• WanderWisley@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    I know a coworker who is an anti-vaxxer and won’t scan a QR code because they think it will steal their identity, but they happily use Facebook, TikTok, and Ozempic.

  • InvalidName2@lemmy.zip
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    22 hours ago

    Welcome to mental illness. Many people are perfectly functional, yet still deeply sick.

    I had an uncle like this. He definitely held it together okay-ish (though that’s up for debate) for most of his life. But the conspiracy bullshit was a consist sign that he was not well.

    And then when his wife passed, he also lost his ability to be functional, so the sickness took over entirely, eventually even took over his body. Nobody could help, not even his children.

    • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      I had an uncle just like this. He spent all his time listening to conservative AM radio, which he proudly called “hate radio”. He died of who knows what alone in his trailer in Florida and wasn’t discovered for two months because nobody gave a shit about him. My other uncle tried to rehab the trailer (which would have maybe been worth five grand) but gave up because the smell was too horrifying. My dad inherited a small bag of his belongings and the stench on those things was unimaginable.

      • InvalidName2@lemmy.zip
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        16 hours ago

        Oh, that’s awful.

        My uncle also had very few allies left in this world, he was just the embodiment of an asshole to pretty much everyone. My dad and aunt were the only people that would even bother to try to communicate with him. Fortunate in some way, they’d talked on the phone the day before my uncle passed, and he agreed to let my dad stop by to drop off some food the next day. Meaning, he’d been dead less than 24 hours before my dad found his body. Otherwise, it very well could have been weeks or longer.

        But the house? Total loss. My uncle had become a trash hoarder. Fueled by depression, but also by his beliefs that the government was tracking him (and would go through his trash if he were to set it outside). My dad and my cousin tried to locate some family memorabilia like photos and things, but they gave up. The house was literally bulldozed and the remnants hauled away, it was in such bad shape inside and out.

  • Frenchfryenjoyer (she/her)@lemmings.world
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    21 hours ago

    it’s weird but back when that huge Earthquake in Syria happened there were a lotta people with no relation to Syria at all adamant that it was a hoax because of stupid things like not seeing the ground shake (in an era where image stabilisation technology is the norm lol) I can’t even begin to understand conspiracy theorists but people like Anon’s granddad are pretty common

    • AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space
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      1 day ago

      Of course, the idea that the President’s head can just explode for no reason in view of the public, and by implication, so can anyone else’s at any time, is far more existentially terrifying than any assassination plot, so, to avert mass panic and social collapse, the FBI hurriedly framed some local weirdo, and then killed him before anyone could flag that he probably had nothing to do with it, which is the only reason why everyone’s life savings still had any value afterwards.

          • jaybone@lemmy.zip
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            1 day ago

            Cue Sarah McLachlan music.

            For the price of a cup of coffee per day, you could help prevent Spontaneous Presidential Cranial Disassembly.

            SPCD affects many of us.

            Cut to Mary Todd Lincoln

            “Worst play ever. Also my husband was killed. ”

            —-

            Seriously though, JFK tried to do some good things. I’d be curious to hear the tankie response. Probably something about the Cuban missile crisis.

            • burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de
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              19 hours ago

              You don’t have to be curious anymore. You can summarize the entire argument rhetoric into, "Supported america in any way/shape/form, therefore bad. Must immediately dismantle imperial hegemony of terrible capitalistic empire.

    • ch00f@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      So in Seattle last week there was a man who accidentally shot himself in the leg while driving his car. He called 911 because he obviously needed help, but tried to tell cops that he was shot by a stranger while driving. They asked why there were no entry holes in his car, and I think he went to jail for being a dumbass.

      Anyway, how do we know JFK didn’t accidentally shoot himself and then try to cover it up because he was so embarrassed.

    • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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      1 day ago

      I took physics in high school, so I’m basically a qualified expert. I can confirm that quantum mechanics tell us that this is possible. Exceedingly unlikely, but possible.

      • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        The satistical chances of every single atom in your body just randomly dispersing and you vanishing is not 0. Just a very, very small percentage.

        The statistical chances of only a spot on your body doing that is near infinitely more likely than the first scenario tho.

        • yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de
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          23 hours ago

          The statistical chance using our current models and understanding.

          We have never observed such a large amount of atoms dispersing through quantum effects simultaneously. There may be some process we are unaware of preventing this.

          Which is to say, there is a non-zero chance the chance of this scenario is exactly zero.

      • Little8Lost@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        From what i know its also possible for a hand to phase through a table but even if someone would slap a table from the start to end of the universe it would be unlikely to happen (i forgot the thickness of the table)

    • the_wiz@feddit.org
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      1 day ago

      I indeed have read somewhere a long time ago (i think back in Usenet days) the conspiracy theory that JFK INDEED was not killed but this whole thing was just a stunt to push his political agenda further and let him retire in peace (you know, like Elvis did).

    • TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      cant dx schizophrenia without more info. all we can identify is a few reported symptoms from a third party. the secret messages are called Loose Associations and that with the persistence of belief in the face of evidence to the contrary indicates a delusional belief, but those can occur in several psychotic disorders. for schizophrenia we’d at least need to confirm two out of three of bizarre motor activity, disorganized speech, and preferably some negative (withdrawing) symptoms like flat affect, avolition, etc

    • console.log(bathing_in_bismuth)@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      That means anon is genetically more likely to develop either/both too.

      If any of you all have a family member suffering from those you should avoid triggers that can cause onset on an early age like smoking weed, especially under 25 years old.

  • jaybone@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    I read all the replies and then completely forgot this was about Rwanda.

    Now I feel bad. I think I even had to write a paper about this in the 90s.

    • TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      not necessarily schizophrenia, but likely another psychotic disorder. possibly delusional disorder if no other symptoms are met. schizophrenia has several criteria that must be met beyond delusions

      • Ymer@feddit.dk
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        18 hours ago

        On one hand, schizophrenia is much more common than delusional disorder, on the other hand, schizophrenia is much less likely to go completely undiagnosed for so long. Either way, grandpa will have to see a proper Hutu psychiatrist to know for sure.

        • TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          16 hours ago

          that we know of! the trouble with delusional disorder is that it by definition presents without many of the troublesome characteristics of schizophrenia. and delusions, by definition, persist in the face of evidence, so insight is generally lacking. in other words, we could hypothesize that most cases of delusional disorder are never reported!

      • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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        1 day ago

        For every time a person has an intensely strong opinion about something they don’t know much about and which doesn’t actually affect them.

        The first thing that came to my mind is the genocide in Gaza. Jews and fundamentalist Christians have a vested interest (sort of…), as do Israeli citizens (more obviously) in denying the genocide, but way more people than those small demographics do so. Those others are the grandpa.

        But it occurred to me as I was writing that this could equally apply to things like gay marriage, or trans rights.

        • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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          1 day ago

          I think this is a bit different: western Zionists may not have personal connections to the Gaza genocide, but they have strong cultural and ideological ones. And given how much western governments are all in on Zionism, it does affect them indirectly.

          A Welsh Rwandan genocide denier is more out of left field

          • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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            1 day ago

            I don’t think it having “ideological connections” makes this metaphor weaker. In fact, I think it highlights exactly why using a comparison out of left field makes the metaphor stronger. The only reason non-fundamentalist-Christians and Jews in the west have for denying the genocide in Gaza is that it has become normalised to do so. If you take a step back and think about why a white moderate “Christmas-and-Easter Christian” (or even an atheist) American, Australian, or European might have a connection to what’s going on in the Middle East…like, really think about it, there is no rational explanation. Only because others have decided to politicise it and make it a talking point and a part of political identity, do westerners end up having disproportionally strong opinions about it. It’s self-reinforcing in that way, but it’s no more rational than the Welsh Rwandan genocide denier, at its core.

        • Rayquetzalcoatl@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Ah I see, I was reading too deep into it and trying to map a 1:1 metaphor - I think you’re probably right, that last sentence feels like either the punchline or an obvious flag that this is not a literal situation. Thanks! 🙏

    • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
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      24 hours ago

      The Rwanda genocide was the Hutu “people” genociding the Tutsi “people”.

      I say “people”, because both of those demographics are almost entirely artificial and were created by the ruling class in the late 19th century based mostly on the criterium of “Do you own cattle?”, and then exploited and the split enlarged first by german colonizers and then by the belgians. The belgians then made it official by printing it on their mandatory ID cards.

      And of course, both the Germans and the Belgians preferred the wealthy, cattle-owning tutsi minority over the poorer hutu majority. And when the white colonizers left, the hutu’s decided to grab some power back… with genocide.

      • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
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        22 hours ago

        Just another reminder that there is no war but class war. The rich and powerful will try to split us by whatever arbitrary division they can, but the differences we have between each other are nothing compared to the differences between all of us and the ultra rich.