5434a
1yr ago
It's worth getting Stories Of Your Life And Others too. There's quite a bit of overlap in the included stories but the variations are worth the duplications.
5434a
1yr ago
Women appear more psychologically threatening than physical adversity, hence the procrastination and post-Hock rationalisation.
Mountains are static and predictable.
5434a
1yr ago
It's a truism but they're going where men don't. All those activities that you'd never consider, and if you did you would dismiss as at the best a bit girly. The girlier the activity the more women will be there and the less men will want to go even in the knowledge the there are lots of women there. At the top end you have "wellness" classes that counsel eating as the salve for your neuroses, or losing weight and getting fit by sitting still and breathing. There'll be a few men there. At the far end you have a club for knitting bootees for premature babies. They won't be at the model railway hot sauce tournament, where even if you're not remotely interested in those things you probably wouldn't be uncomfortable if you washed up there by chance.
Adding on to your spear-not-net fishing advice, the most pragmatic suggestion I can think of would be shops, specifically food shops and supermarkets. Firstly you have to go there anyway. Second you can probably get some indication (and give some indication) of who is more likely to be single by whether they have a basket and are browsing the wine section or if they have a trolley and they're loading it up with mascot breakfast cereal and lunchables. You can somewhat narrow the demographics by time of day too - retirees, school mums, working lunchers, unemployeds, school mums again, working diners, weekly family shoppers, then finishing with evening drinkers - or by swapping the supermarket for the health food shop or the bijou bakery. To some degree the times and places that you shop will naturally select for your own matching demographic. And third you have a lot of opportunities for open-ended casual interactions and brief conversation starters, and the people are in flux so there's less of a weird sense of imposition in sparking those brief conversations that there might be in a bar or cafe where people sit at one table for the duration of their visit.
If it's going to succeed though I'd say it's probably best approached as a low stakes strategy where the expected outcome is weighed heavily towards buying the ingredients for a nice meal, weighed moderately to sharing a pleasant moment with a stranger, and minimal expectation placed on landing the woman of your dreams after five minutes cruising the bog roll aisle. The advantage is that you get endless repeat chances plus the opportunity to raise your culinary skills in the meantime. You also have a baked-in face-saving retreat of the need to complete your shopping the moment any promising interaction risks becoming awkward, unlike a bar where you might have just bought a fresh drink or a social group that doesn't finish for another hour or more. It's a bit like talking to someone in the street but without the sense of interrupting their travel.
[Caveat: I've never done this but I have had pleasant interactions with women in the supermarket regardless, and I'm an introvert with resting fuck-off face who lives in a fairly socially reserved area and skates through the shop on rails to get out the door as soon as possible.]
It's something I've had happening with archive.ph since forever. Not sure what the issue is.
Edit: Took five minutes to look into a bit and other reports point to it being due to my using Cloudflare for DNS lookups. There's a workaround posted at https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/118haqg/archiveph_webpage_archive_as_site_is/jwhqbsh/ but I don't care enough to go digging in my network's config to apply it right now.
5434a
1yr ago
I'd like to read the whole article but archive.ph loops on the captcha page. Does anyone have a workaround, or can copy and paste the text here?
5434a
1yr ago
There's now a direct economic incentive for comparatively ordinary women to be aware of and cater to men's desires [...] And men are, thus, getting the signal that it is fine to ask women to do these things
True, but...
women know precisely what men want in a sexual partner and are willing to provide it... but only outside the context of a committed relationship.
...your mistake is conflating the narrow context of participating on OnlyFans with the far broader context of "outside a committed relationship". Any OnlyFans user who is confused about this will likely find it clarified the first time he tries to transfer his experience to Tinder where, instead of having his requests to see a pretty girl's bumhole happily accommodated (for a price), he will be blocked and reported. At that point the man's expectations should be suitably recalibrated.
There's probably a parallel miscalibration where some men will treat OnlyFans performers as if they were actually on Tinder by trying to force the interaction into the frame of an intimate relationship. The difference is that the OF performers are incentivised to play along to keep the simpbucks rolling in. That seems like a bigger risk of distorting men's impressions about what is normal.
5434a
1yr ago
The same reason I said no to the guy who pulled up alongside me while I was walking down the road and offered to give me a Cartier watch: it reeks of bait.
I still don't know what the attached string was in that instance because I told him I already had a watch and walked away, but I'd guess it would get parlayed into helping him out with something that involved me handing over a sum of money on the basis that he'd already helped me and besides I'd still come out quids in so why not, fair's fair, thought you were a friendly person, is this how you treat people who want to help you, etc.
So yeah, he gives them $500. But he's still using them as a means to an end, so they're still at least half right in their scepticism.
5434a
1yr ago
He explained in the Small Scale Questions thread that it's slang for being thrown/cast, in this case being cast into the wilderness.
5434a
1yr ago
I have no idea, that's the question isn't it. But if you can entertain the idea that there are women who aren't doing as well as they could because some women are social fuck ups too then it stands to reason there should be practical measures they can take to improve their outcomes. It could range from acknowledging the fertility window, to the poor dating prospects for single mothers, to making an effort to understand what most men want and don't want, through to basic stuff like how to flirt (put the damn phone down!), how to write more than three words on a dating site, and, like I said about PUA, what not to do.
Somewhere out there are women who think that collecting rescue animals, wearing dungarees, spending all day on tumblr and exclusively using photos of themselves in a group of 8 isn't hurting their chances. Moaning about the fact that men like looking at naked women on the internet isn't helping them. Neither is holding on to the idea that there's an athletic, high achieving career focused man who is yearning to take a single mother and her children on an all expenses paid round the world adventure, if only he'd hurry up and find her. "Men are even worse than you thought" is not what they need to hear. Otherwise they'll fall into the MGTOW cope trap where they spend 24/7 thinking about how awful the opposite sex while claiming they've forsworn any interest in them.
5434a
1yr ago
I have no evidence but I have a very strong hunch that the practical aspects of PUA were almost directly ported over from sales.
Actually I do have a piece of evidence: the way early PUA schemes were marketed showed a marked influence from the web 1.0 sales landing pages (single page, very long, repetitive endorsements from customers, repeated prompts to enter an email for the free book, etc). Also the use of sales terminology like "opening" and "closing".
I suppose it makes sense. You have young men doing sales, making decent money by using a few choice manipulation mechanisms. They decide first to switch to selling their selves to women, and then when it's shown that it works proceeding to selling their techniques back into the market. I think the innovative part of PUA was incorporating evo-psych to explain and contextualise why and how it works.
I think that's what makes FDS such an embarrassment; they show zero curiosity for figuring out what works, why it works, or even whether it works. They're stuck in a blend of basic "diet + cosmetics" magazine tier advice mixed with an internet flavoured radical feminism of pathologising, well, not even masculinity but more the failures of masculinity (porn brain, erectile dysfunction, general "scrote"-ness etc). For people who spend so long in front of the mirror they show a distinct lack of self-reflection. PUA tells men to stop doing what they're doing and do the difficult things they've been avoiding. FDS tells women to keep doing the same thing only more so.
Half the value of PUA is in simply learning what to avoid doing. You don't necessarily have to sell your soul, you can make a big improvement by ceasing to sabotage yourself with rose-tinted romanticism.
5434a
1yr ago
Finished Conan The Barbarian in The Phoenix On The Sword. Only 24 pages! Phew. Short stories rock.
Over to the other side of the spectrum for Brothers Karamazov at ~900 pages, and Dostoesvky doing his reverse Columbo act of "Chapter 3: I beg the reader's patience, for before I begin the introduction to the beginning, I must first include a preface to the beginning of the introduction".
What is it with old books and these interminable beginnings? It doesn't take that long to set the scene.
5434a
1yr ago
The Motte is a poorer place without posters like yourself providing a measure of counterbalance to the not uncommon tendency around here towards doompilled paranoia.
5434a
1yr ago
I think the problem is your message was so straight forward that it rushed to the objective which removed any ambiguity and plausible deniability from the interaction and explicitly cemented it into the frame of a capital D date. You were probably also too comprehensive with the if/else conditions.
"Doing anything this weekend?"
[response]
"Fancy [social activity]?"
[response]
"No big deal, maybe another time"
...and then there's nothing to have to pretend didn't happen, which is going to be challenging now because you went meta at the end.
On the plus side at least you tried, and shared it for open feedback, and now you can move past it with the benefit of hindsight and others' perspectives. Make a mistake and learn from it. That's better than passively wondering what if. Better luck next time.
5434a
1yr ago
The ASMR style stethoscopic mic'ing reminds me of the exaggerated grotesque Foley effects in Ren & Stimpy.
5434a
1yr ago
Selection bias. You only notice the socially refined peers, you won't see the ones who are failing out because they get nervous at the idea of making a phone call.
If you want to relate to your peers then ask them what motivates them and talk about it, and maybe discuss/explore how it doesn't motivate you. You're not obliged to agree with them.
Finish out the master's degree while thoroughly researching which branch and role of the military suits your aims (air force seems like the comfiest option to my untrained eyes). Talk to currently serving members before you even consider talking to the recruitment office. Sign up, travel the country/world (avoid front line combat), learn marketable skills within a clear hierarchy and away from the general public (about as far from an office job as you can reasonably get), get a solid reference from doing something generally held in good esteem by society, make friends and contacts, save your pay, leave ~30 with a good CV and much improved prospects. Also women like a man in uniform. If you don't like it you're still only 30 and you've got a decent foundation to pivot on. Reading Ancient Greek is cool but it's a luxury pursuit.
If you don't like that then you could learn to code and try to land a WFH/remote job, and if you don't like that then you need to start looking for a lucrative niche or building a business from scratch. Otherwise it's the office life for you. I'm guessing you don't like sales, see academia as an up-hill dead end and aren't about to retrain as a doctor or hit the jackpot as a YouTuber or a Substack writer.
Forget about "the best years are gone". Concentrate on setting yourself straight in the medium term so that when you do figure it out in your "still pretty good, maybe on reflection arguably better years" you're able to pursue it and achieve it instead of being stuck even deeper in a hole. Remember that you will turn 30 whatever happens, so you might as well look forward to doing something worthwhile before you find yourself looking back and wondering what you could have done.
It's corny but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria is a good way of planning your actions, you just need to make sure your scope is appropriate. You have to keep a good balance of short term plans to stay motivated by steadily ticking them off otherwise it can feel like the end goal is too far away.
5434a
1yr ago
INTJ, but the description of that type rings hollow in certain aspects. I suppose that's because the site is trying to sell its services to people who are seeking insights for their professional career development.
5434a
1yr ago
I'm the other way. To borrow your analogy I see it as more like the person who has a perfectly good computer that they could change the desktop wallpaper on whenever they choose but instead they fire up a hot glue gun and permanently fuse a bunch of sea shells and sequins to their monitor, and they still keep the default wallpaper anyway.
If someone thinks navy blue suits are too boring then get a bespoke mustard yellow suit instead, or just get some garish socks and an ugly tie. Most tattooed people these days wear a boss-friendly uniform over some cliche tattoos and regard themself among the social exiles while dilligently clocking in to yet another regulation 40 hour work week.
There's only one thing about a body that makes it fitting for displaying permanent imagery and that's the person it belongs to. That's why tattoos are used for identification; to tell other people which group a person belongs to and/or to prevent a person from telling other people they don't belong to that group. That's why tattoos are associated with exclusive groups, whether that's outlaw bikers, Maori tribesmen, Jews in Nazi Germany, football hooligans or military veterans. If there's no cause to be permanently identified with a specific group then you can use surface pigments for body-specific 2D decoration and traditional flat surfaces for any other 2D images.
5434a
1yr ago
I'm not a fan of the other comments here about how the attacks on him are justified by his unpopularity rather than whether he's guilty of anything more than a faux pas.
It's apology-and-move-on tier, but instead it's been placed in the fire-him-for-sexual-assault tier.
Okay. If that's how they want it to be. But the door swings both ways, and this overly broad interpretation logically leads to claims of having been sexually assaulted becoming comparable to enduring a sub-second celebratory kiss for a national triumph. Their own tactics are trivialising sexual assault. Perhaps that's how Rubiales should have responded.
I for one am still coming to terms with the revelation that I've been the victim of countless sexual assaults since I was a baby, mostly at the hands of my own family. I'm not sure I'm ready to unpack whether I myself may have inflicted the same disgusting crime on other innocent victims.
5434a
1yr ago
I don't know anything about programming other than that the demoscene is about doing the most with the least. What I admire is the enforced creativity that comes from working under hard limits, whether that's byte limits or haiku or vintage drum machines or whatever. It puts a genuinely unique character into the final product that is missing from high budget productions made with limitless choices. It's not had all the corners smoothed off, or to put it another way it's purposefully made out of corners that can't be smoothed off.
5434a
1yr ago
I'm not keen on fantasy but I like seminal genre fiction so I could be tempted to try out the first Conan book. Looks like The Phoenix on the Sword is the first story published, I'll grab that and see how I get on. Might be a while before I get round to starting it though.
Conan is one of the few golden age Arnold films I've never seen so I'll be reading with no preconceptions beyond having seen the poster/video cover.
5434a
1yr ago
I've seen a lot of women a lot older than Robbie engaged in a lot more unattractive roles that I nevertheless find much more attractive. It's not about age or the reputation of the characters she plays, it's about having different levels of response even if the subject is objectively "beautiful".
When I see Katey Sagal or Monica Belluci playing mama bear to a crime family I don't consider that their character is dangerous and low class, or that the actress is in her 50s. I see an attractive mediterranean brunette with nice tits. That's my type. When I see Robbie I see a photogenic blonde woman with an average body. That's a nice type, I can see that, but it's not mine.
5434a
1yr ago
That's how I understood it, which is fine if it's understood as such but from what I've seen he vigorously mods anyone with a different opinion from his "true" ratings. I'd say the arbitrariness is already beginning at the 3s, but that only speaks to my point about teasing out personal preferences from broader agreement.
It's a bit of a wasted opportunity because that sub isn't exactly unknown so it shouldn't be too hard for him to put together a survey, pin it to the top of the sub, and gather a statistically valid amount of responses. I suspect that there'd be some interesting disparities where some people really like certain types that others are basically indifferent to.
5434a
1yr ago
What's always confused me is where beauty becomes subjective. I will gladly acknowledge that Margot Robie is very good looking, but she also leaves me cold.
Where it gets confusing is wondering how many other people see the women I find attractive the same way I see Margot Robie. When I look at the row of canonical "10s" (sorry, "9.5s") linked at /r/truerateme I'd swap their placing with the 7s. For example Taylor Hill (whoever she is) could be an average checkout assistant. I say that because I used to work as a checkout assistant and had half a dozen colleagues who were more attractive and I still wouldn't have rated them as "1 in 50,000 ultra attractive top tier super models". Taylor Hill looks directly comparable to Summer Glau but with a slightly lower hairline, but Summer Glau is rated as 5.5 there!
I suppose no matter which way you cut it there will always be a degree of subjectivity that can't be captured in an objective description.
The best method I can think of to begin to start getting a handle on the matter would be to have people subjectively rank the set of faces in that chart and then figure out where the results overlap and where they split into groups who prefer different "types" that still share a lot of overlapping ratings within those types. Probably somewhere like that website (amihot.com? I can't remember) would also have a reasonable dataset. Until that question has more detail the "beauty is subjective" platitudes make an important, if overstated, point.
From the other side "hey" doesn't make much sense as a greeting as it's central meaning here would be to call attention to someone or something eg. "Hey, watch out for that hole!", "Hey, over here!" or "Hey! You pulled a trick on me!".
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