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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • I don’t like to think of people as immutably good or bad, but I get what you meant.

    There’s a bunch of factors.

    • are they honest?
    • are they kind?
    • do they care about things other than themselves?
    • do they try to make the world better?

    So, someone who lies, is cruel, doesn’t care about anyone else, and leaves the world a mess is being a pretty bad person.

    Someone who just keeps their head down, goes to work, and is polite to people they meet is kind of middling.



  • It’s always been pretty bad for large chunks of the population. This seems like a low point, but there have been many lows in living memory. Civil rights movement in the 60s. Vietnam war. War on drugs. Countless cruelties done to non-whites and queer folks.

    Even the idealized stuff of “buy a house on one income” was more for white people than anything else. Redlining, mortgage discrimination, “and then the white people burned down our house” were all realities.

    This country has always been deeply racist. The wealthy ownership class has largely been soulless ghouls. Maybe they build libraries and museums for a while, but they still oversaw tremendous suffering and poverty.


  • This was a favorite for a long time, by the high water marks: https://thehighwatermarks.bandcamp.com/track/suicide

    It feels like suicide or something worse

    I’ve got this curse on me

    It seems I only dream about the things

    that shouldn’t come to be

    always I try to find a way it feels

    it seems to real to me

    I just can’t let it go

    I’ll let you know

    Just what it means to me

    As days go past and it all moves too fast

    And I won’t think about it

    And when I do it all comes back to you

    And I don’t want to change that

    Markdown fornatting is really tedious to do on the phone so I’m not going to fix that more.

    But the song sounds upbeat, but it’s lyrics are a sad loop they want to break and also don’t want to.







  • If you accept that there are moral/ethical problems with eating meat (contribution to climate change, health concerns, animals being killed and eaten, whatever), and choose to eat meat anyway, and encounter a vegan, what has to happen?

    You can accept that they are making a better choice, but then you have to accept that you’re making a worse choice. Most people are cowards and protect the ego at any cost. Rather than shrugging and saying “yeah, i should eat less meat. Good for you taking the high road”, which requires accepting that you’re not being the best, you can instead grab onto any reasons why no it’s really them that sucks. That’s easier, more comfortable, and doesn’t require any painful introspection or changes.

    It’s the same mechanism when people get mad at cyclists, pedestrians, people who go to the gym, people who don’t shop at Walmart, whatever. They’re doing something that makes you feel bad in comparison. Most people are terrible at that and will lash out instead of doing anything productive.

    Alternatively, or maybe additionally, people are really tribal, and once they adopt the idea that vegans (or cyclists, or people driving small cars, or people wearing sandals, whatever) are in the outgroup, then they enjoy being hostile to them.

    People are ego driven emotional morons. All of us. Me, too. It’s terrible.