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”
Wow you all suck at this. Okay I’m gonna do an actual one. The amount of wars had around the world has SIGNIFICANTLY decreased from just a century ago.
- 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.i am so distracted by your "a"s
You notic𝖾d!! 🎉
I b𝖾li𝖾v𝖾 many p𝖾opl𝖾 can’t t𝖾ll the diff𝖾r𝖾nc𝖾 wh𝖾n k𝖾ming or l𝖾tt𝖾rs (i.e. ee and aα) ar𝖾 just a bit off, and I lov𝖾 it! And th𝖾n th𝖾r𝖾’s it𝖾ms such as s𝖾micolon (;) and a Gr𝖾ek qu𝖾stion mark (;). My nam𝖾 grawlix is the us𝖾 of typographical symbols to r𝖾plac𝖾 profanity (i.e. @$&%#), but I don’t want to b𝖾 too obvious :)
What a great comment from an infrequent commenter. Thank you! This was a lovely read, good points, and I shared with my wife.
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.
Sensible choice.
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.
Concepts of a plan, eh?
Well, I’ve decided to paint it red.
I actually do find that comforting.
This isn’t a fact but I have a gut feeling that people will be taking their power back in the near future.
Every dip into fascism in human history has been accompanied by an eventual upswing and purging of said fascists so, yes, I believe you are right.
IDK…some places have never really had Democracy, or their democracy is openly corrupt, or have been some other shitty leadership for generations. People can live under these systems…just the have/have not division can be really stark.
Franco lasted a long time though. I might be dead by then
Franco’s fascism died with him. Trump won’t live another 36 years.
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
Finally found some of the cause of my stomach issues was allergies. Cooking at home is WAY better way to get food that agrees with me
Are you making your crust or buying it somewhere?
I’m just buying it at this point but it gets discounted pretty regularly
“There is no aspect, no facet, no moment of life that can’t be improved with pizza.”
Daria Morgendorffer
Scuba diving.
It might make it worse, not being able to eat the pizza without tasting the water you’re in and having to deal with removing and replacing your mouthpiece.
… or latrine/septic cleaner on the job. I’m not enjoying pizza in a shittank.
Humans aren’t destroying the earth. We may be changing it so it’s no longer hospitable to us, but the earth will go on fine even if humans extinct themselves.
My go to happy thought is this:
Wild dogs, wolves, coyotes, etc… don’t have eyebrows. That is to say that they never evolved the muscles necessary to move their eyebrows in an expressive way.
Moveable eyebrows were a trait that domesticated dogs specifically evolved in order to mimic their humans and invoke more empathy (and let’s face it…likely manipulate us for more treats)
That’s a good one.
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.
You might be right, but my idea on it is that productivity increases have leveled off and population will begin falling in our lifetime. The ruling class loses power historically when the supply of labor is impacted.
Why do you think they’re all desperately pretending that LLMs are gen AI? They want to secure their revenue without having to care what the plebs do.
and we both know governments both today and throughout history protect the rich and money over people…
You’re both right. You are in that their influence will wane, but they’re right in that it won’t be fast or pretty.
Man this is some fuckin excellent news
Free Open Source Software is pretty amazing imo
Wallets are twice as likely to be returned as people expect. And the interesting thing is this holds true more or less globally.
I dream of finding the wallet stuffed with enough cash to dig me out of this mess, but in reality, if there’s any way at all to get it back to who dropped it, I will. Found a wallet a few months ago on a day trip, laying in the road. Ending up using the names on the credit cards to Facebook stalk a dude, found his company website, called him, and met him a half hour later to return it. Had like 800 dollars in cash it. I just… Can’t be an asshole, even when it would benefit me
Back in the 80s, I was at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, and a guy left his wallet in our booth, stuffed with money.
I took it back to my room, and only removed his Driver’s License, so I could see where he lived. I found out the area code for his city, called Information, and asked for his phone number. His name wasn’t there, but there was one woman’s listing with the same last name, so I called it, and reached his mother.
She was immediately worried, but I quickly explained that her son was fine, “But he left his wallet in my booth, and he’s probably in a full on panic by now. Please call him, and let him know that he can pick it up at our booth tomorrow.”
We didn’t have cell phones back then, so she would have had to contact his company, find out what hotel he was staying in, and then get the message to him, but she must have done all that, because he came blasting into our booth the next morning, still in a panic.
I handed him his wallet, and he took out a $50 bill and tried to give it to me. I refused it, happy to do a good deed, but he threw it at me and ran out of the booth!
I was in Vegas, what do you think I did with it? It was gone 5 minutes after leaving my booth.
You’re good people, don’t regret it. Incidentally, I’d probably grab a handful of the cash and just hand it to whoever returned the wallet to me like that. It was lost anyway.
Dude was very appreciative, he was panicked because he had pictures and sentimental things in it. Did not offer a reward and we didn’t ask… I did hope. But I didn’t ask. Lol
I’ve been on the flip side of this. You’re so panicked about getting your wallet back, and wondering if it was carelessness or thieves, that you don’t even think of giving a reward if you get it back.
I think the worry about thieves also primes us to not want to give money, too, but that’s just speculation.
I’ve also been the one delivering a lost wallet full of cash and got no reward, lol.
I would definitely make space for you in my lifeboat.
That’s one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever gotten. Thank you!
Reminded of when someone opened their car window and yelled to me on the sidewalk that I had dropped some cash on the ground :)
Last time I ran out to a parking lot to find someone who dropped some cash in a store, they split some of it with me!
When you die there is nothing. You go back to where you were before you were born.
No past, no future, no memory, nothing.
You will cease to be and the memory of you will fade from this universe nearly instantly.
There’s a lovely peace to that…
Death is before me today Like a sick man’s recovery, Like going outdoors after confinement. Death is before me today Like the fragrance of myrrh, Like sitting under sail on breeze day. Death is before me today Like the fragrance of lotus. Like sitting on the shore of drunkenness. Death is before me today Like a well-trodden way, Like a man’s coming home from warfare. Death is before me today Like the clearing of the sky. As when a man discovers what he ignored. Death is before me today Like a man’s longing to see his home When he has spent many years in captivity
It sucks how good that show was for how fucked Gaiman is.
The comics are amazing too
Yeah im reading the comics for the first time, I’ve read some of his books before. My gateway was the Pratchett joint venture. I hate that hes so rapey. Now I know a bit of how potter fans feel.
Their casting choice for sandman was really disappointing to me. His appearance is so distinctive and strangely dignified in the book but they cast some conventionally attractive guy with for the lack of a better term little prick vibes
Empty your mind of all thoughts.
Let your heart be at peace.
Watch the turmoil of beings,
but contemplate their return.Each separate being in the universe
returns to the common source.
Returning to the source is serenity.- from Tao Te Ching, Chapter 16, Translation by Stephen Mitchell
That might be the case. Or you could be part of something else. A collective consciousness, of which you are a transient node. Or maybe there is no time at all. What we call time could just be our current state on a progress bar as we process life. Or maybe we’re part of a nervous system for some larger construct. Or perhaps we are just reluctantly self-aware iterations of bio computers with fleeting lives that appeared through the chance combination of carbon-based structures.
Who knows. That’s the beauty of it, which I personally feel religion and a certain type of confident atheism tend to deny with their respective faith/certainty.
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.
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! Love your name btw :)
Happy HRT-birthday! 🎉
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.
Except I’ve been personally assaulted, threaten, and attached by trans people and their rabid allies for suggested trans people are just people and they don’t need special treatment. In person. In real life. i’ve been screamed at my face and threated with violence for not ‘using the right pronoun’, even after i asked them what pronoun they wanted and use it…
I live in a progressive area. Trans people here have it good. But a lot of them refuse to accept that… they want to abolish sex/gender entirely and become physically violent towards anyone who says ‘maybe you should chill and just enjoy your life’ or dates to accidentally ‘misgender’ them. They are the bullies and bigots here.
I’m glad you’ve never been personally attacked and harassed. I’ve had trans folks literally verbally assault me for waiting for coffee because I ‘look too straight’ whatever the fuck that means. multiple times over the past three years especially. Literally had some trans guy scream in my face on the subway yesterday while I was sitting in the corner minding my business and him going on and on about ‘don’t you like my beautiful care I’m a lady now why dont’ you want me i know you want me because you’re a removed i can tell because you have nice boots you take it in the ass.’ And I’m sitting there just ignoring them because I don’t want to engage some mentally ill psycho.
Just because you’re trans or leftist, doesn’t give you the right to assault and harass other people. Most of the democratic party pols are pro-trans agenda. And the ones who dare speak out against it and say stuff like 'maybe men shouldn’t be in women’s sports, or ‘maybe we should have 3 kinds of bathrooms’ get attacked mercilessly and called bigots and hateful by the nutbags. Every moderate democrat who speaks out on the issue gets attacked, despite having popular support because they expressing a more common sense approach instead of a ‘trans people should have no rules or restrictions on them that the rest of us cis people deal with’.
I don’t care about anyone being trans. But I care about insane people using their trans identity to abuse and harass other people, to file lawsuits and etc all because they feel they need to be treated differently than everyone else. Like you want gender affirming care? cool, but don’t give 12 year olds puberty blockers. 12 year olds have no idea who or what they are. let them figure it out when they are young adults like the rest of us. Just like we shouldn’t allow 12 year olds to get plastic surgery or tattoos or any of that type of body modfication
but any complexity or nuance on this issue gets the pro-trans extremists calling anyone a bigot. people should be allowed to be critical of these things. discussion and debate should be allowed to happen without the threat of violence and harassment from the pro-trans people or the anti-trans people.
funny how i’ve never seen a pro-trans person irl on online every have a good discussion of these issues… they just resort to insults and harassment and refuse to acknowledge anyone else’s concerns or questions. it’s almost as if they are just as ignorant and hateful on these things as someone who is anti-trans. and it’s not so much about trans people… as it is about their little culture war bullshit.
ironically when i see trans people discuss some of these things… who dont’ have an agenda… they are a lot more moderate on ‘trans issues’. probably because they are just a person and not some ideologue using trans people as a prop to further their political agenda.
I thought of disputing, but every paragraph is a troll
He didn’t have a clear vision. He had contradictory promises all over the place.
You must be a troll if you’re dumb enough to think all that tripe.
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
