Aapje58
5mo ago
The US could propose making Palestine a UN protectorate that will gradually democratize (taking many decades), similar to how Palestine was a League of Nations protectorate in the past or how Kosovo was a UN protectorate. Then poor in lots of money, open up the borders to Egypt, give them a sea harbor, etc.
Then the support for Hamas and other radicals should dry up as the Palestinians can then get (real) jobs and are mostly safe from IDF and colonist attacks.
Aapje58
5mo ago
Because they have lost repeated wars over ownership of the land
This is just pure racism. The Palestinians didn't fight those wars, countries like Egypt did.
Aapje58
6mo ago
I agree with you that there are women who would have a bad time, just like there are men for whom having to approach women means having a bad time. On the other hand, there is also the outside view, from which you can also judge how much nastiness happens to a person by standards that are independent of personal traits/feelings. For example, I think that it is reasonable to say that a WW I soldier in the trenches has a harder time than someone born into wealth and safety, like Richard Corey. Yet as the poem describes, the person of privilege can nevertheless be extremely unhappy. But that doesn't mean that they had to deal with tough circumstances.
It seems that the extent to which people are content depends heavily on what they expect of life or what people get who they consider to be peers. Yet when those expectations aren't met, it doesn't mean that they are truly hard done by. And the big issue that we are dealing with is that many people nowadays seem to have expectations that are unrealistic (in the sense of what behavior/effort on their part will have what result), with unmet expectations. And especially for women, some expectations get cut off due to age, due to infertility and a greater decline in attractiveness due to aging. And it seems that women often only seem to realize that their approach is bad once they get close to 'the cliff' and it is hard to salvage things this late in the game.
Anyway, I have noticed that women who complain about the result of approaching men pretty much always throw up red flags that suggest to me that they don't recognize that it is far harder to learn how to do this than how to wear makeup or dress up nice; and expect a level of success and a lack of bad experiences that is utterly unrealistic. Your story does indicate that you at least tried multiple times, but it is a red flag that you seem to attribute being "ignored, laughed off, or generally regarded as awkward, pathetic, or desperate" to being a woman who approaches men, rather than a lack of skill (and yes, the cold call is way harder than a warm call, so approaching people is way harder than reacting to an approach). It's another red flag that you even consider it worth mentioning as a bad outcome that one(!) man expected sex right away.
If a man would argue that approaching women doesn't work because he was "ignored, laughed off, or generally regarded as awkward, pathetic, or desperate," or would complain that he can't deal with having a single women get the wrong idea and want his baby right away, he would get raked over coals.
Now, an argument can be made that it's not realistic or fair to expect women to take on this task, for biological or cultural reasons. Perhaps women would even become less attractive to men if we increase their stoicism by the same methods that we use on men, so they can deal with even a fraction of the rejection rate that men commonly experience. It's quite likely that we can't even do that, as people appear to have an inbuilt biological drive to treat male children differently, since we apparently don't need a cultural mechanism for much of it. For example, research shows that parents ignore crying male babies much more, but I can't see a cultural mechanism that teaches parents this.
So perhaps only less liberalism would help, although the incredible stupidity of the people that currently are in a position to steer our culture doesn't exactly make it likely that they'll analyse the problem correctly, let alone come up with a working solution that is spread through the propaganda system.
Aapje58
3mo ago
He’s a young, relatively well-informed recent college grad, which just goes to show how effective the Hamas propaganda machine is.
The chance that he's seen Hamas propaganda seems negligible. There are many far more likely explanations, such that he's ignorant of news in general and is concerned with charming the ladies, or is part of a bubble that doesn't signal boost these things (which doesn't mean that it signal boosts Hamas' propaganda).
I consider it rather extremist and leaning towards false or at least unproven conspiracy beliefs to simply assume that beliefs like this are caused by Hamas' propaganda. It also completely denies people any agency. Using the same logic you can explain all kinds of things as being caused directly by propaganda, like your beliefs about Israel being caused by propaganda from Israel, people who have doubt about the elections because controlled by Putin, conservative Catholics being controlled by the Pope, etc.
Aapje58
1yr ago
They didn't exactly learn from it if they died. However, I think that it is a bit silly to challenge a metaphor in detail. A metaphor clarifies something by finding something sufficiently similar, but that can be understood more easily, yet it is not equal. Challenging it for not being equal inherently rejects metaphors as a valid tool of discourse.
Aapje58
5mo ago
Nonsense, they only started to support Hamas after the deradicalized PLO was unable to offer meaningful improvement to their lives, which was in no small part due to Israel losing even a modest will to find a real solution after the killing of Rabin.
Both Intifada's were long after the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that happened during the Arab–Israeli Wars. You can't retroactively justify ethnic cleansing by arguing that revolt against that cleansing and the subsequent oppression, justified the ethnic cleansing and oppression.
I've never heard anyone argue that a person who fights back after getting sucker punched, retroactively deserved that sucker punch because they fought back. So I have a hard time believing that your argument reflects a principle you hold in general.
Aapje58
6mo ago
I just found that, compared to more traditionally feminine methods of flirtation, explicitly expressing interest in men is often unsuccessful.
But that is a false dichotomy, because almost all flirtation happens when people are talking already, so that's when the approach has already happened. Of course, it is possible to signal interest (or flirt) from afar, but I believe that only a relatively small majority of approaches by men happen only after the woman has specifically signaled her interest in that man and he actually noticed.
In many cases, the man responds to a more general indication that the woman is open to being approached (like wearing revealing clothing) or simply makes the attempt without indications.
I think that the current situation where men don't have clear rules of what is allowed, don't get taught as much what to do and there is less room for making mistakes, leads to fewer and fewer men approaching women without any indications of her interest and putting less trust in ambiguous signals that do signal interest. So women's flirtation game is also not working as well.
The result is then that women who depend on men approaching them are effectively all fighting over a decreasing percentage of men, which automatically means that women are increasingly going to miss out, because the numbers don't match. But the consequences are actually more complex than just women missing out, because the increased bargaining power of those men means that men who do have the natural and or learned ability to deal with the new reality, or the lack of self-preservation instincts, can now 'pump and dump' women or otherwise treat women in ways that are ultimately bad for women.
So superficially it may seem like your approach is working quite well, because unlike men who complain about them failing, women do typically end up having casual sex and/or end up in a relationship with a guy who never gets serious and whom she leaves after a few years to try again, only to be alone for some years, only to get into a relationship with another non-serious person, until she gets close to infertility and either she never ends up with the family she wants or goes for one of the desperation moves (single motherhood, picking some shitty man who does want children, but is a bad parent and partner, etc).
But are those really successes for most women? And at the same time, we have perfectly fine men who end up alone and men who had potential, but were left to whither on the vine.
I believe that unless you change our culture (for which you supplied no plan at all), women in general and at least a solid subset of women, would be better off in the long term if they would adapt to the current situation and would approach shy men and diamonds in the rough. However, what probably won't work that well, is if you start to approach the subset of men that do well with women in the current culture. It's actually in their interest to discourage you from approaching men, because that would give their shy competitors a chance.
It was not the $20 bill on the ground that the other commenter believed it to be. That's all I was claiming.
You are actually the person who came up with the "$20 bill on the ground," not the other commenter. He said that women who approach men would gain rather than lose. He never said that it was trivially easy for women to do this, which your "$20 bill" comment implies.
You also very single-mindedly interpreted that 'gain' as what makes you more comfortable during the initial dating process, which is certainly not the only way to look at it. By that standard, having children is never a 'gain' over remaining childless, as children cause plenty of discomfort, certainly initially. Yet a large majority of people do believe that the benefits are worth it overall.
You may of course believe that the costs of having to approach men are too great (for you), but I don't think you've been charitable to the opinions of f3zinker or myself, when you apparently refuse to even entertain the idea that the downsides you experienced are perhaps solvable (for most women) or are fairly minor inconveniences that you only get so upset about because you've got a bad mindset; and bring upsides that may be larger than the downsides, especially in the long term (by having a substantially higher chance to end up with a better man).
Aapje58
1yr ago
Your definition just rationalizes away success, where if someone gets objectively better outcomes, but their expectations are higher, they somehow aren't doing better because the gap between expectations and outcomes is similar.
Aapje58
3mo ago
But what a revealing statement. Things were so bad that women who might have wanted to resort to prostitution couldn't because there weren't enough clients with means to pay!
It just shows that rich men were concentrated in cities, and their extra wealth was greater than the higher cost of living of the city.
What do you find revealing about this? Is the idea that there were huge wealth disparities in the past a revelation to you?
I still don't consider it a believable explanation. Memorials have a fairly standard ritual, involving a shrine in a public space where people can go to light candles, leave flowers, wreaths, leave pictures, put up signs, etc. Very often, the shrine is placed at the place of death or a park. I'm sure that you've seen that kind of thing often enough in the news or real life.
very similar to the "missing" posters of 9/11 victims.
It seems pretty clear to me that those aren't memorials, but attempts to find missing people. That is why you put up posters all over the place, or on milk cartons, to find missing people.
There is no indication that the posters could ever help recover a 9/11 victim from the rubble, but they're likely put up as a way to remember someone lost, and maybe remind the public of the significance of the event.
I disagree and believe that these were genuine attempts (aside from the handwritten sentence on the wall, which seems more like a prayer to god, and the actual shrine in the last picture that probably had no call to find the person, although the entire shrine is not visible). It seems very common for people to have trouble accepting a sudden death without a body as proof. Denial is one of the stages of grief after all. Arguing that people could not feel this way due to rational fact ignores that feelings do not obey reason.
The common cliche in Hollywood where a supposed death where it is not beyond any doubt that the person actually died, is typically a fake out, may also influence how people react.
If someone claimed posters of Israelis posted in Brooklyn somehow helped rescue efforts, I would agree with you that they're dishonest. But if they claimed it was to bring attention to an issue, then I don't see the dishonesty.
The link you gave tells us that one such poster stated: "Please help bring them home alive." So the poster seems to match your criteria for dishonesty, because there apparently was an expectation that people would spring into action to help the rescue efforts. The only plausible way in which Americans could do this are all highly political, one way or the other (pushing for continuing the war, to trade prisoners, to make peace, to abolish Israel, or praying for Jesus coming back to earth, etc). I suspect that the people tearing down the posters make assumptions about what the desired means is of liberating the Israeli kidnappees, if only by what is left off from the posters, which is any mention of Palestinian victims.
At the very least, I consider it unsurprising that if a conflict involves Palestinian and Israeli victims, and someone sufficiently cares about Palestinian victims, they get upset over posters that only name Israeli victims. It can be true that this means that they don't care about Israeli victims, but it can for example also mean that they consider each life equally valuable, especially if they can count. It is not necessarily bias against Israelis when one considers the ongoing killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians of more importance than saving up to 240 people (depending on when the posters went up, the number may be considerably lower). And people can of course also be upset by a disparity in attention in general and it may thus trigger an already existing dissatisfaction with perceived unfairness. I'm sure that as a member of this forum you are familiar with people upset over biases in (sub)cultures or in the media, and perhaps becoming rather eager to interpret new evidence in that light.
In any case, I remain of the belief that your statement that the only plausible explanation for anger at the posters is a Manichean view specifically involving an oppressor/oppressed dynamic, does not speak well about your epistemology, at least on this topic.
Aapje58
4mo ago
The dishonesty I'm referring to is the denial in the article that there is a political element to it and that it is the same as the kids on milk cartons. It is simply a lie to claim that they expect Californians to assist in the recovery efforts by helping a kidnapped Israeli that they encounter in SF or such.
And I do believe that a lot of what people communicate about 'issues' is biased and is intended to advance an agenda, even if they do not consciously see it as propaganda, but just believe (or 'believe'*) that their very biased views are just correct.
* Lots of people seem to suddenly believe different things than what they initially say, or put on posters, if you question them a little.
Aapje58
4mo ago
That may be tolerable for someone who wasn't Netanyahu. Netanyahu built his image on being the Great Defender
If he actually was a great leader, he first of all wouldn't have gotten into this situation in the first place, but he would have sacrificed his reputation and his political career for the benefit of Israel once he did end up in this situation.
Aapje58
5mo ago
this behavior wouldn’t be as bizarre or noteworthy coming from some Israeli official living in Israel
And that is exactly why this resonates. Here we have a person who ostensibly was responsible for an equitable peace between the Palestinians and Israel, but whose response clearly shows an extreme bias to one nation, more like being a citizen of that one nation.
Aapje58
6mo ago
Perhaps you should reread my comment with a more charitable mindset, because you seem to be missing the points I make by a mile. For example, I didn't at all say that it's a red flag that you didn't like an interaction with a man who assumed that you were open to have sex right away. What I did say that it is a red flag that you considered such a single incident, that to me seems a fairly minor inconvenience, to be a strong argument to not want to approach men as a woman. If it were to happen all the time, it would be different, but that was not what you claimed.
Note that I did agree with you that what the other person said was wrong and that there are women for whom approaching men will be very unpleasant (just like it is for some men). So I'm not sure why you are acting like I was saying any different. I have my own beliefs and don't feel obligated to accept the narrative of the other person you were arguing with or your narrative. I can disagree with both of you; and do.
What do you want me to say? “My God, I’ve been under-appreciating heroic men all this time, putting themselves out there! Now I see this is a real skill. I will never again complain that a clumsy attempt repulsed me!”
No, my claim is that you, and every women I've ever seen complain about their experience while approaching men, seem to expect a level of guaranteed ease and lack of bad experiences that seems very unrealistic. It's like having men complain that approaching women doesn't work because they fail when they put in as little effort as Brad Pitt or George Clooney presumably need to do. It's my belief that a man who would complain like you, would at best be kindly told that he's having completely unrealistic expectations and at worst would be called an entitled creep who deserves jail time.
I do believe that women are often under-appreciating men, for example, by being very unfair to men who have difficulty with the dating process, but this is not actually part of my argument, as it's beside the point (except for the effect it has on their own perception of how easy it is to be the one approaching). I believe that women have it way easier when approaching men. For example, women are considered creepy far less quickly and even if they are, they are far, far, far less likely to get beaten up over it or excommunicated due to it. I do get that men are often not used to getting approached and may thus react relatively poorly compared to situations where people have a pro-social script ready, as many people operate based on scripts and are not very good at freestyling. But everything I've seen, from my own personal experiences to video's with a hidden camera where women approach men with weird requests, tells me that men almost always act way nicer to women than how men act to men or women to men. So a woman approaching men seems to be playing the game on easy mode. Of course, you can still lose on easy.
In a cultural context where men overwhelmingly approach women, people tend to assume on some level that if a woman approaches a man, she must be 1) joking 2) desperate or 3) looking for something casual. I found those were difficult assumptions to overcome.
Men who approach women with the goal of a long term relationship actually also have to overcome an assumption that they may just want sex and/or are desperate. It's a hard challenge in general to shift the person you approach to a sexual mindset where they start to evaluate you as a potential partner, but without them getting upset because they feel forced into a sexual dance that they don't want, or having the wrong idea about what kind of relationship you are aiming for, or considering you the lesser person just for being the one who is making the offer.
An issue is also that women are actually already approaching men. These are often called 'groupies' and they do typically seem to want casual sex or at least, use sex to get a shot at seducing a top tier man. If anything, this willingness by women to approach a small subset of men, and the ease with which they have sex with these men, but very rarely approach those who are not very attractive, makes the problem worse.
I don't know what kind of men you were approaching, but I have heard a decent number of stories where introverted men found a relationship by being approached. It seems likely to me that the paucity of women who approach men who are not rock stars, also enables approaches that are much harder for men to use, like corny pick-up lines or extreme bluntless, like telling introverted men that you approach them because the introverted men that you are attracted to don't dare to approach women and that he better not get the wrong idea and that you still expect him to impress you to have a shot. By using such an approach, you shift the frame from you wanting something from him, to you being so kind to give him a chance. Of course, it needs to be sufficiently true for it to work and it shouldn't be too aggressive or not aggressive enough.
As always the approach needs to be tailored to those you want to seduce, though, and I don't know who you tried to seduce. If you try to approach men who are very successful by approaching women, it's probably a lot harder of a sell.
Anyway, my point was primarily that I'm unconvinced by your arguments for your claim that approaching men isn't viable for you. I think that getting upset over a single person getting the wrong idea strongly suggests that you expect a level of success that is unreasonably for the vast majority of men and women. Attributing being perceived as desperate or such to being a woman who approaches men, rather than even entertaining the possibility that it is the way you do go about it, is also very unconvincing to me.
Of course, it is possible that you cannot achieve a decent success rate (by male standards, which you may consider absurdly low), but I am simply unconvinced by the evidence you present.
Aapje58
6mo ago
I was ignored, laughed off, or generally regarded as awkward, pathetic, or desperate. One man did assume that, since I approached him, obviously I was DTF on the first date. That was very uncomfortable and I walked away feeling bad about myself.
And yet men have bad experiences while approaching women all the time & have to learn how to not be perceived as awkward, pathetic, or desperate. Frankly, I think that the attitude that most women seem to have where they only want to do the things that are fairly easy and that feel good, at the expense of men who then have to pick up that slack, is exactly the kind of attitude that needs to change to fix things without having to curtail women.
Aapje58
6mo ago
Europeans and other supporters of protection of origin (like India) like to pretend this isn't true but it is
That's a pretty silly way to put it. People also use product names like 'googling stuff' for other search engines, yet the US still allows Google to trademark their name and then bans other companies from slapping Google on their search engines. That's not some sort of denial about how people use language. Legislators simply don't allow language use to dictate things like trademarks and in the EU, product names.
Aapje58
2d ago
The president declares "No-knock warrants are now classified as potentially lethal force," what changes?
Federal courts have decreed that police violence should be justified by the circumstances, primarily the risk to officers and others, so they would presumably need to be able to argue some proven risk.
Which in this case seems to be absent.
Aapje58
21d ago
Why do you think that the right sort of women would not apply? Would they prefer to be among themselves for that kind of banter?
Aapje58
1mo ago
So a conspiracy of 3 people only needs 9 friends and family willing to turn a blind eye to anything suspicious and give the occasional alibi.
This assumes that the people who are part of the conspiracy tell their friends and family, but there are many possible reasons why they would not. For example, some organizations that deal a lot with secret things have a shared culture of not telling even their life partners about it. Another example is that the conspiracy can be very damning to the people involved, so they have a strong incentive to hush it up to everyone. Like a conspiracy that involves 'disappearing' a dead body or one where well-meaning researchers caused immense suffering and damage.
Aapje58
2mo ago
I don't agree with that. The goal of becoming an adult is to fulfill your potential, which can be more, equal or less than that of your father.
In the relationship with God, one can never equal or better, but the crucial part is fulfilling your potential, which is possible.
Aapje58
2mo ago
The point of the ad is not "you should do this". The point of the ad is "this is who we are."
So:
- We are people who cannot translate archaic examples to match the modern world
- We don't understand the bible
- We are no different from leftists, except for being a bit weirder
Because it seems to me that those are the messages being sent.
The point seems to be to peel back some of the enculturated dismissal of Christians as hateful bigots that the world
Is submitting really sending that message, or would it have made more sense to show Christians doing good works. Because in the modern context, washing people's feet are not good works, but seem more like either weird virtue-signalling or a foot-fetish.
Aapje58
2mo ago
Instead he found frightening, awe-full power beyond his understanding, which worked to compel his faith despite heroic tragedy.
Yes, Christianity is deeply patriarchal. The children do not understand the wisdom of the father, and they don't want to get their vaccines, because the needle hurts, and they do not comprehend the suffering they are being saved from. So they need to trust in the wisdom of the father, and trust that he loves them, even if they don't understand why he asks the things he asks.
Yet this is a very hard sell in a deeply individualized society that rejects patriarchy.
They are utterly dishonest war propaganda, pretending not to be. For instance, in the link you posted, one such campaign is said to have the name 'Let the World Know.' But who doesn't know about the kidnapped people? It is utterly disingenuous to pretend that this is just to inform people. Your link furthermore claims:
"There is no Israeli flag on these posters. There is no mention of politics. They are as anodyne as the missing children that used to appear on the side of American milk cartons."
This is again utterly dishonest. The choice to put these people on posters, rather than the people put in prison without trial by Israel, which to me is kidnapping as well, is a political choice. The choice to not put pictures of killed Palestinian civilians on the posters (as well) is a political choice. The choice to put these posters up in Western nations across the world is a political choice, just like it would be a different political choice to put these posters up in front of the Knesset, or in front of a Hamas building in Qatar.
As another poster said, the milk carton kids are intended to allow people to recognize these kids in the streets or whatever, but there is no plausible way that a person will run into a kidnapped Israeli in SF and will then be able to help them by running to the police.
Unless you are willing to seriously discuss the real goal of these posters, and the dishonesty behind the refusal to openly state those goals, I don't see how you can get to a correct analysis.
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