All of moderock's Comments + Replies

My understanding of the present state of Taiwan is that they are unprepared for war in any real sense. Sure, they've bought a decent amount of American military technology, but that seems to be it.

Total war requires the preparation of the entire populace. Taiwan has not done this, and I doubt the present government intends to do so. Not only do you basically have to train your populace in terrorism, you also need to equip them with caches of a variety of weapons, entirely outside of government control.

Azerbaijan and Armenia's recent war shows just how the ... (read more)

I've made it a point to build up a set of phrases that allow me to express sympathy, and which have the advantage of being clearly visible expressions, rather than hollow tokens.

For example: "Your mom got cancer? That's a bad deal. Make it a point to spend as much time with her as you can. What can I do to help?"

Thank you for asking this question!

4Eli Tyre
You're welcome!
3romeostevensit
Sangi Apagard
Answer by moderock*110

"Flooding the Zone" appears to be to be deliberate, and rampant across the whole of journalism.

I doubt it has anything to with "trying to satisfy a market generated by anxiety"; rather, it's a case of "our ends are noble and good, justifying victory by any means necessary".

Looking at the above-linked publication on The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model, we see the following characteristics:

  • High-Volume and Multichannel. Text, video, audio, and still imagery propagated via the Internet, social media, satellite television, and traditional ra

... (read more)

For what it's worth, I had a similar journey. Not as much with strong emotions being triggered by trivial things, but I would routinely blame others for my negative feelings.

Coming to understand that I, and only I, was responsible for both my situation and my emotional responses was a difficult journey, but it also helped me address those negative feelings in a useful way.

I wonder if there's a correlation between the American emphasis on comfort and loss of utility for suffering as a social signal?

At least within notable chunks of American culture that I currently have a lens on -- don't live in the US at present, so do take this with a massive salt-boulder -- it seems that visibly suffering quickly earns the sufferer a large amount of sympathy/compassion/support/etc.

This begets more visible suffering -- to the point of harmful neuroticism -- in order to garner more support from the community, and I doubt this is in any way

... (read more)
Answer by moderock80

Glide floss. My teeth absolutely shred every other brand, but Glide is coated with Teflon. Made regular flossing possible.

I stopped watching news years ago. Improved my mental state massively.

Stretching every day, right after work, has been a win as well. It’s a good end to the day, I’m way more flexible, and overall feel happier.

Whenever I feel angry or frustrated, I ask myself what outcome I want from the situation, and focus on how to make that happen. Helps me avoid acting counterproductively on emotion.

As being publicly accused of rape or sexual assault carries severe penalties for the accused, how do you intend to deal with false accusations?

3jefftk
When people speak up publicly and share their experience, everyone can make their own judgement about how to respond. In the two cases I refer to in this post the community response was pretty obvious, and there was a lot of corroboration. I can think of other cases of someone speaking up where it was less clear, and people reacted in a range of ways from "I'm going to stop interacting with this person because they hurt someone" to "I'm going to keep an eye on this person and be extra alert for other potentially harmful behavior" to "I don't think this report is credible and I'm going to ignore it". While this isn't ideal in various ways, it does seem reasonably robust to false accusations.

I have a question in a similar vein -- how would one go about finding resources that don't have immediately available reviews -- videos, blogs, etc?

2Matt Goldenberg
The old fashioned way I suppose, going by the reputation of the creator and the description they provide. I think readily available reviews are often worth going with a medium that has them though.

This sounds like a topic worth digging into. Don't suppose you have a curated list of books (or other resources) to share?