Somebody_Else

Ah, you seem to have a problem with reading comprehension.

Perhaps you want to try again?

(the whole “I know you are but what am I” thing stopped working sometime around high school btw, but it was a cute callback)

If China hears them talking shit…in my house…

Do you think Chinese spies are listening at the windows?

Is China there? I know that Conservatives like to say that it is, but Republicans always lie.

Ive got friends who came from China, they disagree.

Imagine still deep throating propaganda after its been demonstrated false so many times.

had some bad losses in trading lately, took a short break and now trying to actually fix my risk management before going back in

Unless you have insider trading knowledge, start with a huge amount of money, or find some other way to cheat, Trading is just gambling.

If you want to invest, put your money in index funds. I used to say the SP500 or 100, but unfortunately Musk has been allowed to just offload his losses into those funds.

SP500 High Dividend Yield (Other companies have similar) are a decent option, they focus on the 500 companies with historically high dividends.

if you’re older and already been through your 20s, what do you wish someone told you back then? like what actually mattered vs what you thought mattered at the time.

1. Stay active, you don’t need to be in the gym 24/7, but find something athletic that you enjoy doing, try to stay in the habit of doing something athletic for an hour every other day at a minimum.

2. Avoid the sugar trap. I get it, soda tasts good, cookies taste good, but the more sugar you eat, the harder it is to avoid sugar later. Get in the habit of eating healthy while you are 20, it will save your life later.

3. Learn to snack better (if you are a snacker). Snacking is fine, snacking on poptarts, mini doughnuts and soda will kill you. I use chia-seed pudding when I am getting snacky, very low calorie, and as a bonus it has a lot of fiber. Make it with a nice tea, and its a tasty, healthy snack that can last the whole time between lunch and dinner.

4. Avoid the manosphere/redpill/Christian Values/Alpha Male trap. It doesnt impress the ladies, it wont make you friends, it just makes you miserable (and then telling you that its everyone elses fault, but they totally see how great you can be if you just buy this 69.99 protein powder).

5. (And this is probably the most important) Learn to not be a an asshole, the bar is literally so low for men that just being a decent human being will get you plenty of attention. Learn to be respectful when women say no, learn to not care if somebody else is gay/trans/black/fat/bald etc, and especially learn to not make fun of people for it. Learn to talk to people, and hang out without putting them down. Learn to be genuinly happy for others successes, and how to build up others.

This will make you actual friends that stay with you, will impress the ladies (seriously, im of average looks and build, and I have a GF, 2 FWB and 2 more sometimes partners, all just from being an actually kind, decent, safe person), and will set you up to have a much more fulfilling life.

You say China, you mean Republicans

You say Chinese, but you mean Republican.

Its another fad/advertising thing.

At another point, when the Keto Diet was everywhere, there was a restaurant near me that proudly announced that 100% of its menu was “Keto Diet”. There where Keto diet snacks and Keto diet frozen meals etc.

Then there was the fat free phase, I dunno if you remember the fat free cookies that you could buy, or fat free salad dressing, or fat free bread etc.

This trend seems to come from the rise of fitness influencers, and in this case its based in some kind of truth. You need protein if you are working out a lot, you cant built real muscle without it. And so fitness influencers started making videos about the food they ate, and the big thing about it was how much protein it had because that’s what they cared about.

And since influencer driven sales are huge now, you see a lot of companies wanting to cash in on the protein craze, so the packaging shifts towards showing off the protein content, because thats what everyone (or enough people) are tracking right now.

Standwithus is a pro-zionist group, thats best known for ah, massaging the facts…deep tissue massaging the facts.

Frankly, they border on being a hate group, and they have done more damage to the cause of jews worldwide than anybody but perhaps Israel itself.

If Standwithus is saying that anti-Semitism has increased, its a pretty good bet that actual anti-semitism has gone down (and no, saying that the IDF should stop raping Palestinians isnt anti-Semitic.)

Amusingly, as a Jew.

I actually have seen a massive decrease in actual antisemitism.

Muslims are being demonized in much the same way Jews where in Nazi Germany, by much the same people, for much the same reason.

Its never been the far-right, its just been the right

Most importantly, love requires both partners to be emotionally vulnerable, right? So then under gender roles, men can’t love women, only objectify them?

Yes, this is one of the core problems with toxic masculinity

Wouldn’t this make society one giant trauma factory where men are traumatized into detached sociopathy and women are traumatized into servitude?

yes

So what the hell are conservatives doing in relationships? Are they all loveless relationships, or did all of the men cheat their gender role to develop romantic feelings?

Not all, not all men actually exhibit all of the teachings, some have role models who help them overcome parts, some have figured out alternate ways to be vulnerable. Some simply figured out on their own that the teachings are bullshit.

If men didn’t cheat a little in the past decades where gender roles were the strongest,

So here is the big secret.

Those traditional gender roles? Have very little to do with actual traditional gender roles. Actual traditional gender roles are all over the place, and vary hugely from place to place and time to time. For a long time, men wore high heels and skirts, and it was the height of masculine fashion to wear makeup. Some of the most famously masculine men of history have been poets, artists, musicians and more. The “Traditional Gender Roles” being taught by conservatives are mostly just very toxic masculinity that was passed down to them, none of it is actually traditional anything.

Yes

Nobody’s going to like this answer. But the simple reality is this. Basically everything has to be cut.

Actually, exactly the opposite, corruption needs to be cut,

Cutting anything else just makes the problem worse.

Yes, the rich need to pay their fair share. But there’s no way we can tax our way out of that kind of debt. It is not realistic. It is pure fantasy to think a person a company an organization, a country or anything else can literally bring in that kind of money. It’s impossible.

You dont get out of this by cutting, that just leads to a depression.

You get out of this by aggressively going after corruption and corrupt loans, declaring those loans to be void, and enforcing that.

The other alternative is the entire country goes bankrupt.

Cutting everything is how the country goes bankrupt, thats literally the whole goal.

The very wealthy get in positions of power, and make the goverment go into massive debt giving them huge paydays. Then you cut all the things the government is supposed to do to service that “debt.” The economy takes a nosedive, but thats ok, you can just borrow more money to pay the very wealthy. Then make the government decalare bankruptcy, and “sell” the government off to private holdings (who own all that debt) for pennies on the dollar.

The last of us 2.

I liked the first game, the twist at the end was a bit iffy, but it was understandable from a character perspective (Joel was never a good guy, and him deciding to kill a bunch of fireflies to save his psuedo-daughter from an iffy medical procedure makes sense to his character).

The second game was fantastic mechanically, and a train wreck everywhere else.

I understood the story they tried to tell, and they might have even told that story decently.

But it was absolutely not what I signed up for, I went from a coming of age (Ellie) / found family (Both) / redemption (Joel) story, and went right into a gritty “the price of revenge” story that was just so emotionally exhausting. Half the story was spent on a character I didnt care about, the timeline was confusing, and most of all, I didnt want to play a game about Ellie (and Joel’s brother) descending into emotionally driven monsters who sacrifice everything for revenge.

Its hard to say the game was “bad,” since mechanically it was good, and the story had depth. The confusing timeline wasnt great, but was survivable if the game was otherwise good. It was just such a tonal whiplash, and was such a slog to get through that it killed the whole series for me.

Yes, because of the way its used, the way its presented, and how bad it is.

Different people would hate it for different reasons tho

The most common use for AI seems to be Nazi/Fascist/Republican propaganda. Basically anywhere you go is an endless number of bots pushing to defend neo-nazis, tell people that Trump totally isnt a pedophile, make posts about “If he had just complied he would have lived” etc etc etc.

The subset of people who recognize this, would hate AI because its really only good as a propaganda mill.

The next set would be because of the way its being pushed to replace workers, AI doesnt actually make the remaining workers jobs easier, and it doesnt do work more efficiently, its just another excuse to cut headcounts, make a shittier service and charge more for it.

Finally is because its A) Very often wrong and B) Being used to replace actual critical thinking.

Its a growing problem, especially in academia. Students are coming into college or high school with absolutely no idea how to do actual research, how to write a paper in a logical way, how to follow basic logic chains etc. And there is so much bad information being produced by AI now that its becoming harder and harder to find actual good information. For every doctor telling you to vaccinate kids, there are a dozen AI driven videos that have some person being confidently wrong about everything to do with vaccines.

Are there still students who didnt cheat their way through high school with AI? yes.

But they are becoming more and more rare.

And given how wrong AI usually is (AI is very good at being confidently wrong), this means that we have a whole generation growing up who cant tell the difference between “Measles can kill you if you dont get vaccinated” and “Shooting gay people is a fun weekend activity”

Could’ve been a Reddit thread, but it’s likely that any response there would’ve been a middleman for an AI answer anyway.

Except a large part of the reason that people used reddit is that you tended to get decent information. The big/good answers would often be some dude who is waay to into football having a 6 post page about who the GOAT player is.

Now, AI is basically so prolific, that a lot of what AI is being trained on…is other AI. Its slop badly reproducing slop, and the answers that AI gives you are either wrong, or are driven largely by somebody making 50 AI chatbots to swarm reddit with their opinion (or more often, to sell their product).

Even in blue states, women are second class citizens,

It seems like U.S. politics is about instability and collapse at this point,

The unfortunate reality is that Fascist regimes are inherently unstable, and fascist regimes run by drug fueled narcissist’s are the worst of all (in terms of stability).

Since the Neo-Nazi party is in charge in America, the short answer is that its very likely that the US will collapse.

That said, the Roman Empire “collapsed” over the course of several generations (200 to 300 years).

Is this really what life is? Just watching every good thing disappear? Being born into a mostly-functioning society just to watch it fall apart? Being promised a stable life and career all throughout school only for the rug to be pulled at the last minute?

Kinda?

So there is a quote that I think is pertinent here. (Michael Parenti from his book Fascism in a Pinstriped Suit)

“The concentration camp was never the normal condition for the average gentile German. Unless one were Jewish, or poor and unemployed, or of active leftist persuasion or otherwise openly anti-Nazi, Germany from 1933 until well into the war was not a nightmarish place. All the “good Germans” had to do was obey the law, pay their taxes, give their sons to the army, avoid any sign of political heterodoxy, and look the other way when unions were busted and troublesome people disappeared. Since many “middle Americans” already obey the law, pay their taxes, give their sons to the army, are themselves distrustful of political heterodoxy, and applaud when unions are broken and troublesome people are disposed of, they probably could live without too much personal torment in a fascist state — some of them certainly seem eager to do so.”

Assuming there is not a massive change in the next election, it seems likely that Fascism will win in America. But as noted above, you can live under fascism for a decent amount of time as long as you keep your head down and dont complain too loudly.

As to this one

Knowing you’ll have to weather every struggle alone because people only care about themselves?

Republicans are only some 40% of the population.

There are people out there you can make friends with, who will genuinely care for you, and the manosphere has lowered the bar for men so far that just not being a raging asshole is enough to make you noticeable to women. You dont have to be wealthy to get a girlfriend, im moderately successful (I have a solo apartment, and my car is paid off, but im hardly rich), and I have managed a more or less steady string of girlfriends for the past 10 years or so.

If you can manage to avoid the manosphere, the mens rights people, the redpill idiots and the Christians, you can actually be a decent person, and that’s honestly all it takes nowadays. You arent going to jump into bed with a supermodel just being a decent person (probably), but as long as your standards are reasonable, its not that hard to find a relationship (as long as you avoid advice from the above groups).

The problem is largely down to climate change, mismanagement of water, invasive species, and Conservatives.

1. Climate change seems obvious, but trees are generally pretty reliant on having specific temperature ranges, and specific conditions. As climate change gets worse, the more extreme weather events get worse. Extreme conditions can kill trees, evaporate surface water, deprive areas of rain, kill bushes, impact animals etc. Individual trees are decently likely to survive one bad year, but sustained droughts/heat/irregular weather patterns etc can change the surrounding forest, and trees are a lot more the effect of specific forest conditions than the cause.

2. Mismanagement of water is obvious, huge amounts of water are being pumped from reservoirs, dropping goundwater levels to the points that trees dont have access. Rivers and lakes are being contained, and not allowed to flood. As previously wet ground dries out (both from lack of rain, and from not having rivers), its profile changes, and the kinds of trees it can support changes. But the kinds of trees that dry ground can support often cant survive the other conditions (elevation, temperature, soil Ph, animals etc).

3. Invasive species. Bark Beetles are one of the biggest problems, but spongy moths and other invasive insects are killing trees by the bucketfull. Additionally, invasive species like eucalyptus, palm, and salt-cedar restrict water access, ruin the ground, and choke out native trees. Invasive bushes like tree of heaven, spanish broom, greater periwinkle and giant reed can grow quickly, before dying and drying out during a particularly harsh summer, this dried plant mat makes for fire ladders, easy kindling and massively wildfire risk.

4. Conservatives. Conservatives have been pushing to allow private companies and owners to destroy forests, wetlands and other necessary habitat for basically whatever reason. Conservatives push to allow companies like nestle to pump unlimited water from aquafers, and allow AI data centers to take whatever is left. Conservatives have been consistently anti-science and anti-education, and both are needed to restore forests.