HereAndGone2
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User ID: 4074
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
One big thing I see missing from all these "the solution is simple: force women to have children by coercion!" answers is - are men ready to be fathers?
Parenting is not just "I knocked the bitch up, that's my job done, now I should be able to live as I please without being asked to do anything with the squalling brats except pay the minimum out of my wages to feed and clothe them".
Are men today able, and ready, to be a father to a family of three, four, or more children? Are they ready to make sacrifices? Because even with all the laments over how women divorce and bleed men dry, men very easily drop their existing family to go off and start with a new partner (and maybe a new baby). They don't have relationships with their children, see the arguments over "what if you found out the kid wasn't yours?" and several men have no problem that after being the father for ten or more years, now the child means nothing to them and they don't love it and don't care if it dies and don't care if they're the only father it has ever known, that tie is severed.
You can't have big families where it's all on the woman. That's how we got 'married to the State' in the first place; men were willing to fuck around, not so willing to be parents. Or even would be disasters if permitted to be in the life of the family.
Being a husband and father involves a lot more than just "I married her and got her pregnant, job done".
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
AI in ecommerce is making the field even more cut throat driving prices down.
Great! Now you can buy a shit-ton of cheap Chinese crap off Shein and Temu, but you still need to get ten other people as flatmates to rent someplace to live.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
While I can accept universal Maslow-style enlightenment as an ideal post-scarcity society, I'm not convinced that it's possible to push people into that.
Yep. If you just look at the court cases in your local news, you will see how many people decide to spend their free time: drink, drugs, and criminality.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
I'm a skeptic because I don't believe in the implied abundance; someones going to have to produce all those nachos for the average Joe, and the videogames, and the electricity.
I too am a sceptic because of this. If we replace all the labour (or as much as we can squeeze out) with the magic robots, we are not likely to see "and MacroFruitCountenaceBigBigBank happily handed over 80% of their yuuuuuge profits to pay UBI for the 90% of displaced labour force".
Jeff Bezos was able to afford to rent out Venice for his second wedding. That money did not go into UBI. Same with the future: governments will tax what they can, corporations will avail of what loopholes they can, them that has, gits.
And governments may not even tax what they can, see the comedic saga of the government in my country being forced to accept €13 billion in back taxes from Apple, while it did its very best to refuse it (due to fears of "if the EU makes the American multinationals which prop up our economy pay up, they are likely to leave Ireland and then we're effed"). Same with UBI taxes: if it is too onerous a burden, the corporations will move overseas and good luck prying a cent out of the robotic hands.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
thanks to LLMs I can generate thousands of listings' worth of relevant keywords in plain English with great SEO in seconds.
You are a slop generator, one of those making the online experience worse for us all.
I work, actively, at a computer for about an hour a week, on average, and earn all of my money passively through that.
And hot singles in my area want to date me, and you earn $5,000 a month with this one simple trick?
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Yeah, the idea that productivity will zoom up only applies to certain work. How fast can you now build a house if it's all AI? Can AI make it possible for houses to be completed from greenfield site to turn-key in a week? I think there will be gains, but the idea that AI is a magic wand is dreaming.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
I agree with the general thrust of this that we won't get post-scarcity paradise or dystopian hellscape, AI will be a technology eventually folded in (what works of it) into the economy and maybe government policies in some areas, and most of us will go on as we have been doing.
Jobs that can be automated will be (the robot factories run by AI rather than human overseers) and some white-collar work will get disrupted along with that, which will be interesting to watch, but we'll end up pretty much as we are now.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
He uses this term to basically refer to the Zionist project, directed by Zionist Jews inside and outside of Israel, along with Zionist Christians, and secret societies, which are all advocating for war to bring about the Judeo-Christian end times (or something like that.)
Why do you give this guy any more credence than you would QAnon or other wackjobs? "Tinfoil hat guy gives lecture about religion responsible for all bad things" is hardly news, and that the Chinese authorities apparently allowed him to lecture about it (a class he taught (I believe to students in Beijing)") is nothing strange, new or startling. Wow, you mean the government which very much objects to anything that challenges its authority as sole arbiter of what its citizens should think and believe, and which has multiple examples of tyring to coerce, control and destroy religious bodies in China, is happy for some propaganda about "Da KKKristians and Da Joos are behind it all and if only there was no religion we'd have peace, love and a currant bun"? You astound me, Holmes!
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Men ran away as fast as they could from marriage and child-rearing during the Sexual Revolution. So this is reaping what was sowed - oh, women are now on the Pill and other contraceptive devices and don't have to get pregnant if they engage in sex outside of marriage, and indeed we WANT women to engage in sex outside of marriage because then they're not baby-trapping men and tying them down?
Well, here come consequences, boys.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Trying to recreate Trump's train of thought is taking crazy pills, but in the spirit of maximum charity, it could be "actions have consequences, the kind of TDS this person engaged in came back to haunt him as another guy went nuts due to the rubbish being peddled about me and murdered him".
Do not make me go dig out mediaeval illegitimacy and prostitution rates.
Okay, early modern period, which is very roughly 16th-18th century. Someone has done work on that, and probably plenty more as well. But if you are trying to tell me the vast majority of men, historically, have been doomed to die kissless virgins if they could not find a wife... then we must have the heavens full of saints in spite of themselves!
In the Late Middle Ages, a third of the population was probably born extramaritally. From 1400 to 1600, the illegitimacy ratio dropped markedly, but from 1650 to 1850, it seems to have gradually risen from around 5 to 9% in most European states.
"A third of the population" would cover "had the baby first then the wedding" as well as "never got married", but one third? That's a heck of a lot of men not getting regular sex if they didn't have wives yet managing to father children!
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Wildly speculating here, but if he knew/recognised the person (who had waited for him to show up) then he might bring them into the foyer with him.
But this is all armchair detective theorising at present,.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Information about his personal life is slowly trickling out. One source says "Loureiro was reportedly born in Portugal to a Sephardic Jewish family in 1977" so that covers the Jewish ancestry part. Other reports say he was married with three children.
So probably not an affair gone wrong, but it could still be anything. Police say no suspect yet, which is unusual, but I guess we'll have to wait until they can find some evidence and release it.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
500 years ago they were getting the wenches with child but not marrying said wenches; today they don't have to get them with child because contraception and abortion.
Most young men want to have fun, sow their wild oats, and then settle down. Even in the 19th century, they didn't want to be tied down, and ironically often those who did want to marry had to wait a long time for economic stability to do so, or even that their employers discouraged marriage as taking their attention away from the job.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
The same working class background that a certain commentator likes to sneer about. And that our society has spent a lot of time over the past decades trying to shift the culture to "we're all middle-class now", and which has been successfully gutted so that the vices, but damn few of the virtues, of that background survive.
I'm constantly astounded by how much I find myself agreeing with Shoe0nhead, even when I disagree very strongly with other beliefs of hers; see this recent video, where she talks about how she grew up and now how her kids will grow up, starting at 17.01 here.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
It is more than just a dead tree, but it's not some kind of "and by putting in a tree, it really means that the British Empire will continue to survive into the future" symbolism, either. Tolkien liked trees so he put in trees. What are the seven stars a symbol of, then? What are the seven stones? Remember the rhyme:
Tall ships and tall kings
Three times three.
What brought they from the foundered land
Over the flowing sea?
Seven stars and seven stones
And one white tree.
Tolkien explains in notes what they were, and it's not this kind of facile but dumb explanation here:
The seven stars and seven stones are symbols of the Valar, the gods of Tolkien's universe, who guided the Numenoreans to their new home.
Tolkien doesn't put symbolism of that type in, he puts prophecy in: "the hands of the king are the hands of a healer", and so forth. This is how Aragorn establishes that he is the rightful heir and king (and that is what the split between Gondor and Arnor started with, the denial by Gondor that descendants of the Arnorian line had any inheritance rights on the throne).
There isn't any symbolism of "by X you meant the Tories/the Communists/the Joos, just say it, we all know you really mean it, it's Da Joos isn't it???" kind.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Chin up, if AI works out as everyone is hoping, we're all unnecessary for securing the future, the transhumanists who are happy to be replaced by our superior silicon descendants will win, and neither men, women, nor others will survive the Great Robot Purge.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Who knows? He could have been a hound with the co-eds or female faculty/staff members, and this is a jealous boyfriend/husband going after the prof sleeping with his girlfriend/wife. It could be a disgruntled neighbour over putting out the bins on the wrong day. A lot of possibilities, jumping straight to "he was Jewish! (even though on his official bios there's no mention of race or religion) and he was murdered because anti-Semitism!" is definitely leaping to conclusions.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Trump's post was weird but I think he put it out as "crazy left-wingers driven nuts by TDS running amok and murdering people" and no more than that. He's as subtle as a brick, so it was taken as victim-blaming.
My immediate reaction to the news was "sounds like family member did it" because there have been a few recent cases in Ireland of people murdered by their (drug-addict/mentally ill) adult kids in these same circumstances.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Because the shooting took place in his home, let's hold off on speculation just yet. It could be a domestic dispute or the likes, rather than a politically motivated one. And by the name, I would have assumed the man was Italian. He was Portuguese, and while certainly you can be Portuguese and Jewish, we don't know if he was for sure; Wikipedia says nothing about that and so where are you getting "reportedly" from?
It seems like some interested parties are claiming he was Jewish and hence that was why he was shot, but we simply don't know enough yet about what happened. This is reminding me of the list of transgender homicides, where "hit by a car and died in traffic accident" was counted as a homicide.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
I'm looking up the novel right now, and the very ending does have some religious references (Scrooge invokes Heaven, goes to church, etc.) but it's very non-denominational, if I may put it that way. "Heaven" but not God and certainly not Jesus. Church, but it's more the ringing of the church bells, and going to church is part of his entire procedure of reformed behaviour, not a particularly conversion experience:
He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk—that anything—could give him so much happiness. In the afternoon he turned his steps towards his nephew’s house.
Dickens invented modern Christmas, more or less, and it was a majorly secular one right from the start. Yes, generosity, charity, reconciliation with your family, becoming involved with your fellows - but nothing there that couldn't have the very light coat of religious reference sanded off and still be relevant to the 'spiritual but not religious' or modern lay person who observes Christmas as a time for getting drunk, partying, having the big family gathering, and spending a ton of money.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
DeBeers may have popularised the idea of "you too can and should buy her a diamond ring" but they did not invent engagement rings:
Engagement rings have been common in Western countries since at least the time of the Roman Empire. They began to feature diamonds during the Renaissance, and became especially closely associated with diamonds after a marketing campaign by the De Beers Group between 1939 and 1979.
Sure, not everybody had a diamond engagement ring, but there were betrothal rings and other items used/given as tokens of "now we are a couple who intend to marry and are not free to mess around with other people".
The DeBeers campaign was aspirational and worked on that, when people were all rising to the middle-class and expectations were rising with that. "Now you, too, can have some at least of the trappings of the rich and high-class! Demonstrate your success in life and how you're making it!"
Gender reveal parties are probably the modern equivalent of this, I'm still baffled by them. Baby showers were an exotic enough notion to me, now there's this new trend and of course, like all trends, it has ballooned into bigger, better, flashier showing-off.
That doesn't mean babies are a bad thing, and "DeBeers sold you on the idea of diamonds mean love and diamonds are forever, you poor boob, you sap, you credulous mark, you" does not mean getting engaged and married is a bad thing, either.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Namely: if you elevate the relative social status of young hetero single men, it’ll incentivize them to pair-bond, marry and have children.
We really do need a proper survey done of 20-25 year old men asking them "so, do you want to get a job, settle down, marry one woman and have three kids with her, I mean right now, not in ten or fifteen years time?"
Shakespeare for one didn't think the young hetero single men of his day were eager to settle down to domestic responsibility the very first chance they got:
I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest, for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting—Hark you now. Would any but these boiled brains of nineteen and two-and-twenty hunt this weather? They have scared away two of my best sheep, which I fear the wolf will sooner find than the master.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Martinez drove off but paramedics discovered her and her vehicle at a repair shop about a mile away. Martinez was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where she received treatment for gunshot wounds, the complaint states.
Hold on, the ICE agent shot her five times at close range and she was still able to drive away and she's well enough to go to court? I don't know, I would have expected a higher degree of lethality from such an encounter. Though maybe with all the memeing about ICE being stormtroopers, they do indeed have stormtrooper shooting skills.
Then we get the resentful younger men saying women are all gold-diggers and the State should force Stacy-Anne to be my girlfriend.
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