SnuggleButt [he/him]

I’m so disappointed about starfield. I didn’t play it but I watched a bunch of streams on release (cohhcarnage lauding the game while spending 80% of it in the inventory and then backpedaling while kiting an early game enemy for, I shit you not, 90 seconds really solidified the garbage gameplay). The consensus and my personal perception was that it completely lacked any and all soul. For a Bethesda game that is a low point in their dev history. Coming off the back of a morrowind playthrough a year before that game released the contrast showed one of the greatest falls I’ve ever seen in gaming. The entire reason why Bethesda games are good, the core factor, is that soul and charm. Absolute masterclass in releasing a game that feels like an alcohol wipe. I don’t have any hope for their future releases unfortunately

That’s why you degrade and normalize slow and steady. The playbook is written and reused, the product just refuses to read it

It’s a lot less depressing when you realize they’re just the civil conservatives. You can even remove the shock and surprise from liberals if you get them to realize democrats are just civil conservatives and republicans are just conservatives. I guess they wouldn’t be liberals then though

Isn’t it amazing to know that Obama was farther to the right than Reagan?

If leftism is working class policy, then 95% of Americans will always support leftism.

America has a vocabulary problem. They do not understand the definition of leftism, conservatism, etc. They just don’t. Undereducated, underpaid, no PTO, barely holding onto jobs. Of all “first world” countries, my god this is one of the most fraudulent and horrid economies to ever exist in human history

What they did in the past does not reflect their current price. They have a P/E ratio of almost 250 with declining revenue. That is unheard of. It implies that from their current position they’d need to 6-8x their profits just to reach its current level of valuation and be comparable to their competitors valuations. This means that after 6-8xing their profits their stock price shouldn’t move and only then would they be comparable. If it does move up from here, it would necessitate even more growth

You are describing Tesla’s growth and justification for valuation maybe, 4-5 years ago.

No. You are better. Doesn’t make you good, just makes you relatively better. If you were a delusional Charlie Kirk with legitimately good intentions, you’d still be a shitty fucking person, but you would be better than him, you’d just also be delusional.

But that also doesn’t happen. There are exceptions to everything in life; our general rhetoric and understanding of life shouldn’t have to account for those otherwise we’d be here all day. I don’t think it’s possible to have a Charlie Kirk I described, as I don’t think thoughts the opposite of your actions to that extent could be reconciled, but my comment included theoretical measurements

Oh yeah I agree I don’t think it will be avoided long term, I probably just think it will take longer than you probably think is all. And mainly I tie reserve currency to inflation, in that its current strongest property (due to the dollar slowly losing this status) is holding the floodgates of immense inflation back, not necessarily the insane trade leverage it once had

Well the reserve currency is the lynchpin in my opinion because it’s holding back a tidal wave of inflation, which would then cause the issues you’re describing to explode. Without the demand that status generates, the excess supply has nowhere to go. Our current crisis is a function of the massive printing during Covid that even the reserve currency status struggled to contain.

I feel like if Covid as a tipping point did not destroy this country im not sure what will. A lot of people are taking on debt, but there’s a lot farther they can fall. There are cheaper alternatives they will move to in terms of housing, food, etc. not everyone sits at the bottom but everyone can sit at the bottom and I think there’s still a lot to fall. Much poorer countries exist in much worse conditions. And the institutions whose value are based on that debt that won’t be paid back will just be bailed out like in 08 and during covid via printing. This is why the reserve currency is the lynchpin because they can only keep doing this if there’s external demand for dollars.

There already is a critical mass of people who are doing really poorly, but relatively. The issue is they’re not all entering that state at once, so the permanent crisis I describe in my prior comment is one of very many small crises happening, always. This both normalizes the situation but also prevents a large mass of people from being disenfranchised at once, making it hard for society to react as a mass unit. These smaller units will slip into conditions similar to poor countries, meaning they are still viable to live in even though they’re terrible, all driven by consistent inflation.

It’s a decentralized, slow and steady destruction that only affects small portions of the population at once. Unless inflation erupts at once it won’t ever effect enough people at the same time to cause a mass situation

I think the best marker of an imminent rapid decline is the middle-upper class/upper-class non elite. Like, think of people like doctors. These typically indicate the beginning of a revolution or a large change because they have enough money to live very well lives, but not enough to maintain them in the face of hard times, meaning their standard of living can shift the most out of any group of people, and they still represent a nominally large population. There are less of them than there once was but they still exist and I think are important to pay attention to

I mean this is all true but my point is it’s been happening since 08 non-stop. The house of cards is designed to function like this, and whenever there’s turbulence that might threaten it, the us govt prints their way out.

It feels like a perpetual crash is looming because they’ve designed the system to perfectly maintain a constant crash for ordinary people, and drip feed assets to the wealthy. I don’t see an event that stops this from happening until after the US loses the world reserve currency, which would necessitate a substantial decoupling between Europe and the US, which would necessitate more than just China as a competitive superpower

I would argue that we’ve been in the middle of a recession/crash for the last 2 years, so I’m not sure how much would change. A market crash is a different story. They may or may not print their way out of a crash they can’t control but based on how the market rebounded from the tariffs, I feel like the market is completely and utterly rigged at this point, which means it won’t ever really crash

Inflation is the biggest thing that could happen, and we’re already experiencing it. Stagflation really. Sure we might have another situation that causes the markets to crash that they will likely print their way out of, but most of that inflation gets caught in equities. I think the pace of inflation the ordinary person experiences can’t get much worse at this point, and most people are already priced out of a home without inheritance money/assets. This is the tightest squeeze I feel the American populace has felt since the Great Depression, and many metrics point it’s worse; the only reason it doesn’t feel worse is because the normal person isn’t starving due to the difference in agricultural setting. But we’ll see. I think America will just continue to experience inflation at too large a pace and our economy will slowly crumble over the next 10-20 years as we lose our world reserve currency status

Actually think it would be smart to look at the average age of this demographic’s parents. Even in this economic climate there will be economic improvement for people as they age, albeit slower and less than before, but it will also be tied to when their parents pass and leave them with stuff

Didn’t Trump initiate this withdrawal? Like, the entire withdrawal from Afghanistan?

The article kind of contradicts itself. Near the start I believe it mentioned how it wasn’t just a delay in births, but then when it gets down to the changes based on age, it very much indicates a delay, in that women below the age of 30 had a significant decline, but early 30s is the same and 35 and beyond is greater. Yes this is a decline since it’s harder to have a child past a certain age but it’s mostly a delay for now, although considering how our economy is also declining, this trend will increase

Love how we’ve tricked everyone into thinking the only way government can influence economy is through interest rate controls. Lol. Lmao even

Do not interrupt your enemy when they’re in the middle of making a mistake

The propaganda doesn’t really matter. If western elite want to clash with China they will make something up. All this does is continue to allow the western brain to rot. Zero attention span, full auto-pilot, divisive behavior from algorithmic pressure. The west is falling, so why would they try and save it?

Hey I just wanted to say I appreciate your response a lot. I disagree with parts of it but also agree with parts of it and was just a little frustrated at the seemingly uncritical support we often see here of nations simply because they’ve found themselves in opposition to western forces. I do want to respond to it but it’s hard to do from mobile which is how I typically access this site but did want to just mention that I appreciate it!

This has probably been mentioned somewhere but I mentioned to my physician that I was experiencing the same stuff and she told me vitamin b12 (on top of vitamin D that I was taking). She said don’t worry about the amount because you just piss out the excess. Going to bed earlier, wear a weighted eye mask helps with staying asleep. Finally, go to the dentist and check if you have mild periodontal disease. If you don’t take care of your gums what happens is bacteria will seep through them directly into your bloodstream making you perpetually tired. They will lift under your gums to clean them and it helps a ton

With both those supplements + the weighted eye mask (I also use a watch to help gamify my sleep habits) + that under gum cleaning I stopped getting gray hairs, I no longer need to nap every day (i don’t need to nap at all anymore in fact) + I have more energy. I don’t even exercise really because I’m super lazy but those have made a significant difference in my day to day. Compared to 2 years ago I feel like a completely different person from 2 simple supplements, a single visit to the dentist (floss of course going forward) and an eye mask (weighted is really important)

Hey wait mom said I couldn’t escalate my rhetoric anymore cause wishing death on slaveowners was too much! Why do they get to escalate their rhetoric and wish death on perfectly innocent people!? This doesn’t seem very fair you know

If ideology is downstream from material reality then why has material reality over the course of all human history begged for a more equitable distribution of resources among its laborers, but no nation has ever ended up with an ideology that made that a reality (China still pending)?

Material reality does influence ideology. In that those who control the means dictate the ideology much, much more often than not, with an occasional revolution that very often ends up with the same dichotomy between owner and worker.

Do not conflate nation with people, as very often a nation is represented by a very thin margin of elites pretending to represent the interests of their “people”. And very often from a failed state comes corpse-picking vultures who understand the economic situation and trajectory their nation is in, and the economic situation they are personally in, and take advantage of it for good reason.

Ideology is only downstream from your perception of reality if that reality is a revolution among labor, not among elites. Last I checked the Soviet Union falling wasn’t one driven by its labor. Its ideology is aligned with its elite material interests, since it’s very much owned by its elites. Barring some occasional theatrics, Putin is not the people’s president. And that’s not because he’s a permanent ruler, I understand the necessity of one in the face of stronger imperialist forces, it’s because he’s a shitty leader