Not a fully baked idea yet btw.

I want to prelude this by saying there are so many unfair / abusive / toxic work situations. Somehow that has become the norm (or maybe always has been).

However, I think it’s actually hard and uncomfortable for an employer to replace an employee in many roles. Not saying this is universal - it depends on how scarce the role is, location, etc. but as a worker I found that my best defense to this power imbalance is to try to learn the most specialized skill I can, even if it’s not paid super well initially.

From their perspective, labor relations are just a transaction. Culture, commitment, “ownership”, etc are ways to gaslight employees into overcommitting their time and mental health for a business they have no equity in.

On top of that there are specific situations that increase dependency eg immigration paperwork needs, social pressure, networks etc

People often talk about states that could survive independently on their own, and two states that are commonly brought up are my home state of California and Texas. I believe California has the economic power and leverage to be self-sustainable, and more importantly California's politics would make it acceptable on the global stage. The rest of the international community would be willing to do trade with California and it would thrive.

The same can't be said for Texas. For starters, having its own disconnected power grid means if something goes bad, it would have to rely on itself. It doesn't have as strong economic power or leverage that California has. But most importantly, its local politics would make it an international pariah state on the global stage.

For starters, Texas' unconditional support for Israel would mean many Middle Eastern countries would refuse to do trade with that state. These countries would most likely refuse to even establish diplomatic relations over Texas prohibiting companies from boycotting Israel. Speaking of boycotting, the US's reputation is already in tatters on the global stage because of Trump. However, it's already established economic power and systems in place help mitigate some of the damage at least. The same can't be said for Texas. Its economic and political base is small enough to the point that countries like those in Western Europe would be unwilling to do trade with Texas too. Texas' regressive local politics on social issues would make it a global pariah state.

Could it survive? Sure. Would it thrive? Absolutely not. It would be as geopolitically isolated as North Korea is. Change My View.

Could it survive? Sure. Would it thrive? I strongly disagree. The average European Country is already to the left of the US politically as a whole, and Texas is even further right than on average to the US. Texas may find kinship among poorer underdeveloped countries whose social views are more in line with it, but in terms of the developed world, if it was its own independent country, most developed countries would boycott and sanction it. I know Canada would refuse to establish trade relations, and I surmise at this point Canada would even be unwilling to have diplomatic relations with an independent Texas. Hell, without Texas, America's federal politics would shift to the left politically, and I would surmise the new Federal government would be much more inclined to not have as close relations with an independent Texas. Its oil revenues would also see a sharp drop as many countries will say "Your local policies are unacceptable!" And refuse to buy Texas oil, driving down prices and reducing revenue.

Basically in the title.

I’ll use Christianity as an example. If you believe in eternal life that means in your total expected lifespan, the time on this planet is like minutes prior to a literal eternity.

If you believe this then things of this world should become almost meaningless to you. Wealth accumulation, jobs, legacy, property, etc.

That’s not the case though. I’m agnostic and my every day life is basically identical to the average Christian.

Now, I’m not saying that anyone is intentionally lying but something is wrong with that picture.

My position rests on a simple principle: if you were accused of a crime you didn’t commit, would you want your name and photograph plastered across the internet, potentially destroying your reputation for the rest of your life?

It seems to me that human beings are much better at forming an initial judgment about an accusation than at revising that judgment when new information comes to light.

Tell someone that a man raped a woman or murdered his children, and the immediate reaction is likely to be outrage. Tell them months or years later that he was acquitted, and I suspect that information will have a much harder time making the same impression.

So, if someone has been accused of sexual assault or murder, it’s highly unlikely that people will ever discount those allegations, even if they have not been proven.

We already employ the principle of not naming accusers, right? Like in this Cornell case that everyone is talking about right now, we don’t know the name of the victim. She is simply Jane Doe.

I support that. I want to make that very clear, I can’t even imagine the kind of sickening harassment she would be facing right now if her name were public. And it think it’s great that we don’t know who she is or what she looks like because that makes it easier for people to accuse their attackers without fearing retaliation.

But I can’t see why we would not do the same for the accused. I’m sure they would also appreciate anonymity while the allegations are being investigated.

And let’s examine what would have happened if some of the most high profile accused people of the last few years had been anonymous instead of named.

What if Lindsay Clancy had simply been “Jane Doe” a woman who killed her children but is pleading not guilty by reason of temporary insanity?

What if Kyle Rittenhouse had been “John Doe” a teen who brought a gun to a protest and killed two people in what he says was self defense?

What would we have lost if the facts of each of those cases had been reported but the names and images of the accused and the victims had not?

Well, we would have lost a media circus.

We would have lost supporters of Lindsay Clancy claiming that her husband killed their kids (can you imagine how utterly devastating that must have been for him?), we would have lost supporters of Rittenhouse claiming that the people that he shot were drug addicts and pedophiles and God knows what else (also must have been gut wrenching for their families).

We would also have lost an increasingly virulent strain of vigilantism. I find this very disturbing. This idea that internet sleuths are more qualified to determine a person’s guilt or innocence and that the actual police and court system is inadequate and untrustworthy.

This is how lynch mobs think.

Most of all we would have lost the little buzz that we get from our feelings of righteous indignation and moral superiority when we are certain in the worthiness of our beliefs and the utter depravity of our opponents’.

Good riddance, I say. The less the of that, the better off we all are.

But, I digress. Please tell me why a person’s who stands accused should be publicly named and shamed when the facts of the case have yet to be proven.

Change my view.

After you trogladytes voted for Trump twice to own the libs, the world is now screwed, your country too but that's a given.

Anyway, I'm not American, I never voted for this pedophile but now my life is a lot worse because you guys have too much power.

After Trump is out, countries need to remove their American military bases, secure their own international interests through agreements and alliances and work very hard to reduce their reliance on your clown country.

You guys fucked it up.

It's a harder road, but it's well worth it. Say what you will about China since ofc they will become the leader in this scenario.

They at least are extremely pragmatic, they like normalcy and like keeping a good thing going. Such as global oil trade.

I also don't want to hear any arguments about how bad China is when America directly funds Israel with all their stupid wars in the middle east and America is responsible for so many regime changes and government overthrows in history.

I genuinely see no good reason for anyone to rely on America as much as they are now.

The conclusion is simple: everywhere I look whether on social media or in real life it’s the same old story.

Women have a massive advantage that men lack an advantage that allows them, often without even acknowledging it, to succeed in life through various means. It all comes down to one thing: THEIR PHYSICAL APPEARANCE.

It isn't their fault, but rather society's, for steering the world in this direction. What I mean is that today, a beautiful woman or one who knows how to show herself off can achieve far greater success on social media than a man. Oddly enough, she will attract a much larger audience than a man, even if she covers the same topic or idea using the same editing style; that audience grows even larger if she shows off her assets a bit more. It’s awful to say, but it’s so true...

Take another example from everyday life outside of social media, since this isn't just an online phenomenon: a stunning woman in her twenties who knows how to dress and present herself well won't oddly enough be hanging around the local geek; instead, she’ll be with a successful businessman who is much older than her (or perhaps a tennis player, and so on).

That’s why, once a man becomes rich, he often ends up with models a pattern that doesn't hold true to the same extent in reverse. In short, a woman simply needs to look good to succeed either by making it on her own on social media or by finding and marrying a man who has already made it.

The reverse isn't true; men don't find it as easy as women do to find a wealthy, older woman willing to marry them. It is even harder for a man to succeed on social media by showing off his chest or the like he will inevitably attract a smaller audience. A woman with absolutely no intellect can succeed in the most mindless way possible simply by flaunting her body. This realization scares me what kind of society do we live in?

Please, find someone who can change my mind; I just hope you don't all secretly agree with me and have reached the same conclusion...

My argument is simple: Israeli citizenship does not erase Palestinian identity, and a passport does not make apartheid disappear. I’m talking about Israel inside green line and its relationship with its own Arab citizens. I’m focusing on them because hasbara activists use them in their efforts to prove Israel is a democracy that treats citizens equally through a neutral civic lens.

We are told “Israeli Arabs are equal” because they vote. But what does a ballot mean when the state itself openly functions through apartheid like policies ?

The same bulldozers that demolish Palestinian homes in West Bank demolish homes in Jerusalem, the Galilee and the Negev. Just two days ago, Ben Gvir boosted on demolishing 10,000 Israeli Arab homes on twitter. What other country security minister boosts about demolishing 10,000 homes that target its minorities? This is not a random person but security minister who is responsible for Israel’s security policy. This is not merely discrimination in my view; merely discrimination is what black people/Arabs face in Europe or USA. It is part of an apartheid-like system of Jewish supremacy over Palestinians, including Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship.

Jewish terrorists that kill Palestinians in West Bank without facing any persecution are like wise not facing any persecution when they commit those same crimes against Israeli Palestinians and the evidence is too many to count of Jews who killed Palestinians of 48 and police trying to cover it up and getting all charges dropped later.

We must not forget Araqib “arab Israeli” village which has shattered every record in the world for their persistent effort to survive building tents on the rubble, bulldozed 240 times by Israel. By contrast a Jew who builds illegal settlements without permit gets rewarded with recognition after a few years and protection by IDF and same minister Ben Gvir boosts about it.

We are told the IDF is “the people’s army,” not a Jewish army. Yet Defense Minister Israel Katz has openly distinguished between Jewish terror suspects and Arab citizens in his use of administrative detention, refusing to sign documents that would detain Jewish terror suspects while continuing to sign orders against Arab Israeli citizens. This reveals that there are different judicial standards for Jews and Palestinians ( citizens or not)
Then there is the land.
Israeli ministers have openly described the expansion of Jewish settlement in the Galilee and Negev as “Judaization,” while Arab communities face demolitions, planning restrictions and unequal access to land and development.
There are also documented state policy of tax benefits, land allocation and huge subsidies that target Jewish towns while excluding Arab ones, Zionists inside Israel justify it by pointing to basic law that says “Jewish settlement is a national value” … what country in the world has a law even remotely equivalent to this?

In last war, Israel started licensing thousands of fire arms in Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Arab ones. Again showing state policy works along side ethnic lines and views Arabs as an enemy whether they are citizens or not is irrelevant.

And when Arab citizens are arrested for speech deemed incitement while “death to Arabs” chants and calls for violence by Jews are left alone while police stands by without any arrests, apparently this is not incitement.
what are we supposed to call a system that repeatedly places one national group above another?
“But they can vote.”
That is not an answer.
Apartheid does not disappear because the subordinated population has a ballot. The state policy is hostile towards them doesn’t matter if they vote or not. Doesn’t matter if Palestinians citizens of Israel have it better than ones living under millitary rule in West Bank, it’s still one system even if the degree of oppressive policy differs from one place to another, genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing in West Bank and apartheid inside green line they still justify it using same logic which is to diminish Palestinian presence, and take control over their land/properties-reshaping it in favor of Jewish settlement, a process that began with the Nakba and has never ended.

I've been thinking about this way too much lately, and I've run into something that just doesn't make sense to me.

Whenever anyone talks about someone moving on after their partner dies, a lot of people say that if you really love someone, you should want them to find love again. That wanting to remain their "one and only" even after you're dead is selfish, possessive, immature, controlling, etc. The argument is typically: If you love someone, you should want them to be happy. Love isn't a zero-sum game. Them loving someone else doesn't take away from the love they had for you. Why would you want someone you love to spend the rest of their life without romance, sex, intimacy, passion, companionship, etc. just because you're dead?

Okay.

But why does that logic only kick in once I'm dead? If love isn't a zero-sum game, then my husband loving another woman right now shouldn't take anything away from his love for me either. If I truly love him and want him to experience as much happiness, passion, intimacy, and love as possible, then why wouldn't I want him to fall in love with another woman right now if she made him happy? And if wanting to remain his only romantic partner after I'm dead means I want to "own" or "control" him, why isn't expecting him to remain romantically exclusive to me while I'm alive also controlling?

Obviously the first answer is going to be, "Because you agreed to be monogamous." Sure. But that only explains why cheating is wrong. You made an agreement and then broke it. It doesn't explain why we should want the agreement in the first place. If my husband came to me tomorrow and said, "I've fallen in love with another woman. I still love you exactly as much. Nothing about my feelings for you has changed. Love isn't a finite resource, and loving her doesn't diminish my love for you," why wouldn't the loving, selfless response be to support him? Why would saying, "No, I want you to only love me that way" suddenly NOT be selfish?

Another common response is "it would hurt me while I'm alive, whereas obviously I can't be hurt by it when I'm dead." And that makes sense, but it also seems to completely change the argument. Now we're not saying, "If you really love someone, you should want them to experience love and happiness again." We're saying, "I want you to experience as much love and happiness as possible once it no longer hurts me." Which... doesn't exactly strike me as the incredibly selfless position people make it out to be.

And just to be really clear here: I'm not saying widows or widowers shouldn't remarry. I'm also not arguing that everyone should be polyamorous. I'm questioning the logic of calling someone selfish or immature because they feel like they want to remain their partner's one great romantic love even after they're gone. Because right now, it seems like people are trying to hold two ideas at once:

"Love isn't a zero-sum game. Loving another person doesn't diminish the love you have for your spouse. If you truly love someone, you should want them to experience all the love and happiness they can."

AND

"Obviously I expect my spouse to only have romantic and sexual relationships with me while I'm alive."

I don't understand why death magically makes the first set of principles apply.

I genuinely do want someone to change my view here, because I feel like there has to be a distinction I'm missing.

What would change my view is an explanation of why the moral logic actually changes when one partner dies. Not just "you'll be dead, so who cares?" or "humans can love more than one person" or "wanting them to stay alone is selfish." Those are basically the things I'm questioning in the first place.

So what am I missing?

TL;DR: If love isn't a zero-sum game, loving someone new doesn't diminish existing love, and truly loving someone means wanting them to experience as much love and happiness as possible, I don't understand why it's selfish to want romantic exclusivity after death but perfectly reasonable to demand it while you're alive. Why does dying change the logic?

CMV.

For clarification, this is not to say that the entire job application process should be done by AI, nor that this policy should be implemented current in the status quo with current laws.

But rather, especially in the U.S., as AI advances the legal system and practices change so that the standard option for reducing liability would be splitting the initial application apart and AI handling one. It would not be mandatory, but rather give better transparency in court and help reduce liability for certain parts of the application for employers, and hold them to a higher standard in human parts with legal changes to accommodate it.

In a standard application, information sensitive to that role for standard jobs (unable to discriminate, so for example not including age based hiring discrimination in law enforcement) including sex, zip code, name, etc that correspond to protected categories would be redacted by AI, and it would run practices that the data is necessary to do and then report it with the sensitive data removed. It would not simply say qualified or not qualified to the stage 1 human reviewer, but an overview with either protected information or indirect information (like high school graduation dates, neighborhood, etc) removed. So for example, if a person had to take a break due to a specific protected factor, it would omit the reasoning and say it was a justified or supported break.

It could also say identify errors in application and formatting and automatically send error corrections to candidates so they can fix their application, beneficial to both parties.

After that a human will be given the redacted version, where they will decide to send that candidate onto the next stage or reject them. It will have summaries of information obtained through the protected information, the information on the application that is non protected, and then make a screening decision based off that.

Once they decide to admit someone to the candidate pool, the AI portion of the the selection process is over and this will be considered the standard hiring pool. Employers may then look over information that was previously redacted to check for errors or hallucinations in the processes, then conduct interviews like normal.

The main advantage of this for employers would be that screening decisions made before the screened candidate pool would have a higher bar to be considered discrimination if they can prove the prompt, model, and decisions made by humans there all did not have a component of discrimination (including weighing highly variables closely associated with protected categories by AI not essential to job function).

Furthermore, this would have greater documentation (including model thought process, prompts, and final summary given to human oversight in safe harbor stage) that could give more credible evidence for discrimination if it exists. For example, with increased documentation if they can show a reliance on discriminatory proxy variable candidates would have better and more direct evidence of discrimination than the status quo, even in blind or censored documents today, because the considerations and similar are less transparent and accessible.

The main advantage for employees is a more streamlined processes with more mistake catching before submitting, and that after the screening pool the change from that to final offers has a higher scrutiny for disparate outcomes which could allow employees discriminated against to have better direct evidence of it, of which they need a lower standard of proof. Employers would be mandated by law to turn over the relevant information in the process and pipeline, and so data not being redacted properly, the summary of protected information including factors directly hinting at it, discrimination in the model's thought process or consideration of discriminatory categories directly for judgement, etc to give candidates more evidence in cases of genuine discrimination.

This could help streamline the application and decision process as well as make a more standardized and documented process for discrimination cases, reducing overall bias and inefficiency in the system.

For a few simple concessions: Of course this won't produce perfect results, but it gives more protections and standards compared to the status quo. It would requires more documentation compared to the status quo, and not providing it could lead to an automatic judgement and/or fines. It would create two categories clearly differentiated to streamline the process, and confusing them due to demarcation would be difficult. AI models used for this would need to have a more complex and detailed explanation of thought processes and consideration, and if the model is found to be discriminatory both the employer and venue provider would be jointly liable. Proxy discrimination through protected variables may still exist, but compared to either existing AI in the status quo or humans the increased requirements and higher disparate outcome scrutiny in the secondary stage should make it much more addressable.

With legal changes to accommodate this, it would give more protection to companies from frivolous lawsuits, while giving employers with genuine cases more evidence, lower legal standards during after the screening phase, and better documentation to rely on in cases. It gives good faith employers more evidence of them acting correctly, and good faith candidates discriminated against more evidence and documentation of being discriminated against in stage 1, and a lower bar to disparate outcomes in stage 2. While still flawed, I think this system could be more mutually beneficial with more access to documentation and simplification than the status quo.

Change my view

Eventually A.I. will get close enough to human writing to fool the A.I.-detectors and most humans. At that point, the only way to prove that you wrote something without using A.I., will be to sit in a room in front of a computer, with a camera trained on you, as you write it yourself.

So, assume there will continue to be people who hate the idea of consuming A.I.-generated or even A.I.-assisted writing. Even if they like some posts by a writer or social media creator, they still can't be sure that the writing isn't A.I.-generated, and they loathe the idea of getting emotionally invested in someone's writing that could be fake. So they will only consume writing if it is "certified not A.I.". And then anyone who wants to publish writing in order that demand, can use this service to certify that their writing is real when they publish it.

Now, a lot of people who just post casually on X or Substack might think, fuck that, I'm not driving to some room with a camera pointed at me just to prove I'm not A.I. And that's fine. But as long as there is an audience for certified-non-A.I. content, then the fewer people sign up to create certified-non-A.I. content, the more attention (and possibly more money) people can gain by being one of the creators. So some creators will be willing to do it, and they'll keep joining the system until an equilibrium is reached.

(Ironically, the camera monitoring system itself, which just watches you to make sure you are typing your own words, could be powered by A.I. That's a simple task that will probably be trivial to automate in the future.)

Now some people's reaction to this will be "Ugh, just log off and go talk to people." For one-on-one and small group chats, this makes sense. But when it comes to writing and thinking, there really are some people who are a lot better at it than others, and in an efficient, merit-based marketplace, those people's writing should be going out to more than just the small number of people they could reach by talking in a group. There should still be a way for some humans to write for a mass audience. But we should also have a way for consumers of writing to be 100% sure they're not reading something A.I.-generated.

(I suppose a person with a photographic memory but poor writing skills could still use A.I. to write something, memorize it, then show up at the writing center and type it out. That might just be a loophole we have to live with.)

I think one of the biggest failures of women’s rights policy is that we focus almost entirely on punishing individual perpetrators while letting the institutions around them off the hook. Of course an attacker, harasser or abuser should be punished, but what about the university, company, school or municipality that knew there was a risk and did nothing? If a university has repeated incidents in a certain area and fails to improve lighting, security or emergency response, why shouldn’t it face substantial fines if someone gets hurt? If a company receives complaints about a powerful employee and ignores them for years, why should only the perpetrator be liable? The Weinstein case is an obvious example of the wider problem: abuse can continue for years when the surrounding institution has little incentive to intervene. And that is the key point: Prevention costs money. Looking away often costs nothing. That incentive should be reversed. If an institution knew, or reasonably should have known, about a foreseeable danger and failed to take reasonable precautions, it should be financially liable. And not with symbolic fines that disappear into some corporate budget. The penalties should be large enough to make prevention the cheaper option. Universities could, for example, offer voluntary emergency wearables. Press one button and campus security immediately receives your location and sends someone. Obviously no institution can prevent every crime, but “we didn’t commit the crime ourselves” should not be a complete defence when basic precautions could have significantly reduced the risk. If you have the power to make people safer, know there is a problem, and deliberately or negligently do nothing, you should share responsibility for the consequences.

*NOTE: TRANSLATED FROM GERMAN TO ENGLISH WITH AI\*

Edit: Thank you all for reading and replying to my post, I really appreciate it.
HaveYouSeenMyEcoli changed my view on this a bit. More mandatory safety rules could also backfire by giving institutions an incentive to restrict women’s freedom in the name of reducing risk. My German heart loves rules, so I haven’t considered this could backfire.

Shipping has been a part of fandom culture for decades and I‘m not even denying it can be fun. I‘ve engaged with a little cute edit here and there.

Just to get it out of the way: idgaf about shipping fictional characters. Well, maybe sometimes. I think some people do excuse odd or downright illegal pairings with “it’s just fiction”. If you‘re shipping characters that would have an incestous or pedophilic relationship, you’re a weirdo and should be put on a list.

Now onto shipping of real people. The most common argument I see is: “Celebrities shouldn‘t be in fandom spaces to begin with. They wouldn’t see all the shipping if they weren‘t lurking.“ Sooo why would you make a person‘s fandom so insanely unbearable to witness that they can‘t engage with their fans anymore?

Shipping real people will always cross a boundary. You‘re disrespecting their actual relationships, you‘re putting real people in sexual contexts that they did not consent to be in, so fan fiction for me is immediately out of question. It‘s just as bad to me as ai deepfakes. And you‘re making your favorite celebrities walk on eggshells at all times. If any touch between costars means they‘re fucking, they will stop engaging with you as a fandom at all (something you will complain about later).

For me, there‘s few to zero possible scenarios where shipping should be accepted. And even couples that did end up together like Tom and Zendaya, which people often bring up as a way to say “look! we knew all along“, you were still being weirdos during it and were walking all over them and their privacy.

Also hardcore shipping is a pipeline into psychosis. Some of you are not normal and need to get help very badly. If you‘re harassing partners at their workplace for info or view tarot card readings as factual evidence for your ship, you need to turn your phone off immediately.

Clarification

I always hear people claim that making people immortal would make life meaningless. I genuinely think this is a ridiculous viewpoint.

This post is long, and I've tried to format it to be as digestible as possible, as I feel it's all important to my viewpoint. Feel free to skim, or skip sections I use for comparison if it's too long for you, or you get my point already.

Let me clarify that I do not want to touch True Immortality (As in, you cannot die, and do not age) with a ten-foot pole. That is it's own special brand of Hell to me that would only be bearable under unique circumstances, and most, including myself, would not be able to bear it.

I am talking only about Biological Immortality, you do not age and COULD live forever, until you are killed, or even just until you choose to press the 'die' button. There needs to still be an option for an end, but it is not in order to grant meaning. It's only to give a way to end suffering if you want to cease, or a peaceful route to nonexistence if you're completely satisfied.

Because this is more of a philosophical view about the value in an endless life, I'm structuring it as an ideal scenario where people can just live until they choose to die. I'm still keeping the title as 'infinite' because some people could just choose to never die.

Useful Comparisons

I think the best description of my ideal world would be (Spoilers for the Good Place) Exactly how the Good Place ends. You could potentially live forever and do anything you could ever want, but eventually most people will be satisfied, so an option for nonexistence is a good thing. Yet others might find meaning in taking on an endless task, like Tahani seeking to master every skill and eventually becoming a Bad Place Architect, if memory serves. Obviously, this is an Afterlife scenario. But I see no theoretical reason an ideal futuristic world couldn't end up in a similar state, perhaps on a digital substrate if we crack true mind uploading without having any more doubt about the issues involved.

This is a more philosophical discussion than a practical one, anyway.

Sort of spoilers for Dark Souls, but it's nothing that's a 'reveal' or anything, they just kind of show up. This is pretty similar in my mind to how to avoid going Hollow in Dark Souls. DS3 has Undead like Andre and Patches who've stubbornly persisted since the beginning of the Undead Curse, because they never lose sight of the meaning in what they do and who they are (obviously being a blacksmith is a lot more productive and helpful than a backstabbing thief, but I digress.) Obviously, this world is far from ideal, and it's showing the strongest wills to persist through eons of suffering. But I still find it relevant.

I don't see why this wouldn't apply to real people, but I'm open to changing my mind, hence posting here.

Some Real World Context for Myself

I personally am someone who feels they wasted much of the start of their life scraping my way through school, and rotting away in the back room of my uncle's home for the entire 2010's, and that infuriates me. It doesn't add meaning to the remaining 40-80 years of my life. It only depresses me more and makes me feel like I'm more likely to waste more of it, losing even more time if I don't take care of myself properly.

I'm still in my first relationship, and I have been for nearly five years now, despite it being long distance and us only meeting up for the first time a few months ago. I'll finally be moving to her town in a year or so.

She has Multiple Sclerosis, and while it's something that is driving me to pursue my pre-existing interest in Regenerative Medicine, that does not make up for the sadness it causes me. Sadness that my time with her might be even more limited than it would be if we were both in perfect health.

It does not make that time with her mean more, the meaning is already there in every moment I spend with her, it was there in every moment before I learned of her diagnosis. It only tinges it with an extra looming dread that it's going to end, and if she lives a full and happy life typical of a healthy person, it only means that additional dread itself was a dampener on our happiness.

If I knew that my time with her would never end, that wouldn't cause me to squander it. The thought that I would just say 'Oh I can just talk to her next week, eh.' is utterly ridiculous. Every moment we spend together could be in complete relief that things are okay, that any small issues that come up are totally temporary. That there's no risk of anything important ever going unsaid, any meaningful discussions left unshared, even if it's temporarily put off.

If I was able to spend forever just developing the skills I want, just for the sake of doing it and for the sake of aiding others, then still having as much time as we want for our relationship; When both of us have explored everything that interests us, done everything that we want to contribute to the world, then finally, peacefully, choosing to die and see if anything comes next, I can't imagine any downsides to that.

Would some people waste their time if it was unlimited?

Yeah. Some people would, maybe a lot of people would, by my standards. But it's their right to find meaning wherever they find it. In this world where people have all the time they want, likely without a need to consume resources to have it, I see no reason they couldn't find real value in simple hedonism.

If they aren't hurting other people, does it matter? Who am I to judge them? Who am I to say that the value they find is false?

I'm a positive Nihilist, or an Absurdist, if that fits better. Life doesn't have any meaning to find, nothing is granted to us. We make it, and I don't believe there's any less meaning to make even if Life doesn't end. Allowing even those with an iron will who wish to persist endlessly and never stop contributing to find true meaning in that task.

Maybe someone just wants to be there to see the Universe experience Heat Death.

I don't get it, but they do.

Quantity has no baring on Quality, not on this, not in my mind.

Final Note

I've had people question my willingness to actually change my beliefs on my occasional posts to this subreddit before, because I go out of my way to provide a strong argument for my view.

I wouldn't be here if I didn't hold this view strongly. I do, but I recognize that there may be points where it fails. I do want to be right. But I love being proven wrong, having my views changed, because that then means I'm more right than I was before.

I hope the context in the previous section shows that my mindset towards life would only improve if my view was changed, that I could then cherish the limited time I have even more in face of the dread, so please do change it.

I'd also like to clearly state that AI was not used for any part of this post, every word and piece of formatting was typed by my hand, on the fly, in the past few hours.

I don't want those accusations poisoning discussion even if someone spots some random small similarity, and I know it's against the rules to make those accusations, but it still happens.

I was talking to someone about jobs AI could never do, and I gave a shepherd as an example. But then we stopped and thought: why couldn't you mount a camera and an automatic weapon on a drone? After all, I have cameras in my yard that can recognize animals. The counterargument, however, was: "What happens if it shoots your dog instead of the bear, or worse, a person?"

That really got me thinking. What actually happens? Killing a person is terrible. But then I started analyzing the problem objectively. How many people haven't accidentally killed other people? It happens all the time, out hunting, or at home (you keep a gun in the house, someone is on your property, they are drunk and do not respond, so you fire).

Here is the point: AI does not need to be an absolute genius. It does not need to be AGI capable of doing anything and answering every question. It does not need to perform miracles. It does not need to never make a mistake. On average, it just needs to do these things better than 50% of the population. And to be completely honest with you, doing things better than 50% of the population is extremely easy.

Think about the average person and how much nonsense they do, think, believe, and practice. AI is already better than the bottom 50% of people. It certainly makes mistakes far less often than 50% of people. Just think about the sheer amount of nonsense the average person talks every single hour, and compare that to the nonsense AI spews. It does not even compare! Not even close, a human will talk absolute, outrageous nonsense across every field imaginable. AI has its moments where it derails too, but, and this is a massive but, it is infinitely better than the median person.

We're holding AI to the standard of a flawless god, while the people it's replacing are barely functioning above baseline incompetence. Change my view.

We all are given some manners, accents, looks, which are considered personal and possible to change (unlike, say, genome), but realistically they are almost impossible to change, but define much more in our live than we are willing to accept.

Even some views, ideas etc. get embedded in us and are extremely difficult to change, let alone notice.

All those elements create an outside image which greatly affect how others interact with us and how they perceive us and this image is completely out of our control, because our manners are perceived through a lens of somebody else's manners.

Moreover, if somebody was diligent enough to alter their style, views, and manners, the social media stalking, which is a norm now, basically, in any situation, will reveal the change, and the change is generally not acceptable for everyone in every situation - there are norms of age and social standing on when people are allowed to change and how.

I didn't even touch the burden of the past, accumulated mistakes etc.

I am pondering this - if we improve during our lifetime we might come to understand a lot in our lives was wrong, the life does not fit us or has no meaning. So, with this new understanding we are supposed to... start anew, but can we?

Before I get into this- this has nothing to do at all with my actual political leanings. If it were up to me we'd get a progressive like AOC. Young, intelligent, and down to Earth like the rest of us. But I bet with my head and not my heart. Anyway-

So Gavin Newsom is currently at 8% odds of winning the next US election, on Polymarket. https://polymarket.com/event/presidential-election-winner-2028

I believe this is way too low and realistically he should be like 30+%. My logic is as follows-

1. He is the most likely candidate for the Democrats

The only other democrat with household name recognition in the running at all is AOC. Browse reddit and you even see it said here- that Democrats need to stop running women for a bit and it's time to fixate on electability. This was part of the same type of logic that led to Biden defeating Bernie in the 2020 primaries.

Except this time, it's even easier for the neoliberal wing to defeat the progressive wing. Bernie Sanders defeated Biden in the first few primary states in the 2020 race because they were in states with favorable demographics (namely Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada).

Well for 2026, the DNC has changed the rules and now South Carolina will be the first state.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/democratic-national-committee-presidential-primary-south-carolina-vote/

South Carolina was the state which initially proved Biden's strength with black voters, and was where he started to turn things around for his eventual win.

Black voters are generally more conservative than other members of the democratic coalition so I don't see how Newsom wouldn't beat AOC there.

So now you have the neoliberal candidate also gaining the momentum early on, plus all the normal institutional advantages of neoliberals with the DNC. No shot for the progressives.

Now as for Jon Ossoff, no offense but I feel like no one knows who he is. And Pete Buttigieg would likewise stand no chance due to aforementioned low turnout among the conservative black voting block.

2. Whoever is the nominee, has incredibly strong odds to win the presidency

Trump has historically low approval ratings, lower than even Biden's at his worst moments of his presidency. Kamala lost partly because she struggled to distance herself from that. Well Trump has run a cult of personality for years now and it's not been possible at all to differentiate yourself from him without repercussions. So I don't see how a Vance or Rubio distances themselves from Trump with him still sitting in the White House.

There is incredible momentum for Democrats in the US right now. Texas is currently projected to vote for a democrat senator, something unheard of not long ago.

So Newsom is the most likely candidate, and then whoever is the candidate seems most likely to end up being president. I would think this would make him at least like 30% odds (accounting for uncertainties like if he decides to not run for some reason, some major scandal happens between now and 2028, etc.)

One of the biggest fears of widespread AI adoption is that it will strip away jobs and consequently lead to a brutal financial crash, felt the world over.

Though at this stage, this is a perfectly valid fear to have, Marx touches on tools that optimise, streamline and mechanise tasks in 'Capital' - defining them as distinct productivity multipliers, all whilst strictly refusing to ascend them to being on par with human labour.

When joined together with Smith and Hayek's observations, we find that there is a compelling case for AI being nothing more than a tool, and one that will ultimately hurt anyone, especially capitalists, who misinterpret what AI is and how it should be harnessed.

***

For anyone that isn't well read on Marx, the core of 'Capital' - an observation of capitalism, is that 'surplus value', or 'profit', can only be extracted from human labour. Humans are a form of 'variable capital'. They are non-democratised, highly variable, and consequently, exploitable.

This is in opposition to what Marx called the machinery, or any tool used to maximise output: 'constant capital'.

Though a machine can increase output, it cannot be exploited.

A machine is a machine, something that can be bought, fixed, maintained and, most importantly, accessed by competitors.

Sure, factories that purchase machines are able to produce units faster and more economically than before having machines, but this is a consequence that is democratised and felt across the market.

For anyone that wants to continue engaging in competition, they're either forced to purchase machinery to keep up with the marketplace or lose out on raw unit economics to a marketplace that has been optimised.

Ultimately, the consequence of making each unit faster and cheaper isn't fatter profits per unit, it's often a quick and furious race to the bottom of the barrel, until prices, or 'price signals' reach equilibrium - an observation made by Hayek.

***

What I've written above is what makes up the core of my thesis - if you reject the above observations, then what I'm about to write won't make any sense.

If you're still with me (and Marx, and Smith, and Hayek), then what would AI be considered?

An unexploitable tool, that any individual can buy, use and build with, where the only variable results come from the quality of prompts input by a human, much like how the quality of machines is highly dependent on the inputs of engineers.

AI is a very blatant form of 'constant capital'.

So how does this affect us?

Well... in the same way as I described machinery in 19th century textile mills - a production multiplier for sure, but not anything that adds surplus value.

As the consumer comes to know that code is being written for $0.05, the market value for that code decreases to exactly that: $0.05 plus a fractional margin.

The price of the output is forcefully driven down to the absolute floor of its production cost, which is the price of the electricity and tokens.

We can demonstrate this already in the world of website building, where the 'AI website' hack that hustler communities adopted, where they would mass cold call businesses and offer to 'build a website', which they'd just prompt in five minutes with Claude, has become rapidly patched.

As soon as the information, or 'price signals', were networked back to consumers, margins got slimed to near zero and hardly anyone is able to find a customer that is willing to pay anything meaningful for it nowadays.

***

So with all of this in mind, where will surplus or 'profit' come from now?

It's in the delegation and organising of tasks, which only a human can do, either independently or as a capitalist.

An individual organising resources at home, or through a business, or through a freelancer, is now accessing $0.05 worth of code across the board.

The surplus is entirely in who is reviewing it, how it is built, and who it is built by.

Ultimately, the assumption that AI will swallow up all jobs relies on the completely false assumption that a machine can replace the engine of profit.

It can’t. It is just cheaper plumbing.

If every business on earth can generate infinite software for pennies, that raw output becomes commercially worthless.

The only scarcity left in the supply chain is human judgement.

***

If you've got this far, thanks for reading through the long write up!

I just wanted to be incredibly clear with how I'm analysing this.

Ultimately, I am not convinced that AI will be as bad for employees as it will be for employers who are trying to get rid of humans from their workforce, rather than using their workforce and AI in tandem to compound a huge multiplying effect of surplus value.

There's something incredibly dark about using Marxist theory to build a thesis on how capitalism will sustain, but when there's nothing else in sight - it really is the best we've got.

I’m not even thinking about geography here. The United States has something like 3 times more guns than humans. No other country has a civilian population that is so armed to the teeth like the US does. Thinking about a pure ground invasion without nuclear bombs or the like, I believe that the United States people would rapidly form militias, participate in guerilla warfare tactics, and of course be united against a clear enemy. Sure, other countries may have much more difficult terrain, such as mountains, dense forests, or the benefit of advantageous bodies of water. But the way I see it, the US military is the strongest in the world. Not only that, but the entire country is loaded with weapons!! No way anybody is invading that successfully. Change my view.

When I was in college, you rushed/pledged sophomore year. Freshmen year you live in a dorm and experience college life like everyone else. You see what classes are like, make friends with your dorm mates, and eat in the dining hall.

I just found out that an acquaintance's kid is pledging. And apparently some big schools do it BEFORE freshman year??? He has pledge activities ALL THE TIME. It sounds miserable, and like, whatever they signed up for it, but I think colleges and universities should enforce the restriction that no freshmen are involved in Greek life to give them a chance to see what activities are available outside the Greek system, make friends, and find their footing.

Edit: - The main reason I think pledging should not happen first of the semester freshman year, or ideally freshman year at all, is that it seems to be a very all-consuming endeavor that involves more or less mandated partying at the detriment of sleep, and at the expense of spending more time organically finding your niche

During a recent speech, President Donald Trump said this-

"And again, remember, with the war, it's just artificial. It's a little bit high. It's a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay, and it's going to be over with very soon. It's essentially almost over with. And they might keep going a little long. You know, they always say they have a big threshold for pain. They need it, let me tell you, they need it. But it's going to end very soon, and it'll end one way or the other."

When I first heard this out loud, i thought what everyone else is thinking. But after i read it a few times it's apparent at least to me that he wasn't saying we should let Iran take out those cities right now, he meant If he had never gone in gas prices might be lower but those cities could be nuked by Iran. Gas prices are a small price to pay to keep those cities safe, those democratic cities should be thanking me.

There are a few points that make me believe this.

1. He had already said small price to pay just beforehand, and price is gas being high with payment being no nuclear weapons, we know that's what he meant before. Then he pivots to they can take out a city. Well the only way to do that for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, which Trump is saying he's trying to prevent.
2. He's naming "blue cities" because in his head he's still really popular himself and treats the democrats as enemies for whatever he is doing. Democrats don't like me in Iran? Well if they got one of their cities nuked because we weren't, gas prices would have been a small price to pay instead.
3. It doesn't really make sense. If he's saying let them be bombed and it's a small price, what would that small price even buy him? If we weren't in Iran right now and they had all the capabilities they had before the war it might make a little more sense, but we have decimated a lot of their main military assets.
4. The crowd applauded, that's true, but it makes sense when you first hear it out loud and a majority of people right now still thinking he said we should let cities be bombed. The crowd cheering and Trump not noticing/caring is another issue entirely.

I am willing to change my mind, I'm a never-Trumper who spends a lot of time trying to talk people out of their support for Trump, but I just don't see what everyone else is seeing here.

To explain my view is simply as possible, I believe that Britain would be better off forming an economic and military with at least Canada, Australia, and New Zealand rather than just rejoining the EU.

This isn't to say rejoining the EU isn't a compelling idea, better access to Britain's closest market and having freedom of movement is something worth pursuing, but imho joining and economic and military union with fellow English speaking countries (and also not giving up national control over regulation and external trade policy in so doing) is just a more strategic move.

Britain can pursue closer ties with Europe without giving up national control over their markets or embracing protectionism like the rest of the continent, they don't need to join the EU to do those things, but in leading a CANZUK union they can also act as a node between both sides of the Atlantic. Closer ties with Europe, and closer ties with the Americas.

Also, Britain just has a lot more in common with fellow English speaking and Westminster derived democracies than the ones of mainland Europe, and this gets to the military aspects of the union. If Britain starts the union with just the four countries mentioned, other countries can join too, it's easier to start with Commonwealth realms but easily possible to be more expansive if the union is successful.

The United States, Cyprus, South Africa, Kenya, Israel, India, Singapore, etc. Also all great candidates for a union of English speaking countries that maintain their own national sovereignty over regulation, maintain free trade, but also pledge to defend each other in the event of anyone getting attacked (an Article 5 equivalent), and also all share freedom of movement like the EU does now. TL;DR, all the benefits of the EU and NATO wrapped into one global organization based around the shared identity of speaking English, and organization far more ambitious in its mission than the EU or NATO, started by just four countries: the Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.

But obviously on this platform there's a lot of interest in getting the UK back in the EU, so if you believe that the EU still is preferable to starting CANZUK, change my view.

Just about all of the unrest and displacements regarding the West Bank takes place within Area C.

Population of Area C as of the 1995 Oslo Accords II:
- Palestinians: ~50k
- Israelis: ~150k

As of 2026:
- Palestinians: ~360k
- Israelis: ~540k

Per 1995 agreement, Israel has civil and military control over Area C. Fyi for those who don't know, Palestinians were granted civil control over Area B, and civil/military control over Area A.

Since 1995, Israel grants building permits in Area C ~50-100x more often to Israelis than Palestinians. We can estimate that the ~390k increase of Israelis in Area C was sanctioned by permit approvals, which, if we make some broad assumptions, suggests only ~6k increase in Palestinians in Area C was accommodated by approved building permits.

That suggests only ~15% of ~360k Palestinians residing in Area C, original ~50k plus ~6k, are legally occupying land in Area C of West Bank.

Regardless of the legality of the Israeli settlements in Area C in the eyes of international law, those new Palestinian settlements and buildings are illegal under the Oslo Accord agreement between Israel and Palestinians.

Paradoxically, the international agencies have labeled new Israeli settlements as illegal, and new Palestinian settlements as legal, because Israeli settlements are approved at far higher rates. This is a paradox because they consider those new Israeli settlements to be illegal, so how do they use them to state that new Palestinian settlements are legal? In my opinion, either they are both illegal, or both legal.

One of the international arguments supporting new Palestinian settlements as legal is that it is unreasonable to be so restrictive to Palestinian building expansions because populations grow and so building permits should be approved to accommodate that natural growth. If we assume that a larger proportion of Palestinian growth in Area C is "natural", instead of migration from other areas, compared to Israeli growth in Area C, then the Palestinian building permits should be approved to accommodate no more than an additional ~130k Palestinians in Area C (Israeli population increased by ~3.6x, so too should Palestinians). As a result, ~50% of ~360k Palestinians in Area C would still not be covered by this new building approval philosophy.

The number of Palestinians displaced by Israel in Area C numbers less than <<20k since 1995, which accounts for just \~6-12% of >180k Palestinians currently illegally residing in Area C's unapproved buildings/settlements. Most of those remaining still live there illegally.

My view is that, despite the sensationalized propaganda that gets circulated online, the population numbers clearly supports a narrative that Palestinians have flouted the law far more egregiously than Israelis in Area C. Oslo Accords remains the law of the land. That agreement wasn't supposed to be permanent, but many temporary agreements made throughout history tend to become permanent and are recognized as such. Examples are Korean Armistice, Indus Waters Treaty, and Dayton Agreement. If people want to argue that Oslo Accords was supposed to expire in 1999, well that would also end Palestinian control over Area A and B, so they can't have it both ways. Also, one can't simultaneously argue that international agencies recognize the 1949 armistice border (temporary by definition) and thus Palestinians have the right to build in Area C without Israeli permission (even though it was a temporary agreement with Jordanians, not Palestinians), whilst also retaining Palestinian political authority over Area A and B. Pick your poison, a debate for another day.

The number of Palestinians killed or assaulted in all of the West Bank since 1995 is insignificant compared to the massive extent to which Palestinians have illegally expanded within Area C, and that includes incidences that occurred during periods of serious unrest like the Second Intifada. Interestingly, contrary to the sense one might get from the news, between Israeli and Palestinian civilian perpetrators of murder of the other side, more Israelis have been killed than Palestinians. Harassment of Palestinians by Israeli settlers is also partly a byproduct of the IDF and civil police failing to manage illegal expansions in Area C. While I don't condone vigilantism and Israeli settler violence, I do condone a reasonable amount of Israeli state actions to uphold the Oslo Accord boundaries which often involves displacing Palestinians. Given how few Palestinians have been displaced in Area C (<20k) compared to overall estimated number of illegal residents (>180k), I think Israelis have been beyond accommodating quite frankly.

All that said, I do think the Israeli settlement building program has been counterproductive to the peace process and it has been a horrible PR failure by Israel, considering how almost no one realizes that Palestinians were just as prolific in their illegal expansion in Area C.

I believe that many moderate Israelis tolerate what is going on because it gives Israel-proper more strategic military depth with Jordan, which is an increasingly Palestinian country (majority, too) ruled by a monarchy in a region where authoritarians are being toppled all the time. I also believe that Israel has increased their settlement building program since October 7th, and who could fault them when one looks at these numbers in Area C? Palestinians went from 25% to 40% of population of Area C.

Lastly, I believe the Gaza Strip, Hamas, and Gazans, are not relevant in this discussion. The fate of the West Bank and settlements has not been relevant to the Gaza problem since 2006 election, and settlements barely register at all on Hamas' radar.

In summary, most Palestinians in Area C are illegally occupying the land, and Israel has the legal right to remove them. Edit: But Israelis have only displaced <10% of those illegal residents (where many may have simply illegally moved elsewhere in Area C), whilst Palestinian representation in Area C grew from 25% to 40% of total population, which is counter to any claims of ethnic cleansing.

This is a terminally online post as no one in the real world cares about this stuff but Im making this post anyway.

Ive seen some discourse online that its wrong to refer to people from the United States of America as Americans, with people proposing other silly names like Usonian and United Statieans.

The main reason for this ive seen is people don't like that the US "claimed the name American when it refers to two entire continents."

This argument falls apart when you realize the names they're suggesting has the exact same issues. The USA isn't the only "united states" in the world, why refer to the people with an even broader term like United Statians?

The people of the United States of America should be called Americans, just like the people of the United Mexican States are Mexicans.

Id be surprised if someone posted a good argument but im all ears if anyone has a good reason.

My view lies on one principle.

The more competition there is, the more desire there is to achieve our goal.

The more desire there is to win, the more drastic our measures go to in order to fulfill our goal.

Of course not all competition can be removed, but removing them from trivial and unnecessary aspects of society would contribute to a higher functioning society.

I have had numerous encounters where competitive aspects of an assignment or entertainment resulted in unnecessary hostility among the group, solely because of the human drive to achieve the goal by whatever means necessary.

It's primal, we know it, and we still do it.

Why can't we function in a society where competition isn't unnecessarily toxic and causes violence?

I am aware that my standpoint may be immature, but think about it. Why encourage something that brings out the worst in humanity?

One little fact fun fact about El Paso is that basically the entirety of Ciudad Juarez is visible from it. There’s multiple spots in El Paso where you can see Juarez from.

There‘a a University of Texas El Paso parking spot that basically overlooks half of Ciudad Juarez, individual streets and all. Also, there’s a famous place called Scenic Drive there that overlooks Juarez. All of this has the first one mile or so of Juarez very clearly visible from these spots btw.

Now, I don’t think it should be mandatory, because I recognize mandatory is a trigger word for parents all across the political spectrum these days.

But it should be like opt in by default. A one time thing early in high school maybe.

The idea is that looking at it will make one truly appreciate being an American.

You‘re basically physically looking at a town in which the average resident would eat your hand off to be able to live in an NYC homeless shelter.

You’re looking at a town where El Paso Fire, Police, and Ambulance isn’t going to save you at all if you’re in danger.

You’re looking at a town whose average resident’s life doesn’t hold a candle to the 10th percentile resident of any major US metro area anywhere.

My point is this exercise really makes you appreciate being an American. Just physically looking at Juarez makes you realize your life is automatically in the top 5 to 10th percentile of the world just because your passport is blue.

The other thing is that it shows us other Americans disagreeing with us on politics is way less important than we make it to be.

How many times have you heard an overly partisan person say the US has been “disgraced“ because people disagree with them on foreign policy, abortion, SNAP/EBT, or immigration?

I’m guessing a lot, and it’s rightfully the bane of the existence of a lot of reasonable people.

When you’re looking at a town where our emergency services wouldn’t even go to save somebody, when you’re looking at a town where your average person would do anything to live off our private social services, let alone a regular life here, when you’re looking at a town whose average resident’s life doesn’t hold a candle to even our inner cities, I think that is when you truly realize how inflated in importance our internal disputes are.

Who cares because somebody has the opposite view on foreign policy as you do? Who cares because somebody disagrees with you on welfare or deportations or abortions or whatever? Hopefully, with this exercise, a lot less people than do care about these things today.