But that’s only really makes sense in like the simplest of cases. The government doesn’t know if you had a kid this year, or maybe you bought an EV, or maybe you started renting out a room in your home.
If all you have is a single W2 income; then by all means go to your local library, grab a 1040-EZ form, fill it out, and drop it in the mail. Will probably only take you 10 minutes or less.
You seem to have a very optimistic view of the efficiency of governments. I mean the IRS is basically running on a budget of table scraps after being defunded for decades.
Every large organization, private or public, that I’ve interacted has been basically just a bunch of different people in many different silos. I’m surprised to see so many people have this “well oiled machine” perspective of the government where apparently it is all seeing and all knowing.
Sure, that would be simple enough for them to mail you a letter with like “we’re aware of these incomes from these employers” and any failure to file additional income on your part makes you liable. And of course not filing to claim any credits/deductions on your part just screws your out of your own money.
But then that also assumes the IRS knows your address. Does your employer even report your address when your taxes are withheld from your paycheck? And what if you move in the time between then?
I would be very surprised if they didn’t know the address of every taxpayer, and I do believe it’s reported by the companies you work for. If you move, you can fill out a change of address form with the postal service today, which makes the new address generally available. If they really don’t have any way of knowing currently, it would be worth every penny of my taxes to just make an online portal available where you can enter that information yourself.
In all but the most niche cases, they do in fact know that you had a kid. That being said, most things they have a pretty good idea about (or could) and they could easily adopt the system that they do in a lot of other countries where the government sends to a tax form all filled out that says, “we think you owe this much.” Then you just provide the exemptions you listed.
This would save a considerable amount of time when I file my taxes by just being able to double check they got cost basis correct on stocks sold and applied appropriate credits for mortgage interest and what not.
In all but the most niche cases, they do in fact know that you had a kid.
How would the IRS know that? The only way I could think of would be the Social Security department sharing the information with the IRS; and are they legally allowed to do that? But let’s even say that’s true; if the parents aren’t married and filing jointly, who gets to claim the child as a dependent? That’s a decision made by the parents (or local courts in case of custody battles), so not something the IRS would decide.
Basically what it seems to boil down to is that filing taxes is complicated because the tax law is complicated.
I was assuming social security could share that information since now there’s a new taxable citizen. The IRS could easily prepare tax amounts assuming married filing jointly, married filing separately, and single. You would just choose one. And like it currently is, if both people attempt to claim dependency, someone gets slapped with a fine.
Tax law is absolutely complicated, and I definitely won’t deny that, but the IRS can make things easier and could do the basic filings.
They don’t share that information unless absolutely necessary. All government agencies hold their cards pretty close to themselves for legal and liability reasons. The IRS will complain that you’ve both claimed a dependent because you have to include that dependent’s information and they can tell when you both try to claim the same one
Not the sole reason. They play a part, same with H&R Block, but it’s more the people working for the ultra-wealthy who keep bribing politicians to create laws that allow their clients to avoid paying taxes. The companies that have tax software for the small people benefit from the tax system getting more complex, but they don’t directly lobby for those rules, they just want any kind of complexity. Their big fight is against any kind of free tax preparation for the poor and middle class.
It’s pretty disgusting what they do though. They make say $20 from someone filing their taxes. They take say $3 from that $20 and spend it to ensure that their customers are never offered a free alternative. They’re basically making their customers pay to lobby the government to keep taxes so complex that the customer has no choice but to use them again next year.
That’s absolutely not the case. They lobby to prevent the IRS making their own version of TurboTax, not lobbying to make the tax code more complex. Taxes are complex because we have little real oversight but a lot of deductions and credits. The IRS literally cannot track everything they offer deductions for, so it goes largely on the honor system until something seems fishy.
If you have a house, you have deductions. If you added solar to your house, you have deductions. If you bought an electric car or a hybrid, you had deductions for a while there. If you rent you have deductions in some states. You have to list your dependents for credits.
But like I feel like this system of deduction taxes is more difficult than any other country and it reinforces the need for americans to use software or an accountant. Am I wrong? Are other countries putting up with this shit? The biden admin is the first in my lifetime to give us credits rather than a rebate or deductible.
I should have used more precise language. There’s so much jargon! …wikipedia.org/…/Child_tax_credit_(United_States)To my understanding this is the first time it’s ever been paid directly “in advance” rather than served as a credit against your tax payments, awarding money at the end of the year - or even worse when it was non-refundable. This in advance, far higher amount, fully refundable child tax credit is fucking radical compared to what we had and what we’re going back to.
Likewise, the IRS already knows everything about me. If I qualify for, say, food stamps, just have the IRS send me the food stamps. Don’t make me jump through hoops when I’m already destitute, come on.
This would make tens of thousands of jobs redundant and make many social programs much more efficient.
If Democrats actually wanted to win every election from now until forever, this would do it for them. Imagine worrying how you’re going to feed your kids and then the mail arrives “BTW you’ve qualified for food stamps for the last 18 months, here they are” instant loyal voter.
It comes down to price. You can buy used ThinkPads and replacement parts for them quite cheap a lot of the time.
It’s been a while since I’ve looked at devices from places like System 76 but if I recall correctly they are still over a thousand dollars when a used ThinkPad T440P for example can be found for around two hundred dollars.
I can confirm this with personal experience. Wife has T470 (if memory serves, something around that) for 100€. That was from previous work and they offered my old laptop for cheap, so it doesn’t really count as average, but not uncommon either at least around here. I got myself T495 a while ago for 299€ from “public” market and have been purchasing couple years old thinkpads for decades now. There’s plenty of those available, they work just fine for the workload we have for laptops (I got a separate desktop for more power hungry applications) and they’ve proven to be pretty reliable workhorses since the brand was owned by IBM.
Framework specially is really interesting approach and I’d love to test to their hardware, but they don’t have Finnish keyboard available just yet and I can get several used thinkpads for the price of one framework, so as long as I’m using my own hard earned money I rather spend it on a known brand where I already know what I’m getting into and spend considerably less money while doing so.
Also with linux thinkpads tend to work just fine or at least there’s documentation and howtos to get everything working.
Taitonetti.fi. Local shop which refurbishes and sells previously leased computers, so their selection varies quite a bit, but I’ve been a happy customer for years and they have frequent sales for the ‘last of the batch’ computers where mine came as well. However I think they don’t ship to outside of Finland, so it might not be so helpful for you.
Framework laptops are interesting and I hope eventually the modularity allows the components to go down in price. Right now I was looking at a 16 (which all sold out within 3 hours of pre-order launch) but it comes out to easily over 3k CAD for a disassembled kit, skimping on RAM and an SSD.
yoo I didn’t know about used/refurbished Thinkpads being that cheap, I just checked and indeed you can find a T480 with 16GB of RAM for $248 on Amazon!
I also agree with this sentiment. I got a used t440p which I used for years in school before upgrading to the framework 13. I still love my old thinkpad, but its now my cheap in home media server. I would agree that old thinkpad are easy to find and a cheap (but still very useable and still to some extent repairable) option for work and school.
T440P is cheap for a reason. Personally I don’t want a 6 pound laptop with a decade old CPU and a crappy TN screen. Something like a used T480 is reasonable though I guess
I use an early 2010s Thinkpad, with Ubuntu, and I can play Minecraft pretty well on it. It’s great. I don’t often carry it places, it’s a desk laptop, but I don’t know of any other affordable laptop that would have such a long useful lifespan. If you know of any, please tell me, but my experiences has made me quite the Lenovo loyalist.
Replacement parts are a bitch though. At least when it comes to batteries. The only battery I’ve seen with any positive reviews are Green Cell which is European, so shipping is absurd, and Duracell which no longer produces thinkpad batteries.
Your body is constantly generating heat. If that heat has nowhere to go, your temperature goes up and up.
You need to be in an environment that sucks heat away as fast as you create it - and if the external air temp isn’t cold enough to do that on its own, then you have to rely on evaporation of sweat to help shed the heat.
It’s the feature that let us become the dominant predator. We could track large game that is wounded until the collapsed from heat exhaustion. Yay sweaty humans!
So are you saying that people who sweat more in hot environments are better suited for long distance hunting? Because I’m a gross, sweaty mofo and I would like to feel better about it
Probably not I’m sorry. Sweating enough so that the sweat evaporates as fast as it excretes from your pores is optimal. Skin being more wet doesn’t cool faster (drops of sweat falling off you don’t cool you), so excess sweat would just dehydrate you faster. Sorry
It also seems like this is part of why there were so many powerhouses around the mediterranean, the climate there is just right that you can work a lot without melting, and warm enough that it’s comfortable to walk basically naked.
And it makes sense when you consider that humans evolved for a comparatively sedate lifestyle (even hunting isn’t going to involve sprinting that much) in subsaharan africa.
My favourite “lesson” I ever gave was in a grade 9 technology class. It was a pretty small class, about 10 kids. I split them up into two teams and made a competition. They chose their own teams — it ended up being boys vs girls. I never would have made it that way on my own but that’s how it worked out.
The school had a bunch of old, decommissioned PCs that were headed to the junk yard. I sorted through all of them to get two exact sets of working parts for the competition.
The goal of the competition was to recover a jpeg from one of the hard drives. Each team had a computer with the ram removed and two hard drives. One was blank and the other had the jpeg on it. They also had a Linux Mint installer on a usb stick.
I don’t remember exactly how I had set it up but it was points based, something about getting to different stages first. Like 5 points to be the team that turns the computer on first. One of the big ones was that they got an extra 10 points if they did the whole thing without a mouse.
I told the other classes about the competition and asked some other teachers if it would be okay for them to watch and cheer on. It ended up being the nerdiest and most exciting class ever. Students were literally cheering each team through a Linux install. One team got stuck and had to pull out the mouse. There was booing. It was so epic.
The girls won, being the first to recover the jpeg and they did it all without a mouse. It was so awesome. The jpeg was the meme about how would a dog wear pants.
It was about 5 years ago, my first year teaching. I really miss those days. I only teach math now, and while I like that, there was something magical about showing kids how fun computers can be.
Out of curiosity, how much had you already taught them about the tasks? Was it just expected that between the whole team there would be someone who knew this stuff?
If I recall correctly I didn’t tell them much about anything. One of them had a nerd dad who set up his daughter with Linux at home but she wasn’t familiar with the install process. I gave them some basic info when I gave them the rules (you have to connect the hard drives and ram) but for the most part everything was new to them.
On the other hand, I also ran a computer club with some other kids (in a younger grade) where we took that pile of broken computers and salvaged working parts. We ended up with 3 or 4 working pcs that we ran Linux mint on. They used the computers for Roblox or something at lunch lol. The computers ended up being a popular attraction at lunch!
@maxprime my technology teacher in middle school did something similar with me and a bunch of other kids in 1995 or so. That's how I fixed my first pc, and eventually started a career in IT. There was no team competition, but he basicallt said "these are some broken computers, if you can fix them you can have a lab to play Doom or whatever you want. He helped us setting up the IPX network tbf, but we had to check what dimm banks were working, which not, same with hdd and processors, and put togheter everything and install Windows 3.11
Yeah I had formatted and partitioned the disk ahead of time. The JPEG was in the root directory IIRC. I warned them to not plug in both hard drives during the install process to be sure not to overwrite the wrong drive. They were labelled physically but were otherwise identical.
@maxprime@nayminlwin what an amazing story. I love that this could be gamified for them and made more fun. I presume you had a guide or helped them when they got stuck?
I had some of my classes (14-15yr olds) assemble their own computers as the first class. It was cheap junk anyway, and I was willing to risk it, but it set the stage for the year. I dont think I got them to install system on it (whole school run on Linux btw), thats a great touch. And making it into something that entertaining, and stereotypes breaking is brilliant!
If i were to become a teacher in the future (unlikely, but not impossible), i'd hope to be just as caring and enjoying the craft as you are. Keep it up! ☺️
I feel like the overall engagement has increased. I see a lot more niche communities (like people butchering their VWs in various ways 😂) and it’s nice! There’s generally conversation to be had and such, it feels like a healthy platform.
Lemmy slotted in the gap that Reddit left really easily for me, and I’m getting what I wanted from the platform.
One thing I love about lemmy is how easy it is to get a conversation going. On reddit it’s really easy to be buried in a thread, and if you get a response it’s often just a joke or a snarky remark. Here there’s so much genuine engagement. It reminds me of the transition from Twitter to Mastodon. I guess people who bother to make the move are more likely to be more engaged users, too.
Lemmy’s comment sorting does also actively prevent getting buried, unlike reddit (?). Newer comments are biased towards the top, and even heavily-upvoted older comments will fall towards the bottom. The lack of “global karma” and our community’s propensity to heavily downvote anyone doing redditisms like pun threads are also doing a lot of work here.
I didn’t even know about that, that’s really cool. I have noticed that if I come back to older posts there’s often a lot of new activity since I was there last.
My roomie is German so I share stuff from that community with him from time to time. It might be against the Geneva convention, but I’ve not faced repercussions yet.
Someone better versed in Lemmy may correct me, but isn’t comment activity more of a factor with some of the sorting algorithms (e.g. Hot/Active) here? In which case your upvotes may help but your comment may be even better!
I wouldn’t put Afghanistan and Iraq on the same level.
Bin Laden (and Al-Qaeda) was in Afghanistan and they refused to hand him over. That invasion had the support of NATO and even Russia and China. Why? Because Al-Qaeda existing doesn’t benefit anyone and they were behind the attacks.
Iraq was different. It was mostly a US and British invasion, under false pretences. Iraq used to have chemical weapons and even used them against civilians back in the 80s, started a war with Iran and invaded Kuwait, but those were not the reasons given for the invasion…
Now, why wasn’t Bush charged with any crimes? For the same reason nothing will happen to Putin in Russia. What are you going to do, invade the country to arrest the president?
I’m not defending the occupation and whole “nation building” (which I doubt they though would take 20 years). Just pointing out that there was a difference between Afghanistan and Iraq, and that difference was reflected by the support (or lack of) from other countries.
The United States today rejected yet another offer by Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban to turn over Osama bin Laden for trial in a third country if the U.S. presents evidence against bin Laden and stops air attacks.
It’s insane to suggest the US would ever agree to that.
I believe it would have been the correct move, but the US as a nation would straight up never agree to that. The citizenry would have lost their fucking minds.
But did Bush knowingly lie to a degree provable in court?
He would have had to have known it was a lie and for that to be proven in court. With trump, his crimes were so egregious there were devout party line adherents backing out and explicitly stating just how illegal what they were doing is. Trump had been told multiple times, in multiple ways that what he was doing was illegal and he went for it anyways.
Another point to add. It is not illegal for anyone to lie, so unless he was testifying under oath, Bush could lie as much as he wanted without legal repercussions.
Not quite. The constitution has a cutout for official duties of the office. The president must faithfully carry out the duties of the office. So knowingly lying can fail that test.
If you want someone to blame for the US invasion of Iraq, blame Italy, their Intelligence apparatus, and Nicolò Pollari in particular. He submitted the “Iraq is buying Yellowcake” to the CIA twice, who figured out it was a forgery before setting a private meeting with the vice president who did not know the CIA had already ruled it out.
Not quite. Trump is currently being charged in federal court for his part in lying to overturn the election. They used “knowingly false” 32 times in the indictment for a reason. His defense is not that the president is allowed to lie, but rather that he truthfully believed he was telling the truth, so I’m not sure where you assertion is coming from: It is illegal to lie in furtherance of breaking the law, even for the POTUS.
Trump is not being put on trial for lying per se. The lying however is part of the furtherance of a criminal conspiracy, which is illegal. So with regards to Bush, he can’t be charged with lying to the American people. It can however be used as evidence against him if it was part of furthering a criminal conspiracy.
To the best of my knowledge, we have never put a president on trial for the faithfulness clause (and no, impeachment is not an actual criminal/constitutional trial, no matter how much we treat it as such)
The Constitution lists one crime: treason. He didn’t do that. Not faithfully carrying out the duties of the office is absolutely grounds for impeachment, but it’s not a crime.
That’s not true. Even the specific rules laid out in the constitution have limits. You have the right to freedom of speech, and yet it is silent about the type of speech protected. We did not write down that the president is allowed to lie about winning the election in the constitution, but we did write down the president must carry out the duties of the office faithfully, and we gave Congress the power to create laws, which all citizens are bound. The president is a citizen, not a king, and I have to say this again as it was very important to the authors of the constitution: The president is not a king. He doesn’t have the divine right. Trump’s just another citizen who was temporarily given the power of the executive. You could charge him with a crime and put his ass in prison while he was a president without impeaching him. Executive privilege is court tested, but it only applies to confidentiality, and going in front of the public and lying is, by definition, not confidential.
and we gave Congress the power to create laws, which all citizens are bound.
Exactly. Congress has to make things a crime. The fact that the Constitution says that the president has to faithfully carry out their duties doesn’t make not doing that a crime.
If you’re saying that Congress did pass such a law, can you tell me which one?
I think you folks are talking past each other. The constitution requires faithful fulfillment of the duties of office, so because of that requirement, presidents swear oaths of duty. Lying under oath is a crime (not delineated in the constitution) and a violation of the faithful fulfillment of duties, which means that he is violating the terms of presidency set out in the constitution (also not a crime, but impeachable).
Which I’m sure they passed in the year between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq just by coincidence, and they weren’t expecting any shady shit to go down at all.
No no, don’t you know that we don’t do “war” any more? We do “operations” now. War is totally different. Then we have to obey Geneva conventions and all sorts of other hairy stuff. Our politicians have decided as long as we don’t call it “war” then we’re fine.
This is why I maintain that Trump will never go to prison… The u.s government itself would never allow it. They’ll likely help him stay out on appeals till he dies, that’s gonna be the worst punishment he’ll get. I think the government would have him killed and made it to look like an accident before they ever allow him to set foot in prison.
The US government will allow Trump to go to an American jail. This is like ruling over like. The US government would never allow Trump to go a foreign jail, no matter how much he deserved it.
I think there are enough people in power who will use the “one of our presidents in jail will hurt our country” excuse, or they’ll fear reprisal from the maga cult, that they’ll let him walk. I hope I’m wrong, but the u.s pulls this shit all the time.
Yeah but it’s like the PATRIOT Act (it’s an anagram Im just lazy). The PATRIOT Act had been kicking around DC for decades before we had an excuse to pass it. The ICCJ bill was no different.
Iraq was different. It was mostly a US and British invasion, under false pretences
Lil Bush didn’t even really know…
He was just a puppet, and Cheney was part of his dad’s “old guard”. Lil Bush knew the game, so Cheney set it up so every intel agency reported to Dick Cheney, and Dick Cheney decided if that info went anywhere else, including Lil Bush.
Cheney wanted the war, so he only passed on info that would cause the war, and it’s entirely likely he was the only member of the American government who could have seen 9/11 coming. The reason no one else could, was everything has to go thru Cheney, and he saw everything.
I’m not saying Lil Bush is innocent, I’m saying he was a useful idiot that knew he was just a puppet and went along with
But it pisses me off everyone acts like the puppet fall guy is who we should be upset with, not the people who were actually doing stuff and still work with the American Republican political party.
You need to look into the Project for a New American Century. It’s a PAC that most of GWB’s initial team was on and were asking fir war with Iraq in 1997. Wanna guess who in the GWB administration was not part of it?
Officially that was the reason. The violation of the ceasefire. Iraq did not abide by the terms of the ceasefire.
In hindsight, we shouldn’t have invaded. I supported the invasion at the time because of the violations of the ceasefire. I didn’t completely buy the wmd argument.
Looking back, Iraq distracted us from Afghanistan.
Both countries also do not recognize the authority of International Court. High ranking officials definitely should have been hauled off to jail for authorizing, developing, and employing “enhanced interrogation” (aka torture) techniques
They are still happening, the western News just got bored of it. The morality police just received orders to start cracking down hard on women with uncovered heads. The government believes it has the authority to end any Iranians life for any reason, even outside of Iran. The clergy would rather burn down the entire country than let people live free from religious oppression. Without outside pressure, these protests are just going to mean more dead women and stiffer laws against them.
I’m not disagreeing with you but I think what we see is a minority of people with the protests. It seems like there is not really much political will to change anything from the half of the country with a penis, and the older females.
The whole thing is pretty sad but from my understanding when things like this happen they generally blame the west and the majority go along with it.
Honestly as a westerner Iran is pretty irrelevant to my life. It’s not like we can invade them or force them to overthrow the government and if we did people would never shut up about it.
Look at Afghanistan the USA spent so much money trying to spread liberal democratic ideas, integrate and educate women but as soon as we left they went back to how it always was. There is no civil war, the majority just consented to the Taliban rule.
Yeah, absolutely, it is a minority. But I don’t think it’s entirely irrelevant. The clergy used religion to twist and conform the will of the people, turning their views into Sharia treacle. Human suffering is relevant in an empathetic way, but it’s also good to know that human society can look like Iran with the majoritys support. Western society could end up in as bad a spot as Iran, all it takes is a revolution. There is a growing christian theocracy movement in every western country. Disillusionment with western capitalism and democracy is as high as ever and as things get worse, theocratic dictatorships become more and more appealing to more people. There is a non-zero chance we could have our own Iranian style revolution in just a few generations.
I agree mostly. It’s like North Korea, I can’t really do anything to change the situation. My government can’t change the situation. We can try to push some buttons to help foster change but we can’t force it. Change has to come from within.
Have you listened to the it could happen here podcast? The first episodes(the story ones) are pretty good.
Edit specifically this episode but you should start with episode 1 for more background.
If you listen to anti-imperialist analysis by Iranians, it’s never been “Western disillusionment”. The West has always brutalized Iran, stolen from them, murdered them in droves, and destroyed their national self-direction. Nothing saved Iran from the West until the theocracy emerged and purged all of the Western influence. Iranians have the benefits of their own labor and their own resources for the first time in centuries because of the theocracy. And I don’t think any of them think theocracy is the pinnacle of Iran’s potential, but neither are they ready to liberalize until the West falls.
Edit: Frankly, your whole contribution to this thread reeks of orientalism. In your world view, the Iranian people have all had their brains wrecked by authoritarian religious freaks and they’ve become disillusioned with the former vision for a civilized West. This implies that Westoids are normal people with functioning brains and that the problem is limited to some “bad guys” in the West that ruined it by being greedy.
The reality is so different from the delusion your worm-eaten brain conjures up. The West has been mushing the brains of its people for centuries and the entire Western project has been to destroy, murder, pillage, and extract everything it can get its hands on with zero respect for life, dignity, truth, culture, or anything that makes life what it is. The West has been a fanatical death cult for centuries. There is literally no way to criticize a country like Iran the way you do without exposing yourself as a completely propagandized subject of said death cult.
I don’t like the oppression of women nor the elevation of religion either, but that doesn’t mean I regurgitate Western propaganda.
I think calling the west a fanatical death cult is a bit romantic. Let’s not pretend that much of the rest of the world isn’t the same but has historically just lacked the means to do it at the scale the west has.
And nobody is regurgitating western propoganda, we’re talking about the protests in Iran and you start spouting this shit. Way to project.
The West literally subjugated 80% if the world’s population and invented religious, scientific, economic, political, and cultural justification for it. There is no death cult larger or longer living in the world today than the west. The only way to do what they did was to get their population on board. They propagandized their people the most thoroughly to do the most atrocities in the most effective ways possible in order to achieve that 80%. It’s not merely that they had steel. They also needed millions of people to believe that death was life, slavery was liberty, god is good and also god says we must kill, rape, and enslave all of these people. It is literally an understatement to call the West a fanatical death cult.
And y’all are regurgitating Western propaganda in this entire thread when you parrot the bullshit that the theocracy has turned Iranian brains into mush. It’s straight up orientalism.
Projection is when I accuse you of doing something I am already doing. I am not eating Iranian propaganda every single day from the day I am born to now. I am not educated by Iranian propagandists. My movies are not rewritten by the Iranian military. My TV is not owned by Iranian oil magnates. Instead you and I live in the West and our entire lives have been soaking in the most vile, most effective, and most pervasive propaganda in the history of the world. When you accuse Iran of making Iranians believe garbage, that’s projection. When I tell you your brain is rotten with Westoids worms, that’s not projection.
You try so hard to sound smarter than you really are. Also, you don’t think that what’s happening in China, N.K and Ukraine isn’t worse than what’s happening in the west? Lol. The West are no angels, but you seem to have a personal vendetta.
And you are projecting. You are spouting the exact shame rhetoric, just from a different perspective. Extremist, media-inspired dribble.
Do I think what’s happening in China, NK, and Ukraine is worse than what’s happening in the West? Absolutely not. Turtle Island is under a 500 year occupation by European settler colonial structures that killed hundreds of millions of people in a program to make extinct all non-European ways of life.
The occupation of the world by Western white capitalist men is still ongoing and still threatens to end cultures, national self-direction, biodiversity, and sometimes even all life on earth through nuclear escalation. The US has pulled out of so many weapons treaties, has poisoned multiple generations of Vietnamese, Japanese, Yugoslavians, Iraqis, etc. The man who designed and engineered the mass murder of generations of Southeast Asians, Kissinger, literally just went to China as a representative of the US. It’s non-fucking-stop extreme violence by white men.
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Korea have all been bombed to shit by Americans, specifically. The amount of unexploded US ordinance in these regions is mind boggling. The amount of ordinance dropped by the US defies human cognition.
Then we have the US-trained death squads using US-guided tactics to terrorize families and indigenous communities throughout the “Americas”, literally torturing and beheading entire families. The US torture program. The long history of Euro-US apartheid in the Americas, the support for South African and Israeli apartheid, the explicit opposition to ending South African apartheid. The emergence of Euro fascism replicating the US program of apartheid. The industrialization of mass murder.
The US leaves open uranium waste pits in Indian territory, poisoning generations of native families. They destroy water and food supplies, on purpose, to maximize extraction and maintain genocide. The mass murder of the US buffalo was committed by the US military to be explicitly take advantage of a treaty clause that would strip the indians of the lands the US displaced them to. Canada is subject to many of these same critiques.
And it never stops. It hasn’t stopped in 600 years. Name a country that isn’t part of Europe and it will have a centuries-long history of brutal domination by white people replete with genocide, torture, slavery, and theft in the billions. Haiti is still suffering under the debt the West levied on them for freeing themselves under the shared recognition by the West that slaves who revolt stole the property of their own bodies from their owners. The famines caused by England killed millions of subjects. All of the Western touting of poverty reduction has backslid and is built on the total subjugation of billions. If you take China’s poverty alleviation numbers out of the UN total count, the backsliding in Western-held territories leaves almost nothing to speak of.
Yes, what’s happening in the West is many many many times worse than what’s happening in China, DPRK, and Ukraine. And we haven’t even talked about Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, the Berlin Conference, nuclear weapons testing in populated areas, environmental devastation by Western oil companies and the millions they kill, the must brutal embargo regimes inflicting collective punishment on hundreds of millions of innocent people for almost a century. The 600 global military bases. The predatory lending. The disgusting medical experimentation. The role of religion in all this.
And despite all of this, you still think you have a leg to stand on. And that’s the icing on the cake - the amount of Western propaganda and indoctrination that enlists little children in propagating structural racism and violent extremism from a very early age. Indoctrination so thorough that 20 years of schooling are all completely and thoroughly aligned with the violent lies that perpetuate genocide and no one bats an eye. Where all mass media reinforces the dominant narrative and when people speak up millions shout them down. Where sex is worse than violence. Where violence is so normalized that children commit mass murder in their school on a regular basis. Where you and I can have a real conversation and you think it’s somehow logical to claim that what’s happening in China is worse than what’s happening in the West.
It’s a terrifyingly powerful indoctrination, so it’s not surprising that you hold the position you do, but it is a position without a single shred of basis. It is 100% a set of false beliefs that perpetuate the centuries-long genocidal extraction and accumulation of wealth.
Go learn history. The fact that you think I’m spouting “the exact same rhetoric” is fucking mind blowing. The fact that you think this is “media inspired” leaves me completely dazed and confused. What media do you think I have access to that pushes this? You think I watch Chinese TV? Russian TV? Iranian TV? You think they have the time and inclination to put out media programs that explain 600 years of global domination by white people? Motherfucker I am studying history and have been for years now and this is literally what happened. Nothing I detailed above is media hype. It’s literally YOUR history. Go fucking learn it.
Relax dude. You let the baby out with the bathwater. What are you trying to accomplish, you really think I’m going to change my mind and NOT think you’re some nutjob with these walls of text? You do you.
Also, you haven’t changed my mind. I still think that other cultures are equally bad if not worse. I could provide examples and explain it, but it’s not like you’d listen anyway.
He knows his wife likes the meatballs, but isn’t going to order her own, so he eats two, claims he’s stuffed, and let’s her have the last one.
He actually is stuffed, because the ones she saw him eat were actually numbers 7 & 8 and she’s happy because she gets a meatball without ordering extra food.
If a dragonfly locks onto your happy ass, you’re meat. 95-97% hunt success ratio, highest of any animal on the planet. One shot, one kill. Strongest flying insect, with 4 independently operating wings. Watch one fly in slow mo. That is what Herbert had in mind when he wrote ornithopters into Dune. Your inner ear would boil if you could shuck and jive like that. They don’t chase prey, they intercept prey. They aim for where the target is going to be. Their head is basically a giant, binocular eyeball, a 360° target-seeking combat package. Yeah, you read that right, 360° field of view. If you think you’re sneaking up behind one, it’s already seen you.
They do love them some mosquitoes, that’s a fact. Not going to say our swampland in the boonies is mosquito free, but it’s a swamp, it’s loaded with dragonflies, and there ain’t many blood suckers around. There’s another swamp down the street where they fly non-stop mosquito interdiction. Plenty of bugs on the shoreline but paddle out 20’, you’re free and clear. My boys rule the airspace over water.
Anything smaller, which is to say, everyone else, is fair dinkums. They’ll start horking down on what ever part first meets those monstrous jaws, alive or dead, no matter. Every watched one feed? Not for the faint of heart. Whatever space isn’t taken by eyeballs, the rest is all mouth. Those jaws work as implacable, squared-off, champing vices. Pray they start with your head, because starting at your feet is all the same to them. Crazy nastyass dragonfly, dragonfly don’t care, dragonfly don’t give a shit.
The dragonfly you see is the adult, and adulthood is only a month of their lives. Before they begin ravaging the skies, they spend up to 2-years as nymphs, terrors of the sea, two full years of underwater murder practice before they get their wings. If you have the misfortune to share that environment, the pond is dark and full of terrors. They go straight from nymph to adult, pupation is for lesser arthropods like those pansy-ass butterflies, or, as the dragonfly sees 'em, “food”.
Want to “pet” one? Hold very still, fully extend your arm and point your finger, they’ll eventually use you as a helipad. Know any other insect that will do that? You can walk around with ‘em, make finger guns, whatever, they’ll hang. Like a dragonfly has anything to fear from us lowly primates. Woman across the street is a got damned dragonfly whisperer, got a dozen pics of her holding them. Here’s one chillin’ on my wife, rode half a mile upstream with us, our very own combat air patrol.
Notice Stephen King has never written about these monsters? Too scary. Chuck Norris crosses the street. Such perfect killers, evolution cranked out over 3,000 versions. There’s one species down here that’s coal black. Black eyeballs, black head, black thorax, black abdomen, black wing veins, one of the smaller models, think Kiowa helichopper vs. Hind. We got tactical smart missiles, phased plasma pulse rifles, RPGs, we got sonic electronic ball breakers! We got nukes, we got knives, sharp sticks… we got dragonflies!
And no, do not dare confuse them with the lesser damselflies. I mean, look at this idiot, eyeballs all stickin’ out. Unlike the majestic dragonfly who rests with spread wings, prepared for instant combat, the damselfly folds up. Lazy little nitwits.
Want some? I buried an old trash can, filled it with water and plants from the local creek. Stole some pitcher plants and sundews as well, even my plants eat bugs. Had dragons in less than a week. We have two smaller “ponds” taking off nicely. Between the goldfish and newly imported dragonflies, mosquito larvae don’t stand a hope in hell. Given their long underwater larval stage, I’m hoping to have my own air force two years from now.
“Dragon”, it’s right there in the name.
Anyway, I think they’re kinda cool. Maybe we can talk about hummingbirds next? Anything but “cute”, they’re the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered bird you ever set eyes on.
Sounds like you might be interested in reading a manhwa called “Jungle Juice”.
A bug killer spray called “Jungle Juice” is being sold. After using the spray, they gain a “complex”, which essentially turns them into at a human-bug hybrid with whatever they killed. The main character killed a Golden-ringed Dragonfly.
They are super cool and super territorial by all accounts. We were in a pop-up pub in a field and this guy kept coming to sit on our hands. I guess we were in his spot…Common Darter
Anything that move and smaller than them, even fish, as they’re ambush predator, by launching their dino-grabber-like mouth part to grab their prey and send it right into their mouth. They also have jet butt. If the adult is the airforce, the nymph is the navy.
That was absolutely glorious and insanely witty. I’ve been called witty before and this had me feeling joyfully outclassed. I thought I was in for some crazy copy pasta but it just ended up further educating me on WHY dragonflies are so cool.
(And yeah damselflies, psh. Bugs. Seeing a dragonfly is a GOOD day.)
I hope this becomes a copy pasta. It was legit hilarious and awesome to read.
Dang it I’m really hoping you’re having like *a really good day. * Thanks for writing this. :D
Lol I don’t think that link makes anyone more optimistic.
Policies had wide-ranging support, with the most popular being conserving forests and land (54% public support), more solar, wind and renewable power (53%), adopting climate-friendly farming techniques (52%) and investing more in green businesses and jobs (50%).
When you start breaking it down by actual ways to stop climate change and the highest yes vote they can get is 54%? And that’s a 54% for something I thought wouldn’t even be controversial.
I’m just saying it’s ok for someone to take a step back from the news if it’s gonna cause them to stress out. There’s not a whole lot people can actually do in their day to day and I don’t think fighting on a forum with ten people is helping anyone
Policies had wide-ranging support, with the most popular being conserving forests and land (54% public support), more solar, wind and renewable power (53%), adopting climate-friendly farming techniques (52%) and investing more in green businesses and jobs (50%).
Im sorry I forgot jokes weren’t allowed or you’re just being thick because it’s the internet and that’s what people do on it.
I’m guessing that there’s not that much overlap between a group that’d vote against conservation of forests while voting for a pivot to renewables.
So it seems like you’re just making shit up to justify telling people to ignore climate change.
lol I think you’ve already forgotten the assignment
Damn. I thought it was me, but scrolling through Everything & Top Day is just filled with rage bait and doom news. I rarely find something uplifting. And I usually find myself more anxious after reading through them.
I really want Lemmy to thrive, that’s why I am here, but I used to be able to filter all that shit in reddit and still have a bunch of funny dumb simple happy posts. If I do that here I get no posts back…
It’s definitely not a complete nor perfect solution, but I’ve noticed that a number of accounts disproportionately post very negative news links. I’ve started blocking some of those users. It helps break it up a bit. I’m sure I’m missing some news now, but there’s only so many times I can see posts about the world burning up or genocide before browsing lemmy becomes stressful and nihilistic.
So if I see the same negative news story on multiple communities, I’ll click on the user and if they’re blasting negative stories everywhere I just block them. For example, I just blocked [email protected], not because of any harassment or anything, it’s just that they almost exclusively post political and climate doomsday stuff.
Amen. OP, I promise the news still finds a way in, even if you swear it off. You won't be able to escape it completely, but shutting it out by choice makes a huge and positive impact. You don't need to be constantly pummeled with every bad thing that happens every day in order to still be plugged-in to what's going on in the world.
Yep. To expand on this if people still want to use social media, here’s what helped me. The constant doom scrolling is unhealthy and unhelpful.
Block or mute news/doomsday communities/people on social media. Link aggregators and algorithm-driven social media just sucks for news across the board. Use Lemmy (or Reddit, etc) for memes, interesting discussions, cool pictures, whatever, but not news.
Collect a list of news sources you trust and add them to an RSS reader. Ideally in a separate folder from other feeds so you can easily filter them out when you aren’t interested in world news. You only get one “post” per article, rather than seeing the same “everything sucks now” article reposted to 20 different communities, and it’s buried in good ol’ boring news. Everything is less exciting in this format, it’s great.
Stomach acid is also why people with some eating disorders like bulimia have badly eroded teeth. The acid from throwing up constantly eats away at your teeth.
But in this situation you can drink water and wash it down, preventing acid damage to your eusophagus. The author of this greentext can’t get water into their intestines.
If anyone hasn't had a butt cam (colonoscopy) before, this basically describes the process for flushing out before the procedure, except the stuff they give you doesn't taste as good as pickles.
Since I didn’t see any responses that directly answered the question of what do you DO, I’ve prepared a short guide for a generic social gathering. This guide may be inappropriate in some contexts such as a dinner party or event/tv show watching party, etcetera:
Show up
Not at the exact start time, but at a minimum of 15-20 minutes “late”
Bringing an unopened bottle of wine or a 6-pack of beer, or another drink of choice is almost always a classy move.
If you drove, don’t park like an asshole. Consider the neighbors.
If you’re standing on the doorstep and you can hear music, it’s probably safe to just walk in (make sure you’re at the right place!). Otherwise, knock/ring doorbell.
Party!
Get yourself a drink and/or a plate of food if snacks are out
Find friends and say hi! You should probably know at least one other person. How else would you have been invited?
Explore! Hosts expect people in their house so it’s generally okay to look around, admire artwork, investigate the music, go into the backyard, etc. Don’t go anywhere that’s obviously closed off, unlit, or otherwise not a party locale.
Talk and socialize. Meet new people! Ask your friend(s) to introduce you to their friend(s). Lightly eavesdrop on convos for something interesting you can talk about. Listen in general. Ask people what they like to do. Share stories about yourself! Pro tip: the length of your stories should be proportional to how well you know the person you’re telling it to. Just met the person? Suuuuper short stories. “No way! That reminds me of the time my cat was in the bathroom when she got hit by a car! The vet said she was very lucky to have a good friend!” (Confession: I used autocomplete to write that story)
Dance!
Find the host and complement their place, the party, the music, food, whatever. Just be nice. Offer to help if they look at all stressed.
Play party games like beer pong or whatever.
Leave! Say thanks. Take your stuff. Cleanup whatever plates/glasses you’ve used. Don’t drive drunk. Don’t overstay your welcome.
This was probably too much info. I have insomnia. I hope someone reads this.
At the “talk and socialize bullet,” I was imagining sidling up to some group I don’t know, eavesdropping on their conversation, and standing there like a creep trying to figure out the best time to say anything relevant to contribute, but failing and standing awkwardly in silence until I just walk away.
Haha, I can definitely understand this feeling. It can be difficult to overcome! It doesn’t always “work”, and sometimes you will just stand there awkwardly. The good news is that nobody is going to care or remember. Seriously. You’re basically an NPC to people you don’t know. I’ve been to hundreds of parties in my life and have zero tangible memories of other people’s “awkward proximity”. Nobody cares about you as much as you do, which is slightly sad but majorly liberating.
It can be fun to meet (new) people. I think, the key is to be sincerely interested in others and don’t worry too much what they think about you.
If e.g. you are interested in programming or understanding how thinks work, it could be interesting to try to understand how other people tick. What motivates them, why etc. And if you get the impression that someone looks down on you, that’s just another point of data about the world that person is living in. So the fun can stem from broadening your horizon (or from finding common ground).
I’m ADHD, never investigated but scoring high on ASD assessments. It can be fun, with the right people. It wholly depends on who’s there. I’m usually with the people sitting outside, having fun conversations over a beer and/or a joint. It’s just the genetic term for “gathering where there’s food and substances”. You’ll find that you can often meet other NDs overwhelmed by the amount of people and music over there. Chill times.
Reading comprehension seems difficult, so I’ll go over it again, quoted verbatim from my previous comment:
ADHD, never investigated but scoring high on ASD assessments
Here’s what you can deduce from this sentence:
I’m ADHD
I scored high on ASD assessment tests
Never got diagnosed for it (it being ASD)
Here’s what you can’t deduce from this sentence:
“random online tests”: the self-assessment tests I made were provided by both my family doc and official governmental health resources
that I don’t have something because I don’t currently have an official diagnosis: do you think people with cancer don’t have cancer until a doctor says so? I spoke with professionals, but I’d need an adult assessment. Neuropsychiatric resources are already scarce for children as is it, getting an appointment for an adult over here is a rather difficult and time consuming process, for, in my case, discutable benefits
I mean, it doesn’t sound fun written out in bullets but parties are usually a great time for my own socially anxious neurodivergent ass lol. That said, besides work events, I haven’t gone to a party where I don’t already know most of the people in years. Jumping alone into a convo of strangers is my hell.
As a neurodivergent, I get through these events by pretending to be an alien anthropologist trying to blend in and study humans. Conversations are usually easy to start by asking, “So, how do you know the host?” Most people enjoy talking about themselves, so if you nod and listen, you’ll be popular.
Occasionally you’ll meet someone truly interesting. Arrange to meet with them later and follow up. This is pretty much the best way to make friends in the modern age, with intentionality.
Good parties are wonderful, the type of party described above does sound miserable but you can choose which parties you want to attend. Personally I like parties that revolve around board games and interesting conversations where the only real social rule is to bring something: cheeses, an appetizer, weird booze, just something so all the provisions aren’t the sole duty of the host.
I have some details that could supplement the outline.
Just for reference. Talk and socialise genarally take up anywhere from 80-95% of total time spent at parties. Generally most other activities include socialising even though they’re structured. Beer pong you talk about beer pong and/or make fun of people’s throws as well as just regular talking.
For neurodivergent people I recommend searching areas with fewer people, smoking is very convenient in those situations for a break between 3 sets of talking 10 minutes. Alcohol really helps too since it removes some of the talking friction. Dancing is also a good option since it’s less talking and is a structured activity that’s well received at most parties.
I enjoy parties as a charge of pace and getting rid of loneliness for example. Talking to friends and ignoring the rest is also fun but parties are exhausting imo.
Not late late, just late enough that the host has had time to make sure everything is in order, or just to not be the first guest to show up.
Usually a party lasts at least a few hours, so showing up 30 minutes after the start of the party isn’t “being late,” it’s just showing up to a party in progress. Unless it’s a specifically scheduled “arrive at 8pm” kind of affair, in which case the host would mention it and you’d be expected to be there at that time.
I’d add it also depends on your familiarity with the host. Most hosts don’t appreciate if the first guest is a friend of a friend or distant coworker that they feel obliged to entertain while still busy with final preparations. Whereas if you’re a good friend, they can (often) feel more comfortable saying yeah make yourself at home I’ve got last minute things to do.
Because arriving at a party when there’s not many people around can be awkward especially if you aren’t already friends with the host. So you wait for more people to arrive first.
I imagine it’s an even looser norm in places outside the west, considering the west tends to view time/punctuality as more “concrete” than some others. For some of my friends born outside the west, if we tell them the actual start time of an event we shouldn’t expect them any sooner than an hour after that lol.
It’s a really weird thing and something you should carefully consider based on the type of party. The 15 minutes late advice only really applies to getting drunk parties in college.
Yeah if this party is in the Situation Room with the President, you should show up a little early.
Nothing’s quite so awkward as showing up already drunk, dressed wrong, and 25 minutes late to a special briefing about the volcano erupting in Cleveland.
This is a common occurrence at my home as well. When there’s heavy rain frogs get caught in our window wells, some make it inside, some get caught between the windows an screen. I just put on a pair of gloves, fish em out and set them free on higher ground.
Once my cat frantically came yowling up the stairs with a frog in her mouth. Set it down gently, unharmed and stared at me loudly meowing as if to say “look what I found, WTF is this? Do something about it.”
I have a set of tongs at home with frogs for the silicone grips. Living at the beach it’s not uncommon for green tree frogs to make their way inside the doggie door.
This might be a dialect thing, but I’m intrigued at what one tong is? I’m in Australia and we only have pairs of tongs - like we only have pairs of pants - and I’ve never heard them referred to in the singular.
I don’t like to use ‘pair of’ for things like tongs or spectacles spectacles which are one physical item. I do it for stuff like shoes tho. I think pair of tongs is technically correct tho
It is. They know everything about you. Even every store you have shopped at knows a lot about you. It really doesn’t take much interaction for a company to get a lot of info. It’s relatively easy to get an email and from there, if they wanted, they can get the rest of your profile from a 3rd party who has your data all matched up already. They can also build your profile pretty easily themselves as well.
If you’re in the US, you can demand a company release the information they have on you, to you, for inspection. It’s more data than you’d think. A LOT more.
you’d likely have to work for some marketing agency and can probably only buy user data in bulk amounts (based on region, or some other desired demographic) with a recurring business plan of course
it wouldn’t be financially beneficial for these companies to sell an individual thumbprint
You have the right to request access to inspect the personal information a company stores on you. At least, in the US. And I believe the UK and EU as well but I can’t speak as much to those.
If you want to be truly terrified (or enlightened, however you prefer to think of it), pick any big company that you’ve used and request all the data they have stored on you. The amount of data they’ll have is STAGGERING. Certainly hundreds of pages, possibly thousands. It’s insane.
I think personal data poisoning is going to become more prevalent among privacy communities, I would like to see some tooling for this in the next few years.
Tbh it's not black and white. I'm sure a big corporation can extract a ton of information on us but there's still a pretty big gap between having our real names and photos plastered everywhere on social media, or them just knowing where I live and that I spend a lot on steam games. Don't take the small victories for granted.
Im in basically the same position since realistically the change needs to be at an institutional level. I can’t really change anything by myself without excluding myself from most modern services.
We need laws and regulations. But like you I fear it’s too late.
Same here, but that doesn’t stop me from trying where I have the time and energy. One of those ways is voting. So far the government has let these companies wipe their shit onto every corner of the internet, and the 5-10% of us switching apps or emails or… Whatever, aren’t going to change that. It’s not a short-term solution, but I’m starting to think it’s really the only way.
It might not be. Plenty of US states are coming online with privacy rights. If you live in CA, CO, CT or VA you can submit requests to opt out of information sales and for sites to erase your data.
Me. I care I just…fuck. That ship has sailed. I don’t go out of my way to download the big offenders like Tik Tok but…still. Everyone is tracking me. Everyone is selling my information. God knows how many different companies have massive files on me.
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