grapesmoker.bsky.social
trauma ride on energized obliques
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you know what, i respect that
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everyone always replies to threads like this by asking for lottery numbers but the whole point is that it's divine inspiration! you can't summon it on demand! the gods have to extend their favor to you for inscrutable reasons of their own!
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ah, I had misunderstood, thanks
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do you have a digital copy?
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i think i did see someone awkwardly attempt it at a party. it didn't go great from what I recall
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like yeah let's not fetishize people who went to hyp and behave like they're the only ones fit to rule or whatever, but this inverse "state school grads are noble savages with true spirit!" shit is dumb also
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i'm not sure I understand what behaving according to the policy means here. we have lots of policies that are intended to promote the public welfare but which do not entail any compensation, so i'm not clear on what that would look like in this case
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individual responsibility obviously exists but it's not a replacement for policy. it's like the sex ed/teen pregnancy debates of yesteryear. yes, you specifically should do the right thing, but also we just need a social structure that makes that a more viable choice
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i think there's also a disconnect between what someone should do as an individual and what public policy should be. like if someone came to me and asked for advice, i would tell them what i think they should do, but making public policy can't be dependent on everyone just doing the right thing
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seems quite plausible to me
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sure, I'm not disputing that, it's more that I think there are large-scale societal forces that explain this shift, rather than some essential male nature
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I think that *is* how it cashes out at the elite levels though because at that class position you simply have a wider awareness of the world. that's why crypto (on the bagholding side, rather than on the "generating" side) is largely a phenomenon of the lower-middle and working class
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i think a lot of it is the appeal of the gamble: big risk but big reward. getting a higher education is a slog; it's also one of the "scripts" that people had been taught in the past but now feel like they don't deliver
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but also important to note that these numbers are fake bsky.app/profile/aciu...
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arguably the cocaine dealer is doing less harm than crypto
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index funds do not sound weirder than crypto, no bsky.app/profile/dfel...
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i think it's hard to make sense of this chart without splitting it by age. I think the general trend would still hold but I'd like to see how this counterbalances against debt incurred
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my diagnosis: bsky.app/profile/grap...
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importantly, the bigger the corp the easier the job. at a certain point there's nothing for you to do other than to show up at product launches
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i don't know what the solution here is other than to mandate that everyone read richard rorty and erich fromm in schools. we're in a transitional period and maybe the solution here is just for millenials to raise their kids better than gen x has (def part of it)
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this hits working-class men particularly hard because the social prescriptions they are handed out are so at odds with what's actually possible. this isn't to say that they have it "harder" than women, it's just that the delta between what they're told to do and what the world allows is higher
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so, we have a large population that demands "scripts" to live by, but the material foundations that once supported those scripts are cracking. whoops got contradictions in my mode of production again! anyway this all produces a huge amount of psychological stress in many people
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versions of this exist at the elite level too in finance and tech. those aren't any more pro-social, but they are more accepted; the old forms still have some sway in the sense that you gotta pay the rent. but for the men under discussion here those avenues are largely inaccessible for class reasons
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what this looks like functionally is the get-rich crypto or gambling scheme. the reasoning goes: society will not afford me any opportunities. thus, no one is for me unless i am for myself. and therefore anything i can do to get ahead i should do.
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part of what's happening right now is that the old forms (the scripts) are being degraded but the new forms either don't exist or to the extent that they do are unavailable to most. what you're left with is a society that increasingly prizes atomization but without the concept of self-creation
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the idea that you can change your life, your profession, your circumstances, even your gender as you change as a human is something they find repellent. if you don't live by The Script (whatever that may be) you're doing it wrong, in their eyes
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the problem of course is that even a large fraction of people who have the material wherewithal to live this way don't want to do that. for one reason or another (upbringing, psychological makeup) they find this somewhere on the spectrum from unpleasant to downright immoral
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even if you're correct in some abstract sense, the kind of person we're talking about here is not someone who has enough money that the interest is going to meaningfully matter even as opportunity cost. if they did have that, they'd have savings which do what you describe
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it's pretty easy to be challenged, there are lots of challenging undertakings out there to get into
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and that's the best case scenario
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I don't think we're going to have that kind of government, sorry. hasn't happened at any point while i have been politically conscious and looking at this democratic party i have no reason to believe it will happen this time
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"if you had a govt determined to do it" is doing a lot of work here. if we had those kinds of governments we wouldn't be where we are now
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unfortunately democratic senators are not just any idiot, but a very unique and advanced kind of idiot, the type they cultivate in special dc hothouses until they become completely unable to live in any other environment
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all 👏 moons 👏 are 👏 beautiful 👏
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it's actually impossible to make an ugly space photo, we have conclusively established this
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as am i. same deal applies to bribes; a contractor that I worked with couldn't buy me a beer after work, but elected officials can basically accept any amount of money in any form
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jeff fuck imo
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i know it sucks to have your policy positions horned in on by people like that but at some point you have to make a choice about who you're going to be in coalition with