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”
- 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.
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.
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.
the use of the term still actually makes this sorta ominous.
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.
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.
Free Open Source Software is pretty amazing imo
billionaires are not immortal (yet)
And they have physical bodies!
them being immortal would probably speed up their removal, if change can only happen through violence then your hand is forced
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.
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.
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.
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.
In one of those examples, the people of NK worship Kim and his father and grandfather as literal gods.
Lol, no they don’t.
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.
It’s my HRT birthday today, two years now and it’s really sunny and warm. It’s a nice day :3
Happy HRT-birthday! 🎉
Happy HRT birthday! Love your name btw :)
Pizza. It’s really good and I’m going to eat more of it
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
Trump is pretty old, and I cannot think of an example where a movement based around a cult of personality has successfully survived long after their leader has gone. Nor are there any viable successors that are likely to dodge any infighting. JD Vance as a successor? Yeah, ain’t happening.
To summarize, the pendulum will eventually swing the other way. And the worse the MAGA crowd pulls it in their direction now, the harder it will swing.
yeah. frankly while most left/liberal dont’ see it, Trump is also a product of the pendulum swinging. we have been on a good spat of liberalization for 30+ years and there was going to be a backlash. and as someone who grew up working class white, i totally get the unfairness and bitterness of so many of those people who the economic/education system has totally abandoned, and the horrible feelings and condescending that comes from the liberal elite/educated set who look down on everyone who isn’t highly educated and living in a coastal city. i got lucky and got to be one of those people, but many of my peers did not.
frankly i find it truly revolting how much of liberal america is so disgusting smug and condescending towards anyone who isn’t exactly like them, and that massively accelerated in the 2010s. used to be in the 2000s people would respect/admire me for working my way from a poor working class family to elite school on scholarship and putting myself through grad school and building al ife for myself… somewhere around 2015 that all became to change though and i repeatedly starting meeting folks who told me that i should have ‘stayed in my place’ and my ‘education is wasted on losers like you’. etc. and that attitude has only gotten worse and worse in the 2020s. i’d say there is a massive massive increase in class snobbery and elitism that didn’t exist 10-20 years ago.
i’ve also noticed progressives have moved away from economic issues largely and are entirely focused on culture war bullshit, esp use trans people and trans rights as the most important thing ever, which has alienated many many people due to the rage and hatred being spouted over it. to me this is a horrible horrible move, and plays right into the right wing’s advantages. because they are offer a much clearer narrative about these things than the left/liberals are. and clear narratives win elections and voters.
what baffles me is how the democrats can’t understand or replicate Obama’s success and messaging and act like he was some act of God. He wasn’t. He just appealed to people’s sentiments and listened to them… just like Trump did in this last election… meanwhile the democrats totally ignore the people and lecture us that they know better than we do what is going on in the country and we should be happy with how things are.
I hope someone on the left/dems capitalized on the severe economic need in this country and steers away from the culture war bullshit. A candidate that wants to actually fix the problems in this country that affect everyone, but it seems nobody is coming forth to do so. And at best we are just getting some candidates who are just going to go with the ‘trump bad, me not trump’ routine again, which we know doesn’t work.
what a lot of people miss in Trumps success is that he had a clear vision people could get behind, even if it was all bullshit and lies.
esp use trans people and trans rights as the most important thing ever, which has alienated many many people due to the rage and hatred being spouted
You have completely and hopelessly fallen for Republican propaganda. You’ve swallowed their entire framing of trans issues without any thought. You’re repeating the Republican Party line verbatim.
Democrats have spent the last decade trying to stay the hell away from the trans rights discussion at every opportunity. They’re not over bigots like Republicans, but they try to talk about literally anything else. Republicans however have continued to scream from the rooftops about trans people, as they try to incite the populous to acts of literal genocide.
Where are all these Democratic leaders that spend all their time talking about trans people? Can you name a single one? You’ve been brainwashed by conservative media.
been waiting for that pendulum to swing almost 50 years now…
I cannot think of an example where a movement based around a cult of personality has successfully survived long after their leader has gone.
Most religious cults especially Christianity lol, what a statement
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.
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
There’s a promising treatment for Huntington’s disease in the works, and we might have vaccines for allergies and/or asthma at some point!
- 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.What a great comment from an infrequent commenter. Thank you! This was a lovely read, good points, and I shared with my wife.
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
I think that is really reassuring
What does that mean? This is one of the most logically true discussions of spirituality I am familiar with. It takes no position on what that condition might be, but addresses the issue in an almost circular reference.
Those who believe we come from nothing cannot argue that somehow, by having lived, we will go on to be something afterwards, per the First Law of Thermodynamics.
Those who believe we have a ‘soul’, something other than our physical bodies, that goes on after we die, admit that we had to have had a soul prior to birth.
And those that believe we are on a wheel, going through life again and again, understand that we are what we always have been, and will continue to be, when we’re not busy living our lives.
https://philosiblog.com/2011/12/05/after-your-death-you-will-be-what-you-were-before-your-birth/
Maybe there’s only one soul. Like in The Egg. It’s just one soul reincarnating into one life after the next, jumping forwards and backwards in space and time. Eventually after passing through the lifetimes of every sentient being that is, was, or ever shall be, the path of reincarnation loops back upon itself. There is only one soul, only one consciousness in the cosmos. One infinite endless circling wheel of experience, all bound in a universe finite in both space and time.
Canada geese and white-tailed deer nearly went extinct. Now they’re considered pests in some areas. It’s possible for nature to bounce back, it just needs to be given a chance.
Pests? If you got a problem with Canada Gooses, you got a problem with me, and I suggest you let that one marinate.
You or the geese?
Gooses!
white-tailed deer
Kamikaze hoses. I some how have not totaled a car on one yet.
