Seriously, try and imagine what Freud would say while reading your politics blog
Kinda makes you wanna take a shower
Me, watching as Freud grinds up and snorts my politics blog: Uh, dude, are you sure you want to do that?
Freud: *experiences seizure* the future is already here the future is already here the future is already here
It’s not just this, it’s a fundamental inability to *identify* with other people and realize that *that could be me*.
Today I am 31 and healthy and always exercise regularly and eat well so why should I pay for other people’s expensive preexisting conditions and disabilities? Because obviously it’s not possible that when I’m 34 I might get diagnosed with an autoimmune disease or a chronic leukemia and need expensive meds forever. Or that when I’m 36 I might have a child with cerebral palsy who is able to live a full, rich, happy and ~productive~ life but will need expensive healthcare and ongoing assistance to do so. Or that when I’m 48 I might get hit by a car and be left unable to work full time, in need of assistance, etc, myself. Or that when I’m 53 I might get some random-bad-luck cancer (let’s make it easy: not even talk about how lung cancer does in fact happen to nonsmokers or how in any case it’s disgusting to call it “fair” when it happens to a smoker because that punishment doesn’t fit the crime you sadists; instead, let’s consider one of the myriad cancers that hits at genuine fucking random or by some familial genetic vulnerability the individual can’t affect) for which a curative treatment actually exists but it costs $260,000 and without it the prognosis is eighteen months.
Same applies to poverty. (And for some of the same reasons as already sketched, as well as economic cycles and industrial shifts and automation and so on.)
It’s this pervasive prosperity-gospel belief that bad things by definition only happen to the undeserving and trying to help people who experience misfortune is hubris and interfering with the will of the great gods Natural Selection and The Market and doomed to create more problems than it solves because fate favors the lucky because the lucky are deserving because Gnon because *blithering evil*.
I don’t know how to explain thermodynamics and free lunch stuff to people who don’t already have some acquired grounding in physical reality. I also keep saying that caring about other people isn’t the problem (Richard Spencer would probably say he “cares about people”). It’s caring about systems, some of which take care of people (and in a catastrophic failure would become unable to take care of people at all) that’s the problem. If you’re too nihilistically individualized, you’ll apparenrly fail to notice how systems fit together (and don’t). Screaming about it doesn’t seem to help, because systems still fail even when you scream at them. I don’t have an easy answer, but if the most widespread centrist position means ignoring Rotherham-type stuff, then fuck that too.
The economy is like the tyranny of a rocket equation. You only have so much fuel, the gravity between the worlds is already there and you can’t change it.
It is physically impossible to meet all the goals - there just aren’t enough resources (natural resources * capital * labor * technology) to accomplish them all.
American GDP-per-capita is above $50,000. Foreign GDPs outside of a few hyper-efficient places like Hong Kong or Singapore are lower.
If one person takes $3,000,000 to keep alive, you have effectively consumed the complete economic output of one person’s whole entire life.
But it’s worse than that, because our worker had to pay for housing, for food, for transport, for education, and taxes to support all the secondary systems required, and also raise a child to perpetuate the system. If all that’s leftover after all that is $10,000 per year, then any $3,000,000 case consumes the total lifetime surplus resources of five workers.
And I look at many of these cases and do think “fuck, that could be me” - which is part of why I suggested a wage subsidy program!
But a lot of Leftist or Liberal language wants to allow people to create unlimited burdens on society. They want us to pay for treatment while not allowing us to prohibit people from doing things that would require more treatment, or creating people that require more treatment.
You can’t have both! You can’t have both!
The fewer the number of people that require expensive treatment, the more resources you can spend on them. The more that need expensive treatment, relative to the size of the productive economy, the less you can spend on each one, until it falls below the level required for them to survive.
If is vitally important that society become more efficient and more technologically advanced. We must produce more, and more efficiently.
And we can’t just throw aside social technologies. If broken homes fuck people up, statistically, and cause them not to do well in the labor force, then the cost of that comes out of liver transplants, not just ferraris.
Anonymous asked:
Based on previous relationships, my ‘type’ is subbish bisexual nerd women who I can talk to for hours on end (at least at the beginning).
My first girlfriend and I spent a lot of time together, hmn, let’s call it developing video game content piecemeal. Also worldbuilding. Lots of worldbuilding. And various other things.
But that isn’t necessary in specific. That’s just something that happened.
Like, I could name out an exact list of traits and so on, but these things aren’t usually cut and dry like that. They have to be felt out a little.
do you make the drawings yself
(they’re actually really good)
Yeah, I draw the stuff in the #the mitigated exhibition tag. I use my old tablet and CS4.
It’s not my primary specialization. Regular artists, with another thousand hours of practice or more, can do a lot more a lot faster. I could produce some of what others produce as speed paintings or similar, but it would take me about 10-20x as long, possibly longer.
Then again, do I even have a primary specialization?
Anyhow, I recommend that everyone practice drawing a little, as it’s a useful tool for self-expression and communication.
It would be interesting to see other artist takes on the Union Girl character.
@mailadreapta reblogged this 900,000 note post, which I wanted to add to but Tumblr formatting for this is annoying
age 11: worry about internet people finding me in real life
now: worry about people in real life finding me on the internet
Yeah, I have to admit, I’m actually a lot more boring in real life and a lot more colorful, liberated, and free on the internet.
Please remind me to not give @mitigatedchaos any formal power if I ever become King of The World or something. Maybe I can bestow a purely ceremonial title like First Lady of The Republic of Cascadia or Vice Antipope. Grand Ideas should be kept in their ivory towers where they belong.
Ah, but by becoming World Emperor you already broke the first condition holding back those ideas - the inability to designate successively larger geographical areas to test them on live populations before larger-scale rollouts, arising from the necessities of political rivalry.
Victory for National Technocracy begins in the town of Whozawhatsit, Arkowa.
Have you ever met someone on the internet that you liked so much that you sometimes sit there and think “Oh man there are people who are lucky enough to see this person IN THE FLESH ON A REGULAR BASIS and I wonder if they realize how LUCKY they are”
Ah, but the people that know me IRL don’t know I’m the person that I am online, where I can safely have fewer social boundaries and present myself however I want, and filter my thoughts through text.
The trick’s on you, dear readers! The grey-skinned cyborg you imagine dutifully making these posts while in Union Army cosplay does not exist!
Anonymous asked:
You know, I got that on [other platform], too. In fact, someone once approached my girlfriend at the time because they were too cripplingly socially anxious to approach me.
…and also my other ex described my dating profile as a bit that way, once…
A-am I not moe enough? * hides pile of guns under strawberry plush pillow *
SAN FRANCISCO—In an effort to reduce the number of unprovoked hostile communications on the social media platform, Twitter announced Monday that it had added a red X-mark feature verifying users who are in fact perfectly okay to harass. “This new verification system offers users a simple, efficient way to determine which accounts belong to total pieces of shit whom you should have no qualms about tormenting to your heart’s desire,” said spokesperson Elizabeth James, adding that the small red symbol signifies that Twitter has officially confirmed the identity of a loathsome person who deserves the worst abuse imaginable and who will deliberately have their Mute, Block, and Report options disabled. “When a user sees this symbol, they know they’re dealing with a real asshole who has richly earned whatever mistreatment they receive, including profanity, body-shaming, leaking of personal information, and relentless goading to commit suicide. It’s really just a helpful way of saying to our users, ‘This fuck has it coming, so do your worst with a clear conscience and without fear of having your account suspended.’” At press time, Twitter reassuredly clarified that the red X was just a suggestion and that all users could still be bullied with as little recourse as they are now.
