May Day is the perfect day to educate one’s self about the history of union suppression. If you think you see a pattern, you’re right, but the reasons for the pattern have nothing to do with the workers’ abilities and everything to do with powerful people using everything in their arsenal to prevent collective action.

Wish I could just be lazy and have the troubles go away, but that isn’t how it works.

I feel this so hard. I’ve been more active this year than ever, and it takes so much out of me to socialize. But I’ve been giving talks, canvassing, and attending protests because we really don’t have a choice anymore. This government sure as hell isn’t interested in helping anyone, so it’s all on us.

Any advice on getting your money converted to Euros? I’ve been trying to figure that out, but online searches for information are complete garbage now.

You make great points, especially the fact that people are often pushing some kind of bias. However, there definitely is a skill to determining the reliability of a source, it’s called Information Literacy. You’re also right that each person has to develop this skill for themselves.

For those who truly want to strengthen their Information Literacy, I’d recommend starting by learning to recognize various common cognitive biases and logical fallacies. Simply being familiar with how these things work gives you a leg up on identifying nonsense, even if you can’t recall the exact name of the bias or fallacy that may be occurring.

Skepticism will get you far in determining accurate from inaccurate, and it’s important to apply it universally - question everything - instead of simply applying skepticism toward things you don’t like. Similarly, be open to changing your mind when presented with new information, because the more you learn how to see through the misinformation, the more you may find the world around you is different from what you’d been told.

It is amazing to witness a nation learning from another nation’s mistake. It’s such a smart, sensible thing to do. Voters in Canada were able to identify a pattern, imagine the consequences happening to themselves, and make a decision to not do the same failed thing as the U.S.

That’s gotta be a crucial distinction between Canada and the U.S.

Here in the U.S., people ignore and downplay patterns (especially if the patterns hurt their feelings.) When pressed to explain an identical set of patterns, we’re more likely to blame whoever is experiencing the patterns for causing them than to critically analyze the cause and effect surrounding them. [Examples I’ve heard through my life: “Poor people suffer because they’re drug addicts.” “Women don’t get paid as much as men do because women are worse workers than men.” “Black people live in violent neighborhoods because they’re inherently violent.”]

Too many of us are entrenched in the propaganda-sphere; we are too arrogant, vocal, and either unwilling or unable to engage in critical thought against our zeitgeist. I imagine that if the situation were flipped and Canada had been the first to fall to fascism, the U.S. would still follow. After all, if another country messed up, it’s because they did it wrong. But we’re too special, too important, Too Big to Fail™, so we could do the exact same thing and be confident that [consequence] could never happen to us.

Lotsa shocked Pikachu faces going around these days…

Might as well. It’s still safer than driving right up to people who will arrest you, and worse.

Somewhere between January 20, 2025 and today.

I guess we’re at a point where the safest thing to do in this situation would be to just abandon your car and walk away. It’s better to sacrifice your car and inconvenience traffic than to risk your life interacting with ICE.

I mean, I know other drivers would be pissed, but so be it. In the (hopefully) unlikely event anyone here finds themselves in this situation, don’t buy into the sunk cost fallacy - just cut your losses and keep yourself safe.

Sites still add them because it makes them money at the expense of your privacy.

You can also consider it a form of advertising for the platforms. The buttons not only suggest for the user that they should use an indicated platform, but give them an immediate way to engage with it as well. It’s manipulation, all the way down.

Cardinal Pizzaballa

That cannot be his real name.

Looks it up

Huh, TIL.

Or just about fighting each other and it’s all about drama because they don’t have the apparent ability to just simply talk to each other.

Classic sitcom formula. I never got into a lot of the “family” shows in the 90s, because almost every plot revolved around someone being a poor communicator - and that’s it. Person A can’t talk about event/topic Y, and now Person B assumes reason Z and the entire episode and all its hijinks only exist because of it. Everything could’ve been avoided if Person A and Person B actually talked things through, like healthy, sane people who actually want to avoid conflict. But writers couldn’t think of a way to both model proper communication and create a compelling storyline, so here we are.

When that show was popular, I had a boyfriend that didn’t seem able to handle the idea of us liking different things. I never cared for zombies, but I’d heard good things about The Walking Dead and gave it a try. I pushed myself to watch the entire first season before deciding, “Nope, I can’t.”

But when I told that boyfriend? Apparently I “didn’t watch it enough.” When I told him I didn’t care for zombie stories, he insisted, “But it’s not about zombies! It’s about the people.” Uhh yeah, it’s about people in a world with zombies. I could watch a million shows about “people” that don’t involve zombies, so why would I keep watching this one that I already don’t like?

It makes me happy to see others shit on Friends.

When it first aired, my mom was a fan and it would regularly be on in the living room, which was the crossroads of my childhood house - you had to go through it to get anywhere else. Which meant that Friends was impossible to ignore. Walking by, the highest praise I could conjure was, “Wow, that laugh track is doing a lot of heavy lifting.”

At the time of its popularity, I never heard anyone else dislike it. When the show ended, I felt alone in not being sad about it. Since then, I can’t tell if people look back on it with nostalgia or if they are truly still amused by the bland, low-fruit, celebration of stupidity that makes up most of that show’s humor.

The theme song was good though.

if that was the correct explanation then we would expect to see (1) people in countries where it’s worse having even fewer children, which we don’t see, and (2) people in countries where it’s better having more children, which we also don’t see.

That’s not how things work. In fact, that’s practically the opposite of how things work. Increased access to educational opportunities for women is strongly correlated with lowered fertility rates. It’s a well-known pattern. Or another way to frame it, is that poorly-educated women are more likely to have more children.

Part of the pattern is missing from this picture too - before this baby bust, was the baby boom, and before the baby boom, child mortality was a lot higher. A lot of medical advancements took place around the middle of the 20th century, which resulted in more children surviving to adulthood. Prior to this, people typically had many children because so many of them wouldn’t survive. It takes time for a society to adjust to higher life expectancies, resulting in a period where people continue to have many children just like their own parents did, despite no longer needing to.

However, those high rates don’t last. People adjust to the new health expectations, leading the next generation to have fewer children than the one before.

Add in other factors of a prosperous state, such as educational opportunities and access to comprehensive healthcare (which would include birth control), and it makes sense that “countries where it’s worse” would have more children, and “countries where it’s better” would have fewer. (Check the link above for more explanation. It goes into way more detail.)

I’ve mentioned this before in other threads that seek a women-centric Lemmy option, but there was at least one secret community on Reddit like that. Invitees’ post histories were vetted before an invite was sent, both to find women specifically, but also to prevent trolls.

I don’t know exactly how they did it, all I know is that I got an invite one day and found the most open, comforting community I’d ever seen online. It was a place where we could talk about anything from silly stories that made us smile, to complaining about specific issues with bras, all without fear of trolls hijacking the thread, or turning an ordinary thing for us into something sexual.

I miss it.

My mind wanders with ease, that’s the problem. My mind wanders whether it’s an appropriate situation or not, both when I need to focus on something (like during a film or a presentation) and when I need to NOT be focusing on something (like when I’m trying to fall asleep.) I suffer from insomnia because of it.

On numerous occasions, people have suggested meditation to me as a way to practice “clearing” thoughts from the mind. They may admit it “takes practice,” but they assume everyone can do it, which makes it all the more frustrating when your brain seems incapable of shutting up. It’s like the “I know you’re depressed, but have you tried being happy?” of ADHD.

Have you spoken specifically to a dermatologist?

Also, my condolences for all the crap you have had to deal with. That is: the original infestations, the continuing trauma, and the potentially-mean responses of people who don’t understand. I am but an internet stranger, but I feel you, and wish you luck on overcoming your struggles.

I used to feel bad every time I saw a newly-opened small business that had closed.

It’s still sad sometimes. However, ever since I worked in a few small businesses, I got to see just how batshit some small business owners are.

Now when I look at a “new” small business that just closed, I can’t help but suspect that a power-tripping owner probably fucked it all up through their own arrogance.

Meditation helps with this.

I know you mean well, but it bothers me whenever people say this. “Just clear your mind” - says the person who thinks everyone’s mind works like theirs. I’m tired of being told that the solution to the thing I can’t do, is to try to do the thing I can’t do.

I was with you for the first sentence, but you lost me at “witty dint.”