Knightfox
@Knightfox@lemmy.world
- Comment on Loosing my religion 1 week ago:
Ironically, that’s a super Buddhist statement. The idea that you would go do a Buddhist meditation with the expectation of gaining something from it is antithetical to what Buddhism is about. I’m not a Buddhist, I don’t meditate, but I remember going to a session with my significant other and a bunch of people were like, “how many sessions of this do I have to do before I start getting the effects (depression getting better, anger issues, etc).” They completely missed the point that the whole thing is about self-reflection, or as you said, a breathing exercise.
If you’re a mindful and competent person then you probably aren’t gaining much from guided meditation. If you’re struggling with some stuff then taking 30 min of dedicated time to work through it is probably a good thing. If you’re a certain type of Neurodivergent and have trouble focusing, then it’s probably something you could do every day.
More importantly, if you’re a 3rd century AD monk who has a ton of time on their hands, it’s probably not a bad way to spend your time (other spiritual/religious groups would do the same praying)
- Comment on Loosing my religion 1 week ago:
Preach, I don’t hate on people wanting to believe something, but people need to stop believing in scams in general. If you wanna believe in Jesus Christ, that’s fine, just don’t think you’re obligated to give your money to a church that says it’s helping the poor when 90% of donations go to keeping the building and pastor in good condition. The fucking gall of a pastor driving a Lexus and having a boat while anyone in the church is a fucking spit in the face.
- Comment on Loosing my religion 1 week ago:
Wow, totally not where I was expecting that response to go. Super cool, you basically had the pagan version of a christian to non-christian realization. Wild!
- Comment on Loosing my religion 1 week ago:
Freshmen year of college is all about maximizing the amount of free stuff you can get, especially food.
- Comment on Loosing my religion 1 week ago:
Unfortunately we don’t need demons, humans are bad enough as is.
- Comment on Loosing my religion 1 week ago:
Genuine question, no judgement, but why did you spell it Magick in this instance?
- Comment on The end of civilization costs $5 1 week ago:
I love this comment. On one hand I don’t hate the idea that this exists and it’s an obscure aesthetic thing. If someone wants to make super fancy cocktails then fine, whatever. On the other hand,
“Shut up and drink your whisk(e)y neat like God and the Irish meant it to be consumed. The water is already in it.”
Love it
- Comment on America 2 months ago:
Probably so, but it’s still just immersion. If you work in Celsius every day for 2 weeks you’ll be able to switch Celsius without an issue.
- Comment on America 2 months ago:
No, it’s just a familiarity thing and not even rare. It’s like switching between metric and imperial units, if you’re used to seeing something in one format it can be jarring to switch it in your head at a moments notice. A lot of people in the US use 24 hr time if they have a job relating to documentation or if their working hours can cause confusion.
For example, I have a client that has to document received material and they are open from 04:00 - 22:00. They use the 24 hr format because it is common to receive material at both 04:00 and 16:00 and having to make an extra column to type am or pm on their logs is stupid and is just another opportunity to make a mistake.
It’s really not a big deal to anyone, if you get a job that uses it then you switch your phone and within a week or two it’s second nature. Every blue moon someone will notice that all your clocks are set to a 24 hr clock and someone might ask why or what you do to need it, but that’s it.
- Comment on America 2 months ago:
Not really true either, it’s often called military time as a colloquialism because people will know what you mean and it strangely feels more normal/easier to say than “Twenty Four Hour Clock.”
- Comment on I have a plan 3 months ago:
re American? Because it doesn’t make sense to say you’re ind
I’m gonna guess Canadian indigenous, probably a tribe that fled to Canada or was already residing in both countries such as Huron, Dakota, Sioux, or Cree.
- Comment on The UN Voted to Make Food A Human Right, Only Two Countries Voted No: Israel and USA 3 months ago:
Honestly, the UN has been a farce for a long time because of this exact issue. If a handful of countries have veto power then the whole point of the group was moot from the beginning.
- Comment on Pretty much it. 3 months ago:
I doubt Trump was thinking that far ahead. It’s far more likely that he did it simply because big Ag was backing him and they don’t need the subsidies to survive like small farmers do.
- Comment on A sudden epiphany. 3 months ago:
That’s why I said that being considered smart out and among the masses isn’t really an indicator of your intelligence. I remember at my college orientation they asked the crowd to stand up first if they were first in their grade, then second, then top 10, and then top 15%. By the end almost everyone was standing. I’ll go on to say that that university has an 85% graduation rate. So right there we established that those that graduate, barring some non-educational issue or those who are intelligent enough but unable to attend, are likely in the top 10-20% when it comes to educational comparison.
Even then, these are poor metrics for being “smart.” There are a lot of ways to be smart, you can be book smart, you can be emotionally intelligent, you can be wise, and you can have common sense. If it’s not uncommon for people to say you are smart as part of conversation then you likely are subjectively, but objectively that says more about the people around you than it says about your objective intelligence. Something like 20% of American adults are functionally illiterate.
Reading your listed accomplishments I would say that you are smart, and having the intellectual maturity to recognize your strengths and weaknesses is another measure of intelligence.
- Comment on A sudden epiphany. 3 months ago:
With the barriers to entry that Lemmy has it’s not that unlikely. It’s like an incel going onto 8chan and saying, we can’t all be the most edgy people we know.
According to this website there are only around 40-70k daily active users (monthly vs semiannual). If you look at total users we’re sitting on about 1.3 million with 11 million posts per day and 23 million comments per day.
So 0.015% of the population on an obscure site which is not mainstream accessible.
- Comment on Anon catches a glimpse of his own mortality 4 months ago:
I spent some time thinking about your response and I’ll give it to you that Poland is heavily investing in their military which is probably a good thing long term for themselves and the EU. I think my qualm was specifically with the statement that they have been building one of the largest militaries on earth.
On the evaluation of their investment by % GDP they are certainly investing heavily, this website puts them somewhere in the top teens out of ~265 regions (broken down even more than the 195 recognized by the UN). Another metric to look at is the raw total military, not just investment in %GDP. I don’t think it’s particularly fair to compare Poland with other countries which have dissimilar GDPs, for example that website says that Armenia invested 5.5% of it’s GDP in comparison to Poland’s 4.2%, but Armenia’s GDP is $27 billion to Poland’s $1.1 trillion and their military is ~1/3 the size.
To your point (investment in equipment) we have to take into account the quality of the military, not just quantity; you can have 100x more troops but it doesn’t mean much if they are completely outclassed in gear.
So yes, of the ~195 countries of the world Poland is in the top ~10% and if you review their investment by %GDP they are probably closer to the top 5%.
The top 4 militaries by troops (China, the US, North Korea, and India) all have >1,000,000 troops and the top 4 by raw expenditure (US, China, Russia, and Germany) are all >$88.5 billion (and Germany is pulling that group way down).
Let’s break down these metrics. 5% of the average of the top 4 in quantity is 76k troops and only ~50 countries have that amount or more. 5% of the average of the top 4 in expenditure is ~$19.3 billion and only ~21 countries meet that value.
All this is to break down that Poland is in the top 5-10% of world militaries, but if you remove all the countries doing basically nothing they are basically in the middle (31/50 in quantity, 13/21 in expenditure). Poland is definitely making one of the strongest militaries in Europe, but a big part of that is that the other countries in the EU aren’t doing much. If you count up the EU countries that are included in that 21 listed above (UK, Germany, Ukraine, France, Poland, Italy, Spain, and Netherlands) Poland makes up $38 billion of the groups combined $423.5 billion (~8.9%), but all of those are half of the US expenditure ($997 billion) and 77% of the combined BRICS members in that group ($549.1 billion).
- Comment on Man posts his incorrect opinion online 5 months ago:
It fascinates me that people care this much.
- Comment on Your teenager AND your husband 5 months ago:
I remember a reddit post from forever ago where the guy said that the grocery store had asked his mom to let them know when their son went to college because him leaving would impact the quantities of chocolate milk they stocked.
- Comment on 5 months ago:
The same reason why the British still use miles and stone. For some other archaic units still commonly used see horsepower, nautical mile, BTUs, acres, shots (volume), and knots (speed).
Most people use the units they grew up with or use every day as their primary colloquial units. If you grew up using inch, foot, or yard, and enough people around you can also use the unit, it doesn’t change anything in your day to day to continue to use them. It also doesn’t make sense to change what you use and already know if that is also what the people around you use and already know.
That said, Americans do know metric units and many use them every day, they just don’t typically use them when talking to other Americans. If the basis of your argument is US produced media then it just goes to show you don’t really know anything about everyday US culture. Also, why would US media, made for a US audience, with US characters use a unit that most Americans don’t colloquially use?
Complaining about US media containing Imperial Units is like if I watch a Spanish movie and complain about people speaking Spanish instead of English.
- Comment on 5 months ago:
Shh, the non-American’s believe the US doesn’t understand metric at all and if you tell them otherwise they won’t be able to circle jerk.
- Comment on Denominator, go Mercator 5 months ago:
Eh, I doubt that’s the case. It could be a 20 m^2 area, but if it had Greenland’s resources they would want it.
- Comment on Anon catches a glimpse of his own mortality 5 months ago:
No worries, I thought you might have confused the statement as only applying to the first group. I see what you mean about how you count reservists and think it’s a totally valid point.
- Comment on Anon catches a glimpse of his own mortality 5 months ago:
all numbers are active and reserve combined
I literally said that
- Comment on What's it going to take to truly stop the US? 5 months ago:
WW3, that’s literally it. The rest of the world has done jack and shit about Russia and Ukraine beside sanctions and providing resources. People like to meme about Canada being badass, but they have such a small military presence that NATO has been upset with them for about 5 years for not doing their part. Outside of that there is no one in North or South America that can stand up to the US.
Africa isn’t doing much militarily. No one close to China is going to drop their guard to go after the US (Australia included since they have China breathing down their necks as well). That leaves Europe and the Middle East. The Middle East probably isn’t going to do much and if the US takes Venezuela’s oil then they need the Middle East even less.
Europe will probably spin wheels and denounce actions, but the important members of Europe are either 1.) part of NATO 2.) not prepared to defend themselves from Russia if they leave NATO. They can’t meaningfully sanction a military ally without breaking that alliance and once that alliance is officially broken NATO doesn’t have the US backing against Russia and also faces even more risk of Greenland or Canada being attacked by the US.
Best bet for stopping the US is Brazil, Russia, or China saying they will intervene for Venezuela, the EU and other NATO nations saying they won’t support the US, and then BRICS all jump in to fight the US. Maybe this weakens the US and BRICS effectively passes NATO but now Europe is sitting in the crosshairs for Russia.
Honestly, trying to go against the US is more likely to cause the Republican leaders to dislike European or international opinions even more. Republican’s have been complaining at home for 20 years about freeloading foreigners who spend their military budgets on lefty progressive ideas, foreigners complaining about US domestic policies, and all the while the US polices the world for them. It’s this sort of foreign attitude mixed with Russian and Chinese propaganda which has caused the US to drift further and further away from a positive relationship with Europe. Trying to go against the US is more likely to cause a Nazi & Stalin dividing up Poland situation rather than hurting the US.
- Comment on Anon catches a glimpse of his own mortality 5 months ago:
The Poles have quietly been building one of the largest militaries on earth.
Look, I’m all for a prepared Europe, but this quote is a joke at best.
Poland has 300k troops (all numbers are active and reserve combined), Germany has 862k, France has 300,000k, Ukraine has ~2.2 million, China has 2.53 million, Russia has 3.57 million, the US has 2.8 million.
Poland might be building one of the largest European militaries, but they’re still 10x smaller than the belligerent players.
- Comment on Anon tries to understand credit scores 6 months ago:
Good old check kiting, the respectable fraud!
- Comment on Anon tries to understand credit scores 6 months ago:
First off, it’s not a social credit score, it’s a financial credit score, we’re not talking about the system China has for it’s citizens.
As with many of these deep dives on Americanisms, what you’ve found is generally worst case scenarios and also not universally applicable. Some states have restrictions on what your credit score can be used for and how it can impact you, car insurance and rentals being a prime example.
Also, by simply having a credit card (and not using it!) and not having any lapsed debts (collections or reported unpaid bills) you will easily have a score in the mid to high 700s. If you carry a balance month to month but regularly make your minimum payments you will have a credit score in the low to mid 700s. Hell. my wife had 5 bills in collection and still had a 650 before I met her.
As far as credit score applicability, it’s often referenced by businesses as a measure of risk. If you have a 650 instead of a 750 your car insurance might be higher because your risk of payment is higher, but we’re only talking about 10-15% more per year (US south east). Same with with rental, if you have a bunch of bills in collection or default your score will be bad, but a rental provider will be less willing to provide you service if you have a history of not paying your bills. You should still be able to find a place to live, but it will likely be more limited (for example if you have a 400, but not if you have something like a 650) or you may have a larger security deposit.
Overall your credit score likely won’t be an issue 95% of the time, but if you habitually don’t pay your bills then your score will go down and businesses that check your score won’t want to do business with you. I can’t make this clear enough, you have to be deliberate in your actions if you want your score to be low enough to cause a problem. My wife had $15k in student loans, $10k in credit card debt, and 5 unpaid bills that had been sent to collections and she still was in the 600s. The score system exists for a reason, I would argue that it should be a bit more forgiving, but the reason it exists is fair.
Non US citizens might have trouble relating to this, but people in the US take blatant advantage of systems a lot of times. I have a coworker that moved for a new job, but he didn’t want to sell his house because he got it at a good rate and time. He listed his house for a decent rate and his first tenant stopped paying after the second month. He waited until 4 months hadn’t been paid to take them to court and it took another 6 months to have them removed. Just before they were going to be escorted out by the sheriff they paid him the entire back rent in cash to try to prevent the eviction (they had the money the whole time!) After they were evicted he reached out to the local municipality for the water account and they found out the tenant had bypassed the water meter (basically they were stealing). The municipality then said he had to pay to fix the bypass, penalized him for the stolen utilities, and said that for any future tenants he would have to keep the account in his name rather than having the tenants file it.
American credit score systems suck, but they are generally fair and they prove themselves necessary because a certain percentage of Americans seem to have fundamental problems with following common and decent rules of this world.
I just read an article the other day that said Gen Z has the highest rate of credit card fraud ever seen in US history. As a group they just don’t see any issue with ordering something online and then saying it never arrived and reversing the charges. I’m all for saying fuck the system and down with corporate interests, but it’s hard to have a functional modern society that casually commits fraud and theft.
- Comment on The show I was watching went from "Free" to "Paid" *while I was watching it* 6 months ago:
Argh matey!
- Comment on Accidental rapture 6 months ago:
Of all the Christians to put shade on I wouldn’t have thrown Paul in the lot. Paul seemed like a pretty down to earth person from everything I read, he was basically a riches to rags semi militant hobo hippie. Now Peter…
- Comment on Accidental rapture 6 months ago:
Some of the most Christian acting people I have known were Jews, Muslims, and Atheists.