What was this from? I know the reference but can’t place it. I could obviously search for it but, hey, I’m trying to be social here.

I’m pressing X to doubt.

We need to revise that for Lemmy.

“Lemmy: Where men are men, and men are women, and women are men, and I think we’ve got a few women who were born women, and also there’s a whole bunch of new genders as well, and no genders at all, and that’s all cool with most of us.”

It’s a mouthful and might not read well on a t-shirt, but we can workshop it.

Now I’m no American, but something smells FBIish about that address.

I’m kinda shocked that the Trump campaign would agree to this. These rules seem directly in response to his debate style.

For all Biden’s many faults, having to share a stage with him in a civilized manner is almost certain to work against Trump. Especially when his campaign is consistently trying to paint Biden as mentally unwell and out of touch.

I’m glad it’s happening, just shocked that it’s happening under these conditions. I fully expected the Trump campaign to find a reason to back out leading up to this, and any of those rules would likely be a justification for that that his base would be fine with.

ICQ was my first foray into meeting girls online, back when that was a really weird thing to do.

Post a/s/l to pay respects.

No hard feelings at all. I made a well-intentioned but dumb joke that wasn’t well-received and you had the guts to call me out on why people were reacting so badly. I respect that, and am always open to changing my perspective in the face of new evidence.

For what it’s worth, it sounds like we’re largely on the same side here. With Lemmy being such a small place, I even recognize your user name as someone I’m pretty sure I’ve come across before and thought, “this sounds like a smart person.”

Perceptions are also easily swayed because we’ve been on an unusually long objectively (not relative) downward slope.

I’m definitely with you here. I used to buy into the liberal notion that the world is objectively getting better (liberal as in the classic/European meaning, not how it’s typically used here in North America). I think that was largely true for a long time since WWII, and it’s probably still true in several metrics. Overall though, it feels we’re on a major downward trend in many places where it really matters such as the climate, wealth inequality, global strife, etc. I’ll admit that’s had me pretty demoralized but then I have some good interactions with folks in here that helps me see a little light in all the misery, so thanks for that.

Well, while I was also mostly joking with that second comment, respect for calling me out on it. For the record, I do know that people have always been this stupid and that much of the US is ridiculously gerrymandered. If anything I was maybe projecting a bit as I suspect I got COVID a few years back and my short-term memory has been off ever since. It’s been a point of concern for me as, I admit, it’s made me feel more stupid.

I do think people are getting worse, but in reality I blame misinformation campaigns for that.

The one thing I will (politely) disagree with in your comment is your characterization of pot smokers being hard left or disengaged with politics. I think it’s much more universal across the spectrum than you’re suggesting. Now that it’s legal in Canada it seems like everyone uses it to some degree. That’s an exaggeration but I’m continually shocked by some of the people I know coming out of the woodwork as users, and many are not even close to hard left (and are engaged in following news and voting for the party I loathe).

Anyway, respect again for sharing your opinion and I’m truly sorry if I offended anyone with my earlier comment. I’ll leave it up for the sake of posterity.

Oh, I know. I was being facetious in my earlier comment. For the record, I’m vastly in favor of legal weed and occasionally partake in it myself.

True. I literally think of that most days when I see older folks irrationally freak out at the smallest inconvenience. Not that this happens to most old folks, it’s just really remarkable when you do witness it. It’s really sad that they can’t control it, just too bad about the ones who gained power and used it to fuck everyone else over.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but could legal weed have been a bad thing? That brand of fuckery is getting increasingly popular here in Canada too.

Slightly more seriously, I wonder if Long COVID really is messing up people’s brains to this extent. People who would have been on the fence about voting for someone like her before COVID were also the most likely to intentionally avoid protecting themselves from it. Are future historians going to look to that as the catalyst that collectively broke our brains?

Edit: to clarify my initial joking comment about legal weed, I’m super in favor of it and have been for a very very long time. The “brand of fuckery” I refer to as getting more popular in Canada is a reference to the Boebert/Trump-style populism that’s been invading our country over the last decade and to which our almost definite next prime minister subscribes. I was merely joking that perhaps Coloradans are smoking too much, leading to decisions like re-electing Boebert, and perhaps that’s also why we Canadians are making poor choices in this regard.

I don’t care about the downvotes for my vague post - just want to set the record straight that I think weed is good, and putting people in jail for using it is bad.

I’m sure your question was rhetorical, but for those listening from the back: Decades of intentionally under-funding public education, for a start.

I’d go as far as to argue that running a nation has almost nothing in common with running a business.

A business literally exists to make a profit for its shareholders. The owners can try to do good things like pay high wages or give back to their community, but at the end of the day their goal is to make more money than they spend.

A government, on the other hand, should exist to protect and provide opportunities for its citizens to thrive. Generating a profit is largely at odds with that goal. People should have the same access to opportunities regardless of where in the country they live, and that’s going to sometimes mean that functions of the government are never profitable. That should be seen as okay, but people have been brainwashed to think that taxes are inherently bad, and that businesses are somehow naturally more efficient. I can say, as someone who has worked in business all his life, that that last bit is particularly a giant crock of shit. Businesses are no more naturally streamlined than any other organization. Hell, I’m currently personally leading a task force at my work to try to reduce all the egregious inefficiencies I’ve uncovered when trying to figure out why we’re not making nearly as much money as we should be.

The point is, providing government services doesn’t need to be “efficient”. If you can make that happen and save the taxpayers money, that’s great and you should do it. If that means letting any member of your society slip through the cracks, then efficiency be damned. The government shouldn’t be in the business of making money.

And, no, privatizing “inefficient” government services is never the answer. All you’re doing there is introducing new inefficiencies - the need for the business entity to make a profit, and the corners they’ll inevitably cut to make that happen.

Anyway, I hope I don’t come across as jumping on your comment. It sounds like I agree with you - just wanted to tack on this wall of thoughts.

Using the hotline won’t get you fired, but somehow - for totally unrelated reasons - after using it you’ll end up on a PIP with untenable goals, and that will get you fired.

Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. I’m sure they’re a popular band, but “star” to me implies a pretty broad level of recognition among people who follow an art. It’s all just semantics though and I’m mostly being cheeky.

Glass Beach’s William White

Saved you a click.

Not sure about “rockstar” though, as I’ve never heard of them. I’m probably just out of touch though.

My reaction when I saw file explorer:

He’s almost definitely going to call someone a pedo again.

That’s all very interesting and something I will definitely be looking up. While I have little knowledge of psychology myself, I do find it fascinating - especially stuff like this that touches on the idea of consciousness. While I’m a believer in approaching everything scientifically, I hold some explicitly non-scientific theistic beliefs that are at odds with this approach (and which I admit essentially amount to hoping there’s more than we’re capable of understanding ourselves). That brings to mind some of what you said there regarding that sort of dichotomy (as I’m understanding it) of physical biology vs the workings of the mind.

This part is still definitely confusing me though:

I suspect that in sociology that would be some sort of unified anarcho-marxism, if such a thing exists. The atomic theory of society seems to be the thing where they are working on unifying language. If society is fully atomized, asking whether a new society arises due to free choice or resource demands is like asking whether rivers rise due to rain or sewer overflow, if that makes sense?

Is the idea here essentially a question of whether social progress (for better or worse) is essentially pre-determined by geography in some fatalistic way?

I’ll definitely be digging into this a bit over the coming days and may ask my wife her thoughts on the psychological side of what you said earlier. She’s a former psych nurse, so while not at all a psychologist at least has more background in this stuff than I do.

I think there’s a way to follow people on Lemmy (?) so I’ll see if I can do that to keep in touch with you via private messages. Or, I recently got around to setting up a mastodon account. If you happen to use that, feel free to link up with me that way so we can keep in touch (if you’d like). I’m at @herrcaptain@geekdom.social

That’s a very interesting question, but unfortunately one I don’t have much input on myself. I’ve always understood materialism as a belief that everything can be, in theory, explained by science (or in the somewhat-related Epicurean understanding that everything is comprised of atoms). As such, its counterpart would be something along the lines of spiritualism rather than idealism. I’m certain that my understanding of materialism must be a specific definition of perhaps a different concept entirely than that which you’ve brought up. I don’t have a great deal of formal knowledge of sociology or psychology. Likewise, I’ve studied a fair bit of political philosophy but nothing that I can think of which touches on this specific topic. Nonetheless, you’ve piqued my interest and I expect I’ll be heading down a rabbit hole tonight.