Gaashk
1d ago
Yeah, I'm not necessarily saying that some women getting terrible relationship advice is the fault of the men in their lives. Like that article a few weeks back about college girls egging each other on to have sex right away with every guy they were a bit interested in, and then feeling upset about the results. It sounded like the girls in question had gotten a lot of really dumb advice from the women and female media in their lives.
Personally, I like it when my husband uses an interest to suggest an experience we can share, like he'll research some ruins and plan a day trip to go look at them and play tour guide. I don't like it when he tries to info dump about weapon usage in Ukraine or something, but that's at least half negative emotional valance of it being about ways to kill people.
Yeah, it probably was better to have a norm not to complain about one's romantic partner just because you got in a spat and are feeling angry about it. Healthy couples mostly seem not to do that. We seem to have lost some outlets, living so far from our families, -- I've called my in-laws to complain once or twice when feeling really outraged, and it was way more effective than complaining in the comments section of the NYT or something.
Gaashk
1d ago
People can conceivably be interested in anything. I don’t bore women with discussions about anime and sports, if that’s what you’re getting at.
No, it's not. I meant the specific person you were talking to. Are they, specifically interested?
I do not pay attention to women unless I’m required to for work. My girlfriend also prefers that I not have female friends, which works fine given my preferences.
It's unsurprising that your young female colleague might be more sensitive to being talked down to than your middle aged male friend. Because you're not friends, for one thing.
I don’t know what the point of this question is, but no, I don’t pretend to be interested in things if I’m not actually interested in them.
Then it's hardly surprising that it would be more enjoyable for someone to learn about a topic from the internet than from you. I'm currently getting the impression that if I really needed the information you were giving, I would choose another source if possible, despite not generally being a "mansplaining" critic.
Gaashk
1d ago
Things to consider:
Is the thing you're "mansplaining" something the woman in question might conceivably be interested in?
Have you shown a similar interest in hearing about things she's interested in and knows about?
Suppose you learn a lot about Roman military stuff, and she learns a lot about astrology, so you each have a lot of knowledge about an antiquated system. Are you as interested in what she has to say about birth signs as you hope she will be about your thing? If not, why not?
Gaashk
2d ago
I wonder if there's much difference in preferences between younger and older couples, related to wanting to have children together vs it being too late for that. With kids, it would probably be good if one of us were a bit more present and patient, rather than always going on about culture war stuff all the time. My parents are both very thoughty, they met over Dostoyevsky philosophy classes, and get along great -- but there isn't anyone to keep things in order, and their house is absurdly terrible.
I've probably 'mansplained' a lot to my girlfriend, but she's never complained about it. In fact, she seems to enjoy it. We went out to dinner a few weeks ago and I was rambling on about the upcoming British elections, and she kept asking me questions ("Wait, who are the Tories?" "How is the Prime Minister elected?"), and when I apologized for rambling, instead of complaining, she just said, "No, I'm learning something here, I enjoy listening to you talk."
The argument seems to be that many women have been trained to act interested even when actually bored or if they already know more about it, in order to make their men feel better. I don't know how often that's true, I would guess occasionally but not all that often.
Gaashk
2d ago
I listened to podcast of Jordan Peterson interviewing some doctors about it a few months back (https://youtube.com/watch?v=F2RnK23AWUE)
It seemed pretty far fetched, and also just not very useful (like most of Peterson's health stuff -- I like him in general, but his whole family has super weird health issues and opinions). The conclusion seemed to be something like that people with chronic health issues should do some kind of complicated alternative healthcare regime, and also move into a completely new house or something.
Gaashk
2d ago
It looks like more of the hopeful comments come more from widowers, and the angry ones from divorced or never married women.
Gaashk
2d ago
This is the rhetoric that younger generations are hearing from their parents and grandparents.
It's more likely that the NYT commentariat is very highly selected, and more so for this piece.
I have sometimes encountered an attitude in single women over 60 that their mothers trained them to look after the house very neatly as a point of pride, and that they clash with younger women who consider it a personal preference that conveys no status. They would probably also clash with older men who were either raised with the expectation that the woman should keep the house, or men who are comfortable with a messier space. There seem to be several comments about cooking and laundry especially, and someone who just visits her romantic interest, but they keep separate homes. As far as I can tell, this represents both a gender difference (men are a bit less likely to be temperamentally orderly, and much less likely to have been trained in homemaking by their parents), and a generational one.
Gaashk
2d ago
The comment in question:
I'm a woman. Recently joined the chess club at my senior center chess club as the only female. (one guy smugly announced that all the women who join quit because they "can't hang onto their queens"). At first everyone I played was all smiley, sort of flirting and trying to give me "tips" about developing the pieces and so on. But then they found out that I play like a boss and could crush almost all of them quite handily (I'm on a ridiculous win streak). Now none of these men want to play against me, and all their smiles have disappeared. Story of my 145 IQ life. Men need to feel intellectually superior to women and I got sick of playing dumb a long time ago.
Indeed, I would probably not want to play chess with her, it sounds fairly unpleasant, along the lines of #2.
Gaashk
4d ago
Does anyone like or "get" monotype printing?
I have some equipment for making and teaching mono prints with charming little presses and gel plates, but whenever I look into resources about it, the professional art is not inspiring at all. Lots of kind of boring stencils of elephants or birds, lots of leaves, mandala looking stencils, dots that look kind of like packing materials, all in acrylic, which is a huge pain to clean up. I do like plate and woodblock printing, but am not going to set that up, it's a whole different tool set. The most interesting gel plate pieces I've seen included using the gel print as a background and drawing over it in chalk pastel, but then it has to be framed behind glass because of the pastel.
Gaashk
6d ago
That's a good point. Upon hearing a prophesy of terrible children, it might make sense to first try to figure out what went wrong, rather than give up entirely.
Among basically average parents I've seen some have one problematic child and a couple of better ones, in which case maybe it's better to have more children (or at least more than one).
Gaashk
6d ago
I don't think either? Neither scenario is related to why I have kids now, so they might not be in hypothetical true prophesy world.
Maybe I'd have more kids if I had married younger. Maybe I would have fewer if I were more organized about taking birth control pills at the same time every day and renewing on time.
Gaashk
6d ago
The difficulty is pretty variable.
I'm an introvert who loves alone time, and currently 7 months pregnant with two children under 5. I would go on week long silent retreats if I could. My daughter is extremely hyper, showing signs of ADHD. Trying to rest at home with her is awful. Going on adventures with her is pretty fun. I'm reasonably optimistic that her energy levels will pay off in the end, but times were bad when she was a baby in a little apartment. A teacher friend with similarity energetic children is putting them in a bunch of cheap Parks & Rec day camps, and I think I'm going to have to do something like that in the future.
My brother was very challenging for my mom as well. Some parent/child combinations are just really difficult, for personality and energy level reasons.
Gaashk
9d ago
It's the meme version of getting smallpox etc, without either vaccines or any childhood immunity. Western Civilization has great books too, bot it takes quite a lot of education to appreciate it.
I suppose the "white person" version of just naturally absorbing weaving and making attractive books is that my parents were always, every day, talking about what they were reading, reading it out loud, and going on about their favorite books and philosophy professors -- a kind of meme childhood immunization.
Gaashk
9d ago
This reminds me of some articles Scott had shared a while back about "vibes collapse" in remote tribes, when first introduced to larger civilizations. For instance: https://smoothbrains.net/posts/2022-08-24-planetary-scale-vibe-collapse.html
I'm not certain what to think about it. Since the smartphones and modern social media are only ~15 years old, we're still figuring out how to fit them in at a civilizational level.
The classy people like @WhiningCoil are taking up aesthetic crafting hobbies and artisanal homeschooling sans social media.
The uncool moms like me are begging our children to please, please just go watch a couple of episodes Octonauts so that I can get some alone time.
People have been making fun of the overconsumption of written stories since before Cervantes. I suppose it would probably be useful to consider something telos related, but haven't heard anything extremely compelling yet. Perhaps it would be good for some Jesuits to bring the tribe more Aristotle.
Gaashk
21d ago
In the case of restaurants, I'm not sure having different priorities, other than authenticity, is a mistake. Unless people are getting food poisoning, people are allowed to like what they like, whether or not it's the same as the preferences of the people in the cuisine's country of origin. Restaurant owners should go ahead and optimize for that, offering enchiladas at their Chinese buffet or whatever if that's popular. Unless the reviews literally say "this is extremely authentic!" I wouldn't read any opinion on the authenticity into the review.
I would expect Google reviews of various other businesses to mostly be about their customer service, there probably isn't any way around that.
Gaashk
23d ago
"He cutted!!!" for skipping ahead in a line. I can't remember if they say they cutted the paper or not, I think it might go both ways.
Gaashk
23d ago
Was it the same Njall's Saga essay as Scott posted during last year's ACX book review contest? If not, you should read that one, it's hilarious, but I don't think the comments were exactly a discussion either, mostly just a lot of people saying that they enjoyed it over and over again. Which is discouraged here.
This is the first I've heard of the homosexuality paper, and won't based off of this.
Everyone has an opinion on sex.
Gaashk
23d ago
I don't. Suppose I say "I should trim back the plants in my yard," this is silently followed up by "in order to better enjoy spending time in my yard."
Perhaps when my mother was younger there was some hope left for "may" vs "can" when making requests, but that ship has sailed, and I think she may have given up on it.
I'm about to give up on "cut" in the past tense, the kids seem to be losing some irregular past verb forms.
Gaashk
23d ago
If someone finds them a match and pushes things forward, do you have any sense of whether they do alright at marriage?
Gaashk
23d ago
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. What trap? What standard for agency? Isn't f3zinker the one asserting without elaboration that women have no agency?
Gaashk
23d ago
Yours is closer to my experience as well, though I'm willing to believe there's a vast experiential gulf between hot, agreeable woman in CurrenYear who performs for Only Fans and average, prickly woman a decade ago at a provincial state U who hangs out with Baptists and the kind of Greeks who teach folk dancing and won't let a 20 year old drink ouzo with them.
It probably depends a lot on what her specific complications and risks are. There seem to have been some improvements in screening and premature birth care especially somewhat recently, maybe enough to offset the being slightly older side of things (depending on what the problem was).
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