Dr Ben

@rationalaussie Also, Australia has done a much better job (in the past) of integrating and assimilating immigrants into their culture, meaning less cultural conflict.

People say that Australia is fucked, and in many ways it is, but Europe and the UK are turbo fucked. Like literally civil war levels of fucked. Non-peaceful outcomes are all but guaranteed there. Australia is at least blessed with natural resources and has ample food production. Yeah the government is retarded - incredibly retarded - but removing a retarded government is a lot easier than trying to unfuck a shit geography with scarcity of energy/food, and remigrating a couple million immigrants is a lot easier than remigrating tens of millions. We are also an island, completely isolated from the rest of the world. It's actually pretty fucking difficult to get here, and the fact the government has managed to facilitate importing so many immigrants that no one wanted is a testament to how utterly retarded they are. Hard times are coming, but Australia is a better country to weather the storm than just about anywhere else right now. Everything is fucked anyway so you have to choose the country that is least fucked. Many went to Dubai, look how that's played out. Many went to Europe to chill - okay have fun when the war kicks off there. Many went to Asia to be a digital nomad - be careful what you wish for, you're now a permanent digital nomad with no way to get home because they are already out of fuel. The point I am trying to make is this: Life is a game of tradeoffs, and optimising for wealth creation is not always the best decision. Most of the time it's not, actually. Many people are still looking through our world with a financial lense, not realising that all that matters now is survival, both literally and figuratively. We are entering a period of peak chaos. The range of possible outcomes is extremely wide. The path is not clear. Many different things, all path dependent, could happen. In times like this you shouldn't optimise solely for wealth creation, you should optimise for survival in all realms: make sure your portfolio lives to see another day sure, but also make sure you're not gonna end up stuck in some shithole country when the missiles start firing just because you wanted to pay 10% less tax. Because honestly a lot of this shit misses the point: If you have internalised where we are in history, as well as where things are going, most of your work, money etc - it's all pointless. Capital controls are coming, as well as heavy taxation, meaning the government is going to steal all your money anyway to save themselves. And if you somehow make it through that, because you're a Bitcoiner, you're still gonna have to navigate a future where AI + robotics takes every feasible job. So yeah, none of it really matters. Not from a doomer perspective, but from the perspective that you should play the hand you are dealt and roll the dice as you see fit. My mental model of this is to act like it's all a video game, because it probably is. Treat things both lightly and seriously. Work hard if you enjoy what you do but not hard enough that people can tell you are working hard. It should all look like play - that is life.

Women overwhelmingly value equity and emotional safety over the pursuit of truth and academic freedom. Men are the opposite. It's going to take more parents standing up for their sons and fewer CEOs being browbeaten by their wives to stop the feminization of universities and society at large.

@haugejostein For now yes, but we are living on the sacrifices of our ancestors, and won't be able to maintain those living standards for long. Wealth is built on innovation, and we have fallen terminally behind China and USA, so our relative living standards will continue to fall behind.

Europe performs better — not worse — than the United States. Europeans enjoy more leisure time, higher life expectancy, and lower levels of inequality, all with productivity rates comparable to that of the US.

@WilsonLain94316 @JasonClareMP whatever authoritarian practices you bring in to attack your enemies will eventually be used against you.

@JasonClareMP Can we bring in new laws to crack down on ALL hate and bigotry please, whether it be racial, religious , gender or disability bias!

There is no place for antisemitism in Australia. The violence and hatred we saw in Bondi on Sunday night is an evil scourge and we will eradicate it. That’s why we’re bringing in new laws to protect Jewish Australians and crack down on those who spread hate, division and radicalisation. We stand united with Jewish Australians and we will never relent in the fight against antisemitism.

@Keir_Starmer young men need saving from your authoritarianism

I want my daughter to grow up in a Britain where she feels safe in school, online, and in relationships. Every young girl deserves that, and every young boy should be protected from harmful misogynistic influences. My government is making that happen, by backing teachers, calling out misogyny and intervening early. We can stop harm before it starts and save a generation of young men from the influence of online misogynists.

@UltraDane He's looking surprisingly vigorous for someone who sacrificed his life.

“I sacrificed my life to secure this country's freedom and its freedom of speech — and now you arrest people for words while turning a blind eye to crimes committed by invaders. You are a disgrace to your uniform and you are an insult to mine.”

Scientists don't understand that they brought this on themselves and are responsible for this catastrophe. Scientists stopped caring about truth and became a political entity, who thought social engineering was their right and duty.

You are paying for this if you pay taxes

@simonmaechling Academia only has itself to blame. It enthusiastically backed one side of the culture war and became a political actor. So naturally people stopped believing that it's purpose was truth seeking.

The collapse of trust in science is going to go down in history as one of the most sad, bizarre, and destructive social contagions of modern times. We cured diseases, fed billions, and powered nations - and people ran toward conspiracies instead.

@BretWeinstein I contest the assertion that we didn't understand it, pretty much every premodern society understood it, our era just decided to throw away millenia of accumulated cultural knowledge.

The sexual revolution disrupted something fundamental. Sex, it turns out, is far more important than we understood, and making it cheep unleashed a cascade of negative effects. Among the worst: men and women have now become unsympathetic and grotesque in each others’ eyes.

This is your taxpayer money.

I remember many Australians saying, ah Trump's crazy starting an unprovoked war with Iran. Well, for now at least, it looks like it was a surgical strike that didn't cause a war and achieved it's aim of halting Iranian nuclear proliferation. I'm sure if a well-mannered Democrat president had done the same, they'd be calling it a masterstroke.

@interesting_aIl Travels across the universe to meet Florida man, turns right back.

A small demonstration of how hard it is to find planet Earth in the middle of space

@Keir_Starmer is dismantling freedom and justice in the UK piece by piece.

The most comedic truth about true outliers is that if they ever communicated the full extent of their worldview, given the sheer number of layered inversions they perceive, the vast majority around them would assume they were in a state of psychosis. In reality, the inversions are so deeply entrenched that what appears to be insanity is, in fact, sanity. Poetic.

The gentleness with which Mak, the famous 40-year-old bull elephant from Imire Conservancy in Zimbabwe, treats little kids. x.com/fluxfolio_/sta…

Couldn’t celebrate 101 without some Dalmatians 😆

Testosterone is thought to make males more aggressive. It's actually more subtle than that. It makes males engage more in status-enhancing behaviours. In a society that values aggression, yes this makes males more aggressive, in a society that values economic contribution, it makes males more entrepreneurial.

Am I supposed to believe he is a high testosterone male?

@rumilyrics agreed

what a privilege to be able to see, hear, breathe, walk and talk.

@helenstave I wish you health and a long life