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in the unfortunate position of defending Mr. Carnivore Aurelius here but this is actually enough land to supply a good portion (not all!) of a small family’s caloric needs. obviously you could not keep a cow on it but you could do pigs and goats as long as you don’t have neighbors who care. Your wheat yields are gonna be fine. did you know that on average an acre of wheat produces 1 ton of grain? does the person dunking on this know that?

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why even lie about the time like that

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this isn’t intended as comedy but man “What is the best place in Taiwan?” “Taichung” really took me out

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one of my favorite images rn

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i still think about this twitter exchange every time i hear this song btw

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To restate it–my general theory of history (ok, it’s more like my general hunch of history)–is that all apparent social progress is made as our civilization gets better at processing its trauma, bc cycles of violence/trauma/childrearing (and the normalization of these things) largely explain why the past so often seems so inhumanly violent to us–public executions, chattel slavery, massacres, etc, etc.

And there are people in this day and age who nonetheless glorify those days–the thing that got me reading acoup’s series on Sparta was his series on the Fremen Mirage, the illusion (delusion?) so often received in pop-history and in books like Starship Troopers that there’s this distinction between ““““decadent”““ non-militarized, peaceful societies and “morally pure” societies (militarily strong societies, i.e., societies that have value bc they are good at generating and exporting violence)

And–and I’m just spitballing here, I have very little evidence to back this up–I suspect that if you scratch contemporary subcultures where that kind of idolization of a militarized past occurs, where the atrocities–not even the atrocities in service of some cause, just the senseless, pointless, stupid violence–of societies like Rome and Sparta get brushed under the rug, you will find subcultures where people are much more traumatized than elsewhere by abusive, authoritarian, and outright violent upbringings, where the correlation of “authority figure” and “source of shame and pain” is much, much tighter.

Because if you are raised in, or still live in, a shitty, abusive environment, there are two ways you can deal with this: either you can say, this is awful, this is monstrous, no one should have to live like this (and if you do, so much the worse if the whole world is like that, or if it feels like the whole world is like that, because it is painful indeed to look at the world and think ‘oh my, it is full of pain and injustice and there is nothing I can do about it’), or “well, there’s a reason for all this misery.” The reason is ‘because it makes us stronger.’ Or the reason is ‘because it makes us more morally pure.’ Or the reason is ‘because God (or Lycurgus, or Odin, or the Emperor) commanded it.’ Sometimes–at least for some people–the worst possible outcome is that your suffering would have no meaning. It’s not just “well, I had to endure this, so why shouldn’t they?” Or rather, it is, but the core of that sentiment is, “how come I had to suffer?” and the desperate hope that, well, as long as other people are suffering, too, your suffering must have some kind of meaning. That’s Just The Way The World Is, After All. What’s the other possibility? You got fucked over, for no reason?

Sometimes when I’m reading about history, especially in its grimmer parts, I have this momentary feeling–not much more than a fleeting mental image, really. It’s an image of every human being since the dawn of time, as the tiny child we all once were at some stage, groping desperately in the dark for a way to understand the world we were dumped into. But we’re all, in one way or another, still one of those tiny children, with all that entails: a deep deficiency of understanding, a certain inescapable impatience and hotheadedness, cooperative creatures which nonetheless have a terrible fear of pain. In such a world, it feels like the only reasonable response is to try to cultivate a neverending source of compassion within oneself, to try to be as patient as possible with others, who are often just as alone and afraid as we are. After all, it’s what I hope they would do for me.

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pleased to announce that I have to start worrying about the snake

orals tomorrow. kinda fucked how if you don't pass your committee hands you one of these and tells you to get to it

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i close my eyes and repeat this to myself in my mind about 6 times a day

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orals tomorrow. kinda fucked how if you don't pass your committee hands you one of these and tells you to get to it

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he wouldnt hurt a fly. he would hurt other things he just really likes bugs

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you know, banning harmless food additives, not just that, outdoing the fucking european union in banning harmless food additives, was not actually one of the specific downsides i anticipated from trump defeating harris, but why not? Before he first ran, Trump was mainly in political news for birtherism. And the expectations you'd form from that, he lived up to them after elected, finishing his term by denying the election results. We're just running the country on tedious grandpa conspiracy theories. Whatever would be beneficial to do in grandpa conspiracy world, that's the law, and we live with whatever the consequences are in the real world.

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Did someone cut you off in traffic? Are kids being annoying? Did a coworker misread your email? Maybe some sex wasn't as fun as you wanted? Don't worry! Pick 1 (one) source of horrible brainrot to allege as the reason society in general, but mainly some person you don't like in particular, is in decline:

lead in disposable vapes

internet pornography

artificial sweeteners

long covid

smartphones

too many vaccines

microplastics

short-format video

Ignore the complex causalities of health and risk and substitute just-so explanations for the supposed neurological deficiency of your chosen outgroup! Limited time only before the social media outrage cycle moves on! Ascribe an etiology for their clearly broken brains today!!

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"omg you'll post 'i need him' on the most average men" "she's mid" most of us are average and it's good that we can find beauty and desire in average people

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bought some rainbow shoelaces because I’m working at pride events for the next two days, but I’m a little scared that if someone compliments them I’m going to have to say it………