billionaires are not immortal (yet)
“Nothing lasts forever.”
It’s my HRT birthday today, two years now and it’s really sunny and warm. It’s a nice day :3
Happy HRT-birthday! 🎉
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
I think that is really reassuring
What does that mean? This is one of the most logically true discussions of spirituality I am familiar with. It takes no position on what that condition might be, but addresses the issue in an almost circular reference.
Those who believe we come from nothing cannot argue that somehow, by having lived, we will go on to be something afterwards, per the First Law of Thermodynamics.
Those who believe we have a ‘soul’, something other than our physical bodies, that goes on after we die, admit that we had to have had a soul prior to birth.
And those that believe we are on a wheel, going through life again and again, understand that we are what we always have been, and will continue to be, when we’re not busy living our lives.
https://philosiblog.com/2011/12/05/after-your-death-you-will-be-what-you-were-before-your-birth/
Maybe there’s only one soul. Like in The Egg. It’s just one soul reincarnating into one life after the next, jumping forwards and backwards in space and time. Eventually after passing through the lifetimes of every sentient being that is, was, or ever shall be, the path of reincarnation loops back upon itself. There is only one soul, only one consciousness in the cosmos. One infinite endless circling wheel of experience, all bound in a universe finite in both space and time.
Trump is pretty old, and I cannot think of an example where a movement based around a cult of personality has successfully survived long after their leader has gone. Nor are there any viable successors that are likely to dodge any infighting. JD Vance as a successor? Yeah, ain’t happening.
To summarize, the pendulum will eventually swing the other way. And the worse the MAGA crowd pulls it in their direction now, the harder it will swing.
I cannot think of an example where a movement based around a cult of personality has successfully survived long after their leader has gone.
Most religious cults especially Christianity lol, what a statement
yeah. frankly while most left/liberal dont’ see it, Trump is also a product of the pendulum swinging. we have been on a good spat of liberalization for 30+ years and there was going to be a backlash. and as someone who grew up working class white, i totally get the unfairness and bitterness of so many of those people who the economic/education system has totally abandoned, and the horrible feelings and condescending that comes from the liberal elite/educated set who look down on everyone who isn’t highly educated and living in a coastal city. i got lucky and got to be one of those people, but many of my peers did not.
frankly i find it truly revolting how much of liberal america is so disgusting smug and condescending towards anyone who isn’t exactly like them, and that massively accelerated in the 2010s. used to be in the 2000s people would respect/admire me for working my way from a poor working class family to elite school on scholarship and putting myself through grad school and building al ife for myself… somewhere around 2015 that all became to change though and i repeatedly starting meeting folks who told me that i should have ‘stayed in my place’ and my ‘education is wasted on losers like you’. etc. and that attitude has only gotten worse and worse in the 2020s. i’d say there is a massive massive increase in class snobbery and elitism that didn’t exist 10-20 years ago.
i’ve also noticed progressives have moved away from economic issues largely and are entirely focused on culture war bullshit, esp use trans people and trans rights as the most important thing ever, which has alienated many many people due to the rage and hatred being spouted over it. to me this is a horrible horrible move, and plays right into the right wing’s advantages. because they are offer a much clearer narrative about these things than the left/liberals are. and clear narratives win elections and voters.
what baffles me is how the democrats can’t understand or replicate Obama’s success and messaging and act like he was some act of God. He wasn’t. He just appealed to people’s sentiments and listened to them… just like Trump did in this last election… meanwhile the democrats totally ignore the people and lecture us that they know better than we do what is going on in the country and we should be happy with how things are.
I hope someone on the left/dems capitalized on the severe economic need in this country and steers away from the culture war bullshit. A candidate that wants to actually fix the problems in this country that affect everyone, but it seems nobody is coming forth to do so. And at best we are just getting some candidates who are just going to go with the ‘trump bad, me not trump’ routine again, which we know doesn’t work.
what a lot of people miss in Trumps success is that he had a clear vision people could get behind, even if it was all bullshit and lies.
esp use trans people and trans rights as the most important thing ever, which has alienated many many people due to the rage and hatred being spouted
You have completely and hopelessly fallen for Republican propaganda. You’ve swallowed their entire framing of trans issues without any thought. You’re repeating the Republican Party line verbatim.
Democrats have spent the last decade trying to stay the hell away from the trans rights discussion at every opportunity. They’re not over bigots like Republicans, but they try to talk about literally anything else. Republicans however have continued to scream from the rooftops about trans people, as they try to incite the populous to acts of literal genocide.
Where are all these Democratic leaders that spend all their time talking about trans people? Can you name a single one? You’ve been brainwashed by conservative media.
SPYxFAMILY Season 3 just started. :)
It’s a spy anime with this kid who is as adorable as she is dumb. And we love it. It’s more of a comedy than anything, I think. Kids like it because the adorable little four-year-old saves the day, adults love it because the dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks four-year-old makes adorable faces. We all win.
I like it because it’s a good show that features capable adults (aside from one glaring detail) instead of dumbass teenagers. I just wish it was a little less episodic.
Canada geese and white-tailed deer nearly went extinct. Now they’re considered pests in some areas. It’s possible for nature to bounce back, it just needs to be given a chance.
Pests? If you got a problem with Canada Gooses, you got a problem with me, and I suggest you let that one marinate.
You or the geese?
Gooses!
white-tailed deer
Kamikaze hoses. I some how have not totaled a car on one yet.
The universe is extremely big and empty.
Free Open Source Software is pretty amazing imo
There’s a promising treatment for Huntington’s disease in the works, and we might have vaccines for allergies and/or asthma at some point!
- public libraries are still there.
- Book (physical) can still be purchased and fully owned, without any risk of them being remotely edited or deleted and without nay tracking of our reading habits.
- Walking is still free, without any subscription required.
- It is still legal to turn off one’s phone.
- I love my spouse at least as much as I loved her when we first met almost 30 years ago. And, yep, she seems to kinda like me too ;)
Ebooks can be purchased as well, with a little skill (or reading a tutorial) you can make it undeletable and uneditable as well.
Source: My epub library growing day by day, synced between multiple devices by syncthing.
Ebooks can be purchased as well, with a little skill (or reading a tutorial) you can make it undeletable and uneditable as well.
You’re quite right (at least it used to be easy, I have not checked for some time how hard it is now to get rid of Apple’s and/or Amazon’s DRM… the two main DRM-locked ebook sellers), but keep in mind not everybody feels ok to not respect the rules and/or breach the contract they signed. Also there is no need to that at all with printed books.
Why go through the trouble of purchasing them with DRM and supporting that garbage and doing all the work to make them your own?
Piracy is infinitely superior.
Writers gotta get paid, tho’.
Wallets are twice as likely to be returned as people expect. And the interesting thing is this holds true more or less globally.
I dream of finding the wallet stuffed with enough cash to dig me out of this mess, but in reality, if there’s any way at all to get it back to who dropped it, I will. Found a wallet a few months ago on a day trip, laying in the road. Ending up using the names on the credit cards to Facebook stalk a dude, found his company website, called him, and met him a half hour later to return it. Had like 800 dollars in cash it. I just… Can’t be an asshole, even when it would benefit me
You’re good people, don’t regret it. Incidentally, I’d probably grab a handful of the cash and just hand it to whoever returned the wallet to me like that. It was lost anyway.
Dude was very appreciative, he was panicked because he had pictures and sentimental things in it. Did not offer a reward and we didn’t ask… I did hope. But I didn’t ask. Lol
I would definitely make space for you in my lifeboat.
That’s one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever gotten. Thank you!
We’re actually doing pretty well, globally, at shifting to renewables. We’re making more, more quickly and more cheaply than ever before.
AFAIK, this one isn’t true. CO2 emissions aren’t going down. We’re not getting a word with renewables instead of fossil fuels. We’re getting a world with both of them used in abundance.
And the best part is that this is driven by economics, not even policy at this point. Renewables are cheaper.
Fascism doesn’t actually last that long. At some point, policies have to have some kind of attachment to reality, and fascists are incapable of grappling with reality.
Franco stuck around for quite awhile, but yeah its track record is usually short.
Franco was the first one I thought of. However, his fascism didn’t outlive him, and President Pedophile doesn’t have 36 years to go.
Historians debate just how fascist Franco really was. In fact, Orwell wasn’t even that sure when he wrote Homage to Catalonia, and he was quite clear that he went to Spain expressly to kill a fascist.
Well, we all wish they’d “grapple” with a few rounds at high velocity instead of fingerbanging their own shit and screaming incoherently. They’re infecting the other adult-sized toddlers, and it’s getting tedious to corral at this point.
Here’s one I like: despite the efforts of Big Oil and their orange-painted lackey, the amount of renewable energy generated in the first half of 2025 has surpassed energy generated by fossil means.
Renewables surpassed coal, not all fossil fuels. Renewables were 34%. The good news is they are faster growing.
I stand corrected.
