Titus_1_16
10d ago
Well look, you used it naturally enough that I couldn't have told the difference
Titus_1_16
10d ago
one man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens
Really nice turn of phrase
Titus_1_16
10d ago
It's really interesting to me that someone could post regularly on this board and yet still enjoy cannabis. I'm envious of your mental robustness tbh.
A strong plurality of people posting here could fairly be called "anxious overthinkers" - the board is a bilge pump for excess thought, and eg expressing any worry whatsoever about AI risk (whether the worry is grounded in real things or not) ought to be a criterion for anxiety diagnoses.
I smoked a fair amount of weed in my teens/early 20s, took plenty of other recreational drugs, and a near-universal thing I've heard from peers with a similar profile is that around age 25, they started to find weed disagreed with them. Specifically, it makes them/me really unpleasantly anxious. Weed to me now is solely a tool I would use if for some reason I wanted to give myself a panic attack. Maybe I'm a little more dramatic in my dislike than normal, but it's very normal to find weed unenjoyable from mid-20s onward.
So what's your secret? Youthful brain? No prior history of smoking? Iron resolve?
I actually would quite like to like weed again, and agree with the demerits of drink that you outlined - so if there's One Weird Trick you can share, please do so.
Titus_1_16
14d ago
A couple of points: first, in terms of English proficiency being a cultural solvent - English already is the lingua franca of Europe, as it is in many other parts of the world. When an Italian meets a German, 9 times out of 10 they will speak English. When a Finn meets a Spaniard - English (although the Spanish are generally pretty bad at English). And so on.
If Europe is to achieve some manner of proper confederation and thereby preserve itself as anything other than a relic over the next century or two, it needs a language with which to do this. English in Europe (and remember it is after all a European language) doesn't just mean Americanisation, it also means the coalescing of pan-European consciousness.
So English proficiency is not purely a malus, or purely a tool of globohomogenisation.
Secondly - I know you're talking about Latvia as a long shot in terms of migration and integration, but actually its neighbour just to the north, Estonia, explicitly is pursuing a strategy of welcoming ambitious foreigners from the likes of America. They've set up an E-residency scheme that's kind of notoriously open to abuse, but it's meant a lot of foreign tech setting up shop there. Estonia is a more reasonable shot for someone of your profile to move to and integrate into, if you're interested
Titus_1_16
14d ago
Russia looks pretty white to me, just saying.
Russia is only about 70% ethnically Russian, from memory. Eyeballing it, at least half of the countries in Europe would have a higher % of their primary ethnicity.
Titus_1_16
19d ago
A 50% raise is serious business, well done
Titus_1_16
20d ago
As a European, "hot ethnic cleansing in Europe" would be top of my wishlist. I have a few candidates in mind.
However it's very, very, very unlikely to happen within a 12-month time horizon. There is no party near power in any western/central European country with the will and means to do this.
The likeliest scenario (and it's not very likely) would be that we have another crazy year of illegal migration north across the Med like 2016 - except voters and politicians know what this spells now, and "Wir Schaffen Das" sentiment is supplanted by "No Fuckin Way" sentiment. I could then imagine a pushback of current wannabe migrants, and perhaps expulsions from some of the particularly god-forsaken tent cities - but not deportations of people who'd been here longer than a few months.
Titus_1_16
20d ago
That's not a sensible or fair criticism. The point of the post was to illustrate that effective policy solutions are certainly conceivable, they're just outside the Overton window.
Listening and very much enjoying, nice job
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