Thank you, I think she believes she is not protected. I’ll look into this.

My sister in law is blind in one eye, but because she has one working eye she has no disability protection as far as I know. She still can’t drive because she has no depth perception and it’s very dangerous. It’s made navigating going to work difficult over the years, often working the same place my brother did so he could drive her. Luckily her current employer works with her and lets her work from home. But a decade ago no one would have dreamed of letting her work from home.

None of the things by themselves fully justify “belief” in a religion yet many people claim they are without a true belief in the entire system. It’s the problem with such a vague question. By a narrower definition very few people attending a place of worship are true believers. Someone can believe in god, but not really believe in the rules, and still say they are “religious”. Someone can believe in the rules, but not god, and say the same. I think if you are practicing the religion to some extent then you have a right to call yourself religious if that’s how you view yourself regardless of your true beliefs on god, rules, etc. Cultural impact matters more than we give it credit for.

Another big reason is reason number 4

4. Gives a sense of community and cultural connection that other things don’t quite provide.

I’ve met a not so inconsequential amount of people in my life that when pressed admitted, they don’t believe in god, don’t believe in the moral teachings, but attend a place of worship because they think there is no replacement for the interwoven community and cultural connection their place of worship provides. Many people simply like the community connection of their root culture. This is especially true in minority groups (black church, synagogue).

They are just trolling, they are looking for the argument for arguments sake. Look through their post and comment history. Report, down vote, and block, then move on.

If the recipe calls for tofu (and you are not vegan), use Paneer, almost always an improvement.

USA, Minnesota. People hug but ask if you’re a hugger first.

I think it’s funny that only 2 options were given. In India the norm is clasping your own hands together and saying namaste, nomoshkar or some other greeting. No touching. In east Asia a very slight bow is incredibly common.

Adobe Scan works as good as a scanner if you use their cropping system to square up the page afterwards.

You’re worried about kids seeing a nipple while they watch a streamer turn their enemy into a bloody mess. If we can accept kids seeing constant violence in their media, I really don’t think nudity is a big deal. We have our priorities all messed up.

For much of my adult life I’ve smelled good with or without deodorant and rarely sweat much. Lately whether because of a hormonal change or something wrong I’m unaware of, my smell has changed completely. No amount of deodorant helps, no amount of showering helps. In fact, I often end up using deodorant as a last resort, because whatever bacteria is taking over seams to turn all types of deodorant into vinegar & onions in a matter of minutes, as if it’s feeding off the deodorant. The smell seems to be improving over time, according to other people, not just me. But it has given me additional sympathy for people going through this. When its bad, I can lather my body head to toe in the shower 4 times and come out smelling the same as I went in. Sometimes smells are hard to tackle. You shouldn’t assume it’s a hygiene thing.

Having been around melting ice a lot I think this is closer to the right answer. Also decomposing things give off heat. Any vegetation that is decomposing will accelerate ice melting.

A bit off topic from your point, but there is no way to get screwed if you just invest for 10+ years in all market index funds from something like vanguard. The only way you’re going down in that situation is if the whole system goes down for good. Also government bonds go well above inflation. There are options for regular people, but both of those options likely mean financially supporting things you might not believe in. Like a imperial government and a dirty energy focused economy. The only way it’s a casino is if you buy individual stocks. Index funds are the safest way for regular people to make more money than inflation, you just have to be willing to let your money sit for a long time. You don’t invest in index funds if you’re unwilling to wait for the boom and bust cycles to pass a few times.

I knew this guy years ago that bought up basically free property during the housing crisis. Houses were so undesirable in Detroit at the peak of the housing crisis, you could buy a house for $100, as they were considered a liability. His goal was to fix them up himself and then provide them to the community as extremely low rent residences, if anyone wanted to buy them after they were fixed up he would give priority to his renters at slightly above cost (cost of materials) as a rent to own system (not one of the scummy ones but a real system in their favor). He had no intention of making money, he just believed it was the right thing to do. Dude was just a good person through and through.

My parents were both vaccine skeptics. Covid, and all of public consciousness and education about vaccines, convinced them both that vaccines are important. They got the shot and every booster available. Contrary to the common stereotype of vaccine skeptics, they are both highly educated successful people and when presented with solid evidence that their beliefs were moronic, they changed their thinking. It’s not helpful to be so cynical, because people do change. I see people change their minds about things all of the time. Sometimes for the better and sometimes worse. As long as we remain cynical and unmotivated, the morons win.

Both of which appear to also be dropping in severity with time. If you were to say, people should still be careful and wear masks in a crowd, and generally take covid seriously because it’s still dangerous, I completely agree with you. But at some point continuing to call something a pandemic is abusing the word a little, once it’s being fully managed and generally under control then it’s no longer a pandemic. Our own policy places us somewhere between a pandemic and an endemic, so I suppose it really depends on your definitions of the words and how squishy our perceptions of those words really are.

While I haven’t look at recent data, my understanding is that new covid strains are, on average, getting less deadly and but more contagious as time moves forward. If that is still the case, then what we are really looking at now is an manageable endemic virus instead of a pandemic emergency, it’s becoming more and more like the flu. It’s important to remember that the flu was originally a pandemic that killed millions world wide and then became manageable and endemic. The prevailing scientific belief is that most viruses will slowly become more contagious and less deadly over time as those are the mutations most likely to survive. As the death rates continue to drop over time it’s hard to really call it a pandemic anymore.

And what happens in the unlikely event of system collapse? If some major cataclysmic event wiped out the world economy and half the worlds population, what happens when suddenly thousands of nuclear plants are abandoned and melt down world wide? Nuclear is safer in a vacuum, but we don’t exist in a vacuum. Anything that can happen, will eventually happen. Even if those power plants are able to be shut down safely, in a post stable world, the storage of the spent waste would be incredibly problematic as we would no longer have the capacity or knowledge to bury it 4 miles down. I would say that nuclear power is far more risky long term than people give it credit for. We are evaluating it’s risk only based on the present stability and regulations of our current systems. Modern technological stability is really a tiny blip in earths history, we really can’t guarantee a future that will know what to do with spent nuclear waste. Nuclear power is really an all-in bet on our own technological dominance of the future.

I say this as someone that is not against nuclear power, but I think people view it as some sort of quick fix when it just presents it’s own problems. The truth is, you don’t get something for nothing. All energy costs something and that cost should be distributed between several systems and our consumption should be reduced.

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