One of the biggest offenders in the Christian MAGA movement is the infamous John Hagee and family of the Cornerstone Church empire. They are a wealthy, highly political, ultra Zionist church that masquerades as non denominational. There is no separation of politics and faith in this church. While they’re not outright MAGA, they certainly tend to do business like they are.
“Despite the Bible’s clear call for slaves to obey their masters, the abolitionist movement has used its version of the Christian faith to advocate for just the opposite.”
My pay has been lagging inflation since 2003. Employers want experience on the cheap.
I did fine in 2001 on $11/hour. Rent was $345 and gas was 86 cents/gallon. At my last W-2 job, I was making $21/hour, rent was $1,500 and gas was $3.19. When you only double one figure, but the rest inflate wildly, well … yeah, I’d rather be homeless than work for your soul-sucking company.
Literally had a recruiter call about a job and they are like. Well its really a junior role. I was then like so its a junior role that requires and I start going through all the requirements that are for as advanced as a person could be for the all the various software experience they want. She is like well given the market and since I can talk more frank with recruiters its like. So they want a highly expertised senior level of experience but they want to pay junior level and she is like yeah.
When, according to its job ad, an indie pet food company called something like Flopsies is looking for a “rock star” and a “unicorn” to revolutionise its social media presence, you know that the job market has become high on its own farts. Ill-defined franken-jobs, requiring everything from SEO expertise to video-editing skills (all for a salary of £27,000 and free protein bars that taste like hay) require cult-like dedication.
First, you must convince the fine people at Flopsies that it has been your dream since exiting your mother’s birth canal to sell pet food. You would cut off your own hands for the privilege, and quickly learn to write copy for them by smashing your face into a keyboard. You will convey this in a 400-word cover letter, written in your own blood. This cover letter will then be redirected into the ether by an AI filter, because you didn’t use the phrase “optimising algorithmic relevancy” in it. You will never hear from Flopsies again. You will start this process again and repeat it until you are seen fit for an interview in which you have a few minutes to convince a bot that you’re fit for purpose as both a worker and a human being.
They were the result of a unique and new market demand, that of mass incarceration. The point of them was to be easily inspected by guards. To make sure nothing was getting hidden inside them.
I find this hard to believe given the devices most Millennials tend to wax nostalgic about, vis a vis the clear cases. I don’t think Apple was designing their 1st gen iMacs or Macintosh SE’s for prison (that article says these were made clear in order to do airflow studies).
Likewise, I know Nintendo wasn’t making gameboys clear for that reason. 1990s Japanese teenagers would have had 0 exposure to US prison devices in order to gain the perception of them as being cool, to in turn drive that demand within Nintendo.
Translucent plastic has been around since long before mass consumer electronics. Parkesine was around in the 1850s, and there were translucent products made with it.
I think this is a case of different groups using the same thing for different reasons, independently of each other.
Nah, clear plastic electronics were just cool on their own. Same with beige.
Today’s electronics are all boring colors. You find mostly black and white, and rarely some kind of brand-specific colors like the Switch’s red and blue or Apple’s, uh, very slightly off-white iPhone Air colors (they say those colors are gold and blue). For anything else, you pretty much need to buy a skin, which is cool of course, but you can’t use a skin to get clear plastic.
The main reason we don’t get fun colors anymore is because it’s cheaper to manufacture the more popular options in larger quantities. Fun variants means lower order quantities, which means more expensive manufacturing. This is also why some PC cases are more expensive in white than in black.
You know what’s funny about the clear plastic electronics? They were the result of a unique and new market demand, that of mass incarceration. The point of them was to be easily inspected by guards. To make sure nothing was getting hidden inside them.
Them ending up in normal distribution and getting picked up by teens who thought they were cool was simply a fluke. Kind of emblematic of the era in a way, to have the effects of something so criminal seep out in to the wider world, stripped of it’s context, and resold as trend to teens.
Great read! So much that grounds us in reality is found in unplugging from the digital world and getting comfortable in a task that brings us back to the here and now.
Unless im freaking exhausted or having a great dream I dislike sleeping. I grew up everyone in house was up at 7 am on a weekend. Plus the back pain ugh. I want to be productive or play games. And napping? Omfg that hurts. Just pain and dehydration. And screws up my sleep schedule! So I avoid as much as possible.
My SO will sleep 12 hrs a day if leave quietly for day. Parents had same habit and will get up at noon or later on weekends.
I love this source, but this article doesn’t get into some of the issues folks have with sleep. The problematic relationship some of us have with sleep. I do like to sleep, but it doesn’t always work for me. The writer discusses bedtime rituals, which myself (and probably others) need to improve upon, but not problematic sleep (like dreams, at least for me). I want the break from thinking about “things” but have trouble with that. And don’t want to have a weird dream about drinking wine with dog poop in it while visiting with the pope.
I can understand enjoying the state of being well rested or relaxing, but I can’t relate to enjoying sleep. If I can have all the benefits of sleep without needing to sleep, I would take it with no hesitation.
I don’t want to sleep any more than I have to. I don’t want to work, either.
If you have major health issues that impact your lifespan, you might be more acutely aware of how little time we have in our lives. It might make you reassess how you value time spent.
We spend roughly a third of our lives sleeping.
If your life is likely to be <2/3 the average, those lost hours start to feel like wasting precious time. It’s also just limiting in what you can feasibly do.
Imagine being able to head out on a Friday after work and drive 14 hours without needing to sleep; you could be 4 states over by morning, spend Saturday exploring a national park or visiting family, head back at 6pm, and be back home by 8am to spend all Sunday relaxing with your at-home hobbies. Then 8 hours on Sunday night spent reading instead of being unconscious. If only.
I’ve read the first half at home and the second half at the techno party I’m currently at which is now only getting warmed up at 00:20. Seriously considering going home to sleep haha, the artist I came for only starts at 2 AM 🥲. Well-written article.
I’ve been off sick for a few weeks now, and I’ve really enjoyed being able to sleep in. I didn’t realise how tired I was getting just from getting up early each day to go to work.
I love the space in between being asleep and awake in the morning, I feel so relaxed and refreshed, especially when waking up without an alarm.
Their tones, he says, could carry insights into the lives of the people who lived in north-east Spain 6,000 years ago.
As context:
The oldest musical instrument in the world, a 60,000-year-old Neanderthal flute is a treasure of global significance. It was discovered in Divje babe cave near Cerkno and has been declared by experts to have been made by Neanderthals.
Years ago I watched this video that demos old iron smelting technology in Burkina Faso, and these people get farther. They have better natural iron deposits (also lots of people working together helps).
He did end up making a small blade at some point, but it seems like the process of getting iron ore from bacteria is excruciatingly slow. If he was in my area he’d be walking around in full plate armor by now.
I love these videos. I wish he would fully enter the iron age at some point, it’d be satisfying to watch those dots get connected in realtime. I still sometimes joke that I’m waiting for him to build an iPhone.
That side, do you see no good in hierarchy at all?
Correct, I’m an anarchist. Hierarchy is one of the most harmful things that currently exists. I wish to live in a world without it. I genuinely cannot think of a single instance of where my life has been, or could be, improved by hierarchy, only worsened.
Timor-Leste ranks significantly above Isreal in “international peace and security” where Israel ranks 149 out of 174 mostly above places which are in active wars (and also the USA two places below it), and 139 out of 174 on “world order”.
But the ranking also looks at contributions to science, culture and health where Israel does well. That’s not saying they are morally good because if those contributions, but the contributions also do not stop existing because Israel is doing terrible things.
The initiator wanted to introduce a new kind of look at countries, to not only look and value and rank them by gdp or happiness index but by their contributions to outside their own country. They call this good, as in doing good things rather than selfish things.
‘Better’ is a ranking of ‘goodness’ as well.
That side, do you see no good in hierarchy at all?
This is very flawed. Israel, USA, and UAE deserve to be at the bottom of the list because they facilitate genocide, and USA is responsible for hundreds of millions of murders globally.
NGL the Caribbean sounds lovely! I enjoyed daydreaming whilst reading this article especially on a dark and gloomy day like today.
Thank you, alyaza…for a moment you transported me to my paradise. ^_−☆
EDIT: Sent this article to friends, now back to reality:
Stateless people, like the Rohingya of Myanmar or ethnic Russians of Latvia, know the dire consequences that can result when a government disavows them as outsiders. Even if they once had claims to belonging, their citizenship no longer counts if the state doesn’t stand behind it.
This seems insanely biased? Placing e.g. Israel who’s acrively committing war crimes and colonising Palestine above a country that’s just vibing like Timor-Leste?
This reads like a ranking of western-ness, not ‘good’-ness.
Would be interesting to see what multinational experts (for lack of a better term) think about the list. Hungary at #20 was a surprise to me, even moreso due it being #1 in science & technology(!)
male teachers when i was hs were washed out from thier field of study, teaching was thier last chance at a job least alot of them are. you can tell by the way they teach, not very good because they rather be somewhere else.
I had more male teachers then most and it may be a small sample of 30 vs 20, but still I have the impression that women are just better at teaching in general..
Having a penis doesn’t make you a better or worst teacher, but it would be nice if boys had more men teaching them so that they can feel they belong in school and that learning is a thing for them as much as it is for girls. I feel like if the same observations were made about women, it would be received very negatively and seen as being sexist. Having men teaching shouldn’t be seen as them being better at their job than women just like such isn’t the point of trying to have more women in some work environment.
a widespread belief that boys thrive more when taught by men
I have a feeling this “widespread belief” is actually primarily held by the same WASPs who project those stereotypes of gendered behavior onto boys in the first place.
I also find it not at all ironic that “give men more money than women to do the same job” is the solution that people who buy into that belief apparently advocate.
We should aim for more teachers not because of academic success but to promote more social interaction for children with men in teaching positions. All students benefit in ways you cannot test for when teachers are diverse.
That’s a funny bit of progressive cognitive dissonance. Obviously representation is important, and it’s critical that kids see people like themselves in all roles, not just the stereotypical ones… but also, why wouldn’t women be able to figure out how to effectively teach boys in school, they’re just as capable as men are, it shouldn’t matter!
Story time: I was at the gym and my son and I (then 6) had just finished showering after swimming. We’re finishing getting dressed and this older dude, not a handsome fella, was walking all around the he locker room with his hog out. He easily qualified as a gross old dude, apparently, to the guy behind us who said of my son, “he doesn’t need to see that”.
I thought the comment odd, thought the nude dude did look a little gnarly, the locker room is the place for that.
That said, my son and I choose to wear towels between the showers and the lockers, but that’s for us.
As I side note, I asked my kid later about the nude dude and he too though the guy fell squarely into the “gross” category.
I think Australia has inherited the British prude-ness of it being very normal and possible to go your whole life never ever seing another person naked IRL, Europe has co-ed saunas being normal, Japan has sex-segragated bathing (both things are weird to the other culture) and then UK is like, no nude ever~!
The US public made the mistake of thinking they could keep the beast of capitalism tamed. China claims that even though there are capitalists, there is no capitalist class. This doesn’t look good for China’s socialist goals.
American born and raised here. Since I started swimming at the local gym I now get naked in the locker room pretty regularly. It still has novelty in that I always think about if I should put on a towel to wak to/from my locker to the shower, how my body looks (which is funny because I know virtually no one cares), and whether anyone is silently judging me for being naked too much. And if there is a kid I get even more in my head. But I am happy to be doing it because I want to have a more neutral connection to my and others’ bodies.
When I was a kid, I’d go to Zuerich every other year to visit family. My cousins would be frolicking in the nude with their friends around the pool, and it was, frankly unnerving. We’re so used to nudity being “bad” that standard practices throughout history are now anachronisms.
Hard disagree. Go to the beach or a public pool and you’ll see a wide variety of body types. There’s not much covered by a swim suit that you were staring at in a locker room. The loss of locker-room nudity changes little or nothing of how much nudity the average person sees.
The issues they mention are real–people comparing themselves to people in porn and social media–but casual nudity in a locker room has little impact on that. These issues have existed for as long as people have lived in organized society.
And even if there were some small positive that we’re losing, the positives so massively outweigh them that the article’s take seems laughable.
Saying the issue here is AI seems like nonsense to me. The issue is that not many tools localize to Icelandic. LLMs are just some of those tools.
Anyway, languages rise and fall. Hell, Hawaiian was practically extinct at one point and nearly entirely undocumented. Hebrew was extinct for over 1000 years before being revived.
To me anyway, what’s most important is documentation. As long as the shift is organic, the rise and fall of languages doesn’t bother me at all. Let’s just make sure that the languages are very well documented so that the languages are never forgotten. They are one of the most important aspects of cultures, after all.
That’s really cool and all, but even if I give myself permission I don’t have the savings from a 6-figure salary to survive while doing something like this.
Always nice to see a John Plant vid! (I didn’t realise he was still doing these)
Another wonderful series is Dick Proenneke’s Alone in the Wilderness films. There were four total, I believe, split up in to smaller portions across YT and elsewhere:
Geographic citizenship would be really appreciated from many many unsatisfied people living in boredom-driven countries where history is not used as a learning lesson, but as a loop to unavoidably repeat every some decades
The Billionaire Oligarchs are coming for any small shred of enjoyment you can find in this miserable world.
Slightly unrelated - if you have a pet, and especially if you have a young pet, get them on an insurance plan NOW!! As I get older, I am realizing that the reason why most people don’t have pet insurance is because if their dog gets cancer, they would rather just put the dog down. If you are not heartless like this, you should get a pet insurance policy, because you WILL be forced to choose between your pet’s life or $5000+ at some point. I can’t speak for all pet insurance policies, but I know Trupanion is very reasonable if you purchase while the pet is young. I purchased a policy for my cat who is 7, and I had to go with a pretty high deductible to get a reasonable monthly premium. To me, still worth it for the peace of mind that I can care for my boy if he ever needs expensive treatments. But if you want low premium, low deductible, AND that peace of mind, buy sooner rather than later!
“Lists of lies liberal white women tell about Donald Trump,” he replied.
Suddenly, his leg was shaking. He grabbed the edges of the table and raised his voice: “White, liberal women are a plague on our society.”
Guy 2:
I asked him whether his future wife has to be white. He paused, then replied, “I believe, on principle, that white people have a right to maintain a positive identity, and our collective well-being must be maintained with healthy families. White guilt is poisoning kids.”
Guy 3:
“If we lived in a different time, we would be hanging white liberal whores in the town square and dragging them through the streets for the lies they spread,” he roared. My immediate reaction was an attempt to de-escalate the situation.
“Let’s take a deep breath,” I suggested. I took one, then he took one, and we repeated it. He reset. Later, though, when I had my hand on the table, he grabbed my wrist and started ranting again about how liberal white women create witch hunts.
“They say horrible things about me and make everyone hate me and think I’m a bad person,” he said. He was staring at a point in the distance, speaking like he was in some kind of trance.
“What did they say about you?” I asked.
He snapped out of it. “Oh, not me,” he answered. “I meant Donald Trump.”
I mean, my generation got fucked, and I was born under Carter. The main difference is younger folks were raised jaded, so there was little to adjust to. I’d hang out with friends who had three siblings in a house they owned with two cars on a single income complete with full pension at 55.
That’s what was promised to us. The young-uns never saw what things used to be like. It’s one thing to hear stories, but the mid-’80s may as well be the moon landing, JFK, usw.
This is no longer the profession I have served with joy for 35 years. We are being pushed to retreat from the hard-won knowledge and progress of generations. Yet, like the medieval monks and nuns who buried precious manuscripts to hide them from the kings who burned their abbeys, we will preserve this knowledge and progress for another time in the future. In the meantime, we know the truth, and that keeps us free.
That second sentence is just unreal, and yet this is the culmination of a ~75yr project to tear down democracy in the States.
In some ways, we only have ourselves to blame for this, yet now it’s time to do the best we can with what we have left…
Dads are super important for different reasons than moms and it’s rarely studied! https://www.amazon.com/Do-Fathers-Matter-Science-Overlooked/dp/B01L9DXHTW
This book was a good eye-opening read. More should be done to combat stereotypes and promote the idea that dads are competent parents who are integral to emotional and mental etc development of their children.
I’d love it if something like this existed around me, but I’d settle for never being asked “oh did mom get a day off” ever again (for context, I’m a stay-at-home dad and primary caregiver). I get why the stereotype exists but it’s less than helpful to shame the dads who are out doing things with their kids.
There are several groups around that are specifically for moms, dads excluded, and I just wish there were more avenues for me to help my daughter socialize in age appropriate groups
I mean, you’re not wrong but they don’t need to. They have their goons to get people fired. Already have a coworker getting death threats.
I’m a sole provider and am already contributing to positive change in other ways. Besides, I don’t see me shitpoating my way to progressive government. Lol.
Fascism succeeds by scaring people into compliance before they have to make any explicit threats. Maybe I’ll join you when people are actually being locked up for what they post online, but for the moment, i’m going to continue loudly complaining about this administration online because any defiance is a win in these times.
this was a very interesting read. it’s very wild, the moment we’re living in. Not so long ago it felt like being lefty at work just meant “yeah i believe in radical things like free healthcare” and people would laugh it off without actually having much to say about the substance of your thoughts. It was a personality quirk to them. These days it’s like you can lose your job just for saying that you think genocide is bad, or that you think we should do something practical about gun violence.
Keyboard Vagabond
One of the biggest offenders in the Christian MAGA movement is the infamous John Hagee and family of the Cornerstone Church empire. They are a wealthy, highly political, ultra Zionist church that masquerades as non denominational. There is no separation of politics and faith in this church. While they’re not outright MAGA, they certainly tend to do business like they are.
“Despite the Bible’s clear call for slaves to obey their masters, the abolitionist movement has used its version of the Christian faith to advocate for just the opposite.”
Couldn’t we just buy stuff from stores and then return them after using them once?
We should and could, but I feel like we’d have to fight the system pretty hard and have some huge numbers.
Not that I’m saying that it isn’t worth pursuing, it definitely is. It’s just to say that there will definitely be some obstacles.
It seems like a worthy fight.
Can we get together and realign our goals?
this feels like a good example of how rentier capitalism is totally cooking everyone’s brains. what are we doing here
thats exactly it. You have to be in the black. There is no point if you can’t meet your monthly nut.
My pay has been lagging inflation since 2003. Employers want experience on the cheap.
I did fine in 2001 on $11/hour. Rent was $345 and gas was 86 cents/gallon. At my last W-2 job, I was making $21/hour, rent was $1,500 and gas was $3.19. When you only double one figure, but the rest inflate wildly, well … yeah, I’d rather be homeless than work for your soul-sucking company.
I get the address of every company I apply for. It is quite a scavenger hunt at times.
Literally had a recruiter call about a job and they are like. Well its really a junior role. I was then like so its a junior role that requires and I start going through all the requirements that are for as advanced as a person could be for the all the various software experience they want. She is like well given the market and since I can talk more frank with recruiters its like. So they want a highly expertised senior level of experience but they want to pay junior level and she is like yeah.
I find this hard to believe given the devices most Millennials tend to wax nostalgic about, vis a vis the clear cases. I don’t think Apple was designing their 1st gen iMacs or Macintosh SE’s for prison (that article says these were made clear in order to do airflow studies).
Likewise, I know Nintendo wasn’t making gameboys clear for that reason. 1990s Japanese teenagers would have had 0 exposure to US prison devices in order to gain the perception of them as being cool, to in turn drive that demand within Nintendo.
Translucent plastic has been around since long before mass consumer electronics. Parkesine was around in the 1850s, and there were translucent products made with it.
I think this is a case of different groups using the same thing for different reasons, independently of each other.
Nah, clear plastic electronics were just cool on their own. Same with beige.
Today’s electronics are all boring colors. You find mostly black and white, and rarely some kind of brand-specific colors like the Switch’s red and blue or Apple’s, uh, very slightly off-white iPhone Air colors (they say those colors are gold and blue). For anything else, you pretty much need to buy a skin, which is cool of course, but you can’t use a skin to get clear plastic.
The main reason we don’t get fun colors anymore is because it’s cheaper to manufacture the more popular options in larger quantities. Fun variants means lower order quantities, which means more expensive manufacturing. This is also why some PC cases are more expensive in white than in black.
You know what’s funny about the clear plastic electronics? They were the result of a unique and new market demand, that of mass incarceration. The point of them was to be easily inspected by guards. To make sure nothing was getting hidden inside them.
Them ending up in normal distribution and getting picked up by teens who thought they were cool was simply a fluke. Kind of emblematic of the era in a way, to have the effects of something so criminal seep out in to the wider world, stripped of it’s context, and resold as trend to teens.
Fascinating!
Sure, but the presence of a Batman also increases the risk of clown-related incidents. Are those seats worth it, pregnant ladies?
Great read! So much that grounds us in reality is found in unplugging from the digital world and getting comfortable in a task that brings us back to the here and now.
Why are you eating socks?
Unless im freaking exhausted or having a great dream I dislike sleeping. I grew up everyone in house was up at 7 am on a weekend. Plus the back pain ugh. I want to be productive or play games. And napping? Omfg that hurts. Just pain and dehydration. And screws up my sleep schedule! So I avoid as much as possible.
My SO will sleep 12 hrs a day if leave quietly for day. Parents had same habit and will get up at noon or later on weekends.
So I wonder if its how you grew up.
I love this source, but this article doesn’t get into some of the issues folks have with sleep. The problematic relationship some of us have with sleep. I do like to sleep, but it doesn’t always work for me. The writer discusses bedtime rituals, which myself (and probably others) need to improve upon, but not problematic sleep (like dreams, at least for me). I want the break from thinking about “things” but have trouble with that. And don’t want to have a weird dream about drinking wine with dog poop in it while visiting with the pope.
I can understand enjoying the state of being well rested or relaxing, but I can’t relate to enjoying sleep. If I can have all the benefits of sleep without needing to sleep, I would take it with no hesitation.
There are induced comas, but they’re terrible for you and only really used a last resort. Also, the quality of sleep is awful, from what I’ve heard.
If I could I’d sleep 24/7. Anyone know a good way to put me in a coma for a month or 30
I don’t want to sleep any more than I have to. I don’t want to work, either.
If you have major health issues that impact your lifespan, you might be more acutely aware of how little time we have in our lives. It might make you reassess how you value time spent.
If your life is likely to be <2/3 the average, those lost hours start to feel like wasting precious time. It’s also just limiting in what you can feasibly do.
Imagine being able to head out on a Friday after work and drive 14 hours without needing to sleep; you could be 4 states over by morning, spend Saturday exploring a national park or visiting family, head back at 6pm, and be back home by 8am to spend all Sunday relaxing with your at-home hobbies. Then 8 hours on Sunday night spent reading instead of being unconscious. If only.
I’ve read the first half at home and the second half at the techno party I’m currently at which is now only getting warmed up at 00:20. Seriously considering going home to sleep haha, the artist I came for only starts at 2 AM 🥲. Well-written article.
Wish I could listen to Insomnia - Faithless now.
I’ve been off sick for a few weeks now, and I’ve really enjoyed being able to sleep in. I didn’t realise how tired I was getting just from getting up early each day to go to work.
I love the space in between being asleep and awake in the morning, I feel so relaxed and refreshed, especially when waking up without an alarm.
Wasn’t feeling well today, spent the whole day napping with my cat curled up beside me an eating my coziest socks. Might nap some more.
As context:
Super cool, thanks!
Years ago I watched this video that demos old iron smelting technology in Burkina Faso, and these people get farther. They have better natural iron deposits (also lots of people working together helps).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuCnZClWwpQ
How great would that be? If you know anyone who’s done that whole technology tree from the ground up, let me know.
He did end up making a small blade at some point, but it seems like the process of getting iron ore from bacteria is excruciatingly slow. If he was in my area he’d be walking around in full plate armor by now.
Weirdly I came across this video randomly last night.
I was far more into the structure than the result, though. You could do a lot with a temporary fire tube..
I love these videos. I wish he would fully enter the iron age at some point, it’d be satisfying to watch those dots get connected in realtime. I still sometimes joke that I’m waiting for him to build an iPhone.
As usual, remember to enable video captions.
Thank you for sharing this! I had a novel idea about a typewriter repairer, this was an interesting read!
Correct, I’m an anarchist. Hierarchy is one of the most harmful things that currently exists. I wish to live in a world without it. I genuinely cannot think of a single instance of where my life has been, or could be, improved by hierarchy, only worsened.
Timor-Leste ranks significantly above Isreal in “international peace and security” where Israel ranks 149 out of 174 mostly above places which are in active wars (and also the USA two places below it), and 139 out of 174 on “world order”.
But the ranking also looks at contributions to science, culture and health where Israel does well. That’s not saying they are morally good because if those contributions, but the contributions also do not stop existing because Israel is doing terrible things.
The initiator wanted to introduce a new kind of look at countries, to not only look and value and rank them by gdp or happiness index but by their contributions to outside their own country. They call this good, as in doing good things rather than selfish things.
‘Better’ is a ranking of ‘goodness’ as well.
That side, do you see no good in hierarchy at all?
This is very flawed. Israel, USA, and UAE deserve to be at the bottom of the list because they facilitate genocide, and USA is responsible for hundreds of millions of murders globally.
Fair.
NGL the Caribbean sounds lovely! I enjoyed daydreaming whilst reading this article especially on a dark and gloomy day like today.
Thank you, alyaza…for a moment you transported me to my paradise. ^_−☆
EDIT: Sent this article to friends, now back to reality:
“…if you can afford to pay”
That assumes absolute good and bad. Good can also have a relative meaning, when used for comparison.
This seems insanely biased? Placing e.g. Israel who’s acrively committing war crimes and colonising Palestine above a country that’s just vibing like Timor-Leste?
This reads like a ranking of western-ness, not ‘good’-ness.
There are no good countries, there may be ‘better’ ones, but a country existing is inherently exclusionary and creates hierarchy.
Would be interesting to see what multinational experts (for lack of a better term) think about the list. Hungary at #20 was a surprise to me, even moreso due it being #1 in science & technology(!)
male teachers when i was hs were washed out from thier field of study, teaching was thier last chance at a job least alot of them are. you can tell by the way they teach, not very good because they rather be somewhere else.
I had more male teachers then most and it may be a small sample of 30 vs 20, but still I have the impression that women are just better at teaching in general..
Having a penis doesn’t make you a better or worst teacher, but it would be nice if boys had more men teaching them so that they can feel they belong in school and that learning is a thing for them as much as it is for girls. I feel like if the same observations were made about women, it would be received very negatively and seen as being sexist. Having men teaching shouldn’t be seen as them being better at their job than women just like such isn’t the point of trying to have more women in some work environment.
I have a feeling this “widespread belief” is actually primarily held by the same WASPs who project those stereotypes of gendered behavior onto boys in the first place.
I also find it not at all ironic that “give men more money than women to do the same job” is the solution that people who buy into that belief apparently advocate.
I feel like such a blooming eedjet at times like these. What a boss she is.
Thanks to our mums, sisters, aunties, grandmums and so forth for continuing on us naked race of apes, i.e. “sapiens.”
We should aim for more teachers not because of academic success but to promote more social interaction for children with men in teaching positions. All students benefit in ways you cannot test for when teachers are diverse.
That’s a funny bit of progressive cognitive dissonance. Obviously representation is important, and it’s critical that kids see people like themselves in all roles, not just the stereotypical ones… but also, why wouldn’t women be able to figure out how to effectively teach boys in school, they’re just as capable as men are, it shouldn’t matter!
I am afraid of self-help books though.
I suppose there is indeed something of a “humanities” angle when one considers the situation.
(or are you just playfully imitating the way I’m running my sub? XD)
Story time: I was at the gym and my son and I (then 6) had just finished showering after swimming. We’re finishing getting dressed and this older dude, not a handsome fella, was walking all around the he locker room with his hog out. He easily qualified as a gross old dude, apparently, to the guy behind us who said of my son, “he doesn’t need to see that”.
I thought the comment odd, thought the nude dude did look a little gnarly, the locker room is the place for that.
That said, my son and I choose to wear towels between the showers and the lockers, but that’s for us.
As I side note, I asked my kid later about the nude dude and he too though the guy fell squarely into the “gross” category.
I think Australia has inherited the British prude-ness of it being very normal and possible to go your whole life never ever seing another person naked IRL, Europe has co-ed saunas being normal, Japan has sex-segragated bathing (both things are weird to the other culture) and then UK is like, no nude ever~!
The US public made the mistake of thinking they could keep the beast of capitalism tamed. China claims that even though there are capitalists, there is no capitalist class. This doesn’t look good for China’s socialist goals.
Genuine question: what are the positives, in your view?
American born and raised here. Since I started swimming at the local gym I now get naked in the locker room pretty regularly. It still has novelty in that I always think about if I should put on a towel to wak to/from my locker to the shower, how my body looks (which is funny because I know virtually no one cares), and whether anyone is silently judging me for being naked too much. And if there is a kid I get even more in my head. But I am happy to be doing it because I want to have a more neutral connection to my and others’ bodies.
Americans are fucked up about nudity. It’s no thing. Relax.
Thank god for that, it was horrifying as is to be a middle school locker room.
This article completely ignores that bully/harassment aspect of it.
Students at College Station shower at the gym with underwear on. Because they will send gays out of control.
USA is so fucked up about the body, but completely numb to violence.
When I was a kid, I’d go to Zuerich every other year to visit family. My cousins would be frolicking in the nude with their friends around the pool, and it was, frankly unnerving. We’re so used to nudity being “bad” that standard practices throughout history are now anachronisms.
Hard disagree. Go to the beach or a public pool and you’ll see a wide variety of body types. There’s not much covered by a swim suit that you were staring at in a locker room. The loss of locker-room nudity changes little or nothing of how much nudity the average person sees.
The issues they mention are real–people comparing themselves to people in porn and social media–but casual nudity in a locker room has little impact on that. These issues have existed for as long as people have lived in organized society.
And even if there were some small positive that we’re losing, the positives so massively outweigh them that the article’s take seems laughable.
Saying the issue here is AI seems like nonsense to me. The issue is that not many tools localize to Icelandic. LLMs are just some of those tools.
Anyway, languages rise and fall. Hell, Hawaiian was practically extinct at one point and nearly entirely undocumented. Hebrew was extinct for over 1000 years before being revived.
To me anyway, what’s most important is documentation. As long as the shift is organic, the rise and fall of languages doesn’t bother me at all. Let’s just make sure that the languages are very well documented so that the languages are never forgotten. They are one of the most important aspects of cultures, after all.
Haha, right? I feel like most people would take the option if we had the means to end our wage slavery.
I will say though, these are the things I’ve been day dreaming about for the past few years. How to escape the grind
I’m sure my partner and pets will appreciate me bouncing for 6 months. :P
I’m very much drawn to a semi-nomadic lifestyle, but the financial cost to rework my life into one isn’t in my means.
That’s really cool and all, but even if I give myself permission I don’t have the savings from a 6-figure salary to survive while doing something like this.
Always nice to see a John Plant vid! (I didn’t realise he was still doing these)
Another wonderful series is Dick Proenneke’s Alone in the Wilderness films. There were four total, I believe, split up in to smaller portions across YT and elsewhere:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=alone+in+the+wilderness
Geographic citizenship would be really appreciated from many many unsatisfied people living in boredom-driven countries where history is not used as a learning lesson, but as a loop to unavoidably repeat every some decades
https://chat.qwen.ai/s/c65b264b-1eff-4858-adff-a43dd838b729?fev=0.0.237
“Can we go out for margaritas after this? Because you are rough and salty.”
“Are you insufferable unlettered ignoramuses paying attention?!”
“Tell me more, masther.”
…Actually, I’d pay for it.
The Billionaire Oligarchs are coming for any small shred of enjoyment you can find in this miserable world.
Slightly unrelated - if you have a pet, and especially if you have a young pet, get them on an insurance plan NOW!! As I get older, I am realizing that the reason why most people don’t have pet insurance is because if their dog gets cancer, they would rather just put the dog down. If you are not heartless like this, you should get a pet insurance policy, because you WILL be forced to choose between your pet’s life or $5000+ at some point. I can’t speak for all pet insurance policies, but I know Trupanion is very reasonable if you purchase while the pet is young. I purchased a policy for my cat who is 7, and I had to go with a pretty high deductible to get a reasonable monthly premium. To me, still worth it for the peace of mind that I can care for my boy if he ever needs expensive treatments. But if you want low premium, low deductible, AND that peace of mind, buy sooner rather than later!
Same problem in Canada, a lot of vet are being bought by Mars, and price increase…
Everyone expects progressive people to reach out and understand conservatives. It’s weird, why would any woman want to date people who hate women?
Not sure whether it matters, but Guy 3 and Guy 1 are the same Guy, who also sent death threats to the author years ago. Dude needs some serious help.
Most of them are hateful people, but guy #3 really needs a mental health intervention…
I think the scariest part is how normal they seemed until these weird breakdowns. They seem to be barely clingling to sanity
Yo, these dudes are fucking crazy.
Guy 1:
Guy 2:
Guy 3:
YO WTFFFFFFFFF BRO
“Could i ever be physically enticed by someone who wants me to be a domestic slave?”
Why? Why would you want to even try?
tldr, they were all scumbags
Interesting article. I don’t know how you ever get them back to a normal place, once they paint themselves into these corners.
…that is some dedication. Just thinking about it is making me want to vomit.
False. The important thing is saving money by overloading public workers like teachers, so we can lower taxes for billionaires. /s
Pension at 55? Hahahahahahahahahahahha
I mean, my generation got fucked, and I was born under Carter. The main difference is younger folks were raised jaded, so there was little to adjust to. I’d hang out with friends who had three siblings in a house they owned with two cars on a single income complete with full pension at 55.
That’s what was promised to us. The young-uns never saw what things used to be like. It’s one thing to hear stories, but the mid-’80s may as well be the moon landing, JFK, usw.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
Which is the two things that are actually important
I feel so sorry for the newer generations.
That second sentence is just unreal, and yet this is the culmination of a ~75yr project to tear down democracy in the States.
In some ways, we only have ourselves to blame for this, yet now it’s time to do the best we can with what we have left…
Dads are super important for different reasons than moms and it’s rarely studied! https://www.amazon.com/Do-Fathers-Matter-Science-Overlooked/dp/B01L9DXHTW
This book was a good eye-opening read. More should be done to combat stereotypes and promote the idea that dads are competent parents who are integral to emotional and mental etc development of their children.
I’d love it if something like this existed around me, but I’d settle for never being asked “oh did mom get a day off” ever again (for context, I’m a stay-at-home dad and primary caregiver). I get why the stereotype exists but it’s less than helpful to shame the dads who are out doing things with their kids.
There are several groups around that are specifically for moms, dads excluded, and I just wish there were more avenues for me to help my daughter socialize in age appropriate groups
I mean, you’re not wrong but they don’t need to. They have their goons to get people fired. Already have a coworker getting death threats.
I’m a sole provider and am already contributing to positive change in other ways. Besides, I don’t see me shitpoating my way to progressive government. Lol.
Fascism succeeds by scaring people into compliance before they have to make any explicit threats. Maybe I’ll join you when people are actually being locked up for what they post online, but for the moment, i’m going to continue loudly complaining about this administration online because any defiance is a win in these times.
It was a good read. And sad.
You’re right too, about freedom of speech. I’ve disabled my bluesky and LinkedIn accounts, deleting all content in the BS account.
I don’t trust anymore. Maybe I need to live somewhere else.
this was a very interesting read. it’s very wild, the moment we’re living in. Not so long ago it felt like being lefty at work just meant “yeah i believe in radical things like free healthcare” and people would laugh it off without actually having much to say about the substance of your thoughts. It was a personality quirk to them. These days it’s like you can lose your job just for saying that you think genocide is bad, or that you think we should do something practical about gun violence.
Interesting article, but waaay too many uncensored faces and locations in this article. Feels like journalistic malpractice to me.
Pretty sure it was written by a woman. Still no idea who.
That sounds downright out of Machiavelli.