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I want to learn Russian and Chinese

I don’t think it’s taking shelter as much as trying to find an answer to something that has no answer.

For example Eistein I don’t think was trying to take shelter from reality. He wanted to look at reality as deeply as possible and he managed to peek through and see more than almost anyone ever had before.

But he still believed in a God. This is one of those reasons I always call myself an agnostic instead of atheist.

In a practical sense, I’m an atheist. I don’t think Jesus turned water into wine or the Buddha achieved enlightenment and entered a higher plane of existence or whatever.

But I acknowledge there might be supernatural or supranatural items / phenomenon/ or even beings that we can’t ever fully understand.

Greedy people are more likely to end up wealthy. Greedy people are also more likely to end up doing ethically dubious things.

Of course, any wealth at all is unethical if you’re being honest with yourself. There’s a famous passage in the Bible.

Jesus was out teaching his disciples or healing people- whatever he did. And a rich man comes up to him and asks

“Jesus, I want to follow you and go to heaven. Please tell me what I should do”

What did Jesus say? Jesus told him to a) sell all of his shit b) give that money to charity c) physically follow me around

What did rich guy do? Have an epiphany about morality and living the good life?

No, he cried. He cried because he didn’t actually want to let go of the good things he had for morality.

All of us in first world nations are guilty of this to some extent. The way our world is shaped you essentially have to be unethical to survive. There are levels to it, of course. But I think your perspective is too black and white and needs a little nuance. Seem like a teenager.

It’s a question of

How much effort (man hours which ultimately translates to $$$) versus how much revenue lost (people not buying because of Firefox bugs)

In my experience this depends on your specific application. Sometimes there are weird bugs or behavior where you have to really hunt down what’s going on. Other times it’s as simple as changing a few css lines or something.

I view India as a rising power that has the potential to rival China and the USA. I think the culture is backwards in many ways and advanced in others. I don’t like your current administration, but I do think India overall has interesting politics. I mean, you guys have an active Maoist insurgency. Pretty wild for the 21st century.

I tend to get along well with Indians I meet in the states. I appreciate India long history and cultural impact (Buddha came from India for example). There were democracies in India before Athens was a thing.

All in all India’s a rising power with a lot of potential. Unfortunately I don’t think they will reach China-status anytime soon because they don’t exercise as much central control as China does.

In some ways this is good, Cultural Revolution wasn’t exactly a great experience for a lot of people. But in other ways it means the Indian government doesn’t have the power to reshape India in a way where it can successfully rival the European powers.

Fiction is more important than nonfiction in my opinion. Good fiction teaches you about the human condition. Studies have shown people who read more fiction are more empathetic for example. The ability to put yourself in the mind of another person is not only good for society as a whole, it’s good for the individual because navigating relationships is something you will be dealing with until you die.

That of course isn’t to say nonfiction isn’t important, but that’s what all your textbooks are for. That is nonfiction.

Tldr; I don’t think it’s a problem at all, no

I’m a foreigner. Most aren’t. I work from home. Most don’t. I drink kava everyday. I doubt anybody else does.

If you know who you are and what you believe in then you should have no fear like others are saying. Go wherever you want and talk to whoever you want. I used to regularly post on /r/debatefascism before it got banned on reddit. I was disappointed when it got banned.

When you argue with someone online, you’ll never change their opinion… but you may sway some random lurker just browsing through.

I understand that a lot of the far right use “free speech” as essentially a dog whistle- but freedom of expression in my opinion is a vital part of a free society. That doesn’t mean private places like Lemmy instances have any obligation to follow free speech. But I do support and respect places that do.

I prefer Linux not for freedom, not for money, not for privacy.

I do it because I’ll be fucking damned if hardware I own is going to generate value for some large faceless corporation. It’s my computer. I paid for it. I’m not going to install Windows so it can send telemetry and show me ads in order to benefit Microsoft’s bottom line.

It’s like owning a car and letting Uber use it for free every once in a while. No thanks, not me.

interesting idea for what really amounts to a terrorist attack. any others? i figure you may have some other cool ones

personally, i’m more scared of our government in most cases. of course, foreign bad actors can and will do damage but over the long term the government, should it morph into something a bit more authoritarian than it is today, would have much more incentive and capability to do harmful things

i remember there was some leak nearly a decade ago already that showed NSA can access all smart TVs. some TVs even have microphones so that they can listen to what’s going on in your living room. Makes you wonder if Orwell was a time traveler

This is one of the reasons I am hesitant to get any “digital car”. I’ve read that government has backdoors to turn off engine or otherwise control cars.

You can try actually saying something instead of the mild attempt at being disparaging

I’ll repeat it

a) the countries that most working class Americans can escape to aren’t any better and functionally worse. you ever live in a country that doesn’t have hot water or A/C?

b) the countries they want to go to won’t accept them. have you ever tried to immigrate anywhere? it’s not simple and there are requirements that most Americans simply will not meet

America under Trump is still better than most of the world. Take it from someone born in a 3rd world country.

And if you have the qualifications and/or skills necessary to migrate to 1st world countries like in Europe… you’re making a good wage here and have little reason to leave here anyways.

obviously the republicans are more to blame for the roe v wade repeal, but Democrats have blood on their hands too. It’s been half a century since 1974 and the Democrats have had many majorities and presidencies since then. At no point did they pass some sort of abortion bill.

and joe biden has been a leading figure in the democratic party for nearly as long

Going into it, I was wondering if he could pull this off. He needs to be giving more and more public speeches as November gets closer. And every single speech has a chance of hurting him in the polls, helping him in the polls, or not moving the polls.

I felt that the probability of this SOTU was more leaning towards hurting him because of potential stumbles and gaffes - of which he had a few but not many. After watching, if I had to guess 0-100 where 0 hurts hims absolutely and 100 helps him then I would say it was a 60.

I was expecting somewhere closer to 40. We’ll have to see what the polls say in the next few days to really get a clear picture of its effects.

He definitely started off strong, with energy. Which is exactly what he needs to convey if he wants to convince people he’s not too old to be president. But he did have some moments there where he messed up certain words. For example mentioning taking Air Force One to Moscow or women’s “electrical power” instead of electoral.

Regardless, I think it was a good job by Biden and he’s gonna need to keep this up if he wants any chance to win this election because the polls are preferring Trump at this point in time.

I’m starting to believe the worse guy isn’t much worse after all. I wanted Biden to win because of promised immigration reform. He promised to halt the expansion of the wall. Give a pathway to all the people under DACA suffering in eternal immigration limbo.

What does he do instead? Continues the Trump administration’s policies of using COVID loopholes to deny people at the border seeking asylum. Then he expands construction of the wall he promised to halt, and meanwhile does a couple photoshoots at the border with CBP officers.

Of course, absolutely squat was said about DACA or the millions of people who were filled with hope in 2020 after Biden won. Now we know the hope was a scam. It was all an illusion. A mirage.

My main reason I don’t want Trump is because he is racist and xenophobic against Latin Americans. But if Biden is following in his footsteps virtually exactly…

Why should I give a shit who becomes president? I don’t like Trump but there’s no way I’m voting for Biden. I want him to lose. I want the Democrats to realize they can’t just do this forever. I want them to change their strategy. If I vote for Biden and he wins, they learn nothing. They will continue lying and being hypocrites forever.

Don’t you see the democracy is already doomed? Being forced to vote for a candidate is not a voluntary choice. Your voice is mute - it’s not a democracy.

yeah kava doesn’t really taste good but i think it’s much a cleaner buzz than alcohol. both work on the GABA receptors. i wanna try GHB one day because apparently it’s also like alcohol but cleaner - but I have no idea where I’d go about getting it and I wouldn’t wanna go searching for it

In an ideal world we would be able to control climate change. The problem is that we don’t live in an ideal world. We live in a world defined by economics and war. Energy is the heart of everything- without energy you don’t have a modern economy.

Look what happened in Germany right after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Germany was getting most of its natural gas from Russia through pipelines. During the course of the war, those natural gas imports fell of a cliff for various reasons. What did Germany do to compensate? They burned coal. Coal outputs much higher carbon emissions than natural gas. Not only in the burning itself, but in the mining process required to get the coal.

So what was the response of the German society under pressure? Put out more carbon emissions. Just a glance at the global geopolitical situation would tell you that crisis isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

I think this is fundamentally the issue. As long as we live in a world with crisis, governments will never let go of quick cheap and reliable energy. When the economy is in trouble, there aren’t going to be any politicians advocating for things that could potentially cost the economy. And to get rid of our carbon emissions - we need to feel some pain.

In order to meaningfully prevent climate change, we would need to do something yesterday. Instead, we probably won’t be doing anything for the next couple of decades.

Of course, I must end this with a caveat that my comment was made to be a little controversial. I don’t believe all attempts to reduce carbon emissions are a bad idea. To the contrary, I believe we should absolutely enact these changes. I’m just expressing a sort of cynical sentiment that since we can’t really stop it, we might as well start spending money on dealing with it

for example, like the army corp of engineers spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build a giant sea wall in Miami. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/us/miami-fl-seawall-hurricanes.html

but other things to, like building new cities with modern urban planning in order to handle the massive wave of refugees in the future

Dostoevsky. Kava. My girlfriend refuses to watch Yu Yu Hakusho with me