Not often enough. I need to remind myself that reddit is a ridiculously ⬜ space that is so far from being genuinely understanding of the shit POCs deal with. I actually feel bad for not going on Lemmy as much-- I just wish the site was more popping.
It's kind of sad that someone that rich and powerful isn't immune to the addictive nature of Twitter. Like does he not realize how much of a loser he looks like for being so obsessed with what people online think of him?
Love this.
What kind of person do you think I am?
A contrarian who would rather play these stupid games instead of helping a comrade out by recognizing a problem they have and giving good advice? You're not helping here, you're just enabling poor hygiene because you're way too preoccupied with playing the devil's advocate.
You said
Are you doing everything that will better your chances at getting a job or a date?
in response to someone saying
They’re trying to help you learn the things that will help you get a job, or have friends, or go on dates. In short, they’re being a parent. Help them help you.
Notice how you conveniently left out the part about this helping to get a person friends? Instead, you fixated on them being hygienic only for the sake of getting a job or dates. Why did you do that? Surely you understand the importance of hygiene in relation to making/having friends-- something extremely important for one's mental health?
Stop playing this game. It especially sucks because you're playing this contrarian game when someone in a bad situation is basically asking for a reality check, but instead of giving them a reality check you're just entertaining/enabling their incorrect beliefs.
I think you're better off playing it by ear for the time being, and sort of adjusting the rules accordingly as this space grows.
Personally, I'd really like this place to foster serious discussions more than image/meme posts.
I've considered the trades but part of why I chose to get into research science was because although there's racism in science, I've found it less taxing to manage compared to racism in the trades. Trades i.e. carpentry, welding, etc... is just rife with racism. My brother's first day on a construction site, some asshole write "this is where [N-words] are born" on the toilet seat of a portapotty. The foreman was furious and called a meeting, but all the white workers seemed to think it was just a hilarious joke and refused to name the guy who did it. Plenty more racist garbage ensued after that too.
Experiences like that... I don't think I've ever experienced something like that in science. My brother thankfully decided to quit the trades after a while and now works in healthcare. Still deals with racism but nothing even remotely close to what he dealt with in the trades.
Laying flat is more effective, IMO. For those of us who are BIPOC, I wish I could explain to my white leftist allies just how much more difficult it is for us to get good paying jobs with decent job security.
I think telling largely poor people that the best thing they can do to destroy this system is to embrace it enough until they get a good income.
Personally, I truly believe money to be a drug and that no one is truly immune to the powers of corruption that money holds. I've seen far too many good people get corrupted by the power that money offers.
Edit: My brother and I were talking about this thread and he raised a good point. For every dollar you make as a worker, your work contributes to your employer making considerably more money in profit. This is why laying flat or at the very least living a life that requires as little money/reliance as possible is the way to go, I think. It's like fighting a war where for every bullet you produce, you inadvertently produce 10 more for the enemy and still expect to win the fight.
This is an excellent approach. That being said, nearly all the boomers I know who used to rip on me for not having a college degree are now the very same people who say shit like "oh MISTER scientist over here with his fancy education, thinks he knows EVERYTHING about climate change!" when climate change was a major component of my research.
Boomers' unique problem is that it's deeply ingrained in their minds that unless the man on the TV talks about a subject, they shouldn't take said subject seriously. I told boomers about January 6th weeks before it happened and pointed to a number of leaked discussions from the Proud Boys and various far-right groups, but no-- I was dismissed as an alarmist.
Then when January 6th DID happen, the boomers I know who watch CNN did a complete 180 and acted as if "OBVIOUSLY this was going to happen", suddenly parroting word for word what CNN anchors were saying.
The problem as I see it is that boomers and most gullible people put far too much weight into the one way conversation that is TV. There's no comments section for people to call out mistakes and provided sources and despite how often boomers go on their phone, they conveniently claim they're too old to use Google and learn how to fact check. Instead, if their friend Bob tells them he heard from a friend that [bullshit] happened, they're more inclined to just roll with it and believe Bob because Bob is their friend, and their friends are like themselves-- trustworthy and knowledgeable! Because Bob has experience!
Personally, I've given up talking to boomers about anything political/scientific. I'd much rather talk to millennials who are at the very least, far less inclined to fall for the "man on TV told me so, and man on TV can't just lie on TV-- they have high broadcasting standards" trap. Boomers have this bizarre belief that whatever news source they consider reputable, be it CNN or FOX, they simply wouldn't be allowed to push incorrect or intentionally misleading/sensationalist news because they seriously believe that news corporations hold themselves to standards no different than peer-reviewed academic journals.
I don't think all boomers are hopelessly ignorant, but I have a finite amount of time and patience. Bearing that in mind, I'd rather spend an hour explaining a topic like climate change to a truly open-minded millennial/Gen X/Gen Z who is genuinely willing to learn, than 3 hours with a boomer who by the end of the discussion just sort of pulls the classic "ehhh you say that but I don't know..." nonsense.
I'm at a point where I sort of view their level of gullibility at the point of being a mental health issue because of how deeply it impacts various aspects of their lives, and I'm not an expert on mental health issues. I think capitalism has done a number on these peoples' brains and that's the elephant in the room.
edit: I should also add that conservatives are also another group I simply don't have the patience to talk to, for similar reasons. Young conservatives share the same fundamentally flawed approach to how they learn as boomers but their approach is arguably even worse because of how they use the internet as an echo chamber, without ever putting any meaningful effort into challenging their views.
No, and I really do not at all understand how you and so many other people inexplicably believe that Omicron is the last variant of concern when the overwhelming majority of scientists and medical researchers continuously warn of new variants emerging, as they have throughout the last two years.
How can you say Omicron is not dangerous enough for restrictions to make sense anymore when the variant's high level of infection translated to more people dying?
I don’t think a new more dangerous variant will emerge. If it did, I’d think that to be rather suspicious.
What on earth are you basing this off of? I'm a research scientist and while my field isn't related to medical sciences, I know enough to learn from research scientists in the medical field who have been repeatedly saying that new variants will inevitably emerge. This is basic biology and it's mind blowing how COVID exhaustion has lead people to conveniently downplay how serious COVID is and will continue to be in the future.
At the very least, mask wearing in buildings needs to continue to be normalized. N95 masks clearly offer protection for the wearer and more so for anyone around the wearer, as it significantly limits spread of COVID. Why or how could you possibly think that a new, more dangerous variant of COVID would be "suspicious" when basic biology tells us that this virus, just like any other similar virus, will always have new variants? Do you have any educational background in science or medicine that you're basing your opinion off of?
Evidently not :(