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.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JEZmw-3Ev0o

There will be times I will defend Dave Ramsey in spite of the backlash. This is not one of those times. The "you are a princess" is not only cringe inducing, but there is no way he could qualify this statement from simply talking to a woman over the phone.

This is Trump's screwup, though not his alone. The US empire was already failing, and the events putting that in motion were before Trump was even president the first time. Biden also made things worse by trying to paper over the economic problems, but now we are seeing these tactics of the Biden administration being used in the Trump administration, I was not a fan of it under Biden, and I am not a fan of it under Trump. Eventually we cannot fake our way through economic reality.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/iran-says-it-closed-strait-of-hormuz-again-over-us-blockade-6013867?ea_src=frontpage&ea_med=section-1

Did we really go from "the Strait of Hormuz is open" to being closed again already? And for what, so the Friday headlines would get the market numbers to go up before the weekend?

This is exactly how I expect a declining empire to operate. Do everything to keep up appearances while being ineffectual at maintaining anything long term. No one is going to remember Number Go Up in the future, but they are going to remember the actual decline in standards of living.

I would prefer that the outcome of the war with Iran would be that the USA stops trying to project power and influence in the world and learns to keep more to themselves. But I cannot count on that outcome. Zionist interests and our current politicians seem to be putting us on a path to serious harm for the US and its people. It seems we will have to have the harsher lesson rather than the easier one.