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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • There doesn’t seem to be a pattern for whatever name politicians become known by colloquially, except last name is most common. Hillary makes sense to distinguish her from Bill, but I remember people generally using her first and last. Kamala is usually Kamala, but you see Harris too. Trump is Trump, but you’ll see people use his first name at times (like r/TheDonald). Biden is still referred to as Joe occasionally. Bernie was much more common than Sanders. For supreme court justices, it’s usually last name or first and last. I’ve never seen anyone refer to AOC as just Alexandria. Obama is Obama, but I’ve seen Barack in really informal contexts. Nancy Pelosi is first and last. Elizabeth Warren is either first and last or just last.


  • I still can’t find anything about him being a pedophile. If you have something you can link about it I would genuinely like to know.

    He was never given a reason for his permanent ban, but it is thought to be for for his view on trans athletes. He was temporarily banned earlier for saying “the rioting needs to fucking stop, and if that means like white redneck fucking militia dudes out there mowing down dipshit protesters that think that they can torch buildings at ten p.m., then at this point they have my fucking blessing…” in regards to a BLM protest, which was considered inciting violence. Not saying that’s a great statement but it’s pretty clear he’s talking about rioters specifically.

    But neither of these thing make him a nazi. That label shouldn’t just be thrown around casually.


  • It’s interesting that he seems to get a lot of accusations of being far-right by the far-left and far-left by the far-right. I don’t know if there was some controversy I missed that inspired the pedophile comment, but calling him a borderline nazi is frankly ridiculous.

    Here’s the introduction to his wikipedia page for anyone curious:

    Steven Kenneth Bonnell II (born December 12, 1988), known online as Destiny, is an American live-streamer and political commentator. He was among the first people to stream video games online full-time and received attention as a pioneer of the industry.[4] Since 2016, he has garnered further attention for streaming political debates with other online personalities, in which he advocates for progressivism and liberal politics.[5][6] The New York Times has described Bonnell as a liberal,[2] while Bonnell has described himself as “a very big social democrat”.[6]


  • I think you’ll be hard pressed to find someone progressive enough for lemmy to like that will also be interesting to a Joe Rogan fan. I would recommend Destiny though. I wouldn’t say he’s like Joe Rogan, but he frequently does debates with commentators of all politcal positions including those with similar beliefs to Joe. He has an aggressive, confrontational style that would be your best bet at trying to demonstrate the weaknesses of the views Joe would advocate for.

    If you’re not familiar with his views, Destiny could probably be described as a left-leaning liberal institutionalist moderate. His community can attract a variety of viewpoints and is relatively accepting of criticism for Destiny so your brother would have an easier time interacting with them than someone like Hasan.

    It’s nice you are trying to look out for your brother like this. Good luck!


  • It wasn’t my decision, but getting fired from an exhausting job was amazing for me. I wasn’t going to pull the trigger myself, but walking out of my boss’s office I couldn’t keep a huge grin off my face. I was in no rush to find a new job so the months of uneployment that followed were some of the happiest of my life. And I have a better job now that pays less but is so much less stressful.


  • Ideally, an audience would pick up on the bad-faith side not addressing arguments, engaging in personal attacks, making unjustified claims, etc. and be unimpressed. The interrupting especially should prompt some intervention by a moderator, but usually they don’t have a means of preventing it from happening other than chastising after the fact so it still relies on some degree of human decency.

    I’d still call it a debate, just a poor quality one.


  • Emojis are used very widely, including places meant specifically for young kids. These places would already censor words, but requiring emoji censorship as well is adding complexity to a problem that is already difficult to handle. Companies not on the ball with the release of sexual organ emojis would let kids see that until it’s added to their filter list. Kids wouldn’t know what it means, but it can lead to them googling for context or encourage a conversation with the predator using it if they ask about it.

    Honestly, I just don’t think it’s worth the headache. Eggplants and peaches and cats are already pretty easy to understand in context, and if you need more than the emojis we already have, we do have our old fashioned words.



  • That’s true, but the information age allows us to be more keenly aware of problems that aren’t just local. Our new ability to be online has contributed to an uptick in mental health issues.

    Fortunately, being able to shine a spotlight on problems in the world also puts pressure on us to improve. We do have issues like financial inequality and global warming that have recently gotten worse, but if you look at trends like violent crime, illiteracy, global hunger, extreme poverty, child mortality, or deaths to many longstanding diseases, it is hard not to realize that we’re actually collectively doing a good job of making the world better.





  • I’ve only been at two jobs that offered an FSA but both had resources explaining clearly that it is use it or lose it. And my personal risk aversion is why I chose an HSA instead. But it seems like a good idea for people to be able to save money by saying “This isn’t really income, since I am confident it’s only going to a demonstratable health expense. So don’t tax me on it.” It’s like a business expense can be tax deductible, and you are in the business of living. But then you don’t get to take home extra money for being under budget. When used correctly, it’s a tool to drive down living expenses and is more efficient for lower incomes since it uses a flat max annual deduction.

    I don’t want to victim blame people that lose money by overcommitting, but it’s not like this is in fine print. You can get short articles that explain it in simple terms just by googling “fsa” before committing thousands of dollars to something. If you don’t have much idea what your minimum spending on healthcare will be, just keep it as income for full freedom or use a different tax-advantaged option. It’s just meant to be an option for people with good awareness of budgetting to save some money.



  • Piracy leaves creators worse off when it deprives them of a sale, as in you would have paid for something but instead just pirated it because not paying was an option. So I pirate stuff I think is worth my time, but not my money. I then consider it victimless. Maybe that movie is interesting enough to watch but not enough to rent/buy, so I would pirate it. I’m now at a point where money isn’t as scarce as it used to be, so the prices of entertainment seem reasonable and I am much more willing to pay.

    There are a couple of exceptions to the above. I pirated almost every textbook I could since the fact that a student requires one specific product puts the customer in an exploitable position that allows the seller to charge unreasonable amounts (and used books have none of their proceeds go back to the creator anyway). Also, there is no issue with pirating content no longer being sold, since the creators aren’t being deprived of anything. This is mostly relevant for me with old video games on emulators.



  • Without knowing more about your life, this kinda sounds like burnout to me. It is very common is tech fields especially. I would recommend trying to dial back on work if it’s killing your soul like this.

    I worked at a high-paying dev job right out of college that consumed my life and put me in a very bad place mentally. I could not sustainably output what I needed to, and evetually I got fired. But walking out of the meeting I could not stop smiling from the tremendous relief I felt (this was when Covid was big so I had a mask on fortunately). It was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I was unemployed for a few months afterwards which is probably the happiest I’ve ever been. I didn’t travel or do anything noteworthy besides starting a small passion project. Finances weren’t an issue since I had a lot saved up and low expenses covered by unemployment.

    After applying to places in no rush whatsoever and stressing my newfound appreciation for work-life balance in interviews, I ended up getting a job at a nonprofit government-adjacent company with full work-from-home and basically no time tracking. I make less but I can go through things at a pace I can handle and it makes a world of difference.

    So if you have felt this way for a while I would recommend taking a break before committing to abandoning civilization. People with tech jobs like us tend to have options so don’t feel like it has to be misery or the wilderness. Because I can promise you there are places that will allow you to live as a human being. And it may just reignite your passion too. If you still feel like it after stepping away for a time, you can always escape society more dramatically later instead.

    Also, I don’t want to diagnose you or anything when I don’t even know you but there could be some overlap with depression here when you lose passion for life and just generally become jaded at the world like this. Make sure you are communicating how you feel with people you feel comfortable around. Remember that things can always get better, although it sounds like you have been thinking about how to achieve that plenty already. But if things aren’t getting better, you might need to be the instigator for that change so I wouldn’t be afraid to go for it after exploring easier stuff first. Maybe just give camping a shot while you figure this out.

    I didn’t mean for this to get so long, but your post resonated with me a lot I guess!


  • I wouldn’t stress over it. Employers look for someone in an umbrella of majors, because every school is going to have its own names and standards for their class templates. If I saw someone list community development as a major, I would think it would overlap a great deal with urban development, with maybe a bit more focus into civil engineering or sustainability. You’ll want to explain how your background is relevant to a position in the interview anyway. I wouldn’t expect it to get you eliminated before then.

    Also, it’s a cool opportunity to stand out with how it differs from a more traditional major. People like hearing how you chose to include something that you felt was lacking from the default path because you thought it was important. Choosing to specialize demonstrates thoughtfulness, passion, and mastery. You’ll be fine.



  • It’s hard to choose “one piece” of knowledge, so I would try to persuade whoever is writing the book to include the time traveler’s cheat sheet. https://i.imgur.com/O6vSrvq.jpg

    I didn’t make it, but includes a lot of information that didn’t have an intuitive path to discovery, but a lot of practical benefits for humanity. If I were to add to it I would try to include at least descriptions of a few other things:

    • batteries
    • engines
    • simple computers (although this may be more involved than the earlier parts combined, so perhaps just simple logic gate diagrams)
    • genes
    • a guttenberg press
    • lenscrafting
    • a world map
    • calculus
    • special and general relativity (also complicated certainly, but could be useful later)
    • and basically as many physics equations as I can think of