Mewis
1mo ago
I would agree that the current US approach to Venezuela isn't working, and sanctions rarely do work (see Cuba, Spain, Iran, Russia, so on). But the US is entitled to refuse to trade with anyone it feels like. Maybe if Venezuelans were actually starving and dying in large numbers, there might be an obligation to send food, but AFAIK things aren't that bad in VZ.
Mewis
27d ago
Life is pain, but if you don't figure a way to understand life (including the pain) as having value/meaning/significance you're not gonna make it. That's the way I see it. Easier said than done, though.
Mewis
1mo ago
You might have that fear of God in you, but that doesn't cause you to start lying your butt off in ways that are totally feeble.
Think about it. You're sat across from an expert that has power over you. You want them on your side. And your choice is to tell extremely weak lies. 'Never touched a cigarette in my life', you say through browned teeth. 'It weren't me, it was Mr Dick Bum, my identical twin.'
People that lie habitually like this aren't scared. They have bad judgment, no respect for others, no respect for rules. And, if they're pulling the same crummy trick again for the fifth time, no ability to learn from their mistakes.
Mewis
1mo ago
Unless he's been hanging out with Justin Trudeau, HRH King Charles is still whiter than any of them, and is actually a head of state.
Mewis
1mo ago
Genocide is just the magic word that gets Westerners all excited and interventiony. Hey, it worked in Libya.
Mewis
3mo ago
Did he pour the drinks down her gullet? Yes, alcohol impairs your judgement. And yet you are still responsible for the choices you make, wise or foolish they might be.
Mewis
2mo ago
I mean, having friends and family that can give you a room is doing a lot of the work here.
Mewis
27d ago
Surgeons and cosmetic surgeons aren't really regulated in the same way as drugs or other forms of medicine - if a surgeon and patient are willing to try something, they're allowed to do it.
Mewis
1mo ago
Race is both a social construct and a biological category with real consequences independent of how society chooses to treat it. Consider for a parallel example, tallness. Different cultures have different standards of tallness and might treat people they consider tall or short differently. 'Tallness' here is basically how society decides to treat or respond to the very real feature of height.
Mewis
1mo ago
Berman Trek gets embarrassing about this when Sisko/Picard are drawn into helping vaguely pro democracy dissidents from the Romans and Cardassians or dealing with terrorists. Cold War never changes, I guess.
And Mass Effect is very, very early 2000s America
Mewis
1mo ago
Christian Bale, Tom Holland, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Idris Elba, John Boyega, Colin Firth, Ewan McGregor, Tom Hiddleston, Henry Cavill, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Nicholas Hoult, Orlando Bloom, Charlie Hunnam...
Note that all these people came to prominence in Hollywood, though. Beautiful Brits go where the money is - we're left with the remainder.
Mewis
5mo ago
Other way around, surely?
The fact is, nobody is actually sitting down and crunching the numbers on utils. When it comes to actually making decisions in the real world and not in thought experiments, everyone resorts to the same expedients and heuristics - usually, some combination of virtue ethics and deontology. Don't commit murders, don't be dishonest.
Mewis
1mo ago
That's nothing to do with IQ, though, and more to do with being pragmatic versus being imaginative. Like, I could imagine having morbillion dollars, but what would be the point? Is there value in daydreaming about something so unlikely? Or is it just a distraction?
Like, "what Twilight character would you be" is a thought exercise. It's also a game for children who don't have anything better to think about.
Mewis
3mo ago
Somehow the richest and most powerful society in the world, one that executes a hundred million cows a year, can't figure out how to execute humans because uh, it's messy.
Mewis
29d ago
I've never played the Souls games, so I'll take your word for it that they're not good. But if so, why are they occupy such a large cultural space? Obviously, because they are difficult - that extra challenge is clearly adding something that other actions RPGs just lack. I think it's that - there's a pleasure in overcoming an unfair challenge. And I think a lot of it is the unfairness. Other video games are difficult, but they play by Marquess of Queensbury rules - no sucker punches or surprises.
Mewis
30d ago
It is in fact, technically difficult, because the productive middle class are the ones paying for those incentives, and you're incentivizing them ultimately to be less productive.
I don't think it's impossible, but we need to be honest about what this would actually involve - a pretty significant drop in living standards. Are modern political systems capable of steering such a course?
Mewis
5mo ago
It's my own impression that the fiercest advocates for generous asylum policies or even open borders aren't deontologists (who generally have a lot of respect for rules around borders and citizenship), but utilitarians (who are willing to compromise because they value the utility of asylum seekers over maintaining strong borders). It's also my own impression that utilitarians are more vulnerable to charisma and arguments - theoretically a utilitarian is capable of endorsing any behavior if they're persuaded of it's utility, whereas it's much harder to argue a deontologist into bending his own rules.
Mewis
1mo ago
Depression, again
The question was posed in the last SSQ Sunday - what gets you out of bed in the morning? What gives you motivation or purpose? If unhappiness is not getting what you want, depression is not wanting. It is hard and embarrassing to write down the things I want. Embarrassing because they are shallow and venal, and because I am so far away from realising them. And yet by pretending otherwise, by telling myself I don't deserve these things and can't have these things, I am torturing myself and squandering my time.
I want to have a relationship. A loving relationship in which I can both receive and give love. Ideally a romantic relationship with a man, but at this point I would settle for a non romantic one with a biological child or a cute animal like a dog. For the most part, society tells people who are lonely or have depression that they should give up on love, that they don't deserve it. I don't really want to accept that. This is something pretty hard for me. I don't really enjoy sex and am generally pretty shy. I also find gay culture unappealing, on top of my neuroses and horrible self esteem.
The other thing I want is a great body. Despite going to the gym for some years I still feel very dissatisfied with my body and the way that I look, and it makes me feel like I'm lazy or undisciplined that I don't look as good as others. I guess it's pretty shallow and vain of me to express a value like this. But it's the proximate source of a lot of my negative thoughts.
Right now, I feel unbearably neurotic and negative. I'm not beyond pleasure or joy. But it feels ephemeral. I am currently standing in one of the most beautiful places in the world on a lovely warm sunny autumn day. I have no responsibility, no problems. But it leaves me cold. Sometimes I feel like I'm walking around like an idiot zombie, or about to burst into tears. I see the pleasure of others and feel vile and worthless. And I drift aimlessly around without really seeking out the things that might change my state of affairs.
Anyway, thoughts/opinions/perspectives welcome
Mewis
4mo ago
Counterpoint: this same economic malaise is very common among developed Western countries. It is the US that is the outlier here in managing to remain economically buoyant over the past 15 years while peer economies like the UK and Canada have muddled through.
Mewis
4mo ago
That seems like rather a crude reduction. Yes, I would think that young people fighting in war do think about their future... Including the possibility of marriage and family.
Mewis
4mo ago
Because it's far more appealing to join the western sphere of influence than to remain in Russia's. NATO and the EU offer Ukraine a powerful security guarantee, prosperity and liberty.
Mewis
6mo ago
I remember reading some accounts that Bill Clinton had an uncanny level of personal charisma that people who hadn't met him just didn't get. I think it's probably a more general quality of today's rigorously competitive political world. Maybe that's why politicians so often come off as incompetent or fake, that they're selected so strongly for personal charisma it leaves no room for other qualities.
Mewis
5mo ago
Yes, though many government departments and place names have been translated into Te Reo as well, with often the Te Reo name taking priority over the English one.
It seems like a pretty spectacularly bad policy, one seemly optimized for divisiveness.
Yes, I would like to have gotten more of that 60s weirdness. As for the race, I don't really mind. I think you can justify just about any casting in the context of a post racial interstellar society. Except maybe Zendaya and her weird baby-face. Not that I don't get the appeal of dudes that look like they're 25 going on 15, but it does make it hard to take them seriously.
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