Not really. The Fediverse has a slant towards american left/far left and moderation tends to reflect this in larger communities. Particularly the americentrism and hostility to different perspectives can make it difficult to have meaningful discussions on certain topics.

(For context, I’d be impressed if I have more than ~30 countrymen active in the fediverse)

Here’s a few reasons:

• Not funny

• Not nuanced

• Bad art

• Comes off as smug/condescending (author)

• Makes fun of/disparages broad groups of people

• Assigns positions that people don’t agree with to labels they identify with.

Etc. Etc.

Honestly, I would recommend not books on atheism per se, but rather ones exploring non-theistic philosophy. Schools of thought amongst atheists and agnostics are just as diverse, if not more so than amongst theists. My world view is made up of many things, humanitarianism, empiricism and so forth. Ideas that build a foundation.

There is also the more emotional side, finding beauty and purpose in life. Personally I find myself coming back to the works of Carl Sagan, particularly “The pale blue dot”. Capturing, at least for me, a lot of essence.

Here is a short excerpt that he read. Just, wow.

What is the direction of causality here? Being physically able to bike to work inherently filters out a lot of at-risk groups. It’d be good to actually be able to read the study in order to check the methodology, and whether they compensate for these sorts of things.

Unfortunately, the uploader does not reference the source, which makes it difficult to check, and I’m not going to watch an entire video essay to try and find a reference in there (if it even exists).

Idk if I’d call it 5d chess, more like a showman that uses drama with the intent of social manipulation without any scruples. That’s how he managed to win both the 2016 & 2024 elections.

No, I highly doubt that. For one, it isn’t feasible. A declaration of war wouldn’t make it through congress, and is highly unlikely that the US military would actually execute such orders.

The primary purpose of Trumps posturing - at least in my analysis - is a retarded way of intimidating EU countries into militarization to enable shifting US troops to other theatres (Middle East, Asia).

Well, that’s just called lying - US politicians haven’t been fiscally conservative in a long time.

Compared to Sweden

The tax rate is never the issue.

Maybe not where you live, but here (Sweden) where the average worker pays ~60% tax on their earned income the perspective is a bit different :)

Right now certainly isn’t a time to be cutting taxes, but when the gov:t ends up… checks notes… spending 74mSEK on modern art for a rail link that had already overran its budget by 30% - it gets a bit jarring. Meanwhile hospitals across the country are in full cost cutting mode due to the ongoing recession and inflation.

Usually fiscal irresponsibility comes in the form of lavish promises (subsidies, tax cuts, projects etc.) with a jarring absence of an answer to the question “How are we going to finance this?”

Euro perspective - When I hear fiscally conservative, that means supporting a governmental policy that is frugal with spending and responsible with public assets and finances.

This has several parts, here are some of the most important:

a) Keeping a balanced budget - the government should not be spending more than it is collecting from taxes and income. (A little debt in dire times is fine, but that should be payed off when possible)

b) Responsible management and long term planning - the planning horizon should be counted in decades

c) Focusing on core tasks: national security, infrastructure, healthcare, education etc.

d) Not raising taxes unless strictly necessary, lowering them if it is permissible according to the above.

Socially liberal => supports personal liberties

Now why does government debt even matter? Well, because debt is owed somewhere, and if it becomes large may mean that the government is beholden to other parties for the debt.

Most research on human embryonic stem cells - currently impossible in western countries due to ethics concerns.

Theoretically, if a few stem cells from every embryo early on and frozen that might be a huge boon for them once they grow up to adults with potential health issues. Need a new heart? Grow one in a lab from the preserved cells - perfectly compatible.

Currently these kinds of things can’t be explored, and whilst the ethics may be dubious the potential medical benefits left on the table are astonishing.

A handful - lemmy.world because I found it first, feddit.nu because it’s Swedish, piefed because it seemed interesting, dbzero because of yarr and foss

I know, we’re also so small that most of it was never localized to Swedish. But in the spirit of the question - funny

Well, in Swedish, we have “mil”, which is 10km, so mr. Toretto would be living his life 2.5km at a time. However, I can only assume he’s a pilot in his alternate Swedish incarnation, since covering that distance in “ten seconds or less” would mean travelling at >900kmph.

Nuclear isn’t dispatchable.

This statement is false.

“A dispatchable source of electricity refers to an electrical power system, such as a power plant, that can be turned on or off; in other words they can adjust their power output supplied to the electrical grid on demand. Most conventional power sources such as coal or nuclear power plants are dispatchable in order to meet the always changing electricity demands of the population. In contrast, many renewable energy sources are intermittent and non-dispatchable, such as wind power or solar power which can only generate electricity while their primary energy flow is input on them.”

Source: EnergyEducation.ca (Provided by the University of Calgary)

Either you don’t know what you’re talking about, or are actively deceptive. I sincerely hope it is the prior. As such, I suggest that you educate yourself on the topic before commenting further to avoid spreading disinformation.

The main argument for nuclear is not its individual cost, neither for remewables. The main argument is that we need to rid ourselves of fossil fuels.

When planning for a future global energy system w/o fossil fuels, nuclear power has a key role to play as the most reliable source of clean, dispatchable electricity. This allows it to punch far above its equivalent capacity by massively reduce the need for expensive grid scale storage solutions.

Source 1: IEA (2019), Nuclear Power in a Clean Energy System, IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/reports/nuclear-power-in-a-clean-energy-system, Licence: CC BY 4.0

Source 2: NEA (2019), The Costs of Decarbonisation: System Costs with High Shares of Nuclear and Renewables, OECD Publishing, Paris https://www.oecd-nea.org/jcms/pl_15000

Personally, I find the discussion of equality and equity to be quite interesting. Partly because of which areas where either may be considered preferable, and which areas where implementing equity policies ends up leading to objectively worse outcomes, usually in the long term and on a societal level.

I always dread having to replace old appliances, specifically because of the added non-features that inevitably break.

So… you’re essentially carrying around a power bank on the back of your phone all the time? Seems like a gimmick at best.

Honestly, fast charging has turned this into such a non-issue that you’ll be hard pressed to find a more convenient solution.