Yeah, I can’t find a news article or anything, lol. Definitely confused.

Why not just compare the model 3 to an 18-wheeler then? Those weigh way more. Would have made his point better.

And it’s a completely meaningful comparison, as long as you throw away the fact that different vehicles are used for different things.

A model 3 to an f150 is absolutely apples and oranges.

Do you do those things because you truly get enjoyment out of them, or are they simply your drug of choice to help you cope through to the next day?

Those are all things that can be enjoyed in a healthy way certainly, but if it’s just “wake up, work, binge internet, sleep,” every day, then I’m afraid you have a problem. Maybe not a full blown addiction, but at least an extremely unhealthy coping mechanism for some deeper underlying issues.

This is something that you can work on though. Ideally with the help of a professional therapist who can help you identify why you feel the need to cope in this way and help you start breaking those destructive patterns in your life.

You say you don’t like anything or give up on everything, but what does that look like? I assume that you don’t spend 8+ hours every day staring at a blank wall. You must do something to fill your time.

But if you are truly finding it difficult/impossible to be interested in the world around you, then your issue isn’t that you don’t have a girlfriend my dude. It sounds like you’re suffering from pretty severe depression.

And I hate to break it to you, but untreated mental illness is definitely a mood killer, and not just with the ladies. You’re gonna need to get yourself into a better place, or you’re gonna drive more than just romantic partners away.

But I’ll tell you, you’re awfully fatalistic for 35. Women tend to pretty holistically prefer guys in the 33-40 bracket. You’re not past your prime in the slightest. A little self confidence and a little investment in the world around you, and I think you’ll find that you will attract people no problem.

And hey, maybe I’m wildly off base. I know I’m making a lot of assumptions based off a very small paragraph. And maybe I’m reading you super wrong. If so, I apologize.

One thing to keep in mind though. The idea of a relationship and sex you have in your head? That’s a fantasy. Both are great things certainly, but when I was younger I feel like I built them up to be something deifying in my head. That once I had them, all my greatest desires would be met, and that life would be finally “complete” for me.

Understand that relationships are work. Fulfilling work, but work nonetheless. They require just as much “sticking to it” as any hobby that you haven’t stuck with, if not substantially more. And let me tell you, you’re absolutely not going to want to do it all the time. It requires a lot of dedication and perseverance.

And don’t build up sex to something more than it is. Its great, certainly, but I promise you’re putting it on a higher pedestal in your head than it deserves.

But all that to say, right now, you’re in love with the idea of a relationship, not the reality of one. I’m confident that you’d find the reality to not be what you’ve dreamed of it. And the problems and struggles you have in your life are rarely made easier by adding more work and responsibilities.

Take care of yourself and get to a point where you love yourself and the world around you as it is, and I think you’ll find that the rest of this will kind of take care of itself.

My first pass reading the headline has me thinking the dead daughter was running for Congress, and I was very confused.

What about it being mandated makes it unethical?

Is it the “military” part of it? Cause I think that neither of us are proposing this as a “fight and die” thing.

If it’s just the mandate in general, would you say taxes are unethical? It’s the government taking a portion of the fruits of your labor for civic gain.

Is mandatory schooling unethical? It’s the government mandating what you do with your life in large part between the ages of 6 and 17.

I just fail to see what makes this meaningfully different from any number of things that we already happily accept.

I mean, I still prefer my pitch to yours, but I wouldn’t be sad with your idea either.

I don’t think your pitch really combats the “people won’t actually want to do the work” issue. I think in either example you’ll have a lot of people who are “just here so I don’t get fined,” as it were.

But I think you’re overstating that issue in either case. Will it have that issue, sure. But so does the military writ large. Does it impact efficiency, sure. But making an efficient, well oiled machine isn’t exactly the point.

But other than that, reading your proposal again, I kinda think that the only thing that makes your proposal different from mine is the mandatory nature of the service.

The benefits you outlined are commensurate with the lower enlisted ranks in the military, so like, yeah, that’s what I’m proposing I guess.

I think the benefits of forcing people to leave their bubbles justifies the forced nature of mandatory service. It a means of helping young people escape cycles of abuse, and exposing them to other cultures. It’s also a great equalizer, in that it effects poor and rich alike, where your system ends up just admitting poor people who are desperate (not unlike the military as it stands.)

I’d also be open to having a program option where you can defer up to 5yrs to pursue a college degree if it’s in a relevant field (civil engineering, etc) and do your mandatory service afterwards utilizing those skills. The program still pays for that college time but gets relevant use out of you at the end. This prevents people who know what they want to do from having to delay and gives them relevant job experience right out of the gate as a resume builder.

I was gonna post this if you didn’t, lol.

I actually kinda support a mandatory civil service? Hear me out.

First, while I think structuring it like the military makes sense from an organizational standpoint, I think the focus would be on civil works projects. Maintaining national parks, infrastructure projects like federal interstate system improvements, etc.

This would serve as a way to get a big influx of money and labor into these large scale infrastructure projects in a way that’s bipartisan. The Republicans would like it because it’s cheap and they support mandatory military service. The Democrats would like it because it’s a big public works project that creates jobs and builds out infrastructure.

I think it would also be a unifier and help build a sense of national identity and break people out of their insular bubbles. They say travel is the antidote to bigotry. This would get people from all parts of this nation travelling around and intermingling. The son of a clansman from Arkansas would be exposed to, and have to work closely with, queer people from SoCal. The young gang member from Detroit would be able to get away for a few years and perhaps reinvent themselves. The son of the billionaire will have to work hand and hand and side by side with the kid raised penniless in the foster system.

It gives people a precious few years after highschool to see the nation and not have to make huge decisions about their future careers at 16 years old. It can expose them to different fields of work, and teach them skill to best prepare them for their futures.

All in all, I think a system like this could do a lot of good, both for the people in it, and for our nations failing public works.

Why not just launch it directly but background the process so it doesn’t hang up your terminal?

It seems to me what you (and Biden) are saying is that things have progressed to the point where Hamas (and by extension the Palestinian people) are unwilling to reach a peaceful solution.

If that’s the case, what should Israel actually do? What terms should they offer? And what if Hamas rejects those terms? Is there a solution to this problem that actually solves anything?

Did you mean to reply to me? I don’t see how that is relevant.

Like, sure, oil and gas companies are corrupt and doing immoral things to prop up their industry.

But if a coal plant can sell me electricity for 5¢/kwh and the windmill company can sell it to me for 2¢/kwh, I don’t care what immoral stuff they try, the consumer is gonna buy the cheaper option.

Historically fossil fuels have been the cheaper option, and most of the immoral stuff was to avoid bad press. That strategy doesn’t work if you’re the more expensive option. The market will in fact work for the best in that scenario.

Which isn’t to say the free market always makes the “correct” decision. Fossil fuels are a great example, as they have continued to be the primary form of energy for the past 100+yrs, since it was cheap. But it looks like natural market forces are bringing us around to green slowly but surely, and Chase Oliver might be right that this is a problem that will, at this point, largely solve itself.

I mean, I think that’s what the majority of people are advocating for in green circles too, no? “No New Coal” and all that?

I don’t hear much advocacy for tearing down working power plants.

Power plants don’t exactly have an infinite shelf life. They get run down and need to be replaced. Eventually only building green leads to only having green.

Combine that with the ever increasing cost of actually running a coal fire plant. Shipping in hundreds of tons of coal is eventually gonna get way more expensive than operating a solar or wind farm. At that point the business owners will likely tear the plant down of their own volition to replace it with the cheaper option. (Though that will be admittedly a little slower, as you have to amortize in the construction and downtime costs.)

Yeah, I’m in a bluer state than California my guy. Think, like, Maryland or Massachusetts.

I feel pretty safe voting for Chase Oliver, lol.

Not that I’d feel bad voting for him in an Alabama or Mississippi either.
Hoping to flip it someday doesn’t change the fact that when polling suggests that it’s going 90% one way, hoping that maybe you’ll flip it this cycle is delusional.

I mean, I live in a super blue state, but like, if you want me to vote for Trump to try and flip it for him, I guess I can do that?

I like Chase Oliver. I don’t agree with him on all the issues by a long long shot, but I think he seems like a genuine dude, and I understand his positions, even when I disagree with them. And he’s ideologically consistent if nothing else.

I’m in a state where the Electorial College is a hard lock anyway, so I’ll probably vote for him since my vote doesn’t matter otherwise. Just as a protest vote if nothing else.

Plus, if they can get enough of the popular vote they’ll get federal funding in the next election cycle. The Libertarian Party definitely has an extremist wing to it I can’t stand, but there’s something to be said for rewarding them for picking a reasonable human being for a candidate lol.

I mean, I recall seeing a ton of press a while back that the percentage of the Texas power grid that was renewable keeps growing because it’s more economically viable than traditional power plants.

So, like, he may not be wrong. Solar and wind just keep getting cheaper. It’s not like businesses will spend extra money to burn coal, just to spite the environment.

Yeah, I’d be interested in how many people go to the inauguration of other countries heads of state.

Like, my best guess is that it’s a dig at, like, Gov Abbott, but I agree that I don’t think I’d expect him to, even if he was a Democrat.

But does it protect a company who is throwing out food that someone then eats? They aren’t a good Samaritan in that case.

And even if it’s lawful federally, they may run against local ordinances.

And even if every single thing is above board, that still doesn’t stop them from getting sued. It just means they’d win. But legal costs being what they are, it’s probably cheaper to just run off anybody who might be litigious before something can happen.