Ask Lemmy
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- public libraries are still there.
- Book (physical) can still be purchased and fully owned, without any risk of them being remotely edited or deleted and without nay tracking of our reading habits.
- Walking is still free, without any subscription required.
- It is still legal to turn off one's phone.
- I love my spouse at least as much as I loved her when we first met almost 30 years ago. And, yep, she seems to kinda like me too ;)
Ebooks can be purchased as well, with a little skill (or reading a tutorial) you can make it undeletable and uneditable as well.
Source: My epub library growing day by day, synced between multiple devices by syncthing.
Why go through the trouble of purchasing them with DRM and supporting that garbage and doing all the work to make them your own?
Piracy is infinitely superior.
Fascism doesn't actually last that long. At some point, policies have to have some kind of attachment to reality, and fascists are incapable of grappling with reality.
Franco stuck around for quite awhile, but yeah its track record is usually short.
Franco was the first one I thought of. However, his fascism didn't outlive him, and President Pedophile doesn't have 36 years to go.
Historians debate just how fascist Franco really was. In fact, Orwell wasn't even that sure when he wrote Homage to Catalonia, and he was quite clear that he went to Spain expressly to kill a fascist.
Well, we all wish they'd "grapple" with a few rounds at high velocity instead of fingerbanging their own shit and screaming incoherently. They're infecting the other adult-sized toddlers, and it's getting tedious to corral at this point.
We're actually doing pretty well, globally, at shifting to renewables. We're making more, more quickly and more cheaply than ever before.
And the best part is that this is driven by economics, not even policy at this point. Renewables are cheaper.
Wallets are twice as likely to be returned as people expect. And the interesting thing is this holds true more or less globally.
I dream of finding the wallet stuffed with enough cash to dig me out of this mess, but in reality, if there's any way at all to get it back to who dropped it, I will. Found a wallet a few months ago on a day trip, laying in the road. Ending up using the names on the credit cards to Facebook stalk a dude, found his company website, called him, and met him a half hour later to return it. Had like 800 dollars in cash it. I just... Can't be an asshole, even when it would benefit me
You're good people, don't regret it. Incidentally, I'd probably grab a handful of the cash and just hand it to whoever returned the wallet to me like that. It was lost anyway.
Free Open Source Software is pretty amazing imo
Canada geese and white-tailed deer nearly went extinct. Now they're considered pests in some areas. It's possible for nature to bounce back, it just needs to be given a chance.
Pests? If you got a problem with Canada Gooses, you got a problem with me, and I suggest you let that one marinate.
We will all die at some point.
Something around half far sooner than they deserve, and the rest'll hang on longer than anyone wishes they would.
Here's one I like: despite the efforts of Big Oil and their orange-painted lackey, the amount of renewable energy generated in the first half of 2025 has surpassed energy generated by fossil means.
Renewables surpassed coal, not all fossil fuels. Renewables were 34%. The good news is they are faster growing.
There's a promising treatment for Huntington's disease in the works, and we might have vaccines for allergies and/or asthma at some point!
Trump is pretty old, and I cannot think of an example where a movement based around a cult of personality has successfully survived long after their leader has gone. Nor are there any viable successors that are likely to dodge any infighting. JD Vance as a successor? Yeah, ain't happening.
To summarize, the pendulum will eventually swing the other way. And the worse the MAGA crowd pulls it in their direction now, the harder it will swing.
I cannot think of an example where a movement based around a cult of personality has successfully survived long after their leader has gone.
Most religious cults especially Christianity lol, what a statement
yeah. frankly while most left/liberal dont' see it, Trump is also a product of the pendulum swinging. we have been on a good spat of liberalization for 30+ years and there was going to be a backlash. and as someone who grew up working class white, i totally get the unfairness and bitterness of so many of those people who the economic/education system has totally abandoned, and the horrible feelings and condescending that comes from the liberal elite/educated set who look down on everyone who isn't highly educated and living in a coastal city. i got lucky and got to be one of those people, but many of my peers did not.
frankly i find it truly revolting how much of liberal america is so disgusting smug and condescending towards anyone who isn't exactly like them, and that massively accelerated in the 2010s. used to be in the 2000s people would respect/admire me for working my way from a poor working class family to elite school on scholarship and putting myself through grad school and building al ife for myself... somewhere around 2015 that all became to change though and i repeatedly starting meeting folks who told me that i should have 'stayed in my place' and my 'education is wasted on losers like you'. etc. and that attitude has only gotten worse and worse in the 2020s. i'd say there is a massive massive increase in class snobbery and elitism that didn't exist 10-20 years ago.
i've also noticed progressives have moved away from economic issues largely and are entirely focused on culture war bullshit, esp use trans people and trans rights as the most important thing ever, which has alienated many many people due to the rage and hatred being spouted over it. to me this is a horrible horrible move, and plays right into the right wing's advantages. because they are offer a much clearer narrative about these things than the left/liberals are. and clear narratives win elections and voters.
what baffles me is how the democrats can't understand or replicate Obama's success and messaging and act like he was some act of God. He wasn't. He just appealed to people's sentiments and listened to them... just like Trump did in this last election... meanwhile the democrats totally ignore the people and lecture us that they know better than we do what is going on in the country and we should be happy with how things are.
I hope someone on the left/dems capitalized on the severe economic need in this country and steers away from the culture war bullshit. A candidate that wants to actually fix the problems in this country that affect everyone, but it seems nobody is coming forth to do so. And at best we are just getting some candidates who are just going to go with the 'trump bad, me not trump' routine again, which we know doesn't work.
what a lot of people miss in Trumps success is that he had a clear vision people could get behind, even if it was all bullshit and lies.
It's my HRT birthday today, two years now and it's really sunny and warm. It's a nice day :3
!upliftingnews@lemmy.world and !wholesome@reddthat.com exist and I think that's beautiful.
In the grand scheme this is all fleeting. Humanity is fleeting. The earth will continue, it will heal, trees will eventually take over. The earth has patience, more than we can comprehend. Long after we're gone it will still be here, it will be green and lush and vibrant, life will be abundant again, and we will be little more than a few ancient scars on it.
That personally brings me peace. No matter how dark things get it's nothing on the immense scale that is out planets lifetime. 5 years? 10? 20? 100? 1000? It's nothing to the earth. Humanity's <10,000 years means nothing to the planet in the scale of millions of years. Even climate change, the effects to us will be horrendous, but to the earth it will keep happily spinning, and it will get over it and correct itself.
Humanity’s <10,000 years
Not to nitpick over much, but humans are ~2M years old or more, with H. sapiens being about 300K years old.
The industrial age, however, is not even 300yrs old, so there's your flash in the pan extinction spiral, so to speak.
Even closer to the bare truth: the earth has no "patience" and "green and lush and vibrant" is beautiful to those that prefer it — but life is not assured, and neither is the eventual equilibrium that settles after our species' last fuckup fades. Still, you're on the right track. 😅🖖🏼
I’m having goulash this evening, and the next couple of weeks. The world could go up in flames and hell freeze over and I wouldn’t care.
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
I think that is really reassuring
What does that mean? This is one of the most logically true discussions of spirituality I am familiar with. It takes no position on what that condition might be, but addresses the issue in an almost circular reference.
Those who believe we come from nothing cannot argue that somehow, by having lived, we will go on to be something afterwards, per the First Law of Thermodynamics.
Those who believe we have a ‘soul’, something other than our physical bodies, that goes on after we die, admit that we had to have had a soul prior to birth.
And those that believe we are on a wheel, going through life again and again, understand that we are what we always have been, and will continue to be, when we’re not busy living our lives.
https://philosiblog.com/2011/12/05/after-your-death-you-will-be-what-you-were-before-your-birth/
A few somewhat recent ones of different magnitudes:
- Cancer, despite still being the leading cause of deaths worldwide, is seeing a downward trend in mortality rates across most subtypes
- The 2025 Nobel Prizes are currently being awarded
- The Greek Parthenon recently became scaffold free for the first time in 15 years, apparently restoration is using all original pieces as well
- EU has fairly recently revised the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive which will require new buildings to have zero-emission
And let's not forget that cancer is the leading cause of death because medical science has made all the others much less fatal.
History always repeats itself.
Things get bad, then they get REALLY bad, then usually violence solves it and things get good again.
It's definitely a cycle, and unfortunately we're getting really close to the end of one world order and the birth of a new one.
Oh, phew. 🫡
SPYxFAMILY Season 3 just started. :)
It's a spy anime with this kid who is as adorable as she is dumb. And we love it. It's more of a comedy than anything, I think. Kids like it because the adorable little four-year-old saves the day, adults love it because the dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks four-year-old makes adorable faces. We all win.
I believe historically we are still at the most peaceful time in a global scale. Doesn’t mean things aren’t bad or getting worse, but I guess we’ve got that going for us?
The only way out is through, where there's a will, there is a way.
The universe is extremely big and empty.