“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice”

I had a former coworker who was a hardcore Trump-publican and also really into Warhammer 40k, Star Trek, and to a lesser degree Star Wars, and at least once a week would play Pink Floyd’s “Animals” and “The Wall”. That media illiteracy hits hard.

EH & HC (considered by many to be EH under a new name) are the two I was referring to. Tanky subs were an afterthought on my part.

Let’s take a look at HC’s local front page right now:

• First post is pro-Elon, uses “woke” as a derogatory term

• Second post is anti-science transphobia

• Third post is the same story as the first post, says a “hate crime” was committed by the “woke” person, article is on Breitbart [EDIT: fixed a typo I made here]

• Fourth post is ok, fairly normal, but posted by an avid poster for the site named Donald Musk

• Fifth post follows the suit of the fourth post

• Sixth post is transphobia for sports, article is on Breitbart

• Seventh post follows the suit of the fourth and fifth post

• Eighth post is by a news bot, headline says Israel is gonna keep doing what they do

• Ninth post is ok, just a banal joke

• Tenth post paints Tesla as a victim of violence, article is on Breitbart

• Eleventh post is saying most voters prefer moderate Democrats over “radical” AOC & Sanders, article is on Breitbart

• Twelfth post is anti-science transphobia

• Thirteenth post is by a news bot about Canada’s Carney’s plan (I don’t know enough about Canada’s politics to know where this guy stands on things)

• Fourteenth post is by a news bot about Anti-Trump rallies, headline seems politically neutral

• Fifteenth post is anti-science, pro-Trump, COVID conspiracy theories, article is on Breitbart

• Sixteenth post is ok, just a joke

• Seventeenth post is by an admin trying to save face by soliciting mods for a token leftwing community on their site, the only volunteer is one of the above posters of anti-science transphobia

• Eighteenth post is in German about some technology?

• Nineteenth post is by news bot about US attacking Yemen

Looks like your home instance has defederated from the first couple that came to my mind, so you’re probably not seeing them

I think my grandma’s eternal obsession with Elvis Presley, plus some of her other social quirks like coercibility, would be seen as reflective of autism by a professional diagnosis

Don’t mistake your own countrymen for categorical allies

Google showed no results for the comment in quotes. DuckDuckGo showed no results for the comment in quotes. Bing showed one result for the comment in quotes…. and it was a self-described incel forum; a post/comment on this forum said the comment came from this YouTube video which is no longer viewable because the account has been terminated. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y3pdwcE534c

EDIT: Wayback Machine has an archive for this link and one of the snapshots does indeed resemble your screenshot. The video’s name was “Burger Andy gets left behind” by LivestreamFails.

Slop gets dropped. That’s clearly James Austin Johnson missing a finger or two

Slop gets dropped

Thank you for thinking for me. I was afraid of doing that for myself.

(I get that your comment is tongue-in-cheek, not sure everyone else will)

In general, Reddit has made the move that all big name old social media have made (except maybe like Snapchat? I can’t think of any other exceptions) and kowtowed to corporate advertiser money, rightwing misinformation and bigotry, and the egos of oligarchs such as Elon Musk. This is essentially done to make the fat cats in the corporation richer.

I was able to find your deleted Reddit post [EDIT: understanding now that you were referring to posts across multiple subs]. My best good faith guess [for r/frangrance] is that the mods may have considered it to be within the scope of the “No medical advice or health questions” sub rule? Navigating to even find the sub rules was difficult since the mods have attached them via a link that immediately redirects to an account sign-up page. My workaround to even read the rules was to copy the link and change the “www” to “old” and it worked.

[EDIT, continued: For r/zerowaste, the only good faith issue I can see — and it’s a stretch — is the verb tense of “[Crafting] Posts must be something that you have made yourself.” Since you haven’t yet made the fragrance in full, maybe they don’t allow WIPs or for others to help with WIPs?

I don’t see anything with r/sustainability’s rules that would apply. They do have a “No Surveys” rule but there are other posts that do solicit input and advice, so that apparently doesn’t apply to your post.]

You might find Lemmings who are happy to help with your fragrance situation on any of these communities:

https://lemmy.world/c/askscience

https://lemmy.world/c/science

https://aussie.zone/c/environment

https://mander.xyz/c/science

False. He still meets the core conservative values of being white, blonde, straight, cisgender, and male. And “Christian”. But above all else, bigoted and anti-intellectual.

Oh in that case, here’s a genius

Oh…. Well I could say the same thing as well.

Slop gets dropped

I’m thinking it’s AI slop?

I’m gathering from your comment that you’re being motivated by disillusion and disappointment in the universe, rather than a purely logical approach? While I am an advocate for atheism, I don’t know if you’re looking at it for the most sound of reasons. I will play devil’s advocate (badum-tss) to clarify some things about the belief system for you.

There’s a well-known quote by Epicurus that comes to mind:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

You see that there is evil in the universe, but that could be explained by an uncaring or malicious deity. If there is a deity that knows of the universe’s evil and chooses not to stop it even though it would not ail the deity any to do so, then that deity is evil and undeserving of worship.

I’m slightly an agnostic-atheist (even though I think the term itself is a bit sloppy), since I think it’s technically plausible (but essentially unknowable) that an astronomically large being could have created the Earth and its inhabitants through scientific and/or mechanical means but for their own entirely selfish and uncaring reasons. The deity in the poorly received film Eternals is the closest representation I’ve seen to what I consider to be a plausible “creator”, since he created Earth and its life to selfishly exploit them for his own species’ natural procreation, and he achieved this through scientific and mechanical means such as a factory forge (you’ll have to ignore the little bit of literal magic that he does perform in the movie).

Atheism also does not categorically conclude that there isn’t an afterlife, but most atheists would believe that there is not one. Maybe when we die, the electro-chemical signals in our brains get turned into antimatter and get zapped over to another dimension? It may be an off-the-wall notion and be fundamentally unprovable and non-disprovable, but atheism does not require a belief that there is no afterlife.

Not having to abide by the arbitrary rules and dictations of religions can be freeing, but don’t get carried away and think that nothing matters or that you’re okay to take up any vice or do any crime. Religions have sometimes plugged in the wrong formula and accidentally got the right answers, like “Thou shalt not kill” or “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, which generally will be destructive and hurt undeserving people if you violate them.

I think of religious views as just another set of beliefs, and I consider any belief that is ridiculously detached from observable reality, contradictory, taken up without evidence, or devoid of empathy to be a belief deserving of being mocked and scorned. I don’t grant an exception on the merits of categorization or level of conviction or personal attachment, though I do circumstantially avoid mocking it out of courtesy.

Hope this helps clarify some things and that you make the best of your future.

There are plenty of brown shirts to go around

An influence on my views was reading an abridged Bible on my own when I was a child to see what my family’s doctrine actually is and to critically examine the merits of its values and realism. School science textbooks also provided some insight into the physical world and its implications.

A unique element of atheism relative to other religious views is that there isn’t a unifying dogma. Generally, atheists agree on evolution and The Big Bang and just basic science stuff, so some elementary literature or media on those could be a start. However, it’s possible to be an atheist and not believe in these things and to instead believe that everything happens and happened for some non-deistic magic reason or because of some other off-the-wall idiosyncratic theory without scientific backing.

Fundamentally, you should ask yourself if you’re interested in atheism due to doubting the feasibility of deities; or if you’re doubting there being a meaning or purpose to life and the universe; or if you’re doubting that your concept of deities could perform certain actions, such as standing by while tragedy happens (or perhaps you’ve got some other reason?). From there, you can direct yourself to the field of study of your choice: scientific, philosophy, and world religions, respectively, but be sure to branch out into the other two options.