Serious answer: I remind myself it’s normal to be shocked by some stuff people do/create. I check the content against my ethics, and try to decide if I’m being uptight or if it really is messed up. If it’s something that isn’t unethical/harmful but I just don’t like, then I remind myself that not everyone needs to share my tastes.

If it’s genuinely terrible I allow myself to feel the anger/sorrow for a bit, try not to let it become excessive, and congratulate myself on having limits that fit my ethics. I remind myself that good people exist and they are the ones I want to support, emulate, and engage with. As others have mentioned, distraction can also help. Video games, music, socializing - whatever will move your train of thought along.

Just waking up, and you made me smile :) Thanks for being friendly stranger.

I’ve talked once or twice about Reddit being negative and being happier here on Lemmy. Part of the reason I like Lemmy is it’s a smaller userbase, which means fewer vocally negative people to drag things down. I also feel like the conversations are more “genuine” in that I feel like I’m talking to single people as opposed to crowds.

Speaking of crowds, I did very well on Reddit in terms of karma but to me it always felt like a dogpile - if my post/comment got those first 5 upvotes it would keep on doing well. If it dropped into negatives it was basically a lost attempt and the thread would fill with insults/criticism. Here there’s seems to be less “inertia” and more chance to win people on merit. I’ve had people respond aggressively, but rarely and not actually cruel. I’ve only been here for about 2 months, but so far that’s my take.

Deal. Hold me until dawn?

Can I get a courtesy indictment?

I have previously wondered what scientists like Nile from the YouTube channels NileRed and NileBlue or Styropyro could do if they wanted to.

Nile is a chemist does things like turning plastic gloves into hot sauce or making super-reactive chemicals that really don’t want to exist. In some of his videos he’ll be making an intermediary chemical and say stuff along the lines of, “If I drop this we all die”.

Styropyro is legitimately like a mad scientist without the evil, and deals mainly with huge amounts of electricity and military-grade laser builds. He flat-out tells people that if they try to reproduce his experiments there’s a very good chance they’ll die or be seriously injured. In that military-grade laser video he burns a hole through a steel truck door from hundreds of feet away.

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
― Epicurus

It’s one of my go-to arguments against intelligent design.

I wanted to know why someone would do this, and here’s what I found. People have previously used false positives in a criminal fashion to get money. An article from 2013 suggests sellers may not share liability as it’s legal to sell these things, only becoming illegal when it’s used for fraud. Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, just reading what they said.

The only explanation that makes sense to me is that TikTok is being targeted because it’s teaching people to criticize their governments. It’s a source of information that isn’t domestically controlled and that’s dangerous. It’s where younger generations gather to protest and share news they don’t see on Fox News or The New York Times. Coverage of the the bill don’t mention changing TikTok’s short-form format or restricting access to user’s data - it’s about either moving the corporation into the US hands or killing it’s influence. Many experts and some politicians argue it’s an attack on free speech and unconstitutional.

Arguments about mental health and data safety fall completely flat for me when so many other entities are left alone in spite of the same problems. Many social media platforms, ads, video games, etc. are deliberately designed to be addictive and give a “quick fix” that can harm mental health. Big companies like Google and Facebook/Meta have a business model of collecting data and “sharing” it with others. Governments collect data without protections like warrants all the time, and that includes the US. If mental health, privacy, and data safety were really the issues that motivated lawmakers we’d be seeing much more general protections (like in the EU) as opposed to targeting one company.

I made a post with a lot of sources about horrific Israeli treatment of prisoners in the comments of this thread about a doctor detailing abuse in the prison he worked in. I won’t copy/paste, just say the TL:DR is that for over a decade Israel has detained without charge/trial, systematically tortured, and even raped Palestinian prisoners (including minors). They coerce confessions from these children and adults by using all of those methods.

If you want evidence for those allegations, I tried to keep that linked post to a 2-minute read and include only what is confirmed by credible sources.

“Human calls lowered 3 octaves might be what dinosaurs actually sounded like. Haunting yet beautiful!”

It’s one of my favorite dog pictures ever :)

Super interesting! I’m going to file this under “hope it’s true, will wait for testing/confirmation because the claims are amazing”.

A is for Apple. B is for Ball. C is for Communists that want to kill your parents and burn everything you love to the ground. D is for Democracy, which requires that you don’t ever question what we tell you.

That’s why I specified you may call it whatever you wish to. The important bit is not the words used, it’s the fact that less taxes are paid. Going back to the Oxfam report I linked: “Worldwide, only four cents in every tax dollar now comes from taxes on wealth.” and “A billionaire gained roughly $1.7 million for every $1 of new global wealth earned by a person in the bottom 90 percent.”

No matter how those facts are coming to be real, or how you wish to fix it, or what you want to call it, that is the situation I would like to have remedied by taxation or other forced redistribution of wealth. I’m not even full communist or anything - I firmly believe we need distinct economic tiers to encourage people to perform. You don’t get enough surgeons if you pay everyone a cashier’s wage regardless of job. But there’s a huge amount of room for correcting wealth inequality that allows the wealthy to enjoy the best life has to offer while still preventing the (IMO) injustice of current economic reality.

It’s neither. It’s how our tax code is written.

In my defense, that’s precisely why I opened with the idea that we should tax the obscenely rich. As in, change the tax code. I haven’t alleged that Elon et al are criminally evading taxes (although I’ve heard rumblings of it happening in some cases), but rather I say the code needs to be revisited with levelling inequality in mind. I’ve even heard people like Mark Cuban explicitly say they believe their economic peer group should be taxed heavily. "Cuban urges people to get so “obnoxiously rich that when that tax bill comes, your first thought will be to choke on how big a check you have to write. Your 2nd thought will be ‘what a great problem to have,’ and your 3rd should be a recognition that in paying your taxes you are helping to support millions of Americans that are not as fortunate as you.”

Since capital gains are taxed lower. Many people have converted their pay to stock.

A fine example of using technicalities/loopholes/whatever you want to label it as a way to reduce taxes paid.