But they DO have the exclusive right. People want to be told the world is different - that it’s better - but if we want to change it we need to see it for what it is. If we say “They don’t have the right!” before we’ve done the work necessary to strip them of the right, then we’ll never even understand how to start fixing this broken system.

Well yeah, as the owners they have the exclusive right to determine what’s okay. They’re just following the rules as they’ve been laid out by centuries of corporate lobbying for more exploitable copyright laws. Those are what we need to focus on if we want more fair use of intellectual property that the rights holder has already sufficiently profited from - the thing that such protections were initially meant to ensure to a much more reasonable extent.

It’s easier to just not give them any other options for so long that they forget it was ever any different.

Maybe just this once, for old time’s sake.

I sure hope so, but I don’t see much changing. I guess we’ll see by looking at where Reddit is at business-wise by next year. People were saying it was doomed last summer after the 3rd party app fiasco, and their daily traffic has only gone up since then. I’ve long since lost all faith in the masses making the best choices for themselves.

They’re better than the OLD alternative, which was total boycotting at best, and torches and pitchforks at worst. The NEW alternative is complaining about it for a week or two, then continuing on without making any changes at all. They don’t mind the new alternative.

Well, it worked with the news.

The point of whisleblower laws is to make people feel like a lack of whistleblowers means a lack of things to blow whistles over. Then all they have to do is silence any whistles before they’re heard by the general population and boom, public trust in the system is strengthened without actually needing to do anything drastic like actually fixing the system.

A lot of cops are so high strung that you essentially have to pretend you’re having the time of your life while interacting with them - any nervousness or annoyance is taken to mean that you’re potentially a violent criminal who could kill them at any moment.

Just the realization that a woman holding a pot of hot water could hypothetically use it as a weapon, however unlikely it was in this scenario, was enough to make him instinctively shoot with only minor notice that still did nothing to prevent him from killing her even as she began cowering and apologizing.

This is the culture we’ve allowed the police to build in this country; the job is dangerous, and they’re only human, so they believe they should be forgiven for being scared regardless of the situation, and should be forgiven for taking drastic measures while they’re scared.

I put my alarm far enough away that I need to get up to turn it off. By then I’m already out of bed, which is otherwise the hardest part for me by far.

Yeah, my mom used to be upset that I didn’t hold onto my old pokemon cards, but not only did I never have any rare ones that would be worth anything anyway, I used them how I wanted to when I wanted to, and when they stopped interesting me, I gave them to someone who was still interested. I don’t regret that.

I realized that later, yeah. That’s not something that a kid would usually realize is bad on their own, though; if it’s something you and everyone you know has always done, most people wouldn’t think to question it.

For me it was when I was around 8 or 9 and met someone from Kenya. They could speak perfect English, wore normal clothes, and talked about having electricity. I’d literally never been told that those things existed in Africa - every reference to that continent only talked about tribes and jungles, save for Egypt which only talked about ruins and deserts. I asked around and found that most of the rest of the world has the same stuff we have, and most countries have a functioning government. I was so confused - why were we the country of freedom when everyone else has the same thing?

At the time I just assumed that there was something I was missing, or maybe the rest of the world just caught up to our idea, but eventually I came to the conclusion that they tell us we’re the country of freedom - and keep our studies of other countries to a minimum when we’re young - so that we can internalize the rhetoric that our country is the best before we find out that most other countries about the same, and often better in certain ways.

While that’s true, they still believe you’re lesser if you’re different. The jewish person in the anti-semetic group and the trans person calling for the end of trans healthcare will still be the first on the chopping block if the goals of those groups come to fruition. They’re like pets to them - animals that aren’t on the dinner table only because they serve a better purpose alive than dead.

They’re actually a lot more consistent than this post makes them out to be. If you’ve got every single thing on their list that makes you a man - from the genitalia, to the physique, to the likes and dislikes, to the sexual orientation, to the behavior - you’re a man. Same for a woman. If you’re anything less, then they’ve just found their excuse to revoke your humanity in their own minds. You’re different from them, and so now you’re lesser than them. The same thing applies to people of different skin colors, religions, etc.

That’s how those types of people have always been - they think of themselves as “nice people, but only to those who deserve it” which essentially just means a horrible person to everyone but people exactly like themselves. They honestly believe that any less means they’re entirely justified to hate you. All they need is one little thing to point to, and any amount of harassment or worse is “only fair.”

Small price to pay, imo. When my job was forcing everyone back into the office in 2021 I just picked out one of the headhunters who contacted me on linkedin, got an offer for a remote position with better pay, and brought it to my employer to get a raise and the go-ahead to keep working remotely. I’ll suffer the occasional spam email for the knowledge that I have options for another job lined up pretty much whenever.

Most republicans I know believe that their party, like their country and their religion, needs to be followed blindly; if their party supports it, it’s good, and if their party rejects it, it’s bad. End of story. No more thought will, or should, be put into it.

The people who go on and on about how America is the best because “freedom” are now working out whatever mental gymnastics they need to perform to justify voting for the man who said if you vote for him you won’t need to vote anymore. They already chose to support Trump and his party - nothing they say or do anymore will change that decision.

That’s the issue with American politics. It’s so overtaken by corporate lobbying that “good candidate” and “electable candidate” are mutually exclusive.

I was never full-on incel, but I was definitely headed down that path. I was a late-20’s fat guy with severe acne all over my upper body, and I’d obviously never had a girlfriend. I looked ahead in life and just saw it going further and further downhill. I tried dieting, working out, etc, but none of my attempts at making a change ever lasted.

One day I saw a facebook post that one of my old highschool classmates had gotten married. The guy looked a lot like me, and at first I was mad - I had that classic incel thought of “why is he successful and not me?” But after sitting in that dark place for awhile, I realized that the answer to that question is that I can be successful! I realized that I’d never tried to put myself out there because I always viewed myself as not being worthy - I needed to be fitter, more attractive, better at talking to people, etc - but did I really? I wanted to find out, so I made an online dating account, cleaned myself up, got a friend to take some nice pictures of me doing things I enjoyed, and put myself out there.

I made a goal for myself to never start a conversation with “Hey” or something similar - I went through every profile I found and picked something specific to talk about. It took a while, and I missed a lot of opportunities by being awkward, but eventually I got good enough at holding a conversation to secure a few dates, and in only a few months of that, I found the woman who is now my wife!

I’m still fat, but having someone to look good for was at least enough for me to shower more regularly, which cleared up a lot of my acne. I’m still pretty awkward, but so is my wife, and we both find it endearing. Life’s not perfect - there are still issues - but I’m no longer looking ahead at my life and seeing only downhill trajectory; I have a sense of optimism I didn’t have before, and it mostly came from me accepting myself. I’m not sure if other incels are the same as I was - not realizing that the one they actually hate is themselves - but I hope that if they are, they eventually come to the same realization that I did: that they are worthy.

My wife and I usually plan big vacations about a year in advance so that we can follow flight prices and whatnot to get a good deal. We also book a few days at a cabin for our anniversary every year, so we just book the next year’s reservation while we’re there, since reservations can fill up even several months in advance.

Only planning a week in advance seems stressful to me - we planned a last-minute (for us) road trip vacation earlier this month for the long 4th of July weekend, and it was tough to find cheap places to stay that weren’t super grungy.