1% of the global population with PhDs is a choice.

If we just counted phds that becomes 800 million people

Ouch. And to follow that up with “intelligence is often underestimated by cynics imo”. Simply brutal. I hate to be the one to break this too you, but having a PhD doesn’t necessarily mean a person is smart. Even if it did, that 1% is sort of entirely making my above point about society.

That seems like a fair percentage estimate. What you’re leaving out is society. The ancient Greeks, even the 99.9% dummies, were excited about philosophy and learning. Today, Joe Rogan is one of the most popular podcasts in the world and you can’t throw a stick without hitting a dozen grifters proudly parroting logical fallacies while people clap. So yeah, there might be eight million people out there, but their thoughtful blog probably gets a dozen hits a month. Their world changing lecture was cancelled for being woke. Their exciting revelation they add to the conversation get overshadowed by someone yelling how great “Oh! My Balls!” was last night.

There are no good guys in this war.

I am 14 and this is deep

I like the part where reviewers have a scale then use less than half that scale. Like 5 star movie reviews where half of films are 4 star or higher and 99% are 3 star or higher. Maybe if a movie has an incoherent story, is obnoxious AND offensive, and sounds like it was filmed in a well then it’ll be 2.5 stars. To get 2 stars it has to be something that doesn’t even qualify as a movie and thus won’t get ranked.

Weird, it’s almost like there’s a global class war going on where only one side is organized and doing the fighting. Also, that a big part of their campaign is to infiltrate any remotely left leaning political party to sabotage it from within. But that’s crazy. I mean, if there were going to do something like that they’d also be constantly sowing conflict between left-learning centrists and leftists which only ever happens every single day on every single media and social media platform.

That’s a bit like yelling at firefighters for wasting time connecting their hoses when they should be putting the fire out.

That’s a quality headline rewrite.

I would agree that kink is a spectrum, or axis. Specifically, it’s the Z-axis to the masculine/feminine attraction (“gay-straight” but generalized) X-axis and sexual intensity (aka, horniness level) Y-axis. That’s right, we’re going 3D.

Me in 2026 to myself: Be careful about burn in.

Also me in 2026 back to myself: Engineers solved that with hardware and software a long time ago. Burn in is incredibly rare now.

Me again: Remember how mad dad got about the Cartoon Network logo in the corner?

Me, frustrated: Dude, we haven’t watched network TV in 20 years.

My final stand: Dad was really mad, bro.

It really is the roaring 20s all over again! Hell yes! Even have Republicans in charge of everything again! Party like it’s 1928!!! /s

If there was an easy solution to the cartels someone would have done it already. Take obtainable wins.

Yes. Improvement no matter how small is still improvement. More importantly, improving conditions can have sideways impacts on those big problems. Cartels (and Putin, using your Russia example) feed off desperation. Improving material conditions tends to make things harder for the bad guys, which is why the bad guys work so hard to make materials conditions worse (/wave MAGA). In reality, most problems are multi-faceted so we’d be fools not to see the big picture and do what we can where we can. The alternative, hyper focusing on the big problems, lets other problems grow which ultimately ends up feeding the big problem.

I don’t know, it seems we’ve nearly perfected a failing upward system. Much better than all those old fashioned professional oaths we used to take serious. /s

Someone always thinks something else is more important. Doing that and making (wishfully) perfect the enemy of good are solid recipes for no progress.

This reminds me of the kinds of things my 1st grader and their friends find funny because of their incomplete understanding of the world. It’s cute kids, less cute when adults don’t know what “cumulative” means.

People focus entirely too much on method instead of motive. There’s lots of methods to quit that have worked for some and failed for legions more.

I come to Lemmus for exchanges like this. Well reasoned, level headed, and consequences considered. Imagine if we could get conversations like this to take place in those government buildings- sure would be swell.

Putting a sign for the car infront of you to read on the back of your vehicle is incredibly on brand for Pavement Princesses.

Oh good, so they’ll be taking on domestic forced labour next, right? Right?!

Geez fellas, I’m starting to suspect these GQPedos actually have no values whatsoever and are just saying whatever feels convenient to get what they want.

Good catch. Thanks!