Granted, I am in a bible belt rural city, but I’ve realized if you stick out the conversation with some of these Trumpy Christians long enough you’ll get to the heart - They really do just… want to be told what to think. You have to play nice to get them there, but they eventually drill down to some variation of “Gods word is law and my pastors word is gods word and anything else is satanic bullshit we’re not meant to know if we were it’d be in the bible or my pastor would tell me, as God intended.” Scientific advancement is either fake or heathens dragging us further and further from god because Satan guides them to knowledge about the world.

I can’t speak for everyone of course but its nuts to see how many people really are still ALL IN on “the apple is knowledge, Eve ate the apple, and that ripped us away from god for eternity - we were meant to be nothing but sheep”

I can’t speak for “everyone” of course

Hell yeah dawg let’s spend millions to benefit the human population!

“NO! THATS SOCIALISMS! What I MEANT was hand it all to billionaires for absolutely no reason!”

Thats the plan - and nothing will be done because there is no law, no faith, only money.

Democrats are no better. They’ll argue for women’s or trans rights (when convenient) but even most of their "progressive voters still worship at the altar of Money and think to limit greed in any meaningful way is inherently sinful.

So i can come deflate your tires every night and tell everybody you’re a loser who doesn’t even know how to fill a tire then?

If you knew how to take care of your car the tires wouldn’t be flat every morning. 🤷‍♂️

People who love arguing socialist states fail love to ignore that the reasons are 95% economic interference and outright military intervention or coups from capitalist countries.

That sounds nuts but having been there I wouldn’t be terribly surprised. I think the crazy part is (living in a bible belt rural city surrounded by pro-car everything and the various internet fearmongers) how mundane it all feels even at it’s peaks. Just a bunch of fucking people getting where they’re going. I’ve never understood the allure of sitting in gridlock for over an hour over just sharing space with a bunch of other boring normal assholes for 30 minutes (or whatever.)

My best friends are very pro car and liberal in that “sure better public transit is needed but ‘I’d’ never use it it doesn’t work for me cause XYZ” sorta way. I dragged them on an amtrak to DC, and took em on the subway up to our hotel and they’re just like “…oh that was chill.” Yeah, just fuckin people getting where they’re going it’s not a bath salt zombie apocalypse down here.

Oh fuck off already, nobody cares.

Do we have an iamverysmart community? We could use one.

The problem is most people are mostly concerned with their personal status quo. Change is scary and all the negative change doesn’t count so long as it doesn’t affect them.

Of course, sounds like nobody ACTUALLY faced consequences and got to keep on keeping on. Just another lesson in “theft and fraud are legal as long as its from people below you”

People love to point at crime numbers on the subway but ignore the percentages, like yeah there’s (making shit up , not actual numbers) 15 crimes a day but its NEW YORK CITY thats out of 50,000 rides or some shit. I did the actual math once and it was like 0.005% chance of a crime on the NYC subway, beats the hell out of auto numbers.

Beat me to it 😛

Yes

This is America. Its never been and will never be shocking. America is built by violence, for violence.

Of course Lemmy and dropout have a meaty Venn diagram, but this really makes me glad I haven’t watched all the Smarty-pants 🤣

Handsome boy ❤️

For a point of comparison, a ChatGPT request uses 2.9 watt-hours (and rising) to a google searches 0.3 (which per your example would only be run once assuming you’re checking different blogs from the same list of results.)

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/chatgpt-google-search-need-power-to-run-heres-how-much-water-and-electricity-are-used-to-answer-questions/articleshow/111382705.cms

Pretty much nail on the head here. Its basically “something something bootstraps: the novelization”

This is the way I’ve come to look at it: non-violence is ideal, but non-violence is one of many “languages.” (Obviously here we’re just talking about violence, but yknow some is political, some is social, etc.) Some people can speak many of these, some people only speak one or refuse to use others (like how you say you will only use nonviolence.)

The issue is that some people only speak one language, and aren’t going to “understand” (be persuaded or moved by) others no matter what. A bigot only understands hate and emotion so they aren’t going to be swayed from that position by logic or facts because they don’t “speak” that language.

What I’m getting at, is that for people who only speak violence - non-violence doesn’t mean anything to them except an easy target. They aren’t going to consider your viewpoint because you won’t fight back, they won’t back down because “clearly you aren’t a threat.” They’re going to violence until they reach their ends. With somebody like that, you have to “speak their language.”

Of course on an individual level you (maybe) can get the police to handle it, but on a social level like dealing with nazis you have to keep them scared of return violence. They are violent by nature (the entire ideology is elimination of undesirables) and should be treated as such. Let them know that we punch nazis. Let them know they aren’t the only ones with guns and unlike most of them we go to the range. Let them know if they wear iron crosses and shit they’re getting kicked the fuck out. Fuck them, and let them know we’d be happy to fuck em up if they want to give us the opportunity.

I’m generally anti-violence myself, but I’m also a large guy so I’m lucky enough to be able to avoid it. I can’t bring myself to be a pacifist though. Knocking some kid around is easy come take a swing at me and see how it goes. Shrug

Maybe I missed it being mentioned elsewhere, but I think the writeup I’m familiar fits well with this angle of the discussion. Basically, it says tolerance is a social contract that we’re all born into and protected by so long as we uphold our part of the contract (by being tolerant.) If you are intolerant then you break that contract and are no longer protected by it, therefore making intolerance toward you acceptable and not a breach of the contract for others.

(Also, I agree that religions/race/etc are invalid for judging somebody’s tolerance)

At least with battle passes its all laid out and its more a case of putting the play time in.