Basman

Culture war IS ragebait, like how cheese is made of milk. Being ragebait makes it less real if anything. Day to day reality isn't that emotionally activating. The antidote to culture war is going outside. It's mostly engagement farming for profit and the terminally online who get way too much energy out of arguing over shit.

+ Epic gives free games once a week. Most of them are trash but occasionally you'll get an actual game you'll put some hours in. Gaming has better value now than ever before.

It's finally got a price and release date (about a stack). https://store.steampowered.com/hardware/steammachine I'd really want one but it's a little expensive to justify when I already have a decent PC. For once a PC that isn't a giant RGB monster. Really bad timing with AI though, hence the price. Power users (Redditors) will scoff at the performance but it's statistically an upgrade for what the average gamer actually has.

Looks like a giant dildo in the background

I really dislike how post-modernism is abused to qualify nonsense. It's probably one of the most abusable philosophies. A lot of the time it's used to justify ideology. It's why Russia loves it. Wokies atleast are a little genuine, but even there it's used for gaining leverage over people (for the upper middle class+ primarily).

There's little to debate. Your just wrong.

Game over man, game over!!!

Digital licenship is fine. Massive value through digital stores. Can get really cheap too, especially if you exploit Steam keys. There's only been a handful of times where it's been used in consumer unfriendly ways, and arguably those times have always been illegal. Laws need to catch up to the digital age in general though.

Idk. I think it's largely fake and exaggerated for clicks.

Relationships and pick-up are different skillsets, but it's funny going "adress me 🐘" to the former pick-up guy. They won't let you get away with going normie.

It's a PC dude. It's expensive but considering the current market the price is relatively reasonable. New consoles aren't going to be much cheaper. We live in a post-AI world.

Looks like something an extra in a Mortal Kombat movie would wear. Like some sort of shady underground night club where a fight breaks out between the main characters and the dude wearing this gets beheaded by Scorpion or something.

I'm not against billionaires existing in principle. They provide a lot of value to society and enable the survival of thousands, but they also tend distort politics and acidify the pond so only they can survive. A lot of wealth is squandered after certain point too, so I'm generally in favor of heavy taxation of the wealthiest people. Give back to the society that enabled them to flourish in the first place. It's only fair. In an ideal world, it should be harder than it is now to become a billionaire/millionaire but easier to be average.

I have culture war fatigue. Make it stop...

There's already a thread about this I think.

It clearly does. No one saying it's binary.

Even babies can recognize when someone is attractive. It's largely genetic. Humans don't find other species sexually attractive, like horses or lions, even if they have good genes for that reason (outside of weird fetishes).

I don't understand this urge to relativize something which is fairly objective and obvious. And well documented. Even babies like attractive faces.

The most extreme version of this polarity is harems. A bunch of women who don't work a day in their life and who's only purpose is to be sex objects for some king, a peak status male. Literal bird cage shit. Granted, they where mostly slaves and didn't have a choice in the matter, but you could argue that proves the point of women not being valued for material survival. If they where it wouldn't make sense to lock them up. You'd make your sex slaves till the fields, fish and build houses in between cheek busting.

When Trump starts a pointless war you can atleast least vote him out. When Putin starts an insane war, nothing short of a miracle or old age will remove him from power. Power tends to corrupt and make people lose touch with reality. The best thing about democracy is arguably that it puts checks on power.

In my experience, when people talk of an intellectual gap in a relationship it's tends to be a justification for a general lack of passion and maybe other frustrations.

You'de be hard pressed to find a relationship that meets every need you have. The risk is that it won't necesarilly get better than this. Be careful chasing the dragon. Is it not possible to cultivate a love of philosophy in her over time? It could be a great experience to be part of that. Don't be too binary or hasty in your thinking.

I remember going out once and this girl with a hunchback was aggressively approaching guys, like going up and hugging their arm and shit, and they would just ignoring her awkwardly. They would freeze like in Jurassic Park. Brutal stuff. You have to feel sorry for someone like that.

Whereas modern self-help is about getting what you want out of life, IE. "carrot" self-help, religion was about what not to do, IE. "stick" self-help. Religion always instills in you a sense a duty and belonging towards the straight and narrow whereas modern self-help doesn't necessarily instill any responsibility relative to excess. Pick-up devils or stock brokers would be good example of excess driven by modern self-help (and modern culture tends to reward excess). I think the reason why people in the past gravitated more towards "the stick" and why nothing like Tony Robbins existed back then is because life was much harder and more brutal. Religion set basic moral standards that probably didn't exist prior and equipped people to better deal with a hard life. One thing that characterizes modern self-help culture in my opinion is that it instill a sense of entitlement relative to getting what you want out of life. But sometimes life gives you things you don't want, such as war or chronic illness. People have no frame of reference when they suddenly end up in a situation that throws their life upside down. You can kind of see this culture in action when people disparage drafts. Drafts are essentially a form of institutionalized servitude but are often necessary for collective survival in a lot of cases. People didn't have the luxury to feel entitled about their life back then. They where too busy just trying to survive and had to make do. Religion as old self-help better equipped people to deal with death, as people died younger back then, something that modern self-help doesn't really deal with directly in my opinion. In general, modern culture doesn't really teach people to have a good relationship with death. People generally want to live forever then get disappointed with life when they die. Now, you could argue that believing your going to heaven when you die of tuberculosis at 41 isn't good either, but how far off is that really though? Not that modern self-help is bad, but it's interesting to note the distinction in how modern self-help and religion differ philosophically. Just my 2 cents.

This feels more like an over the top culture war thing than genuine politics. It's a complete non-starter.