Yes, you raise a very important point that I completely glanced over with sleep-deprived tunnel vision brain. Young males are a group, where ideological factors are a lot more prevalent. A constant barrage of presenting the desirable thing to be succesful - everything from sexual gratification to security in life depends on it - is given to, well, actually everyone, but even today still predominately young males. In addition, the ideological explanation presents no proper “out” that has analytical value: If you don’t succeed, you are just some sort of beta cuck or whatever. How about you buy this course by this YouTube influencer, on how to get money and pussy by changing your own inadequacy, which of course in reality throws the vast majority of their fans into dependence and diminishes any resources they had.

This demand to be succesful, dominant, happy and stoic, weighing on the superego as basically an old dream of success that is becoming more and more unattainable but is still presented everywhere, is also in conflict with material reality. Being the breadwinner of a household where you have a wife that delivers reproductive labour and sexual gratification to you, while you earn the money and keep her dependent? Even with chauvinists that are deep into that ideological prison, households being able to earn enough money without both people working (often even more than two jobs) is not what we are seeing in the present and the future. So, this discrepancy has to be explained in a way, that is compatible with their ideology.

As a side note: parts of the liberal, more well-off “left” (a very relative term here) will basically just give them the answer “well, you are a stupid, low-IQ chud loser, so its your own fault” - basically reinforcing the very “sink or swim, be succesful, if you can’t be, it means something about you is wrong” ideology that creates this whole mess to begin with.

But of course, the answer many will then land on is a variant of my previous post: It worked in the past, right? An outside malevolent force must have corrupted this. It’s the feminists. It’s the Jews. It’s the insert enemy here. That is the core of it again - discrepancy between material reality and ideological demands and dreams within society. Concerning young men, the extreme right also has good illusionary ways to provide them with a sense of being powerful when they are in reality not, through violence that doesn’t threaten the upper classes, and relative privilege within their ideological stratified view of reality.

Ironically, that material reality of proletarisation can even fuel “tradwife” romanticism for some women - basically, the dream of being a loved and loving housewife, being submissive to and dependent on their husband and his income, anything, just to escape the dread of having to work under current conditions without any of the security of the past. (Note that actual submissive impulses that people potentially have as a fetish are a whole other thing in that discussion, but it is relevant, that for some submissive people at least, that can of course also add to the allure of that fantasy, just as the idea of being a breadwinner that has a dependent person giving them sexual gratification and admiration is alluring to people with dominant fetishisations)

So, I am heading to bed for the night, because I have been awake all night and day and the day before to catch the debate - but the short answer is: The decline of the middle class and the petite burgeoisie - which I in this case view not in the traditional definition, but also broader, as all the people owning a little bit of capital i.e. savings for old age in some fond or maybe a house of their own. Also the disappearance of job security and stable work relations.

With it, the conservative “lets keep things as they were” mindset of people who had a decent enough life, i.e. mostly boomers that lived through the economic growth phase of the post-war era, but also younger people dreaming of that time or having profited from it through their parents, comes into crisis. But as this mindset argues from its own experience, it dreams of the past (“Things worked back then, right?”), while missing, that the very same “working” system was what had within it, already the inherent nature that eventually led to it decaying around us. So they need to explain the decline as something caused by an outsider, a malevolent force.

At the same time, this decline of the middle class leads them to try and grasp to divisions that might “save” them from proletarisation - becoming properly dependend on paycheck to paycheck and owning nothing but their own labour power to sell on the market. So, racism for example - if you are white, you might just be spared from the above fate. And you can kick down, targeting all those brown people below instead of punching up - the latter is a lot more risky after all. And the people up above can’t be at fault, after all, you (or the people you heard about from the past) had a great life when those were around, right? It just have to be the “right” people, like you and the people of your nationality/race/religion/other ingroup - often depressingly arbitrary.

This is still a very reductive summary, a lot is missing, globalisation, how it relates to the net rate of profit, how consolidation happens, details about the ideology of our current times. But broken down to it’s basics it can be summarised as such. The middle class is disappearing as a consequence of capitalist development, which leads to them becoming panicky and diving headfirst into ideology.

Well, anyway, good night, hope it was possible to understand what I was trying to bring across in my rambling

Yeah, while the republicans have basically openly moved to reactionary and fascist politics, thus implicitly accepting the status quo is over, the influential parts of the Democrats seem to have been clinging completely to the idea that the status quo is what is to be preserved - even though material reality will not make that possible.

Right now, we seem to be in a historical moment, where old privileges are breaking away from a continuing crisis in capitalism that basically has been smouldering since the (late) 70s and kept stable through neoliberal policies thus far. Old privileges being lost results in a reactionary shift worldwide at the moment. It will be harrowing, but there is at least always the possibility of the pendulum swinging the other way - right now, in the coming years, organisation, connecting people, openly presenting radical alternatives to prepare for that moment seems to be the most important work to me.

You know, as much as one has to keep Machiavellian machinations and Realpolitik in mind… Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Biden did not do well. They report about it in a way that gives them clicks. There is no plan.

The mining is also usually a really polluting affair for the region, much more than the what power generation might suggest. And overall, in many countries there is a lot of subsidies going on for hidden costs, especially relating to the waste and initial construction. So it is not as cheap as a first look might suggest.

I’m not against it per se, it is better than fossil fuels, which simply is the more urgent matter, but it’s never been the wonder technology it has been touted as ever since it first appeared.

“If the RIAA sued hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.”

That’s what I suspect, too, but I’m not entirely sure in my research so far. The question I am still unsure about: Is it as costly in running, or is the real costly part “just” the “training our model” part? I wondered that, because when I was messing around, things like generative text models could run on my potato PC with a bit of python scripting without too much issue, even if not ideally - as long as I had the already trained dataset downloaded.

I do wonder what differences in philosophy and development led to something like Blender to be pretty accepted even in pro circles?

For me, personally, the moment I found out you can easily install a version of gimp that doesn’t distribute it’s tools and canvas across a dozen windows was when it began to feel “right” for me. Granted, I am only using it as an amateur for meme and touching up on graphics for game dev, but it feels right to me at least.

I think it will hinge on one thing: Will AI provide an experience that is maybe worse, but still sufficient to keep the market share, at lower cost than putting in the proper effort? If so, it might still become a tragic “success”-story.

Ah, sad, thank you for researching! Here’s hoping it will come back in some form.

Life itself, the propagation and continuation of it, the creation of conscious structures capable of experience, reflection and influence over their nature - and ultimately defiance against a cold and dead, seemingly endless universe.

Or, for people that like the cold universe, there’s a quote I forgot who it came from: “The purpose of life is to waste the energy of the sun”

Spring. Not too hot, sun is out, things are green, lovely time of the year. Autumn is also nice, similar stuff to like, but overall, I don’t like the muddy ground and weather as much. Winter is nice temperature-wise, but the lack of sun messes with me. Summer is… unavoidable, unfortunately :/

By now, Lemmy, hands down. I do sometimes end up on reddit from searching for stuff, and I check every now and then if I got any messages on my old accounts just in case someone wants to reach out, but overall - even without niche communities, Lemmy is just the better experience for me, personally.

Satohi Kon’s “Paprika” is still my favourite movie, and there is a lot to discover and reflect on, on second and third and umpteenth watches.

Some sort of humanist atheism/existentialism? I guess…

As a teenager and young adult, I used to be very interested in cosmology and astrophysics, to the point I wanted to study it at uni. The vastness of the world and existence seemed like a beautiful enigma. I was also always interested in philosophy, which ended up more lasting than my interest in physics.

After growing older, the vastness of nature and existence seemed more and more haunting than beautiful. If there was something like a God, it had to be a mad idiot god. I actually kind of sympathised with Gnosticism and similar thoughts for a while, but I could not believe in a metaphysical, perfect entity waiting even further behind everything. I could not believe in some sort of salvation, that could just come to us by giving up on materiality. It seemed like an empty self-delusion. Similarly, I respect Buddhism a lot, and think there is a lot of good ideas within it, but it’s ultimate life-nonaffirming philosophies and focus on avoidance of suffering did not resonate with me.

Looking at the history of our planet, our universe, and humanity, it seemed clear to me, that existence just stumbles along. We are a “mistake” in a vastness of empty, dumb, boring clouds of hydrogen and dust, nuclear furnaces and holes in reality, devoid of meaning. Life felt more and more to me, like a great rebellion against a vast, seemingly all-encompassing nothingness. No aliens in sight either, that could relieve us of our burden. Just humanity, as the one lifeform so far known to us, that at least has the potential to not fall into the traps of self-annihilation and lifelessnes that permeates our past and present. Just humanity with the responsibility of getting our shit together or life eventually being just reincorporated into the vast, dumb nothing of the “idiot god”, so to speak.

All the mistakes of humans felt to me more and more like just extensions of the same stupidity that is also manifest in all of nature. And our struggle against it, feels like a sort of “sacred duty”. Those loaded words to illustrate, that I’d think of myself as actually having strong faith in a weird way, even though it is not rooted in the supernatural as such.

It’s also evident to me, this faith has at least partially persisted for me as an anchor for myself. I have not been suicidal ever since I felt that way, even though for most of my life I have been struggling with trauma and a variety of mental health disorders, and have been suicidal before. I could not think of that anymore, suffering seemed almost meaningless to me, now, and it feels better to endure it than to give in to the vast nothingness without a fight, without trying to create as much good as possible in this small contingent miracle that is life, that has been brought forth by so much struggle and so many seemingly impossible coincidences, chance and “mistakes”.

I have a big aversion against beliefs that put faith into higher powers, be it nature or God or some sort of transdimensional aliens or whatever. I try to analyse beliefs like that not with disdain, though, but as results of how we are caught in the world we are, in our circumstances, and how life itself has had to “trick” existence itself into allowing life to exist, by follwing its rules but also emergently transcending them, creating something new from it, that is more than the sum of its parts.

Politically and philosophically it lead me to Marxism and Hegel respectively. Marxism with it’s focus on changing our material foundations and dynamics, in order for us to be able to develop our humanity and be able to act more rational in the grand scheme lends itself well to it. Hegel, with looking at the development of ideas and humanity dialectically, developing something until it reaches the limit of its own contradictions also appealed to me.

Sorry for the wall of text, the question caught me in a somber mood and caused me to monologue.

I was, and am, skeptical, but I also must admit, the potential breakthrough is teasing my psyche with that feeling of just wanting it to be real. A part of me hopes that maybe it will still end up confirmed by other peers, but, granted, it was a low chance even when the news first came out.

Yes, they really are the heartbreak pet. My best friend had some for most of her adulthood, and the recurring heartbreak, feelings of responsibility for them and also just vet bills both took a toll on her. All of them were awesome, intelligent, full of character and cute, but it is an emotionally taxing pet to have, for those reasons.

“Journalists”

I’ve had conversations with one of my friends during some of my lowest points, and I remember him saying once: “I wonder how many mental illnesses could be cured by just giving people enough money to live comfortably.” There is some great truth there.

Hang in there, if not just for yourself, then for loved ones and for all the people that share your frustrations and struggles, there always is the possibility of change, there are years in which weeks happen and weeks in which years happen, and behind every strike lurks the possibility of revolution - as soon as opportunity arises, your frustration and helplessness can be directed towards change.

That’s at least one thing that keeps me sane.

I am blessed to have two friendships that I have been able to maintain even through times of depression and paranoia, mostly because they are stubborn and forgiving enough to stay with me and reach out, even when my delusions of having to isolate from everyone because I am too horrible and bad to deserve friendships kick in. It’s a privilege I know isn’t guaranteed in life and I am so damn lucky that the mess I have comes with them.

If you are going through tough times and don’t have anyone at the ready, I know it can be hard, don’t give up. There’s the professional stuff like therapists, emergency hotlines, self-help groups and, yes, sometimes even strangers on the internet can be enough to give you a necessary mirror to at least lessen any delusional self-hatred and hopelesness that can creep up. Reaching out can be hard and seem impossible, but it is possible, and it is worth it - you are worth it.