• 6 Posts
  • 369 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • The United States is doomed.

    We care more about engaging with content that spikes our brain chemicals than we care about facts and reality. So many people have been duped to believe and promote things that are verifiably false for the benefit of corporate interests and the fragile ego of you-know-who.

    This article is genuinely terrifying. It confirms that half of Americans believe statements that have been proven to be lies. That’s a lot of people being hoodwinked. That’s a lot of people convinced they should cast a vote to hurt themselves for the benefit of one person who has never done a thing to help them. It honestly breaks my heart.


  • My initial reason for not having kids was financial. I think a lot of people have learned it may be better to have children later in life when you can properly care for them. I know many people who’ve had their first child in their late-30s and early-40s. My aunt had her first child in her fifties. That’s not something that was common before modern medicine.

    I have always had the idea that I would have a kid if and when I met the right person to share parenting with. That hasn’t happened so I’ve had to put some thought into my priorities. It’s not fair to have a child just because it’s what society says you should do or just because you want someone to take care of you when you’re old. It’s so much more than that and I think people should be more mindful of the responsibilities and long term repercussions.


  • I offered two reasons I personally may regret not having children. I could list several others such as the pure joy of watching them grow into adults and mimic you and your partner. If you want to say that’s selfish, to bring another human into the word to experience a universe of emotion you’d otherwise never experience, I understand that perspective. No argument.

    But then I offered that choosing to prioritize your own life is in and of itself a selfish act. It’s more explicitly about you than it is about another person.

    Would you disagree that going out to eat by yourself is more of a selfish act than inviting a friend to eat out with you? Sharing an experience is less selfish, no?



  • I’m not sure you’re going to get an objective answer to this as no one has lived a life of either having kids or not having kids, hungrythirstyhorny.

    I will say that, as a single male in his mid forties who has observed a good amount of life; first, the thought of not having people to rely on in you’re old age is a little worrisome; and two, not having had someone to pass my knowledge and skills down to is a little sad. However, I really enjoy the freedom and opportunities my life (and bank account) affords me.

    There is always a cost to freedom. Or, as Jonis Joplin put it - freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose. Choosing to not have children is a selfish act. Whether “selfish” is a bad thing or not is subjective.

    I would offer that anyone who’s going through life without children, find some altruistic outlet to participate in. You can otherwise find yourself wondering what your legacy may be or what the point of your life has been - aka a mid-life crisis.


  • What people often leave out of this is that it only applied to broadcast publicly available television. It did not pertain to subscription cable tv which is why it was deemed unfair to local stations leading to its demise.

    Considering this and other “public” versus “paid” examples in commerce and welfare, it says a lot about our culture. We care more about our freedom to spend money than we care about the general welfare of the population. We Americans want the freedom to be “bad” people (for lack of a better term) while rejecting a government that would promote our wellness and prosperity.

    This is because our federal guidelines (aka The Constitution) merely outline the root level philosophies and leaves the majority of government responsibilities to the states. And in a time when borders are nearly meaningless in an always instantly connected world, beginning with nationally distributed cable television channels, a lot of people are ignorant to their own state’s legislation and power of their local representatives and own voices.

    This country has changed a lot in 250 years. The old rules and guidelines are failing us. The death of the Fairness Doctrine wasn’t unfair, so to speak, but there’s a desperate need for new legislation that does the same on a national level. That’s never going to happen because the federal government can’t limit the “free speech” of entities people have to pay for to gain access to.

    I would guess that anything that requires an account to gain access to it, even just an email log in or ISP / cellular subscription, skirts around the same rules that apply to free over the air television. To reiterate, we want the freedom to pay to be lied to. And our Constitution grants us that right.




  • This is of course entirely accurate. If you’ve lost your mind and forgotten who Netanyahu is.

    But you haven’t because you say, “Biden refuses to use his leverage, even though he has admitted in an interview that it was “reasonable” to conclude that Netanyahu is prolonging the war for his own political benefit.”

    Joe Biden is an enabler but the US is not “the main obstacle to peace in Palestine”.


  • I guess I’ve been living under a rock because I’ve never heard this story. So, as a curious person, I would have expected someone writing an article about the story would at least take a few sentences to explain WTF beaglegate is about.

    I searched on my own and found the story to be mixed truth.

    It is a fact that, in two different NIAID congressionally funded studies, beagle puppies were tested on and euthanized.

    It’s not clear if Fauci specifically knew of or approved of these studies while he was head of the NIAID. Though all tests were done according to existing procedures and regulations. There’s a lot of misrepresentation of what the tests were or how the dogs were treated for political theater.

    Source: snopes and politifact.


  • I generally put short term things on index cards and long term things on digital. Or I just note something down with whatever’s most accessible at the time.

    So, for work, I have a long list of tasks in Microsoft Planner I should get done in the mid-term and long-term. If someone asks me to get something done asap, I put that on paper. I’m really bad at getting things done on the digital list but I’m trying to get better at it.

    Chores and groceries go on the white board on my fridge. Then I transcribe them to index cards if I need to remember them out of the house.

    I try to keep a pad with me when I’m out of the house to note things down. I use a tiny little Fisher Space Pen which easily fits in my pocket.

    My problem with digital is that it’s too easy to forget about. When I mark things down on paper, specifically index cards, they start to stack up and I feel motivated to reduce the clutter they create. Throwing out ten index cards because I got shit done feels good.




  • they didn’t really vote to protect access at all.

    It’s incredible how easily people assume something to be true and take the time to unintentionally spread misinformation in a public forum. Had they just taken two minutes to read the content which they’re commenting on, this could easily be avoided. I mean, “rejected” is right in the headline - really didn’t even need to read the article.

    And yet people are upvoting these inaccuracies because they emotionally agree with the comment even though it’s proven false in the headline.



  • There is literally no good argument for writing a law banning this. It’s indefensible. I challenge one person to try.

    I’ve been in favor of RCV for a decade+ and believe our country would change practically overnight by adopting it; however, there are legitimate reasons it hasn’t been adopted. As stated and linked in the article,

    Brown and other critics of ranked choice voting contend the system is confusing, and he said there are numerous instances in which voters didn’t end up ranking their choices.

    Ballot exhaustion occurs when a ballot is no longer countable in a tally as all of the candidates marked on the ballot are no longer in the contest. This can occur as part of ranked-choice voting when a voter has ranked only candidates that have been eliminated even though other candidates remain in the contest, as voters are not required to rank all candidates in an election. In cases where a voter has ranked only candidates that did not make it to the final round of counting, the voter’s ballot is said to have been exhausted. An exhausted ballot is sometimes referred to as an inactive ballot.

    Whether this qualifies as “literally no good argument” I think is dependent on the number ballots where this was an issue. You could make an argument that people aren’t educated about the system or the system isn’t adaptable for all voters. Whether those are “good arguments” is perhaps subjective.