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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • I’m mot sure I understand what kind of answer you are looking for. What did the Whig historiography achieve? Or the Great Man theory? Isn’t Critical Theory an academic approach that allows people in the humanities a different theoretical framework to approach the problems of culture, history, literature, etc? It’s been pretty successful in that, and while I believe that academic scholarship has some influence on world affairs, it’s generally the political zetgeist exerts more pressure on academic thinking than the other way around…







  • Spot on with “lieing about having your shit together”, I’m in my 40s and in academia and almost everyone is “just pretending” to be a high functioning adult.

    But you don’t need to spend your life in front of a computer. You can do all sorts of shit. But people like economic security and that makes “college > soul destroying job” seem appealing. But life can be all sorts of things, as long as you realise you’re in control of the choices not the results.

    There’s a well established trope that at every age, people think there life is about to settle down and stop being as open and free. I was defintely the kind of person who felt that turning 21 was becoming ancient and tbat life was basically over. But each decade has been completely different and often wild, I’ve done lots of different things, lived in different places and even now I’m married and have a house and all the more “settled” things, I’m confident the last few decades will also be varied and interesting.


  • It depends. Mostly I care, a new baby is a big deal, I think about how it will affect them, what the child might be like, the fact that I will probably still be spending time with that child in ten years.

    Holidays I care if they’re interesting. If someone goes somewhere I’ve always wanted to go I might have questions, if they’ve been somewhere I’ve been I might chat about what I liked. But when people try to tell you a detailed recount of some trip, it can be very boring. My parents are particularly bad at reminiscing together while notionally telling me, so they keep going “where was it we ate the second day? No that was the other place” it’s awful. But it’s a chance for them to feel happy about their holiday again, so I try to be patient, and I remember how many times my parents pretended to be interested as I explained how I was doing at some computer game or whatever.

    But to answer your question, it sounds like you care less than most. But everyone cares less than the people who’s life event it is. There’s lots of scenes in comedies about people hating hearing about new babies, or being forced to look at holiday photos. So you’re not alone!








  • An increase in supply would reduce wages, unless it also increases demand. If you think about wages in cities vs rural areas, you’ll see that most of the time more people = more economic activity = higher wages.

    Where this breaks down, is if there’s barriers of entry that prevent immigrants from participating in the economy fully. If immigrants aren’t allowed to legally work or start business (as happens with some asylum seekers or ‘illegal’ immigrants) then they are forced to compete over a small pool of off-book / cash-in-hand jobs, which could see a reduction in wages without a significant increase in overall economic activity.