The rise of "inceldom" as a social phenomena was inevitable with the destruction of non-transactional social spaces and general alienation brought about by capitalism.
It's tempting to think that these people are struggling exactly because they're horrible misogynists, but historically tons of misogynistic people have still had sex and relationships. Bluntly, even the Golden State Killer was married at one point, and had children.
Life is materially and socially worse for a lot of people. I've made this same post basically every time this comes up, but where are the places where people can just hang out publicly, without being harassed by the cops or expected to spend money they might not afford to spend, just to socialize? If you cannot meaningfully socialize, you have little hope of getting a relationship or even just sex.
For many USians at least (can't speak for other countries) dating starts to suck waaaay more ass once you're out of school. The post-school options people are generally aware of are: Dating apps (which suck ass and seem to be a potent vector for extreme mental illness), bars and clubs (which cost money and suck if you don't drink or you have anxiety about being compromised around strangers), and that's basically it.
Lack of social spaces necessarily produces lack of sex and relationships. It will get worse before it gets better.
Lots of liberals completely internalized Bush-era "War on Terror" rhetoric demonizing Arabs and Muslims. They tried to pass it off as "enlightened," that's the only real difference.
Democrats don't value democracy so much as they value being in control. The only way to maintain their sense of unassailable moral superiority is to remain the political status quo.
Without that, they have to confront the fact that people have increasingly little use, respect, or patience for their two-faced, fair-weather-friend political beliefs.
I'll say up front that I'm a bit confused by everything. It seems like I log out for a day or two and a bunch of wild stuff happens and I just feel lost.
It seems to me that the site has largely been fine as is, and that it doesn't really need the amount of tinkering that the mods & admins seem to think? To whatever extent the people running the site want to change its functionality or culture in some substantive way, my impression is just that the rest of the users want to be a part of those choices, rather than a feeling of "us / them", where it feels like the people with admin & mod credentials operate like a wholly separate entity.
I notice a lot of people commenting on upvote-policing and stuff of that nature, and I'll say that more than half the time I use this website I am literally high and will sometimes just zone-out and upvote everything I see without reading it. If I notice the comment is shitty, or that it's some of our users getting needlessly aggressive with each other, I will remove my upvotes, but that's only if I actually notice.
I wish you all the best and hope this site stays cool and good. It is my favorite place online.
Pokemon games keep giving us digital dog-fighting, but I just want a game where you're a park ranger or conservator or something, managing an ecosystem, maybe stopping Poke-poachers or whatever to keep it exciting.
I think it depends on what / how much you want to do with it.
For me, I consider myself to have no particular artistic talent, but I can still entertain myself by making interesting shapes just with box-modeling and the subdivision-surface modifier. Hell, election night I was trashed and making plaid patterns all night in the procedural texture thing they have. That shit was great.
If you wanted to do something like a fully animated 3d character or something, that will obviously be harder, with 3d sculpting and animation being their own whole skill-sets. Also "re-topology" is a thing (if you make a 3d sculpt it's a wad of triangles that you can't really use, so you have to re-create the shape on top of the existing shape, but with good topology), and that shit looks miserable to do.
There are loads of blender tutorials on youtube as well, including short and sweet tutorials on how to achieve specific effects / techniques. Keep in mind some of it is tied to annoying "hustle grindset" kinds of content, so it may stink up the algo a little.
Maybe this is the wrong place to ask this, but how / why does the US have this bullshit veto power in the UN? They can just no-sell the rest of the world's members unilaterally, and I don't understand why the rest don't ever have any ability to collectively tell the US to fuck itself and proceed without our consent.
Not that I'm aware of. Light sparring is better than beating the brakes off each other, but one of the big breakthroughs in understanding CTE in combat sports was finding out that even light sparring does some cumulative damage over time.
EDIT: now that I'm thinking about it, I'm pretty sure there has even been research showing something as innocuous as "heading" the ball in soccer could cause some minor brain damage over a career. Basically, brain is just hella sensitive.
Look at what's actually available to you in your area, then narrow down options by affordability. From there, start visiting gyms. Most good gyms are fine letting people sit in on a class to get a vibe for the place, and if they aren't then that's a red flag imo. Whichever place seems to have the best environment for you is the best pick, because if you hate going or hate the people, you won't keep going and you won't learn.
Wrestling and boxing are a straightforward and reliable combo. Boxing is widely available (even if you live in the middle of nowhere, there's decent chance there's still a boxing gym), and wrestling is available in many schools and increasingly available to people out of school with the popularity of MMA.
If you are able to get both, I personally would recommend training wrestling a bit harder than the boxing, both because you can go at a higher intensity without concussions (although sometimes collisions still happen), and because wrestling controls where a fight takes place (standing, on the ground, etc.).
One (the only?) useful thing you actually can practice on your own: standing up quickly. Look up "BJJ technical standup", and practice getting up off the ground as quickly as possible. This won't teach you how to get up from under people pinning you, but if you get knocked over or trip, it could make a huge difference being able to stand up before they get on top of you or stomp you.
Everything else you need sparring partners to do shit with, or it won't really help. If you look around you might see stories about high level pros who "don't spar", but those are misleading clickbait -- those guys already did all the sparring they needed and now they're cutting it out to save brain-cells and extend careers. You still have to spar to develop the sense of distance management, stress, and not freaking out when you get hit in the face.
Also, if you'd like a bit of non-chud martial arts slop for fun, consider checking out Jack Slack (who just did a cool video on the Mir lock, in the context of Jon Jones' infamous standing shoulder crank) and Heavy Hands (general fight breakdowns and predictions for UFC cards, sometimes they talk boxing specifically) on youtube.
"The pure (libertarian) socialists ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice.
They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted,
how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted.
Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions
through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed." - Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds
Jakarta Method Quote
"This was another very difficult question I had to ask my interview subjects, especially the leftists from Southeast Asia and Latin America. When we would get to
discussing the old debates between peaceful and armed revolution; between hardline Marxism and democratic socialism, I would ask: Who was right?
In Guatemala, was it Arbenz or Che who had the right approach? Or in Indonesia, when Mao warned Aidit that the PKI should arm themselves, and they did not? In Chile,
was it the young revolutionaries in the MIR who were right in those college debates, or the more disciplined, moderate Chilean Communist Party?
Most of the people I spoke with who were politically involved back then believed fervently in a nonviolent approach, in gradual, peaceful, democratic change.
They often had no love for the systems set up by people like Mao. But they knew that their side had lost the debate, because so many of their friends were dead.
They often admitted, without hesitation or pleasure, that the hardliners had been right. Aidit's unarmed party didn't survive. Allende s democratic socialism was not
allowed, regardless of the d'tente between the Soviets and Washington.
Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century were those who believed too sincerely in the existence of a liberal international order, those who trusted too much in democracy, or too much in what the United States said it supported, rather than what it really supported -- what the rich countries said, rather than what they did.
That group was annihilated." - Vincent Bevins, The Jakarta Method
I'm pro-Bob Ross because I think he helped demystify art for a lot of regular people who might have never gotten into it otherwise.
IMO one of the biggest problems with creative stuff in general is that people have this horrible idea that there are the talented and the untalented, and if you aren't born special, you don't get to do it and can't ever be good at it.
In my view, having a popular mainstream figure break painting down as a learnable skill sort of helped bring it back to regular people.
The "middle class" is an extremely nebulous class of people mostly defined by vibes, and since most people don't want to identify as outright poor, they like to identify as middle class since it's basically open to anybody due to how vague it is.
Poor people will call themselves middle class (maybe qualify it as "lower middle class"), wealthy people will call themselves middle class (maybe qualify it as "upper middle class"), and so politicians can make hollow but safe appeals to this nebulous class that tons of people identify as, but which nobody really coherently belongs too.
So basically, "I will help the middle class" is speaking to no-one, because the middle class doesn't really exist, but people will hear it and think you're speaking to them.
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The rise of "inceldom" as a social phenomena was inevitable with the destruction of non-transactional social spaces and general alienation brought about by capitalism.
It's tempting to think that these people are struggling exactly because they're horrible misogynists, but historically tons of misogynistic people have still had sex and relationships. Bluntly, even the Golden State Killer was married at one point, and had children.
Life is materially and socially worse for a lot of people. I've made this same post basically every time this comes up, but where are the places where people can just hang out publicly, without being harassed by the cops or expected to spend money they might not afford to spend, just to socialize? If you cannot meaningfully socialize, you have little hope of getting a relationship or even just sex.
For many USians at least (can't speak for other countries) dating starts to suck waaaay more ass once you're out of school. The post-school options people are generally aware of are: Dating apps (which suck ass and seem to be a potent vector for extreme mental illness), bars and clubs (which cost money and suck if you don't drink or you have anxiety about being compromised around strangers), and that's basically it.
Lack of social spaces necessarily produces lack of sex and relationships. It will get worse before it gets better.