[+3]! I must have come across a few of your before.

I hate how accurate that sounds. I really hope not, otherwise the Democratic Party really will have learned nothing in over a decade.

I think equitable help makes sense as a parent, also fostering a mindset with your kids to not take much more than what’s needed. Post-18 I plan to help pay towards their car insurance, phone bill, and living expenses as long as they are at home. Once they move out, I’ll still help with what I can until they tell me otherwise.

I’m not optimistic I’ll be able to financially provide as much help as I would want to give. Also I’m not optimistic that a young person will be able to afford their own home easily 20+ years from now. Unless there’s more public housing or a sudden increase in the amount of houses being built, I expect real estate to keep going up but wages to stagnant, without intervention at least.

I’m skeptical that Harris is the front runner the DNC pushes, they might but I believe we could see a split over Harris, Walz, or Newsome as the front runner in 2028.

Someone like AOC could throw their hat in the ring, which could work but they would have to do hardball quite a lot to get any progressive legislation passed federally. The courts would be trying to check the EO power and be much more limiting than they are currently.

She tried to play towards too many people all at once really. Trump wasn’t committing to anything as he was posturing that he could be either way on an issue, and I think Harris was trying a more toned down version of that. Her bet was that swing state voters were more center or right leaning, but really she almost cemented them being that way with her middle ground approach.

Her actual policy positions were reasonable and passable on their own, but she didn’t bake any risk into her platform. She didn’t try to promise more progressive legislation, which almost assuredly would have helped her and the other Democratic Senators/House members to win their elections.

It took me awhile to even realize how it worked, but it tracks the total number of comments or posts that I’ve liked from another person. You’re number for me shows as [+1]!

At first I thought it was an instance based like system lol. Incidentally I feel that would have been a cool serparate thing to track for how popular posts are based on the likes of other people from your shared instance.

I’m not sure if it’s an app specific thing, Lemmy specific, or what, but this is one of the built in features on the Voyager app for me at least.

>be Germany

>create a fake language called “Deutsch” just for laughs

>get everyone in Germany in on the joke so you’re all “sprechen sie Deutsch”

>continue pranking tourists for years now, everyone’s gotten pretty good at selling the bit as well

>one day some ‘geistesschwache’ accidentally leaks the script we’ve all been using

>oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck

>mfw people mistake it for a translation guide

[+2] next to you!

[+3]! Thank you for the laugh

I mostly agree, although I would say they follow the Bible verbatim™, where in reality they are just following what their local pastor or grandfather is saying the Bible says. Some common things they do take literally such as the Earth being only 6,000 to 10,000 years old, there being a literal Garden of Eden, and a literal Noah’s Ark.

Whatever whacko is trying to say ‘slavery isn’t wrong’ is not a Christian imo.

I feel that many Catholics I know call themselves Catholic first, rather than saying they are Christian and then clarifying that they are Catholic.

Off-topic: I feel a lot of these issues unfortunately came about from Christianity fracturing around the wrong thing. Christianity fractured around people having to do good works to go into heaven, as those leaving the Catholic church thought that faith alone was sufficient. The Catholic church of that time was greedy, they were letting people buy their way into purgatory, so that they could then go into heaven. The original Martin Luther, saw that greediness and called the Catholic church out, but he was calling them out and fractured the church over the wrong reasons imo.

Because they went off the basis of faith being sufficient; it opened the door for “Christians” to be genuinely awful to others since all they had to do was ask God for forgiveness right before they died and it was ‘All Good™’. The Bible calls on Christians to love one another, even people they might call their enemy they are called to love. I feel more of these people need to actually read the words of Jesus, because he is not condoning any of this type of hateful behavior.

I guess it depends on how you define ghosting and the expectations you want to set with some people. For instance, I recently didn’t notice someone sent me a message a few weeks prior, so when I noticed it I responded right away.

If it’s family I doubt there’s a big expectation to always reply over text. If it’s close friends, sometimes people are just not in the right space to give a good reply so they might not have an answer. If it’s someone you barely know, I think it can be a bit hurtful to building a bond with them.

I regularly have ghosted people for weeks or months though as I’ve gotten older, but that’s more because I’m overwhelmed more. Idk if people want to talk I’m always open for a call, but texting isn’t my focus these days.

It’d be kinda fun if the Fediverse made its own hybrid English dialect. At the very least it would create a unique niche that’s only on the Fediverse. That alone would draw in some people wanting to get in on the fun.

You really notice how tight knit Lemmy is if you have user specific scores enabled or if you leave yourself tags for specific users. [+1] was already next to your comment for instance. Whenever I see double digits profiles I know those are usually regular posters.

It certainly doesn’t hurt. There are still plenty of Catholics listening to what the Pope says, especially at the Catholic schools and colleges across the country.

I wouldn’t say they’re necessarily tiny but they are a minority by far. 94/213 of the Democrats in the House are part of the progressive caucus for instance, which is 94/435 total seats in the House. Having 1/100 of the seats in the Senate by comparison.

Imo they just do what they can get away with. Which will continue for the foreseeable next three years at minimum.

For progressive change, it really needs to happen at the state level within Blue states. We need those programs passed at the state level and then we can sell how successful they are to the other states.

I agree, that’s why I feel that having more countries willing to stand together on certain points matters as well. The more people coming together to say something and stand by that, the more that message gets through, even to those that have selfish goals.

I wouldn’t say Americans are tricked, but a vote for positive change tends to be met with a vote for ‘changing nothing’ by someone on the other side of the aisle.

People’s best bets is really to focus on making their own states more progressive and pass those progressive programs at the state level. Banking on having the federal government pass the progressive programs people want is not going to work

People living in Purple and Red states are going to need to see Blue states thriving from progressive policies if they’re going to be convinced to change their voting habits. People living in Blue states should no longer be banking on doing the more caring option of passing progressive programs federally, instead Blue States should be willing to go into debt to fund these progressive programs.

I believe that’s an overstatement, not all politicians are corrupt. There are many members of Congress that are working to make things better and pass progressive legislation. AOC and Bernie for instance haven’t been silenced and replaced by big corporations.

I agree with you that the US’ federal Congress is more pro-billionaire, but there are still people that want to make things better. The issue is that those people do not have the votes to pass progressive legislation. Lots of people are seemingly happy with the status quo given that half of the states predominantly vote Republican each election cycle.

Even authoritarian governments can be swayed when money is on the line, imo. If countries enforce standards via an international trade deal, anyone that doesn’t play ball by the rules could be incentivized to change if they want a cut of the pie.

Take non-ethical working conditions for example. If every country said they will not do business with a country that doesn’t implement ethical working standards then that country could be incentivized to change. If there was a requirement for third party auditors to be able to regularly verify that those standards are being upheld then that could help ensure that those basic standards are being met even in authoritarian countries.

When education is purposefully defunded and left to rot for decades now, is it really that surprising things are the way they are? When voters are more educated, they tend to vote Democrat.

If a country wants to prevent this, then it needs protections that can’t go away for education. Furthermore, media companies need to be held to higher standards of reporting, and at this point I feel that influencers should fall under that bucket as well.

Personally, I don’t hate the idea of tying the ability to vote behind getting any Associates Degree. With the caveat that the college would need to be free and accessible to anyone that wishes to go, with a room and food expenses covered to accommodate people. I feel this is a fairer way to get Aristotle’s idea of restricting voting to the educated.