rayusa

in 2025, 23.1 million children were born in india, ranking 1st in the world in terms of birth numbers. in second place is china (8.7 million), nearly 3 times fewer. one out of every 6 children born in the world is from india. this figure, by the way, is the statistics for children born within india's borders; the indian diaspora abroad is quite crowded too, so a high number will be coming from there as well. over in their cousins' pakistan, 6.9 million children were born in a year, ranking 4th in the world by number. this means that 50-60 years from now, people of indian subcontinent origin will dominate the world population, with nigeria's and china's populations being at significant numbers too, of course. those who are white caucasian are generally declining in number, their reproduction rates aren't enough to replace the population.

there's no point writing as though the public suddenly went mad and started hunting migrants in the streets. the event that drove the public into the streets has no explicable side to it as it is, and on top of that, the authorities saying "the footage puts migrants in a difficult position, posts like these should be banned and punished" pushed people completely over the edge.

by the way, elon musk made a post a few days ago about the two iraqi migrants who raped a 7-year-old girl in the city of essen in germany, saying "they should be executed." so what did the germans realize? the case had been hidden from the german public, and the great majority of the german people had no idea what was going on.

in many european countries, the uk, sweden, the netherlands, germany, and ireland chief among them, there's a horrific crime wave caused by migrants, and the governments have busied themselves protecting these marauding hordes instead of their own citizens. the number of arabs, which was under 500 thousand across all of europe 30 years ago, has now passed 25 million. how many africans there are is unknown. the peoples of europe have only just started waking up to the fact that they've been sold out by politicians, and it's probably too late now.

they are selling a company that lost 5 billion dollars last year at a 1.8 trillion dollar valuation. there's no limit to human stupidity.

we take a group of children away from their families and keep them locked in a place they never wanted to be in. we don't let them go to the bathroom, drink water, or even eat whenever they want. talking is forbidden too. we yell at them constantly. sleeping or crying is also not allowed, and if they do it, we yell even more. once a day, at a time we choose, they're allowed to eat whatever food we decide, but only for a limited amount of time. and on top of all that, we charge their families a lot of money for it.

"science is the only true guide in life."

steve hanke

hosted both clark gable's and marilyn monroe's last completed film.

(see: the misfits)

socrates left behind no writings. he considers himself the wisest person because he knows that he knows nothing.

a site that completely bypasses the whole "download, install, deal with it" part of the old console days and moved everything into the browser. http://gam.onl/

it has a pretty extensive archive ranging from ps1 to nes, sega to arcade. you click, the game opens. it handles the emulator + rom business in the background, and all that's left for you is that nostalgic "just one more round" feeling.

of course, the copyright side of things is a bit of a gray area, and you might run into ads/pop-ups, but as a concept, it's a lazy gamer's dream: no installation, no config, straight to the game.

in short: your childhood, in the form of a chrome tab.

sweden's qualification for the world cup was an absolute farce. i honestly can't remember ever seeing such an undeserved achievement in my life. you finish dead last in your qualifying group with 2 points, and let me emphasize this, just because you beat the likes of slovakia, estonia, and azerbaijan in nations league c, you get to play in the playoffs. i mean, you're playing in the playoffs because, per the rules, you got relegated in the previous nations league cycle. then, because you're not seeded in the playoffs, the match you were supposed to play away at ukraine ends up being played on neutral ground in spain. then, by sheer luck of the draw, you beat ukraine on neutral ground, and again by luck of the draw, you end up playing poland at home in the final. you beat them at home too and book your spot in the finals. having all of this line up back-to-back just wasn't fair in any way.

first and foremost, this whole nations league nonsense needs to go. why are you rewarding failure? if you absolutely insist on having some kind of incentive, then give that extra spot to teams in leagues a and b so that teams actually fight to get promoted to those leagues. why is a team getting special treatment just because it beat azerbaijan and estonia in league c?

the playoff system itself also needs a serious overhaul. just have all the matches played on neutral ground in a single host country, like the european cups did during covid. today, turkey was the only away team to advance, even though on paper the away teams were actually stronger, which goes to show how much home advantage matters.

this is what happens when incompetents are running the show. then again, uefa probably figures, "as long as the big teams make it, who cares about the rest." hopefully they'll move past this mindset and we'll get a fairer qualification process.

no longer last in national public education ranking. education week's latest quality counts report card ranks the silver state 50th among the 50 states and the district of columbia. new mexico dropped to 51st.

in the fall of 1959, khrushchev accepted an invitation to visit the united states. the visit, and his meetings with president eisenhower, created hope for a permanent "thaw" in the cold war. to reduce tensions further, the two leaders planned a conference with great britain and france in may 1960, to discuss the divided nation of germany. but, on may 1, 1960, the russians shot down a high-altitude american spy plane called a u-2, which was flying over soviet territory. at first, the u.s. government said it was only a weather plane, but soviet leader khrushchev revealed that the pilot of the plane was alive and had confessed. the meeting that had been planned quickly collapsed, and the cold war continued.

nietzsche's "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" as an epistemic method

friedrich nietzsche argued that hardship is essential for personal and intellectual growth. a masochistic epistemologist might deliberately seek out suffering—physical, mental, or existential—to reach higher knowledge. this could include exposing oneself to extreme contradictions in philosophy, embracing cognitive dissonance, or deliberately engaging with unsettling ideas to refine one's perspective.

the “trial by fire” academic approach

some scholars believe that only by putting themselves under extreme academic pressure—sleep deprivation, obsessive study habits, grueling argumentation—can they truly grasp a subject. the belief is that true knowledge comes not just from learning, but from enduring the exhaustion and mental anguish of relentless intellectual pursuit. think of law students cramming for the bar or physicists pushing their minds to the brink in pursuit of theoretical breakthroughs.

zen koans and the agony of unanswerable questions

zen buddhism employs koans—paradoxical riddles meant to frustrate and dismantle logical reasoning (e.g., what is the sound of one hand clapping?). the frustration, the repeated mental failure, and the ego death that comes from realizing the futility of logic are all considered necessary steps toward enlightenment. in this sense, knowledge is acquired through self-inflicted epistemic suffering.

the soviet “sharashka” model—knowledge through forced labor

during stalin’s reign, many of the soviet union’s best scientists and engineers were imprisoned in sharashkas—secret research labs inside labor camps. they were forced to innovate under harsh conditions. some of the soviet union’s most significant technological advances (including early space technology) were developed by prisoners enduring immense suffering. this raises the idea that the best insights may arise not in comfort, but under extreme duress.

extreme sports and the limits of perception

some athletes—especially in extreme sports like free solo climbing or ultramarathons—report a hyper-aware, almost mystical state of knowledge that comes only when their bodies and minds are pushed beyond normal endurance. pain becomes an epistemic tool: suffering leads to heightened perception, clarity, and a new understanding of the body’s and mind’s limits.

self-destructive art as an epistemic practice

some artists—like marina abramovic—deliberately put themselves through pain or suffering as a way to achieve higher artistic and existential understanding. her work rhythm 0 (where she let the audience do anything to her body, including cutting her) reflects the idea that true artistic insight requires masochistic exposure to suffering.

stoic voluntary hardship—learning through deprivation

stoics like seneca and epictetus encouraged deliberately living in poverty, enduring cold, and denying oneself pleasures to cultivate wisdom. they believed that true knowledge of life and self-control comes not from intellectual reflection alone, but from experiencing pain, deprivation, and the stripping away of comfort.

monastic self-flagellation as a path to divine knowledge

some christian monks, especially in medieval times, practiced self-flagellation as a way to deepen their spiritual understanding. the belief was that physical suffering purified the soul and led to divine revelation—an extreme form of masochistic epistemology where knowledge of god comes only through pain.

“red-pilling” and the psychological pain of awakening

some modern ideological movements embrace the idea that “waking up” to the truth requires suffering—being ostracized, experiencing mental turmoil, or even enduring social exile. this is evident in radical political or philosophical circles where undergoing mental anguish is seen as proof of gaining real knowledge.

hacker culture—“the struggle is the learning”

the hacker ethos often values breaking systems, struggling through endless failures, and enduring sleepless nights debugging code as the only legitimate path to real technical mastery. a masochistic epistemologist in this domain might argue that the more painful the process of acquiring knowledge, the more deeply it is understood.

cervantes did not grow up dreaming of becoming a writer. his only dream was to become a soldier known for his bravery.

at 24, he achieves that dream. he and his brother join the naval battle of lepanto. the pope declares that all soldiers who fight in the battle will have their sins forgiven. later in life, cervantes will say that using religion for politics is deeply wrong. he will be excommunicated multiple times.

he returns to spain five years later, having lost the use of his left arm in battle. in his pocket he carries a letter praising his courage, written and signed by don john of austria, leader of the holy league.

now his hope is to find work using that letter, even if he only has one functional arm. but as his ship approaches the coast of barcelona, it is captured by algerian pirates.

cervantes is both fortunate and unfortunate. because he is carrying don john’s letter, he is considered a valuable prisoner. a valuable prisoner means a high ransom. but he is also unlucky, because no one back home has the money to pay that ransom.

after several years, just as he is about to be transported to istanbul as a slave (yes, human trafficking is not new), his family manages to gather the ransom by borrowing money from the trinitarian order. after five years as a soldier and five years in captivity, cervantes finally returns to spain.

now his goal is to pay back his family’s debt. he chooses the most promising path: turning the story of his captivity into writing. at the time, theater is the fastest road to fame and income. a playwright with a successful play can make good money. the most successful playwrights even have their scripts printed and sold to growing audiences.

so cervantes’ new dream is to turn the story of his captivity into a dramatic play and make a living. but the theater market is tough. people are tired of heavy dramas, and cervantes cannot succeed there either.

to survive, he takes work as a tax collector. but he’s accused of mismanaging funds, and now he finds himself imprisoned again in his own homeland. prison gives him time to think.

he realizes there is another popular form of entertainment. medieval europe has long adored stories of wandering knights and their adventures: romances.

but cervantes also sees something new happening: printed books are spreading everywhere, and the number of people who look at the world through literature is rising. the world is filling with stories, and in such a world, how people read becomes just as important as what they read.

so he writes don quixote using a completely new literary approach. it is experimental. it does not fit existing genres. it needs a new name. the spanish word novela captures its essence: something new. (this is where the english word novel gets its meaning as both “new” and “a long narrative story.”)

when don quixote becomes successful, cervantes runs into a new enemy: literary pirates. the book is translated into many languages and sent across the ocean to the americas. (it has been about 120 years since europeans began colonizing the continent.) people start dressing like don quixote and sancho panza in the streets. an anonymous writer even publishes a fake sequel, claiming cervantes has no exclusive right to the characters.

cervantes can’t accept this. so he writes his own sequel. the public wants a continuation, and they don’t care who writes it. cervantes makes a clever move: in his sequel, he deliberately contradicts the events of the pirate sequel and even includes a scene where don quixote challenges the “false don quixote.” the fraudulent version fades into obscurity.

but cervantes knows the real enemy is not the pirate writer. the real enemy is the new world created by the printing press. a writer can depend on printers to spread their work, but printers can also reprint a profitable book without the author’s permission and never lose sleep over it. in this new mechanical age, authors are at a disadvantage.

even though cervantes creates a new literary form that surpasses the popularity of romances, he dies poor about ten years after don quixote is published.

today, literature is losing ground to video games and short-form videos. the question is no longer “which book is suitable for children?” but “which websites are safe for children?”

cervantes was the one who began this struggle. don quixote fought windmills; modern writers fight screens.

stoicism is more than an ancient philosophy. it is a toolkit for modern life. it began in athens around 300 bce with zeno of citium and later grew in rome through the words of seneca, epictetus, and marcus aurelius. the central idea is simple: we cannot control the world, but we can always control how we respond to it. that is where true strength and freedom live.

“we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” seneca
“it is not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” epictetus
“you have power over your mind, not outside events. realize this, and you will find strength.” marcus aurelius

the miranda warning is a statement police must say to someone when they arrest them, to tell them their rights.

“you have the right to remain silent. anything you say can be used against you in court. you have the right to a lawyer. if you can’t afford one, one will be provided for you.”