“that’s just how I’ve always done it” is the worst when it's used as an excuse to avoid putting effort into personal growth

I will not install your shitty app

Using AI is amoral and I will never use it. As a programmer, every day it feels like I'm increasingly the minority.

Dating apps are inherently dehumanizing

In relation to your hill: While you're entirely correct, that's absurdly small potatoes compared to industrial water use. Yes, we should be conscious of our water use and limit unnecessary overuse, but a higher priority ought to be regulating industrial use. Data centers are the obvious example of using way too much for bullshit that ain't worth the water or power. Speaking of power, we could reduce water use by power plants. Nearly all generate power by boiling water. I'm a power plant operator at a plant that happens to use reclaim water as our source water, and we purify on-site for the main process, and we have a brine concentrator and crystallizer on-site to recycle the cooling tower blowdown and remove the solids to a dumpster that goes to a landfill. Unfortunately we burn methane, so I can't say that we're green, but we at least discharge zero water into local waterways (except storm drains when it rains).

My hill: Vote with your wallet. If you really believe in something, stop giving money to companies fighting against it. I won't buy chikfila because the owners actively spend money on gay conversion camps and lobby to reverse the legality of same sex marriage. It's impossible to research every little thing before every purchase, and sometimes there's no reasonable alternative, but something like chikfila is easy to avoid. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, but don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Little changes can add up, and doing anything even a little bit better is an improvement over not trying.

Bonus hill: Put your fucking grocery cart into the cart corral. It takes ten seconds and prevents cars from getting hit. It's kind of the simplest measure for societal decency. I don't believe in the death penalty, but what value are you contributing to society if you're too selfish to return your fucking cart?

Getting married without a prenup in today’s world is foolish. Ask marriage counselors and they will in general tell you to get a prenup. A prenup is wrote by two people and both have their own attorney. Anyone who refuses to get one or even discuss one is someone you should run from. A prenup details how a divorce AND how a marriage should run.

Also anyone who wants operating system or device level age verification doesn’t understand how bad things will get if we do that. It’s only about mass surveillance and selling of your data. It does nothing to protect kids.

Keep right except to pass. The passing lane is for passing.

I want to share my photos of our trip with you, but I don't want you to upload them to Google, or apple, or amazon, or meta, or any social media.

If it's a pic of you, fine, do whatever you want. But please don't take my whole album and store it in your google photos.

Edit: to maybe disambiguate, I go on a trip with someone else, we both take photos/videos using our own devices, and then afterwards we are exchanging what we took. Not like, me sharing photos with someone who didn't even go on the trip.

my hill: when i post an asklemmy, i place my answer as a comment, so the thread doesn't become a bunch of replies to my personal answer, so each reply to the post relates directly to the original question

People who believe in any religion are the same as dormant terrorist cells. One can have perfectly formal relationships with them on a daily basis, but given the right conditions, they become a huge, possibly lethal, risk.

Taking a car for a 3km distance is unconscionable when walking or cycling are valid options.

Driving less than the speed limit will not kill you.

Water usage but in the opposite direction. Yes, I'm going to take a bath. No, I don't think it makes any actual difference ; go blow up a factory or a data centre if you care so much about water. (Or maybe do it even if you don't, it never hurts !)

My biggest pet peeve is people who scalp their lawns and spray shit all over it to make it green and kill the bugs. If it didn't kill the buggies 'n stuff I wouldn't care so much but I'd still think it's dumb cause all they need to do is not mow so aggressively and plant some clover to fix the nitrogen. Like their lawn needs less maintenance not more. Stop fucking spraying shit all over your lawn please AAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Private ownership of vehicles should be banned. Most people's cars are unused for 90% of the day, which is insanely inefficient. Have a pool of cars they anyone can hire just for the time they need them. It would be cheaper for everyone and there wouldn't be three fuck ugly cars in front of every house.

The abortion debate will never be resolved.

This is mainly from the two sides arguing about different things.

Pro-life is about how a life starts at conception which means that abortion is murder. Pro-choice is about how women should have a choice to have an abortion.

I’m not going to eat a fucking hot dog, I don’t care how much everyone else pretends to enjoy them, they’re a crime against food and decency.

I ditched my smartphone over 5 years ago, and will NEVER go back. In fact, I don't have a phone of any kind. They are surveillance/psyop devices, and they are turning people into biological robots. The scifi show Dollhouse is basically where this is all heading.

ALL information, except what you can hold in your brain, should be 100% public, with no limits on use.

An unimaginable concept right now, but I think it is essential if we hope to ever trust each other and achieve global peace.

There is no free will. None whatsoever.

To secure your stuff. Hacking and social engineering are both easier than you think and identity theft is devastating. I know most people here already know that, but having worked in tech support, it's unbelievably common to skip even the basics, not to mention my grandparents who think I'm just paranoid.

I hate doing dishes like that anyway. I just scrub them one at a time under running water after letting them soak in whatever water can fill in. I don’t really think of the sink as a sanitary item regardless of how much you clean it. The drain is always going to be gross.

Suits are weird, they feel old and out dated, like cosplaying a 20th century business boy in grandpa's pajamas. Multiple layered long sleeve shirt, jacket, and trousers doesn't make sense for the majority of weather in most cities or even more if you're inside temp controlled buildings more often. In the winter you want something heavier like denim or fleece lined or water resistant, and in the summer you want breathable fabric, wicking, single layer, shorts, etc. Overcoats don't need backup jackets, and some of the people who did wear it like a uniform last century weren't people you'd want to emulate.

People should be able to transfer their vote of their first preference didn't win. Sorry democrats, being forced to vote for you isnt democracy.

I think Bernie was an idealist and I don’t buy in to a lot of his ideas while appreciating his work to create real change. Don’t crucify me for this.

I wholeheartedly believe there is an alternate timeline where Bernie won the 2016 democratic nomination and won the presidency and we avoided all this shit.

The Cowboy Bebop remake by Netflix was mostly good. It failed because Netflix didn’t advertise “normies” correctly.

"Deserving", "credit", "blame", "justice", and related concepts are all collective hallucinations. We're all observers riding around powerless in robotic meat chassis and the part of us that experiences every bad and good thing we'll ever experience is completely disconnected from the part of us that makes any decisions. There's no "justice" in making sure someone who committed some atrocity experiences negative consequences. The "justice" system should be focused solely on rehabilitation and protecting people -- innocent or otherwise. Governments trying to be in the business of "punishing" people is misguided at best.

[off topic]

Have you tried replacing the grass with local flora?

Also, what your family uses is a drop in the bucket compared to what your local industry wastes.

There are probably a dozen or more open air, private swimming pools that sit filled, full of chemicals, and unused 350 days a year, within walking distance of your place.

Neil Postman was right.

Our educational models and methods are changing for the worse.

TV and the internet are terrible mediums for public or political discourse and this has exacerbated many of our existing issues.

Our culture has become more shallow and has started to lack something profound because of how we utilize technology for education, business, and entertainment.

Things will not improve until we change our relationship with these technologies.

EDIT: several words.

Religious people are one the biggest reasons as to why we are where we are today. Anyone that tries to "respect" these delusions are also culpable. It's the best invention to sedate the masses in their cage since sliced manna.