What I have thanks to money, what i pay for, i.e, what money can buy, that is what I, the possessor of the money, am myself. My power is as great as the power of money.
The properties of money are my- (its owner's)- properties and faculties. Thus what I am and what I am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy myself the most beautiful women. Consequently, I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness, its power of repulsion, is annulled by money. As an individual I am lame, but money can create twenty four feet for me; so I am not lame; I am wicked, dishonest man without conscience or intellect, but money is honored and so also is its possessor.
Money is the highest good and so its possessor is good. Money relieves me of the trouble of being dishonest, so I am presumed to be honest. I may have no intellect, but money is the true mind of all things and so how should its possessor have no intellect? Morever he can buy himself intellectuals, and is not the man who has power over intellectuals not more of [an] intellectual than they?
Omg I remember having this argument with my friends. "Well there are some home remedies that work, modern medicine doesn't have a monopoly on all knowledge" OK but homeopathic medicine just means its water, plain water that remembers being able to cure a disease, its fake "Yeah but they're not all like that some of them work, my grandma would use a half of an onion to take the pain out of bee stings" jfc I'm literally not talking about that, I'm talking about water sold as medicine that is covered by most major insurance! look it up!
Granted I was an almost constant user, I maintained a "high" basically from when I woke up until I went to bed at night. It was def a form of self medication, it did help with a lot of ADHD symptoms because rather than getting lazy I would get hyped and very active. Used it that way basically from a little before covid, all through covid, until November of last year. It did affect my work performance, looking back, but I interviewed for that job high, I went to work high most of the time, still got good reviews, raises and a promotion. I was addicted or dependent or whatever term you want to use. But like high functioning I guess.
But in November I crashed hard. Had a complete psychotic break. I thought the government was using 5g to beam mind control beams, an array of numbers containing hidden brainwashing instructions, to make me believe I was this person, when really I was a fake, an android put into this life to do their bidding, they killed the real me and I was the replacement, and this happened all the time, I just happened to pick up on one of their transmissions.
I'm a rational guy, I don't know where this shit came from. I have pages in my notebook documenting it. Luckily my wife is amazing and I was kind of able to talk myself out of it enough to have her convince me and remind me of what was real. Since then I had to quit. I def got some intelligence points back. And I haven't had any more episodes. But damn that scared the shit out of me. I didn't even know it was possible.
Quitting smoking and vaping is harder, last year was the first time in my life where, after not having a cig in a long time, I was at a thing and people were smoking and I bummed one and it was absolutely disgusting to me. Felt great to hate it tbh.
But in like 13-15 years of habitual smoking I never had a psychotic episode from it.
I don't know, maybe a proclivity but our family wasn't really the type for diagnosing mh disorders. I had to fight like hell to get my own diagnoses as an adult.
Don't self diagnose based on a single internet discussion but self diagnosis is crucial to getting yourself some relief. I didn't get a diagnosis until I was about 40, and even at this point the change was dramatic. I don't take stimulants but I take a few medications and it made life so much easier, I doubled my salary in 3 years, bought a house, just had a fantastic few years. But I also have a ton of trauma, I hurt a lot of people and myself from being so chaotic and depressed and incapable of processing thoughts or feelings, or being able to handle basic finances. I also lost like 15 years of good life where I could have been successful and happy instead of depressed and stuck in a shitty job with no clear way out.
If you're reading these discussions and realizing that it seems a little too familiar, take this seriously. If you decide you have it, don't take anyone's word that you don't. Its hard to get treated IMO, so if you see a therapist and they don't want to treat you for ADHD, then bye bye, find another one who will take it seriously. I went to therapists on and off for years trying to figure out why I was depressed, and they basically told me I was okay, the normal amount of unhappy with regular life stuff. I finally got on a mild antidepressant and it helped immensely. I fought and found out the antidepressant had an off label use for treating mild ADHD, and when my daughter got diagnosed I looked more into it. When I went to therapists to get treated for ADHD, they told me I was just depressed. so you gotta fight for yourself, but this world is a fuck, and it can be extremely worth while once you get what you might need.
People on Lemmy really don't like any kind of equivocation between the two parties. Also saying that the Dems are a front for Republican objectives isn't correct either. Republicans are the party of nationalist industrial old money bourgeois, Dems are the party of nouveau riche, international finance capital, tech, and labor bureaucracy.
Leftists identify Democrat politicians as a class enemy, and it's true that the bourgeois base of the republicans will join the bourgeois base of the democrats in class solidarity if their class interests are threatened. Liberals also have a nasty habit of defending private property above all else which gives lefties the Heebie jeebies, and creates a lot of inter class strife among workers. The bourgeoisie is one thing, just like the working class is one thing, and as much as I believe that workers should unite to fight against their class enemies, the working class is divided into different striae (lower class reserve army of labor vs. Middle class suburban worker for example) that compete for the scraps, so why wouldn't the ruling capitalists be divided similarly in a fight for the lion's share? Capitalism is, among other things, a system of coercive forced competition. This competitiveness takes many different historical forms across many divisions in society. As much as I'd like to unite all races, gender expressions, ethnicities, economic groupings against our shared enemies in this class war, we all know it's not that simple. Competition is how the system perpetuates, it is the driver of monopolization as well as something like an immune system against worker solidarity, the greatest threat to capitalism.
Often the first step in dialectical thinking, the mode of thought that begins to emerge with class consciousness, is an ability to take two things that seem separate and unite them into a single thing by analyzing the relationships that form them. But dialectics is a process that works forward as well as in reverse. We can use it to identify two things that are one, but we should also be able to use it to identify that one thing is also two. Many people see the synthesis between the two parties and draw a conclusion based on that, and go to the internet to proclaim this discovery, which is often met with lots of people who agree rhetorically with the conclusion, making us believe that we are correct in out new knowledge. But part of this consciousness is an ability to deal with contradictions as part of our analysis, whereas the human, or maybe just modernist, tendency is to discard contradiction for the illusion of surety, another byproduct of competitive mode of capitalist evaluation. We have to realize that each revelation is just a new facet of the truth, which is a lifelong pursuit that is shared among class conscious workers, not arrived at finally by an individual. These truths, as well as the basis for them are all historically contingent. Many things about the class struggle never changes, many of the tendencies identified by Marx for example, but many other things are constantly changing.
I would also be remiss to fail to add that there probably is a concerted effort by bad actors to false equivocate democrats and republicans in order to alter political outcomes, propagandize or maybe just breed suspicion. I don't know if its Russia or China or the democrats or the republicans, probably all of the above plus many many more to different extents. But all these people on Lemmy who detect such bad actors in their communities, I think we have to trust their ability to tell truth from falsehood. even if we don't agree completely with their conclusions, doesn't mean they are completely wrong. When working people tell us something we have to listen. We are all victims of propaganda, so dismissing the sincere fear of other workers as propagandized delusion says more about how we falsely view ourselves as part of the working class, than it does about them.
Good, remove all the weird reddit answers, leaving only the "14 year old neo-nazi" reddit answers, "cop pretending to be a leftist" reddit answers, and "39 year old pedophile" reddit answers. This should fix the problem and restore google back to its defaults
Do not be deluded by the abstract word Freedom. Whose freedom? Not the freedom of one individual in relation to another, but freedom of Capital to crush the worker.
Recalling my past is like watching a cringe comedy that turns briefly into a Yorgos Lanthimos film about various mental illnesses, then a quirky Wes Anderson film, and back into a cringe comedy.
Edit: A few people have interpreted the title as serious, so I wanna clarify that it was meant as a sarcastic joke about how little sense the neurotypical world makes to me, but it is still legitimately me asking for help understanding said neurotypical world....
I can relate. I often say "sure" as an affirmative. To me it sounds nice. People always think I'm being sarcastic. I mean, I am often sarcastic but not in the mean or mocking way that people take this.
"Would you like to do go to the concert with me?"
"Sure!" crying "why don't you want to go to the concert with me???"
When Bloomberg reported that Spotify would be upping the cost of its premium subscription from $9.99 to $10.99, and including 15 hours of audiobooks per month in the U.S., the change sounded like a win for songwriters and publishers. Higher subscription prices typically equate to a bump in U.S. mechanical royalties — but not...
Seen a lot of posts on Lemmy with vegan-adjacent sentiments but the comments are typically very critical of vegan ideas, even when they don't come from vegans themselves. Why is this topic in particular so polarising on the internet? Especially since unlike politics for example, it seems like people don't really get upset by it...
I'm an ex vegan (about 5 years) so I've been on both sides if it. Here's my opinion.
When I was a vegan it was very much a part of my identity. It was something that I thought about 2-3 times (at least) per day when I ate, and any time I went to buy food. I remember being actually insufferable about it for a long time and I'm pretty sure I've lost friends over it, being annoying and preach to a friend's husband and then eventually just not getting invited back for game night. So people are definitely feeling burned/rejected/otherized by vegans who, if not just coming right out and saying it, strongly infer that you are a "bad person" for consuming even small amounts of animal products, or at least let you know that you're being judged for it. As an ex-vegan I've experienced this myself.
On the other hand, non-vegans are also insufferable about food. My friend in college didn't like cheese. Hated how it tasted, hated the way it felt in his mouth. But he loved pizza. He would often buy pizzas for everyone, with cheese on, pick the cheese off himself, and eat it without. I swear that every time he did this someone would say something about it, "what? You don't like cheese? Why?!" I personally had to endure a lot of weird questions and looks, and comments when after volunteering for a whole day at a baseball field for my son's team, and they served pizza after which I just refused. I just quietly didn't get myself any, and people had like 20 questions about it. I didn't even bring up that I was a vegan, I just said I wasn't hungry, which was odd and apparently unacceptable.
Vegans and vegetarians also get judged for their diets, there are plenty of non-v people who will become like preemptively defensive about it, and let you know they think you're weak and unhealthy. You get otherized and judged, even if you dont care what people eat and you just patiently say that its a personal choice, for health or the environment or whatever. This actually deepens the in-group acceptance/out-group rejection of everyone involved. The next time a vegan has to hear about their choices they'll be less patient with the person asking; the next time that person eats an egg around a vegan and gets lectured, they'll be less patient and around and around it goes.
I have theories about why this is, some of which maybe are apparent from what I've written. I think people do construct identities around consumer behavior, and they feel rejected when someone doesn't share those same consumptive habits which they take for granted. I'll get into it if anyone gives a shit.
But I think theres a problem with public discourse that encourages this kind of ingroup/outgroup good/bad acceptance/rejection, so much that it is implied in all discourse whether a vegan or not. This is the thing that drove me away from veganism: I think that vegans are right about a lot of things, but they can't actually see the world for what it is, they can mostly only see through this lens. This is basically the same problem with liberals, conservatives, religious, atheist, whatever. Its the cult of the individual having eroded any experience of interconnectedness, even though we are interconnected. As such, people can't see the world for what it really is, we can only see it from behind the fences of our specific camp.
Right, I agree, have empathy and respect, open mindedness. But without getting into it too deep, you know how do I empathize or respect others when often we don't empathize or respect ourselves? It's this involuntary and constant process of turning out and externalizing. Please don't consider this a call out, just an illustration because I know you don't mean it this way, but by the end of your thought process you are like out grouping some imagined person who is doing this thing, creating an in group between you and I, and others who still behave this way. And I can be as cognizant as I want about this, but I also commit to these groups, and I have recent examples of this toward ideological groups I encounter in my political organizing. People who I used to not have a problem with, I now am extremely suspect of, because this was done to me. Its like baked into our language, or the ways in which we derive meaning. And maybe to some extent its unavoidable, or at least will be until some severe cultural shift happens that changes our ontology and language.
But many people have noticed, from all walks of life, you will hear, "we have never been more divided." And yeah sometimes you hear this from people who probably don't have our best interests at heart. But this campism has only increased since, idk, Trump? COVID? The neoliberal turn of the late 70s early 80s? Who can say. But if that's true, and this phenomenon has increased over time, then maybe it can decrease as well. I hope so. There's a lot of changes that need to happen to society, and quickly, but without that respect and empathy you talk about, I worry about what might happen to people. This out grouping can quickly turn into dehumanization and worse if not checked. And I don't know what to do there except at least try and model that behavior and try and discuss it when I can.
Yeah you're right it's okay to have differences and preferences, its the moralizing that causes problems rather than accepting and trying to find commonalities across the divides.
Historically, I've perceived Reddit as slightly left leaning, with strong pockets of conservatives. Recently though, a vast majority of comment sections seem to excuse violence, such as in this thread (TW: police brutality), where people say things like...
I left reddit for good 4 years ago for just this reason. I suspect it was well before that, like when someone tracked the IPS of reddit users and discovered that the most redditors were in the town where Eglin Air Force base is located. Now there's more bots but they used to have more people just doing the same shit. Lots of large police forces have big social media teams I wonder what they do. And the most prolific mod and poster of their time was likely Ghislaine Maxwell. Oh and their CEO made their career in the CIA before coming over to Reddit, which from what we know about people who left the CIA to go into media, is that they never really left
Sorry I hadn't looked at my notes or thought about this in a while. Its not the CEO its their director of Policy, Jessica Ashooh. My apologies to Spez I hope his mountains of money can give him comfort.
That air force study is cool, gonna add it to my notes!
So I'm a shut-in with a ton of problems and no money. My life revolves around World of Warcraft and Destiny 2 which is sad in its own right I'm sure. Anyway every single time I try to find a community (guild or clan) it goes to hell within a month or so. They always say I'm too negative about the game or my performance. No...
#1 through #69: no push notifications, no feeds on my home screen, nothing I don't explicitly turn on and configure. No bloat whatsoever, the phone comes practically empty. I got this at the beginning of 2022, before then I kept finding myself reading articles about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. Like I could not give less of a fuck about them, that story, whatever. I don't know who she is, and I don't particularly like JD movies except maybe Dead Man from the 90s, he probably beat the shit out of her idk. But for some reason I kept finding myself reading these articles on my phone absentmindedly. That kind of shit ended immediately.
Downsides? Not everything works, because there's no google play, and I couldn't get it even if I wanted it. I can use most google services on the browser, but for maps I have to use Osmand, which works but doesn't give me the fastest way to a place, and its kind of a trick to find a specific house or business without looking it up on a computer first and locating the nearest cross street. Schools, hospitals it has saved no problem, but not the optimal routes ore even anything relatively close. Great for my city where I can get myself 98% the way there already knowing the fastest ways around. Out of town we usually use my wife's navigation.
Those drawbacks are a little annoying but I will never go back to android, and I would never use apple in the first place. I love my phone, it feels like its mine in a way no phone ever has.
Elon Musk has another secret child with exec at his brain implant company ( www.theverge.com )
Lemons(?) of Lemmy, what is something that feels so obvious to you that you just get lowkey pissed at the world for not knowing?
Because it takes slightly less mental energy to sit and stress than to do the thing. ( lemmy.world )
Lockdown mode in Android 15 protects your phone from 'juice jacking' ( www.androidauthority.com )
Points taken from article:...
Is lemmy now what reddit used to be 10+ years ago?
Title
USA: E-bikes could become more expensive after June 14 ( www.globalcyclingnetwork.com )
A new tariff will hit e-bikes on June 14, and costs across the US e-bike market will rise
Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search ( www.theverge.com )
If you are a Libertarian and hold liberty as your core value, why do you not believe in universal healthcare? Nothing impacts liberty more than sickness and death.
Former Green Bay Packers Quarterback Aaron Rodgers Suggests Religion Is Used To Manipulate People ( wisportsheroics.com )
Pro-Israel billionaires urged New York crackdown on Gaza protests: Report ( aje.io )
Hey Evolution! You know that involuntary flinch I do when I think of embarrassing things in my past, sometimes accompanied by a groan?
Yeah, that's unnecessary. Let's start doing humans without that.
At least twice a week ( sh.itjust.works )
Do you consider Lemmy/Reddit (and similar platforms) to be social media?
I had this discussion with a friend, and we really couldn't reach a consensus....
Why are neurotypicals in charge of making up the social rules? They're not even very good at it.
Edit: A few people have interpreted the title as serious, so I wanna clarify that it was meant as a sarcastic joke about how little sense the neurotypical world makes to me, but it is still legitimately me asking for help understanding said neurotypical world....
Robot dogs armed with AI-aimed rifles undergo US Marines Special Ops evaluation ( arstechnica.com )
got him ( lemy.lol )
After announcing increased prices, Spotify to Pay Songwriters About $150 Million Less Next Year ( www.billboard.com )
When Bloomberg reported that Spotify would be upping the cost of its premium subscription from $9.99 to $10.99, and including 15 hours of audiobooks per month in the U.S., the change sounded like a win for songwriters and publishers. Higher subscription prices typically equate to a bump in U.S. mechanical royalties — but not...
There are songs we've gone our whole lives without hearing and the best song we've ever heard might still be out there.
[Serious] Why do so many people seem to hate veganism?
Seen a lot of posts on Lemmy with vegan-adjacent sentiments but the comments are typically very critical of vegan ideas, even when they don't come from vegans themselves. Why is this topic in particular so polarising on the internet? Especially since unlike politics for example, it seems like people don't really get upset by it...
When did reddit turn Facist?
Historically, I've perceived Reddit as slightly left leaning, with strong pockets of conservatives. Recently though, a vast majority of comment sections seem to excuse violence, such as in this thread (TW: police brutality), where people say things like...
If everyone had access to healthcare the net benefit of treating the mental illness and other disabilities holding them back would easily cover the cost of the healthcare itself.
Being 'to negative'
So I'm a shut-in with a ton of problems and no money. My life revolves around World of Warcraft and Destiny 2 which is sad in its own right I'm sure. Anyway every single time I try to find a community (guild or clan) it goes to hell within a month or so. They always say I'm too negative about the game or my performance. No...
18+ Backdoorule ( lemmy.ml )
Recounting Dreams: A Riveting Discussion ( lemmy.zip )
its true tho ( lemmy.today )