Zzyzx

Oops, it's been a long day. Fixed now.

Hi Dr. Nick!

What a couple of ghouls

Holy shit

Yeah, that gross dude.

Like, we can see in real time the damage done by shitty family life and even the fundamental skewing of an entire worldview and empathy-spectrum due to wealth. And, if these dudes weren't causing so much damage to everyone around them because of that, I would pity them more. They're some of the most obvious cases of "hurt people hurt people." But I am also finite, and so my empathy goes more to the people they are hurting.

I never considered that...

"Nobody puts ~~baby~~ Picard in the corner."

I remember something like almost 20 years ago, reading an interview article with him after his first wife? girlfriend? dumped him. I think it was in Rolling Stone. Anyway, the dude was nowhere near as (in)famous as he's become. And basically the interviewer wrote that Musk seems to want to be loved, but also seems incapable of being lovable. Or something along those lines.

I'm sure part of it has to do with shitty parenting. I mean, just look at his dad. Same thing with Trump too. For such emotional and psychological damage, I can at least pity both of them. It is sad that impressionable young children in need of love and security don't receive that from the most important people in their lives. But my pity ends when they take their daddy issues out on literally everyone else around them rather than go to therapy.

It continues to amaze me just how many grown-ass adults have seemingly never moved beyond schoolyard-levels of maturity. This is like typical childhood bully stuff. And that's before we even get into these immature manbabies actually have real power over people...

"It's only a civil war when we do it. Otherwise it's nonsensical violence against innocents!"

My first impression:

Funny how 15 years ago there wasn't €800 billion to help common citizens in the face of global recession. Instead we all had to go on an austerity course that allowed everything that helped the average citizen to decay, if it wasn't outright cut. And now all these mainstream parties are running terrified of the far-right that seized on the fertile ground they left with these actions. But when it comes time to dump more money into massive industries, then there's always more to be found.

Even in Germany the Holy Grail of politics that has kneecapped any effort to widen social services or address climate breakdown can finally be done away with. In order to dump money into the armaments industry, which (speaking non-ideologically and purely from a practical perspective) at least in the German case is massively putting the cart before the horse. The Bundeswehr is a joke, and has been for at least 15 years. They've been trying to reform it, which it needs before anyone throws money at it.

As far as wanting to feel safer, well I would contest the idea that dumping money into weapons actually makes people safer. We have seen such periods of military spending before in history, and they usually don't make the world safer. Rather they make politicians feel more confident that, since they have a thousand hammers, everything must be a nail.

I hate that calls for peace have become hijacked by far-right parties that are only interested in either business with a kleptocratic irredentist authorianism in Russia or want to mirror that polis in their own countries. We need to work out a new perspective that doesn't fall into blind militarism while also avoiding becoming targets for neo-imperialist forces. I don't know what such a movement would look like practically, but perhaps we can take inspiration from anti-imperial movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.

That's a risk I'm willing to take