Why *did* so many western nations seem to decide on a policy of infinity migration so suddenly, with seemingly no fanfare or public debate or even mention about it prior to backlash? for example the change in Canada here from 2015-2019 looks genuinely crazy. Huge change to a previously conservative system, more than doubled. Possibly it made local news but not in the US.

But then the post 2020 change blows *that* out of the water

big % of the loneliness epidemic and fertility crisis is downstream of the fact that men now pursue a girl for 2-10 seconds total and if it doesn't work go "oh well"

women probably also reject far too quickly but that just means not giving up matters even more

https://twitter.com/Niicho125196/status/1959446635655929881

there seem to be many different shades of "no desire" at play. If you really like someone you should probably try harder before giving up. But second if you like someone and they reject you you should be learn from that. Actually consider how you can be more likeable

simon civilization scale

A: You can leave keys in your car
B: You can leave car unlocked
C: You have to lock car
D: You have to lock car and conceal any valuables
E: You cannot keep anything in your car
F: E + and you have to leave it unlocked so they don't smash the window

https://twitter.com/ZyMazza/status/1958176451498217890

This is much more actionable than the sci-fi weeb stuff. We have a lot of work to do. There are not many A-grade civilizations.

IMO just buy Siggis 4% yogurt and cut up small pieces of what you already eat to feed them

3 babies in: We have never made a puree, never bought "baby food", and the only baby-specific thing we've made is roasting sweet potato cubes, which we mostly stopped doing

https://twitter.com/mountainwesttax/status/1957457655783661795

buying bags of frozen peas and corn is much less messy than a puree, and they can self direct eating

babies love any cold meat chopped up long before they even get teeth, almost zero mess (compared to purees), even with hamburger

there's people that actually do things and then there's "who's joining me?" and there's basically zero overlap between the two

Never wait for others. Even if you want them to come. I realized years ago when hiking or night swimming or making plans generally, trying to get people to go with you, "scheduling", all that, its crap

instead just say "I'm climbing Mt. Moose, if you want to come be at the parking lot of Yam cafe at 6am Sunday"

There are a lot of things that just don't compute with respect to relationships. Beyond dating too, like male loneliness crisis. Everyone has more avenues than ever before to resolve loneliness, they don't seem to want to. Or are unwilling to lift a finger.

https://twitter.com/CartoonsHateHer/status/1940207436771860845

People have more windows to peek into societies than ever before.

One explanation for large scale dating or friendship woes is that people are just not very good at rating their own place in that larger system that they now have a view into.

one long thought that's difficult to justify concisely is that almost all housing cost issues are downstream of crime and social disorder people claim things like "house prices are high because owners vote and they want to keep their property values high" but this is glib and partly begs the question. They don't want to all price their own kids out. But maybe they feel they have to.

I'm honestly shocked how many people still think this tariff plan is a good idea. Not the utility of tariffs in general, but this specific plan. Any company that has complex inputs to make an even more complex outputs, which is most of the high value manufacturing, is going to be in the gutter.

https://x.com/TheStalwart/status/1909813379897733250

why did so much of the best food in the world come from this circle a lot of the best food in the world comes from this circle but that has more explanations (silk road + hellespont)

Wealth is good. Prosperity is wholesome. If you are privileged what you should feel is gratitude, not shame, and you should be thinking of how you can employ and pass on this prosperity.

& I think one should feel a duty to build wealth for their family.

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1888939980719845780

It is very sad that a lot of the people who talk about intergenerational poverty also try to slam wealth.

pretty much all the arguing about careers and making a living is really due to cost of living which is due to this graph, and almost nothing else.

The red area is housing that doesn't exist. It's what 2008 caused us not to build. Solve this and you solve everything. From 1960 to 2005 we built 2x the number of houses per person that we build today. It's still cratered.

That's why the 2008 crisis failed to crash housing prices for more than a couple years. The "bubble" was over, but we stopped building houses, so they got scarce instead.

even my haters cannot stop gushing about my nice photos

https://twitter.com/MorlockP/status/1878463661074784340

if I do another gallery show "The lighting is absolutely perfect - because of course it is." is going in the artist description

The only thing I'll say about the job discourse is that I run a very small tech company in New Hampshire and we hire literal high school interns from AP CS classes and train them and it works really really well.

*All* hires since the founders were interns out of high school. now,

1. This cannot scale indefinitely, and not everyone needs junior talent

2. NO ONE ELSE IS DOING IT?

When we first bought the land we had no landscaping budget but our own time. We started cutting down trees and brush all over, planning ideas for everywhere (orchard here, grove here, clear this field, etc)

We found it was unsustainable

https://twitter.com/rhymeswithvocal/status/1865977840379769044

There's simply too much for two people to do (at least two people who aren't retired)

So we took a step back and decided to work from the house outwards. Make the immediate lawn look nice and pull out all poison ivy. Plant a couple trees we really like (magnolia, sugar maple)

The simplest conclusion from looking at "seed oils" for ten seconds is that the burden of proof is on them. Never before did we eat this much Linoleic Acid (LA). Never before did we muck with fat composition at this scale.

You don't need "proof" to decide to avoid them.
if fat composition explosively changes and everyone gets obese you don't need to do a bunch of studies. You can just not eat them and eat saturated animal fats instead and not get fat yourself and feel great.

You don't have to prove anything to anyone.

I avoided answering this one because I wanted to think about it for longer. But I still don't have a great answer that isn't rambling personal philosophy which probably won't translate well.

A few general things though.

https://twitter.com/EyesOfSky17/status/1855121199657005384

I did make a thread of advice on finding a wife, which is not exactly finding a husband. But there is some overlap.

Some people asked me to write a husband version, but I found it difficult to say much with confidence

https://x.com/simonsarris/status/1705367597124841695

I think lots of people are used to the idea that life has a script. School encourages this, many ppl follow script from 3-21. Once the script is finished, people can exist at a sorta end-of-history state without re-examining. Some get depressed by this.

https://twitter.com/EstuaryDelta/status/1854341566439268697

It's like navigating a river downstream and then finally you reach the ocean. Now what?

I have some sympathy for men and women stuck here.

I think some of the birthrate decline can be attributed to two forces happening everywhere: increasing complexity, and decreasing hardship. Life is too complex and too 'good.' I'll try to explain Complexity: There are too many non-life decisions to make and navigate. Whats the right healthcare plan? did I pay my phone bill? My dishwasher broke, I needed an oil change last month. 115 IQ people hardest hit: am I REALLY optimizing my IRA contributions perfectly with my HSA?

the idea of a "honeymoon phase" in relationships is the fakest thing I've ever heard in my life. To believe it you would have to be a passive actor in your own life, things just "happen" to you. A television-brained phenomena "oh whoops my desire just magically went away, no doing of my own of course, I was just minding my own business and then it wasn't there anymore. I have no function or part in the making or unmaking of that."

are you an imbecile? are you watching life from the third person?

People claim these things (beauty, masculinity) don't matter or are superficial but clearly they do if everyone is looking for them.

Luckily many desirable qualities are also skills. If you are under-developed, you can develop them. Never let people tell you they don't matter!

https://twitter.com/verymoisturized/status/1831334957681115406

A lot of people want masculinity to be a stance of some kind, but really its a set of hard and soft(!) skills.

As a byproduct of learning/doing, one's personality changes (simplistically think: confidence), and people sometimes want to separate these from skill-building but...

One of the most deeply evil things to happen in my life is that liberals have become reflexively pro-crime.

Unable to address serious problems, they do everything to downplay disorder, and consistently minimize or blame victims.

https://twitter.com/mikegalsworthy/status/1822731997925515527

It was an unthinkable position growing up. Before 2010 I can't recall anything like it.

I am told that in the 1990s, many liberals were serious about finding ways to reduce crime. Now that class treats it like a random natural disaster that you're a bad person for mentioning.