urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
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User ID: 226
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
12hr ago
Every new administration tries to give the VP a prominent role after the election, and then like 2 months in they do something embarrassing, and the President's office just goes, "yeah, that will be a one-way trip to Siberia." Are there signs of life from J.D. Vance?
The framers almost immediately knew the VP was a dead office, I wonder why they didn't just significantly alter it when they passed the Twelfth.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
12hr ago
In a sworn statement, Barry O’Kelly said while conducting research for the programme he came across an advert on Facebook in Portuguese advertising rental accommodation at 79 Old Kilmainham Road.
I wonder if the renters were Portuguese or Brasileiros.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
12hr ago
And the Tim Walz thing backfired -- a lot of the right started talking about his history and views and he turned off a lot of the moderate white men they were trying to get. And then he got creamed in the debate with Vance, which counteracted Trump's embarrassing performance against Harris ("they're eating the cats of the people who live there").
I personally noticed Trump getting a big boost from moderates in the months leading up to the election; I know people who hated his guts who were angry at the Democratic party after the Biden debate, and people who were horrified when Trump was shot and considered voting for him for the first time.
Trump won because Biden died live on stage, and because Trump didn't. The election was televised.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
13hr ago
two or more unrelated persons living together who pool their income to make joint expenditure decisions.
New term for cohabiting just dropped: "two or more unrelated persons living together."
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
13hr ago
Another important point was trans issues — Reddit was really starting to crack down on that.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1d ago
I think they're being normalized as we speak.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1d ago
It's more of a mixed bag for the people possessing it, as you mentioned.
It also encourages people to pursue harmony, intimacy, and compassion, which are real positives. I don’t endorse the “I get whatever I want thing,” but I simply can’t bond with a disagreeable person because I care deeply about fairness and I prefer to resolve conflicts in a way where everyone is heard and cared for. I believe in stating preferences openly, and finding compromise; I’m certainly not interested in docility, but in every kind of human relationship I strongly prefer cooperation and compassion, because we all need it.
I usually think of myself as rather disagreeable, but that does sound like a description an agreeable person would give of themselves. Huh.
Anyway, I would frame the attractiveness of agreeableness as being more about similarity and bonds of affection. I simply don’t like disagreeable people, not because I can’t exploit them (I don’t like exploiting anyone!) but because I feel like I’m constantly being exploited by them, if they even see me as a source of any value, which they usually don’t. I don’t like living like that. I’d rather lay cards on the table and cooperate rather than engage in games of status and one-upmanship.
It’s true that agreeable-agreeable pairings can have their own downsides, but I’ll stack them up against other personality combinations any day, particularly for intimate relationships. Especially if you couple your agreeableness with honesty and forthrightness. Maybe that’s what HEXACO honesty-humility+agreeableness looks like? I don’t know.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1d ago
The hypergamy crunch is just around the corner. We're already at a point socially where there are three women to two men among new college graduates. This clearly cannot last.
Why can’t it last? Sure, over timescales some groups will have more children than others, but liberalism is a powerful identity package that has a lot of ability to convert people from conservative backgrounds.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1d ago
I place about a 20% probability on a default and/or civil war in the next 20 years, but Christ is King so who cares?
My mother and I were driving on the highway last night and talking about how the world seems to be going crazy, and half of young people aren’t even vaguely interested in family formation, and no one seems connected to any one any more.
And then the rain cleared and we saw a double rainbow, and she quoted from Genesis: “I have set my bow in the sky.” She continued, “We were just talking about how the world feels crazy, but God’s in control.”
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1d ago
I think domestic life will be bad, in the sense that people will grow more atomized, disconnected, and lonely, while housing and health costs will continue to absorb more and more of people’s wealth, and the division between the haves and the have-nots grows even more intense.
I think both the left and the right realize this is our destiny, it just depends on how you frame it which side starts cheering and which side starts going, “well, actually…”
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
2d ago
This is why people don't want to make top-level comments.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
2d ago
bustr
Excuse me, what-str?
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
2d ago
You said you're single. Have you thought about putting your interest in larger women to work?
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
2d ago
The two most interesting motte posts that shaped my views on the dating world were one by a poster who I don't think posts here any more, who made an argument that the sexual revolution can't be inherently responsible for the male-female happiness gap because such a large gap is present only in the United States and not in Europe, where the revolution happened even more strongly; and @Terracotta linking a chart that showed the massive climb in obesity in the US, suggesting that if you're looking for a woman who does not qualify as obese or overweight, you're limited to the top 25% of women -- who, of course, are interested in similarly-top men.
Both of these convinced me something funky is going on in the US in particular, and that the obesity crisis, as well as general physical fitness (young men don't have muscle like they used to), are responsible for the unique unhappiness of American dating.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
3d ago
For example there are a fair number of converts to orthodoxy that seem to push for rebapism as if they’re joining a new religion.
This isn’t an orthodox convert-generated phenomenon; there’s a longstanding (as in centuries) dispute in Orthodox praxis over whether converts from other Christian traditions should be baptized. The general trend is to say ‘no’, but this is supported by a theological view that generally argues baptism is not grace-filled unless the baptizer is an Orthodox individual, preferably a priest or deacon. Most converts to Orthodoxy are received by chrismation, the term for what is called confirmation in Catholic parlance, which is given great significance as a means of completing baptism in Orthodox theology. The view is that chrismation back-fills grace into a baptism that was performed outside the Orthodox Church. But the view of Orthodoxy generally is that non-Orthodox baptisms aren’t really baptisms, in the strict mystical sense they believe is significant.
The reason converts sometimes push for a rebaptism is because there are some Orthodox rigorists — most notably Mount Athos, one of the holiest monasteries in Orthodox culture — that will interrogate converts and refuse communion to those who were not baptized Orthodox and instead received by chrismation. The converts are trying to deal with an unfortunate situation by aiming for what’s universally accepted, so that no one will have grounds to reject their reception into the Orthodox Church. It’s the rigorists’ fault, not the converts’.
The best comparison point would be Baptists — who, of course, believe that someone baptized as an infant should be baptized instead as an adult, and that infant baptisms aren’t ‘real’. They couple that with a less mystical and more symbolic interpretation of baptism, but nevertheless they believe that other Christian groups are doing baptism wrong in certain cases and that those who were incorrectly baptized ought to be baptized in the proper way, even if that means repeating it. While Catholics and magisterial Protestants have long agreed on baptismal validity, Baptists and Orthodox stand outside that consensus for different reasons.
So it’s not really about the converts hating the old forms of Christianity they grew up in — though that certainly can be a part of an individual’s psychology — and more a serious theological dispute within Orthodoxy about proper baptismal practice that they’re trying to navigate based on conscience. As with everything, the Official Orthodox Answer is “be received however your priest says you should.”
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
3d ago
I believe Thomas meant to emphasize the lower-case orthodoxy in his statement about what could be successful in the 21st century. It's admittedly hard to distinguish sometimes when people are talking about Eastern Orthodoxy or Oriental Orthodoxy or mainstream Nicene lowercase orthodoxy, but, well, all Christian groups claim to be a part of the "Church Catholic" (which means in parlance something different from the "Catholic Church", but try telling the LCMS that), and most Christians are big believers in the evangelion, and most believe in the charismata... so the ambiguity goes on.
Interestingly, in cishet girl lore, there's a coping fantasy about a particular kind of female physicality, distinct from the normal T&A variety, that somehow connects up with a woman's soul and channels male physical attraction into magical emotional intimacy and commitment. You can see it in Disney films and romance novels, where the hero absolutely never starts by noticing the protagonist's bouncing breasts, but may be magnetically drawn to something spiritual and ineffable about her hair or eyes or posture, which turns out to express some deeply unique feature of her personal character.
I would probably get accused of lying for saying this, but while I certainly don't lack attraction for a woman's curves, the physical feature that makes me feel deep attraction to someone is their facial features. I don't know about "spiritual and ineffable," but a warm smile and deep, thoughtful eyes make my heart melt, and a connection of shared vulnerability gives me butterflies in the chest. Someone once told me I made her "feel like I'm in a romance novel," because I talk that way, and similar statements have been made by other people I've dated. But I'm also well aware my romantic orientation is not typical for men, and I have no clue how I ended up with those feelings. It's one of the biggest mysteries for me.
That said, I would not describe myself as "demisexual," and I have the hardware and software for immediate sexual interest. It's just not something I particularly like acting on, and never have. For me, the romantic and sexual attraction have to happen together -- typically, if I find someone romantically attractive, they have a warm smile or seem smart and kind and radiant, I'll find them sexually attractive at the same time. I will admit that a passionate love affair in which sex occurs early has its attraction. But only because it would mean the passion is so strong and intense that we found ourselves unable to control the sexual tension -- which is remarkably similar to the sexual fantasies that women will sometimes admit to.
I can also find people sexually but not romantically attractive, though that's almost always because they have some personality flaw that I find repugnant and I see no vulnerability to which I can relate. If I find you attractive, and you find me attractive, I will find myself staring into your eyes or fantasizing about what it feels like to hold you close or whether it would feel like being in a whirlwind to kiss you, probably more than I will fantasize about what sex with you would be like. My own experience is that sex fueled by passion is just massively more pleasurable, even in raw, hedonistic terms, than sex divorced from it. It's just hotter.
All that being said -- the male complaint is that men with this attitude are often more shy and reserved, and oftentimes get passed over or not romantically noticed by women. And when they do get noticed, the things they say and do that demonstrate their strong romantic orientation are often seen as fake or dissembling, precisely because men try to fake it to play women. And the orientation is so rare among men that I'm not sure most people believe it even exists. I just don't know why my psychology on this is so unusual, or how I ended up there.
Yeah, but gay rights activists are angry that MSM can’t donate blood, because they feel it stigmatizes being gay.
But I agree with you, people valuing defeating stigma more than protecting people from serious diseases is a really bad thing. I think the gay community has long been in denial about how seriously HIV/AIDS created rather than reflected stigma against gay men, and my understanding is it became something of a rite of passage back in the day — “I’m pozzed, so I no longer need to worry about it.”
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