I felt the same way (spoilers for whoever hasn’t read it). The protagonist just kept encountering significant people where it seems like there’s going to be a struggle to overcome, leading to character development and newfound maturity, but no. He just moves on to another scene instead and they’re not seen again. It was just annoying.

The teacher that feels he’s not living up to his potential? The private school friends that he hangs out with but often finds frustrating? The childhood friend who he shares unexplored romantic tension with? The nuns whose meals he pays for despite having dwindling funds? The prostitute he just wants to have a conversation with? Her pimp, who attacks him? The potentially rapist family friend? For pretty much all of them a relevant conflict is initiated just for him to leave it unresolved, probably after labeling them a phony.

The only exception is his sister, who he sees like two or three times. And then the final conflict at the end is like: “Hey sorry for taking your birthday money so I could keep wandering around these past couple of days instead of talking to our rich parents.” “That’s ok, I forgive you. You’re my brother and I love you. But I worry about you sometimes.” “Yeah anyway, I’m bitter about the world so I kinda want to disappear into the wilderness.” “Please don’t do that.” “Ok I won’t.”

None of you should explain anything to five year olds.

First time I’ve seen someone else mention it. Definitely an underrated show with a lot of wild ideas.

I’m not saying it can’t be done, but getting a compromise from a debate is not a primary goal. For competitions, the goal is usually to demonstrate and practice debate skills and the topic and positions matter less. For more serious debates, it is meant to be a way to expose people to the strengths of your position’s arguments and expose the weaknesses of your opponent’s. It’s valuable as an opportunity to persuade an audience of people who haven’t been firmly entrenched in either position, or who may have only been exposed to one side’s arguments in earnest.

The framework does presume both viewpoints are valid, since both sides are expected to believe in their position, be rational, and be reasonably well-informed. An invalid perspective would not be argued by someone meeting these criteria. It does not presume equality as that would be preemptively judging the quality of the argument. Either the debate platform or the other debater would presumably not agree to a debate with someone who cannot be expected to meet these criteria.

It seems bizarre to me that the only user I have seen actually trying to provide constructive criticism for the bot so far in this thread is the one that already likes it. Especially when others instead advocate for things like the mods taking a political stance to endorse and using mod powers to reinforce it.

I like the bot. It’s valuable to have context for the organization pushing a story. I agree that others are reading too much from the orgs they like being labeled as biased. It’s assumed a news source will have some bias, and trying to avoid acknowledging that is dangerous. The takeaway is simply to be wary of any narrative being pushed (intentionally or not) by framing or omission, and get news from a variety of sources when possible. Instead, people tend to think identifying bias is advocating that the article should be disregarded, which is untrue.

To your suggestion, I do think adding more sources for reliability and bias judgements is a good idea. It would give more credibility if multiple respected independent organizations come to the same conclusion. More insight into their methodology in the comment itself could also be nice. The downside of adding these is that it would make the comment even longer when people have already complained about its size.

Other than that, I have seen people dislike using the American political center as a basis for alignment, but I have yet to see a good alternative. I expect a significant plurality of users are from the US, and US politics are globally relevant, so it seems to be a natural choice.

Nearly every critic I have seen so far just thinks it should be removed entirely because they find it annoying. I would say even if it isn’t considered useful for the majority of users, the amount of value it provides people who do use it justifies whatever minor annoyance it is to others. Anyone who gets really tired of collapsing the comment or scrolling past it can block it in seconds.

Thank you to the mod who created this thread. Even if it’s good to gather feedback, it’s obviously not easy to get bombarded with negative comments. I’m impressed with the patience you have shown in this thread.

Op discovers fiat currency.

I still can’t find anything about him being a pedophile. If you have something you can link about it I would genuinely like to know.

He was never given a reason for his permanent ban, but it is thought to be for for his view on trans athletes. He was temporarily banned earlier for saying “the rioting needs to fucking stop, and if that means like white redneck fucking militia dudes out there mowing down dipshit protesters that think that they can torch buildings at ten p.m., then at this point they have my fucking blessing…” in regards to a BLM protest, which was considered inciting violence. Not saying that’s a great statement but it’s pretty clear he’s talking about rioters specifically.

But neither of these thing make him a nazi. That label shouldn’t just be thrown around casually.

It’s interesting that he seems to get a lot of accusations of being far-right by the far-left and far-left by the far-right. I don’t know if there was some controversy I missed that inspired the pedophile comment, but calling him a borderline nazi is frankly ridiculous.

Here’s the introduction to his wikipedia page for anyone curious:

Steven Kenneth Bonnell II (born December 12, 1988), known online as Destiny, is an American live-streamer and political commentator. He was among the first people to stream video games online full-time and received attention as a pioneer of the industry.[4] Since 2016, he has garnered further attention for streaming political debates with other online personalities, in which he advocates for progressivism and liberal politics.[5][6] The New York Times has described Bonnell as a liberal,[2] while Bonnell has described himself as “a very big social democrat”.[6]

I think you’ll be hard pressed to find someone progressive enough for lemmy to like that will also be interesting to a Joe Rogan fan. I would recommend Destiny though. I wouldn’t say he’s like Joe Rogan, but he frequently does debates with commentators of all politcal positions including those with similar beliefs to Joe. He has an aggressive, confrontational style that would be your best bet at trying to demonstrate the weaknesses of the views Joe would advocate for.

If you’re not familiar with his views, Destiny could probably be described as a left-leaning liberal institutionalist moderate. His community can attract a variety of viewpoints and is relatively accepting of criticism for Destiny so your brother would have an easier time interacting with them than someone like Hasan.

It’s nice you are trying to look out for your brother like this. Good luck!

It wasn’t my decision, but getting fired from an exhausting job was amazing for me. I wasn’t going to pull the trigger myself, but walking out of my boss’s office I couldn’t keep a huge grin off my face. I was in no rush to find a new job so the months of uneployment that followed were some of the happiest of my life. And I have a better job now that pays less but is so much less stressful.

Me too!

This is relevant to a lot of the points people are making: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RequiredSecondaryPowers

Also, this thread reminded me of a video from many years ago: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-vQ2RVqJCNM

Second this. It is free for federal, and iirc $15 for state. Also, you can upload submissions from Turbotax if you used them before so many fields will be pre-filled out. I actually preferred the freetaxusa experience to turbotax having used both.

Mr. Seal Your Girl

Audiobookbay and smart audiobook player is my setup too. I probably got it from a similar thread. My only annoyance is using audiobookbay’s search can be annoying sometimes, but altogether I love both.

I’ve only been at two jobs that offered an FSA but both had resources explaining clearly that it is use it or lose it. And my personal risk aversion is why I chose an HSA instead. But it seems like a good idea for people to be able to save money by saying “This isn’t really income, since I am confident it’s only going to a demonstratable health expense. So don’t tax me on it.” It’s like a business expense can be tax deductible, and you are in the business of living. But then you don’t get to take home extra money for being under budget. When used correctly, it’s a tool to drive down living expenses and is more efficient for lower incomes since it uses a flat max annual deduction.

I don’t want to victim blame people that lose money by overcommitting, but it’s not like this is in fine print. You can get short articles that explain it in simple terms just by googling “fsa” before committing thousands of dollars to something. If you don’t have much idea what your minimum spending on healthcare will be, just keep it as income for full freedom or use a different tax-advantaged option. It’s just meant to be an option for people with good awareness of budgetting to save some money.

Piracy leaves creators worse off when it deprives them of a sale, as in you would have paid for something but instead just pirated it because not paying was an option. So I pirate stuff I think is worth my time, but not my money. I then consider it victimless. Maybe that movie is interesting enough to watch but not enough to rent/buy, so I would pirate it. I’m now at a point where money isn’t as scarce as it used to be, so the prices of entertainment seem reasonable and I am much more willing to pay.

There are a couple of exceptions to the above. I pirated almost every textbook I could since the fact that a student requires one specific product puts the customer in an exploitable position that allows the seller to charge unreasonable amounts (and used books have none of their proceeds go back to the creator anyway). Also, there is no issue with pirating content no longer being sold, since the creators aren’t being deprived of anything. This is mostly relevant for me with old video games on emulators.

I wouldn’t stress over it. Employers look for someone in an umbrella of majors, because every school is going to have its own names and standards for their class templates. If I saw someone list community development as a major, I would think it would overlap a great deal with urban development, with maybe a bit more focus into civil engineering or sustainability. You’ll want to explain how your background is relevant to a position in the interview anyway. I wouldn’t expect it to get you eliminated before then.

Also, it’s a cool opportunity to stand out with how it differs from a more traditional major. People like hearing how you chose to include something that you felt was lacking from the default path because you thought it was important. Choosing to specialize demonstrates thoughtfulness, passion, and mastery. You’ll be fine.

The Downpayment Toward Equity Act (currently still in Congress, but already budgeted for) is meant to address the generational wealth gap you described, so there is hope. It would give a $25,000 grant to first-generation first-time home buyers.

I don’t think anyone should be ashamed of getting help from parents for buying a home. As you said, it is essentially an advance on one’s inheritance. Nepotism is favoritism for something intended to be merit-based.