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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • I understand why people always say things like this. It’s the not having a choice that ruins eternity. Fortunately it seems that such a fate is physically impossible in this reality. Even if you were made of the most durable possible material, you would still fundamentally be composed of baryonic matter, which means if you fell into a star, collided with a celestial object at relativistic speed, or fell into a black hole, you would surely die. There is always a way out for an enterprising immortal, and afterwards sweet nothing.


  • Fire is a natural and necessary part of many ecosystemsm. It keeps parasitic insect populations down, stuff like ticks and chiggers, and some plant species rely on fire to prepare the soil for seeds and even is required for some plants to release their seeds. In dry ecosystems like the western USA it also consumes old dead plant material, reducing the fuel available for future fires and reducing fire severity overall. Many foresters and fire fighters advocate for increasing prescribed burns, essentially forest fires that we light on purpose in cooler and wetter times of the year to consume the fuel without risking a catastrophic fire that is difficult to control. I just think that’s neat.


  • applebusch@lemmy.worldtoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldOddity Quality
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    2 months ago

    I’d just like to point out that while women are certainly victims of rape and their likelihood to be raped in their life is far higher, they are far from the only victims of rape. Men are also victims of rape, but often their victimhood is marginalized and ignored, forcing them to suffer in silence or find what little support they can from their romantic partner, if they are lucky enough to have one that doesn’t leave or trivialize their feelings. Women face these same challenges, but they can find support in loved ones, family members, and romantic partners, or failing that at least at women’s shelters. Support that may be nonexistent for their brother or father or partner. To make everything worse, men bear the specter of rape and the rapists who committed it. People feel the need to take precautions with male strangers, acquaintances, and even friends, which can damage their relationships with the men around them, even if those men never have or would rape anyone. All of this is fucked up. I’m not sure why I took the time to type this, but what I’m trying to say is there are reasons why some men have that perception of women. When you are starved of affection and love, see a romantic partner as the only viable means to get it, and constantly feel alienated by what you see as your only viable romantic partners, it’s easy to start resenting them. Men see women turning down with disgust more love than they could hope to be offered in a lifetime, their one goal as they drown in their loneliness, and of course they assume women have it easy. It’s wrong, obviously, on even a cursory inspection, but loneliness and depression don’t exactly encourage critical thinking and deep emotional introspection.





  • To me the ring feels more like heroine or cocaine or something, you know one of the drugs that just make people feel good. The hobbits had no real ambition for more than a good life, and they pretty much all already had that, so when Bilbo or Frodo used the ring it was like “heh, nice” and then they went back to their great life with no desire to use it again. Of course they’re basically microdosing while they carry it so they eventually start to incur the cost. Frodo only really starts to get corrupted after months of grueling travel and suffering, and losing hope of ever returning to his life in the Shire. Everyone else has all these obligations and ambitions that weigh on them, and much like regular people they’ve given up varying degrees of their happiness to further those goals, so the ring would feel like getting back everything they’ve sacrificed and being happy again, or for the first time for some. The metaphor is a bit of a stretch, but I think it fits broadly with these magical artifacts that corrupt people. Just like cocaine, heroin, meth, morphine, or whatever, they give people a feeling that they can’t just get over. It’s biology, they hijack the reward system so we have no choice but to push the feel good button unless we can overcome the urge through willpower or getting whatever feeling the drug or magical artifact is replacing naturally. Some people only get so corrupted but some just keep going, chasing the dragon and replacing more and more of their life with the fake feelings of the drug or magical item.









  • It doesn’t feel like there’s any real alternative to Google search. Most of the privacy based search websites are really just Google or Bing on the backend. The only other index is Yandex the Russian one, which, yeah. I’m happy to be proven wrong, but the internet search space is approaching peak enshittification, and it doesn’t look like anyone is stepping up to meaningfully change anything. No private companies seem willing to actually square up with Google, considering the investment it would take. Honestly I don’t see things getting better anytime soon. This is just another symptom of the erosion of the social contract in the US and the rampant greed that’s driving it. Nothing we can do can’t be enshittified by bad actors in this environment. Not to be too US centric, most of the big tech companies are based here so our garbage culture fucks over everyone.