This is one of the cutest things I've ever seen 🥺

I mean liberal and conservative aren't the same level of crappy in my eyes, but it is accurate to say corporate interests fund both of them. I think its reasonable to question how beholden both of them are to private interests

Every time I'm struggling to deal with greif, or someone in my life is, I always come back to this post from many years ago on reddit by a user called gsnow (it was in reply to a redditors friend dying, they were asking how they could cope with the pain of that loss):

Alright, here goes. I'm old. What that means is that I've survived (so far) and a lot of people I've known and loved did not. I've lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can't imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here's my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don't want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can't see.

As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.

(Back to being written by me) aside from making sure you're using healthy methods to cope (DBT has some really helpful coping skills in its "distress tollerance" section that I've used more times than I can count. DBT is a particular school of psychotherapy, like CBT), find yourself a therapist so you have some support with the process. I'm sending love from my corner of the world

Protections seem probably more important for putting them through unusual experiences that may involve suffering than killing them for food, as that's essentially predation which they experience as a natural part of life

There's an argument to be had that we as humans are intelligent enough to choose not to put animals through that which is why lots of folks choose to be vegan, but eating animals is more of a personal ethical choice, whereas funding research conducted on animals kinda needs to be a societal one given it's funder by other parts of society, and research is generally for the benefit of society; so society needs to be the ones to decide whether the research is ethical. Not sure I articulated quite what I mmea, but hopefully what I'm trying to say makes sense

Jesus fucking Christ, what a clusterfuck.

I can't wait to not be able to spend google play store credits on renting movies anymore, just like there's no way to spend google play store credits on purchasing albums or songs 🙃

Wow. Thats genuinely so sweet. Just donate an umbrella to make sure someone else's day isn't total dogshit

Ayy, let's fucking go.

Glad it was a false alarm, it's nice to have them as an option in the android market

I know there are automated tools that exist for detection CSAM- given the challenges the fediverse has had with this issue it really feels like it'd be worthwhile for the folks developing platforms like lemmy and mastodon to start thinking about how to integrate those tools with their platforms to better support moderators and folks running instances.

Thats actually a fantastic point, thank you for pointing that out to me!!

ಠ⁠_⁠ಠ

Yo... What the fuck.

great post

Everything in this post describing your choice, to me affirms that I have found the right instance to make home. Thank you for your transparency and sharing how your background influences your perspective. Thank you for engaging in healthy reasonable discourse with those using the hammer and sicle (not a communist, but discussion of political ideologies is important and shouldn't be censored). The ways and places where you chose to draw the line show, to me, a lot of integrity and I greatly appreciate and admire your willingness to engage with perspectives other than your own while remaining intolerant of bigotry- I think that balance is something perhaps everyone could aspire to doing better.

For my two cents- soon lemmy overall will have the option for accounts to defederate as they please, giving a good option to those who would like to avoid this community. I support the decision to stay federated, and I support lemmy adding more tools for users to moderate what they want to be exposed to.

I really appreciate that this instance generally favors letting me filter out what I don't want to see for myself instead of making that choice for me. I just moved from lemmy.world and I really appreciate the transparency in communication, and the focus on remaining federated with other communities. Thanks for facilitating this community space!

I genuinely do understand concerns about legal issues and the risk of facilitating illegal activities- but its not even hosted on their instance, why would it mater that the communities EXIST. They're literally hosted by someone else...?