I don’t know if this is just Lemmy behavior or the decision of the specific admin/moderator, but I do wish that posts that get removed for irrelevance or getting off topic or whatnot would just get “locked” with voting/comments disabled, rather than purged. I hate participating in what seems like a good conversation only for the content to get irretrievably nuked just because it has a bad title or is considered off topic.

I think 99% Invisible might have some episodes up your alley.

Some of the episodes are about more modern-day topics, but a good majority of them involve historical events and figures.

I feel like there’s probably about 50 different directions that one could take that idea, and the story very clearly paints that act as a Bad Thing™ to have done.

But to play devil’s advocate (just because I have also been missing this type of discussion), one could argue that experiencing love would compromise Miquella’s plans for his planned age of compassion. An age of compassion would be one which treats everyone equally, to try to universally end worldly suffering.

Love, on the other hand, is what allows one to play favorites, and is also something that cannot really be controlled. Having a stronger attachment towards some people over others because of love would result in discontent, and sabotage the type of egalitarian compassion Miquella wanted to create.

Marika’s reign became rocky because there were conflicts between those she favored and those she shunned. She absolutely played favorites, and did not love everyone equally. Her solution to break the cycle of suffering was to simply remove death from the world entirely, but as we saw, that just ended up making its own whole host of problems.

So I think Miquella was trying to avoid making that same mistake of favoritism we saw under Marika, but ended up making another mistake which could have been just as potentially consequential as his mother’s decision to shatter the rune of death. A dispassionate “compassion” wouldn’t really be compassion at all.

I would rather argue the motivations of a souls boss

Miquella did nothing wrong.

Part of it is also the constant push to try to weave the principles of confederacy into the fabric of American history via monuments and memorials, to build up this idea that the confederacy is part of the modern American identity rather than antithetical to it.

See for example the recent controversy surrounding the military installation called Fort Bragg. Braxton Bragg was a slave-owning confederate general who, by all accounts, was not even a good leader. But given the fort’s location in North Carolina, one of the former confederate states, it got its name presumably due to local military officials sympathetic to the “Lost Cause” narrative, and stuck until just recently.

In 2023, the Biden administration pushed to change the name of the fort to “Fort Liberty” so as to continue removing these Lost Cause memorials and end this myth, but this year the Trump administration just recently renamed it back to Fort Bragg, ostensibly now named after a different Bragg who was just a paratrooper during World War II. But no one is fooled by what they’re trying to do.

It’s almost sad, really, just how badly they’re clinging to this myth even today. But I guess more scary than sad, given that half of the government is essentially run by traitors. And it’s really been that way for a long time now I suppose, but shocking how strongly they still choose to hold their ground on these ridiculous narratives when pushed.

Acht and neun.

Neun sounds like English nine, and acht is like October, which used to be the 8th month.

English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Japanese, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Latin, Classical Greek.

That makes 11, I guess.

Being gay or bi has nothing to do with this, so why bother mentioning the fact?

I wouldn’t go that far, I think it’s a very relevant detail for OP’s situation.

Internalized homophobia is a real and unfortunate phenomenon for people who grew up in restrictive environments, and it can result in a lot of self-hatred and mental distress, including diagnosable disorders.

And the worst part about it is the shame some people feel about the whole thing might have them feeling that talking to a doctor or therapist is simply not an option, as they are not prepared to be “out” to others, even under the protection of medical confidentiality. The very idea of being out can be internalized as a failure, especially if it would burn bridges with bigoted family members (which is easy to say from the outside looking in that bigots aren’t worth your time anyways, but not so easy when that is your entire support network and every happy memory you had since childhood).

It’s definitely not simple, at any rate.

Luckily digital signboards will always be an option to replace TVs with if the situation becomes truly dire. The sorts of no-frills displays corporations buy to display whatever media they want in store.

Might not come with sound, but you can pick up a cheap sound bar and it will still be better than whatever cheap speakers commercial TVs try to cram in there.

I just wish her views on the Israel/Palestine situation were better.

When I was younger, you got $20 from a friend if you were lucky, and that was fine by us because no one wants friendship to feel like an obligation. Today with inflation that might be more like $50, but still not a big thing.

$100 is typically what family would give, I wouldn’t go that high because it honestly may be seen as stepping on the toes of family members if they don’t give that much.

Honestly just a card is fine.

I guess Microsoft really changed the world.

I’m assuming America is only paying El Salvador for prisoners America sends to El Salvador. They don’t give a shit what El Salvador does to their own domestic prisoners, or America’s, quite frankly.

The only thing I did recently was buy a replacement device for one I had that was crapping the bed and would need to be purchased soon anyways, but decided to buy something now before it completely died just in case prices sharply rose in the next few months.

Other than that, nothing really. I am putting away as much money as I can in savings, avoiding large purchases/being generally frugal, and taking good care of my things so they last as long as possible. Life’s not perfect, but I’m making as soft a cushion as possible in case things do get worse.

Not to say the future is set in stone or that we shouldn’t be worried, but even the Great Depression only lasted about a decade, and it’s still crazy to me just how quickly the last one went by. I have a place to live, enough money put away that I could probably last it out that long one way or another if I was laid off tomorrow, and a generally supportive community around me where people look out for one another.

But I’m lucky, I know not everyone else can say the same, so I hope you’re all doing alright out there.

I don’t think it’s building materials that is the question, but rather the multi-million dollar machines that are often designed and imported from elsewhere.

Those fancy Bosch assembly lines your widget factory needs will be hit by that 20% tariff coming from the EU, even if the building they sit in is made of American brick and lumber.

Yep. Even if you’re buying a product which is by meaningful standards “100% American made,” consider the invisible costs. The cost of the packaging that they use, the cost of the supplies/equipment they use in production and the upkeep required to maintain them, the cost of the infrastructure they use for logistics and operations, etc.

All these less visible dependencies affect the cost of doing business and can still be impacted by tariffs if anything comes from overseas, even if the product itself is just a bottle of maple syrup made in Vermont.

It doesn’t matter who the hell wants to buy TikTok if ByteDance still doesn’t want to sell.

I don’t know why we keep having these sorts of conversations when they’ve signalled they have no intent to give in to the demands of the US.

I mean, we’re here talking about it, aren’t we?

2 is a maverick.

The real TIL is always in the comments