Basman

Understand that human nature is fundamentally animalistic and selfish and set the standard that you will survive on your own terms. Accept that your selfish and decide that no one gets to define you but yourself. Value yourself. Develop strength and adaptability. Take pride in destroying your enemies and conquering aspects of your life because it means that your on the up. Assume that you and only you are in charge of your life. Rage at life. There's a great joy in stage red because it makes you feel alive. You are physically manifested in your body. Your here, materialized and impacting.

True.

Basically a very technocratic and national interest centered view. It does highlight the need for competent technocracy though, as when you have incompetent technocracy you get a population that feels rightfully mismanaged, but doesn't quiet understand the intricacies of why. Like in Germany there where way to many migrants and they weren't properly integrated, creating parallel societies. Just living of welfare and shit. And there was a lack of vetting for migrants that where for example gangsters, in part due a growing population being good for capital. An incompetent technocracy erodes the ground underneath itself as the people end up voting in a Trump, who then work to undermine checks and balances of power and democracy at large. It is the cancer of oligarchy eating itself.

It is true that I took art very seriously. I haven't considered that angle.

I think one of the challenges with political reforms in the US is how polarized the population is on a lot of things. In West-Europe abortion is hardly a debate because the majority of the population support access to it. Or the gun reform in New-Zealand after the shooting. It's hard to have any cultural and political reform without popular support. It's how you get this situation where you vocally want to do things in spite of the opposition.

It doesn't really matter if you can divorce intent from dangerous weapons or not. It is obvious that unrestricted access will lead to bad use. The whole "guns don't kill people" angle is a red herring as far as I am concerned.

But the tool itself can be an expression of crazy as well enable craziness. Why buy a gun in the first place? If you can buy high capacity guns, why shouldn't you shoot up a school? Tools are not inherently benign in my opinion. Nuclear bombs are a prime example of this. Why would you ever create a nuke if not to blow up a country?

Which is exactly why you don't give cars to kids. Or shouldn't give guns to mentally ill 18 year olds. Expecting people to statistically be responsible is a false libertarian view. You need rules and regulations. If you view humans more as animals than this makes perfect sense.

I don't really think it is constructive to debate whether or not guns kills people because it is semantics. I see it used largely as a deflection to avoid any kind of discussion when it comes to gun safety, which hints at perhaps a subtle admittance that the notion that guns don't need regulation is a false one, because if it is true why not defend it on the merits of its arguments? Why deflect discussion? It is like how Christians refuse to debate god most of the time as their belief isn't epistemically grounded and doesn't have an argument. It is much more pertinent to focus on the merits of gun control. What works? The current situation is clearly not working. People are being killed.

It is definitely about the tool. use depends on availability. For the same reason we need people to get a license in order to drive there should be more stringent rules for gun ownership. The only reason why it is such a debate is because gun culture is so ingrained in the US. NRA itself was a proponent on gun regulation in the 1930s to curb gang violence, which implies that access to guns does matter.

I don't think sex work is in of itself unethical or necesarilly bad for you as long as your still growing as a person. Socialization and dating can be a wellspring of growth which seeing a prostitute can circumvent to a certain degree. Seeing a prostitute is clearly transactional, so in that regard there is no manipulation of the partnership. But I think that the supplying of sex workers can be unethical. There's a lot of nasty exploitation going on broadly speaking in how sex workers are brought into the industry and it is generally an expression of poverty.

Eldritch horror is essentially "forces beyond one's comprehension". For a rat, eldritch horror would be to realize that everything that humans build, subways, electrical wiring, pipes, is beyond their comprehension. They can only see surfaces and tunnels. They only know to scuttle away when a train rumbles by. They don't even know and are wholly incapable of knowing what a train is to begin with.

It is not true to that the primary motivator for the invasion is national security. The invasion is a net negative for Russia. None of Russia's security council would ever launch an invasion. It is wholly Putin's idea, who is motivated by a notion of Russian supremacy and the need to maintain regime. Keep in mind, they thought that the invasion would be quick, like Crimea. Putin is stuck in Ukraine because he can't withdraw without undermining his regime. He probably wouldn't have invaded if he knew that it would be a war of attrition lasting several years. You also don't acknowledge how depoliticized Russians are. When Ukraine occupies Kursk, Russians externalize the whole event. They don't see a foreign army occupying their town as something they are politically responsible for. It just happens. "politics are for politicians (IE. Putin)". How does the state of Ukraine matter to people who don't even care what their own government is doing? This is Putins war. Not Russias. If you can't acknowledge that simple truth you can't say anything about the war that is truthful. disingenuous at best. Misleading at worst.

Scientists are going to have a field day dissecting their cadaver when they pass one day.

You can have a just invasion. WW2 is a prime example. Zazen's whole argument hinges on the Ukraine war being about national security, which I rebuke to be about regime security and ideology. It's a fatal flaw in his whole perspective because it is so fundamental to understanding the war. That position is being used to muddy and legitimize Russia as a violent aggressor with an unjust cause. It legitimizes authoritarianism, hence the democracy angle. When I say democracy, what I really mean is checks and balances of power and political sovereignty. That is worth protecting. The average Russian doesn't have political sovereignty. But you balancers don't even recognize that as a factor in the equation. The reason for the invasion is authoritarianism. Interesting that you think that is a legitimate reason to attack a small country.

I actually think that the parasite was just mindlessly trying to "reproduce" by melding with the protagonist. It's so feral and it fits the theme of sexual violence in Giggers work. It could be that these "parasites" where meant to be part of the ritual process. There is even a dedicated machine for parasite removal in the temple, but these symbiotes, in this case, would probably be made of moldmen instead of wallmen via the sperm goop. Moldmen are obedient and demure, whereas the first protagonist was a cold bastard evident from his treatment of the moldman at the recycling plant. A moldman parasite would likely be less hostile and disposable.

It could also be that he thought that if he left his body behind, the parasite would sever his connection to the nexus before he managed to reach the gate, but didn't foresee the cord snapping. He was cornered. But yeah, there is probably no real conclusive answer. Most people I think dislike the ending.

Right before the protagonist is attacked by the parasite (colloquially known as), his consciousness warps back into his original body from the android he was steering. This is probably because the cord between the brain of his body and the nexus was strained too far and severed, like when you rip an electric plug out of its socket. So already there, the protagonist failed in reaching his destination. It is evident from the crucified corpses tethered to the nexus within the chamber that your supposed to leave your original body behind and transcend via an android body. But the protagonist wanted to bring his original body for some reason, and even used the knife arm to keep his body stimulated in order to maintain consciousness until transcendence. But that ruined the ritual, which is when the parasite attacked.

I never said that. What I meant is that Russia's invasion is about political control.

@zazen Your fundamentally misinformed about Russias motive, willfull or not. It is only defensive war ideologically and for regime security purposes. It's really Putin's war. Not Russias and has little to do with actual national security but influence and political control. You can only think it's a defensive war if your a Russian authoritarian or misinformed on the cause. Ideology doesn't change the fact that it is an offensive war however. Ukraine is democratic and culturally close to Russia, which is a unique threat to Putin's regime security. He is paranoid of a Qaddafi incident happening to him. A bunch of NATO country border with Russia but that never turns out to be a significant issue. NATO is only a threat to Russian authoritarianism. The issue isn't national security but regime security. The issue with you "balancers" is because you are misinformed of the cause, willfull or not, you advocate for handing Ukraine over to Russia on a silver platter essentially, salt, pepper and all. You are advocating for authoritarianism and political control through violence. It is intensely hypocritical coming from someone who obsesses over US imperialism. It makes you look like a shill. When Russia does it, call me communist fredo. You criticize US for invading a small country but when Russia does it you come up with ever excuse why it is defensive and we should just leave the Russians to themselves, etc. Your a phony.

Tai Lopez is one of the OG scammers on YT. He's been at it for years. He might have genuine information in his courses buried beneath the layers of "guru talk" and lingo that reframes taking risks as an inherent good (very convenient for the scammer). The information in these courses are rarely ever worth the money and can be accessed for way cheaper by just reading books or even for free with the internet. These gurus whole business is overselling basic self-help. I was once scammed myself into a course by Brett Jones ("Old Leo", if anyone remembers), which was essentially just a basic marketing course. Not worth the insane expense. You payed $2500 for a valuable lesson that you never need to repeat if you learn from it.

I've heard that people on average only do focused work for 3-5 hours a day. That's about the human norm, I believe.

I also found the point of how god would probably "enjoy" the scorn universe fascinating since it's such a unique and particular way of experiencing consciousness. Saying that it would not "appeal" to humans is such an understatement that it is comical. It's like the world of Scorn is so awful that an entire civilization devoted all of its efforts just to escape it (though in part due to their own machinations it seems). But it is interesting to look at from afar, through a screen.

Scorn is a fascinating game. I haven't seen anyone do Gigger justice before as inspired piece. One thing I noticed that these lore aficionados tend to focus on the "hard why" when trying to analyze abstract games like Scorn as opposed to looking at the thematic ques. Like, what is the work to meant to instill in the viewer. When there is no clear answer, I find that lore analyzer types tend to way over-analyze and speculate instead of focusing on the simple conclusions that you can infer from the thematic ques. The parasite at the end seems to be just scornful at the second protagonist and wants to drag him down crab bucket style because it doesn't get to ascend, which fits the theme of the game, of body horror, creepiness, cruelty and reproduction. It is an elitist enlightenment that has been automated in grotesque fashion off the sacrifice of countless and is only available to a certain few. Scorn reminds me of Rainworld, which has similar lore of a race of birdmen who also employed biotechnology and to whom enlightenment became an institutional process that their civilization revolved around.

Trump's issue as an authoritarian ideologue is that he is incompetent. He doesn't have any real strategy or plan, is addicted to drama and can't take advice. If Trump was conscious and competent he would first and foremost just have invested his inheritance into index funds. He would be richer now than if he made a bunch of businesses. He'd be less status chasing. Trump idealizes Putin because he perceives Putin to be a part of a prestigious society of autocrats which he wants to be part of. If Trump was competent he would have stalled on the issue of the Epstein files indefinitely. There's no reason why he actually had to make an official statement. He could've just made up some excuse why they can't be released "just yet" when questioned.