Skulldrinker
No bio...
User ID: 1874
Skulldrinker
2yr ago
based on the vehicle morphologies and material science testing and the possession of unique atomic arrangements and radiological signatures
These statements would be way more compelling with some more detailed examples that would indicate that anyone with some degree of scientific literacy is in the loop. I'm not quite clear on if "Unique Atomic arrangements" are referring to novel chemicals or novel elements or novel isotopes of elements. I'd love examples of what kind of vehicle morphology would prove non-human intelligence. A fucking rough sketch from this guy of what vehicles he's seen isn't even forthcoming. Any of this stuff would massively change human understanding of physics and materials tech, the fields there haven't been real theoretical breakthroughs in in forever.
Skulldrinker
10mo ago
The last new star Trek movie came out, what, 10 years ago, and they weren't particularly woke anyways (by Star Trek metrics). The beef with them was they were shallow James Abrams action-fests, not that they were too woke. Star Trek has always been progressive. It just wasn't always so #CurrentYear.
My beef is with Star Wars, anyways. I very specifically got accused of "being against strong role models for girls" when I said The Last Jedi wasn't very good, and I've kinda never forgiven the world for that.
There's still a set of critics and influencers who will clap like circus seals at anything that vaguely alludes to capitalism bad or hwiteness bad,
Eh, I've got a personal story to share.
A few months ago, I ran into someone at the pub I'm a regular at and worked for during the span of a festival. She was tall with grey eyes and a strong jaw, a spacey stare-right-at/past-you expression and a throaty dreamy voice with a tiny hiss in it; a few sideways teeth. Kinda Debra Morgan-looking. She was also a regular and barbacked occasionally, otherwise she did merch distribution at festivals and venues. We both sperg'd out on eachother about this-or-that subject. Her stuff was Electric Cello, Cannibalism, Fullmetal Alchemist deep lore (what the fuck is Father? Our conclusion: the closest analogy would be a luciferian fallen angel). We were talking about Tieflings throughout the editions and character trope stuff, I said I like the Half-monster-guy-who-hunts-monsters-and-is-conflicted-about-it schtick, like Hellboy. Turns out Hellboy is her favorite/comfort movie that she throws on when she's down. I immediately know why. She shares some music she's working on with me, says she hasn't shown it to anyone else, even her best friend. Says I'm easy to talk to. Says she'd wondered if she'd run into me that night. I'm more a Show, Don't Tell sort of person, but I'm obviously internally smitten. In case you can't catch the hint, she's not 100% neurotypical. Neither am I. I mean, I post here.
I got her phone number so she could tell me when she'd be doing a cello set somewhere, but her set didn't pan out and she didn't reply past that, so I didn't keep at it, but she kept Liking my instagram posts (nature/wildlife/bugs and RPG sessions).
She posts about going to a House of the Dragon S2 watch party at another bar for her birthday, and I formulate a plan: Turn up at that party and give her a laser-guided gift. I have an extra copy of the Hellboy paperback that's the main source for the film (she hasn't read the comics). Inside the front cover, I write "all us freaks have is each other" (Like I said, I know why we both love the film, and DelToro in general). I also fire up my filament printer and print out three full-size tooth faeries from Hellboy 2 in blueish-green plastic, assemble them, and color in the eyes and teeth. (This isn't that big of a project for me; I've played Warhammer in the past)
I turn up to the watch party, which is full of goddamn Kneelers who shout "woo, matriarchy!" which causes me pain. But it's still a decent time, a kid gets his head hacked off. Afterwards I run into her; she'd arrived after me and I intentionally wasn't looking for her during the episode. But we both make a big deal of running into eachother. I run back to my car and come back with a cardboard box full of faeries. She loves them, she's cooing over how cute they are, how they all have different heads, she's giving them names, she's showing them off to everyone around her. She spontaneously hugs me when she sees the dedication inside the book.
As an amusing aside, after the watch party this bar had an open-mic stand-up event. And everyone was terrible. Like, reddit-tier generic terrible. There were boos and groans. Some boilerplate edgy jokes (I think one guy joked about Gays for Palestine getting thrown off of buidings. It was just fucking inept). At first I think this is a huge windfall; I'm actually funny. But it'd be hours before I could get on and school these fools. My crush and her crowd get up to head to a different bar, because they're so affronted. I'm invited along, even though I'm slightly worried about the prissy reaction, I steadfastly hold to their work being bad because it's bad, not because its offensive.
The company my crush keeps is slightly worrisome to me. Many are fat feminists of the "Men, amirite?" sort, but I don't have the impression they're close friends, just acquaintances. I later find out that she's a preacher's daughter and was an activist from an early age, part of OG Occupy (she's in her early 30s, I'm in my mid-30s). I carefully talk around the subject and express my own frustration that activism these days is more about being seen having the right opinions and hating the right people than furthering a worthy cause, which seems to resonate with her a bit. There's a careful future conversation to be had, but at least she remembers a time before IdPol infected every cause.
She goes outside to smoke and asks if I'd like to join her. She smokes American Spirit; the same cigs I smoke, which I only do socially (too much time at bars in the smoker's pen; that's where all the cool people and cool conversations are) They last forever. She talks about how she loves pretending she's in a noir story when she smokes. I ask "Yes, but in this context, who's the jaded alcoholic detective and who's the dangerous dame?" She smiles as I take a cig, I reach for a lighter, but she beats me to it. "Pretty people don't light their own cigarettes" she says, with that same smile.
A few minutes later, I kiss her. We spend a little time just holding eachother, enjoying the closeness, and head back inside.
The evening continues. I try not to monopolize my crush and let her hang with the rest of the people there. We go back outside for another cigarette, I kiss her again, she pulls away a bit when I get over-enthusiastic, we talk more, I decide to dial it back. Typically my conversations with women are like pulling teeth; I ask open-ended questions and get yes-or-no answers. They never volunteer information or start a topic or ask me about myself or even talk about themselves; I get the impression that they're playing dead to make me go away. Maybe that's just what normal people are like. This evening isn't normal, we're chatting. She says things that surprise me, which is disappointingly rare in my interactions with people. We can talk about stories and ideas and random science facts. She gets my jokes. She makes her OWN jokes. We're both creative in our own ways. She talks about her job, how it forced her to learn social skills, which is something she struggled with for a long time; she's had to put the effort into learning stuff that other people seem to just do without thinking. The feels feel so feel I have to fight to stop my eyes from getting wet. I'm very much being hit where I live.
My crush starts mentioning how tired she is, people have been buying her drinks all day. I note she's acting even spacey-er than she typically is, and resolve to not push for anything. I also find out she's just landed an awesome tour contract where she'll be handling merch at a succession of festivals all summer and autumn; she'll be gone for six months, and she's got to pack tomorrow. But there's a few shows that are happening in the city, so she'll be back in town a few times.
People start clearing out, she's very tired, she talks about calling an Uber. I offer to drive her and save her $10, since my car is nearby and I haven't had any drinks for a few hours. We walk back to my car arm-in-arm, all cutesy and formal. There's hand-holding. There's continued verbal telegraphing of tiredness, and she's not escalating anything. I get her back to her place, unload the box of faeries, kiss her one last time and say "I wish we had more time together," then leave. Send a text the next day expressing how great it was getting to know her, how nice a time I had, how I'll miss her and hope to get together again when she's back in town.
A day later, I receive a reply:
Just so you know, I'm unhappy that you made out with me while I was drunk. That wasn't how I wanted my birthday to go, and I'm really upset about it.
I reply saying I'm sorry, I might have rushed things when I realized you'd be leaving town for a while, how would you like me to comport myself towards you in the future? I'm trying to say "If you never want to hear from me again, please just say that." I never receive any further reply. She hasn't unfollowed me on instagram; I've hidden her posts so I don't see them unless I go looking, so as to avoid further pain. I'm confused in addition to shattered; is there a rule that you're not allowed to flirt with women when it's their birthday? She wasn't so drunk that she couldn't have cogent conversations about wide-ranging topics, I sure as hell felt encouraged. I thought I was being gallant by not asking if she'd like to show me her place or otherwise head inside for "coffee" or to see etchings. Fuck, how much worse would this have been if I had?
I wonder where those tooth faeries are now. Thrown out? In a box in a closet? I can't imagine her scattering them on shelves like she planned if they're just going to remind her of that time she got molested.
This is what my life is like. Nothing ever, ever works out, and whenever I think I'm making an emotional connection with someone, reality itself seems to realize a mistake has been made and steps in to correct things. I have a day or two of emotional torment as I accept that I am going to continue to be alone and to feel arbitrarily alienated. I am not allowed to do the things regular people are allowed to do. I don't get to be human. If I try, even other weirdos reject me once they sober up and invent new rules regarding birthdays.
Someone else in this thread complained that a girl didn't text him back, and I thought to myself "Hold my beer."
Edit: I appreciate the condolences, but I kinda despair at the caliber of some of the replies, and its damaged my view of the remaining userbase of this place. I don't need regurgitated /r/Redpill advice about shit tests. I'm lucky enough to have spent most of my (albeit limited) intimate time with women in actual relationships with another human being that I like and respect and who likes and respects me, instead of some retarded power game with a bratty child. You can miss me with that gay shit.
Skulldrinker
1yr ago
I remember when a recent whistleblower or leaker or whoever said that a crashed captured UFO was found to contain "Unknown Elements," with no further explanation of what that's supposed to mean, and it very much killed all of my interest in UFOs. We know what an element is even if we haven't seen it before. All the elements on the periodic table are known, or theoretically known. There's no room on the table for an element that isn't an rapid-decaying ultra-heavy metal. Unless we're talking about an incredibly exotic isotope of element 325 that somehow exists for more than 2 seconds and isn't hideously radioactive. Or Element Zero, in which case, I guess we should head to the Charon Relay in the outer system. Is the unknown element he describes a tiny sample in some sort of larger mechanism, like the Freon in a refrigerator? Or is the hull of this thing made of 70% Glorkium? Or did the guy mean elements as in elements of construction? Then I'd love a cursory description of the novel metamaterials that this thing is made of; whatever nanotubules or gels or frictionless fluids or super-conductors it's made of would be super-interesting to just have a cursory description of. Or is this guy just a 'tard that knows "Element" is a science word?
Also, your top-level post is bad and you should feel bad.
Skulldrinker
2yr ago
Except that female writers also write female characters as one-dimensional Mary sues, because yaaas queen slay.
The dynamic I notice in media today is that there's lots of Representation, but none of the minorities being represented are allowed to have negative character traits or be unsympathetic antagonists (for the same reasons as above), so straight white male characters wind up as sinks for all the narrative negativity.
Skulldrinker
1yr ago
Isn't that a bit of an absurd leap? Both towards cutting off power to the rest of the country and assassinating governors. Neither Biden nor Abbot are tryhard fedposters fantasizing about the Boogaloo, they're elected officials with investment portfolios and re-election campaigns.
but but it's worth noting that the 2017 Wonder Woman did well despite obviously having a female lead.
Wonder Woman is a girlier Rosie the Riveter and Gal Gadot has a desirable personality. There's a lot more basic appeal there than a film that inexplicably shouts "black girl magic."
The problem isnt putting a chick in it, it's the making her lame and gay.
Edit: And doing it all the time while pretending that it's daring.
Skulldrinker
1yr ago
That's because D&D is (was) really a Western dressed up in an anachronistic pseudomidieval setting. And it's settings and monsters owe more to Conan and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser than to Lord of the Rings.
Now it's become an alice-in-wonderland tea party for non-binary tiefling warlocks.
Skulldrinker
2yr ago
Didn’t this just happen to the creator of Rick and Morty?
Yes, but in the course of the legal proceedings for domestic assault and kidnapping (technically, preventing someone from leaving by blocking a door or taking their keys counts as attempted kidnapping, so it sounds like a drama-filled domestic spat), there was a bunch of fishing around and apparently he made some joke about a 14-year-old fan being Jailbait while interacting with said fan. Which also turned him into a groomer and a pedophile according to Reddit. So legal exoneration now doesn't do much for him. Plus he generally has a drunk-texting habit, which provides additional examples of being "creepy," the ultimate sin.
In the course of this, there were also claims that he hadn't actually done any in-person work apart from voice stuff on any of his shows or projects since Rick&Morty Season 3, which I'm slightly skeptical of; it sounds like all his friends and co-workers distancing themselves and claiming they never liked him anyways and none of those projects should suffer cancellation because they don't represent his work. Buuut, you can tell on the Season 3 R&M commentary that he's less involved; there's a lot more guest writers and randos and vapid LA circlejerking; and there's no Season 4 Commentary, which is consistent with less engagement from him. It's also consistent with someone who was muscled out of his own show by Dan Harmon. Genuine shrug here, the evidence is ambiguous, everyone involved has motivation to lie or elide.
My own hypothesis is that guys who luck into fame and success (and the sexual opportunities that come with it) later in life often don't know how to handle it, they're the eternal underdog who finally caught the car. Famous men who haven't lived through decades of sexual deprivation before becoming famous have better OpSec and don't fall for Crazy so easily.
Skulldrinker
2yr ago
They've gotten their fear of social danger mixed up with their fear of physical danger.
I've spent lots of time around women who actually have been physically assaulted, and they don't pull this "I feel unsafe" crap. They have some idea of what dangerous men actually look and smell like, and don't regard all men they meet as incipient rapists.
My own theory is that women get told constantly to Be Afraid, but don't actually know what it is they're supposed to be afraid of and thus their Danger Sense isn't particularly well-calibrated.
Skulldrinker
6mo ago
No political party or subculture at this point can in good faith claim to be the one who's "chill" about things and confused as to why other people are so bent out of shape, there must be something wrong with them. Everyone has gotten dirtied up at some point.
Also, being performatively concerned about something is not the same as being afraid of it.
The other day I had a conversation with someone who used to work for a Non-profit who's whole thing was getting Asylum-seeking migrants in Chicago as many resources as possible. She left that job because most of it was telling them (the Migrants) to lie to get more stuff, and coaching them on exactly what to say. Her take was that the whole thing was just moving people around and extracting money from the city so the Non-profit could continue to pay its directors their cushy salaries and justify the non-profit's continued existence, while dumping Guatemalans in the city's shelters and public housing so the men could be layabouts or thugs while the women deployed their kids to sell candy in Fulton Market (trendy restaurant district).
So not anything we didn't already know. Just funny to hear it from the horse's mouth. Especially an ethnically-mexican horse
Skulldrinker
1yr ago
My objection to ethnic swaps is also related to the use of race in (semi)original works; my best recent example is the The Last of Us HBO adaptation, which was overall very good. But I still noticed that no diverse person is ever allowed to be bad,. The closest we got was a reasonable Asian FEDRA school administrator who's technically a fascist, and Marlene, a character that is worshipped by 1/3rd of the cast, is a romantic revolutionary, and who's mild badness is part of the show's entire grey/grey moral choice thing re: Ellie. In "bad" settlement #1, everyone is a beardy Midwestern type you'd see at a MAGA rally, with guns and trucks, and they're obsessed with hunting down one particular guy, who appears to have been the only black man in town (and who has a great moral excuse for ratting on his neighbors, conveniently. In the game, he and his brother weren't being specifically hunted by white people, they were just survivors like the main duo). "bad" settlement #2 is also mono-ethnic. They run into one "good" settlement, which of fucking course calls itself communist and is run by a black woman. It's like Stephen King; black people are so good they're magic. You can always tell who's good and who's bad by where the African-Americans are. The game itself has this too, but it's pretty tame by comparison and I don't have issues with it beyond Noticing.
When you have to have diversity but also can't depict anyone diverse as "bad," all the antagonistic roles get concentrated in the non-diverse characters, and any diverse antagonist that sneaks in has a maudlin excuse that makes them tragic and sympathetic, only the straight white male is capable of just being evil.
Skulldrinker
9mo ago
Every young Canadian I've met thinks "America, Amirite?" Is the peak of humor and social commentary. They aren't going to move somewhere with guns and racism, which of course define the US.
Skulldrinker
1yr ago
Because every time I tried meeting anyone, I ran into the full Covid gauntlet of Bubbles and Taking It Seriously, stuff that women mysteriously stopped caring about once it stood in the way of fucking him.
And because he had become a hollow skinsuit of upward-mobility who spoke entirely in progressive talking points, to the point where it reminded me of the guy from Nightcrawler. And had a pathetic fucking meltdown where he tried to hold his girlfriend hostage by locking his door with her keys in his room, plus all the emotional abuse before. And he tried to steal the lease out from under his roommates. And he'd poison people against his roomates by calling us racist. And he collaborated with the landlords (to steal the lease), and simped for them massively despite them calling him racial slurs behind his back, which we informed him about in our bid to convince him that they were bad people whom he should not make deals with, especially with him valuing his Blackness so much. So he was a Queer (straight but wants to fuck leftist chicks who hate straight men) Black (ish,) Feminist (who abused women) Communist (who sold out his prole roommates). Eventually he had some sort of psychotic break and attacked me with a fire axe, I maced him and got a restraining order to get him removed from the place. And to this day I have former mutual friends who won't talk to me, because he's Black and Leftist and I'm a straight white male who called the cops on a Person of Color. And wherever he is now, he's undoubtedly balls-deep in some chick he met at a pro-palestine protest, while I still can't get anyone to fucking turn up for fucking coffee after getting my heart mutilated in 2019. Because people are so fucking retarded that they misinterpret me as some kind of monster, while he's the Jesus of their new religion.
That is why I hate the world.
Skulldrinker
2yr ago
This seems like another example of someone having a personality disorder, but no one noticing because they express it by shouting political slogans. You can see Borderlines acting as attack dogs for political activism all the time.
"Smithers, release the crazy bitches."
"Bitches do be crazy, sir."
Skulldrinker
26d ago
I've been reflecting lately on how downright unhelpful and unpleasant my experiences with dating/flirting/sex were earlier in my life, and what a weight around my neck the still are. In my previous life, there was no such thing as flirting, women were just "being friendly," and would curl their lip and give you a glare if you let slip that they'd been socializing with someone heterosexual by doing something so crass as asking for a phone number. "Ewwww, a man is speaking to me, make it go away" was what happened if you spoke before being spoken to. The attitudes of the women I knew socially bounced between "Just talk to people silly, it's not that hard, you're so nice," "chuh, why do you feel the need to not be alone, there's something wrong with you," and "Fourteen out of twelve women will be sexually assaulted by eyeball-contact at frat parties by niceguys before they even get a job that pays them 70 cents on the dollar compared to a man."
I once had a woman approach me at a new years party at a bar (small, bob cut, I can still remember the contours of her shoulderblades), something about trying to find her friend, but the friend never got mentioned again. We got another drink, she asked to dance once she got back from the bathroom. While she was in the bathroom and I was holding her drink, a fat redhead got in my face, demanding to know who I was, who I was here with, if I even knew her (bob cut's) name. I was taken aback, said her name is [name], I'm holding her drink for her, then we're going to dance, oh, there she is now, bye. BobCut came out of the bathroom, didn't acknowledge fat redhead, took her drink and my hand, and dragged me out onto the dance floor. It was 11:50pm. At 11:56pm, security appears and separates us, the fat redhead is screaming in my face demanding to know who I'm with, a security guy is asking the same questions while she screams at me. Bob cut is nowhere to be found (probably being given a foil trauma blanket while still trying to figure out what happened), no I'm not allowed to speak to bob cut, no I'm not being kicked out, no I can't speak to bob cut, who am I here with, no, bob cut doesn't count, no I'm not being kicked out, who am I here with. I'm getting increasingly frustrated, I'm not particularly sober, fat redhead is still in my face, her head jerking around on her flabby neck like some kind of righteously affronted parrot. I can sense a blowup looming, the front door is conveniently nearby, and the future of me doing the new years countdown and making out with someone has evaporated. I leave, and I ring in the new year of 2017 walking down the snow-dusted sidewalk of Milwaukee, cursing my awkwardness and cowardice.
The bar was a nerd/geek/gamer pub, of course. Nowhere else would the act of a man dancing with a woman be treated as some sort of crisis in need of calling security. I never ran into either of them again, the pub itself closed shortly thereafter. Since then, every time a woman flirts with me unprompted in a social setting, I go into a quiet panic and look over my shoulder for whatever third party will arbitrarily decide I am not worthy of happiness or love.
My point is that I keep failing to get phone numbers or contact info, or I collect contact info and do nothing with it, even when women are blatantly eye-fucking me, because I still have the lingering trauma of living in 2010s geek culture. And I still run into snippets of it every now and then, but with a current-year leftist flavor. (I've been in conversations where women will make some reddit-y crack along the lines of "straight white men, amirite?" but turn out later to have been into me, scrabbling for contact info or a kiss as I try to politely take the hint and leave.)
I just want to go for a stroll in the park with someone and bang them later, then do that again with the same person for the foreseeable future. And I hate that the world and I both conspire to make that much more difficult than it should be.
Skulldrinker
8mo ago
When I think of "Normies," this is the concept I have in my head, maybe a bit less gendered.
I have a huge amount of sympathy for the women who have been my friends, close friends, or lovers, because they have universally been rejects or outsiders of this culture and I recognize the marks this experience left on them.
Skulldrinker
1yr ago
It's not ugly women and pathetic men that makes the score go up, it's just interacting with SBI, and corporate decision-makers see no reason NOT to chase ESG, since to them "quality" is a vague untrackable nonsense term uncorrelated with the financial success of a product, but ESG rating IS trackable and legible
Skulldrinker
1yr ago
I could have put this in Wellness Wednesday, but I'll phrase this as a question:
When am I allowed to mace a hobo?
The story: I'm working at a food stand at a winter market festival downtown for a month. It's over $25/hr after the copious tips, and short 6-hour shifts, but my ulterior motive is about getting an In with the bar running it, and just to network amongst the Hospitality Folk.
But, this means I'm taking the CTA for a change, and thus keep seeing things that can't be unseen. The other day, there's a ranting man on the opposite platform, wandering up and down it, shouting nonsense. Not old, bent, or decrepit, cheap clothes that are still in one piece. I'm waiting for my train, and see him eventually fixate on a woman and start leaning in to her and gabbling. She stands there frozen and ignores him as he shuffles around her like a giant annoying pigeon. There's a bunch of back-and-forth of this guy wandering away, coming back, going down the stairs, then back up, then looming over her and gabbling at her. I'm staring the whole time with what must have been a thunderous expression, the woman meets my gaze a few times and mouths something once. Both of them are black, incidentally; she looks like a nurse or something adjacent: South-Side Respectable. I'm trying very very hard to control my temper and not escalate the situation, actual physical harm in these situations is pretty rare, this is just emotionally harrowing for the poor woman.
He wanders away a bit and she makes a move for the stairs, I see him start to follow, and I've finally had e-fucking-nough. I go down the stairs and meet her sheltering by the turnstyles. He sees me and stops on the stairs, starts going up and down them, in that attempt to be nonchalant that the mentally ill always fail at. My train is a minute away, she's crying, I say it's okay, and shout to the attendant "Hey, there's a ranty hobo that isn't leaving this woman alone. She needs help."
With my train arriving and my shift starting soon, I go back up to my platform, get on the train, and see though the window that same woman, standing on the platform, crying, while the hobo stands behind her gabbling. She's got her own train to catch. This is what I'm left with as my train leaves the station.
After, of course, I realize the optimal move would have been to being her up to my platform, get on my train til the next hobo-free platform, then continue on her way. My presence alone would probably have dissuaded him. But I didn't want to be late, I didn't want to escalate the situation, and I didn't want to be tempted to beat up a brain-rotted hobo.
Cut to work.
Background: One of my fellow döner-kabob-slingers is a early-30s woman that I was initially a bit taken with; she introduced herself to me as recently-divorced, asked me if I had a partner or not, and just generally paid way more attention to me than I'm accustomed to (which felt good, because it doesn't happen much, which made me sad. But also made me uncomfortable, because of the unfamiliarity of it, which also made me sad.) There's a bit more incidental physical contact from her than necessary. She's skinny and wide-faced and granola-y, we talk about nature and wildlife stuff; she's involved with urban ecology project planning and...equity. Dang. Also, I later overhear her talking about Polyamory or some shit (Polyamory as practiced by women is just laundered Friendzoning/Cucking, Polyamory as practiced my men is just laundered Playa-ing. She wants to fuck around but needs a buzzword for it). So my interest is...reduced. The woman who mutilated my heart in 2019 was also a recently-separated devorcé, fool me once and all that.
Anyways, I arrive at work all bent out of shape and want to talk about it. So I ask my not-crush, as someone who's lived in Chicago for a while, and as a woman, if stuff like that ever happens to her and what bystanders can do to help without making the situation worse. I narrarate the story pretty much as I do here. (I leave out the part about them both being black, it isn't relevant). I'm genuinely looking for advice, but I also want to untangle my feelings, and, yeah, I want to convey to her that I'm the sort of person that struggles to not White Knight.
The first thing she says?
"I think you're trivializing that poor man's mental illness by calling him a gabbling hobo."
The walls go up inside me. She's Orthodox Woke. "Yes, I should have been more technical: Bum, Gabbling Stalker Variant, Able-Bodied."
"You don't understand, access to mental health services has been reduced because Republicans-
"I'll go tell that woman to not cry, then, it's Ronald Reagan's fault for kicking him out of his mental hospital."
So that's the story of how I stopped being attracted to someone.
Just to quickly double-check, I ran this story past a close female friend who moved here from Nebraska, and an apolitical Chicago native bartender, and both had different flavors of "What the actual fuck?" Reactions. She was speechless, he laughed.
Because of stuff that's happened to me, I carry a can of mace on my keys. But I notice my hand going for it in situations like this, where I'm almost looking for an excuse to use it, and I'm worried I'm eventually going to spray a particularly-annoying panhandler in the face.
Skulldrinker
2yr ago
it also seems like space and 'moonshots' have long been a darling of the left.
I'm not sure this is the case anymore. They've been pulling the "There are starving trans people of color being hunted by Republicans while the ocean is rising, and you want to spend money on SPACE that could have gone to my non-profit for hunted trans POCs?" card for a while, and demonizing space travel as a way for rich (white) people to escape earth. I don't hear much futurism from them anymore.
Buuuut, I was surrounded by particularly-inconsistent leftists for way too long.
Skulldrinker
2yr ago
you only have 7-9 years when it requires 10, and this concerns you? I get that it's an actual nerd (,who might be similarly autistic) you're dealing with and not an HR gremlin, but come on.
That's an excessive degree of scrupulosity you're exhibiting. Go for it with zero guilt. Pretend your time studying at uni counts as "experience" if you must.
Skulldrinker
7mo ago
All my friends rarely date these days for that reason. These issues are all we talk about when we get together.
So their conversations don't even pass the Bechdel Test.
I get that this is a different country with its own rat-race social problems, but I roll my eyes at the fear of men who hate women. Most men who hate women hate them because women won't get anywhere near them, so they never have an opportunity to hurt a woman apart from mean comments on the internet. Sexually successful men dont hate women, they just don't treasure them, and treat them how [sexually successful] women treat men; as disposable. Abusive men don't hate women, they hate the world and women just can't resist being around them for some mysterious reason.
Or by "men who hate women" does she mean that don't soyfully agree with generic feminist talking points? I once ended a relationship over watching The Imitation Game, of all things. "Ah, here's Kiera Knightly reprising her role as a modern woman trapped in the past" was apparently such a hateful comment that it got me a continuous diatribe about women's suffrage until I flat-out got up and left. I wonder if that was proof that I hated women.
Skulldrinker
2yr ago
Because kids are great? It's a hard sell these days, but kids actually can be a fun, rewarding life project.
One thing that's changed about having kids is that it used to be more fun. Your friends had kids too, the kids could be left to their own devices for most of the day while the adults hung out. You were allowed to have a life and identity outside of your children.
Now, children demand all things they see advertised at them, subject everyone around them to their obnoxious media habits, expect the adults to entertain them, or sit like a lump on an ipad and scream if it gets taken away briefly. All your childless friends don't want to spend time in a child-safe house full of child-friendly media. If the children do actually go outside, it must be in the form of organized events with signed waivers and fees and disciplinary talks when one kid makes physical contact with another kid. Kids have become a thing that you buy ipads for that resents you for being straight and white and killing the planet.
I use these sorts of bikes occasionally. They cost x¢/min, starting when you unlock and totaled up when you relock. If you don't re-lock the bike, the meter just keeps on ticking. I'm not sure what happens eventually, maybe the rider who's account checked it out gets billed for the "stolen" bike. But the way the QR system works, it isn't particularly possible to grab someone else's bike by mistake. It is possible to be grabbing the last bike (or the last "good" bike, all the rest having flat tires or rusty chains or the like) and someone else to take issue with that. I don't think that happened here. I think a group on young men wanted to grab a free bike, and were expecting to get it through some combination of the target's niceness reflex, confusion as to how the unlock system works (while the target is trying to figure out how the "misunderstanding" happened, the bike is already gone), and the implicit intimidation of a group of agressive youths. In this case, it didn't work, she froze up, got confused, knew something was wrong, and tried to attract bystanders. Then a helpful person re-locked the bike, completely ruining the young men's intent to get a free bike that someone else will be billed for.
Lots of people, (Midwestern Americans and Canadians, in particular) have a niceness reflex; when you, say, trip on someone else's foot, the kneejerk assumption is that you were being inattentive and just stepped on a person's toes; you say "sorry" and yield to them, it taking a moment or two to realize that you've been intentionally tripped. Other people do not have this reflex, either because of their cultural background or because they're dicks; either way, these people notice the niceness reflex of others and try to exploit it.
I also see these bikes left in yards in my (shitty) neighborhood. Now I know how they got there and why the rider doesn't care about being billed for them.
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