I think you have to also account for the kids’ ages. An infant is different than a toddler, teen, or adult child.

https://theauthoritarians.org/

They tend to be more authoritarian. That means they’re more likely to prioritize in-group above all else.

There’s a book about authoritarian personalities I was reading a while ago. It talks about an experiment where they did like a model UN, but secretly sorted all the authoritarian types into one game and everyone else into the other.

The authoritarians ruined the world. Like, nuclear war. When they got a do-over, they still fucked it up.

The other group basically cooperated and solved world hunger.

Authoritarians probably shouldn’t be allowed in positions of power. The GOP attracts a lot of them.

I mean, yes, you’re right that it’s a simplistic take. However, falling for that kind of nonsense is not a sign of intelligence. Being able to assess “Is this a good source?” and “Are other people in fact people?” are signs of intelligence.

Low density places are always going to kind of suck on a lot of metrics. You just don’t have the people to support a lot of stuff. I’m sorry that small towns are dying but like there’s not really a reason they’d thrive.

Cities have been important since like the dawn of history. At least farms grow food. Suburban sprawl is the worst.

Cost of living needs to go down and wages up, but no one should be vying for low density.

Your brother is an fool and shouldn’t be allowed outside without supervision, nevermind voting and operating heavy machinery.

It definitely changes the options available to overcoming it!

A small club has a bylaw saying they serve no hard alcohol at parties. That’s a real rule that is enforced. But they can change it with an agreement, or just ignore it from time to time.

Something like acceleration due to gravity is going to happen no matter what.

Sometimes cultures have really toxic ideas on them. Probably all cultures have something. Like in the US there’s a lot of “the only emotion men are allowed is anger”, for example.

How do you fix that? Is there a general solution? Because sometimes it’s like enforced by the very people it’s harming.

But it’s all social. Made up. It’s not like physics. We can’t all decide that acceleration due to gravity on earth is now a nice round 10 m/s². But we could just decide working long hours is bullshit.

I’m going to guess it’s the same origin as “the cruelty is the point”. Some people just don’t want other people to be happy.

Also some people aren’t fact driven. Working fewer days feels like it should be less productive, so it must be.

Some people really just want to hurt their out-groups. Some people are selfish. Some people fundamentally do not think government should exist.

Those people are assholes who should not be in any positions to make decisions.

Neglecting public education is really going to keep biting us in the ass.

Something like half of US adults can’t read at a sixth grade level.

If we took some of the idiotic venture capitalist “it’s cat gifs on the block chain” nonsense and put it into education and infrastructure, we’d be so much better off.

I don’t really know how to get from here to there, either. Give me magic powers to Thanos snap away some people, maybe?

The problem with Mastodon and Twitter is structural, it’s based around following people, not topics.

I’ve long thought this but infrequently find other people who think the same!

On here (and reddit, rip) and most forums, I don’t really look at the user name. I just read the content I think that’s a better setup.

A lot of people are really quite stupid. On top of that, they’re in social groups (ie: tribes) that have shitty values.

Long term investing in education would help. So would things like removing lead from the environment, and fixing healthcare and labor laws so people aren’t so stressed all the time trying to survive.

Something like half of US adults can’t read at a 6th grade level (Snopes says this is basically true but there are complexities https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/08/02/us-literacy-rate/ )

I usually squash my local into a single commit, then rebase it onto the head of main. Tends to be simpler

I am unfamiliar with this. Link? Does it update galaxy to point to your steam games?

I mostly buy on steam to have my library in one place (without manually adding games) and the free cloud backup. And the Linux support.

Yeah the Internet is full of traps that are engineered to draw men in. There’s blood on Google’s hands for just letting that happen. (And probably other companies too, but YouTube is big)

Related note: unchecked capitalism makes everything worse. Trying to get dates and the apps are just like “pay us $5 and maybe we’ll show your profile to someone. Be a shame if your beautiful profile just never showed up for anyone.”

What the fuck is wrong with these people?

I do live in a city and wouldn’t have it any other way.

You don’t consume movies books television music art? Variety of food?

I recognize that some people want to be hermits but that makes me uneasy. But like, whatever, it takes all kinds I guess. Not a fan of subsidizing anti social behavior though. Lots of roads and highways and shipping and such to support people living in isolation.

People are interesting. People produce culture. Cities are where people are. Cities are always going to be more interesting and more cultural.

You want to start a band in nowhere, Utah? Ok, well, you’re going to have a lot fewer people interested in joining or watching than a city of any size.

Some stuff might move online. But I’m reminded of an interview I read during the pandemic. Someone was asked “what can I do at an in person party I can’t do online?”. The other person replied, “fuck people.” So there’s that. In-person social stuff matters.

So like yeah I guess it might be cheaper but it’s probably going to be less interesting just because there’s fewer people around.