I know this is just a showerthought, but what do you define as religion? The term religion doesn’t necessarily need a God.

Or do you mean the 3 mainstream monotheistic religions? (Christianity, Judaism, Islam)

I do, just wanted to know more about how bad stuff actually would be if you wouldn’t. Asked questions, learned a lot.

Our news network has daily polls anyone can participate in. They share the results daily during their broadcasts. They even ask open ended questions or commentary, and broadcast those with different views.

Check out the Uplifting News community :)

Everything is finite. Live in the moment and enjoy that song now without worrying whether you’ll enjoy it in the future. Other songs will take its place.

I’ll echo the most given tip: start slow, with only an overnight at a place near you.

If you want a “longer” trip, you could also consider going to a campsite where they have all the commodities like water and showers, setup your tent there and do day hikes from that place. You’ll get a feel of what you need for food and cooking, but still have the safety and commodities of a public campsite at your disposal.

youtube rabbithole and gear: Don’t get dragged down in the youtube rabbithole and all its gear recommendations. Gear is really, REALLY personal. Before you know it, you’ll spend hundreds of pounds on gear. Although you could view reviews of what you’re looking for, most “top 10 things you need when backpacking” are just ads for specific brands and/or very much a personal preference. Accept that you will buy gear you dislike in actual use. And that (if you find out you like backpacking) you can gather your gear over the years to suit your need. You’ll learn more from 1 actual backpacktrip than 40 hours of Youtube.

Don’t buy everything all at once, it will most likely be a waste of money. The stuff you have lying around will be heavier than “backpackgear” but will be more than sufficient to see if you like backpacking at all. You’ll find out what type of camping/backpacking you actually like and can buy gear accordingly:

• You like hiking but not setting up all the stuff? You won’t need sleeping gear as you’ll go from lodge to lodge/hostel to hostel
• you like having one base camp where you’ll hike from? You’ll buy heavier, more durable luxury gear.
• you like walking many miles and only have the minimal gear to sleep and eat? You’ll be buying lightweight gear that is super light.
• you’re a combination of any of the above? The gear will be a combination of the above.

There are so many ways of backpacking and camping. That is where Youtube will not help you. It is so important not to impose any arbitrary rules on how you should backpack/camp yourself until you actually know what aspect of it is important to you or what you enjoy most.

One more thing about buying gear(which again, I would try to minimize buying anything for a first trip) You’ll (almost) always have a tradeoff between 3 attributes: Weight, Durabilty and Price

1. Gear is durable and cheap, but heavier.
2. Gear is lightweight and cheap but less durable
3. Gear is lightweight and durable, but expensive.

Then, 2 rules for what gear to bring:

1. You need less than you think.
2. Always, ALWAYS test your gear at home if you’ve bought something. Have a tent? Set it up. Have a stove? Try it out. You don’t want to be out and about without a clue and a guide to setup and use your stuff.

food: Check your local supermarket for products that can be easily prepared without needing cooling. Some types of bread have long expiry dates and are excellent for backpacking trips. Nuts and energy bars can be great too for snacks. Something like an apple is a great snack too. Try to see what you normally eat, and see if there is anything that would be practical to take with you on a trip without needing a fridge.

If you have a stove with you on your backpacking trip, special dried backpacking meals are lightweight, easy to make and (can be) tasty without being too expensive.

Part of the hobby is the journey itself. So give yourself the time to find what you like, what you need, and how get the most reward/enjoyment out of the hobby.

One counterpoint I would have is that I believe most ads are paid per-click? I actively refuse to click on any internet ad anyway, might as well block it.

Does Lemmy have any sort of algorithm that puts more upvoted posts to the top and drown out downvoted posts? Or is it more based on replies?

Yeah, thought this too. Identified a similair looking spider with an app once.

Big nope vibes.

Your mother was a hamster, and your father smells of elderberries.

I was like: “huh? But I’m using Boost right now!”

Welp, unpopular opinion time.

Honest question: all of it? Like including all the history and its influences on our modern society? Every opera, classical music and piece of art? Will we be forbidden to listen to its influences?

Tom Holland (who is a secular historian, not that actor guy) writes:

“Familiarity with the biblical narrative of the crucifixion has dulled our sense of just how completely novel a deity Christ was … [Christianity] is the principal reason why, by and large, most of us who live in post-Christian societies still take for granted that it is nobler to suffer than to inflict suffering. It is why we generally assume that every human life is of equal value. In my morals and ethics, I have learned to accept that I am not Greek or Roman at all, but thoroughly and proudly Christian.”

And again, he is not actually a christian believer, but his thesis is that all of our western society is drenched in christian values, and it would have looked absolutely different without it.

Even Richard Dawkins calls himself a “cultural christian”. Would you destroy that culture too? Our whole western society is built upon it. To destroy religion is to destroy way more than you might realize.

Do some religious people do bigoted things? Yes! Would I like that to be different? Yes! But “destroying religion” is throwing away the baby with the bathwater. The time of the new atheists movement has been over for a while. The sentiment of religion= bad is getting old and frankly, outdated. In the academic world they’ve moved on: more and more academics see atleast some value in religion, even if they don’t necessarily uphold a faith themselves.

Not trying to sway you to believe in anything religious. I don’t care. But not seeing any value in religion is… a depressing take on this world and it’s beauty.

Grayson and the Slappers

I will never not read “AI” as “Al”(with an L) . Makes it more goofy, so less scary.

That is one hell of a gaslight.

I think it’s because our brain can’t really focus on both content and spelling at the same time. You can only really check either the message or the spelling at one time when you are the author.

When you check the message/content of your post, you look at every sentence and ask yourself: does it convey my point? Did I choose the right words?

When you check spelling, you should check word by word without looking at the meaning(unless spelling depends on it). Since you know what’s coming next in your story, you’re probably just rushing through the sentences. You’ll miss stuff because you don’t read every word. It is the classic “the the” problem where the same word is shown twice in a sentence, but you miss it because you only fastread it.

Also, spell check last. If you spellcheck first and then do some rewriting, the new stuff will have a high chance of spelling errors.

My feeling is that this is temporary. Currently there is a big fight about what is offensive and what is not. It is only logical that, when that public debate is still ongoing, people will have less tolerance towards offensiveness: we haven’t reached a consensus yet on what we should tolerate in our online language. We as a species are not used to the responsibility of anonymous communication and the repercussions it has on how we act and perceive that communication.

Also, movements and changes most of the time go to the other extreme first, before landing in the middle somewhere. That’s just how change often (not always) works.

That, or you’re getting old and you’re doing the “back in my day” thing. Could be that too. The world changes, language changes, jokes change. It’s just part of life man.

Edit: welp, this apparantly is a hot take, when I thought it was quite neutral. I’m not saying we shouldn’t stand up against offensive behaviour (my view is the opposite). It’s that coming to a sensible consensus about certain topics as a society takes time. It takes time to convince people to change their ways, but it also takes time to not fight for extremes when you’re having new talking points. Everything is balance. But in my attempt to keep it short I apparantly didn’t convey much of that message.

I think foss at large has a UI/UX problem. The problem lies in that many people think UI/UX is that last 5%. You cannot, however, add this late in a process when dealing with complex programs or heck, an operating system.

100% agree. I hope Cosmic DE can remedy some of those learning curves, but that is a tough ask from a desktop environment .

I mean heck, it took me several months to fully get accustomed to OS X Tiger when I switched from Win XP back in the day.