Used to love it, had too many weird promptless experiences, unplugged it and now it’s gathering dust on a shelf.

Though it was nice to say “Hey google, tell me today’s news” and get a few different news updates while making coffee.

Edit: Out of sheer curiosity, have you tried factory resetting it?

Man - I know most folks feel the best thing to do is get rid of religion all together - but at this stage I’d settle for and support a new, loud, and active Christian sect denouncing xtian radicals and the churches that support them as Satanic corruptions.

Believe Old Testament and its edicts mean a damn practical thing in today’s world? Satan.

Insisting on not rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s? Satan.

Treating your fellow humans as lesser for anything whatsoever? Satan.

Corrupting Bible verses to justify creating suffering and not rendering aid to anyone who needs it? 100% Satan.

Forcing means to reduce anyone’s capacity to exercise free will, the one key thing their creator deity granted all humans? Sounds like Satan to me.

And so on. I realize this is deeply naive. But part of the reason I like The Louvin Brother’s song Satan is Real is whenever I hear the guy’s testimony on Satan, I think about about people in the offending churches:

I grew selfish, and un-neighbourly
My friends turned against me
And finally, my home was broken apart

The Louvin Brothers themselves would likely vehemently disagree, but - does this sound like anyone you know?

/end of vaguely spiritualist rant.

I’m not who you were talking to, but I think you and I can agree that war is primarily a means to increase the power of the aggressor. Money is one form of this, perhaps the main one - though I’d argue things like direct control over other territories and their populace is another (connected to money re: control of resources, sure, but that’s just one aspect).

That said, the American WWII dead buried at Arlington, or the Canadians and Brits buried in Dieppe for that matter, or heck, even the Soviets buried in Warsaw (regardless of how you may feel about the former USSR in general) - would you say that their lives were given, primarily, in the name of money/power? Or in defence of that being stripped from others by force?

I’m not going to pretend there isn’t an argument to be made for the former, but I am legitimately curious about your thoughts here. Is it ever just to take up arms?

Thanks man! This is helpful.

When we talked last, I was talking about the social aspects (crudely understood) of it all - have general mistrust of experts, poor life situation, feelings of, or acutal, social isolation -> find people who seem to have a privileged knowledge others don’t that you agree with, make them your tribe -> have a position in a social group, slowly introducing you to more and more outlandish ideas -> repeat points to recruit others to the tribe and signal social value to said.

So agree totally with learning about how this stuff works from psychology and human weakness POV being a vital starting point. Appreciate it!

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Holy shit man, what a ride.

I’m glad you figured some of your shit out and are making progress. I’ve seen more than one person just crumple under less than half of what you’ve been through. Big ups, dude.

100% agree. It’s a big world out there with people of all kinds, living lifestyles you couldn’t possibly imagine (in both a positive and a negative sense). Those rare moments you get to connect with those people, human to human, are always interesting as fuck.

Every time I took acid in public, I was a magnet for massive weirdos, but every time it’s ended fantastically well.

(Can’t responsibly recommend though, there were very real risks of getting stabbed or robbed a couple times)

Having an in-depth conversation with a crossdressing or trans street sex worker at 0100, claiming they were thirty but who looked eighteen at most, looking to do tricks for meth money, while I was outside of a bar on karaoke night on acid.

She showed me her DeviantArt page, which included a drawing of her as a queen on a playing card fellating a shampoo bottle. It was the most fucked up, but interesting drug-addled conversation I’ve ever had. Very friendly, eventually went down a block to another group of people because quote ‘They look pretty drunk’.

Every part of this sounds made up, but I swear it’s true.

Edit: For some reason, I think it’s important to point out this was a Thursday night.

Here is a random list of songs I like, in my opinion under the umbrella of country in one way or another (though some stretch that a little. Or a lot. Don’t @ me, die-hard country fans).

Some may, indeed, involve beer, trucks, and American Christian propaganda - but pleasant sounding at least. I’m also confirmed to be pretty lame, and that may be reflected in my choices here.

I also never said you needed to dig deep - some/most of this is like, a fingernail scratch. But if you find something here you dig, strongly recommend diving deeper into the artist.

Merle Haggard - Mama Tried
George Jones - White Lightning
The Highwaymen - Highwayman
Dick Curless - The Heartline Special
Eddy Arnold - Cowpoke
Conway Twitty - Hello Darlin’
Townes Van Zandt - Waiting Around to Die
Sons of the Pioneers - Empty Saddles
Marty Robbins - Running Gun
Willie Nelson - Bubbles in my Beer
Hank Thompson - A Six Pack to Go
Johnny Cash - Sunday Morning Coming Down
Sonny James - Baltimore
Del Reeves - A Dime at A Time
Dale Hawkins - Everglades
Jimmy Bryant and Speedy West - Blue Bonnet Rag
Tim Carroll - I Think Hank Woulda Done It This Way
Buddy Emmons - Orange Blossom Special
Tommy Collins - You Better Not Do That
The Louvin Brothers - Satan is Real [here’s that propaganda I told you about - still love this song]
Eddie Noack - Psycho
Chet Atkins and Jerry Reed - Jerry’s Breakdown
Tom T. Hall - That’s How I Got to Memphis
Roger Miller - Dang Me

There is, in fact, good country music that isn’t just about trucks, beer, flags, and right-wing U.S. propaganda.

People have a lot of hate for the genre due to the mass appeal, common denominator examples. But like with all music, dig a little deeper beyond what gets radio play and you can find some good shit.

For me, it’s sheer laziness. Can’t be arsed to shave more than once every 6 to 10 months.

Do always find it funny when folks react strongly when I do shave. It’s hair growth, not a personality.

I disagree that it’s without merit. Again, OP is not asking the question “Is God evil?” - they’ve come to that conclusion already and aren’t presenting it for debate. They’re asking if there is a term for this position. It’s a fair question, and probably an entry point for them to do additional reading and thinking on the idea (after which point it may or may not be revised). If there was a more even mix of theists, atheists, and folks in between who wonder about this stuff on Lemmy, I’d hope OP would come back to discuss the idea, but that’s not what’s happening rn.

If it helps, I’m coming at this as someone who believes in small g god - to borrow the Christian idea of the trinity, God the Father does not exist as an independent entity, God the Son is a more interesting discussion, but god the holy spirit does exist - rather than a pure atheist. Happy to yap about that more but it’s kind of off topic.

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Best I can do are mushrooms that can give you a new lease on life, or at absolute worse psychosis.

Want some fire flower? I know a guy for that too.

Security guard - with the right post it can be any time, but night shift is your best bet.

Any business where locations exist simply to increase territory/coverage. Here in Canada, this includes certain cannabis retailers, vape shops, certain gas station locations, that kind of thing. Places where the job is clean stuff at a certain cadence, then wait for customers, where customer volume is kinda low. Obv don’t rely on these being forever jobs - the cannabis and vape store that fits this will eventually close - but you can get paid to basically study until then.

For a long time, I’d say accept that nothing was going to happen with this girl I fell for at the time, and focus on my writing (what I was in college for at the time, with an eye to getting into a great program at the uni down the road for slighty less total cost than just going there).

I’ve since learned it’s important not to focus on what you could’ve done differently in the past. It’s done, and it lead to wherever you are today. But boy, did that person - more accurately, the situation I found myself in re: that person - cause a series of events that included some pretty dark times.

But who’s to say life right now would be better for it?

Don’t downvote this guy, ‘bruhhhh’ is right.

One Christmas, my mother-in-law gave me an unopened bottle of whisky they had in their cabinet for a while. It was some of the best whisky I’ve ever had. About halfway through the bottle on Boxing Day, I took a moment to look up the cost (it’s since gone up in price, but you’ll get the idea)

https://dekanta.com/store/suntory-hibiki-30-years-old/

I. Was. Horrified. I have exactly two ounces left, that I will probably consume with my wife on my deathbed.

Probably just poor writing.

I had an interaction a while back that made me start thinking about payphones, and since you can call toll-free numbers from payphones here without depositing any coins (checked to make sure this is still a thing last week), this seemed like an interesting idea.

I have some artsy-fartsy thoughts about it, too: creative uses of dying infrastructure; ‘true’ anonymity - the info I’m getting from people is basically the number they’re calling from, as a product of that their location during the call, and whatever audio they want to shove down the pipe - that’s it; ideas about locality and physicality in an age where mass communication has erased borders in many senses, but people feel disconnected from their local communities more than ever, etc.

If you have some time to kill, I wrote a long-winded comment about it earlier and put it on a pastebin clone here (due to length limitations for comments here): https://pastes.io/paoqsezsjn

Basically, I like the idea of this weird number you can only reach from payphones someone slapped a sticker on in 2024, that doesn’t ask for money (even the .50 to connect), doesn’t try to sell you anything, and primarily just offers a box to leave some audio in. Could yield nothing, could yield something neat.

One of the following ideas, in order of how likely I could get it running (given I wouldn’t have the foggiest what I’m doing):

1. Forward the 1-800 calls to a free VoIP voicemail service, inviting callers to leave to leave the date, their location, and a message. Print stickers with the number, slap them on however many payphones I can find, and see what happens. I could do this tomorrow if I wanted.

2. Same idea, but routing to a FreePBX set up with whitelisting. While slapping up stickers, dial an echo number (don’t think that’s the right term - one that just reads back the number you’re calling from, not one that echos what you’re saying to test latency), add number to whitelist. That payphone is now activated. Activated payphones get to leave a message, anyone else gets ‘Good bye’ and disconnected. Some reading suggests this is possible, but with many, many things to learn between now and then (especially whitelisting). I’d be starting from 0 knowledge.

3. The above, but when you hit # to end your message, you get access to some automated menus with some fun/weird stuff (qotd, show times for upcoming bands I find interesting, a party line would be cool, etc.). See all comments demonstrating ignorance.

Why? It’s pretty dumb, but seems like it’d kill some time and could garner some interesting/weird audio. I do like the idea of whitelisting payphones only, both to cut down on bot call vectors and to push the like 3 interested people to use the disappearing comms anachronisms around town.