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.

Bills in Congress are a lot like women: when they are big, they are not beautiful, no matter how much anyone insists on coupling the terms "big" and "beautiful."

Making a bad choice that is not entirely your fault does not mean the choice was not bad. It is just that you were not making decisions based on correct information. The conclusion you should gather from that is not to double down and claim that you made the right choice and say that others are just jealous, but rather to use the information you now have to help others not repeat the same mistakes.

Taking the double down option just shows that you are no wiser in spite of the experience.

One of the major problems I see with the younger generations is that even though many of them will place blame on the boomers for many of their financial issues (correctly), many of them will still somehow think that going to college was worth it in spite of the crippling debt and wasted years on a degree that gets them no job.

It's okay, you can admit it was the wrong decision. The boomers led you astray there, so you don't have to defend that choice. You were lied to about that too.

I remember seeing an advertisement about an app that keeps track of your unused subscriptions and let's you cancel them easily, and I was surprised such an app would exist. It makes me realize how bad some people are with money. How can you not know what all your subscriptions are that you are paying for?

Dave Ramsey has a point when he tells people to cut up their credit cards. Too many of them are too stupid to be responsible when it comes to spending with them.

While I was not of voting age in the early 2000s, I remember the rhetoric of the neocons. "They hate us because of our freedoms! We have to fight them over there so they do not attack us over here!"

When I examine every neocon still around, I find their only pillar of their supposed "conservative" values are building a strong military. Reduce spending and uphold traditional values? Those come last (if at all) when compared to sending soldiers to die in Israel's interests.

Fuck neocons.

I would prefer we not go to war with Iran, but when did any of the preferences of myself or any of the citizens of the United States matter to those in power? I would hate to be someone who enlisted recently in the military, as they have legitimate chances of being deployed. That most likely will not cause a big shake up.

What would cause that is if our government is stupid enough to start a draft for this war. The young fighting age men just might fight an enemy closer to home than Iran.

If we have WWIII in the near future with the talk of "Iran is close to having nukes" (again), I bet that all the talking heads shilling for globohomo will equate Iran to Italy, as it is the "weak link" of the alliance of Russia-China-Iran.

But with all the poor handling of the American hegemonic empire, I don't think "the good guys" (the USA and its allies) will be winning. In fact, those writing the history later may be labeling the other side as "the good guys."

We shall see.