There’s simply too much centralized power there. You need something more of a union of independent states with very limited “federal” power, much like the EU. Sure, there will never be a clean consensus on anything, but at least there’s no chance a single grifter can seize so much power to wield that they can basically just do whatever to whoever within the federation and beyond.

Kind of fitting the punk attitude and rock-ish in sound is a Finnish band called Ursus Factory. I love them, seen them live a few times, such energy. And it’s just two blokes, nothing more. It’s so surprising they make it work live too, since in studio releases they tend to have some backing tracks, but it just somehow works.

Bio in eng: https://ursusfactory.net/ENG-Bio

Not sure if it’s as good if you can’t pick up the lyrics, but here’s a few of my favorites:

• Sadetakin pintaan: https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=Jrvlp6oSsvE
• Mitä luolassa on: https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=3vAxM_1XHW8
• Oletko siellä: https://lordag.ffm.to/oletkosiella
• Tuun tuun tuun: https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=E0B0mzOxcc4
• Mitä mies mitä äijä: https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=EcbO3SBrxbY

Seriously suggest checking out!

Edit: For tidal users, I made this playlist to quickly check those five out: https://tidal.com/playlist/545e800a-1f64-4a2d-a536-1de2267ec40f

As long as capital is the foremost concern, sensibility, sustainability and common good will never be. Can never be.

Everything needs to change before that becomes an option. A revolution has to happen, on a large enough scale to change that.

I think there’s a real angle there for something, in regards to the various vaults and what they are for. But I can’t see how that would convert to anything practically doable. But imagine squid game, basically, with each season being a different vault and a different experiment. Of course it can’t work as a reality show for obvious reasons, but I really do think it could be a hit show as a seasonal anthology series.

The tests and the vaults are a big part of the fallout lore after all, and part of it’s charm. I think there’s a lot there, even something that could work as a reality show were we not civilized and peaceful and instead allowed something like real life squid game concepts in reality shows.

Next up: “America really needs Africa for security reasons”

Yeah I wouldn’t work under questionable and actively disingenuous leadership, especially if they’re also ethically clashing with mine, so I get their reaction extremely well.

I couldn’t do it, so I can’t expect others to, but it’s a sad and bitter fact that it just leaves more room for the rot to fester.

But I personally think that the more the rot spreads, the more immediate the threat will seem to most, the more obvious the need for change, then perhaps that’ll encourage more action elsewhere. At best, the rot spreads too fast for its own good and ultimately kills the host. Once the ship goes down, the people can get together to rebuild. With more safeguards and more robust systems.

If only the forge parts were part of the spec like I believe in fossil for example. They are pretty much standardized already. All of the forges have issues, prs, releases. If there exists a git extension for this already, we really ought to spread that via word of mouth because at least I’m not aware of one. If not, I hope someone more familiar with the git spec could work one out and write helpful contribution guides to go with it. I, same as a lot of others I would believe, would be very much interested in helping build one.

Well and eloquently put.

I’ve gone through it all so many times in my head, I do think I’d be prepared, but I am not ready, never have been, as illustrated by my consistently disappointing attempts at suicide, more so when I was younger, but not so many years ago, too.

There’s, fortunately, enough for me here not to be ready, instincts fight back, the mind finds a way to end in a satisfying enough compromise for whatever acute drives me there at the time. But since I’ve gone far enough on many of those occasions, I’ve done a lot of both mental and emotional work to be prepared, I’m happy with how my life is and has been, I wouldn’t feel like I miss anything, or I didn’t get to do all I wanted. I have. The important bits, that is. All the rest are just nice little things to do while I’m stuck here.

I was never suicidal in the bitter or angry sense. I’ve always just been simply too tired to bear everything life brings. It’s just too much and not worth it in my mind. But apparently my subconscious thinks otherwise. Which is fine. It’s a beautiful world, for the most part people are amazing and full of light, the nature just fills your soul with joy and a sense of wonder, animals are just so impossibly adorable to observe from afar, some from close enough that their excitement and love just rubs into me, too.

It’s all good, but not worth all the rest of it. It’s just way too tiring. Makes you empty and drained on a daily basis. There’s so much love and beauty, but not enough time, not enough resources, not enough anything to really reach them in a consistent enough basis, so you fight and you fight, you bear through everything to get there more often, and it’s simply not enough. It’s not worth it. I’d rather cease to exist and be blissfully oblivious to all of it. And be happy I got the time I did with it all. It was beautiful, in part, and it was so endearing, in part, but I’d rather leave it at that, smile and fade away to nothingness, away from all the toil and effort it takes to barely reach anything.

So in a conscious sense I’m all prepared, I’ve even gone and talked my friends and family through all this, so they’d be prepared too, so there wouldn’t be any threads left hanging. It’s all wrapped up nicely in a beautiful, happy little bundle, that should let me join eternity in peace, with a smile. I’d even like to think I’m ready, but in practice, I’ve had to come to accept my subconscious self simply doesn’t agree. Every time it feels like it does, finally, and I go through all the song and dance, and at the last minute, it halts my hand and makes me back off. Sometimes so bitterly close to release.

So I can’t really say I’m ready, even though I feel ready. Have felt for a very long time. Decades.

But I’m happy enough to remain here. It’s still a beautiful world. People, animals, nature are still so full or wonder and love. It feels barely worth it, I’d even say not worth it really, but the subconscious self has its own evaluation which doesn’t line up so nicely with mine. But I guess I should be happy about it, since while each and every day brings further drain, more burden, heavier a weight on my shoulders, it also adds up slowly to the pile of beauty and love and light and all. Not in a bearable ratio, in my mind, but who am I to question my subconscious. It’s still beauty, love and light. I’ll take it, if I have to, and I’ll cling to it all for sense of self and purpose.

Once I get to go, I’ll be all the more relieved, the more the burdens grow and the eyes tire. And the pile of beauty and love will have grown a bit bigger.

I am so very sorry you have to live like this.

In general, reading a lot of these comments in this thread is just heartbreaking.

I really think this is a cultural thing in part. I live in a progressive social democracy in Europe, and I really don’t think many see it like most people here do. I asked a couple of the more traditionally masculine/male friends and they tell me the share everything too, that they need it in a relationship especially, since they do hold stuff in from others apparently. But the very closest ones, friends and spouses that is, they need to lighten the load. And I recognize that too. Shit’s too heavy to carry alone.

I am an enby who presents primarily masculinely but I have a lot of feminine traits and habits too.

Which is to say I am a bearded, muscular reserve sergeant who wears a lot of flannels and wooly clothes, but I have a beautiful, glimmering head of hair that goes to my lower back which I love to braid and the routine to keep it and my face in good shape is very long every day, and in my routines am generally considered very feminine. I do makeup, I cook and bake, I sing all the time, dance freely while doing household stuff, and most crucially, I am very good at listening to others talk about feelings and such, but am also myself very much a sharer in terms of my feelings and just general thoughts too, however fragile or even embarrassing, or just cute, whatever.

I also have adhd which kind of makes me just be myself whether I wanted it or not, I mostly do and think only after. Same goes for things I say or talk about. Couldn’t hold things in if I wanted to…

Which, in turn, is all to say that I’ve always just shared my feelings and intimate thoughts and all without restrictions, mostly because that just happens, but I also like it about me and it keeps me kind of grounded and well conscious of myself, but importantly, it encourages others to share too, and I feel very much more connected to everyone around me, since we tend to talk about everything, even the difficult things.

But I was born a biological male, I present visually mostly masculinely, am very traditionally masculine looking dude, got upbringing as though I was a man, so I think my pov might be relevant still, even though I learnt, as a young adult, who I really am, what I feel, what I see, what I indentify as and how.

I did talk quite freely back when I was young teenager too, when I was still confused and tried to fit the male bill, so I think it’s something more fundamental than what I consciously understand myself to be.

Either way, it’s always been super helpful and really helped me connect deeply with people. Help them, and also get help in turn. It’s a precious thing. To share. To dare to share.

I hope it gets easier for you too.

I’ve long since removed myself from the mainstream (I.e enshittified) social media, but my spouse loves to show me cute, silly or funny animal videos and I genuinely love the habit.

However, the pst year or two, I keep finding myself asking “who is this? why are the there?” since the actual silly or just cute video is only half of it, then the other half is just a bloke watching the same video I guess, but for whatever reason (I.e content theft and number go up game) included in the damn video that is the actual content.

I keep thinking it’s relevant somehow, like maybe their dog jumps out and does something funny in response to them watching a cute dog video, but no. The entire thing is just them silently watching and often not even nodding or gesturing like others here illustrate. More often than not, they simply sit there silently with a very neutral non-expressive face, then the video ends and there was exactly zero point to that (other than pumping out content for the algorithm with minimal effort I guess?). It’s a real fucking thing. It boggles the mind. Who wants that?

I asked my spouse why on earth would they ever choose to watch those when they can just skip and look for other cute stuff. It makes no sense to me. The algorithm should simply not suggest or serve those to anyone since in my mind, nobody would bother watching them. It genuinely fucks with my mind.

However, I’ve since learnt that the modern way of consuming even things like instagram is click on whatever on front page, then simply scrolling up/down or left/right for next videos without any chance to evaluate whether one wants to watch it or not. It simply toots new ones infinitely and I guess the users just… watch whatever comes?

It’s fucking ridiculous. The only reason those trend like they do, even for us millennials, the modern boomers, is because somehow somebody watched it once, or it was paid/promoted or something, then the algorithm just decides similar people will watch that snd suddenly perfectly normal and sensible people like my spouse end up watching some random fucking people sit still with nothing to offer, in an abrupt video, day in day out. It’s simply ridiculous.

But while I don’t get it and actively loathe the practice (I.e content theft and gaming the platforms in ways clearly not intended (or exactly as intended…)) I guess that’s just the way of the world now. I feel boomer enough even though I’ve barely passed 30 because I don’t get all the brainrot stuff and don’t get exposed to those since I no longer use social media I can’t curate myself like non-proprietary link aggregators, and I keep getting these surreal experiences that seem so completely nonsense to me.

Anyway, I just wanted to clarify that this kind of content is not niche, the instagrams and tiktoks of the world keep pushing exactly that kind of senseless shit to even regular millenials like my spouse and by their proxy, me. The feed is otherwise just cute animal videos basically. The half that isn’t, is cute animal videos with some visibly tired and uninterested streamer-looking bloke taking half the screen for no actual reason other than capitalism-driven modern social media practices.

My friends who have entirely different interests also get them. Like tech-savvy guys too, content is mostly technical or nerdy stuff, but a percentage of that just comes with some weird person staring in the screen on the bottom part of the video. It’s so stupid. Musicians whose feed is similarly specialized and in no way gen alpha tier brainrot or suspectible for nonsensical streamer content or whatever, have a part of the feed just be absolutely out-of-place rgb-light-headset gamer looking dudes just silently fucking watching and very occasionally perhaps even react with a singular nod before the video ends.

It is a real trend that seems to even inflict itself to the kind of people I would absolutely think would not ever watch any content like that, are not just your average people mindlessly scrolling, rather very sensible and extremely specialized in their interests kinds of people.

I am genuinely surprised that you do not seem to have seen this. Count yourself lucky. I count myself as one too, although I still occasionally have to be exposed to that shit when a cute otter video is pushed on my face and for a second, each time, I almost laugh at the fucking bloke just sitting there, each time a different dude. What nonsense.

It’s a strange instinct to think, somehow, this wasn’t the case. In general, not here specifically even. And he especially does not seem like someone who’d just ad hoc do something without knowing what he is doing.

Yeah I do a similar thing with intermittent fasting. I allow myself to eat as much as I want, but only after around 1600 (4pm for the temporally confused friends) or roughly the time the kid gets home from school and either has a small snack or we eat dinner straight away around that time. Couldn’t skip that, because I do need to show example too, since they, as many kids do, struggle to eat enough, sometimes just nibbling on stuff. Even if they’ve been very active with hobbies and friends and walking to and from school (around 4km total) and they really need the energy and the nutrients to build back and heal the body after all that, not to mention usual growing stuff. And as they often do, especially the salad sides are difficult without someone body doubling the experience, or if we’re doing something different, unusual food to slightly expand their comfort zone progressively. So I can’t really fast beyond that. But I’ve found I don’t really need to. I’ve lost around 10kg in a year just by this small fasting period. No other changes. I wasn’t obese before, just a bit overweight, but I have been back in the day, on the obese side even. I got back from that with keto diet, and luckily never let it slip back too much, but that isn’t an option anymore, for largely the same reasons; have to lead by example, show healthy eating habits (when they are there) and have diverse, nutritious food. Can’t do keto like that.

I’m not doing this for weight reasons though; my blood sugar is on the high side, almost pre-diabetic, and the docs tell me if I don’t get it sorted, I’ll eventually just slip over the line and that’s not something you get back from apparently. I also have vascular fat (or whatever it’s called in English, the inner fat) that I’d need to get rid of to get my liver values back to healthy bounds. Already gave up drinking some years back, even if it was occasional even then, and it wasn’t enough, so I have to try and get the fat off too. Keto would’ve been perfect for this, back in the day I lost crazy amount of that inner fat especially on it, but apparently this intermittent fasting is doing good things there too, although not nearly as effectively.

But the surprising thing to me is, I didn’t cut off any foods or food types, generally I’ve tried to keep the short carbs a bit lower than usual, but haven’t gone entirely off. And it still works. I haven’t been on the blood controls yet for either of the reasons, but my scale tells me about 2-3kg of that 10kg has been inner fat.

And even through Christmas and a lot of carbs, the weight didn’t seem to sway back almost at all, even with delayed monitoring.

Which is all to say, it seems easier to cut on the calories if you only consume them less than half a day, time-wise, even if you ate unhealthy food and generally not very diet-y. In the limited timespan it might just be impossible to get to similar amounts of calories vs. if you ate regularly throughout all day, if you like me have trouble regulating and tend to overeat fairly consistently (I have adhd so the dopamine rush gets me too excited every time and I guess I lose most of my sense of moderation for a while there).

Sorry for the weird digression. Just wanted to hop in with my experiences.

I’ve been in a committed relationship for the past few years, so I haven’t got the freshest experience, but:

I’ve always had luck with tinder and similar ones. Current relationship is from there too. But this is for mono relationships.

When I was going through my poly experiments era, tinder really didn’t work out for me. Or any of the others at the time, but tinder’s been the biggest here regionally so I’ll keep using that in place of all the similar apps.

Surprisingly enough, for any poly or just more casual stuff otherwise, the most action and great memories and experiences I got through Jodel. It’s not a dating app, but somehow it just happened to work. I didn’t explicitly send messages to anyone either, it just came to be.

Which is all to say, it’s not the explicitly dating apps alone one should consider. Or, rather, I guess it depends a lot on what one’s looking for, and perhaps speaks to just how much people you can meet and get contact with and get excited about and have nice memories with, without trying explicitly to do that. Just organically connecting with people on a personal level without any masks on.

But I never thought any of the different ways to meet people are necessarily bad or gave me any problems or whatever. People just meet and click, if they dare to put themselves out there. When I was younger, it was through school, work, bars, friends’ friends, parties, gigs, festivals, cafes, libraries… you know, basically anywhere there are people, you might just accidentally find a fun or endearing adventure with someone.

That’s not to say there aren’t any bad experiences too. But it does a lot of good to instead focus on the good ones and try and hang on to them, so you’ll dare to throw yourself out there again and have more of them. I know it’s not as easily done as it is said, but outright dismissing it without seriously trying will definitely not help and even actively sabotage your own confidence and vibe, you know?

A lot of it is just attitude. If you can find a way to remain happy and endearing and brave enough to get personal, close, even if for just little whiles at a time, then I almost guarantee you, you’ll just attract others somehow, somewhere, always. The question I guess is, will you pick up on it or dare to go with it when it comes to you? Because that shit is hard and stressful if you’re not used to it, very easy to just skip or ignore outright without even trying, without exposing yourself to the potential harm and heartbreak (potential love and warm memories too, mind you!), and only repeat practice will ultimately give you the perspective and outlook required to come out better each time.

But I digress. I know not everyone has a good time with these, perhaps a lot of it is regional/cultural too, but almost everyone I know, have mostly had amazing experiences, ultimately, through these apps. Some get to it some other way, mostly the means alternate, but people just tend to find each others naturally, somehow just end up in the right place in the right time. Sometimes that’s the tinder or other dating app. Sometimes it’s something else.

But I haven’t personally heard any horror stories, and all the heartbreak and sad stories have always ultimately been overshadowed by later joy and warmth found in the exact same apps or whatever. Neither have I experienced anything out of ordinary. Some heartbreak, some disappointments, sure, but most importantly, love and caring to outshine those. Nothing that wouldn’t happen if met otherwise.

This has to be a joke, right? But the .gov domains are reserved in us for actual government agencies, right? So what the fuck

I would also consider just choosing the middle ground and take the pension, retire half time. If that’s doable within your country’s framework.

Less work, and you can potentially choose the work depending on how you do this, which can make it even more enjoyable in addition to having less hours. You’ll get to supplement the pension with a bit of income, you can perhaps even choose to live more frugally for a few years to get some extra investments going that you only touch on emergencies, but otherwise will hopefully get large enough to fight back on the inflation.

But if it was me, I’d just retire. No telling what the world will look like in a few years, nevermind 20. Even if you kept working, there’s no guarantees things’ll get better, maybe entire economy collapses and all that work has been for nothing. Or maybe the humanity collapses, you know.

I’d take all the free time I could muster and spend it as much as practical, on nice enjoyable things and family and friends.

While I don’t agree, I’ll concede I might be in the minority with this stand. But I don’t really believe in a universal intelligence in the first place. There are several, and not all of them are self-serving or marked by the traditionally associated emotionless calculations. There’s emotional intelligence. Social intelligence. And so on.

I don’t pretend to be a philosopher or a psychologist to say what they all are, what they even are if you get down to it, but I do know there’s intelligence in caring for others. There’s intelligence in many kinds of sacrifice too. They just aren’t the classical kind of universal intelligence, because that is defined by self-serving “cold facts” and a fragile attempt at realizing an objective world and objective stance on it, which one can never truly reach or possess. If something like that even is possible.

I stand by my original comment, and I’ll be a bit sad to learn if I’m the odd one out with that take, but I also think these are the kind of things philosophers ought to talk about and not me. What do I know? Maybe my view is distorted by idealism and good expectations, faith in people and the world, that may well be unsubstantiated and entirely delusional.

Sometimes we don’t value stable career or steady income as highly as other pursuits.

I wouldn’t say it’s not intelligent. Just different priorities.

I admire anyone brave and idealistic enough to commit to academia or culture or any similarly less lucrative and extremely uncertain path. Takes some resilience and big balls. You are almost guaranteed to lose a lot of the comforts available to others with that. And yet, they still do it. And we are all better for it. The world is better for it.

That has to be one of the worst choices if you must go. I get that we don’t think straight in those moments of our life, but it’s such a horrible thing to force on someone and their conscience…

Not just trains, but all the instances where someone entirely unrelated will be dragged into something so heavy, like truck drivers, too. Hard to live with, can really ruin lives.

Another thing I don’t like is when others that aren’t trained for it like the paramedics or police, have to see the outcome and fallout, such as jumping off a building into a busy street, even at night when nobody’s there just now, but will be. Or hanging yourself from your balcony in an apartment complex.

It fucks up someone to see that, and I have to believe everyone could make the responsible choice of doing it in private or in a way that affects least amount of unrelated people possible. Like going with the helium/nitrogen bag, hanging within the bounds of one’s privacy, if shooting is the way to go, do it perhaps in the woods, somewhere peaceful and remote, and call the paramedics so they’ll be there before any innocent walkers-by, etc.

It’s bad that anyone has to be involved, but at least the professionals have the training to deal with that somehow, even if it will ultimately fuck them up too at least somehow. At least it’s a conscious choice for them to put themselves in the position that they might have to see shit like that. Same for police.

I would strongly encourage messless ways to go, too, because I think the psychological impact of a peacful-seeming exit without blood or injuries has to be the least damaging. It’s never going to be clean and harmless to others, but an exit bag would do a lot of good for everyone eventually involved in the situation.

But I also get that a lot of people in that position may harbor some general hatred and bitterness towards others, which is horrible and I have to think entirely avoidable if the society did its job, so they might even choose to go as publicly and messily as possible just to make a point or something.

But the others have to live with that shit. They keep going. You don’t. The least we can do is try to minimize the trauma and impact we necessarily inflict on others when we do go. We get the peace. We get away. Those others, not so much.

I don’t know how this would be taught other than boldly and empathetically talking about it in school, to make the point repeatedly, like we do with sex education for example. And health education too. We really should talk about these things, so when the time comes one has to leave, the spine reaction would be to do it as kindly as possible, to be considerate in the choice of manner.