aasatru

If you believe God created this place, literally everything is proof of God. It’s hard to explain a good one, and particularly one that is both good and interventionalist, but the whole “God created it and left it to rot” idea one can kinda understand the appeal of. It’s hard to imagine how this all just popped out of nowhere.

Of course, it solves nothing, as you just shift the problem over to God. But that’s besides the point.

I think the religions that allow for multiple and often flawed gods seem easier to believe in, but if you’ve been taught to believe in some Yahweh spin-off I try not to judge to harshly.

This is a super interesting comment, thanks!

As for why Coca Cola made their Santa red, I guess the Scandinavian influence is also worth keeping in mind.

The Norwegian version of Santa is known as Julenissen - literally the Yule nisse - with the continental European stories of Saint Nicholas having been merged with our own traditional nisse (Scandie gnome) living in the barn (fjøsnisse). Nisses, like gnomes, traditionally wear red hats.

Where I celebrated Christmas on Tuesday, we were visited by a version of the fjøsnisse rather than coca cola santa. He told the kids they are coordinating with the Christmas nisse, as it gets busy on the north pole (there is, of course, only one Christmas nisse, but a bunch of fjøsnisser). But of course a knitted red hat was still in place. 🎅

As long as he doesn’t end up subscribing to the Chicago school of economics, but I have the impression that the University of Chicago has moved on and that even there it’s only subscribed to by the loonies these days.

But whenever someone says they studied economy in Chicago I still get suspicious.

Ironically, the influence of the Chicago school is probably why tuition is so expensive. Supply and demand, baby.

As far as I know there’s no option to boost posts from Lemmy, it’s an exclusive little function for Mbin and the microblogs.

I quite like it, as it makes it easier for good comments to “escape” from here and into the microblogging platforms. Assuming of course you are followed by users over there. But it is not a function on Lemmy.

So I’m not sure what OP refers to, or how posts appear as boosted in the dadjokes community. But it is indeed possible for Mbin or Mastodon users (among others) to boost any content seen on there.

I don’t think there’s any need to be rude. Just tell him you appreciate that he wants to make sure you’re alright, but that you’re just not a very talkative person and you quite enjoy silence. You can say it’s nothing personal, but that’s just who you are and you’ll let him know if one day for whatever reason you are not fine. If you’re feeling generous you can ask him to do the same, but that is a potential commitment.

I don’t think independent forums exist in the eyes of many legislators. The internet equals big tech.

If they accidentally kill off the independent web they won’t even notice. They’re probably still on X, thinking it’s still hip and unaware alternatives even exist. Never mind trying to explain them about independent forums.

This comment was brought to my attention as it was reported for being too dumb to exist.

As I’m not a moderator of this community, I’ll leave that judgment to others.

However, I will point out that the Online Safety Act was passed in 2023, towards the end of well over a decade of British politics being dominated by the Tories. Labour only won the election in 2024.

So, despite popular belief, the liberals are not the ones taking your rights away. Unless you consider Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, and Sunak to be liberals, of course. Which you might, as nobody using the word “liberal” seems to have even the faintest idea what it means any more.

The Online Safety Act is not about regulating TikTok, it’s about surveillance underneath a thin veil of protecting children. And it is very much a Tory piece of work.

I think PeerTube is ideal if you don’t want to use YouTube. The first selling point is of course Fediverse integration; the second is that it’s peer to peer, so that hosting costs don’t increase much if many people are watching at the same time.

The hardest part is to find a suitable instance (assuming you won’t self host), but it should be doable.

Maybe it’s not actually a simulation, but something else that we’re programmed not to be capable of thinking about?

frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument.

Fair enough.

Here are the two sources he cites as examples:

Elisabeth Rosenthal (2017) An American Sickness: How healthcare became big business and how you can take it back. Penguin Press.
Michael Moore (2007) Sicko. Dog Eat Dog Films.

I understand swing states and how they are important to follow in presidential elections, but Montana has had a Democratic senator since 2007 and he only lost his position at this election. So even though Montana is deeply red, in a Senate sense it did swing this election - it changed colour.

Thinking of swing states is a useful shortcut when trying to predict the outcomes of presidential elections. I don’t think it should be generalized to Senate elections.

But they all flipped from Democrat to Republican senators, while all the states listed by OP were held by Democrats already and remained in the hands of Democrats?

I mean, sure, somebody gave them the label swing states, but it seems they were not really all that important.

Which raises the question:
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?

I wouldn’t be surprised if a significant portion of the NYPD cares just as little about finding this guy as the rest of us care about them finding him.

“Yes yes, we take it very seriously. Look, he was wearing a hoodie!”

The Republicans gained Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Montana, and with them a majority in the senate.

Maybe I’m missing something, but they don’t seem to be struggling all that much to me.

It literally goes back to Shakespeare, something all Brits are incredibly aware of.

In addition, transgender people have always been around, and it seems as if the conservatives have been terrified of them forever. So there’s obvious potential for comedic value.

Echibit A: Queen, I Want to Break Free.

In case you’re European, and genuinely wonder.

Having children leave the house is a re-defining moment, just like establishing a family in the first place. It’s scary, but it comes with all kinds of possibilities as well.

It sounds like you did a good job on reinventing yourself as a parent, of course trusting your judgment that your kid is indeed wonderful. But the fact that you love him enough that it keeps you going probably counts as further evidence that you’re not doing so bad.

You’ll manage to reinvent yourself again. And if you can’t do it in your marriage, there’s no shame in doing it outside it.

There’s still a bunch of kindness around. There’s good food to be eaten and culture to be consumed. There’s drinks to be had and friends to be made. Dances to learn and skills to master.

There’s a lot of things to be hopeful about, aside from the whole everything going to shit thing. And if you can brighten up people’s lives by doing it, you might even contribute to the world going slightly less to shit.

I think it’s time to recalibrate and focus more on the closer things. Doesn’t mean one should ignore the world, but we’re not fixing it by stressing out, doom-scrolling, and posting about it online either. We tried.

This is supported in PieFed by default, in case you’re interested in checking out other Lemmy-compatible software.

My filters kept me sane through American election season.