• 1 Post
  • 23 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: June 21st, 2023
  • memfree@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Was it naivety?
    10·
    13 days ago

    You could say it started with Eisenhower lying about a U2 spyplane being a normal weather flight, then Khrushchev producing the pilot and exposing the truth of the espionage campaign. Supposedly, the U.S. more or less trusted its government up to that point, but that big lie started deflating the post-WWII belief in an honest democracy.

    If you watch old movies from the 1940s and even into the 1950s, you will find a substantial number where “Rule of Law” and general ethics were central and critical parts of the story. The populace expected liars, cheats, and scoundrels would be outed, convicted where there was crime and ostracized where there was not. Of course there have always been greedy bosses, but the U.S. has vacillated between imposing extreme taxes and regulations to doing nothing at all about social imbalance.

    Most recently, everything got disrupted by Citizens United wherein the Supreme Court ruled that money is speech. Money is the opposite of speech. Money is power. The point of Constitutional ‘free speech’ was that speech be allowed despite a lack of power and influence – not because of it.

    In the aftermath of Citizens United, the ultra-rich have swayed the elections of judges and politicians with special attention to given to writing policies and eliminating restrictions. This was made easier by earlier elimination of the fairness doctrine and the 1996 Telcom Act that loosened limits on how many news outlets an entity could own. (extra info)

    – But no, it was NOT naive way back when. The U.S. used to be a country that would (generally) hold bad actors to account. Nixon resigned when impeached because he understood that he could not lead after being caught. Trump knew he could lead despite his crimes. Perhaps we’d have been better off in Nixon had remained president such that the country would have been forced to take action back then.

  • memfree@lemmy.mltoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Is it sexist to say "I've never worn a wet dress before"
    142·
    16 days ago

    You’re probably focusing on the wrong thing. My guess is that while you think she was reacting to what you said, she was probably reacting to something else. For example, if you have boys who wore wet clothes without comment, or if you yourself have worn wet clothes without complaint, she might think it sexist to presume a female is required to be more modest than a male. She might have thought you were acting as if your immature child was vamping like she was in a wet t-shirt contest rather than a squirmy toddler (no idea what age your girl is, tho) and that your reaction was too embarrassed. It could have been a number of things, but you’d have to ask her to find out.

  • memfree@lemmy.mltoUnited States | News & Politics@lemmy.ml•How The New York Times is (still) getting gamed by the right
    10·
    26 days ago

    Again and again, when the Times attempts its false balance — trying to make Republicans sound less unhinged than they actually are — it results in bad journalism. It is the same problem social media platforms have encountered in moderation: removing misinformation and deplatforming bad actors means removing and deplatforming more Republicans. Eventually, using the excuse of “fairness,” social media companies gave up.

    The Verge also cites this Politico article on how the right actively worked to discredit Claudine Gay. From Politico:

    When you put those three elements together — narrative, financial and political pressure — and you squeeze hard enough, you see the results that we got today, which was the resignation of America’s most powerful academic leader.

    Lordy, how I wish truth and logic was sufficient to fight lies and crazy.

  • memfree@lemmy.mltoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•*Permanently Deleted*
    8·
    1 month ago

    A relative got billed thousands of dollars for post-medical transport back home. Insurance covered the cost to fly him to the hospital, but not the trip back. This guy has spent decades enjoying his home in the middle of nowhere, but everything has gotten harder as he’s grown older. He knew he was getting short of breath more easily, but didn’t realize his lungs were severely deteriorating – until his wife found him passed out on the ground instead of doing yard work.

    Now he has to use oxygen (5l/min) all the time, is mostly stuck in the house, and lives too far from most services to do anything. His wife can drive to town to get groceries and the like, but he has to calculate if he’ll have enough oxygen to make a trip, and his wife doesn’t want him driving at all lest he get dizzy and cause an accident. Airlines won’t let him fly.

    The couple are having a hard time finding people to drive all the way out to their place to help take care of things. They are pretty much stuck out there with a lot of chores they can’t do and very little entertainment. They did finally manage to get someone to install a generator so when the power goes out (which happens often enough), they can keep recharging the oxygen.

    Prior to this, he’d been making long trips to see doctors for back and neck pain because there weren’t any close providers, but those docs somehow missed his breathing issues. I don’t know if he was seeing a GP as well, but his choices were limited. Family had urged him to move somewhere more … well, if not urban, at least suburban for over a decade because his medical care never seemed very good. Now it is nearly impossible.

    Does that answer the question? The guy went from doing yard work one day to incapacitated the next. I’m sure the change is usually less instantaneous for most people, but there are cases like his where the change from healthy to ‘not’ is fast.

  • memfree@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Divorcees of Lemmy, why did your marriage end?
    3·
    2 months ago

    I’m doing better without him, so don’t worry too much about it. Old women tend to live alone simply because men die younger, so it’s no biggie if some of us start that trend a bit early.

    I remember an old guy who really wanted to remarry when his wife died, courted and married someone new, and then expected her to do all the household chores because that’s what women do. She was aghast. He hadn’t given any indication that what he wanted was a free maid while wooing her, and she backed out of the whole thing immediately – much happier to be on her own than take on his expectations.

  • memfree@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Divorcees of Lemmy, why did your marriage end?
    31·
    2 months ago

    The reddit hivemind gets triggered by the very idea of cheating. As far as I know, there was no cheating in my marriage and eventual divorce, but it didn’t matter to me if he cheated or not. It mattered to him that I didn’t cheat, so I didn’t. From my point of view, I’d have a problem if he was spending all his free time with someone else instead of helping with the house, chores, relationship, and so on, but random sex was fine by me – as long as it didn’t result in pregnancy or become a full-blown relationship.

    Years ago I read some paper about how humans have two primary and competing reproductive strategies: monogamy versus promiscuouness. It theorized that cultures tend to codify monogamy as the standard to follow because its proponents get very hostile to the promiscuous whereas the promiscuous do not much care what the monogamous do.