I think the response depends on what your goal is.
I assume that you find it annoying? Or disrespectful? Is the issue impacting work at all, or do you just hate having to talk to them through this impersonal intermediary? I think if that’s the case, the main remedy is to start by talking to them and telling them how you feel. If they want to use an LLM, fine, but they should at least try to disguise it better.
He is a former Marxist?? I find that bewildering, hilarious, and doubtful.
I think it’s great when people have open enough minds to radically rethink their beliefs, but I hope I’m never so brainrotted as to somehow strawman my own former beliefs.
This meme doesn’t work because a conservative literally bought me a copy of that book and it’s infantile.
This book is titled “Basic Economics” because Sowel is a troll, and the economics in his book are largely correct but incomplete to the point of misinforming people. This is an incredibly “conservative” book through-and-through.
Again, I think the effect you’re describing is real, but it’s also pretty gated in a lot of ways.
We have a lot of treatments first, but also widespread medical bankruptcy. A lot of people lack access to basic necessities.
I’m other words, I don’t think someone running out of insulin gives as Schitt’s Creek…
I get the sentiment, but I think it’s possible we might miss the benefits you’re describing less than you think.
For the average American, the biggest manifestation of what you’re describing was cheap electronics, trucks, and suburban developments. These kinds of benefits are a poor salve for the alienation and atomization that now besets us. We have been trained to try and fill the holes in our lives with crap while losing more and more of the time and security that affords actual contentedness.
I think a generation raised knowing and trusting their neighbors, able to walk to school and bike to work and possibly go home for lunch, where they can eat some veggies grown in a community garden on an apartment roof might not feel like they’ve lost all that much just because they can’t buy an exercise machine they never use for $99 at a Black Friday sale.
There’s a reason a lot of “poorer” countries greatly outpace is in satisfaction and quality of life surveys.
I agree with most of this. However I think there are additional elements that make prediction challenging.
First, if the US undergoes any kind of revolution in the next five years, the cultural effects you mentioned could by overwritten by more recent events. I realize this sounds improbable, but the transition from the New Deal era to global neolibralism was a revolution. “The Reagan Revolution” was an actual economic and social revolution. And we’re overdue for another.
Second, both the markets and the real economy were in an unsustainable condition before Trump. The pursuit of endless growth, the disruption of climate breakdown, the end of the US’ monopolar hegemony, and the return of extreme wealth inequality in the US made the status quo impossible to simply maintain. Big changes were coming even without Trump.
I maintain some optimism. I think anti trust regulation, climate-based financial regulation, and an embrace of market socialism could render the last three months to be the last gasps of the old order instead of another point in what has been a decline decades in the making. But it depends what happens next.
I’m not an expert, but I’m an index fund/mutual fund guy. I’m not looking for a lottery ticket, I just want to keep up with the market.
They’re basically the new savings account, right? If they don’t do well, chances are nothing really is, so your money is stagnating to the same degree as everyone else. No real loss.
Yeah. I went to a friend’s birthday hangout at a local pizzeria, and there were five of us around a table, and one guy was a city council member. The good ones are not that inaccessible.
This is what I was going to say.
Falling apart at 28 isn’t normal, but what is normal at 28 is having your body suddenly stop giving you a hall pass. That’s very relatable.
Get 8 hours of sleep a night, walk and bike when you can, eat your greens, etc. and you might notice a difference.
This isn’t a question most of us have had in the shower. I think that transferring guardianship of children for profit is largely considered unethical. I believe it is legal in some circumstances. I’ve been told that orphanages can sell orphans to other orphanages. I’m not really sure what context you’re asking about, though.
This is kind of weird timing, because “No Other Land” just won an Oscar.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/09/no-other-land-film-shared-palestine-solidarity
Kind of a weird choice. I mean, Netanyahu is right there and you went with this guy? Ok.
No offense, but that’s conspiracy nonsense.
There are plenty of real conspiracies. You don’t need to l look for the goofball ones.
Honest take? A lot in the short term, but probably quite little beyond that. Maybe Harris won and a Nazi would win after that, or Vance would win on a similarly radical platform. But this won’t pass until we identify a replacement. But there’s no simply avoiding what we’re going through.
There is a way to deradicalize people. It’s not easy, but it’s possible. I’m surprised this isn’t more common information now, but here it is.
You need to understand that each of us builds our beliefs on a set of ideological structures. We believe in policies because of principles. We believe in principles because of foundations. All of these ideas reinforce each other and create our sense of self. Preservation of the self is the highest imperative, and so people resist persuasion with increasing ferocity the more foundational an idea feels to their sense of self.
The way around this is to convince them that their foundational beliefs support a different concept. In many ways, it’s actually a bit like the premise of the Christopher Nolan film “Inception” without the technology: the person needs to essentially feel like they themselves discovered whatever idea you’re trying to convince them of, based on their existing beliefs.
This means first understanding what their core beliefs are and why they feel that these support the policies and identies you’re trying to change. Then you need to identify what can serve as a replacement, and find a way to get them to see the replacement as more appealing.
To put this into practice, can you tell me what you’d describe as their underlying principles? What are their fears and desires that shape their values? Common examples for conservatives include fear of change; a belief that life is a ruthless zero-sum game, and that we all most look out for our tribe or we will be exploited and subjugated by our adversaries. Conviction that tradition is a guide to keep us safe from reckless thinking, and that prescribed social roles and hierarchies are essential for our very survival.
If that’s the case, you can’t argue for progressivism by trying to convince them that we should all just love each other and welcome immigrants and that gender and sexual freedom are socially good. It’s like trying to talk them into jumping off a bridge. Instead, you need to explain how if you want to look out for yourself and your family, you should do it in a different way. And these politicians who sound so convincing are secretly the kind of people that they already don’t trust.
Keep in mind that replacing their faith in these kinds of leaders with your preferred political leaders is likely folly. People don’t invert their ideological identities. You need a replacement that is a good match, and because politics are often polar, a better substitute for dangerous political attachments are often simply outside of politics entirely. This may be non-partisan faith communities or sports teams or local social clubs. But if you can find a new story that fits into their existing theory of the world and satisfies their ideological needs better than right-wing politics, you CAN get people to slowly stop watching YouTube conspiracy videos or stop spending their time in far-right Facebook groups in favor of something healthier.
All of this is hard to do, but it CAN be done. I find it very frustrating that this info is still somehow obscure considering how essential it is these days.
I think the question has two answers:
Are they locked from the outside? And are the locked from the inside?
My understanding is that they are actually locked. Here are two links with some information.
First, there’s an interesting bit of lore about the doors on the space shuttle that might shed some insight:
What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he’s not coming back? [Ars Technica]
Apparently the Space Shuttle originally had a handle for opening the door that was found after the shuttle entered use to have a bad habit of instilling a bit of “call-of-the-void”. They eventually added a padlock. Also, it should be noted that these doors are not Star Trek-like sliding doors with a bunch of electronics. They’re much more like submarine bulkheads with big-ass mechanics, as I understand it. This was on the shuttle, but I think the design logic of the ISS was inherited from the space shuttle.
Second is this post on Stack Exchange:
User TidalWave explains how hatches in general on the ISS are not accessible from the outside. They’re opened from the inside. I would assume that some exceptions probably exist for edge cases. They must have had a way to get in the first time, for instance. But by and large, it appears that the ISS is not accessible from the outside.
Check this out:
https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html
As others have pointed out, this is an industrial-scale problem that can’t be solved through individual consumer choices, but if I understand your post, you’re asking more genuinely how we are ever supposed to make the math work.
This is a simple, user-friendly research-grade tool for analyzing the projected effects of various interventions. The answer to your question is:
Doing all of these will stop the increase of heating, which will keep us to around 1.5 degrees of warming. The last step required would be industrial direct-air carbon capture.
That’s currently the best plan that physics and engineering offer us.
This is an amazing shower thought.