100 girlfriends

The purpose of my jellybean thought exercise was to show that “I don’t know” and “I don’t believe” are not mutually exclusive. Basically:

I do not believe [x] != I believe [not x]

I don’t believe in String Theory. String Theory may be correct for all I know: I am not a physicist, and my understanding of String Theory is cursory at best.

Because I do not have enough evidence to warrant belief, I cannot say I believe in String Theory. But that same lack of understanding means I must also say I don’t believe that String Theory is false.

Say you have a jar full of jellybeans. We know that the number of whole jellybeans in the jar must be either even or odd.

If someone asks you if you believe the number of jellybeans in the jar is even, you can and should say “no” if you haven’t counted them or otherwise gathered any evidence to support that conclusion. To believe something is to say you feel it is more likely true than false, and you can’t say that about the given proposition.

Importantly, this does not mean you do believe the number of jellybeans is odd. The fact that one of those two things must be true does not mean you have to pick one to believe and one to disbelieve. It is perfectly rational to reserve belief either way until you have evidence one way or the other. You do not believe it’s even, nor do you believe it’s odd.

So, if we define “atheist” as “someone who does not believe in any gods”, I think you meet the definition of atheist. Just like the person in the above example does not believe the jellybeans are even & also does not believe they are odd, you don’t need to believe “there are no gods anywhere” to not believe “there is at least one god”.

The big divide in the US is not so much between Republicans and Democrats as between people who invest and people who don’t. For a man of his means who is running for America’s second-highest office, Tim Walz is on the wrong side.

God forbid a leadership position go to someone not in the ownership class!

In 2022, 58 per cent of Americans owned stock, either directly or indirectly through mutual funds. Based on his 2019 financial disclosures and his 2022 tax filings, the Democratic vice presidential nominee is not one of them.

So? The average American, who has maybe a 401k and some options thru their company, still has more shared class interests with someone who owns no stocks whatsoever than with someone who doesn’t have to work for a living.

The rest of the article fails to load, but looking at the author’s other pieces, we see she thinks price gouging is a myth and that another recession might actually be a good thing. She’s either so out of touch she may as well be from outer space, a soulless corporate sellout, or intentionally writing ragebait with an economic coat of paint.

I feel you in a big way, but to be totally fair: corporations becoming states has probably trended towards the better from a zoomed-out perspective, and political leaders lying all the time has probably only become more visible than ever.

The entities that were doing all the colonialism for the past several hundred years have been private companies, and they did huge amounts of slavery and genocide. Blackwater is bad, but the East India Company was worse. This is not to say that things are good now, only that they aren’t like worse than they’ve ever been.

And I think the present day has a greater expectation of political leaders being accountable to the people they govern than most of history. Back in the days of monarchs and oligarchs, there was no mass media to tell everyone they were lying and no likely consequences for the liars even if there were.

Again, I empathize a huge amount with what you’ve said & I am also disappointed that the world we’ve created isn’t better than it is. I just personally think that the above two are trending in a more optimistic direction, even if they’re still objectively pretty bad.

Fifty-three percent of respondents hold a “very or somewhat” unfavorable view of the system, while 40 percent hold a “very or somewhat” favorable view.

I swear to God, you could ask “Do you enjoy being hit in the face with a hammer?” in a poll and 30% - 50% of my countrymen would answer “yes”. At least one third of this country lives in a completely different reality.

Thank you for your wonderful and informative comment! I went out back to see if she was still there / look for an egg sack, and snuck another pic. She’s quick! Ran up the fence as soon as she saw me!

RIP Kumoko.

True that! Almost got a face full of this guy earlier this week:

I wonder if spiders put webs in front of windows to catch bugs that fly towards the light, or if they put webs all over a building and we only see the ones near the windows?

Cute comic!

BRONCO IS TAKING HIM INTO THE SCREWS, KENNY!

1. Rape does not always involve physically overpowering someone. Someone may coerce someone else into sex with blackmail, lies, threats, or abuse of a position of power.

2. Erections are controlled by a person’s autonomic nervous system. A man can get hard even when he is not turned on or consenting to what is happening.

3. Not all rape involves a penis. A woman who sticks an object into a man without his consent is committing rape. Rape is about power and control over another person, and the rapist need not be directly stimulated for rape to occur.

Power stancing

Zweihander parries

Small white soapstone

Covenant of Champions

Bonfire Ascetics

Dark Souls 2 had a lot of cool things that didn’t get enough credit.

I’m glad I’m not the only one with that criticism. I enjoyed the first game so much more because of that.

Hear, hear! Bigger problems nowadays, but more control over my life to compensate.

There’s also something that’s really calming about having more life experience? Like back in 2013 I was mortified at the prospect of getting bad grades. Missing assignments was the #1 source of stress in my life, and it was all-consuming at the time.

Now? I know not only did that not matter, but that any given thing that stresses me out that badly has a good chance of ultimately not mattering in the same way.

I would guess the logic behind going harder on repeat offenders is that they’ve already been punished once and didn’t stop breaking the law, so we should punish them harder this time. Not sure that’s super effective reasoning, but w/e.

Carries a gun

Violently terrified of others carrying guns

This guy was never not going to murder someone.

Yep. Prisoners and homeless people are there to remind you what happens if you stop making money for the boss man. Plenty of horrible, exhausting, unsafe jobs get away with paying dogshit wages because it’s either that or being thrown into the maelstrom of human misery that is being incarcerated / unhoused. How many people would die of heat exhaustion in an Amazon warehouse if they knew their basic needs would still be met if they quit?

As a heads up: I went looking for Black Hole on fdroid after seeing this comment, and couldn’t find it. Looks both the fdroid and github were nuked.

Yeah! Kropotkin argues a couple points:

• People are generally pretty good at self-organizing to solve problems, and have done so effectively in small communities for thousands of years.

• We have the technology* and productive power to ensure everyone enjoys a decent standard of living.

• Much of the scarcity we face today* is artificially created and entirely avoidable if we produce to meet needs instead of maximize profits.

• Things like laziness, corruption, and greed can largely be addressed by ensuring that all of a person’s needs are guaranteed to be met. Many people we currently* call “lazy” are either stuck in a hyper-specialized job that they can’t leave because they need to sell their labor to survive, or unmotivated because much of the wealth they produce is absorbed by someone else. And people tend to take more than they need more often than not because they are stuck competing with their fellow man for resources instead of cooperating for the common good.

He also does some back-of-the-napkin math to show that it takes less than a year’s worth of labor to produce everything a household needs for a year, and that the remaining labor time of that year should be open for people to cultivate different skills and pursue their passions. He argues that the distinction between what we today call blue-collar and white-collar work is unhealthy, and that everyone should do a bit of both.

His central thesis IMO seems to be that in the event of a socialist revolution, people shouldn’t be afraid to immediately start doing socialism. Take inventory of the food & start giving it to the hungry, figure out how many empty houses the community has & start housing the homeless, stop growing cash crops / producing niche luxury goods and start growing food / manufacturing necessities until everyone’s needs are met. He sternly warns against half-measures: maintaining the state’s use of violence or keeping track of some kind of currency or propping up political leaders are all things he claims will spell the end of a revolution before it gets off the ground.

I really loved the book. I feel like it provided a great example of what communism could (and IMO should) look like without all the baggage of so-called communist states like China and the USSR.

*= The book was written in the late 1800s. I think a lot of it holds up really well and some points seemed like they really called events that would happen in the next hundred years. That being said, it’s probably not as airtight today as it may have been in 1894.

The Conquest of Bread was a breath of fresh air! I cannot believe I read a book about politics / economics that was actually optimistic and left me feeling good about fundamental human nature.