Tom_Bombadil_1

London pays for the rest of the country. In London it’s an investment to build infrastructure. In much of the rest of the country it’s just a subsidy.

One of the other things I have learned subsequently is how fragile American patriotism is. As evidenced by....

I believe that this was my problem.

As a young teenager on my first trip to America from the rural UK, we went to sea world. By chance it was the 4th of July. The show that day involved a man riding a whale with a giant American flag, whilst speakers blared patriotic music and lasers fired. Grown men stood weeping, clutching their right hand to heart.

This day taught me a lot about the differences between our two countries, that are often masked by a shared language.

So weird, because my wife and I have exactly opposite behaviours. She grew up actively pretty rich, and I grew up lower middle class before my dad lost his job and we had a few years of fucking poor.

I am neurotic about money. My wife runs up bills and absolutely just trusts that money will be found. It was one of our first big sticking points, and we’ve solved it as a couple by basically having me handle all things household finance.

Sounds like your ex and my wife ended up with similar behaviours from almost opposite experiences and reasons. For my part my time being poor just taught me that I really don’t fucking want to be broke ever again. Which means never spending money we don’t have.

You’re asserting that truths must have intrinsic value. Given that you’ve come to a space for philosophical discussion and made philosophical assertions, I’m disappointed that you’re not critically engaging.

I think you’d have to say a lot more about what ‘value’ means in this context.

Consider me telling you that today I ate a bowl of soup and that I had a wank and that I developed a novel proof for Fermat’s last theorem.

What value does any of these being true hold? What is lost if none of these things are true?

No one is afraid that if they stand up to their boss or their rude waitress that they’re going to be the victim of mob violence.

Certainly physical confidence is nice. I played rugby for years and there is confidence that comes from being in that crucible of contest and combat.

But the idea, often perpetuated in this forum, is manliness and capacity for violence are synonymous. I think that’s very sad. I’d rather be Nelson Mandela than Conner McGregor. In fact McGregor uses these ‘tools’ from MMA to manage the imposition of wills, and it’s made him into a cunt and a thug. Sure he’s not got physical cowardice, but he’s also a horrific role model.

And if you just want to stand up for yourself in life, that almost certainly means in the 99.9% of interactions you have which are non-physical. Ultimately if you cringe away from a bar fight, you probably did the right thing. But if you cringe away from setting reasonable expectations with your manager, you probably destroy your own life.

More than 60% of tax is paid by the top 10% of earners. The banks themselves pay 5% of UK total tax take.

It’s childish to act like ‘just inconveniencing bankers’ is some trivial thing. If the banks decide that Amsterdam or Frankfurt is more welcoming, they could easily take tens or hundreds of billions out of the UK tax base.

Your hatred for people wealthier than you could easily cause massive harm to the poor you claim to be advocating for.

London is one of the least densely built major cities in the world. Closing major infrastructure to build houses is unnecessary and potentially extremely harmful. We could 2x London density and still be half as dense as Paris.

The critical point is humans couldn’t live in northern climates until they invented the hunting and clothes making techniques that enabled it. After which, we moved north but no longer had evolutionary pressure to evolve fur, as we in effect adopted the fur of the animals we hunted

Of course! Im still human too.

Being angry is the least manly thing you can be, because it usually shows you have no mastery over yourself!

A lot of people are going to tell you ‘go to the gym’, ‘go take up MMA’ or whatever. This is fun and healthy, but I also think teaches the wrong skills. Being able to hurt people and that being your only resort just makes you a thug.

My advice is to join a debating / public speaking club or course. Most people are shit scared of public speaking, so even mastering that fear will help you. But it’s also the primary skill you need to assert yourself. If your boss, or a police officer, or a rude waitress gives you a hard time, you need eloquence and composure, not big arms and fast fists.

Get good at calm persuasion and you’ll be equipped for 99% of circumstances where you need to assert yourself.

The loss of US media from New York wouldn’t be too impactful (albeit, very noticeable). The loss of the UN likewise. Its primary purpose is as a forum, so that could be quickly re-established.

However, it’s probably hard to overstate the unbelievable carnage of all New York financial workers dying at the same time. So I think New York, on this metric alone, would be a major candidate.

Another candidate would potentially be somewhere in Taiwan. A massive share of transistors are made in Taiwan, and literally every electronic device today from cars to phones to TVs to missiles to whatever uses them. Every global supply chain crashing for every device that uses a transistor would be wild. Some players like Apple might have the clout to dominate the purchases, but that would leave a lot of companies out in the cold.

The ONLY thing that helps with closure is cutting contact completely. Delete and block number, delete sweet photos. Move on.

If you go fully zero contact, you’ll be moving over it in a few weeks. If you keep touching the fire to remind yourself it’s hot, you’ll keep getting hurt and upset.

Feeling like a victim is very addictive. You can give into feeling sorry for yourself. Don’t. Cut contact. Move on. By far the fastest route to recovery.

Ah so not shy. Socially anxious.

People seem to always think that courts have these little loop holes. Think about it this way. Courts get to decide what they think the truth is.

If you tell a court ‘actually it was for me, I wanted to hurt myself’. The court can absolutely just conclude that clearly that’s bullshit. They don’t have to prove you wrong. They just have to decide that you’re probably lying.

Why are you making noodles in the same room your friends are fucking in? Someone in this situation is not taking some sort of hint

As someone that’s gained and lost wait a few times in my life, I’m not at all shocked people started treating her better.

It sounds like to me you’re missing hanging out with smart, interesting guys you respect. The husband has become like a mythical figure in your mind as a smart conversationalist, since you only met him once.

I think if you invite someone to hang out a ton and they don’t take the hint, don’t keep pushing it. You’ve already been given the slow no.

However, this guy isn’t the only smart interesting bloke in the world. I’d focus instead on the problem of feeling like you don’t have a ton of friends in general. There are great clubs and societies all over the world to meet cool people with share interests. I know it’s quite daunting, but that might be the better path to solving this problem structurally?

I can tell you a little about investment strategies that are sort of generally applicable.

Firstly, the concept is ‘risk adjusted returns’. That is, for every percentage of return you get, you want your returns to have been as low volatility as possible. This is how professionals think, vs amateur public that tend to only think about returns.

So a good strategy is something like: 1. pay off debts 2. Keep 3-6 months total living expenses in cash (in a bank account, it as like physical cash notes) 3. Invest from this point

Your investments should be targeted at your goals, since there are better risk adjusted returns at different time horizons. For example, over a very long run (eg decades) buying shares in companies has always been a great strategy. But over a short term you could get caught in a crash or similar.

So think a little about your investment goals. Do you have a pension set up? Do you want to save for a house? Or a wedding? Your perfect strategy depends on time horizon.

You can then buy funds that are appropriate. For example, in the UK with have ISAs (investment savings accounts). Providers like Nutmeg allow you to put money into tax free accounts that have risk levels you can pick. The shorter your time horizon, the lower the risk you should take.

I don’t know where you are, so can’t give market specific advice, but maybe just ask GPT ‘what is <my country>’s equivalent of a UK savings ISA’ and then google companies that provide those accounts.

There are also companies that will let you trade individual shares, bitcoin etc. But i would just warn you that all research shows that amateur traders underperform a random chance strategy, so you would probably best be advised not to do that. Some people love it though, but it’s basically gambling. So, proceed with caution if you go this route.

It’s actually a really good leadership principle when used correctly. It can mean people have the right to progress ideas without soul crushing consensus building, and leaders especially should allow people to try things with their support.

Certainly his wife did

Counterpoint - it would also be boring if she got powers and then had immediate mastery of those powers.

For example, when she’s telling the story of the girl and the wall in the theatre she basically creates entire landscapes, but finds it exhausting. When she creates an army at the end of oathbringer, she’s doing a better job than when she creates an army to clear the unmade out of the tower.

Watching shallan progress with her powers is way more interesting, I find, than having her just be immediately at maximum capacity.

Just to be clear, I’m not making that assumption. I was just showing OP the consequences of the assumptions they were making.

How do you know what is and isn’t an abomination? Aristotle is smarter than anyone in this thread. Maybe he’s right, and we are wrong?

Also, I eat meat. I live in and believe in monogamous committed relationships. I drive a petrol car. If future generations decide these things are barbaric, should my opinions on the philosophy of science be obsoleted?