The inevitable conservative argument: “If we didn’t have open borders, construction companies would need to cater to their employees better because they’d have less competition from cheap labor. Thanks Biden”
Mr. Frey, a Democrat, acknowledged that some residents might oppose any loosened enforcement of drug laws. But he said he hoped the measure would contribute to a national rethinking of drug laws that date back to the Nixon era, and draw attention to the role plant-based psychedelics can play for people dealing with depression, trauma and addiction.
It IS nicer, but I’m just tired of seeing it everywhere. My wife is one of those people. Her phone scares me from all the spyware she has on it. It’s an iPhone, so I guess it’s a bit better? I don’t know.
Same reason why people are still on Twitter and Reddit, the majority can’t be arsed to push back against companies. This is why they keep getting away with it and it’s just enabling other companies to go the same route.
Yeah, and the same reason I believe all these micro subscriptions in cars will just go ahead. In 5-10 years, half of the functions of the car will be locked behind subscription gates and it will be normal. Too many people jsut don't bloody care.
Some things they don't care about -- e.g. Reddit, Twitter stuff -- and some things they just don't feel like they can affect. If they're buying a new car, and every single car in their region and in their price range is selling subscriptions, then they're going to feel like they have no choice.
Now, they do likely have choices -- they could buy a used car, or they could look outside their immediate region -- but those options may not address their pain points (maybe they really, really wanted a new car), or maybe they can't afford the time to travel, etc., but the fact that less convenient choices exist don't necessarily make people aware of them, or feel like they're real options.
When every company you interact with, and every transaction you make, is like this, it takes up all of your spoons for dealing with this stuff. It wears down your resistance, and makes it feel like it doesn't matter what you want, just what's being offered.
I mean you’re right, but it’s so fucking exhausting to care about everything wrong in the world. Gotta pick your battles. Personally I have a semi-decent Jellyfin setup, but I’m not going to berate anyone for taking on a netflix sub if the momentary distraction helps get them thru another day in this dystopian hellworld.
Indeed. Here’s your $50,000 car that casts $1000 a month to operate on top of fuel and maintenance. So really it is a $100,000 car that you put 50k down on and pay off on the installment plan. We are in the enshittification stage of this version of capitalism. We cling to the myth that the system makes our lives better, it did for a long time if you lived in the developed world, but that dynamic has played out. Now we are in the phase where ‘growth’ is mainly found by enshittification.
While that’s true it’s also true in 1776 most Americans couldn’t be arsed to push back against the king, it only takes a relatively small portion to care a lot and to order a better alternative then when the ball is rolling everyone will jump on
Same reason why people are still on Twitter and Reddit, the majority can’t be arsed to push back against companies.
Or they just want to watching something on their television after work and have other priorities other than some "war against Netflix" that a couple corners of the internet are angry about?
I was so upset about Santa Clarita Diet. That one and leaving Travellers on the biggest cliffhanger I could ever imagine with time travel and shit and then… just gone.
In the “Big Book,” the foundational document of these programs, “Chapter 4: We Agnostics” tells atheists and agnostics that they are “doomed to alcoholic death” unless they “seek Him.” The chapter characterizes non-believers as “handicapped by obstinacy, sensitiveness, and unreasoning prejudice.”
This really jumped out at me. What a horrible thing to say about someone, especially someone looking for help.
From what I understand, they appeal to a ‘higher power’ as a part of the 12 steps. Also, there is Narcotics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, and others. The 12-step program, as flawed as we may see it, actually helps a lot of people so I’m not knocking it.
I’ve also heard you can be very relaxed with the higher power ‘as you understand it’, providing a way in for agnostic/atheistic members. I don’t have all the info, just what I’ve heard unfortunately.
The Big Book being discussed in this comment is one of the foundations of the Alcoholics Anonymous program. Hence this warning about alcoholism. AA features a higher power as part of recovery.
I was thinking about going to some AA meetings, was massively put off though by all the bible thumping rhetoric. I don’t want anything to do with the majority of religions.
The Founders were steeped in the Age of Enlightenment. Modern Americans wouldn’t even recognize it as Christianity. Like The Jefferson Bible
… completed in 1820 by cutting and pasting with a razor and glue numerous sections from the New Testament as extractions of the doctrine of Jesus. Jefferson’s condensed composition excludes all miracles by Jesus and most mentions of the supernatural, including sections of the four gospels that contain the Resurrection and most other miracles, and passages that portray Jesus as divine.
You could label their morality puritanical but I think cynicism would also equally apply. If you view humans as naturally greedy and selfish, society needs to codify expected behavior to keep it in check.
Jefferson raped other people’s children and sold his own. Washington was not only a slaver but used his victims’ flesh as a cosmetic. (Washington’s famous “wooden” teeth were actually harvested from enslaved humans)
Secular government is a good idea on it’s own, not because 18th century R. Kelly and Leatherface said so.
yeah, it seems what they meant is freedom to be a christian without the pope and absolutely nothing else. no nonbelievers, no non-abrahamics, hell, not even any abrahamic believers who believe in other religions. protestant, mormon, or cringe catholic, take your pick or go to literal hell.
and the best part is when they use the excuse of religious freedom as a shield for their bigotry. like i’m sorry, if your holy book literally calls for gays to be stoned to death that’s a call to violence, it doesn’t deserve to be protected or tolerated.
I feel like this is inaccurate. What other religions were on hand in the late 1700s? The native religions, of course, but the white guys did not care about that.
Of course there was an emphasis on avoiding dependence on any one organized religion. That was one way of keeping power in the right hands.
And in the 1970s and 1980s, it depends where in the US, but in many places or was and is very common to be Christian. If there is an strong majority, there’s no need to explicitly weaponize because society itself is already pushing your agenda. But that doesn’t mean harm wasn’t caused.
I hope you get up on the other side of the bed tomorrow. It sounds like you’re going through a rough time in life, but with luck perhaps it’s only a one day phenomenon.
Also, if you want to troll, try to do a better job than that. I got kind of bored reading it.
There is the story of Sodom, two times in Leviticus, the obvious coverup of Johnathan, the reference in Ezekiel (which according to modern prot studies of the bible is a big freaken deal), two times in Paul’s letters, and a derived part of Matthew.
Homosexuality is attacked more times than all of the diet rules combined.
yeah, it seems what they meant is freedom to be a christian without the pope and absolutely nothing else. no nonbelievers, no non-abrahamics, hell, not even any abrahamic believers who believe in other religions. protestant, mormon, or cringe catholic, take your pick or go to literal hell.
If by “they” you’re referring to the folks who wrote the Constitution (many of whom were Deists, not Christians), that’s very much historical revisionism. The religious right certainly thinks that’s what they thought, but it isn’t true.
i did think that but i stand corrected by @Jase. seems like the founding fathers were actually based (at least on this topic) and it’s just the people who like to speak for them who are corrupting this message.
that said though, there are a lot of calls for religious freedom nowadays that shape up like this: basically, “i should be able to practice my religion and i guess i’ll endure yours because you’re in power, but we’re gonna do something about those unbelievers, right? …right?”
Politics mixing with religion has been terrible for both.
No it hasn’t. Religions benefit almost immeasurably from infiltrating politics in so many ways, ranging from exemption from all discrimination laws, to having their private schools funded by tax money, to controlling the majority of hospitals in the country, to being allowed to rape and marry children consequence free.
Eh, that’s the church as an institution. I mean religion in the more abstract sense. Political leanings becoming tied to a religious stance has become ridiculous, and has watered down Christianity quite a lot, to the point where even Trump gets to go pray once a year and call himself the Christian vote. It’s also been remarkably divisive, as naturally, a lot of Christians aren’t that, and hot political debates somehow become religious debates.
Tying religion to politics has allowed politics to slowly pull that horse further and further, to the point where “Christianity” now means southern fundamentalism to a lot, maybe even most, people. I think without political influence, we’d be a lot closer today to how Christianity started, and is meant to look.
Not that I disagree with the sentiment that things would be better for all of us if thr GOP hadn’t courted the religious right, but I did want to mention that Christianity in the 1st century looked a lot different than it has in the 20th or now.
The religion has changed dramatically over the years. And it was usually a collection of disparate sects. The new testament canon as we know it wasn’t agreed upon until around 400, and the standardization of mainstream belief, the Nicene Creed, had only been adopted a generation before.
And of course the split during the Reformation in the 1500s changed white a bit. Even decade by decade you see different movements, changed in interpretation (slavery being ok vs not), and such.
We don’t have any of the original biblical sources, and none of them are believed to be writings directly from Jesus or his disciples themselves. What we have is filtered through other parties and further filtered through the canonization processes (OT and NT both).
So it’s a bit tough to really pin down what Christianity was “meant to be”. But I wished it wasn’t what it is in many parts of the US.
The separation of church and state has forced American denominations to compete in a marketplace for souls/money, and they have become ruthlessly efficient corporatized entities, using marketing and business-process management, and exploiting tax advantages and high switching costs.
Meanwhile, in Europe, you have official state Catholicism or Protestantism-flavors, which are moribund, inspire little passion, and most everyone is either atheist, agnostic, or un-passioned.
Such an interesting statement. I can kind of see what you mean. Would you happen to have more reading material on this topic? It would be very appreciated.
lmao, so the church and state shouldn’t be separated because the government is inefficient and its inefficiencies should remain to be inflicted upon the church?
that’s… actually kinda based, lol. i do appreciate the objective and the unconventional method to achieve it. however, i think there’s a difference between being a government entity and having control over governance. the latter should never be given to the church, because that’s one hella fast way to surpass all the damage they have managed to do under the american system. for example, while your statements seem accurate for western europe and the nordics (emphasis on “seem”, i don’t live there) but over here in hungary the “christian democratic party” is literally the only party our government is in a coalition with, and they get to pass discriminatory laws basically as fast as they can come up with them. the closest analogy i can give is imagine if all the shit that’s going on in those red states was going on country-wide with no one left to oppose it.
that’s also what europe looked like before the “age of enlightenment”, which is separation of church and state is so important in public consciousness, even if not technically implemented.
still, i do like your idea, and yes, inflicting bureaucracy upon the church would be helpful. maybe it’s not a separation of church and state that we need, but protection of the state from the church’s influence.
The separation of church and state has forced American denominations to compete in a marketplace for souls/money, and they have become ruthlessly efficient corporatized entities, using marketing and business-process management, and exploiting tax advantages and high switching costs.
This is not a product of separation of church and state, but of the atrocious combination of hyper-capitalism and tax exemption for religious organizations.
Yeah it is one of the unexpected results. It is an imperfect analogy but Europe Christianity has become a domesticated animal that knows not to cause trouble. American Christianity is a mean badass sewer rat that not only fends for itself but can’t be killed. I really doubt anyone could have predicted this before it happened.
This reminds me of one of my favorites quotes, which is about the 2020 US presidential election, and I’m not even from the USA, but it’s suitable in so much scenarios in life: “It shouldn’t be this close.”
For me, it was I Think You Should Leave’s new season that got me to sign up for a month to binge that repeatedly. After we finish the documentary on Homo naledi we’ve been watching, we’ll cancel Netflix and start Max for a month so we can watch the new season of Righteous Gemstones.
If it was up to me, I would have canceled a while ago. My wife, and my mom who shared my plan will be fine coughing up the extra few dollars a month to keep it. I think forums like this get a skewed world view since they’re populated by the kinds of people that would be fine setting up their own media server and just pirating what they want, or just churning services to binge watch what they want from each one every few months. I think Netflix(and other services) know that the average user is just going to keep going, even if the price continues to rise gradually over time.
The one thing that might tip the scales is people that set up their own media server and then share that with family and friends. I’ve got a few family members sharing my Plex, but I can also see that they don’t actually watch much. My niece seems to be the one person that will actually ask me to add content for her, so maybe it’s a generational thing where the people that have already used streaming services for a decade or more will keep going, but they’ll see a drop off of new users as they find something else.
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