hotpotamus

Christian or apparently anything else; the specific religion doesn't seem all that relevant actually (which says some things about religion I think).

I suppose I am currently mildly homeless which does tend to make the thought a bit harder. Also, as a man, I am not able to make children no matter how much money I'm given; there are other things necessary that I do not have. Anyway, the idea really just does seem infeasible for a few reasons - money is just one of them.

Interestingly, in other contexts I've heard people say that equality of outcome is an unwelcome suppression of meritocracy.

I believe the biggest correlate is actually religion, and I've suspected for some time now that Nietzsche was really onto it quite early with the whole "Death of God" thing.

That said, I can say that while I may in theory be able to afford a kid today, I couldn't after a layoff, which does happen to me sometimes. Frankly, I like my current employment, but I'm starting to get some bad vibes sadly. The thing is that kids need support for like 2 decades and it's hard to imagine a job lasting that long. I always remember the scene from Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" where the dad walks in and tells the kids he can't afford them anymore so he's going to sell them to science, and I can at least find it all pretty amusing.

In those 11 years fertility has fallen near universally. Speaking as a millennial, I never saw my career as a means towards changing the world or some life mission driven by passion; I just wanted to find stable employment to hopefully find some financial security and keep my ass in health insurance (I foolishly contracted a childhood condition that left me somewhat disabled). Graduating into the great recession and trying to stay on the treadmill of employment as I flee one layoff or another hasn't left much space in life for a lot else.

I actually feel quite fortunate these days (for a number of reasons) that I never wanted children (also for a number of reasons); if I had I can imagine that it would be quite a disappointment at how it has become ever more infeasible.

Perhaps lower and middle class people want upper middle class children.

What if girls’ biological differences predispose them towards success in educational institutions? Then we need some sort of specialized education in order to provide the boys more intensive socialization?

What does it mean to “fix” school/college?

> we finally start recognizing that men too can be victims of systemic issues.

This has always been known to at least some. There are reasons that the left pushes for universal healthcare - because they are aware that systemic issues can affect everyone. The alternative is personal responsibility - pull yourself up by your bootstraps, ironically first written as a joke because it's literally impossible, but then unironically praised as an ideal of American individualism.

Honestly, I think American men are caught in a bad feedback loop that results in them voting for ever more toxic political representation that then shreds whatever safety nets they can and results in more estrangement from society, and it's a trap they will not escape from; it's too far gone to be fixed at this point.

If we're in a simulation, there's no reason that other beings couldn't have also arisen within the simulation with us.

I'll note that both your options there end in rejection.

Perhaps we could call it putting your best self forward to make a good first impression? The advice I've often seen is to treat a date like a job interview - is full honesty expected there? In fact, in a romantic context, is full honesty ever appropriate? If you said something like, we're probably both around 7 on the attractiveness scale, make similar incomes, aren't getting any younger, and probably can't do much better; let's settle for each other - how would that sort of honesty play?

I live with them rent-free so it would probably go against my own interest as well to force them out via pricing.

Would you have dated her at all if she had been honest about how miserable she is up front? If her inherent personality is just miserable, then how else is she supposed to navigate through life?

Old people in Texas get their property taxes frozen I believe at 65. But honestly it might be better for them to downsize into something more appropriate and perhaps free up the larger houses for families. My mother has basically just turned my parents' house into an eBay warehouse full of junk that she intends to sell one day. I can't say that I have any big problem with that at the end of the day, but if you think getting young families into housing is a more important goal for society, then it does seem like a waste.

Meanwhile, I'm pretty sore about the 10% year over year thing, particularly when I hear about how Republicans run a low-tax state or that a wealth tax is unconstitutional/infeasible. I pay my wealth tax every year, but I suspect I'm too poor for the kind of wealth tax they mean. I can at least enjoy the irony.

I once awoke to see a large spider running away from me on my bed. I was a bit displeased with that until I learned that they hunt roaches. I figured if it was running away from me, then it figured (perhaps incorrectly) that I was not to be messed with and so the food chain in my house remained as it should be.

I don't know that hydrogen was a "scam" per se - I think of fuel cells as essentially an alternative battery technology. It wasn't clear 20-30 years ago that lithium batteries would progress as much as they did, and so fuel cells were perhaps a reasonable hedge.

You see, this even has echos of Red Scare era hysteria. It's hardly anything novel.

You’ve read far more into my comment than I wrote.

Again, for as long as Hollywood has existed, it has been excoriated by conservatives as a din of leftist libertines (and not without at least a bit of reason on occasion). Before that, theater performers were seen in much the same light. The moral panics stretch back time immemorial I’ve no doubt, but I can at least remember 10 years ago and there was no lack of controversy then.

Corporations were also engineered to be un-killable. The way to reach them is to go after the people who run them. Obviously, if that’s the analogy, then the miners are quite secure anyway.

Reminds me of Adam Nuemann's ambition to be the world's first trillionaire.

If you've ever watched the extended edition of T2 (which I can mostly recommend), it actually gives quite a bit more development to Miles Dyson that shows him as a nerdy, focused futurist/engineer, and also a loving family man. It's quite well done though you can see why it would be cut from the theatrical release of a balls-to-the-wall action movie.

That said, if you think that the early 90's were some sort of pre race-consciousness society or Miles Dyson just happened to be black as some sort of accident of casting, then you probably just weren't aware of the issue - you weren't "woke" to it, so to speak.

What's funny is that any time I've suggested increasing taxes on the rich, I hear how I'm jealous and really I should be thankful for the incredible standard of living that I have as a modern human (as I struggle to maintain employment, housing, and health insurance while nursing some health issues). And yet any time I see suggestions of collective sacrifice to literally save the world, I'm told it's impossible because people are too jealous of how rich people will bend the rules for themselves (as though they don't already live beyond any kind of rules in our current arrangement anyway).

It really seems like heads the planet is fucked, tails the planet is fucked. And for some reason it's a mystery why people have stopped having children.

I have to admit I’d love to go to a wedding with realistic vows. I’d imagine something like, “I promise to love and cherish you until such time as it becomes inconvenient or I get tired of you or whatever”.

Perhaps we can derive the core beliefs of the Republican party from their 2020 platform. Given that that is how political parties typically express such things, it seems reasonable.

It does seem like Gen X is going to get shafted a bit harder than others. Boomers are the richest cohort in history and their children are the Millennials; they may be on the poorer side now, but they do stand to inherit if end-of-life care doesn't soak it up first.

> Oh, I have 3 kids and no money. Why can't I have no kids and 3 money!?

- Homer Simpson

That all seems fairly apparent to me - perhaps people have just become more numerate/economically savvy.

I didn’t read the paper but did read the article and one of the cool aspects of it was that they did go back in the timeline to find known historical temperature anomalies after calibrating the sponges against a modern period with good temperature measurements, so I would assume so.

I just wonder if this actually does change the “baseline” Earth temperature as the article implies rather than just adds a bit more detail to known historical temperatures.

As far as the temperature variation thing and deniers, I’ve always thought Munroe did an excellent job with the visualization I linked above in showing why the current change is so unprecedented when compared with previous ones.

I wasn't aware of the Little Ice Age being much of a denier talking point. It actually does seem fairly relevant to this story since these sponges lived through that time period. But I'm mostly just looking at the XKCD temperature timeline https://xkcd.com/1732/

Interestingly you've left it somewhat ambiguous as to whether you view these immigrants as morally upright while being somewhat naughty. You could certainly say that they've found an exploit/hack in the system by claiming asylum and could view that as clever and/or immoral depending on the eye of the beholder.

I will say that I don't think the situation is being handled all that well (and I suppose hasn't for decades, but perhaps that just goes to show that there's not much we can do at all), but as a resident of South Texas, I haven't felt any actual problems with my day-to-day life that I can directly attribute to illegal immigration.