BahRamYou
3hr ago
And, at the end of the day, being Amish is voluntary. Those who don’t enjoy the life leave
That's omitting a lot of details that make it difficult to leave. They have to leave behind all of their friends and family. Go out into a totally different society. Probably with very little savings, and no relevant skills or education. And there isn't, as far as I know, any support network to help them transition. If they wait too long, they'll probably end up married and with children, since the Amish encourage that in all young people. It's damn difficult to escape from that sort of upbringing.
This woman did it by making a dramatic escape, getting help from a prior outside friend, working a crappy job at Burger King, and then finding her way into working as a stripper. That's not an easy path to follow!
BahRamYou
6hr ago
And how we supposed to feel about that, as Americans? So we're too fat and lazy and stupid to actually get good at sports, but at least we're rich enough to buy up talent from other, more sporting countries? Are we going to win the world cup by taking advantage of anyone worldwide with a vague connection to America and bribing them to play for America? Is there even a point to having a nation-based sports competition when there's increasingly large numbers of global elites that can pick and choose which nation they play for, and their family background + big money training since youth gives them an immense advantage?
BahRamYou
7hr ago
What do you figure was the point in the 2024 case? I think I gave a reasonable enough list of benefits. High-ranking military being scared to leave their house without a bodyguard degrades military performance: people make worse decisions under stress, and more competent candidates may not want such a job.
Well, the true answer is I don't know. I don't speak Russian, and I'm not very well-informed about that case or the results of it.
But it seems to me that the reporting focuses on that general's role in charge of chemical weapons. Those are a huge trigger-word for western civilians. By killing him, the Ukrainians are making a big public statement that "the Russians are using chemical weapons on us." If that's true, it would significantly increase Western public support for Ukraine. Of course, I have no idea if that's true or not (I hadn't heard of chemical weapons being used anywhere else), and frankly I don't care, I think a few thousand dead from chemical weapons is much less important than hundreds of thousands of dead from artillery. But politically, they are a big deal.
Also, you know, they killed the guy. They didn't just lightly injure him by sending an assassin who had no prior experience with firearms. That seems like an important step in carrying out an assassination.
BahRamYou
17hr ago
I just thought it's odd that the man was shot 3 times at point blank range at survived, and i'm trying to think of an explanation. But I admitted that I'm biased because I've been reading spy thrillers recently. I'm really not making a strong claim here about anything, I just thought it was an odd story. Whats the point of Ukrainian secret services shooting some random general in Moscow?
BahRamYou
17hr ago
You can always use further motivation to continue the war. They're relying on volunteers, not conscripts, and this will surely spark a wave of new volunteers. They'll probably play up the "IRL action movie hero" part even more in Russian media, too.
Oh, and this general was apparently from Western Ukraine, so he's practically the perfect model for their "Ukraine is Little Rus" propaganda. He can be a useful spokesman after the fighting ends.
Most high-level assassination attempt of the current East European unpleasantness. The target was lieutenant general Vladimir Stepanovich Alekseyev
He seems to be IRL action movie hero, who successfully fought the assassin after being shot in the back twice (while the assassin seems to be boomer who was using gun for the first time in his life)
Is it possible that this is all some elaborate Russian plot? War hero gets shot 3 times in the back, but lives and fights off his assassin bare-handed. They blame it on the Ukrainians. Makes for great propaganda value. (I'm probably biased because I've been reading Tom Clancy spy novels recently so Maskirovka is on my brain. The Russians are always doing this sort of thing in his books.)
BahRamYou
20hr ago
USA seems to be doing quite well at figure skating this year. It helps when you can poach the best figure skaters from USSR and Japan. However, that also diminishes the nationalistic hype of the Olympics... it feels like these are just globalistic sports dynasty families, spending their whole lives travelling around the world, not attached to any country in particular.
But also the death of network television, and NBC does a shitty job streaming it on the internet.
BahRamYou
1d ago
Sure. Easy enough to say this sort of stuff when it's just hypothetical, much harder when it's a real decision that you have to make and it's permanent.
BahRamYou
1d ago
I think it's one of those questions that really depends on how exactly you phrase it. Obviously in the real world there are no magic buttons, so we have to use our imaginations.
Like, is this a button that's constantly available, every single day, but once you press it there's no going back? In that case i could see a lot of men pressing it in a moment of recklessness (possibly while drunk) just like how people get bad tattoos or other questionable body modifications.
Also, does it just work superficially, or does it affect their brain, too? Will they suddenly wind up with a drastically different personality? I don't think a lot of people would want that.
Also, is there an equivalent magic button for women turning into men? Otherwise, the world might end up with a huge surplus of women, which changes the gender dynamics quite a bit.
BahRamYou
1d ago
There used to be a lot of jobs for people liks: local music hall player, freelance graphic designer, craftsman stoneworker, small town paper writer, etc. Admittedly most of those dried up long ago, though.
BahRamYou
3d ago
For us in the US, the cost isn't necessarily the issue, it's finding a friendly doctor to write us a prescription. FDA rules us like a nanny state.
BahRamYou
6d ago
Definitely a lot of hopelessness going on. I'm a millenial, so I've heard us described as "the sad generation," an entire generation of young adults longing for the days of our youth when things were so much better. Which is weird, because all the economic stats say that we're much wealthier than ever, and there's a million new options for entertainment that we never had before, and... somehow that made everything worse? Odd.
I'd agree that e-proles and cosplay aren't just about sexuality. I meant it more like... any raw, unfiltered display of emotion. The male cosplayers I've seen at cons usually favor huge weapons and elaborate armor, which is more of a power fantasy. Then you've got the people super into historical recreation, or cute slice of life, fantasizing about some life of pure coziness. And even the more sexual anime stuff they rarely actually have sex, it's just blatantly showing off the bodies of hot women with no shame. I think it's that feeling of like "raw burst of emotion" that appeals to people who are kinda depressed and hopeless, because it at least lets them feel something. It's like taking a straight shot of cheap tequila, as opposed to sipping a fancy wine.
But also, yes, it's just a very convenient aesthetic. They can stay at home in their parents house, talking to their friends on discord, and apply some $5 hair dye or wear a $20 cat ear headset, and instantly they're part of it. No need to buy expensive concert tickets, or name-brand clothes, or a racing car, or cocaine or anything like that.
BahRamYou
6d ago
As someone not from the US I'd ask you to elaborate on this a bit. I've only seen such particular diners in movies and I can only assume that they normally make cozy third places in the terms of sociology. Is there any particular reason why they are normally open around the clock and are disappearing and are relatively expensive?
It definitely used to be a thing. I remember going to places like that as a teenager, but most of the places I remember have either shut down or are no longer open late at night. There are still some, notably IHOP and Waffle House, but they're mostly near freeways, and not somewhere I'd really like to go unless I'm driving long distances at night. Even most fast food places shut down at night (but there are some exceptions). I did see a few classic 24 hour diners in New York City, but that's NYC being different, and they were very expensive.
For why, I'm not exactly sure, but I can guess a combination of factors. It just costs a lot more to run a restaurant than it used to, because of rent and labor costs, so it's not profitable to keep a big space open with few customers. Or if it's peak dinner time, they want people to eat and leave quickly so they can turn the table over to a new customer. Especially if the "customers" are bored young people who are going to sit around for hours talking loudly and not ordering anything except maybe one soda, it's just bad business. Then, if it's in a city, you also have to worry about homeless people using it as a shelter, which is even worse for business. Maybe in the past there were more middle-class people who wanted to use it as a third space and could afford to buy a full meal there at 2am, but those kind of people would just stay home now. Something like the classic "Nighthawks" painting I just don't see, and maybe it's better that people can just stay home and go to sleep, but it is a bit sad.
BahRamYou
6d ago
Definitely a difference in the sort of crowd that would download a torrent + apply the .sub file, or pay expensive import fees, or join a club just to watch someone else's bootleg tapes, vs the current meta of endless mindless streaming on demand.
Also, excuse me while I go full weeb a minute, but I feel the same way about sushi. There's levels to it. On the low end, you can buy cheap premade stuff as a snack, and that's perfectly fine, just don't expect any complex flavors. American restaurants usually oyster California rolls or some deep fried monstrosity and that's... fine... but you might as well just order fried shrimp. The better places offer simple nigiri or sashimi with nice rice, so you can really taste the subtle flavors of the fish, and a clear mild liquor like sake really does complement it well. Some fancy plates and a cool chef also helps the experience. But at some point people go to extremes where they're just wasting money on "the secret, ultimate fish" or whatever and that's just stupid. Or you get drunk salarymen snacking on sushi while also binge drinking and smoking so... that can be fun too, in its own way. But once in a while its worth making the effort to appreciate a fancy meal with more subtle flavors than typical restaurant fare.
BahRamYou
6d ago
Not an easy one. I used to use MangaRock, but it got shut down for piracy. Im not as plugged into the scene as I used to be- the big mainstream western accrptance and commercialization kinda killed off the indie scanlation volunteers. Your best bet is probably to search the list of manga that have win awards not in the shonen/shoujo category, like the general category of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogakukan_Manga_Award. Once you find something you like, you can search what else they've done- often they have more experimental works that never hit it big, but are more intellectual. Or if there's a specific genre that interests you, you can see if there's a magazine for that (eg, there's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Yuri_Hime for yuri manga that's actually aimed at women, instead of male fanservice). Unfortunately the rabbit hole gets pretty deep, and the really niche stuff is often print-only, not sold outside Japan.
Piggybacking: i actually do have a personal account where I have been significantly beating the overall market for about 10 years now. Is there any way I can leverage that to get a good job in finance?
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