testfactor

Fair enough on all counts.

I would point out that if everyone only made friends with people better than them, no one would have any friends. It's important to pour into others as well as to get poured into. It's how we make the world better. And just because someone is "worse" than you doesn't mean they don't have value. And it doesn't mean there isn't something you could gain from having them as a friend. I've had friends who are "better" than me and "worse" than me make positive change in my life.

And I know you say you're not in a place to work on this, and I can respect that, but I would say that it's never a bad time to continue leaning forward in a positive direction. And if this is something that's negatively impacting your life, the sooner you work on it, the sooner you'll be less impacted by it. No time like the present and all that.

I have friends with crippling social anxiety. It's a lot of work, and they have their ups and downs for sure. But it's something that they're working on in therapy and making strides on. It is possible to improve and for things to get better.

I mean, it's hard to say without knowing exactly what you're talking about, but universally condemned likely seems strong. But regardless, you said that you don't value the same people I do. Does that mean you can't value someone with different beliefs than you?

You say that there aren't any groups in your area that would interest you. What kind of group would interest you? What group, if you saw it was starting up in your area, would motivate you to go out and meet people?

That's a spooky looking dude.

I mean, I think you may be overselling the word "suffering." I wouldn't put "working so I don't starve" in the same category as "starving to death."

If "suffering" just means "anything I don't 100% love," then it's effectively meaningless, no?

I know mental health issues complicate things, but that's something to work on, not an obstacle that can't be surmounted. I have tons of friends with mental health struggles of all kinds.

But you say that you don't value the same people I do, but what makes you think so?

As I say, I was at a local boardgame meetup this past weekend. Not exactly a "party" crowd. And to be clear, there's local meetups for everything under the sun. What do you value in people that you don't think you could find a social group for? What makes you think finding a group you would vibe with is particularly hard?

Fair. The OP you were responding to was about how people cope with loneliness IRL with pseudo-real online interactions, and you responded with how it's difficult to find relationships in person.

I agree it's not necessarily related, but I the guy above was wildly afeild taking your statement as an excuse for why finding relational fulfillment online is an acceptable cope. It was kind of the topic at hand.

But, aside from that, I think making new connections is really just about going out there and doing it. I'm 33 and constantly meet new people, so it's definitely achievable in your 30's. Just go to things. Open up Eventbrite or whatever and find something going on that looks like fun, and then just go. There's a whole world of opportunities out there to meet new people.

He's just saying that using Lemmy as a cope for not having IRL friends is healthy.

But, to your point, making friends is easier than you think. Join groups. They're everywhere. I literally went to a "boardgame play testing" event today and met a lot of cool people.

Things like that are everywhere. You just got a look for them.

Look, rawstory is a rag, no question. But they literally embedded the video of the sermon. Literally a video of the events in question.

You can hardly argue they're misrepresenting things when you can literally see the thing yourself.

Like, what better source than the actual video of the event could you possibly want?

There isn't, because the source is his ass.

This was a pastor in Indiana during a sermon that was live-streamed on Facebook. So, like, funded by a PAC in what way exactly?

No PAC is mentioned in the article at all, much less a Chick-fil-A backed one. And this isn't even tied to anything that would require any funding anyway.

I'm no Chick-fil-A apologist, but like, the idea that this is some secretive super-PAC that Chick-fil-A is using to fund pastors calling for the death of gay people is some Q-Anon level nonsense.

Are you a vegan by chance?

I feel like that's the next big moral shift. People lionize dogs and cats, and harming one makes you literally Hitler. But there's not a lick of difference between a dog and a cow.

I think that an objective ethicist would absolutely say veganism is the only moral choice, and that anyone who isn't a vegan is knowingly participating in unimaginable cruelty.

But in our current context, only a small fraction of people care. Including a lot of people who look down on people of the past for not being as amazingly moral as they are.

I do think the situation is more complicated than Lemmy would have you believe.

Both Iran and Hamas have been geopolitical issues for a long time. And it's worth remembering that all of this was kicked off by a large scale terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas.

It's also worth noting that Iran is a Russian puppet, and Europe obviously has some "neighbor problems" with Russia at the moment, so there's a sort of baked in desire to oppose their vassal states.

And, while I think everyone would agree that the loss of civilian life is terrible, there is a huge amount of misinformation that makes it hard to be sure what's going on. Hamas does have a long history of screwing over the civilian Palestinian population to further it's political goals, and so people are willing to give Israel a little more credence than they deserve when they claim things like "Hamas was hiding in that hospital" or "we're blocking aid because Hamas is hoarding it all to drive up tensions" or "it was Hamas who shot those civilians," because it actually wouldn't be the first time any of that had credibly happened. Something of a boy-cried-wolf scenario.

Add into that genuine desire to combat real anti-Semitism that's been a fallout of this whole situation (a problem that hits pretty close to home in Europe due to events of the past century), and you can see why some people might be a bit over-eager to support Israel in this conflict.

It's worth noting there are no good guys here. Israel is obviously in the wrong, and are committing horrible atrocities. I think that much is plain on its face. But Hamas and Iran have both had "the destruction of the state of Israel" as stated policy goals for the past 80 years. The reason Israel has the Iron Dome is because they've been getting missiles lobbed at them non-stop for decades.

And when there are no good guys, people tend to just align themselves with who they like more, or who they owe more to.

Just because it's generally possible for the bladder to rupture before the muscles give out, it's certainly not impossible. A myriad of conditions or even just genetics can lead to a physically weaker bladder.

I think it's a bit bold to say that absolutely 100%, no exceptions, that the muscles will always fail first. Even if that's true 99.99% of the time, there's just far to much variance in human bodies to rule it out, I would think.