“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.”

“The brutally honest care more about the brutality than the honesty.”

“Reasonable people can disagree reasonably.”

I can’t live up to those ideals but it would be cruel to myself and others to stop trying to.

I love this idea. It’s essentially externalizing those thoughts you want to stop having in an easy to imagine way. Thank you!

Which is so silly when you think about it: “this tire expert isn’t a REAL mechanic”. Okay…and?? We need both.

Thank you, that makes sense. I wasn’t sure if the sleep deprivation was just making me (more of) an idiot.

Logically, if he treats the sex worker right, with no demanding, no (non negotiated/sane) violence, and his actions don’t extend into monogamous relationships, and his views on future sexual partners are neither transactional nor cruel, it should be fine.

Emotionally would likely be a different story for the partner, or at least for me. Partly due to the stigma attached to sex work, and partly due to feelings of inadequacy or worry about needing to perform unwanted acts, and partly due to a suspicion that that really would affect his views, because people’s thoughts and feelings are messy, sprawling things that don’t fit into the mental cabinets we stuff them into. But if the partner couldn’t get over that, then they’re not for him.

And yes, this applies to women who pay for sex workers, too. Or at least it damn well should.

I can’t be the only one who can’t parse this sentence.

I’m sorry, can you rephrase this? I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.

A discussion of orthopedic shoes.

Note: the above site is trying to sell you on them, but the concepts/justifications they discuss pertain to your question.

I don’t agree that the reaction to what rightwingers say is so thoughtlessly contrary. In my experience, the reaction is usually “…huh, not what I expected, but okay. Oh, wait, THAT’S the reason they hate it? Nevermind…”

Oh right, I had heard about that: there’s a filter. I’m not sure what instance it’s on and what words it filters, though.

I was using the verb version of a word for a female dog.

That’s a good point, and you’re right that I’m conflating them.

What other elements of AI would you imagine would be useful here?

America is harder to live in the poorer you are, and it’s on a steeper scale than in other industrialized nations because there are fewer and less robust social services, especially health and child care, and declines in union membership have paired with a rapid increase in wealth inequality that is forcing the shrinking middle class downward and stomping on the poor even harder.

You can live a comfortable life (for now…) if you are firmly middle class and up. Your higher salary than your counterparts in Europe is eaten away at by higher costs, and you deal with risks that they don’t in the form of transportation being car dominated (more accidents and less walking exercise) easy access to guns (the most dangerous being the one in your own home, to you) and less strict food safety laws. Compared to those in Eastern Europe, however, your likelihood of suffering from a foreign attack is drastically lower, not that it was ever very high to begin with.

One thing that Americans take pride in (and rightly, mind you) and full advantage of is our First Amendment right to not have our speech be curtailed, so a large amount of the bitching about America, and especially in English, is Americans bitching about America(ns). So there’s a cultural element to it that may or may not exceed the truth.

Given that the AI we have is prone to making things up because it “fits” according to the models it trains on, how much faith would you have in a translation done by an AI on writings made by people who lived millennia before said language models were developed?

My cat is deaf, so there have been a number of “Oh! It’s you!” startled “mrrrrAAAAAs” directed at me when I come around a corner.

She’s quite talkative, with lots of greeting (and aforementioned startled) trills and meows that can range from normal level to “causes ear bleeds at close range” level.

You improve at what you do often and with mindful intent. You’re already doing that; what’s tripping you up is the guilt you feel at getting things wrong because it feels like you’re being dismissive of people.

But you’re not: you’re actively working on a problem you’ve identified you have, and for partially personal but also kind, interpersonal reasons. There’s no timeline or final grade to worry about, so just focus on enjoying your media and discernment will come to you.

This comment right here.

With burnout and depressive states your ability to foresee the good in life, or even experiences outside of the grind, is severely curtailed: you essentially develop emotional tunnel vision. A psychiatrist can help you break the negative spiral.

A shrug and a “pretty good” = acceptable, not worth complaining about.

A slow grin first or it being said loudly = better than good, great.

Although this depends on how emotive the speaker is.

Exactly. Places/communities like Lemmy can and should serve different functions for different people - newsfeed, forum, meme collection/dumping ground - but the fine line between value and addiction gets obliterated by moneyed interests.

The question as posed paints with very broad strokes. I’m guessing by “religious people” you’re probably thinking of American christians of the larger denominations.

Why do you think that religiosity is necessary to oppose queer people? In my experience, opposition to the queer community and expressions of queerness is tied to views on gender and conservative/regressive views overall. While there is certainly overlap between orthodox/regressive religiosity and said roles, you can still see a lot of bigotry from people who don’t care about what any god says, they just think “that limp-wristed fairy isn’t a REAL man”.

As with anything outside the mainstream, the experience of being an atheist (and being “out” as an atheist) can lead people to question more things that are considered normal and empathize with others, but it isn’t a given.

Sometimes deviance enforces a sense of humble and earnest examination of common truths and connection with others and their own struggles, and sometimes it enforces the view that this person knows better than the crowd so no need to really question what is definitely their own views.

An “abortion” at that gestational stage is induced labor.

I dunno but it’s the size of England.