cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
19hr ago
Personally I've experienced the opposite. It's easy to make friends, stay in touch with them, and find activities to do with them.
I'm a parent of 3 and I only work part time remotely, so at least two of the factors listed apply to me.
I'm friends with a bunch of the neighborhood dads. We will have get togethers during the nice weather where the kids all just run around someone's house and backyard.
I've made some friends on TheMotte who are fun to talk with and play video games with.
I've made some friends on some of the games I play online.
I still have many friends from my time in college, I will have a few hour long phone chats with one of them. Another I get lunch with every other month. A few others I see regularly at underwater hockey. I'll have all the underwater hockey players over to my place for a get together on occasion.
My wife and I have about 15 cousins each, some of them live close enough to hangout but they are also in the process of getting married so we have averaged about two weddings a year while married.
I'm going to see Hail Mary with a friend and former roommate when it comes out. When I texted him I realized we hadn't texted or hung out in over a year. I haven't been avoiding him or anything I'm just literally too busy to hangout with all the friends I have.
I like having friends though. I enjoy hanging out with people and having deep or interesting or just funny conversations. My mother is a major contrast with me. She has a few friends that she might speak with a few times in a decade. One couple that might be considered friends with her and my dad, but that couple puts in all or most of the effort to get together. And otherwise she just has her adult children (3, including me) that she hangs out with. She doesn't like having lots of friends. She easily gets a form of social anxiety that makes her dread going out.
With everyone I know this is the same general pattern. They either have a 100-200 friends they can't possibly hangout with, but they try anyways. Or they have like 1-5 friends that they are barely trying to maintain. Both groups of people seem to be getting exactly what they want.
I think the main limiting factor on modern friendship is how many friends someone wants to have. And thus I don't think it's much of a problem at all.
cjet79
1d ago
I'm realizing while reading this list that I never liked traditional action movies. It's the big spectacle that I enjoy. Sci fi and fantasy movies with massive battles. Or large explosions in modern settings.
Marvel movies have been a boon for me. I unironically enjoyed the Transformers movies. I have fun watching Michael Bay films. Star wars original trilogy was my favorite as a kid. And I loved the huge starship battles in episode 1.
cjet79
3d ago
I feel like the US has lost plenty of times and been fine. Korea had an unsatisfactory stalemate (that still haunts us). Vietnam was a clear loss and retreat. Iraq and Afghanistan were immediate victories followed by long drawn out slogs that no one feels we "won" at.
The 1990 Gulf war was a victory of sorts, but that seems to have happened because we didn't get involved in regime change in Iraq at that time. Otherwise you have to go back to WWII for a clear victory.
Your specific phrase "overthrowing the regime" is kind of a strange victory condition. We have arguably already done that in Iran. Bunch of their leaders dead on day one. There might be a technical continuance of governance, but there is already going to be a different set of people in charge in Iran. And historically our attempts at regime change in the middle east have gone poorly. It's why no one wants us committed to a ground war.
cjet79
5d ago
I really honestly thought that the Murderbot series was making fun of leftists and that the show was too. I guess it was kind of a reverse Poe's Law situation where I read sincere views that seemed ridiculous to me as a satire of those views.
The universe is definitely built on leftish tropes.
This is just more and more hilarious as I think back on the murderbot novels I read (a total of 5 of them i think).
One of the aspects of the setting is that the leftist little utopia planet gets to exist mostly because a larger capitalist/corportist system allows it to exist, and indirectly supports its existence. It has the same vibes as a small town deciding to be a little communist commune inside America. The town can survive with a totally anemic economy, because the rest of America is producing food and consumer products at such dirt cheap prices. The town only needs to export and trade a little to keep afloat.
The leftist planet utopia in the novels is in a very similar situation. They can't do anything complex without help from the corporate system. They want to explore a planet for a possible colonization effort. But they can't produce the spaceships to get there. They can't produce the surveying and survival equipment they need on the planet. And they can't produce the security they need while on the planet (they are so naive they aren't even aware enough to realize they need security). They are helpless kids being given expensive toys.
They are left alone on their planet not because they are strong enough to deter aggression, but because they are so poor and backwards that they have nothing worth stealing.
You went over some of the relationship stuff that happens in the novel. It has what I feel is an accurate level of interpersonal drama among sexually fluid and diverse crew (aka a lot of drama). And the main narrator of the story, the murderbot, sees all this drama as pointless and stupid, especially in the face of life-or-death stakes.
To me its a story about some incompetent leftists that are overly focused on pointless and stupid interpersonal drama that get saved by a hyper-competent corporate slave (and then in later novels its an ex-slave). If this is what passes for leftist literature, then maybe I need to go back through some of the stuff I've dismissed. Or maybe the lesson is that as long as the author says the correct things in interviews they can absolutely trash leftists with impunity (are we sure the author isn't a closeted pro-capitalist?).
cjet79
6d ago
Interesting.
The graph does imply that up to four previous partners is fine. That seems like a safe number to me too.
I didn't realize I'd be in the manwhore category, depending on what counts as previous partners I've had between 5 (just counting long term girlfriends) and a few dozen (counting anything).
I'm very satisfied with my wife. I think I would have been far less satisfied with any of my previous girlfriends (which is why I broke up with them). I did learn things from those relationships that have definitely made me a better husband. I'm not sure I would have been able to woo my now wife, keep her as a girlfriend, take the leap to propose to her, or stay monogamous and in love during marriage. There are specific lessons I learned from previous relationships to help me through each of those stages.
Maybe other people learn faster than me, or know not to make certain mistakes in the first place. I was an idiot that required some learning.
It was absolutely a time and resource hog, but I don't really know what else would be worth spending my time and resources on. My free time would have been eaten up with playing video games, watching comedy, and arguing with people online. And those things are fun, but not fulfilling.
cjet79
6d ago
The market solution in this case is just "wait out the conflict". Ships sitting in port isn't free but it's a lot cheaper than insuring against a full loss or calling in protection for the ship.
It's unclear to me how long Iran will be willing and able to sling missiles and drones at its neighbors. I would think that the "wait it out solution" implies an expectation by the market in a short conflict.
That is interesting, I'd never heard the Victorian and Edwardian take on this. I arrived at basically the same conclusion as them. I am very much an introvert. I am comfortable and happy just sitting in my basement playing video games or reading books all alone. I realized many years ago that friendship is important for mental health, and I've tried to never neglect it.
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