For those rare occasions when magic won’t get them out of a pickle, their melee weapon is a large cast-iron.

I think most people objecting to it are primarily objecting on moral grounds, not legal ones.

Had a book assigned for history class that totally and forever changed my understanding of Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World I think it’s called.

Dude and his empire basically singlehandedly spread the written word, religious freedom, and lots of other ideas we generally consider good today. Not saying he didn’t kill a lot, because he did, but his historical impact is much more complex than “barbarian invader kills a bunch of people”

Tipping culture in the U.S. is fucked. Who does it benefit most? The employers who are able to underpay their workers. (Even minimum wage these days is horrifically low.)

The companies are able to externalize the wages they should be paying to their customers, who really pay huge portions of the employees’ “wage”. (E.g. I’m a gig worker doing deliveries, and more than HALF my pay comes from tips.)

If you don’t tip or tip very low, you’re using the employer’s negligence as an excuse not to pay the service workers a living wage. For this reason, when considering engaging with the service industry, you should assume you will pay a healthy tip, unless the service worker truly and massively drops the ball. If you can’t afford a healthy (20%) tip, then you can’t actually afford the service.

surprised i had to scroll down so far to find Old Man’s War. definitely worth a read.

Look into housing co-ops! They’re basically this and there are already (kind of) a ton of them around!

I’ve been in one for a couple years now and it’s going pretty well.

me, a person who’s recently begun to suspect i might be autistic:

óoooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

yep.

i don’t get it…why does the DM ask for wis saves at the end?

Capitalism is the greatest generator of wealth ever created

I feel like when making that “calculation”, you’ve forgotten to figure in the complete and utter destruction of the biosphere, the impending losses due to climate change, the cost in human lives and well-being and dignity of enslavement, exploitation, and so on.

Even when you CAN do this, it’s usually because the employees are either kind enough or inattentive enough to let you do this. And if you are clearly unhoused or poor, your chances of being able to do this are much, much lower than if you can fit in in a middle class white area. (Restaurants with predominantly poor clientele or many homeless people nearby tend to be much stricter about this.)

I guess the one argument for “public restrooms” is rest areas along major highways and restrooms in public (usually national or state, not little municipal) parks.

So we do have public restrooms…they’re just nowhere near 99% of the population most of the time.

the cognitive dissonance is astounding

this had me actually cackling for a minute, thanks for sharing

There are 1.9 BILLION Muslims globally.

You think the vast majority of them are fundamentalists?

For interesting, well-written, and in-depth articles I recommend:

The New Yorker Harper’s (not Harper’s Bazaar) The Atlantic New York Times Magazine

I’ve been using Notally for a while and I think it checks all your boxes.

I’m a gig worker who delivers food to people.

I almost went into CS and consider myself fairly well-educated, so I think although I’m not in tech I share a slightly similar background and sensibilities with Lemmy folks. I just got on here a couple days ago and it kinda reminds me of reddit back when I joined (hopefully minus the racism and spez’s favorite subreddit)

Factory farming IS killing for pleasure.

Livestock animals are killed for their meat. Something close to 80 billion mostly chickens, pigs, and cows, all of whom have been shown in lab experiments to be surprisingly aware, intelligent, and social. The vast majority of these animals also spend most of their lives in a living hell.

Why are they killed? It is not because it is nutritionally necessary to do so. It would be vastly more efficient to use land and resources to grow crops for human consumption than for livestock and their feed. Doing so would vastly increase the amount of available food supply, drastically reduce emissions, and reduce the suffering of hundreds of billions of living, feeling creatures (trillions over just the next 15-20 years).

They are killed because humans have a gustatory and cultural preference to eat meat. Although meat is often healthy, western diets especially often over-include it, and meat is not nutritionally essential for health.

I am not advocating for literally all human beings to become vegetarian or vegan with no exceptions ever. In fact, the use of some amount of livestock is necessary for maximally sustainable food systems. However, we could drastically (something around 95% globally, maybe more) reduce the amount of meat we consume and ensure that livestock are treated humanely, and it would be objectively better in the long run for humanity and for the planet.

Killing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_vegetarianism

edit: Also hunting (specifically of deer and similar) is not a problem, as their populations will grow out of control without hunting. People advocating widescale vegetarianism in fact are not generally against hunting deer. But how much of the meat that is consumed in the developed world is hunted? Factory farming is by several orders of magnitude the greater ethical and climatic concern.