I’m an atheist. I dated a woman once who believed in spirits. I think she experienced night terrors among other things and interpreted them as supernatural phenomena. It didn’t cause problems then but I was a lot younger and I think now I’m less tolerant of that sort of thing. But who knows - I was crazy about her so maybe if I meet a woman I’m crazy about like that again then I’ll tolerate anything.

More recently I’ve dated people who believe in a vague sort of life after death but never someone who practiced any religion. I think I would immediately rule out practicing religious people if I were going through a list (as when dating online) but if I met someone in person, really liked her, and then found out she was religious then I’m not sure what I would do. It would definitely be off-putting.

The problem for me isn’t the lifestyle differences but rather my impression that religious people are missing the point about the basic nature of existence, when it really should be obvious. It makes me feel like I’m patronizing them, because to be frank I don’t tend to think of them as my intellectual equals. (And I know that makes me sound like a pompous jerk.)

I completely quit reddit in protest after using it for over ten years when it threatened to replace the moderators of a small subreddit I participated in after that subreddit shut down during the API protests. I don’t actually care about the API myself (I never used anything other than old reddit) but I thought that reddit had no moral (as opposed to merely legal) right to take over something the mods had built and it merely hosted.

Lemmy is worse, but at least I’m following my principles.

A woman I know worked as an escort on and off and spent most of her time traveling, but I don’t think most people have the looks and the charisma to do that even if they want to. I’m not sure what other careers both pay enough and let you quit and then start again easily, but presumably there are some.

I don’t get it. Is the new icon funny somehow?

The computer that controlled all the doors refused to open any of them, including the door to the room in which it was physically located.

It wasn’t quite HAL 9000 because doors could still be opened from the inside, but control over the computer was regained only with the help of a locksmith.

I was also a very active user of traditional forums but, in my experience, small niche subreddits (when I was on Reddit) were a decent substitute in terms of content, since posts could stay on their front page for several days. Lemmy isn’t big enough to have those yet but I hope it will be. The thing I miss most about forums isn’t the format but rather the community. The forum I posted on the most had only a few dozen regulars and I knew them.

There was the guy with a kind, insightful take on controversial issues and a fetish for women with more than two arms. The active duty marine who reliably posted harsh truths. The feminist I didn’t get along with at all despite agreeing with her about most things. The dedicated father who bought real razor wire for his daughter when she wanted a UN-peacekeeper-base themed birthday party. The very determined conservative who defended his position no matter how outnumbered he was and once bragged that he had given his wife several dozen orgasms in a row…

I suppose I was the young man with strange views about what was or wasn’t fair and a great deal of anger over any perceived unfairness. (I don’t think I was particularly well-liked.) The internet is so much less personal now.

At least they’re not hiding that the solution is generated by AI, but the random usernames make me suspect that they’re trying to avoid blocking or banning.

I think that the variety of leftists here, ranging all the way from people who don’t hate voting for Democrats to literal Stalinists, is one of the peculiarities of Lemmy that I find interesting. With that said, actually engaging with any of the ones more like the latter than the former is, as you’ve experienced, unrewarding.

Do they think that vaccines have changed or that their generation was more resistant? Or does this person also experience same-sex attraction which he thinks every vaccinated person does?

(The covid vaccine is a new technology so I suppose he might be blaming it.)

Would you like to be a moderate? I’ll propose giving the hogs the assault rifles and you’ll instantly become a moderate.

humans have assault rifles <— no one has assault rifles —> hogs have assault rifles

Edit: would arming both humans and hogs also be a good compromise?

I say we cede the country to the pigs. They might do a better job.

19, because I started going bald very early. I’m about 40 now.

Whole home water filters is what you want.

My well water had arsenic in it and I installed a filter only on the cold water line to the kitchen sink. I only drank that water and unfiltered water was fine for everything else. Something like that could be much cheaper for OP.

The fact that the salute is so offensive, they did it so blatantly, and their denial was so disingenuous is the point. It’s a demonstration of power. They can do a Nazi salute and their opponents can’t punish them. They can deny that they did a Nazi salute and their opponents can’t control the narrative. If they did something more subtle, then people might think that they weren’t facing any consequences because their opponents were giving them the benefit of the doubt. With the Nazi salute there is no doubt. The only explanation for why they aren’t facing any consequences is that their opponents are powerless.

I don’t get the assumption behind jokes like this. You aren’t required to stop everything, ignore your partner, and fall asleep immediately after reaching orgasm.

No, there’s also the good alternate Fediverse where I don’t have a goatee.

No, they’re Soviet pliers he bought in the 40’s. They look similar to these:

Note the pinchy parts on the outside of the pivot that will cut you if you’re careless while opening the pliers.

My pliers. They’re passed down from my great-grandfather. He bought them used.

When my sister bought a couch, it wouldn’t fit and so the building super “helped” her by ripping half of it to pieces in order to get it into her apartment. Then she made me put it all back together, which was rather challenging. At least the upholstery was still in one piece.

I’ll have my revenge years from now when my sister wants to get rid of the couch. She’ll try to break it up again and she’ll realize that I put it together using heavy-duty screws rather than the little nails that the factory had used. That thing is not coming apart again.

No, there were always lots of people relatively near me. Even when I lived in New Hampshire, I was only an hour away from Boston. Now I live in Manhattan. My issue is the standard one that nerds have: intense social anxiety, and all the solitary habits formed by decades of social anxiety.

The funny thing is that when my dog was alive, I made sure that he had an active social life. I would even ask strangers with dogs if their dogs would like to meet mine.