The issue is that under our current economic model consumption always has increase because revenue and growth for businesses is essential and CEOs are mandated by law to increase shareholder value as much as possible. While the number of people will and is decreasing, the ammount each individual will consume will have to rise so much as to increase overall despite the smaller number of consumers.

That, or the system, as it currently stands, will collapse - degrowth means recession and our society isn’t built to embrace recession yet.

There should be at least a reading comprehension test for people to qualify to vote. Even better would be a media literacy and critical thinking test before election season even starts

This! We had a very cool unit in Linguistics on this back in college, it seems the academic consensus is that the first language you learn - i.e, your native language, can stop being the primary language that you use and hence, in time, it can be forgotten.

Our professor gave us an interesting example as to why the term “native” language is no longer as relevant: her daughter, whose primary language was Romanian, had moved to Germany and met her husband there, whose primary language was German. They later lived in the US for a while, both using English as their primary language for close to a decade and then moving to Japan, where they have had their son. In essence, the kid doesn’t really have a “native” language - at home, they speak English, when they visit Europe they speak Romanian or German, and everywhere else in his life he uses Japanese - which is also his primary language, as that is the one he uses most often and is most proficient in.

Look up Nox Arcana if you want something Gothic. Might be a bit too orchestral for your needs, but it’s a dark version that’s unlike anything I’ve heard.

Fută-te-ar Stalin

Pronounced: Foot-uh-tea-are Stalin

Congrats! You can swear in Romanian now!

Oh, that’s safe. Try being into a more obscure ttrpgs like Mage The Ascension or worse, niche Powered by the Apocalypse games like Legacy.

I can’t even talk about them to people already into ttrpgs.

“I piss in your mother’s death”

Alternatively, “May Stalin fuck you”

And yes, I live in Eastern Europe.

I think wealth disparity can get much worse than this. People used to be enslaved and forced into serfdom. The people on top wouldn’t have to win if the people revolted, they just have to not lose and let the people who already struggle die from starvation. Such a scenario is highly unpredictable and personally I still think the people would win, but it’s definitely an uphill battle that’s getting harder the more we remain passive.

It’s so interesting to me how money can have such a different value for different people. I live in the EU yet I make less than 1000€ a month even though prices are at EU levels. This would more than double my income and it would mean I could finally afford new clothes, I wouldn’t have to worry about having money for food, bills would be paid on time and I could even save up a meaningful ammount! It would be a literal life-saver.

Not saying I’m in favor of it, but there’s still market socialism out there as a political stance

Oh no, the devs are to blame. Lots of people including me bought into the promise that this would be a Pokémon mmo. We expected expansion packs, coop content, new monsters to catch and new places to see. The devs vehemently oppose adding new content to the game and have been saying as much since late early game, right before launch, when most people have already paid.

Unfortunately, the devs see mmos as “games where you grind a lot”. Sure you can play the story coop, but at end game you have nothing to do with a friend. Sure, lairs technically have 5 players but everyone is playing their own game and the only interaction is a shared pool of resources.

The game is super grindy for no reason, it’s always online despite not having much justification for that aside from “you have to see players in the world, doesn’t matter that you can’t interact with them in any meaningful way”, and updates focus on meaningless pvp content with nothing major like new tems to spice things up.

If you asked me before launch if the game was worth it, I would have readily said yes, even if just for the storyline. Unfortunately, they rushed it so hard after the mid-point that they botched it completely, and you are left with a barely coherent, pointless excuse of a story.

It’s not the worst game out there, I have sunk 350 hours or so in it (most of that grinding), but the devs have piss-poor decision making, a lack of transparency, an aversion to criticism and they are getting desperate. You’re better off not getting invested in this.

If you have any questions about the game, feel free to ask.

PS: the ban thing isn’t an issue from my experience. It’s the rest of everything.

Are Honey Bees in danger in Europe as well? The only headlines I’ve seen of them being on the decline were about North America before

Oh damn, that’s a very creative solution!

The sad fact is you can’t really escape politics and ideology since they literally permeate everything. The closest thing you can do is make something as appealing to mainstream audiences and thus as close to the stuff most people agree with, but… Liking the status quo is still a political statement at the end of the day.

Let’s say you’re talking about a character in a movie who always goes out of their way to help people. That would be palatable to most, it’s a very widespread worldview and value. But even then, a segment of people believe that you shouldn’t help people if it doesn’t get you anything (What’s in it for me? Sort of mentality).

In that situation, the person claiming you shouldn’t help people for free would rightfully be labeled an asshole, but the point still is that even something as benign as that makes a statement in a conflict between an altruistic ideology (It’s good to help people!) Vs an egoistic ideology (I need to get something for my effort)

This is obviously a very simplified version of how deep politics and philosophy affect all interactions, but I hope I managed to get my point across!

Have a nice day, stranger!

Each axis would give it a new dimension. One axis is just a line, two are a flat square, three would be a cube and adding a fourth one would literally make it 4d, which we cannot perceive with our eyes. It’s one of the reasons it’s so hard to accurately describe a person’s politics using a chart, aside from the other methodological issues.

Fair enough! It does take a lot of time to build an understanding of the issue here and I failed to take that into account. I realize not everyone has that sort of time, inclination or even general interest in the subject and that privacy is not exactly at the top of values for most people.

Still, I think people as individuals are still at least a little bit at fault for the way things are, though certainly the most of it falls on the system that fails to teach people about this sort of stuff and on the corporations that take advantage of that lack of knowledge.

I guess I let my frustration get the better of me in my comment. Sometimes it feels like there’s this massive fire raging in the middle of the city and just a handful of us are trying to put out at least a tiny proportion if it while the rest just don’t care about it.

Anyways, thank you for the well-written response, kind stranger, and for making me self reflect!

I don’t think that’s good excuse. Firefox is free and installing it takes less than 10 minutes.

Still, it sucks that they’re pushing them so hard on everyone. I tried to see the appeal, but I can’t stomach short form content at all. I get whiplash!

We’ll keep saying that can’t happen here right up until it happens

I have a cat. It stays indoors at all times. It makes no sounds and doesn’t bother anyone. Yet it still gets scared half to death every new year’s due to fireworks.