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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31654 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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As a result, they have become forever-rich, irrevocably prosperous; they can even drop capitalism if they feel that way, the accumulated resource and technological base allows for implementing planned economy in all but name

Please, people unfortunate enough to live in the fucking EU would beg to differ. It's shambolic and getting worse, and there's seemingly no hope of it stopping. The idiots will ruin the economy and the power grid and honestly, I feel like if I want to keep living in a normal country of similar climate type, I'm doomed to learn Japanese and move there. Shouldn't be that hard, it's not tonal, and discord gaming allows for endless free practice.

It's over, really. If we only fall back to 1950s living standards, we will be able to count ourselves fortunate, but most likely we'll be getting omnipresent technological snooping, police state and tone policing too.

Japan wouldn't take you, unless you have a highly skilled blue collar occupation. You'd have to hope for an economic miracle in Argentina, which does not seem realistic.

I'd be only considering emigration there, to some rural area, in case I had a record of stable, reasonably paid remote work. Are they declining to take people who have a source of income ?

It'd not be the comfiest lifestyle, as it's an expensive place, but Japanese are still capable of building nice stuff and even their declining areas have a sort of charm, that's much easier to appreciate than decaying modernism or commie architecture.

They don't seem to be getting taken over by wokies, probably innate psychological differences.

I have no such hopes for e.g. Poland or even Russia. Woke western stuff is mostly seen as cool among Poland's careerists and normies.

Japan is indeed a better bet than Eastern Europe in terms of resistance to wokeness but how comfortable would you really feel to be an alien in the most basic, racial sense on a perpetual basis? The Japanese, even in supposedly cosmopolitan areas, will always treat you as an outsider. Maybe you're fine by that, but for me, being around my own kin will always be preferable. Wokeness is a small price to pay and it has likely peaked anyway, certainly there's much more skepticism today than even 3-4 years ago.

I've always felt like an outsider in my own native land, fwiw. I lack the instinct for tribal affinity entirely. To feel I fit in with some group, I have to be engaged in some cooperative enterprise with them.

But if I mastered the language, which shouldn't be that hard as it's not tonal, and I probably have some talent for language, and respected their culture and didn't try to fuck with them, they'd probably respect me, or at least many of them enough to make it bearable. And given my gracile [1] build and look and coloration (brown and brown, respectively), and children I'd have would probably fit in well.

[ 1]: Actual question I was once asked: "hey, do you have a sister? I saw a tall girl who looked exactly like you?" .. (sigh).

[ 1 ]: Also, clean shaven with a certain hairstyle I kept getting mis-sexed by Faceapp which would insist I'm a woman.

It will certainly be interesting to see. The math on renewables is sobering. The amount of energy input per unit of energy output is just too damn high. And that doesn't even take into account the massive shortfalls of rare earths, copper, and other minerals which are required for the massive build out of solar, wind, and power grids. That's not a one-time investment either. The usable lifetime of solar and wind generation assets is less than 20 years. Germany has spent hundreds of billions on renewable energy and all it has brought is less reliable and more expensive power.

So Europe does seem to be headed down the road of rationing. "Sorry, you can't charge your electric car today". "Planned blackout for Tuesday". "Smart thermostat set to 17 degrees by central ministry", etc..

On the other hand, Germany is burning a shit ton of coal this year, so maybe they are willing to pivot if the misery level gets high enough.

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