The comment about your wife is related to his comments about you beating him and breaking his arm. He’s decided you’re abusive and are part of the reason his childhood was so messed up. It probably helps him cope with a few things. For example he doesn’t feel guilty when he abuses you or your mom’s hospitality or generosity because you owe him. Anyways he decided that you’re abusive and so you probably beat up your wife worse than he does. It’s self protective, if you’re worse than him (he assaulted his wife and you kill yours) then he can still be a good guy in his own mind by comparison.

He sounds pretty fucked up honestly, and his coping mechanisms are maladaptive. If you want to help him, reach out occasionally to let him know you’re there. Don’t give him money or things or a place to stay. He doesn’t see you as a role model, he sees you as someone who owes him Infinity for what you’ve done, meaning he can abuse you in significant ways and it’s all fair in his mind. You owe him for what you did.

If he ever realises that he’s the problem in his life, and that to make his life better he needs to BE better, only then can you help him.

You can’t help someone be better if they don’t want to be better.

I’m not really going to argue with that much defeatism, I just want to clarify that being a person that’s enjoyable to be with doesn’t mean being a Hollywood movie definition of a “fun” person. It doesn’t require you to change into someone else. It just means you work to improve yourself, reduce the aspects of yourself you don’t like and increase the prevalence of aspects of yourself you do like.

You don’t need to become a “fun” person, just a YOU that you would want to spend time with.

Nobody is forcing you to improve yourself, but like I said before, if you wouldn’t want to spend time with yourself why would anyone else? Even if you live the rest of your life alone, would you not prefer being able to enjoy your own company?

Finding a partner has two roadblocks.

1. Would you date yourself?
2. Could you date yourself?

The first asks are you fun to be around? If you were a fly on the wall in your house would you think “this is a person I want to be with, their activities, demeanor, and level of self-care are something I find attractive”. If you don’t want to be with yourself why would anyone else? Work to being and staying a person you enjoy being around.

The second is more applicable to people who are alone and introverted. If you lived two streets over from yourself how could you meet yourself. If you’re not someone that ever interacts with new people then how can you meet anyone? Find ways to open yourself up to meeting people you want to be with and who want to be with you. This could be through hobby based communities, to socializing with classmates and co-workers, to meeting friends of friends, to joining new groups or classes you’re interested in.

More people were killed in the firebombing.

The theory that more people would have died of the nukes weren’t dropped is FAR from settled fact. The Japanese were already looking to surrender and it’s not likely the bomb played a big part in that decision.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki?wprov=sfla1

Regardless it’s nothing to get banned over, that’s for sure.

That’s how a lot of stuff works, true. I don’t agree that can work with violence. I also don’t appreciate the conceptual response to very practical questions.

I live in a peaceful society. I wouldn’t want my neighbour to be able to use violence because my tree dropped it’s leaves on his side of the lawn. I wouldn’t want an alternate police force hired and paid by a group of white supremacists (current statistics aside) to enforce laws in a biased manner. Having other corporations able to use violence is an absolute dystopian nightmare and is 100% the cause of every dystopian fantasy world. If the government WASN’T empowered with violence then there is nothing to stop the above 3 scenarios. So I’m not sure what other “equalizing distribution” you’re imagining and I’m not certain a better one exists.

I am open minded, which is why I asked those 3 very specific questions. If your have a better idea I’m all ears. If your idea is just to open up the floodgates and hope for the best because that will equalise access to violence and more equal is more better, then I will keep treating libertarian ideology as a threat to civilization. Mostly ideas that sound nice, but no practicable solutions that don’t destroy society. Like communism.

Dude what the fuck? You do NOT want it to be legal for people to use violence to enforce their views on others. That’s what “might makes right” is and it’s how gangs are run. It’s brutal. Every positive consequence you imagine will be completely dwarfed by the depths of human violence and depravity this would unleash.

Government programs IS US HELPING EACHOTHER. Sure corporations have been undermining democracy, but the government is OUR corporation. It’s the only one that we get the choose what it does. The fact we’re obligated to pay taxes is EXACTLY the implementation of your statement “we’re obligated to help eachother”

I don’t understand how you can make statements like this. The threat of violence? The government’s monopoly on violence is rephrased as the will of society to ban violence in public life by restricting violence only to the enforcement of democratically selected laws. There is no other way I can conceive. Should more people have the ability to use violence to enforce their views on others? Should corporations have that right? If no one has that right how can we stop someone who decides THEY have that right?

The whole “government monopoly on violence” is for me the most absurd librarian statement of them all. What’s the alternative? Who should decide what deserves violence? Who should use violence? What do we do if someone breaks this compact? Because the current answers are at least ideally “the people, through democratically enacted, clear and transparent laws”, and “the people, through the police they pay for accountable only to the people” and “apply fair and balanced justice through the judiciary system, run by the people and accountable only to them”. I’m in no way saying that it’s working perfectly as is clear in recent politics, but it’s certainly trending in the right direction in social democracies. We’re closer to that ideal now than we have ever been. As far as I’ve seen libertarian ideology has only come up with absolutely HORRIFYING answers to these questions, or wishy washy nonsense.

That’s fair.

It’s very frustrating seeing someone argue for disproven theories (like the government is less efficient than the free market in arenas most countries have socialised) using easily disprovable statements (like single payer healthcare would be more expensive to US citizens than the private system you have now). Especially when those ideologies can only hurt everyone.

I do apologize for the tone since you have been respectful and I have been less so. You don’t deserve the rudeness but your ideas don’t deserve the consideration they get in civilised society either.

Every graph of healthcare costs vs privatisation with the US in it is necessarily a comparison between private and public healthcare systems since most countries have single payer as most of their healthcare.

The US government healthcare programs are by far the most cost effective offering in the US but it’s hampered by regulations such as not having the ability to negotiate prices (until the recent tiny concession on a handful of drugs that has paid off in spades).

Finally, other large countries including India and China may have lower life expectancy, but they’re close and rising rapidly compared the stagnant US trends. Of course the bang for the buck they get is at least 5x what the US gets with its ridiculous system

If you listen to online libertarians they seem to believe everything is on the tables. Utilities have already been partially privatised and they’ve successfully impressed the classification of broadband as a utility which would have improved service, accessibility, and price at the cost of corporate profit.

Exactly. To me all the basics of life, the bottom tiers of Maslow’s pyramid can’t be privatised. Healthcare, utilities, education, infrastructure, social safety nets, you need those things as a PREREQUISITE to participation in the market. The market can’t provide its own prerequisites. If you don’t provide these things you simply cannot have a competitive free market in the first place.

Wow, you seriously still believe that corporations compete with eachother in the healthcare sector despite the fact that most insurance companies have a “network” specifically so that they don’t have to compete with eachother? How is healthcare a competitive market that drives towards efficiency exactly? The more you privatise healthcare the lower life expectancy you get and the higher you all pay!

If you think private healthcare is more efficient than single payer healthcare when EVERY PIECE OF DATA WE HAVE says the opposite then I think that says more about you than it does about the government.

Damn, you’d have to be completely brain dead to still believe anything is more efficient than single payer healthcare. The US has the worst outcomes for the highest cost in terms of life expectancy. Same with roads, utilities, schools etc… the more you privatise the more expensive things get for a lower quality product.

A well regulated, competitive market is good for many things, but for others it’s atrocious. An unregulated market has never produced good outcomes on any scale larger than the board of directors.

If you’re seriously summarizing the libertarian agenda then I can’t believe any one over 14 could hold these ideas unless they were VERY sheltered from reality.

Oh my god YES. Don’t accidentally snitch on someone doing you a solid.

Yeah getting dogs run over every 2 weeks, letting dogs bite people, burning plastic, running illegal drug dens… These are definitely the kinds of freedoms we need to protect! The only problem is running motorcycles at night, that’s where you draw the line apparently…

Ah yes climate doomerism. “The Earth is going to become uninhabitable, but there’s nothing anyone can do about it now so I’ll just keep on keeping on”. Classic!

NUC for 100$ https://www.amazon.com/Bmax-B1-Pro-Fanless-Computer/dp/B0CJBST7XQ), if you wait for a sale you can often get an even better one. Kodi does basically everything you were asking for with a couple of plugins for free. Your phone works as a remote with a free app (kodi remote). You can “program it” by taking any keyboard in the house and setting it up, shouldn’t need it after.

If you somehow don’t have a keyboard or mouse and/or don’t have the tech literacy skills to install a program and a couple plugins and have no desire to learn then I can understand why you feel like Chrome cast is your only option, because it probably is. Nothing wrong with that I suppose, but stop acting like it’s the best option for the average person, let alone the average person on Lemmy.

You can get an N100 NUC for about 100$ and it’s a full windows 11 or Linux PC that can do everything you listed and everything else a computer can do. No ads unless you allow them.

I don’t know how you make that list. It’s wild. LOTR and Maritx 1 I’m on board solid story, solid movie, solid acting, visuals, sound design, no notes.

I don’t know how you take matrix 2 without 3, it’s just the first and second part of the same, somewhat unsatisfying conclusion to the matrix, still pretty good and they tried something that blockbuster movies rarely tried: to make you question the nature of reality.

Inception is a self masturbatory movie about the importance of movies. It’s not bad, but I don’t know how it joins the others.

Interstellar is not a great movie. The visuals are nice, but the plotline completely falls apart imo. It’s like they knew where they wanted to go, realised half way through there was no way to get there, then just used enough jargon and pseudoscience to hide the fact they drew a straight line from where they were to the conclusion. They even had to retcon stuff with janky time travel.

I’m not mad because i disagree with your list, I just don’t see what puts it together. It’s like someone saying his favorite foods are steak, sushi but no fish, apples, and fruitty toothpaste.