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  • Oh yeah, I’m not worried about it at all.

    It’s just disturbing to me to see the side that I see as the good guys (the left) getting increasingly drawn into the trap of violence and discrimination. It’s like no one in politics has the ability to self-reflect these days.

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  • Really? We’ve basically descended to antisemitism now?

    I 100% think the use of force in Gaza is genocide and a war crime, but this is a cartoon I’d expect from the Right. We’re better than that.

    Looking forward to the downvotes for my ground shattering opinion that racial generalizations never have a place in political commentary.

    EDIT: I’ve never been happier in my life to be downvoted. Keep them coming. I love how I even said in my initial comment that I do not support Israel and think they’re committing genocide (which is the general Lemmy opinion), but I’m still getting toasted. I would say the same thing about a WWII cartoon that made racial generalizations about Asians, or about the imperialist cartoons of the late 1800s that made generalizations about any number of a group of other people.

  • In 2018, Republicans accidentally legalized cannabis. Now 22 AGs want them to undo it
  • I think the loophole is going to stay in place. The hemp lobby has exploded since 2018, and has done a lot to keep the loopholes from closing in even very Red states. In the real world money is what talks, and I think there’s too much money at this point to put the genie back in the bottle.

    But that’s my two cents. I could be wrong. Hope I’m not.

  • Maybe we are late in the universe, perhaps universe used to be a lively and vibrant place homing millions of civilizations. Now, we stand as the last remnants, hence, possibly the most advanced.
  • Awesome comment, thanks for the detail.

    To play a bit of Devil’s Advocate (from a bench-top scientific standpoint I come from immunology/microbiology background—so I know enough theory to be dangerous but don’t have your depth of evolutionary understanding) doesn’t a lot of this rely on cosmic timescales? I’m sure I could easily do a web search on this, but I think there are a lot of galaxy clusters that are much older than the Milky Way. That would give the potential for many multitudes of planets that have been around much longer than Earth, which gives a lot of time for intelligence to evolve and sustain. Now, if an intelligent civilization can ever survive for that long is a different question in and of itself.

    I personally have wondered if the natural, sustainable, next step in any intelligent evolution is artificial forms of intelligence. Maybe biological intelligence is just the bootloader for less squishy forms of life? Immortal silicon life sort of renders the biological limits of space travel a lot less problematic. I know that comment exceeds the scientific into the philosophical, but it’s a thought I’ve had a lot lately.

  • Victory? [elder cactus]
  • Yeah, and also I wouldn’t go out of my way to shit on someone who believes we live in a simulation. Simulation theory is sort of plausible with our current understanding of tech—but right now it has just as much evidence as most religions (which is none for both). So yeah, I don’t think it’s good practice to try and dunk on people for their beliefs.

  • The great rewiring: is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness? The evidence is equivocal on whether screen time is to blame for rising levels of teen depression and anxiety.
  • Yeah, everyone in this thread saying the phone bad is a Boomer cop out is oversimplifying the issue.

    Yeah, there’s probably a component of taking the blame away from decreased quality of life by blaming it on phones—but you can’t neglect the effect that lack of social interaction has. I’m from the same era, and it’s overwhelming to think how much more complex everything has gotten.

  • They had some good ideas, but they also had some really bad ideas.
  • I don’t think the problem is that the government “wasn’t the best ever,” I think it’s that it hasn’t changed. And the US hasn’t done a lot to enforce some of the groundwork beliefs of the framers.

    I still think the idea and balance of power of the US government is one of the best—but it was created to change with the times and address practical flaws (amendments) and hasn’t.

  • What did we learn from Covid? (Jen Sorensen)
  • I truly think there is a component of unprecedented, shared psychological distress (everyone needing to stay inside like solitary confinement) and post-COVID cognitive distortion that makes the entire pandemic feel like some sort of fugue state. I was working in healthcare during it and when I look back at those years it feel like someone that was a dream. I’m in my 30s and no other part of my life feels like that.

  • What did we learn from Covid? (Jen Sorensen)
  • And it’s this weird thing where a decent percentage of humanity was working super hard to save everyone else—did save most everyone else—and a ton of people are just going on about the “Fauci Ouchie” and nanochips.

    The general public has no idea how many people we saved with the mRNA vaccines and critical care medicine. They’re blatantly oblivious to it. The death toll would’ve been monumentally worse without a coordinated effort of public health, healthcare, and research. Yet no one has any idea. COVID was simultaneously one of humanity’s greatest unrecognized accomplishments and one of its greatest blunders.

    If you’ve ever read or watched The Expanse series I feel like it’s spot on as far as humanity’s response to disasters.

  • What did we learn from Covid? (Jen Sorensen)
  • I was assaulted by a family member for not giving “IV Ivermectin” to someone with COVID who I had just crash intubated (honestly thought they were going to code, but somehow didn’t) back during the Delta wave.

    My view of humanity has gotten pretty pessimistic since COVID. If I had the guts I’d honestly love to go create an insulated community of people who actually think about stuff and want to help each other.

  • Pick One: Which is your favorite way to read books?
  • Yep.

    Cleaning. Home improvement stuff. Driving. Cardio.

    A more niche one—we got a puppy this past summer. Those first few months they need so much attention. Having an audio book in my ear made the process of following him around everywhere/training so much less infuriating.

  • What's the most unexplainable/unlikely thing that's ever happened to you?

    As the title says. Sometimes posts like this lead to a bunch of “paranormal” discussion—that’s ok but not a necessity. I’m relatively skeptical of that stuff myself, but they always make for good conversation and friendly debunking. This also includes very unlikely things. I’ll start:

    When I was growing up (in the days before the communication revolution) my family took a trip to Chicago. During our five days there we somehow hailed the same cab driver three times, in three extremely different locations in the city. The second time all of us were shocked, and the third time we actually had him take a picture with us. I’m sure my folks have the old disposable Kodak photo buried somewhere in an album. Could he have been stalking us? I guess so. But he certainly didn’t seem like he was, and nothing bad happened. He seemed as surprised as we were. Definitely stochastic—but it’s funny how weird stochasticity can seem when it’s a little less random.

    22
    Canapés

    For a recent party we hosted

    EDIT: Ingredients as asked—

    Thinly sliced homemade sourdough baguette—toasted to make the crustinis. Very lighted brushed with some truffle oil at the end (and a sprinkle of MSG)

    Crème fraîche

    Prosciutto

    Imperial ossetra caviar

    Chives

    4
    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)SE
    Sekrayray @lemmy.world
    Posts 2
    Comments 118