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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: January 19th, 2025

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  • I feel like we’ve run this meme further than is useful; there’s absolutely criticisms to be had about how the separation of church in state operates within American government but it’s hardly the only “developed” (hate that word but you know what I mean) country to have a government that takes for granted Christianity as default; Britain, after all, has a state church – for (pun slightly intended) Christ’s sake – that definitely bleeds into the way its government thinks about what a religion is and how much “religion” gets support.

    I’m not saying I wouldn’t prefer (and hope we move towards) a more strict and complete separation but let’s not pretend America is astonishingly unique…



  • I mean, people always think teaching not to bully people is boringly obvious and it is, if you stop to think about the concept in theory, but it can be different, when you’re in the heat of the moment; teaching the fundamentals do help people, even if painfully clear to those at a higher level. I think those’re actually pretty good.

    The issue (as you’ve kinda noted) is they never go beyond that. The Honey scan might be hard to impart as, if I didn’t know some of how the system worked because I program for a living, it would’ve seemed like magic gibberish. The other two are good ones, though.

    Honestly, teaching the fundamentals of how the intervals work in some way I think would go far. The number of people who don’t know what file extensions are always worry me.



  • tomenzgg@midwest.socialtomemes@lemmy.worldZoomers & Boomers are the same
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    4 days ago

    This always surprises me as I’m younger millennial and my Gen X dad always feels more technologically behind than me.

    But it’s funny because I’m only so into computers because of him as he had things like Windows 3.1 and 95 and 98 in our home from a young age and he even went to school for C++ but he doesn’t really remember it (it got him an accounting gig) and his pursual of technology these days is pretty limited to pre-built stuff from Samsung and Sony than any real grasp of how it works. I struggle to get him to show even passing interest in something like Linux (like, I get liking Windows; you grew up with it: you’re more comfortable with it. But not even curiosity, even if you’ll never use it?).

    Expert on Excel and OneNote (because it’s his daily bread-and-butter) but probably would ask for my help on rotating a PDF.

    What OP describes sounds much more aligned to my millennial peers than the bulk of Gen. X I know.


  • I’m not too familiar with his record before running for the Senate, I’m afraid, but, presuming it was sufficiently different that people had wanted to vote for him and no one had been sounding the alarm, part of me wonders if something had happenned when he had his stroke.

    It’s, obviously, not a given but brain damage can cause personality changes. I have very little evidence beyond speculation but I do wonder, from time to time.



  • This is the answer.

    For whatever complaints one might have about Discord (and they are legion), it does a really good job of packing a bunch of different functionality in one place and with a UI that’s super easy to grasp and understand what does what and how that requires very little foreknowledge of what the thing is or its underlying mechanisms.

    If I am completely new and pretty blank of what it is, Discord’s pretty good at me being able to catch up quickly; it’s got a good UI and, following that, functionality for a bunch of things related to communication. And, if I need a quick solution that just gets me going…that’s gonna be pretty painless.






  • He’s just angry the attention isn’t going to him.

    story about my sister's dog that isn't related to the overall thread here but I just want to tell because it's one of my favorite memories of him (he's still alive)

    I’ll never forget the one time it was so obvious my sister’s dog was jealous. My long-distance partner was visiting so we were cuddling and whatnot; and I kind of hasn’t noticed but he’s whining and running around us in the background. So my partner gets up as we were moving over slightly and the second I sit down – but before my partner has sat down in my lap – he dives into my lap and just looks up at me with the most pleading face I’ve ever seen him have, his tail doing that little timid half wag dogs sometimes do.



  • Thank you; people keep getting excited whenever France makes moves towards forms of leadership these days but I can’t help but suspect that Macron doesn’t want to eradicate the global hegemony America had held through recent history but put France in its place.

    Demanding back a gift given in celebration of America’s abolition of slavery solely on the basis that France was the one to gift it (i.e. ownership) is too on-the-nose, even if you tried.



  • We already assess people for mental health issues.

    And, again, – if you had even passing familiarity with disability circles – you’d know that there are many people who have criticisms of his this currently works. This isn’t remotely a perfect system and its existence doesn’t suddenly make it so.

    You have an idea of a system that has already gained a complete understanding of human psychology and, also, is able to assess it without fail or error.

    We in fact should select for the traits that we want/don’t want

    Think very hard and long about what that sounds like…

    Even shitty customer service jobs use these tests

    And disabled people have discussed, at length, of how jobs like these are heated towards abled people!

    How can that possibly be a bad idea?

    I have you that answer, in my first response. Can you guarantee that these tests won’t get highjacked or used by opportunists? Can you ensure they won’t unfairly exclude those who shouldn’t be there (gay people had to struggle with the psychiatric community to get them to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; https://daily.jstor.org/how-lgbtq-activists-got-homosexuality-out-of-the-dsm/)? And these tests are not perfect, even right now (again, it isn’t surprising you don’t know this as many people don’t; but continuing to ignore the erased disabled voices which have pointed this out isn’t going to make them a smart idea).

    Respected people in the psychology field have already said that trump is mentally ill in such a way that he’s unfit to rule.

    And many people pointed out that this was wildly unprofessional and irresponsible (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/16/health/analyzing-donald-trump-psychology.html). It’s common amongst psychiatric professionals to not do armchair diagnosis since there’s no way you can get accurate assessment from that position. But it’s a great example of the way even professionals can exercise bias and poor judgement! Again, how will you ensure this won’t happen with a system you’ve now put in charge of gatekeeping what change is even possible?

    The problem is that now he’s manoeuvred himself into a position where he can’t be removed, and soon even us talking like this will be illegal.

    That’s a problem of other systemic issues, not because we didn’t use an assessment of human psychology that’s far from as black-and-white or accurate as you are presuming it is.

    Stealing from cancer kids charities would be a no, no matter what disability that person had.This could be summed up as ‘no tolerance for intolerance’ or ‘no kindness towards cruelty’.

    There are other means of detecting this than using psychiatric tests. And, while you’ve adjusted your requirements to include sympathy, can you guarantee that others will? Autistic people struggle with cognitive empathy, too; can you guarantee that a fear campaign won’t start up, that influences those running these tests to just, well, play it safe and keep these people out of the decision-making, for now? I have no interest in spending another century arguing with people who don’t belong to a marginalization while the supposed findings of psychology is used to justify civil restrictions and criminal proceedings while those groups don’t get a say because, well, didn’t you know that psychiatry has found those people to be antisocial and unproductive?


  • The eugenicism is because of the tests; not the politicians.

    https://www.tumblr.com/dovewithscales/714693265828478976/very-much-so-the-early-comics-were-written-during

    You think this would work because you assume we could write such tests with such accuracy as to evade bias (or that such requirement for testing wouldn’t be exploited by opportunists to place metrics much more aligned with whom said opportunists would like to eradicate).

    I’d point out that you say the tests should test for empathy but Empathy Deficit Disorder exists and, as EDD people often point out, the lack of being able to feel empathy doesn’t stop them from wanting to help people and making choices based off that desire. They just don’t feel empathy when they do it.

    Of course, you’re not using that word to mean literally understanding and relating to others’ feelings; sympathy would certainly qualify.

    But how do you ensure that? Who gets to implement these tests? And what stops it from being someone who just sees Empathy Deficit Disorder and goes, “Eew…keeping them away from this….”

    I always feel to like I sound like I’m being condescending but (and I mean this as genuinely as possible) you should try selling out writing and theory by disabled authors. Because of the way disabled people are erased from both culture and society as practically a matter of function, it can be really hard to even realize the ways in which our assumptions don’t factor them in. Stuff covering ability and autonomy are incredibly interesting in the ways they think about concepts due different lived experiences.