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First projections of EU Parliament election results
  • It's far from perfect, but the European parliament is vastly more functional than the American Congress, just based on the amount of legislation that is crafted, compromised on, and passed. These laws, which have to be adopted by all the countries in the EU, are the most prosocial and environmental in the world.

    With these elections increasing the size of conservative coalitions, there will be more of a push against things like green regulations, immigration quotas, and support for Ukraine.

    More conservatives are being elected because right-wing nationalist/populist parties across Europe are fanning the flames of anti-immigrant hate, the burden of inflation, and EU regulations that might squeeze the ability of farmers (or other laborers) to make a profit, in order to sell their Make (insert country name here) Great Again rhetoric and whatever religious/corporate/fascist power dynamics that rhetoric conceals.

  • Dragon's Dogma 2 launches to "Mostly Negative" review bombing after microtransactions reveal, and man, what a bummer
  • I don't understand how letting players pay money to avoid grinding for items isn't a douchy move. It either means they think you will have less fun if you pay less (otherwise people wouldn't be motivated to buy shortcuts) or that they are making you pay extra for an easy mode.

  • Like surely you must have acquired a clue by now.
  • I understand your point, but I think that magical and mythical thinking are fully part of how our minds evolved and still work, and if we fully develop our faculties of rationalization, almost everyone still thinks magically. Think about ideas like luck, or a fear of something improbable, or most of our expectations in life. Or why many masters of logic still believe in mythical beings and afterlives.

    If you talk to someone from an animistic culture, they don't need to question or have a structure of reasoning in place to explain why the waterfall has a spirit. It just does, it always has and it's obvious. However, if a person who lives in a wealthy country today, had public education and believes that vaccines are dangerous. They will believe it rationally, not irrationally, and have a slew of rationalizations for the belief. These are two types of magical thinking, but the former has a magical worldview and the latter does not.

    Rationality is weak against many types of thinking and motivation, and there are many more steps in the maturation of a mind. I do personally agree that a solid foundation in rational thinking should underlie whatever beliefs, morals, ethics, and insights a person adopts. But it is also highly likely that in my examples the former person is healthier and happier than the latter person, and both could be just as gullible.

  • Like surely you must have acquired a clue by now.
  • I prefer this view. Limiting the definition of cults to "small" or "based around a person" is missing the point that all religions are self-preserving in-groups that offer "truths" that will limit your worldview by excluding others, and practices that differentiate followers behaviorally.

    But also beliefs can be useful. For example, the idea of an afterlife or reincarnation can help reduce the fear of death. The belief of forgiveness for sins, can offer redemption. That random events have meaning. That we are not alone when we are alone. All cognitively useful and therapeutic.

    Opposing beliefs can be held at the same time. I can know that probabilistically, or based on personal experience, or empirical evidence, that death is either an ending or an unknowable, and still choose to believe in reincarnation because it does give more meaning to my actions and reduce fear of death.

    And cult practices are often as good for the individual as the beliefs. Having community and regular social interaction is critical to human health. Conducting rituals and ceremonies give structure, meaning and comfort to the parts of our days and lives. Praying and meditating. Charity and service and on and on. These are all useful, healthy to the individual and to society.

    When we can learn to adopt these things without closing our minds to other worldviews and possibilities, without in-group fear and defensiveness, without superiority and proselytization we'll be in a better world that's still full of cults

  • 10 Reasons You Should Switch From Chrome to Firefox.
  • Switched away to Vivaldi and Opera on desktop years ago due to better design and ability to swap between workspaces. Trying to migrate back to Firefox for ethical reasons. Desktop design still lags behind but privacy is great.

  • 10 Reasons You Should Switch From Chrome to Firefox.
  • The main problems I have with it now are sometimes there are still issues with loading between browser and apps. Like it might open multiple tabs trying to open an app, and it leaves the app redirect pages open in your tabs list. Additionally, sometimes (like 3% of the time) website scaling doesn't always work, especially on older sites or those made with janky CMS's, and I've also rarely had problems with some dynamic content like inline forms and graphs.

  • 10 Reasons You Should Switch From Chrome to Firefox.
  • I recently made the switch. Make sure to install whatever add-ons you need, turn on the "open links in apps" setting, and turn on the "pull to refresh" setting. Import your bookmarks and you can still use the Android password manager. It's not 100% as smooth, but it's pretty close.

  • Poignant post on the state of things
  • I moved from the US to Italy, where everything is cheaper and better quality, and we get free healthcare, free college, retirement pension and six months paid maternity leave. All this on a 35% tax rate. Public daycare is about $300 a month, housing expenses are about half of what I paid in the US, and while groceries are about the same, they are all local, organic, non GMO and -get this - crops are grown for flavor rather than weight. Houses are smaller here and wages are usually lower, but working hours are less and less intense, and the pace of life is much chiller.

  • We're not allowed to forget they exist.
  • Cult Is just the English version of the French word culte which means the public practice of worship, devotion, adoration, veneration or exaltation. A lieu de culte is any place of worship like a church, a mosque, a synagogue, or a Babylonian temple. Le culte protestant is Protestantism, le culte du soleil means "sun worshipers," le culte de la performance means the veneration of productivity and competition, and a culte de la personnalité is the adoration of and obedience to a person - whether spiritual, political or entertainer.

    This use of the word cult still makes the most sense in English, because we could say all of those French phrases in English and anyone would understand what they meant.

    Therefore, by extension, all religions or sects that include devotion to a deity, person or idea are cults including Christianity as a whole and each of its denominations.

  • Trudeau government transfers land management to Nunavut in historic deal
  • Incredible example for others to follow. With Inuit winning most local elections, the area is much closer to self governance by the indigenous people there, while active participants in the Canadian state.

  • Game derulepment
  • I'm thinking an RPG Maker style game. You play as Morpheus, the god of dreams. Each level is a different person's dream. When you arrive the dream is a nightmare fueled by past experiences and internal feelings. You have to journey through the dreamscape and find these factors and resolve them to heal the psyche of the dreamer and turn the nightmare into a good dream.

    An example would be a dream where the dreamer is delivering a presentation in front of a classroom naked while the other kids and teacher make fun of them. As that scene plays out, you walk around the school and discover little tidbits about the dreamer. Some of these tidbits are external factors that led to the dream, like memories of people making the dreamer embarrassed for being themselves. You could resolve these by fighting and defeating them in the form of nightmare creatures. And some of the tidbits will be internal factors, like feelings of insecurity and defense mechanisms like reinforcing ideas, that give power to the twisted logic of the dream. These, you have to heal by pointing out the flawed logic and encouraging the dreamer to accept themselves. Once you do everything, you go back to the classroom and find the dreamer giving a TED talk to an enraptured and admiring crowd.

  • InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)DR
    DrQuickbeam @lemmy.world

    Humanitarian technologist & big data wrangler, on a quest for evidence-based policy. Rational optimist, post-statist, contemplative humanist, mystery enthusiast, bardo tourist.

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