Fancy savings account for retirement that’s stored in stocks so it can explode at any point. Basic perquisite to ever retire in the US. Many people don’t have them.

Ideally or practically? Those are very different conversations.

Practically, there’s not a lot that can be done. In the US, there’s not a good way for someone like that to continue living.

I also will note that the phrasing of your last two sentences is kind of unpleasant. I’m not sure if that’s your intent, but it creates this implication that your value as a worker is the major contributed to your value to society. I don’t think that’s the case- I think it’s possible for someone to not work and contribute a lot to the happiness and well-being of a local community. Also, part of the thing that makes humans special is that even if someone doesn’t contribute to the overall needs of society, we will still take care of them out of love. That we love other people is a sufficient foundation for their existence.

Any recommendations? ; )

We have so little time on this beautiful earth and the writer of this article chose to focus on this instead of how beautiful butterflies are, or something lovely and true.

Depends on the place and context. I don’t know as much about the Chinese market for these things, but in a lot of cases for Japanese/Korean titles in this genre there’s a number of fascinating elements that combine to make it appealing.

It’s about beautiful men and can focus on them a lot, for one, but it also offers vectors to discuss and engage with dynamics and/or social things which women are discouraged from expressing. A lot of the time, one of the couple in Boy’s Love (for example) is intended to be a bit of a proxy stand-in for the female reader. They’re more often the viewpoint character, and they get to be more vocal about sexual desire for men than a woman may feel comfortable writing a female character expressing.

They also can engage with some kinds of stories about bigotry that can intersect with women’s problems in sympathetic ways; and, if you’re trying to deal with something that’s really sensitive or traumatic as a woman, then having male characters go through something similar can give the appropriate level of emotional remove.

Also, pretty men kissing!

Like, I’ve been reading CLAMP stuff again and wow those are pretty men!

I’m not a woman, mind you, but I’ve been reading this stuff for, like, 15+ years and these are my (incomplete) conclusions.

Do you mean, like, if they suddenly stopped existing or if they never developed?

Wow, it’s almost like the incredible stress of being alive now keeps people from opening up and being intimate. 🤔

Very interesting resource. I found her video presentation about online gaming very informative and delightfully fair.

Yeah, see, I am on your side but the focus on “destroying books is bad,” is kind of irrelevant to the actual harm being done.

It’s that they’re devouring the contents of people’s brains for the ability to replace them that’s concerning. If they chose to do this in a completely different way that preserved the books, I would not say it changes the moral valence of their actions.

By centering the argument on the destruction of the books, it shifts it away from the actual concern.

Your empathy is in a good place, but the problem isn’t how humans are broken, it’s what is breaking them.

Western society* is built in a really dumb and alienating way. Humans are reduced to a labor commodity, places where people can mingle socially are being commercialized out of existence, the internet has evolved into a machine that actively profits from outrage and alienation, our governmental institutions are primarily driven by forces no regular person has any power over and we can’t even feel pride in our work because it’s profitable to convince us that we are replaceable and disposable.

Where’s the social incentive to connect to other people? The powers that be benefit from a disorganized and isolated population, so they will do nothing to change that. Market incentives mean that media which focused on things that provoke fear, rage and anxiety are more profitable than ones that promote community, happiness or hope.

It’s permeated so deeply into our culture that some older kids movies seem completely insane now. Like, think about ET and consider how wild it would be nowadays for you to just let your children vanish for hours doing whatever and wandering around wherever.

The fear and anxiety determines our actions, and there are multiple incentives on a macro-social level for that to continue.

Hell, I have watched this happen in real time during my 10+ year time on the web, where the communities of excited weirdos sharing their thoughts and feelings have been so thoroughly dominated by this that it is hard to engage with any social media without someone shoving a headline into your face that is intended to upset you.

On Tumblr, for example, the trend was so strong that the idea that you weren’t constantly upset was a sign of being a bad person. You know, on the Superwholock site? Yeah, the one that wanted to fuck the Onceler.

If you want to reverse this trend, it’s going to require changing how our political, economic and media environments act by changing their incentives. Otherwise, any change will be superficial and fail to produce meaningful results.

It’s pretty depressing, but that’s the situation as I see it.

*I’m not qualified to comment on other cultural spheres.

How many times can journalists retread this conversation from 2018? The polls are still out.

This reminds me of when I shadowed a librarian in high school and they talked to me about how people got really upset with them throwing away books that had multiple reprintings and were in awful condition.

Because people as a whole lack the capacity for nuance, I guess.

Bad focus on the news article.

🫂

Preach. I’m so bad at selling myself!

I just want a job with a living wage now, and it’s agonizingly, dehumanizingly hard to look online. Especially if you have the extreme rejection sensitivity aspect of ADHD.

I wholeheartedly agree.

…so what about the minorities in those red states who are stuck there because of their financial or familial situations, and who lack the power to influence politics?

Wouldn’t work out. World’s too complicated for simple answers like that.

Leaving, even if it would produce a viable nation, would involve leaving a lot of people in the lurch. There’s people in conservative states who need the counter balance of blue states to slow down their government’s trend to self destruction and fascism.

Even though it’s increasingly frustrating with how feeble that resistance is, it does keep things like banning gay marriage in the “difficult to pass” territory and not the “a few compromises” one.

It’s increasingly hard to find things that are like that for everyone. It’s an unfortunate trend that means I have to very aggressively curate my feeds to keep from being dragged into it.

This situation is really rough. I wish I could offer you financial support, but I can’t right now.

I want you to at least know that I’m thinking about you and I care.

You should check out the policies for your local libraries, if there’s a conveniently placed one you may still be able to get intermittent access?

Yeah, typo on my part 😅 Pasdechance has it right, I meant news company.