A mixture of emotions. In my case,

1.) I live in Illinois and bought a home in 2020 when the interest rate was 3.2% as a first-time homeowner. If I were to sell and look for a new home, the interest rate in Canada would be somewhere around 4%, plus the cost of living is higher compared to where I live. That’s ignoring the complications that could come from obtaining a permanent work visa as a foreign citizen.

2.) I love my job as it is now and it may be difficult to find a job in the same field. Also, my wife recently found a job in her career field and for the first time wants to stay at her employer for the foreseeable future; working in public health and helping the people this horrible healthcare system is failing to care for.

3.) Family and friendship ties to the area.

4.) There’s some semblance of hope if we stay. I do still want the best for everyone that I share this earth with. Even if it were financially viable for me to leave, there’s millions that aren’t so lucky. If I pack up and leave that’s one less person voting for progressive policy and advocating for empathy in a country that has real projective power in the world.

5.) Illinois, as a blue state, is temporarily insulated from damaging policy that Trump is trying to enact. JB Pritzker has remained steadfast in his opposition to Trump and regressive political action.

I liken it to French opposition during the period of Nazi occupation. (Clearly it’s not a 1:1 comparison.) The french resistance hampered Nazi wartime efforts just enough to keep Nazi logistics from being able to cross the channel and occupy Great Britain. If that were to happen, the United States wouldn’t be able to set up any sort of staging area on the other side of the Atlantic ocean. Amphibious assaults would have taken place on the western coast of GB where there’s cliff faces rather than the sandy beaches at Normandy. Maybe Germany is then able to allocate more troops to the eastern front in that scenario, who knows. But thankfully that’s just a hypothetical and isn’t something we have to ponder.

*unless it’s product is collectively owned by the public and for the public as a civil service.

Nothing to see here. Just a <1 day old account spreading propaganda.

Are your 2 separate friends not checking ebay’s seller ratings and buying scummy shit from scummy sellers without using PayPal’s buyer protections?

This is such a tired trope. eBay has improved well beyond when it was just the wild west of third party sellers. I’ve not had a single issue on eBay in the last 3-4 years of purchases. Ive actually had extraordinary customer service through eBay. Recently purchased a used $50 coffee grinder and it arrived with cosmetic damage from shipping. Contacted the seller and they refunded the entire purchase while also letting me keep the item.

Lmao, whoops.

Why? Piracy is the ethnically ethically correct choice.

He’s a robosexual

Yes

Fucking boomers and their Samsung phones. Why can’t they just be like us Millennials and our Apple iPhones? 😤

Okay, but if you were even slightly informed on the situation they’re presented with or read the article, you would know that this Rumspringa you want to introduce to their society would kill them. They don’t have immunity to common illnesses like influenza and it has previously decimated about 85% of other indigenous peoples.

Not just that, they’re in contact. They have an agent of Funai that they are able to contact if they so choose. They’re offered metal gifts to prevent them from stealing metal from farms and putting themselves at risk. They’re aware of outside presence and actively lay wooden spike traps to dissuade people from seeking contact. Funai protocol is to only allow communication if it is initiated by the indigenous people.

Morning breath is caused by bacteria replicating overnight so even if you use mouthwash and a tongue scraper before bed, I promise you have morning breath. I’ve tested it myself with my wife by doing all sorts of hygiene before bed. Floss, water rince, tongue cleaning, brush, then mouthwash but still my breath smelled in the morning. Its just a fact of reality. Please brush your teeth in the morning for those of us that end up smelling your breath.

If you’re a fan of Scrubs, Donald Faison and Zach Braff started a watch along podcast on Spotify called Fake Doctors, Real Friends.

Evolutionarily speaking: If cooperation did not give advantages, why the fuck did we become a social species? Going for anti-cooperative strategies only ever makes sense in zero-sum games and practically nothing in life is.

In game theory cooperation does give advantages.

Both co-op: +1/+1 Both defect: 0/0 Defect/co-op: +3/0

That’s just one interaction. When you expand the experiment, predictability becomes a positive trait and risk is avoided. So by more often choosing cooperation, you become more predictable, avoid the risk of not gaining any points through mutual defection, and more people are likely to interact with you. More interactions=higher potential for points. When you adjust the rules of the game to not define a set number of interactions with each player and you can choose the frequency of interactions with bad reputation players, cooperating is naturally selected for. Conversely, as the pool gets collectively nicer, defection will net more benefits and the pendulum will start to slowly swing the other way.

I’ll ignore the first half of this reply because we won’t agree. Not every choice is a conscious decision in my eyes, but the vast majority are.

As for the second half, believing that bad actors would be weeded out based on the principle of free will is naive. Consider game theory. Two people have something to gain from cooperation, but more to gain from defecting. Meanwhile, the other gains nothing or very little. That simple thought experiment incentivizes bad actions from time to time. You have more to gain by acting selfishly.

Now blow up the experiment. You vs the world and reputation is introduced. Someone with a perfect cooperation rate is flawed. They offer nothing but blind trust and can be taken advantage of. The opposite also displayed. Someone who makes selfish decisions all the time offers nothing but blind distrust. You’re left to choose which people to interact with that are somewhere along the middle of the reputation gradient. Those that are 70% or lower seem unpredictable or untrustworthy so many choose to interact with people on the higher end of the reputation spectrum when available and reflect that in their own decision making. You can’t always choose who to interact with, so eventually you’ll have to interact with a bad actor. You’ll get burned by making a cooperative choice and they will benefit from it. In turn, ensuring that they will survive natural selection.

I can only speak for my own beliefs. I don’t believe in an omnipotent god. I believe that god holds dominion over the heavenly afterlife and that is all. The universe was created by pushing over the first domino, two atoms collided, and now life exists. It’s up to us to use the gift of life as fully and morally as possible. To leave the world a better place than when you first arrived. I don’t think that we are some pet project for a God that can change everything on a whim.

Catholicism teaches that God is all forgiving and loves unconditionally. For as many flaws as the Catholic Church has or has had, they’ve generally been the Christian denomination that’s preached forgiveness the most to my knowledge. Maybe I’m wrong.

And I was talking about my beliefs growing up in the Catholic Church not Catholicism as a whole.

I don’t believe in a spiteful god, but sure man, go off I guess.

Can’t speak for everyone. But for myself, the world and humanity was created with free will and it’s up to us to choose good vs evil. God only has dominion over the heavenly afterlife and the hellish afterlife is forced to exist on the principle of yin and yang. There can be no good without evil.

For context I consider myself agnostic but was born roman Catholic and base my morals on the teachings that everyone was created equal and forgiveness should be shown to those that can be helped. Forgiveness isn’t a requirement in the cases that someone willingly chooses evil in the face of morality over and over. (Putin, Hitler, Trump, Netanyahu, serial violent criminals, etc.)

Lawnmowers only take about 16oz of oil and you can buy 5qts(160oz) for $23 here in the states. So that $23 would last 10 years of oil changes if you replace it once per season like I did.

Not sure what that would cost you in Europe. So maybe that’s where the disconnect is.