Ted Ed: https://youtu.be/_EF4LXLxquM

Shouldn’t the process be to have the houses built and then have people move into them? Not to have people create demand and only then play catch up and build a place for them to live?

Very boomer coded housing as a commodity mindset.

You’re right India’s milestone relates to infrastructure ie. installed capacity. There was a period in July 2025 where 50% of India’s electricity came from renewables but on a regular day the split is 70/30 coal/oil to renewables. India is still very much in a emerging stage and essentially every nation in human history that grew past this stage relied on coal to do so unfortunately. Hopefully India and other emerging markets can use significantly less than Western countries did, now that we know of the climate impact. Thank you for the clarification!

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/india-hits-50-non-fossil-power-milestone-ahead-2030-clean-energy-target-2025-07-14/

It’s military keynesianism and the US economy has been running off of it since world war 2.

The economic issues were a direct result of US foreign policy.

​In a January 2026 interview at the World Economic Forum and his February testimony before Congress, Scott Bessent took credit for engineering a “dollar shortage” that triggered a currency crisis and mass protests in Iran.

Bessent used phrases such as “Making Iran broke again” and described the resulting economic turmoil as “economic statecraft with no shots fired.”

Through sanctions, the dollar shortage and currency crisis/hyperinflation led to the collapse of one of Iran’s major banks, which led to the protests prior to the war starting.

Melania is that you?

Sounds like an overstatement of the European civilian response. A majority of Westerners have generally supported colonial settler activities for the past 500 years.

Congrats! India also hit their target of half of their electricity coming from renewables middle of last year - five years ahead of their 2030 target according to the Paris agreement. Love to hear news like this!

The majority of men there think it’s wrong based on NFHS survey data from 2021. Men’s “rights” groups claim that a law against marital rape would be misused to bring about false accusations (which this comic points out) and this gets amplified by the algorithm.

The criminalization of marital rape is sadly a fairly recent concept in human history and only began in the mid 1900s. Germany criminalized it as recently as the late 1990s and the UK a few years before that.

India is looking to significantly overhaul its legal codes, much of which are derived from outdated colonial/Victorian norms, which is long overdue.

I would be incredibly naive for us to assume Khameini was just another tinpot dictator. There’s no way that, knowing this day would come, he hasn’t made a priority of building institutional resilience designed to withstand his demise and/or an attack from Israel/US. He was in his late 80s. We can be sure that the conversation around who would succeed him was happening even before this war started.

As terrible as he was, he was by no means politically unintelligent. Unfortunately we can’t say the same for America’s leadership at the moment.

Regime change is incredibly difficult work, even with strong political will and support from the people. America arguably had that with Afghanistan, and even with much of the resources of the world, ultimately failed.

Could militant Christianity play a role in ending to the western Roman empire and the American one as well? Would be an interesting case of history repeating itself.

Usually how those divisions occurred is much more interesting.

I’m fascinated that certain ideas have persisted over millennia and curious what it is about them that has captured minds so consistently. Religion, but more broadly spirituality, seems to have a constant presence throughout human conciousness and that is quite remarkable.

I think you’d run into trouble with the definition you’ve offered - worship of a single God. In Advaita Vedanta, as a prominent age old example of pantheism, we are all part of the divine. There is not worship of a distinct entity seperate from ourselves, which is a defining characteristic of the practical application monotheism.

Sufism on the other hand has pantheistic elements (beleiving that all creation is part of the divine) but ultimately includes worship of a single distinct divine entity ie. Allah/God.

Agree that we don’t need to go too deep into semantics.

Pantheism is non dualistic. It is a philosophy where we are all part of the divine. There is no distinct god. In monotheism, god is a distinct entity. I wouldn’t categorize pantheism under monotheism.

Hierarchy is inherent to monotheism specifically. Polytheism can be hierarchical but often is less so.

As someone working in the medical field this was accurate perhaps 20 years ago and now things have gone the opposite direction - many doctors are wary of prescribing opioids, even when it’s justified, out of fear it will lead to addiction.

Religion can certainly be problematic but I think its worth bringing up how monotheism specifically acts as a mind virus at its worst. It’s inherently exclusivist and closed minded, priming people to see those that don’t believe in their god as not human and can even act as justification to bring pain, suffering and death upon nonbelievers. It’s also inherently centralized and authoritarian which is why it to works synergistically with oppressive forms of governence.

Polytheism is riddled with mystical thinking but, generally, beleiving in more than one god makes it more difficult to use it as a justification to hurt people that don’t believe in your god. By having a wide variety of divinities it is naturally decentralized.

Christianity wiped out Roman polytheism with relative ease and ushered in a millenia long dark age. Politicians/Rulers of long past and even today recognize the coercive and unifying power of monotheism and are often keen to wield it to stamp out dissent and concentrate power.

Monotheism is also effective at priming people to accept autocracy. If you believe in one supreme all knowing deterministic god then it’s not that hard to believe in a human ruler wield absolute power as god’s chosen one.

Democracy and monotheism in many way incompatible phiosophies. It’s why the Greeks, South Asian and indigineous confederacies were able to arrive at democractic systems at various periods in history (they were not monotheist) and also why the West had to institute seperation of church and state to become democratic.

I say this not to disparage spirituality as a whole. I personally have been made better by it and believe that it’s core to the human experience but acknowledge that some do not feel a need for it. What we need to be wary of is monotheism. It has brought great civilizations to ruin and promotes conformity of thought which stifles human ingenuity.

The answer to your question is a resounding no but you both need to be on the same page. Is there any real risk of you developing deeper feelings that will hurt you in the future if/when you’re cast aside? Are you ready to be cast aside on terms that are not your own if his parents decided it’s time for him to get serious? Would you be comfortable with going from his priority to a distraction in one fell swoop when things get real? Would you simply end the relationship at that point?

If you feel respected by him and his family and you’re cool with it not going any further / potentially ending abruptly then sounds like you’re okay with the circumstances.

You’re in a relationship with a guaranteed expiry date. Traditionally relationships were a means to an end (marriage), now they can be much more sophisticated. Are you truly satisfied with terms of your relationship and most likely outcomes?

If there were a person who treats you great, fucks you good and gets you but also could be a long term partner, would you rather be in that situation? Do you think you’re wasting time by not looking for that person? Is not the oppurtunity cost of this relationship too high if that’s the case? Is there a part of you that feels your investment in this relationship is a sunk cost that makes it difficult to look for alternatives?

It really comes down to whether you want a long term relationship or not. If that’s not a priority to you then you’re fine. If it is, then you may be passing on something even better and you need to decide if it’s time to go look for that.

There is a South Indian film that takes on this idea.

Two nearly century year grandparents have fallen into a routine of elderly living, taking care of each other with some help from the kids.

One day the grandfather finds a love letter from another man addressed to his wife from over 50 years ago. He is livid and wants a divorce despite their near 75 year relationship.

The family largely tries to dissuade him but he is determined to pursue divorce. His wife largely remains silent throughout all of this.

Ultimately a daughter who the grandfather has estranged for going on her own path returns and the context of the grandmother’s affair is revealed.

The grandfather was a flawed character with an inflexible patriarchal view on family dynamics (a fairly global norm in the 1950s and 60s). He has shown growth into a more egalitarian mindset since then.

However, when they prematurely lose their eldest son to a drowning accident, he struggles to cope. He turns to alcohol and while being lost in the bottle his wife (the grandmother, who is also mourning) has to find a way to keep the family together, raise the kids, manage the household entirely on her own.

It was during this period that the affair occurs. A man in the community offers the grandma emotional support while the grandfather is trying to drink his grief away, detached entirely from his family in any meaningful way.

When the grandfather comes to know that it occurred during a period of life that he has come to regret, he forgives her, as she forgives him for his detachment while grieving the loss of their son. Having reconciled they die peacefully together in their sleep.

I completely agree with you that obsessive monogamy is toxic. I think if someone is cheating “casually” in a mutually agreed upon monogamous relationship then that is a red line and disrespectful. However, real life can get pretty complicated and no one should be entering a relationship expecting to exert absolute control over their partners body / intimacy. That is incredibly toxic

This entire thread just makes me mourn the quality of history education in this part of the world.

Which nation, through a proxy war with the USSR, armed and empowered the progenitor of the Taliban?

Nearly everyone here desperately needs a crash course in how this part of the world creates the circumstances for conflict and instability elsewhere. If you look closely enough you’ll see, from the colonial era to now, it was done with (often times malicious) intention.

The amazing thing about American foreign policy is that it thinks it can fix the problems it creates and it essentially never can.