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Posts
16
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1,218
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • That argument only works on the specific belief that souls constantly exist on earth though. In various mythologies and religions, there are various other realms where countless numbers of souls exist without inhabiting a human body on earth.

  • There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1, but none of them are 2.

    That is by definition though. 2 is impossible to appear between 0 and 1. I know already that it's possible for my consciousness to exist and I don't see a reason to assume it's impossible to exist in the future. So, it becomes more like the Infinite Monkey Theorem. Technically, it's possible for my consciousness to not appear again, but almost surely it will.

  • I see it (or at least some form of it) as a realistic possibility. Let's say that consciousness is a completely physical thing, a certain set of chemicals, cells and molecules in my brain that define what is "me". That would mean that given infinite time, something that possesses "my" consciousness would eventually appear again.

  • I explicitly said “we should disincentivize (via fees or increased property tax) those who don’t properly renovate their buildings”, so… such people would just have to pay fees or more taxes (realistically and depending on fee/tax amount, they would take a loan instead or do the exact same thing they would have to do if renovations were needed for whatever other external reason such as aging of the building, fire, flood, etc.).

    The problem is that a large portion of those people you talk about aren't renovating because they can't. Renovation already makes financial sense in many cases, but it requires a huge initial investment. You think for example an older retiree can just take out a loan? Haha, no. Fires, floods etc leave many people destitute unless they have a good insurance, which wouldn't apply to this situation.

    You keep arguing against the proposal of incentives, which is fair enough. I can understand the argument that you don't want to finance people's private property. But what I take issue with is your idea of increasing the financial burden on those people with increased taxes and fines. I don't think you've presented a good argument as to how this would improve the situation in any way.

  • Does it say somwhere the tax cuts are for low income oeners only?

    Not that I know of, but that is beside the point as it's not what you originally suggested. Restricting the tax cuts to low-income people would be a much more reasonable idea.

    If you can’t afford to own a house (or car, or anything else) you’ll have to sell it.

    From what you suggested, you want to actively price people out of their houses. So non-rich people in rural areas etc won't be able to keep their homes anymore and have to rent. Their houses will either get bought by rich people or real estate companies who can afford to do the renovations or they'll be left abandoned. People who are already rich can afford the renovations and won't be affected by the penalties. Is that really a desirable outcome to you?

    To give a concrete example, a policy like you suggested might make my mom homeless. She's not rich, my parents were both social workers and paying off the house took decades. The house is from the 1920s, so it needs a lot of renovations to be up to modern standards. Currently, she can slowly save up some money and do them one at a time. You'd place an additional financial burden on her, which would make her unable to save money for the renovations and possibly cause her to lose her house.

  • Plenty of stuff like this or this or this

    Again, those are all pushes for legislation. None of which are implemented at this point. The EU is, for better and for worse, a bureaucratic monster. Anything it does has to go through a long process involving multiple oversight comittees, the commission, the parliament etc. It really doesn't have the option for much secrecy. National governments are quite a different story.

  • But those are all publicly available pieces of legislation. It's quite a leap to go from that to just assuming they'll secretly and illegally spy on you through public wifi networks, without any law allowing them to do so. Besides, if they have no problem doing that, why would internet through your European ISP be any safer?

  • Depends on how much brain capacity I need. When I need to actually think, it has to be instrumental. So game soundtracks, classical music etc. Stellaris is one soundtrack I quite like for thinking. When it's something I have to think really hard about, it's music off though.

    Otherwise, when I'm working on a repetitive, brainless task, it's whatever I'm in the mood for. Metal, country, j-pop, post-punk... could be anything really.

  • They've also sold less than half the number of XBox One units compared to PS4, and like a third compared to the Switch, so they've been lagging behind for a while.

    These days they don't really seem to focus on console gaming at all. I'm curious to see if we'll even get a traditional "next gen" console. It might just be a console UI for Windows PCs instead, with some third-party produced "console"-PCs.

  • I highly recommend leaving the typical tourist route (Tokyo-Osaka-Himeji-Hiroshima-Kyoto) for at least a few days and visit some of the other main islands. Kyushu is my favorite island. So much to see but not yet overrun with tourists. Nagasaki and Kagoshima especially are lovely cities. I also recommend visiting an Onsen town for 1-2 days.

    Some other tips closer to the main tourist route:

    • Stay at a buddhist temple on Koyasan. Many people only go there for a day trip, but the temple stay really makes it special
    • Do the Shimanami Kaido cycling route. Depends on your fitness of course, but it's quite doable for most people in 2 days and you can also do only a part of it.
    • Between Kinkakuji and Ginkakuji, visit Ginkakuji. Less overrun and has a (IMO) much more beautiful garden surrounding it
    • When visiting Miyajima, take a rental bike (e-bikes are available) to the eastern side of it - you'll find quiet beaches with small shrines and hundreds of deer just chilling out
  • As someone who really likes the game: No, it probably isn't for you. The story is very much edgy youth fiction and much of the game is reading through the story. The gameplay is good, but not so good as to carry the game if you dislike the story and aesthetics.

  • My parents were pretty opposed to violent media. As a younger child, I wasn't really allowed to play anything that had explicit violence. Once instance I remember is when I was about 8 and we got a new PC that came bundled with Age of Empires 2. I was initially allowed to play it, but my dad took the CD away when he saw how much warfare it involved. Generally, they usually kept to the official age recommendations on the boxes. They relaxed their rules significantly from when I was around 12 though. That was also when I got my own PC and a Steam Account and they didn't really check what I bought on there. Even got my mom to buy me GTA San Andreas (which has a 16+ recommendation here) when I was around 14. They never really approved necessarily, especially my dad, but they let me make my own decisions when they felt I was old enough.

  • But why do Visa/Mastercard give in to them? If it were governments, or even a very large popular movement I'd get it, as there might be consequences to ignoring those. But Collective Shout is really quite small, there would be no backlash to just ignoring them. I guess maybe they have powerful connections.

  • I really don't get it. What makes this one radical organization from Australia seemingly have so much influence and power? Frustrating as hell seeing how people's livelihood can just be taken away from one day to the next due to one organization's puritan values.