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.

In a non-directly political example, I recall the black hockey player that killed someone with his reckless maneuver was given a similar defense by Redditor types who stated, "He said he was sorry, he feels bad enough about what he did, so he should not get further punishment."

I cannot comprehend the mindset of someone who thinks that others should consider "saying sorry" is the same thing as taking accountability.

https://youtu.be/h1ylsXhn3cM?t=916

Timestamp at specific part. I have seen this happen too many other times where "they said they were sorry" is supposed to be enough atonement for whatever horrible act that they did. No, I will not accept the call to "just move on from this" when you know full well that they do not apply this standard to their opposition. The Left never accepts just saying sorry from the Right, but they want it to be different for themselves.

https://channels.im/@usluck/115414726507737102

As if Illinois is not already well known for having a gerrymandered map. So they are just going to do it again, but worse? Okay.

When it comes to motivating young men to do anything with the carrot and/or the stick, you better make sure the carrot is not rotten and the stick is not worn down too much.

We are definitely in the "carrot is rotten" part of motivation for young men, especially when it comes to relationships with young women. And even if the stick is fresh and ready, eventually it stops hurting when you use it too much.

This is not to say there are not the hardcore types who operate only to oppose the other side. Donald Trump has made many people come out of the woodwork who merely want to oppose him at all costs. I recall RFK Jr getting opposition from the New York Times when he criticized the use of artificial coloring in food, only for them to fall over themselves in proclaiming "there is very little difference" in non-artificial sources. The only difference being: the artificial source itself.

This is not to say that there is never anyone who has changed their views. But generally this is not due to some well crafted argument made by some pundit, but rather a life experience.

My dad for example used to be a liberal Democrat. That changed the moment he started paying taxes. For those like him, there is value in the information presented by pundits, since they now have a necessity to discover what they were never hearing due to a major turning point in their lives.

I have seen examples both on the left and right accusing the other side of not having any actual values other than opposing their enemy. I see this accusation as mostly untrue for both sides. Rather, I suspect that most people have already made up their minds on their political views and see no value in trying to repackage their message to appeal to those who are inherently opposed to those ideas.

So we see less of that kind of engagement attempted, thus "no actual values" are seen.

Seeing many talking heads make a big deal out of government employees possibly losing their jobs does not inspire any sympathy from me. When there are economic struggles on any scale in the private sector, people lose their jobs. Why should government employees get special status of job protection?

Yes, cuts do often happen to government jobs, but I see far more protest at government jobs lost than losses in the private sector.