Semester3383

@Semester3383@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is gold investing a scam?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Generally speaking, precious metal commodities are a hedge investment; they aren’t a primary investment themselves, but they’re a hedge against a loss in value of other investments, like stocks or bonds. If you are investing in gold as a hedge against inflation wiping out stock market gains, then yeah, it’s pretty solid. You probably don’t want to hold on to it forever though; if you’d bought gold just prior to Carter taking office and the stagflation of the late 70s, you be pretty much break-even with things like index funds.

  As far as total societal collapse, you would need to have the physical bullion, not just have precious metals in your investment portfolio. And even then, gold might not have a ton of value in a subsistence society. People might trade for it, but if I had food to trade, I don’t think I’d be trading for gold, since I can’t eat gold. The people that will clean up in a subsistence environment? The Amish.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  But if a cop says you’re doing a sobriety test, you don’t have a choice.

  Not correct. Field sobriety tests are ‘voluntary’ in all states in the US, although refusing to take one may be used as evidence against you in a trial, depending on the state. Likewise, you can refuse breathalyzer tests, although that may carry significant civil penalties.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It depends on the state; you aren’t required to take a breathalyzer in all states, nor are your required to submit to field sobriety tests in all states, although refusal can have different results depending on the state. It would be best to check the laws in your state. source

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Actually, no, there aren’t. As of this moment, there’s no way to know if you’re intoxicated by marijuana, and, since that’s legal in a number of US states, that’s a ‘problem’. (Although, let’s be real, stoned people tend to drive reeeeeeaaaaaalllllllllly slowly, not exactly hugely dangerous.) You can detect the metabolites with a urine or blood test, but that doesn’t tell you how long ago you used it, or if you’re still under the influence.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How Lemmy users feel when they delete their Reddit account⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Nice! I got permabanned for saying that hus-brenna was the proper way to deal with neighbors flying Nazi flags.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Shout out to my engineering homies.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  TBH, many of the people that buy his products at this time are leftists. Or at least anti-authoritarian, and deeply suspicious of gov’t control over individual liberties. His position that civil rights are for EVERYONE has meant that many people on the political right have no interest in doing business with him. And he’s absolutely right; if rights aren’t for everyone, then they aren’t rights.

  It shouldn’t be a radical position to say that all people in the US should have the rights that they are promised by the US Constitution, and yet we currently have a gov’t that is doing their best to wipe their ass with the constitution and flush it down the toilet.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Shout out to my engineering homies.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Who is responsible for the death? The person that intentionally drives a van into a crowd of peaceful protestors, the rental company that didn’t do a full psychological screening and criminal background check before they rented a van to the person that committed the murders, or Ford for making the Econoline van with steel body panels instead of covered in 5’ of closed-cell foam?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Shout out to my engineering homies.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  What it was designed for, and what it’s used for, are two different things, as you already agreed. Even if you truly, absolutely believe that the only purpose of a handgun or removable-magazine-fed semi-automatic rifle is to kill other people, then you would also have to admit that the overwhelming majority of them never are used to fulfill their purpose; the number that do are, compared to the number that exist, practically a rounding error. There are literally more guns in non-police/non-military hands in the US than there are people. There are far, far more defensive gun uses annually–regardless of who measures it and how–than there are gun homicides.

  And bluntly, I absolutely DO NOT trust the gov’t to be the only ones with access to firearms. If you can look at Trump, ICE, Hegseth’s DoD, cops in general, and say, oh, yeah, I shouldn’t be armed, but those guys are cool, well, I don’t know what to tell you. And I don’t trust ANY gov’t to not harm the people, because there’s no way to prevent fascists from taking control without also becoming authoritarian.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Shout out to my engineering homies.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  His response, as is mine, is that what people use his guns for simply isn’t his business. If people used Stanley hammers to beat people to death, would it mean that Stanley was an immoral company? Or would it mean that people used the product in an unlawful and immoral way?

  I happen to very, very strongly believe in 2A, and I think that the US is in the shitstorm it is currently in in no small part because liberals–but not leftists–have been working their asses off to disarm themselves.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Shout out to my engineering homies.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I desperately wanted to get a degree in mechanical engineering so I could go to work for an arms company (like Heckler & Kock, FN Herstal, etc.). Never happened, got an art degree instead. Then I met a guy that owns a very small firearms company, and, well, yeesh. It’s a brutally hard business. He makes a good product, he has good morals and ethics, but the market is so saturated that anyone smaller than the largest arms companies are hemorrhaging money. Glad I didn’t try to live my dream now.

  I may not like what governments do with arms, but good goddamn, the arms themselves are neat.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How long after starting Vitamin D supplements should you notice results?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Dermatologists are worried about cancers, buuuuuuuuuuuut the cancers have very low mortality rates, and the effects of not getting sun tend to be pretty drastic. I’ve got a lot of tattoos, so I keep them pretty well covered, but I am usually vit. D deficient as a result.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Uhhh... It's a work phone⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  “It’s a burner, kid. So that when cops arrest me at a protest they don’t get shit from my phone.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨apparently, the T button dosent exist for some people⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s not from the past. It’s a current letter, as are ß, ð, and æ. They’re just not currently used for writing English, even though the sounds are common. For instance, ægishjálmur, scheiße, Oðínn. Both the eth and thorn are used in modern Icelandic, the sharp s in German, and ae is used in multiple Germanic languages.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nothing’s new bloatware includes Facebook services that can’t be uninstalled⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The problem is that the website doesn’t allow some of the critical features that the app allows, such as depositing checks. IIRC there are a few things that I was trying to do–link accounts for payments, I think?–where I had to use the banking app.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨hmm breakfast⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve definitely had better luck with them, although it depends on how windy and rainy it is. If it was so bad that a cigarette was going to be soaked before I got it lit, then nothing was going to work. Plus, you also have cold temperature performance; liquid fuels (for lighters) will continue to work in exceptionally cold weather, while butane lighters tend to not.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nothing’s new bloatware includes Facebook services that can’t be uninstalled⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Haven’t tried NewPipe yet. I currently use YouTube for specific videos, and I’m usually operating it from a private tab in my browser through a VPN, rather than the app. (So far I’m not getting served ads that way, although sometimes I have to skip to different countries to get around sign-in nags.)

  Banking apps are the one thing that worries me. My prior bank didn’t allow rooted phones to be used for online banking; I haven’t made an attempt with my current phone. Given that I now live in a… Rather remote part of the country, access to online banking is fairly important.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Victor Davis Hanson | The Left’s Love of Political Violence Is the Threat to Democracy | Ep. 58⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9335287/

  factcheck.org/…/what-we-know-about-political-viol…

  justsecurity.org/…/correctly-assessing-left-wing-…

  economist.com/…/is-radical-left-violence-really-o…

  Any real analysis of actual rates of violence motivated by politics can see that, while left wing violence is apparently rising, that rise is from “extremely low/non-existent” levels to “barely a blip on the radar” levels when compared to right wing violence. Anyone making claims to the contrary is simply not being honest. The overwhelming majority of violence motivated by politics comes from the right, from neo-Nazi groups, from Oath Keepers, Proud Man-children, Threepers, and so on. Note that these are groups that are actually organized, have a command structure, funding, and so on. Compare this to ‘antifa’–which is short for anti-fascist, and if you aren’t anti-fascist, that makes you what?, pro-fascist?–which is barely organized (despite hysterical claims from Trump and his flunkies), has zero funding aside from the people bring with them, is non-hierarchical, has no meetings, and so on.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nothing’s new bloatware includes Facebook services that can’t be uninstalled⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Disappointing.

  I bought one of their phones nearly a year ago. The UI was… Not great, IMO, but I was able to re-skin it. The SD card slot was the biggest reason for me. Well, now I know taht my next phone is going to be a Pixel with Graphene installed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨VW introduces monthly subscription to increase car power⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If it’s all software, that means that you can jailbreak it, just like a phone.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨robot slurs⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Pretty sure that HK-47 called humans meatbags.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s already a problem. People are outsourcing their thinking to LLMs, and LLMs aren’t capable of thinking.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm doing my part⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  AFAIK, pedophilia refers specifically to the sexual attraction to children. When it’s used as a weapon per your scenario, it’s both a war crime and child rape.

  Like, if adult men as sexually assaulted as part of war crimes (and that’s distressingly common), the perpetrators are likely not gay or bi-; they’re ‘just’ committing atrocities.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm doing my part⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The system is currently 237 years old, which would make fucking the system the opposite of child molestation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm doing my part⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  AFAIK, child molestation victims are not more likely to become pedophiles or molest children; usually they’ve got a lot of PTSD.

  The only treatment that’s available is chemical castration (to largely eliminate sexual urges, although that creates a ton of health issues), and therapy that reduces the probability of criminal offenses against children. It’s not treating pedophilia per se, it’s helping people learn to avoid triggers and spaces where they’re likely to feel overwhelmed by sexual impulses. There’s no cure.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm doing my part⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Depends.

  Pedophilia is likely an inherent sexual attraction, much like being straight, or LGBTQ+. It appears that the sexual attraction is not something that the person has control over. There’s no good evidence that it can be changed. Some pedophiles are also sexually attracted to age-appropriate partners, some appear to be exclusively attracted to children. Moreover, it appears to split into nepophilia (infants, toddlers), pedophilia (pre-pubescent children older than toddlers), and ephebophilia (pubescent children and post-pubescent children younger than the legal age of consent).

  Epstein appears to have been attracted to post-pubescent girls younger below the age of consent, but he also seems to have had sexual relationships with adult women. E.g., he wasn’t exclusively a pedophile.

  Child molestation is a completely different matter. Child molesters can be pedophiles, but they can also be opportunistic sexual predators. A significant amount of child molestation is also incest, e.g., a parent or close relative (almost always male) using a child for sexual gratification because they can (proximity, opportunity), rather than preferring children. Either way, child molesters that sexually abuse children are very high risk offenders; they are often very, very likely to commit the same crime repeatedly.

  So, I’d draw the line a line between someone that’s sexually attracted to minors, and someone that acts. The child molester? Yeah, fuck 'em with a chainsaw. Pedophiles that haven’t yet done anything (including grooming!)? No.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does anyone struggle with spending money foolishly on prostitutes?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  you’re just a Christian who hates God.

  I’m a former Christian that’s been deeply disappointed by the followers of god, or gods; the hypocrisy and mental gymnastics of the purported followers was what eventually led me out of Plato’s Cave. If Jesus was real, and Christians truly followed the actual words of Christ in the four gospels (not Paul, Paul was a dick), then I’d likely never have started questioning my own faith. As it was, it still took me 25 years, four years in seminary, and working as a missionary before I started to question anything.

  The reaction is certainly part of it. But that’s definitely not all of it.

  Atheist says what I don’t believe: I don’t believe in any god, or anything supernatural. (Could there be one? Sure. But I haven’t seen any falsifiable evidence. So technically I’m agnostic, but I round up to atheist.)

  Satanism says what I do believe: I believe that men are free to do as they want, as long as the don’t infringe on the rights of others. I believe in bodily and personal autonomy (including abortion, drugs, and yes, suicide). I believe in being free from unjust and unwarranted authority. I choose to model my life as much as I reasonably can on the version of Lucifer presented in Paradise Lost and other Romantic-era books.

  Anton LaVay was an ass, a misogynist, a bit homophobic, and generally a bit of a douche-canoe, but he was very right in that the idea of a Satan, and of sin, was the best friend religion ever had; without the idea that men are inherently sinful, no one has any need for religion, because no one needs to be redeemed. You need to feel bad, because if you don’t, then there’s no reason to keep showing up at church every week to receive forgiveness.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does anyone struggle with spending money foolishly on prostitutes?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Most of history from that time period is from books that don’t cite sources.

  Most of the history that’s accepted from that time comes from multiple sources–rather than just one–and has some kind of archaeological evidence backing it up. In contrast, there’s essentially zero writing about a Jesus of Nazareth aside from books written a minimum of 70 years after he supposedly lived. If you choose to treat a single book as proof of truth, why the bible? Why not the Torah, or Quran? There’s certainly better evidence that Muhammed is at least a historical figure, although even that is debated. For that matter, why not the Tao Te Ching (although, again, the actual existence of a Laozi is very debateable)?

  I do not condone that.

  You say that you’re a Christian; the vast majority of Christian sects condemn homosexuality and marriage equality. Christians are called to evangelize (Matt. 5:14-16), and likewise the bible says in multiple places that homosexuality is sinful (along with divorce, eating cheeseburgers, and, well, just about everything that’s enjoyable in life). But you don’t condone it?

  Never heard of this happening.

  Oh really? You’re not aware of laws being passed that prevent access to and criminalize reproductive care, or laws that ban gender affirming care? Really?

  Really?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does anyone struggle with spending money foolishly on prostitutes?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Okay, what evidence convinces you? HOW do you “know”?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does anyone struggle with spending money foolishly on prostitutes?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  And what is your belief based on? What falsifiable evidence do you have that it’s actually correct, factually true?

  In other words, how do you know?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does anyone struggle with spending money foolishly on prostitutes?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Because Jesus Christ rose from the dead. OP is a Christian and believes that.

  Any evidence for that, aside from a book that doesn’t cite sources? Look mate, I can believe that Harry Potter really defeated He Who Shall Not Be Named and saved the muggle world from his domination, but does that make it right? Would that be a positive thing to base all of my life on?

  This is the same as a Christian telling an atheist that their gay relationship is wrong.

  …And yet, they do that all the time, don’t they? Not only that, but they try to pass laws preventing them from happening. Or to prevent trans people from accessing appropriate healthcare. Or to ensure that women don’t have rights to their own bodies.