Domestic wars are never pretty, no matter how powerful the military. Most people in the military don’t serve to shoot their own country. Countries don’t want to damage their own infrastructure or enflame their own people. Oligarchs won’t support a war that damages their bottom line. People vastly over simply how easy it would be to stop an armed resistance.
None of the things by themselves fully justify “belief” in a religion yet many people claim they are without a true belief in the entire system. It’s the problem with such a vague question. By a narrower definition very few people attending a place of worship are true believers. Someone can believe in god, but not really believe in the rules, and still say they are “religious”. Someone can believe in the rules, but not god, and say the same. I think if you are practicing the religion to some extent then you have a right to call yourself religious if that’s how you view yourself regardless of your true beliefs on god, rules, etc. Cultural impact matters more than we give it credit for.
Another big reason is reason number 4
I’ve met a not so inconsequential amount of people in my life that when pressed admitted, they don’t believe in god, don’t believe in the moral teachings, but attend a place of worship because they think there is no replacement for the interwoven community and cultural connection their place of worship provides. Many people simply like the community connection of their root culture. This is especially true in minority groups (black church, synagogue).
Getting caught up with semantics arguments seems like a waste of energy. Because, genocide or not, for many people impacted by any war with disproportionate power imbalance, it sure as fuck is as horrific as a genocide regardless of how one defines it. (I’m not necessarily criticizing the use of the word by some, I just think many activists get bogged down in defending the use word rather than addressing the horror.)
Any regular person putting significant cash in individual stocks instead of index funds is just gambling. All US broad market index funds beat inflation over every 10 year period since index funds have existed.
Transportation pales in comparison to heating and cooling homes and businesses. The single greatest thing we can do to reduce climate change from a policy standpoint involves reducing that. From work at home, to multi family zoning, to converting business skyscrapers into living space, to increasing efficiency and fossil fuels from energy production. And all that does a lot to improve transportation environmental costs as well.
Under your simplified system a person making 55k brings in less than someone making 49k. Which disincentives getting a raise at that salary range. There is a reason that currently we only tax money over the brackets set.
Progressive taxation isn’t really the problem here though, our low tax on investment profit is. We should also probably enforce a 2% wealth tax on anyone making over a billion dollars.
They are just trolling, they are looking for the argument for arguments sake. Look through their post and comment history. Report, down vote, and block, then move on.
Plenty of states it’s much higher, in Minnesota the rate is set by the state according to patient need. It’s not unheard of to pay $15k a month as $14k month is the average cost per resident.
“They constantly attack the right” if you view reporting what they have learned from investigation as an attack on the right, you should really asses what you think journalism’s role is. Should they report belief as truth, or truth as truth? “Only have liberal guests on” this is an obvious lie, and makes me question whether you ever actually listen to NPR or if you just have severe confirmation bias and view ANY liberal or Democrat on as proof of no conservatives even when they have both on at the same time… I hear conservatives on there pretty regularly.
What is true is that slightly more of the guests are Democrats than Republicans, but NPR has been very honest about how difficult it has been to get Republicans on their channel. They might ask 12 Republican senators to come on before one agrees meanwhile the first Democrat they ask agrees. With the decades long effort by the right to delegitimize any news that isn’t their tightly controlled propaganda machine, is this a surprise?
I don’t think it’s proof of bias to just attempt to report the investigative results of their work and have one party be anti-truth and then claim bias. Real news channels have an obligation to report reality irregardless of one parties unsubstantiated belief in anti-science, anti-fact, and anti-democracy demagoguery.
With that said, their is no such thing as unbiased news as humans are all biased. At least channels like NPR attempt to be unbiased, unlike the hundreds of propaganda rags all over this country.
If the recipe calls for tofu (and you are not vegan), use Paneer, almost always an improvement.
USA, Minnesota. People hug but ask if you’re a hugger first.
I think it’s funny that only 2 options were given. In India the norm is clasping your own hands together and saying namaste, nomoshkar or some other greeting. No touching. In east Asia a very slight bow is incredibly common.
For much of my adult life I’ve smelled good with or without deodorant and rarely sweat much. Lately whether because of a hormonal change or something wrong I’m unaware of, my smell has changed completely. No amount of deodorant helps, no amount of showering helps. In fact, I often end up using deodorant as a last resort, because whatever bacteria is taking over seams to turn all types of deodorant into vinegar & onions in a matter of minutes, as if it’s feeding off the deodorant. The smell seems to be improving over time, according to other people, not just me. But it has given me additional sympathy for people going through this. When its bad, I can lather my body head to toe in the shower 4 times and come out smelling the same as I went in. Sometimes smells are hard to tackle. You shouldn’t assume it’s a hygiene thing.
Both of which appear to also be dropping in severity with time. If you were to say, people should still be careful and wear masks in a crowd, and generally take covid seriously because it’s still dangerous, I completely agree with you. But at some point continuing to call something a pandemic is abusing the word a little, once it’s being fully managed and generally under control then it’s no longer a pandemic. Our own policy places us somewhere between a pandemic and an endemic, so I suppose it really depends on your definitions of the words and how squishy our perceptions of those words really are.
While I haven’t look at recent data, my understanding is that new covid strains are, on average, getting less deadly and but more contagious as time moves forward. If that is still the case, then what we are really looking at now is an manageable endemic virus instead of a pandemic emergency, it’s becoming more and more like the flu. It’s important to remember that the flu was originally a pandemic that killed millions world wide and then became manageable and endemic. The prevailing scientific belief is that most viruses will slowly become more contagious and less deadly over time as those are the mutations most likely to survive. As the death rates continue to drop over time it’s hard to really call it a pandemic anymore.
And what happens in the unlikely event of system collapse? If some major cataclysmic event wiped out the world economy and half the worlds population, what happens when suddenly thousands of nuclear plants are abandoned and melt down world wide? Nuclear is safer in a vacuum, but we don’t exist in a vacuum. Anything that can happen, will eventually happen. Even if those power plants are able to be shut down safely, in a post stable world, the storage of the spent waste would be incredibly problematic as we would no longer have the capacity or knowledge to bury it 4 miles down. I would say that nuclear power is far more risky long term than people give it credit for. We are evaluating it’s risk only based on the present stability and regulations of our current systems. Modern technological stability is really a tiny blip in earths history, we really can’t guarantee a future that will know what to do with spent nuclear waste. Nuclear power is really an all-in bet on our own technological dominance of the future.
I say this as someone that is not against nuclear power, but I think people view it as some sort of quick fix when it just presents it’s own problems. The truth is, you don’t get something for nothing. All energy costs something and that cost should be distributed between several systems and our consumption should be reduced.
I’ve never much cared for the details of a lot of communities/subs outside of very specialized ones. I’m going to participate if the topic is interesting and learn about the rules as I go. There being multiple communities for the same thing was pretty common on reddit.
Related question, why the fuck do some people feel it necessary to grunt, moan, pant, and otherwise loudly vocalize while shitting? Zero people want to hear you, shut the fuck up, you are gross.
I just don’t feel like Reddit management remembers what the point of their system is. If they have such contempt for the mods and the users, what even is the point anymore. I get that they need to make money, but they need to do it in a way that keeps reddits positive aspects. This can’t end well, the only hope for them is if enough people leave and they readjust their perspective and become a little more self aware. I’m not holding my breath…
Most of those where cops only larping as military. Military operations are a completely different thing. No country wants to fight their own people. Your own logistics, intelligence, supply chains, and financing all rely, in part, on the very people you are fighting… You can’t trust or count on the chain of command at any point, at any point your keys to power can turn on you and you’re dead. Leaders with half a brain know you usually don’t have a long life attacking your own people.