You are likely scanning my profile and history because I said something in a tone that made you feel funny or angry. This is called being reactionary. You can overcome it.
It’s a sad side-effect of our nature as a species that the best examples among us will also be the ones most likely to go unnoticed, as it takes someone with some level of self-importance or even narcissism to promote themselves and what they’ve done.
theater meant to placate the angry masses
Thousands of years into our civilization and the oldest tricks still work the best. The more things change and all that.
edit: that said, Epstein was almost definitely working as a double-agent between various organizations, maybe a quadruple agent or more, he wasn’t so well-connected and powerful just because he dealt children, he also dealt secrets between superpowers, so just having contact with him as a state official puts a massive spotlight on you as a security risk.
National governments care a lot more about you being a security risk than they do about you hurting kids.
I basically ignore all news that doesn’t have substantive outcomes and consequences, the news is just a massive speculation market driven by grifters, political scammers and online betting. If you read anything that seems to appeal to your feelings, that’s a huge red-flag that you’re being gamed. I wish everyone knew this.
If you read up on Pope Leo’s life, you see that he most definitely was not in it for luxuries and power.
I am no fan of the church as an institution, particularly for what it’s done in the past both on grand scales of violence as well as institutional coverups of abuse, but I know that a massive segment of our world does still look to the church for moral guidance and does not feel aligned with the abuses of the past. I know a lot of people don’t relate to that but it’s kind of wired into our human condition at this point to seek out higher power to align with, so we can’t just dismiss everyone who looks to the church as idiots, nor those running the church as scammers or grifters.
I don’t know if in his heart of hearts someone like Pope Leo really believes the literal truth behind what he’s taught and upheld in poverty stricken regions and while trying to bring communities together, it’s probably more nuanced than that, but I don’t think you sacrifice so much in your life unless you think there’s SOME level of higher-calling or greater reward for preserving some kind of faith. I can’t really relate, I have no faith, but I don’t look down on those who do have faith. I mean, the universe is absurd, I can’t judge one kind of absurdity over another, I just don’t have use for emotional appeasement about fear of death. Some people need some kind of hope in order to get through their day and that I can definitely relate to.
When you resent a segment of a population for not living up to your standards, you’re not being a better person, you’re being that which you hate. Black-and-white thinking, xenophobia, hate.
Meanwhile, if you recognize the failings of populations over individuals, you will form far more useful and nuanced analysis of situations. An individual person has great capacity and infinite capability for change, for learning, for adapting and understanding. But when you are talking populations, they take on every worst property you can attribute and become inflexible, disappointing mobs of stupidity.
If you can’t hold both of these ideas in your head at once to both empathize and sympathize with those you don’t understand, while remaining true to your own values and understanding of the world, again you’re just MAGA with an accent.
enjoy your new authoritarian government and lawless system.
It’s there too, wherever you are and however much better you think your tribe is, you are the same fucking species with the same fucking vulnerabilities, and the harder you stamp your feet and shake your fist that you’re “better” the more vulnerable you are to having your agency taken away without you even caring or realizing it.
I don’t really want to continue to try to teach “being a mature adult” to someone just looking for validation for their own self-importance, so I’ll leave it at that and just hope you grow up one day. I won’t be there to see it, or anything else you have to say.
Is the government becoming right-wing and outsourcing everything to shitty corporations? How the heck does the capital let things get this bad?!?
Americans looking down there like:
I literally get a lot of hate when I try to warn people in other countries that what’s destroying the US is an international problem and everyone, everywhere is going to be impacted the same way. It’s much easier to retain a smug sense of self-important invulnerability to the things you see happening to “those annoying people over there, they ain’t like us.”
ADHD refers to a spectrum of symptoms, it’s not necessarily a disease in itself. This is a very misunderstood concept, and I’m sure I will get pushback here on it because we get really used to our labels, but I’ve been through the system so many times and talked to a lot of doctors and have connected with the consensus. The DSM5, the manual from which we get all these terms and diagnosis talk, is always in a state of flux and is used as a guide for identifying symptom clusters and forming plans to ease harmful effects of those clusters, not labeling people’s identities or diseases, nor curing anything.
What’s all this have to do with your trouble focusing? That there is likely an underlying issue causing your ADHD symptoms, and this could be anything from an actual innate disorder like autism spectrum disorder, or it could be an effect of life experiences like PTSD from stress or abuse, or it could be your current lifestyle and living situation, it could be clinical anxiety/depression, or it could be something else entirely.
This is why the boring answer, which is most often the correct answer, is to consult an actual professional, not rely on asocial, sheltered, internet strangers because you will unconsciously seek out what you want to hear, not what you need to do to address the problem, which may in fact be something you really don’t want to hear.
It’s making fun of the long-standing trend of using abstract generated imagery that fetishizes a technological view of the world while trying to talk about human issues, as well as tacky, over-the-top AI art broadly.
There is also an “anti-meme” trend online that uses literal translations of imagery to make absurdist jokes.
Nostalgia is not about the actual thing itself, but the person you were when you enjoyed that thing.
Nothing, and nothing will change. That’s what it means.
To expand: the idea of international law, or law broadly, is a fantasy that liberals believe in. Our legal systems in the world serve to preserve order, not dispense consequence evenly. There is no greater power, there are no international police, there is no consequence for killing as many people as you want, as long as you have an army and money.
I know this is preaching to the choir for anyone who’s been on the left for a while, but I also assumed all the safety and morality lessons at the end of G.I.Joe cartoons were actually seen and heard by the children who grew up to run the world, and I assumed that people cared about facts and holding onto memories of things they’ve learned, so maybe we all need to start reminding each other how the world works.
It’s really easy to move if you get a running start and really give it some muscle. If you have room in your cartoonishly large suitcase, you can bring your family, your home, your car, your career and your extended family and whatever support systems you have! Also, governments all over the world love when you just drop in unannounced, they set up trampolines and big piles of comfy pillows for you to jump onto safely and everything.
Kayfabe is real, people know it is, they engage with it anyway because they want to have fun playing around with stories and narratives and we’ve all learned that we can make our own reality and get some level of social support for it.
Yah you’re right, hundreds of millions of people just aren’t as smart as you, it must be crushing to have so much clarity and insight that your entire species doesn’t share, the righteous loneliness must be palpable.
Fun fact, if you do itemized tax returns, you can make cash donations to your school, fire department or road authority, etc. and get a receipt and then deduct that from your taxes, it’s basically forcing your state to spend your taxes where you want it spent.
Note: it’s been a long ass time since I did itemized returns, your mileage/laws may vary.
It’s fantastic and absolutely bonkers how many of the world’s problems will be solved once Trump finally returns to the Earth. How can one man, with so few working brain-cells, cause so much damage and death and chaos.
Yah you’re right, all these poor, hard-working Landlords who serve the people must be protected at all costs, they do so much for the average renter, we can’t dare touch their clockwork perfect system that SOOOO many people love.
Jesus christ, grow a clue.
New York has some of the highest wealth in the country, but woe and damnation if we suggest that maybe they should consider helping us out with shit like roads and garbage and sewers. Nah, let’s let the people working two jobs pay for all that.
“Why can’t we just continue as normal and keep pushing the problems down the road for someone else to figure out?” - New York’s comfortable masses who are already older than dirt and have no stake in the future, and basically all of America’s financial policy for the last hundred years.
Since there is no such actual thing as “law” when it comes to power and wealth, the best we can do right now is keep the horrors fresh enough for long enough that when hopefully the administration collapses (likely) or that we see the current legislative and judicial branch decide to take action (a snowball’s chance in hell) so no, no arrests will happen until the fascies are out of office. And even then, it will hinge on the political will for a new administration or new set of representatives to take on.
There is a very strong chance it will never go anywhere. There are a lot of Epsteins out there and they’re not going to face justice for the exact reason that nobody has wanted to release Epstein’s files, which is it’s tied to too many people and massively destabilizing to governments. We want that, they don’t.
Even if we get an amazing new administration with progressive, law-abiding values, just touching the Epstein files is going to be political suicide because of the political warfare that will be leveled on anyone who tries to dig into it, so every potential leader is going to have to decide if they want to dedicate their entire time in office to fighting a raging river of opposition and legal threats and physical threats for trying to get rich, powerful people brought to justice.
You can’t, however you frame this issue there’s going to be a sacrifice. We have to all digest this.
The best kind of sacrifice you can make though for the best outcome is to limit your child’s screen-time, AND ALSO YOUR OWN. Spend more time together, practice what you preach, you are also a child being harmed by social media.