The reason why that Muslims have more children than other religious groups and non-religious people makes anxious is because it makes scared that they'll become the majority of the population.

And I don't want them to become the majority of the world because... well, I hope what I'm saying is not Muslimophobic but--most Muslims tend to be assholes who are homophobic, sexist, and bigoted towards other religious groups and non-religious people.

(If I'm wrong about anything here, I would appreciate it if you tell me.)

EDIT: I'm sorry for my bigotry. I was mainly talking about the ones from the middle east--since that's where most these negative traits I've listed are--and I'm overly anxious.

People say lemmy isnt as toxic as reddit and while i feel thats partially true i also feel its partially not

if you have the best of intentions but the group or user circles dont think so then you are turned away

I recently shared a video in a post that in my opinion contains feedback that could be beneficial to open source, met with mostly hostility on that post when i only wanted to share that video to help open source

and then there is the toxicity of some groups on lemmy, im left wing because i think everyone should be equal and the world should be free from bigotry and intolerance but some of the left wing comments on lemmy read as toxic and i feel like I'm a person who wants better in the world but I'm excluded from other left wing people because of the toxicity

it makes me feel i have the be careful on lemmy with what i say and cant give good intentioned feedback or criticism to other users because it'll just be met with hostility if the group / user circle/s doesn't like it or be misinterpreted as an attack

all of that can feel very unwelcoming me at times

sorry if this doesn't come across as clear, its just that i suck at writing "high quality posts / comments" and i wanted to get emotion to text and vent

Firstly: I'm reasonably sure these women are just kvetching. I often say 'I'd rather drink piss' to express that I don't like something. Obviously I'm not actually going to drink piss.

Secondly...I do agree it's a bit much to compare men to a deadly 1200 pound predator. I would be a bit fed up of hearing that too if I were a guy.

Thirdly...that said...I understand WHY women say that even if it's a bit ridiculous. I've had a male friend completely turn on a dime and send me rape threats while drunk. I pleaded and tried to reason with him for about 20 minutes before I completely snapped and threatened to do things to him with a hunting knife that I won't detail because there's no need to make people vomit. Only then did he back off and switch to making excuses and blaming his autism. It was terrifying because there was no reasoning with him. He LIKED that I was frightened and freaked out. It gave him a pleasurable power rush. The only reason he backed off was the threat of said hunting knife.

A bear isn't malicious. A bear just wants to eat. A bear can be redirected or avoided. You can do things such as wear a bell or carry mace or put up an electric fence around a tent. A man isn't necessarily malicious but IF he is...those precautions won't do jack poopsies because he consciously knows the woman doesn't want it and LIKES the act of stomping on boundaries.

Yes it's currently 2024 but some memories resurface in my head sometimes and I finally want to write them down.

A quick refresher for you regarding the Bill Cosby scandal:

In the 1970s & 1980s he had a secret hobby of drugging & raping unwitting women, and it wasn't widely known about /prosecuted until 40-ish years later.

Now, before his scandal was discovered, you might recall he had a successful, much-loved, long-running sitcom on TV, the Cosby Show, in which he appointed his own character's profession as gynecologist, Doctor Huxtable.

In hindsight now, we can surmise that if Bill Cosby hadn't been an actor, his dream job would've been probing women's vaginas all day for a living.

(That's my first resurfaced latent memory, that his character Dr Huxtable was a gynecologist in that show, meanwhile IRL in his free time he was drugging & raping women)

Furthermore, several of his Cosby Show episodes showed that Dr Huxtable had a gynecology office IN HIS HOUSE, IN HIS BASEMENT where he would invite his gynecology patients into his house 😱

(That's my second resurfaced latent memory on this topic.)

Ladies, how inappropriate would it feel to have a gynecologist appointment AT YOUR GYNECOLOGIST'S HOUSE, and IN HIS BASEMENT??

And your gynecologist is BILL COSBY who drugs & rapes women⁉️

OML I just can't even.

Do you hear me? Literally during the years he was IRL drugging & raping unwitting women, he assigned himself a Hollywood role as a GYNECOLOGIST who had a gynecology office IN HIS HOUSE BASEMENT.

🤦‍♀️

One more detail while we're on this topic, In my own life in 1989 I was a 14-year old little girl, and in 1989 The Cosby Show was at the height of its popularity and everything seemed to be going fine in the Cosby Show realm.

Meanwhile, in Long Beach California I was scheduled for a surgical procedure and I opted for general anesthesia because the idea of being awake during my surgery was not appealing to me,

so as I was going under, my anesthesiologist was checking in with me to determine the moment I went unconscious, you know how they engage you in conversation so they can ascertain your level of consciousness. Well the last thing my anesthesiologist asked me before I went under was

"Do you like Bill Cosby?"

I had enough time to process the question while I was laying there about to be gassed, but not enough time to respond before I literally went under.

The way I mentally processed it before I had time to respond was, "well that's a random question but sure, Bill Cosby is a great guy, great show, upstanding citizen, on his TV show he portrays a good wholesome father and a professional doctor, Bill Cosby is also a stand-up comedian and he's written a couple books and my dad even has one of his books on his bookshelf, a birthday gift from one of his brothers, what's not to love? sure yeah I like Bill Cosby."

But that question that came out of left field from my anesthesiologist as I'm vulnerably trustingly laying on the table about to go unconscious, " Do you like Bill Cosby?" 

in retrospect has not only endured as a rather creepy vivid memory to me, but also leads me to speculate that my anesthesiologist may have been somehow aware of what Bill Cosby was up to in his free time even in the current year 1989,

and you know anesthesiologists have access to drugs that make people unconscious. and how vulnerable patients are when unconscious and completely in the care and at the mercy of their doctors.

It's all just very creepy to me in retrospect.

No, I'm not speculating that I was abused at any point during that process, there were many doctors there and I was in good care

but just the things I mentioned earlier are creepy enough.

TW: Homophobia, abuse

I work at a children's foster care organization that specializes in caring for kids who have experienced significant trauma. I'm somewhat acclimated to terrible parents.

As I walked by the front desk late this morning, the receptionist disgustedly thrust the phone towards me. On the other end was a woman asking if we are an orphanage, and if we can take her son. (This is not an unheard-of situation... Most of the time it's a stressed out parent using us as a threat to put their kid back on the straight and narrow.)

I answered as I usually do, giving her the referral hotline for social services. She immediately went ballistic, screaming and jostling the phone so that I could only hear every third word. But it was clear that the reason she was so upset is that she just found out her son is gay. She kept using the f****t word.

I had the receptionist, a resident, and a social worker all standing around watching, so I couldn't say what I wanted to. I was also in a bit of an adrenaline shock and nearly froze, but I gave the only answer I could muster... "Since you've chosen to use abusive language, I'm going to disconnect the call."

My vent is this: it's so easy to not be an abusive asshole. I hate living in a world where this person's vote counts the same as mine. I hate living in a world where people can be this hateful and aren't completely shunned from society.

My secondary vent is this: I wish I had a brain that didn't short circuit under stress, and that I would have thought to "play along" so that I could gather this woman's contact info and at least tried to help that poor boy.

Thank you for letting me vent. I don't feel better, but at least I feel like I've shared.

Apparently it's perfectly possible to owe the IRS tens of thousands, and then just make up debt and point to a random person telling the IRS to go after them... ...and they will simply draft up a letter, demanding you to pay this outstanding, ficticious debt within two weeks.

What. The. Fuck.

I know the person who claims that I owe them 15k. It's my weed dealer. I also know he has legal and financial issues, so I assume he somehow told his creditors that I owed him a lot of money, and there is no law requiring verification.

So... Either I pay 15k € I don't actually owe, or I get a lawyer to dispute it, which will also be several thousands, none of which I am responsible for.

I'm not currently in debt but I also don't have any savings.

I dunno man, it seems like in this world it's just not possible to go a single year without being accused/hounded/... no one gives a fuck and everyone just wants "theirs". Which would be fine if people would leave me alone and not try to get their grubby mitts on what little I do have.

Fuck.

F***ing morons in the world! Everyone is so damn impatient that now when I am at at four way stop and turning and my ass end is still in the intersection the other car going straight already decides to take off instead of waiting a micro-second for the intersection to be clear. All sorts of scenarios can happen...a pedestrian could appear causing me to brake and then you would crash into the rear of my car. Stop being a moron and think! What the hell are you gonna' do when you get home a nano-second earlier?

I have been in and out of college several times and I've failed physics twice already. My entire life has been on hold for the past 10 years because I have most of a degree except for physics. So here I fucking am, taking physics as an older and more mature adult. Surely I'll be able to make it work just this once. But no. The lab professor is the biggest hardass I've ever seen and I'm not even completing the non-lab homework at a sustainable rate because they're being hardcore about that too. At a community college this time of all places.

If I had a time machine I would go back in time and tell myself to never go to college ever under any circumstances. Even going to las vegas and gambling all my money away would have been a better choice. Even throwing fistfuls of $100 bills out of an airplane would have been a smarter financial decision. Even working at Walmart where those 15 cent raises eventually add up over the course of 10 years would have been a more lucrative career path.

Tl;dr fuck society

I was trying to help a male friend with his depression and the entire conversation quickly switched over into him ranting about how awful women are and how we won't give him sex and how we just use men to provide things.

I tried sympathizing and he went on and on about how we're just ice cold harpies who don't care about men.

He complained that his cortisol was high and it was all caused by being single and women were killing him.

I lost it and said 'scoop your adrenal glands out with a spoon then'.

Ooooooops. I could have handled that a lot better.

I can't seem to understand it. Day in and day out most of us wake up to clock-in for some bullshit product that creates waste and inflates the pockets of some bullshit board member? What the fuck is that? Don't give me the productive member of society rhetoric. How am I creating benefit to the world while simultaneously destroying it? You don't need that new model car. You don't need a smart-oven. Just like the livestock industry, we are born and urged to consume. We keep getting bigger, taller, stronger - but for what? We don't have any actual predatory threats except for ourselves, so why do we insist on strong-arming one another? The convenient excuse of the Human Condition? We developed critical intelligence and dextrous motor skills to engorge ourselves to extinction? Stupid. Stupid. STUPID.

Why does crunching imaginary numbers for a socially-engineered financial index get you "paid" more than feeding your local population, or delivering health-critical mail to someone's front door? Our existence collectively has placed our value in all the wrong places. I suppose Man's need to dominate all things prevails; our planet included. When will we stop raping our soil of cash crops to feed an industry that poisons our wells every day? There is no bastion for any precious material on Earth. Especially so for the hope of future generations.

The worst part? It's that I know I am part of the problem. I don't want to lose my comforts. So, I go back to my bullshit product and make wealth for some bullshit board member. This way, some day, I'll gain that 15% of my actual life to live with a neat variety of health issues to physically limit everything I've wanted to do in life before that moment. All the while, said board member will be able to replace internal organs in order to enjoy their sports yachts for much longer than I can even dream of.

Life is great. Thanks for listening.

When October 7th happened, it was horrifying and Reddit became a political warzone. People on Reddit were calling openly spreading hate and calling for genocide. I reported those users, because it was against Reddit TOS. I was banned for a week. None of those users were punished.

Over the next month, I was banned from every major news sub and beyond for speaking out against the IDF's actions in Israel. No comments I made broke subreddit rules or Reddit's TOS, but moderators banned and muted me anyway. I reported moderator abuse to Reddit and they ignored it.

This week, I reported multiple people again for calling for genocide. I was permanently banned for "report abuse" citing a report I made THREE WEEKS prior with someone calling all Palestinians terrorists and advocating their murder. That user is still on the site and never punished.

Report abuse is meant to protect speech and discussion on Reddit, but it's being weaponized as a tool to silence criticism of Israel. Multiple appeals have been denied despite there being no justification and no violation of Reddit's rules.

My secondary account was banned ("ban evasion") the moment I commented in a sub from which my primary was unjustly banned for commenting negatively on the IDF. Reddit is refusing to honor its own rules and actively oppressing speech its administration doesn't agree with.

1. I establish username, pwd, and provide an email address

✅

Looks good so far but all goes silent and they don't send me a verification email.

2. next day I try to login using the credentials I established yesterday

🚫

"login invalid"

3. So I try to establish the same username password and email address I tried yesterday.

🚫

"user already exists"

4. So I try to log in using those credentials.

🚫

"incorrect login credentials"

5. So I come up with a whole new username and a whole new email address. I try this with that instance and it takes me back through steps 1-5. So I try it with a different instance and it takes me back through steps 1-5. Over and over again. For months

The only instance that has ever let me in is dot world but they are glitching so hard lately and I want to join a new instance. I'm trying!

My wife and I share a vehicle and it needed to be dropped off at the shop. I brought my bicycle with me to bike back while it’s getting worked on. Biking back I tried not to take many traffic lights, but there are two that are inevitable. The lane splits into a right and left turn lane, so I take into the left lane. Someone honks behind me but I couldn’t tell if it was directed at me. I made the turn and someone pulled up next to me and said “You gotta signal buddy!” I said, “I was in the left lane?”

It looked like he was texting and driving, didn’t see me until the last second and thought, “he should not have been in my way.” Fucking self-titled people throughout the day are just annoying. Get off your God damned phone and pay attention to the road, and don’t pretend like it’s someone else’s fault.

They send a shit ton of letters and texts, call me damn near every day and even had the nerve to show up at my door! I get that my address is public record but I feel it's a step too far to show up and interrupt my weekend to talk about politics. It honestly makes me not want to vote at all if all it does is make it look like open season to be persuaded.

I understand in person/public when people say "How are you?" they aren't seriously asking, well...I don't understand but I know it is a thing. However, in a online social group when they are having a "mental health check in" are you only allowed to say "fine" and move on?

I mean I am not going to unload but there is a lot bad right now, there is no silver lining for me right now, am I suppose to just act like all is good? I am not that good at lying and some of these people have known me a long time.

Am I too far off base to think the idea of a mental health check in is to talk with everyone else, share, commiserate, and find some relief in opening up?

Deep Breath, and done.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/4578562

My grandmother's sister went into the wheat drying room after hearing noises, assuming one of the kids had gotten in. Once inside, she heard a noise coming from a closet. Upon opening it, she discovered a man pointing a gun at her. The man panicked and shot at her head. He then grabbed her phone and started running out. Just then, everyone came out of their rooms, causing a lot of panic. As he ran towards the door within the chaos, my uncle and I grabbed our guns to chase him. He noticed this and yanked my 7-year-old cousin by the wrist, then jumped over the wall with the kid and escaped into the fields. We couldn't find him.

A few hours later, a ransom call demanded 10 million and insisted not to involve the cops. The father of the kid told him it was impossible to gather 10 million in a hurry. Later, he called the cops. The next morning, the guy called again, agreeing to 4 million and arranging a spot for the exchange. He told the father to come alone.

The next night, they managed to gather around 500,000 and went to the spot, the father and uncle, with the cops following and cutting off access to areas. There, the guy took the money and pointed to a figure in the dark, claiming that was the child, and then rode off.

Luckily, it was indeed the kid. Three hours later, we received a call from the cops that they had caught the guy. I forgot to mention that the cops were this efficient because the family knew all the political leaders of the area and had some ministers in their pockets.

We went to the station to check on the situation, and they had beaten the guy up pretty badly. It turns out we knew the guy; he happened to be the son of the land caretaker and had been the family's driver for a few years. His original intention was to steal some stuff from the house, but once he got caught, he improvised. His motivation was the fact that the family of the woman he wanted to marry asked for a 400,000 dowry, and he couldn't afford that.

I know it's not normal. It's something that needs therapy that I can't afford or get to fix. Most people don't sit there when there's a quiet moment thinking about how horrible of a person they are, pulling examples from throughout their life to reinforce just how much worse they've made the lives of everyone around them. I know it's not normal to need constant noise to try and keep your brain distracted enough to quiet those thoughts as much as possible. But I just wonder, what must that be like? What's it like to be normal where you can just enjoy a little peace in the silence without going through your biggest hits: regrets edition?

I know part of it's just being born broken because I was doing this shit when I was a little, little kid. But these days, I can't even blame bad luck when the reason there are so many examples at the ready is because of my history of terrible decisions and bad behavior. I had opportunities many beg for handed to me, and I squandered, wasted, or rudely refused every one of them until I got where I am now.

Every problem I face today is one of my own making. Every time I vent about it I'm reminded of that as people will come in and tell me how they were, "Just like you once, but I fixed myself up and got out of that, so you can too." But I can't. It's doable. Just not by me.

So instead, I sit here, day after day, just trying to make enough noise to drown out the regrets. But sometimes there isn't enough noise, it all boils up, and I'm left stewing in my regrets until it all runs dry and the process starts all over again.

i don't need to list them out, anyone here knows what i mean

i mean -- just a specific example - this post. i'm going thru it rn, and it's so nice that on lemmy i can be in my feels, type this, post, and hopefully people see it. but if i try to post this on reddit, it'll get removed from place after place, even shit like /r/depression has fucking automod horseshit making it a goddamn tribulation to post a post!

but that's very granular. the internet is dying -- no, actively being killed by venture capitalist scum. the planet is dying. democrats are running 90 yo joe brandon again, there is no meaningful progressive pushback anywhere because that's how the system is designed to work. voting or calling reps is akin to writing a letter to santa. actual protest meets militarized police.

fun living through the end times.

My family member uses this phrase at least once every interaction and it drives me absolutely nuts. I know it was probably never corrected when she was younger, but my God, it just makes her lose any credibility with me. That, and “irregardless,” “could care less,” and “take it for granite.”

I made a post in the general discussion channel about my neighbor's dogs barking all night, and instead of just allowing the fucking thread to continue as a general discussion, it's locked by a moderator and told the post here. Y'all literally turn into this place into Reddit.

If it was posted to a political thread, sure, but it's literally fucking called general discussion. The best part about leaving Reddit were the moderators who just had to have control of something in their lives, and here we are again.

Would it have broken Lemmy to leave the fucking post up?

So, Apple is blowing it's horn now on being a $3 Trillion valued company. Like, yay I suppose...

But then I see why and with my own eyes, where I work, their accessories are ridiculously expensive. A simple little phone stand, was $35. But because it was Apple, it's priced that highly.

A simple clear and plastic looking case from Apple, is $40. With those prices, you could actually buy a budget phone (if you're okay without the features of an average smartphone).

Fully functioning phone vs a stupidly common phone case for Apple phones. That's absurd.

I know it's Facebook's shitty algorithm but I'm tired of seeing these reels and short videos, of all of these bimbofied women! They're unattractive, I don't like things like asses and breasts being too gigantic. It's ugly to me and I'm sick of seeing it.

I find this the most frustrating part of federation. So many more communities to block when so many instances can have the same sorts of community

We've been together for 3 years. To give some context, I'm currently in extreme financial struggles that I realistically can't hold a relationship of this type anymore.

We live in different cities. 6-hrs drive apart. Basically she only likes me for money, and sadly I wouldn't have a problem with that if she reciprocated the giving and care back. It's not a sugar-daddy relationship and was never meant to be. We're the same age and supposed to care about each other in every way and not like this.
It sucks when someone only values you as an ATM and ignores every side of your personality and every other kind of support you can provide: Self improvement, self worth, self image and value, health care, emotional, future planning, respect, protection, and all the worrying and care which I give to her more than I do for myself. I emptied my bank account for her and she still wouldn't care for me because it's not enough. Constant gifts for her, her friends, her family, rent, hospital bills, all sort of bills, fancy restaurants, flight ticket and hotel bookings (for her only not both of us), resorts, medical therapy, ... I gave her everything she wished for that I could afford. I let her have the nice things while I still live poorly and have bad ones. All I asked for return is care and time of her day. I'm not talking every day, No; She wouldn't even see me for few hours every month. The last month was the breaking point for me, I spent over $10K on various things for her, and then we decided that I would come to sit with her and she replied with "I can only stay with for 3 hours, then I have to do other things and meet other people." So I asked her to choose a date when she is not very busy and can see me for few more hours at least, and she still wouldn't do that. So I said, "ok no hard feelings, but I'm canceling my trip and all the gifts I was going to bring with me. Maybe we can sort another day in the future." After that she got angry and cussed at me and said to never see, text or call her again in life.

From my perspective: I do not want to waste so many hours and money to see her for 3 hours. I feel bad about myself and I don't feel desired or cared about. I started to hate this shit of relationship we have where I constantly give my all and everything to someone who doesn't give back anything.

From her perspective: I'm not good enough and I don't care about her.

In the end, I tried my best and didn't mistreat her once. I really wish her the best but would not want to apologize and restart things with her again.

Thank you for the vent and please feel free to share your opinions. I will respect them and try to understand them regardless.

... it looks like ended up breaking my PC on the move somehow... I even went ahead and removed the GPU to prevent it from breaking but it looks like that's actually what ended up being broken 🙃 (I have 4 debug LEDs. When I turn it on it goes from CPU to DRAM to VGA and gets stuck there). I'll have to see if I can get it to work somehow after I get home later, but I'm afraid I was unlucky enough to actually have killed my GPU with static electricity. And of course it had to be the most expensive part....