charlesf
3d ago
People on the internet love to roleplay the epic things they totally would do in any given situation
Something I was discussing previous on a different board, and that is a larger issue beyond this event, is that the majority of people have effectively 0 experience making important, possibley life or death decisions, when their body is absolutely flooded with adrenaline. In our prehistorical past, this prepared us for violence. This response is, in the modern day, often an evolutionary trap. My father was a career NCO in the USMC and he occasionally spoke about training people to manage, and if possible prevent, adrenal responses to the events around them. Even people that are aware of the issue, who've had training and exposure to stimuli to try to assuage it, still don't ever really know what their response is going to be when it happens. The fight/flight/freeze response really doesn't understand modern society very well.
charlesf
3d ago
A decent % of gay men aren't into the party scene at all and want the same sort of long term relationships that hetro men and women generally have.
As a statistician, gay men are pretty much the only demo that are honest-ish on surveys about sex and relationships. It makes comparison data even more alarming to look at if you aren't ready for it. While on average a gay man in the US has about 7x more unique partners than a straight man, there are a large fraction of gay men that aren't actually into the casual sex/hook up gay culture at all really, or aren't attactive enough to participate even if they want to. If you only look at the numbers of the top 25% or people that have had more than 4 lifetime partners, its starts looking like someone made a calculation error. Epidemiological data in college comparing gay men to straight men and all women was how I learned what an axis break was as a freshman.
edit vv - yes, only self identified are considered gay. the other group are 'men who have sex with men' (MSM) a unique demo that is somehow often 100% straight. researchers generally focus on behavior and not labels/identity here as the MSM demo esentially cannot be intereacted with in a cooperative way if treat them like they are "gay".
charlesf
3d ago
It'll be 26 years in a couple of months, I've been there for 24. It still my most used website, but I can't imagine a new user would get much out of it. We've all known each for a couple of decades now and its a lot of very old inside humor. One thing I really do enjoy is that most Goons are over 40 now and a lot of us are in some fairly important roles in society, particularly tech. I've had connections on SA help me out with things I'd never have known someone IRL who could. People in gov't, upper management of FANG companies, etc. Its like the Internet Freemasons. I can join pretty much any semi-popular online videogame and there will be a Goon group waiting to teach you the game and give you stuff to get started.
I was in the waiting room of a doctor's office yesterday and my wife noticed a number of....spicy? (I think was the term) books on the bookshelf. None of the current monster/dark fantasy stuff thats all the rage right now, but absolutely text based pornograrphy for women. About a dozen of them. The exact same shelf, immediately adjacent to the smut books, were three different editions of the Bible. This was an office in a Catholic hospital.
... and pointing it out is impolite due to the subject of conversation.
Its impolite because its only men that seem to take issue, and its inappropriate for men to criticize women. Full stop.
I've left out the absolute best part imo. The overwelming majority of these books are written in a non-omniscient* first-person, producing an entire generation of women "readers" who struggle with, or fail completely, to parse the meaning of third-person prose. They can't keep track of who is doing what; literally can't tell who the subject/object of the sentence is and get so confused they give up on the book. The meme is "3rd person is immediate DNF" (did not finish).
*non-omniscient in that the main PoV character often lacks the knowledge of what the main PoV character is thinking or planning.
https://tiktok.com/discover/i-cant-read-third-person
https://old.reddit.com/r/Barnesandnoble/comments/1lhiwrs/third_person_difficulties/
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/4854296-struggle-reading-books-in-third-person
charlesf
20d ago
-There isn't nothing.
-Don't make the cars behind you have to slow down. This starts with knowing there are cars behind you in the first place. This extends to far more than traffic.
charlesf
24d ago
I've found often that two people can sometimes agree strongly on, to use a turn of phrase, the diagnosis while differing quite a bit on the course of treatment, as it were. It can be refreshing to be around someone that sees the world the same way you do, even if their idea of what should be done about it is questionable.
charlesf
24d ago
My experience has been that people in Spain react pretty well to being addressed in (competent) Spanish by visitors. In fact this has been my experience in every Spanish speaking country. Especially since English isn't anywhere near as common in Spain (and Italy) as Germany or the Nordics (I suspect France as well, but they'll never admit it). Depending on how you learned Spanish, you might want to brush up on some of the word useage and phrases common to European Spanish. I've found the Madrileños fairly easy to understand once you get used to the seseo. You can watch Spanish news broadcasts to get an idea. Other parts of Spain I've not done as well understanding them, mostly Andalucia, despite it being my favorite part. Most educated Andalucians can switch to Castillian without issue though.
The story of the establishment of the Space Force before Trump was ever involved is long and fascinating. The key proponent that actually got it done was this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Raymond . The short version is that there had been elements within the USAF, NASA, and congress that have been arguing for a separate military branch for outerspace operations since the 60s. The space stuff actually started in the Army, though it transistioned to the Air Force by the 60s. In the early 80s they finally made a separate Space Command org within the USAF, but this is when the case for a separate force really started to gain momentum, though it would be a long time with an abortive attempt until it actually happened. The argument hasn't really changed in nature at all over time, just relevence, as the circumstances have changed around that Air Force: the subject matter expertise, experience, and career paths for the space related operations has become too complex and specialized to remain in the USAF, just like the Air Force itself emerged from the Army for largely similar reasons. General Raymond spoke many times about his own path through the ranks, mirrored by many of his peers, where he'd be productivly commanding a org within the Space Command of the USAF, get promoted and transferred out of SC back to the general aviation Air Force, and everything he was working on back in Space Command fell apart. Yanking the COs and NCOs back and forth, in and out of Space Command produced worse officers/nco performance in both orgs, chaotic career paths, and hastened retirements of COs to fled to the private sector to continue to follow their passion for space. Essentially that we would be unable to field a competent space command as long as the career people with the expertise could be yanked out of the org at any time without recourse. The Air Force had been promising increased autonomy and specialization to the existing space command, stating they'd stop jerking the career people around and allow them to specialize but never made any real moves to implement it. I think, in my very amateur observations since then, these arguments have been borne out by the record of the USSF, which is operating quite effectively according to everything I've seen and read, especially compared to the other branches. (particularly the Navy which is a mess).
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