The recent post on why men are ignoring help and falling behind made me think of this documentary. Don't know who here might be interested, but it's certainly a lot to think about.

There's a documentary exploring the Mens Rights movement. It's far from perfect, but I think it definitely has some good points. Firstly, I'd recommend watching Cassie Jaye's (the creator of the doc) TEDx Talk about open-mindedness and listening (~15 Mins): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WMuzhQXJoY

Then there's the documentary itself (~2 hours): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7MkSpJk5tM

Cassie Jaye has posted a lot of the unedited and full interviews to her channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7HeX2SUI9v84DMIawkSBzLRANIc9RQ7t

I was reading this text from the Washington Post (sorry for the maybe paywall):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/06/xi-jinping-crackdown-china-economy-change/

The opinion asserts that in response to liberalization of Chinese life, driven by capitalistic economic growth, is the reason that Xi Pinjing "cracked down in every sphere imaginable — attacking the private sector, humiliating billionaires, reviving Communist ideology, purging the party of corrupt officials and ramping up nationalism (mostly anti-Western) in both word and deed."

My conspiratorial brain latched on to the humiliating billionaires line, and started thinking about a between the lines message along the lines that billionaires are good and should not be humiliated, a subtle warning-response to the progressive grumblings here in the U.S. that a failure to support capitalism will result in totalitarianism.

Then I started thinking about the questions, are billionaires good for society? I had always held the position that a billionaire is a market failure (in my econ 101 understanding of the term), much like pollution. It is improper hoarding and unfair leveraging of capital into disproportionate and un-earned degree of pesonal privilege.

It is certainly a by-product of euro-american capitalism, whereby the desires and welfare of the many are trodden on by those with the ability to fight and to shape the regulatory machine meant to protect the interests of the common-wealth.

I see a few possibilities. One, is that my understanding of economics is wrong, and producing as many billionaires as possible is the ultimate goal of capitalism and in fact good for everyone, even in theory.

Two, it is indeed as I suspect, a market failure. And the failure here is one of degree, it is not, in fact problematic to have some individuals with significantly greater wealth among us, and is, in fact, beneficial overall, but to have some with so much more than the rest of us (wealth inequaility) is a result of getting in the way of a clean functioning marketplace.

Three, economic theory is working as described, and economic theory/activity is an insufficient foundation for the maintenance and success of a whole society, and we need to find a way to constrain it to its own sphere, so that it provides us with what we need to be healthy and happy, but no more.

I turn to the bright minds of tildes: am I looking at this right?

From today, I've decided to write at least something every day until the writer's block frees me of its hold. I face this from time to time and don't really understand what to do, there is no cure really except hoping that something will happen or some inspiration will strike at some point causing me to write something.

One of the reasons could be that I'm a computer programmer and mostly blog about technology topics. But programming isn't really a topic or subject on which you can keep churning out rivers of literature, can you? It's a very exact and precise science just like mathematics and I feel most things that must be written about it are already written. In fact, I pretty much feel the same way about any kind of topic, we are literally swimming in oceans of information already! That's probably one of the reasons that keeps me from writing. I don't want to unnecessarily add my useless pennies to great literature contributed by people who are wiser and smarter than me.

But then the question arises what should I write about or blog about? I can write about nothing in particular and whatever that comes to mind (like I'm doing now) or I can write a research or news article or something. But I don't know how exactly people go about that. Most articles today are opinion pieces anyway and mine will probably be the same. But where do these "opinion writers" get their information from? There have to be some primary or base level sources. What are they? Can you recommend some good ones?

Another thing that keeps me from writing freely is all the environment you see on the interwebs these days which is just so toxic and discouraging, isn't it? It's not just about having a thick skin anymore but you live in a constant fear of getting canceled for something as trivial as your mere mentioning of some individual (about whom you may not even be fully aware of). I have to think a million times before writing something if this will offend any netizen or not, my guess is that many other writers must be going through the same thing and this is what results in the infamous contemporary expression, Self-Censorship!

If you're going to constantly self-censor yourself and kill many great ideas when they're just in their infancy, I don't think you'll be left with a lot of creative stuff to write and you may not even feel like writing anymore. Self-Censorship beyond a basic extent (like filtering of abusive words and phrases, etc.) is counter-productive and should be highly discouraged in my humble opinion.

Other natural antagonists like lethargy, laziness, procrastination, etc. also need to be blamed, of course! Sometimes, I don't find the motivation to read or do further research on a topic. Without reading, you can't get enough material to write, a good writer must be an avid book worm also. I feel sure I can contribute a lot to the literary world some day and I've decided to keep battling with my proverbial pen (actually the keyboard!) until the day it happens.

I think that's enough for today, might come up with another great wall of text tomorrow! Sorry if I wasted your time.

It's a very broad question, but seeing the latest extremely worrying news from where I am made me wonder: how's everyone else getting on? Now that we're moving past the lockdowns and furloughs, do things look hopeful where you are?

Things in the UK are pretty bad right now - huge inflation, energy prices hitting points that will seriously harm people's financial stability just to stay warm in winter, unending political scandal, increasing pollution, and little real sign of a light at the end of the tunnel. I'm fortunate enough to be able to handle it at least for now, but I'm genuinely worried for those around me and for the country as a whole.

The pandemic hit us all hard, but it's difficult to gauge how hard. Obviously Brexit is an extra anchor around the UK's neck, but then the US has the legacy of Trump and mainland Europe has a war on the doorstep, so we're far from the only ones with problems. Are we in a uniquely bad position, or is this how everyone's feeling right now?

The title says it all, really.

Today there was a story about the Flordia Department of Education rejecting a record number of books for containing Critical Race Theory. But when I read the article it said that it was rejecting these books for other things - for Common Core and for a thing called Social-Emotional Learning, or SEL.

SEL is not a term I'm familiar with, so I looked it up. There's an organization that advocates for it called CASEL who has a more in-depth writeup, but to put things as simply as possible, it's the idea that lesson plans should include material to improve a person's social and emotional growth and is largely concerned with students' mental health. I couldn't understand why anyone would have a problem with this kind of thing; kids today are put through a lot of stressful situations and it looks like mental health for children has been an issue that has exploded over the past few years. So I found and read an article about why it's controversial and I'm practically in tears over here.

Right now we are living in a world where children are tortured so much that they attempt to kill themselves and there are grown adults - legitimate parents of their own children - who are fighting against the people who are trying to help them. And all of the answers to why they are doing this are just absolutely insane to me. Some of them don't want their children to realize they were racist. Some of them don't want to ever discover the concept of sexuality or gender identity for fear that their child might not be straight cis baby factories. But overall, it seems like they oppose it because it threatens their control over their children, as if they were puppets to command.

I already knew how fucked up they were when they were trying to pass that Don't Say Gay bill, but this is just absolutely next level insanity. I'm sure they don't realize that the concept of SEL exists largely because there are so many children in the world who have had to deal with parents who think and act like these people do.

Utah Parents Unite, an activist group that says it’s fighting indoctrination and mask mandates in schools, urged its members to lobby against a bill to expand suicide prevention programs to elementary schools, where, the group said, “suicides are not happening.” (National data obtained by NBC News show that the number of children ages 6-12 who visited children’s hospitals for suicidal thoughts or self-harm has more than doubled since 2016.)

ARGH!

What I meant is a world without any barriers whatsoever for the circulation of people. Each country would have border checks for things like explosives, heavy drugs, and weapons, but apart from that everyone would be allowed in, always. I'm not sure about economy measures, trade barriers, and circulation of goods, though.

But please, feel free to interpret "world without borders" however you wish! ;)