Gentle nerd freak of the pacific northwest. All nation states are vermin.
The fact that power results in antisocial behavior has been understood for millenia.
Lots of societies have had cultural infrastructure of equality that attempts to mitigate this weakness in our biology and prevent harmful levels of power accumulation. The basque village layouts that Davids Graeber & Wengrove talk about, or the practise of ‘insulting the meat’ of successful hunters.
Neuroscience shows that rulers will always become evil.
Getting more power actually changes your brain, suppressing your ability to use empathy. The very powerful will always struggle to remember that others are human and don’t want to be hurt.
Humane behavior and hierarchy are mutually exclusive. Heirarchical organization encourages humans to hurt each other.
It’s just a lie. I don’t think it’s meant to hold up to scrutiny, it’s just meant to be repeated.
It really shows that netanyahu’s genocidal attempt to cling to power are not just brutal, inhumane and a risk to the whole region, but also strongly against israel’s own interests.
Red No gender No appearance No size The table was the same color as our dining table, but that was the only property it had.
Yep, another great example. When you have as few rules and as tightly focused a scope as lasers and feelings, every single situation the rules can generate is going to be on theme.
every ttrpg has had rules that can be exploited and abused
That’s true for games in the tradition of D&D/F20/Trad, but not all ttrpgs. Fewer rules, a tighter scope and more elegant design make it much easier to rule out the kind of bad interactions or edge cases that lead to rules that run counter to the game’s purpose.
My Life with Master, Fiasco and Fall of Magic are all games i’ve played, where exploitation or abuse of rules is just not possible.
Unbound is a tactical combat rpg without any room for abuse of rules.
John Harper’s rules-lite DW hack World of Dungeons is probably too elegant for abuse to be possible.
That’s the first few that I can think of, but i’m sure there are plenty more.
I’m a hard determinist, so I’d disagree with the “you choose” part, but basically I agree.
You are whoever you are in the moment, there’s no fake self to hide behind and no real self lurking unrealized.
There’s no core real you, no true deep down self.
We’re social mammals and the immediate social situation were in is one of the many factors that determine our behavior from moment to moment.
Go running.
You know when you build something up in your head to be really awful, then you try it and it’s exactly that awful?
If they’ve already proven they can steal and lie, of course they’ll get VC money.
Some people love to dry hump strangers on a crowded bus or train, is that more like it?
I have to admit I don’t understand what connection this has with paying for music apps.
I’m pretty sure if you’re paying for it, that’s not love.
Didnt we already know that elon opened starlink to the russians? I thought he announced after that call with putin?
Yep! In my experience it’s awful and it stays awful for ever.
But just like with going to work, over time you come to accept that existence is suffering.
“Chinese” mummies is a bit misleading. The Tarim Basin has a long history of Chinese rule/influence, but not that far back.
These mummies are from a unique population that descended largely from Ancient North Eurasians, a group who contributed smaller percentages of ancestry to Northern Chinese people, Europeans, Siberians and Native Americans.
So these cheese enthusiasts are less Chinese and more like distant foreign relatives to the Chinese who adopted dairy-heavy pastoralism after it expanded through the steppe.
The funny thing is that actual chinese snake oil was incredibly effective at alleviating things like joint pain or some skin conditions. It has higher concentrations of omega 3s than fish oil and has even been shown to help mice learn mazes faster.
That’s why grifters selling fake medicine all claimed it was snake oil - people already wanted snake oil because they knew it worked.
Personal trainers. Watching other people exercise is not a job.
You may as well be a corporate tax accountant, a ghost writer for the rich or an email scammer in terms of the value you create for society.
That example does sound quite different, but Wiktionary has it as from the Proto-Slavic *(j)edinъ, which is “ultimately from *h₁óy(H)nos.”
Finnish or Estonian are so wildly different
I know right?! I strongly remember the first Uralic language example I heard was the Finnish for merry christmas: hyvää joulua - it just sounded so different.
It’s not a question of “look[ing] like distancing or lack of empathy”, or just “bitching about people in power”.
Scientific studies that look at your brain itself - not your behavior - show that as people get more power the brain’s empathy centers become suppressed and you are chemically less capable of being a good person.