Not_mikey
@Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Comment on Americans: How the hell do you meet new people or get into relationships after college? 19 hours ago:
Always gonna plug disc sports when threads like this pop up. Ultimate Frisbee is fun and if you live in even a minor city there’s usually a rec league to join. Has the best culture of any sport IMO, full of the chilliest most accepting people who are always looking for more people to join and with rec leagues people will sometimes go out to the bar after to hang out.
Disc golf is also great for meeting people if you’re not as into cardio. Can join tournaments and they’ll usually pair you up with people. Or just go solo to the course and occasionally someone else will offer to let you join their round or if you’re waiting with another solo at a hole you can offer to let them join you.
Both are also very cheap activities, Frisbee you just need cleats and to pay ~$50 for a rec league season. Disc golf is basically free once you get discs.
- Comment on Americans: How the hell do you meet new people or get into relationships after college? 19 hours ago:
OP said he’s in car centric america, in my experience those are the only people who regularly ride bicycles.
- Comment on Why is the USA attacking Iran? 1 day ago:
Israel was able to pinpoint the location of top political figures extremely easy. That means that the civil society hates more the government than israel.
This shows more the competence of the mossad / CIA then broad support for Israel. They just need to compromise/ payoff one person at the top of the regime to get the ayatollahs location and then bomb it.
I think you’re vastly underestimating the hatred of Israel in Iran. It’s not like here in the US where people are just starting to come around to the idea that Israel is a bad actor despite the efforts of the media. In Iran the media has been constantly showcasing the atrocities of Israel and the plight of the Palestinians for decades. Even if that wasn’t enough they just bombed the country and started a war with no reason given. Even if some people hate the government more than Israel they still hate Israel, and if given a chance to decide their government, if this one falls, they will probably pick one that is antagonistic to Israel.
Same in Gaza and this is why Israel will never let there be elections in Gaza. They know that if people can vote they will vote for a government hostile to Israel, just like they did in 2006. They don’t want a government with popular support and legitimacy because it’ll make them look even worse when they bomb them.
- Comment on YSK About Ali Khamenei's fatwa against nuclear weapons 1 day ago:
Yes the Ayatollah massacred his own people, but that sadly is the logical move for an authoritarian regime. Building nukes and making the sanctions that cripple the economy which created the unrest permanent is not the best strategic move, as mentioned above. They want to get a deal done, it’s just trump / neta yahu will take nothing but complete capitulation.
They’re enriching uranium and denying inspectors because the US dropped out of the deal and they’re trying to bring them to the table. If the US is going to impose sanctions and put pressure on them they have to put pressure back on the US . Otherwise the US can just sit back and wait for the regime to collapse under the weight of crippling sanctions.
Under the JCPOA Iran never failed an inspection, it wasn’t until Trump dropped out of the deal that they stopped allowing them in, and if another deal is reached there’s no reason to believe that they’ll violate it.
- Submitted 2 days ago to youshouldknow@lemmy.world | 16 comments
- Comment on Why is the USA attacking Iran? 2 days ago:
Yes, and a lot of Iranians support their government, or want a theocracy that’s even more paternalistic. If the regime falls now you’ll most likely see either a military dictatorship take over to suppress the various conflicts and contradictions in the country, or those conflicts flare up into a civil war between theocrats and Democrats similar to Syria. Israel wants the civil war because a military dictator is still probably going to shoot missiles at them, arm Hezbollah and Hamas etc. while a civil war all the missiles are fired within the country.
- Comment on Why is the USA attacking Iran? 2 days ago:
Trump is torn between the neoconservatives like Rubio, formally bolton etc, and Israel that want regime change and his own unwillingness to go full troops on the ground. The neocons successfully get trump to blow up Obama era deals designed to keep the peace by catering to Trump’s ego telling him he can get a better deal than Obama, in reality they don’t want a deal and want to escalate but this is the best they can get.
So trump goes to the negotiating table only to find out that Obama’s deal is the best he can get. Frustrated and unwilling to admit Obama was just as good a negotiator as him he begins to blame the leaders for their intransigence. The longer this goes on the dumber he looks for blowing up the original deal and not being able to get a new one, all the while Iran is enriching more uranium to try and push the US to accept the old deal.
Then Venezuela happens and he comes up with a new plan, if you can’t change the deal you can at least change the negotiating team. He can take out the leader, use them as a scapegoat for the long stalled negotiations, sign the same deal and call it a win. Maduro repeatedly said he was willing to play ball with Trump but it would be on similar grounds to the Obama era deal but trump couldn’t go back to the US and say he re-imoosed all these sanctions for nothing, so he took out Maduro, got a reason to declare victory and went home.
My guess is he’s trying to do the same here, say all the issues with negotiations were because of the Ayatollah, sign a new version of the same deal with Trump branding like the USMCA , declare victory and head home.
Is Israel gaining something that I’m not seeing? Destabilization the main goal?
Yes, Israel doesn’t want regime change because they know hatred for Israel is so broad that it will survive a regime change. They want to turn Iran into the next Syria and get them to turn all of their ire inwards instead of at them.
- Comment on Why is the USA attacking Iran? 3 days ago:
By doing this Israel wants a more friendly government.
Israel knows there will never be a friendly government to them in Iran, Israel knows that hatred for Israel is broad and will survive a regime change, especially one triggered by a war of aggression from Israel. They’re hoping to turn Iran into the next Syria, keep them fighting amongst themselves so they can’t turn their ire towards them.
- Comment on AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations 1 week ago:
That’s because it’s “read” every paper written by a “defence” department of any nuclear power and all of them will say that they’ll escalate to nuclear war if anything bad happens because they want to scare the other powers away from doing anything to them. In any case though who the fuck is giving an LLM nuclear launch capabilities unless they want a somewhat faulty dead man’s switch?
- Comment on "Being vegan is unnatural" 1 week ago:
Not if rfk and the beef lobby have anything to say about that
- Comment on Strange Times 1 week ago:
Dare you to say that to his face
- Comment on Littering 🚯 1 week ago:
I can’t be asked to get a license for a proper firearm
My god, what tyranny you live under, please tell me what authoritarian country you live in so uncle sam can come free you.
- Comment on Eventually, coffee moves from a drink that gets you going to an emotional support drink. 1 week ago:
There’s a common myth over here that coffee can stunt a child’s growth. A myth I only today learned was false after researching it for this comment.
- Comment on 'It's Possible to jailbreak F-35 like iPhone', Says Dutch State Secretary of Defense Tuinman 1 week ago:
Please keep buying our jets bro
We spent $1 trillion to make them bro, we need these to work bro
We’ll iron out all he bugs, trust us bro
It’s the best jet ever made bro, it’s killed so many Palestinians and Iranians bro
- Comment on Double standards 2 weeks ago:
I think they mean the guy slit the birds neck and then let it drain, instead of fully beheading it.
- Comment on Harm production 2 weeks ago:
Damn kids these days, just staring at their phone all day instead of getting drunk and wrapping their car around a tree.
- Comment on Acciracy 2 weeks ago:
Corruption and racism aren’t really unique to America though. If you look at current Japanese politics you’ll see they can be just as racist and corrupt as the US.
- Comment on Acciracy 2 weeks ago:
During my study abroad in japan we visited an elementary school as a cultural exchange. The class that day had to pick a country and list three things about it. A bunch of them picked america and the three most common things were McDonalds / hamburgers, pancakes and Disney.
- Comment on a very tasty snack 3 weeks ago:
Gonna save this pic and look at it whenever I crave meat.
- Comment on angry 3 weeks ago:
Must be some shitty Xanax if he’s still mad after taking them. Isn’t the point of Xanax to chill you out?
- Comment on Waymo raises massive $16 billion round at $126 billion valuation, plans expansion to 20+ cities 3 weeks ago:
They have to report any accidents to the authorities. They tend to be very diligent on this as cruise, another former autonomous vehicle company, went under after it lied about how an accident happened.
- Comment on Rent is theft 4 weeks ago:
I haven’t worked in the industry but I’ve been a member of a credit union for enough years to see that as my wealth goes up, so do my relative returns. The basic savings account earns 0.05% , you have to have more invested to get higher APY. To get the top tier, as far as I know, high yield rate of 3.75% you need to have $25,000 invested there. The median savings account in the US is around $8,000. So 10 people each with $100,000 are getting more than 100 people with $10,000.
Yes credit unions may not be taking top 0.1% billionaire money, but they’re definitely taking top 20% money, which is where the real class divide in the US is at. The top 20% own over 70% of the nations wealth. This combined with the increased rates I mentioned above mean that this top 20% is getting a majority of the investment income, even from credit unions.
The difference between a slaveholder and a landlord is one of magnitude not kind. Both demand labor from someone without a claim to property to someone with a claim to property, not for the labor they put into producing that property, but simply because they own that property. In slavery that property is the slaves body, for a landlord it is the house a person lives in. A landlord demands a smaller share of the person’s labor, 30% vs 100% but that’s just a difference of magnitude. You can mystify that relationship all you want through a bunch of third parties and middle men but fundamentally that is what landlording is, exploitation of the propertyless by the propertied. A small portion of that money going to slightly less wealthy people doesn’t change the exploitative nature of the system.
That doesn’t make the process of loans/credit inherently slaveholder/slave, and implying as such is just ridiculously childish. You aren’t going to convince any sane adult with that sort of semantic stupidity.
So I guess one of the most influential and consequential sociologists and economists of all time isn’t a sane adult because he compared capitalism to slavery
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Read any Communist or anarchist theory and it will be full of comparisons between capitalism and slavery with analysis of the similarities and differences of the coercive nature of both.
- Comment on Rent is theft 4 weeks ago:
And if the person’s got their mortgage from a Credit Union… then its… all those evil working class credit union members profiting?
A very small portion of mortgages are owned by credit unions, and the income of those mortgages are mostly going to a small percentage of wealthy members as opposed to the average working class person with 10k in a savings account earning 0.5% APY
The trope that slaveholders are all evil, profiteering off of the slaves, is an over-simplification / stupid stereo-type. Yes, there are shitty slaveholders. Yes, there are more planter aristocrats involved in slavery these days, and those planters are pretty exploitative. But there are lots of slaveholders who are just regular locals looking to try and gain some financial security.
Stereotyping an entire demographic of people based on some negative trait of a particular subset of that demographic is not helpful. It’s not helpful when it’s done to portray racial minorities in a broadly negative way, nor is it helpful when its done to portray slaveholders in a broadly negative way.
- Comment on Rent is theft 4 weeks ago:
if I sold it, it would go not to a family in need, but to a BnB company or an “investor”
You know you can choose who to sell it to, you can reject offers from investors. The family in need may not get you the highest price but reducing the price makes housing more affordable, at the expense of your bottom line though.
Sure the family could’ve tricked you and sold it right back to an investor but with closing costs, fees etc. it would make it hard to make a profit by doing that.
- Comment on Rent is theft 4 weeks ago:
Even with repairs and maintenance at an all time high a majority of rent is profit, either for the landlord if they own it outright or a bank if there’s a mortgage on it. The fact that a majority of the money being paid for housing isn’t going into building or maintaining housing and is going into the pockets of landlords, banks, mortgage backed securities holders is the main reason housing costs so much.
This is why the best solution to housing affordability is social/public housing. If you remove the profit motive and make it so all the money going into the housing system is spent on building or maintaining housing, then more homes would get built because there would be more money for them and you remove the rentier class constantly lobbying against new buildings to preserve property values.
- Comment on Rent is theft 4 weeks ago:
Even in the case of a break even mortgage situation the meme is still true, it’s just the rich assholes getting paid for doing nothing are the banks and holders of mortgage backed securities.
- Submitted 4 weeks ago to [deleted] | 8 comments
- Comment on Pope Leo XIV brings not peace but a sword to AI oligarchs and a slop-mad world in new address, says it's 'Turning people into passive consumers of unthought thoughts' 4 weeks ago:
He’s just mad the church of shrimp Jesus is leaving him in the dust.
- Comment on How do you fight doomerism/pessimism in these trying times? 5 weeks ago:
Can slacktivism work
IMO no, You’re way less likely to reach anyone outside your bubble online unless you have a large broad following , and even then you’re mostly broadcasting to an echo chamber. The algorithms are working against you, they don’t want to show you nuanced takes from the other side that’ll make you think and stop scrolling for a second, if they do show you takes from the other side they’re going to show you extremist rage bait that is easily dismissed by a funny caption.
That’s why I think phone banking , which can be done through software too even if you don’t have a phone, is better. You’re calling random people, and more of them are less into politics than the people on social media who are seeing political content, so they are less entrenched and more open. I guess you could also get to these people through social media but you’d have to fight against the algorithm to get out of the echo chambers and into the more moderate general spaces.
In general I think you need to focus on and put energy into things you can change for the good. If you are unable to change others minds then you can still focus and put energy into changing yourself for the better. You can focus on changing your mind for the better, learn an instrument, a new skill hobby etc. that you can see yourself getting better at. Or you can focus on changing your body for the better through exercise and diet.
For example if you want to fight climate change and probably improve your health with more fiber and can control your diet then switching to a vegetarian diet can be a way to change your body for the better. You can also learn to cook vegetarian food which will build a new skill and improve your mind, a skill you can clearly see / taste you getting better at.
- Comment on How do you fight doomerism/pessimism in these trying times? 5 weeks ago:
Tough spot, but some suggestions I can think off the top of my head:
for organizing: come election time you can phone bank from home. Find a progressive cause or candidate you believe in and they’ll usually have a system set up and script for you to call or text and a list of phone numbers. This can also be an entry point into the campaign to volunteer to do other things and you can explain your situation
For exercise:
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you can buy some weights online and use those along with body weight exercise to work out. I mostly do cardio so I’m not too familiar but I’m sure there are plenty of guides online
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walk a dog. If you don’t have a dog you can probably find a neighbor near you who would be happy to have there dog walked. Idk how restrictive your living situation is but I’d hope that walking the neighbor’s dog would get you permission.
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try vr if you can afford it, some of the games will get you moving and sweating and are pretty fun, there are also guided workouts as well.
Whatever you do just start a regiment that you can do and keep to it. You probably won’t see progress for a while but if you do keep on it and make it a habit you should start to notice your mood improve.
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