Benjaben

Life's short, do weird stuff!

This record, a few by Neurosis, and one or two by Cult of Luna were such a vibe. We knew some knuckleheads who even started a joke ish band called Cult of Neurisis lol

Buddy, "Appalachian atmospheric black metal" is a weird combination of words I've never seen before and I'm stoked to give it a whirl. Praise Satan for keeping metal interesting.

Lol yeah, name became a wee bit unfortunate thanks to those angry rascals

Oh snap thanks for pointing this out! Been a long time and I haven't kept up with ISIS, but their Panopticon was damn near genre-defining for me at the time.

You seem like a caring person, so perhaps this will help guide decision-making. When you make major decisions that deeply impact another person, or even just get real far in evaluating options and imagining outcomes, asking strangers, etc....when you do these things without communicating with the other person at all, the end result is you protecting yourself, not them. Even if it feels like you're carefully considering their interests.

No matter your intentions, if you're not communicating with them and letting them participate in big decisions that affect you both, you are not acting in their best interests. There are many times (like abuse) when that is 100% the right approach, but you need to be very clear eyed about that choice to remove the other person's agency. The way you're going about this protects you at their expense, and in this situation it sounds kind of cruel, rather than justified. I'm not judging you harshly, your intentions seem good, but you need to understand that this is not a loving way to treat an adult.

One of our political parties discovered they can reliably achieve short term goals by politicizing facts and science. The success of this strategy points out that it's available to anyone who wants to use it, which over time has meant that group of voters just got continually flooded with nonsense, until we got here.

There's (almost) no one pushing back from that side - the strategy is too successful, the margins of victory for the party are too small, and most politicians in general want what's best for them and would put the long term health of the group they're representing as a distant priority, if at all.

Doesn't even really require coordination/cooperation. With enough people willing to employ this strategy for enough time, by now the distrust of science and official communications is extremely entrenched.

If you're looking for the "why" we're susceptible to it, it's the same old story - people angry at how things are going can often be manipulated into blaming people and things other than the true causes, with obvious advantages / incentives for those doing the manipulation.

Heard anything about Mullvad's browser? You seem knowledgeable about the topic. I use their VPN already, still using Firefox for my browser though. I'm further behind the curve than you are, lol.

Fair enough. And there's enough variation in us that few rules truly apply to everyone. Hell, I know an adult woman who eats almost nothing but sweets, no physical activity, stays thin as a rail (though likely not healthy, to be clear).

Ah bummer, I had that happen when I was younger. Completely unenjoyable, was ruined for many years. It sure seemed permanent for me, but for whatever reason edibles after all that time off worked great.

What are you using for your browser now?

Thanks for sharing this, hope ya continue 🤙