1. That must be quite frustrating and difficult for your self esteem.

2. You may be right, but you might be putting your own insecurities on to the motivations of others. The world from other people’s perspective don’t always align with what we think. Could what you describe be as easily explained by something else, perhaps even your insecurity about it?

3. Have you discussed this issue with friends / family and gotten their honest thoughts? Do they agree that what you say could pose a problem?

4. Have you attempted to make yourself look older with makeup and such? Are the results the same with as without?

5. Do you have male friends you can ask if you are attractive?

6. Are there republican conventions nearby? If the men there show interest and say you’re mature for your age, you may want to A. Run B. Conclude that your features may be a challenge.

7. If men don’t approach and talk to you, try approaching and talking to them. Showing you’re interested and available is usually a turn on. Men are simple.

Best of luck.

The evil manifests physically.

Occasionally I fire up Civilization. The first one. I’ve also enjoyed Imperialism 2. Star Wars Rebellion, X-com (the original). Jagged Alliance 2.

All of those are from the 90s.

My point was to sort the good from the bad. To support those who are against evil and fight against those who perpetrate it. Shooting unarmed prisoners of war is nazi like, and while as you say, such things are done by all militaries, it is a thing of evil and should be hindered, in the same way that we should hinder the nazis from shooting people.

Is it 3% of the population in the streets that lead to change?

Nice Germans who who are respectful and tolerant are welcome. Nazi Germans get shot at. That’s what your granddad would probably say. Listen to granddad.

Which part?

The main idea as I understand it, is that the workers produce value and that value will never be fairly distributed back to them unless the workers themselves are in charge. This is an analysis of human nature, the owners are fundamentally selfish and will try to maximize their profits, workers to them are merely a means to that end. Therefore workers will be underpaid for the value they create and in the worst case, horribly exploited. I agree 100% with this analysis, as it can be seen a thousand different cases of in history.

The answer to this according to communism is that the workers, who are the majority, take over, become themselves the owners, and distribute the value they create fairly. As a person who believes in democracy, not just in the political sphere, but also in the economic sphere, this seems a good idea.

Communism then branches into multiple factions on how to achieve that goal, coercion and violence, or use elections and the power of the state. In the former cases, such as the Soviet Union, such situations open up for power grabs and authoritarian leaders, which I dislike.

The latter tactic created the European, and especially the Nordic welfare states, through democratic means. These states are not communist, as they abandoned the goal of workers in charge, and went for regulated capitalism instead. While better than most, these states now struggle, as even regulated capitalism distributes wealth from worker to owner.

In these states the workers are again exploited for the benefit of the owners. This is not explicitly understood, because this understanding and its terminology is considered a failed system, reference the Soviet system. Instead the exploitation is warped into other grievances, such as anti-globalism or anti-immigration, leading to a takeover of power by the political fringes. The fringe supported by the owners will have more funds and therefore better chances. And while that fringe may portray itself as pro worker, it will in fact represent a true capture of the state by the owners, leading to the opposite, based on the analysis of human nature as mentioned above.

Tldr: don’t ask questions if you can’t be bothered to read the answer 😅

In some ancient text I read it talks about how the ancient Greeks had stopped wearing swords all the time for protection, but there were still some primitive areas where they did. Civilization reduces the necessity and the rate of return on individual violence it would seem.

My point is not that we don’t know yet, my point is that we can’t know. All our knowledge is based on studying the natural universe, if something is beyond it, then by definition it would not be knowable by studying our universe. Perhaps at some stage we could reach a way of examining and understanding the supernatural, but for our intents and purposes it’s outside the box, while we are inside, and our only way to relate to it is to choose whether we believe in there being something outside the box or not.

The answer that any person who has thought about it and not rejected the idea is: If a being that has created and shaped our universe exists, it exists (at least partly) outside of our universe. Like a programmer doesn’t have to follow in his life the limitations of his code in programming, such an entity’s existence would be so far outside our modes of thinking that “who created him?” would simply fall flat as a question.

To begin to answer such a question one would have to have some knowledge of the plane of existence where the divine resides, and as that is outside the realm of what we can understand through physics and the natural world we live in, the question becomes unanswerable.

The question then becomes, can something exist on another plane of existence? The answer is of course, we can’t examine anything outside our universe, so, the answer must be, we don’t or can’t know.

I suppose then, the next question becomes, do you want to believe that there is something /someone outside the natural universe that gives meaning to our existence?

How you fit your parents in law in microwave?

Dang, if those agencies ever see my Civilization 4 save games, I’ll be so royally embarrassed that I spent so much time on it that they could blackmail me to anything.

Ok, what you need are realistic possibilities. I live in Norway and just had a daughter. I get 2 weeks off from work, paid, from arrival of the baby. My wife is now on mother’s leave from her job, paid, for about a year, (there’s math, but nvm), then I get paid parent leave for about 3-5 months when she is done. Kindergarten here costs about 200$ (US) per month, recently lowered from around 300$. All children have a right to kindergarten from they’re a year old (simplified).

My dad just spent a month in hospital in Sweden. The total cost was 400$.

Universities here cost about 100$ per semester + living costs, which the state owned student loan bank offers at decent interests to cover, and if you pass your exams, 40% of the loan is turned into a grant.

I could go on. Main reason on my opinion is the Nordic model of labor organization, where the state, businesses and workers try to make compromise so that businesses go well, workers are well paid and the state mediates when necessary. There are issues of contention, it’s not paradise, but it works quite well for quite a lot of people. Bernie has talked about the Nordic model for years. It’s real, it works quite acceptably, and it can be yours.

First step, strong unions and politicians that support them.

Yeah, the catholic church encouraged the study of the heliocentric idea, right about until Galileo used his scientific papers to directly criticize and mock the pope.

You keep going at it. You try to make yourself a better person, bit by bit, and forgive yourself for your mistakes. You work to understand your own neurosis and patterns of emotion and find ways to work on them. I still feel dysfunctional sometimes, but it’s a pattern that I’ve learned not to fall into fully.

Tel’aran’rhiod

Hi, Norwegian here, we have 5 weeks vacation per year, mandated by law. Oh, and the government takes 10% of your paycheck every month and pays it all out in July, so you have the money to go on vacation. Strong labor unions is the recipe.

Yeah, his name was Simeon bar Jonah, Simon, son of Jonah, or by modern style, Simon Johnson. Then Jesus pops up and starts calling him the Rock… Simon the Rock Johnson. (also fun gravy, Dwayne means fishhook)

The who? The Hu! Who? The HU!

Still have a few shares from the old gamestop squeeze, said I’d keep them as a memory. Might not now.