Mewis
4hr ago
No offense meant, but it sounds like something is going on with her if she's gaining weight but doesn't want to talk about it. You should be able to talk about it, even if the conclusion you reach together is that she likes food more than being thin. That might be all that it is (and there is definitely a lot of shame in our society around excessive weight gain), but she might also be communicating some other difficulty. It's worth asking if there's been any emotional trouble recently, whether from family or work.
I don't think there's much to be gained in trying to psyop her this way. Of course, having a better body is it's own reward, but it might shift the dynamic in other ways. She might feel ashamed or insecure, and those feelings might cause resentment. That's the worst case scenario. I think it's unlikely that she'll be inspired to join in.
Mewis
1d ago
The idea that Putin and Russia are not under threat from the US axis is I think, not on solid ground. That's been demonstrated several times over the past twenty five years. Iraq, Syria, and Libya were not under threat from the US, until suddenly they were. Fundamentally, the US believes it has the right to direct the affairs of all the world, simply waiting for crisis and opportunity to strike.
This is not to say that Russia's aggression is justified. But the notion that the West is just minding it's own business is ridiculous.
Mewis
2d ago
I feel like two or three years ago it became weirdly ubiquitous in advertising. I don't really stay up to date with TV so I couldn't comment on that.
Mewis
1d ago
You are right that the US is very careful not to directly call for Putin's removal or a partition of Russia and it's destruction as an independent power. But I think that is what they seek, and it's what they work towards, and if Putin was to show any weakness, it's what they would work towards openly.
Mewis
2d ago
I don't know. Is a full blown war between Iran and Israel even possible? Does either nation have the capability to deploy and maintain a substantial force on the ground of the other, or is the worst that can happen a full air exchange?
Mewis
4d ago
I agree that it's very hard to tease out the direct impact of sun exposure from all the other things that come with it, but if that's really the case then clearly it isn't a big deal and it's definitely not worth shifting your attitude to favour indoor activities over outdoor ones.
I don't see that the struggle was fruitless. The way that black people were treated under slavery was abominable, truly awful, and was never justified by HBD.
Second, I think we're close - maybe within a generation - of having the understanding of genetics to very very quickly identify if a gap exists and close it through non coercive means like embryo selection. So I think you should be optimistic.
Mewis
18d ago
The issue therein is that the amount of money you'd need to pay to move the needle is uh, astronomical. We're not talking about the price of baby formula here, we're talking about six figure sums per person. And what you're essentially paying people to do is stay home, not work, and consume more. The better the program works, the more it costs and the less money you have to pay for it. And all this is also massively regressive if targeted at the middle class.
2rafa is on the right track here in terms of scale, but even big shovels can't turn the tide. You end up digging the earth out from beneath your feet. Do we really want to encourage parents to work more, and the childless to work less? Will young childless people sit still and let themselves be dragooned into working as nannies and cleaners for the fruitful and then taxed to pay for their own service?
And will any of this work? Low fertility is not a symptom of poverty, but of some of the richest societies to ever exist. Which then turn around and say - but not rich enough. Just a bit more money. can we really buy virtue, really bribe ourselves into having kids?
Low fertility is here to stay. It is a symptom of an industrial society that has refined every process of production except for human procreation. When we want cattle, we roll up our sleeves and make them. But human children are not even at the level of a medieval cottage industry. Maybe it's for the best that we don't see babies as commodities. But that is a choice, and it follows from that choice that we will not have very many of them.
Mewis
28d ago
One thing that stuck out to me in Dune was the chasteness. The Harkonnens are sex weirdo pederasts in the books, an element that is totally excised in the movies, even though they're delightfully weird in other ways.
Mewis
28d ago
This is what they call 'four quadrant" films, films that penetrate all major demographics. Marvel has it pretty spot on with no sex and minimal romance, and you can't argue with money.
Mewis
28d ago
Why not simply bring down the force of law on these petty criminals for the crimes they are actually committing, rather than this chicanery about nudging social media?
Mewis
1mo ago
This sort of romantic neo-nazi image is ridiculous. The Nazis were not high trust. In fact they were the total opposite, a heap of the most venal, odious, dishonourable bandits to ever come out of Germany (which is saying something). They had no concerns for honour or trust or mercy, no respect for the traditional religion of Europe, no respect for the ancient peoples of Europe. They started vast wars over money and land, lied habitually, ran a horribly corrupt state built on exploitation and outright slavery, and slaughtered millions.
Nor was their state really ever intended to be self sufficient. From the start, the intention was to loot, conquer and subjugate their neighbours. Indeed, the German nationalist project was mostly complete by 1938 with the annexations of Austria and the Germanized regions of Czechoslovakia, and scarcely a peep from the Allies. But the Nazis dreamed of imperial domination and glory, not self sufficiency. Instead of rallying the nations of Europe against Bolshevism ( an easy task), Hitler squandered his credibility. By the end of WWII even anti communists like Churchill were drinking with Stalin, and it was left to the US to establish an anti communist front in Europe - well, the half of it that was left.
It's interesting because we have a much better example of reactionary "we don't do globalism here"autarky from the 1940s - Franco, who carefully avoided entanglement in either WWII or the postwar international order. That didn't work either, but he failed with more grace and less bloodshed than Hitler.
Mewis
14d ago
Well, the more obvious answer is that there's more money to be made from King of Pop than Wacko Jacko, since the man himself is dead, but his music lives on.
Mewis
19d ago
I do like turn based strategy, but there's something totally repellent to me about games or media where every character is a bobblehead anime girl.
Mewis
15d ago
Clearly, that exclusionary element is not needless - it serves a purpose or satisfies some desire. I think that desire is the desire for competition, just channelled into a single player game. I also think it's wrong to write off that very natural drive as snobbery.
Mewis
1mo ago
Why is there no in between?
I've noticed a pretty big pattern these days among fitness YouTubers. More clickbaity videos, more collabs with other creators that are popular, more shilling of exercise apps and products. It's not necessarily bad content, and a lot of it comes from people who are genuine and respected. I just think that's the ecosystem they live in now. And I couldn't say on the back end exactly how they're financially incentivised and rewarded, but clearly they are being pushed in this direction.
Mewis
26d ago
Restaurants are if anything, a great example of competition keeping prices low. Most restaurants have terrible profit margins and many of them fail.
Other good examples of industries with high competition and crummy profit margins - airlines, supermarkets.
Mewis
14d ago
Life is pain, but if you don't figure a way to understand life (including the pain) as having value/meaning/significance you're not gonna make it. That's the way I see it. Easier said than done, though.
Mewis
1mo ago
PEPFAR is estimated to have saved over twenty million lives, if that's worth anything to you.
Mewis
20d ago
Sure, but Hamas doesn't simply want a change in management and a new name on the map. They conceive of Palestine as being essentially and exclusively Arab and Muslim - not all that different from Israel being essentially Jewish.
Mewis
1mo ago
The referendum didn't fail because of some ultra catholic silent majority - it comes on the heels of large wins for abortion and gay marriage in referenda. Most people are still good liberals. The fact is that these amendments were half baked from the start.
Mewis
26d ago
The more obvious point is that if we really end up facing such a disaster, we'll just geoengineer a solution. The only reason we don't pursue it now is piety, but it's hard to imagine billions of people just letting themselves die because the IPCC says it would be wrong to stop climate change.
Mewis
1mo ago
A million things. London, as it is, is being strangled by a hideous combination of sky high rents, high taxes, and a glutted labour market. That it manages any prosperity at all is a marvel - that what prosperity it enjoys is sapped to support housing prices (and atop it, a rentier class of whitehairs) and an underclass of semi employed immigrants. The rest is pure consumption.
This is how despite inviting vast numbers of immigrants, Britain remains poor and is not likely to change it.
Mewis
1mo ago
Rivendell is temporary only from a terribly alien worldview - it has lasted thousands of years. That is, of course, insufficient from the perspective of an Elf, but should satisfy any mortal human.
The Shire, of course, is clearly idealised by Tolkien, but anyone who thinks it to be paradise is wrong. Tolkien himself clearly grasped the drawbacks of such a society - petty, parochial, ignorant, and dependent on the goodwill of greater civilizations.
Right, but the reason you don't want powerlifting advice is... Because you don't want to be humongous. Which is totally fair, but if you eat like a normal person and lift weights, you'll just look "toned".
Regardless, it's entirely possible to effect great changes in your physique just through calisthenics. I know some people who do calisthenics with incredibly impressive physiques.
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