This is absolutely a kind of rage-bait.
I don't doubt that there's a growing segment of misogynistic boys who have been influenced by Tate and our society's general check-out when it comes to being communal and supporting each other and the absolute bullshit mess that social media and online dating has created for young relationships, the statistics are abysmal and worrying...
But that said, the large majority of all Americans at any age are still pretty much just getting through it like always.
These kinds of stories, while beneficial that they are highlight and showing us problems that need to be addressed, all they're doing without a prescriptive solution or counter-point is just wedging this division in our community further and further apart. It's making girls scared of boys. It's making boys scared that girls will think they're horrible misogynists, and thus they will be defensive at the ready accusations and the exchanges spiral from there.
It's revolting that we cling to hateful figures so readily. They give us validation for pent-up frustration and anger at a system that has abandoned us. That's why it's addicting to read about horrible things and horrible people. Which makes horrible things and horrible people. Our addiction to hating people is creating people like Tate, because our desire to hate someone makes us click on these stories over and over and feel that righteous outrage that seems to make everything make sense. It's addicting and we need to recognize it and stop imbibing in it.
We need to store the waste for thousands of years. This is bad.
I feel like you didn't read my comment and just wanted to talk about thorium. Which is fine, yes I know it generates less waste and creates its own fuel and all that, I am speaking about nuclear waste as we know it right now, from our hundreds of traditional power plants, the things that MOST people associate with dangers of nuclear waste. Which I explained is not even remotely the problem people think it is, because the actual amount is so small and those thousands of years pass in a blink of an eye deep under earth's crust.
Thorium is good. Traditional nuclear power is also good.
How old are you? Have to you learned history?
Have you been paying attention to anything? Like, at all? Did you just wake up from a coma?
I'm reading this from next to a very large stack of non-perishable goods and bottled water.
remember they predate upon other birds’ chicks, etc.
Wait 'til you see what humans do!
I love how almost none of this discussion is about nuclear power or thorium and just about people wanting to feel morally correct about something and snarling back and forth at each other accusing the other of supporting genocide.
Our species is so cooked. We must be the first species to evolve with our heads up our own asses.
For the amount of actual nuclear waste, it kind of is. Earth is so huge and the amount of waste so small, that you could bury literally ALL of it under a mountain somewhere and chances are high that it would never see daylight again nor would never be found by anyone in the future.
Even despite this, extraordinary measures are taken to make sure nothing escapes the containment until such time that Earth's crust has completely rolled down into the mantle or the mountain erodes, which by then it wouldn't be nuclear waste anymore.
Most of the species on earth will go extinct again
FTFY
Humanity having enough power that their mistakes can destroy the world isn’t normal.
As someone born in the cold war, I can't relate. It's always been this way as long as I've been alive, so if something has been a way as long as anyone can remember, I think it's pretty safe to call it "normal" at least for our species. This is what we do, this is how we operate.
I really believe if we accepted that our human nature gives us a lot of very bad baggage and our entire conscious experience is often an illusion assembled by millions of years of evolution, and that we may never rise above our instincts, we actually might start making progress towards a more equitable future.
Kinda like when you're an alcoholic or other kind of addict, if you finally accept that you have a problem, you learn eventually that you can't trust yourself so you make measures ahead of time like hiding your wallet, disabling your credit card, etc. It's wild that a lot of people consider very successful tactics like this to be a "cop out" and live in this delusion that we "should be better" and can somehow rise above our own natures. Like telling a fish it can fly if it really, really tries hard enough. It's setting you up for failures and frustrations.
Me who was denied an education and raised by a cult family in the wilderness for the first 20 years, and had to escape and learn everything and get an education on my own, and still somehow managed to learn the importance of voting for qualified candidates, reading this and taking notes
Lemmy is barely a thing. Lets not get ahead of ourselves.
People do prefer centralized platforms with shiny front-faces and easy-to-navigate corporate bullshit. The reason why that stuff is so successful is because it works.
People fled to Bluesky because advertisers moved to Bluesky.
But maybe some kind of resilience to the forces of destruction plaguing commercial social media.
This isn't going to be the effective slogan that turns the masses who are finally just barely starting to fill Bluesky.
As soon as any platform sees a measure of success, it becomes a product and thus vulnerable. If we want social media that isn't just a massive propaganda and advertising machine, I feel like we need to change something else.
Like physically storming corporate offices and returning the means of production to the people?
Maybe.
I can already tell I won't enjoy conversing about this with you, it's okay, have a good one.
It seems like you’re directing this at me,
I actually wasn't but I do appreciate the brutally honest and non-combative reply, this is exactly the window into how the foreign and domestic forces working tirelessly to amplify contention and hate have subverted our very spirit and left us not wanting to care about anything anymore.
This isn't entirely the fault of the population, but the population can and should at least more informed of this tactic so they don't doom-scroll the worst clips and gifs, the pandering content, the screaming matches and "debates" and news stories from dubious outlets. We need to do this so we all take better care of our minds, this is part of the whole story... your mind is vulnerable and selfish forces will sell out your mental wellbeing and sovereignty so they can keep making line go up.
If you take care of your mind like your body, if you take care with what you put into it, it will be stronger and healthier and you can make better decisions. This is why they are attacking the very notion of "mental health" by the way. They want a depressed, checked-out population of serfs working the fields and buying the latest iPhone as soon as it lands.
The election was real.
The millions of contentious voices on Facebook, twitter, reddit and so on were not. They used the KGB handbook to play the basic tactic of amplifying the worst contention on both sides of literally every issue, leaving the general, moderate population absolutely checked out and uninterested in involvement.
When you don't feel connected to your community, what do you do? You ignore it, you don't work to better it.
While I say this was from the KGB handbook (literally) I don't think they were the only forces at work, I think it's just an effective tactic that everyone who wants to control or subvert the richest, most powerful nation on earth (a nation already sabotaged by "fierce individualism") will readily employ so that democracy no longer stands between them and the prize.
When the goal is "line go up for infinity" the soil itself is a commodity that will be dug up and sold. I really feel like ya'll still aren't realizing what's happening. Almost half the population didn't get involved, and the ones who did had no media literacy or involvement in politics, as evident by the absolutely bonkers exit polling. We're at that scene in the Die Hard sequel where the dump trucks are driving the gold out of the city.
It’s really easy to blame non-voters when you have the privilege of civic literacy
This is a helluva line I that I'm absolutely stuck on.
I don't even know how to approach it... civic literacy as a privilege? I feel like that's an entirely new term invented as a way of avoiding accountability tbh. I get that it's hard to vote, and I get people who have to work all the time, but I don't get pushback against the idea that we're just not making the effort or trying to push through challenges for a better future. Fuck that, I don't care. Ya'll gonna learn one way or another what accountability means.
I feel so bad for you. Now excuse me while I go back to living inside of it.
Drugs tend to make people really metastasize into whatever ideology gets stuck in their head.
I feel like we sunk ourselves by being the faction of humanity that wants a better future, equality for all, which includes respecting the unique lives of every person and ensuring that we don't needlessly shame or harm people who very well could have been us. We, the side with innate empathy to a fault, the side that champions quiet contemplation and lofty ideals for the descendants we will never meet.
And while we're in the midst of trying to build this better tomorrow, we have the other side of our species, just fucking rampaging through the countryside like savage orcs, not only do they not give a flaming fuck about body shaming, that's the only language they know. So much so that they don't just want every other person to feel shame, they want to be the ones who cause it, they want to take your bodily right away from you, and use your very weaknesses against you.
They learned from you. They peered from the shadows as you nurtured the needy and gave hope to the sick, they learned that if they just cry "Stop! You're being mean!" that you will lower your sword and you will recite your oath that you will not be like them.
And behind the safety of this banner, THEY HAVE TAKEN THAT WHICH WE HAVE SPENT 10,000 YEARS BUILDING.
Fuck that noise, we have to take gloves off and fight them on their land. Which used to be our land. And sorry to anyone out there who has a small penis, stop using attacks on the deserving to justify what other orc have made you think about yourself in the past. Rise up and fight with us, so that your kids won't have to endure the same pain. THEY weaponized all of our vulnerabilities, not just your dick.