I’d rather they let the experts quickly determine how much lead is unsafe in drinking water than to have to constantly go to court to prove to a judge not just that lead is unsafe in drinking water, but to convince the judge that poisoning people is bad and should be stopped.

Honestly this kind of makes me think more seriously of finding a way to leave this country. The consequences of this shit can’t be overstated really. It effectively ends all regulatory bodies’ ability to regulate.

I feel like these tech bros are the same kind of dullards in highschool who would argue with the english teacher about how studying symbolism, metaphors and subtext etc. was a waste of time. They don’t view things like art or creative writing as products of actual labor because they’re not strictly technical endeavours, they don’t have the capacity to understand where that stuff comes from so they develop this world view where they see it as just something frivolous that creative people casually produce almost without effort or study.

The way these people’s brains work is, ironically, so shallow and literal.

I haven’t really fallen in love since I was young, but I guess it has multiple stages; after the initial physical attraction it just kind of feels like your entire perspective shifts and this person becomes a central focus of your life, you think about them a lot and are always looking for oportunities to be close to them, talk, share experiences and “catch eachother up” on previous life experiences that have shaped you as a person. You want to understand what makes them who they are and want them to understand how you tick.

The longer you’re in love with someone in often manifests as worry for them, which I think is common for all types of love. You just carry this awareness of them and their well-being with you all the time and worry for them the same way you might worry about your own future and well-being.

You get so familiar with eachother over time that they change who you are and vice versa, kind of like two trees growing together and where they meet it’s difficult to tell who ends where. I think this is kind of that sense of “oneness” people talk about. It’s a comforting feeling, but also is the hardest part to deal with when a relationship ends.

I only had one person that I’d say I was ever really in love with, I’ve had romantic relationships with people I care for deeply but there’s only one person whoever really got stuck in my heart in a permanent way that I’ll for certain just carry them around as part of myself until I die. It’s nice in a way to have that kind of a connection with anyone, but quite painful as well. One way or another I think most of ys end up in a state of longing, that’s just part of the human experience.

What makes you believe you won’t ever experience romantic love?

I’ve been watching a lot of shiey on youtube and it makes me want to train hop. I went wandering for a few years when I was younger and I miss it sometimes, I hitch hiked all over, but never train hopped and now I’m a bit too tied down I probably won’t get the opportunity.

Not a regret exactly, but I do miss the freedom of living out of a bag and just waking up and traveling anywhere you want on a whim with no set dates or requirements other than making sure you have food and water.

I just dismiss it because I hate the creepy anime maid upskirt aesthetic. I don’t really care if the gameplay is good.

Such a pathetic, weak effort by the Biden admin. Imagine having to build an entire pier and do air drops to deliver aid because “The US’s greatest ally” won’t allow you to deliver aid directly.

Israel is literally an enemy to the US. This is not how allies behave towards eachother.

Well, you’ve gotta leave enough of a percentage for all the Russian and CCP sockpuppets.

Could be, but I don’t think it really matters honestly. The message is still righteous, the books are still readable, no one was hurt. So it’s whatever.

I appreciate the spirit, but people who read books are probably the wrong demographic to aim this kind of messaging at.

If there’s one thing humans can do, it’s eat something into ecological collapse 💪

You can actually induce this in yourself. My friend and I would practice techniques meant to help induce lucid dreaming, and while having a lucid dream was difficult to achieve (I only achieved one super chaotic lucid dream), I definitely had way more instances of sleep paralysis during that period.

It was scary when it first happened but once I understood what it was I wouldn’t panic and the hallucinations that came with it became less nightmarish and instead just kind of odd. My reaction to it became more of “Ah, this shit again.” and after a bit of struggle I’d eventually I’d just become fully conscious.

It depends on the film, characters and how the director chooses to portray them. I think there’s a natural tendency for most viewers to feel aligned with the protagonist because that’s the perspective traditional stories are told from and most good writers/directors aren’t going to make characters who see themselves as unempathetic even if they’re not behaving like great people objectively.

Sometimes directors use this kind of bias to make us empathize with people we might normally not by giving context of a characters life. But other directors try to create empathy for morally grey/bad characters and it just doesn’t work for me.

For me, a director like Yorgos Lanthimos is really masterful at playing with that audience expectation/bias to create discomfort, tension or to foster a deeper feeling of empathy than I might get from other films. It’s a bit ironic since his style of presenting characters is kind of robotic and almost alien, but it feels like he gets at something deeper than just showing characters emoting, he makes the entire world around the characters emote for them and it feels really all-encompassing similar to how feeling emotions in real life often does. My take away from his work is that a good director is able to evoke a sense of the character’s internal state even if the actor does nothing.

Terrance Malick is another director who can make me empathize strongly, but uses different tools. All of his films make me feeling like I’m a time traveling ghost that just kind of pops in and observes people’s lives intimately. He’s much more language driven than someone like Lanthimos, but his penchant for voice-over works really well at making the viewer feel like they’re tapping into the live feed of the character’s internal monologue.

So, the short of it is; the degree to which I empathize with a character is based mostly on the skill of the director to make me lose myself in the emotion of the film.

While there are totally legitimate reasons to criticize Biden, we’re upset at your unwillingness to simply admit when you got fooled by propaganda. People need to be more critical of what they see in this era, particularly when information is presented by the RNC.

When people swallow this kind of thing uncritically it degrades the quality of discourse and undermines the legitimate criticisms that exist.

I do understand how the brigades can be annoying for sure, but I don’t mind arguing with tankies, – I think it’s actually really useful for exposing their propaganda for what it is. It helps expose normal people to counter arguments so that they might become a little more aware, rather than just seeing propaganda go unaddressed and being morel likely to assume it must then be true.

The only issue I have personally is if the mods are in on it too and delete your posts/comments because you start to make a bit too much sense.

Tankie mods don’t moderate in good faith though, to do so would entirely undermine their political objectives. That’s kind of the point of the thread here – to defederate so that the tankies aren’t deciding what people can or cannot see and say.

I don’t see how the charter idea would actually help with that but maybe I’m not understanding the mechanics of how other mods “weigh in” on ban appeals from other instances.

Did you bother to check if the video was real before you posted this?

Honestly once you sort of realize that you can’t be on the left and also support authoritarianism/fascism (regardless of the label or intent) the factionalism kind of isn’t as troublesome or confusing.

You end up with those who believe in supporting progress informed by rational, current understanding of reality and then you have those who cling to failed ideas the same way conservatives do.

The left can debate solutions and data reasonably without splitting into contradicting camps, people just need to always check and see if they’re actually oriented towards the defining principles of left wing politics; bolstering human rights and well being, strengthening democratic institutions and outcomes using the most current understanding of the world we have available to us right now.

The left, by definition, flexes and adapts to reality to achieve an outcome, conservativism is when people try to bend reality to fit their ideology.

That kind of makes me a bit more skeptical of Lemmy as a whole if I’m being honest. Not necessarily the instance owners, but the system as a whole.

This comes just over a month after the UK charged two men with spying for China. UK police have accused them of giving “articles, notes, documents or information” to a foreign state, while China has called the allegations “malicious slander”.

Lol, this kind of makes me wonder about whether the guy ever was a UK spy or if the CCP just arrested him to make some public display of retaliation for losing their own spies. Not putting it past the UK to have recruited him, but China has always had a habit of saying literally anything to try and save face.

There’s a light side?