I understand the appeal of what you’re describing. The relief people feel when they no longer believe that everything depends on them can be profound. When that pressure lifts, attention often shifts outward. The mind stops circling so tightly around its own story. There is usually more space for patience, generosity, and simple attention to other people.

But I think the interpretation you’re placing on that experience goes a step further than the experience itself requires.

The deeper issue here is the sense of self. Most of us move through life with the feeling that there is a real subject at the center of experience. It seems as though there is a thinker somewhere behind the eyes producing thoughts, making decisions, and carrying responsibility for everything that happens.

Yet if you look carefully at your own mind, that picture becomes harder to maintain.

Thoughts appear on their own. You do not know what the next one will be until it arrives. The same is true for emotions, impulses, and even intentions. If you pause and try to observe the exact moment a thought is created, you will notice that it simply shows up. The sense that “I am thinking this” usually arrives just after the thought itself.

So the self we feel ourselves to be is not nearly as solid as it seems. It behaves less like an inner controller and more like a narrative that keeps getting updated after events occur.

When someone says they have surrendered to God, something psychologically significant often happens. They stop insisting that the small character in their mental story is responsible for holding the world together. That shift relaxes a lot of internal tension. The mind no longer feels compelled to defend and promote the self at every moment.

And when that contraction loosens, a few predictable things tend to follow. Anxiety eases. Defensiveness drops. It becomes easier to care about what happens to other people because attention is no longer monopolized by the maintenance of a fragile self image.

But notice what actually produced the change. The benefit came from loosening identification with the story of the self.

You do not need to believe that the universe is guided by a supernatural intelligence for that shift to occur. Traditions that spent centuries examining the mind reached similar conclusions without invoking a creator at all. They noticed that what we call the self is largely constructed out of thoughts, memories, and sensations appearing in consciousness.

Seeing that clearly can alter the way experience unfolds. The constant effort to defend “me” begins to look unnecessary. Concern for other minds arises more naturally once attention is no longer locked inside that narrative.

So the freedom you’re describing is real. But interpreting it as evidence that a divine mind has taken control of events is an additional step the experience itself doesn’t justify. What the experience actually reveals is how much strain comes from believing that there is a solid self at the center of everything.

If someone wants to explore that question directly rather than adopting a belief about it, there is a simple experiment available. Spend enough time observing the mind without distraction. The ten-day silent retreats taught in the tradition of S. N. Goenka introduce the practice of Vipassana meditation in a structured way. Ten days of carefully watching thoughts, sensations, and reactions can reveal quite a lot about how the sense of “I” is constructed moment to moment.

Information about those courses is available here:
https://www.dhamma.org/en/about/vipassana

What form of magnesium do you take?

Magnesium supplements usually come in different forms because magnesium is combined with other molecules to improve absorption or create specific effects.

Common types and their main benefits:
• Magnesium glycinate – Good absorption; supports sleep, relaxation, and anxiety.
• Magnesium citrate – Helps with digestion and constipation; mild laxative.
• Magnesium oxide – Contains a lot of magnesium but low absorption; often used for acid reflux or constipation.
• Magnesium malate – Supports energy production and muscle function.
• Magnesium L-threonate – May help memory, focus, and brain health.
• Magnesium taurate – Supports heart health and blood pressure.

I understand the comfort in believing someone is in charge of how things unfold. When life feels uncertain, that idea can be reassuring.

But the fact that things can change at any moment doesn’t necessarily require a divine plan. Change is simply the nature of reality. History shows that situations that look hopeless sometimes shift in surprising ways.

Fear is also natural. The real skill isn’t replacing fear with belief, but learning that we can face uncertainty without being overwhelmed by it.

In that sense, the deeper confidence might not come from faith that everything will work out, but from discovering that we’re capable of meeting whatever happens.

A lot of people reading this thread might walk away thinking the science is settled in favor of Bitcoin mining being environmentally beneficial. That’s not really what the academic literature shows.

It’s true that the “energy per transaction” metric is widely criticized because Bitcoin’s energy use is driven by mining competition and hashrate, not by the number of transactions. But pointing that out doesn’t invalidate the broader body of research on Bitcoin’s electricity consumption.

The papers cited here didn’t “debunk” environmental concerns. Most of them simply argue that some projections were exaggerated or based on questionable assumptions. That’s normal scientific debate. They don’t conclude that Bitcoin mining is environmentally positive.

At the same time, there is emerging research exploring potential upsides such as using curtailed renewable energy, acting as flexible demand for power grids, or reducing methane flaring. Those ideas are being studied, but they’re still case-specific and far from a global consensus.

So the reality is more nuanced. The literature doesn’t support the extreme claim that Bitcoin is an environmental disaster, but it also doesn’t support the claim that it’s broadly a climate solution. The impact depends heavily on the energy sources miners use and how mining integrates with local power systems.

She may be expressing:
1. Online identity fatigue
2. Fear of a monotonous adult life
3. Low faith that effort will meaningfully improve life

Many teens who talk this way in high school shift their views in their early-mid 20s once they gain agency, mobility, and real choices outside school structures.

School is a uniquely constrained environment, which amplifies feelings of artificiality.

0 BTC (genesis reward was 50 BTC; halvings start at block 210,000)

What is it?

The monetary thesis here is solid. The architecture less so.
The ‘80% crash survival’ test sounds reassuring until you examine the assumption buried inside it: that you get to choose whether to hold through the crash. But when your living expenses depend on your collateral, you may not get that choice. Strike’s margin call triggers at 70% LTV, with 24 hours to resolve it. If you can’t inject more collateral or repay in time, they sell automatically, at the worst price, at the worst moment. And under their own terms, that forced sale is a taxable event. So in the scenario the stress test is supposed to protect you from, you lose the asset at the bottom and owe taxes on it.
There’s also a baseline cost that needs to be named: 12% APR. Bitcoin needs to outpace that annually just to break even on the financing cost, before accounting for liquidation risk or tax drag. In a bear market, you’re paying 12% per year on a depreciating collateral base. That’s not a small headwind.
The deeper irony is philosophical. Satoshi’s whole project was built on one diagnosis: trusted third parties are security holes. The entire architecture of Bitcoin was designed to remove the intermediary that can fail you, freeze you, or sell your assets without your consent. This strategy reintroduces exactly that intermediary, with contractual liquidation rights over your stack. You haven’t exited the old system. You’ve added a more complex dependency on it, with leverage on top.

I would begin by questioning the comfort hidden inside what sounds like certainty.

You are saying there is no real struggle, that what looks like conflict is merely a creature flailing against a conclusion already written before time began. But if that is true, then history stops being a moral arena and becomes theater.

Pharaoh was not defiant, just cast.
Rome was not cruel, just useful.
Every tyrant, every oppressor, every architect of suffering becomes not guilty but necessary.

And if the powerful who suppress truth are merely unwitting instruments of a divine plan, then what exactly are they guilty of? If their actions serve the very counsel they oppose, condemnation becomes incoherent. You cannot meaningfully damn someone for playing the role your script required.

That is not justice. That is choreography.

You describe the cross as a triumph, a moment when the enemy believed he had won but in fact guaranteed his defeat. But if this outcome was settled before the foundations of the world, then the suffering was not a risk taken. It was a requirement fulfilled.

Which raises an uncomfortable question.

If victory required torture by design, is this redemption or necessity dressed as mercy?

You also move quickly from theology into politics, suggesting that those who wield influence today are participants in some cosmic rebellion. I am far less impressed by that move.

Not because power does not exist, it plainly does, but because once you interpret worldly events as manifestations of principalities and powers, you have lifted them out of the realm of evidence and placed them into myth.

And myth has a peculiar advantage. It cannot be disproven.

The danger of believing the ending is already written is not merely intellectual, it is moral. If the last chapter guarantees victory, then vigilance becomes optional. Inquiry becomes secondary. Responsibility becomes diluted.

History becomes something we watch unfold instead of something we shape.

I do not find reassurance in the idea that every enemy is already under someone’s feet in principle. That kind of certainty has too often been the companion of passivity or worse, of cruelty justified as inevitability.

If the struggle is real, then what we do matters.

If it is not, then neither do we.

And I see no reason to surrender the former for the comfort of the latter.

Drop all 30 on a table and don’t move them.
Title: “Authentic.”

The laziest art idea isn’t designed.
It just happens.

If this wins, it proves the concept.

"No man is crushed by misfortune unless he has first been deceived by prosperity" -Seneca

The metaphor is elegant, but it quietly smuggles in teleology.

Architecture implies an architect. Design implies intention. Evolution has neither. Natural selection produces the appearance of design without foresight, purpose, or blueprint in the conscious sense.

If parental love is a load-bearing wall, it’s not because it was meant to uphold the human edifice. It persists because lineages lacking it tended not to. That’s differential replication, not architectural intent.

Geometry doesn’t float above the stone, it is a description of how matter arranges under constraint. Likewise, consciousness isn’t an inhabitant of biology; it is biology organizing at a certain level of complexity.

Meaning, then, isn’t a foundation in the structural sense. It’s a subjective valuation produced by organisms shaped by selection. Powerful, yes. Transcendent, not necessarily.

The structure remains upright not because it has purpose, but because it has not yet collapsed.