They also say to do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life. They say lots of things, many of them contradictory.
I think your advice of intentionally setting aside time is wise, though. I believe that too often we take for granted that things will just happen, and also overestimate the chilling effect of “not being spontaneous”.
When in his almost eighty years on this planet has he ever acted or been treated like a regular citizen? Regardless of what should be, and what should have been, he isn’t normal. He is, by luck, by practice, and by preternatural talent, always evading consequences.
Those he cannot evade, he deflects onto others. So this moment of extraordinary , if his pattern holds, will also be extraordinarily laid upon others. If the GOP doesn’t find a way to remove it for him, and he doesn’t win the presidency, they know they’re in line to be footing the bill. If he does win the presidency, he’ll either evade(saying the president cannot be beholden to such a punishment and serve) or deflect, and through internal graft or external selling of favor, we’ll all end up paying his bill.
This isn’t an argument to feel sorry for him, nor to soften the judgment against him. This is an argument to be wary that he is still the same person he was before the judgment, and is likely to be as conniving as he has always been, if not the more so if he feels cornered by it.
All meaning is constructed meaning, and, to quote Shakespeare, “there’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.”
We decide, collectively, and as individuals, what is positive and what is negative. We invent for ourselves, whole cloth or adopting from our elders, meaning in life, the universe, and everything.
That doesn’t mean they are without worth. The world is altered daily through the things people imagine. Money is an invention, its value existing in the collective imaginations of those who use it. Maps are not the lands they represent, but their cartography influences where people live, work, and travel. Numbers and maths are inventions— languages invented to describe the universe and its movings, but the universe moves without needing to know them…
… nevertheless, with those invented languages we orbit distant planets with artificial satellites, and create the wonderful bit of nonsense that allows us to communicate here.
We choose to find meaning in the world, and then we choose the meaning we find there. Ultimately everything else can be winnowed away, but that. I believe we have value because I choose to believe we have value, and I weigh the good of the world with the bad because I actively choose to continue to see both. It isn’t easy all the time, and it doesn’t have to be one way or the other. But it’s what I want for the world, and what I want for me.
That seems like a convenient excuse for him to bear less, or none of, the guilt for his actions.
Does Agent Smith have autonomy?
Or the definitions of what it means to be conservative or liberal have changed, and that’s altered the conscious and subconscious calculus for people.
I would also add the ratcheting up of political identity as personal identity, and an intensification of tribalism.
Then again, that’s all tied up in my own confirmation bias.
Another way of thinking about it:
Numbers offer a sense of scale. As numbers go further left from the decimal, they get bigger and bigger. Likewise, as they go right from the decimal, they get smaller and smaller.
If I’m looking with just my eyes, I can see big things without issue, but as things get smaller and smaller, it becomes more and more difficult. Eventually, I can’t see the next smallest thing at all.
But we know that smaller thing is there— I can use a magnifying glass and see things slightly smaller than I can unaided. With a microscope, I can see smaller still.
So I can see the entirety of a leaf, know where it begins and ends, even though I can’t, unaided, see the details of all its cells. Likewise, you can see the entirety of the line you drew, it’s just that you lack precise enough tools to measure it with perfect accuracy.
I don’t have their numbers, but this isn’t the first place I’ve seen similar quoted. First one I found through some friends’ discussion was this, which puts us, at a quick glance, at around a third of last year’s total(still plenty bad).
People broadly seem willing to see through statements the administration makes about Taiwan, but not about Israel. Then again, a lot of critical thought and nuance tends to go out the window when Israel is brought up.
so I just feel like I should be able to live my life and not have to worry about all this. Why can’t I?
Are you seeking permission or explanation?
I would say that’s still a manageable temp to go vote in, if you’re spending little time out of doors, rather going house-to-car-to-building. Any significant requirement of time spent outside, particularly idling in line; changes that.
That answer is also changed depending on the state of the ground/roads. Is there a significant amount of ice about? In neighbouring Wisconsin there is.
Also, a lot of voters, particularly conservative ones, are older, and the perils of the ice and deep cold are greater for them, and likely considered as such.
So… yeah. I can see weather dampening turnout at this quite a bit.
This implies their voters are speaking in a unified voice. They’re not. Subsets are, closer to it, but overall, politics is about compromise and consensus.
If you want the power of dominion, go for a monarchy, and if you don’t want to compromise at all, go to war. When it comes time for peace again, it’ll be some manner of compromise.
I think this is ignoring the seas of dross that have fallen away in the past. There have always been bad movies, and unoriginal movies, some of them doing quite well at the box office(used as a metric to show that people were showing up to see them). We don’t hold a lot of them in popular memory because we don’t watch them anymore, and what’s left from those eras are the movies of sufficient quality or resonance that we continue to watch them.
The system has a number of issues that are well trod, and certain pitfalls which are inherent, but hanging a lack of quality or unoriginality entirely on capitalism is overselling it.
I would posit that a lack of moderation, or a form of monomania is a bigger culprit here. Too much focus on the business side can stifle creativity, but too much focus on the creative side can result in sprawling, unfinished messes. With too much focus on safety we can be stigmatised from action, but with too much focus on action we can lose our humanity in favor of feeding the gears of progress.
This accounts for the bean counters, but doesn’t grant them the power of being the one true reason for everything being bad.
Implication being that if Republicans are losing in states they think they should win, they’re not going to change their positions, candidates, or arguments, but instead try to rig the system so they still win.
It’s an Alabama focused news site. The we can apply to either Alabamans, media outlets, or both. So that’s the we, and likely one you’re not a part of.
If you are in that we, it sucks, but if you’re going to be part of a whole with your neighbors, you’re going to have to own the consequences of their ideas sometimes. Maintaining a separation from them might make you feel morally superior, but it’s not going to do anything to negate those consequences or prevent future ones.
Separating is a powerful act, but it should be a rare one.
A lot of the internet survives by pattern and habit. Pattern, habit, and the hope, founded or not, that things might get better with a site you’ve been using for years.
With a fair cohort moving here to escape the creep of corporate internet, it doesn’t seem, on the face of it, like they’re looking for drama. Saying they are is a handy way of dismissing them out of hand, though.
It’s not like C-level folks aren’t cashing in well before their companies are profitable. They put on executive clothes and live executive lifestyles, either because it’s what they want or because it’s part of the theatre put on for investors.
I feel confident in the assumption that most users wouldn’t begrudge a company a modest profit off of the content they produce uncompensated on their sites. But it’s an unwritten social contract, and therefore ripe for abuse.
Some of it is born of users not realizing the value of what they give to the corporations— their data for mining, their engagement for attracting and maintaining even more users to the site. Some of it is born of the explicit contracts being written solely by one side(the execs).
Maybe it’s more than a lot of noise
He realized he needed to make a push in the press, so he resorted to the only way he apparently knows how to communicate: lying.
I already had it mulling in my head privately, but this shit conches it for me: spez has to go. He broke community trust, and continues to more and more as this thing drags out.
That went from zero to apocalypse very quickly.
I think you’ve been chasing the news dragon too long and too hard. Past a point, it doesn’t make you more informed, just… sadder. More given to misanthropy and despair.
We’re here, and we’re not all bad. Most of us want the same things: health, happiness, love, and camaraderie. We want those things for the people we care about— sometimes more than for ourselves.
The vast, vast majority of us are just people. We get caught up in things, and we forget it sometimes, but that’s a people thing too. And so is helping— when tragedy strikes, or those times we create tragedy, people are also the ones running toward the danger and uncertainty to help save those who cannot save themselves.