Gaashk
24d ago
I haven't heard this talked about very much among the women I know, or seen it come up in real life. It seems like opinions vary depending on the specifics, not only of their ages and life circumstances, but also their personal characteristics.
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There probably is an annoyed old maid effect, though I haven't encountered it in real life. Nobody I actually know was hoping to date Brad Pitt, and was disappointed when he chose a younger woman instead.
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Some religious sects like to emphasize women as those who stay at home under their husband's umbrella of protection, while the men go out into the world, work, and lead. Since this is already playing up the power and agency differential, I would be concerned about a young woman in that culture marrying a much older man with much stronger preferences/opinions/set life circumstances than her. They'll tend to fall into "I do this/like/believe things because my husband does," which I don't like, and seems to be setting them up for abuse.
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I would be much less concerned about a couple with an age gap, but similar life development levels, where she's responsible, conscientious, serious, and wants to settle down young and start a family, and he has a steady job and house to make that happen, and they're working together on their household as project. In those cases I'm not sure that I really notice the age gap all that strongly.
Gaashk
27d ago
I like about the free school food for any kid, even if their parents didn't apply programs that their parents don't have to apply, the kids can just go up to the counter and get breakfast or lunch. Also, the food I've observed is surprisingly good, actually.
Gaashk
28d ago
As I understand it, the Conservative position is something like that there are still jobs that kind of suck. Electricians have been going out in 50mph winds, working on the power poles lately. There are people repairing roofs in Phoenix in the summer. There are people collecting garbage on single lane dirt driveways, where they have to back all the way down the driveway to get to the garbage bins. There are people working in the South Dakota oil fields, and on Alaskan fishing boats. They have to both get paid quite a lot, and also get negative blowback from not working. There's a whole essential layer of work like that. I knew a man who was a sewage diver, and was married with kids.
A big part of the illegal immigration "jobs Americans won't do" narrative is about how high the floor for labor is, due to forbidding low labor and poor person lifestyles, while also providing more benefits.
Of course, I say this, but don't necessarily want to do those jobs as currently constituted (and couldn't physically do most of them), and am strongly in favor of further automation to make them less difficult.
Gaashk
28d ago
Yeah, it's certainly not fantastic. I was experiencing some schadenfreude last fall when SNAP benefits were possibly going to be delayed due to the government shutdown, and people were panicking about extremely first world food problems.
I do think we have to work on culture a bit. Countries used to have fasts. Lent and Ramadan are both starting. We should probably move back towards some amount of abstention being the proper thing to do, rather than just eating thoughtlessly all the time.
Gaashk
28d ago
My kids have been eating government posole lately. I guess I'm happy to see the government pay for regional food traditions. A big step up from my mom's memories of Navajo garages full of cheese sitting there going bad, because cheese wasn't culturally considered a viable food.
Gaashk
28d ago
Some states offer, in addition to free school lunches, to let people bring their children to eat remade lunches during breaks as well. That's fine, they can keep doing that. I'm generally impressed with the free lunches around here, the kids' school lunches are better than what I bring to work.
Gaashk
28d ago
The divil is always in the details for these kinds of social credit schemes.
Have kids? If they all attend school 97% of school days
If the AIs cure viral infections first, I suppose.
Kid scores in the top 20% of his grade on a standardized test?
The main reason people currently (often) get paid more for being smarter is because we need that intelligence for important things like good decision making. But in a world where their parents are putting all their intellectual effort towards gaming the social credit system, this will end badly, as currently seen in places like South Korea. Anyway, in a world with ubiquitous AI programs, why wouldn't the student just talk directly to the AI, and get rewarded for asking about socially beneficial things, and generally sounding like an upstanding young person in the AI's professional judgement, rather than doing standardized tests at all?
Large age differentials are so uncommon in my social sphere, that my actual encounter is from time spent in rural Muslim Albanian villages. I don't think I've met a mainstream American woman who was sexually attracted to a settled boomer man, so it's not really a point of concern. I suppose if it happened, I might think something like "huh, that was unexpected," and not much else.
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