• 45 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • I think Europe and Ukraine would be happy with EU membership, or, failing that (because overall complicated and it’s gonna take some time) a way to extend Article 42(7) guarantees to Ukraine. Invite the UK etc. while you’re at it.

    Who should be shit-scared of that possibility is the US because it’d sideline them. Worse: It’s bound to come with “buy European” provisions (the French will insist and nobody’s going to bother opposing it harshly) and I’m not sure whether the US can afford its military-industrial complex without exports.

    So… did Trump already meet with Lockheed-Martin?




  • If you want to fix institutional racism in the US you need to fix social mobility because that’s the primary mechanism by which it gets perpetuated. For that you need educational status of the parents and their tax declarations, not skin colour. You need to stop financing schools from local taxes so primary and secondary education is as good or better in poorer areas instead of having quotas lowering standards for people who got a worse education because they live in the wrong neighbourhood. You need free tertiary education.

    Focussing on race is a convenient way to ignore actually addressing the issue and instead continue to deepen societal rifts and to breed resentment among non-racialised disenfranchised people.


  • Don’t get me wrong if they had those opinions and also posted other things, generally engaged with the community, was a part of it, I would be much more critical of a ban: It’d be shutting down conversation, as you say. But giving that kind of leeway to people who are doing, essentially, drive-by shootings effectively also shuts down conversation: People aren’t going to engage in earnest with that kind of thing, that thing being allowed would set precedence and sooner than later everyone’s on motorcycles taking strafes at each other. Can’t talk to people who aren’t willing to sit down for a beer, can’t talk to people who don’t engage in good faith, can’t talk to people who come barging in with a megaphone in hand. Paradox of tolerance, Nazi bar, and all that. It’s much less of a fickle balance than many (especially US) liberals assume.



  • Euro overtaking the dollar as reserve currency in 3, 2, 1…

    Thing is: Much of the volume of USD-denominated trade is habit and inertia, it’s a convenient unit of transfer and thus banks keep reserves of it to make transactions with. It took the US blocking a payment from a German customer to a Danish tobacco retailer for banks to switch Euro<->Kroner transactions to not go via USD (Those were Cuban cigars) as standard operating procedure for banks very much involves “don’t fix it if it’s not broken”.

    Thus: The more you stir the pot, the more people want to get away from your complications. On top of being a convenient unit of transfer the Euro is also backed by a similarly-sized economy as the dollar and on top of that much more price stable against that economy: The Fed is perfectly willing to inflate the dollar to influence e.g. employment, while the ECB is committed to price stability, rather telling member states to devalue internally if that’s what’s necessary the prices shall stay the same.



  • How can you actually think at all, and arrive at such a conclusion?

    Bold claim, asserting that whoever downvoted you thought before doing it. Humans short-circuit all the time, nothing you can do about that, and getting bitter or exasperated won’t help, either. Deal with it. If you want you can start your comments with something universally agreeable, that always helps, and only then get into details. “Universally agreeable” as in “agreeable to both truth and all false notions anyone on earth has at the moment”. If you want to get idiots to listen you have to start out on a common ground that they share.

    More specifically, in this case, you could’ve started your comment with a short rant about the state of availability of ADHD medication.


  • Disagreements and getting downvoted are one thing, been there, done that. Getting that amount of downvotes in that short a time-frame with no other interactions anywhere on lemmy is a whole different game. It may be their actual convictions, it may be deliberate shit-stirring, in any case it’s not a net positive for the overall community, community needs common ground.

    Also those opinions could’ve been expressed in ways less… tendentious. Things like “incapable of self-governance” are ban-worthy bigotry on their own, at least in my book. Plenty to criticise about Iran, the actual people isn’t among it. Iranians by and large are vastly more sane and liberal than their government.

    Might that person have something valuable to contribute? Possibly. They should have done so instead of speedrunning a ban, then they could have contributed it. Probably a throwaway account anyway.






  • Like what Tao Te Ching says. Humans shouldn’t have too much of what they desire.

    Actually, quite the opposite: Empty spirit, full stomachs, weak will, strong bones. Will as in “determination, aspiration, ambition”, not as in the opposite of demure. Same difference as pride vs. dignity. The idea is to fulfil all base desires and devalue the fickle and temporary to nip strive and competition in the bud. The answer to “People are spending money they don’t have on things they don’t need to impress people they don’t like” isn’t to preach asceticism, isn’t to leave desires unfulfilled, it’s teaching that that’s not a desire it’s a neurosis: Humans should have all they desire, problem is many don’t know what that is because they’ve been conditioned to consider contentedness shameful, instead of a base desire. What you actually want is food, shelter, health, family and friends, peace, song and exercise, being there for others as they’re there for you.


  • When placed above

    Yeah but now you don’t have a terrace you have something that’s in permanent shade. Long story short: People still want to be able to see the sky. You can, in principle, plaster a whole city with solar pavers, you can’t cover it all in solar roofs.

    Things like solar roadways don’t make sense because a) cars much less trucks are way more destructive and b) you don’t really need to see the sky when driving. But a terrace? If there’s any place for ground solar, then there. The question isn’t whether it’s a good solar installation, the question is whether it’s a good terrace paving and if the extra costs are made up for by electricity production then sure, why not.


  • I’m sorry but it wasn’t Lutheran leadership which systematically and institutionally covered for, protected, and enabled, paedophiles, and you dare talk back to me about sanity. That “unbroken chain of succession” is a massive source of hubris and self-righteousness. It’s also a myth there’s been plenty of broken links in that chain.

    And why would sola fide need to be tampered: The difference here between Lutheran and Catholic positions, both accepting sola gratia, is that faith is the result of that grace, its acceptance, faith cannot be without grace. Your works aren’t god’s grace. Your prayer and your worship isn’t god’s grace, only god’s grace is god’s grace. You’ll see it at the heaven’s gates, you’ll see definite proof of it, all you need is to not reject it once you have that proof. You really think an omnibenevolent and omnipotent god would create a world with plenty reason for doubt but then “haha gotcha, stupid” people into hellfire.


  • What if two patriarchs differ?

    Then they differ. The Orthodox Churches are autocepalous, that is, self-leading, there’s one per nation – and generally only one, if multiple are operating in the same then because they’re serving their diaspora and there’s no native orthodox church. The Patriarch of Constantinople has a special role among the patriarchs as first among equals but it’s about representation, calling synods, no actual power. Oh, one thing: To declare a Church autocephalous. The Russian Church maintains that it’s the prerogative of the individual Patriarchs to turn internal sub-divisions into new Churches and guess who declared the Ukrainian Orthodox Church autocephalous, and who didn’t, and who the other Patriarchs agree with.

    That was a trick question. You aren’t allowed to decide because you’re some random Christian.

    Christianity in fact has the doctrine of universal priesthood, though it tends to get forgotten: Believers need no mediator to be in contact with god, consequently, god can choose to act through anyone. Luther re-ignited that whole thing which is why Lutherans are saner and much more democratic than Catholics and then America happened making people retroactively think the reformation was a mistake. All you really need is a vision and a following and you’ve got yourself a denomination.


    The truth of it all is that it’s all held together by inertia, tradition, and hastily applied duct tape slowly turning into the former two. Just like anything else in human culture.