uhh no. comparing our actual life experience today with the actual life experiences of our parents and grandparents is the only way to know if we’re doing better, the same, or worse.

your argument is the argument of the domestic abuser and the authoritarian government and the rapacious theologian.

“be grateful for what you have” or “it could be worse” is shitty advice.

“The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class”

https://youtu.be/akVL7QY0S8A

Elizabeth Warren a long time ago told us what was coming, and it’s either here or nearly here.

Alright I’m gonna try this hereditary math…

So these kids will have the same dad, making them at least half siblings.

Their moms are sisters making them first cousins.

So what are they like 3/4 siblings…?

I’m not sure I follow.

I’m starting from the assumption that OP genuinely wants to talk to women without being creepy (for lack of a better term), presuming that comes from his intrinsic association between “talking to a woman” and “attempting to establish a romantic relationship with that woman.”

That’s a thought that’s undesirable and presumably persistent. Sort of the definition of “intrusive.”

I’m aware that the pop psych understanding of the phrase is specifically about violent or violence associated thoughts but those are the ones more people have and that probably are more disturbing than annoying.

When your parents say, “did you talk to any of them,” they mean did you strike up a conversation with a woman with no presumption of potential romantic outcome.

When you say it, it seems like you’re assuming there’s a potential for a romantic outcome in every conversation between heterosexual men and women.

Your goal should be to strike up a conversation with a woman about random topics of interest, including very shallow ones, with no expectation that you’re evaluating her as a potential mate, and she’s not evaluating you.

Yes, we’re all subject to intrusive thoughts so from time to time, you’ll fail at this goal and start thinking about a romantic path. That’s fine. Just acknowledge it to yourself and endeavor to do better.

It will probably take time and practice. Give yourself grace to try and fail and learn. You’ll know you’re succeeding when you realize you had a conversation with a woman without her gender being a consequential thought in your mind.

People know what 60 Minutes is.

They don’t know what Skydance is, and definitely don’t care about it (that’s not necessarily ‘good’).

They sort of know what Paramount is, from movie title sequences, but they don’t care about it more than any other movie production company. (Again that’s not necessarily ‘good.’)

Going public like this is a great answer to Trump’s bullying.

Don’t think of it as a race, think of it as an opportunity to find kindred spirits

IF we can get a very strong Congress that recaptures and then vigorously defends it’s Constitutional powers, AND that goes through the trouble of codifying what used to be political norms before Trump, AND amends the Constitution as needed to put a strong leash on the Executive branch, I think it’s possible we could become that anchor again.

But it took a world war and at least 25 years of concerted effort after to build that role for ourselves. Even though the Republicans have damaged or destroyed it in 3 months, it won’t be rebuilt in 3 months.

After WWII there was a halcyon era where nearly every adult in America agreed that nerds had been crucial to our winning. That’s why Operation Paperclip came to be where we stole all the former Axis nerds we could find.

It also led to an unprecedented boom in education spending, research spending, etc., mostly aimed at beating the USSR at technological development. Sputnik goosed that significantly, and the Apollo program briefly did as well, until Americans got bored of Moon landings…

That was probably the first major flashing red warning light most of us ignored: Moon landings… boring!!!

Anyway, educated people started doing things that weren’t directly associated with winning the Cold War, like exposing the dangers of lead in everything, the dangers of smoking, the dangers of chlorofluorocarbons, the dangers of greenhouse gasses, etc.

That threatened the ability of grotesquely wealthy hoarders to hoard even more grotesque levels of wealth.

So they started the project to dismantle education in America.

That project kicked into afterburn once the USSR collapsed and the Cold War ended.

And so far, nerds haven’t been successful in regaining their status.

Also the villification of experts as people hell bent on leveraging their expertise to dominate our control non experts.

I recently right that a useful counter to that conspiracy their is to point out that experts should be thought of as tools to be used for different purposes. Like any tool, experts can be misused in a variety of ways, including accidental and purposeful.