Love it! I’ve saved a copy, because I think it’ll make future explanations a lot easier. Thanks!

Initially I did yeah, but eventually learned that different people use it differently. So good practice to never assume sarcasm through emojis unless you know the person well

I do suspect Qi is a useful abstract concept for focusing and activating parts of our physiology. But while it feels like a single thing (“energy”), it is more a very complex bunch of processes the same way our consciousness feels like a single thing, but is actually a very complex bunch of processes.

Really hope Jesus makes his comeback via an appearance on RuPaul. The bible does say it will be unexpected.

Ah okay, cheers for the info! I’m new to US-based sources

I grew up as a Christian. When I was around 15, someone asked me “if I hadn’t been born a Christian, would I be a Christian?” Considering it, I opened my Bible and immediately a verse popped out (in classic God fashion) saying “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have”

So then I felt called even more to really explore, based on that:

• 1. I couldn’t currently defend my faith reasonably
• 2. If God was actually real, he wouldn’t be scared of people exploring arguments against Christianity, because the faith would be based on something ultimately true.
• 3. By exploring other faiths, arguments, etc, if I returned as a Christian, I would have a much stronger faith.

The more I explored these arguments, as well as gaining a better understanding of what the Bible actually is (in a historical and literature sense), more and more of the belief system unraveled, eventually to the point I didn’t call myself a Christian anymore.

Then over the next decade I went back and forth exploring alternative denominations in Christianity, as well as other religions (Daoism, Buddhism, Judaism), especially as I still felt a “spiritual pull” / intuition in a lot of situations. So it took me a really long time to separate that intuitive sense of direction from the belief system around the Holy Spirit specifically, and learn where trusting that intuition is effective, and where it can be misleading. That’s been the most complex part of all of this.

I still enjoy exploring other belief systems, components of Christianity, and connecting with whatever that intuition is occasionally, as I do think there is a lot there for human psychological and emotional health that Western modernity sorely lacks. (I suspect this hole in our culture is why a lot of fundamental US Evangelism has flourished btw)

But that’s how I lost my faith - God gave me the push I needed :P

Might not be exactly what you have in mind, but I have a separate browser that has set as Home the following state-owned or aligned news sources from around the world to check different perspectives on current headlines:

https://www.bbc.com/ - Britain

https://www.abc.net.au/news - Australia

https://english.news.cn/ - China

https://www.foxnews.com/ - US Right-wing

https://edition.cnn.com/ - US Left-wing (@GuyFawkes recommends MSNBC over CNN here)

https://www.rt.com/ - Russia

https://english.alarabiya.net/ - Saudi Arabia

https://www.dw.com/en/top-stories/s-9097 - Germany

https://www.batimes.com.ar/ - Argentina

https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/ - South Africa

https://ddnews.gov.in/en/ - India

https://www.cbc.ca/news - Canada

https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/en - Brazil

https://www.straitstimes.com/global - Singapore

https://news.un.org/en/ - United Nations

https://www.sbs.com.au/news - Australia, but more multicultural perspective

I would just like to push back and say that the Internet was an open public project, and it has helped countless people across the world. Every single problematic tech that people are pointing to at the moment are closed-source commercial projects.

That is Capitalism at work.

Bloomberg and others are funding the Paris agreement for the US, where the government pulled out: https://www.bloomberg.org/press/un-special-envoy-michael-r-bloomberg-announces-effort-to-ensure-u-s-honors-paris-agreement-commitments/

Lol. Pythagoras - considered one of the gods to maths teachers - explicitly talked about the mathematical beauty of music. Where was this person trained?

I’ve already made this a separate post, but I do think it is very relevant to this. You can already start finding alternatives to US-centralized software and digital services, and these two sites are a great start:

https://switching.software/

https://european-alternatives.eu/alternatives-to

Thanks for heads up! I’ve shared that link to my circles

You know, if the mainstream news spent this amount of oxygen explaining that it can be downloaded in various sizes and run securely, the whole world would be in a much better situation.

I am not saying that China don’t do some of the things they are accused of, but the amount of anti-China fear in Western nations is only hurting ourselves.

Remember there have been worse times and you are descended mostly from people who survived them.

I love this

I’m not in the US (thinking of you guys everyday), but when I found myself feeling depressed by the direction of big tech, I realized that open-source and the Fediverse was the healthy and exciting way forwards. It was the one thing that felt like I remember the internet feeling like in the late 90s. I think you are spot on. It is the only way that democracy can survive in tech.

They actually can’t. Being open-source, it’s already proliferated. Apparently there are already over 500 derivatives of it on HuggingFace. The only thing that could be done is that each country in the West outlaws having a copy of it, like with other illegal materials. Even by that point, it will already be deep within business ecosystems across the globe.

Nup. OpenAI can be shut down, but it is almost impossible for R1 to go away at this point.

and it’s open-source!

Sooo… after hearing what he just said at the AfD rally, I take this back. Block that cursed shit.

I think both Twitter and Musk are incredibly toxic for society, but we don’t want to set that precedent. People can make their own choice whether to visit the site. At most, links to Twitter should be flagged as such.