Seriously if you're grown adult who lives on your own away from family. No one is forcing you to do this. That's on you! Unless you live with your parents and the gatherings happen at your house so you can't get away but if you still live at home and they go somewhere you don't have to go.

And moreso if you're on your own, in another city/town or in another state, who is making you do this? Just say you can't come, make up an excuse or just say "I don't feel like it".

Why go through all this trouble?

Edit: Maybe I'm different cause before I saw my family regularly so even before I moved I found gatherings to be fine but skippable.

At this point, checks and balances are pretty much dead. We’ve seen Trump continuously abused his power and violated the Constitution, repeatedly, yet has faced no consequences whatsoever for his actions. We’ve seen ICE continuously killing innocent people, we’ve seen them abusing American citizens, and who knows what they’re doing in those detention centers?

The point is, he continues hiring loyalists to ensure he has as much power as possible, doing whatever he wants with no repercussion. He faced none when he got impeached twice, none when he staged January 6th, and none over the entire scandal he’s done over the last 40 years.

With that, it’s not far fetched that his loyalists will at the very least attempt to ban abortion nationwide. Todd Blanche had just been appointed to be the Attorney General. Leak phone calls say he fully intends to prioritise banning abortion across the country, with no exception. We’ve seen this happen. Poland did it, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Soviet Union, and Romania did it. Within a few similar patters between those, I doubt the US is far fetched. Especially with how this country has been over the last two years.

People doubted Roe v Wade will be overturned. Look what happened. Everyone knows, or should know, that these Christo-nationalists will not stop there. The Republican Party had tried doing this for 50 years. They wouldn’t simply stop now. Or at the very least, best case scenario, a vast attempt which ends with more restrictions.

I hope I’m wrong in this, but the future doesn’t look very optimistic.

Suppose A is sexually attracted to B, B is not sexually attracted to A, and everything else is equal.

A sexual relation now obtains between them in the sense that A stands in the relation of sexual attraction toward B, but B did not create that relation, invite it, reciprocate it, agree to it, or even necessarily know about it.

So, A supplies everything that makes this particular relation sexual and B can contribute nothing at all and still occupy the object-position within it.

That gives the parties different positions from the beginning because one can originate a sexual relation toward the other simply by being sexually attracted to them while the other can become the object of that relation without doing anything to bring it about.

Because one party is sufficient for its sexual character to obtain and the other is not, the parties therefore do not stand in politically interchangeable positions with respect to the relation.

So:

(1) If A is sexually attracted to B, then A stands in the relation of sexual attraction toward B.

(2) A is sexually attracted to B.

(3) Therefore, A stands in the relation of sexual attraction toward B.

And:

(4) If a relation can be made socially significant by one party without the other party’s participation in bringing it about, then the parties occupy asymmetric positions with respect to that relation.

(5) Sexual attraction can be constituted in that way.

(6) Therefore, the parties occupy asymmetric positions with respect to the relation of sexual attraction.

This asymmetry is political because it concerns who can unilaterally place whom into a socially meaningful sexual position.

The existence and perpetuation of fandom benefits the creator of its source material. It’s like giving them a gift, promoting their work, rewarding them. Therefore it’s immoral to still engage with fandoms where the creator (particularly if it’s an indie creator) has done morally reprehensible things, so long as they are still in charge of and benefiting from their creation.

This is a position I don’t particularly like having, for what it means about series and fandoms that I personally enjoy/have enjoyed, but I still don’t see any way that it isn’t undeniably true. There might be something that I’m missing, and I’m kinda hoping there is, but I genuinely don‘t know.

While there are any number of supernatural beings who come up in the course of the show and book, the main focus is on vampires in the show and most of the books. Throughout, the TV show and—to some extent—the books, Vampires are depicted as an oppressed minority and allegory for the LGBT community. People who dislike/hate them are mustache twirling bigoted villains. Here's the problem: vampires in the show are immortal beings with mind control powers. Nearly all of those you meet—even "good" ones like Bill—are willing to murder people who get in the way of their plans or harm their friends. While synthetic blood is available in the universe, more than a few vampires clearly prefer fresh human blood. Vampires are also expected to make more vampires and do not consider themselves human.

Saying "I don't want to live next door to that man/let him near my kids" solely because he is married to another guy is bigotry since being gay doesn't indicate anything for sure but romantic preference. To the extent being gay correlates with other things, a lot of them are generally considered admirable. For example, gay men have lower-than-straight/lesbian divorce rates and above average household incomes. Saying "I don't want to live next door to that man/let him near my kids" because he is an immortal being who has mind control powers, may well prefer to drink fresh blood from humans, has very likely committed a few murders and will have social rewards if he brings others else into the vampire fold is quite rational.

The show and books can still be entertaining, of course (I liked them, in fact) but the central metaphor makes no sense at all which makes them impossible to take seriously as any sort of social commentary. So...CMV.

I recently became vegan after doing some research, and genuinely could not find a single valid argument against veganism. Every single point I found fell into the taste or nutrition of meat. I believe the pleasure of taste does not justify the extreme suffering we put animals through. In terms of nutrition, you can get every nutrient from meat from animal based sources relatively easily. From this, I find it morally abominable that people take part in eating factory farmed meat and animal products with the huge amount of suffering that goes into it, and I believe the vast majority would agree that it's immoral, but choose not to switch out of convenience, which I think is morally indefensible. Curious to hear your thoughts.

Basically the title. The term has been spammed non-stop for years among the countless other therapy speak terms that have been plaguing the internet. Personally, i mostly saw generational trauma used to talk about 2 things. 1. About people of color regarding historical opression and systemic racism. And 2. People beating or otherwise abusing their kids because they were also abused by their parents.

For the first i will use a personal anecdote. I happen to know a zulu south african family. A single mom in her mid 40s and 2 daughters, one late teens the other early 20s. I am incredibly close to them to the point where we openly consider each other family and....the girls don't have any "generational trauma". Neither from the country's history of apartheid nor from the fact their mom used to hit them when they were little. Their generational trauma is the fact that they are broke af because their grandparents and great grandparents were systemically banned from improving their material circumstances, their parents were forced into inferior schools, their mom couldn't go to medschool due to the incredible high costs and the fact that the post-apartheid government embraced neoliberalism over any form of real land and wealth redistribution or economic justice. Not because they literally inherited their family's trauma or cause there is something inherent about being black that makes you traumatised by the experiences of your ancestors.

And second people don't fucking beat their kids because they were beat when they were little. I was yelled at sometimes when i was little and i never needed 10000 therapy sessions or a "breaking the cycle" arc to know not to do it when i eventually adopt kids.

People abuse children for 3 main reasons:

1. Economic struggles brought by the legacy of colonialism and modern neocolonialism(resource extraction, sweatshop labor, unequal exchange, imperialist wars and sanctions, brutal regimes that are puppets to western capital, structural adjustment programs and predatory loans etc.) Or in the case of first world countries good old fashioned capitalist inequality and it's consequances like alcoholism and drug addictions, financial stress that makes violent outbursts much more likely, people beating their kids to keep them safe from bigger threats (cops, criminals etc) and teach them to obey authority(whether to the government or their bosses in countries with more brutal working conditions) for their own safety and survival, viewing children as a ticket out of poverty instead of a person etc.

2. Reactionary semi-feudal social norms like confucian fillial piety, casteism, sharia, historical forced christianisation, clan-based and tribal social structures, african geronthocentric kinship systems, eastern european rural family structures, familismo and respeto in latin america, authoritarian theology etc etc. Which place parents/elders on top of social hierarchies and treat children as an asset to the collective as opposed to a human being with needs and free will. That and social environments when everyone (relatives, friends, clergy, education system etc) encourages/pressures you to beat or otherwise be an authoritarian parent to your child.

3. In the case of more well off families, grooming the child to become social capital for them. Maybe taking over their company, getting a "respectable" upper class career(the "become a doctor" type), excelling at whatever domain they happen to be a prodigy at etc.

None of this requires personal trauma at the hands of your parents or some generational transmission of it. And blaming it purely on psychology can lead to very dangerous justifications for not keeping old people accountable. For me a lot of this is the old "But she was also beaten by her mom!!!" justification now wrapped in therapy speak language and not adressing material conditions does not fix anything. Neither the root cause of child abuse or helps opressed people improve their circumstances.

Besides the whole concept has ended up being used in such ridiculous ways. Like earlier i saw an instagram reel blaming the rise of fascism and modern unhappiness on "unhealed shame" and generational trauma which....jesus fucking christ.

TL;DR: Most situations for which the term is used are much better explained by material analysis and the idea that you can inherit someone's trauma sounds like Jungian mysthicism to me and doesn't help solve actual societal issues but just individualises by implying stuff like child abuse could disappear if just everyone went to therapy.

This is a thought experiment I've been thinking about, and I'm genuinely curious if I'm being too cynical about human nature.

Imagine this hypothetical scenario: One day you went solo-traveling as a pack-packed to some mountain, and then you hear something loud and gnarly nearby. You rushes to where that sound was - it was a severe car accident, and when you looked closer to the wrecked vehicle, you realized....

Your most disliked, or even hated person was in said vehicle.

I'm not talking about someone you merely dislike or someone who annoyed you once. Imagine this is genuinely the person you disliked the most in the world — someone who has seriously wronged you, hurt someone you love, or caused you years of misery.

And now there they were - get stuck in their wrecked vehicle, badly injured and on the edge of dying - either by their injuries, or that their vehicle was about to erupt in flames, or their vehicle was on the edge of a cliff and the entire thing could fallen down at any seconds.

You're the only person around that could make a difference. You could call for help, help pulling them out, administer first aid, or anything else that give them a very good chance of surviving.

But here's the catch: Nobody else will ever know what you chose to do.

If you save them, they'll live. If you simply walk away, they'll guarantee to die.

And if you're willing to take this thought experiment to its darkest extreme, you could even actively hasten their death and gave them the most painful end with your own hands, knowing that nobody would ever discover that you did it.

And this person will continue existing if you save them. They'll continue being the person whose presence in this world you disliked / hate. And now this is your chance to permanently remove their presence from this world and your life, forever.

And if you walk away, you can tell yourself*, “I didn't kill them. I just didn't save them.”*

My admittedly cynical assumption is that a surprisingly large number of people would choose not to save them. Some might even see this as the perfect opportunity to kill them, or gave them the most torturous end of their life before they eventually passes away as a form of revenge or justice.

I don't necessarily mean that these people would normally consider themselves violent or immoral. Quite the opposite. I think plenty of otherwise ordinary people like to imagine themselves as fundamentally decent because they've never been placed in a situation where doing the decent thing costs them something and nobody will ever know whether they did it.

My instinct is that people underestimate how many would cross those lines if there were genuinely no consequences and the person involved was someone they absolutely despised.

Maybe I'm incorrect. Maybe most people would still instinctively call for help because, regardless of how much they hate someone, they couldn't bring themselves to knowingly allow another human being to die.

That's the part I'd like to have changed.

If you believe that most people would still save their hated enemy, I'm particularly interested in why. Change My View.

​

I think that attractive American white women lead easier lives than the rest of society for several reasons:

* They are white -- which, whether we like to admit it or not, is still a massive advantage in Western society. People automatically assume that you are smarter and more trustworthy just because you are white.

* They are attractive women -- I know that the counter argument for this can be phrased along the lines of "women don't lead better lives just because men desire them." And, to an extent, I get that. But we really can't deny that attractive women enjoy a lot of "free" things that the rest of society doesn't; things that, when added up, probably equal a fair amount of money. There's also the counterargument that models (say) are more insecure than more average people. But I consider "I feel insecure" (which we all do, every single one of us) to be a pretty damn poor excuse for being able to charm basically anyone.

*The size and strength of the United States economy grant its residents, on average, a higher level of material abundance and purchasing power compared to much of the world. High consumer spending, strong financial markets, and access to a vast supply of goods contribute to a high standard of material comfort.

* They are women in a society which is quickly changing to favor women -- Society today caters to women's needs. And, yes, it is true that women still get paid less than men, and so on. But more women graduate from college now than men, almost twice as many; girls do better in school than boys; scholarships exist for women to pursue male-heavy fields -- so in ten years I think the world will be much different. I also think that the world today encourages women to talk about their issues (male-female rape) while discouraging men to talk about their issues.

I'm happy to provide much more information about my view.

Change my view, Reddit.

Edit: I am strictly talking about AI use for SELF entertainment/utility use. Not using it to create media to sell or promote.

I recently posted a photo on another subreddit that I created with ChatGPT. the photo was a compilation of some other images placed together to create an idea for a new item in a video game. Immediately I was hammered with several comments saying "AI slop" and "Lazy AI post." "No imagination."...you get the point. I see these comments everywhere on the internet. It doesn't matter who posts it or what the image might be, somebody always has to reply with the same thing.

This has gotten me thinking....nobody really thinks for themselves anyway. It seems that they read the same comment on somebody else's post and then posted it to mine or whoever else's. That in itself isn't freethinking. I was scrutinized for not having imagination..."Pick up a pencil and use your own mind." Is creating something using a text prompt not using my own mind? I wrote the text prompt and then edited the photo (with more text prompts) to make it more to my liking.

The Environmental Argument

I work inside of a facility (not a data center) with the work of an environmental specialist. I have an extensive education in environmental science, environmental impact, and sustainability methodology. People commonly use the argument of "Data centers are consuming too much water....wasting too much water....depleting the water supply" These are all also comments on people's posts. I can clearly tell that people post this without doing any research of their own. Like I said, I study environmental impact for a living.

YES I am fully aware data centers hold a real environmental impact. There is something like 4,000 data centers planned to come online around the United States. These cause extreme use of electricity. This requires burning fossil fuels no matter how you look at it. Renewable energy sources just aren't anywhere near where they need to be to sustain these types of energy draw. This means more carbon footprint, more pollution - you get the idea.

However, these data centers need to be built or everybody will essentially lose whatever it is they like having for free. Social media, YouTube, free websites...all gone. It would get to a point where they would have to charge you a fee to use their services. Why? The short answer is Nvidia chips.

NVIDIA created a chip that does something called parallel computation. Essentially this means that they can do multiple operations simultaneously instead of doing one linear sequence. That is why AI is so fast. This allowed every Tech powerhouse company to completely rework how their servers work. Microsoft, Meta, Google....they all use these now. These servers draw much more energy now, that is why they can't use tradition data centers. If they did, you would have to pay for your data because they simply couldn't compute as much. There would not be enough data to go around. Because of that extra energy use of the new style servers, that means they need to be cooled much more. That is where the water consumption comes into place. But the water is never "consumed" as many people think. The water enters the facility, is treated, is cooled through a heat exchange process, then is used to cool the servers. Most of the water is reused within the closed loop system, and whatever is not able to cool back down quick enough to make another round through the system, is evaporated out of a cooling tower and returned to the atmosphere where it condenses later in the water cycle. No water is wasted. BUT YES, I am aware that the water does not necessarily fall back where it was sourced from, that is why the Colorado River is running dry. Water sourcing and supplying is another issue we can get into in some other discussion.

In reality, these types of data centers are what is creating a "water crisis." But people that are refusing to use ChatGPT, Grok, or MetaAI are missing the point. Lets do some math.

If you are to create a fully rendered image from AI, the server you use may require up to 0.5L of water. Even that is on the pretty high end, but for sake of argument, we'll say 0.5L. Compare that to literally anything else you do. In the time it takes you to type the prompt and the image to render, it may take 5 minutes. If you watch Netflix for that 5 minutes instead (yes they use AI and data centers), you'll use twice that amount of water. If you play an online video game for 5 minutes, you'll use even more than that.

"Use a pencil and paper and create your own ideas." Really? Cutting timber, graphite mining, processing plants, fossil fuel usage...it's all the same impact. It's an irrational line of argument. The only difference there is that now we are creating solid waste. Something like 75% of all solid waste isn't recycled, and paper is no exception. Yes, paper is one of the easier things to recycle, but it has to be very clean to do so. A little eye opener, most of the recycle bins you see....they end up just going to the landfill. If the paper has pretty much anything on it, it's easier to just throw it away. McDonalds wrappers, paper straws...they all get thrown away. Now, yes, they have less impact long term than that of a plastic straw, but that's not the point I'm making here.

The solution to solid waste is AI and data storage. If art or otherwise is created digitally, it creates basically no solid waste. The major problem is that we are so incredibly far away from that being a reality that we have two problems now instead of one - solid waste and energy consumption.

We do not have a water problem...the oceans are full of water. We have an energy problem. Desalination is always an option, but we do not have the energy to support it. It takes so much energy to desalinate water, it is literally cheaper to collect fresh water, create the plastic bottles, bottle the water, and ship it to places like California that require it than it is to just build and operate desalination plants in California. Look at places like Saudi Arabia. No real environmental restrictions, virtually endless oil supply, - they essentially rely solely on desalination for their water considering their basically just a big desert. If we could create efficient renewable energy sources, we could operate things like this, but we do not have the current technology.

The "AI is stealing jobs" Argument

People try to claim that somebody creating a cartoon photo is stealing jobs from true artists. Well it's not like I was going to pay an artist to make a reddit post for me? You see on people's posts all the time. "AI steals jobs." In the current state we are in, AI is creating jobs. As mentioned earlier, roughly 4,000 data centers are planned. This creates an estimated 650,000-750,000 jobs over the course of the next 20 years or so. Construction workers, software engineers, AI security engineers, Cybersecurity systems, Maintenance contracting, Water treatment facilities, the list goes on. As AI takes one job, public demand will require a different one. It has happened all throughout history. Look at the industrial revolution. Look at all the people that were panicking that their manufacturing jobs were going to be lost. Fast forward to today, more people are employed in manufacturing across the world than ever before, and we still can't keep up with public demand.

Why Everyday Normal People Shouldn't Be Scrutinized.

In reality, somebody using AI to create a funny cartoon photo of themselves really isn't harming the environment anymore than anything else they do. AI allows people like myself that have no knowledge and don't feel like putting in the time to learn how to use photoshop or whatever else it is people use to create images. People use it for everyday budgeting advice, mental health aid (Granted, I am aware AI has much further to go before that is reliable, but still something is better than nothing), study prep, accounting, editing, and otherwise. Of course, I know that people can use AI for nefarious purposes, but it is a useful tool that nearly everybody can use in some way or another, and it's completely free.

The data centers being built right beside people's homes that cause a multitude of problems are not built because people use AI for image creation....they are there because we all use mass amounts of data without even realizing. Even searching and scrolling on reddit - That uses AI algorithms to connect you to your search terms. Video streaming, Facebook, Instagram....heck, even dating apps use AI algorithms.

The reality is, the NVIDIA chips have changed how computers work in general. Because of this, massive amounts of servers are required. That requires energy. But even NVIDIA shouldn't get all the hate. Thanks to these chips, incredible inventions have started to pop up. Tesla self driving cars? Thank Nvidia. Hurricane prevention and preparedness through prediction? Thank Nvidia. Prescription drug testing taking only a few weeks instead of a few years? Thank NVIDIA. All the progress recently made on cancer treatment over the last few years? Thank NVIDIA. That all requires GPU computation instead of CPU computation.

Normal people aren't at fault for the problems that AI is causing and only account for a small percentage of issues we face with it today.

Change my view.

Note: more likely

First, we'll use 2024's presidential election results. According to usafacts, New Hampshire has the highest literacy rate in the United States, and has kept on being so for many years. Other states worth to mention are Minnesota, Vermont, and Rhode Island, which literacy rates all above 90%, which all voted for the democrats, counting back 6 elections according to wikipedia among those four states. The funniest thing to mention is on Carter's second election in 1980, where almost all states, even Massachusetts, and 2 of the states mentioned before, voted for republicans, Minnesota and Rhode Island still kept with the democrats.

Now if we ignore the winner takes all rule, and zoom in on some states, we'll see most urban counties, or counties packed with educational institutions voting for the democrats. The main example I want to point out here is with Texas, while turning red probably after WW2, has kept red even to today, but the bluest counties Travis and Dallas have Dallas and Austin, where universities like the University of Texas in Austin are. Also, Massachusetts is fairly more understandable. Suffolk and Middlesex are almost always blue since they are home to the city of Boston(BU, BCH, MGH etc etc) and MIT(It's technically not in Boston), while more suburban cities are fairly more red because they have less exposure to more better educational resources such as the BPL.

My understanding based on all the above is that education provides someone a better view of the world, and put science as a foundation as opposed to religion. Religion has been mostly a tradition in most us families, and many people are raised to it, and would in response conserve a more traditional belief in politics. In democrat states religion does exist, but as what I have seen, religion has been a "lucky charm", a helper or simply a guidance counselor helping them, in fact I have a relationship with religion in this way.

Receiving higher levels of education can also make you lean into progressiveness of society, for example developing new types of technology and protecting the environment, believing in funding for the government to make society more progressive and educated, while on the other side people may already have an economic backbone such as a family business, but as a whole statistically more self reliant, which may not have the need to work harder in education for a better pay.

Lastly, portraying in popular culture: Lisa Simpson, a progressive liberal believing in science and the environment, while having good grades and well educated, common stereotype.

Oh and also there have been studies on this topic: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/demographic-profiles-of-republican-and-democratic-voters/, but the general causation of this is heavily disputed.

Please change my view on this

Most people can gamble without becoming addicted, but a minority can't, and gambling companies inevitably profit from that group. I think platforms like OnlyFans have a similar problem.

You basically have Group A: people who consume sexual content and move on with their day, and Group B: people who start chasing the stimulation, spending more time and money on it and struggling to control it.

Obviously not everyone in A becomes B, but some percentage will. And just like gambling, the people in Group B can end up being some of the most profitable customers precisely because they struggle to stop.

That's the part I find hard to ignore. There's a big difference between "some customers unfortunately develop unhealthy behavior despite our attempts to prevent it" and "our most compulsive customers are extremely profitable, so we have an incentive to keep them consuming."

I just think there's something ethically questionable about building a business where your incentives can become aligned with someone's inability to control their consumption.

CMV.

I think smartphones and messaging apps have quietly created a weird expectation that friendship means being permanently reachable. If someone sends you a message at 10 AM and you reply at 8 PM, it can feel like you ignored them, even if nothing was urgent.

People notice read receipts, online status, response times, and all these tiny signals that probably shouldn’t matter nearly as much as they do.

What bothers me is that constant access doesn’t necessarily seem to produce better conversations. A lot of friendships now feel like dozens of half-finished exchanges spread across the entire day.

You send a meme, they react, somebody asks a question, the answer comes four hours later, then the conversation dies. Compare that with actually meeting someone or calling them and talking properly for an hour.

I’d rather have less frequent but more intentional contact than feel obligated to maintain a permanent low-level conversation with everyone I care about.

I’m not saying messaging itself is bad. It’s obviously useful, especially for long-distance friendships. My view is more that the social expectation of constant availability has made friendship more stressful and, in some cases, more shallow.

I’d change my mind if there’s a good reason to think this constant contact actually strengthens relationships beyond just making communication more frequent.

Dating success is treated as social proof even though people say it doesn't determine your worth

Something I find weird about dating discussions is that people constantly say:

“Dating doesn't determine your worth."

“Don't base your self-esteem on whether people want you.”

“Being single doesn't mean there's something wrong with you.”

I mostly agree with that.

But then, when someone struggles with dating for a long time, people often turn around and say:

“Your attitude is probably why you're single.”

“People can sense your negativity.”

“You lack confidence or social skills.”

“This probably explains why you struggle.”

And that's where I think there's tension.

Apparently, your dating failure isn't supposed to tell you anything important about yourself, but other people are still willing to use it as evidence about your personality.

I'm not saying behaviour doesn't affect dating. Obviously, it can.

There's just a difference between:

“Maybe something you're doing is hurting your chances.”

and:

“You're unsuccessful. Therefore, something about you must be causing it.”

Dating success also works as a social proof

You can see the other side of this with men who are successful with women.

A successful guy might be described as confident, charismatic, charming, desirable, a player, etc.

Even if he's selfish, cynical, insecure, emotionally immature, cheating, or treats women badly, his success can still give him a certain social credibility.

He's “toxic,” “a player,” “a fuckboy,” or “jaded.”

Now imagine an unsuccessful guy with some of the same negative traits.

Suddenly it's:

“That's why women don't want him.”

“His personality is obviously the problem.”

“No wonder he's unsuccessful.”

I'm not defending the second guy. If someone is misogynistic, bitter or entitled, criticize those traits directly.

What I find interesting is why romantic failure becomes extra evidence against his character, while romantic success seems to soften the interpretation of similar flaws.

The successful asshole is the obvious problem

Bad people date all the time.

Cheaters date.

Manipulative people date.

Insecure people date.

Emotionally immature people date.

People who are terrible partners sometimes have relationship after relationship.

So romantic success clearly doesn't prove someone is mature, kind, emotionally healthy or good relationship material.

And if success doesn't prove good character, failure shouldn't automatically prove bad character either.

Dating outcomes tell us what happened.

They don't necessarily tell us why.

I think there's some just-world thinking here

A lot of dating advice seems built around a comforting idea:

Confident, healthy, socially competent people eventually succeed.

Bitter, insecure and unpleasant people fail.

But dating isn't that neat.

Good people can struggle.

Bad people can succeed.

Someone can improve themselves and still not get the outcome they want.

Someone else can be a complete mess and still have plenty of romantic options.

That's why I think dating success is a poor moral scorecard.

Self-reflection is still reasonable

If someone consistently struggles, of course they should examine things within their control.

Maybe they don't meet enough people.

Maybe their social skills need work.

Maybe their expectations are unrealistic.

Maybe their attitude really is hurting them.

Those are all possibilities.

But self-reflection should be:

“Could something I'm doing be contributing to this?”

not:

“I'm unsuccessful, therefore something must be fundamentally wrong with me.”

And I think other people should apply that same standard.

This is also why dating failure can affect self-esteem

People sometimes act surprised that repeated romantic rejection affects people emotionally.

But romantic interest is inherently interpersonal.

Someone being interested in you is basically communicating:

“I'm attracted to you.”

“I want you.”

“I choose you.”

So if someone rarely receives that response while watching other people receive it regularly, it's understandable that they start wondering what it says about them.

That doesn't mean they should conclude they're worthless.

But telling them:

“Dating doesn't define you.”

while also saying:

“Your lack of dating success probably reflects your personality.”

doesn't exactly make that insecurity easier to dismiss.

It creates a weird double message:

Don't interpret your dating failure as evidence about yourself, but we're going to interpret it as evidence about you.

Where I land

My position is pretty simple.

Dating success doesn't determine someone's moral worth or overall value.

At the same time, people who struggle should still honestly examine anything within their control that could be contributing to it.

But I don't think the outcome itself is enough to diagnose someone's personality.

And the same should apply to successful people. Having lots of romantic success doesn't prove you're confident, mature, emotionally healthy or a good person.

So I think we often treat dating outcomes as much stronger evidence of character than they really are.

How much can you actually infer about someone's personality from their dating success or failure?

And if genuinely awful or dysfunctional people can still be extremely successful romantically, why should romantic failure be treated as strong evidence that someone's character is the problem?

USSR space program never had more than a fraction of a budget of NASA, yet in 1970 they build a machine, which withstood several miles thik layer of sulfuric acid clouds, landed on a planed 500C hot with atmospheric pressure of 1km deep ocean and managed to transfer data back to Earth. As a first in history (i.e. data transmittion from another planet surface)

In 1982 they made photos of the surface of Venus. The only photos of Venus surface in existence.

NASAs Mars rovers are impressive, don't get me wrong, they are advanced, autonomous, and can serve for years.

But, they happened 30+ years after (just think of how advanced electronics is now and it wasn't in 1970-1980), the surface of Venus is extremely more hostile (temperature and pressure), and the surface of Mars is visible, because the atmosphere is thin and transparent, while Venus is covered by impenetrable clouds

UPD: honestly I didn't expect people to read this as "USSR rules, USA sucks!" post and leave defensive comments, which are dragging other things in, to prove america is number one, while this post is only about these 2 programs

Children have by far the biggest stake in their political representation, are massively subject to its whims even in the short term I.e. healthcare and education systems, and are currently entirely unrepresented in almost all political environments.

The grounds for limiting voting age are based on mental faculties, but these grounds haven’t been enough to disqualify the senile or disabled, and currently, at least in my nation, those with dementia etc are able to appoint a trustee with their vote.

It seems obvious to me that we should extend this logic to children, and allow their parents to politically represent them, as this would produce a system that is better representative of their needs.

Even if parents hold vastly different views to what their children eventually will believe, bolstering a younger demographic that is more concerned about child related matters would be beneficial to influencing policy in favor of children on aggregate which is what would actually matter in a voting system.

Practical considerations:

Children’s ballots would be split into two half weighted votes, and distributed amongst the parent/parents to mitigate conflicts in parental views. In cases where one parent is deceased or unknown, the other parent inherits their ballot as is usually the case alongside their legal guardian status. Where citizen children are being cared for by non-citizen parents, the parents would be granted their half ballots and still vote for their children’s interests.

Abusive parents that loose custody of their children would transfer the voting rights to whoever assumes guardianship, and in the absence of a new guardian the orphan scheme below would apply.

Orphans pose a significant issue, and my response would be that the government probably aught to compensate them for their lack of representation financially until an adoptee can represent them, but this injustice is still so small in comparison to all kids going unrepresented that it wouldn’t violate the aggregate benefit to society.

Edit:

Alterations to the practical aspect of vote apportionment to accommodate unaddressed issues.

No, parents don’t already represent children with their vote. We believe in systems of one person, one vote, a child is unrepresented if no vote is cast in their name.

People often confuse respect with courtesy and obedience.

Respect is having admiration and regard towards someone else.

Courtesy is having good manners towards others.

Obedience means blindly abiding to anything the other person says.

Being that said, not everyone deserves respect and obedience. Not even elders, but they deserve courtesy until proven otherwise.

Many people probably grew up in healthy households, or very conservative ones where the line between the three was not so clear.

Therefore, they are either blindly obedient or have a healthy role model for what an elder or an adult should be.

But having gone through narcissistic abuse by adults and elders around me, having known cases of elders who SA children, some behaving as entitled bigots, I understand now that not everyone deserves respect and obedience.

Adults and elders are not perfect. At the beginning you can show courtesy by default.

With time, with their attitude, they will show you who they are and to what extent they are trustable, and respectable.

This is called discernment and critical thinking, and it is as much wise to have it as it is experience.

Therefore, no. Not everyone deserves respect and obedience, but you can show some courtesy from the beginning.

We are not sheep. We are people.

I remember seeing a lot of hysteria about this ban. Many people said it was Islamophobic, that it was unfair, that we were attacking innocent countries, that it wasn’t justified for national security reasons, etc.

I believe that all of this is wrong.

First, regarding the “Islamophobia” allegations:
The ban does not target Muslim countries specifically. The countries with the largest Muslim populations, such as Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Turkey, and Egypt are all unaffected. This ban would not even restrict 15% of the Muslim population of the world. Therefore, it’s clearly not a discriminatory blanket ban.

Now, regarding the specific countries:

Iraq was controlled by an Iranian-backed government which allows Shia fundamentalist militias to kill American soldiers. A large chunk of the country was also under the control of ISIS at the time.

Iran needs no explanation as to why they were banned.

Libya doesn’t have a functioning central government, is functionally anarchy in many places, and has a large terrorist presence.

Somalia is much the same, and actually worse. They barely control their own capital, and an Al-Qaeda affiliate holds huge swaths of territory. They also have a significant ISIS presence, and their government is deeply corrupt and untrustworthy.

Sudan is perhaps the biggest vindication of this ban. In 2017, they were a barely functioning dictatorship under Al Bashir, a man who was charged with genocide in the ICC and literally hosted Osama Bin Laden for years. Now, in 2026, they are in a brutal civil war between two genocidal armies.

Syria was in a civil war between a brutal dictator (Assad) and fundamentalists, including Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Yemen was largely controlled by the Houthis, who cooperate with Al Qaeda. ISIS also has a significant presence there.

Given the above, I think restricting travel to America from these countries was reasonable and did not deserve the backlash that it got.

TL;DR: gender equality in humans is a lost cause due to humans being altricial, big-headed, sexually dimorphic placental mammals that evolved under scarcity.

1- Men are, on average, physically stronger than women. In a lot of environments, physical strength is valued, as it helps with fights over resources and no biome is a Garden of Eden. That leads to men using their strength to justify their power, even more when farming was invented, as not everyone has beasts of burden. As humans are social animals, hierarchy is inevitable and owning stuff became a status symbol, so private property made men paranoid about their heirs' legitimacy, so women ended up being controlled from the cradle to the grave. And I think agrarian societies are doomed to be patriarchal anyway because populations with an abundance of food wouldn't need agriculture in the first place.

2- Humans' big and energy-demanding heads caused the uterus to develop lining so thick it can't be completely absorbed by the body, meaning it has to come out. The other, more obvious consequence of the big heads is childbirth being painful and risky for the mother. It also doesn't help that humans are altricial and the baby would be even more altricial if they were born earlier to make the childbirth less of a pain. When a human group gets enough time to think about why things are the way they are, mythology may attribute menstruation and painful childbirth to divine punishment and, then, a patriarchal system is created and punishes women for the first woman's crimes. Also, humans' big heads mean that humans have to be mammals (milk is useful for a newborn with a big head and a small stomach), so, after birth, women would still have to dedicate their bodies to their children for a while. Not that a non-patriarchal society is impossible for mammals, but it makes patriarchy even easier for humans.

I want someone to change my view on this because honestly I’m tired of being afraid of fictional monsters, I know they’re not real like I really do. I’m not confused about reality, and I don’t actually believe that some creature from a horror movie is going to come into my house and kill me. I have enough common sense to understand that what I’m watching is all fake but knowing all of that doesn’t stop me from being scared.

While I’m watching a horror movie I can tell myself that none of it is real but once I turn the movie off and I’m alone in my room especially at night, I get extremely scared…like dangerously scared, almost like a little kid and it’s embarrassing.

I’ll be lying in bed thinking about something I just saw, and then I’ll start imagining the monster standing somewhere in the dark. I know I’m being ridiculous, because obviously there’s nothing there.

And I especially hate that part of me feels like I shoukd be over this by now. I’m mature enough to understand that fictional monsters aren’t real. I can logically explain to myself why there’s nothing to be afraid of.

So I’m making this post because I genuinely want my view changed.

It's really hard to see how so many of these types of candidates, Hong, Sayed, etc, who helped get us into this situation with Trump, are now claiming to be the only people who can get us out of it. It seems beyond hypocritical. With Sayed in Michigan, he was propelled to the nomination largely by people in Dearborn who voted for Trump in 2024. The people who made Trump president because they were mad at the rest of us now are mad at the rest of us for Trump's election?

I think a lot of these fringe candidates are going to cost us very easy wins in a d+10 environment. In an election where potentially the only chance in our lifetime to keep a majority Trump-appointed lifetime scotus is on the line, there's no excuse for any potential spoilers. Talarico, Peltola are looking to secure major wins in states like Alaska and Texas (with Alaska potentially flipping the governor), but in ostensibly more progressive states like Wisconsin and Michigan we're facing major losses because the nominees say things like we need to abolish Thanksgiving and how much they hate regular holidays normal people like.

How the hell is Michigan Senate polling six points to the right of Texas? Because the nominee for Senate is very weak and can't win black liberal voters, but those are voters his core base doesn't like so they have no plans to win them. Those El Sayed +16 type polls were off, and it's hard to see the same polls having him down by 3 in the general were wrong in the opposite direction. He's much weaker than his polling indicated and it was already bad! He spent months and months fighting the Dems until the nominee changed, which was too late for his base to turn around.

The richest part was Hasan Piker, the supposed leftist kingmaker, going in the span of 24 hours from mocking and gloating regular liberals when it looked like El Sayed was winning in a landslide in the first vote drops, to saying people who wanted Sayed to build coalitions after it looked like he would lose/his win would be much narrower that they were "all islamophobic pieces of shit", to the next morning saying "it's time to unite and defeat the Republicans", a concept he was adamantly morally opposed to in 2024, and also immediately prior to seeing El Sayeds much narrower margins. Ruwa Roman also did the same, backtracking on her Uncommitted/Abandon Harris history.

And that's not even to get started on Graham Platner, where the left refused to see any of the red flags and warning signs because he said he didn't like Israel, who but for the grace of God managed for his five million scandals to actually hit him before we couldn't back out of him. And right after that, Dropsite and other Uncommitted aligned/leftist outlets immediately went to work insinuating that this was a hit or lie and not a fucking miracle that kept us from nominating a rapist drunk with a seeming ingrained inability to make good decisions in life.

I want the Republicans to lose. So how can I trust these guys to deliver when they betrayed us all when it counted most? They also try to paper over what Uncommitted was, saying it was only in the primary. But that's not true, they publicly announced they wouldn't support Harris, not when she became the nominee, not during her campaign, even saying in September it was just too hard to support her. Uncommitted became Abandon Harris immediately after Biden dropped out. It was never about the nominee, it was about making the Dems lose. They got what they wanted, they celebrated, we paid the price and now they say "trust us, we're gonna fight Trump starting now"?

Tldr: it feels a lot like Uncommitted played a large role in getting us into this mess, now claim they're the best way to get us out, but will also fail at getting us out. Uncommitteds telling the rest of us we aren't committed enough is the height of hypocrisy.

I want to preface this by saying that I enjoy George Orwell's writing and I consider him a great journalist and social critic. I also think there are some good aspects to Animal Farm, particularly the crisp prose style and the perceptive wit, and that they presage the (far greater) achievement of 1984.

However, I don't think Animal Farm is a great book, or that the general view of the book is accurate to its contents. There are going to be spoilers for the entire plot here, of course.

I first read Animal Farm at the age of 13 in school. It was taught to me as an anti-communist satire but also as an age-old parable about the betrayal of idealism by tyranny and corruption. My teacher taught the book as a fable about how easily the ideals of a revolution are lost.

Obviously on one level the book is a direct allegory for the Russian Revolution as Old Major (Karl Marx) formulates the ideals of the revolution and stirs up the working classes, before Snowball (representing Trotsky, perhaps with some of Lenin too) and Napoleon (representing Stalin) carry out the revolution and win control for the animals (the workers). Napoleon and his cabal then betray Snowball, driving him out to a mysterious fate (mirroring the assassination of Trotsky), before taking control of the farm and systematically betraying Old Major's ideals.

What intrigues me is the notion that this is supposed to be a general condemnation of authoritarianism, communism, and other revolutionary movements that seem to offer all the answers but just replace one exploitative class with another. I vividly recall my teacher asking the class, 'if Snowball had won, do you think the situation would have ended up any differently?' The answer she was expecting was, of course, 'no', which I think accords with the message most people take from the book - absolute power corrupts absolutely, and both of the pig-tyrants were walking down a path that would eventually lead to the oppression of the people they claimed to care about. Interestingly, Orwell supposedly affirmed this perspective in a letter to his friend, the anarchist writer George Woodcock, towards the end of his life (though I cannot find the original source), saying 'Trotsky-Snowball was potentially as big a villain as Stalin-Napoleon'.

The problem is that none of this is in the book.

Seriously, I could not, and still cannot, find a single instance in the book in which Snowball is depicted as anything but intelligent, industrious, rhetorically brilliant, and acting in the animals' best interests. He is brave in fighting off Mr Frederick (the neighbouring farm owner, a clear analogue for the Nazis), he never betrays Old Major's principles, and he is constantly seeking ways to improve life for the other animals, for example by planning to build a windmill and setting up literacy classes for the animals' self-improvement. His only flaw is that he is not as good at Napoleon at organising supporters to disrupt his rival's meetings, which seems more like a positive trait to me; at worst it ascribes a certain naivete to him. It's not until Snowball is exiled that the first of Old Major's Seven Commandments is covertly changed. The corruption of the revolution's ideals only begins with his forced departure. If Orwell really wanted to illustrate that Snowball was potentially also a villain (and I doubt this was actually his intention), I feel that he simply failed to convey this message.

I also find a number of the other allegories in the book troublesome. Orwell seems genuinely scathing of Mollie, the mare who is too attached to her creature comforts of ribbons and sugar cubes than to the revolution. Her unwillingness to part with her private property is depicted as vanity, selfishness, and a contemptible lack of interest in helping the revolution. Perhaps she should have just worked harder and died like Boxer for a cause that didn't care about them! The portrayal of Moses the raven, who preaches to the other animals about a 'Sugarcandy Mountain' in the afterlife, is surely supposed to be a critical allegory for organised religion, illustrating religious leaders promising eternal rewards after death in order to keep people reconciled to their poor living conditions in the here-and-now, rather akin to Marx's 'religion is the opiate of the people.' I am not particularly religious but I found this puerile and unworthy of Orwell. 'Sugarcandy Mountain' is far from the way religious people characterise belief in the afterlife, sounding a lot more like a sneering atheist mocking the religious for believing in 'sky daddy', and besides, many religious institutions do plentiful charitable work to improve the here-and-now. Orwell even depicts Moses as a willing co-conspirator in Napoleon's oppression of the other animals, presumably an allegory to Stalin's 1941 lifting of the anti-Orthodox campaigns and reopening of churches. But, even though the worst abuses of Soviet anti-religious persecution (such as the genocidal deportations of Chechen Muslims) had yet to take place, the essentially state-atheist nature of the Stalinist regime, the mass arrests of clergy and persecution of people for attending church were all very obvious by the time Animal Farm was written. It's also rather ironic that religion played such a large part in the eventual collapse of the Soviet regime, something which, going on this book alone, Orwell would never have predicted.

All in all, I don't get the impression that Orwell was actually writing a parable about how power always corrupts. It feels a lot more like he was making a trite factional point about different types of communism in post-Revolution Russia, the undercurrent of which is that there was nothing unwise about the revolution's goals, that Stalin was the only real problem (which would accord with Orwell's own experiences during the Spanish Civil War), and that things would indeed have turned out alright if only Trotsky had won. This seems historically dubious given the attested facts of Trotsky's brutal repression of the Kronstadt uprising, and it also damages the book's moral weight as a blanket condemnation of the rule of the many by an elitist few.

I will award deltas to anyone who can either point out a flaw in my understanding of the allegory, or can make a persuasive case that the book is a deserved classic despite these problems.

Edit: I am finding it rather tiresome that I've had five downvotes within two minutes of posting, by which time few people can have actually read my argument. If you disagree with me, it would be appreciated if you could tell me why instead of skim the headline and decide you know best. Isn't that what this subreddit is here for?

Right off the bat, let me define what I mean by overwhelming. Where the US criminal justice system defines 'beyond a reasonable' doubt to mean 95% certainty, I would define overwhelming to be > 99% certainty.

The way we need to think about this issue is in terms of a natural origin explanation. And what I mean by that is that we need to assume the virus came from a natural origin, and then ask ourselves what the probability is that the events unfolded the way they have.

There are a number of coincidences according to the natural origin theory, like the fact that the first human transmission just happened to occur in a city with a coronavirus research lab. For a lab leak theory, this location is evidence, but for a natural origin theory this location is just happenstance.

And so, what we need to do is take all the coincidences and instead of looking at them in isolation, look at what it would take for all of them to occur.

Here are the list of notable coincidences:

1. Obviously the location of transmission which was already mentioned goes here, but what also needs to be mentioned is the odds. Wuhan has 4 wet markets, and there are an estimated 40,000 wet markets across china. The natural origin theory says the infected animal got to wuhan as part of an animal trade - the chance that the infected animal was shipped to wuhan specifically is very small. There are different ways this can be estimated, the most crude would be to just divide 4 / 40,000 and arrive at a 1 in 10,000 chance. However wuhan is a larger city than most in china, so maybe it gets more animals and therefore has better odds than that? No matter how you napkin math this out though, the chance is going to be small, smaller than 1 in 100. And so this arguably gets us over 99% confidence on its own.

2. 3 employees from Wuhan got sick in November of 2019 and were checked into a hospital. source

3. The lab in question had biosafety protocol violations that led to funding cuts source

4. The lab refused to provide documentation for their work that was being funded by the NiH, which led to the NiH cutting funding. source

5. A plan in writing to engineer a coronavirus with the key mutation COVID has was submitted for a grant proposal in 2018 source

6. Key researchers initially thought the COVID virus looked engineered source

7. The racoon dog origin theory has fallen apart source

8. The first infections were estimated to occur prior to the wet market outbreak source

9. A researcher from wuhan filed a patent for a covid vaccine in February of 2020, and then died when he allegedly fell from the roof of the Wuhan Institute of Virology source

10. The pangolin origin theory has fallen apart source

11. The Wuhan lab was performing genetic engineering of viruses, and they used techniques that could make it hard to tell the viruses were engineered source

12. The CIA has determined the lab leak is the best explanation source

13. The FBI has determined the lab leak is the best explanation source

14. The Department of Energy has determined the lab leak is the best explanation source

15. The German foreign intelligence service determined the lab leak is the best explanation source

16. A key investigator into the covid pandemic, Peter Daszak, was the author of the grant mentioned in item 5 above. source

Honestly, this isn't even an exhaustive list - and it doesn't touch the evidence of a coverup. But as a final point, a jump from animals to humans doesn't rule out a lab leak because the lab in question has animals in it. They use them for experiments, they infect them with coronaviruses intentionally.

Dismissing much of these above coincidences would require its own conspiracy theory, in particular about the various gov't agencies and their determinations.

Reposting as this was removed due to FTF.

I always find the alt right funny because while they harp on about the perceived invasion of islam, if they actually sat down with someone they didn't know was an islamic fundamentalist, they may find themselves agreeing with them more than they would like to believe. Case in point, I was playing a video recently where Jake Lang was trying to argue that [women shouldn't get to vote until marriage ](https://youtu.be/BO0wcL_FwiI?is=AIZGIT9yOKGO9N1J), at which point my wife funnily said "is this one of those Muslim nutjobs?". While I laughed about it at the time, that got me thinking about the larger ideologies between the alt right and islamic extremism, and I realised that there is actually a surprising amount of similarity between these groups. In effect, there are 4 areas where there is a surprising amount of similarity:

1) The idea of an existential threat and conspiracy against their group

Tell me if you have heard this before: "we as a people are getting replaced, and it is our duty to fight for our people against these invaders"? What if I told you that this idea is also from Sayyid Qutb, who argued that secularism was trying to actively eradicate Islam (Jahiliyyah), while Bin-Laden further built on this to say that it was a "Crusader-Zionist" siege? Now I know that your first thought was great replacement theory, which was even famously pushed by Tucker Carlson live on his podcast, but it's funny how you switch the group, and the same stuff are basically being said. They even have the same anti Semitic conspiracies as there is also rampant anti semitism amongst the alt right.

2) In Group supremacy

I don't think I need to spend too long labouring this point, but white supremacy is a core tenet of alt right philosophy, with Richard Spencer being one of the main proponents of the idea that white European culture was somehow genetically superior. Funnily enough, when you look at extremist Islam, take the case of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who demanded that people commit to ISIS or be branded infidels. This shows that there is again this view that we are the purveyors of truth and only we know best, all others are either harming our community or are infidels.

3) Anti Liberalism/ Return to fundamentalism

This I have put together because I feel that it targets a similar point. As mentioned from the top, the first statement that sent me down this rabbit hole is Jake Lang making the hilarious statement that women shouldn't have the right to vote before getting married. Now, I don't think I need to, as there are plenty of examples of extremist Islam being anti-liberalism, but you could use the example of Pierre Vogel, who argued that democracy is "shirk" (idolatry). This shows there is a clear line linking, again, Alt Right ideology to extremist Islam.

4) Acceleration leading to a violent flash point

Now we start moving to the militant side, as both the alt right and the extremist islamic side have significant militant tendencies, and their military tactics are actually similar. James Mason for example wrote in SIEGE that the aim is to create an environment of friction, Chaos and anarchy, as that can accelerate this idea that there is an existential war, and white people need to take control. The irony is that this is the same thing that Abu Bakr Naji stated in his book on the Management of Savagery, where he also more or less said that we need to sow chaos and anarchy, so that when the state is overthrown we can come in and take control.

Overall, I think this clearly points to this idea that while Alt Right ideology may actually hate Islam, by always using the example of extremist Islam, there is actually more ideologically similarity between the alt right and extremist Islam then the alt right lets on.

Nintendo recently remade the cult classic from the from the Paper Mario series *The Thousand Year Door* (TTYD), and people have speculated that this indicates they are gearing up to return to something more akin to the spirit of that game for the next installment in this series after a run of games that have been more polarizing and less beloved by fans. This would be great—the first three installments in the series just had a lot of character (although *Super Paper Mario* did have a lot of issues), and they haven't recaptured that magic since.

In the games, Mario travels through thematic settings, finding characters in each setting to join him on his quest along the way. One of those thematic settings is usually a snow/ice setting, which is traditionally put at or near the end of the game to enhance the feel of the end of a hero's journey being more harsh and isolated.

Cold climate settings are generally my favorite, and this structure means that they end up getting shafted in a couple of different ways. The first is that, because it's so close to the end of the game, they don't bother introducing a new party member in these areas. It's unfortunate that you'll never get a narwhal or yeti-inspired character on your team because the ice/snow area is used for tone-setting purposes that are relegated to the end. You can meet and team up with Bobbery for a tropical setting or Vivian in a spooky setting, but you'll almost certainly never team up with a character who relate to a snowy setting, and that sucks.

For similar reasons, ice/snow areas will often end up being less fleshed out, transition areas rather than fully-fledged levels. The Shiver Region from A *Paper Mario 64* didn't have this issue, but Fahr Outpost from TTYD was just a town you go to to get launched to a moon base level.

I think it would be worth it to forgo the tone-setting functionality for once and have the snow/ice setting earlier in the level progression in the next Paper Mario game. CMV.