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testfactor

@ testfactor @lemmy.world

Posts
1
Comments
760
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Are you using Lemmy / other networks to create noise in your life and to replace talking to people irl?

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  • It does sound like you've let doom scrolling negatively impact your life.

    I won't argue things are bad, but the reality is that most people are generally decent.

    Sure, there's a lot of dicks out there, but they're very much the minority. They are just overrepresented in the Lemmy echo chamber (and other online platforms too of course).

    Obviously it's hard to say if you're being "too picky" as it were without knowing exactly what lines you're drawing, but it sounds like you might be projecting your negative expectations onto people as opposed to people actually not living up to those expectations.

  • Feel bad for you if you live in the suburbs when the NAZI gestapo starts moving in.

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  • I don't agree with the guy, but it is worth noting that there are around 21k ICE agents, vs 3.8 million teachers.

    That extra funding would probably spread a little thin when you're sharing it with over 100x the number of people.

  • Are you using Lemmy / other networks to create noise in your life and to replace talking to people irl?

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  • Fair enough on all counts.

    I would point out that if everyone only made friends with people better than them, no one would have any friends. It's important to pour into others as well as to get poured into. It's how we make the world better. And just because someone is "worse" than you doesn't mean they don't have value. And it doesn't mean there isn't something you could gain from having them as a friend. I've had friends who are "better" than me and "worse" than me make positive change in my life.

    And I know you say you're not in a place to work on this, and I can respect that, but I would say that it's never a bad time to continue leaning forward in a positive direction. And if this is something that's negatively impacting your life, the sooner you work on it, the sooner you'll be less impacted by it. No time like the present and all that.

  • Are you using Lemmy / other networks to create noise in your life and to replace talking to people irl?

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  • I have friends with crippling social anxiety. It's a lot of work, and they have their ups and downs for sure. But it's something that they're working on in therapy and making strides on. It is possible to improve and for things to get better.

    I mean, it's hard to say without knowing exactly what you're talking about, but universally condemned likely seems strong. But regardless, you said that you don't value the same people I do. Does that mean you can't value someone with different beliefs than you?

    You say that there aren't any groups in your area that would interest you. What kind of group would interest you? What group, if you saw it was starting up in your area, would motivate you to go out and meet people?

  • Prosecutor to let registered sex offender walk free after elementary school kidnapping attempt

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  • That's a spooky looking dude.

  • Evading suffering is itself a form of suffering

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  • I mean, I think you may be overselling the word "suffering." I wouldn't put "working so I don't starve" in the same category as "starving to death."

    If "suffering" just means "anything I don't 100% love," then it's effectively meaningless, no?

  • Are you using Lemmy / other networks to create noise in your life and to replace talking to people irl?

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  • I know mental health issues complicate things, but that's something to work on, not an obstacle that can't be surmounted. I have tons of friends with mental health struggles of all kinds.

    But you say that you don't value the same people I do, but what makes you think so?

    As I say, I was at a local boardgame meetup this past weekend. Not exactly a "party" crowd. And to be clear, there's local meetups for everything under the sun. What do you value in people that you don't think you could find a social group for? What makes you think finding a group you would vibe with is particularly hard?

  • Are you using Lemmy / other networks to create noise in your life and to replace talking to people irl?

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  • Fair. The OP you were responding to was about how people cope with loneliness IRL with pseudo-real online interactions, and you responded with how it's difficult to find relationships in person.

    I agree it's not necessarily related, but I the guy above was wildly afeild taking your statement as an excuse for why finding relational fulfillment online is an acceptable cope. It was kind of the topic at hand.

    But, aside from that, I think making new connections is really just about going out there and doing it. I'm 33 and constantly meet new people, so it's definitely achievable in your 30's. Just go to things. Open up Eventbrite or whatever and find something going on that looks like fun, and then just go. There's a whole world of opportunities out there to meet new people.

  • Are you using Lemmy / other networks to create noise in your life and to replace talking to people irl?

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  • He's just saying that using Lemmy as a cope for not having IRL friends is healthy.

    But, to your point, making friends is easier than you think. Join groups. They're everywhere. I literally went to a "boardgame play testing" event today and met a lot of cool people.

    Things like that are everywhere. You just got a look for them.

  • Evangelical church urges Trump admin to 'execute' LGBTQ Americans

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  • Look, rawstory is a rag, no question. But they literally embedded the video of the sermon. Literally a video of the events in question.

    You can hardly argue they're misrepresenting things when you can literally see the thing yourself.

    Like, what better source than the actual video of the event could you possibly want?

  • Evangelical church urges Trump admin to 'execute' LGBTQ Americans

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  • There isn't, because the source is his ass.

    This was a pastor in Indiana during a sermon that was live-streamed on Facebook. So, like, funded by a PAC in what way exactly?

    No PAC is mentioned in the article at all, much less a Chick-fil-A backed one. And this isn't even tied to anything that would require any funding anyway.

    I'm no Chick-fil-A apologist, but like, the idea that this is some secretive super-PAC that Chick-fil-A is using to fund pastors calling for the death of gay people is some Q-Anon level nonsense.

  • "Oh, but Robert E. Lee was such a Southern Gentleman!"

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  • Are you a vegan by chance?

    I feel like that's the next big moral shift. People lionize dogs and cats, and harming one makes you literally Hitler. But there's not a lick of difference between a dog and a cow.

    I think that an objective ethicist would absolutely say veganism is the only moral choice, and that anyone who isn't a vegan is knowingly participating in unimaginable cruelty.

    But in our current context, only a small fraction of people care. Including a lot of people who look down on people of the past for not being as amazingly moral as they are.

  • In 6 hours it will be illegal to say "I support Palestine Action" in the UK, with a sentence of up to 14 years in prison.

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  • I do think the situation is more complicated than Lemmy would have you believe.

    Both Iran and Hamas have been geopolitical issues for a long time. And it's worth remembering that all of this was kicked off by a large scale terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas.

    It's also worth noting that Iran is a Russian puppet, and Europe obviously has some "neighbor problems" with Russia at the moment, so there's a sort of baked in desire to oppose their vassal states.

    And, while I think everyone would agree that the loss of civilian life is terrible, there is a huge amount of misinformation that makes it hard to be sure what's going on. Hamas does have a long history of screwing over the civilian Palestinian population to further it's political goals, and so people are willing to give Israel a little more credence than they deserve when they claim things like "Hamas was hiding in that hospital" or "we're blocking aid because Hamas is hoarding it all to drive up tensions" or "it was Hamas who shot those civilians," because it actually wouldn't be the first time any of that had credibly happened. Something of a boy-cried-wolf scenario.

    Add into that genuine desire to combat real anti-Semitism that's been a fallout of this whole situation (a problem that hits pretty close to home in Europe due to events of the past century), and you can see why some people might be a bit over-eager to support Israel in this conflict.

    It's worth noting there are no good guys here. Israel is obviously in the wrong, and are committing horrible atrocities. I think that much is plain on its face. But Hamas and Iran have both had "the destruction of the state of Israel" as stated policy goals for the past 80 years. The reason Israel has the Iron Dome is because they've been getting missiles lobbed at them non-stop for decades.

    And when there are no good guys, people tend to just align themselves with who they like more, or who they owe more to.

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  • Just because it's generally possible for the bladder to rupture before the muscles give out, it's certainly not impossible. A myriad of conditions or even just genetics can lead to a physically weaker bladder.

    I think it's a bit bold to say that absolutely 100%, no exceptions, that the muscles will always fail first. Even if that's true 99.99% of the time, there's just far to much variance in human bodies to rule it out, I would think.

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  • Sorry, iirc this conversation started with the question about what does free trade look like in a non-capitalistic system, and you pointed to mercantilism. You then seemed to say that the main difference between capitalism and mercantilism is the complexity of the marketplace. Which, if true, seems like a poor example of free trade without capitalism, as they're largely the same system.

    But I do understand your point. When trade is controlled by the state (a la mercantilism), I don't know that I'd call it free trade, but, really, I'm not too hung up on this point, as I think the real blurring of the line is on the micro vs macro scale. You can have local free trade without large scale free trade (e.g I can sell leather goods, but not be involved in the import and export of animal products which remains the purview of the "government"). I might argue that this is localized capitalism in a non-capitalist system, but typically when we talk about capitalism we are talking about governmental economic organization.

    I also really feel like this breakdown is due to trying to map this into the modern economy. Does the definition of the "means of production" breaks down in a service economy like the US? The amount of total jobs involved in any part of cloth production (or other manufacturing sector jobs) is a minority. What does "seizing the means of production" look like when what's being "produced" are services not goods?

    I think, if nothing else, it makes it hard to distinguish the "leather worker" from the "animal products exporter" as those are only different in scale not kind when there is no immutable aspect of nature or industry under control. The difference between my local burger joint and McDonalds is of scale, not kind, so how do I seize the means of production from one and not the other?

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  • Can you provide a source for that definition of capitalism?

    Genuinely asking, as it's not the definition I have historically heard, and while I can find things that argue that what you are saying is an inevitable byproduct of unregulated capitalism, I can't find anywhere that says those problems are a requirement for a system to be called capitalism.

    As far as I can tell, if there is free trade and money/capital is owned and managed by private citizens, then that meets every formal definition of capitalism I have been able to find.

    "Late stage capitalism" I think carries the connotations that you have outlined, but not capitalism in general.

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  • I don't think it's possible to have a system without some form of legitimized power, as people will always fill that vacuum. There will be a village elder or judge or peacekeeper or something, as those all fulfill necessary elements to a functioning society, and they will all come with some amount of legitimate authority.

    Now, I suppose it might be fair to say that those "legitimate authorities" aren't prescribed by the system, and therefore any corruption that follows is not the fault of the system. That seems a bit squishy to me, as those "legitimate authorities" are a natural outflow of society, and if the system does not have built in controls on those positions it is tacitly approving of any corruption.

    But I'll grant there may be a purely semantic argument that the system itself is immune to corruption, in the same way that a starving person doesn't have to worry about food poisoning.

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  • I think where I struggle with this conceptually is mapping it onto the US service economy.

    We've largely moved away from "owning the means of production" translating to "who has the rights to the copper mines" and more to mean, "who owns big businesses." And since anyone can start a business, and there is no meaningful limit to the number of businesses there are, it feels much more far reaching to say that there should be no "private ownership of businesses" than "someone shouldn't have exclusive rights to all the copper."

    I'd also push back on "the workers" not being private ownership, unless you're advocating for a model where any business is required to cut in all employees as part owners?

    And I don't know how you legislate running a business "for good" and not "for profit"? That line seems blurry at best, as you need profit to keep the lights on and keep your family fed. Maybe caps on the amount of profit that a business can make as a percentage of revenue? Idk, it seems impossible to make such a system that isn't easy to game.

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  • Fair, though it seems like you're saying that capitalism is just complicated mercantilism, at which point it ceases to be a good example of free trade without capitalism, no?

    Though, I do get your overarching point that capitalism has more to do with private ownership of the means of production.

    I think though, especially in a service economy like the US, it's hard to define "the means of production" in a way that is distinguishable from generalized private property and enterprise.