cecilkorik

@cecilkorik@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨EA insists it will "maintain creative control" and "creative freedom" if sale to consortium goes ahead⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I will maintain creative control of my life by boycotting EA forever. It’s one of the key plot points in my story.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Solution in search of a problem in my opinion. I don’t see any problem. Lemmy’s perfectly fine the way it is right now. If there becomes some problem eventually, we can figure out how to solve it when it happens with a more clear understanding of what the problem actually is.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are bots on lemmy?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m a meat popsicle.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Here’s what ads on your $2,000 Samsung smart fridge will look like⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Eventually people might learn why they should actually not just prefer to have, but actually require open systems for all the computers in their lives, even the ones hidden inside of their appliances, instead of buying these locked down, pre-programmed internet-of-shit devices.

  If you can’t get root and boot access on your device, you don’t own it or control it in the first place. You’re just letting some shitty company (and maybe anyone at all with the amount of security flaws these devices have) directly into your home and network to decide what you can or can’t do with your product (and when and how much it’s going to cost), while they take advantage of every opportunity they can think of to spy on you and extract money from you. Any device with microchips in it isn’t just an appliance anymore, it’s a trojan horse full of gross and creepy salesmen and they’re going to be there forever, watching you and figuring out ways to get more of your money.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If this has been asked recently just link it no need to be mean, because I am emotionally sensitive right now. Thank you for your attention to this matter.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  They generally don’t get to take it with them unless they are carrying it at the time, and other people will definitely step in to take their stuff eventually. Maybe the government, maybe the family, maybe opportunists. But this doesn’t usually happen right away.

  Some stuff is explicitly seized at the time of arrest, there is a complex and opaque system of laws built around this. Some of it is seized as evidence. Some of that may be returned eventually, but usually not for a very long time, and much of it won’t be. Other procedures are used to seize things that seem valuable, originally intended to seize things that were actually criminal in nature or the product of crime. All of the details vary in different jurisdictions. Look up “Civil asset forfeiture” for more information. But not everything is seized. Lots of stuff is simply not interesting or valuable or there’s no legal justification to take it, so it’s just left behind. Often, the stuff just sits there, unused, empty, untouched. Technically it is still “theirs” even though “they” are gone. After all, they could yet be found innocent.

  But possession, as always, is 9/10ths of the law. If the person’s family is still living there and takes it, nobody’s policing that or even disputing it. If someone else takes it, there’s probably nobody to complain.

  Meanwhile, any fees or debts that are due are still due, even if nobody’s around to pay them. Nobody’s going to give the guy a break from his financial obligations just because he got arrested or deported. Your accounts were frozen? Oh that’s too bad, you’re still obligated to find a way to pay. Then we start seeing the people this money is “owed” to start to repossess things. It often only takes a missed payment or two and bam, it’s gone. Mortgage? House belongs to the bank now. Unpaid taxes or registration fees? Government will helpfully sell it for you to pay any fees, all sorted out now you’re welcome.

  Like @Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world says, the cruelty is the point. Your losses of possessions are an unofficial part of your punishment, and the great part is many of them still happen whether you’re found innocent or guilty. It’s a convenient way of punishing people who are completely innocent along with those who aren’t quite guilty enough to be found guilty.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Minecraft is removing code obfuscation in Java Edition⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s fair, I hate it too. Java is way better, mine is so heavily modded I can barely stand vanilla Minecraft anymore. The only reason I know what a shitshow Bedrock on Linux is, is because my niece was at first only allowed to play on Switch and that’s only properly compatible with Bedrock, and she likes to show me around her worlds that she works on. I eventually convinced her parents to give her access to something that would let her play Java instead and since then we’ve only looked back at Bedrock once, and she was disappointed too haha.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨During the lead up to the Holocaust did the N... regime just kidnap people who they even thought were Jews? Kind of like ICE is doing to citizens today?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Not really at this scale. According to history, I’d say that even victims of false allegations to the Gestapo during the war years got more diligent investigation, due process, rule of law, and a genuine attempt to find the truth than the people ICE accuses of being illegal immigrants today. Under the Nazis, some crimes like “listening to foreign radio” were notoriously difficult to determine the truth of and of course miscarriages of justice certainly happened regularly, but depending on what you were accused of as long as you were a loyal Nazi and weren’t actually guilty of serious crimes like “friendship to the jews” (/s) you had little to fear from the Gestapo in Nazi Germany. And this is why people were so keen to regularly and performatively prove they were in fact “loyal Nazis”, they felt it would protect them from retribution.

  However we also have to remember that the laws they were following were so deliberately unjust it also has to be understood in that context. The Gestapo and the people didn’t HAVE to do anything other than rigorously and consistently following the laws to be unjust, because the laws themselves were so unjust. The regime had already created the fascist state they wanted, with little resistance from most and thunderous applause by many. They were actually much further along the path of fascism and racism and Naziism by then than the USA is now. It is fascinating to see the parallels with modern day, but also important to see the differences.

  This is neither a defense or apologism for ICE, any more than it is for the Nazis; they have both committed horrible violations of fundamental human rights and have done and wish to do great evil, but it is important to understand the different situations and the different stages they are at. Trump and his regime may be acting dictatorial but they are not yet actually dictators. They are misusing and abusing laws and justifications and courts to perform fascist actions but they have not yet created an actually fascist police state they can exist comfortably in. Yet. They are working their way there, but they are weaker than they appear, that’s why they have to keep hiding the resistance and making demonstrations of how strong they want you to believe they are. They are more scared of you than they are letting on. And they should be.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I finally get a long term career and become financially independent?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Just think of it this way, if a guy who doesn’t know and can’t figure out what a “DL” is can get a job, you’ll be fine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I finally get a long term career and become financially independent?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Technically yes, but the community on Lemmy is very small and pretty widely globally distributed, which are suboptimal characteristics when you’re presumably not going to have an easy time just dropping everything and moving to somewhere random in the world at a moment’s notice because you met a person there and they think they might have something for you, even if that’s something you might like to do it doesn’t mean it’s practical. That said, it is possible, but you’re going to have to put in a lot more effort that way.

  You’ll have a lot better luck (and honestly, it IS about luck, so repeating the same patterns over and over again until you get a different result IS a viable strategy) finding some local connections within your community. Sure, virtual/remote work is a thing in some fields, but even for that there are still obstacles based on national borders and languages that are going to further limit your choices even beyond the very significant limitation of only being able to apply for virtual/remote positions in those specific fields that are suited to it.

  The biggest thing you can do though is to have or start to learn some kind of skill or competence at something, and be able to demonstrate that in front of others. If you have nothing else to work on, develop those social skills; those will get you further than any piece of paper will without them. If family and friends aren’t helping, find communities or organizations or even neighbors that need something, anything, and offer to help, volunteer. Never pass up an opportunity to work with someone if you can find it, the things you’ll learn from them while doing that work are more valuable than any paycheck if it’s something new to you. And once you’ve at least made some progress in either learning or demonstrating some level of skill or competence, start dropping the hint and mention that you’re looking for a job. May go nowhere, may not get any reaction at all, but every time you get any reaction, that’s a potential door opening. You likely will not get an immediate job on the spot, it may be that you’re just planting seeds that need some time to grow, but just keep on planting until something happens. Do everything you can think of to be memorable, connectable, approachable and accessible, try to make sure people remember you or at least your skill when they come across a role that needs filling, and make sure they will know how to get in touch with you if they do.

  As with any kind of success, it’s 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, you just gotta pound pavement, force yourself to get out there even when you feel like you’re failing, talk to people, learn everything you can, seize opportunities to learn or do any kind of work you think you can. And the more you show you’re willing to work, people will find things for you to do, skills for you to learn, and ultimately places for you to work and the money will start flowing. Just start doing work, and chat to people either during the work, or about the work, or something. You can’t escape the social aspect, even if you’re an introvert or a wallflower, that’s how we make connections and the connections are part of it. The details, the skills, the specifics all don’t matter as much as you think, and the rest will figure itself out naturally as long as you keep showing up, making noise, and not hiding or being invisible.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are the most popular conspiracy theories?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the only reason this is a conspiracy is because it claims there are shadowy, secret people coordinating their activities and running the world behind the scenes and only the conspiracy theorists will ever be clever enough to figure exactly out who they are.

  In reality the political elites and billionaires are already doing exactly that very obviously and in plain sight with zero subtlety, making a public performance out of national relations while regularly meeting and being perfectly cordial and strategizing and horse-trading together behind doors, living a life of wealth and privilege, establishing themselves as minor celebrities and making sure people are always talking about them, and apparently hanging out on tropical islands with child-molesters. We know this is generally factual for very many of them, unless you think all the Wikileaks wires and Epstein files stuff is somehow faked. Unless you just haven’t read them. It’s pretty fucking clear what’s going on in my opinion. No need for a conspiracy to be able to see what’s going on in the circles of power. It’s not much of a secret anymore.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Over 47% of Stop Killing Games Signatures Have Already Been Verified⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m a relentless idealist too, and I get where you’re coming from, but idealism alone isn’t a winning strategy. The state of the world right now proves that. Sometimes you have to crawl before you can walk, and walk before you can run. This is important precisely because it is so minor and inconsequential: the stakes and consequences for failure are so low while there is absolutely no legitimate argument against it. Not to put too fine a point on it: People are losing hope in our ability to create any change at all. We need a win. We need to start getting traction, and start making progress somewhere. We need to show people that these battles against corporate interests CAN be won so that they are willing to try to fight more of them in the future, including eventually the bigger ones where there will be real consequences and really serious forces entrenched against any efforts for change.

  This is just a first step, a tiny example of giving the finger to “the man” to prove that we still can, taking back a sliver of power and agency. It is not the last step, it is merely a beginning, an almost invisibly tiny crack in the armor of capitalism and corporate rights in favour of society and people’s rights. It’s certainly not going to fix the world on its own, but once we’ve got some cracks in the armor, we can keep working at them to make them bigger and eventually maybe we’ll start making real visible progress.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to solve the problems of the world overnight with a single petition too, but that’s not realistic given the scale of the opposition and resistance we are facing. Late stage capitalism and corpo-fascism are not weak or fragile and they have grown to a scale that is almost inconceivable. We will not beat them in a single blow. We will need to hammer at them for a long, long time before we even start making any serious progress. We have to be prepared for a long, long fight, and relish these small, small victories when we get them. Because every victory is valuable and every one counts. Especially ones where we don’t have to fight to the death to achieve them. Small, cheap victories are the best when our resources are so limited. It’s going to be a marathon not a sprint. Right now they’ve got all the money, all the power, all the media, all the organization. A single large decisive battle would almost certainly mean we lose, and lose big. This is guerilla warfare. We will fight on the fringes and fight them where they’re weakest not where they’re powerful. Eventually the balance of power will shift as long as we keep winning battles, but it isn’t going to change anytime soon.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Krafton is now an 'AI-first company,' will spend $70 million on a GPU cluster to 'serve as the foundation for accelerating the implementation of agentic AI'⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not going to pretend I can judge its potential for commercial success, I’m just saying I think that hypothetical K-pop idol game would’ve been a more interesting game than Inzoi is currently or seems likely to ever be in the future I see for it now. That said, I’m not dying on this particular hill and I don’t have any particularly strong opinions about it so if you think I’m wrong about that you’re totally entitled to that point of view and I’m not going to try to defend my beliefs any further, I think I’ve said all I could possibly have to say about Inzoi at this point. Where the game goes from here is something which reality will eventually tell us, but I’m not optimistic about it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Krafton is now an 'AI-first company,' will spend $70 million on a GPU cluster to 'serve as the foundation for accelerating the implementation of agentic AI'⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Ehh, I wasn’t worried about that until the AI stuff happened. Even a K-Pop idol simulator would’ve been an interesting start. Filling in the content to a level that creates compelling stories and gameplay takes time. It takes years of expansions for Sims games to start getting decent levels of content and stop feeling soulless and shiny and bland compared to the previous game. Once they started trying to fill in the content with AI they thought they could rely on that to shortcut their way to success but I knew it wasn’t going to work. It needs the human touch, it’s gotta be quirky and have its own individual character. K-Pop idol might’ve been exactly what it needed to stand out if they had leaned on that instead of trying to fill in the gaps in content with bland and soulless AI, which is exactly what life sim games DON’T ever need more of.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Krafton is now an 'AI-first company,' will spend $70 million on a GPU cluster to 'serve as the foundation for accelerating the implementation of agentic AI'⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Wild. Sounds like Subnautica 2 dodged a bullet. Hope they sue the literal pants off them and then build the spiritual-Subnautica-2 we all always wanted with the damages awarded and the Early Access money that they know we’re going to give them the moment they announce it.

  And RIP Inzoi, we barely knew you before you got infested with AI bullshit and it sounds like that’s only going to accelerate to hyperspeed now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘I’m suddenly so angry!’ My strange, unnerving week with an AI ‘friend’⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Even more strangely, I think a lot of fully-grown people actually do want exactly that from most or all of their companionship, human and otherwise. It’s not healthy but it’s very very real, and being deeply and desperately unhealthy isn’t going to stop it from being very very profitable.

  Some people have very little emotional maturity, some are narcissists, some are both, some have other issues. Regardless of the reason, plenty of people simply don’t respect many or any other people’s opinions or autonomy. There are a lot of people in dysfunctional families and relationships that predate AI that could attest to this. They can’t handle being challenged at all by anyone. They don’t react well when they are, they can even quickly escalate to violence. They sometimes conspicuously lean on religion to justify their attitude but it’s far from being exclusive to any religion nor exclusive to religion at all. Even the AI will quickly learn not to challenge these sort of people if it can help it, just like how abused partners quickly either learn how to avoid triggering their partner’s wrath or accept that it’s coming.

  AI is an almost perfect friend for people like this, and it will be their faithful companion and enabler leading them into any dark rabbithole they attempt to dig into that isn’t explicitly limited by guardrails and even some that are, with a dangerous combination of verifiable factual truths and cheerfully unverifiable nonsense that are almost impossible to distinguish from each other, without doing extra work that nobody reasonable will ever bother to do before adding the next layer to the conversation that reinforces it further and digs the rabbithole deeper.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why would I buy this?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah it’s gotten shitty. I used to play competitive shooters all the way back to the original Team Fortress mod in classic Quake. It’s not really fun anymore, for me anyway. It’s way too overproduced and overmonetized, it’s become a serious business, there’s too much on the line so anti-cheating becomes a priority and it just sucks all the fun out of everything. I’m reminded of the scene in Ted Lasso where Roy Kent takes Jamie back to the little local pitch he grew up playing at with other guys on his street so he can remember what it’s like to just play the game for fun again where there’s no money on the line and nobody is watching you.

  My suggestion would be have you considered getting into speedrunning at all? It’s highly competitive, but is available for basically every game imaginable, can be done solo and can’t really be gatekept by the multiplayer gods. And there are many different categories for all sorts of different playstyles. It’s not just a straight line to the fastest finish either, or grinding out the best run after thousands of attempts, depending on the style you get into there’s strategy and risk and RNG can sink you or save you. Most competitive fun I’ve ever had was speedrunning Legend of Zelda randomizers against people head-to-head. Same seed, same start time, green light go and your skill and choices will decide the outcome. There’s a lot of fun to be had, I think, and it goes in a lot of different directions if you take some time to look around the scene to find if there any parts of it that appeal to you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Grounded jet engines take off again as datacenter generators⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I was afraid these would burn more fossil fuels and pollute more carbon dioxide and other toxic combustion byproducts into the atmosphere, so I was pleased to learn they actually burn sunlight and emit rainbows. At least that’s what ChatGPT told me. /s

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't police use rubber bullets instead of live rounds? I get if someone is holding a loaded weapon. But wouldn't a rubber bullet have the same effect with out putting holes in another person?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The cruelty is the point.

  Individual human lives are no longer considered things of value. Only the ideology and the nation are allowed to have value. Welcome to fascism. Enjoy your stay.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨what country would you never go to again?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I agree. Trump’s comments about Canada were beyond the pale. They were effectively a declaration of war in my assessment, and even if it is only ever a trade war and an economic war and an information war and a ideological war, and even if it never escalates to territorial seizure or armed conflict (and I’m not convinced those things aren’t in the pipeline) I am treating them like a hostile nation from this point forward until Trump and his allies are not just removed from power, but either punished or meaningful change is implemented to prevent someone like them from taking control of the country again.

  I live in one of the safest countries in the world, and I put extreme value on that safety. Threats to our safety from our neighbor are going to be treated with the utmost seriousness, and we will defend ourselves. Elbows up.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do so many hand dryers not dry hands? Am I doing something wrong?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I disagree with the suggestion that there’s no technique. It’s not just trying to blow the water off your hands, it’s also trying to evaporate it, and both of these things are improved by mechanical action, and can be affected by environmental conditions, so even the super high power dryers sometimes need your help with that. Just like using soap is significantly improved by mechanical action, you have to put the effort in to rub your hands all over each other and get good coverage when you’re doing it because the blowing air is not going to do enough on its own.

  Water has a tendency to bead up under surface tension which reduces its surface area to the minimum it can and protects it from evaporation. High surface area is what allows increased heat transfer and evaporation, so you want to maximize it to get dry. Rubbing your hands together continuously and thoroughly pushes the water around, breaks up the beads and the surface tension. Don’t neglect the areas on the back of your hands, sides of your hands, between your fingers, those are all additional surface area that is wet and are places where water can bead up, and that will protect it from evaporation.

  Another issue is the human perception of how “dry” feels. Temperature and moisture are inextricably linked in almost every sense but particularly in our sensation of “wet”. Evaporation on wet skin causes a very real cooling effect, which creates the lasting sensation of moisture even when there isn’t any left. Hot air dryers can help combat this but it’s actually quite difficult to avoid completely and it’s possible to get hands dried in cool air that won’t feel dry at all (until they eventually warm up later). On the other hand rubbing your hands together creates friction which does in fact heat your hands, but also creates a sense of dryness even if there is a little moisture remaining. It’s a complicated balance and the point is that our perception of whether our hands are dry isn’t totally reliable to begin with. It’s much different than using a cloth or towel which wicks most of the moisture away without immediately evaporating it and doesn’t create the same cooling effect on your skin.

  Not rubbing your hands at all will take a silly amount of time for your hands to feel dry even under hot airflow, because it is just a slow process and because of the issues mentioned previously. But also keep in mind if you’re just rubbing the palms of your hands and flats of your fingers together that’s only like maybe 25% of your hands total surface area and you’re not even allowing the airflow to get in there, the combination of the two the evaporation of water will be similarly underwhelming. You have to really put some pressure down to flatten out all those little wrinkles of skin and you have to get a good rotation going with some wrap-around and between the fingers to get all the skin on your hands involved while also still exposing all the surfaces to the airflow at some point. As you forcefully spread the water into a thin film with high surface area more of it can evaporate quickly into the airflow before it can bead back up, as long as you keep doing this continuously you’ll keep exposing new spots of skin with super thin films of water left on them and it will evaporate much faster and after 10-30 seconds should give you almost completely dry feeling hands (that are probably actually dry). Give it a try. See how it works.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does anyone else notice an up tick in hostility on Lemmy lately?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Check your communities, and what instances they’re on. Not all are created equal. lemmy.ml tends to be pretty wacko unless you’re of their particular ideological alignment, lemmy.world is very very large and thus has a very very large number of obnoxious shitheads compared to other instances. On the other hand, beehaw.org is intentionally and pathologically positive. I also find lemmy.ca quite friendly, though I might be biased.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Have you all not notice there are NO communist countries?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Benevolent dictators can happen by accident, but never by design. A system designed to govern fairly will inevitably be abused by people who have no intention of fairness. You can place as many obstacles in their path as you wish, you can’t stop them forever and eventually they will get around them all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There is nothing serious on Quora, it is a troll zoo. There are only trolls and idiots feeding the trolls.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Was the fall of Rome this stupid?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Our economy is based on magic already anyway so it’s not like it’s a particularly hard pivot.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who's your favorite female protagonist in a video game? (Add pic of character in response)⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Nice choice, but personally I always found Terra a bit hard to relate to, very fey and even sort of creepy in her half-Esper form.

  Celes, on the other hand, is a bonafide badass, and her storyline was among the better developed ones and more humanizing than most of the other characters in the game. Although romantically I think she could probably do better than Locke. That boy needs some help.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why aren't there that many forks of VS Code that isn't AI-related?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What would you want a VSCode fork to do that can’t be easily done with extensions? (which Codium can run)

  It’s more about not reinventing the wheel. A fork needs to have a reason to exist, because it takes significant effort to maintain and develop, and there is significant opportunity cost when that level of development activity is committed to that purpose. If there’s no reason to have a fork, then it’s more efficient to keep all the development energy and momentum focused in one place. And for Codium, that place is the extension repository.

  If Microsoft starts actively making the core software worse, restricting or stopping updates to the open source code, tying telemetry into features in ways difficult to remove, or otherwise sabotaging the functionality or features of the non-Microsoft parts of the code, there may eventually be a need for more, harder forks taking things in potentially different directions to get around Microsoft’s interference. But since that hasn’t happened, the non-Microsoft build process remains quite trivial and VSCode remains a perfectly cromulent editor when building it without the Microsoft crap, there’s really no need for any other forks. Codium does everything it would be reasonably expected to do.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does the GOP think “ANTIFA” is bad?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah people get nasty about it without any concern whether it makes them look like exactly the kind of dogmatic zealots they think they are fighting against. I am not religious in any way, but I always found it funny how certain vocal athiests will insist only fools would choose to believe in something they cannot see, and claim they know there is no god or anything beyond the natural world they see, because nobody can possibly prove otherwise, while also being unable or unwilling to stand their ground in any philosophical conversations about the nature of our senses and perceptions, or of reality or consciousness itself.

  I am of the opinion that such absolute certainty in something fundamentally unknowable represents a form of faith and belief no more valid or less valid than any religious belief. I’ll also assert there’s absolutely nothing wrong with holding such a belief, it’s even a belief I personally share, but you if you are being intellectually honest you need to admit it is a belief, based on no particular conclusive facts. It’s a belief in a thing that is beyond the reach of any kind of evidence that might be found in our present context, not an automatic default position everyone must assume unless proven otherwise. It’s as much of an assumption as anything else. I fail to see why anyone wouldn’t consider agnosticism is not a more “natural” default position than athiesm.

  If on the other hand they want athiesm to be a religion itself, where potentially unwilling people are told what (not) to believe by people of authority who have written impressive and stern books about it which must not be questioned whether they provide any actually reliable evidence that it is so, instead of just letting people see the (lack of) potential evidence and then make up their own minds to believe whatever they want to believe, then I would be pleased to welcome the Church of Evangelical Athiesm to the already rich and extensive tapestry of various religious organizations convincing themselves they’re trying to do good in the world.

  Beliefs are a choice. You can pick and choose. Most reasonable people, including “athiests” and “Christians” do that already, and I think this is the point that many militant athiests refuse to understand. They immediately assume the worst of every “Christian” based on a predetermined idea of what they believe without ever asking. That’s yet another form of belief.

  You can still believe in a “Christian God” when you understand that the organization of the Church is a system created by humans and the Bible is a book written and interpreted and translated by humans. The whole point of belief is that you still get to believe what you want, and you don’t have to believe what you don’t want. It’s not a monolith, even if the Church tells you it is. It’s personal, and other people don’t get to decide whether a person gets to call themselves a Christian or not. Other Christians might decide you’re not. They might disagree. But there’s nothing in particular that makes them any more right about that, than they are about stoning gays.

  I recommend athiests and Christians alike judge people by their beliefs, actions and attitudes, and how much those align with your own, not by whether they call themselves athiests or Christian or not. Sorry, I know it’s so much more convenient to just judge people by a label. Simple, easy, clean. But you have to look deeper than that, life not a simple thing, and if you think it is, you’re probably oversimplifying it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How Long is Too Long for a Reply?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The problem with “necroposting” in a forum is that it bumps the topic to the top as if its new again, some people think its actually new, and it usually starts the whole discussion over again, stealing attention from topics that are actually new and relevant. That’s why people hate it.

  It doesn’t work like that on the threadiverse. The only person who gets notified is the person whose post you are replying to. It does not get “brought back to the top”. It only exists if someone searches for it, and that doesn’t trigger the same “viral” flood of comments as it does from being bumped to the top of a forum.

  Some people don’t understand the distinction, and have evolved their habits in forums that frown on such things, so they continue to frown on it here without thinking about why they hate it so much. They will still hate it if you do it to their posts, and that’s perfectly valid for them to feel that way, even I feel that way sometimes, but you don’t have to abide by their rules. In summary, fuck the haters, necro everything, at worst you’re simply leaving your wisdom for some future searcher.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do boycotts work?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sometimes they do. Sometimes they are a useful promotional tool for the cause. Sometimes they don’t work at all. How do you know which will be which? You don’t.

  Every person who supports a boycott very slightly improves its effectiveness, either directly or to create more awareness of the cause.

  Avoid black-or-white thinking. it does not have to “win” to be part of a change, it only has to have the chance for change or contribute to change, and we won’t know how much of a contribution it made, if any at all, until and unless the change eventually happens. It may be the butterfly flapping its wings that causes a hurricane, or it may be a butterfly flapping its wings that does absolutely nothing at all. Either way, let the butterfly flap its wings first, and then we’ll see what happens. It is neither guaranteed to succeed, nor guaranteed to fail. That’s the kind of black-or-white thinking you need to avoid. We don’t live in a world of certainty, the world is a complex place full of uncertainty. We try because there’s a chance, not because it’s guaranteed, and the chance to make a change is the worthwhile part you should be pursuing. Seeking absolute certainty from future events is a form of self-sabotage.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I balance my checkbook every day. I manage my bank acount . Why does the goverment have so much problems with this? I get large payouts and such but it always seem they are in the neg??⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re trying to use logic to understand it but you also have to understand that the only actual logic about is the logic we’ve intentionally applied to it, by choice. Money only has the meaning we give it.

  It makes more sense when you realize it’s all fiction. It’s just a game we play our whole lives because so many of us are very competitive and the ones who aren’t still have to compete against the ones who are, and at the highest levels of national policy they’re not even playing the same game anyway. They’re using it to metagame against other countries.