hydroacetylene
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User ID: 128
hydroacetylene
9d ago
A superpower going bankrupt is very much précédented(Russia in the nineties).
I’d also dispute that Trump going full thug and becoming a dictator would be able to meaningfully institute fiscal sanity.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
If they actually did this, it probably would have been by declaring a European ODC the real culprit.
I am highly suspicious of such a thing in a country with jury trials, but that’s how you’d go about it.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
I mean, the last time they had an advantage in exploration they totally did.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
Far-group just means no one thinks you are able to present a threat. A mongolian goatherder is, presumably, both of our far-group. Xi Jinping is, presumably, both of our outgroup. You are far-group to everyone because libertarians lose almost all the time(sometimes they have chainsaws and cloned dogs). If Elon was actually Trump's puppetmaster you'd be lots of people's outgroups.
It's not differentness, it's unworthiness of notice.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
Maternal mortality with no medical care isn't anywhere near 10% per birth- it's 1-2% per birth in the least developed parts of subsaharan Africa and that seems to line up with historic data from Europe(granted, needs to be taken with a grain of salt).
hydroacetylene
10d ago
Man, I remember that news story. Mostly, I remember the jokes about how it was pointless to petition Taylor Swift to break up with her boyfriend when she was obviously going to anyways because Taylor Swift.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
The democrats need someone who's good at his(and it has to be a man) job and not someone who can hit the right shibboleths and characteristics. Currently they have Olivia Juliana in charge of their effort, who's best known for her weight and also somewhat well known for failing at being a progressive influencer even by the low standards of the Texas Democratic trainwreck-of-a party.
'Failing upwards landwhale feminists want to appeal to you' is not how you get a workable plan for winning over young men. It's how you get troll answers and a money pit. Democrats need someone who's legitimately popular on his own, who gets to color outside the lines a bit, who's a man's man that appeals to men. Legitimately, the failing upwards reputation is one they need to shed just like the Karen reputation. I don't know if this guy is the guy for that. But I will say- Joe Rogan didn't become a big deal because of his association with Trump. He became a big deal and Trump won him over.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
It's actually worse than that- democrats really need the urban political machines soldiering on their side like true fanatics and not by half measures. There's also several dozen large municipal debt crises gonna blow up, and political/economic realities mean someone is going to have to get bailed out, at least partially(the entire US insurance system is underwritten by municipal debt). Republicans have a strong incentive to drop a big bailout to keep the urban machines from going whole-hog with the democrats again, democrats have a strong incentive to drop an even bigger bailout to get them to go whole hog for the democrats again, everyone has insurance industry lobbyists in their ears explaining how the crisis needs a bailout.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
The abundance democrats are also buffoons, albeit less buffoonish than other democrats. They're like paultards with a D after their name.
We're simply in a downward swing on the western civilizational cycle. The next boom we'll conquer Mars, Venus, maybe the stars. But the west doesn't have its shit together well enough right now and no one else has the capability and desire.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
Ok, were I a Musk aid I would be strongly advising him to shut his mouth. There's schizo theories galore, but at a basic level, Elon is a drug addict who happens to be good at math right now. And yeah, it's politically impossible to cut spending because everyone likes gibs. Old people, young people, black people, white people, poor people, rich people, small furry people from alpha centauri- they may not agree on anything else, but they all agree they like free shit. It keeps the lottery in business. It gets politicians elected. Promising something for nothing makes the world go round. Trump understands that and Elon is, I guess, not grasping there's nothing to be done about it. Brown Argentina, here we come.
hydroacetylene
11d ago
He believes doing this will cause him to die before it manifests.
hydroacetylene
11d ago
That makes no sense, because prolife activists are notably opposed for fornication.
hydroacetylene
11d ago
People centering their personality around religion is an old, old phenomenon, and while often seen as annoying, it is very much something that society knows how to deal with.
hydroacetylene
11d ago
The median outcome of beginning the exorcism process is ‘you’re imagining it, go see a mental health specialist. We can provide a list of catholic psychologists and psychiatrists sorted by gender if you’d like’.
hydroacetylene
11d ago
Perhaps the attention paid to the male loneliness crisis is due to the fact that it manifests as societal wide problems, whereas female loneliness just results in shut-ins posting on private tumblrs to a circle of cheerleaders waiting their turn at the podium.
For a real life example, spend time browsing 4chan vs crystal cafe.
hydroacetylene
11d ago
I mean, far-right brain rot seems very big on self-improvement stuff even if some of their specific prescriptions are a bit dumb. I wonder how much of it is, specifically, that the hit the gym and cut out seed oils and start a business stuff protects men(there is a negligible number of actual women into this stuff) with rightward leanings from spiraling the way progressives do.
hydroacetylene
11d ago
Women are going to connect with something. And, well, social media influencers are like that.
hydroacetylene
11d ago
Itinérant laborers exist. The roustabout class is declining, but it’s still there. There’s men, trucked up from not Mexico but the countries south of there, who will come do whatever for cash- no particular skills, but they’ll work until it’s time to start drinking. There’s people a bit like your friend. There’s homeless guys who alternate between working some minor, low-skill job(painting or the like) and doing drugs under a bridge.
hydroacetylene
11d ago
This reminds me of one of my grandpa’s top pieces of advice- life’s too short to make enemies.
Then again, he also recommends eating an unhealthy diet to avoid having to deal with senility.
hydroacetylene
11d ago
I have my perspective on this, but nobody is worried about my ingroup’s fertility rate except my ingroup. So what I’ll say is this- you clearly are going to keep working yourself up with worry until you just go ahead and have another baby.
hydroacetylene
12d ago
Sûre, but every dataset available gives the same answer- blues have worse mental health.
hydroacetylene
12d ago
It should be noted that there are way more cases of mental illness than exorcisms. And at least Catholic exorcists won’t even see you unless a shrink checks you out to make sure you’re not just crazy(indeed, Scott has done this). Not exactly an apples to apples comparison.
hydroacetylene
12d ago
Maybe they’re Catholic jokes.
My larger point is simply to illustrate that this friend is... kind of a player, someone who seems very sociosexual, to the point where excessive sexuality seems to surround him
We also tell the joke ‘baptists only fornicate lying down so peeping toms don’t mistake them for dancing’. Applied holiness standards have been selective for a while.
hydroacetylene
12d ago
Baptists have always drank alcohol, even if they said they don’t. Remember the jokes- ‘Baptists? So rude, they won’t even say hi to you in the liquor store’ and ‘How do you keep a Baptist from drinking all your beer? Bring a second Baptist.’ Or even ‘Baptist church? Check the deacon’s office for beer.’
Sexual misconduct allegations of that sort aren't terribly unusual among baptists(or low church Protestantism generally), so it doesn’t surprise me, but even fairly liberal ones near me at least theoretically ban cohabitation. On the other hand it does seem like preacher’s wives have gone from Mrs pastor to copastor. Definitely have the impression that, liberalizing(slowly) though they might be, baptists are holding out dramatically better than nondenominationals.
The reality is that to balance the budget you have to answer- who do you want to kill? Grandma or our soldiers? And nobody willing to answer that question will ever get elected.
The political realities mean the debt will be paid for by 1) inflation and 2) lying about the debt(your social security checks will not go as far as promised, sorry). The government will bail out load bearing sectors of the economy, maybe at third remove, but the average person will see a decline in purchasing power. Maybe to Western European levels, maybe not. It’ll be a prolonged economic crisis and that will cause political instability but there’s a lot of ruin in a country.
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