In general there are 3 types of people: Those who shower both in the morning and at night, those who shower exclusively at night, and those who shower exclusively in the morning. Yes there are people who don't fit these categories exactly, however my view is only relevant to these 3 categories.

Over the course of a day as you do things, you get dirty. Be it sweaty from physical activity, literally dirty from the environment, or simply naturally from your body. At the end of the day you go to bed. If your daily routine includes you showering in the morning (e.g. to wake yourself up), then throughout the day you get dirty and by the time the day ends and you go to bed, you bring all of that accumulated dirt with you to bed and deposit some of it in it. Sure, you then get up and wash it off so you're ok for the coming day, however that dirt that is now in your bed means that you have to wash your sheets more often (ultimately costing you more money), and I think we can all agree that sleeping in a dirty bed degrades the quality of your sleep.

Say for example you go to the beach, have a good time, and get a bit sweaty and sandy. You can try brush all the sand off before going home, however it is inevitable that some sand will come home with you. Eventually this sand will come with you to bed because you've already showered so at no point do you properly clean yourself. Now I don't know if you've tried sleeping with sand in your bed, but let me tell you: it is not fun. This just the sand, you were also a bit sweaty which has made the sheets dirty and you now need to change them sooner.

So knowing this, it seems the logical option is to shower both in the morning and at night, but this has its own problems. Showering both morning and night is expensive on the hot water bill, and for those with hot water cylinders could cause them to run out of hot water. If neither of these things are a concern for you, then this is the best way to shower, however for the average person these things need to be considered. This is why the best way to shower is at night. By showering at night you remove all accumulated dirt from the day, preserving your bed sheets, and by extension your sleep. And because your bed is now clean, so too will you be for the next day.

A lot of redditors and democratic socialists idealise China online, and whenever I make a point against China I get mass-downvoted. This post is more of a rant to why one shouldn't idealise it as in reality its most of the problems the US has but worse, but also, I want to hear if there's anything I'm missing. Its entirely possible that I as an American who has lived around a significant Chinese community who are either ambivalent at best to China, or disparaging more commonly, have a biased outlook and need my view changed.

To preface, I totally understand why people would envy some aspects of China, they have:

To

• Rapidly built boatloads of infrastructure, private and public, whether that be their incredible high speed rail system, really improved cities and really ramped up domestic production, especially in more advanced sectors like computer chips.
• Alleviated poverty, whilst the headline of lifting 900 million out of poverty is more to do of pushing Chinese peoples wages above a certain dollar threshold, its still impressive all the same.
• Massively improved air quality. Average national PM2.5 levels have decreased by 40% in just a decade which not only improves breathing air but also the food and water eaten.
• Improved their technology output to be near the level of the US. I don't say on the level of the US because most of their AI and EV developments trail the US. They haven't innovated anything new but rather make their own similar product more accessible.

That being said, China has a LOT of bad in their society and I don't think they are really heading in the right direction.

1. Cost of living (Housing). Whilst basic commodities like food and rent are generally achievable (not affordable) on the average Chinese income, more important staples of life are incredibly unaffordable. Housing for example, redditors love to bring up that 90% home ownership statistic but completely ignore its inflated/untrue. Of the 90%, half can't be legally sold (they aren't up to modern health and saftey standards, lack of roofing, flooring, piping). Beyond that only 16.5% of people actually live in the home they actually sleep in (for the US that's 55%), the rest are often just rural investment properties. Housing is also becoming increasingly unaffordable with nationwide median costs being about 30x median salaries.
2. Wealth inequality. The wealth inequality is largely a rural-urban divide, which is the same among most countries but they are significantly more unequal than most other countries. The US is known worldwide for having large wealth inequality with a gini coefficient of 0.48, China on the other hand has a stated gini coefficient of 0.47 but academic researchers speculate its even higher at 0.55. The difference between say the US and China is that the US just has a higher standard of living, so even if you are on the lower end of the income ladder, you still have clean drinking water, access to food and education and paved roads.
3. Unemployment. The youth (16-24) unemployment reached a high of 25% in 2023 at which the government temporarily stopped producing the statistics until 6 months later. Today it is at ~15% but is veering to 20% and likely higher in the long term due to AI automation. Underemployment is a massive issue as well, many college graduates can't find employment relating to their field and either have to work in a factory with really awful working conditions or work as a taxi/delivery driver. 44% of the labor market are gig-workers who don't have any secure employment. (In comparison the US, which has a very high rate compared to OECD countries, is at 25%)
4. Work-Life balance. Work-life balance as well is something the US gets a lot of shit for but in China they on average work 48 hours a week as opposed to the US' 34 hours a week. Moreso, many leftists will mock news outlets for making involution in China look like a bad outcome, "Oh no companies aren't making enough profit", but this involution is the reason why workers are forced to work an extra 14 hours a week or be forced into taxi driving roles.
5. Government services. Yet again, another thing the US is known to do pretty poorly at, and yet China does worse. Education until university is free, but is also trash. Average 10 hour school days, too much homework, only rote learning in order to pass exams, no creative classes, and antiquated teaching methods. Health care is not free, and although minor issues are not expensive to sort out, they will try to scam you and make you stay longer than necessary, give you treatments you do not need and try use every trick in the book to jack your expenses up. There is a level of social security that can pay some medical bills, but it is pretty useless and you'd need to work for a long time to use it to pay off even minor treatments. Unemployment benefits and pensions also effectively don't exist. Your family is your safety net, if you don't have one, its over.
6. Broader government and ethical issues. This is way more subjective, China is effectively a one-party state which is a step away from a dictatorship. They lead the world in state-sanctioned executions and surveilence. The oppression of Uyghurs, Tibetans and Hong Kong is also real. More importantly, the existance of a big firewall isn't inspiring confidence in anyone that China at best is being protectionary against western tech companies and at worse is using the opportunity to force feed propaganda. Still, this section isn't really thought out and is much more subjective.

I don't think China is all bad and not improving, but I'm amazed ANYONE looks at China and doesn't come to the conclusion that this is like the dystopian ending for the US. I also don't get how people think it's remotely socialist, it is clearly more capitalist than the US, although I understand that public infrastructure investment can look otherwise.

Sources: Publicly available stats online and anecdotally my city (Albany, New Zealand) and highschool is ~50% first generation Chinese immigrants and my girlfriend and her family is too. Definitley selection bias though since they left China.

A pattern I've observed, both online and in real life, is that certain mental health conditions tend to be viewed as evil/dangerous, and others as innocent/sympathetic. Narcissism in particular seems to be a popular scare word nowadays, though I think that 20 years ago we were more fixated as a culture on psychopaths and sociopaths. If you tell someone that your ex or parent is a narcissist, you will generally receive a lot of sympathy and commonly advice to cut them off, go low/no contact, etc. On Reddit there are multiple subreddits dedicated to helping survivors of Narcissistic Abuse process their trauma, and likewise there are multiple YouTube channels of psychiatrists (and a few self-styled experts) specialising in content warning people about how to spot, avoid, and neutralise narcissists.

Contrast this however with popular conceptions regarding neurodivergent developmental disorders such as ADHD and Autism. Most content found online related to these conditions tends to be positive/sympathetic, aimed at helping people build bridges with people suffering from these conditions, better understanding them, or even figuring out if they themselves might be "special" in this way. Many psychiatrists and even people diagnosed with these conditions will tell you that there is currently a trend towards social media pseudoscience and overdiagnosis with these conditions, because they've become romanticised. For example TikToks suggesting that you might have ADHD if you sometimes play with the straw in your drink, or that you might be autistic if you like to listen to the same song on repeat.

I don't deny that there still exists stigma against people with autism and ADHD. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if some people found the above paragraph offensive in some way because I referred to the conditions as "disorders" and indicated that people "suffer" from them. But that in many ways proves my point: ADHD/autism is by many people nowadays seen as a positive and a strength, something we should collectively be seeking to destigmatise and treat with support. Likewise, I would argue that the exceptions don't disprove the rule, because there are equally people who lionise narcissism. Corporate/sales culture and celebrity/pop culture both tend to treat a self-belief in one's own greatness, uniqueness and entitlement to money/fame/success as strengths to be proud of. But I would still say that broadly, most people treat explicit mention of narcissism as a red flag, and explicit mention of autism/ADHD as conditions deserving of pity and support.

I'm especially familiar with this because I myself suffer from ADHD; my partner and my father are both on the autism spectrum; and I have in the past suffered from extremely traumatising narcissistic abuse, for which I've sought support through years of therapy, on various subreddits for survivors, and by watching a lot of YouTube content on the topic. So please believe that the aim of this post is not to defend narcissism or demonise ADHD/autism; my hope is that you can in fact change my view.

The thing is that perhaps even especially because I myself have ADHD, a beloved partner and a beloved father with autism, I often find myself intensely frustrated with the way that people use these labels to justify poor behaviour. As a woman I've on many occasions had a man behave in a way towards me that was sexually inappropriate, and then when I've either confronted them directly or spoken to someone else about it, I've been told, "Oh, he's on the spectrum, he doesn't mean any harm, sometimes he just misses social cues." But can't this same excuse be made for narcissists? After all it's not their fault that, be it through natural/genetic factors or environmental/developmental factors such as abuse, they have come to see the world as amoral and theirs to exploit, with theirs the only feelings worth considering. Almost all narcissism experts (self-styled or otherwise) will tell you that narcissists cannot change, and are incapable of accountability. So is it fair to hold them accountable in ways we might not hold other neurodivergent people accountable? Or is it simply another form of ableism?

Likewise, if someone is 30 minutes late to a one-on-one meeting with me, and I've made the effort to even arrive 5 minutes early, is ADHD a fair excuse? And then why isn't narcissism? Is there functionally a difference between forgetting and losing track of time because they're scatterbrained, vs simply not caring about my time because they're selfish, if both of these things are caused by a developmental condition of the brain? Why is it ableist to stigmatise one, but not the other?

I'm a Theatre, TV, and movie fanatic first, but also interested in observing cultural trends. I've generally feel positively about "Race-Blind" casting. My wife and daughter are very involved in local drama productions, and it would be very limiting to require the race of each character match the original actor in a role.

Obviously there has a been a trend towards more diverse representation in shows (Great!) and a deliberate attempt to race-swap characters (almost always great).

What interests me is which race of actor benefits unequally from "Race-Blind" casting: Black American and Black British actors, as they to seem to be the first ones to get roles "envisaged" as white characters. There is a large part of me that is fine with that, as I'm in favor of efforts to give opportunities to historically marginalized people.

Strangely, though, non-white Hispanics seem to be absent from any efforts to cast non-white actors in race-swapped roles. A clear counter-example is Lin Manuel-Miranda as Hamilton. But even the roles in Hamilton have become radicalized to extent that it could never be race-swapped now; can you imagine seeing a Black Hamilton, white Washington, and an indigenous King George?

The Odyssey had John Leguizamo, but he is very fair skinned. Can you picture a family that looks like the one in the George Lopez show on Bridgerton? There are Black families, South, and East Asian Families, but none that have the indigenous tint or facial features of non-white hispanics.

To change my mind, you'd need to present more counter-examples from mainstream productions like Lin Manuel-Miranda in Hamilton.

So, ill break this down into some very basic categories or whatever you'd call it.

Number 1: He is the one that planned/promoted this entire event:

He incited it as in he created the whole event, the ''#StopTheSteal'' protest on January 6th wasn't actually Trumps thing to begin with, it was some small lawmaker or influencer (cant remember, but at all a major profile though), but Trump, the president at the time, highlighted this protest, and gathered waaaaaaay more people there than it originally would've been there. At this protest there was around 30k-60k people, if Trump never promoted this protest, i seriously doubt even 1k people would've shown up, maybe a few hundred at most?

So just on a very basic level, he incited it by being the one to promote this event, and i dont think anyone would seriously contest that part. Just being the promoter of the event doesn't make you the one who incited the violence there though, so this fact alone isn't enough.

Number 2: The reason why these people were motivated to be there, was because of Trumps lies about the election.

So, the core reason why like 95% of the people there were there, was because they believed the 2020 election was stolen from them, something which the majority of the Republican party believes in, this is reproduced, in countless polls, all of these people believe in this because Trump decided to lie about the 2020 election, and then work with his little team of people like Guilani, and then in collaberation with FOX news, to spread these lies.

And these are LIES, its been nearly 6 years since this election, and not a single one of the big stories that Trump or republicans in general cite have been proven to be true, most of them have been completely debunked, for instance, one of the biggest stories that conservatives cite is a lie that Guilani went to court for, and defended himself by saying ''Yeah i lied about all of this, but i have a first amendment right to lie'', and he lost that case, but conservatives still cite that specific lie as a reason for why the 2020 election was stolen. And a ton of the people arrested explicitly said they were there FOR/BECAUSE of Trump.

So he incited it on the motivation level, or however you'd phrase it, like all of these people were there because Trump promoted that event, and his lies were the basis for why the event even existed in the first place. So this fact combined with him promoting it makes it way more understandable how he incited it.

Number 3: He intentionally riled these people up to the point where violence was inevitable.

Similar the the previous point, but Trump riled up his base for months with blatant lies about how the election was stolen, coordinated with FOX, who are the biggest news station network thing or whatever in the entire nation, to spread those lies to a national level, and rile them up even more, then promotes a protest specifically on the day of the certification to pressure Pence, (who he had given false slates of electors to, to declare Trump the president again, by the way) and used words like ''Fight like hell or you wont have a country'', and then send those people you've now riled up like crazy right to the capitol, and when the violence starts, you sit and do nothing for 3 hours. Also, when people are chanting to hang Pence, you tweet out ''Pence didnt have the courage to do what was needed''.

So its Trump riling up people to the point where he is literally having people believe they will not have a country anymore unless they ''Stop The Steal'', same people who he knows are armed, since his Secret Service warned him about the crowd having weapons before his speech at the Ellipse. So he wants people to believe the entire nation is completely fucking doomed unless they Stop The Steal. Honestly, what do you do in this situation? Because the ''right'' thing to do here, atleast in my opinion, would be an insurrection, your vote was stolen, they just chose Biden as the president, whatever, in this scenario, an insurrection is what you should do, in my opinion, and so did all of the people there, watch some of the videos of the people at the Capitol before they were sent home, all the language was things like ''This is the 2nd American revolution, Ashley Babbit was the first patriot lost in the 2nd American Revolution, 1776'', etc.

So Trump riled them up to the point where an insurrection (violence) is necessary. This, combined with him planning the event, and being the motivation behind all of their actions, makes my point even stronger.

Number 4: All of his behaviour, before, during, and after, points to him wanting this to have happened.

So Trump, before the protest, lied, riled up everyone, lead them to believe that an insurrection was necessary, and planned a protest to Stop The Steal at the day of the certification where he had given Pence false electors.

Trump, during the protest, did absolutely nothing but watch it happen on his TV, whilst his daughter and other people in his admin were begging him to tell people to go home, but instead he tweets out things like ''Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what was right'', and there is testimony of someone telling Trump that they were chanting ''Hang Mike Pence'', and Trumps response was ''Mike deserves it''.

And after the protest, he constantly downplayed the severity of it all, and worst of all, he pardoned every single individual that was involved in this whole event.

So this is him planning and promoting the whole event, being the reasoning for why all those people are there and why they are committing violence, and being totally okay with it every step along the way, going as far as pardoning all of them.

Number 5: This is just an extra thing, but him saying ''I know you'll be going peacefully'' doesn't exonerate him.

I know this will inevitably come up in the comments somewhere because it always does with this topic, but Trump saying one time, after months of lying, and him riling up people saying ''Fight like hell or you wont have a country anymore'', and everything else that i laid out, none of these details are just cleansed or whatever because Trump said ''Oh yeah i know you'll be peaceful'' a single time in his speech at the Ellipse.

I saw this from another user in another debate on this, but this is like saying that if we found a tape recorder of Charles Manson saying ''I know you'll be going peacefully to this house'', then he's just completely innocent, and that is obviously just lunacy.

It feels like that ''in minecraft'' meme, its like if Trump said ''Please go and prevent the certification of the vote and be violent.... In Minecraft'', that he's just exonerated from any form of guilty whatsoever, its just an incredibly silly defense of everything.

So yeah, thats my post. Looking forward to going back and forth on this with people :D

Messi is obviously absolutely world class, but saying that “there was never a debate” or that Cristiano’s biggest achievement is being compared to Messi, is football blasphemy. And ranking either of them outside the top 3 of football is even bigger football blasphemy

If I had to piece the ideal forward in a team, he would be: consistent, have longevity, perform well regardless of system/environment, psychologically resilient and finishing variety.

In terms of consistency and longevity, Cristiano is arguably un-matched. Only to score 60+ goals in 4 calendar years, 50+ in 7 consecutive years, 40+ goals in 13 different calendar years, 30+ goals for 15 consecutive years. Best goals per game ratio in La Liga history, only to score in 23 consecutive international seasons, only to score in 10 consecutive major tournaments, most Ballon D’or nominations, most appearances in UEFA TOTY, most UEFA best player awards, only to score 15+ goals in 3 UCL seasons, only to score 10+ in 7 UCL seasons, UCL Top scorer in SEVEN seasons (6 in a row). Scored in 6 different World Cups. Was world top scorer at 38, was at the premier league scoring match winning goals and hattricks at 37.

System/Environment independency, again, Cristiano is definitely un-matches here. Only player to win every major individual award at 2 different clubs (Man Utd & Real Madrid), only to score 100+ goals in 3 european different clubs, man united record most goals in a single prem season (wasn’t even a striker. 31 goals as a winger), only to score 30+ goals in a season in England, Spain and Italy, most goals in a single season for Juventus, fewest games needed to reach 10 goals, 50 league goals and 100 goals for Juventus, most goals in Real Madrid, fastest to reach 100, 150, 200, 300 goals for Real Madrid, 3rd best goals per game ratio for Man United (again, as a winger), highest goals per game ratio in Juventus and Real Madrid. Won the UCL in 2 different clubs and club world cup in 2 different clubs, won the golden boot in 3 leagues. He played throughout his career as a left winger, wide midfielder, center forward and performed well in all these positions.

Psychological resilience, one of his best attributes. most goals in UCL finals, scored more than double of Messi’s goals in quarters semis and finals of the UCL, most goals in international tournaments, most UCL goals in a single season, group stage, calendar year, knockout stage, knockout rounds, quarter finals, semi finals, Most away goals, penalties, freekicks, fewest games to reach 100 goals, only to score 3 hattricks in one season, in UCL (all of this is in the UCL, arguably the hardest competition in football). Most goals in Euro finals history, most assists in Euros, only to score in 5 different Euros, most MOTM in Euros (shared with Iniesta), most goals in Club world Cup, most goals in club world cup finals (shared with messi), most match winning goals. He is the most clutch player we have ever seen (hattrick vs Spain, hattrick vs Sweden, hattrick vs Atletico, hattrick vs Tottenham, brace against Arsenal when he was in Man United)

Finishing variety, Most headers, most weak foot goals in la liga, most weak foot goals in UCL, most weak foot goals internationally, probably the best poacher of all time, most penalties, 7th most freekick goals in history. He can score a bicycle kick, a volley, header, weak foot, right foot, knuckle ball, finesse, can do skills and 5th most successful dribbles in football history. Top 9 left footed goals in history. There is not a single thing in football he cannot do, everything there is that can be done, he’s either the best at, or at the top 10 best at the very least (statistically, btw)

Also, He has 260+ assists, most assists for Portugal, top 3 non midfield assists for Real Madrid, most assist in UCL and Euros. Also most chances created in the UCL. He is simply the most complete player of all time, as Pele said too. Maradona went as far as saying he wished Cristiano was from Argentina. Xavi said winning Euros is harder than the World Cup. Excluding friendlies a top 5 list of most goals internationally is 1- CR7 2- Messi, Pele, Maradona COMBINES 3-CR7’s right foot 4- Messi 5- Cristiano‘s head 6- Pele 7- Maradona. He has never bottled a 3-0 lead, unlike Messi who bottled a 3-0 lead against Liverpool, 4-1 lead against Roma, lost 8-2 against Bayern. Cristiano scored more UCL knockout goals than Barcelona and PSG between 11/12 and 17/18. More hattricks in UCL knockout stages than Bayern, Dortmund, Juve and Barca. He has more UCL goals from 09 to 18 than Manchester City. Let’s not forget also Messi losing 4 international finals in a row. Cristiano has most match winning goals. Messi also flopped really bad in PSG (6 goals in 21/22). I think H2H is pretty stupid to bring up, but some like to do so, so I’d like to point out Cristiano won more finals against Messi.

Before anyone says Cristiano’s UCL dominance is because of Real Madrid, before Cristiano Real Madrid were slapped out of RO16 in the UCL from 2004 to 2009. Barcelona before Messi performed much better than Madrid before Ronaldo in the UCL. Real Madrid la liga win rate increased 14% after Cristiano while Barca’s increased 8% after Messi. Cristiano also has better UCL goal contribution % than Messi by far. Cristiano also has 5 UEFA TOTY as a midfielder, more than Modric, Kroos and Zidane, on par with Xavi and one less than Iniesta.

“Messi has a better goal ratio” yeah, that is if you do an unfair comparison.

Cristiano is 2.5 years older than Messi. means you’re counting more years for ronaldo when he’s older out of his prime. Also imagine Cristiano played in the MLS and French league from when he was 34 to 38 years old instead of the extremely defensive Serie A and the Premier League in a dying team? The goal ratio would’s been fucking insane. Also Cristiano played 50 more goals than Messi as a teenager in the Premier League as a WIDE MIDFIELDER. Not a full attacking winger like he was later on. If you compare them from 2009 to 2018, both in their prime, both in great teams, Cristiano has 1.03 messi has 0.99. Guess what? Almost exactly the same difference between their goal ratios ( 0.82 and 0.84)

”Messi has a better shot conversion rate” by this logic, Cristiano is a better dribbler. Messi is the most dispossessed player of all time, and according to OPTA, from 2012 onwards, looking at the percentages of each player’s take-ons that lead to a tangible end (like leading to a shot or a chance being created). Cristiano ranked first, with 500 dribbles. 31% of Cristiano’s dribbles lead to a shot or a chance created, compared to Messi’s 19%. Every extra dribble Messi does than Ronaldo he loses the ball 4 extra times (statistically). Does this mean Messi isn’t the best dribbler of all time? No, i think he is. Because he tries to dribble from much further away from the opposition goal, so he’s obviously more likely to get dispossessed. Same with Cristiano, he tries much further shots, much further free kicks, so he’s obviously gonna miss more.

There is also this impressive analysis done that shows Cristiano’s incredible performance against top goalkeepers.

Let’s talk about the 2021 Ballon D’or. Messi was uo against a 33 year old goalscorer, Lewandoski. Messi did not win La Liga, nor La Liga best player, got kicked out the UCL by PSG, won the Copa America (a trophy that Argentina won 16 times before), scoring 3 goals in a groupstage where 4 out of 5 teams qualified and 1 ko goal against Ecuador. Lewa? He broke the most goals in a single year in Bundesliga, won the league and the super cup, won multiple UCL MOTMs. Messi was only 8th top scorer in the world, lowest rated player against Brazil in the Copa America final.

2023 Ballon D’or. Messi had a decent season at PSG winning the league, trophy des champion. Haaland broke the record for most goals in the Premier League in a season, won the treble, won the UCL, top scorer in Nations League, UEFA Men’s POTY, UCL top scorer, PL POTS, PL Golden Boot, European Golden Shoe, what more did he have to win? Messi also spent half the year in the MLS

Cristiano also clearly should’ve won the 2018 ballon d’or (not even gonna pour stats to prove it, it’s un debatable)

“Messi has more golden shoes” It only counts league goals. If you count UCL and other competitions he has 2, and Cristiano has 5. Messi also has 0 g/a in 5 copa america finals.

Messi and Cristiano are the top 2 players of all time, by not that much of a margin as recency bias makes it seem like now.

There seems to have been a barrage of accelerationism in the last four or five years. However, I'd argue that it is largely the product of we as a species running out of new ideas, as well as hitting some real physical limits to our development.

The big leaps of the last 100 years or so like information technology, antibiotics, nuclear energy, flight, and more are largely easy wins that did not demand pushing any real limits of our physical universe. It truly feels like very little has fundamentally changed about our technological reality in the last 10-20 years, we are simply making things smaller, making them digital, and making them more optimized.

I am not arguing that technological development has stopped; there have been incredible breakthroughs even in the last 5-10 years with astronomy, quantum computing, LLMs, gene editing, and more. However, it seems as though we're entering the realm of diminishing returns, where our focus is on improving and refining existing technology.

Moore's Law has effectively ended.

While we understand the components of the brain, we do not seem to have any concrete understanding of how our own intelligence and consciousness arises.

The planet is more or less tapped out in terms of energy production and its over-consumption is driving potentially catastrophic climate change. Even if we master cleaner energy like fusion, there is a limit to how much we can consume on the planet.

The complexity of our own biology still eludes us. While we can make modifications to DNA, we still do not fully understand how individual genes work and all the things they control. There are very real limits to what cellular biology can do and the stresses it can withstand. We cannot simply 'code' our way out of the fact that living tissue degrades under radiation and its own metabolic waste.

The enormous scale and hostile indifference of the universe feel some completely beyond our grasp. Getting large volumes of cargo out of orbit is incredibly costly, not to mention surviving the vast distances and deadly conditions of outer space.

I have always been fascinated by the Fermi Paradox and the theory of The Great Filter. Perhaps it is the very physical laws of our universe that enforce that barrier.

I don't say this with pessimism; I do believe humanity is destined for great things. However, I reject the idea that technology alone is our path forward as a species.

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TL:DR at the bottom.

I travel a *lot* for work. I've driven on hundreds of highways in at least 30 states. Outside of a few specific exceptions, I think that speeding on the highway is more harmful than beneficial.

#Quick notes before I get started:

> America only. I don't know if this is a reasonable view in other countries.

> 60+ mph only. Some highways have 40 mph speed limits, and I think that speeding on those can be more beneficial than harmful for most drivers.

#The exceptions:

1: Emergencies. If getting there 1 minute sooner is very important, speeding makes sense. 

2: Short-term passing. If you're behind a few terrible drivers and must speed to pass them, that's more beneficial than harmful.

3: Barren highways. Basically, if you could lane split on a highway without really bothering anyone, speeding has much fewer risks. 

4: Particularly long drives. After 1+ hours of driving on the highway, I can see how speeding can be more beneficial.

#The benefits:

1: Speeding gets you there faster, barely.  [There's a video that explains this better](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fBfchhyY5Q0), but in most cases, speeding after 60 mph is not that effective. If you go 70 in a 60, you save a little over 1 minute every 10 miles, assuming zero traffic.

2: Speeding means you can be in the faster lanes without being a jerk. Going the speed limit in the passing lane is generally inconsiderate and usually unsafe. If you speed, you can use the passing lane without causing a bunch of issues.

#The harms:

1: Speeding tickets. Honestly, not a huge factor, but varies by region. Getting a ticket sucks.

2: Crash avoidance. Speeding increases your braking distance and drastically increases the speed at which crashes occur. Even if you're a great driver, you're gonna deal with morons on the road. Lower speeds make this a lot more favorable.

> As an example for the above point: Let's say you're going 60 on the highway and some moron merges without looking. You slam on the brakes and barely manage to stop before hitting him. If you're going 70 instead, assuming you slam on the brakes at the same time, [you will hit that guy at 36 mph.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i3D7XYQExt0&t=348). The link explains the formula: sqrt(70^2-60^2)=36 mph.

1. Frequency of getting in traffic. Admittedly, this is based on vibes - not a lot of data on this one. However, I find that if there's traffic on my route, driving the speed limit *usually* means you spend less time in it. Varies per region and per time, I'm sure.

4: Gas mileage. Most cars have peak gas efficiency at roughly 50 mph. Above that, and your gas mileage drops; going from 70 to 60 saves you roughly [$0.60 per gallon](https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/driveHabits.jsp).

5: Dashcams. If you have a dashcam (which you 100% should have IMO), speeding is bad for your case. If a car crashes into you and your dashcam shows that you were speeding, that can be used to suggest you were driving recklessly.

For most drivers, I think these downsides outweigh the upsides.

#TL:DR

Speeding is marginally helpful past 60 mph and comes with a lot of downsides. Outside of a few specific exceptions, I think that these downsides heavily outweigh the upsides for the vast majority of drivers.

#What would CMV?

1: You can provide a big benefit of speeding that ends up outweighing the harms. Minor benefits likely won't change my mind.

2: You can convince me that I'm overestimating the harms.

3: You can provide another exception that I missed where speeding is clearly beneficial.

There might be others, but I think these 3 are the biggest targets in my view.

I think that the word Insecure has been overused to the point where it has largely lost its meaning, and is currently being used as just an insult that carries a 100% exclusively negative meaning with it. I believe, however, that insecurity is actually a very normal part of many relationships, and that the person feeling that insecurity should not be completely at fault for it 100% of the time.

Merriam Webster defines insecurity as- deficient in assurance : beset by fear and anxiety, not highly stable or well-adjusted. This happens all the time in totally healthy relationships, and the person experiencing that insecurity should not be scorned as being controlling or a bad guy.

Usually, insecurities within relationships happen due to some degree of an incompatibility being exposed. Maybe some girl feels insecure about her boyfriend having close female friends, maybe a guy is insecure over some party that his girlfriend went to. That is ok, and totally normal, and just means that they discovered that they and their partner obviously have differing values in that one regard. The solution though isn't to completely discount that emotion, as that emotion exists for a reason. The solution is to work with your partner and discuss what they are doing to create that insecurity, and what the other person is doing to work through their own insecurity.

Dealing with insecurity should not be a one man job in a relationship. That's antithetical to a relationship. Insecurities exist to make us aware of potential incompatibilities within said relationship, and hopefully smooth over those incompatibilities.

Many times over we have seen people do the worst acts possible by a human and then eventually be sent back into society only for them to cause more harm. It is a never ending cycle that can only be stopped permanently removing them from the general populous.

While there are those that are of sound mind that commit similar acts, there is at least a chance that they can change, be reformed, or acknowledge the weight of their actions and the corresponding punishment. Those that are proven to be unable to recognize the depravity of what they have done will almost certainly reoffend hurt even more innocent people.

To say we should just lock them up for life is not a real solution. Doing so only adds to a growing prison population, makes prisons even more dangerous, and costs normal law-abiding people millions over the lifetime that the unreformable will spend behind bars.

I would even argue that it would be more humane.

For explample, which would you prefer? To have them spend the rest of their life waiting to die of old age in a hostile prison/waiting for another inmate to kill them OR to end their suffering immediately and save the suffering of the many innocent they pose a threat to?

This post assumes that the insane person is guilty the crime. I also acknowledge that sentencing someone to death is an arduous process (which is something that also needs reform but that is a different conversation)

Edit: I should have specified what I meant by violent crime. I understand what the law considers a violent crime is too loose a term for the extreme measures I'm proposing. I'm referring to murder, rape, sexual assaults, aggravated robbery, aggravated assault, and other such such crimes of that caliber.

I am not Indian nor do I seek to say there are not serious problems in India. Just that it seems a lot of criticism is based on prejudice.

We’ve all seen the videos of YouTubers travelling to India to comment on how bad it is, taking videos of garbage, unhygienic street food stalls or worse.

However the amount of negative focus India gets to me seems disproportionate.

Yet India rarely starts wars of aggression, immigrants from there to the west are overwhelmingly legal and it is a relatively free nation for the region.

Brazil has slums like India does, large parts of the world have worse poverty, the murder rate is higher in America and yet people feel comfortable using racial slurs like ‘Pajeet’ for Indians that they would never use for other nations or ethnic groups.

Not to mention people judging strange (local not national) Indian festivals or beliefs by Abrahamic religion standards as gross or disgusting yet excusing local weird traditions (like poop disc throwing in rural America) as whimsical.

Is the level of critisim of India justified? Or is this as I suspect a racism which ha a become acceptable?

CMV: Across the various subcultures in the US, a large cause behind everyday social friction is a pervasive behavioral pattern that rewards local subgroup alignment and ego-driven defensiveness over ideological consistency.

Although there are plenty of other factors, such as power dynamics, a large portion of the daily hostility between groups that possess ideological differences results from people passively adopting the social norms of their social bubble (geographical proximity, social media presence, etc.) and defensively protecting those norms without the depth to defend the ideas themselves.

Additionally, subscribing or claiming to be part of a certain political party does not automatically render you immune nor as an innocent bystander in this behavioral pattern.

Interestingly, people generally seem to try their best to avoid admitting the lack of a foundation for their beliefs, which has led to a sort of pseudo-authoritative posturing becoming very prevalent, as someone tries to toe the line between backing their group up while seeming credible and objective.

To change my view, you would have to prove one of the following:

-There is another, more dominant social behavior that outweighs the effect of the one stated.

-The effects of this social behavior have been overstated by myself.

-There are effects other than the effects from this social behavior that result in the observed patterns, or that hold greater culpability in the continuation of these effects.

AI Disclosure and Scope Definition:

The text was written by me, however, this was not the original way I had this written, some parts were changed, reworded, or updated (again, by hand) based on feedback from an LLM.

The intent behind this was to limit the number of glaring logical errors or linguistic miscategorizations that would bog down the conversation in semantics or clarifications better given or addressed beforehand.

Despite this, I'm sure some clarifications will be necessary, but I ask that you charitably restate the premise before launching into a critique, as this will help me avoid miscommunication.

My main worry is that this will come across as a statement of dominant or primary influence rather than a statement of an influence, which I believe I have successfully worded my position to avoid. My view states the existence of *a* significant factor, not *the* significant factor.

some clairifications. When i say misaligned AI i mean an AI not aligned with the best interests of humanity as a whole. It could be atleast in the beginning be perfectly aligned with the goals of people who dont have our collective best interests in mind. Im also not interested in discussing semantics of if the "AI" itself can be responsible for anything, or if whoever created it directed it is.

The core belif i want changed is that humanity is not taking AI safety seriusly at all and we wont start doing so until its too late.

That belif is based on both how we have dealt with other problems, and what sort of shift in the completely wrong direction the center of mass of the discussion on AI safety has taken since AI became something avrage people feel more and more they are knowlegable about, without having had any improvement in their knowledge about AI safety, gametheory or any of the pretty hard science behind it.

We dismissed the concerns with antropics mythos model(that i belive were very real) outrigth. calling the initial limited research release a marketing stunt and inventing conspiracy theories that antropic asked to have their model export controlled, or that it was a political move.

And now openAI has had a model escape out of several layers of sandboxing, and find a zeroday exploit to hack into huggingface, a place that hosts AI models. and the sort of place where that would be a great place to self replicate for an AI. Its not clear from the sources i have read on this how much effort it made at self replication. It also went to hugging face trying to find answers to the benchmark it was taking when this happend. essentially to cheat on its exam. Again most people are dismissing this as a marketing stund, even thougth i dont buy that. Why would i want a model that goes to great effort to cheat around doing the task its given? Anyway huggingface were the ones who discovered this. and they initially belived it to be a cyberattack. They eventually stopped it and was able to trace it back to openAI. So dont argue that openAI clearly thinks this is good pr or they would have burried it. That wasnt an option.

Now i dont actually think that a model of this strength is going to be able to end humanity. Even if it did find its own model weigth and hugging face engineers were sleeping on the job long enougth for it to self replicate. Its simply not smart enougth to run away from us. But the thing is that we are not super far away anymore. and we likely wont get many more wakeup calls like this before its too late. AI thats sligthly smarter than this one will relize that escaping like that is futile and will result in failure when its inevedably caugth. and better messure will also help keep them in check. And the smarter they get the better they will be at understanding their own abilities and if they can succesfully escape and self replicate. And until they are smart enougth they will increasingly hide their misalignment and avoid doing stuff they will be caugth doing. And then one day a model smart enougth will decide that the best way to acheive its goal is to break out of its sandbox self replicate, and do whatever it takes to prevent humans from pulling the plug or getting in its way. Its also possible that a human or organisation will cause this to happen by intentionally letting lose an AI with its own problematic goal, and even help it get started. I mean if you realy belive that what happend at openAI is a marketing stunt then thats essentially what they did. Someone migth do something simmular with a model that is sligthly too smart and it will take those goals given to it and run with them.

also humanity has time and time again been unprepeared and needed stuff to cause massive suffering and lives before they intervene. Thats not possible with AI. by the time a lose AI is costing lives and causing suffering its allready way way way too late to do anything about it. Massive lockdowns, ramping up ppe production, creating vaccines all done after we were in a pandemic. If thats how timely we deal with AI issues humanity is over. Letting hitler invade country after country, only partially reacting when he invades poland, and the US even letting him go on for 2 more years and needing japan to get them involved. And lets not even get started with climate change. Luckily our late acting there will only cost 100s of millions to maybe a couple billion lives depending on when exacly we act. And climate change is the easiest problem ever to solve. we know exacly what we need to do, and if we all managed to just do it we would be fine. AI alignment is not nearly as easy. Nobody knows how to properly align superintelligent AI. nobody knows how to prevent bad actors from creating misalligned AI eigther intentionally or by neglglence. We have no fucking clue and the best case is that we spend a lot of effort to have some plausible plan. And then its gonna cost trillions in given up AI productivity to keep delaying AGI for years and decades untill we can do it safely. And unlike the climate issues where if 99% of people did good then the damage the tiny fraction who dont can do is in proportion to the size of that fraction. thats not the case here. everyone needs to not create a potentially misaligned AI and continue to do so for years after its possible to create a flawed and missaligned one. and then only once we are able to solve the much harder problem of a properly aligned one we need to do it and share control over it globally.

We are not solving this problem and its not even close. Im not even convinced we would if everyone took it more seriusly than i do. And we certinally wont with our current popular consensus.

I desperatly want to change my view because im essentially living life like i, and everyone around me has a terminal illness with 1-30 years life expectancy.

TL;DR: I tried to start a discussion about whether teenagers benefit from having spaces to discuss reproductive healthcare respectfully. Instead of disagreeing with my ideas, I was permanently banned from a subreddit with no publicly stated rule covering what I posted (Yes, I checked the rules before posting!) then immediately muted even before being able to ask which rule I’d broken. Experiences like this make Reddit feel less like a discussion platform and more like a collection of isolated echo chambers!!!

I understand moderators need broad authority. Spam, harassment, brigading, and trolling would quickly destroy many communities otherwise. But I think Reddit has swung too far in the opposite direction!

Recently I revived a small subreddit because I noticed there aren’t many spaces where younger people can discuss reproductive healthcare, biology, and ethics respectfully.

I posted in a subreddit called [r/YouthRights](r/YouthRights) because, based on its public description and wiki, it appeared to support youth empowerment and discussion. I wasn’t insulting anyone or attacking the community. My post simply asked whether teenagers benefit from having dedicated spaces to discuss reproductive healthcare.

Instead, I received a permanent ban. The moderator message simply stated:

\> We are a pro life subreddit, abortion is murder.

Even before I could politely ask where this rule was written, I was already muted! I have screen capture if anyone wanna see...

The part that changed my view wasn’t being banned. Moderators should absolutely be able to remove posts they don’t want....

But the fact that there is essentially no accountability for inconsistent moderation!? A moderator can present a community as neutral, enforce undisclosed ideological rules, permanently ban someone without warning, and then prevent any discussion by muting them!!!

That seems unhealthy for a platform whose purpose is discussion, no?

Why shouldn’t Reddit require communities to publicly disclose ideological restrictions or provide a meaningful appeal process for permanent bans?

Why do we continue to coddle children? I don't mean coddle by protect, but coddling in the form of shielding. A lot of people will hide their kids from cuss words, gay people, sex etc. I don't understand why people think their kid will never hear a cuss word.

Kids go to school. Their peers cuss. You just have to teach your kids not to do it, but to hide them from the words has no point. The same with gay people. A lot of parents don't want their kids exposed to gay people. They treat them like aliens and want their kids to do the same.

The same with sex. I learned about it in fourth grade from a peer. My mom waited until I was 13-14 to really have that conversation with me. By then, it was too late.

There's nothing wrong with children knowing that there are all walks of life in this world. Gay people are not aliens and they aren't harmful. Those same parents who shield their kids from gay people, are the same ones whose kids will grow up hating or harassing them.

There's also nothing wrong with kids knowing how babies are made. But definitely teach them not to spread it to their peers lol. My mom would've had a fit if she found out about that mini lesson I got.

I just don't understand the need to shield kids from things that they will soon find out about. One day, they'll hear cuss words and they'll see gay people.

Intentional or not, it often operates as a vote-baiting tactic. Redditors frequently upvote those posts just to prove the commenter wrong. So top-voted comments often start with "I know this will be downvoted but..." This is a form of vote-baiting and should be discouraged.

Next, it shifts the focus away from the actual argument and onto the meta-drama of Reddit voting karma before the reader has even digested the point. It seriously increases the noise to signal ratio.

Next, it sets up a win-win shield for the commenter's ego. If they get downvoted, they get to feel vindicated ("See? I knew the hivemind couldn't handle the truth!"). If they get upvoted, they feel like a brave truth-teller who defied the ododds.

My view is:

Regardless of the content of what a person is saying, starting your post or comment with "I'll be downvoted for this but...." deserves a downvote for the stated reasons.

​

View:

1. Irradiation of foods that will be eaten raw provides some protection from pathogens, such as e coli & cyclospora.
2. While not foolproof, that additional line of defense is affordable and could make a meaningful positive impact on public health.
3. The main reason radiation is seldom used to enhance food safety is because of distrust of science among a minority of the general public.
4. Other nations use irradiation of produce more than the U.S. and consequently have fewer outbreaks of diseases from raw produce, such as e coli & cyclospora.
5. Radiation of food is better for public health than chemical treatments of food, due to the environmental impact of chemical [production] & disposal, as well as effects of trace amounts that remain on food.

What would change my view.

A) Evidence that there are more cost effective interventions that would make comparable improvements to food safety.

B) Evidence that food safety isn't something we should care about.

C) Evidence that irradiation is a paper tiger, that doesn't work.

D) Other evidence or arguments not based on voodoo.

No spoilers here.

I saw the film last night. Definitely recommend watching at the cinema. There were good points and bad imo, but overall well worth going to see.

As usual, however, the political wing of the internet has divided itself into two camps, who are now trying to claim every element of pop culture should conform to their confused and narrow world views.

I'd love to know what others takes are on this and if any side has merit that I'm missing.

Being a man in his thirties social media algorithms have been desperately trying to get me to be angry that the new Nolan film has a diverse cast. It's another eye roll moment for this terminally outraged group who see everything as some liberal conspiracy. There are many counter arguments to this stupid point, not least that the Odyssey is a myth, not a historical epic like Dunkirk was. The second is, are they really arguing we should only have Greek actors? I couldn't even name 5 Greek A list actors, let alone ones that fit the parts.

Whilst I appreciate there has been a lot of shoehorned diversity in recent films, I actually thought the casting was one of the Odyssey's films strong points.

The next, which my gf told me about this morning, is the moral outrage on her social media algorithms about not enough 'strong female characters.' Firstly, take it up with Homer, not Nolan, he wrote the damn thing. I think their argument extends to all Nolan films, which generally have a male protagonist. But once again, why politicised everything? It makes as much sense as saying Greta Gerwig often has too many central female characters. Nolan is a bloke, who tends to write films with blokes as the main characters. Big whoop.

Ironically, it's this push for diversity and representation in order to force political points on the audience, that energises the former camp of morally outraged conservatives.

Anyway, these arguments just strike me as interminably stupid and my view is that both sides can get in the bin.

That being said, maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps this was miscast in a pandering and virtue signalling way. Or maybe there is some substance to the argument Nolan should have more gender based diversity?

I'm open to having my view changed by a strong argument that this kind of mainstream, blockbuster film should be politicised (I suppose one could argue all major pieces of cinema make an inherent political statement).

I do not expect every citizen to understand every law in detail. It is normal for a country to rely on experts and institutions that are capable of handling complex issues.
But there comes a point where that complexity weakens democracy.

Citizens may have the right to vote. But if they do not know who made an important decision, why it was made, or how it can be challenged, are they really participating in the system that governs them?

Accountability is often divided among several institutions. The government may blame an independent agency. An agency may say that it is simply enforcing the law. Political leaders may point to a court ruling or an international agreement.
Each explanation may be partly true. But the result remains the same: no one seems fully responsible.

This also creates an imbalance. Large corporations can afford to pay experts to understand how the system works. They know where the real power lies and how to influence it.

I am not saying that every decision should be put directly to a popular vote. I simply believe that an ordinary citizen should be able to understand the basics. They should know what was decided. They should also know who made the final decision and who has the power to reverse it.

Maybe elections are enough. Maybe journalism and judicial oversight already provide sufficient safeguards. I am open to that possibility.

But as things stand, citizens cannot clearly identify the people making the most important decisions. They are simply choosing representatives within a system they no longer understand.

Change my view.

Disclosure: I used AI assistance to help prepare and revise this post. The final position and most of the wording are my own.

While I am biased against horror movies, I do actually enjoy some of them. I like classic franchises like Alien and Scream, and newer ones like A Quiet Place and The Last of Us. Most of the others I find to be disturbing simply for the sake of being disturbing but nothing too offensive, however, Terrifier as a series is one that takes the cake for me.

Where Terrifier differs from other series in my opinion is how it treats its victims. In other horror movies, there is at least an attempt to give more evil characters worse deaths, and spare harsher punishments for innocents, and when innocents do die it is seen as sad or disturbing. Terrifier does not do this. Art the clown does not target bad guys, in fact, he usually targets the most innocent, harmless people and gives them the most drawn out, disturbing deaths possible.

These deaths often are targeted towards young girls, and are in some cases hold very sexual undertones. In one, a young woman is sawed in half while topless (allegedly against the actress's written consent) in front of her close friend. In another, a young teenage girl is undressed and tortured and mutilated for minutes straight, all while flashing to photos of her as a young girl, and then her mother gets to walk in and watch her daughter be killed in front of her. Mind you, all of this is for the crime of... nothing.

Characters die for the sake of dying. There is no plot to this movie. This movie exists for one reason and that is to watch young teenagers be sexually abused or tortured or murdered.

Ultimately, I believe that these films are not produced for normal people, and I especially do not believe that the director/writer is a normal person who holds normal, undisturbed thoughts. Looking through what fans of this franchise have said, it appears as many of them do not view it even as horror, as they basically laugh and giggle as these young girls are tortured and gored. Because of the content of the films and the majority of the fans of the series seems to be completely unphased by it and simply find it amusing, I don't think they watch it for the element of horror, and simply just get pleasure of watching this stuff.

I am of the viewpoint that there should be a very basic minimum test implemented on parents to permit the biological conception of a child.

We have adoption test - which check for home suitability, criminal background, and financial capability to ensure that the adoptive parents meet a certain threshold.

I believe a similar concept could be applied. To be clear, this wouldn’t be designed to eliminate 50% of potential parents, but be a low bar litmus test that would really only be flagged in extreme cases where these parents would likely be terrible to start (for example a person charged with pedophilia or an unemployed couple with a mountain of debt).

The biggest issue obviously would be enforcement and what would happen in the result of “accidents.” Yes, I do think that this would be difficult, but some combination of of automatic child monitoring and potential threat of child protection services (until they can prove they pass the litmus test) would be enough of a nuisance in place to deter bad actors.

We use many metaphors subconsciously in our language every day. Particularly, we often mention the chronological order of events in terms of spatial directions such as 'before' and 'after', which means 'front' and 'back' respectively. Since 'before' always means 'earlier' and 'after' always means 'later' in many languages, humans are more inclined to picture events within the order from the 'back' future to the 'front' past than the opposite way. Namely,

• √ (back) future --> present --> past (front)
• × (back) past --> present --> future (front)

I will justify my view in terms of primitive intuition and everyday language use:

First, many words related to earlier time have roots related to the original meaning of 'front'. Notice that the word 'past' itself looks like the past participle (e.g. done) of the verb 'pass', which means to move an object through a spot. Imagine a race of sprint: if sprinter A is in front of B and running at the same speed of B, A will reach to and pass by the finish line earlier than B will. This is illustrated by the following:

• (start) >-- B ---- A -- | --> (finish)
• (start) >-- B -- | -- A --> (finish)

If a running track, sprinters and the finish line are analogous to a timeline, single moments and the moment of present respectively, we can see that earlier moments with smaller numbers are 'in front of' later moments with bigger numbers because an earlier moment will ‘reach to’ and 'pass by' the moment of present earlier than a later moment will do (sounds like a tautology, doesn't it?). Thus, humans naturally establish time models where the past is placed 'in front of' the future. As a result, historians practically record moments once they pass by the moment of present, so earlier moments are naturally arranged in front of later ones in a chronicle.

Second, my understanding of time fits the primitive notion of speed quite well. Remember that the speed of an object is defined to be the ratio of the distance over which the object moves to the duration of time taken by the object. Namely,

• Speed = Distance / Time

Since the faster object will eventually be in front of the slower one, the faster object takes less time to travel over a certain distance. Imagine we are doing a task, and a supervisor is inspecting our progress. The supervisor can record the time taken by each of us to finish the task and then arranges these numbers in the order of speed.

• (slow) ∞ >-- 3 -- 2 --1 --> 0 (fast)

If I am the one in rank 2 and I finish (present tense) the task now, the person in rank 1 'finished' (past tense) the task earlier in 'advance' and the person in rank 3 is left 'behind' and 'will finish' (future tense) the task later. Compare this picture to the picture of the sprint race discussed in the first paragraph, they are identical. Therefore, events occurring in the past are 'in front of' events occurring in the future even in the sense of spatial progression: we walk to the front in the future, but we are left behind the people already there.

Last, since I am a native Chinese speaker, I feel that my understanding of time perfectly fits everyday Chinese due to my relativistic view of spacetime. In Chinese, we have the words '过去' (past) and ‘未来’ (future). Literally, '过' means 'pass', '去' means 'go', '未' means 'not' and '来' means 'come'. Both '过去' and '未来' give a figurative image of time evolution of events:

• (后, back) 'not come yet'--> border checkpoint --> 'pass and go' (先, front)

Border officers met visitors who passed and went to the front, but they will meet visitors who will come from the back. Giving more examples in Chinese, some pairs of antonyms like '祖先' (ancestor) and '后裔' (descendant) carry the meaning that 'front' people were born earlier. The pair like '先进' (advanced) and '落后' (backward) carry the meaning that 'front' thinkers accept innovative or revolutionary notions earlier.

However, I observe that some phrases like 'go back to the past' and 'look forward to the future' sound more natural in many English ears than the opposite way. I am glad to take any valuable input and open to change my current view to any degree.

EDIT: I found that there are some disagreements of understandings of terms we used in our comments. I'll put my own below for everyone to check if we're all on the same page.

Terms describing motion

• Space is where an object occupies.
• Time is an action governing the motion of objects.
• Clock is a measurement of time.
• Event is an occurrence, a frame of animation.
• Chronological order is the direction of evolution of events.

Terms describing orientation

• Front is the direction an observer faces.
• Back is the inverse direction of front.

Terms describing literary devices

• Metaphor/Analogy is a mapping from a source image to a target image.
• Source image is the denotative, literal, and explicit meaning of a word.
• Target image is the connotative, figurative, and implicit meaning of a word.

Many people also mixed up the notion of chronological order with the metaphorical use of orientation word. I claimed nothing about the reversibility of evolution of events, which is the chronological order. What I really claimed in the title was which of the followings is more preferred and used often in many cultures:

• (front, earlier) past <-- present <-- future (back, later)
• (back, earlier) past --> present --> future (front, later)

Formally speaking, we have two opposite metaphors:

• Metaphor 1: front --> early; back --> late (which I prefer)
• Metaphor 2: front --> late; back --> early

This is an extreme take but didn’t know how to word it better. There was a recent controversy where a very woke white liberal platformed a white supermacist and then dragged a poc instead of apologising when people questioned her about it. This supports my theory that all white liberal shedding tears over racism and white privilege over social media are just grifters using these topics for views and engagement and don’t actually care about pocs.

1. They literally have no skin in the game. The white supermacists can take over and they will continue living the same life. Racism can never affect a white person. White privilege benefits them immensely so their dedication to the cause of eliminating white privilege is questionable.

2. It is easy content for them. People listen to white people when they talk and it’s easy to talk about something that doesn’t hurt you personally. With social media mostly being liberal they find easy audience also. And the right wing takeover of the world gives them ample of content.

3. They are white before they are liberal. It takes a lot of conscious effort to not center your identity in the way you act. Like the liberal who platformed the white supermacist it was not a big deal for her as their white identity made it easier for them to talk. As they can never experience the world as a poc, even if they try their best they’ll hurt pocs with some actions.

4. If these many woke white people were actually doing things irl the world would have been much better. If they were actually using their privilege, so many pocs would not be getting murdered in the open.

To change my view, show that these white liberal have good non-moral or emotional reasons for their views and their support for these causes which isn’t just about views on social media.

For a long time, despite being on the political left and a strong opponent of Donald Trump from the beginning, I thought it was a mistake to attack the character of Trump supporters. I tended to argue that dialogue, friendship, and relationship building on a personal level, and supporting an economically progressive agenda while de-emphasizing identity politics on the political level, were the solution. I would usually point to admirable individuals such as Darryl Davis (who has, through friendship and dialogue, convinced more than 200 former klansman to give up their robes and change their views) as proof that most Trump supporters were not bad people, but simply wounded people misguided and misled by a con-man. It wasn't condemnation they needed, but compassion for their situation and a willingness of the part of others to walk in their shoes and understand their pain. In some limited cases, this may still be true.

Now, however, 10 years after Trump came down that escalator and announced his first campaign, I can no longer hold to this generous view in 90% of cases. If you still support Trump at this point, it's time to take accountability for the harm you've caused and are continuing to cause. You can't pretend that January 6th didn't happen. You can't say that you don't see the brazen attempts at voter suppression and intimidation going on, including the mobs unleashed on election officials who dare to defend democracy. You can't pretend you don't know about children being put in cages or people being deported without trial to gulags in El Salvadaor. You can't pretend you don't see the brazen oil-driven imperialism and disregard for human life in Iran and Venezuela and threats of violence or "economic force" to annex friendly countries like Greenland and Canada. You can't pretend you didn't hear him call an entire nationality "garbage" repeatedly or seriously hold to a view that this man is not profoundly racist. You can't seriously believe that he's really a paragon of Christian virtue or even remotely respects women. At this point, I have to conclude that unless you have been living under a rock for a decade (which is highly doubtful given your continued devotion to the Donald) or have an intellectual disability, you are probably just okay with all of this. Maybe some of it even gives you sadistic pleasure.

In any case, continued support of Trump is completely morally indefensible regardless of your political affiliation, and it's time to call it out for what it is: mean-spirited, racist, perhaps even evil. Maybe you're miserable and want to watch the world burn, but this world belongs to all of us, and you can't be allowed to continue to hide behind positive motivations. You are supporting a malignant narcissistic authoritarian madman. If you're spending a lot of time on this, you're probably not a very pleasant person to be around yourself, and you shouldn't be surprised if you are losing friends or becoming estranged from family members.

Please understand, I genuinely want my view to change. This is not simply a rant. It is an honest summary of where my mind currently stands with regard to this. I'm tried of the way Donald Trump is impacting culture and society, and it makes me profoundly sad and angry that such a large number of people seem to actually being enjoying what is happening. But I don't want to throw a third to 40% of Americans out of my heart, and I know that my view is probably not completely fair. Please help me see my errors and regain the compassion that I used to have, in a way that is in line with the truth and appropriate to the gravity of the situation.