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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • Just recognize reality. Trump has spent his life in media. He’s skilled at crafting a narrative that appeals to the dumbest 51%. His wide variety of horrible characteristics works against that, but you need a candidate who can take advantage of those horrible characteristics. Rather than doing that, Biden has played into Trump’s narratives, despite tons of time to prepare. If we would let ourselves see it, we’d recognize it’s a binary choice. Go with Biden and make Trump president, or go with anyone else and stop him.




  • Look into switching jobs. Unemployment is on the low end. People who switch jobs tend to make more money, and it’s easier to get a high-paying job when you have a job already because employers can’t help but think more highly of you if someone else is wiling to employ you.

    Depending on what you do a recruiter or staffing agency may help. What’s worked best for me is posting an updated linkedin profile with keywords that recuriters will look for that relate to buzzwords for your job. Remember recruiters are typically trained as salespeople and may not know much about your actual job, they just look for words. Put in that you’re looking for work (but only show it to recruiters) and see if anyone bites.





  • To be honest, I don’t think Trump has the attention span to do any more than hold a bunch of gloating rallies. Ironically his own immunity may end up working against his desire for revenge, as some justice department lawyers will push back until Trump gets distracted by a squirrel or a coloring book or something.

    That being said, I kinda dream of moving to Canada. Fun fact: the median Canadian wealth per capita is higher than in the US, meaning it may have a better claim to “land of opportunity” if we’re talking about ordinary people instead of the richest few. Plus the people really do seem to be nicer. The mosquitoes though…Canadian mosquitoes are no joke.



  • I think what it all comes down to is most people don’t really want rational debate, and don’t participate in debates in the hope of learning or even to help others learn. Most people participate in debates to feel superior/“own” the other side. The result is debates that are typically lazy, uninformative, and downright mean.

    I think all of us have a little bit of this desire for superiority in us and we need to consciously make an effort to suppress it.






  • There’s a lot of possibilities.

    My top contender would be a desire to explore, which probably requires consciousness. Given that we have pretty much no idea what leads to consciousness, it can be guessed (dubiously) that if it arose more easily then we’d have an explanation by now. It could be that it’s an extremely rare phenomenon, and there may even be other planets with “intelligent” but mechanistic beings that act entirely for their own survival and don’t build civilizations or explore much.

    Second would be intergalactic and to a lesser degree interstellar travel. If we assume both 1) intelligent civilizations are extremely rare and 2) faster-than-light transportation is impossible, it could be that everyone is just too spread out to make contact.

    Third, and the one I most feel is right but it requires pretending I understand quantum physics (which I don’t) and probably offending many that do, is the notion that the concrete universe is not large but small and has no objective existence independent of our respective perceptions, and any part of the universe that’s invisible is a mere wave function that will only have concrete reality upon our perceiving it. I make the further dubious assumption that conscious beings can’t be part of the wave function. So there.




  • I’d suspect it’s reaction to large cultural shifts in the last couple of decades - including gay and trans rights, George Floyd and increased racial integration in media, me too, etc. For whatever reason, perhaps loss aversion, many people tend to react angrily and violently to change and the threat of change. Perhaps it’s analogous to how communist movements in the early 20th century led to fascist movements a decade or two later.

    I also don’t think it’s the US only, so you can’t put it all on Trump. I’d argue Trump and similar figures around the world are the result of the above counter-reaction.