Ahh, I misinterpreted your post as a complaint. I’m not a hypermiler, but I do find the efficient routes are often the lowest stress routes as well.

That’s in your trip options “prefer fuel efficient route”. You can turn it off.

An alternate view for you, politicians can’t possibly be expected to know about everything, care about every cause, meet with every person. One of lobbyists roles is to educate and motivate where otherwise politicians may be complacent. The reason that education is currently problematic is because powerful people control much of the “education”. I think a well regulated lobbying system could remove some of the downsides while keeping the upsides. I’ve also worked in and around politics, that reality doesn’t make either one of us more or less correct.

I think you’re misattributing my intent. If you want to make corporate lobbying illegal or highly regulated I’m all for it. But lobbying overall is an inherently good and important part of politics. If you merely talk to a politician about a bill you want to pass you are lobbying. But you are likely very bad at it compared to a professional, so you pay an organization to do it on your behalf. Do you expect politicians to live in a black box completely disconnected from constituent issues as long as they are in office? Because that’s how you get laws passed that have nothing to do with human need. If I donate to the ACLU, HRC, or an environmental group, I expect that some of my money will be spent on lobbying congress. That is not bad or evil.

I absolutely read the question, accusing me of reading comprehension problems while having serious reading comprehension problems is some reddit level stupidity. Reread what I wrote, you read the first half and ignored the second half. I was merely illustrating that many paid lobbyist do very worthwhile things. From labor rights, to environmental justice, to human rights. The issue isn’t lobbyists, the issue is corporate lobbyists…

Let’s say you lose your job because a company lays you off without notice amid record profits. With your new found free time, you get so angry you go to your state senators and representatives and try to convince them to make a law limiting layoffs to a 6 month notice period for profitable companies. You are now a lobbyist. You are saying not to lobby the government full time. But for the sake of clarity let’s say your coworkers also got laid off and pooled their money to send you to lobby on their behalf, you are now a paid lobbyist.

I feel like most people that complain about lobbyists are really just complaining about corporate lobbyists or lobbying groups paid by corporations. Lobbyists are a good and necessary part of any democracy.

People can say whatever they want, no one can stop you. But people still have every right to judge your character. Being in a free society works both ways, you can say mean shit and I can think you’re mean.

People use “retard” to compare others or themselves to people they deem lesser than. It doesn’t work as an insult if you don’t look down on cognitively disabled people. You don’t have to use it on someone cognitively disabled, the implication is already there whether you have intended it or not.

For me, I think there are much worse words. While I don’t use it, I don’t waste my brain space judging people who do.

Hopefully you mean ones still in construction… No need to cause an unprecedented environmental disaster after all.

Arctic MUD?

Anything that says yiff in the title, this stuff is so popular in lemmy. Not kink shaming, but really doesn’t do anything for me.

Reality?

None of the things by themselves fully justify “belief” in a religion yet many people claim they are without a true belief in the entire system. It’s the problem with such a vague question. By a narrower definition very few people attending a place of worship are true believers. Someone can believe in god, but not really believe in the rules, and still say they are “religious”. Someone can believe in the rules, but not god, and say the same. I think if you are practicing the religion to some extent then you have a right to call yourself religious if that’s how you view yourself regardless of your true beliefs on god, rules, etc. Cultural impact matters more than we give it credit for.

Another big reason is reason number 4

4. Gives a sense of community and cultural connection that other things don’t quite provide.

I’ve met a not so inconsequential amount of people in my life that when pressed admitted, they don’t believe in god, don’t believe in the moral teachings, but attend a place of worship because they think there is no replacement for the interwoven community and cultural connection their place of worship provides. Many people simply like the community connection of their root culture. This is especially true in minority groups (black church, synagogue).

They are just trolling, they are looking for the argument for arguments sake. Look through their post and comment history. Report, down vote, and block, then move on.

If the recipe calls for tofu (and you are not vegan), use Paneer, almost always an improvement.

I’m saying I’m not the one that accused you. You’re confusing me with the person who responded before me.

I’m not the person who first responded, I accused you of nothing…

The British repeatedly gave blankets they new had smallpox. Todays evidence is that nothing happened, the virus was already dead. But it’s worth mentioning that from a Native American perspective this still happened, they received blankets and shortly after they had an epidemic. Whether they contracted it from the blankets or not is sort of besides they point, they intended to infect Native Americans with smallpox and local tribes ended up having a smallpox epidemic shortly after. Maybe they found another way, or maybe someone got infected by coming in contact with the British during one of the conflicts. But does it really matter? With or without blankets they still murdered millions (thought to be the largest genocide in human history) of native people on their own land simply because they wanted to steal all the land. They didn’t need smallpox to do that, they did it with guns, and forced starvation.

USA, Minnesota. People hug but ask if you’re a hugger first.

I think it’s funny that only 2 options were given. In India the norm is clasping your own hands together and saying namaste, nomoshkar or some other greeting. No touching. In east Asia a very slight bow is incredibly common.

Presuming of course that they absolutely weren’t going to replace those microscopes without that endowment.

In many, if not most, cases there would never be room in a budget for an electron microscope at your average mid sized or small school. Keep in mind we’re talking about a million+ dollar expenditure.

In many cases improvements like a building or an electron microscope absolutely hinge almost entirely on donations, that’s why they are so attractive to a donor. They can make real lasting improvements to a college or university that wouldn’t otherwise exist.

Even the endowed scholarships that go to assist with tuition are never as big as people think. If you have a $100,000 endowed scholarship. The school is likely only giving $4,500 of that out each year so they can grow the endowment at the same rate they give out money, thereby ensuring future students get more help.

I’ll paraphrase a real world example. School X has a $100 million dollar endowment, with $65 million going to endowed scholarships, that’s only ~$3 million a year for tuition relief. That same school is looking at a $45 million a year budget. Certainly they could chose to spend down their endowment and give their students 2 years of free school… And then what? Pass on the 3 million a year budget shortfall to future students?

I work in higher Ed, I agree the system is broken, but most schools endowments come no where near being able to give free tuition.