houseoftolstoy @[email protected]

Part 1

A man is traveling by foot when he sees a party of merchants walking in the opposite direction. With that party is a donkey who is heavily burdened with all the merchandise. The man noticing the donkey ready to collapse, states, "That donkey is carrying too much! Take off some of those things so that he does not die from exhaustion!"

The merchants take a look at the donkey and see that the man is correct. They start to discuss among themselves what they should do.

I have a theory about the supposed increase in autists. The internet is to blame. Not simply because people can look up terms and mis-diagnose themselves (though this is part of it), but rather that the internet has the unfortunate side effect of allowing people to be "terminally online."

When you are doing the vast majority of your communication through text alone, you are missing most of the actual communication you would get in a natural social situation (vocal inflections, emotions)

/1

For anyone who wants marriage and family in their future, I have some advice:

Don't marry wrong. If that means not marrying at all, so be it.

It is indeed better to not marry at all than to make the wrong choice on who to marry. I will never tell any man that they have an obligation to get married, because in spite of the fact that I am married myself, I understand that my path is not one that can or should be prescribed to all other men.

Not surprised gas prices are still elevated. If one of the side effects of the war with Iran were to have a scapegoat for economic issues (high gas prices can have downstream effects besides gas being more expensive), then I think it is more detrimental than helpful. Trump started the attack, so the blame will get (rightly) pushed on him.

Yes he is also being controlled, but that does not make him blameless.

Just ran a sub 6:30 mile. It was on a treadmill, so perhaps it is not an official time. But it is the best time I have been able to do in a while. I doubt I will ever get back to my all time best time, but I never would have thought I could get it down this much since my high school days.

Among all other circumstances with war with Iran, I saw gas prices spike overnight. I suppose it is a minor inconvenience when considering everyone who is within striking distance of missiles in the Middle East. I will take having higher gas prices over being in the war zone itself.

The war shouldn't be happening in the first place, but that is something not in our power to choose.

With a new war kicking off with Iran, we must consider the possibility of a draft taking place. While I think the possibility is quite low, the probability is still above 0.

The draft would be an extremely moronic idea. But given the current trend of government choices, they are quite willing to enact ideas that are terrible and evil. I have to wonder how many of them understand that if you want a civil war, enacting a draft is one way to spark that powder keg.

I for one am sick of the incorrect pronunciation of Epstein. It is "Ep-stine", not "Ep-steen." I don't care about any retarded justifications, the "ei" makes it a long I, not a long E.

Even more retarded when it was with Harvey Weinstein, when it was said as "Wine-steen." As if we do not see the exact same letter combination in the same name.

Is the media doing this because the "stine" pronunciation of Stein would make people associate the name as Jewish? Too late, everyone already knows.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ohoqQqXes0

This sums up how I feel about the prospect of space travel outside of our solar system. In short, other stars are too far away and anyone who thinks we are going to get the magical technology to travel fast enough to make such travel possible is delusional.

My conspiracy theory of the day: the demonitizing of videos using terms like "pedophile," "rape," and "porn," are not used to protect children, but to serve as a shield to our own corrupt rulers so that it is harder to discuss the horrible acts they are doing.

Not that it really would work anyway, since people just created replacement terms like "PDF file," "grape," and "corn." You can't truly stop the message, you just force people to come up with new terms.

I have an idea to sell the idea of a net-taxpayer voter system to leftists. Use their hatred of billionaires against them. Talk up how billionaires should not be voting since they have been getting huge tax cuts.

Maybe it won't work, or maybe it will force them to look into how much each group actually pays into the tax system.

And to make sure we do not fall into the trap that short sighted libertarians do, the order of operations goes like this: the welfare ends. THEN we can stop ICE activity. Thinking the order of operations are interchangeable shows that you have no ability to think.

I have a proposal to address the ICE activity/immigrant welfare fraud/immgration issues in general. This is a proposal I doubt anyone on the left would agree with (and probably a good number on the right too).

I accept ending all ICE raids and activity on the condition that we abolish all welfare and welfare adjacent programs. If the immigrants are really making it on their own, then welfare being gone will not affect them.