Is it praxis to blow up lemmy.world to decentralise the 'verse?

lmfao this is hilarious

The above comment is made of glyphs arranged to convey meaning. The Code of Hammurabi is made of glyphs arranged to convey meaning.

So the comment will very well be likely a significant contribution to human culture.

Gimble vice and a fleshlight?

People’s brains fall out of their heads on this one hey? Like wtf, you’re actually responsible for what you say seems pretty basic. Nobody is arguing for prosecuting anyone who expresses opinions, or what they earnestly believe to be true and communicate in good faith. Just, if you make shit up and people get hurt well then, you did that hey.

Hmmm lets examine this statement.

Isolated weird place, scary Russians, Russian stereotypes of intellectual game + tremendous violence.

Gee, it almost sounds like this is a too convenient racist lie. Any proof? The oldest reference just says ‘it totally happened’ and cites something I can’t access on Google books. It’s 20 years after the fact and not a primary source.

It’s a book about non monogamy and how to practice it in a considerate and sensitive manner.

She makes a handful of digital toys free. Slurs hurt real people. Keep this in context

Power is pretty corrupting and anyone who is a famous person (as in, public enough to maintain fame as opposed to just broad recognition) probably has a bit of an ego.

I mean your average normal person would be like “Don’t idolise me, I’m just someone who writes books you like. Now please leave me alone” not posting on tumblr to adoring young fans.

Wrong!

No frotting the electricity

You should probably know that historically societies collapsing has typically resulted in improved health of the lower classes as judged by skeletons in the archeological record.

We should not really understand societies collapsing as a violent or spectacular thing. It’s usually just growth slowing, people move away, the ability of states to enforce taxes and provide services weakens and people work out their own stuff.

I’m not saying society is collapsing, just that if it does it’ll probably look more like declining birthrates and movement away from cities and advanced manufacturing to more agrarian lifestyle. Also that for the poor and downtrodden this will probably, on average, be an improvement.

I’ve been called a tankie for just trying to be clear about what Marxism actually is. I would say I’m sympathetic to Marxists but not one. Having far stronger anarchist sympathies.

But you know, being critical of the usa or saying anything remotely positive about China/the ussr means you are either a Russian bot/op or a tankie.

Sometimes I’m blown away by the quality. Like a lot of the shit I’d buy locally is chinese made anyway.

Often you get stuff like ‘premium’ retailers getting the stuff that QC passed to a higher standard or whatever but it’s worth minor decreases in quality for a 1000% discount or whatever absurd retail markup there is.

The thing is, if you’re buying something for a dollar it’s gonna be about that quality. you need to know the brands that make good shit. Like some of the 40 dollar kitchen knives on aliexpress are amazing value, some are scams. Electronic components are similar. I can buy an esp32 there for 5 bucks, or locally for 45. Same product.

Now would I trust a fruit bowl bought for 2 dollars to be good? lol no. There’s just material reality at the end of the day. No amount of genius engineering and dubious manufacturing conditions can make high quality material appear from thin air.

I’m not calling anyone out. We all eat worse than we’d like to, exercise less than we feel we ought to, have a home messier than we’re pleased with, spend more time watching mindless tv than is really good for us or some analogous permutation of minor sins.

We’re apes trying to figure out how to use root digging and berry picking brains to navigate the lightbox of eternal distraction and a world of concrete, glass, and tedium. This shit is hard.

If you have similar experiences to my past ones then I hope you can draw comfort from knowing you’re not unique in your difficulties and it is possible (although life circumstances depending not always easy) to overcome them.

Sorry to hear that. I’ve quit quite a few things, as well as a long term weed habit in my early twenties and so here is what I have to say in no particular order:

• Understand yourself. Take a bit of time to think through how you feel about what you’re doing and why you do it. Have compassion here and look at the root causes, don’t be like “I vape and I don’t want to because I’m a garbage person with no willpower” or something nasty and unhelpful. For example with myself with weed I came to the conclusion that I didn’t really enjoy the effects overall, but it was a very comfortable way to alleviate boredom and the rebound anxiety and sleeplessness was difficult to handle.

• Based on the above figure out what you’re going to do about it. If you want to stop then have plans for handling anticipated barriers (if you can’t sleep don’t lie in bed being miserable. Have a book to read, a walk to go on, a show to binge or a friend to chat to etc). If you have particular triggers find ways to avoid them, raise the barrier to using weed by making it a pain to get/be reminded of. If you always vape when having a morning coffee maybe idk have a morning coffee at a cafe instead while you adjust.

• Understand it’s gonna suck a bit. It just is, there will be a period where you are restless and bored. Acceptance is powerful.

• Understand that there is no point in making it harder for yourself. Like yeah it’s going to suck a bit but there is no need to punish yourself. Have plans for stuff to do to replace it, have plans to alleviate the worst symptoms, pick up new hobbies, adjust your work schedule if you can (more or less, whatever makes it easier for you), change your space etc. Don’t just raw dog misery and hope to succeed. It’s ok to take a sedative the first couple of sleepless nights, or to lean on friends a bit, or be messy and late, or spend a weekend mindlessly videogaming or whatever.

• I strongly recommend exercise. Exercise helps manage stress and energy so much, it makes the brain dispense the happy chemicals, and it is time consuming but simple. Try find something you like to do. Again don’t force yourself to suffer. Long walks, swimming, running, cycling, lifting, climbing whatever takes your fancy.

• edit. Of course most of all: Almost nobody reliably succeeds at tasks on the first try. That is not weakness, that is life. Sometimes we get beginners luck and something comes naturally and easy, usually we have to fumble a few tries getting better each time. Plan to succeed, accepting lessons along the way. Every impulse resisted is confidence and experience, every stumbling block is an obstacle identified, every minute your body is normalising its chemistry. You cannot go backwards by trying.

I would quibble here and say that torture is actually an incredibly civilised act. I mean this not as an endorsement, but rather in the sense that only highly ‘civilised’ societies appear to have every carried out systematic torture. It seems to require a great deal of centralised, bureaucratic control in order to prevent instincts like empathy from preventing it.

It’s also worth pointing out that torture, as defined in a UN convention that is pretty broadly ratified is much broader than we normally think of it. It is defined as follows:

For the purposes of this Convention, the term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Which I think is food for thought. Portrail of torture is incredibly systemic in media, and I think we are numbed to it a great deal although I don’t know which way causality goes there. How many of you have seen cops handling someone roughly with the intent to hurt them or intimidating someone to make them pliable as routine ‘justice’? That is literally torture by a convention that it is highly likely the country they work for has ratified.

That research never went ahead you moron. Look I’m done, go huf petrol somewhere else

Idk how to explain epistemology to you. This whole yeah yeah cleavage sites spike protein blah blah you gotta ask. Why were people proposing investigating that? Oh because they were anticipating viruses like that would be highly infectious and could emerge.

Coincidences actually do happen, how many proposed researches into coronaviruses don’t match sars 2? Why don’t initial cases line up with what we know of where lab workers lived and travelled? why is there no testimony relating to the lab work? scientists have souls you know.

Viruses jump species, novel mutations happen. Everyone was expecting a Coronavirus pandemic and guess what? In a completely predictable fashion we got one.

You can’t just put red string between every vaguely cooincidental thing and conclude something. That’ll have you going bonkers.

Yeah nobody who wrote that article or edited it understands virology and neither do you. This is not evidence.