Recently, Australia set a social-media ban for users under the age of 16, by requiring social media companies to implement age verification measures in place by requiring users to prove ID. Of course, enforceability of this is difficult and remains challenging, but I see the merits behind this move.

Personally though, I think the product that should specifically be looked at (across all countries) is short-form content (i.e. TikTok, Instagram Reels, etc.). It is deliberately addictive, and the impacts are real.

For example, this study demonstrated that "Results revealed that short-form video addiction not only directly impacted academic procrastination but also placed indirect effect on academic procrastination through attentional control. Furthermore, the mediating effect of attentional control was contingent upon individuals’ boredom proneness. Higher levels of boredom proneness weakened the impact of short-form video addiction on attentional control."

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10756502/

While I am aware that other forms of addiction can occur (video games, TV, etc.) I believe the potency and the effects of short-form content are more harmful because there is

1. Zero effort involved in scrolling

2. Instant gratification / dopamine

3. Zero attention span requirement

I find this to be particularly disturbing for children who are still developing, while we're already looking towards a future that is seeing elevated unemployment rates for new graduates combined with the reliance and threat of AI.

Disclaimer: I am Chinese, and I am 100% pro-China.

I’ve been observing Trump and our government for a while, and the narrative of Trump as merely a "madman" doesn't explain how he keeps winning the elections. Something didn't add up, but now I think I understand his actual intention: Trump's ultimate goal isn't to defeat China, but to split the world with China.

China and the US are naturally perfect allies:

• Geopolitically: Separated by oceans, they pose no direct territorial threat to each other.
• Economically Complementary: America needs China’s manufacturing capabilities and tech talent to maintain its military and global dominance. Meanwhile, China lacks high-end services and financial tools. It needs the US to sustain the petrodollar system for global trade, as well as America's ability to project soft power. China has no ambition to project power beyond its traditional sphere of influence, which aligns seamlessly with Trump’s neo-Monroe Doctrine and his grand strategy of global retrenchment.
• Shared Traits: Both are highly entrepreneurial, geographically insulated continent-sized nations, and incredibly pragmatic with flexible moral standards.

The Leverage War The Trump/Rubio administration saw this potential and proposed a "G2" structure in 2025. China refused because it wants to be the senior partner. Since then, Trump’s aggressive moves haven't been about destroying China, but accumulating leverage ahead of his May 2026 visit. The Iran war was supposed to be a bargaining chip, but he screwed up. With both economies struggling with high debt and low employment, they couldn't reach a final agreement in May. This resulted in a "constructive strategic pause" to build more leverage until negotiations resume in September.

The Pre-September moves by both parties since then:

• US Moves: Trump is using Japan and the Philippines to provoke China. More importantly, he handed Saudi Arabia the right to nuclear weapons to dismantle China’s alliances. Pakistan is obligated to defend Saudi Arabia. By encouraging Saudi Arabia to provoke Iran, the US traps China in a dilemma: China either joins the conflict (losing its leverage and having to pick between Iran and Pakistan), or it abandons its allies, proving to the world it can't be trusted.
• China’s Counter: China is making its AI open-source. If this bursts the American AI bubble and triggers a US recession, China will gain massive leverage at the September negotiating table.
• Trump's Current Dilemma: Now, Trump has run into trouble. If he cannot stop the war before September, it will prove he desperately needs China's mediation—effectively handing China massive leverage. His strategy to prevent this is twofold: first, drag China into the conflict before September while strictly avoiding a US ground invasion; second, actively cooperate with Russia on the Ukraine war negotiations, using that to get Russia to facilitate peace talks with Iran.

The Future Currently, both sides are trading blows quietly: the US leverages Taiwan and dismantles Chinese mining control(targetted on rare earth) in the Americas and Africa, while China leverages rare earth minerals (crucial for US radar manufacturing in the Iran war) and expands in the South China Sea.

I doubt September will be the end. This "internal fight for external unity" will likely last 1-2 years until Trump's term winds down. Ultimately, G2 is the inevitable future because they need each other. America cannot stop China, and China cannot surpass America. Together, however, they can permanently shut out the EU and Russia. The real nightmare will be for the proxy countries that picked the wrong side—the Philippines, Australia, etc (no one in the western sphere sided with China. Correct me if I'm wrong)

I’ve held this view for about as long as I can remember and have not once heard an argument that’s convinced me to change my view. Curious to see what arguments there may be that I’m missing.

My view is really as simple as the title: physician assisted euthanasia should be legal for anybody, at any time, for any reason. A perfectly healthy 25 year old should be able to make the decision to end their own life in a peaceful way for whatever reason they may want to do that. Same with terminal patients, same with…. Anybody for any reason.

To me, it’s entirely dystopian that the government essentially forces you to live or to find a way to kill yourself through other means if you don’t want to continue living. The most personal thing we have is our life, and yet we don’t have full control over ending it.

Some arguments I’ve heard that have not persuaded me:

* It will be abused by doctors/insurance companies/organ harvesters etc. Essentially some form of an argument telling me that this will lead to people who don’t want to die being pressured to die.

To that, I say two things: 1. We’re currently pressuring people who want to die to live, which I see as just as bad as pressuring those who want to live to die. Both are pushing people towards an outcome they don’t want. And 2. This simply doesn’t change my view because it’s a pure hypothetical - the law to do this isn’t written, and all this says to me is we need to be careful about how we allow it — which of course we need to be.

Arguing that it will be abused does not change my view.

* But life may get better for a depressed person who kills themselves.

It might. It also might not. And at any rate, who are you to tell that person what may or may not happen to them. Let them make their decision. Maybe they don’t want to wait for life to get better and want off. Let them off.

* Depressed people don’t think clearly about these decisions.

Yeah, this would be where mental health comes in. A depressed person who wants to end it all today will find a way to do so. The only difference is they may end up botching it and harming themselves. Or they’ll leave their lifeless body to be found by a loved one and traumatize them. Give someone an easy out. Let them go peacefully if they want to.

Those are the main points people typically bring up. I’ll likely refer back to this main post if/when they’re brought up here, as I don’t want to continue to repeat the same reason that doesn’t change my view, but I am very curious on any novel takes or arguments against this I haven’t considered.

There seems to have been a barrage of accelerationism in the last four or five years. However, I'd argue that it is largely the product of we as a species running out of new ideas, as well as hitting some real physical limits to our development.

The big leaps of the last 100 years or so like information technology, antibiotics, nuclear energy, flight, and more are largely easy wins that did not demand pushing any real limits of our physical universe. It truly feels like very little has fundamentally changed about our technological reality in the last 10-20 years, we are simply making things smaller, making them digital, and making them more optimized.

I am not arguing that technological development has stopped; there have been incredible breakthroughs even in the last 5-10 years with astronomy, quantum computing, LLMs, gene editing, and more. However, it seems as though we're entering the realm of diminishing returns, where our focus is on improving and refining existing technology.

Moore's Law has effectively ended.

While we understand the components of the brain, we do not seem to have any concrete understanding of how our own intelligence and consciousness arises.

The planet is more or less tapped out in terms of energy production and its over-consumption is driving potentially catastrophic climate change. Even if we master cleaner energy like fusion, there is a limit to how much we can consume on the planet.

The complexity of our own biology still eludes us. While we can make modifications to DNA, we still do not fully understand how individual genes work and all the things they control. There are very real limits to what cellular biology can do and the stresses it can withstand. We cannot simply 'code' our way out of the fact that living tissue degrades under radiation and its own metabolic waste.

The enormous scale and hostile indifference of the universe feel some completely beyond our grasp. Getting large volumes of cargo out of orbit is incredibly costly, not to mention surviving the vast distances and deadly conditions of outer space.

I have always been fascinated by the Fermi Paradox and the theory of The Great Filter. Perhaps it is the very physical laws of our universe that enforce that barrier.

I don't say this with pessimism; I do believe humanity is destined for great things. However, I reject the idea that technology alone is our path forward as a species.

I think that the word Insecure has been overused to the point where it has largely lost its meaning, and is currently being used as just an insult that carries a 100% exclusively negative meaning with it. I believe, however, that insecurity is actually a very normal part of many relationships, and that the person feeling that insecurity should not be completely at fault for it 100% of the time.

Merriam Webster defines insecurity as- deficient in assurance : beset by fear and anxiety, not highly stable or well-adjusted. This happens all the time in totally healthy relationships, and the person experiencing that insecurity should not be scorned as being controlling or a bad guy.

Usually, insecurities within relationships happen due to some degree of an incompatibility being exposed. Maybe some girl feels insecure about her boyfriend having close female friends, maybe a guy is insecure over some party that his girlfriend went to. That is ok, and totally normal, and just means that they discovered that they and their partner obviously have differing values in that one regard. The solution though isn't to completely discount that emotion, as that emotion exists for a reason. The solution is to work with your partner and discuss what they are doing to create that insecurity, and what the other person is doing to work through their own insecurity.

Dealing with insecurity should not be a one man job in a relationship. That's antithetical to a relationship. Insecurities exist to make us aware of potential incompatibilities within said relationship, and hopefully smooth over those incompatibilities.

So, ill break this down into some very basic categories or whatever you'd call it.

Number 1: He is the one that planned/promoted this entire event:

He incited it as in he created the whole event, the ''#StopTheSteal'' protest on January 6th wasn't actually Trumps thing to begin with, it was some small lawmaker or influencer (cant remember, but at all a major profile though), but Trump, the president at the time, highlighted this protest, and gathered waaaaaaay more people there than it originally would've been there. At this protest there was around 30k-60k people, if Trump never promoted this protest, i seriously doubt even 1k people would've shown up, maybe a few hundred at most?

So just on a very basic level, he incited it by being the one to promote this event, and i dont think anyone would seriously contest that part. Just being the promoter of the event doesn't make you the one who incited the violence there though, so this fact alone isn't enough.

Number 2: The reason why these people were motivated to be there, was because of Trumps lies about the election.

So, the core reason why like 95% of the people there were there, was because they believed the 2020 election was stolen from them, something which the majority of the Republican party believes in, this is reproduced, in countless polls, all of these people believe in this because Trump decided to lie about the 2020 election, and then work with his little team of people like Guilani, and then in collaberation with FOX news, to spread these lies.

And these are LIES, its been nearly 6 years since this election, and not a single one of the big stories that Trump or republicans in general cite have been proven to be true, most of them have been completely debunked, for instance, one of the biggest stories that conservatives cite is a lie that Guilani went to court for, and defended himself by saying ''Yeah i lied about all of this, but i have a first amendment right to lie'', and he lost that case, but conservatives still cite that specific lie as a reason for why the 2020 election was stolen. And a ton of the people arrested explicitly said they were there FOR/BECAUSE of Trump.

So he incited it on the motivation level, or however you'd phrase it, like all of these people were there because Trump promoted that event, and his lies were the basis for why the event even existed in the first place. So this fact combined with him promoting it makes it way more understandable how he incited it.

Number 3: He intentionally riled these people up to the point where violence was inevitable.

Similar the the previous point, but Trump riled up his base for months with blatant lies about how the election was stolen, coordinated with FOX, who are the biggest news station network thing or whatever in the entire nation, to spread those lies to a national level, and rile them up even more, then promotes a protest specifically on the day of the certification to pressure Pence, (who he had given false slates of electors to, to declare Trump the president again, by the way) and used words like ''Fight like hell or you wont have a country'', and then send those people you've now riled up like crazy right to the capitol, and when the violence starts, you sit and do nothing for 3 hours. Also, when people are chanting to hang Pence, you tweet out ''Pence didnt have the courage to do what was needed''.

So its Trump riling up people to the point where he is literally having people believe they will not have a country anymore unless they ''Stop The Steal'', same people who he knows are armed, since his Secret Service warned him about the crowd having weapons before his speech at the Ellipse. So he wants people to believe the entire nation is completely fucking doomed unless they Stop The Steal. Honestly, what do you do in this situation? Because the ''right'' thing to do here, atleast in my opinion, would be an insurrection, your vote was stolen, they just chose Biden as the president, whatever, in this scenario, an insurrection is what you should do, in my opinion, and so did all of the people there, watch some of the videos of the people at the Capitol before they were sent home, all the language was things like ''This is the 2nd American revolution, Ashley Babbit was the first patriot lost in the 2nd American Revolution, 1776'', etc.

So Trump riled them up to the point where an insurrection (violence) is necessary. This, combined with him planning the event, and being the motivation behind all of their actions, makes my point even stronger.

Number 4: All of his behaviour, before, during, and after, points to him wanting this to have happened.

So Trump, before the protest, lied, riled up everyone, lead them to believe that an insurrection was necessary, and planned a protest to Stop The Steal at the day of the certification where he had given Pence false electors.

Trump, during the protest, did absolutely nothing but watch it happen on his TV, whilst his daughter and other people in his admin were begging him to tell people to go home, but instead he tweets out things like ''Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what was right'', and there is testimony of someone telling Trump that they were chanting ''Hang Mike Pence'', and Trumps response was ''Mike deserves it''.

And after the protest, he constantly downplayed the severity of it all, and worst of all, he pardoned every single individual that was involved in this whole event.

So this is him planning and promoting the whole event, being the reasoning for why all those people are there and why they are committing violence, and being totally okay with it every step along the way, going as far as pardoning all of them.

Number 5: This is just an extra thing, but him saying ''I know you'll be going peacefully'' doesn't exonerate him.

I know this will inevitably come up in the comments somewhere because it always does with this topic, but Trump saying one time, after months of lying, and him riling up people saying ''Fight like hell or you wont have a country anymore'', and everything else that i laid out, none of these details are just cleansed or whatever because Trump said ''Oh yeah i know you'll be peaceful'' a single time in his speech at the Ellipse.

I saw this from another user in another debate on this, but this is like saying that if we found a tape recorder of Charles Manson saying ''I know you'll be going peacefully to this house'', then he's just completely innocent, and that is obviously just lunacy.

It feels like that ''in minecraft'' meme, its like if Trump said ''Please go and prevent the certification of the vote and be violent.... In Minecraft'', that he's just exonerated from any form of guilty whatsoever, its just an incredibly silly defense of everything.

So yeah, thats my post. Looking forward to going back and forth on this with people :D

All the Christian’s I’ve met say that god and only god should be worshipped and that he also gave us free will. For a moment let’s say that god didn’t give us free will and we are all to worship him, this certainly seems to challenge the idea of an all loving god if the sole purpose of our creation is to worship him with no possibility of doing anything otherwise. It seems a bit like living as a slave to me. Now let’s say that god gave us free will. Why does god care what we do with it? Is it really free will if the expectation is to use it to worship him? I’d argue that attaching those strings to free will is worse than having no free will at all because now we’ve been created with the ability to choose to worship him or not, and if we don’t worship him, we’ll suffer his wrath, etc etc. That’s like your parents saying that if you don’t live your life exactly as they want, they’ll beat you up, or maybe even kill you. So if god is all loving, why does it matter what we do with the gifts he gave us?

Edit: To clarify the cmv, please demonstrate this is not the morality of a child by giving/allowing us free will and punishing us when we don’t use it correctly

If you say that free will came from eating the apple, then it definitely was intended by god because if you don’t have free will then you can’t choose to eat the apple

He may be THE richest person in the world, but I'm genuinely sick of him getting ALL the hate for his money.

He owns Tesla, twitter and spacex to name a few, which don't directly affect our lives at all.

I don't understand why none of the hate are going towards these massive corporations and billionaires that own all the supermarkets, and oil companies that price gouge and DIRECTLY interfere with our QOL.

Especially considering "hoarding wealth" doesn't matter in this economy, we Arnt on the gold standard anymore and our money is literally fake. We should be focusing on the grocery and oil CEOs that directly ruin our lives, force them to drop their prices to a reasonable amount, then we won't have to raise minimum wage, which won't fuck up inflation, especially since less than 1% of the US is on federal minimum wage anyway.

I get that Elon is a fuckwit and all but come on he's the least of our concerns 😭

EDIT: I am in no way an Elon supporter, or support any billionaire.

It's becoming mind numbingly apparent and repetitive. I see it constantly now on reddit. Literally any interest being labeled "interest+tism" usually referring to themselves in their self-diagnosed autism for which they probably decided on because they don't like their food to be touching. So now their whole personality is the made up disorder they put on themselves.

It's as if people have become so bland, so lacking in self-identity and personality that they are just yearning to find anything...anything at all that gives them some interest. All the while bringing down the people that actually have said disorders and causing society at large to think of it as little more than a joke.

I literally saw someone say in a comment "having any interest with too much enthusiasm is just autism". Self-diagnosed as autistic, of course. These are the people that are actively hurting and destroying the perception of entire groups of people that have been misunderstood for their entire lives. And these people just use it like fashion. Like a skin suit mimicking anything it can.

Title is pretty self explanatory, but I fear that many Democratic politicians and their supporters may have overplayed their hands with the Epstein files. It's taken for granted that Trump and his administration have blocked the release of all the files to protect themselves and their allies. They are regularly called pedophiles themselves or protectors of pedophiles.

Well if that's the case, then the next Democratic administration has no way to avoid the same criticism if they don't release what Trump has kept back. And if they use the same excuses that the Trump administration uses (e.g. protecting victims), then those excuses must be criticized equally.

The discourse has largely been to release ALL the files. If democratic supporters (and, to be fair, many anti-MAGA republicans) don't continue this demand once a democrat is in office, they are hypocrits.

(To balance the view, briefly: anyone who has supported Trump in blocking the release of the files has no ground to stand on to demand the next administration release them)

Edit: I should add to me view a clarification that my personal opinion is that everything relevant in the files is already out in the open. Trump and republicans way over-promised, expecting to find a sophisticated network of a global pedophile ring, but rather found a pretty small operation that got a few underage girls to one degenerate, Epstein. There is no additional prosecutable information in the files.

Basically, sanctioning Russia will do as much good as sanctioning and fighting Iran has, it'll not affect the oligarchy and military at the expense of radicalising all the ordinary people. Russian oligarchs aren't stupid, they know how the economy works and know a billion ways to bypass restrictions. Sanctions in general have had a pretty lousy effect on wars throughout history, the only countries where sanctions can change anything are cases between close economic allies. US-South Korea sanctions or Taiwan sanctions worked to change their political system simply because the economy was built up on US capital, while in Russia the economy was built by Putin alone.

Then again, think of the "best case" scenario: the sanctions after years and years and years drop the country's economy down from a typical Eastern European country closer to something like India or Central Asia. Geopolitically, this'd be an even larger mess than what we have right now. Any protest movement that gets big enough that even the FSB, one of the most funtional agencies in the country that has complete control over it, cannot stop it, has a good chance of literal global destruction. The closest example we saw to protests toppling dictatorial governments in the modern era was the Arab Spring, which saw protests for democracy quickly descend into flurries of hate and radicalism and, unless dispersed by force, civil war. Imagine a Syria-like situation in the biggest country in the world with the largest nuclear arsenal. Dagestani jihadists gaining access to nuclear silos, millions upon millions of refugees, rogue security forces attacking Baltic and Nordic countries with little revard for international law or order. The long-touted "collapse of the Russian economy", if it does become strong enough to warrant political change, may quite literally destroy the entire world through the destruction of a nuclear power.

And remember, this is supposedly the scenario where the sanctions see an unprecedented success, while most likely they'll simply fail to hurt the war effort in Ukraine and business will continue as usual. There is literally no reason besides an emotional one to enact this policy, and when exactly have emotions and vibes been proven suitable for serious economic and foreign policy decisions?