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Joined 3 months ago
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Cake day: January 8th, 2025

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  • Been in that state a lot. That’s classic depression. Evo-psych has some stupid ideas but their read on depression is solid. That urge to withdraw from society is a human urge. The urge is designed to lead to either, you leaving your band of primates to seek another, or your fellow group members coming and finding you to show how much you matter to them. Modern life doesn’t let that happen though. So many of our relationships are digital or just shallow so no one can tell you’re leaving, and changing your group in a real way is hard. If you want to feel betterment you have to use your rational brain to seek out what your body is instinctively reaching for. Pick something that you have always cared about, and go to a real life event centered on that thing. This can be almost anything, as long as there are real people, really sharing a physical space. Talk to the people about that thing. Don’t do it just to tick it off the list, you have to pay attention to what they are saying because you need to be able to articulate their ideas and then respond to them.




  • It’s technically true in absolutes. Absolute freedom, without giving up humanity, gives no guarantee of safety provided by anything outside of yourself. Absolute safety exists only in a providential void, where needs are seen to magically, as by a benevolent god. If you seek safety in the absolute freedom, you lose the freedom in one way or another. Walls to keep out enemies keep the builders in. Tools to provide for survival require production and maintenance, taking away your freedom to choose to do things that you enjoy. If you seek freedom in the absolute safety, you have to risk giving external forces access. Those forces always carry risk of harm, whether by malicious action or indifference. However, while it’s necessary to sacrifice one for the other in the absolute, it’s not sufficient. Nothing about the relationship says being less of one necessarily makes you more of the other. The easy example is prison. In most prisons your freedom is severely curtailed, but you certainly aren’t safe. You might even be imprisoned for the purpose of being harmed.








  • Having kids is always an act of selfishness. You don’t do it because you are trying to ‘gift’ life to the child. You do it because you think it will make you happy. Look at your reasons.

    “me and my partner have wanted children since we were children” There’s your reason. You have the biological imperative. You want your genetics to continue.

    " if a life is not worth living it must be an absolutely horrific and torterous experience." That’s life. ‘Worth’ is purely subjective. Objectively, life is worthless. If you have the right genetics and circumstances, you can ignore this fact, but it’s always there.

    “If all of us liberal and educated folks stop having kids what will the world look like?” This is just the ideological version of the biological imperative, the idea of ‘my ideas must be passed down’ instead of ‘my genes.’ But it is based on faulty assumptions. It assumes your kids wouldn’t become fascists just because you aren’t. It assumes the children of members of a political party will automatically join the same one when they grow up. Why would you assume this? Do you have the same views as your parents? Grandparents?

    If you want to have your kids, go ahead, but don’t delude yourself that it’s your gift to the leftist cause or to the child. It’s a way to scratch your biological itch to be a parent, just as much as masturbation and sex.


  • Insert joke along the lines of ‘I don’t.’

    More seriously, I’ve thought about this a bit. The simple answer is already seen in other responses: rural enough to escape crowds, close enough to urbanity to get good internet. The more perspicacious answer is overly complex: someplace where the weather is mild enough not to kill you if you lose your keys, and likely to stay that way despite climate change, mountainous enough to have nice views and avoid flooding, flat enough to build, sparse enough for land to be affordable, populous enough to be able to get the things I want without making a long trek, wooded enough to get the benefit of trees, bare enough to allow access, not too many racists or zealots, not too rich or poor of neighbors, neighbors not close enough to disturb me, but not so far that I couldn’t run over for something if needed, somewhere politically stable, somewhere I can work without a million-mile commute, where the soil doesn’t suck, where there’s a pleasant amount of rain and sun…

    It’s not a small question.


  • I actively avoid shorts so most of what I watch is long form.

    • Technology Connections - A guy needing out about household tech
    • Unlearning Economics - a trained economist turned public edutainer who kept learning after Econ 101, unlike others who shall remain nameless
    • Behind the Bastards - Chummy laughter about the worst people ever
    • RPG with DBJ - RPG talk with a focus on creativity and exploring the opportunities afforded by the space of ‘limited only by your imagination’
    • We’re in Hell - A guy looking at pieces of media and the ideology infused into them by culture
    • Gresham College - lectures on widely ranging topics, presented by professors but targetting the layperson
    • The Morbid Zoo - A cool gal doing analysis of movies, usually horror, but sometimes others, with an eye toward ideology and culture (Hellraiser, Smile, Twilight, PotC, etc.)
    • Folding Ideas - More film analysis, but with a tack toward various criticisms
    • Doctor Who - the old series are all on the tubes now. Not educational, but fun.


  • Why would anyone put up with the attack that is advertising? If it requires you to watch ads, it’s not worth it. You wouldn’t sit through a free movie if it meant a stranger showing up every few minutes and offering to let you rim them, (it’s not that no one wants what their offering, it’s that they don’t care whether you’re interested or not. They’re still going to show you their asshole) why would you allow a similar violation of your mind?