Rationality.
The world is ruled by superstitious people who make irrational decisions based on belief in the supernatural. So very often, such decisions end in disaster.
But rather than taking responsibility and owning their errors, they’d rather scapegoat and blame others.
When we accept the facts of reality as they are, we can begin to make good decisions.
Yup, I work as a shipwright welder and have had to refuse to complete assigned tasks. When I’m tasked with welding two large steel plates together, end to end, they both need to be double beveled. If they’re not, then all I can do is make thin surface welds which are easily broken.
That’s dangerous as these steel plates are an inch and a half thick and weigh a lot. Their weight alone will break surface welds. So I refuse to do the job. They ask why I refuse and I tell them about the lack of double bevel.
I’m even willing to break out the oxy/acetalyne torch and cut the bevels myself, but they refuse. They’re in a hurry, they don’t have time to do things correctly or safely, and they don’t care about making it someone elses problem. That’s the sort of shit that’s likely to cause serious injury or death.
Purchases from Wish. A pair of block heels where the heel length didn’t match the shoe arch. Wearing them meant constantly falling backwards. It was so comically bad, the seller gave me a refund and said don’t bother sending them back.
A Gorillaz t-shirt, also from Wish. The picture on the website looked ok. However, what I received was so awful I thought it was a prank. The white shirt had what I assumed was yellow rust stains. It looked like a rag kicked underneath a disgusting kitchen frier and left there for years.
Some of the seams were on the outside and some were on the inside. The print itself was heavily pixilated, as if someone took an internet forum avatar image, blew it up, and stuck it onto a shirt.
No, we would work together on tasks. I would walk to work while Other Me would take my car and get errands done. Or to change things up a little, Other Me could walk to work and I would run errands.
Hell, Other Me could play my online games and make progress while I’m at work. I’ve been meaning to level up my Black Mage in FFXIV, but life has kept me busy.
In the evenings, we would have to clearly explain to each other what we did that day and who we interacted with. Otherwise we risk diverging into two different people.
I left Twitter sometime after Elon bought it. The content in my feed drastically changed and was filled with racism, Nazi glorifiction, and child prawn. Reporting these posts did nothing, the automated respone system kept claiming there was no violation. So I deleted my account and never came back. I also actively avoid clicking on Twitter post links.
I didn’t quit Reddit, but it quit me. Reddit perma-banned me for speaking out against the genocide in Gaza. An admin even called me a “disgusting Nazi simp” because I opposed the genocide. The amount of admin and mod gaslighting & abuse is at an all time high.
I don’t do the Meta stuff because of all the cross platform account linking. I still have a FB account, but it’s not my real name, it lacks personal info, and it’s only to stay connected with family and IRL friends.
I got banned from Tiktok preemptively and I never learned why. I didn’t even have an account, but when I went to make one on my work phone, it said I’m banned. Weird. I tried making an account using my home phone as a test and it worked, but I just deleted it afterward without posting anything.
There really needs to be a digital bill of rights or something.
A power efficient e-ink laptop.
A laptop with a colossal battery life, I don’t care how chonky it is.
A smart watch that can do much more than the simple crap they do now. Larger is fine, maybe a smart bracer.
Multitools that are specifically designed for trades. It’s not tech, I would just love to have a multitool with specific tools for welding.
Some kind of wrist device where I can copy a file from one electronic device and paste it onto another device with hand gestures.
A Clockwork uConsole device that’s a bit more powerful and can use m.2. Those things are neat little kits, but they’re alway always always sold out of the good version. I wouldn’t mind a laptop in this format.
Doomsday prepping is the answer. Start building up a large supply of non-perishable foods, properly sealed for long term storage.
Have a wide variety of different food storage options. Having nothing to eat but rice will drive you insane (that’s not hyperbole, it’s serious).
Not just food storage, have tons of medical and hygeine priducts stored up as well. Things like toilet paper, toothpaste, wet wipes, ibuprophin, tums, etc. Assume there will be no stores or money in the future, plan acordingly.
Have all of your important documents in paper form. Keep all contact information, passwords, addresses, phone numbers, emails, and other important info on physical paper. There’s a strong possibility the internet will go down for a long period of time.
If possible, download Kiwik. Within the software, you can download all of wikipedia so that you have an accessable offline copy. It’s about 125gb in size.
Start downloading stuff you don’t want to lose. If you have a youtuve video ripper, start ripping videos on how to do things like repair your own car and other repair tutorials. Download videos and tutorials on how to cook if you don’t already know how. Also how to start and maintain a veggie garden.
Have a plan for the electric grid going down for a long period of time. Folding solar panels are a great way to keep phones and battery banks charged.
I could go on all day, but basucally you should prepare for a total government collapse. Internet, electricity, plumbing, trash removal, hospitals, police & fire rescue, depletion of groceries and store goods, etc. I have do doubt we’ll see these things either partially or completely collapse and fail.
If we’re talking the average working class voter, I hold a great amount of sympathy for them. I really do understand where they’re coming from.
The Democrats are corrupt as hell and aren’t doing a damn thing for the American people. Pre-Trump Republicans are corrupt as hell and aren’t doing a damn thing for the American people. The country is legitimately falling apart and there’s no one to turn to.
Here comes this guy out of nowhere who’s never been in politics and thus not beholden to their corrupt schemes. He’s promising to tear down the whole damn system that isn’t working for the average American. He recognizes and acknowledges the plight of working class America. He’s claiming that it needs to break completely before it can be repaired.
This is the reasoning behind my little brother supporting Trump. He’s so desperate for real change that he’s willing to overlook a lot of Trump’s bad behaviors. To my brother, Trump is a useful wrecking ball, a bulldozer coming to forcefully wipe away everything wrong with politics.
Of course, Trump has no real intentions of fixing anything. He’s just there to loot the government and shield himself from the law. All of the right wing supporters, politicians, preachers, and business execs are just stepping stones.
Why where you there? What was it like? How did you do later in life? And did it have any effect as a adult?
I shouldn’t have been in special education, but I was. Home life was a nightmare. My mom and dad would constantly fight and take it out on me.
That meant once I left school for home, there was zero chance of ever getting any homework assignments done. I would get straight A’s on tests, yet would get all zeros on homework assignments.
The school wouldn’t listen, nor cared about, the abuse going on at home. They were always short staffed and short on budget, so special ed was their bandaid solution.
The special ed teachers ptotested time and time again as I clearly didn’t belong there. Sometimes the class would read aloud a book together. We would go in a circle, each reading a paragraph. Everyone else struggled to get through it, I breezed through it.
The teachers wouldn’t let me participate anymore as I was unintentionally embarrassing the other students. There was no internet or smartphones at the time. So I spent nearly all of high school, reading any and every book I could get my hands on, silently.
Do you think that you would keep your integrity and use your money for the greater good, or that you would be corrupted by your power?
I suppose it’s a matter of perspective. Very few people in the world ever see themselves as actually evil. Every villain is the hero in their own story.
But if we recognize basic truths about people’s preferences, I think a greater good can be achieved. Everyone wants a place to call home and good food on the table. Everyone wants good health and to have a sense of purpose or meaning to their lives.
This is universal, regardless of race, sex, gender, nationality, language (I can’t include religion as some religions demand the oppression & extermination of others).
As a Satanist living in the US, I only follow laws that don’t conflict with my faith.
Killing, stealing, and real harm laws I follow. Anti LGBTQ, anti women, and anti immigrant laws I do not follow.