Urist

Did not know about this site. It was a nice read and their mission statement is cool. Thanks for sharing! :)

It is nice where possible and can help locally, but on scale it will not force through any changes. To see why, we only need to consider the historical material conditions that allowed the development of the current capitalist form in the first place. Small businesses where defeated by capitalists that could employ tactics the others couldn't answer.

In order to answer to the consequences of our current mode of production, we have to force changes to how production is carried out. Saying we want our products locally, ethically and environmentally made will only change their branding, not the fundamental exploitation in search of surplus value.

When you have to spend on things like haircuts, repairs, etc, keep the money in your social network.

While I agree with the idea of not buying garbage, there is absolutely no way we can unconsume ourselves out of the capitalist ploy to extract surplus value. Do not put the blame on people who try to (often) satisfy legitimate needs, but on those forcing labor to be spent at the cost of both the environment and workers themselves.

Ecofascism (not accusing you here) is not going to solve the climate crisis.

I like people who think critically themselves (and are sometimes weird in lovely ways). Often I find them to be leftists and/or Linux users. I encourage your independent thought as to why.

Yeah, hearing about how hard it would be to get tenure dissuaded me from pursuing my original dream of doing a PhD. In retrospect I think I am much happier where I am now than I would've been, which really is what matter the most to me now. Freeing myself of the obligation of attaining my goals was actually quite nice.

I misinterpreted your comment and was very pleasantly surprised that something named "rational wiki" would call him out for the crackpot that he is.

If you want to make conclusions about matters humans can barely comprehend

We do not know everything about the universe, sure, but to say it is outside our scope of comprehension is a stretch that I would argue follows from religious dogma: "God works in mysterious ways" and all that. In fact, the developments of the last centuries have shown that most of the things we thought were mysterious, we could actually explain with science.

Most religious people claim to know more about the world than atheists: After all, they are the ones having some sort of relationship with some ethereal/omnipotent being.

Atheists mean by the second that they find as little material basis for believing in god as in [insert whack theory here (teapot, spaghettimonster, etc.)]. We do make a judgement one way or the other, we say that our default position is not believing literally incredible things without proof.

The bar for what needs to be proven unless assumed false is higher the more that is claimed. Since god (especially to monotheistic denominations) are by definition the highest being claimed to exist, there is a huge burden of proof required for believing in it. Since there exists none, we choose to assume that the statement is false.

The reason we make all these stupid analogies is to hammer through the point that we, like everyone else, make a lot of assumptions that unproven things are false. The question of god is not really special in this regard, except for the historical and biological conditions that makes people inclined to believe in the fairytale absent of any good objective reason.

Yeah, this is not a nazi bar.

So there is actually a valid critisism of Russel's teapot, or toaster in this case, that there could be a detectable causality that put the object in orbit even if the object itself cannot be observed (such as a rocket to deliver it). However, this (minor) flaw in a popularized analogy does nothing to reject what the analogy represents: A stupid idea that cannot really be falsified, even though it is false (see what I did there?).

Atheist do not carry any belief in not believing (this even sounds stupid). We simply have come to the conclusion that there is no basis for believing in any particular denomination, nor some unspecific general one for that matter.

I am pretty certain our brains evolved to filter out friendly/known voices some tens of thousands of years (or more) ago. I feel tired sometimes before and after coffee, and often less so on coffee breaks because the real issue with coffee is that the caffeine can definitely disrupt sleep.

I understand you need consistency to not be engaged by sounds. I hope you understand that other people have other limitations, hence, again, it is your first statement I disagree with.

I see you repeating the claim that it makes sleeping more difficult, but I do think those that listen to sounds, be it ocean waves or someone talking, have the experience that it makes it easier for them to fall asleep.

Sure, there can be problems with sleep quality for numerous reasons. However, making a blanket statement that this disrupts the sleep, especially of those that have positve experience with it, is going to need some factual sources (that I do not think exists).

According to what I have read, it is fine if it is not too stimulating.

EDIT: Also, it is easy to take a break from coffee: It only requires not drinking a few cups. Either way it does not really prevent fatigue, at most delaying it.