That is the hyperbolic caricature conservatives apply in their head, sure.

It’s a pretty common approach to complicated issues.

We need a standard high school class that is some kind of intro to epistemology, how to study something scientifically, how to root out bias, and maybe even a little on logical fallacies.

How many high school grads are even aware of the concept of confirmation bias?

I fear we as a collective society are just so, so bad about knowing how to find the correct answer to something. Despite all the technology at our fingertips, so many people learn things the same way humans have for centuries: somebody I trust told me!

Is the memory of voters really so poor?

How are we supposed to avoid repeating the mistakes of history when the voting public can’t even remember why they scrambled to get out and vote for Biden 4 years ago?

I mean, if Harris lost to somebody like Romney or McCain, sure I could see that voters weren’t excited by the campaign plus the racism/sexism angle. But to just ignore how absolutely insane Trump was as President, and all the open messaging about how next time will be worse, never mind all the criminal and traitorous stuff… it’s insane.

Well the good news is that the probability of such a program happening has gone up.

The bad news is that you are disqualified if you have all your teeth or any kind of college degree.

Eh, I’m not interested in supporting them, but the code is free and open source. I’m using a client written by not-them, to connect to a server run by not-them, and reading federated content from dozens of other servers run by not-them.

Basically, 20 seconds of thought could tell anybody that this is a terrible idea.

IF the thinker is looking for a good overall policy and not just trying to stick more money in their pockets in the short term.

You expect them to cry about the working class affording food when they only have a house for three out of the four seasons of the year?

I appreciate the reply. Thanks for the discussion!

Oh yeah I get that. The disbelief and disappointment are off the charts for me.

But to continue my train of thought, what’s worked well for my mental state is to give myself permission to focus on the small scale and those close to me rather than (justifiably) dwelling on the fucked up state of society at large.

So instead of worrying about whether society is worth saving, I worry about whether my own sanity is worth saving, and by extension whether it is worth trying to have a happy and fulfilling life. And that’s not just being selfish. It’s equivalent to putting on your own oxygen mask on an airplane before you help others. With my head on straight, I can help improve the lives of those around me, and that is not only worth it but feeds back into making my own life and mental state better.

And from time to time I also like to remind myself about how insane it is that we even exist, that clouds of matter formed billions of years ago in supernovae were able to coalesce and form self-aware brains. It just makes me more interested in learning about existence and the universe.

And when I point that attitude towards the fucked up things in society and the world, it certainly doesn’t make those things better. I think about how I am watching significant history being written, and I can at least be an engaged witness even if I can’t change the course of that history. Though I do try where I can, and of course vote accordingly.

When I have gone through this thought process lately, I’ve concluded that even if I plan my life in the most cold robotic way possible, my mental health and general well-being are at their best when I am compassionate towards those around me.

So first you must ask yourself what your true goal is. Do you want to “win” some shallow materialistic version of life? Or do you want to help others, or just be happy regardless of what it takes? Then that helps inform later decisions.

My automatic assumption has always been that saving everything, retiring early, and being a recluse was my path to a happy existence. It’s just what I felt I wanted to do. I bet I’m not alone there.

But then I had the great luck to have COVID come around and fuck up my career and finances in a few different ways. Now I’m stable again at work and my finances are a disaster, but I’ve waded through so much shit mentally that even though big retirement account balances feel great, that’s not what creates real joy, contentment, and even optimism.

…In my brain anyway. It’s like we all have slightly different owners manuals but we don’t get a copy of it and have to reverse-engineer it. In my case I had some things I cared about a lot get torn away, but I still had my family, and I realized that without that stuff that got taken away I was still the same person and was just fine. That definitely flipped a switch or two. Well, that and a grueling couple years dialing in medications, lol. Anything that helps!

Oh man, a friend and I were the AV crew for a while in high school in the late 90s. Basically we’d deliver these TV & VCR wheeled stands to the teachers needing them in the morning. If there wasn’t any need, we got to hang out in the equipment room instead of home room.

We got to use the elevators and even wield “the key ring” from time to time.

Are they going to cut Social Security? No, too many older voters that depend on that income. Medicare? Nope, same thing.

Republicans: “unless we can just not need their votes any more… 🧐 “

This is the second time in two days that Lemmy has reminded me about Constantine.

So yeah I think I’ll be rewatching it too!

It does feel about on-brand for this timeline that Trump of all leaders might get the credit for fixing* the Middle East problem.

• where the problem is the existence of the conflict, and the solution of a glassy wasteland littered with charred skeletons will successfully not have regional conflicts for a thousand years.

Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug

Yep, I’ll typically use vim or nano for editing existing files, but when in just want to make a quick temporary note or fiddle with some plain text it’s the graphical one that came with the DE.

Is nothing sacred?

At least that’s one use case that Linux will always be awesome for - editing plain text without added bullshit (excepting any keyboard shortcuts you need to learn to save or exit, depending on your editor, lol).

And you can obviously do that on windows with any number of third party apps. But not having the basic clean text editor included in the base OS install just seems wrong.

A wise man once said, If you choose not to decide, You still have made a choice

also privileged people who think that a Trump presidency won’t affect them

I’m a privileged person who probably won’t be directly affected by another Trump presidency. Probably. Hopefully.

But anybody who genuinely holds that opinion, and doesn’t care what happens to everybody else, may as well just be a full-on trumper.

Trump still got 72 million votes and counting this time. That’s with another four years of Trump scandals, revelations, criminal charges, insurrections, mental declines, and on-video insane statements.

The people who stayed home, or the politicians who failed to motivate them, sure they carry some blame. They could have helped. But they are not the base. The ones who followed Trump from being the outsider who is fun because he’s an asshole/racist like them, to the corrupt traitorous dictator-to-be who they’d like to watch hurt people. Blame them much more.

The steady level of Trump support unfortunately supports the fear that our culture is just garbage. We’re surrounded by it. There are plenty of proud assholes, sure. But so many people will legitimately be pleasant to everybody they meet and seem to function in society, but either believe horrible things or have a thick shell of indoctrination and ignorance around their brain.

Oh trust me, the watching with a mixture of fascination and horror is coming from inside the states too.

I wish you good luck as well. I hear the US is known to fuck around with other countries occasionally. (And that’s not supposed to sound threatening - it’s just a recognition that we fuck with other countries even during “good” administrations, never mind when we have a dictator-loving wannabe in the office)