5434a
1mo ago
I think trans people have shared traits and interests that justify - make useful - the existence of the group term.
So do I when they're grouped as a sub category to a referent super category, but if we call them women the super category ceases to signify anything essential and becomes effectively arbitrary and correspondingly insignificant. (And when it's arbitrary I have no need to justify my opinion beyond it being an opinion that's mine. Back to square one, the circle created by trans rhetoric travels in both directions despite their intention.)
When I say "transwomen aren't even transwomen" I say it to contrast their own rhetoric and demonstrate their dependence on the binary they (selectively) disavow.
At base my argument is that "men who [choose to pursue and increase their femininity, AKA transwomen]" is legible. Each element points to something distinct even where the element might be fuzzy at the boundaries. "Transwomen are women who want to affirm their gender identity as women by pursuing feminine social signifiers" (the most charitable framing I can come up with) loses legibility the more you think about it as each element circles back to itself until the boundaries it depends on collapse into meaninglessness.
My own belief is that they do this because, less charitably, they are men who [want to be women and throw out these convoluted rationales to avoid the distress of acknowledging that they simply can't]. What they can do is increase/maximise their femininity, which is what they're already doing, and which I can't see anyway of discrediting. It's plausible, it's feasible, and it's legible. It doesn't float my boat, but it doesn't knit my brow either.
5434a
1mo ago
I've got a couple of things housemates who worked in similar sectors have left behind but honestly most B2B swag seems kind of shitty, although that might have been due to their entry level positions. Stationery. Toys. T-shirts. Nothing you'd really miss (so you leave it behind), and more like a grown up version of the stuff you would have found included directly inside every box of cereal. I suppose it's a different affair if you manage a multi-million dollar budget.
I refuse any loyalty points scheme more complex than "collect 10 stamps to claim a free coffee".
5434a
1mo ago
That's close, but I mean more along the lines of:
Packet of branded food item (coffee, cereal, yoghurt, soft drink, snack, etc)
"Collect X proofs of purchase and get a free Y!"
And the free Y is something durable and/or worthwhile, and the X proofs is realistic, not triple digits. Or if it's triple digits the Y has real monetary value like a games console. The branded items running the promotion were available in every shop, so it was designed to cultivate brand loyalty rather than loyalty to a chain of shops. Stamps were more agnostic about what you purchased and tend to be limited to one chain or a small consortium.
I suppose most marketing campaigns have transferred to apps, loyalty schemes and other sign up lists, but I get the impression those are focused on discounts and other volume sales promotions rather than straight up material freebies.
5434a
1mo ago
Beat them to the punch and send them a brief message on the day-of to cancel.
I'm joking of course but psychology and dating is so counterintuitive it would probably work.
5434a
2mo ago
I think you're being overly cautious and perfect's-the-enemy-of-good but fair play, you've considered that suggestion and it doesn't work for you. All I'd say is that for any bootstraps enterprise to work you're better thinking of it like a penniless illegal immigrant would approach it, ie bending the rules, delay spending until you've got the work assured, bargain hunting for materials, and starting with the small jobs no one else wants.
Magic man repairs, maybe? That looks like a basic/niche kit could fit in a backpack, there's no end of broken shit for free you can take home to practice on and then throw out again, and people pay top dollar to avoid redoing expensive work. Just an idea.
My underlying point was that identifying practical issues and potentially overcoming them to achieve a material result is more productive and stimulating than reading a book, writing a song, lifting some weights or listening to a preacher. It's about finding something external to focus on that you can effect a direct meaningful change upon. Admittedly that's a lot harder if you need it to be profitable but it's potentially more rewarding too. Chin up.
5434a
2mo ago
I'm content to attribute it to a glitch on my end. Just checked and I do indeed still have an unposted draft reply to another topic in a different tab that was unaffected.
5434a
2mo ago
IIRC from seeing your previous feedback it seemed to happen to you quite often. This was the first time it's ever happened to me, but on the other hand I don't post much.
On the other other hand I sometimes draft long posts that I never submit and leave them for days and they're still sitting there waiting in their tab.
The screen scrolled without me touching it and then when I got back to where I was the comment was gone. Bizarre.
5434a
2mo ago
Other than fees and the technical know-how what's to stop someone swapping from an open blockchain into Monero or another privacy coin and then back again to sever the links? The blockchain might indicate money went into Monero, and came out of Monero, but Monero says "...".
5434a
3mo ago
The point is that exploring our cultural frontiers diminishes the amount of territory left unexplored, and a lot of the charted territory has been marked as being of limited interest and value for more than a generation. We know the extremes are out there and most people choose the alternative not out of ignorance but out of preference.
5434a
3mo ago
If you swapped the newspapers for cardboard boxes I have a box room that's at roughly 3 and that's after over a year of using it as a staging area for de/cluttering projects.
I clean the house to floor level roughly once a week and leave the kitchen clean every night.
5434a
4mo ago
Oh nice, I didn't know about the new miniseries. I'll add it to the download queue.
I'm content to take a punt on Tai-Pan next seeing as it's the next chronological installment, hopefully it's okay even if it doesn't measure up to Shogun.
5434a
4mo ago
A friend lent me Sum, a collection of very short stories about different permutations of the afterlife. It's refreshing to read something that gets straight to the point.
5434a
5mo ago
Colours can be tasteful if they're used with care but generally less is more. Our neighbours use multicoloured lights but it's offset by each bulb being very small. The bigger the display the more the colours will clash. Red and white could be a suitable combination for the season but monochrome white makes an effective Schelling point for a whole neighbourhood to converge on and create a semi-coordinated appearance.
For me blue lights don't say Christmas (or Judaism), they say either "blue LEDs hit the market and everyone began using them in order to look more futuristic... twenty years ago" or "emergency vehicle". The one positive is that it's not as eerie and unearthly as green. Blue is cold and eye-catching and that's why it's such a confusing choice to have a big bright one on the front of so many TVs, but again: "futuristic". Christmas lights should be warm and festive, like a log fire reflected on a brass coal scuttle or candlelight shining through stained-glass. White lights are bland but at least they're reminiscent of frost and snow and fit a wintertime palette.
I've noticed a lot of people don't distinguish between warm and cold white though and end up using the bluish white lights indoors where a warmer tone would be much cosier and more inviting, leaving their sitting room with a similar lighting ambience to a commercial kitchen.
I guess that now LED ropes are getting cheaper soon everything will look like Tron. "Bloop bloop bloop! Merry twelve slash twenty five."
5434a
5mo ago
Hindsight is 20/20 and "easier said than done" notwithstanding... At the risk of being a back seat woodworker I'd redo the front panel and make it cleaner and simpler by replacing it with a cover flap, maybe with just the volume knob exposed. Faster and more practical would be to make a new flap on top of the existing control panel and avoid having to alter too much of the finished work. Just seems a shame after making such a good job of the power/turbo buttons.
5434a
5mo ago
Thanks, got some good laughs from that. Surpised the video didn't use the "this is fine" dog at any point.
5434a
6mo ago
I've been using a rooted Nook Simple Touch for about 10 years. All I do is copy epubs to it and read them. Any minor features that I feel it's missing probably are available, but they're so minor that I don't need them enough to work out how to add and configure them. The screen is a bit grey but this is my first and only e-reader so I don't have anything to compare it to. I've never had a problem reading it.
The only major bug is that if I use the thumbnail library viewer rather than the list library viewer it will somehow drain the battery in less than 24 hours. If I don't do that the battery lasts for about two months. Occasionally the touch feature will drift out of calibration but that's fixed in 20 seconds by soft powering off and running my finger round the edge of the screen. I bought a cover for it which has kept it in good condition but the button cover on the button I use to turn the page has been worn through.
Over all would recommend, I'd happily buy another if I lost mine. I've just checked and there have been newer ROMs released since I rooted mine but if it ain't broke why fix it?
5434a
6mo ago
Textbook fluent native is:
"Alright?"
"Alright?"
It's like "what's up?". It could be interpreted as a sincere question if you're not familiar with it as a greeting but the context typically indicates that they're not making a genuine query.
5434a
6mo 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
7mo 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
8mo 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
8mo 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
9mo ago
Despite not being a parent myself I have a solid sympathy with the idea that you're not really eligible for real grown up status until you're a parent. The difficulty is that making parenthood the benchmark is that it would accord a teenage single mum higher status than a childless man like myself while incentivising the creation of yet more teenage single mums, so I added the educational criteria to tilt the balance back to a range of more long term pro-social outcomes (promoting stable relationships, increased fertility rates, parental responsibility/discipline). Totally unworkable in practice anyway as it would never get support, people would be anywhere between their 30s up to their 70s or even 80s before they were granted status.
Fight 10 different guys in a row, five minutes per round, with 5 minutes of rest in between each round.
It's a reasonable idea, definitely more feasible, but that's 100 minutes in total. By the 10th fresh opponent you'd be a sitting duck, especially if they're preparing/prepared for the same trial. Presumably the guys in question are your peers? Seems unfair to fight older or younger opponents. Then again maybe participating as one of a younger-than cohort of opponents would be good preparation and pre-qualification for the initiation and act to rebalance the advantages.
standardized tests that try to capture the would-be adults' actual understanding of the world and the implications of entering certain kinds of contracts and relationships
I think I would have understood enough on an intellectual level to have passed such a test at age 13 and then promptly spent the next ten years learning the same lessons the hard way. Analysing it at a remove isn't like knowing it in your bones the way you do after you've been through it, so I think the tests would have to embody a strong practical element somehow.
5434a
10mo ago
You're looking for consistency on the wrong axis. It's not "children are mature, adults are vulnerable". It's "this claim suits my agenda, and this separate claim suits my agenda too".
It appears to me that their mind is made up and it says that old trad white male capitalist able-bodied neurotypical cis hetero normative patriarchal [progressive stack intensifies] is the enemy; the source of all that is evil. It's a totalising blend of identity politics plus politics as identity. It's "are you with us or are you one of them?"
I read one of each of the gentleman burglar character books (Fantomas, Arsene Lupin and Raffles) and from what I remember Arsene was the best of the bunch.
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