SwingingTheLamp
@SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
- Comment on Why do some laws exist if everyone is expected to just break them? 4 hours ago:
If that’s true, then it would be a good idea to have everybody converge on a particular speed. It doesn’t seem practical to negotiate that speed amongst a constantly-changing set of drivers, it probably needs to be chosen in advance. That seems like a natural function of government, to choose the consensus speed through a process designed to represent everybody in the community.
To communicate to drivers entering the roadway this consensus speed which everybody must travel at—for safety—the government could, say, post it on signs located along the roadside.
But that’s probably just a ridiculous fantasy. How then should all drivers negotiate the consensus speed to ensure safety?
- Comment on The one drawback to walking at night 1 day ago:
Hard to say. I see women out walking alone at night all the time in my city, at least a handful just past my house every evening. (It’s a university town.) I passed one woman happily chatting on her phone, and oblivious to the world, while riding home tonight after dark. The last time anyone was attacked by a stranger was, I dunno? It definitely happens, but it’s years between instances. They’d probably be safer in the late night hours, with hardly any car traffic. A lot more people get killed by cars.
- Comment on Why do smokers specifically seem to be disproportionally bad for littering? 2 days ago:
I hear ya. I just wanted to provide an example in which social norms lead people to do the right thing.
- Comment on Why do smokers specifically seem to be disproportionally bad for littering? 2 days ago:
If you want a happier example, there’s the trash in Wisconsin state parks. The Dept. of Natural Resources used to place trash receptacles in our state parks, and haul the trash away. That worked, people put their trash in the bins, because that’s the social expectation.
But the DNR lacked the staff to keep up with the trash. Sometimes animals would get in and spread trash around, but mostly, people would pile trash on or around cans and dumpsters. If that’s where you put your trash, that’s where you put your trash, right?
So, the DNR simply stopped putting trash receptacles in the parks altogether, and announced that you’d have to pack your own trash out. And it worked! Without a socially-sanctioned place to deposit trash in the park, people pack it out. (Mostly. Humans are still essentially animals, so various detritus gets dropped, but no garbage bags full of food scraps left on the ground for the raccoons.)
- Comment on To my late wife, Carmen, my spicy little habanara pepper (pls read and lmk if you think it's okay to send) 5 days ago:
To add to the other comment, saying “always-late wife” would convey the correct meaning to most English speakers.
- Comment on To my late wife, Carmen, my spicy little habanara pepper (pls read and lmk if you think it's okay to send) 6 days ago:
If she’s dead, I don’t think it matters what you say.
- Comment on Gimme some evidence that anyone at all in the government is pushing back on Trump with any effectiveness at all. Someone throw me a bone here. 😬 6 days ago:
I dunno, man, it just feels like the ol’ fascist/totalitarian tactic of flooding the zone with shit until people get exhausted from fighting it has worked, people are exhausted, and there’s this energy of elated resignation, like, we can’t swim upstream anymore, so fuck it, riding the current is kind of fun (and the inevitable waterfall is out of sight and out of mind for the moment).
- Comment on What's the deal with male loneliness? 3 weeks ago:
So young men are believing that everyone except them are all in relationships and/or fucking all the time, and believing that them not doing those things makes worth less as a human being.
I just want to add that, in virtually every online discussion I’ve seen about the dynamic between men and women, if a man says something incel-ish, or otherwise not popular, there will be somebody (almost always a woman) who will fire back a retort like, “yeah, but no woman wants to be with you anyway,” (I haven’t seen it on Lemmy, which is wonderful.)
There it is: Your opinion, and by extension your worth as a person, is based on your ability to have sex. Is it any wonder that men think that, after being explicitly informed so?
- Comment on What's the deal with male loneliness? 3 weeks ago:
Without a single coherent thought expressed!
- Comment on Hurry 5 weeks ago:
Sheeeeit, don’t hit a guy with those turgid vacuoles without a NSFW tag.
- Comment on Where's the mayor? 5 weeks ago:
This is the guy who set a woman on fire in a subway car.
- Submitted 5 weeks ago to [deleted] | 25 comments
- Comment on ohh ... 1 month ago:
Waiting times are atrocious here in the U.S. The earliest in-person appointment that I can get with my GP is about 6 months out. Non-urgent surgeries are sometimes take close to a year. A friend recently had to keep a bladder drain in after surgery for an extra week because there were no doctors who could do the 5-minute removal available.
Anybody who says that long wait times are unique to public health systems is lying.
- Comment on Do you consider Taylor Swift to be of the working class and why? 1 month ago:
No. There’s no hard-and-fast definition of the working class that everybody agrees upon, but there are some common ones. She’s certainly not part of the Marxist proletariat, since I’m certain that she and her management team are smart enough to have invested her money so that she never need work again, if she so desired. Also, she employs a small army of people to put on tours. Similarly, she has far too much money to be part of the working class as loosely defined by people who must sell their labor to survive. From what I understand, she came from an upper-middle class family, so she’s not even working class by culture.
I can sort of see an argument that she puts on a very physically-demanding show, exchanging her labor for money, but performers traditionally haven’t been considered working class.
- Comment on I don't have a purpose in life and feel like a robot. This cannot be good for my mental health, but I don't know how or what to change. How do I change? 1 month ago:
I suggest reading the book Running on Empty by Dr. Janice Webb. Maybe it will explain some things. (Or maybe it won’t. I’m no expert.)
- Comment on The Tulsi Gabbard Smears Are Unfounded, Unfair, and Unhelpful 1 month ago:
Seems like the author could’ve cited plenty of examples, then, but just didn’t?
- Comment on The Tulsi Gabbard Smears Are Unfounded, Unfair, and Unhelpful 1 month ago:
With that title, I was expecting that the author could name more than 3 alleged smears from long ago.
- Comment on This world is cruel… 2 months ago:
First thing I thought of was the “Elementary School Musical” episode of South Park.
- Comment on True Story 2 months ago:
You say that, but “vote blue no matter who” is exactly this argument under the paint.
- Comment on True Story 2 months ago:
I’m on this kick of pointing out that the utilitarian ethical calculation still works with 100% Hitler and 100.1% Hitler. Harm minimization, baby!
- Comment on True Story 2 months ago:
Oh boy, if you haven’t, read its history. Its real history. Wild stuff.
- Comment on True Story 2 months ago:
To continue this thought, you might be interested to know how neuroscience tells us the brain works: In short, the unconscious mind decides and acts, and the conscious mind makes up stories about why. Quite often, the story is just wrong, or at least misguided. Those voters have a real reason that they don’t understand or won’t admit to themselves, and a million reasons that they give instead to explain it.
Yes, we need to drop the misconception that people rationally decide about much of anything, and learn about their real reasons.
- Comment on Nuclear Demonology 2 months ago:
They’re missing out, then.
Villagers: Let’s sacrifice a virgin to the volcano god.
Virgin: Help me, step-bro!
“Plot”: proceeds as one would expect
- Comment on Nuclear Demonology 2 months ago:
Yeah, the real question about him: Does he accept his payoff in rubles, or is he the kind of two-faced mercenary who demands dollars? (I know my guess.)
- Comment on Simple as that 2 months ago:
This is my plan to colonize Mars: Send a billionaire. As a self-made man, he won’t need a huge team of workers and costly infrastructure support to build a successful business.
- Comment on Honey 3 months ago:
Kinda tongue-in-cheek questions, but: Honey isn’t an animal body part, it isn’t produced by animal bodies, so if it is an animal product because bees process it, is wheat flour (for example) an animal product because humans process it? How about hand-kneaded bread? Does that make fruit an animal product because the bees pollinated the flowers while collecting the nectar?
- Comment on Pesto!!! 3 months ago:
But have we tried feeding a human infant 24kg of fish per week? Y’know, for science.
- Comment on Anon wants a cute girlfriend. 3 months ago:
Hmm, methinks that Anon (and all of us straight men) might do better by treating women as people. If we feel it’s so important to have a cute girlfriend, then should we not respect that a woman might want a cute boyfriend? If we think women should keep an open mind about us, maybe set an example, and keep an open mind about non-physical traits that make a woman cute?
Yeah, it’s always down to luck—that’s just life—but being a good dude is putting your thumb on the scale in your own favor.
- Comment on Ok boomer 3 months ago:
Refuse to do free work for a company—insist that the grocery store employees go and gather the items on your list from the shelves for you! Never set foot on the sales floor, do pickup orders online only!
Background: It used to be that the proprietor of a store brought items you requested to the counter for you. In 1916, Piggly Wiggly pioneered a new grocery store model, requiring/allowing the customers to pick items off of the shelves themselves. Not only did they not give you a discount for doing their work for them, they raked in more money from impulse purchases. The increased sales more than offset the increase in shoplifting losses. A cynical, corporate ploy to bleed customers dry, and we just think it’s normal now!
That is to say, the purpose of a grocery store is to provide food in exchange for currency. There’s no law of nature that I know of that says that having an underpaid teenager drag your food across the scanner is the only proper way to do check-out, just like there isn’t one that says only a store employee can pick items from the shelf.
- Comment on Burning Up 4 months ago:
Tell me it’s 68f out and I will fight you.
Note to self: High heat levels make Canadians cranky.