I feel like external pressure is only half the problem. It is important but IMO the role model is also a problem. Non toxic masculinity is often describe in the negative of the toxic masculinity : you're good when you are not toxic, not when you are something positive.

In some way it is less restrictive, but in other way it is missing the model.

The other side of this coin is the corruption of the ideal that lead to nihilism. Toxic masculinity corrupts ideals. Violence is strength. Protecting is necessarily the destruction of the threat. Independence is power. Smart is manipulation and deception. Everything is to be seen through a lens of domination and power. And that is the core of the problem.

Instead, a model is to be seen with any quality, but through another lens. Strength can help the weak. Smart can disarm an explosive situation. Power is to be shared and used wisely. Basically, a model opposite to the toxic masculinity can be many things with all the qualities of the virility, but the difference is that they will be used and targeted differently. And for many people, it is to be learnt through a model.

This is a core problem because for many people, if you tell them to drop the toxic behaviour, there will be nothing left to aim for, nothing for them to transform into.

And this goes back to the social validation you're talking about. Going from toxic to positive requires a transformation so that the qualities someone has can be positive instead of negative, but as qualities they can still be praised and admired.

Are you discovering capitalism now?

Epic is the worst of the 3 platforms for a user. It is a drm like steam, but with less games on it, and even less optimized (so even more wasted resources and time loading useless advertising).

Steam has it that is makes game run on Linux smoothly, and the biggest library of games. Gog is drm free. Epic has absolutely nothing a user may want, except for free games so that you are now captive of their shitty platform.

It's the delusion stage, when you think companies are places where you do professional work. Then you learn no one cares about properly doing your job. In fact, they'd rather you do not.

That's called cooking. And we usually call it meat instead of dead animal, because it's a specific part of the dead animal that's tasty and nutritive once cooked.

There are 3 outs to this conflict: Israel absorbs Palestine (and probably does a genocide), Palestine absorbs Israel (and probably does a genocide), or they start to be friends and live together.

Context matters a bit on this : Jews have been harassed for litteral millenia. After ww2 were they were harassed even more than before, they were given their original land from were they were chased millenia ago. You can argue it's partly their fault for keeping their culture and religion eventhough they're all over the world, but I think one should be free to live its life regardless of its religion.

Fast forward to today: Israel became as racist and intolerant as everyone gave them through history, so out 3 is quite not likely. Palestinians are not really better on this, because they've been chased from their homes to begin with and war took its toll, and it's now decades of apartheid to fuel hatred and resentment.

Was it for them only, Palestine would be erased and Muslims genocided or deported in the neighboring countries. But both the UN and the neighbor Muslim states are very much hostile to Israel and several wars happened so that it would be the Palestinian who would genocide and deport the Jews. But they lost, partly because Israel is supported by the USA.

Now the USA will support Israel forever. I guess they like to have an outpost in the area. So Israel won't be deleted in the foreseeable future. But UN and the USA (oddly) don't want to see Palestine erased. Which lead to parents and kids situation.

In brief, Israel and Palestine would gladly fight to the death (I guess Palestine hope for an escalation with the neighbouring countries). But UN doesn't want that (because the US want to be seen as the good guys, and no one wants the US to gain more ground than what they have with Israel). And there we are: the kids hate eachother but the parents don't want anyone to win, because each parent has a favourite child.

The deadly loop of apartheid => terrorism => apartheid needs to end, but no one wants it.

I wonder if it's purposeful sabotage at this point. You can't be that stupid and still be paid millions of dollars to do your job can you?

Capitalism is truly amazing if it can happen.

There are hardcore liberals around here too. That's what you get when there isn't an algorithm to promote fascists.

Liberal policies have done a lot of harm to the French system. We still have a lot of holidays, probably more than anywhere else (minimum 5 weeks, sometimes 6 or 7, and then, if you have more than 35h/week, you have even more, up to 11 days/year for 39h/week).

But healthcare and unemployment are being dismantled over the years.

Government is planning a law this autumn to force people to work to get the lowest unemployment income (what you get after 2 years of unemployment, or if you never worked). Unemployment became harder (you get less for less time).

Public healthcare is understaffed and underfunded. There are more and more wait before you can get an appointment and the quality is decreasing. You more and more need a complementary insurance to cover the full cost, because the public one covers only a part of the cost or not some specific cares.

Police is becoming litteraly fascist, asking for special laws applying to them. And the government consider giving it to them. They are asking for more weapons, and they are asking to clean the vermin from the cities (litteral words they use, I consider this sedition). Currently the government plays nice to the police because they're scared if what would happen if they didn't. Especially since they rely a lot on the police to shit down protests.

Protest are severly repressed by the police, and the right to protest is in actual danger because if the préfet (chief of police in a department, appointed by the government, representative of the government locally and responsible for the security of the department ; a department is a small administrative region) decides that your work is necessary, then you can be drafted to work. Public services are already unable to protest (in hospitals for example).

Information is very concentrated. TV channels are possessed by like 4 people, same for newspapers. And public ones are less and less independant.

This autumn will be very hot. Right now it's the holidays. In September both school and assembly will get back to work, and the government is planning to anger teachers, one of the most powerful union in the country, and several questionable security laws. Government has no legitimity but hide behind the discourse that "no one else has legitimity either".

I don't think we have it worse than in many places, but it's getting worse for us. Fighting in the beginning of this year didn't got us anything for retirement (now 65yo to get it).

"I'm no prude" and then rant at how too horny BG3 supposedly is... Yes you are very prude fellow.

Capitalism destroy people first, relationships and societies then, and the land and the world finally. It's not an accident, because if you want to fight that, you'll be destroyed too.

Another way to see it is that it's the opposite of society and civilization. It's the law of the jungle. Competition applied to everything will only destroy everything. Civilization is when you stop to see the other as an opponent and you cooperate with it instead. Capitalism is seeing those people as opponents in a life or death competition, and making everything so that society is a life or death competition between them. It's not pragmatic, it's death.

I fail to see how this is not the case for everyone.

Absolutely no one has a habit of paying taxes. Or brushing their teeth.

I would argue that what you have is depression here, not adhd. You need help.