problem_redditor
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User ID: 1083
American defeat was well outside my model, so this is "winning too much", as it were.
I did not necessarily expect this outcome either, and I remember arguing with users here at the start of this war who were pre-emptively gloating about America having global unrestricted power to bulldoze everybody Chyna decided to associate with, that the good ol' US of A enjoyed such an overwhelming military dominance over virtually everyone else that they could just walk in, topple regimes and replace them with puppets, then walk away in slow motion while explosions detonated behind them.
Turns out none of these takes aged well at all. It was ridiculous hubris then and it's ridiculous hubris now, and at this point one would expect to see grovelling mea culpas from anybody remotely capable of updating their priors.
Honestly, the only thing I've played for a while is online Scrabble, which I have become very good at for no particular reason. There is literally no practical use to knowing things like "what are all the admissible two letter words in the American Scrabble dictionary" and yet I continue.
The latter. You have a semi-separate nervous system of sorts in your gut, called the enteric nervous system, which orchestrates the entire digestive process (including peristalsis) and has a sleep-wake cycle of its own regulated by your circadian rhythm. It's a large collection of neurons that's about as sizeable as a cat's brain, and can operate by itself if disconnected from the rest of your nervous system.
The real philosophical question is whether such a thing is independently conscious to some degree, but that line of questioning leads nowhere good.
What kind of differences would even need to be reconciled between people who don’t live with each other?
These aren't religious disagreements, and I didn't cut this family member off entirely, merely reduced contact with her. It didn't get so bad I would fully initiate NC, though I do have a lot of annoyance over a lot of things. It's not on the level of some of the horror stories I believe some others in this forum could tell.
To answer your question, I did live with the family member in question; circa two years ago my elder sister moved back in with me after her then-boyfriend of five years called a temporary pause on the relationship, which eventually led to a break-up. It's hard to give a full picture of why I soured so heavily on her without massively long essays (longer than this one) detailing the pattern of behaviour that eroded my sanity overtime, but the reason for trying to reduce contact was simply that I started to notice just how aggressively one sided my relationship with her was.
Note that for several years I suffered from a chronic illness that made it extremely difficult for me to work (which I have written about before here) and she would constantly lambast me; she barely even cared to talk to me then - she had a stable job then and a relationship and I had none of these things. After I recovered, found stable employment, and generally began to pull my life back on track, she suddenly became more interested in spending time with me. She wanted to go out together, talk more often, and generally have a closer relationship, presumably because I had finally become someone Worthy Of Attention. Then, when her own relationship collapsed and she moved back in with me, the dynamic shifted again, and suddenly she wanted emotional support. And despite the fact I was still getting back on my feet then I did provide it, to the point that my own mental health seriously began to suffer (and if I tried to withdraw after spending hours reassuring her, she'd often follow me and continue the conversation). But it soon became clear that there was a lot of underlying behaviour from her that would simply not change, and persisted long after she had gotten over the breakup.
Her general hygiene was awful. During this period she quit her job and started pursuing self-employment, which gave her a far more flexible schedule than I had, yet I would always see dishes in the sink left out for days on end, clutter in the hallway so thick one could barely walk, and hair clogs in her shower drain that resulted in standing water; eventually there was a carpet of black mold growing on the bathroom floor. I was the one who scrubbed the floor after getting back from work (the drain would clog and the mold would always accumulate again though), and at one point the mold had even spread to the blinds and pillows, which I also had to clean. Keep in mind I am not a tidy person at all and do not believe that everybody must kowtow to the member of the household with the lowest tolerance for clutter, but when you end up with black mold everywhere that's a sign that the situation was ridiculous.
In general I always felt as if she often displayed an intense lack of reciprocal care or interest in other people's lives, except when she wanted to tell you that you were Doing Things Wrong, and she would not prioritise you if it caused her inconvenience (though you would have to deal with many of her neuroses, in contrast). One prominent example of the sheer lack of consideration involved a holiday I was planning, where I made the mistake of asking whether she wanted to come, and what should have been a simple yes-or-no decision somehow remained unresolved for months. Every time I asked, she treated me like I was pestering her, and my planning was delayed repeatedly because I had no idea whether she was joining. Eventually she decided to come, something I never forced her to do, and then spent much of the latter half of the trip constantly complaining over every little annoyance in spite of the fact that my leave was limited and hers was not. So many little instances when she was living with me showed she just did not care about my time and did not appreciate the extent to which every other family member put their lives on hold to accommodate her when she needed it.
She could be good, even fun, to be around. But the problem I think was that she felt at liberty to embrace some of her most indulgent tendencies because she thought she would never be dropped like a hot potato by family members. Eventually the sneaking suspicion that she just did not give much thought to my wellbeing looked too plausible to ignore, and when she moved out I took the opportunity to give myself some space from her.
Have any of you intentionally reduced contact with/outright cut off a family member you used to have a good relationship with due to irreconcilable differences? If so, how did it go and do you feel regret about it?
I did so recently and can't stop feeling guilt (and also a lot of anger) about it.
problem_redditor
2d ago
Are any of your friends named Barney Stinson, by any chance?
(I kid, of course.)
I can have a quiet cocktail (what was offered as an alternative) or read a book in bed any evening.
I agree, but being in Mexico opens up a constellation of other options you could capitalise on, all of which may offer you more utility than going to a soccer game it doesn’t seem that even you’re particularly interested in. It’s not a choice between “soccer match” and “reading a book in bed” (that I concur is an awful value proposition when you’re in a foreign country), it’s a choice between “soccer match” and “seeing Teotihuacan” (which is all lit up at night) or “wandering the historic centre trying out the local food” or “watching the mariachis in Plaza Garibaldi” or any number of other very local things you could be doing.
Coolness per se doesn’t matter as much to me as enjoyability does. If you’d enjoy the match, then yeah, go for it. But there are other options you can avail yourself of which might be better for you, depending on your bent.
problem_redditor
2d ago
Just a question:
Why?
Why should he go? Sounds like negative utility to me. Straits-dwellers have a pejorative word for this behaviour: kiasu, which roughly translates to FOMO on steroids.
Seriously who cares if you’re cool or not only losers care about that.
problem_redditor
2d ago
A nitpick, but the Chinese state’s capital back in the days of Rome would have been Chang’an (modern day Xi’an) or Luoyang, not Beijing. Beijing has really only been the Chinese capital ever since the Ming.
'Careers' with very short times, nearly as bad as professional sports stars, and not likely to return the same high incomes.
There are many careers with limited shelf-lives, and I would also note that the vast majority (read: virtually all) of athletes do not earn high incomes and are nowhere near likely to do so in the future, outside of statistical outliers that represent less than a fraction of a percent of the total. For example in my country, Australia, half of elite adult athletes live below the poverty line, considering incomes from all sources including other jobs, and that sample reflects the top percentage of athletes in terms of skill level. Your chances of earning high incomes in sports is close to nothing; hell many Olympians are in dire financial straits and leave the games riddled with debt since they are responsible for their own training, travel and coaching expenses. That is, of course, assuming they even make it there. The vast majority of people in sports must work side hustles to live, and it carries a far higher possibility of bodily injury than any modelling job. To point to "professional sports stars" is like pointing to supermodels as representative of your average modelling career. They are the tip of a very large iceberg.
While I certainly do not think they're the best longterm career choices, given that I do not morally object to people being athletes, I do not see modelling as something so incredibly and uniquely distinct that I think it warrants any sort of special treatment. If you're canny it is certainly also possible to build connections while modelling and then pivot into adjacent roles such as styling or talent management, and it's certainly not unheard of for people to pursue modelling or modelling-adjacent work while obtaining education, especially given its nonstandard and flexible nature. Most people who find work in modelling or sports won't do so as their primary source of income, and this is fine - the idea that the only jobs that should exist is stuff that you can do full-time for your whole life isn't true. There is a valid place in the economy for jobs that allow people to earn some income on the side or for a temporary period, and I am certainly not about to start policing people's choices and preferences like some kind of moral busybody.
EDIT: added more
problem_redditor
4d ago
This is reminding me of this one Shoe0nhead tweet:
karl marx rising from the grave finding out his movement has been taken over by fat ugly mentally ill losers who think being healthy is fascism and cant even own guns because they will k*ll themselves
“Marxism is gay?”
“Always has been”
this "affirmative action for minority posters" thing is taking on the character of a Motte urban legend.
To clarify, I didn't mean "minority" posters as in a minority demographic, I meant minority posters in terms of holding and expressing unpopular views (hence why I referred to "ideological diversity").
We are sometimes slower to act on people who are being reported a lot for having unpopular views, because frankly there is hardly any active poster here (with only a few exceptions) who, if everything they said was getting reported, wouldn't end up having some comments cross the line and the mods getting a sense that this person is a Problem.
This is true enough, and I do understand this principle. But there exist unpopular posters here who are capable of engaging within the rules of the forum and don't repeatedly flout it (in spite of the fact that I am sure they get reported). magicalkittycat and Goodguy are some examples who, in spite of sizeable ideological difference from many of this forum's users, I would prefer to keep around. This user's behaviour on the other hand regularly brings heat and not light, with relatively few quality contributions to show for it unlike other posters like Dase/Ilforte.
I am telling you the same thing. The fact that some poster really grinds your gears does not mean you should take the opportunity to write screeds about how much they annoy you.
I realise moderation isn't a task that can be 100% consistent all the time, and had I ever been offered a moderator position I would probably refuse. But this kind of user criticism does not seem particularly out of pocket for this forum; it's something that happens on this forum a lot.
So just to clarify the rules for the future (and I am asking this to clarify, not as a rhetorical question): What is the definition of "personal", and does criticising the visible behaviour of a poster here without extending into their personal life count as overly personal? If not what's the criteria for moderation? Because it has been stated before that criticising people isn't against the rules, only making personal attacks, and as such before this I would have thought criticism restricted to how one's behaviour breaks the rules is fair game, especially considering that virtually every time any other user has reacted with hostility in this thread, it was in response to bad faith.
problem_redditor
5d ago
This is the only correct answer for such a large sum of money.
Yeah the absolute gall of this user never ceases to astound me, especially considering she routinely violates so many of the rules of this forum. So many of the rules are about limiting antagonism, charitability, kindness, avoiding low-effort participation, avoiding weakmanning, providing evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory one's statement is, and she just freely flouts all of these rules as if they shouldn't apply to her. In this thread alone she has done this to at least two separate users: she has assumed your mental state and accused you of not seeing women as anything other than body parts to fuck and jerk off to, then accused someone posing her a hypothetical of asking her to "concede" to a whole list of imagined uncharitable points of view that were present nowhere in the original comment. It’s nothing but flagrant bad faith.
I understand the point of having affirmative action for minority posters in order to ensure ideological diversity, but when someone pollutes the commons this consistently and has such a small (nonexistent?) roster of quality contributions they end up having a strong net negative effect on the forum. And somehow you collectively got singled out alongside her for being inflammatory in spite of the fact that you were responding to a ridiculously uncharitable and downright slanderous picture she painted of you. Incredible.
Where did you get any of that from what he said? You've basically imputed all of your own imaginings onto him based on one comment posing you a hypothetical.
For what it's worth, I agree with @TitaniumButterfly. Your commentary is routinely so incredibly low quality I barely respond to it, but I would honestly prefer not to see it here.
Even assuming it is "different", the idea that you can only objectify people if you can see their junk is an idea I reject. Traditional "sexy poses" for men include things like action poses, strength and power poses, work poses, rebellious or defiant poses, etc. And if those men are all the way naked, then you can't see that they can afford that Hugo Boss suit, or what kind of work they do, or whether they're in some kind of uniform, or what kind of social status they have, or whether their sleeves are rolled up as a signal that they are about to get their hands dirty. Men are often sexy because of what they can bring in the way of protection, social status or resources. The way men are objectified reflect that, and just because they are based on what men can do or have or can get or earn doesn't mean they aren't objectifying. Being objectified as a tool as opposed to an ornament is still objectification.
I also very much disagree with the idea that female sexuality is anywhere near as PG as your portrayal. There's many examples of women cheering over and consuming scenes with men in various stages of undress, e.g. those in Twilight, which featured widely popular fanservice scenes of a shirtless underage Taylor Lautner who had to undergo short-term dehydration and consume 5,000 calories per day to maintain his muscle tone; he eventually had to negotiate for fewer shirtless scenes. Or, you know, the very many times Ellen featured shirtless male dancers to titillate her female audience, for example here and here and here - video 1 is a full-scale performance featuring male "entertainers", video 2 was a challenge for male Bachelorette contestants who had to dance sexy for the women in the audience for tips (said tips were stuffed into the pants of the men), video 3 is a strip dance Ellen set up for a specific woman in front of a live audience. Let's also not forget the constant male nudity on display in majority female-viewed dramas like Bridgerton, which features a very nice array of exposed asses, here and here are some examples. Also I'm not unfamiliar with gay porn (as a member of the target audience), a genre that apparently has 50% female viewership, and I can tell you there is a lot of cock.
Definitely agree that the hoe scaring countries off the beaten path are the nicest ones and tend to contain the most idiosyncratic and interesting things. Also they're not crawling with tourists and souvenir shops trying to sell you tack shit, or if they are it's in a very unique local way that's still of interest to an outside observer.
Overcurated leisure experiences like cruises, resorts, very guided tours and so on are overpriced and negate so much of what I like about travel that I barely view it as an option.
But the people benefiting from that were the men running the show and the TV network, not the girls themselves.
Earning income from bouncing up and down on a trampoline is an obvious and measurable benefit. It's also notable from a cursory search how many of these trampoline girls already had jobs like those before their time on The Man Show; the job histories of many of these girls include Playboy and fetish modelling as well as burlesque dancing. What you’re objecting to is called employment, and they made their free and informed choice on that front. On the topic of the costs of such a job, many other jobs (mostly male dominated ones, I might add) qualify as worse than this one and boast high occupational injury and death rates; unless you argue that all employment is exploitative a la Karl Marx there is no basis for special pleading.
he would be delighted to date her and not think less of her and would still treat her with respect as wife material instead of "woo-hoo, I get to bang the thot".
Even if one doesn't necessarily want to date her (and yes, being in such professions indicates personality traits that don't always correlate well with what most people are looking for in an LTR), that doesn't imply you have to see her as Not A Human or whatever extreme point of view you were imputing onto OP. And nonetheless not thinking of a lingerie model as wife material certainly does not mean you view women in general as "a disparate collection of parts to jerk off to", if anything that contraindicates such a viewpoint since it suggests there is a difference between who you want to jerk off to and who you want to spend your life with.
In any case looking at their lives it appears that many notable “Juggies” (the trampoline girls in question) were capable of bagging a husband and having children, so I'm unconvinced the cost of taking on such a job is anywhere close to how you portray it.
problem_redditor
8d ago
Yes because this is such a massive risk. As we all know, it is extremely commonplace for a brother after heavy porn use to attempt to mount his sister.
The endless kvetching about men perceiving women as sex objects when they choose to present themselves as sex objects is always quite amusing. The idea that one should be taking umbrage on behalf of the women even when objectification was their goal is downright incomprehensible to me. People appear to believe that when a woman dresses skimpily and gives everyone involuntary panty shots it should somehow have no effect on how anyone thinks of her, no matter how shamelessly she is advertising her services, and woe betide the man who dares to notice since it's clearly just a failure on his part to Appreciate Her Personhood enough.
And it is only male attraction that is to be judged in this way, of course. That doesn't apply to a woman rubbing one out to a picture of David Beckham.
but if the guy in question never matures out of that attitude, then yeah: gosh why aren't women getting married to men who think of them as a disparate collection of parts to jerk off to, what a puzzle.
If you have created lewd content of yourself and disseminated it into the commons for money or other gain, you are advertising yourself as being willing and able to fulfil a certain need, and people who stumble upon that will view you in that context. Seriously the quoted statement above is about as intellectually sound as saying that I don't view bus drivers as Fully Realised People because I'm not interested in the minutiae of my bus driver's internal life and see him as a tool whose purpose is primarily to take me from point A to point B. People interact with others differently in different contexts. Yes, in a context where someone is advertising or providing services to me I am seeing them primarily instrumentally through the lens of what they are offering me, that doesn't mean I would not be capable of viewing and approaching them in any other manner with a different goal in mind if I were to encounter them in other contexts (say, in a social setting). That’s normal human psychology, not a pathology, but if women want to opt out of relationships for that reason then that is their choice.
The travelling was a means, not an end in itself. In both instances the origin is a type II or sometimes type III activity that is being repackaged as type I fun while clinging to the cachet of being type II/III.
But leisure travel is old, it has been an end in itself whenever conditions became stable and there was any slightly sizeable middle-to-upper class; ancient Romans travelled all through Greece, Asia Minor and Egypt for fun (and sometimes left reviews of their experiences on the historical sites). Tourists would travel to the pyramids and the ruins of Troy, motivated by the concept of otium, or "self-realisation time". Temples would derive significant portions of revenue from tourism; they charged fees, contained artefacts for sightseeing and often claimed to house some legendary figure's remains. There were tourist resorts in Baia and Naples. This isn't particularly limited to Rome either, Chinese literati engaged in landscape tourism, going to mountains to gather herbs and appreciate scenery.
I'm also not certain the "stolen valour" hypothesis works very well here to explain the cultural cachet travel currently holds. Merchants who would have travelled heavily in the course of their work were not considered particularly high-status people in many historical societies (Greece, Rome, China, early medieval Europe all considered them a disreputable, parasitic nonproducing class). A lot of times travelling becomes vaunted once it becomes a pastime that the wealthy are willing and capable of participating in, when the empire is stable and it can be portrayed as a form of self-cultivation and source of worldly enlightenment instead of a job performed by the lowly for money.
Also I feel like seeking novelty by partaking of foreign people's native mundanity contributes to the starving of novelty in one's own culture. Cultural output requires the boredom and appetite for change that motivates people to organise and take action.
That is quite the opposite of my take. Cultural exchange has shaped societies in many novel ways over the years; it's far more often that novelty via partaking of foreign people's native mundanity results in that novelty being exported back to one's own society and syncretising in interesting and new ways. To continue with the Roman example from before, after the annexation of Egypt and significant travel there Roman Italy gained a large market for Egyptian-looking artworks and syncretic pieces of art that the well-to-do put in their homes. And while not so related to travel, the development of European chinoiserie largely was caused by coming across porcelains and textiles from China, in other words partaking in "foreign people's native mundanity", and it resulted in many new art styles such as Rococo.
My perception was that the flavour profile of Beijing food had a good bit less depth and spice than the other regions of China I visited (such as Shanxi, where I really enjoyed the food), and I crave spice to an absurd level. Admittedly I've not spent too long in Beijing, just four days so I probably haven't had the chance to try too much; I had kaoya, zhajiangmian, Beijing-style shaomai in the Qing dynasty restaurant that spread these dumplings throughout China and a small handful of other regional specialities, I'd say they were fine but not great. I'm sure there's great food there though and am happy to accept recommendations for the next time I go.
Agree with most of your points. There's also lots more traditional practices going on in China than most people tend to think, IMO. People almost seem to believe all culture got supplanted by Communism - I've seen people assert that communist China "destroyed" things that a 5 minute Google search would prove still exist - but honestly it's quite clear visiting Mainland China that a lot of varied regional practices remain extant and have flourished heavily under liberalisation (sometimes you can find some seemingly really improbable things still being practiced, like the hermit lifestyle in the Zhongnan Mountains that stretches back all the way to the Qin dynasty). Aspects of traditional stuff actually seem to be cool among the younger generation in China unlike most other places in Asia I've visited, and as a Malaysian Chinese much of what I saw felt rather familiar to me.
Hoeflation doesn’t necessarily have to be conducted only through revealing the body but can also be achieved through augmentations of the body itself. On the extreme end of this, think of the women who utilise surgeries and fillers and gaudy makeup to accentuate everything to the point that they look terrifying and emotionless and I’m not sure any man finds them even remotely attractive.
Though now that you’ve mentioned it, it would be very funny to see some episode of some adult TV show take this idea and just run with it, where the thotting goes so far that it becomes downright grotesque and your average woman 100 years in the future aspires to being a Cronenbergian body horror.
This is why I'm not using the word "winning" to describe what occurred with Iran; they were capable of creating enough attrition for the US to decide it was not worth it. The US, however, did not achieve the overwhelming bulk of its aims even in the best-case scenario for the US going forward, and that is the relevant metric when trying to assess a statement like "The US has so much global power that it can effortlessly topple every regime, and nobody can do anything in response". It doesn't matter what word you assign to the whole sorry situation, though it's more accurately described as "US failure" than "Iranian victory".
Quite evidently people who believed the previous statement about practically unchecked US power certainly need to update! That is not a hallucination; it was an actual position which was triumphantly and openly stated by some users, as the links provided by Dase illustrate.
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