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I want to learn Russian and Chinese

I don’t think it’s taking shelter as much as trying to find an answer to something that has no answer.

For example Eistein I don’t think was trying to take shelter from reality. He wanted to look at reality as deeply as possible and he managed to peek through and see more than almost anyone ever had before.

But he still believed in a God. This is one of those reasons I always call myself an agnostic instead of atheist.

In a practical sense, I’m an atheist. I don’t think Jesus turned water into wine or the Buddha achieved enlightenment and entered a higher plane of existence or whatever.

But I acknowledge there might be supernatural or supranatural items / phenomenon/ or even beings that we can’t ever fully understand.

Greedy people are more likely to end up wealthy. Greedy people are also more likely to end up doing ethically dubious things.

Of course, any wealth at all is unethical if you’re being honest with yourself. There’s a famous passage in the Bible.

Jesus was out teaching his disciples or healing people- whatever he did. And a rich man comes up to him and asks

“Jesus, I want to follow you and go to heaven. Please tell me what I should do”

What did Jesus say? Jesus told him to a) sell all of his shit b) give that money to charity c) physically follow me around

What did rich guy do? Have an epiphany about morality and living the good life?

No, he cried. He cried because he didn’t actually want to let go of the good things he had for morality.

All of us in first world nations are guilty of this to some extent. The way our world is shaped you essentially have to be unethical to survive. There are levels to it, of course. But I think your perspective is too black and white and needs a little nuance. Seem like a teenager.

I view India as a rising power that has the potential to rival China and the USA. I think the culture is backwards in many ways and advanced in others. I don’t like your current administration, but I do think India overall has interesting politics. I mean, you guys have an active Maoist insurgency. Pretty wild for the 21st century.

I tend to get along well with Indians I meet in the states. I appreciate India long history and cultural impact (Buddha came from India for example). There were democracies in India before Athens was a thing.

All in all India’s a rising power with a lot of potential. Unfortunately I don’t think they will reach China-status anytime soon because they don’t exercise as much central control as China does.

In some ways this is good, Cultural Revolution wasn’t exactly a great experience for a lot of people. But in other ways it means the Indian government doesn’t have the power to reshape India in a way where it can successfully rival the European powers.

Fiction is more important than nonfiction in my opinion. Good fiction teaches you about the human condition. Studies have shown people who read more fiction are more empathetic for example. The ability to put yourself in the mind of another person is not only good for society as a whole, it’s good for the individual because navigating relationships is something you will be dealing with until you die.

That of course isn’t to say nonfiction isn’t important, but that’s what all your textbooks are for. That is nonfiction.

Tldr; I don’t think it’s a problem at all, no

I’m a foreigner. Most aren’t. I work from home. Most don’t. I drink kava everyday. I doubt anybody else does.

If you know who you are and what you believe in then you should have no fear like others are saying. Go wherever you want and talk to whoever you want. I used to regularly post on /r/debatefascism before it got banned on reddit. I was disappointed when it got banned.

When you argue with someone online, you’ll never change their opinion… but you may sway some random lurker just browsing through.

I understand that a lot of the far right use “free speech” as essentially a dog whistle- but freedom of expression in my opinion is a vital part of a free society. That doesn’t mean private places like Lemmy instances have any obligation to follow free speech. But I do support and respect places that do.

I prefer Linux not for freedom, not for money, not for privacy.

I do it because I’ll be fucking damned if hardware I own is going to generate value for some large faceless corporation. It’s my computer. I paid for it. I’m not going to install Windows so it can send telemetry and show me ads in order to benefit Microsoft’s bottom line.

It’s like owning a car and letting Uber use it for free every once in a while. No thanks, not me.

In an ideal world we would be able to control climate change. The problem is that we don’t live in an ideal world. We live in a world defined by economics and war. Energy is the heart of everything- without energy you don’t have a modern economy.

Look what happened in Germany right after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Germany was getting most of its natural gas from Russia through pipelines. During the course of the war, those natural gas imports fell of a cliff for various reasons. What did Germany do to compensate? They burned coal. Coal outputs much higher carbon emissions than natural gas. Not only in the burning itself, but in the mining process required to get the coal.

So what was the response of the German society under pressure? Put out more carbon emissions. Just a glance at the global geopolitical situation would tell you that crisis isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

I think this is fundamentally the issue. As long as we live in a world with crisis, governments will never let go of quick cheap and reliable energy. When the economy is in trouble, there aren’t going to be any politicians advocating for things that could potentially cost the economy. And to get rid of our carbon emissions - we need to feel some pain.

In order to meaningfully prevent climate change, we would need to do something yesterday. Instead, we probably won’t be doing anything for the next couple of decades.

Of course, I must end this with a caveat that my comment was made to be a little controversial. I don’t believe all attempts to reduce carbon emissions are a bad idea. To the contrary, I believe we should absolutely enact these changes. I’m just expressing a sort of cynical sentiment that since we can’t really stop it, we might as well start spending money on dealing with it

for example, like the army corp of engineers spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build a giant sea wall in Miami. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/us/miami-fl-seawall-hurricanes.html

but other things to, like building new cities with modern urban planning in order to handle the massive wave of refugees in the future

Dostoevsky. Kava. My girlfriend refuses to watch Yu Yu Hakusho with me

I don’t know about “evil” because I don’t really subscribe to the Christian good vs evil. Yeah there are people out there who do terrible awful things, but generally speaking the most “evil” things come as a consequence of our amoral decisions.

We decided in the US that cars should be the primary method of transportation back in the 50s in order to stimulate the growing car manufacturing industry. That decision now results in nearly 50,000 people a year dying in car accidents.

We are not much different from the Mayans sacrificing victims in order to bring rain. We do the same thing, but for a different ideological purpose.

This is, in my opinion, much more dangerous and harmful than “evil”. Sadists come and go but institutions and ideology remains.

Having said all that, I’ve been robbed & beaten. I’ve been through heroin addiction. I grew up as an illegal immigrant.

All of those ultimately shaped who I am today, but there were definitely difficult moments. Life is complex though and I think “evil” had nothing to do with the most traumatic and painful events in my life.

I have quite a few. I don’t believe in copyright laws or IP in general. I think it holds back innovation and exists solely to benefit megacorps like Disney or pharmaceutical companies.

For example - you develop a new drug that really helps some people. You charge $50 a pill even though it costs you $5 to produce. Without the government protecting IP, another company will come around and produce it and sell it for $6 a pill, providing cheaper access to healthcare.

People will say “what would give someone the incentive to make new things?” Without actually thinking it through. For a great example of how lack of IP is a good thing, look at how Shenzhen went from a fishing village to a Chinese San Francisco in a few short decades… one company will take the product of another and iterate on top of it.

Another unpopular opinion is I’m pretty absolutist with free speech. I think certain things like calls to violence or intentional defamation of character should be restricted. But pretty much everything else should be fair game.

I believe in open borders and think the US should return to the late 1800s style of immigration. We’re gonna need the population to compete with China in the coming century.

I also think that the primary investment into climate change at this point should be preparing for the inevitable changes instead of trying to prevent the inevitable.