To be fair, the world has a bit of an extinction problem.

Happy to hear his turtle genes didn’t select for longevity.

He just wants another excuse to send individuals checks with his name on it. Could be a good opportunity to virtue signal as well if the plan winds up being exclusionary toward singles or other groups.

I’m rather surprised at the audacity of leaders, thinking they can contain the chaos they are stoking. I suppose Iran and Gaza may give them hope, but I think they are way too confident in the propaganda machine despite its successes to date.

Perhaps our best chance of spurring change without careening into civil war is to encourage folks to move to battleground states. That’s what I did during term 1.

Sounds like you consume useful information. I wager she uses socials as many: to compare herself to others, perusing a mix of ego-affirming and ego-damning content. These are powerful emotional hooks and oscillating between those states can be confounding. Add a dash of fatalism, which is not hard to come by in this culture, when at a low, and I think it easy to see how one might capitulate.

There are a lot of people out there that think their personality traits are inherent and that their physical attributes are static. In fact, my brother was one of these people, to an extent. He passed away at 40 years old due to morbid obesity. I attribute his downfall to capitulation by way of comparison. He came to think the hole was too big and that his genetics were too poor to make changes, despite me providing an example to the contrary. Sadly, my parents fanned the flames of his dissonance with their own identity-bound delusions.

So, my guess is that you have developed a healthy personal philosophy and have not surrounded yourself with the type of people or digital content that renders that philosophy dissonant.

And, void for binaries.

Yeah, the reactive group signaling stuff does more harm than good, just further perpetuating the conditions that allow propaganda to proliferate. This includes intentionally using the wrong words, for dramatic effect. Wholly agree that more, rational conversation and LESS insularity is the best path forward.

I stocked up on rk3566/rk3588 boards during the pandemic. They make excellent little network appliances or light-duty workstations. Mainline kernel support is now solid for both chipsets.

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I grew up in the country where lots of people are like this. As an adult, I’ve always lived in cities. I’m some odd amalgamation of the two, perfectly content in not chasing goals but also hyper vigilant in avoiding people that enable poor health decisions. It’s quite a zen life, to be honest, but I often come upon people who work both extremes: pushing me toward unhealthy habits or pushing me toward more prestigious paths, assuming depression. I don’t know; I’m just happy to be healthy, competent, and well fed.

And, I’ve always been single, having never been compelled to try. When you don’t intend to have children, the calculus changes. I would enjoy having the full human experience, but my outlook prevents me from making that choice.

Kudos man. Happy to hear that. It’s tough to assemble a cogent world view when the people closest to you muddy the waters by tugging emotional hooks. I’ve been there.

It’s tragic, yes. But, don’t underestimate the effects of propaganda, repeat exposures that dwarf my face time with the guy. He doesn’t have my range of experience. He’s just a lonely, 50-something man that’s had more negative than positive experiences in life. He has tunnel vision.

In my mind, he’s responsible for his choices and frame-of-mind. But that’s not going to stop me from sharing my perspective without confronting or proselytizing. Insecurity is a mother fucker.

Heh, oh I do realize that. I’d not say I’m being strategic, but I am being intentional. One of the reasons I chose to live where I currently do is to expose myself to that subset of the population. I don’t have a car, and one of the (internalized) benefits is creating opportunity to chat with a broad spectrum of people. I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m tooting my own horn, but I consider myself to be a student of perspective. Many years ago, after university, I joined the Peace Corps. I have direct experience building relationships with folks whose beliefs blind them. I just find it tragic that we seem to be careening toward conflict when it’s all so eminently avoidable. So, I try to spread a little grassroots goodwill.

I’d add, I wish that we in America had some form of compulsory or strongly-encouraged foreign service not related to war.

I frequently chat with my neighbor who is a Q-class Trumper. Over the past year, I’ve been able to observe the leopards licking his face as if I were filming a nature documentary in 4k. We actually get along great. I like having a window into whatever inane, batshit information he consumes, and he really enjoys my company, as I don’t outwardly judge him, and I listen. Naturally, he’s on disability and dependent upon the state. As such, he’s running low on funds and needs to move in a couple months.

We had elections this past week in my state. I told him that I voted, and he offered up some excuses as to why he can’t make it to the polls. We tend not to directly discuss politics, because I told him a long time back that I’m still salty about Bernie. Deep down, he knows that we don’t align, but he doesn’t want to rock the boat. I give his pets treats. I give him treats. He occasionally mentions various religion-based conspiracies and alludes to looming conflict and the criminality of the left, but he’s become more mum on this front. I think, the gears may be turning in his head.

I don’t have any grand insights with which to conclude my anecdote. I give the guy a 30-70 chance of rediscovering reality. But, by being nice to the dude, I do think his chances are much better than they would be had I ignored him the past few years.

Reactivity and haphazard attribution has spread like an emotional contagion. It’s understandable but certainly doesn’t inspire much confidence in our ability to adapt to compounding crises.

Not directly related to the original comment, but generally, I must disagree with the assertion that caring about differences in intensity is problematic or warrants the assumption of “justifying bad behavior”. I’d argue, that in most cases, failure to juxtapose two distal scenarios is more dubious and spurs a breakdown in communication. It seems commonplace now, amongst a set of the population, to cast all loosely related things into one bucket, details be damned. This is a dangerous mode of groupthink. It represents an over-correction that pushes the pendulum-of-social-discord to new heights. I also think it emblematic of the current political divide. Assuming intent, and classifying it as akin to some greater evil, only “highlights” that one party is tugging emotional hooks to make an obscure point seem clear. That’s religious bollocks. Words matter and differences are important. Good-bad binaries are born from our ideological past, to assert control or prepare us for battle.

“why are you defending bad behavior from being compared”

He quite clearly is comparing them and saying one isn’t as bad, in his tongue-in-cheek opinion.

“why do you care?”

Many are quite simply fatigued with the torrent of false equivalencies plaguing modern discourse, whether for dramatic effect or not. I think it sometimes comes from a good place, but more often, I suspect it to be self-serving, group-selection, othering behavior. The sanctimony with which some connect the dots clouds broader context. Effective communication requires giving the other party some grace.

I speak to some folks who have worked on university campuses over the past 20 years. Beginning, in earnest, around the year 2010, this type of behavior has run amok. I do think it started with good, well-reasoned intentions but metastasized into a nebulous search-for-meaning, a weary reaction to the declining state-of-the-world. Yes, identifying bad behavior can be a positive, to move society away from our more basal instincts, but oversimplifying in this manner is not helpful; it’s inflammatory. It’s like fighting fire with fire, which may work for a time, but ultimately, it’s a stopgap, feel-good, short-term solution that runs the risk of exacerbating the original problem.

Fact of the matter is, we are living during a time of extinction. Siloing into groups is probably inevitable, and I think manifestations of the culture war are a symptom, driven by environmental factors and bad actors. But, humans should be intelligent enough to maintain a broad context window and resist the temptation to reduce the complexities of cause-and-effect into emotional binaries. Mapping differences is how we truly improve and avoid thinking in binaries.

TLDR: I drank some coffee and wrote some stuff. No offense intended. For more about “thinking in binaries” check out the essays of Montaigne.

I hypothesize that insular “family values” is the time bomb that stoked their egos insofar as to blind them to the real machinations of this world, and now their minds are detonating into a cloud of dissonance, deflection, and denial. It’s sad really, to witness the fallout of decades of propaganda.

Ditto. Mine are now virtue signaling how anti-Trump they are when they always pedaled “voting for your wallet” and other Reagan-type bullshit. I don’t blame them for being so obtuse, but god damn can it be frustrating to see the hypocrisies bubble up while they demand adulation.

Probably too unsightly for many, but I use gooseneck arms from snakeclamp.com. I use them for many things, like making helping hands for soldering, bike maintenance, and mounting monitors. You need to get one rated for the intended load. There are a ton of mounting base options and plenty of attachments, including one for holding tablets.

Sounds like it’d not be you ideal solution but thought I’d mention it on behalf of others.

Doublespeak has always been their bread and butter, like “trickle down”. Add the mindrot of “faith”, and bang, you have the reigns. My birth family ate that Reagan-era shit up.

edit: heh, I didn’t notice your username until after