lmfao this is hilarious

The above comment is made of glyphs arranged to convey meaning. The Code of Hammurabi is made of glyphs arranged to convey meaning.

So the comment will very well be likely a significant contribution to human culture.

?

Gimble vice and a fleshlight?

People’s brains fall out of their heads on this one hey? Like wtf, you’re actually responsible for what you say seems pretty basic. Nobody is arguing for prosecuting anyone who expresses opinions, or what they earnestly believe to be true and communicate in good faith. Just, if you make shit up and people get hurt well then, you did that hey.

Hmmm lets examine this statement.

Isolated weird place, scary Russians, Russian stereotypes of intellectual game + tremendous violence.

Gee, it almost sounds like this is a too convenient racist lie. Any proof? The oldest reference just says ‘it totally happened’ and cites something I can’t access on Google books. It’s 20 years after the fact and not a primary source.

Look ultimately words mean what they mean in the context that they’re spoken but broadly neoliberalism is highly socially permissive. Provided, that is, one does this as a responsible member of the capitalist economy and doesn’t disrupt the market.

Like you can have neoliberals that love trans kids, celebrate pride, want more black female drone pilots etc. It is, however, not a neoliberal position say compare the number of vacant properties to the number of homeless people and suggest that perhaps we should just take the unused houses and give them to homeless people? That would violate the principles of private property and free markets. After all: what freedom does one have if you can’t watch someone freeze to death on the doorstep of your vacant investment?

If your friends think that freedom to do that is utterly absurd and a society which defends that is fundamentally rotten then they are not liberals in the academic sense, however their substantially more leftist stance may be called liberalism in the political context you find yourselves in.

To clarify my question. What do you mean ‘actually liberal’ ideologies?

Like what are their thoughts on monetarism?private property? free association? private entities in markets? Debt and paying it, both private and state held?

If they think that the state should provide the means of subsistence of the entire populus, that property should in general be held in common and private property is not sacred, that government entities in a market are often more effective than private and/or that business should be heavily regulated to serve common good, that debts should be cancelled when it is not realistic or fair to pay them etc. Or perhaps even further afield positions like questioning nation States, police, militaries and boarders… well, then they are not in fact liberals haha.

What do they see as different between neoliberalism and classical liberalism. Neoliberalism is mostly a post-Keynesian revitalisation of classical liberal economic positions updated with modern banking practices and globalisation.

… everyone? hence my use of broadly? It has complete and utter ideological hegemony since like the 70s. If you study economics you study neoliberal economics and they don’t even bother specifying. All major political parties in the anglosphere and most of western Europe follow neoliberal ideology, even the green-left is largely neoliberal. There are basically no classical liberals left.

She makes a handful of digital toys free. Slurs hurt real people. Keep this in context

I think I misunderstood you.

See my other comment for why I think freedom is sort of a useless thing to frame anything around. At least without further clarification.

Reactionary ideologies are incoherent.

I think it’s tempting to try and be pithy but freedom is complicated. For some people freedom is an absolute, do what you want when you want. For some it is about theoretical possibilities, for example if you ask if people are free to quit there job the answer heavily depends on how someone balances theory vs practice. Others take a practical lens, freedom only counts if it’s plausible to do.

Sometimes freedom is about ideals. you are free to read all the political theory you like, you umm wont because it’s boring but if someone threatened that would you be upset? At other junctures freedom because pragmatic, “what use is freedom to read if I don’t have freedom to eat? I’ll trade one for the other” someone might say.

Some people rate permissions more than restrictions, some the opposite.

I don’t think it’s a concept we can really pin down. Everyone has their own interpretation and it’s not universally values: much as dominant ideologies often insist it is, the rise of fascism should hint that others care much less about it.

Sigh, I’ll wade into this river of shit.

Liberalism is broadly understood as neoliberalism, which is an ideological descendant from classical liberalism. This ideology positions itself as being broadly in favour of individual freedom within a rather tight definition of freedom. Namely liberals are concerned with the ability of people to read what they like, own what they like, marry whomever they like and so on provided they do this inside of a system of capitalist free market exchange.

Modern liberalism tends to frown on heavy government intervention in market affairs, which they see as representing the free (and thus good) exchange of goods between individuals. They also tend to be broadly in favour of the militaristic western global hegemony.

Criticism of this attitude comes from 2 places.

1. too much freedom.

2. not enough freedom.

(1) is people that want women bound up in the kitchen and walk around with an odd gait that makes you remember Indiana Jones films

(2) are people (I’m in this camp) who see liberalism as a weak ideological position that favours stability over justice and, in so doing, ignores the suffering of billions.

Power is pretty corrupting and anyone who is a famous person (as in, public enough to maintain fame as opposed to just broad recognition) probably has a bit of an ego.

I mean your average normal person would be like “Don’t idolise me, I’m just someone who writes books you like. Now please leave me alone” not posting on tumblr to adoring young fans.

You should probably know that historically societies collapsing has typically resulted in improved health of the lower classes as judged by skeletons in the archeological record.

We should not really understand societies collapsing as a violent or spectacular thing. It’s usually just growth slowing, people move away, the ability of states to enforce taxes and provide services weakens and people work out their own stuff.

I’m not saying society is collapsing, just that if it does it’ll probably look more like declining birthrates and movement away from cities and advanced manufacturing to more agrarian lifestyle. Also that for the poor and downtrodden this will probably, on average, be an improvement.

Sometimes I’m blown away by the quality. Like a lot of the shit I’d buy locally is chinese made anyway.

Often you get stuff like ‘premium’ retailers getting the stuff that QC passed to a higher standard or whatever but it’s worth minor decreases in quality for a 1000% discount or whatever absurd retail markup there is.

The thing is, if you’re buying something for a dollar it’s gonna be about that quality. you need to know the brands that make good shit. Like some of the 40 dollar kitchen knives on aliexpress are amazing value, some are scams. Electronic components are similar. I can buy an esp32 there for 5 bucks, or locally for 45. Same product.

Now would I trust a fruit bowl bought for 2 dollars to be good? lol no. There’s just material reality at the end of the day. No amount of genius engineering and dubious manufacturing conditions can make high quality material appear from thin air.

I’m not calling anyone out. We all eat worse than we’d like to, exercise less than we feel we ought to, have a home messier than we’re pleased with, spend more time watching mindless tv than is really good for us or some analogous permutation of minor sins.

We’re apes trying to figure out how to use root digging and berry picking brains to navigate the lightbox of eternal distraction and a world of concrete, glass, and tedium. This shit is hard.

If you have similar experiences to my past ones then I hope you can draw comfort from knowing you’re not unique in your difficulties and it is possible (although life circumstances depending not always easy) to overcome them.

Sorry to hear that. I’ve quit quite a few things, as well as a long term weed habit in my early twenties and so here is what I have to say in no particular order:

• Understand yourself. Take a bit of time to think through how you feel about what you’re doing and why you do it. Have compassion here and look at the root causes, don’t be like “I vape and I don’t want to because I’m a garbage person with no willpower” or something nasty and unhelpful. For example with myself with weed I came to the conclusion that I didn’t really enjoy the effects overall, but it was a very comfortable way to alleviate boredom and the rebound anxiety and sleeplessness was difficult to handle.

• Based on the above figure out what you’re going to do about it. If you want to stop then have plans for handling anticipated barriers (if you can’t sleep don’t lie in bed being miserable. Have a book to read, a walk to go on, a show to binge or a friend to chat to etc). If you have particular triggers find ways to avoid them, raise the barrier to using weed by making it a pain to get/be reminded of. If you always vape when having a morning coffee maybe idk have a morning coffee at a cafe instead while you adjust.

• Understand it’s gonna suck a bit. It just is, there will be a period where you are restless and bored. Acceptance is powerful.

• Understand that there is no point in making it harder for yourself. Like yeah it’s going to suck a bit but there is no need to punish yourself. Have plans for stuff to do to replace it, have plans to alleviate the worst symptoms, pick up new hobbies, adjust your work schedule if you can (more or less, whatever makes it easier for you), change your space etc. Don’t just raw dog misery and hope to succeed. It’s ok to take a sedative the first couple of sleepless nights, or to lean on friends a bit, or be messy and late, or spend a weekend mindlessly videogaming or whatever.

• I strongly recommend exercise. Exercise helps manage stress and energy so much, it makes the brain dispense the happy chemicals, and it is time consuming but simple. Try find something you like to do. Again don’t force yourself to suffer. Long walks, swimming, running, cycling, lifting, climbing whatever takes your fancy.

• edit. Of course most of all: Almost nobody reliably succeeds at tasks on the first try. That is not weakness, that is life. Sometimes we get beginners luck and something comes naturally and easy, usually we have to fumble a few tries getting better each time. Plan to succeed, accepting lessons along the way. Every impulse resisted is confidence and experience, every stumbling block is an obstacle identified, every minute your body is normalising its chemistry. You cannot go backwards by trying.