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Well, I know I’m real, so by virtue, I believe you to be as well.

Do I think I’m smart enough to have been able to come up with a language system of my own that makes sense to me rather than just a bunch of mood grunts? Nope.

The test? My understanding of the test is to see if we can be good people and if we can build a symbiotic relationship with our planet and other planets. It’s been a rocky few millennia for us people, but in spite of how chaotic life has been, it oddly feels like we are all much closer together than in prior generations.

I feel that what we need to do to make things better starts with ourselves. If I’m happy, then I can share my happiness with others. If I hold love in my heart, I can share love for others as well. If I hold anger, judgment, or dislike then those things can tend to spill out, even when that’s not what I would want. Connecting with my roots has helped me to have my heart, rather than being cold and more self-centered.

If we’re in a good spot, we can help our friends, we can help our neighbors, our local communities; we can create a culture of positive change. When everyone’s backs are against the wall, people need community now more than ever.

Taking that step forward every day will help you; for me, it involved making a promise to myself to never stop moving forward. Hydrate yourself often, focus on getting nourishing meals three times a day, building yourself a routine will help, having a cup of coffee each day is beneficial, limit caffeine intake to one or two cups and only before noon, play brown noise in the background to help drown out any rude or critical thoughts or feelings, and low dose melatonin =<1mg for sleeping soundly and peacefully at night helps as well. I recommend visiting a therapist if you can afford it, but invest in yourself today because you are worth it. I spent a decade learning these lessons, but I’ve been thriving more the past few years now :D

This sounds like a humerus activity to try

For the record, I said several authoritarians, I didn’t say every one was one. I would say your reading of my comment was uncharitable at best and rude at worst.

Do you often ride on trains?

Also, how would you describe the sound it makes on the tracks?

You’re not wrong. Many of them are exposed to propaganda on TikTok and it is a growing issue. Espionage is being done to divide the left and consolidate the right. Just because it’s not as noticeable as the propaganda from the right doesn’t mean that it’s not having subtle effects. If it gets people to disengage or not look out for their best interests then it is effective. All this to say, there is a way to bring about positive change that has to do with being involved locally.

Marxism itself wasn’t necessarily tainted, but his ideas of socialism and communism definitely had a social stain associated with them. So by association it had a black mark.

I think it’s pretty clear that we haven’t seen it for what it was supposed to be, when it was weaponized by authoritarians and then attacked by capitalists. It’s supposed to be a grand thing of the people coming together, not stained in blood.

I think you may have misread what I said there about the reformist part. His ideas were revolutionary for the time, but many of the ideas could be applied by reformist.

I think his ideas can reform a capitalist system. It’s probably one of many ways his ideas get off the ground. The big thing was changing the system, it’s not necessarily all about how you get there.

What do you mean? A reformed and reforged system is a new system.

I could give you a multi-hour long breakdown of my views but something tells you’re not interested in a long-form dialogue here.

I think you’re spot on, Marx specifically has a lot of connotations the general, uninformed public is terrified of.

I remember when I had to read it for a class the first time and the vibes in the room was exactly like you’re opening some of book of sin. I was scared of a book, as a college student at the time. Then we actually started reading it, and it was like “wow this guy gets the issues of the system”.

While I personally have agreements and some disagreements with Marx, I think he helped give me a lot of solid ideas that the system itself could be reformed and reforged.

I think it’s a shame that his ideas had carried a public taint to them for so long, due to several authoritarians co-opting his message. I have no clue why it’s not required high school reading at this point, since I feel it’d go a long ways towards helping more people get curious about improving and changing the system for the better.

Teaching them about logical fallacies and how to spot them may be the best defense against these types of personalities imo. Many influencers that you’re concerned about try to prey upon these fallacies, so teaching your kids to spot them can help them to realize those people are full of shit.

Curating their content a bit to include more people you want them to be like can help as well, at least then they can have good people to look up to.

If your kids think you have their best interests in mind, I feel they’re less likely to push back and more likely to respect the boundaries you put down.

I would say CNN probably still is mostly left leaning (relatively), but they have had a lot more right wing stances over the past five years than they did the previous decades.

I believe you used those terms correctly, although offline people would tend to say it more as economically conservative for that second part, in the US.

You’re right about it being more of an aggregator. I think having a good aggregator is about as important as the sources. To be more informed, hearing the news from different perspectives is essential, I feel.

For actual sources, starting internationally is a good bet to get an outside perspective of what’s going on in your country. I feel that the BBC does a great job of covering US news for that reason. Al-Jazeera is another international source that is decent for most news in the US, but has notable biases for issues in the Middle East as far as I am aware.

For more domestic US sources, PBS and NPR are the gold standards and worth supporting since they are public broadcasting networks. The other major news networks have more notable biases since they are privately owned.

For business news, Axios, Forbes, and Yahoo Finance do a decent job.

They label it as “leans left” now, with independent reviewers, so not as left as other sources. Although, I question if that takes into account the topics that don’t make it on the website.

Sources like Ground News help to show where the bias of your sources lay. Mind you, even neutral sources have their issues since they may not cover more serious “partisan” topics, even if the material is very disturbing.

Ground News does have a Blind Spot tool as well to help show most stories that the other side is not talking about, excluding the very serious ones I mentioned.

It is with my in-laws at least; well for some of them. It’s how they envision coming on top in their American Dream. They get to spend their weeks pumping themselves up thinking it’s their turn next to win and envisioning all the things they’ll get to do with all that money.

I would say the scam is convincing people that they are lucky and that they specifically will eventually hit it big in their lifetime. This exact gimmick is what prevents some people from voting against their best interests because they could one day hit it big at the lotto and be in the big leagues! Assuming they don’t blow all that wealth on poor financial decisions in the few years thereafter or win at all for that matter.

If California is allowed to look good, then it hurts the credibility of their ideology.

I think there are some criticisms about Californians leaving the state raising housing prices in their own state. That’s just how supply and demand works though when the supply of houses suddenly becomes more limited in your area.

They like to say things along the lines of: “Californians messed up their own state with their high taxes, fled here, are driving all the prices up, and are now trying to bring their fAiLeD PoLiTiCs to the state.” The real answer is that California is such a desirable place to live that there are not enough houses and well paying jobs to go around. People leave the state because of unregulated capitalist pressures, not because of the state’s strong social programs.

It’s not just Californians moving to other states that are driving prices up. Housing prices going up is also caused by private equity firms buying up available properties, a slowdown on building new houses capping supply, people from other states moving, and Not In My Backyard people trying to prevent lower cost housing in their towns since they don’t want the price of their house to ever drop.

Having strong social programs in their own states could actually help mitigate the impact of prices going up for housing as well as for other goods and services. For instance, they could have their own state provided healthcare coverage to help them have guaranteed healthcare. They could have better public transportation systems so they are not so car reliant to get to work. Rent controls in place to mitigate landlords pricing people out of the area. Affordable housing construction. Even things like public utilities could be offered for less by the state for gas, electricity, phone, and internet.

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Good to know for future reference! Thank you!