Wikipedia. It tends to have excellent, neutral explanations of ongoing political stories.
As a plus, every article is written to be a complete picture (at low resolution) and so you don’t have to deal with the way regular news articles lack orienting stuff if they’re an “update on the situation” article.
Like if you haven’t been following something, wikipedia articles are written in a way that brings you up to speed from zero.
The 90s were really pastelly. The early 2000s were super colorful with the sudden proliferation of LED art. At least in my experience.
Like, never again until you die?
There you fuckin go, that’s perfect!
Except it could be forgotten after just being heard once.
It’s a beautiful word. Gorgeously orange. With just a hint of collapsing chocolate cake.
Trango 👈👈
Oh yes, this is a competition, and someone is going to win it.
There are lots of resources out there. Far more than here. Most of “the world” is out there. This is happening whether we like it or not.
And all the “dick waggling” is steps on the path to it happening. Funny flesh images, homoerotic shaming, whatever this dick talk is about whenever space comes up, none of it changes the serious nature of what’s going on in space.
I wish I could do that
What is it with progressives and homoerotic shaming?
Trump didn’t end the war in Afghanistan. Biden did. The President who determined how that happened was Joe Biden.
Holy shit I forgot about that.
Did he say he had a plan? I thought he said he could end the war.
thoughts?
Ever the optimist I see
We’re like humanity’s spartans. I literally feel less fear than is rational for my own survival, because it’s optimal for the group that I should be ready to be overwhelmed by rage or whatever and attack the lion and get killed so others can survive.
I spoke with a female marine once — someone who could kill me no problem — and she told me the fear she felt before training was still there. Conversely despite knowing from experience that I am useless in a fight, I feel cocky and self assured. Or, if I stay on top of the cockiness, I simply don’t feel afraid.
I don’t mean it’s not there. I’ve been terrified. But I’ve got a confidence that just slowly steadily increases in the absence of recent evidence, that somehow I’m invincible.
Anyway, I say it’s like spartans because this reminds me of some kind of drug cocktail you could inject into a solider to just make them not give a fuck.
I’m not complaining mind you. I’ve got no problem with having less fear. But mostly because I live in a super safe environment, so it doesn’t hurt me to have less fear.
Still is, according to legend
I’ve been to Medieval Times I know exactly what it means. Is say we bring back eating big drumsticks in public.
Fucking castles, duh
I think acquiring money can be an addiction, in the sense that it’s a behavior that allows escape (it’s a simple goal that’s easy to define, allowing a person to stop looking around and just go forward). Just like video games provide an orienting direction, hence provide dopamine, hence can be addicting, money can do the same thing.
Because money is a number, it’s inherently gamified. You can just set “more money” as the objective and you never have to change it and it’s always a direction to go that can produce dopamine.
Now, if it’s not the best, most meaningful direction. the dopamine flow decreases but doesn’t stop. Just like the video games getting boring, or your brain adapting to the cigarettes or cocaine. You still get a little jolt of dopamine, but not as much as before, so it’s this tired, boring life.
The thing is, there’s a lot of uncertainty and withdrawal and relearning you have to go through to get away from the repetitive small-hit dopamine cycle and into the more organic, less repetitive, large-hit dopamine cycle of … being a real person doing valuable things.
So yeah. Money as addiction. Source of small dopamine hits, that are easier to obtain and more familiar and hence comfortable, than the messy and uncertain process of seeking dopamine through real-world accomplishment.
ALSO, there’s the problem of how markets work. When a person is relative low in the market structure, their only way of getting profit is to really produce a lot of value. The higher a person gets in that structure, ie the more they advance financially, the less value they’re adding. The ultimate asymptote they approach is when they have sufficient money to live on the interest, and it’s totally automatic, and their contribution to economic value is zero.
This means that as a person follows the path (one of many paths) from worker to entrepreneur to pretty bourgeoise to elite, they steadily lose the natural, organic meaning that comes from actually providing value to others.
The person who used to love and be sustained by the smiles and appreciation of their coffee customers, probably isn’t getting much juice out of sitting there looking at spreadsheets of their 5000-coffee-shop empire.
But along the way, they’ve already switched their dopamine source to be from a combination of value provided and money received, to be just the money.
Which is like sitting there lighting up a cigarette to stave off the discomfort for another hour, or to prevent having to think about something that makes you anxious or uncertain. Just light up a smoke: dopamine.
Just like me with this damn website. Addicted. Small dopamine hits, comfortable stand-in for actual meaning.
Well I’m sorry it sounds fake. Stories about my life often do because I have a weird combinaron of characteristics that lead to weird situations, leading to a density of adventures that most people find simply unbelievable.
Also, if it’s fake there’s definitely something wrong with the lesson. Nobody should be making shit up to teach lessons. Lessons need to come from the truth.
Are you gay, or a woman? I’m pretty good at relaxing, and wouldn’t mind having an industrious partner.
I just want to add that a substantial social safety net doesn’t have to be a loss of freedom. You can keep it broad and level and market activity can happen above it while still processing information.
As a libertarians, I often argue with other libertarians about this. To me, being a libertarian is about making liberty the highest value to be sought by governmental design. A reduction of risk for everyone across the board increases liberty. It leaves people free to engage with others as they see fit and to seek profit wherever they will.
That calm thing you’re talking about is huge. One of the prerequisites of anything that can be called freedom is the ability to think clearly, and science has shown that the more stress and uncertainty a person is under chronically, they less clearly they can think. Freedom means being able to do what you choose, and people can’t really choose if they’re sleep deprived, full of adrenalin and cortisol. Like, the psychological literature calls that “ego depletion”, and with good reason. A person whose willpower budget is always drained, and therefore can’t control themselves, is not a free person.
Never underestimate the ability of a few good policies to increase individual liberty. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
As a person with ADHD I cannot help but see things like this as designed to take advantage of my poor executive function to “simulate” my consent on things.
Same with government programs that require a lot of paperwork to access benefits.