It's been awhile since I've written anything but I think that's for the best.
The energy around everything is just off for me this year and I've been doing everything in slow motion. It feels like the world, down to a micro-level, is caught up in tension and waiting to go somewhere, but it won't.
Mostly I've just been watching anime and listening to Star Wars books on audible, both of which I highly recommend you start doing right away. A big part of life for me is just observing content and extracting out a greater meaning from it. I think that's a big part of what keeps me sane and decently motivated.
I've said before that creating things is the purpose of life, but I also think just learning about and enjoying things in general is a big part of that.
If you haven't seen it already, Frieren is an anime about an immortal elf girl trying to travel to heaven to see her friends that died 80 years ago. Flashbacks appear frequently, showing how detached she was from everyone around her, and frankly it's quite sad. Missing out on people because you allow your connection with them to decay is one of the many great mistakes in life. I imagine it's common for people, even within families, to just stop talking because they got out of the habit. I can think of a few examples personally, though I'm trying to address this.
Staying connected with people takes a lot more effort than it seems.
So here's my thoughts on this year:
I don't have many thoughts on the election to be honest.
There's a theory I've heard a few times that they'll install Trump.
Personally, that's just too many layers of 4D chess for me. If the government is equally likely to install either one of them then I don't see any reason to analyze it seriously. I still haven't made up my mind on what happened in 2020. Plus, we don't really know who we'll have on the ballot to vote for, Trump will probably be in prison, and Brandon is ancient.
The energy around the election just feels dead to me. Feels like no one cares, which I think is for the best. I hate when people get worked up over politics and argue over it.
Obviously, you should vote for Trump for the cheaper gas prices alone, he'd also likely slow down the Ukraine war quite a bit. I doubt I'll be voting, but that has more to do with me not caring enough to go out of my way to do it than anything else.
I think regardless of who gets in, Israel will do some tricks to gracefully lose the war so they can continue to have enemies in Gaza.
The messaging surrounding the Gazans all being evil is marketed really well, so much so that all the war-crime stuff Israel is doing is mostly seen as justified. Personally, I don't really care that much. My brain shuts off when I start hearing the genocide rhetoric.
I think the Palestinians should've surrendered a long time ago, it's extremely clear by now that their allies don't care about them and will never step in to defend them. They're just dying for no logical reason, and a big part of the blame for the casualties is on them, that is assuming that Hamas is a legit group and not an Israeli op.
You can only care about so many things in life, and I've never been about pretending to care for people across the world.
The Ukraine war will likely drag on into 2026-2028. I doubt Europe will provide any soldiers, but even if they do, it would need to be a few hundred thousand to make a difference. France sending 10,000 soldiers there wouldn't change anything, aside from providing Russia with compelling PR material to keep the war from becoming unpopular domestically. Ukraine can't launch any massive operations due to the lack of soldiers, and Russia doesn't have much of a reason to simply capture Kiev and subjugate the remaining population.
With the huge amount of women refugees that have fled, Russia would have to manage a huge population of incels with many reasons to hate them. America could just throw a few trillion dollars into the now Russian-controlled Ukraine and start a rebellion if enough of these guys are left alive by the end of the war.
Another alternative is that Russia gets outspent and has to take a huge L while going home with the bit of land they've captured. I say huge L because in 2022, four regions of Ukraine voted to join Russia, and the Russian government agreed to the results, so not following through on securing the territories would look really bad.
I don't think any of these wars will blow up, and I predict the election will be peaceful due to Trump being much less culturally relevant than he was in 2016 and 2020. The people that even know what he got charged for are all old, and his refusal to get on Twitter has really hurt his brand in my opinion.
Overall, I'm pretty whitepilled for 2024.
2025 will be another big AI year and we'll be even closer to the dream of full-functional ai gfs and I'm looking forward to that.
