andrew ta … t.a. = teachers assistant or total asshole depending on the day.

sometimes i feel like being an asshole to people other days i’ll teach people.

I want to say this with the greatest possible compassion - this is serious neckbeard energy. Like, your whole series of posts is.

Your logical points aren’t any real defence. You can logic all you want - but the medium is the message. Your choice of subject matter, how you choose to define it, and how you choose to talk about it, clearly displays a lot of bitterness towards women. I expect you’ll want to argue that I am talking about superficialities and ignoring the more important, deeper, logical points you are making. But this is sort of like showing up to a first date, unwashed and unshaved, wearing a shirt covered in holes and stains. Your presentation isn’t some inconsequential thing that only dumb people focus on - it is the most potent representation of who you a really are. If you show up to a first date without shaving, you are telling your date, in a way words cannot compensate for, that you do not care about them enough to complete simple, normal tasks. And when you talk about “teaching” women in the manner that you have, it is clear that your real goal is not the improvement of these women’s relationships, but for you to be able to criticize them and air your grievances for perceived previous offences you’ve suffered.

I’m not unsympathetic to your state of mind. I think any man who dates women, at some point or another, has had some similar bitterness. It is just human nature to project our frustrations, and think that “they” are the source of all our problems and if only “they” would change everything would be better. But it is also not a state of mind that is really helping you, so I suggest you chill out a little and open your mind to the possibility that you might be wrong.

You called dibs with handwaving. The international court of dibs doesn’t recognize such chicanery.

And regardless of your legal standing, I plan to offer unfettered trade access to Redneckistan to the TJ cartel. Combined with the natural skills of our friends in Montana and Wyoming, I think it would be unwise to begin a war. Sanctions or no, I can’t see you coming out ahead bringing Portlandian hipters to the front lines - whether or not their mustache might belong to a civil war general.

Accept our rightful ownership of British Colombia and Baja California (both Norte y Sur) or be prepared to lose even the claim you have rightfully dibsed.

Considering you didn’t know the names of BC and Baja, we’ll be taking those, along with some strips of land to connect them (would be nice to get Banff, too). After all, we would like ocean access for trade purposes.

consumer cooperatives as the only capital controlling entities who are allowed to buy labor only from worker coops

Who would enforce this?

whichever province Vancouver is in

BC

And also that tiny little dangly bit of Mexico just under California that’s like a little peninsula.

Baja California

I vote adding the rest of Idaho, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. I say this mostly as a Coloradoan who wants to be part of the west coast union and realizes the importance of geographical connectivity. But also, you’d get a lot of very cool mountains and deserts in thr deal.

The result of this would be war, you know? You just created a Great Other.

Its funny, because I’ve felt similarly in the past. But then I got some really great advice.

You aren’t special. Your problems aren’t that unique. There are already ready-made solutions for almost every problem you have, and your real problem is that you tell yourself that you are especially worse off and your problems are totally unique, because otherwise you would have to admit that the reason you keep failing is that you were just too dumb and lazy to do the obvious hard work everyone else was doing. So shut the fuck up and stick to the program as written. After you’ve finished the program, then you’re allowed to criticize it.

May or may not be applicable to you. But it was what I needed to hear

Also, even if you are making the right descision in breaking things off, often the more you say the more ammo/pain you are giving to the other party. Most of the time, the “wait 24h” trick makes you realize you are saying too much.

That’s not an insult. It’s an observation.

I would sign up for this class

Honestly, you’re teaching the class a lot more about yourself than you are about the subject matter here

You Are Going To Die: Leveraging Your Existential Dread For Fun And Profit

Syllabus:

1. You are going to die.
2. No, seriously. Dead. Like, dead dead. Forever.
3. Jesus Christ, pay attention, you’re running out of time!!!
4. Practical: putting the fear of God in your heart with a near death experience.
5. Okay, I can see from your shell-shocked faces that you are listening now. Now sit quietly and think about your inevitable death.
6. If you knew you would die tomorrow, what would you do with your last day alive?
7. If you knew you would live to 100, what would you want to do in your life?
8. At the moment you die and everything goes black, you will be alone and must look death in the eye and shake its hand. How will you prepare yourself to face this moment with courage, instead of curling up in a ball and crying like a little bitch?
9. Practical: seeing death out of the corner of your eye - questing into the wilderness and doing an ass-ton of mushrooms.
10. Breaking down your goals into smaller goals: creating an outline for your life.
11. Breaking down your small goals into itty bitty goals that arent so scary.
12. Just fucking show up: the most important part of getting literally anything done.
13. Stick to the program: giving up your ego and just doing as you are told to see if it works.
14. Every day: turning small steps forward into sustainable habits.
15. Playing the numbers game: how to make your own luck.
16. Practical: Grind it out - one month of being a hyper-optimized perfectionist
17. Burnout - what to do when all you do is delay gratification
18. Impatience and frustration: your biggest assets in getting things done
19. Evaluating progress and re-evaluating goals
20. Not good enough - if it’s important, never settle for anything less
21. I want it NOW - realize that your “sensible” plan is actually a form of procrastination
22. Practical: Pull the trigger - challenge your limiting beliefs about what is possible and do something that scares the absolute shit out of you to make your dreams come true.
23. Passive progress - focusing on changing your life so pursuing your goals becomes effortless.
24. The big keys: mindset, health, friends, and environment.
25. Mindset
    25.1) Go touch grass - when you feel hopeless, you probably just need to go outside and not think about anything for a while.
    25.2) Go touch grass - if you are chronically online, you will be extremely anxious about everything because the internet keeps your attention by telling you the world is scary and most people are evil. Stop it.
    25.3) Go touch grass - no, literally. Being in contact with nature will improve your mental health.
    25.4) Anytime something bad happens to you, it is your responsibility to turn it into a learning experience that you can grow from. Yes, even trauma. Especially trauma.
    25.5) Life is a mirror for your mindset - how your beliefs about the world reflect back to become outcomes.
    25.6) Be a contender, not a champion - the real victory is the journey not the outcome.
26. Practical: go backpacking in the wilderness for a week. No electronics.
27. Health
    27.1) Sleep
    27.2) Diet
    27.3) Exercise
28. Practical: do sleep, diet, and exercise right for once in your life.
29. Friends
    29.1) Making new friends: just walk up and say “hi”.
    29.2) Making new friends: go places where people who like the same things you do hang out.
    29.3) Deepening relationships - offering and asking for help.
    29.4) Deepening relationships - share feelings, not just facts.
    29.5) Asking for support - people love to help you when they can see you are already doing the work.
    29.6) Boundaries - establishing and maintaining them.
    29.7) Cutting people out when they are detracting from your life.
    29.7) Yeah, that goes for family, too.
30. Practical: pick a friend or make a new friend. Open up to them about a personal goal, and ask for their support.
31. Environment
    31.1) Pro surfers don’t live in Nebraska - how your environment impacts your success.
    31.2) Move to the right city - if the best in the world don’t live there, you are in the wrong place. 31.3) Move to the right part of the right city - if you can’t walk to where you work on your goals, you are in the wrong place.
    31.4) Move to the right home in the right part of the right city - if you can’t relax at home, you are in the wrong place.
32. Practical: Make a plan to move somewhere better next semester.
33. Remember, you’re going to die - appreciating each moment that you are alive.
34. Final: get wasted at a secret forest rave. Students will be graded based on how shamelessly they embarass themselves on the dance floor. Bonus points for getting shot down trying to hook up with an attractive stranger.

I highly doubt most high school seniors would pay much attention to a class about math and personal responsibility.

The land value and carbon taxes are key here. The carrot is people seeking better, happier lives and developers seeking to turn a profit - the lower bullet points serve to allow these carrots to be attained. But the taxes are the stick. And people tend to move a lot faster when you beat their asses.

A land value tax removes the incentive to speculatively hold onto land. Instead, it charges landowners a heafty fee to hold onto valuable land in or near walkable areas, which sends a clear message - build something (like housing or a business) that will make good use of this valuable land, or give it to someone who will.

Of course, this will light the fire under some asses. Owning valuable land is still valuable with a land value tax - it is just that the value is in the potential profit to be made, which is only realized if you build something. So expect land owners to be ready and willing to pay big sums to import the labor and materials necessary to get their land to a profitable state as soon as possible. And this would also be a strong incentive to use existing unused building space in walkable areas. All those luxury apartments with outrageous rents sitting empty would see steep price drops as owners scrambled to get someone in the door to make the building profitable. Same with all those empty storefronts which have been vacant as the landlord lazily searches for the “perfect” tenant. And all that office space in downtowns, unused since covid? Expect it to be rapidly retrofitted into affordable housing.

So while rents in walkable areas are screaming downwards, the carbon tax creates an additional incentive to move there. Of course, we pair the tax with a dividend, so an average person is actually making money from the tax - but the incentive is clear: the less carbon you emit, the more money you make. Which encourages people to choose less carbon-intensive forms of housing and transportation. Which means more apartments and cycling, and less detached homes and driving.

but there’s no way that’s sustainable

Why not?

Why not? The Netherlands does just fine prioritizing cycling for everyone - on par with the “childish” scooters and skateboards.

Nah. With the right reforms, we could make cities walkable in a decade.

• Land value tax
• Carbon tax
• End single use zoning and upzone everything
• End parking minimums and free public parking
• Streamline building permits
• More in-the-weeds zoning reform, like removing minimum lot sizes, removing setbacks, removing aesthetic constraints, etc
• Defacto policy of not removing privately installed speed bumps that people make in front of their houses

Of course, good infrastructure and transit would be nice, too. But these reforms would cost very little money and could be implemented immediately, and would likely result in a city overrun with chaotic, uncontrollable ebike traffic - which I’m okay with.

Suburbs can be walkable. Rural areas, too, depending on your definition of walkable.

What is disturbing about it? Cars are more expensive now, so we found something else? That’s the only way it would ever happen. People hate change. It is either “cars too expensive, so people change” or “traffic too terrible, so people change” or “cars too full of annoying electronics, so people change.”

Yeah, I have a friend. She emancipated herself from her family at 16 and got her GED. Worked nannying and waitresssing jobs when she needed money, but otherwise spent about 5 years traveling the world.

Literally just apply to teach English in Asia. Typically the wage is a solid middle class income, and you don’t need to know anything about teaching or English.

You can also look into WWOOFing if you want to explore that.