if you pushed those conversations you’d be shocked at what you find.
Ultimately voting is an act, not speech or opinion, it’s an act to manifest your will and your priorities onto others through force of law.
So while one can take the approach of getting along to get along when it comes to regulation and corporate taxation, it becomes less easy when you recognize that, as a functional adult making an informed choice, your husband acted to end women’s bodily autonomy, erode women’s health care, end same sex marriage, deny and delay climate change action, and a whole host of other abhorrent policy goals.
I want to say, I take no pleasure at all in saying this to you. None. Your response to the post is just so personal it feels impossible to respond to in an impersonal manner. I just felt the need to challenge the idea that affable personality traits can make up for abhorrent policy goals.
Not only her rights, the rights of people who aren’t straight, the rights of people who aren’t cis, the rights of kids to have a decent education, the rights of indigenous people, the rights of non-whites. That’s even not to mention that they’re against providing people with healthcare so that they don’t die, against trying anything that might make this planet livable in the future (for the kids that they claim to want to protect), and against not trying to fucking overthrow democracy. I don’t need to agree with my partner’s every opinion and political ideal, but at the very least I have to be able to respect them, and throwing everyone who isn’t a well-off white man off a cliff for “lower taxes” isn’t something I can respect.
Where I do think you have a point is that I find any conservative hypocritical because they think one rule for them & different rules for others. He knows this. But am I perfect? No way. And on voting, when I vote I also have to make compromises because no party here is willing to protect the environment or give us healthcare or push back against our oligopoly. I think yeah he convinces himself on the social stuff because he believes the R will bring a better economy by some magic, and that’s about it. I cancel him out and 11 votes back me up, all our kids who are old enough to vote, all their companions.
But no, I’d not give up a loving and mostly compatible relationship because of politics, and apparently he wouldn’t either. I think without these connections, we’d be so much worse off. He would be worse in an echo chamber, and isn’t an idiot in other ways at all.
Obviously your calculation will be different. But I can love someone who is not me.
Alright, sure. But that’s still just him being not just willing, but actively trying, to strip your human rights away for this magic economy and you rationalizing his actions as an acceptable compromise.
I would see that as a clear example of disrespect and disregard for my well being and the well being of people who I care about.
This isn’t about finding someone just like you to love, far from it, compromise is normal and differences between people in love are wonderful. What this is about, for me anyway, is that I would draw the line at someone who is actively supporting the deterioration of my human rights regardless of how many dishes they do.
True. I mean, it’s sad for her to be with someone who’s got such a low bar. Does the dishes? Honey, you can use a machine for that. I’m doing them right now!
That’s the opposite of why people stay together. Usually people say, “Well they have trouble doing the dishes, but at least our major beliefs are similar.”
Honestly she seems pretty similar to her husband in how illogical she’s being. He’s like, “Well Republicans might be terrible socially but they might lower my taxes!” She says, “Well he votes for people I despise but at least those dishes got done!”
They are similar people in that they both make bad life choices. So maybe it works?
Honestly she seems pretty similar to her husband in how illogical she’s being.
Love is not logical. If she’s happy, I don’t see the issue. It’s up to her to decide whether she believes he’s a good person, and apparently she does. Who are we to tell her she’s wrong about someone we don’t even know?
Interestingly something like 41% of women identify as pro-life. I know you and the person you were responding to probably wouldn’t, but my point is just that there are a lot of women who would see their conservative male partner vote for anti-abortion candidates and not be bothered at all. Not because they’re rationalizing it, but because they don’t see it as a negative in the first place.
Both pro-life and pro-choice are sanitized descriptions of the beliefs they refer to. Both movements contain people that believe completely insane things on the topic, like that women or doctors should be imprisoned or worse for making a certain difficult health choice, or that unborn children aren’t really people until they’re on a particular side of their mother’s vagina.
And you are further sanitising the PC position. In the vast majority of cases abortion is not about health, but convenience. The vast majority of PL support medical exempts as shown by the actual wording of the laws passed.
That changes a lot depending on what time period of pregnancy you’re looking. The later you look the more it’s about health. By the time you get to third trimester abortions they’re almost exclusively about health. The ones of convenience are early, it all makes sense.
Citation? I can’t find anything to support this, just vague gesturing by organisations with no hard data. The only rigorous data I can find is a study from France which is irrelevant because France bans late-term abortions except for medical reasons. In fact I suspect that this is the cause of this belief, third trimester abortions are primarily medical, because most states in the US and countries in the world ban them except for health reasons. So of course the studies that address them are all going to be covering medically indicated abortions, and then journalists take this to the presses.
There is Kimport’s paper which doesn’t support your claim, but I find it quite shoddy regardless.
There's a reason why the feminist saying "the personal is political" is so threatening. Because it denies precisely the reasoning seen above and elsewhere in this thread.
Conservatives often complain about progressives ending relationships and friendships over "politics". Because they want to draw a hard line between the two, where as long as they behave civilly to people's faces, it doesn't matter when they vote to make the same people's lives materially worse. Because "politics" is something... I don't know, abstract?
That’s an interesting take. Conservatives tend to have an image of hypocrisy - ie, maybe treat a woman well, yet seek to restrict her legal rights or prevent women from protections, and they seem to think that this hypocrisy cannot be questioned. They never like being called out or questioned on it.
My experience living in a couple of countries in Europe is that people’s tendencies for how they relate at an interpersonal and also towards society are cultural and that further, interpersonal and societal forms of relation are in fact separate.
For example, in The Netherlands there is more a tendency to consider the broader impact of one’s actions (and being called “asocial” is actually considered insulting), whilst in Portugal if you don’t take advantage of “The System” when you can get away with it you’re considered a sucker (the dutch tend to think of “The System” as “everybody else”, whilst the portuguese do not) but in both countries screwing people (not in a good, sex, way) is considered a bad thing and I would even say the portuguese tend to at least express more their concern with other people on a personal level, quit likely even be more emphatic empatetic.
Meanwhile in the UK taking advantage of others, personally, whilst being very polite about it, is the essence the upper class upbringing (the “gentleman” is certainly no such thing).
I expect that you get the same thing in US were culture is not broken along language barrier lines but none the less seems to be siloed by other factors.
The problem is that many personal decisions have systemic consequences. Things like weight gain, smoking or even poor resource utilization cause serious societal and environmental harm, and yet terminating relationships over them is generally criticised. (Many of the biggest issues {climate change, healthcare, drug abuse etc} faced are directly caused by poor personal habits, not voting).
So the question is out of all personal decisions, why are political views being carved out as an exception that is worthy of terminating a relationship?
“is so threatening”
Sometimes when you are criticised it’s because you are a complete moron, not because your ideas are so brilliant they send people running.
Many of the biggest issues {climate change, healthcare, drug abuse etc} faced are directly caused by poor personal habits, not voting
This is just such utter nonsense. Many places around the world have made massive inroads into solving these problems and every single time, the solution has come from systemic policy decisions.
Healthcare has been addressed by various universal healthcare systems, drug abuse has been addressed through decriminalisation, offering of rehabilitation, and making sure people aren't living under crushingly miserable economic conditions.
And climate change is not caused by individual decisions, but by the fact that our economic system only values profit, and thus incentivises the destruction of the environment to increase profit.
So the question is out of all personal decisions, why are political views being carved out as an exception that is worthy of terminating a relationship?
Because politics affects people's lives. I could not care less if you're a nice person to my face if you are voting for policies that make it impossible for me to live my life.
You talk about personal choices as if someone being overweight is going to measurably affect your life, when it just isn't, no not even through increases in health insurance costs. And then downplay the actual effect of conservatives criminalising my healthcare.
One of those actions clearly has orders of magnitude more impact than the other. Yet strangely, you are concerned about the one with negligible impact, and want to ignore the one with considerable impact.
Sometimes when you are criticised it’s because you are a complete moron, not because your ideas are so brilliant they send people running.
You are below my contempt. Your ideas are simplistic and have been addressed decades ago. You are painfully boring.
“This is such utter nonsense” So you don’t think that people choose to be wasteful?
Laws and personal decisions both cause systemic changes. And guess what, laws do not pass if people do not already engage in personal habits that the laws encourage. The tobacco restrictions would never have passed if it weren’t for personal decisions that lowered the rate of tobacco use.
“You strangely are more concerned about the one with negligible impact”
No, they both have consequences. I’m pointing out that the distinction being made that somehow political views have special considerations over all the other personal actions is worthless. (Remember what the actual topic was?)
Additionally do you realise how completely insane your argument is? A single voter does not determine laws, groups of voters do. Just like how a single smoker does not burden the healthcare system, millions of them do.
“Someone being overweight isn’t going to on measurably affect your life”
It is. Here’s the hard facts, overweight people are less happy, they have worse socialisation, they are unattractive ( which as much as people want to pretend like attractiveness doesn’t matter, it absolutely does when it comes to casual interaction), they have shorter, less productive lives, they increase health care costs. All of these effect society as a whole and the individual.
“And downplaying the actual effect of conservatives criminalising my healthcare”
I have no idea what you are talking about, I never downplayed any laws, you’re just fabricating that so you can justify your whining.
Look, I’m not a conservative but more importantly I’m not someone who conjures nonsensical arguments to justify some vague gut feeling I developed while eating poisonous mushrooms.
“This is such utter nonsense” So you don’t think that people choose to be wasteful?
That's not what I said. Read again.
And guess what, laws do not pass if people do not already engage in personal habits that the laws encourage.
Of course they do. Behaviour can follow legislation. Furthermore most of the legislation would need to target corporations, not individuals. In which case behaviour definitely follows legislation.
No, they both have consequences. I’m pointing out that the distinction being made that somehow political views have special considerations over all the other personal actions is worthless. (Remember what the actual topic was?)
Because one primarily affects the person making the decision, with smaller secondary effects on other people. And the other primarily affects other people, doing significantly more harm.
People being overweight does not affect you nearly as much as people voting to ban gay marriage or trans healthcare affects LGBT+ people.
It is. Here’s the hard facts,
Oh please.
overweight people are less happy,
Which is none of your business.
they have worse socialisation,
You are deeply unpleasant yourself, take the log out of your own eye.
they are unattractive ( which as much as people want to pretend like attractiveness doesn’t matter, it absolutely does when it comes to casual interaction),
Nobody owes you attractiveness you little freak.
they have shorter, less productive lives,
None of your business, how other people spend their lives.
they increase health care costs.
Old people increase healthcare costs. If unhealthy people die earlier as you say, then they probably save the system money.
All of these effect society as a whole and the individual.
Not even remotely to the degree that political action does. Voting outweighs all of that by many orders of magnitude.
I have no idea what you are talking about, I never downplayed any laws, you’re just fabricating that so you can justify your whining.
It's called an "example" sweetheart.
Progressives aren't ending relationships based on political stances around taxes. They're ending relationships because of bigotry against marginalised groups.
“Further most of the regulations need to target corporations”
Guess what is also a way of targeting corporations? Market forces. If people aren’t buying your products/services, do you keep selling those products? The reason why boycotts generally fail is because people are spineless, not because the actual action wouldn’t cripple a business.
You so desperately want to prove the point that the only personal choice that matters is voting, that you are willing to deny reality.
“Then they probably save money”
Probably? Is that the strongest statement you can make? People who die younger don’t have lower healthcare costs (unless it’s an accident or homicide), because they are sicker throughout their end of life.
“Doesn’t effect you as much as people wanting to ban gay marriage”
Pretty, sure that more of my taxes go towards paying for emphysema treatment than are effected by the tiny amount of same-sex married couples (which incur costs how?).
“None of your business how other people spend there lives”
It’s everybody’s business. If this was true, then things like tobacco restrictions wouldn’t matter because healthcare costs are nobody’s business.
What happened to the good old socialists that recognised that if society has a responsibility to support you, you conversely have a responsibility to not be an unnecessary burden? Nowadays we just have libertarian-poisoned socialists who think that nothing you do matters.
“Nobody owes you attractiveness” They owe themselves attractiveness. It is an objective fact that obese people suffer socially, and that translates to societal problems.
“Not even to the degree as voting”
How many companies do you think have dedicated blocks of consumers amounting to 50 million people? A boycott of 50 million people would destroy most companies (if they even have that many customers). You are confusing the fact that most people don’t engage in personal action (because they are just like you), with asserting that personal action does nothing. The reason why political action works is simply because people do it in coordinated groups.
“Progressives are ending relationships based on taxes …”
Motte and Bailey argumentation. The topic was whether or not it is appropriate to end relationships solely on voting (but not personal habits), you explicitly argued that it was (because only voting actually matters) and are now narrowing it down to only “bigotry against marginalised groups”. When that was never the topic.
“You are deeply unpleasant yourself” Are you sure about that? Would you prefer a dishonest liar, who said “Oh my gawd. So true, sweetie.” to every nonsensical claim you made? (Obviously, yes you would, because posters like you are accustomed to sycophantic behaviour).
!The fungus shapes the ice into fine hairs through an uncertain mechanism and likely stabilizes it by providing a recrystallization inhibitor similar to antifreeze proteins!<
I always find these interesting that we still haven’t figure out fungi fully.
Nope, but I’ve found a nice mac and cheese sandwich to be a small mac and cheese put on a chicken sandwich at KFC/Chik-Fil-A/Popeyes/Your preferred chicken hut. Add a BBQ sauce and it’s great. Super messy though.
I admit. I just pictured them lying on the operating table about to be knocked out for surgery with them saying "Good luck on the surgery" to the surgeons.
Are you Canadian by any chance? It’s common in Canada to call electrical utilities “hydro” whether there’s water generation or not. In the states they don’t do this as much. At least not in my experience.
Well hello there Washington citizen! WA is the only state in the US to get most of its electricity from hydro.
You’ve got a great river system up there and WA manages to put it all to great use. If the whole country had that kind of river network, perhaps we’d all be running on renewables…
Ah - I didn’t know we were the only ones who do. But yes, it’s nice to have that. I understand we also have the largest ferry system in at least the US, although I think that’s not directly related to the rivers.
Utility poles. Could carry electricity and/or telephone and/or cable tv. In some places it may be home to street lights, sirens, emergency signals, fiber optic cables & junctions/splitters, or other infrastructure.
Power does not corrupt. It reveals. If you have the power to do whatever you want, it becomes apparent what you wanted to do. If having this power makes you do evil deeds, it means you already wanted to do evil deeds but lacked the power to.
I think the issue is that it’s impossible to have “perfect morals” and morals are subjective. Once you have absolute power there will no longer be someone or something to keep you in check when it comes to more questionable morals. Sure you might not think you are doing anything wrong, but you can still look like an evil villain to everyone else.
Even if we agree that it causes visual pollution, I’d argue that visual pollution from fossil fuels is many multitudes worse. Case in point, major chinese and indian cities.
I was in New Delhi when the AQI was ~700, that is MUCH worse than visual pollution. My lungs started hurting within 20 minutes of being outside, and a huge amount of people on the domestic flight I was on (mostly local residents) had coughs.
Sometimes “ugly” is even “not pretty and wealthy looking”.
Wind turbines aren’t pretty but they’re not any more of an eye sore as overhead power lines or whatever. And at least it’s a symbol of caring about being sustainable.
A lot of people like to move all the “ugly” elsewhere out of their sight and then call those places shitholes. It doesn’t bother them they’re just moving the infrastructure where the less wealthy have to deal with it. They’d rather a coal plant destroy a lower class city in pollution than see wind turbines near their upper class neighbourhood.
I think any place that rejects renewables should get a coal fired power plant instead. Let them reconsider it as their kids grow up with heavy metals and all the other shit these things spew out.
We stayed at a private beach resort once and I never want to again. Sure it was nice for a bit having so much space to yourself, but I miss you guys. I missed the +90 year old couples holding hands, the kids hopped up on ice cream and youth and BEACH, the young families holding a newborn, the middle aged bikers, the weird guy driving a model T, teenagers being sullen and prodding jellyfish, dogs who look like they are in heaven, hipster bicycles, processed meat fried in sugar somehow, arcades that still take coins run by crooked carnies, the 12 guys who decided to dig a really deep hole, the weird religious ethnic immigrant group just chillin…
I missed humanity in all its loud happy glory. This is the way we are meant to have fun, together. Not alone on some beach chair while someone underpaid changes our towels.
A relative gifted me a really ugly tree ornament. I don’t put up a Christmas tree and haven’t ever in my adult life. Relative knows this and delivered it alongside comments about me needing to get a tree and get more into the “religious” spirit of the holiday.
Normally I would at least look to donate or something I don’t want, but ugly, religious proselytizing junk goes in the trash.
Yep, from Rome to Rīga, they used to mark the death of nature with plants that refuse to die. Later, they started decorating them to symbolise the blossoming or the harvest of the year’s last feast.
Source: school education from the last pagans of Europe.
Oh yes, we all remember that well established in the bible parable about Jesus dragging a pine tree into his house in a dessertic weather town for his birthday party every year and how mad Mary and Josef were when it started to rot in February because Jesus just refused to take it out.
By far replaceable batteries. You used to be able to purchase physically larger and higher capacity batteries to get insane battery life, but because they would include a larger rear plastic for the phone it would still look normal. Now we have to waste space and lose efficiency with external power banks.
Pretty sure phone cases with external batteries exist that are literally identical to what you are describing (“purchase physically larger or higher capacity batteries”). Also current phones do a lot more than the old phones you’re describing as “having insane battery life.” Sure, a cell phone of 2005 could be left on for probably two days straight without needing a charge but you were only getting an occasional text message and maybe calling someone once or twice and maybe playing Snake during that timeframe.
External batteries are not the same as there is substantial loss in transmitting the power to the phone, particularly with the many “magsafe” compatible wireless ones. The wired ones add substantially more bulk for similar battery size and although the standard for battery life is much better now, for many otherwise great phones it’s still not amazing (aka every pixel prior to this year’s).
Being able to quickly swap a battery or simply replace it with a 10000mAh cell for only a few mm more thickness (my preferred method) simply isn’t an option now.
Some users have come to this thread to answer this question honesty and openly. Without cussing or name calling or anything.
I think it’s shameful for people to be downvoting them. Downvote something for being off topic, or for being violent or hateful that’s fine. But for having an opinion that’s different from yours in a thread specifically asking for that?
There are always going to be people who you disagree with. On every topic.That kind of behavior will only push people away.
I asked this question because I really want to try to understand people who are different than me and hold other opinions than me. Broaden my horizon. Maybe help people question their own reasonings.
So, I asked a question on a topic I don’t understand. I hope people will answer honestly and that people who disagree will avoid persecuting that honesty.
Good for you that’s a great attitude to have. Having honest and open conversation in good faith is so valuable and healthy. Keep it up and don’t let those types get you down.
I totally agree about the common ground. Understanding has to occur on both sides. You must be willing to listen before you expect anyone else to.
I think for a lot of people its very similar to religion.
If you grew up in the church, the priest/pastor was a nice guy, church events were very central to the community, he spoke at Nannas funeral. You might not be religious but the broader concerns about “the church” ring a lot more hollow because you have seen the positive side.
If you grew up somewhere that was very republican and your local and state reps did the meat and potatoes of their jobs well, why would you have anything against them? Your community was nice, nobody was racist or homophobic (that you noticed), the schools were funded, people had jobs. You have seen with your own eyes that Republicans arent evil.
Downvotes only push people who care about the numbers away. People who care about discussion will only be pushed away by vitriol being sent their way via replies and DMs.
Highly unlikely this is what the civil war would be like. It’s not a state v state thing necessarily although that might be a small part of it. In the first civil war, the south unified and its people largely supported the war, except their slaves. It’s unlikely something like that will happen again. It’s not impossible but unlikely.
What is much more likely is rural v city. Even in red states, cities are blue and will often vote for blue policies. Rural areas are where things get dicey. They’ve been largely left behind by the surge in industry and general expansion of the capitalist economy we currently have (they’ve had a lot of businesses (including grocery stores) close because more people are leaving, and their rural towns are frequently having their hospitals close leaving large swaths of areas where the nearest hospital is an hour away). As such, they’ve got a grudge against the cities. What’s likely to happen is rural counties and their local governments trying to cut off their food supply, starving the cities to win the battle. There’s tons more possibilities, but this one I think is the one that’s got the highest likelihood.
Another possibility that is scary, but is highly dependent on the party of the people in power, is the government using their power to actually strike the cities, like in Syria where Assad bombed and used chemical weapons on his own people. Syria is actually a pretty good example of what more modern civil wars are like, or can be like. Governments v rebels and militias, and cities v rural (although there’s much less rural land in Syria).
If you’re interested, the podcast It Could Happen Here has a great first season where they go over possible disasters including a civil war and a pandemic (it was actually made in 2019 so before covid). It’s really helpful and can teach a lot, especially for an outsider from across the pond. It also does a lot better job giving an explanation and actual sources.
Hope this helps since it didn’t seem like you were getting a real answer.
I had to stop listening to ICHH it gave me way too much anxiety and was just too stressed back when i listened in 2020. I’ve since taken up to instead listen to BTB and cool people who did cool stuff off the same network. Monsters that are usually dead and people who kick ass make me feel better.
Another thing the world ought to know is that the folks who are identified by “red” and “right” in America are in the minority.
Significantly so.
However our voting system uses geography / land as a modifier so while there are less of them they occupy a larger land mass and have an outsized vote strength because of that.
When total votes in a state can be split 45-55 but the delegates go 90-10 there is a problem
Another fun thing about that is that most folks who identify “red” or “right” actually aren’t paying enough attention to know that. Go ask them, they think people like them make up 70% or more of the country. If they do try to activate their little civil war they are going to find themselves very quickly surrounded by folks who do not like them at all, as their expected 200-million strong army ends up actually only being 1.5 million people spread out over 30,000+ square miles. Watching the realization dawn on them might actually even be fun if it weren’t a herald of Troubles for America.
The geographical separation of slave states by an actual border allowed the first Civil War to take place on a stage perfectly suited for traditional warfare. North/South division and the formal joining of the Confederacy by state governments kept it all straightforward. Point South and tell the generals “Go.”
asklemmy
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.