OpenStars

joined 1 year ago
[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 1 points 9 months ago

Thank you for helping put my mind at ease:-). Sadly, I think there are quack doctors, especially in the USA, but as you say the entire issue is so super-charged b/c on the other side you have things like those literally torture camps where they electroshock little children, often leading to their actual death. I think multiple of the latter have been created and directed over by someone who a decade or two later in life came out as gay themselves, and one or perhaps two even killed themselves - i.e. they hated themselves, b/c of their pseudo-religious bullshit treating Christianity not as "love one another" but rather as "do as I say" aka Might Equals Right and Conformity Is All. So then hurting the children sprung forth from their own mental illness, but in the process they created a panic among parents who wanted to "beat out the gay" from their children, who they ended up killing instead:-(.

The parallels between those stories and the anti-vax movement are profound: each relates to ignorance, and each results in a huge risk and often death to the most innocent among us:-(. And THAT is why I keep saying that I am losing hope for democracy: why should "citizens" have a say, in such INORDINANTLY COMPLEX matters, that require specialist knowledge, especially when there is (often Russian-derived, intentional) misinformation polluting the whole topic?! Except how else could be done - the State (e.g. China) decides, and everyone just has to follow its lead? Which brings us back to: the only solution forward would be to ensure that people receive a basic edumacashiun, so that we are better prepared to deal with such attacks on our system(s), even as we try to move forward into the future. But Christofascists on the one side, and corporate-backed liberals on the other, do seem a daunting pair of adversaries.

How are we supposed to tell people how things actually are for us if nobody even listens to us in the first place.

Amen, sistah! That is the really odd thing I find about most aspects of life - like "Evangelical" Christianity in particular, isn't the goal there to "save" people, so then why go extremely out of your way to alienate them, via let's say passing anti-abortion laws? All that on top of the fact that the Bible not only never says that Christians are meant to regulate non-Christians, but in fact it says the polar opposite of that! Christians are to judge "Christians" - e.g. when a priest diddles a child, THAT is something that should be judged! And also, Christians are specifically never ever to judge "non-Christians", who have been granted freedom to live however they wish. The only grace I can manage to come up with for people who think like that - even though it included me for many of my early years - is that sheeple aren't known for their ability to perform acts of higher thought. They are vulnerable. As are we all, just differently, is all.:-|

That said, there really is a line there, and that is when you step up to take away the rights of other people - properly warn them, yeah, maybe go so far as to require an extra consent form or some such, but when you actively prevent someone from doing as they please, that generates resentment. How the hell are people supposed to "evangelize" to someone who has just e.g. been tortured, perhaps to literal death? (successfully anyway) It makes them a hypocrite.

The saddest part is that in reality we all want the same thing but “They” have us fighting about manufactured issues and differences that don’t actually matter at all.

I agree so hard I can't even throw in a nice phrase here about it, maybe I'll just say "gulp". Among well-meaning individuals, we can discuss ANYTHING at all, no matter how difficult, and if there's something we don't quite "get", we can look it up. Maybe put our money where our mouths are and hire an expert to explain it to us. But we can get it done. However, among people who are not well-meaning, we can discuss NOTHING, b/c every single topic is merely being used as another avenue to preach their belief at someone, not merely virtue-signalling b/c they actually do mean it (sometimes), but still not all the way over to the other side in terms of being actually authentic. They must be quite lonely I imagine, and not comfortable in their own skin/heads, to need to resort to borrowing the actual thoughts of others rather than stare bravely at their own, following wherever they may lead. Take pity on them, but don't let them be in charge!

It is not my place to tell you what to do, but I do hope that you get a chance to rest before replying to me - as much as I enjoy hearing from you, I want you to be happy even more:-).

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 4 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Probably b/c back then, they wanted to survive?! :-P

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 11 points 9 months ago

I doubt its authenticity... b/c I do not see her wearing jeans, while eating beans!? :-P

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 1 points 9 months ago

How do we know though that that is not how they calmly & casually just say "hello" in their world? :-P

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I gave up on iOS entirely - I still love Mac OSX but I hate iOS, especially if I am constrained, b/c of work reasons, to still have to use a Google or Microsoft account. Apple just flat does not care what our needs are, out there irl, only what they want to provide. Now I am aware: if you sell your soul to them (by using exclusively their products), then they do take extremely good care of you. So long as you never even so much as dare to dream of venturing outside of their walled garden... you will be fine. But I just cannot live that way:-(. So I put up with the mess of Android, b/c it is still far better than the 1984-style "security" that iOS offers imho:-P.

Then again, I desperately do want a fairly stable daily driver, not an adventurous linux "experiment":-D.

it could be more about personally losing something than it not being fair.

Oh yeah 100% agree there - all of humanity, and most especially children, use justification rather than purely logical reasoning.

my answer to the question “How can we help people?” is to just help people.

NO, I very much disagree, at least in my own sense. Then again, you did mention that it may not be phrased well, and your actual actions I 100% agree with so... there is that:-P. In general I think that such selfless act tend (even if not fully guaranteed) to be the better way, as in you help yourself and them at the same time - subject to your capacity ofc. A big issue there that I have agonized over in my mind is trans children. Since we know that younger humans use "justification" rather than pure "logic", is it really helpful then to allow them access to surgeries that are not designed for that, not well-tested, and have an enormous failure rate (isn't it like 50%?), where they can become crippled for life? Then again, I have no skin in that game really, and while I am mostly an ally in the sense that I think like "dare to be different" is a good thing, still I do wonder if those children are being taken advantage of by predatory doctors who are pushing expensive surgeries (like $100k USD a pop!), more than acting to help them be who they truly are. And some I believe truly are, but how do we know the difference b/t when it is helpful vs. harmful, and isn't that related to age, or at least some measure of emotional maturity? I have read (on Reddit) in trans forums that even older trans people (who I trust more than myself to be cognizent of the issues involved?) are themselves against allowing literal children to go through that. To clarify, in case I am sounding "conservative" here myself (dErP), I am talking solely about children here, whatever that cutoff might be, like 15-18 or some such, and the goal is how to help them, not how to tell them what they can or cannot do (maybe the surgery could be allowed but not like federally approved for safety, or worse yet have some label attached to it, like those warnings on cigarettes? Anyway, I don't mean to go deep into that issue per se, but rather to use it as an exemplar: "How can we help people?", for me, requires some knowledge as to what, exactly, that is.

But ofc I am probably over-thinking it.:-D And yet even in doing so, I am offering my love to society in terms of trying to find that "correct" path. Not that I would tell much of anyone, so I don't even know why really myself, except that it is in me to do so.

Anyway, when the answer seems more simple I just go for it - like I like to tip well, even putting in a dollar when I pick up food where no server is involved so it is not usual, and even if that could be 10-20% of the order cost. Those workers deserve their wages, and I need to be generous and that is one way to help support people who really are needing, wanting, and deserving of it!:-)

I feel like that’s just because those stories don’t sell as well and/or they get immediately buried by ragebait.

Sigh... yeah, everything seems to come back to money. There's probably a morality/philosophy point in there somehow, like it tends to reflect what we value the most, as a society. Truth isn't something we really care about, nor children, and for the most part we (the USA I mean) mostly care about healthcare when there are expensive drugs available for purchase, not so much at any other time.:-(

I applaud your efforts to remain open to experiences, possibilities, and loving one another - stay awesome gurl!:-D

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 42 points 9 months ago (3 children)

The Eldritchen horrors that we saw are not the reason that... uh I mean, there is no such thing as... uh I mean it was a technical glitch, I swear!

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[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 20 points 9 months ago (2 children)

The TV series Earth: Final Conflict, made by Gene Roddenberry, had a story based on this premise:-).

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 16 points 9 months ago

Not only that, but also under these conditions. Blaming others for one's own problems used to be a sign of mental unhealth, but now it is considered a sign of "proper management"!:-P

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah I still use Blokada 5 on my daily driver - it generally works "well enough" for most things, so I never bothered to switch to 4 on it. But I did notice that if you try to play a game on it, it's like the ad blocker isn't even there, whereas version 4 worked a lot better straight away. I may just not have played around enough with the settings of 5 though:-).

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