-Neutral name (sorry SJW)

Boo this person! (I kid, don’t boo them, they’re doing good work and I understand if not everyone wants to be a sh.it.head)

I’d ask how you define evil in this case. To me, an act is evil when the net detriment to the planet and its contents (including humans) is greater than the net benefit it creates, and the actor pursues said act knowing this. I’d argue it scales with the nature and context of the act. It’s hard to say this isn’t real. But yes, we all have the capacity for evil, and also can be complicit in other evils by dint of normalized behaviours (without necessarily being ‘evil’ ourselves)

I do agree that an absolute Evil doesn’t exist, the same way an absolute Good doesn’t exist. But we’re a pile of writhing meat puppets on a moist, moldy rock - we don’t exist on that level in the first place.

Shhh, the Ontario PC doesn’t want you to outright come out and say it.

As an aside, still think it’s kinda fucked that the two largest lab services companies here are now both owned by American interests (Lifelabs = Quest, Dynacare = LabCorp).

I’m more than a little convinced that if Jesus walks the earth today, he is really into EDM and you’re only really coming across him on the festival circuit.

Man - I know most folks feel the best thing to do is get rid of religion all together - but at this stage I’d settle for and support a new, loud, and active Christian sect denouncing xtian radicals and the churches that support them as Satanic corruptions.

Believe Old Testament and its edicts mean a damn practical thing in today’s world? Satan.

Insisting on not rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s? Satan.

Treating your fellow humans as lesser for anything whatsoever? Satan.

Corrupting Bible verses to justify creating suffering and not rendering aid to anyone who needs it? 100% Satan.

Forcing means to reduce anyone’s capacity to exercise free will, the one key thing their creator deity granted all humans? Sounds like Satan to me.

And so on. I realize this is deeply naive. But part of the reason I like The Louvin Brother’s song Satan is Real is whenever I hear the guy’s testimony on Satan, I think about about people in the offending churches:

I grew selfish, and un-neighbourly
My friends turned against me
And finally, my home was broken apart

The Louvin Brothers themselves would likely vehemently disagree, but - does this sound like anyone you know?

/end of vaguely spiritualist rant.

Thing is, it’s not that uncommon to do this, and it’s not like the cashier is going to report you as suspicious to the relevant tax authority. Sometimes people don’t have the full value for groceries in their bank account, or are right at the tip of their credit limit - but do have cash on hand to cover the rest.

The point is to have a paper trail/transaction history of lesser value for the tax man. Two transactions in one visit is just as valid as two different visits using different payment methods.

Comes down to whether you feel awkward doing the first one I guess (cashiers generally won’t think twice about it, aside from maybe mild annoyance). It is a classic “Things aren’t going great for me rn” move - but who cares, you know the truth.

(Ignore all of this and pay your taxes, people)

I’m not who you were talking to, but I think you and I can agree that war is primarily a means to increase the power of the aggressor. Money is one form of this, perhaps the main one - though I’d argue things like direct control over other territories and their populace is another (connected to money re: control of resources, sure, but that’s just one aspect).

That said, the American WWII dead buried at Arlington, or the Canadians and Brits buried in Dieppe for that matter, or heck, even the Soviets buried in Warsaw (regardless of how you may feel about the former USSR in general) - would you say that their lives were given, primarily, in the name of money/power? Or in defence of that being stripped from others by force?

I’m not going to pretend there isn’t an argument to be made for the former, but I am legitimately curious about your thoughts here. Is it ever just to take up arms?

I likened it to a room with bidirectional portals yesterday - your analogy is much better, and has been stolen for future use.

When I worked customer service, our policy was to always apologize for any issue that lead to the call. One day I read some HBR article about a study where problem-solving focused language, v. the standard apologetic approach, lead to higher reported levels of customer satisfaction even if the issue ultimately wasn’t resolved.

Tried it - it really did seem to work. Had a few discussions with the call quality person about it and made my arguments - they didn’t agree, but couldn’t help noticing I was the one getting positive feedback v/ms left with management and service quality surveys about.

YMMV, could easily see an environment where you’d get written up for just 100% ignoring the policy and doing something more effective. At the time I had a “I’m going to do exactly what I think is right, until I get fired over it” mentality, and and in many respects was very lucky I didn’t.

A little niche, but

🥳

I don’t have one particular highlight, I just love being here. Good admins, good people, good discussions, people are pretty chill. What’s not to like?

sh.it.heads 4 lyfe, yo!

Thanks man! This is helpful.

When we talked last, I was talking about the social aspects (crudely understood) of it all - have general mistrust of experts, poor life situation, feelings of, or acutal, social isolation -> find people who seem to have a privileged knowledge others don’t that you agree with, make them your tribe -> have a position in a social group, slowly introducing you to more and more outlandish ideas -> repeat points to recruit others to the tribe and signal social value to said.

So agree totally with learning about how this stuff works from psychology and human weakness POV being a vital starting point. Appreciate it!

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If you have an issue with a given community, find or start an alternative one on another instance. If you have an issue with how your instance deals with anyone, sign up for a different instance.

I urge you to consider this before giving up on Lemmy entirely, it’s kind of the beauty of the federated services.

Fair.

I mean, I have one. It’s Canadian, and I was not stoked at all about the actual event, but I did laugh (and felt guilty after) at this.

The early GTA games are different, for sure, but they’re still fun games in their own right.

Only thing that really threw me off going back was no in-game map/radar.

Ugh, yep. Right around the time the agora system was getting fleshed out, too, so things just naturally took a bit longer.

Related - “What’s a Beehaw?” - newer sh.it.heads, probably.

Godspeed, f.ukwad.

(Hmm…not as cute as sh.it.head. I still kinda like it, though. Excellent domain name choice in general.)

The Dude, as per usual, abides.

Thank you again for all you do.