The people, and the consumers, have absolute control but seemingly choose to believe they don't.

This self defeated mantra of "we have no power" is exactly what keeps us from enacting change.

On paper Americans have a lot of rights, but without $$$ to fight for those rights most people have no real rights. That's why like 94% of US court cases end in plea deals. Nobody can afford to go to trial.

The message has basically always been "the climate is fragile and we're adding energy to that system, which will cause change in the climate"

The whole "the world will end in 5 years" is a really lame reaction that dismisses the messaging on purpose. It's what people use when they don't want to say, "I don't care" because saying that makes people feel/look bad or because they are "anti-hippie" or whatever phrase we wanna use.

There are a lot of things in life that feel negative but have a host of benefits.

Today's capitalist/productivity focused grindset mindset has people removing "friction" wherever they possibly can.

A phone call, like exercise, has benefits. Doing the "most frictionless" thing often harms us in the long run. Hearing someone's voice is very important, not only for you to understand what they're saying but for you to learn how to interpret how they say it. Social skills are a muscle that need to be worked. Shooting a text atrophies those skills.

Think of how often people refuse to make phone calls simply because they've convinced themselves that phone calls are bad. It perpetuates itself.

Fixating on efficiency and hustling is a great way to get left behind, not only socially, but in experience and exploration.

I know way too many folks who fixate on efficiency and getting stuff done that they aren't living a real life.

AIM was filled with script kiddies using spam to "hack" people's computers. It just crashed the app when they spammed you.

Then stuff like trillium came out which meant you didn't have to use AIM's awful client.

Lol

Stop substituting and finding short cuts. Just eat a balanced meal with vegetables.

The main reason protein is highly sought after is that it's an ego/prestige thing associated with excessive self care.

Our diets are very heavily connected to our social status. Being able to consume that level of protein is all about excessive self care.

Fiber is cheap and viewed as a poor person thing. Nobody is holding up their expensive grass fed fiber to brag about the environmental toll it takes, like folks do with their meat and whatnot.

A lot of the protein fad can be traced back to dairy farmers pushing whey into every product they can.

That's kind of the great irony of all this. We put ourselves on a pedestal while claiming all other living creatures are below us, yet we are destroying the livable environment so we can have more plastic stuff and beef. We are the worst yet consider ourselves the best.

The way people treat cats is insane. Overweight enclosed predators who give up on life. Most dogs live in apartments and crates. We forcibly breed them, including breeding disabilities into them, en masse to create useful or cute slaves who we force to "love" us. The whole thing creates a cycle of required fostering/adoption that encourages more people to get pets cuz people want what they see.

A couple weeks ago I was in a natural hot spring. The specific pool I was in is usually around 42.2c, 108-112F. There was a gal there with a tiny teacup dog, like maybe 5.5kg or 12lbs. She was forcing the dog into the hot water. The dog was visibly in pain and struggling with the heat. She acted like I was the asshole when I asked her to stop.

I used to think this level of abuse was the exception but in the last decade or so it has become the norm. Really sad.

They're saying that human accidents happen at a much higher rate while self driving cars nearly never have accidents, yet people fixate on the relatively few examples when self driving cars do have accidents.

If human drivers were held to anywhere near the standard that robots were then nobody could drive.

This is very much normal. I'm not saying it's correct or alright, just that it is normal.