please yell at me in the replies, i thrive on confrontation

This is like when people insist they’re alpha. That is to say, if you have to say it, it’s probably not true.

Well to be fair it probably is pessimism. That doesn’t make you a pessimist in the same way that me expecting to wake up every morning doesn’t make me an optimist.

I think that flu thing is an old wives tale. You usually get flu because you breathed it in. The association with cold is because during cold weather people spend more time in poorly ventilated areas.

Same. Often finish the can with a feeling of disappointment and thirst.

Happy to oblige.

Basically the North is a totalitarian state in which one family has retained absolute control of the state and its population. They have prioritised military programmes and their nuclear ambitions above the needs of their people and thus they have one of the worst economies and their people are often starving and diseased.

Recently they have also been arming Russia to help with their war of aggression against the innocent people of Ukraine.

All of this is in contrast to South Korea which is a democratic country with one of the world’s strongest economies which provides for a very good standard of living for its population.

There is much more, I’m sure, but these are the first things that pop to mind and the reason why the North is not the best Korea, and infact the South should be considered the Best Korea.

I think if you reflect a little, you know the answer really. Take a look at what happened during the pandemic

Although the 1% is really the 0.1%. So it’s much, much worse.

That sounds sensible on first thought…but it’s easy to find slurs that are for non-oppressed people’s.

The French, for example.

Oh yeah I forgot about the whole “choosing your candidate” piece. You wouldn’t want other parties messing with that…we just vote for a party and the party chooses its leader and can change it whenever they want.

Why do they ask? That seems so weird to me. I have never been asked (by the government) what party I support, and would be outraged if I ever was.

You have to register your political affiliation when getting a driving license?

Ummmm you might care to remember that the USSR also “bailed out” Europe.

You know…in the sense that you were dragged into a war you had no intention of joining, by a foe that had already gone 11 rounds with the UK and Russia.

The UK spent an entire empire “bailing out” europe. Twice. But we don’t hark on about it.

But you’re right about one thing - no one is coming to bail you out. You’ve made it abundantly clear you will only act unilaterally. Europe will stay in its lane, quietly hope that Trump has a stroke, but ready to stand on its own for a 3rd time.

I find it odd that the three candidates you mentioned were all elected. What’s your point again?

Use that to empower you to do the things you want to do. You don’t know how much time you have, regardless of age.

Also use your 30s to build habits that will help keep you active into your 80s. Resistance training, cardio, and eating right. I struggled with this until my late 30s and while I’m making great strides now, it’s a much harder fight in your 40s and 50s.

Sure if that works for you.

There are very few people in my field who can compete with me when it comes to capability and productivity - and that’s in a highly developed country with some of the world’s best educational institutions and companies to gain experience with.

I was unaware of that when I posted this.

Both seem to work.

I’m not naive to that fact, I just don’t like it.

I’m not gas lighting you and I didn’t know that was the intended acronym of .ml

If that’s true then I will be moving instance.

BTW I’ve not been blocked (to my knowledge) by anyone- I’ve just had a couple of instances where I’ve been in discussion with someone and when they turn to ad hominem attacks they’ve called me a tankie or some such. Regardless of what was being discussed or my views.

This sentiment is exactly what I’m talking about.

I’m not associated with the moderators anymore than your average user of .world is associated with their’s.

My point is, yes I can choose to change instance but why should I? Lemmy is meant to embody the best of us - and yet some of us are creating “us and them” situations.

This sentiment makes me sad.

I chose .ml because it was smaller than .world (and that seemed to be the point of federation) but was also generic (my interests are very varied) and had great uptime, and didn’t de-federate or had been de-federated by many instances. Now people say stuff like this and I feel the need to change instances because I don’t want people to tar me with that brush (and I have been accused directly multiple times just because of my instances) but I feel conflicted because the whole point of this while thing was that we could be on any instance we liked and it shouldn’t impact our “social standing”. I’m disappointed in people that they can’t judge a person by the content of their character rather than the instance they are on. And alas - I feel it’s only a matter of time before I’m forced to change instance because of other people’s prejudice.