Young men and women have such unrealistic expectations from relationships that it’s trashing their mental health when reality doesn’t match what is thrown at them by social media. Social media is the real culprit no doubt but the number of people actually doing anything about it is scary low.
The Canadian defense budget is quite small (30bn). 4bn is a big number compared to that but in general this is quite small compared to most developed countries. I believe Canada has been quiet thanks to their neighbors protecting them but with that changing I’m wondering whether there will be a shift in defense spending.
This will also create new jobs and a market which the economy probably needs.
There are only 15 countries worldwide with a higher defence budget than Canada so the budget is hardly tiny, it just doesn’t meet the arbitrary and obscene targets of 2/5% GDP. In actuality, Canada spends more than twice as much per capita than the world average.
The only realistic threat to Canada is the new one from Donald Trump, but it would take closer to 30% GDP to protect from that one.
> There are only 15 countries worldwide with a higher defence budget than Canada so the budget is hardly tiny...
Canada is pretty big: it's the second-largest country by land-area. Surely there must be certain defense expenditures that need to scale with that?
> In actuality, Canada spends more than twice as much per capita than the world average.
That seems like a twisted measure, due to 1) the land-area issue I mentioned above, and 2) there are a lot of countries in the world that are small and poor, and thus cannot afford a military that can actually defend themselves.
> The only realistic threat to Canada is the new one from Donald Trump...
How is USA not realistic threat? They are already going out of their way to harm and weaken Canada. They are openly talking about expanding. They are already commiting war crimes in pacific and have fascist leadership. With president likely having alzeihmer or dementia or other mental healt issue
Trump says a lot of things, but he pretty much always chickens out. I am certain he'd chicken out of invading Canada, if that's something he was ever seriously considering. And I doubt he's seriously considering it: he appears to believe being "unpredictable" gives him advantage in negotiations, saying outrageous things makes him "unpredictable."
He is not chickening out in committing international piracy and abduction. Annexation is just a step away from that. Greenland is a soft, conquerable target - can hoist the Stars&Stripes and stomp the natives under boots without much trouble. Canada, on the other hand, is bloody hard and conquest won't happen.
> He is not chickening out in committing international piracy and abduction.
The boat attacks are small actions, unlikely to result in any consequences. Also I haven't followed it super-closely, but I believe the claim is those are cartel drug-smuggling boats, and I haven't seen anything indicating that's wrong (e.g. they bombed an innocent fishing boat). No one cries for the poor, grotesquely guilty cartels. Trump will do low-cost stuff like that. Also piracy requires plunder. Blowing boats up isn't piracy, because there's no plunder.
No one liked Maduro, and he probably stole his last election (at least), so no one's really crying for him. Are you?
> Greenland is a soft, conquerable target - can hoist the Stars&Stripes and stomp the natives under boots without much trouble.
Didn't Trump already back down on that?
> Canada, on the other hand, is bloody hard and conquest won't happen.
So you concede my point? Even with Canada's military exactly as it is right now, there's no realistic military threat to it from Trump, because he's never going to commit to anything that costly.
> The boat attacks are small actions, unlikely to result in any consequences. Also I haven't followed it super-closely, but I believe the claim is those are cartel drug-smuggling boats
Lol, no. Oil tankers are not "cartel drug-smuggling boats". This U.S. administration lies like the Prince of Hell. Another oil tanker was captured by piracy a couple of days ago.
> No one liked Maduro, and he probably stole his last election (at least), so no one's really crying for him. Are you?
Americans don't get to decide that. And most especially not members of this corrupt administration who make Maduro look like an angel.
> So you concede my point? Even with Canada's military exactly as it is right now, there's no realistic military threat to it from Trump, because he's never going to commit to anything that costly.
He is crazy enough to sanction Canadian shipping. You don't need to attack land when you can attack shipping and tighten the screws.
About 11 years ago I went on a bus in Rochester, NY. It was bizarre to me that every person in the bus (about 12-15 people aged between 18-25 maybe) were buried in their phones. No one was talking to each other, not looking outside, nothing. I had the latest iPhone but since America was new for me I mostly spent time looking at the world around me and talking to people. I felt sad that the social world had come to this.
Fast forward to now and this is what I see in India too. Talking to random people in their prime years (maybe 18-30) is now 'weird'. But it's perfectly fine if it's via 'insta' or 'snap'. I can't imagine how much worse it's now in America in that age group. I know my pre teen nephews have withdrawals if I take away their devices here in India.
The moral here is that procreation requires better social skills and strong presence in the world and good parenting will probably create that. In order to raise an offspring, people need to have good mental health and that generally leads to good physical health which in turn improves the mental health and so on which can lead to procreation etc. The scrolling and virtual world is a distraction from reality. Something that keeps away humans from each other. We will only see this getting worse. In India the social world is still good enough to see higher birth rates. But that is also now slowing down. Mental health of people is not great. People complain about being single but there is virtually no way to hold a conversation as getting their attention is impossible. Phones are glued to their eyes and hands even when sitting with you.
I am hoping though things will be different in the future.
Real people are annoying, hard to deal with, unpredictable, dirty, smelly, all sorts of issues.
The imaginary people inside your magic box are perfect, on demand, and don't complain or otherwise bother you when you put them away.
What porn is to love, social media is to, well, darn near everything else. Once we perfect donuts over TCP/IP we'll all be perfectly round and content and never need to interact with anyone else.
They are actually not. In fact once you work on your mental health, you'll find real people the only kind you'd want to talk to. But the real people actually working on their mental health (part of it is reducing device usage to bare necessities) are quite small unfortunately. But I am hoping that will change.
That's the point - real people are annoying because you are annoying. (Not you in particular, but me, you, everyone.)
Dealing with real people in real situations is dirty and messy and not "video-game perfect" like Instagram likes et al - but in the end it is real and you end up discovering that your rough edges have been worn off in the great river of life - just as theirs have been.
In fact, I'd argue that a vast portion of the "mental health crisis" is just that - we're not dealing with each other so we're not learning how to deal with ourselves.
One of the best ways to "grow up" if you will is to have children - because they ARE real people but darn if they're not messy and sometimes insane; you have to learn to deal.
I wouldn't take what they said as an actual insult. They're saying reality is dirty and social media is making us want to live in bubbles rather than deal with it. Thinking that was is to our detriment which I understand OP agrees with.
The decline in birthrates isn't related to growing living standards, as poorer countries also have declining birthrates. Turkey has a lower birthrate than the UK, and Mexico has a lower birthrate than the US. Places like North Africa and South India have seen declines in birthrates comparable to the West.
He makes the argument that declining birthrates are due more to a fall in coupling than a fall in people in relationships choosing to have kids. He brings up that birthrates would actually be increasing if marriage rates remained constant. This means that all the incentives countries push such as subsidized childcare or tax breaks to have kids are putting the cart before the horse, as a growing share of young people don't have a partner to have kids with to begin with.
He then brings up that the fall in coupling a country experiences is roughly correlated to the rate of mobile internet usage in that country. 46% of American teens say they use social media "almost constantly" vs. 24% a decade ago. People would rather use social media than go out and meet others. He points to South Asia as an example, as it's experienced a relatively smaller decline in marriage rates, and mobile internet usage there is lower than in the rest of the world.
I suppose it's yet another way that cell phones are impacting society.
If you look at the top companies in America currently by market share, pretty much all are selling addictions while maybe a handful actually selling tangible products.
Captain’s Log, Stardate 48492.1 We have entered orbit around Sol III-bis. Long-range scans suggested a pre-warp civilization at the peak of the Information Age. However, upon arrival, Lieutenant Uhura reports total silence across all hailing frequencies. No radio, no subspace chatter, not even leaking analog television waves. Yet, life sign readings are off the charts. It is a ghost town inhabited by eight billion ghosts.
[Surface - The Town Square]
The transporter beam hums and fades. Riker, Spock, and Counselor Troi materialize in the middle of a bustling intersection.
Riker immediately reaches for his phaser, expecting a reaction. A panic. A scream. Nothing.
A native walks straight through the space where Riker’s arm is raised, correcting their path by mere millimeters at the last second, eyes never leaving the blue glow of their palm.
"Captain," Riker taps his combadge, voice tense. "We've landed. We are... invisible."
Spock raises an eyebrow, scanning a nearby human with his tricorder. "Incorrect, Commander. We are simply irrelevant. Their optical sensors are registering our presence, but their visual cortex is filtering us out as 'non-content'. We are pop-up ads in a physical reality they have deprecated."
Suddenly, Troi gasps. She stumbles, clutching her temples. Her knees hit the pavement hard.
"Counselor!" Riker is at her side instantly.
"It’s... it’s too loud, Will," she whispers, her face pale, sweat beading instantly on her forehead. "It’s not voices. It’s not emotions. It’s... flashes."
She squeezes her eyes shut, but the tears leak out. "A billion images of felines. Dancing figures. Arguments without context. Tragedy mixed with absurdity. It’s a scream, Spock, but it’s a scream about nothing."
"Motion sickness of the mind," Spock observes, looking at his readings. "A precise description. You are attempting to find a focal point, Counselor, but there is none. The signal is not radiating from a central broadcast tower. It is a mesh network of pure dopamine."
He turns his tricorder to the crowd. "Fascinating. They utilize a tight-beam UHF protocol—what the archives call 'Bluetooth 17'. It ensures that no signal ever touches an unintended recipient. They have achieved perfect privacy, and in doing so, created perfect isolation."
"They could have warp drive," Riker mutters, looking at a mag-lev train passing silently overhead, filled with slumped, blue-lit figures. "Look at this infrastructure. The power efficiency alone..."
"They do not want warp drive, Commander," Spock says, closing his tricorder with a snap that sounds like a gunshot in the quiet street. No one flinches. "Space travel requires looking up. Warp drive requires a destination. This species has already arrived."
Troi looks up, her eyes bloodshot, trembling. "We have to leave, Will. Please. It’s... sticky. The thoughts... they want to be thought. They’re hungry."
Riker taps his badge. "Enterprise, three to beam up. Now! Lock on to my signal, not the ambient noise."
[The Bridge]
Back on the ship, Troi is in sickbay, sedated. Spock stands at the science station.
"Status on the planet, Mr. Spock?" Picard asks, looking at the viewscreen. The planet is beautiful, blue and green, peaceful.
"It is a tomb, Captain," Spock replies, his voice devoid of judgment but heavy with implication. "They have not been conquered. They have been optimized. They have traded the chaotic inefficiency of exploration for the streamlined certainty of simulation."
"The Great Filter," Picard murmurs.
"Indeed," Spock turns. "We often theorized that advanced civilizations destroy themselves with fire. It appears, Captain, that it is just as likely they destroy themselves with a warm bath."
Picard stares at the screen for a long moment. "Helm, engage. Warp 1. Get us away from here."
"Course, sir?"
"Anywhere," Picard says, adjusting his uniform. "Just... outward."
As much as I love this post, I have to be the one to point out that Uhura and Spock are from a different Enterprise than Picard, Riker, and Troi. Great work, though, I can practically hear Leonard Nimoy reading this dialogue.
I see an em dash! Honestly, mixing cast members from different series might be exactly the kind of mistake that an LLM makes. But it made me smile, so score one for the robots.
When India moved to UPI in the last few years something very interesting happened. The same devices that accept UPI (usually some android based POS) also accepted a plethora of cards. Previously merchants would be hesitant to take anything other than cash or charge 2% for visa/mastercard. But with wide adoption of digital payments they now just accept any payment with the goal that they don't want bad reviews and/or lose customers.
Point being that with a cheap alternative, it's actually much more convenient now to use a Visa or Mastercard especially with tap to pay because with competition being so high, the diversity means people allow all payments.
The competition is high with online ordering (which accepts cards), so the incentive is to not lose customers. in fact people have become so desperate for more sales that they would let you take something and pay later but not lose you as a customer.
Small businesses generally dont because the setup for a merchant POS is quite a bit of hassle. In fact maintaining that device also costs money. A UPI merchant on the other hand is quite easy and free from what I know. This setup with visa mastercard might change in the future (with square like devices). However there is also a security problem so fraud might increase with that. Very interesting times for visa and mastercard who have basically not innovated since their existence and yet somehow have grown so big.
If previously 3 merchants had visa / Mastercard out of 10 who only accepted cash or cheques, then with UPI all 10 now accept UPI but 7 or 8 accept a universal POS which allows more type of payments. If previously 10% payments were via cards that costed them 2%, then now if sales are 2-3x because of UPI and online payments, letting go of that 2% for even 20% share of cards is fine because they captured a larger market with more sales. Not so long ago, India was a cash dominant economy so UPI actually opened that up. UPI actually helped Visa and Mastercard. Credit card spending has gone up a lot because of digitalization.
If in EU a local payment system captures the cash market, then the habit of using digital payments will actually also help Visa and Mastercard make more sale.
I currently don't have a credit card, but when I do, I find paying by a Visa/MasterCard much more preferable than UPI, simply because it's easier by tapping.
The same argument can be made that advertising boosts sales.
That doordash makes local eateries more prosperous.
It would elevate the debate if we acknowledge the dark patterns these business came up with to extract rents from the economy. That a category actor greatly benefits that's the outcome of any disrupting tech.
I don’t see why there can’t be tap to pay via UPI. There is no holding back when it comes to technology. But it’s not implemented yet. We still have high corruption. Maybe they don’t want to make digital payments too easy that people forget cash. Just enough to win elections.
I was there when this started to roll this out - I remember a lot of nice pine labs payment terminals - it was really nice that I could begin to depend on my American Express card there more than trying to finagle cash (2000inr bills get you a lot of frustrated service workers). I say AmEx because they tended to work much better than my visa there.
That’s how all my non resident friends pay. They have chase bofa discover Amex etc cards that they use to pay most places. Ease of payments is the catch and credit cards bring that process down a lot. There is something psychological going on with cards that UPI and ApplePay simply don’t have. Swiping probably was fastest.
Anecdata here, but the last times I tried to use VISA/MasterCard in a shopping mall meant to serve people from all over the world, it just did not work. UPI was flawless, though.
(And then as pointed out, anyone smaller straight up doesn’t support anything outside of UPI.)
The good news is that this won't matter much because it's probably out of consideration for pretty much all of the HN crowd. Ferrari is one of those things which the ultra rich and a small sliver of the population can afford to buy brand new, and those not even lurking here. For everyone else it's something they can try out on a track if they are curious.
That being said, I wonder what can be cloned from this by others. The ICE are huge and refined and people can steal that engineering into other cars. With battery and motors, I feel like everyone is now on a level playing field and starts from zero. I wonder what will set apart a Ferrari from others.
It’s a double edged sword. The computer at this point is 7 years old and had slowed down (planned obsolescence). It’s not exactly going to be anything like a new computer. And Linux for that is perfectly fine for everyday tasks and what you can get from a 7 year old computer before the ARM chips entered the scene. On the other hand if you did buy a new computer you’d probably get to run the latest windows and macOS versions running perfectly fine in which case he’s probably complaining about how bad Microsoft and Apple have gotten over the years which is why he’s giving Linux a try in the first place.
It feels like the author entered with the bias of complaining and frustration no matter what by comparing a weakness with others strength.
The goal is to tackle it in every way. The medicines are supposed to be supportive and not the solution. More often than not people treat it as a solution.
Thats why they are eventually tapered and discontinued once you are able to be on your own.
As someone who tried citalopram escitalopram and sertraline, along with venlaflaxine and fluvoximine, I would suggest doing a pharmacological test for psychiatric medications.
I am an intermediate metabolized for the first three and the ones I was on most long. It did not suit me and made my orgasms go from ‘wtf’ to ‘that’s it?’ And they are still not normal 2 years after discontinuation.
I am still depressed and anxious to the point of serious consideration of these medicines to save myself, but you can save yourself the experimentation by doing a simple test and avoiding those medicines.
Anxiety depression panic attacks are something I wish more people studied along with sexual health.
That’s B3 for nerve and dna repair if I understand correctly.
I notice a difference after eating non vegetarian food but since I also have IBS, my absorption can be a hit or miss.
A very balanced and nutrient rich diet with good sleep and exercise is the start to mental health recovery. People often forget how important all this is.
for ibs: no coffee, milk (any milk), vegetable oils, wheats, soy, or anything from USA :D and no sugar or alco
then slippery elm and probiotics, d-vitamin + c-vitamin.
fasting, intermediate is also helpful.
add berries and yes, beef meat and lots of greens.
with strict diet ibs goes better.
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