There’d be motherfuckers on TikTok snorting lines of asbestos
Trumpers would start eating asbestos for breakfast just to pwn the libz
When seatbelts were introduced to cars, there was a big movement against them. Some by car manufacturers to keep costs down, but a lot of backlash was from good ol’ natural born idiots so contrarian and averse to change they’d let themselves die just to give a smug look about not doing what someone asked of them. The sort of dumbass who during the height of pre-vaccine Covid would drown in the fluid buildup in their lungs and refuse treatment because doing so would be an admission of fault.
These past 9 years have made me DEEPLY cynical about my fellow man. There is no bottom. No level of malicious stupidity is low enough. It’s not even disappointment anymore, I’m resigned to it. Some people are so beyond hope, so beyond redemption, it’s like trying to get a fucking deer to recognize itself in a mirror. Just ZERO awareness, no theory of mind, object permanence is a fucking coin flip. If it weren’t for my principles, my absolute refusal to engage in dehumanization, I’d be tempted to write them off as another species just to cope with the dissonance that comes from seeing people acting that self destructive. Like it doesn’t make sense. You’d expect at some point some form of pattern recognition and harm avoidance to develop. “Hey, putting my hand on the stove hurt. It hurt every time I did it. It hurt everyone I saw someone else do it too. I’m gonna put my hand on the stove and it won’t hurt this time.”.
I was annoyed about the seatbelt laws, but I was a little kid at the time. I came from an era of riding in the back of dad’s truck and enjoying the breeze. Hell, I went from New England to Canada in the back of a capped truck. I was eight years old and never thought anything of it.
However, as I got older into my teens I got more adamant about using a seat belt, even when the laws were still sorta gray here (you were let off with no warning most times). Now its second nature, even if I’m heading 3 mins to the store. Some people still don’t because they think that they’re only endangering themselves. Thing is, I have a brother in law that’s a first responder. He’s seen people torpedo out of windows in head-on collisions and into the other car, injuring the other driver/passengers.
Honestly, I don’t get what the whole problem is. You barely even notice them on you. Most people who don’t put on a simple and comfortable safety belt are just being fucking stubborn children who don’t like being told what to do. I’m glad I grew out of that way of thinking. Some my family are those “good ol’ natural borns”. They’ll tell me I don’t have to put my seatbelt on and every time I adamantly say, “I always do”. My other brother in law will literally crank the radio so he can’t hear the seatbelt alarm. Drives me insane, but I love the idiot.
I hated them as a kid because they were uncomfortable and didn’t fit right. My mom made is wear it but I used to put the chest belt behind my back as soon as she turned around because it dug into my neck. I probably should have been in a car seat for way longer than I was. As an adult I don’t even notice it.
Untethered occupants are a serious danger to other occupants in their own car. I wouldn’t agree to drive with someone who wouldn’t put one on tbh, partly because it hints at a lack of judgement and I wouldn’t want that person in charge of the car.
There are still people that buy “belt silencers” or sit on their seatbelts to drive without. Newer cars will alarm, and mine even shuts down if you drive without a seatbelt
My sister’s boyfriend bought an oldtimer with no seatbelt. The previous owner installed some and he took them out again. I think there is nothing that brings him more joy than to tell people how he doesn’t need a seatbelt. He also drives his children around in this deathtrap. But he also refuses to wear a helmet when they ride their ebike. My sister nagged so long about it that he now takes the helmet with him, but he doesn’t wear it, that’s the compromise they reached. Some people are just fucking weird.
Seen bumper sticker: No air bags, we die like men.
To be fair, I find that funny.
I assume it’s sarcastic, but you never know
Is he signed up to be an organ donor?
I think those are mostly for super obese people because seat belts are really uncomfortable if you’re really, really fat. At least that’s what I always assumed because everyone I know who has one is really fat.
So dying is better than being uncomfortable…
I enjoyed reading this. Well put. I also share this recent realization. It’s made me feel a bit less imposter syndrome. Among other things.
I think there is a growing divide between the most and least intelligent in society, and it has been growing with tech advancement (the gap wouldn’t have been that big in the middle ages). If we ever develop superintelligent AI, I can see that becoming an inflection point in this divide because we (Lemmy dwellers) will become as fallible to that AI as the people you mentioned are today in what is still a human-dominated society. Introducing AGI will vastly exasperate the gap between the most and least intelligent and I can’t see society surviving that in its current form.
Not quite.
Tech’s facilitated a lot of things, but not a schism in intelligence. That requires systemic destruction of education systems, especially those that focus on critical thinking and comprehension.
No matter how smart you are, we’re still herd animals. Get enough loud drivers and it infects everyone.
Boomers have their odd naivete and emotional immaturity from intergenerational trauma, but Zoomers have something i consider worse - a self-righteousness that demands the appearance of purity and correct behaviour. It’s more important to be seen to say nothing wrong than do the right thing. It’s the weird US paradigm of posturing puritanism on steroids - and unfortunately the interconnectivity of the internet has facilitated that infection
I was surprised to find out that people also were against seatbelts. Weird
My country banned smoking in all public indoor spaces almost 20 years ago. As a smoker at the time I thought it was ridiculous, felt that my rights were being violated and thought it would never last. The quality of life improvement it made is massive. Today I vape rather than smoke but wouldn’t dream of doing either indoors or being where someone else is. It was 100% the right move. Not quite the same thing but you sometimes can’t really understand the benefits of an alternative to the status quo, even if you understand it logically.
Contracting silicosis to own the libs. Then use some sort of donkey enema as a cure.
I’m a little surprised Trump hasn’t signed the “Asbestos Fibers Are Our Friends” Executive Order.
If CFCs were banned today you would see people spraying them in the air to own the libs, also spraying their children with DDTs because RFK Jr told them to
worth giving it a try…do NOT, I repeat do NOT spray RFK Jr with DDT every time you see him. I am a liberal and this would really make me cry. Don’t do it!
What about thalidomide?
Fun fact: They did. Rush Limbaugh had a proud “keep spraying” campaign.
Of course he did, goddam
LOL, libs are trying to ban asbestos! They want us all to catch fire! Asbestos causing cancer is a conspiracy, do your own research. Besides, Ivermectin will cure any cancer caused by asbestos.
/s (because the USA is crazy and someone would really post this and mean it)
Post it on reddit, and that will end up as a google AI recommendation next week.
Asbestos is a great way to prevent the glue on your pizza from catching on fire !
I can see them railing a line of asbestos just to own the libs. Better than vaccine denial I suppose, at least it limits the damage.
A guy I went to HS with definitely did this one time on a dare. A piece of insulation fell out of the kiln in shop class n another kid smashed it n told this kid he’d give him $5 to snort it. No one thought he would, but this dude absolutely railed it. Someone asks the shop teacher later what the tiles were made of and he says asbestos mostly, but it’s fine as long as you don’t mess with it. 💀
I keep checking on his Facebook every couple of years to see if lung cancer got him. So far, he’s still kicking lol.
Hate to break it to you: https://www.archpaper.com/2018/08/epa-asbestos-manufacturing/
Asbestos was used because of it’s flame retardation and it’s easy to make. Provided it’s properly encapsulated and does not become damaged risk can be mitigated. Preventing damage is the hard part, no one plans for a tree to fall on their house. Maybe if everyone just wears a air mask all the time we wouldn’t have to worry about it.
The mask really gets in the way of eating ass, though.
A suppository is used to absorb nutrients or medicine into the body. Which brings me to my question: Can you eat ass with your butt?
Unfortunately that only produces the Infinity Turd™️ which is still under patent.
Marketing really missed an opportunity for “InfiniTurd” on that one.
Dude it was on the tip of my ass too, I originally had “Infinite Turd” but I thought give the people what they want, MCU
Not without prosthetics.
Provided the ass isn’t made of asbestos you should be fine to remove your mask.
Assbestos
Looks like you’re not familiar with the inside of my mask
Asbestos is kind of a wonder material.
Easy to manufacture in complex shapes, inert (acid resistant, so great for chemical pipes), flame retardant, great insulator, and fairly cheap.
Shame that it causes really bad cancer…
Yea, but doesnt everything get damaged? And even if its while breaking it down when disposing/recycling/dumping it?
O.O
Russia has a town named after asbestos and lobbies for asbestos.
They’re getting rid of silicosis protections now too.
I used to live in a city called Asbestos, the mine was closed back in 2012 and older folks are still angry about it, they’ll even tell you that the workers handling it weren’t in worse health than anyone else in the city… The worst part is that it was banned in the construction industry 30 years prior, so they kept exploiting the mine only to export it to countries that hadn’t banned it, even if it meant killing people there…
Depends who would ban it. From my life experience, we have one side that definitely would because they get mad at anything the other side. ANYTHING. While the other side is typically more rational and has critical thinking skills.
I have heard that Obama supports breathing.
I also heard Obama supports Trump, so if you like Trump it means you like Obama and that makes u a dumb librul. Checkmate, everyone.
I heard Obama and Biden are anti mask and anti universal healthcare now.
Are you talking about liberals being dumb?
/j
Yeah, dumb liberals with their dumb vaccines and pasteurized milk and fluoridated water and science. 🙄
Fucking libtards
They probably don’t even know how to do the tariff hokey pokey.
Tariffs go up, stocks go down. You can’t explain that.
Liberals were against vaccines long before conservatives were. It was never mainstream, but it was getting there.
Source?
I remember in the 90 or maybe 00s a study coming out that said vaccine scepticism was about even between liberals and conservatives.
I literally cannot tell them apart from a fascist Maga!
-young American leftists
I hate that the word fascist has become the new slur people use when they hear something that is against there core political beliefs. There are real fascists but they are not everyone who isn’t far left. I see this turning into a left version of the red scare. People are getting increasingly extreme and violent on each side which is dangerous for the long term stability of the US. In reality I think we need more moderate politicians who are willing to reach across political briefs and backgrounds.
We needed that 40 years ago, in 2025 we have to fight against actual fascists doing actually fascist things.
Correct. If anything, we’ve been too conservative with the word in the past decade or so. They’re openly talking about shipping off undesirables to gulags, but we’re supposed to tone down our rhetoric and not call them fascists.
…if they don’t want to be called fascists, maybe they should consider not being f*cking fascists…
…there’s a german word for people who supported the nazi party even though they didn’t agree with all of its policies: nazi…
What other side? Sure there are always a few rational people. However the vast majority choose a side and then blindly oppose anything the other side says/does. When their side happens to have critical thinking on their side they are for that, but that isn’t a factor in why they choose something.
Trying to convince yourself otherwise proves that you are ignoring the issues on your own side. If you really were a rational thinker you would have to choose your side separately for every single issue - nobody has time for that which in turn means you sometimes rely on someone who turns out to be irrational but because they have proved rational in other areas you trust them here too.
If you really were a rational thinker you would have to choose your side separately for every single issue - nobody has time for that
This really is not that difficult nor time consuming.
It is absolutely difficult and very time consuming
For some.
There are literally hundreds of complex interconnected issues that affect our daily lives. It is impossible to have a well-informed stance on all of them. No one benefits from strong opinions based on an oversimplified understanding. That’s childish.
The things that directly affect me are all things that one side is against. One side wants to remove my ability to be myself get mental health care etc.
I don’t love the other side but it’s the only one that will allow me time to get to a point where I can be useful in getting my ideas to people.
Completely agree.
I’m an independent thinker. In the past republicans and democrats had both good and bad ideas.
In today’s world democrats are more for the people as a country and care more about citizens, example, making sure kids in schools get free lunches, “no child should go hungry” as they understand not everyone is rich and can afford proper meals for dinner later in the day, the cause being maybe medical debt or other unforseen hardships, example. A car accident and need a sudden co-payment of $2000 to fix or replace their car. While republicans want to stop free lunches to save 12¢ extra in a state/county tax. So I’ve seen Republicans only show greed for themselves which in turn completely halts advancements in a society. Example, private healthcare. You would pay significantly less in a raise in federal tax compared to a monthly premium+ medical bills. The math isn’t that hard to do, but Republicans are so blinded by the thought of "my hard earned money is for me and not for Susan who has 3 kids and her husband has terminal cancer. Now she has to pay $250,000 when he dies.
So in short. Democratic party in my eyes has been for people. Republican party in my eyes has been for themselves and everyone else can live in the streets.
If you have morals and standards, its not hard to take a stance on every issue. If you support education, it doesnt take much looking into anything about education to understand how decisions fit into your worldview. And even if you support some aspects of one side and some from the other, you still have to pick a side because welcome to Americas 2 party system.
My experience with many users on lemmy who support “critical thinking” are not actually advocating critical thinking. Theyre trying to justify their mental gymnastics while simultaneously feeding their self-righteous egos
If you really were a rational thinker you would have to choose your side separately for every single issue
- You should already do this for anything you care about? It really, really doesn’t take long for the important stuff. For everything else -
- You don’t need to take a side on things you don’t understand. If you haven’t had the time to assess something… don’t share an opinion about it. It’s perfectly functional and rational for humans to specialize and leave problems for other humans to deal with. It is only social media that convinced people they should care about literally everything.
It takes a lot of thought and research to come up with a good opinion on some subjects. Some subjects are easy because of values, but you need a lot of study to understand other subjects.
You need to have an opinion on things you don’t understand. There are people for and against vaccines - this is a very complex subject and both sides have what sounds like science behind them, and both also have real medical doctors. You are affected though so you better get to the bottom of it as both sides will tell you the wrong choice is a disaster.
I also think it hasn’t helped that the news as become more of a propaganda outlet. They probably live in a bubble.
…this is the crux of it: until we confront the disinformation sphere authoritatively, the problem will persist, and crossing that line is antithetical to the american identity…
…i fear that the american identity must immolate itself, one way or the other…
We simply weren’t ready for the internet. Humans haven’t really been ready for any of the advances we have ever made. Hank Green has an excellent video about the societal vulnerability to new communications technology. I don’t know how we address it, because we never really addressed the others either.
The original printing press enabled Luther to break the Church’s theocracy. More modern printing enabled newspapers to instigate the Spanish American war. The technology is still used in the modern day for propaganda and lies.
The radio enabled the Nazis and the Red Scare to fill people’s homes with hate and fear. The technology is still used in the modern day for propaganda and lies.
The TV enabled the police state and “law and order”-style Republican disinformation. People who were otherwise safe and comfortable at home were suddenly and constantly faced with escalating panic about criminals and terrorists, even while crime consistently decreased over time. The technology is still used in the modern day for propaganda and lies.
All of these new technologies didn’t just change the way we communicated - they changed the way we thought about the world. Or rather, people in the right places at the right times used that technology to change how we thought about the world. We are human, and every new communications technology gives an ever smaller group of humans ever greater influence over the world.
And finally, the internet. We thought it would be different. We thought it would give voices to the many. But instead it gave the wealthy access to the soundboards where they can silence and amplify voices, and it opened up town squares for even the most hateful and ignorant ideas to gather and fester and grow to become legitimate political forces.
The internet enabled all of the massive changes we see today.
It is sad to me that Lemmy has been taken over by people calling others fascist. I think from a moderation perspective any highly political content should be removed immediately unless it is in the proper community. I’m tied of see comment after comment talking about how everyone and there dog is a fascist and other related rhetoric. It is ultimately easier to name call than it is to actually show empathy to someone you absolutely disagree with. I like to read other peoples options but the problem is that many here have turned a option into fact. Asking why they feel some way just pisses people off and makes them defensive instead of generating good discussions. Words like “fascism” ultimately serve the interests of those in power not individuals. It is used as a tool to get people emotionally engaged instead of mentally engaged. Emotional people are much easier to control and influence.
In short, I’m saddened to see Lemmy be taken over by useless political circle jerking. None of it does anything useful other than scare off new Lemmy users.
Words like “fascism” ultimately serve the interests of those in power not individuals. It is used as a tool to get people emotionally engaged instead of mentally engaged.
This is nonsense, sorry. I get it. Think for yourself. Assess your sources. Think rationally. Challenge your own beliefs.
But the people in power are openly breaking the law, abusing authority that they don’t have, stripping away rights, dismantling the social safety net, shipping people off to die, and ignoring any of the constitutional and legal safeguards meant to prevent any of this. It’s fascism.
Any logical, rational, thoughtful approach to the situation will provide the same exact answer as the emotional response to seeing Trump and Bukele laugh and lie about Kilmar Abrego being a terrorist. Call a spade a spade.
This is it, possiblylinux. That’s the SS. We have the gestapo. There is no more “fiscal conservative.” There is no more “classical libertarian.” We are nazis now.
You can either be a classical american war hero and strongly oppose this, or you can be a nazi. Those are your options. I’m not saying this euphemistically. I’m not saying it as a metaphor. I’m not exaggerating for dramatic effect.
If you do not live in the US currently, and you do not want to be relocated to Guantanamo Bay or El Salvador, then you should not come here.
Thats however what everybody thinks about themselves
Nope. Both sides are not the same. Period.
It’s not about them actually being the same.
What @lowleekun@ani.social is saying is that no one sees themselves as the bad guy, regardless of what their opponents think.
Sure, they can view themselves however they want. Doesn’t change reality.
You’re low key proving my point about how people think.
It’s funny because I 100% agree with you both.
Look mate i agree but when arguing with comservatives that the exact same attitude that they give you and it annoys me because it is not a real argument to say “you are wrong and have no critical thinking skills” yet here we are again.
Conservatives are wrong and are reactionary in a way that shows they have no critical thinking skills. It is ok to acknowledge that.
It won’t win anyone to your side if you’re trying to convince them and say that though. That’ll just harden them in their views.
If you really want to reduce the influence of the right then you’d want to stop that sort of language spreading
No, treating them as reasonable people is the reason they took power. They cannot be reasoned with as proven by decades of them hardening their views while they were treated as “reasonable people with differing views”.
No, I won’t cater to the idea that pointing out problems makes them worse.
A lot of those people are correct.
The Dipshit tried to bring it back his last term. Guess which country is the top producer of asbestos?
