When I first learned that people were transitioning their gender, I was very much “live and let live,” but took exception at having to call people their preferred pronoun. It seemed like a rigged game to me, like they wanted you to guess at what their gender is, and if you got it wrong, you’re a bigot.
Then my wife was like “what harm does it do to call them what they prefer?”
And I thought about all the hurtful names people teased me with at school, and how I wished they would’ve just called me by my name.
So I said “OK,” and that was that. It hasn’t been as hard as I thought to recognize what people wish to be called. Unless you’re dealing with a “they/them,” then they gotta tell you. Or if you’re dealing with a butch lesbian that dresses boy-ish. On those occasions, I just try not to use any pronouns or talk to them extensively for fear of messing up.
Israel.
I used to support Israel, until I heard about them executing children in Gaza.
I used to believe I had an ex-girlfriend in Chicago, but once that person came out as nonbinary trans with he/they pronouns I now know that I have an ex-boyfriend/ex-theyfriend in Chicago.
That progress is inevitable.
gestures wildly
I used to think Tankies were misguided but harmless. Now I understand, if they got their way, they’d be dangerous.
I got into a fairly in depth conversation with one of them where they explained that they believed that the suspension of freedom, suppression of speech and expression, and sustained authoritarianism were necessary to achieve the socialist utopia. Except worse, they believe that these bad things should be in place until the entire world was socialist. If even one country wasn’t socialist, that would be the justification for suppression on the rest of the entire world. So essentially they’re defending worldwide authoritarianism and suppression of everyone in perpetuity.
I’d point you to this conversation so you could be your own judge, but true to their suppression methods, they exercised their own authoritarianism, deleted all my posts on the subject leaving only their own, because they said I was speaking against socialism and that can’t be allowed fulfilling the exact authoritarianism and suppression I was citing as a problem with their philosophy.
but you don’t understand, if only we murder and kill everyone until they are socialist then we’d finally never have to murder and kill again! unlike those evil capitalists who just go around murdering babies and grandmas, we are so much better than them! we only murder babies and grandmas who aren’t socialist!
if only we murder and kill everyone until they are socialist
tankies don’t like socialists, they call them liberals. they would slaughter socialists, too.
This feels basic now but I used to be very ‘pro tech’ and would have latest-ish phones, getting smart gadgets, etc.
Now I consider those features to be negatives and refuse to buy things with internet, if possible.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot the last few years. I was huge into electronics and gadgets and such 10-15 years ago. Things were fun and exciting. Now there isn’t any real fun or experimentation or uniqueness in electronics. Phones are just a black slab with minor differences in features. Every new gadget has to be set up with your phone and then requires a monthly subscription.
It was always a money making venture, but every new iteration seems to cost more and do less. It’s depressing.
I have a theme for total launcher that makes My phone a PADD with LCARS.
The use of language. My mom was a proofreader for a handful of local editorials, so the “correctness” of language was pushed very hard on to me from very little. As a result, I pushed for “correct” language onto others very hard as well. And this isnt about English, but my birth language, which has lots of conjugation rules, gendering details, grammar quirks and special cases; so people do tend to deviate from proper grammar a lot in informal settings (and sometimes in formal as well). I became a “language nazi” of sorts, and noticed quickly how people spoke fearfully in front of me to avoid making mistakes and getting corrected. This was something I (regretfully) took pride of.
Until one day, a friend of mine which specialized in languages said to me: “Language isn’t prescriptive; it’s descriptive”. And it took a while, a plethora of questions, and infinite patience from her, but I eventually came around and understood what she was saying: language is what we use to convey ideas from one to the other. We stick to a given language and grammar (structure) because that’s the common agreement for the language speakers, in the expectations that it makes for easier communication. BUT, if a sentence can transmit correctly a thought, even when not using a word in the dictionary or not applying grammar rules, then it’s fine as long as me (or whomever is the interlocutor) understands what they’re trying to say. Furthermore, even when using proper grammar with “existing words”, communication can be confusing and requires clarification. If you can make up a word in the spot that better conveys what you’re trying to say, then I’m all for it! (And probably will start using it myself). If you learned to speak a certain way and call stuff a different name from what I learned, or if you add extra letters to the word because that’s what you were taught by your family (something very usual) then that’s cool and I’ll respect it.
TLDR: Language has no rules. It is what we make of it.
I know you said English isn’t your native language, but I’m choosing to believe the grammar and punctuation mistakes in your post are just there to troll people who are still “language Nazis”. :-P
However, I was led to believe that some languages are prescriptive. For example, French has Académie Française. I was told (no idea how true it is) that it’s actually “in charge” of the language, so they get to decide what is “right”. The wiki page seems to indicate that they decide what goes in the French dictionary. That being said, I have no idea what authority they actually have outside of that. I doubt they’re issuing fines for using loanwords.
US gun control. Then i realised, better than medical cancer which if not dealt with by an external party will continue to kill the host, with the global cancer which is the US, at least in part it takes care of itself. I like to think every gun death in the US is one less bomb dropped on innocents, or one less innocent tortured for no reason other than that society’s sick sadism, in places like Guantanamo
I used to be a conservative Christian. I was vehemently opposed to things like gay marriage and abortion.
Then I actually moved to a larger city and met gay people and, well, that became the crux of my deconstruction. Turns out people are people, no matter where or how they’re born, or what they choose to be or identify as.
My views on abortion have changed, to the point where I very much do not believe in fetal personhood, though I still think late-term abortions should be shied away from if they can be avoided. Regardless, it makes no sense to remove a woman’s right to choose how her body is used. It’s hers. If she doesn’t want to put her body through childbirth, or doesn’t want to take on the immense burden of raising a child, she shouldn’t have to. But, at the same time, dudes should be aware of what they can inflict upon a woman just because ‘it doesn’t feel as good’ with a condom on. Wrap it before you tap it, boys.
or what they choose to be or identify as.
Still can’t help but repeat tired old anti LGBTQ+ rhetoric though. Still framing it as a choice.
Maybe you didn’t even realize you did it, I don’t know.
Perhaps you misread.
what they choose to be
Sometimes biological preference is biology and not preference, though. Something to continue ruminating on.
I thought the preceeding words in the sentece made that clear.
Turns out people are people, no matter where or how they’re born, or what they choose to be or identify as.
The flu vaccine (pre Covid). Always been pro vax in general, just never saw the need since I never had symptomatic flu. My immune system is good enough, right?
Well, it was like a switch flipped in my brain. One day, I suddenly realized getting the shot isn’t about me. If I don’t vaccinate, I get the flu, and I don’t have symptoms.
That makes me a carrier. I’m a disease vector. Somewhere throughout my day, I’m going to pass it on to some immunocompromised person, and I will be the reason someone’s grandma doesn’t make it for the holidays.
“Just the flu” still kills hundreds of thousands of people every year.
I lost a lot of respect for a coworker over this.
This was pre pandemic. They brought a nurse into the office to give everyone who wanted a flu vaccine. She wouldn’t do it.
I said to her that if she got the flu, she’d probably live, but she’d also pass it on to other people. She’d be contagious before she knew she was sick, so she might be on the subway and infect a bunch of vulnerable people. Old ladies. Little babies. Anyone.
She was like no that’s not how it works. That’s not going to happen.
I was like, why not? In what way is that not how it works?
“I’ll just stay home if I’m sick”
“What about when you’re contagious and don’t realize? Or if it hits when you’re already at work?”
“That won’t happen”
Just denial.
Can’t convince people with facts. You have to play on their emotions. Make them feel good about themselves, or reinforce something they believe in. I can’t always figure out how to do that
Wait, does the flu vaccine actually work like that? I didn’t kmow it did anything to dampen transmission. I’ve never gotten it because I have such intense needle phobia it didn’t seem worth it, but if this is true, then it has more benefits than I realized and that kinda changed the calculus a little
It’s basically a numbers game. With a vaccine the flu can’t spread through your body because you have immunity. Meaning your body can fight of the flu so you don’t get sick/have symptoms (or at least all of that is greatly diminished). Since the flu can’t spread in your body, there is less flu in you for you to spread to others.
So more people vaccinated means less viral load in the community which means less people spreading and therefore getting the flu.
I guess that does kinda make sense, less viral load in the commumity = better. I always thought that, because it might only protect against 80% of the flu strains out there (or however good we guess for the season), that herd immunity can’t be achieved and there was no point
I definitely never heard of it presented as a measure to protect people around me
Yes, vaccination primarily reduces odds of infection. No infection = no transmission. Secondarily, vaccination reduces the symptoms of an active infection if you get one anyways.
No. This person is clueless. vaccines don’t prevent you from catching a disease. they simple allow your immune system to deal with it better. the flu vaccine means when you do get the flu it will more like cold.
you are getting sick all the time, it’s just that your immune system works well against things it knows. you only get sick sick when you encounter a bug that your immune system hasn’t ID’d and can’t fight.
you can still spread viruses and bacteria to other people even without symptoms. you are doing it all the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity
Stop spreading antivax pseudoscience
When your immune system kicks a virus out, you don’t catch the disease.
For your immune system to kick it out, it has to be in first.
You never get symptomatic flu? Can you please get to yourself to the nearest research hospital and get started on the genetic immunity or whatever it is you have. You may be the key for saving millions of lives and untold suffering.
A large portion of the population have immune systems that keep them from having symptoms of common diseases, or symptoms so mild don’t notice. That’s part of why transmission rates aren’t 100%.
Only 1 in 200 people get the flu each year. Lots of people never catch the flu in their life. Flu is pretty rare compared to the common cold.
1 in 200? No. Funny how the ones who don’t provide sources are the ones who spread nonsense.
1 Billion people a year get it. That is roughly 1 in 8.
Of these 3-5 million get severe illness, and out of that you get roughly 300-600k deaths.
This is mine too. Pre covid, my thought process was “I’m young and healthy and have had the flu twice in the last 15 years, I’d rather save the shots for someone who needs them, not me! I’ll just keep working my retail job and going to school even if I’m a little achey and sniffly, I can tough it out!”
Now I get them both every year. I still kinda feel like I’m taking a shot away from someone who needs it more, but I’m just trying to do my part!
If I don’t vaccinate, I get the flu, and I don’t have symptoms.
That makes me a carrier. I’m a disease vector.
This is flawed. Vaccinated people clear quicker; and asymptomatic people aren’t spreaders. This is just ‘shedder’ bullshit, and you’d benefit from re-examining it or consulting someone with a relevant degree.
you can spread diseases with being asymtopatic. it very much depends on the strain. people with the covid vaccine could still get covid and spread covid.
it’s just that with the vaccine the risk of dying from it was gone, which is predominately for older adults.
we never gave covid vaccine to kids because it was no threat to them.
but OP here is very confident in their delusional understanding of how a vaccine works and what it is. and thinks it’s a ‘cure’ for a disease. because they have a vastly oversimplified idea that is factually wrong.
User says they’re all for vaccines now
Accuse them of being antivaxxer
???Will say it’s kinda funny seeing a word created in ignorance used itself in further ignorance.
After the October 7 attack I was very pro isreal. Of course it’s totally unacceptable for a neighbor to enter one’s territory and kill hundreds of innocent civilians. You can’t commit such an act of terrorism without consequences. However I have seen that the Israeli invasion has been all but moral and the use of the word genocide feels more and more justified. It has gone way over board and I have staunchly become anti isreal. The war was supposed to be a war on Hamas but the innocent civilians in Gaza have had to bear with unbelievable suffering which I no longer believe justifies the war.
I hope that since then you’ve done some research about the history of the region and conflict. Hamas was not unprovoked.
What made you not realize the decades of Israeli aggression that caused October 7?
US media has spun such a one sided narrative for decades that I never looked close enough to to catch on that it was whitewashing genocide. October 7th and the Israeli reaction was comparable to the US genocide of Native Americans both through the dehumanization and pbvious propaganda that I started paying more attention. The more details came out, including the apartheid state structure, the less I felt that there will ever be a peaceful two state solution when Israel is an expansionist culture that cannot accept or acknowledge the right to exist of the Palestinians whose land they stole, much less the soverignty of their neighbors.
I was in the same boat (outside of being already critical regarding israels illegal settlements in the west bank). Main reason was that growing up in Austria, criticizing anything jewish was practically a taboo, and the only ones doing it publicly were the far right, which delegitimized all of it in public discussion.
It took their atrocities to make me realize how much effort Israels Zionists are putting into trying to tie Judaism/Ethnic Jews/Zionism together, so that blaming Israel can be countered by accusing anyone to be an antisemite. (I also have to say that for how good Israel is at Psyops, they really botched this one on the world stage.) I also realized that the conflict became a lot more one sided over the years; in the 80s and 90s there still was a push for a 2-state solution, and attacks in both directions were a common occurrence. Nowadays Israelis getting hurt is often the direct result of repressive action from Israels side.
Oct 7 might very well have been an false flag op in retrospective. It gave Bibi the chance to annex all of Gaza, Genocide be damned. It’s similar to Putins staged apartment complex attack.
It’s pretty much been confirmed that Netanyahu let it happen.
Then there’s this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Directive
Bibi received warnings from multiple sources that an attack was planned and yet weren’t troops moved away from the venue where it occurred in days before?
Yeah, the troops patrolling the border were told to stop patrols that morning!
as someone who went through the same, it was mostly lack of attention. i had a vague idea that israel and palestine hated each other, and it was easy to understand from a perspective of israel taking palestinian land, but when you don’t think about it too much it’s easy to both sides it or feel like the supposedly western, supposedly democratic one has a point. i think a lot of people in the west had that vague, unrefined view when oct 7 happened, and it’s easy to stand with someone who just suffered a terror attack.
but it just kept being a focus in media, and the more you look into it, the clearer israel’s crimes against humanity become. and the crazy part is that the vague perspective of israel taking the land for themselves is absolutely correct, but when you see it for the real atrocity it is, rather than an abstract curiosity, it’s impossible to side with the occupiers if you’re not a bigot.
I can only add that, as much as I despise what occurred to Israel that day, it achieved their objectives in a way nothing else probably could have. It’s difficult to morally reconcile, but the evil they committed against Israel exposed a greater evil Israel was committing against them.
Trans athletes in student sports - now I believe there should be no student sports. It’s a waste of educational resources to have a team run by the school system. I went to the football stadium in Allen, TX and I realized how messed up schools have become
I’m big into sports but this seems like a reasonable take – it’s already the case that none of the good youth soccer leagues are affiliated with schools, and it’s easy to see how you extend that model to other school sports. Also, having the NCAA be the minor league for the NFL is enriching NFL owners at the expense of our university system. The downside, of course, is that we’ll exclude children whose parents can’t afford to pay for club sports, which generally I’m in favor of moving public goods (like getting children active and learning how to cooperate) to be paid for by government rather than private enterprise, but I get it. I’m not sure how it relates to trans athletes in sports, though – you’re just kicking the can down the road to a bunch of laws and lawsuits about discrimination and participation in club sports rather than school sports.
Sports should be for lots of people to play, not just a few ridiculously skilled experts, with everyone else just watching.
Trans athletes in student sports - now I believe there should be no student sports.
I LOLOLED
Its funny how people come to radically different conclusions on one topic:
Conservatives: Omg gEnDeRs! What would we do if a boy and a girl touched, jaysus would rain hellfire on us
LGBT+ Allies: Trans Women are Women
Egalitarians: Gender shouldnt matter
This guy: ABOLISH SPORTS
But still lowkey an interesting take +1
When you find out how much of the education budget goes to the sportsball team instead of the educating it’s not such a radical take.
I went to more than one high school in which the science classrooms were using worn-out microscopes and textbooks old enough that the teacher occasionally told us to correct bits in ink for the next user, while the football team always got the shiniest newest toys to bang their thick skulls together with.
This guy: ABOLISH SPORTS
Abolish institutionalized sports; I’m thinking, in favour of self-organized sports. Just remove the fucking money from it in education - remove the money funnel from education anyway - and watch people care less about composition and more about everyone being active and smiling.
people in the usa would rather give up their guns and their right to vote than their sports.
Sports are actually good overall, but the overly strong focus and wasted money spent on them is absolutely ridiculous.
no school sports - this is the most radical take I’ve ever seen on lemmy.
and i like it. I and I like sports. FWIW the town my brother in has no school sports… the sports are run by an independent volunteer org. Nobody gets paid. but i’m not sure it’s a good ‘model’ because their sports program is mediocre and their teams are average at best.
he’s actually trying to move his family to another town with better sports because he expects his kids to go to college on sports scholarship like him and his wife both did. and there is no way that will happen if his kids are bad sports teams.
i do think sports have educational value, teaching teamwork and discipline and health. i learned more from cross country and marching band versus everything else combined. but i definitely agree about the ridiculous funding disparity, though, no extracurricular should be getting more funding than core classes
my hot take is that sports and bathrooms shouldn’t be gendered. i understand the “seperate but equal” clause doesn’t include gender, but it should, given the better funding and accomodation boys sports get over all but the best girls teams. siloing off genders has catastrophic cultural consequences- “locker room talk” shouldn’t and wouldn’t exist otherwise, plus the whole trans rights thing that shouldn’t and wouldn’t be an issue
Personal story: Ages ago I was in marching band in TX, so we had to visit multiple other schools to play against them.
Some of those stadiums, even 20ish years ago, were ridiculous. So much money that could have gone to much better programs, or even a publicly available stadium that aren’t locked to a specific school district. I left band before graduating.
That’s like saying the arts are a waste, it’s a “I don’t like it or see the benefit so it shouldn’t exist” scenario
I think that’s an American-centric view. It’s uniquely American to build a stadium for high school sports.
polygamy.
no further comment.
I think this does need some more information. Were you for, or against, what kind of 180 was it?
no. comment.
/s
the sanctity of marriage is broken. increased life expectancy, increased stress, increased cost of living, etc.
if nothing in this world will change it makes more sense for society to change with it.
part of that change may include taking multiple partners. gender ratio isn’t important.
if its difficult for two working adults to afford a home, what about three or four? if they all share living spaces intimately the COL goes down further.
it’s not just about the sexual gratification, it’s about the care and respect for each other.
if I was 30 or 40 years younger I would seriously look into polygamous or polyamorus relationships.
Finding one person I like enough to marry is hard enough 💀
Noisemakers in electric cars. I thought it was a conspiracy of the incumbent manufacturers to make EVs as shitty as ICE cars. But I’ve had plenty of situations where people were unaware that I was driving up to them and that’s not a good thing. Just to be clear, I don’t expect pedestrians to jump out of the way when I come along with my car but situational awareness is an important factor for avoiding accidents.
That noise is awful. We’re in the fucking future, I want my car to sound like the Jetsons’
I watched a YouTube video from a blind creator. She mentioned how scary EVs were in parking lots. She just had much less time to react to them compared to ICE cars. I don’t mind the spooky hum my car makes so much since then
It took me way too long to figure out ICE means internal combustion engine.
same tbh. the correct answer is no cars. i still think evs are better to have around than ice cars, but an oversized murder machine shouldn’t be the primary mode of transport, and it will always need to announce its presence.
road noise along major roads is mostly tire noise anyway, and evs still have tires
People and animals walk out in front of my noise-making EV all the time. It really needs a bicycle bell or pedestrian horn or something. Maybe it’s the frequency of the sound. People just don’t seem to realize it’s a car right there the way they do with ICE.
Without personal experience I still say no. The world is loud enough.
I hear them all the time, they seem to make the same amount of noise as a ICE, unless it’s a big engine truck/sports car.
This is mainly relevant in parking spaces. My car is basically completely silent when I’m going below 20 kph or so.
Some of the electric cars have artificial noise that is far, far louder than any combustion engine. There is one that sounds like a spaceship hum from the movies that I can hear in my apartment despite not reallly hearing any ICE engines other than delivery trucks.
Whoever designed that one went overboard.
they aren’t though… all i can hear when they are on is the loud whirrring of the electronic motors. i like of hate it tbh, regular cars aren’t as loud to me.
The whirring is from a speaker. The electric motors are insanely quiet. On cars that don’t pretend to have sounds through a speaker, you’re basically just hearing the tires on the floor and the HVAC fans.
i used to think the us was an incredible place to live, and that most people saying otherwise were just amplifying its faults from a sheltered perspective. one single trip to nyc of all places changed that. it’s impressive how broken the us is, the decay isn’t just an abstract concept, it’s literally everywhere in a physical sense. even places that were supposed to be nice were rough around the edges in so many ways.
(edit: just to clarify, i’m a european)
It’s the fact that so much in this country is about money. We can’t have basic infrastructure or maintenance because the money it would take to build and maintain it means the guy at the top earns less, and we can’t have that. I fucking hate it here and wish that I had any hope of living elsewhere, where people are treated like people instead of numbers and a paycheck.
every society is like that.
Yeah it’s really noticable as an australian too. The bottom is allowed to fall out in ways that feel scandalous. So many things are just shabby. So many systems are just bafflingly, solvably dysfunctional.
The US isnt that beautiful if you’re looking at this from a European perspective.
HOWEVER, if you’re from a place even worse, the US could look like paradise to you.
Don’t forget that if you have regular access to a relatively uncensored internet and can drink water straight from the tap, you have it better than half of the world, which is not to say you shouldn’t strive for better, you definitely should protest, contact your congressperson, vote, all that stuff (as best as you can mentally handle), but sometimes you have to pause and appreciate what you do have.
Context: I was born in the People’s Republic of China circa 2000 and now resides in the US. I mean yes China’s public transit looks better but everything besides that isnt all that nice really. I lived in a part of a city that looks absolutely filthy and deteriorated
(And yes, NYC is dirty, especially Manhattan, but some places in Brooklyn look quite okay, if you could afford living there lol.)
