Basman

Too much of US survival is tied up to Taiwan currently. Concession are non-negotiable. The majority of Taiwanese don't want to be part of China either. It wouldn't be the first time a tankie tried to gaslight people into victimblaming and putting the onus of responsibility for avoiding war on the victim instead of the aggressor. Violence is correct when facing territorial aggression. It's on the aggressor to not invade sovereign territory.

Logistics is a core concept in Models by Mark Manson. Though it's focused on dating, logistics is equally true for forming and maintaining any other kind of relationship. Logistics is at least half the battle if not more, so to speak.

The most social I've ever been was staying in a college dorm with a bunch of other 19-21 YO dumbasses. Socialization happens naturally when logistic align.

The more immediate concern is the military turning. The military couping the government is fairly typical of tribalistic third world nations. That's part of why they use foreign mercenaries (talk about "legitimacy"). They have already moved all their gold to Russia, so it's clear that the regime doesn't feel secure currently.

Palestine has had years and literal generations to accrue sentiment. "Free Palestine" has been a talking point for liberals long before October 7th. When Israel then has a disproportionate response to October 7th then it is easy for that turn into huge protests for a demographic that isn't unfamiliar with protesting.

Why do you need drugs outside of addiction, conformity and shit-life syndrome?

He's mad that he's not in the Epstein files.

Hipsters are people who trendchase in a way which make it feel like it is not trendchasing.

Christiania was overrun by gangs due to a lack of rules and police until they made a deal with the Danish government to sell the buildings in exchange for police enforcement. These kind of communes always tend to turn into a shit show or become semi-cults in the long-run because they don't appreciate what it takes to maintain order.

I no longer really use ChatGPT. What's the point when it doesn't know anything? It's sicophancy breeds false confidence and you can't trust that what it says isn't just regurgitated Reddit. It's a waste of time when I can just do my own thinking.

Women not being dependent on relationships anymore means that general availability is higher. You're more likely to meet someone who has been in a previous relationship/married today. In a previous age those women would have stayed in those relationships and not been available to you in the first place. It's cope to complain about women being too independent. A relationship is about more than just resources.

Tragedy of the commons. When there is dysfunction in the system, they'll vote in populists who are only there for self-serving reasons and are going to make things worse. Then they'll repeat that pattern ad naseum till we no longer have a democracy. If the issue is a sense of agency in the electorate then the solution is to somehow find a way to make the electorate feel a sense of agency again within the democratic system. That would involve reinventing our way of centrist technocracy.

Conspiratorial thinking is a kind of magical thinking where you outsource responsibility for society to an mystical group of elites. It's characteristic of people who suffered tragedy and survival difficulties to cope with hardship. In my opinion, you can speculate in moderation with knowledge that it is to a certain degree unsubstantiated, but ideally with a degree of understanding of how politics and society works. Like, no one completely controls society. Or understand that elites have a psychology of their own and are thenselves subject to human weakness, like peer pressure, mental illness, etc. They are not these mystical beings who are essentially evil, like a krampus hiding under your bed.

I don't buy the narrative that "dating is impossible". I see a lot guys not socializing enough to really warrant the bitterness. If you really wanted it you'd prioritize it, even if the sky was falling. You could maybe complain about the effort-reward ratio all depending but you will get a girlfriend if you earnestly decided to act on it. I think a lot of this male resentment is more about a lack of belonging and feeling culturally rejected rather than dating necessarily being too hard, in large part due to feminism. To be fair, that is a serious political and cultural issue which will and has fed into authoritarianism.

They've exhanged rationality for an illusory sense of agency.