Apparition of Jack

To add to this, I really think promoting education in Islam societies will go a huge way to diminish the extremism. Perhaps moreso than any other religion in the modern age, Islam tends to be an all-encompassing ideology for its believers that can be used to explain away just about anything, regardless of how helpful or not it is. A young kid struggling with school? He’s not depressed and needs to see a counsellor, he just doesn’t pray enough and is ungrateful to God! Someone got cancer? It wasn’t because they were drinking 2L of Pepsi every day, it was because they watched too much Western tv and lost faith in Islam! A sheik got caught embezzling $100 million from the state treasury? Well he’s a holy man, who are we to judge? Basically, I think Islamic societies need a strong dose of Stage Orange rationality, science, free-thinking and secularism, rather than the toxic Stage Blue(/even Purple in some cases) fundamentalism and superstition that defines too much of conservative Islamic thought. More Muslim scientists, academics, engineers, blogposters, journalists, businesspeople, mathematicians, etc etc and less insane sheiks, muftis, imams etc spewing highly dogmatic and oppressive nonsense.

Islam needs a serious reform movement to bring it in line with the modern world imo. There are tons of abhorrent teachings in the Bible (how to own slaves, which heathens to kill etc) yet if you seriously suggested bringing back slavery 99% of modern Christians would scoff at the idea. I don’t see why Islam couldn’t be any different. Yes the Quran says to kill nonbelievers, to chop hands off thieves etc, but ultimately a society’s development level will influence which teachings they listen to, not the other way around. I think Islam needs a serious, internal reform movement that uses Quranic teaching to emphasises non-violence, religious tolerance, etc. Greater emphasis on doing good deeds and generosity rather than a strict, literalist interpretation that supports violence and oppression. How this would work? I don’t know. I’m not Muslim, and I don’t know much about Muslim countries. Maybe some Sufi leaders or other humanistic preachers could lead this movement. Whatever the case, I think Islam as an institution needs to do some serious soul-searching in the coming years. The wanton acceptance of violence in too much of modern Islamic thought is unacceptable.

Apparently the guy who was recorded stopping the gunman was a Muslim named Ahmed Al Ahmed who owns a grocery store in Sutherland Shire. Honestly this is a huge sigh of relief for me, as someone with Muslim friends it always feels shitty knowing that events like these make them more of a target, so the fact that the guy who saved lives was Muslim goes a long way at dispelling the narrative that they’re all violent radicals. And like, what other example of pure Sydney heroism is there than a Muslim grocery guy who probably lets you keep the extra bananas you can’t afford when you’re tight on cash stopping a bunch of Jihadi radicals from killing more Jewish festival goers? The guy is an instant legend in my book. It’s still scary times but thank heavens something positive can come out of this. God knows we need it

Damn as a Sydneysider this hits way too close to home :’( It’s really hard to find the words to know to what to say. Regardless of your opinions political violence is just awful all around. I guess I’m just praying for the victims and all of Sydney as a whole. May they rest in peace 🙏

Here’s a great video about Georgism, how it works, and how it could solve society’s problems. I think it’s fascinating.

The logic of a LVT is that it prevents rent-seeking and unjust profits being accumulated for doing nothing. If someone buys a vacant lot in a suburb for $50,000, and then 10 years later that suburb becomes on of the trendiest places to live so demand for land increases, that person is now able to sell that vacant lot for $500,000 without ever having produced anything or improved society in anyway. Their entire wealth comes from closing off valuable land to society in order to sell in the future, making construction more costly for everyone whilst providing no value in return. Likewise an LVT applies to natural resources. Which person created coal, oil, minerals etc? The answer is “no one”, if someone is getting rich off goods that have existed since before humanity was around, in some sense that represents a crime against all the people in a society who share the same land. By taxing a mining company for the value of that land - which would account for the uncreated raw resources on said land - you’re effectively saying “the wealth from these resources belongs to everyone in this society, not just the person who happened to have the land they were on, since no one created these resources and hence the profits from them shouldn’t just belong to an individual or private entity.” Basically, no one invented land, no one invented coal, etc, so for companies to get rich off the hoarding and closing off of these resources, it leads to negative financial incentives that don’t actually improve society and instead funnel wealth to entities that don’t actually produce anything at the end of the day. There’s more to it than that, but I think that’s the basic jist of it.

What have you been hiding from us, Leo?

Where’s Dan Bilzerian’s healthcare plane? What does he plan to do about predatory corporate subscriptions models and the enshitification of the internet? How will he crack down on white collar crime? I suspect he doesn’t have any answer to any of these, because he’s just another stupid right-wing grifter trying to make a quick buck by “fighting woke” or whatever.

The other dumb thing is that these politicians never talk about the CAUSES of immigration. People blamed Merkel for taking in 1.5 million Syrians - as if Syria wasn’t experiencing a brutal civil war (which in my crackpot understanding was influenced by the destabilisation of Iraq by the US a few years earlier, but whatever) and that these people should’ve just… disappeared off the face of the earth or something. It’s the same thing with people complaining about “military-age males” immigrating from Africa - yeah, no shit, these men are fleeing because they DONT WANT TO FIGHT IN TRIBAL WARS (there’s like a dozen raging right now, it’s fucked.) The dipshit anti-immigration nationalist doesn’t understand that we live on a single planet. Borders are only conditional at best. The ACTUAL best way to reduce immigration would be to support stabilising policies in poorer nations and invest in economic opportunities there, so people don’t become desperate enough to try their hand at Europe / North America for a better life. But would these idiots ever actually do that too? No, instead they’re usually the morons SUPPORTING foreign military campaigns into these unstable countries and do shit like cut USAID (where do you think all the people USAID keeps alive are going to go for safety? Heres a hint: it’s not Cambodia.) We live on one planet. Events in Ghana or Columbia influence what happens in Europe or America. Shutting yourself off isn’t just morally questionable, it just straight-up backfires.

According to the current immigration debate, there seems to only exist pure-blooded locals who’ve existed in that exact same piece of land since animals first walked out of the primordial oceans, or hyper-new arrivals who’ve only been in the country for six hours and don’t speak a word of English / French / German / etc. But what about the people descendant from previously-established migrant communities, who might have some cultural ties to their relative’s home country but are otherwise thoroughly integrated into mainstream society? Like, where does someone like Andrew Yang or Kim Kardashian fit into these debates? You’d be hard pressed to say either of those aren’t fully American citizens, but their parents, grandparents or even great-grandparents were, at one point, immigrants. It always feels weird to me that it’s only a dichotomy between like, full native white Brits / Americans / Canadians / Germans etc, and fresh arrivals from India / Nigeria / Honduras etc. What about the people who don’t fit into either category? It’s crazy that these people aren’t more part of the discussion. What do you guys think?

COVID was a mass trauma event. So much of the political chaos in the world today can be directly traced back to it (yes, even Trump winning in 2024.) You don’t move on from a mass trauma event by pretending it didnt happen.

I personally was pretty OK during COVID. I’ve been an introvert for a long time and I had lived many years more or less by myself beforehand so I wasn’t too impacted by it overall. I am dealing with my own personal health issues, but that’s unrelated to the pandemic. My concern is more for other people, who still haven’t physically or mentally recovered from the pandemic. I do hear what you’re saying, and I agree physical issues are a bigger problem than emotional ones relating to the pandemic, but I guess what we’re talking about is trauma here. Some people have the ability to shrug things off, which is good for them, really, but for a lot of people, especially developing kids, the conditions they went through during the pandemic weren’t so easy to move on from. Trauma is harder to see and more difficult to cure in some sense than physical issues, so it can be easy to dismiss it as “not really a problem”, but for the people going through it it doesn’t work that way unfortunately. Also there’s been a lot of talk about kids during all this, but let’s not discount adults either. Even if you don’t believe the lockdown caused psychological stress (which id disagree with but w/e), you’d have to admit that sudden disruptions to the economy, socialising, spending habits etc would have an impact on a lot of people anyway, wouldn’t you agree? I mean, the terrible inflation we’ve seen over the last 5 years has more or less been caused by the pandemic alone. Just having less people working on farms, working in factories etc made the price of everything shoot up. If nothing else, can you accept that the financial crisis caused by COVID has made a lot of people anxious?

Life isn’t a zero-sum game. Someone’s suffering doesn’t disappear because someone else had worse suffering. If a kid came up to you crying because he was just beaten up by bullies, would you say to him “don’t whine, my neighbour lost his legs in Vietnam?” do you think that would help the kid? Losing your legs is “worse” than being beaten up, but does that mean what the kid went through wasn’t bad? Also I’m not just concerned for Australian kids. There’s kids in America, the UK, hell goddamn everywhere going through this. Fuck, do you think kids in the SLUMS weren’t affected? In fact, many of the poorest communities had it worse. They were the ones stuck in apartments, stuck in the city etc because they didn’t have big houses with gardens. Again I keep saying COVID affected EVERYONE. Not just white kids. Not just wealthy kids. EVERYONE. What about all those “slum” kids whose parents lost jobs because of the pandemic? They exist, you know. What were they “supposed” to do? Be born rich? Lmao EDIT: You also havent disproven what the doctors have been saying. I ask you again - are they lying? EDIT 2: What about long covid? What’s your answer to that?

No, but when kids are suffering, you don’t pretend that they’re not. Would you tell someone who was beaten by their parents as a kid not to feel depressed? Or someone who went through war not to be angry about what happened? People need to HEAL, you don’t just dismiss people’s suffering. I mean shit someone in this thread legit has long covid lol

what does immigration have to do with anything? 💀 corona didnt care if you were Latino or white lol Obviously not everyone was seriously negatively impacted, for a lot of people (including kids) life has moved on. But for too many people it hasnt either. When doctors, nurses, teachers, parents, kids etc are saying there’s a problem then there’s got to be a problem. I mean just look at this comment from a YT documentary about coronavirus from a nurse. Obviously nurses are different to most other people, but it’s not like other people weren’t affected too. Considering, you know, it was like, everywhere 💀