Honestly, I would recommend not books on atheism per se, but rather ones exploring non-theistic philosophy. Schools of thought amongst atheists and agnostics are just as diverse, if not more so than amongst theists. My world view is made up of many things, humanitarianism, empiricism and so forth. Ideas that build a foundation.

There is also the more emotional side, finding beauty and purpose in life. Personally I find myself coming back to the works of Carl Sagan, particularly “The pale blue dot”. Capturing, at least for me, a lot of essence.

Here is a short excerpt that he read. Just, wow.

Idk if I’d call it 5d chess, more like a showman that uses drama with the intent of social manipulation without any scruples. That’s how he managed to win both the 2016 & 2024 elections.

No, I highly doubt that. For one, it isn’t feasible. A declaration of war wouldn’t make it through congress, and is highly unlikely that the US military would actually execute such orders.

The primary purpose of Trumps posturing - at least in my analysis - is a retarded way of intimidating EU countries into militarization to enable shifting US troops to other theatres (Middle East, Asia).

Well, that’s just called lying - US politicians haven’t been fiscally conservative in a long time.

Compared to Sweden

The tax rate is never the issue.

Maybe not where you live, but here (Sweden) where the average worker pays ~60% tax on their earned income the perspective is a bit different :)

Right now certainly isn’t a time to be cutting taxes, but when the gov:t ends up… checks notes… spending 74mSEK on modern art for a rail link that had already overran its budget by 30% - it gets a bit jarring. Meanwhile hospitals across the country are in full cost cutting mode due to the ongoing recession and inflation.

Usually fiscal irresponsibility comes in the form of lavish promises (subsidies, tax cuts, projects etc.) with a jarring absence of an answer to the question “How are we going to finance this?”

Euro perspective - When I hear fiscally conservative, that means supporting a governmental policy that is frugal with spending and responsible with public assets and finances.

This has several parts, here are some of the most important:

a) Keeping a balanced budget - the government should not be spending more than it is collecting from taxes and income. (A little debt in dire times is fine, but that should be payed off when possible)

b) Responsible management and long term planning - the planning horizon should be counted in decades

c) Focusing on core tasks: national security, infrastructure, healthcare, education etc.

d) Not raising taxes unless strictly necessary, lowering them if it is permissible according to the above.

Socially liberal => supports personal liberties

Now why does government debt even matter? Well, because debt is owed somewhere, and if it becomes large may mean that the government is beholden to other parties for the debt.

Most research on human embryonic stem cells - currently impossible in western countries due to ethics concerns.

Theoretically, if a few stem cells from every embryo early on and frozen that might be a huge boon for them once they grow up to adults with potential health issues. Need a new heart? Grow one in a lab from the preserved cells - perfectly compatible.

Currently these kinds of things can’t be explored, and whilst the ethics may be dubious the potential medical benefits left on the table are astonishing.

I agree - and it’s also a language problem. Many of the words that nowadays are core parts of the left wing message can easily be portrayed as hostile to them due to their historic genesis and literary meaning~

A simple vocabulary update would help a huge amount, simply switching to more gender neutral terms that carry a sufficiently equivalent meaning. Feminism -> Gender Equality; toxic masculinity -> misogyny + internalized sexism; patriarchy -> oligarchy + egalitarianism etc.

This has become a huge weakness that can be (and frequently is) exploited to portray it as hostile towards these groups.

A handful - lemmy.world because I found it first, feddit.nu because it’s Swedish, piefed because it seemed interesting, dbzero because of yarr and foss