America is harder to live in the poorer you are, and it’s on a steeper scale than in other industrialized nations because there are fewer and less robust social services, especially health and child care, and declines in union membership have paired with a rapid increase in wealth inequality that is forcing the shrinking middle class downward and stomping on the poor even harder.
You can live a comfortable life (for now…) if you are firmly middle class and up. Your higher salary than your counterparts in Europe is eaten away at by higher costs, and you deal with risks that they don’t in the form of transportation being car dominated (more accidents and less walking exercise) easy access to guns (the most dangerous being the one in your own home, to you) and less strict food safety laws. Compared to those in Eastern Europe, however, your likelihood of suffering from a foreign attack is drastically lower, not that it was ever very high to begin with.
One thing that Americans take pride in (and rightly, mind you) and full advantage of is our First Amendment right to not have our speech be curtailed, so a large amount of the bitching about America, and especially in English, is Americans bitching about America(ns). So there’s a cultural element to it that may or may not exceed the truth.
Given that the AI we have is prone to making things up because it “fits” according to the models it trains on, how much faith would you have in a translation done by an AI on writings made by people who lived millennia before said language models were developed?
My cat is deaf, so there have been a number of “Oh! It’s you!” startled “mrrrrAAAAAs” directed at me when I come around a corner.
She’s quite talkative, with lots of greeting (and aforementioned startled) trills and meows that can range from normal level to “causes ear bleeds at close range” level.
You improve at what you do often and with mindful intent. You’re already doing that; what’s tripping you up is the guilt you feel at getting things wrong because it feels like you’re being dismissive of people.
But you’re not: you’re actively working on a problem you’ve identified you have, and for partially personal but also kind, interpersonal reasons. There’s no timeline or final grade to worry about, so just focus on enjoying your media and discernment will come to you.
I don’t want people to be kept in check because they fear being slapped, and I don’t believe most people become their better selves through experiencing or fearing pain. So no, I don’t see Karens as presenting a solution to the problem of managing poor behavior.
That being said, what I do think is a problem for the Karen term is that insults are invariably misused in ways that hurt innocent parties. The women who are inconveniently or inarticulately but legitimately angry have reason to fear being mislabeled by those who want to shove them into a mental box and out of sight.
It’s amazing how so many MBAs can tank a business. I’m seeing the same thing in my organization: as the number of people who have ever worked in the field decreases relative to the MBAs, things get worse, in both cultural and functional ways.
Be careful, next they’ll argue that since you could theoretically get a paper cut from the foil wrapper that it’s a safety risk and needs to be reevaluated.
Never. I haven’t seen any snide looks or side eyes, either, and if I can’t find something then the ones I’ve seen (in both red and blue states) have been as helpful as can be, trying to find things in library networks or in other formats (ex: Libby).
With burnout and depressive states your ability to foresee the good in life, or even experiences outside of the grind, is severely curtailed: you essentially develop emotional tunnel vision. A psychiatrist can help you break the negative spiral.
Exactly. Places/communities like Lemmy can and should serve different functions for different people - newsfeed, forum, meme collection/dumping ground - but the fine line between value and addiction gets obliterated by moneyed interests.
The question as posed paints with very broad strokes. I’m guessing by “religious people” you’re probably thinking of American christians of the larger denominations.
Why do you think that religiosity is necessary to oppose queer people? In my experience, opposition to the queer community and expressions of queerness is tied to views on gender and conservative/regressive views overall. While there is certainly overlap between orthodox/regressive religiosity and said roles, you can still see a lot of bigotry from people who don’t care about what any god says, they just think “that limp-wristed fairy isn’t a REAL man”.
As with anything outside the mainstream, the experience of being an atheist (and being “out” as an atheist) can lead people to question more things that are considered normal and empathize with others, but it isn’t a given.
Sometimes deviance enforces a sense of humble and earnest examination of common truths and connection with others and their own struggles, and sometimes it enforces the view that this person knows better than the crowd so no need to really question what is definitely their own views.
Is the Hilbert Hotel filled with cats en route to St. Ives who may or may not already be dead?