Puer Aeternus

Sounds like a lucrative, spicy potential side gig! Bringing people to their knees, telling them all their problems. Transmuting their shit to fertilizer so they may rise up and become a truly rare specimen.. An actually healthy, functional human! I'm only sorta kidding, trying to improve from default turd state is like self-deception whack-a-mole. Boop one turd down, but then three more appear! Getting cheat codes wouldn't solve, but rather simplify the process a lot.

Meh, just sounds like he's making content for the average person. Most folks will be average, not self-actualizers. Not surprising he's moving in this direction. Probably decent for people who want to stabilize on that level and grow through it. Ultimately average seeking people will be drawn to it and those seeking something more will go elsewhere. As you have!

@BlueOak Happy to have supplied the content! Will definitely share more in the future as I find it

When I think of proxy wars, I think of the big players. The Cold war. Russia, China, the United States. But unknown to me, proxy wars play out between medium powers vying for influence as well. The linked video discuses one of half a dozen conflicts between the UAE and Turkey. Seems all that's really needed for power to be leveraged is some sort of disparity in something.. Information intelligence, military equipment/technology, money/funding, etc. It's really fascinating how deep the patchwork of self-interest runs. How even smaller or less involved players chip in on whatever side fits their interest. This is the outcome of what IR studies calls global anarchy~ There's no over arcing system strong enough to negotiate conflicts and prevent interference. Instead, moral considerations are thrown out the window in a race to the bottom, defending the side best serving a nation's self-interest.

Anyone can come to Jesus, but can you pop lock for Jesus like this man?

I think what you ultimately need, is to get to a point where you can validate these questions for yourself. Rather than turning to other people to answer them for you. It doesn't matter if people think it's too shallow. If these things do it for you, they do it for you. They don't even need to be long term man, it's ok if you feel full enough after a few years of them. If this is what you want to do right now? Do it right now. Just. If you've never done these before make sure you get experience in them before fully commiting. If you haven't done em before hard to tell if you like them actually or just the fantasy of it, until you do them.

Don't think the understanding you have of LP matches what it is. You're right though, if you were only allowed to do work you were passionate about. Not gonna work for most. Too impractical. Rather, I think the realistic version is. Full time work/school/stay in mommy's basement for more free time, part time life purpose. And to keep doing that until you've accumulated enough experience to turn life purpose full time- maybe even for a while keeping part time some throwaway job.

@PurpleTree I don't really think there is a better guy in this scenario. It's too messy and they've had this sort of conflict before many times. Countries can have wildly different domestic and foreign policies. For example, look at France. It's not perfect but they have lots of quality of life standards and policies in place making them a genuinely decent place to live. But their foreign policy is super exploitative. France essentially has a grip on most of their african former colonies and will leverage massive power to keep them in line with what's best for France's interest rather than that country's. The issue is the boundary is drawn at a national level. Democracy brings representation from people of the country, but not countries receiving its foreign policy. Countries like Senegal and Mali don't have much say. Even if France were to implement policy in favor of these countries, if it harmed citizens of France there would be pressure of roll back.

This, should be framed and hung on many forum users walls.

Meanwhile, all those other people are wondering why you aren't giving them attention. @Princess Arabia is really right. People who get more attention are under more scrutiny, more responsibility. Sure you want that? And not just that. If you want an example of people getting widespread attention from the public, look at how fans interact with celebrities. Receiving the projections of MILLIONS. It's not about the celebrity, it's about the fan. Imagine nosy people shoving themselves in your business all the time, having no privacy, repeating the same omg I'm such a fan, can we take a photo! Interaction a bazillion times. Not to mention the spooky, creepy shit that would go down. Maybe your ego would feel massaged for a bit. But not long. Things are better as they are now.

@Eskilon Thanks man! Yeah it wasn't a fun time to get here, but I'm glad this is something I get to spend so much less energy on now.

@aurum Not given up, I just don't care. But not in an apathetic woe is me way. I don't care to play the attraction game, it's not enjoyable for me. Already don't talk to many people and not planning on talking to many more in the future. If I somehow meet someone I'm interested in. I'll just be direct. Hey, this is me. No bullshittin, no swooning oh I'll be a high value man and get a hot bod for you babe! No hiding the weird autistic shit I do. Just take it or leave it, up to her. Interested? Cool. Not interested? Also cool. I'm already cool on my own. I can enjoy my solo time and satisfy my own sex drive WAY better on my own than with someone I'd have to play games for.

No better way to stop being black pilled than living your existence presently and connected to God. Even after I shed my black pill beliefs, I was still in quiet desperation. The game of self-improvement and chatting up women seemed like such a chore. What? All this stuff I don't necessarily even want to do, just to get a slice of their attention. It can be an intermediary stage, because you still care. You're still trying. But this.. Having contentment and not caring about what happens. Is so much sweeter. Granted getting here ain't no joke, it's very individual. And the technology to work through this things aren't particularly known or immediately obvious. I'm a very specific person so not sure how many people would even be able to access something similar. Hence why the self-improvement strategy rules, it's just more accessible.

Working on your mental health? This trauma work is no joke. Getting waterboarded working through your emotions on the regular can cause burn out like nothing else. Especially if all/most of your life has been spent neck deep in suffering. When you really don't know anything besides feeling like low to high grade emotional BLEHness. Please, give yourself the time to rest from that hell. Do something actually joyful, get outside and kiss some bugs, hug your pets or some blankets, or whatever gets your rocks off. Build a container to live shamelessly like a five year old for awhile- Cause fuck it, somewhere along the way you lost touch with em and didn't get to experience all those pure moments. You'd be surprised, you may actually make more progress doing this than just churning and burning through your problems with a battle axe. Take a break!

Americans never fail to amaze me with how American they are. Apparently, during the alcohol prohibition era breweries pulled a marketing switcheroo and got the public addicted to ice cream instead. The addiction ran so deep that the navy refurbished a barge into a mobile ice cream factory. The beast could churn out 10 gallons every seven minutes and had to be pulled by tugboats throughout the Pacific Island Campaign.

Maaaan. If you ever wanna realize how deeply the map isn't the territory. Read one of these gender/dating threads. It's such incomplete waff, spend your whole life trying to understand this and you won't come close. Always some lurking emotional baggage, half-truths, regurgitated clichés, and folks proclaiming their limited experience to be the holy truth of all reality. Really makes me not take myself serious at all. All my theorizing is just for funzies it doesn't really mean anything. Even if better modeling of reality is practical, it'll never truly touch reality. Now I want to go sit in a corner, stfu, and just be.

Big fan of this channel for African history and biographies of African leaders. It's a good resource into a region with less coverage.

@Loveeee Leos response in the blog post discussion Q: 20 hours ago, Daniel Balan said: How do I develop world class political education and understanding A: Books, books, books! You must read actual books. Books on history, geopolitics, war, diplomacy, espionage, law enforcement, sociology, political science, international affairs, economics. I will add 40 books about such topics to my book list soon. Beyond this, my method is starting with my area of highest interest. This way you get the most momentum and motivation to discover things. I like to research new topics on YouTube/documentaries or look for recommendations. I'll dive into this and start reading books if I'm really interested. Having a separate YouTube account so the algorithm can feed you novel things on politics you wouldn't have otherwise searched can be really nice too.

Yes of course the tariffs were going to make things worse. But we have been living in a buffer period where companies rushed to purchase a lot of extra inventory to keep prices lower before the tariffs applied. This has produced the illusion that the tariffs might not inflate things like they were expected to. However more and more companies are running out of this cheap inventory. Over the coming months, you're going to see stores making increases. Not only will it increase the price of imported goods, it will increase the price of EVERYTHING. Why? It makes sense to spread out the increase to other goods where they won't be noticed as much, rather than only raising the price of the imported ones. Which doesn't even mention how this opens the door to price gouging. These companies are going to try and eat as little of the tariffs as possible. You will ultimately be the one paying for this economic policy. https://youtu.be/URSgDL2ltkY?si=DYTWTS6Nj0XGER3x

Good news! Interested to see how this plays out.

To many, volunteering to risk their life in foreign war would be unimaginable. Yet, the numerous men in this documentary did just that. Why? Who are these people and what are their motivations? Coming into the documentary, I expected to learn about regional geopolitics and how these foreign fighting groups organized. Instead, I was impressed with the vast range of differing motivations for being a volunteer. No, an overwhelming majority of volunteer foreign fighters (abbreviating to VFF) didn't make money. Most were bleeding cash and some emptied their savings to reach the conflict zone. But don't get it twisted, the VFFs had different self-motivated reasons for going. Of the more self-oriented, you could tell some just wanted an adventure. The relatively simple cause of "blowing shit up and killing bad guys." Living out action movie fantasy as main characters. Some showed a deep insecurity and wanted to prove they were hard to the folks back home. Many of these cases had children at home, making their decisions especially questionable. Other VFFs operated through an ideological or religious lens, to represent the true faith, to spread American freedom and justice. While others showed a more humanitarian interest. The draconian policies of ISIS and recorded atrocities, tortures, and executions triggered a moral sense of duty in many. Some showed empathy towards the locals and were clearly emotionally attached to their ideas of justice. A few carried this humanitarianism to inspirational levels, making incredible personal sacrifices. Beyond personal motivation, many interesting group dynamics played out. Volunteers lacked a sole central planning entity, leaving individual groups responsible for vetting their VFFs. The bar was low, criminals, mentally ill, and those with no combat experience could join. Beyond this shakiness, scam groups were rampant. Groups often got into conflict over tactics, territory, or just straight up petty shit. The local militaries often treated the VFFs like luxury toys, to be passed around and represent the status of their unit. But not to see combat, as their deaths would bring bad PR. Truly, you can find layers of human bullshit in everything. But the spectrum of how much is truly impressive. A VFF traveling abroad could be a pedophile escaping the country and humanitarian ready to lay down his life to protect the locals. Even those with good intentions encountered massive roadblocks to their initial plans to help.

This is a journal for me to actively reflect on the interesting documentaries I've watched lately. All with the goal of practicing my writing and getting those slippery ideas out of my head and into words!

Ohhhh jeeezus not this AI shit again. Don't think you understand how complex so many jobs are, even ones that seem simple. Like there's been decades of baseless yap about oooh, driverless delivery trucks are coming. It's gonna put so many people out of a job! It is still so, so far away. Because reality is often beyond what we can model for, one little unpredictable factor can send things out of wack. Even if we can replace some things with AI, should we? Like no mate I'm not going to be like oop, let's open up AI Therapy by ChatGPT. Get my deep problems resolved, it's only going to be so supplemental. Or like this prompt art stuff. Sure it will take some of the market and has its applications, but most serious brick and mortar companies are going to have their own graphic designers. Also.. uh, humanoids? Lol. That techs even further behind AI and less certain. At the end of the day, you just don't know what's going to happen. It'll definitely have SOME impact, but to the extent you're imagining with current tech seems a little silly. Just do what you want to do! Stay flexible and adapt with whatever new things come up. The future can be uncertain and spooky, but you can work with it.

Sounds like you at least have some emotional blocks around this, that's making it stressful to the point of avoidance. You should sit with the issue and try to get to the bottom of it. I'm sure it would take some time and emotional labor to figure out properly though, so be ready.

I don't really have much to add, just wanted to say this is some dope, profound shit and am so glad you got to experience it! Good on you following through on it despite the setbacks and getting so much out of it. Makes me really want to give it ago. I can still be nervous sometimes, so perhaps throwing myself out of a plane is doctors orders.