The country was founded in large part as a nation for those escaping oppression and persecution for their beliefs. It was designed to provide everyone certain freedoms the founders claimed to be inalienable.

While this is still an immensely powerful idea, it can not function without guidelines and government involvement.

Two hundred fifty years ago, it made sense for sparsely populated states to operate mostly independent of the federal government. In time, land became more dense and borders dividing populations and cultures and commerce blurred. Now, the entire world is instantly connected.

Somehow, generation after generation, it was not self-evident that all people should be treated equally. The police force and prison system still largely resemble what they were initially intended to do - serve the wealthy and enslave people for profit.

The United States affords everyone the same freedoms and opportunities by way of doing nothing at all. Everyone has the opportunity to work hard and make a fair living for themselves. But some people win the genetic lottery and inherit extra opportunities and extra freedoms.

We all have the freedom to be complete idiots and that’s considered a win.

Our constitution needs to be re-written. In my opinion, it needs to be explicit about what all the citizens of the United States should be afforded: education, health care, clean air and water, shelter, the right to not be lied to by the people who draft and pass legislation impacting our lives, the right to a source of information that’s not subject to special interests.

No. I can’t say I like it. I don’t like how our government is intent on making our lives worse by their inaction. They take more and more of our money while we get less and less in benefits.

We have no leadership. We have influencers and celebrities. Some people complain about globalism because they know we can’t compete on a global scale. People are prejudice of foreigners who take their jobs because they’re complacent with doing as little as possible. Our most successful form of entertainment is ragebait. Who’s helping us progress as a country? Who’s helping to make us smarter and healthier and happier? Who exactly is promoting general welfare and domestic tranquility?

It’s the land of the me and home of maybe. And our constitution supports your freedom to be this way. Some people love that and claim the freedom to do nothing is what makes America great.

A great America, to me, is one built for everyone to prosper, that promotes self-worth and civil respect, that strictly enforces the idea that my freedoms can not be infringed upon by you freedoms or beliefs. A great America is one that doesn’t have elections where you have to vote for the person you dislike the least. Politics should be positively engaging. We should give a damn about our leaders and they should have to deal with consequences of their actions, like anyone else.

Though it’s not perfect, the one thing I really love about America is our immigration policy. It’s the best place on the planet for people to escape for a better life. Our country is built by and thrives because of immigrants. It’s the one thing that has held true for hundreds of years. How we treat immigrants is a sin. How our government fails to properly fund our immigration system is appalling. I believe most people are in support of legal immigration yet they fail to support proper funding of our immigration department. It wreaks of racism and bigotry.

America is, by design, the land of the self-righteous. The only people in favor of that are the self-righteous.

people haven’t been taking politics seriously and have elected unserious people.

This is the inherent flaw. We have a representative government that never intended “people” to take politics seriously. Politics was for the landowners.

An excuse not to interact with people.
“Sorry, my notifications were off while I was busy yesterday and didn’t have a chance to check it”.

That is not a healthy response to reading something on the internet. Hope you can find some peace in your life.

I think a lot of the existing higher prices are largely due to grocery store mega corps price gouging. Smaller markets are more flexible (while paying their staff living wages). Famers markets are still an obscene value. I filled up two bags with produce the other week for $30. Granted, ten years ago that would have been $20.

Also, no one seems to mention the increased prevalence of paying with a card. Every transaction paid with credit or debit is hit with a 2-3% charge from Visa or the POS supplier. Now that so few people are paying with cash, all stores are increasing their prices to cover those costs.

Food inflation was just below 2% before the pandemic and has been just below 3% since last fall (which is roughly double normal food inflation) https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/food-inflation-in-the-united-states/ This article is grossly outdated and the claim of “skyrocketing (meaning, actively increasing) food prices” is flat out wrong.

Quotes from the linked article and this one…

Grimes sees another factor driving up consumers’ perception of higher grocery prices. “What has happened over time is that the quality of food has gone up”. In other words, America’s tastes are too damn high.

According to the study, many are changing their food shopping habits. About 37% say they are now shopping at discount grocers versus big-name supermarkets. About one-quarter of respondents (26%) say they are buying less healthy food for themselves and their families because it is what they can afford.

I’d love to know how many shoppers are continuing to buy processed foods versus learning to cook from produce and proteins. Or how many have started sourcing produce from farmers markets.

Nothing but (arguably) the love for your family should come before properly feeding yourself. It’s food. It’s what we need to survive. Everyone should know how to make a healthy meal from real, cheap, local, seasonal ingredients. I know that’s hard for a lot of people (including my own family) but it should be the case. I can not comprehend people saying they’re buying “less healthy food” to save money. Healthy food is cheap AF - as long as you know how to cook it. I just spent $65 at a fancy produce market in a major city to feed myself for the week.

I’m not arguing that prices aren’t up. But they aren’t still as high as during the pandemic and they certainly are not skyrocketing. It just drives me mad when I see people not taking feeding themselves seriously and then go and blame the government.

I would have thought “Food & Wine” would have at least offered some suggestions or links to “Cheap Weeknight Dinners” or “How to Grocery Shop When You’re Broke” to help people struggling.

My initial reason for not having kids was financial. I think a lot of people have learned it may be better to have children later in life when you can properly care for them. I know many people who’ve had their first child in their late-30s and early-40s. My aunt had her first child in her fifties. That’s not something that was common before modern medicine.

I have always had the idea that I would have a kid if and when I met the right person to share parenting with. That hasn’t happened so I’ve had to put some thought into my priorities. It’s not fair to have a child just because it’s what society says you should do or just because you want someone to take care of you when you’re old. It’s so much more than that and I think people should be more mindful of the responsibilities and long term repercussions.

I offered two reasons I personally may regret not having children. I could list several others such as the pure joy of watching them grow into adults and mimic you and your partner. If you want to say that’s selfish, to bring another human into the word to experience a universe of emotion you’d otherwise never experience, I understand that perspective. No argument.

But then I offered that choosing to prioritize your own life is in and of itself a selfish act. It’s more explicitly about you than it is about another person.

Would you disagree that going out to eat by yourself is more of a selfish act than inviting a friend to eat out with you? Sharing an experience is less selfish, no?

That argument makes sense. Though I see it more from choosing to prioritize yourself and own self interests over having children and sharing a life with them as selfish too. I guess we’re all selfish one way or another.

I’m not sure you’re going to get an objective answer to this as no one has lived a life of either having kids or not having kids, hungrythirstyhorny.

I will say that, as a single male in his mid forties who has observed a good amount of life; first, the thought of not having people to rely on in you’re old age is a little worrisome; and two, not having had someone to pass my knowledge and skills down to is a little sad. However, I really enjoy the freedom and opportunities my life (and bank account) affords me.

There is always a cost to freedom. Or, as Jonis Joplin put it - freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose. Choosing to not have children is a selfish act. Whether “selfish” is a bad thing or not is subjective.

I would offer that anyone who’s going through life without children, find some altruistic outlet to participate in. You can otherwise find yourself wondering what your legacy may be or what the point of your life has been - aka a mid-life crisis.

The title’s wording suggests, to me, that people are going to TikTok for their news. That’s not what the article is claiming. It’s reporting that Americans distrust TikTok the least compared to other social media platforms.

compared to Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter), respondents felt that TikTok was the app least likely to influence the news stories they saw, whether that be via algorithmic recommendations or content moderation.

By the numbers, around 61% of US adults said they felt TikTok was influencing the news they were shown, while 74% said Facebook was, 72% said Instagram was, and 66% said X was.

71% reported seeing inaccurate news on TikTok “sometimes” or “extremely or fairly often,” compared to 76% on Instagram, 84% on Facebook, and 86% on X.

I’ve never seen more TikTok than a few embedded humorous videos so I don’t know what kind of news is on TIkTok. I would venture to guess though that these numbers seem plausible.

The larger concern is that people are getting their news from social media and what these platforms are suggesting to people based on their ‘likes’ and who they’re following. If I’m only following Republican political leaders or MAGA members of congress, the business model of these platforms is to keep you engaged with more emotionally baiting content.

And, to repeat the author,

what respondents view as “inaccurate” should also be scrutinized, given that we live in a polarized news media ecosystem where information can be labeled as fake to serve a particular interest.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240618202713/https://www.businessinsider.com/social-users-think-tiktok-news-more-reliable-than-instagram-facebook-2024-6

That’s because of the need for an ally / military presence in the middle east. It has nothing to do with Gaza.

I’m of the opinion that an individual with the explicit intent to commit genocide is the main obstacle, regardless of who is supporting them.

This is of course entirely accurate. If you’ve lost your mind and forgotten who Netanyahu is.

But you haven’t because you say, “Biden refuses to use his leverage, even though he has admitted in an interview that it was “reasonable” to conclude that Netanyahu is prolonging the war for his own political benefit.”

Joe Biden is an enabler but the US is not “the main obstacle to peace in Palestine”.

I generally put short term things on index cards and long term things on digital. Or I just note something down with whatever’s most accessible at the time.

So, for work, I have a long list of tasks in Microsoft Planner I should get done in the mid-term and long-term. If someone asks me to get something done asap, I put that on paper. I’m really bad at getting things done on the digital list but I’m trying to get better at it.

Chores and groceries go on the white board on my fridge. Then I transcribe them to index cards if I need to remember them out of the house.

I try to keep a pad with me when I’m out of the house to note things down. I use a tiny little Fisher Space Pen which easily fits in my pocket.

My problem with digital is that it’s too easy to forget about. When I mark things down on paper, specifically index cards, they start to stack up and I feel motivated to reduce the clutter they create. Throwing out ten index cards because I got shit done feels good.

This is so huge. And I’ll be shocked if this makes it to the nightly / cable news outlets. We have more important things to worry about; like if someone lied about doing drugs in order to get a gun.

When I have a perfectly flat four row stack and the 4x1 tile appears.

Those are pretty good points. Still, you had to participate in Reddit in order to find that story.

The point is that news organizations, reporters, etc. need to start using fediverse platforms so we’re not stuck still using Xitter and Reddit. Moreover, a source from a reputable news outlet would be preferred over social media.

I mean, you couldn’t source a link to a tweet yourself and had to share a reddit post on reddit’s competing platform?

https://x.com/nazirafzal/status/1797413922057711911

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