Susurrus

1. Added paragraph breaks and will try to use them actively.

2. As mentioned in another reply, I was referring to the base idea, and not to what people think or feel. Perhaps I failed to convey that effectively.

3. Probably true. Hard to say for certain, but as far as I can tell, 'aliens' are practically guaranteed to exist, while gods are the opposite.

Completely agree. I had the same experiences as a kid. Organized religious institutions always go against the religions they pretend to preach. Religious belief should be a personal choice, not a mass brain washing.

The Catholic Church requires that Christians indoctrine their children into Christianity since they are born. But this is the Church speaking, not Christianity or Jesus. In fact, the New Testament clearly says that it is perfectly acceptable for the family of a Christian to reject Christianity. The sole fact that they love the part of their family that is Christian, is enough.

But of course, barely any self-proclaimed Christians have ever opened the Bible, let alone read it. And the Church coveniently doesn't recommend reading it.

What you're saying is completely true, but in no way contradicts what I said. I was referring to the fundamental idea of faith. I never said people adhere to it, and that nobody actually thinks God, or whatever else, exists.

Obviously, a lot of people do. Just like a lot of people think the Earth is flat or that chocolate milk comes from chocolate cows. A huge number of people are uneducated, have been fed propaganda and manipulated for years. I don't think anyone needs any convincing that churches lie to and scam people on a daily basis for personal gain. But doesn't make faith or religion itself a lie.

Similarly, there's quite a few self improvement gurus who make up false ideas about self improvement and feed lies to their many, many followers. But does that make self improvement itself a lie, or a pointless dream?

Shitty solution to a shitty problem in my opinion. Quite often patients are indeed put into the ambulance immediately. Ambulances also have tons of medical equipment, none of which you can fit on a bike, obviously. Then there's the question of paramedic safety, especially given how many road accidents there are in the US. Plus, that would be a major cost for healthcare providers. Instead of 2 paramedics, you'd need 3 or 4, since they can't go solo, again due to safety concerns. Overall this isn't something we should be looking for alternative solutions to. You can't keep making workarounds for systemic issues, like horrible road/traffic design or society being severely uneducated.

Facebook used to have a team dedicated to analyzing their apps' risks to children's and teenagers' health. The team concluded that there are indeed many serious health risks for both children and teenagers, especially teenage girls. Shortly after, it got disbanded, and all its recommendations completely ignored.

The problem here is: the EU currently works quite well overall for its citizens, precisely because there isn't really one big player. It is considerably more difficult to commit crimes and atrocities on the scale of the US, Russia and China when you're small, weak, and all your close allies are watching you. I don't have any doubts that a united EU, a federation perhaps, like it was originally intended, would be the greatest power the world has ever seen. But it would come at a great cost to all of its citizens. In anywhere between 50-250 years it would most likely develop into an empire similar to the ones we have right now. Unless we could figure out some sort of new structure to combat these challenges, which in itself is a major undertaking.

So essentially the same thing as the US 50 years ago? And in some ways, kind of like Russia 200 years ago? Except it's progressively getting more civil.

Dealing with superpowers and empires is always unpleasant, and everyone would rather stay as far away from them as possible, but it's not always and option. Well, it seems we either continue the cycle, and swap US partnership for China partnership (then probably same thing again in a couple decades), or we break the cycle somehow.

Personally I'd prefer if 'memes', if you can call it that, like this one were kept to politics-centered communities.

In any case, I think the message is true for most if not all countries on the planet. No politician from any major party is a good person, and they most definitely don't care about you enough to do anything for you. You will probably have a hard time finding any politician that isn't a liar, or worse, but the major parties are the worst of the worst.

I think you're bringing up good points about important issues. However, what the current US administration is doing doesn't seem to solve any of those problems in any capacity. In fact, the previous administration did a lot more on that front, without collapsing the entire global economy at the same time. Also, as some other comments pointed out, almost nobody on the planet is 'caving in' to the tariffs. The vast majority of the world is simply cutting trade with the US wherever possible, resulting in Americans paying several times more for various goods, for no apparent reason or benefit.

Personally I've been of the opinion that advertising, at least in its current form, should be illegal since I was about 15. I'm not 100% sure if it should be completely illegal, or just very heavily regulated. Even after all those years, I'm still baffled nearly every day that people around me seem okay with current advertising.