The qualifier base is exactly right. Like we use base as a pejorative, but it is what we are. That is our base state.

You know what itd take to drop us back to this level? I would say about a week without electricity. If you said to any given group of what, 50 people. Pick numbers out of a hat. The person with the dot dies, but the electricity comes back on. That would be enough.

It's supposed to make you feel very weird because it is innate tribal behaviour that is not very far from the surface. Individual vs group, traditions, rituals, sacrifice, and the perverse gratitude that you are the survivor etc.

Read it then go read Facebook for a bit...you start to see people for what they are. Panicky, social, tribal animals.

I remember that. Either Ray Bradbury or Isaac Asimov.

Hunting party goes back in time to hunt dinosaurs right.

Anything that you can think of has already been thought of, modelled, and done by international actors who have more resources, technical capability and time than you, and have far fewer morals.

You want a specific outcome to this election? So do Russia and China. They're a lot better at this than you are and are orders of magnitude more invested in it.

I live in Australia

The homicide rate here is 0.86 deaths per 100k people per year

Of those, approx 66% are male.

The suicide rate is 12.3 deaths per 100k per year.

Of those, 75% are male.

The statistics are similar in most Western countries.

Pause for a second and think about the last time that you heard that mentioned either in casual conversation or in the news media.

It is not spoken about.

Younger than 45

Oh OK that actually makes sense.

45 year olds and above are digital immigrants. In short, they had an off-line childhood and an online adulthood. They have different speech and writing patterns to you because they learnt and communicated in a different way to you.

Assuming you're under 45, this won't make sense, because you've never experienced a world which doesn't have this sort of interaction. You're a digital native, digital tech has always been there.

In twenty years time, children born or educated after the advent of chat gpt will have the same problem understanding you. The way you write, post and interact will seem clunky and old fashioned. It's already happening - we're having to adapt the way we interact, in order to be able to 'be understood' by AI.

The wonderful thing about humanity, tho, is that we do adapt and adopt! Consider this - everyone over the age of 50 had to learn something completely new to them in order to be able to communicate with you via email, sms or messaging app. They used to just talk, or write letters. Sharing media was a physical act. Yet here they are using the same texh as you. Awesome.

I spent a bit of time going through your post history to get an understanding of your background

In short I think your life experiences mean you've lost all trust in men. Not just your direct experiences but what you've observed in others.

As a result you enter each interaction assuming the worst. Every male social worker you engage with will confirm this pattern because that's what you're looking for. The - ah fuck here we go again - feeling.

For them, and I don't expect you to have empathy for them, this is what they live - the outcomes of other mens behaviours. But - they were there and they tried. That is something.

You have changed quite a lot of your original post.

"OK so she must've bleached the full head then done the green side first, then the black side. Man her scalp must be itchy as fuck. What did I used to use to stop the burn? Coconut oil? Yeah that's right. Smelt like Malibu for a week or so, and had to throw out that set of pillow cases. Man that sucks, I loved those pillow cases, perfect for winter. I wonder if you can still get them?"

Yeah there were dumb kids in my class too.

I'm kinda baffled that we're a decade deep into this and people are still hung up on the fact that despite knowing their figurehead is an asshat, genuinely good people can have the level of cognitive dissonance to simultaneously support what they believe he represents, while also ignoring his actions.

There are societal divisions to the very bedrock of the USA - Trump is a symptom, not the condition.

The devices that you describe are incompatible with a standard that has been mature for 50 years.

The 3.5mm jack is everywhere, it is the standard. USB C is incredibly recent.

Put it this way, if you were to walk into a store and pick up any given electronic product with audio output, would you expect it to have an audio jack, or a USB C connector?

In your drawer full of random electric cables, how many have 3.5mm plugs in them vs usb a, micro, mini, or some propriety plug? And how many could you plug into a device and just...work?

So why do you accept devices that don't have this standard?? It is beyond me.