Can you demonstrate how you would have composed the question?

I think people overthink spending money on things they don’t support. I think stealing it is justified, but If you’re doing academic studies or learning how to deprogram people, go ahead and buy a Nazi’s book if you have to.

That said, if you’re looking to argue with Holocaust deniers, trying to defeat them by studying their arguments is a classic blunder.

Conspiratorial thinking is rooted in social maladies, and attachment to a theory is a downstream effect. You can no more talk a Holocaust denier out of their belief with evidence than you can fix a broken water main by sand-bagging the street. If you’re trying to deprogram someone, you’ve got to learn how to get them to open up about the background experiences that led them to look for these answers and then usually find ways to help them find alternate communities that obviate their need for the conspiracy in a way that at least feels self-directed.

It’s a much slower process, but if that’s what you want to do, read up on that and don’t bother wasting money on Irving’s book.

I think animal affection – particularly for cute, non useful animals – is an extension of our infant protection drive.

I don’t really know much about him, and I can’t dispute your personal gut feeling. But I’m not familiar with anything that gives me this feeling.

For what it’s worth, I think in general that if you say, “I just don’t quite trust <name>. I didn’t know why, but they creep me out,” about pretty much anyone in public political life you can probably find a basis for that over a long enough time scale.

He is a former Marxist?? I find that bewildering, hilarious, and doubtful.

I think it’s great when people have open enough minds to radically rethink their beliefs, but I hope I’m never so brainrotted as to somehow strawman my own former beliefs.

This meme doesn’t work because a conservative literally bought me a copy of that book and it’s infantile.

This book is titled “Basic Economics” because Sowel is a troll, and the economics in his book are largely correct but incomplete to the point of misinforming people. This is an incredibly “conservative” book through-and-through.

This is essentially what I was going to say (though more poetic).

I’m of two minds. I admit that i cringe a bit that he would even call this “good trouble”. John Lewis’ “good trouble” was nearly getting beaten to death. How Booker can apply such a label to an act of protest that didn’t even meaningfully delay any noteworthy business is frankly amazing to me.

But also, he did fucking do something. He specifically articulated that we should all be alarmed, and he declared that he intends to not cooperate with or normalize what is happening. Low bar? Yes. But we all have to start somewhere.

I actually like Cory Booker. He was my third or fourth pick among the 20-something candidates that ran in 2020.

I’ll say this: this act is not enough to convince me that elected Democrats are going to do anything meaningful in the next two years. But the absence of it would’ve made me far less likely to expect it. Good for him.

This is kind of weird timing, because “No Other Land” just won an Oscar.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/09/no-other-land-film-shared-palestine-solidarity

No offense, but that’s conspiracy nonsense.

There are plenty of real conspiracies. You don’t need to l look for the goofball ones.

Honest take? A lot in the short term, but probably quite little beyond that. Maybe Harris won and a Nazi would win after that, or Vance would win on a similarly radical platform. But this won’t pass until we identify a replacement. But there’s no simply avoiding what we’re going through.

I get what you mean, but to follow on what @woodscientist said, I think your persistent ego is essentially a subjective impression you have.

Your sense that the “you” of today is a direct continuation of the you of yesterday is a feeling you have. If someone simulated your mind, that construction world presumably wake up convinced that it was a continuation of your ego just as you do every day. If you were still around, you’d probably insist that you were authentic and it was false. That assertion is intuitive, but ultimately neither of you can be proven correct. Both interpretations are subjective and equally valid.

I sincerely mean this with no disrespect: while that sounds quite reasonable, it is thoroughly sophomoric and misinformed.

I think your impressions sound like very rational assessments that happen to be unfortunately based on bad underlying information.

Before I elaborate, would you mind telling me: what has been your personal first-hand experience meeting transgender people who are out to you? And what state do you live in?

Also, if you’re comfortable, what would you cite as a source of news and information that has guided your thinking on this issue?

Here is a transcript from a panel discussion on this topic held last year at Baltimore’s museum of industry.

https://therealnews.com/baltimores-co-ops-show-the-power-of-a-solidarity-economy

They have a few examples represented. One is a coffee shop that the owners closed after the workers started a union, but then the union raised the money to buy it out and the owners agreed to sell it to them.

Another is a family-owned hardware store that converted to a worker-ownership model when the owners wanted to retire because they didn’t want to ever see a subsequent owner sell to a private equity group or big corporate chain.

There’re some great insights provided. The long and short is that it’s a lot of work, but very rewarding for those who have the appetite for it.

I like this observation a lot. Because I was going to say that if we couldn’t conceive of a simulation, we’d probably just speculate about the closest thing we could imagine.

Yeah, that sounds right.

I tried following Lemmy users on Mastadon. It was a cool to see that it’s technologically possible, but it was not a pleasant way to consume Lemmy content.

I want to respond to this by saying that it is 100% correct.

Get to know your neighbors. Figure out who can do what. Is anyone undocumented? Is anyone good at fixing things? Who has kids and who is good at watching kids?

The plus side is that if we do this right, we should be able to toss out the Christian Nationalists in a few years. But we’ll have a much better shot at that if we learn how to take care of one another the way we should’ve a long time ago.

I believe today is actually the sixty-fifth of the month.

The seventy-second is next Sunday.

I think what you and @mossyfeathers@MossyFeathers@pawb.social are picking up on is that youth-coded descriptors are often terms of endearment. They’re often used flirtatiously and towards people of whom you feel protective.

Conversely, adult names imply responsibility. Is it a problem to describe men in a way that implies responsibility and women in a way that implies protectiveness? Not necessarily.

I just think this stuff is linguistically interesting. I think it’s more grammatically typical to use equivalent terms to create parallel construction when comparing the sexes. Again, no judgment is intended.

Alright.

I just like words and linguistics. No one needs to be the bad guy here.

I think it’s interesting that you are comparing “men” and “girls” as opposed to either boys and girls or men and women.

No judgement. Just thought that was interesting.