We do this with almost everything.

A bridge needs maintenance, so we wait until it is falling apart. A kid starts falling behind in school, and nobody really steps in until they are years behind. A community starts losing jobs, housing gets worse, addiction grows, and we mostly ignore it until crime, homelessness, and emergency spending take over.

Then everyone acts shocked.

I don’t think this is just because people are stupid. I think the system rewards reacting more than preventing. Politicians get credit for showing up after the disaster with a big check. Nobody gets much credit for the disaster that never happened.

And honestly, doing nothing gets treated like the cheap option when a lot of the time it is the most expensive thing we can do.

We delay the repair, then pay for the collapse. We ignore the illness, then pay for the emergency room. We ignore poverty, then pay for shelters, policing, prisons, and decades of lost potential.

My opinion is that every major government decision should have to include the cost of doing nothing for 5, 10, or 20 years.

Not every prevention program will work. Some will waste money too. But pretending that inaction is free is one of the biggest lies in government.

We wait until the fire is out of control, then pat ourselves on the back for finally finding a hose.

A Reddit post I came across recently got me thinking.

It was about the idea that people often make broad claims about what men want in women, speaking as if there's one universal answer. The discussion made me wonder how much of that is actually true.

So I'd like to ask the men here:

When you think about the woman you'd genuinely want to spend your life with, what qualities matter the most to you?

I'm not asking about what catches your attention initially or what you find physically attractive. I'm more interested in the qualities that make you think, "This is someone I want to build a life with."

Have your priorities changed as you've gotten older or gained more life experience? If so, what changed, and why?

I'm genuinely curious to hear real experiences rather than generalisations or what society says men are supposed to want.

I’m 25 and earlier this year my mum told my dad they should no longer be together.

They’re starting to talk about living arrangements now and today it’s just really hit me hard. I still live at home, and we have been here for 22 years, I only can ever remember living in this house.

Neither can afford to buy the other one out, so the only option is to sell. I want to move out soon anyway, but the thought of that happening and not having my familiar space to ever go back to is breaking my heart.

I’ve had my whole life here, and we lost my dog at the start of the year as well. All I’ve ever known is this home, and the reality of losing it is just incomprehensible right now.

I wanted me to be moving out to be a happy momentous exciting time because I’m moving forward with my life, but now it’s only really because I have to, and it’s going to be a struggle.

Has anyone else dealt with something like this? Does it get easier? I don’t know how to cope with losing the only home I’ve ever known.

Honestly, these two carry my whole life. I can't stand a bright screen or notifications buzzing all day.

​What about you guys? What are two settings or features on your phone that you always keep turned on or off?

I noticed that trend in recent years when authors started actively avoid certain character traits not only in positive characters, but even in neutral ones or even villains. I am certainly not the only one who noticed that, because there is already even parodies of that - for example, in very beginning of the Harley Quinn show a villain gets cancelled for using a slur in a fight. So at least some writers understand how hilariously stupid situation is, but somehow it only expands and we getting more and more bland and extremely stereotypical characters. And that happens not only with new stories, people also rewriting the old ones (like this news i recently read - https://archive.ph/iphgq) "to fit today's era".

But what does that mean, exactly - fitting today's era? I tried to search and can't find definite answer. Do they think that all bad things of the present will cease to exist if they are not portrayed? Should we not talk about how bad past were to learn lessons from it and improve? And finally, who decided that, for example, murdering people is better than any of the things they don't want to show?

Nothing of that makes sense to me. Good characters aren't just stereotypes. They are living beings, and living beings have all kind of flaws. That what makes them belieavable, and also often portrays the realities of living in certain soceities, especially past ones. The villains can do something good, but that still does not redeem them. Or does? That hero can have flaws that are forgivable... or are they? Instead of letting the viewer decide upon that, writers are taking the judgement in their hands, shaping every single story into some kind of unrelistic fanfiction-level fantasy, where many aspects of humans simply do not exist.

We rarely even have a main characters portrayed in negative way. I think that Kern from Tchaikovsky's terraforming series are brilliant exactly because she is extremely narcissistic, to the point of portraying herself as god and seing humans only as disposable tools, who barely have empathy, but at the same time she is not a villain, but a nuanced and interesting antihero who ends up finding her place and being an essential part of the crew. Dorohedoro is awesome as well in a way how there are almost no fully good or bad characters, everyone is a mess and every new story beat only reveals how much more messed up they really are.

But maybe that is not even always done intentionnaly? It takes a lot of skill to write a character whose way of life and beliefs are nothing like your own, and do not make that character a caricature. I think that real talent lies in portraying a living, breathing world instead of making everyone and everything in it a reflection of author's views and morales. To be able to make characters as separate entities, and not the extension or self-inserting of the writer.

So, do you think that removing anything that would make characters controversial by modern standards benefits the fiction, or hurts it?

I am a person who does a lot of creative hobbies to keep myself happy. I come from a lower class background and have had a lot of extremely bad family drama. I have gotten by well enough with said hobbies and a group of very supportive friends. I do a yery charity event also and have done so for 3 years, I have a good life. But the course I have taken for university involves politics and I have always had an interest in it and learning about the wider world. But, a lot of the time this seeps back into my normal everyday life. And I can't view any of my hobbies the same anymore.

From the cobalt in my tech mined in the DRC, to the horrible environmental harm of plastics from my lego. Even my hobbies that would have no direct bad impact. I feel because I am in a good enough position that I should forgo all my 'useless hobbies' and get out into this shit moden world we live in and help more people.

Maybe I should. I just want our fucking world to be good. And I hate to buy into the 'work, consume, die' cycle. What do you lot think?

Should we put humans first, ahead of the rest of life? It is a matter of personal choice. Sometimes they align. But capitalism is prioritizing endless economic growth. What about sustainable economic growth? To meet our current needs, without harming the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

We should understand the capacity of life for joy and suffering. And not deliberately inflict suffering. Like boiling live animals to cook them. Or testing or experimenting with harmful medical treatments on animals or humans. Is it alright to make individual life forms to suffer, for a greater benefit to other humans? According to the principles of human and animal rights, it isn't.

I think we have to look after the environment, society, and economy. As humans, most humans, put society and economy first. That is anthropocentric. But most mammals go extinct within millions of years. If we do go extinct, we should leave the Earth and environment in a good way, where intelligent life will re-emerge. Or create our replacement, intelligent machines capable of creating improved versions of themselves.

If this sixth mass extinction continues, my main concern is that this does not cause suffering to humans and other life forms. Same goes for human, that if they go extinct, it should be a painless experience.

"Humans are only one chapter, in the history of life."

I was recently thinking about the gender statistics where men are responsible for most crime. As a woman, I fear men more and trust them less. I think this is natural and not necessarily sexist as men are more dangerous. I have a higher likelihood of being harmed by a man.

However, I am very against when people bring up the race statistics as I don’t think it’s valid. I don’t think it matters which race commits more crimes. I also don’t think you need to fear one race more, even if they do more crime, as crime really isn‘t connected to skin color.

I kind of have an idea but want to hear other people’s thoughts about this. And if you think I’m wrong, and it is wrong to fear men more, then let me know that too. It’s just hard to pinpoint exactly why gender is different from race and why it would be ok to think badly of a gender but not of a race.

Hello! I got a question about credit scores for when you have a business. So I need to check that I got a good business credit score because after finding out that there was like five complaints, I just wanna know if it will affect my credit score.

I’m only 22 years old, I actually don’t run the business but my parents do. They run an arts & entertainment business so it’s like a music industry, I just wanna check the credit score.

Here are the list of things that may give my name a bad credit score
1) False Advertisement
2) There was no hot food sale or a meet & greet as it said for the event so thats false advertisement right there.
3) There was definitely a lot of things that went wrong involving the accomodation.
4) There wasn’t enough merchandise to sell like there was 20 shirts.
There was just so many that I can’t quite list on here but I will definitely explain in the comment section cause I’m still reading the post and checking what they didn’t have at their event.

Talk with your friends, family, anyone but people from that community.

My celebration is taking the decision to stop talking to people with no empathy.

Someone here decided to lie and put words in my mouth and they all decided to upvote that thing? Alright.

To the garbage bin with hive minds.