GONADS125

Yeah, it is most definitely in the US/NATO’s best interests to continue supporting Ukraine against russia, as the longer the conflict continues, the more severely russia cripples itself against any future conflicts. It’s already an impossibility for russia to feasibly launch a successful offensive against any NATO nation at this point.

Why the hell would we stop supporting Ukraine when that serves to further our own interests and further weaken our greatest enemy?

That is, unless you’re a compromised republican/MAGA moron… (Hope it’s clear I’m not referring to the user above me here.)

This is entertaining, but I seriously don’t understand how it’s appropriate for the World News community.

I’m not happy with this development, but I’m slightly amused by the irony being that lemmy.ml is pro-china and has been moderated as such.

Average German Shepherds have cognitive abilities similar to a human child around the age of 3. Exceptional German Shepherd intelligence definitely exceeds that imo.

I grew up in a large family with many children and my educational background is in psychology, and I am convinced that some of my dogs have been as smart as the average 4 or 5 year old, at least…

Part of that, just like in raising children, is about imprinting and instilling inquisitiveness. Creating complicated play activities like hide and seek, hiding toys/wrapping them in a blanket, scent training, etc. I train my GSDs to observe animals rather than go after them, and they will sit on the porch outside and just watch animals like I would.

You can shape dogs to be smarter and incredibly affectionate/empathetic; it’s not entirely genetics in my opinion. For the greatest impact it’s best to start young, but I’ve been able to facilitate more inquisitiveness in rescues/fosters before too.

I trained my previous German Shepherd to understand a conditional question. It took a few years to teach, but I would ask “What do you want? Do you want [option]?” Could be go out, food, water, treat, play, love, walk, ride.

After enough conditioning, I could ask him “What do you want?” and he would literally tell me. I’d ask him and sometimes it was clear he was just bored, and would literally start to slow wag his tail and try out options. Like he’d go up to his treats and I’d say “No, you don’t need any more of those…” and he’d get this little tail wag and then go try a toy or something. Was really handy if he ran out of water or something. I’d ask “What do you want?” and he’d lead me to his empty water bowl.

Incidentally thru different keyword use for toys, he learned to differentiate the names his favorite toys. Like his basketballs were always one of his favorites, and he comprehended that his ball had a specific name, but still fell into the category of “toy.” So if you said “Go get a toy” he might bring his basketball, but if you said “Go get your ball” he would only grab his basketball.

He sadly died a couple years ago. He imprinted a bit on one of my current dogs (also a GSD), and I’ve been trying to expand on toy names with this guy. The names he’s got down well so far are blue ball, basketball, jack, long jack, cactus, pineapple, donut, and the ring. Maybe a couple other toys I can’t think of that he’s learned. (we spoil our dogs with too many toys…) But I can tell him “Go get the cactus!” and he’ll tear off and search until he finds the specific toy.

It’s very enriching for him and really shows off the intelligence of dogs that people take for granted (intelligence definitely varies on breed tho…).

No. While faster than light travel might secure the human race’s survival and intergalactic presence, is the human race more important than our planet? I don’t think so…

While I value human life, we’re just hairless apes that are both too smart for our own good and still incredibly simple-minded and tribal. Our importance is self-importance. What is the benefit of human-kind for the universe? So far we’re making existence worse for other species. We’re already destroying our planet.

Emotionally and selfishly I want us to continue going, but I think our existence has been far more detrimental than neutral, and certainly far from a positive impact on nature. We’re parasites to this planet, and I think a life-supporting planet is more important than the selfish and detrimental endeavors carried out by one species.

The Earth is more important than our selfish asses.

It can be really hard to recognize and reprogram automatic negative thoughts… I don’t know you and don’t want to jump to conclusions about you from a single comment, but I thought it could be helpful to share this info.

The “What? Me Worry” evidence-based module available here for free has great education on how to engage in cognitive restructuring, which is all about evaluating the evidence for and against a belief, and altering it to make it more accurate (not more positive, but it just so happens that the more accurate beliefs tend to be more positive than the automatic negative thoughts).

This is an awesome website full of free evidence-based resources that I used in clinical interventions with my former Clients. Love to share it online. I’ve found a lot of the material very helpful myself.

Sounds like you’ve dodged a toxic work environment so far, hope it stays that way for you!

I had a very toxic, manipulative, and lying boss. Would literally gaslight people. She criticized my valid overtime to my supervisor and when my supervisor told me, I said “Can you come with me to her office right now? I’m going to confront her.” My supervisor was nervous but followed me to our boss’ office. This was just the last straw for me in a long series of events.

Our department’s office was being remodeled and we were temporarily in a space where there were a ton of other teams from homeless and school-based departments that heard me confront her.

I probably came close to aggressive, but I mostly stayed in an assertive tone/cadence. But it was clear that I was pissed… Every time she made one of her unreasonable criticisms I called her out on it. When she said we were going to agree to disagree, I told her: “No we’re not; because you are wrong.”

She knew that her criticisms were unreasonable and just to abuse her limited power that sadly still went to her head. She would gaslight our team about policy/workload changes that didn’t actually come from above, and increased our workload unreasonably to make her look good. She literally told a team member of mine who was suicidal (we were all struggling immensely being over-worked in the collapsing healthcare system here in the US) “It sounds like you’re standing on a ledge and you need to decide to stay or leap.” This is leadership in one of the largest mental health organization in the US… She also told this same team member: “You’re not depressed; you’re just lazy.”…

She only got worse over the years until I quit in February this year after long-covid started kicking my ass and I couldn’t handle the workload/lifestyle anymore. Despite the fact that she only got worse over time, she never treated me that way to my face again.

She’d lie and talk shit about me behind my back, but she never talked down to me or anything like that to my face again. I think I scared her. She’d never had anyone confront her and call her out on her bullshit, not to mention with an office full of like 20+ people to hear her humiliation.

On the walk back to my supervisor’s office to finish our monthly ‘supervision’ meeting, my supervisor said “I can’t believe you talked to her like that. I wish I could stand up to them like that… but I’m too afraid to lose my job.”

That right there is where I argue that my actions were probably against my own best interests, but it did work out well for me. She would no longer micromanage and harass me like everyone else she oversaw. It’s usually worked out for the better, but I’ve got a bad habit of sticking to my guns when I know I’m right and not being afraid of confrontation.

I can’t think of a time in my life that directly confronting and taking on a bully hasn’t had a positive outcome for me. Whether it be verbally or physically, it has always made the circumstances better for me. Don’t know if it’s fear or respect. Most bullies are very insecure tho.

Definitely not recommending that sort of confrontation in a work setting tho. I think I probably would have been fired in most circumstances, but I think she knew I’d do my damnedest to uncover her bullshit on my way out.

Here is a free evidence-based resource for self-esteem.

I used to use this website a lot with my clients when I was a caseworker. I’ve found some of the resources helpful myself. Here is their resource page. Distress Intolerance is a neat one.

The longer it continues, the more likely that scenario is IMO. Bitter alt-right extremists would probably start losing interest after a short while, whereas social media competitors would stand to gain from long-term interference.

Is asking what everyone’s favorite communities are a ‘support’ question as well?..

Kinda defeats the point of an ‘ask lemmy’ community when the questions are ovepoliced like this. Not a very welcoming environment for asking genuine questions.

Most users reading this suggestion won’t even be able to post in that walled off instance…

Could definitely see this, plus trying to capitalize on the exodus of users from reddit.

My recommendation is to take a Critical Thinking and/or other philosophy classes at your local community college (granted one exists near you).

I don’t think there’s a problem with that. Diversity is a good thing. I sub to both in that situation. I’m subbed here and to an ask lemmy community on .world as well.

I’ve never changed my voting habits. I downvote trolls, hate, spam, and irrelevant content. I never downvote out of disagreement, nor do I use the upvote as an agreement button. I will upvote people I disagree with/am debating with if I believe they are promoting relevant discussion. That is how voting is intended to be used.

I live in the US in a location where the tap water is safe to drink (not always the case, e.g., Flint Michigan) but I still filter it for the taste (chlorine in the water).

Most municipal water is safe to drink in the US. Ground water depends entirely on where you live and many situational factors (City pollution, water level, etc.).

We will get boil notices from time to time when a contaminant is detected in the water supply. But that’s been rare in my experience, after living in several regions in the US.

No one should ever use tap water for netty potting without boiling it though! You can contract a brain-eating amoeba if you don’t boil, which has over 97% death rate.

Was just thinking this looks so much better than reddit…