The first thing to note is that Buddhism is a broad term that contains a lot of different belief systems. It is also plagued by poor translations of terms that don’t translate well into English, especially without looking meanings of the original terms.

Imo, your friend has distorted and misrepresented Buddhist teachings in order to justify not changing their behavior regarding meat-eating.

I’d challenge the use of the term “deserved” altogether, and I’d say “caused” might be a more accurate interpretation. Karma is not about an intelligent, all-powerful being passing judgement and smacking you down. It’s sometimes referred to as “the law of cause and effect.” It’s described as a function of the universe, the same way that physical laws makes objects fall to the ground when dropped. The exact way in which this works is up to interpretation. More secular-minded Buddhists might point to logical and observable consequences to explain it, while more spiritually-minded ones might argue that it’s more of an invisible, unexplainable force that carries over between lifetimes.

To use an example: a child that is fed a hamburger by their parents does not have knowledge of the animal’s suffering that was required to make it, nor do they have agency to control their diet or to prevent the animal from being harmed. But, an animal is still harmed through the process. The intent and agency of the actor are not important in the same way that it doesn’t matter if a ball on top of a slope is pushed or knocked over. It would only really matter if you’re dealing in terms of judgement.

It is not your responsibility to enforce karma on others. Karma isn’t a positive or negative force, and just because something happens that doesn’t make it good or fair or deserved. Rather, the idea is to navigate the world in such a way that you minimize undesirable consequences. Buddhist precepts are a list of guidelines that are intend to do just that, the precept about nonviolence being the first. The idea is: “Bad things seem to happen a lot when people go around killing living beings so it’s probably better to not do that, generally speaking.”

You are correct that your friend’s interpretation and worldview is a mess of contradictions that could just as easily be used to justify harm to humans, and that they’re blatantly violating the first precept. But I would argue that they’re not accurately representing Buddhist teachings, and their views shouldn’t be held as representative of the belief system, though admittedly, like I said there are a lot of different traditions and beliefs.

Define your variables. Wtf is “b,” the number of votes candidate B would have, plus one for no reason? Why is candidate T getting t votes and not t-1 votes? Terrible math, try again.

So is he going to do anything material about it? Or is he giving that statement to the press and then immediately calling up Bibi to reassure him it’s just for show? I have a feeling I know the answer.

“Wow, the Fire Nation is just like the latest country the news told me to hate, good thing America’s around to Share Our Greatness™️with them!”

My brother is a veteran, and when he came back he started “self-medicating” with meth to treat his PTSD. He was constantly on the verge of crisis and making violent threats (carefully phrased to not be actionable). At the time, I was working at an Amazon warehouse, at times doing 60 hours weeks, and at the time I was on Facebook and if I got off work and wanted to check it, he’d see I was online and if I left him on read it would be a whole thing. I described it as being a 911 operator on call 24/7. I basically wrote him off as dead to me, but my parents wouldn’t and that was the worst part. I remember visiting and we tried to go out for dinner but then he texted my mom with another crisis and now she’s in tears again, like always. It was constant. And he’d accuse them of all sorts of stuff, my mom still had one of those phones you had to press the button multiple times to get a letter and if she had a typo he’d accuse her of doing it on purpose. All he did all day was be alone with his thoughts, going through the same cycles, shooting up meth and absorbing whatever crazy right-wing bullshit he was listening to.

My parents are pretty well off and they were there for him. They tried to check him into all sorts of mental hospitals and rehab, but he’d check himself out early. There was an incident early on where he checked himself into the VA and they tried to cut him off Xanax cold turkey, which is potentially life-threatening, and he responded violently. This put a flag on his record which made it difficult to get him treatment later, and he was also careful to phrase his threats ambiguously enough to not be institutionalized.

It was pretty clear to me that this was only going to end one way, and at one point I thought about going up there and killing him myself, before he could hurt an innocent person. But the cops kept a watch on his house until it happened and he took a gun and led them on a car chase to somebody’s house, pulled a gun on them, and got shot in the arm. When I heard it happened, I didn’t know if he’d live or die and didn’t care, I was just relieved that it had finally happened and that nobody else got hurt. He went to jail for a bit and that got him off the meth so he’s doing better now.

What really gets me about it though is how easy we got off, though. Compared to the people on the other side of the war, the people actually living in Iraq and Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of people slaughtered, countless civilians. The children terrified of sunny days because that’s when the drones fly. How many times over do you have to multiply the pain and suffering I felt when I saw my mother’s face in tears to get even an inkling of the suffering inflicted on those people?

And it’s all just out of sight, out of mind. We went to war and people hardly even noticed, everybody just went about their lives as normal like it wasn’t even happening. People don’t even give a shit about veterans killing themselves on the daily in VA parking lots and waiting rooms because they can’t get care, they sure as shit don’t care about brown people on the other side of the world that the news treats as subhuman. And now, Bush gets rehabilitated on Ellen and the libs expect me to vote for Biden. It’s absurd how little people care about all the people they murdered.

Boss Battle music

Always fun to see accusations with no link and speculate on what actually happened.

I was raised Catholic and left it at a young age and spent a lot of time uprooting the brainworms so I don’t think there’s much left. However, whenever I can’t find something I really need and start getting stressed, I’ll still recite, “Dear St. Anthony, please come around, my X has been lost and cannot be found.” It’s a useful way to calm down and focus instead of freaking out and panicking.

Other than that, I still retain a lot of the theology I learned in high school, and I can still sometimes get a little opinionated about various things even though I have no dog in the fight.

If people are skeptical of Söhnlein, he understands. “Forget OceanGate. Forget Titan. Forget Stockton,” he tells Insider, referring to his late partner at OceanGate, Stockton Rush, who was one of the passengers aboard the doomed Titan.

I don’t think it works like that bro

Years ago I tried my hand gambling on politics on PredictIt, and I didn’t lose all that much, but there were a couple bets I lost that seemed like sure things. Mostly the lesson I learned is that talk is cheap and there’s no real consequences for people saying one thing and doing the other.

For example, in the 2016 election, there was a market on whether no-name Carly Fiona would qualify for the CNN debate, and by the rules they set she didn’t qualify, but there hadn’t been as many polls in the right timeframe as had been expected. Still, they released a statement days before the debate, saying “rules are rules,” so I took a bet at like 90% odds thinking it was completely safe - then they let her in at the last minute and I lost big. I don’t remember the exact circumstances, but I think I lost a fair bit on a market about Trump meeting with Kim Jong Un, which was a pretty chaotic market. The most chaotic market I ever saw, which I avoided and wanted no part of, was whether Bernie would win Iowa in 2020, and watching it closely in real time made it very obvious that some really shady stuff was going on. Probably the most I ever lost was Biden winning the 2020 primary, which is about when I got out of it.

I would not recommend gambling like that because if you have money on the line there’s an incentive to be glued to the news in a way that can be really unhealthy. Honestly the stress was worse than the money I lost. It’s more trouble than it’s worth, the fees will get you, also it’s generally more about predicting what the market will think so you can profit off the swings, and personally I think it’s kind of a distasteful way to engage in politics. At the same time, it can be a learning experience - it definitely got me in the habit of asking “And what consequences will this person face if they’re lying off their ass?” every time I see a headline about someone saying something, and of not paying as much attention to statements in general.

Have you considered the possibility that some people like the taste of pumpkin spice lattes? Or do you just get to dismiss everything you personally dislike as “The Lacanian ‘object a?’” You could substitute literally any food or drink for PSLs in what you said, it’s completely meaningless.

It’s just empty words and phrases for you to feel superior to others based on what treats you enjoy or don’t enjoy.

Say what you will about the map, at least there’s no England.

There’s probably a way to link literally any given thing to white supremacy and cis heteronormativity provided you don’t care how tenuous the connection is. Hating mainstream stuff when you don’t have an actual reason is just a way to make yourself feel superior. Hell, I could probably draw a more compelling connection from hating basic stuff to white supremacy and cis heteronormativity than you could for the reverse.

The infamous Drones are Queer paper is probably a good example of how it’s possible to draw a connection between virtually any two things if you try hard enough. Or just tell Chat GPT to write an explanation on how X and Y are linked for any two things.

How dare anyone ask me to stop criticising a thing I have no problem with and no intention of criticizing! We stand in solidarity with all cynical killjoys across the world! Even if we don’t hate something, we will defend to the death the right to hate it!

Ahh yes, the classic emblem of America’s crass consumerism checks notes flavored coffee.

PSLs and Halloween decorations are bourgeois decadance, clearly.

Yeah we had a wrecker a while back go full mask-off over pumpkin spice lattes calling them “whore coffee” and making death threats over it. Granted that might just be that one wierdo but hating on PSLs and other “basic” stuff at least was a thing a while back.

What criticism even is there against PSLs and Halloween decorations??

I don’t think anybody’s being pressured into drinking pumpkin spice lattes or eating avocado toast lmao. D&D is a fun and good creative, sociable activity and more people getting into it is good, actually.

Any popular thing is going to have hype around it, that doesn’t mean that it’s inherently bad. You’re free to dislike popular stuff but saying it’s bad just because it’s popular is a bad take.