Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
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User ID: 863
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
10d ago
I can only speak to my own experience but I expect companies have a lot of incentive not to do this proactively (though it varies by company). The upside is increased retention of people who might have left for a better offer. The downside is paying a bunch more money to people who were not going to leave anyway. Depending on what your turnover looks like the balance could tip either way. Ideally companies would target these raises precisely to the people who would leave without them but identifying them is probably hard, unless they self identify by negotiating with you and another company at the same time. I got my largest raise ever doing something like that but it was definitely nerve wracking. Concerns about retaliation or adverse action even if I stayed. Would not be surprised if people just take outside offers and skip the further stress of negotiating.
January 3rd in an odd numbered year? Time for the United States House of Representatives to choose a new Speaker! Mike Johnson (the current Republican Speaker) is the favorite but the Republican majority in the House is even narrower than it was when Kevin McCarthy took 15 ballots in 2023. The current rolls stand at 219-215 Republican-Democrat. The Speaker election requires a majority of all votes cast, which will be 218 if everyone votes and less if some Representatives-elect abstain. This means Johnson cannot afford to lose more than two Republican votes (or more than four abstentions) in order to be elected. At least one Republican (Massie) has committed to voting against Johnson, meaning he cannot afford to lose another voting Republican (or three abstentions). This is all on the assumption that all 215 Democrats vote for Jeffries on every ballot. The first ballot is about to commence.
ETA1:
At the end of the first ballot the totals stand at 216 - Johnson, 215 - Jeffries, 3 - Other. No Speaker elected.
ETA2:
One hour later Norman and Self change their votes to Johnson, delivering him the win 218-215. Formally electing Johnson on the first ballot.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
10d ago
I think I am lacking some clarity. When you make the decision to keep them on and train them as you migrate their infrastructure to the cloud is this a business decision or a charitable one? Would it be cheaper, for you, to fire them all and hire replacements/do the migration yourself? Or is training them as part of doing the migration also the correct business decision?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
14d ago
Interesting. I guess what makes it breeding "kink" in my mind is that it's getting sexual arousal from the thought of becoming pregnant. It's less obvious to me how prevalent that is. Lots of people want to be pregnant and have sex with the goal of becoming pregnant but for what fraction is becoming pregnant sexually arousing?
The other way animals are bred just involves a stallion going to town, which I'd argue is better described by other kink names, including, if relevant, petplay kinks.
My impression is that a breeding link is often coupled with (though not identical to) what is being described in this paragraph and often subsumed under the same name.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
15d ago
I recognize that it is because "breed" is standing in for two different mental images but the conjunction of these two paragraphs is something.
On the one hand, describing the act of humans procreating with "breed" is very disrespectful. That's what animals do, or what we do to animals, not humans! On the other hand, the existence of the term "breeding kink" is insane because the human urge to breed is natural and not at all kinky.
What if someone gets off by being inseminated like an animal!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
15d ago
No, but that's because I've been in the same long term relationship since I was a teenager. Also the changes are in the opposite direction of your question. Generally it has led to me being more willing to date people I would not have otherwise, rather than less willing to date people I was already inclined to.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
16d ago
As I mentioned in another thread I've done this same reflection myself and it's changed my own perspective on who I would or would not date. In any case I don't imagine this reflection necessarily entailing any particular change. I suspect most people who experience any change will do so in a way that's the opposite of certain standards of beauty common in their cultural milieu but that doesn't have to be the case.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
16d ago
"We" is "everyone" in my mind. I've certainly changed my own opinions about who I would or would not date by doing the kind of reflection I have in mind.
As to "why" I think understanding oneself and one's beliefs is a good thing. Maybe one finds one's preferences are not grounded anything deeper than "I like this for reasons I can't articulate" and that's fine. But maybe one finds that one has a preference that could or ought be otherwise. I certainly did.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
17d ago
I don't think anything in this comment contradicts anything in my comment. I did not have black women specifically in mind. I had some examples of women of various races that varied along some of the traits OP mentioned explicitly but decided not to post them. To my mind there is a pretty substantial difference between "I have not met (and may not be likely to meet) a person of a particular race who has the qualities I want in a partner" and "I could never partner with a person of a particular race due to some essential nature of the people of that race." I do think that many of our preferences are substantially influenced by the culture and environment we are raised in but the process of changing that fact is much more a socio-cultural one than an individual one.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
17d ago
I suspect this is a case of (perhaps mutual) misunderstanding. When the post you were responding to said they were "not scared of ... crime ..." they did not mean "it would not be bad to be the victim of a crime" they meant something more like "as I go about my daily life I do not experience any subjective fear that I will be the victim of a crime." Your response, then, was not interpreted as "crime is bad, so it's rational to have some amount of fear of it" it was interpreted as "you ought to feel afraid of being the victim of a crime as you go about your daily life." This also neatly explains the responses you got. There is certainly a stereotype of conservatives in certain liberal bubbles as someone who experiences a fear response (often grounded in a belief they will be the victim of a crime) whenever they see a non-white, immigrant, Other, etc person. I expect you ended up being rounded off to this stereotype based on the interpretation of your comments.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
17d ago
I don't think anyone is obliged to find anyone else attractive but at the same time we should be willing to look critically at the preferences and beliefs we do have. When we're talking about racial preferences I think the natural investigation is to ask what that racial preference is rooted in. Is there some trait you find attractive that you think people of a certain race have that people of other races don't? My impression is these discussions tend to flatten substantial intra-racial variation in the traits in question and engage in a lot of racial essentialism.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
18d ago
From a pure numbers perspective most of the drop in births per woman since 1976 is driven by women who do have children having fewer children, rather than women choosing to forego children entirely. The latter has increased from 10 to 17% but the former has decreased from 3.4 children per woman to 2.3.
On the topic of women having more children, society should pay women a competitive wage to do so. If it really is the case that the most valuable thing a woman can do is to bear and raise children, moreso than whatever other work they were doing, then society ought to be willing to compensate them competitively with that other work. This is how markets for labor ordinarily work. If I want someone to put their scarce labor power to my purpose instead of some other I need to pay them more! This isn't a new idea, of course, it's over 100 years old.
But is there any way of insuring a woman’s economic independence while child-raising is her chosen occupation? Or must she sink into that dependent state from which, as we all know, it is so hard to rise again? That brings us to the fourth feature of our program — motherhood endowment. It seems that the only way we can keep mothers free, at least in a capitalist society, is by the establishment of a principle that the occupation of raising children is peculiarly and directly a service to society, and that the mother upon whom the necessity and privilege of performing this service naturally falls is entitled to an adequate economic reward from the political government. It is idle to talk of real economic independence for women unless this principle is accepted.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
26d ago
I gotta know. What is actually the ROI on fare enforcement? Here's an article from the AP written March this year talking about NYC sending an "additional" 800 NYPD officers specifically to check for turnstile fare evasion. According to the NYPD Police Officer benefits page the starting salary for an officer is $58580/year and grows to $121589/year at 5.5 years of experience. So the total cost to the city of just these officers is somewhere between $47M and $97M per year (assuming all are between 0 and 5.5 years experience). The fine for jumping a turnstile starts at $100. So in order to justify the cost of these officers they are going to need to ticket between 470k and 970k people. According to that same AP article 28k people had been ticketed so far that year. Here's a Gothamist article from September this year that claims about 70k tickets were issued for fare evasion in the first 6 months of the year. So those 800 officers turned a presumptive 28k tickets/3 months into 42k tickets/4 months, a gain of 14k tickets (or, $1.4M in fines). Set this against the payout of NYPD salaries in the neighborhood of $12-24M. A steal! As long as you're the NYPD.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1mo ago
Ok, feel free to rephrase my previous comment. Draw me the line from Indonesian prostitute earnings to men caring about their partner's body count.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1mo ago
I'm gonna need some help. What's the chain from "there's a negative correlation between time as a prostitute and earnings among Indonesian prostitutes" to "there are not a lot of normal guys who would marry Lily Phillips."
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1mo ago
If you watch the documentary she's pretty clear her lack of enjoyment at the end is because she feels bad that some of the guys didn't have a good time, not any regret about the act itself.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1mo ago
Ok. Then those men are free to not to marry a woman who has had a lot of partners. I am confident there are a lot of normal guys who do not care how many previous partners their partner has had.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1mo ago
Socially agreed upon by who? I certainly don't agree. What is the benefit to me of this woman having difficulty finding a husband?
I guess I'm fascinated by the logistics of the whole thing. The article says that each guy got 5 minutes for the 100-man run. That's right around 8.3 hours or so of sex. Were there breaks to eat? Use the restroom? Seems like that would be essential. Or maybe you fast beforehand? For 1000 men, assuming you want to keep the same time, you're looking at 30 seconds per guy. That's not a lot of time! Makes sense to have them disrobe first but I wonder if getting/maintaining an erection will be a problem. Standing in a line of naked guys for 30 seconds of sex is probably not the most arousing thing. Wonder how you find a venue that is big enough for a purpose like this.
Lily and her friends have done similar things before but I cannot find any of it since any mention of her name brings up thousands of links about what she did this week.
For many search engines you can add something like "before:" to get results that are before a particular date. Ex. doing a search on StartPage for "Trump before:2020" gets me news articles about Trump from before the year 2020.
The cherry on this cake is that she can get married to a fairly normal guy tomorrow because Riley Reid, another adult entertainer did this too.
I feel like I'm supposed to read this as sardonic, but why? Is there something bad or wrong about the fact she could marry a normal guy?
ETA:
I watched that whole fucking documentary and I'm glad I did because if you watch the whole thing she's very clear the reason she's crying and emotional is because some of the guys tried to guilt her about not making them orgasm or not feeling they got their 5 minutes worth, not because she feels some kind of shame or remorse for having sex with so many guys.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1mo ago
I have had pretty good experiences with Premera Blue Cross Blue Shield. My employer actually just started offering a United plan to us this year, though I did not elect to use it.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1mo ago
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1mo ago
The main character in Doctorow's story also has a personal connection. His initial entry to the content that radicalizes him is his insurance company denying an experimental treatment that could cure his wife's cancer.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1mo ago
Cory Doctorow called it I guess. All the way back in 2019 he wrote a short story about a man, radicalized by reading online stories of heartless insurance companies, doing some retaliatory terrorism. It was a pretty good story too! I also see the Wikipedia article for the book has already been updated to reference the shooting.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1mo ago
I guess I don't see it. All the people alive today who are choosing not to have kids are, themselves, the kids of "kids who have kids." Seems like there's a further assumption required that some proportion of the population will never be convinced by memes or ideas that lead people not to have kids. That is, humans will never do some kind of voluntary extinction.
I guess I'm not seeing the angle where the employees should be grateful to the company. This sounds like it's cheaper for you to train them than it would be to hire replacements and additionally you hope they'll accept a lower salary. Should they be grateful your business didn't waste money firing and replacing them?
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