authoritarian

Yes, I suppose either way the waste is being created, I'm just not always confronted with it at that level

I don't necessarily disagree with your statement, but I also don't feel particularly honorable funding invasions of foreign countries, killing civilians with drone strikes, developing and producing massive amounts of weaponry, spying on American citizens, and other unsavory business the US is involved with

I've had one instance with amazon where they clearly drop shipped the product and didn't even take it out of the box. I purchased a single hang-on-back aquarium filter which came in an absolutely massive amazon box, containing another hugely oversized walmart box, containing an unlabeled/unbranded box which was still too large, and then finally the aquarium filter in it's own box and packaging. It almost seemed like it had been shipped from some supplier, to walmart, to amazon, and they just kept sticking the package in a larger box. The amount of waste for a single small filter was absurd

Back when I originally started using Amazon it got me in the habit of not checking prices elsewhere because Amazon was usually the cheapest, and that was also before I started having to pay my states sales tax. Nowadays, I find the prices are generally not very good, not to mention all the other issues Amazon has, so I do compare prices with other sites before making any purchases. However, I imagine a lot of customers never broke their habit of just purchasing without checking elsewhere which has likely contributed to this.

I didn't say they were equivalent. OP said that there's rule of law, and that if you are hiding from the police you can't claim that having to hide is an act of torture, which is obviously not always the case

Grapefruit I can see, but what kinds of melons are there that aren't sweet? The most common melons I can think of (watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew) are all quite sweet. Through googling I found some other melons that appear to mostly be from asia, although I've never seen them in person, and there descriptions mention sweetness as well. Do you have examples of savory melons?

>even I get concerned with the green movements when they seem to be coming for each part of my life I hold sacred-- a nice warm shower (or two!) is a highlight of my day.

How is this article an example of "coming for each part of your life" you hold sacred? Did they state, or even imply, anywhere in the article that they were going to go around and force people to be environmentally conscious?

I'll never understand why articles discussing environmentalism are always met with a certain amount of comments where people seem to be angry, offended, or otherwise upset as if they're being personally attacked. The police aren't going to come around forcing you to give up your current shower. Spreading awareness of ways to live one's life in a less wasteful well is a good thing, and the emotionally charged negative comments are a step in the wrong direction

I used to shower daily, but after slowly decreasing to 3 showers a week it's actually had a great improvement on both my skin and hair. I've read articles that have mentioned that it may be because showering too frequently strips your skin/hair of beneficial oils and/or bacteria but I'm not sure that's really the case. Either way, I've ended up both saving water and improving my health/appearance by showering less frequently, although it seems counter intuitive

>Text messaging was available in the razr era but not nearly as ubiquitous as it is today. Relatively few people used it

This isn't at all true in my experience, perhaps it's an age/generational thing? Personally, everyone that I know that texts today texted just as much back when they had flip phones like the razr

>Seattle also has a high price-to-rent ratio: https://www.mashvisor.com/blog/best-real-estate-markets-pric.... You may actually lose money on a cash flow basis if you buy.

I don't know where they got their numbers, but they're saying that home price of a $1000 rental is $421,080 which is absolutely insane for Seattle. 3 Years ago when I was shopping around shitty apartments were $1500+, with decent apartments and houses renting for $2000+ easily. One of my family members rent out their $400,000ish house for something like $2200-2400 a month. You won't be able to find a $400,000 property to rent for anywhere close to $1000. My house was listed in the 200s, sold for 12% over asking, and has appreciated nearly 50%. If I ever move my house will rent for over $2000 a month easily and it's quite old and not even in Seattle proper

That doesn't sound right to me. I purchased my home about 3 years ago and if I remember correctly on top of principal I would end up paying an extra 40 percent or so in interest. To pay 2 million on a half million dollar loan your interest rate would have to be insanely high (like 30+ percent). In my case my mortgage was only about $300 more than the apartment I was living in previously (very expensive area) so it would've taken an extremely long time to save up the cash to purchase our home. The house has also appreciated nearly 50% since I purchased it, so if I had waited it would have been too expensive for my budget

I appreciate that you respond and explain why you disagree rather than simply downvoting and moving on. However, Facebook, and other similar sites, are literally designed to be addictive. Many of the founders of some of the largest social media, and other SV tech, companies took classes that focus on making an app/service/product addictive. You may personally not feel addicted, but that doesn't change the fact that these companies specifically abuse psychological processes and reactions to make their products addictive to the average user. There are a ton of articles on the subject. It may be easier for some to leave than others, but that doesn't mean these companies don't purposely make it psychologically challenging to leave for many. Here are a few articles on the topic

https://www.livescience.com/49585-facebook-addiction-viewed-...

https://www.wired.com/story/phone-addiction-formula/

https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/just-how-bad-kids-sma...

https://www.1843magazine.com/features/the-scientists-who-mak...

The emotionally charged downvotes from the people that are addicted to facebook will do nothing to change the fact that it IS addicting. It is literally designed to get you addicted, and it's clearly working

Quote from BI "It's the first known investment by the kingdom since the murder of the American journalist Jamal Khashoggi last year."

Not something I'd want myself or my company to be associated with. As usual, I suppose it shows what's really important to these people. $$$

Yes, it's absolutely an addiction. I constantly hear people talk about how they can't leave facebook because they'll lose connections with friends and/or family, won't be able to find out about events, or will somehow otherwise be missing out on life. I deleted my account 7 or so years ago and the impact on my life has only been positive

Yes, I agree that religions should have to pay taxes. When I said regulate, I meant regulating peoples right to practice

> the number of Saints who practiced heroic virtue is far greater in Catholicism than any other form of religion or lack

Such as Mother Teresa, who allowed people to die in horrible conditions in hospices where patients were given insufficient food and no painkillers because "suffering makes you closer to god," and then went to a costly, fancy facility and took painkillers herself when it was her time to die.

>There's also countless medically and scientifically verified miracles.

This is absurd. Just because something happens that can't be fully explained by science with current knowledge and technology does not make it a religious miracle. Also, pretending that is true, how would that be evidence of you belonging to a denomination that is "real Christianity." Perhaps it was one of the other countless religions that try to falsely attribute things they don't understand to 'miracles'

>it's the only philosophy that truly lines up with real life experience

Satanism truly lines up with my real life experiences. Is that evidence that that is the true or real religion?

>But this is the only one that fully satisfied my intellectual mind without having to give up intellectual integrity.

You just said that you believe that there are medically and scientifically verified miracles, so I'd say this statement is false. How do you feel about dinosaurs? How old do you think the earth is?

>And finally, it's the only philosophy or religion that has ever fixed me

This I can understand and respect. IMO the rest of what you said is mostly brainwashing/indoctrination.

While I personally agree that religion overall has a major negative impact on society, and has throughout history, I still don't think they should be made illegal or regulated. People can believe what they want to believe, and trying to control thoughts and ideologies is absolutely not something I would ever support. It would set an incredibly dangerous precedent

Yes, it's the same kind of rhetoric that people in pretty much all religions/beliefs/denominations use about all the others to trick people into joining.

Yours is wrong, ours is right. Yours is misguided, ours knows the true way. Yours is corrupt, ours is trustworthy and wholesome. Yours won't help your soul reach enlightenment, ours will save you. Yours is counterfeit, ours is real.

Yes, I knew a girl who was raped and her mother would only allow her to talk to their priest rather than medical and/or mental health professionals. People in the thread are talking about how astrology, religion, psychics, etc. are all ok because they don't cause harm but I believe they can and do cause harm in many cases.

Of the people I know that strongly believe in things like astrologists, psychics, or religion a large percentage also believe other absurd conspiracy theories such as vaccines causing autism, the moon landing being fake, etc.

I think we set a dangerous precedent by allowing people to blindly buy into things like astrology, without calling them out. I of course don't believe these kinds of things should be made illegal/regulated as people should be able to make their own decisions, but I also don't think they should be humored and blindly tolerated by the rest of the population.

My dad payed his entire way through college with a part time cafeteria job and graduated with no debt. My tuition was over $50,000 a year and housing, fees, etc. was over $20,000. Even adjusting for inflation, he went to college for a tiny percentage of what it cost me

Yes, my dad was able to pay his entire way through university (tuition, housing, food, etc.) just with the money he made working part time at the university cafeteria

Just what the world needs, another social network....

This seems a bit pedantic. I'm certainly not a mathematician but it does seem obvious that you cannot cut a circle into any number of pieces and rearrange it to be a square, as a circle has curves which would prevent you from making the square a solid without gaps

I've never had a job where I had to work more than 5 days and/or 40 hours a week. I did well in school, found a job that values work life balance, and have gone from security intern, to associate security engineer, and finally to security engineer over a 4 year period. It may not be a "high paying job" compared to someone who worked at FAANG, but I have been able to purchase a house and save for retirement in the years since I've graduated college all without ever having to kill myself by working a ridiculous amount of hours.

You can absolutely have it both ways

Anecdotally, since I purchased my house in the summer of 2016 in the PNW, it has appreciated nearly 50%. That's a 6 figure increase just because of the area I live in, and I've done virtually nothing to the home

Drug possession has been decriminalized in Uruguay since the mid 1970s. As you mention, Portugal also decriminalized all drugs in 2001. Switzerland provides safe injection rooms and needle exchanges for harm reduction

The same thing that happens now, except medics could know you're overdosing on pure diacetylmorphine (or whatever is sold), rather than heroin mixed with fentanyl mixed with baby formula powder mixed with your dealers skin sells mixed with whatever other garbage street drugs get cut with. Not to mention the money saved from being wasted on the war on drugs and gained from the sale of drugs could go towards mental health and other medical services to actual address the root of the issue rather than wasting even more money by throwing addicts in prison

If you're transparent about doing some shady shit, you're still doing some shady shit