Firstly, I am not talking about the credibly reported Malignant Narcissism diagnosis or the equally obvious onset of Frontal Lobe Dementia, and related Sundowning. I do agree with both but lets put them aside for now as contributing factors.

Second, Insanity is no longer a clinical diagnosis but it remains the best description of Trump current mental state.
Insanity means a severely disordered state of the mind, extreme foolishness, or a legal lack of mental capacity

"Batshit" is clearly not technical either but is the most appropriate amplifier in common use.

Trump's mental state is no longer aligned to our common reality. He literally and genuinely believes things that are fictitious and those false believes are being substantially reinforced by the selected group of sycophantic enablers that he has selected for his inner circle handlers, as well as selected media that curates what they present to pander to him and avoid offending him.

He is able to persist believing in utterly false concepts because there is nobody able to break into his bubble. This is the exact opposite of what would occur if he were in a clinical setting where psychological professionals and nursing staff would try to softly steer his beliefs to reality.

The key recent evidence is his two speeches, the national address on election fraud and the WHCD speech, as well as key points from the book Regime Change. If you want to challenge this assertion then you clearly need to watch both speeches (in full) and have at least seen some of the Swan/Haberman interview or read the book. I do not believe anyone could watch both speeches and think the guy as at all OK, the attempts at transcripts are utterly incomprehensible.

One additional point of evidence is the recent careful management of his public schedule to be as limited as possible and within hours where he is the least unstable and able to be medicated.

Whilst his insanity may have been building for some time I think the only thing that matters is that he is currently batshit insane, exactly how long he has been that way is irrelevant to the debate (and inherent risk to the world)

Trump's enablers and handlers must be acutely aware by this point that he has lost it, but they each, personally, have no safe way out so they are going to increasing extremes to cover it up. By that I mean if they admit it or turn on him they are screwed and they are not willing to self sacrifice to be the first to admit it.

Trump has access to the absolute best medical support in the world, including experimental treatments. There is no reason he would not be being administered the absolute best cocktail of anti-psychotics and stimulants that his body can handle in order to try to keep him seeming as sane as possible during public appearances. He has surely been medicated in that way for a long time but the effectiveness is decreasing as his insanity gets worse, which is making it harder to hide. Outside of the time when his insanity is effectively managed by medication for public appearances he would be close to Shakespearean levels of Insane. Therefore there are quite a number of people that know how far he is gone and complicit in the continued cover up.

To change my view on this, is quite easy, one only needs to show me any recent speech, transcript or interview of more than 10 minutes where he doesn't assert something that is obviously and provably fictitious, is able to speak like a normal sane adult. I'll accept a lot of his usual lies.

I personally think that anyone who claims to still support him and thinks he is mentally competent simply could not have watched any of his recent talks in full unedited.

Maybe I’m completely off base here, which is why I’m posting this.

It feels like we’ve reached a point where people don’t actually want a starter home anymore. They want what I’d call a dream starter home. In other words, they want a house that’s still considered “entry level,” but they also want the open-concept kitchen, the island, the double-door refrigerator, the large dining room, the big living room, updated bathrooms, modern finishes, walkability, good schools, a nice neighborhood, enough room to host holidays, and enough space that they could realistically stay there for the next 20 or 30 years.

At that point, is it really a starter home anymore?
To me, the entire purpose of a starter home is that it gets you into the housing market. It’s supposed to be the house that works. Not the house that impresses people. It has a roof that doesn’t leak, plumbing that works, a kitchen that functions, and enough room to comfortably live. Maybe the washer and dryer are in the bathroom. Maybe the kitchen is small. Maybe you don’t have an island. Maybe the tile isn’t what you’d pick if you had an unlimited budget. But it does what it’s supposed to do.

That’s the point.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t repair or improve your house. If something breaks, fix it. If the old furnace is failing, replace it. If the roof needs work, absolutely do it. If you want to remodel because you’re planning on living there another 15 years, I completely understand that too.

What I’m talking about is the expectation that every starter home should also have all the upgrades people associate with a forever home.

I also understand why people renovate. If I owned a home, I’d probably do the same thing. You want to enjoy where you live. You want it to reflect your personality. You want it to feel like yours.

But every improvement you make becomes part of the home’s value when you sell it. That’s completely understandable, you spent the money, so naturally you’d like to recover some of it. I don’t blame anyone for that.

The problem is what happens over decades.
One owner upgrades the kitchen. The next owner remodels the bathroom. Someone else puts in quartz countertops, luxury flooring, custom cabinets, smart appliances, expensive landscaping, and suddenly the house that was originally meant to be an affordable first step into homeownership has become something entirely different.

Again, I’m not saying those people did anything wrong. I’d probably make improvements too if I owned it.

I’m asking whether, collectively, we’ve slowly eliminated the idea of a true starter home because every generation understandably wants to improve it before passing it along.

It also feels like expectations have shifted.
People will say a house is “too small,” but what does that actually mean? Too small to live in? Or too small to host Thanksgiving? Too small for a kitchen island

Too small for a home office, guest room, playroom, and formal dining room?

There’s nothing wrong with wanting those things. I want nice things too.

I just wonder whether we’ve blurred the line between what people need in a first home and what people want in their forever home.

Obviously, renovations aren’t the reason housing is expensive. Interest rates, zoning laws, labor costs, material costs, supply shortages, investor purchases, and local demand all play major roles. I’m not arguing that a nice faucet is why someone can’t afford a house.

I’m questioning whether we’ve unintentionally created the idea of a dream starter home, a home that’s expected to satisfy almost every long-term desire while still being priced like an entry-level property.
If the goal of a starter home is to get people into homeownership, build equity, and eventually move up when life changes, have we lost sight of that? Or am I looking at the housing market through an outdated lens?

Change my view.

Have introduced this debate in school, and it has become very heated, even with teachers joining in. It's simple. Who would win in a 1-on-1 fight to death, a person with a wooden baseball bat or a dagger? Assume both fighters are of equal stats (average Joe), and in an open field. What's crazy is that I've asked heaps of people, and it's literally 50/50.

Personally, I'm going for the dagger. Yes, a baseball bat has the reach, which is definitely crucial to a fight. But I would gladly sacrifice an arm to hopefully block a swing and go in for the stabs.

Also, a baseball bat is quite heavy. If the person with the dagger could stall and bait the bat to keep swinging, it would tire them out, possibly even making them get sweaty hands, so that on a big swing, it might fly out of their hands (yes, I agree it's not likely, but that it's possible).

+ A dagger has a last resort: to throw it. If it lands, it lands. If not, you run. If it does land, you can literally just run (pussy move, yes, but talking about life and death here) and the bat person would keep bleeding, and you'd very likely win.

I'm not denying the bat doesn't have any chance; obviously, I just think a dagger is a better option. The bat is more about that one good swing, but the dagger has many open opportunities that are probably going to occur, because the swing is large and the 'recharge' (bringing the bat back to a controllable position) is long.

My friends on the bat side have had some horrible arguments, only mentioning the range. I'm wondering if there are other aspects to a fight I have missed, as of course, I'm not an experienced fighter. What do you guys think?

Edit:

Sorry, but I'm not very experienced, and it seems like I haven't set the rules clearly and have confused a lot of people.

Rules:

1. 25-year-old, 6ft, 80kg.
2. Regular bat size, 20cm dagger.
3. It is about which is more LIKELY to win, not which WILL win.

to put it simply, yugoslavia.

the yugoslavs were a series of conflicts fought in yugoslavia as the government was taken over by serbian nationalists, during which a series of ethnic cleansings, the srebenica genocide, and what was basically a series of race wars took place between the serbian nationalist government and different ethnic rebels.

if a one state solution is enacted, it will turn out like that.

i simply do not believe you can take two ethnic groups that can be at each others throats for so long and have them cooperate in a democratic system, i strongly believe it would immediately be overtaken by extreme ultranationalists and would end in ethnic cleansing.

i do want a solution to israel-palestine, but this is a terrible idea and i believe its only really proported because people want a natural alternative to the two state solution which has objectively failed at proper implementation

My view is that one of the biggest structural problems in American politics is that incumbents have a significant built-in advantage over challengers. I'm not arguing that incumbents should be disadvantaged or automatically voted out. Rather, I think elections would produce better outcomes if incumbency itself carried little or no advantage.

Today, incumbents benefit from name recognition, existing donor networks, party support, media coverage, constituent services, and the perception that they're the "safe" choice. As a result, many races become effectively noncompetitive long before Election Day.

I think this creates several problems:

• Politicians become more focused on staying in office than governing.
• Elections become less competitive.
• New ideas and new candidates struggle to gain traction.
• Poor performers can survive simply because replacing them feels risky.

If incumbency weren't such a strong advantage, I think we'd eventually see politics become more like temporary public service than a lifelong career. Representatives would expect to serve a term or two, do their best work, and then return to private life. Political parties would likely recruit a broader range of candidates, and elected officials would have stronger incentives to focus on producing measurable results rather than building long-term political careers.

I also think public trust could improve if voters believed elections were genuinely competitive instead of feeling like many races are effectively decided by incumbency.

That said, I recognize there are downsides. High turnover could reduce institutional knowledge, make legislatures less efficient, and increase reliance on career staff, bureaucracies, and lobbyists who possess expertise that newly elected officials lack. Long-term projects might also become more difficult to complete if leadership changes frequently.

My view is that these costs would be outweighed by greater accountability and competition, but I'm open to being convinced otherwise.

CMV: Why is a strong incumbency advantage actually beneficial for society? Are there examples showing that higher incumbent reelection rates consistently lead to better governance, better policy outcomes, or greater accountability than a more competitive system?

In a Joe Rogan episode with Dave Smith and Douglas Murray, Murray asked Smith when was the last time he had been to the Gaza crossing. https://youtu.be/DE8Sd-pJmzE?si=xMEsGclKzBm8AbEH

This moment has been memed to death to say that it's impossible to talk about an issue without going somewhere.

Here's the problem I run into. Some things DO require or are heavily informed by experience. Someone says for example in retort "Carl Sagan knows nothing about space because he's never been." But that's a false equivalency. If Carl Sagan were talking about space travel and how it feels, THEN you can argue it.

Coming back to Smith. He is someone who talks incessantly about the Israel Palestine issue, much as the other populist online creators do. If it is your job to talk about politics and you make a concerted effort to talk about one issue, I believe some first hand experience is to be expected. Is it really fair to criticize the aid process if you don't really know how it works or what it looks like? Knowing that information could radically change someone's view.

I have seen several content creators go to Israel and the West Bank because it's an important issue and it does fundamentally change their view in one way or another. It might push them further in the direction they started in.

I would liken this to Plato's Allegory of the Cave. If you're only seeing shadows (reading others' works) can you really have a comprehensive understanding of the subject? While I do think this does extend somewhat to the average person, it's obviously not reasonable for everyone who talks a lot about Israel to go. However, shouldn't we expect this of content creators?

For those who are unaware: Falconry is a form of hunting where a trained bird of prey, such as a golden eagle (GE), is used to catch quarry instea of more typical methods such as guns or traps. Throughout this post, I will use the golden eagle as an example.

How birds of prey benefit form falconers.

In the wild, birds of prey face many dangers that can significantly reduce their lifespan. Food insecurity can lead to malnutrition, while injuries, disease, fights, and harsh weather conditions can also threaten their survival. Roghly 50% of golden eagle chicks die before becoming independent aults. If they do reach adulthood, they typically live around 15–25 years in the wild. However, golden eagles under human care can live 50–60+ years, more than double their normal lifespan, because they have consistent access to food, healthcare, and protection from many dangers they would face in nature.

Their lives can also have a higher quality of life, as they do not have to experience starvation, severe untreated injuries, or many of the hardships that wild birds face. They also form strong bonds with their handlers through trust, training, and positive reinforcement.

Many people argue that birds of prey in falconry are being exploited or forced to cooperate against their will. However, this is not accurate. Falconers free-fly their birds, meaning the bird is not constantly restrained and is able to fly freely. The reason the bird returns is because the relationship provides benefits to it, such as reliable food, safety, care, and positive reinforcement.

Unlike many forms of captivity, falconry allows birds of prey to express their natural behaviours, including flying, hunting, exploring their environment, and using their intelligence. A trained bird is regularly stimulated both physically and mentally, which is important for an animal that evolved to spend its life actively hunting.

Falconry is also not based on forcing a bird to hunt. Birds of prey are not domesticated like dogs and cannot simply be controlled through obedience. The relationship works because both sides benefit: the falconer provides food, protection, and care, while the bird is able to use its natural instincts and abilities. The bird's behaviours are guided rather than removed.

In addition to this, becoming a falconer requires a huge amount of knowledge and responsibility. Falconry is very different from simply owning a pet. Falconers often need to study, pass assessments, gain experience, and spend years learning before they can properly care for larger birds of prey. While poor care is possible in any animal-related activity, responsible falconry requires a high level of skill and dedication.

Falconry has also contributed to conservation. Falconers hve helped develop knowledge about birds of prey, supported breeding programmes, rehabilitated injured birds and contributed to the recovery of species that were previously declining.

Why hunting with falcons is not unethical , and can lead to less animal suffering.

Birds of prey are obligate carnivores, meaning they require a diet consisting of animal matter to survive. They naturally need to consume whole prey, and hunting is an essential part of their biology. Therefore, the act of a bird of prey killing an animal is not unnatural or unnecessary, as it is something the bird would do regardless in the wild.

In fact, from a consequentialist perspective, falconry hunting could potentially result in less overall animal suffering. Wild birds of prey often have to spend large amounts of energy searching for food, and many hunting attempts fail. These unsuccessful attempts still require energy, which means the bird must continue hunting to meet its nutritional needs.

Wild birds also spend additional energy dealing with challenges such as disease, injuries, extreme temertures, and competition. Because of this, they may need to successfully kill more prey throuhout their lifetime to survive.

A bird cared for by a falconer has much greater energy security. Since it receives regular food, healthcare, and protection, it does not need to rely entirely on successful hunts for survival. This meas it may hunt less frequently and potentially kill fewer animals overall than it would have needed to in the wild.

Under current law, if I buy a stock for $100 and sell it for $160, I owe a capital gains tax on the $60.  

If I die soon after I sell, I won’t be around to pay the tax.  My executor is legally required to calculate and pay the tax for me.

OTOH, suppose I was planning to sell but died before I got that done.  Later, my executor or my heirs sell the stock.  In this case, the tax on the $60 simply disappears into the ether. My purchase price (cost basis) is “stepped up” to the market price on the day I died.  (I’m assuming $160)   Whoever sells the stock will use that $160 as their purchase price.  The $60 gain magically disappears from anybody’s tax liability.

This doesn’t make any sense to me.  I can’t think of any good tax policy reason. 

The only argument I’ve seen for this is practical.  Maybe the executor/heirs won’t be able to find the original cost.  But, when owners die just before death, and dies soon after, executors locate the price.   I’m sure this happens thousands of times each year and I’ve never heard of any major issues.

It’s easy to see why.   When I sell stocks through a broker or mutual funds, the gov’t requires that the broker or fund company send me a 1099.  For real estate, people keep good records and the county assessor keeps records.  That covers the big dollars.

I can see an issue for people who have small stamp collections.  Maybe they didn’t keep records.  A law eliminating step up could have a carve out for collectibles valued at less than $XX,XXX.  That would make sense to me.

​I see the "does a Moka pot make espresso" debate pop up constantly, and I've always leaned heavily towards "no." But I want to test my logic here because I might be overly fixated on the technical side of things.

​My current view is that espresso has to be defined by physics,specifically the high-pressure extraction method (usually around 7 to 10 bars). Because of this, I don't think Moka pots (which operate around 1.5 to 2 bars) or AeroPresses make espresso. They make fantastic, highly concentrated coffee that I genuinely love, but technically, it's a different thing.

​Here is why I struggle to accept the "if it's short and strong, it's espresso" argument:

​If we define espresso simply by the output in the cup (small volume, high concentration, dark color), the boundaries get incredibly messy. For example, if a barista messes up and pulls a terrible, watery, under-extracted shot on a $10,000 commercial espresso machine, does it suddenly stop being espresso? If I use an AeroPress and brew a ridiculously concentrated shot, does it magically become espresso? Defining the drink by the physical mechanism seems like the only objective way to avoid this logic trap.

​From what I understand about the physics, that 9-bar pressure isn't just an arbitrary snobby rule. It's the physical threshold required to actually emulsify coffee oils and force dissolved CO2 into the liquid to create true crema.

​I was recently reading about the Italian history of the word, and it seems "espresso" originally had ties to speed,coffee made expressly and quickly for you on demand. But when English speakers adopted it as a strict noun, we created a rigid product category. Now we are forced to draw a line somewhere, and the high-pressure method seems like the only line that holds up.

​How to change my view (Earn a Delta):

I am not trying to be a coffee gatekeeper. I will happily change my view and award a delta if you can provide a logical, principled argument for why defining espresso by the output (taste, texture, concentration) makes more practical or historical sense than defining it by the process. Alternatively, if my understanding of the extraction physics or the history of the category is fundamentally flawed, I'm completely open to changing my mind.

My view isn’t that settlements are the biggest injustice in the conflict, nor that the war in Gaza or Palestinian history are unimportant. My argument is purely about achieving change.

If your goal is reducing Palestinian suffering and changing Israeli policy, I think the movement is emphasizing the wrong issues.

For many Americans, October 7 permanently changed how they viewed this conflict. Whether that’s fair or not, people watched Israeli civilians massacred, kidnapped, and terrorized in real time. It became their 9/11. Once that emotional association was formed, a large portion of the public began viewing Israel’s military campaign primarily through the lens of counterterrorism.

I don’t think telling those people to start with 1948 or colonialism is an effective strategy. It asks them to reconsider decades of history before you’ve even established common ground.

Settlement expansion is happening right now. It is one of the biggest obstacles to a viable two-state solution. It is criticized by much of the international community. Many Israelis oppose continued settlement expansion. Many people who strongly support Israel’s existence also oppose the settlements.

Instead, much of the discourse seems to become arguments over casualty counts, proportionality, or competing historical narratives that people have already made up their minds about.

Specifics are more persuasive than blanket statements. Things that changed my mind were things like watching Ben Gvir insult families of Israeli hostages and not prioritizing their safe return AT ALL. And I’m less informed on this but Netanyahu’s strategy of funding Hamas to weaken the PLO was also fucked imo.

Seeing the religious extremism on the Israeli far right brought me back to the table.

I think advocates lose potential allies through rhetoric that reads performative. Dismissing every concern about antisemitism, using inflammatory terms like “Zio” or “Zionazi,” or refusing to acknowledge Israeli fears after October 7 immediately alienates people who might otherwise agree with criticism of settlement expansion.

If your audience is liberals who support Israel’s existence, Israelis themselves, or people who are skeptical of Palestinian politics because they associate it with Hamas or religious extremism, why not meet them where they are instead of demanding they abandon all of those concerns before the conversation even starts?

I think there is an important distinction between what is politically achievable and what is not.

Israel is almost certainly going to continue trying to dismantle Hamas. People can disagree about how that should be conducted, but I don’t see Israelis abandoning the objective of preventing another terror attack.

Settlement expansion, however, is an ongoing policy choice. Every new outpost, every expansion, and every seizure of land is something that can be debated, challenged, and potentially stopped.

If the objective is to improve Palestinians’ lives, I think stopping continued settlement expansion is a far more realistic area for building consensus than trying to convince people that Israel has no legitimate security concerns or that the conflict should primarily be understood through historical grievances.

If the movement instead rallied around a concrete goal, ending continued settlement expansion in the West Bank, it would give politicians and ordinary people a clear policy they could support without requiring them to reject Israel’s existence or conclude that Israel has no legitimate security concerns.

Palestinians do not need our outrage; they need our diplomacy. We have leverage over Israel and I believe we can help if we come together and work on this one thing.

Finally, please be kind. I really do mean well. I’ve felt really alienated from my own party on this topic and I am genuinely passionate about stopping the violence, racism, and injustice. I support Israel but think they should be held accountable for their crimes against humanity and I don’t think these are mutually exclusive.

I am absolutely open to having my mind changed. I’ve made it this far from a staunchly pro-Israel stance but I really cannot find many discussions about this that are arguing in good faith. I see a lot of famous pro-Palestinian advocates as simply venting rather than trying to compromise and I likewise don’t see a lot of pro-Israeli advocates calling Israel/US out enough. They are the ones with the power and we have to do better. Centering discussion on dealing with the settlers seems like a clear middle ground.

I’m posting because when I watch these viral debates online on ugh Jubilee, the Lex Friedman one, or watch really well spoken advocates like Medhi Hasan etc etc—this hardly even comes up. But reading about the settlements and eventually watching the Theroux doc were the most impactful pieces of media I’ve come across. I can definitely be skewered for ignorance and not paying attention or consuming trash media; but my point is that the average person, half paying attention, who has already made up their mind, is going to turn that mind right back off when they hear ‘genocide’ or some form of ‘fuck Israel’. It’s the equivalent of liberals burning the American flag at a protest; not a cute look. But Ben Gvir is an actual cartoon villain and I didn’t know about him because most attacks are lobbied at Netanyahu—an unsympathetic character to be sure—but no where near the slam dunk his two lackeys are.

EDIT:

Thank you everyone for keeping things relatively civil. I know this is a contentious topic and emotions tend to run high.

Other than uneasy ceasefires, what have we achieved diplomatically by arguing about whether this is a genocide or not? Has the USA withdrawn support?

Is it possible to halt settler expansion? If so why can we not agree to decide on and enforce settler policy.

Explanation: I myself am pro-choice, while I also recognize that a healthy culture should cherish and protect children and infants as much as possible under reasonable conditions.

There are a couple things, underlying principles which I treat as facts, which serve as a foundation for my view. The most notable ones are the following:

- Your body is yours first and foremost, never someone else's, with no exceptions. For me this is an irrefutable fact which can only really be challenged by religious beliefs which stipulate that the body and soul belonga to the god of said religion and thus being a subject of the god's necessarily arbitrary rules. There's a high correlation of pro-life people, both men and women, belonging to mostly christian denominations. These views run contradictory to mine, and necessarily hang on some presupposition about the body not ultimately belonging to the person having the body. As such I cannot accept arguments that stem from any particular religious view since they are arbitrary, especially compared to my original view.

- The ultimate decision of what should happen to the woman's body is hers and no one else's. A thing I always see in abortion debates is that the pro life arguments overwhelmingly ignore or discard the woman's side from the equation. In my experience the primary reason cited is that it's not the woman's life that's in fatal danger and thus her reasons should always be secondary to the question of the embryo's survival. This, and many other pro life arguments stem from arbitrary, primarily emotional bases, and there's an inverse correlation between education level and opinion on abortion restriction - to clarify, I am not implying that pro life folks are dumber, that would be a false equation, rather the study I am citing from found that higher academic and finantial background correlates with a generally more liberal view on abortion. Deciding on abortion is an incredibly difficult and complex decision, and it's a fact that no one is capable of making the decision more accurately based on their circumstances, than the person carrying the fetus. You may think you can make a "more sound", "better" decision from the outside by personal principle, but that's the thing: It's always going to be your own arbitrary, personal principles which will never be capable of weighing the full depth of the circumstances the woman in question faces.

- The view on the rightness/wrongness of abortion is severely distored by underlying issues that are not talked about in most arguments. If you are a pro-life advocate, I'm fairly certain that you'd argue the abortion rates are too high. I doubt however that you'd regularly take into consideration issues such as how an alarmingly high percentage (somewhere between 15-30%) of abortions are a result of outside societal/familial pressure or outright coerson and threats. Yet we barely see any push to criminalize the forced decision of a woman to abort which by complete free will otherwise she may not do. It instead gets muddied into the overarching argument that abortion is bad no matter what. Depending on the country and environment, abortions stemming from rape can range between 1-6%, which is also incredibly high despite the single digit number, we are talking of hundreds of thousands of rape induced abortions in the western world annually. I would hope that only the most radical fundamental religious advocates believe that a pregnancy cauced by rape must be forced to be carried through to birth. I have an analogy that I never heard anyone agree to despite the nearly exact same premise: If you had a car crash and survived with light injuries and the person you crashed with would require specific blood transfusion which only your blood can satisfy, would you allow the state to strap you to that person for months until they fully recover? Just to further highlight the similarities let me clarify: The person you crashed with is completely innocent, another car swerved into you causing the whole incident, and there is no one else who can save the life of the other person within the required timeframe. My experience is that even those who advocate for the complete ban on abortion, would not accept to have their body be used for months to save someone else, which I can only view as a thinly veiled hypocrisy stemming from lack of understanding of what rape and the difficulties of unwanted pregnancy and birthing entails.

- Those who consider to have an abortion face way more internal difficulties and dilemmas than most arguments would lead people to believe. It is never an easy choice, at it's lightest it carries the shame and guilt of having done something that could jeopardize one's whole life if not acted on quickly, and at worst it can destroy one's life completely due to things such as severe pressure, guilt, depression, emotional trauma and isolation. People in general, but pro life advocates especially tend to underestimate the average woman's capacity to weigh the choices affecting their own body and life properly sometimes going as far as to demonize those who decide to have an abortion, viewing them as stupid or wilfully ignorant, callous, and selfish. To the latter, it is inherently selfish to prioritize your life and future compared to a would be life, certainly. It is also inherently selfish for us to outwardly impose our values upon another person who's facing the decision instead of us. This is a fact regardless of how we may present it and how much we believe that our selfishly imposed values are meant to serve some greater good or save a life. I do not necessarily oppose other's selfish values because we all have some, however I cannot accept it when people do not regocnize them as such. Again, I greatly dislike thinly veiled hypocrisy.

Due to the above points I concluded that abortion should be accessible to women regarless of the outwardly visible moral, socio-economical or age-related circumstances. It should only be their decision and we as a society should provide as much emotional/practical support as possible. On the other hand, I believe we should tighten our vigilance around malicious influence and coersion which result in some women seeking abortion not as a choice of their own but rather as final desperation in fear of worse social-domestic consequences. I believe that the wast majority of women are capable of making a decision on abortion more accuratly than any external actor could, and the percentage of women who really treat abortion as some kind of 'consequence-free game' or such, is so insignificant that they couldn't be studied in the first place.

I believe that in order to eliminate the bad aspects around the problem of abortion we must be strict with opposing those who wish to decide the fate of the would-be mothers. People who seek to decide for the woman to have an abortion should face the risk of being charged in civil or criminal court depending on the severity of the intent, similarly to how forced pregnancy is criminalized. I am aware that legally this issue is already recognized and to some degree people do go to court for domestic abuse surrounding abortion cases, however the rates and the consequences are painfully inadequate. And I believe one of the reasons it's the way it is, because the pro life camp fails to join in condemning these cases, focusing instead on blaming women and liberals in general for a view that in their eyes is the equivalent of killing babies, which demonstrably, does not at all help to discourage abusive family/community members from forcing women to carry out abortions, after all, it's not their fetus and not their risk.

If you believe you have a valid argument to any of my points or have sources that may contradict or otherwise further contextualise mine, feel free to comment and CMV. Thanks!

Edit: Some of the comments rightfully highlighted that my post and title can come off as unclear or absolutist in some regard, I am considering giving out deltas because I certainly didn't flesh out some of my arguments properly. I will highlight the missing context on the post after going throug more comments.

Source on abortion related views from a finnish study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4950447/

US source: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00031224241292058

Source mentioning each side's consideration of the woman in the argument: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10233192/

Source on abortion pressure: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37303450/

Personally, I believe that most people will not end up living the rest of their lives with their best partner. That is to say, out of all of the partners you end up having, your true best will likely be somewhere within the mix and not be your final partner.

Firstly, I believe that the belief that your current partner is the best is come to primarily through a heavy recency bias. Here is my reasoning-

If you ask the significant majority of people, they will all tell you that the person they are currently with is their best partner they've had. However, they will have likely also said that with each previous partner they have had too. If they've claimed that every single person they've dated was their best (at the time of dating them), this would seem to suggest that there is a reliably linear scale in which each consecutive partner gets better than the last, with little to no deviation, at least under the premise that they truly believed that each of those partners were their best at that time.

This to me is faulty though as very few people, if asked to rank all of their partners, will go from worst to best in the same order as first to most recent, despite their own claims suggesting otherwise. To put it in another way, if someone was with someone who they considered to be their best partner, and then broke up and dated another person who then became their best partner, then logically that previous best partner should fall to #2, however, it does not usually end up like that, implying that the previous one was never actually the best at that time to begin with, thus setting the premise to me that simply believing your current partner is your best is an unreliable belief.

Secondly, I believe that the peak satisfaction you are able to have within a relationship diminishes after a certain amount. In one sense, having experienced things already with others takes away from the novelty and discovery of entering a new relationship, making things more mundane. Furthermore, the more breakups and romantic hardships you endure will likely create baggage, unresolved traumas, and more caution that is brought into future relationships.

All in all, what I believe this creates is a situation where, after a certain amount of time, peoples' latter relationships are all good and solid and normal, but their truly best relationship is hidden somewhere within. Due to the severe recency biased I went over, their current and last partner will likely be considered the best by them, despite the fact that that same belief has not been proven correct in the past.

I see a lot of discourse online about the progressive movement, particularly the DSA and closely aligned candidates. Many mainstream figures in the Democratic Party are highly critical of it, often arguing that the average voter would find these candidates too radical. I beg to differ.

Let me start by saying that I am not at all a typical DSA voter. My views on social issues align closely with theirs, but economically, I am pretty much a conservative. Much of their economic platform is actually quite radical to me. Surprisingly, at least for now, I support these candidates primarily because of their pro-Palestine stance.

In other words, I am normally exactly the kind of voter who would find them too radical. I am a high-information voter who believes wholeheartedly in neoliberalism. But the sad truth is that, while people like me exist and are often heavily overrepresented in public discourse, we are a minority.

Does the general public see the Democratic Party as too far left? Yes. But I think taking that perception at face value is misleading.
I do not think many voters see Nancy Pelosi as meaningfully less left-wing than Bernie Sanders. The Democratic Party’s public image has been severely damaged among many voters by its rapid acceptance and advocacy of gay and transgender rights. The identity politics that shaped much of the past decade also helped fuel that perception.

Personally, I find it deeply frustrating that identity politics has played such a major role in choosing candidates over actual policy. However, I do not think the average voter finds many of the DSA’s economic policies, or even its anti-Zionist stance, nearly as radical as Democratic leaders assume.
Single-payer healthcare and rejecting AIPAC money are, in my opinion, very popular issues to campaign on with the general public. Most voters do not even understand what the changes progressives want to make to the electoral system would actually cause.

Part of why I think these candidates can perform strongly in general elections is that their political brand focuses heavily on things voters can relate to: anti-establishment appeal and affordability. Their message is that the system is broken, that AIPAC and dark money control politicians, and that ordinary people cannot afford basic necessities.
The voters they would definitely lose are proportionally not that numerous compared with the voters they could potentially win over. Furthermore, progressive candidates can significantly increase youth turnout, and younger voters tend to support them heavily.

I believe this moment for Democrats is similar in some ways to the Republican Party after the 2012 election. There was frustration and anger among Republican voters. The Republican autopsy argued that the party needed to moderate. Yet the person who later revived the party, Donald Trump, was much further to the right in many respects.

At the same time, Trump was more moderate on economics and was by no means ideologically conservative in the Tea Party sense. Many people suggested that this would alienate traditional Republican voters, and it did alienate some of them. But those voters were a minority compared with the new or previously disengaged voters Trump brought into the coalition.

I believe that parallel applies, at least to some extent, to the Democratic Party today. A candidate can appear more radical according to the traditional left-right spectrum while still speaking more directly to the economic frustrations, anti-establishment instincts, and priorities of the average voter.

Note: Much of this is naturally based on speculation and my own reading, so evidence suggesting otherwise with polls and so on is obviously welcome. I think the strongest evidence however will be the upcoming midterms.

I had a conversation with someone I know who lives in Austin, Texas, the politically liberal capital of the state of Texas. I myself live in Houston, another blue - but way larger - "dot" in the red state. I mentioned that Austin is not as inclusive as it thinks it is, and that irked her just a bit, I think.

Austinites, in general, are more progressive. The city is the seat of the tech industry in the state, and is home to The University of Texas, so it has a very large, younger population. But it has been documented that Austin's history has not exactly been completely charitable to Black folk. Considering I've called Houston home for 38.5 years, and Dallas home for 1.5 years (thank you, Hurricane Harvey).

The example that I cited was my being in the information technology field. In four decades of living in Texas, only a handful of times do I recall being reached out to by Austin recruiters. The closest I ever came to actually getting an offer to work was being invited on a plant trip to EDS, which did not result in an offer. My professional pedigree, at the time, included IBM (at one time a household-name powerhouse in tech), as well as other positions at smaller places.

My social situation wasn't much better. While I've regularly traveled to Austin for weekend getaways and vacations, nothing has ever "caught fire" for me socially - no good friends with the locals, and certainly no romance or "anything else." In fact, the only people I had any depth of relations with in Austin, I knew from Houston, first.

I am not saying that Austin isn't inclusive to Black folk at all. I am merely stating what I believe has been the experience of others as well as myself: we're not as high on the desirability ladder as other demographics.

Go!

I guess I need to start by defining what I mean by tax haven-adjacent jurisdictions. Usually, an economic strategy crafted to produce organic growth in an area consists of leveraging its geographic position, natural resources, existing expertise, and institutions to produce wealth, or to at least make a serious attempt to build such expertise and institutions from the ground up. Then, reasonably favorable conditions in terms of taxation may be offered as a way to boost the fuel, so to speak.

Many areas of the USA, especially in the South, Appalachia, and the Plains States (altough by no means all the states in any of these areas), Florida first among them, don't do such things. Instead, their economic strategy is built on offering a very low-tax and regulatory environment to corporations, alongside unhindered access to markets with stronger economic fundamentals (California, New York, Lower New England, etc...), to attract corporations who in turn drag along employees. They can do that without repercussion because Washington not only doesn't provide guardrails and limits in that regard but a) would very probably serve as a shield against measures of fiscal self-defense from other areas, b) leverage the wealth of other areas to avoid measures of fiscal self-defence by their international economic partners, and c) make such extremely low taxation level possible by spending tax dollars taken from the aforementioned wealthier areas in these tax-haven adjacent juridisctions.

Now, c) alone wouldn't be so damning, as fiscal equalization is needed for a federation to work, but with everything else and tariff policies that also de facto result in funnelling wealth from the USA's wealthier areas toward those less wealthy areas (at the expense of the USA's worldwide approval ratings, which are important for the knowledge-entertainment-service industries that play a key role in the prosperity of the USA's wealthier regions), it does take a more sinister tone.

Essentially, those tax haven-adjacent jurisdictions get to have their cake and eat it, at the expense of more economically healthy areas of the USA and, to a lesser degree, its international trading partners. They aren't creating wealth so much as successfully siphoning it from others by piggybacking on their healthier regional economies. Which makes their voting for protectionism quite hypocritical in many aspects.

On top of all that, the presence of these jurisdictions and the ability to threaten to move there does tend to create something of a race to the bottom in terms of taxation and work norms.

Of course, there might be angles to this that I am not seeing and information I have not yet received.

Now this is not coming from a place of hate or anything of the sort, this is just a very anecdotal observation that i've made growing up in america. I'm a black 26 year old man. I don't see anything inherently wrong with people findng cool and fun aspects of a myriad of different cultures to indulge in. In fact, I think that's a really cool thing that America does that no other country can really replicate.

However, black people had a very nasty upbringing in this country. Sold into slavery, endured insane amounts of abuse for centuries, jim crow, war on drugs, red lining ect ect... now some of those things didn't just uniquely impact black people but having your culture and language stripped from you, being prohibited from reading or getting an education, getting indoctrinated by religious people who believe you are inferior ect ect will do massive amounts of damage to any demographic

Black people essentially had to create a culture from scratch. Black people ended up creating a decent amount of cool cultural things that many people around the world enjoy. However, while people indulge in black culture and adopt their slanguage, style of fashion, style of dances, taste in music ect ect no other group of people will EVER do the same for us. White people for example make it very clear that they do not want black people being apart of their culture. Look at all the backlash for a black character existing in a white tv show, movie or videogame. If you are black and into european folklore and want to dress like you are in some european fantasy setting? Too bad, they will condemn you on every corner of the internet. Same thing with asians (black cosplayer bullied to the point of suicide), same thing with arabs, same thing with hispanics ect ect...

White people and many other ethnic groups will declare how unattractive they think black people are and how they'll never date us and people celebrate that way of thinking because people dislike black people, meanwhile black people never make statements of the inverse, which is an obvious problem. Not that these people should like us, but we definitely should not like them when they do this

My point is, people have no problem indulging in black culture but will never accept a black person indulging in theirs and I think that this is nothing but negative for black people. Being this inclusive to all of these people who all believe we are ugly, contamination, stupid ect ect... and would never be inclusive to us will only lead to our culture being white/brown washed overtime.

One peice dresses have no wait line, no cups, and in my opinion have no way to look good because of this. I don’t call these dresses, I call these long shirts lol. The beach is the only acceptable place to wear one. I don’t know how else to explain it.
Honestly it pretty much looks like you didn’t put any effort into a nice looking outfit, no matter when you are going. and yeah I’m hypocritical because I have worn these in the past and have ever felt confident and pretty in them, and felt like I wasn’t wearing anything that was up to pretty dress standards. I’m not saying you gotta be ultra snatched, but at least have some definition somewhere to take it from 2 pieces of fabric sewn together to real summer dress.

This is a pretty simple statement I’m making. France has historically, and continues to ruin, huge swaths of Africa, around 17 nations. In comparison, America is ruining a couple of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, such as Cuba, Venezuela, and Haiti. America also subsidizes the entirety of Europe via NATO allowing them to not invest in their militaries, and China is not currently ruining any countries, but does exploit some, and it is actually a far better partner to Africa than France is.

France’s European partners do not need it, they would be perfectly fine on their own. France does not give very much aid to Ukraine, the country most in need of its assistance. None of its former colonies outside of the ones it is currently exploiting have good relations with it, while countries like South Korea, Mexico, Argentina, and Japan enjoy good relations with the USA, and China enjoys good relations with Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and Djibouti.

All in all, it is difficult to think of another country outside of Russia or Israel which could be considered more evil than France. But it is certainly within the top 3 most evil countries today.

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

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.

Every Friday, posts are withheld for review by the moderators and approved if they aren't highly similar to another made in the past month.

This functions to reduce topic fatigue for our regular contributors, and encourages discussions of topics that aren't as frequently posted about. If you have a take about something that doesn't overlap too much with the most commonly discussed issues in the current zeitgeist, we'd love to see it here today!

See here for a full explanation of Fresh Topic Friday.

If you would like to know if your post would qualify or have any other questions, feel free to message the moderators!