Yeah. Idiocracy is indeed happening.

Plenty of coping from the liberal corporate media, instead of admitting that liberals abandoned the working class to court the monied interests.

I don’t know what age you are, but if you’re too young not to have known, some people have medical conditions that make them struggle to pee.

There are exceptions of course but IMHO, you shouldn’t block toxic contents, you call them out instead. Doing so basically puts a red flag to any would-be readers that this person and the associated content is harmful and dangerous.

Voters in general have a memory of a goldfish. People vote on immediate concerns and issue. To be honest, if Democrats had a stronger backbone to stand up to Israel, this would not have happened.

I was going to say the 90s and 00s before the recession was better, but then I remembered it wasn’t great for the LGBT. Homophobia is casual and mainstream up until recently.

Short on the AI stocks before it crash!

Yes, for the general population. Otherwise, companies will stop the psychological pricing. Same with corporate snooping to see our shopping and grocery habits and then send us with targeted ads.

It never works on me. I was taught at a very early age that pricing down by one cent of one dollar is a psychological trick and that I should round up to the nearest whole number.

You should read “Utopia for Realists”. It gave countless examples in history where providing unconditional basic income works. Even as we speak, other countries in the past decades did trial on universal basic income and it worked. In one experiment, twelve homeless folks were given regular unconditional cash grants. Except for one, all cleaned themselves up and are renting an accommodation.

UBI works unquestionably. But how has it not been implemented yet? Aside from the “fuck you, got mine” attitude, as well as I hypothesise that in evolutionary psychology, because energy upkeep is high-demanding, it makes us think not contributing to a group in any capacity is being a dead weight, UBI is still not implemented because many say that property owners will abuse unconditional income by raising rent prices. Instead, many propose universal basic utilities, meaning everyone would get free housing and utilities, but still working to get their own food presumably.

But I do not know about the arguments on UBI and basic utilities because of the emerging and inevitable usurpation of humans by AI on the labour market. The current thinking on both UBI and basic utilities is making presumptions of operating under the current free market framework-- that everyone will still be working in some ways and contributing to society. Sooner or later, with the coming of AI, the current mindset about working as a default behaviour is becoming obsolete and being relegated, in my opinion, as a relic of evolutionary psychology.

I never actually understood why the need to pursue constant happiness. It is as fleeting as sadness. The trick is to be content. Manage what is within your control and let go of what isn’t in your control.

Why are American conservatives such a bunch of loonies? Conservatives in other developed countries allow abortion in cases of clear danger to the health of the mother and/or the fetus/baby. American conservatives is as bad the Taliban.

And yet they wonder why populism and extremism is on the rise…

I know some people down vote and don’t discuss, but it’s very strange in a political discussion when you don’t get a pushback but getting so many downvotes.

My dude, there are plenty of actual automated bots on Reddit. IIRC when Reddit cracked down hard on bot accounts recently, over half of users and participation in many subreddits also decreased. That alone says that there is artificial engagement on Reddit rather than genuine human interaction (which vindicates the dead Internet theory). It explains a lot as to why a very innocent and neutral comment somehow gets a downvote: they are just bots downvoting.

Even here in Lemmy, there are downvotes on the same benign comments and no explanation as to why someone would disagree. But even if the comment is political in nature, there are downvotes but no feedback as to why one would disagree. There is a post on c/climate on European Greens calling for Jill Stein not to run for US presidential elections because she would just siphon the votes from liberals and progressives even though she will not win. And many comments on that post are getting half or a third of downvotes, but there are no accompanying disagreeing comments to explain the disagreement. It is clear that there are bots in that post who are trying to downplay the repercussions of Stein running to US elections and democracy.

I wonder what the biodiversity was like in that period.

To play the devil’s advocate, if you are an employer you would want to find out why the person has been unemployed. Was he unreliable as a person before? Was he combative with his previous employer and colleagues? Was he actually in prison all this time? What if this guy is a corporate spy?

There is plenty of anti-work circlejerk in lemmy, and they are not completely wrong, but there are employers who do act in good faith. And certainly as an employer, they do not want to hire a person who was fired for stealing from their previous workplace. Which is why a huge employment gap is certainly a red flag from an employer’s perspective. And which is why it’s always important to leave a company on good terms. Because even if you left the previous job to genuinely care for a family member, you have someone to vouch for you to the prospective new employer.

I see this response all the time “create your own if you want to see niche communities and Reddit communities migrate here.” Well, if I have the bloody time to moderate, or even if I do, will there be many people? And if there are many people, do I have the time to moderate? What if there are mod bickering and drama?

The question is time. Does anyone else have the time to moderate and put up with BS inevitable with most communities?

Well, I’m not American so I cannot feel the existential dilemma between picking a genocider or ride or die genocider. But if I am electing, I certainly don’t want to feel being forced to pick either two. I imagine many Americans probably feel uncomfortable with that as well.

Additionally, another factor with Trump still polling remarkably well is because a lot of people perceive the economy under Trump to be better. Take it as you will, but people under economic pressure feel forced to pick the extreme. People typically value economic security over liberty, unfortunately.

My guess is the Palestinian issue which puts people on the fence. Both parties would still support the Israeli government.