Edit: Sheesh. Some of you folks need this.
Dictionary Definitions from Oxford Languages
up·lift·ing /ˌəpˈliftiNG/
adjective
adjective: uplifting
inspiring happiness, optimism, or hope. “an uplifting story of triumph over adversity”
Wow you all suck at this. Okay I’m gonna do an actual one. The amount of wars had around the world has SIGNIFICANTLY decreased from just a century ago.
This isn’t a fact but I have a gut feeling that people will be taking their power back in the near future.
Every dip into fascism in human history has been accompanied by an eventual upswing and purging of said fascists so, yes, I believe you are right.
IDK…some places have never really had Democracy, or their democracy is openly corrupt, or have been some other shitty leadership for generations. People can live under these systems…just the have/have not division can be really stark.
Franco lasted a long time though. I might be dead by then
Franco’s fascism died with him. Trump won’t live another 36 years.
In 6 billion years the sun will swole up to engulf the earth and none of this will have ever mattered.
Assuming humanity doesn’t get our shit together enough to explore and settle the galax-heeheehee. I’m sorry. I used to hope for that.
Even if we did, most of us will likely be born into slavery on some distant colony as the property of a deranged tech trillionaire.
I vote to reduce taxes on the slave owning billionaires just in case I ever become one.
Sensible choice.
I’ve been working on a new kind of spaceship designed to act as both ark and engineering station for the construction of dyson spheres. So there’s that, although I’ve not got very far with it yet.
Concepts of a plan, eh?
Well, I’ve decided to paint it red.
I actually do find that comforting.
- The world is αwful.
- The world is much better thαn it once wαs.
- The world cαn be much better than it currently is.
All three stαtements αre true αt the sαme time. It’s wrong to think these stαtements contrαdict eαch other.
You sαy there is doom in our current reαlity, and it feels true, but never discount the wonderful things either. While mαny in this threαd have focused on directly αnswering question, I suspect there mαy be αn underlying dissαtisfαction in your mentαlity.
This threαd cαn shαre wonderful things, but without α shift on mentαlity, it mαy be eαsy enough to brush off. I know becαuse I wαs and still αm like this. Prαcticing grαtitude or grαtitude journαling mαy help, it did for me.
• I’m grαteful becαuse vαccines hαve such α powerful αurα of protection, thαt we αs α society have forgotten the nαmes of the diseαses they protect αgαinst. The world can be better, because one day, we may even erαdicαte these diseαses which still plαgue our species.
• I’m grαteful I hαve opposαble thumbs, becαuse it mαkes it eαsy to be α potαto on the couch and doom scroll. The mere αct that I can see informαtion on α powerful device thαt cαn tell me the stories from αround the globe is quite incredible.
• I’m grαteful becαuse I don’t comment very often, but I wαnted to this time. I usuαlly lurk quietly, but I too cαn be better thαn I currently αm αnd pαrticipαte sometimes.i am so distracted by your "a"s
You notic𝖾d!! 🎉
I b𝖾li𝖾v𝖾 many p𝖾opl𝖾 can’t t𝖾ll the diff𝖾r𝖾nc𝖾 wh𝖾n k𝖾ming or l𝖾tt𝖾rs (i.e. ee and aα) ar𝖾 just a bit off, and I lov𝖾 it! And th𝖾n th𝖾r𝖾’s it𝖾ms such as s𝖾micolon (;) and a Gr𝖾ek qu𝖾stion mark (;). My nam𝖾 grawlix is the us𝖾 of typographical symbols to r𝖾plac𝖾 profanity (i.e. @$&%#), but I don’t want to b𝖾 too obvious :)
What a great comment from an infrequent commenter. Thank you! This was a lovely read, good points, and I shared with my wife.
My go to happy thought is this:
Wild dogs, wolves, coyotes, etc… don’t have eyebrows. That is to say that they never evolved the muscles necessary to move their eyebrows in an expressive way.
Moveable eyebrows were a trait that domesticated dogs specifically evolved in order to mimic their humans and invoke more empathy (and let’s face it…likely manipulate us for more treats)
That’s a good one.
Humans aren’t destroying the earth. We may be changing it so it’s no longer hospitable to us, but the earth will go on fine even if humans extinct themselves.
Pizza. It’s really good and I’m going to eat more of it
“There is no aspect, no facet, no moment of life that can’t be improved with pizza.”
Daria Morgendorffer
Scuba diving.
It might make it worse, not being able to eat the pizza without tasting the water you’re in and having to deal with removing and replacing your mouthpiece.
… or latrine/septic cleaner on the job. I’m not enjoying pizza in a shittank.
Cost of living has gotten to me recently so I’ve been making my own pizzas and they taste better than dominoes plus they’re cheaper. I’m stoked
Dice some garlic, mix it with passata and chopped spinach and that’s your sauce. Cheese and sliced tomatoes on top, plus more spinach
Are you making your crust or buying it somewhere?
I’m just buying it at this point but it gets discounted pretty regularly
- public libraries are still there.
- Book (physical) can still be purchased and fully owned, without any risk of them being remotely edited or deleted and without nay tracking of our reading habits.
- Walking is still free, without any subscription required.
- It is still legal to turn off one’s phone.
- I love my spouse at least as much as I loved her when we first met almost 30 years ago. And, yep, she seems to kinda like me too ;)
Ebooks can be purchased as well, with a little skill (or reading a tutorial) you can make it undeletable and uneditable as well.
Source: My epub library growing day by day, synced between multiple devices by syncthing.
Why go through the trouble of purchasing them with DRM and supporting that garbage and doing all the work to make them your own?
Piracy is infinitely superior.
Writers gotta get paid, tho’.
They already don’t get paid. Nearly every writer has to supplement their income with a paying job. Writers know this.
Piracy doesn’t hurt the writers nearly as much as it hurts the publisher, and that’s the point. If publishers get hurt badly enough and can’t operate properly, then writers will find a different path, and go independent, and keep all the money for themselves. THEN I’d want to buy directly from the author.
Ask the independent writers on Amazon how that’s working out for them.
It’s getting their works digested by Amazon’s LLMs.
Because some books are not available? You know, someone has to be the first to share. Sometimes that someone is me.
Ebooks can be purchased as well, with a little skill (or reading a tutorial) you can make it undeletable and uneditable as well.
You’re quite right (at least it used to be easy, I have not checked for some time how hard it is now to get rid of Apple’s and/or Amazon’s DRM… the two main DRM-locked ebook sellers), but keep in mind not everybody feels ok to not respect the rules and/or breach the contract they signed. Also there is no need to that at all with printed books.
Not parent poster, and you’re totally correct… But paper-format books don’t work at all for me, or many others with accessibility needs. I read almost exclusively with TTS while driving/doing chores/walking or to fall asleep. It’s… very hard to TTS a paper book.
So, an old (<= 5th gen) Kindle works great. They’re incompatible with the newest Kindle DRM, so they still allow old methods to transfer books. For KU books, it also has built-in TTS, so you can leave the book “reading” for you after you’ve transferred the file to your “real” device. That way authors get paid for your page reads, but you can still read/store/transfer/preserve the book.
But Amazon still tracks your reading data, and you’re still supporting Amazon’s/Kindle’s self publishing monopoly… But it’s literally the only place where books from my genre of choice are available, so not really any good options until their unethical monopoly is regulated away from them.
I was just pointing out that if that’s your major reason for buying physical over digital, it’s solved very easily.
I for one really don’t like owning many physical books because of the space it takes and 95% of my book purchases are digital.
the use of the term still actually makes this sorta ominous.
You mean it is worrisome (sorry, English is not my native language)? If so, it’s the intend because I think there is already too many hints pointing out to a (slow?) vanishing of many of those ‘options’.
yeah essentially its like. for now. implying they will be gone which is like part of the things I worry about for the future.
It’s one of the reasons I decided a while ago to move back from digital to analog (I started using ebooks in the early 00s and have been mostly reading ebooks up 2 or 3 years ago, approx.) for as many things as I was able to, not just reading books.
Physical ownership and ‘not-Internet’ & ‘not-high-tech’ dependent medium should be a lot more resilient to any excess of control, surveillance and censorship than anything digital. Plus, baring accidents, all of those analog things will outlive me and my spouse (we’re both well into our 50s) and, unlike with digital ‘objects’, it’s very easy for us to make sure those analog objects will end up in the hands of a new owner that will know how to best use them… without anyone having much to say about it.
Renewable energy and battery storage are seeing an absolute collapse in prices such that it is inevitable in the near to mid term future that we will move away from fossil fuel extraction leaving much of it in the ground. This will happen no matter who is in charge politically or who tries to subsidize fossil fuels because money is king and a lot of free energy hits the earth every day.
This, combined with falling birthrates, means we will hit peak carbon emissions and begin to drop back to a new normal, a new economy built around labor rather than capital because of the shift in balance between resources and workers similar to what happened during the black death. It is my opinion that this will begin to happen in my lifetime and will fully come to pass in our children’s lifetime.
Having worked in energy for 10 years (particularly battery storage and solar) you are correct about the prices falling, and in my opinion you are also correct about this dooming fossils.
However, I do not agree with your second point around a new economy arising built around labor rather than capital. The mechanics of value creation can change (eg renewables vs fossils) but what the ruling class will not allow to change without intense prolonged struggle is their own position as the rulers.
You might be right, but my idea on it is that productivity increases have leveled off and population will begin falling in our lifetime. The ruling class loses power historically when the supply of labor is impacted.
Why do you think they’re all desperately pretending that LLMs are gen AI? They want to secure their revenue without having to care what the plebs do.
and we both know governments both today and throughout history protect the rich and money over people…
You’re both right. You are in that their influence will wane, but they’re right in that it won’t be fast or pretty.
Man this is some fuckin excellent news
Fascism doesn’t actually last that long. At some point, policies have to have some kind of attachment to reality, and fascists are incapable of grappling with reality.
Franco stuck around for quite awhile, but yeah its track record is usually short.
Franco was the first one I thought of. However, his fascism didn’t outlive him, and President Pedophile doesn’t have 36 years to go.
But many other fascists have now been given power by TacoBoy. I don’t think any singular person’s demise is ever going to be as “uplifting” as many are dreaming…
Historians debate just how fascist Franco really was. In fact, Orwell wasn’t even that sure when he wrote Homage to Catalonia, and he was quite clear that he went to Spain expressly to kill a fascist.
i recall my spanish friend saying something like it wasnt really franco that was the problem, but all the aristocrats wanting to use him as their source of legitimacy
putin and kim have been going for quite some time.
Putin has always been a dictator, but he hasn’t always been a fascist. He started his career as a moderate technocrat that happened to have incredible access to KGB resources. Very handy if you’re in the market to be forever president. As time went on he’s been mixing and remixing his stances and aims.
As far as NK, I’m not sure they’ve ever been fascist. They’re just a vanilla authoritarian police state.
A major component you can use to point out fascism specifically out of the rogues gallery of evil ideologies is the notion that a fascist government specifically derives its power from endlessly designating and promising to destroy out-groups. If it lasts long enough to run out of targets, it goes on to consume itself.
Those are well crafted, defensive dictatorships at this point that have had decades and decades to sow the seeds of complacency and authoritarian control of their population. In one of those examples, the people of NK worship Kim and his father and grandfather as literal gods. So Americans aren’t quite there yet.
Not saying they’re super far off, but still a bit to travel before you get to centuries of repressed soviet/russian control and literal god-king dictators with an iron first around their populace.
well yeah because they were not short lived is all im sayin.
In one of those examples, the people of NK worship Kim and his father and grandfather as literal gods.
Lol, no they don’t.
Effectively they do. When even mild criticism can get you thrown in jail, the difference is minimal in effect…
Well, we all wish they’d “grapple” with a few rounds at high velocity instead of fingerbanging their own shit and screaming incoherently. They’re infecting the other adult-sized toddlers, and it’s getting tedious to corral at this point.
When you die there is nothing. You go back to where you were before you were born.
No past, no future, no memory, nothing.
You will cease to be and the memory of you will fade from this universe nearly instantly.
There’s a lovely peace to that…
Death is before me today Like a sick man’s recovery, Like going outdoors after confinement. Death is before me today Like the fragrance of myrrh, Like sitting under sail on breeze day. Death is before me today Like the fragrance of lotus. Like sitting on the shore of drunkenness. Death is before me today Like a well-trodden way, Like a man’s coming home from warfare. Death is before me today Like the clearing of the sky. As when a man discovers what he ignored. Death is before me today Like a man’s longing to see his home When he has spent many years in captivity
It sucks how good that show was for how fucked Gaiman is.
The comics are amazing too
Yeah im reading the comics for the first time, I’ve read some of his books before. My gateway was the Pratchett joint venture. I hate that hes so rapey. Now I know a bit of how potter fans feel.
Their casting choice for sandman was really disappointing to me. His appearance is so distinctive and strangely dignified in the book but they cast some conventionally attractive guy with for the lack of a better term little prick vibes
Empty your mind of all thoughts.
Let your heart be at peace.
Watch the turmoil of beings,
but contemplate their return.Each separate being in the universe
returns to the common source.
Returning to the source is serenity.- from Tao Te Ching, Chapter 16, Translation by Stephen Mitchell
That might be the case. Or you could be part of something else. A collective consciousness, of which you are a transient node. Or maybe there is no time at all. What we call time could just be our current state on a progress bar as we process life. Or maybe we’re part of a nervous system for some larger construct. Or perhaps we are just reluctantly self-aware iterations of bio computers with fleeting lives that appeared through the chance combination of carbon-based structures.
Who knows. That’s the beauty of it, which I personally feel religion and a certain type of confident atheism tend to deny with their respective faith/certainty.
We’re actually doing pretty well, globally, at shifting to renewables. We’re making more, more quickly and more cheaply than ever before.
And the best part is that this is driven by economics, not even policy at this point. Renewables are cheaper.
AFAIK, this one isn’t true. CO2 emissions aren’t going down. We’re not getting a word with renewables instead of fossil fuels. We’re getting a world with both of them used in abundance.
Growth of carbon has been slowing to zero and we’re hitting peak carbon sometime around now
But the economics are clear: if renewables stay cheaper than fossil fuels (and there’s no reason to think they won’t), governments will make the switch anyway.
Water power was cheaper than coal, yet Britain industrialized on coal power.
True, but it was more restricted in its potential application (because you had to be near a reliable water source). Modern electricity generation, including renewables, doesn’t have that limitation - as the application of coal to steam power demonstrates!
Hydropower can only be built in specific locations. Coal can be built anywhere, renewables are somewhere in between.
britbongs also chopped down all their trees and waged a worldwide war for spices they never used, they’re a silly people
Wallets are twice as likely to be returned as people expect. And the interesting thing is this holds true more or less globally.
I dream of finding the wallet stuffed with enough cash to dig me out of this mess, but in reality, if there’s any way at all to get it back to who dropped it, I will. Found a wallet a few months ago on a day trip, laying in the road. Ending up using the names on the credit cards to Facebook stalk a dude, found his company website, called him, and met him a half hour later to return it. Had like 800 dollars in cash it. I just… Can’t be an asshole, even when it would benefit me
Back in the 80s, I was at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, and a guy left his wallet in our booth, stuffed with money.
I took it back to my room, and only removed his Driver’s License, so I could see where he lived. I found out the area code for his city, called Information, and asked for his phone number. His name wasn’t there, but there was one woman’s listing with the same last name, so I called it, and reached his mother.
She was immediately worried, but I quickly explained that her son was fine, “But he left his wallet in my booth, and he’s probably in a full on panic by now. Please call him, and let him know that he can pick it up at our booth tomorrow.”
We didn’t have cell phones back then, so she would have had to contact his company, find out what hotel he was staying in, and then get the message to him, but she must have done all that, because he came blasting into our booth the next morning, still in a panic.
I handed him his wallet, and he took out a $50 bill and tried to give it to me. I refused it, happy to do a good deed, but he threw it at me and ran out of the booth!
I was in Vegas, what do you think I did with it? It was gone 5 minutes after leaving my booth.
You’re good people, don’t regret it. Incidentally, I’d probably grab a handful of the cash and just hand it to whoever returned the wallet to me like that. It was lost anyway.
Dude was very appreciative, he was panicked because he had pictures and sentimental things in it. Did not offer a reward and we didn’t ask… I did hope. But I didn’t ask. Lol
I’ve been on the flip side of this. You’re so panicked about getting your wallet back, and wondering if it was carelessness or thieves, that you don’t even think of giving a reward if you get it back.
I think the worry about thieves also primes us to not want to give money, too, but that’s just speculation.
I’ve also been the one delivering a lost wallet full of cash and got no reward, lol.
I would definitely make space for you in my lifeboat.
That’s one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever gotten. Thank you!
Reminded of when someone opened their car window and yelled to me on the sidewalk that I had dropped some cash on the ground :)
Last time I ran out to a parking lot to find someone who dropped some cash in a store, they split some of it with me!
Free Open Source Software is pretty amazing imo
