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I don't think it's possible to believe something and simultaneously recognize it as just a belief system. You can be like Jordan Peterson and you treat everything in your holy book as allegory, but at that point why stick to one religion? Might as well take wisdom from multiple holy books if you don't really believe any of them.

The likes of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir? "Pretty sure" - you're speculating. Such a deal would have been satisfactory to most on the Ukrainian side earlier this year. The Russian demands during the Trump negotiations were harsher than that...

Oh stop. The "peace" treaty Hamas signed was for all intents an unconditional surrender. Israel still occupies most of Gaza's agricultural land and they want Gaza to be completely demilitarized. The treaty sets Gaza up to ruled by a committee that included Trump and Tony Blair rather than the Palestinian people themselves. Putin's latest demands were similarly crushing - complete demilitarization, no security guarantees, and wanted Ukraine to give up land that hasn't even been occupied by the Russian military (heavily fortified land, losing which would allow another invasion to be easier). In the video you linked the Ukrainian correspondent herself says they have no choice, there is no peace offer on the table. The war needs to reach a point where Russia thinks it gain more from a reasonable peace agreement than it can from continuing to fight.

Well, Russia actually wants to make use of the population in the regions it conquers (after erasing their national identity). The Israeli far-right wants to displace Gazans from their lands and colonize it. Israel kills Palestinian children, Russia kidnaps Ukrainian children and raises them as Russian.

I'm not a fan of comparing the 2 conflicts, but for perspective, a comparable number of Ukrainians and Palestinians have been killed. Most sources put the number of Palestinians killed at ~70,000. Some people consider this an underestimate and Caspian Report used a figure of 84,000 in his most recent video. For Ukraine the UN estimates ~15,000 civilians killed and most sources estimate 70,000-80,000 military losses. Civilian causalities are obviously more morally repugnant than military losses but let's not pretend 20% of Ukraine was taken without significant bloodshed. A big reason for the double standards is the US support for Israel. FIFA, Eurovision, etc don't want to risk the ire of a Trump-led US. And some European politicians are bought off by Israel as well. Banning Russia carried less political risk.

Uh, what the Allies did was less invading and more liberating of occupied territories (North Africa, Italy, France, Holland, Belgium). The reason they had to go into mainland Germany eventually was because the Nazis refused to surrender otherwise. I think people overestimate the importance of the Holocaust in the actions of the Allies. The world had some knowledge of it during the war but the full extent was only discovered after the defeat of the Nazis. The primary motivation of the Allies was stopping an aggressive, hyper-expansionist power.

Meh. This forum as usual trying to find people to feel morally superior to. Kanye is a psychologically broken individual who has long thrown in the towel on his career. This song is just him venting anger.

This forum emphasizes "sophisticated" and "deep" thinking way too much, you don't need that for politics to be effective. Dugin's tactics are working on millions of people across Europe and North America.

Nah

The problem is that they haven't been offered any good security guarantees since Trump took office. Every peace offer so far has been wishy-washy in this regard.

And there have been solar flares observed from other stars over a million times stronger than the Carrington Event. If we ever got hit with something like that it would be the end of human civilization.

It's not even about looks and riches, it's the guy being perceived as being a womanizer. It was surprising to me when I learned that Wilt Chamberlain had a (posthumous) sexual assault allegation. Someone who led a playboy lifestyle and claimed to have slept with 20,000 women still resorted to forcing a woman into a sexual act.

Who thinks like that? Strawman... That's what I've already tried to think of before to understand rape. As weird as it is to say, if a gay man raped me out of pure carnal lust, I don't think it would be the end of the world. I wouldn't hate him to the point of plotting revenge or anything. I'd just report it to the police and I would recover emotionally after a while. Now, if it was like a prison rape where the intention was to exert domination and power, that would fuck me up. Unless there was a way of getting revenge within a reasonable time frame, I would probably become depressed and suicidal.

The article sounds like other female celebrities being jealous of the female celebrities that went on this flight.

Quite elitist

China is behind technologically and hasn't proved themselves capable in any war. Specifically, the production of jet fighters and microchips has "trade secrets" which China is not privy to. Remember how Deepseek had to be trained on last generation chips? The question is, will Americans be willing to fight a world war for Trump?

The 2016 presidential debates were peak comedy. But Trump hasn't done anything legitimately funny in years.

If Sadhguru is considered stage blue, then Spiral Dynamics is nonsense. At this rate this forum will not consider anyone to be Tier 2 except for Leo, lol.

Ukraine is fucked. Palestine is fucked. The middle east in general is fucked. Americans are fucked on several domestic issues. But with RFK and Musk having Trump's ear surely the environment has a chance? Musk doesn't just make electric cars, his companies have done work on battery storage and solar power, and he's holding a competition for carbon capture tech ideas. I refuse to believe that he would only have a profit motive. People are rarely 100% in one political camp or another. Musk can be right wing on other issues while still having the correct position on climate change. Musk has made himself indispensable to Trump. It's corrupt, but if he decides the government should be doing more for the environment, Trump will not be able to ignore him.

I think these complaints come from people having a higher expectation for academic research jobs than they do for industry jobs. As if academia is supposed to be some "pure" pursuit of knowledge. It sounds like academia has bullshit just like any other job. Scientists act like salespeople with their research proposals? Okay, the corporate world is all about sales as well. Aside from actual salespeople, anyone working in industry who has an idea will have to convince their boss/coworkers of the validity of their idea. If scientists were allowed to research whatever they wanted without the "sales" part, people would also be complaining about research funding going to waste. So what's the alternative?

My point is that human psychology doesn't work that way. People get tired of bullshit eventually. Every fascist and communist state needed a secret police, propaganda alone was not enough.

Assuming they don't become a dictatorship, it's impossible for one party to maintain power forever. Trump's victories hinged on him being seen as an outsider candidate, as an "underdog" who was going to take on the establishment. If MAGA republicans stay in power for a significant length of time they will be seen as the establishment (no matter what propaganda they use). Framing themselves as outsiders will be impossible. Also, recessions and times of hardships are inevitable. Whichever party is in power at the time of a recession will be blamed for it, and people will be inclined to give the other party a chance.

This feels like negativity just for the sake of fitting in with the general "doom and gloom" narrative. American politicians prioritize their big donors over the electorate. Musk has spent over $100 million on the Trump campaign. If he decides there should be more environmental policies, Trump will have to do something about it, regardless of the opinion of the Republican base. In the livestream Musk did with Trump several weeks ago, he mentioned that high CO2 levels are bad for human health. It's a bit of an odd argument, but I take it as a sign from Musk that he still cares and that he hasn't become a climate change denier.

I wanted to go on a psychedelic retreat next weekend. I live with my family and I obviously knew it would be a bad idea to tell them. However I had to tell them that I would be going somewhere. They managed to get a few vague snippets of information from me, and then from googling the events that were going to be happening in the area, they were able to deduce that I was going on a psychedelic retreat. My parents are very religious and so they took this badly. At first they told me how by going on this retreat I'd be inviting demons into myself, and this would completely mess up my life, and it would be dangerous to my family if I were to keep living with them after having brought these demons onto myself. Later, they started making fun of psychedelics, saying that the insights you have on a psychedelics seem like complete bullshit once the trip is over. And they made fun of the kinds of things psychedelic users say: "we are all one", "the universe is love", etc. But the conclusion of the entire conversation was that if I went they would never let me back in the house again. Now, I'm not some teenager going through a rebellious phase. I'm 24 and I'm both embarrassed and depressed to be still living with my parents, so I thought this might just be the catalyst I need to move out. I was religious when I was younger and I understand exactly why me going on a psychedelic retreat bothers my parents so much. Our worldviews are incompatible, there can't really be a compromise, and it would be best if we just lived separately. I had a job last summer and I hardly spent any of the money. I have enough money to cover the cost of the retreat plus modest living expenses for at least 2 months, possible even 3. My current living location isn't great for finding a job, especially with the Covid-19 lockdown, but by renting a room in the city I would have a better chance of finding one. If I managed to find a job within those 2 months, things would be fine. In theory it doesn't seem like an unrealistic plan. In practice, I've been heavily depressed over the past year and a half, and it's only getting worse. I'm now getting doubts about whether going to a psychedelic retreat is the right thing to do, regardless of my family's attitude. While the combination of therapy, psychedelics and relaxation you get on such a retreat is probably quite good for mental health, I feel my problems may be too severe to be taking them to such an event. I feel it may be silly to expect the retreat to be a magic cure and that it may make things worse in fact. There are several reasons why I'm depressed but chief among them is definitely my inability for dealing with people. I have an extremely hard time communicating with people and people tend to dislike me more often than not. My social skills have been improving over time, especially over the past few months. But no matter what I always feel I massively lag behind other people my age in this regard. People would expect a 24 year old to have better social skills and this will make it difficult to find and keep a job. I have had a few jobs before but I never lasted long in them (all of them were less than 2 months). On top of that being depressed, I know there will be days when I have absolutely no motivation and this will further make it harder to find a job. The problem is that if I do nothing, then what? At my age, living with my parents and sitting in my room all day (as I said it's very hard to find a job in my current location, and the lockdown limits how far I could commute) is both bad for my mental state and it's bad for other people's opinion of me. Thus, it only magnifies my problems. I'm not expecting people on an internet forum to have the perfect answer of course, but please try to advise me: 1) Should I go on the psychedelic retreat? 2) Regardless of whether I go on the retreat or not, should I move out? (not going on the retreat would save a fair amount of money, giving me a few more weeks of breathing room)