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?
8hr ago
I had a job once that required keeping clocks in sync between all of the computers in a company. For servers we decided clocks could drift only one millisecond, but for desktops we allowed up to 100ms. This required modifications to Windows because Microsoft only imposed one minute clock discipline at the time (only improving on this policy after 2016, which is probably not early enough for whatever piece of shit the jail installed).
Was there a specific use-case for the highly strict clock synchronization?
Also, thanks for the write-up. Computer timekeeping has always been a personal nemesis (NTP sync errors, RTCs failing, random clock drift, time being an hour off randomly due to strange bugs, Windows and Linux not playing nicely on a dual-boot system even when I beg windows to use UTC, there are so many problems) so it’s interesting to read about how complex it is to keep clocks in sync.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
13hr ago
· Edited 13hr ago
It seems like “romantasy” has become the default genre for young women, it's pretty startling. I also have met people who seem to be basing their conception of what romance should be like on these sorts of books. I know a young lady who's desperate for a man who also reads romantasy, which is particulary bizarre because these are books written with female protagonists from the perspective of women. I'm not sure what she expects her dream man to be getting out of these books.
Maybe that kind of thing has been around for a long time. But I know older women who like romance books, and they were never like that. My mother is an avid reader of romance, and a shipper before shipping was cool (there were, in fact, fan forums that shipped Anakin Skywalker with Padme Amidala, and yes, my mom is still sad he turned into Darth Vader).
But my father is certainly no romance novel protagonist, yet my mom talks about how funny he was when she met him, and how all the girls thought he was cute, and talks lovingly about going on drives in the country with him and listening to music, and says that even when there was tension in the relationship, it didn’t matter — “I loved him.” They’ve been married for 40 years. That’s my parents.
My mom is just a sweet lady, she likes love stories because she loves people, and romance novels are about people connecting with each other and sharing vulnerability.
I worry that maybe the market for romance stories has shifted from, “sweet story about people overcoming adversity for true love” to “escapist experience where you get to imagine yourself being seduced by one of Snow White’s magical creatures.” Also, please do not look up "scenting."
I get the feeling that older generations viewed these stories as an enjoyable narrative with an inspiring message about the sacrifices that lead to love, which could be tempered by the actual lived experience of seeing your mother and father, aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers, go through the reality of marriage and as such understand that the reality isn’t like books — and yet still worthy.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
13hr ago
Are you an insanely charismatic man in excellent shape, who's impeccably dressed and whose every word and gesture are a near world-class work of performance art? No? Plenty of people have happy relationships - or non-catastrophic relationships - with women with BMIs of 30, 40, 50, even 60.
Huh, this feels like the conclusion of a narrative arc. Never thought we'd hear this message from you, brother. And you're not wrong.
Did you ever find a girlfriend?
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
14hr ago
This is the usual way I read the motte.
You do have to be careful, though -- sometimes you can end up with a perfect comment responding to what you thought a discussion was based on a reply to a reply to a reply, and then you realize you spent all that time reverse-engineering what was already stated or dismissed in the discussion.
"What fraction of men would dick another guy if there was a non-gay way of doing it?" I would bet that the real number is in the 3-10% range.
Well, "date" is different from "dick", and the chief complaint from trans women is that men are willing to have sex with them but not be seen in public.
I recall there was a survey (probably not a great one, but whatever) that something like 1/3 of men had had a sexual fantasy about a transgender partner. There's also a stat that the "trans" section of PornHub is one of the top categories. So you're correct that the level of sexual interest in trans women is higher than is accounted for in the 3%.
But the fact remains that we're still talking about less than one percent of the population, which already regards men being interested in them as highly suspect precisely because of the gulf between that 33% and the 3%. Statistically, any given man that expresses interest in them is around ten times more likely to be looking for an exotic sexual experience than a relationship, and the majority are uninterested in that -- not least because being transgender implies a certain discomfort with one's genitals, around which the sex fantasies often orbit. The minority that is interested in being an exotic sex fantasy is highly likely to be swamped by offers and choosy the same way cis women are.
But also, "having a sexual experience" is only one of the many reasons a man might desire the companionship of a woman. "Being seen as a man who has been chosen by a woman" is also a huge factor -- and it's one that the hypothetical about AI girlfriends doesn't take into account.
I don't disagree that some men on the margins are exploring alternative sexual experiences with gay men or trans women or whatever, but this just isn't a big enough segment of the population to have much of an effect on what straight people are doing.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
2d ago
royal
America
Wait, why do I hear musket fire in the distance?
Okay, if your hypothetical came about -- what do you think they'd do? Don't just put us on the spot like that -- it sounds like you have something to say. Say it!
Add to that a growing visibility of trans women in romantic spaces
Last time I checked, only 3% of heterosexual men report that they would date a trans woman. Maybe that's increasing. But even if we granted that huge numbers of men gained a newfound interest in trans women, it simply isn't the case that trans women will form some great competition for cis women. There aren't many of them (what, like half a percentage point?), and most are not interested in heterosexual men, whether because they perceive heterosexual men aren't interested in them, or because they believe they can't build a relationship with them, or because they prefer women. We're looking at a fraction of a fraction of a percent here.
It's possible that some fraction of bisexual men will start dating men at higher rates (see the "I traded women for femboys" meme), but my understanding is that the situation for male-male pairings is that sex is easy to find, but ghosting and avoidant attachment is even more common than among straight men.
Sometimes straight men like to proclaim, "maybe I will go gay!" like a kind of protest, same way that women annoyed with men sometimes start investigating political lesbianism, but same-sex pairings are just different in important ways due to biological and cultural factors. The grass is rarely greener on the other side. Fantasies aren't going to save you, and trans women aren’t your fantasy. They’d be the first people to tell you that.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
2d ago
I can see that, actually. And the reality is that my own worldview can sound very "F", depending on the context. That said, my general view of the world is that we should be making reasonable decisions based on logic -- and accounting for people's emotions and the real fallout of a decision on people is a part of that. I read "You prioritize facts over people’s feelings when determining a course of action." as referring to, not taking people's actual feelings as a result of the action into account, but "making a gut decision based on people feel at the current moment rather than actually evaluating whether those feelings will reflect how they experience the fallout of the decision." Other people might read it differently, and that's a big ambiguity!
That's my problem with the T vs F dichotomy -- it's not real. People who are so far in the extreme that an emotional argument from their partner or their child would not persuade them barely exist. And people who are so extreme that they'd rather make a feelings-based argument over what kind of mortgage to get also barely exist. People are both feelers and thinkers. I agree with @Primaprimaprima on this.
I'm not a utilitarian, but I guess I sound like one in this context. But my values on these kinds of questions are shaped by the fact that my feelings and emotions are very flighty and unhelpful a lot of the time: if I made decisions based on how I feel right now I would make horrible, impulsive, and often extremely avoidant decisions! I couldn't function. My life has been a long struggle of using the "heartless robot" to override the useless emotions that can't help me in the moment, to try and develop a path forward that will lead to the best emotional state I can possibly expect and to proper functioning. I have to think in terms of telos, because I need some kind of a star in the East to walk towards in the desert.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
4d ago
Maybe. But there's an increasing trend of social anxiety making people just not want to go to things at all -- and of course the internet rectangle makes it easy to develop parasocial relationships or social media addictions and spend time on those instead of actual people. The flakiest people I know are the least busy.
For instance, I have a friend who wanted to hang out and I haven't texted him back in 3 days (but to be fair, it took him 4 days to get back to me). And my girlfriend is in the other room and I'm typing this right now. I'm choosing you over snuggling, faceh-less internet person! Something has gone wrong there.
I saw a t-shirt at Target the other day that read, "Canceller of Plans." And I know the rush that comes from cancelling plans. But it's still pathological avoidance.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
4d ago
Oh, you don't feel like saying "Strongly Disagree" to:
Complex and novel ideas excite you more than simple and straightforward ones.
You are not too interested in discussions about various interpretations of creative works.
You prioritize facts over people’s feelings when determining a course of action.
You actively seek out new experiences and knowledge areas to explore.
Or "Strongly Agree" to:
You usually feel more persuaded by what resonates emotionally with you than by factual arguments.
People’s stories and emotions speak louder to you than numbers or data.
You favor efficiency in decisions, even if it means disregarding some emotional aspects.
You are not easily swayed by emotional arguments.
Congratulations, your personality type has been determined to be mottezan!
I didn't have you pegged that way based on some of your other posts, but I suppose it does fit.
That's actually my big issue with the MBTI: Thinking and Feeling aren't so alien to each other. I could probably be equally described by the INFP functions, making decisions based on values, following what's right, working on refining values, trying to take others' perspectives into consideration. I do both. But I'm distrustful of my 'gut,' and I want to expose it to logical argumentation to see if what I'm doing is actually in accordance with the logical way to pursue my values and preferences. I'm a big believer in cooperation, but because I believe it is logical.
I also have a strong romantic identity, which does somehow slot in to that frame. But by far the most important thing in a relationship to me is that I can explore ideas with my partner -- my girlfriend met me because I gave a lecture about history and she felt, according to her recollection, that "this is the kind of man I need in my life!" 100% of my partners have either identified with the Tumblr phrase "sapiosexual" or could fairly be described with it. That's not to say I'm not affectionate in a traditional sense, because I have also been described as romantic, but for me a relationship needs both aspects. For me, my idea of an amazing date is a discussion about the concept of justice over dinner and a reflection on the future of commerce as pillow talk.
That's also a problem with the MBTI -- it doesn't have anywhere to put the logician who's also a hopeless romantic!
But it's rather foreign to me, because logic to me is a tool, it's not where I live.
I think in words. Have you ever used Spreeder? I hardly know her! That's what my mental imagery often looks like; words scrolling through my head against a black background. I often feel punctuation, when I wrote "feel" just then I felt kind of like I needed to lean, and when I write a full-stop period, I feel like I need to jolt forward like a typewriter. (*jolt*)
Basically 85-90% of my internal experience is me thinking about what I would write in an essay or say in a lecture about my experiences or whatever I'm thinking about; for instance, today, I was thinking about how the prisoner's dillema applies to dating and the kind of argument I would make for cooperation in a world where so many people feel like defecting. I don't necessarily think in syllogisms, but I do think in logical, well-flowing arguments. So what people read on the motte is extremely close to just what I'm doing in my head most of the time. That's why my motte posts are often so long. This, right now, is literally my stream-of-consciousness.
I have "absent-minded professor" vibes, and I frequently make wrong turns when driving because I was thinking about personality theory instead of navigating. Fortunately my cerabellum is pretty good at keeping my foot on the brake when it needs to be.
I also like listening music to crowd out distractions so I can get into my flow of words, and sometimes I pace while thinking to also occupy my body and 'get it out of the way.'
Do you actually not experience your mind as a buzz of images and sounds by default?
Well, maybe not unless you count the sound of my own voice, or music. I don't experience many mental images, and I find fiction hard to read if it has a lot of description, because my imagination can't keep up with the imagery they're trying to get me to experience. I prefer dialogue.
My internal conscious experience is highly verbal, and I've occasionally found myself thinking about a phrase so intensely that I say it out loud accidentially. My chief mode of internal experience is to imagine that either I'm doing what I am now -- and writing something -- or to imagine myself with my partner, or in front of a crowd of people, explaining to them what I'm thinking. When I was in school I often imagined giving a class presentation on whatever was interesting me at the moment.
I hate smalltalk, but I love public speaking, because to me it's like writing an essay out loud, and with more opportunity for humor.
It's quiet and "logical" up there?
It's logical, but not necessarily quiet. Like I intimated, the logical processing I go through has to compete with the anxiety feelings that often try to crowd it out -- tightness in the chest, lightheadedness, shaking, impending sense of doom. I guess you could maybe think of the logical thinking as a way to compensate for the fact that my emotional experience is so intense and unreliable.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
4d ago
do you like to categorize people because it's another interesting data point about how they work
This is basically the thing that got me interested in psychometrics. My problem is I have a bad tendency to categorize people in my head as lab rats with identifiable characteristics and try to predict what they’re going to do. It can make it a little hard to actually connect, because I’ve already formed an impression of what box someone fits it, and my box is oddly specific.
That said, what you said earlier about the most interesting part of Meyers-Briggs being the type functions is also my view. I think the categorizations are bogus, but I’m definitely the sort of person whose most conscious experience is thinking through things like I’m making a logical argument, pulling in information from the environment to try and enhance that logic, and then dragging my feelings along.
Except when anxiety hits and the processor gets interrupted by the amygdala. That’s when things go off the rails.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
4d ago
I guess this is just flyover country being behind on the trends, but my impression is that tattoos, especially lots of them, still do signal criminality or BPD or sluttiness, or at least an attempt to look cool.
They're also just a lot less common here, so maybe they're still a reliable signal of something.
I frequently hear women express sentiments that actually, promiscuity is good, being a camgirl is a completely normal job, and having a dozen boyfriends in one year and collecting gifts and favors from all of them on the way is par for the course and bystanders should politely not notice it. I very rarely (in fact, not in almost a decade by now) hear the opposite IRL.
I don't know that I've heard that IRL, though I do recall even in school there were lots of girls who expressed interest in marrying a man for the money, or in using sexual appeal to get things from men, while never expressing interest in the idea of actually loving a man.
I guess these motivations have been around forever, along with the more intrinsic motivations like intimacy, companionship, physical affection, etc. But it's surprising to me how the shoe has moved to the other foot and it's much more rare for me to hear discussions of intimacy, companionship, and physical affection as the core reasons people are looking for a relationship. "I would like to have children" has a strong constituency, but I'd argue that's still an instrumental reason to have a relationship. (But an important one!)
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
6d ago
Gattsuru?
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
7d ago
Man I had you pegged as a 50 year old Fox News boomer.
Dean not only knows what gap moe means, he's embodied it.
(Also I don't know what it means and this joke is based on a 2-minute google search.)
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
7d ago
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
If you were waiting for the right moment to add a flair, this is your moment.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
8d ago
“George E Hale describes Mottezians” could be a regular segment.
More interesting than bare links, at least.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
9d ago
Yeah, I recall it was an explicit point among some pro-choicers to “own” the abortion activism in the aftermath of Dobbs. Maybe the larger ecosystem has rejected that take. But it was a thing at the time, and I respected the candor and straightforwardness of the view. I get that the point is “women should have the right to choose” and that it’s not “abortion is the greatest thing ever!” but the shift has been from “safe, legal, and rare” to “safe, legal, and none of your damn business how rare it is.” It’s more of a change in tone than a change in view point.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
9d ago
It is about the idea spread by the words that are used in that organization's name.
That people should care about the lives of black people?
I don’t think it’s sensitivity reasons, it was that the algorithms on social media platforms deranked or demonetized content that had references to death or sexual assault. Presumably for advertisement reasons. You said it’s grown beyond just that, but I believe YouTube and other platforms censor it just like TikTok, so they’re just doing what the algorithms encourage.
So this isn’t an example of zoomer fragility — it’s an example of the power of advertiser skittishness and algorithmic content ranking to affect language on multiple platforms. (That sounded like AI, but it wasn’t. Promise.)
I could also just be out of touch on this, but I’ve never heard of someone who literally won’t say the word “killed” in an in-person setting. Rape is more sensitive, I guess.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
9d ago
Which is why I'm a PC gamer now; I just buy old games for the cheap on Steam.
I've been a PC gamer since I was a kid, I always was ok with mouse and keyboard but I can't use a controller to save my life(s). When PC gaming and system building started to get big I was pretty startled at all the attention the PC was getting, I was just a geek who liked tinkering with systems and suddenly all my male relatives are asking me for PC recommendations!
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
9d ago
These awkward affectations you use to avoid typing words remind me of Zoomers saying "unalived" or "grape" - originally because they had to censor certain words on TikTok, but now it's just becoming a Zoomer thing that you can't Say Those Words.
I've never heard of "grape", but I don't spend much time on the Tok. "Unalived" is just an inherently funny word, it sounds like a Monty Python joke about bureaucratic language. I'd only use it as part of a joke.
Of course, "died" is a phrase people don't like saying, "passed away" is the old euphemism.
I don't know anyone who won't say "died" in person, but maybe this is a younger zoomer thing that I'm too unbrainrotted to understand.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
9d ago
they instead refer to pro-life activists as 'anti-abortion activists'.
I'm ok with that -- obviously that's what they are!
There's even the movement to stop saying pro-choice (among pro-choicers) and instead say pro-abortion. I'm fine with this. Obviously whether abortion is acceptable and should be legal, and under what circumstances, is the core of the debate. I'm happy to use the euphemisms, because it's also true that pro-lifers believe they're defending life and pro-choicers believe they're defending the ability to choose whether to carry a child to term.
I get the "marriage equality" thing, but honestly I'm fine with that term too -- if you believe gay marriage is meaningfully different from straight marriage, obviously you think it's unequal, and should be so legally, in an important way! Of course, that's strategically dangerous, but I would rather people just bite the bullet of whatever it is they want to argue for and own it. But I'm also happy with the term "traditional marriage," though I'd prefer if advocates for that opposed "we just don't love each other anymore" divorces as well.
I guess I just take the "avoid semantic debates" thing pretty far -- for the most part, I'll use any term you want me to use, I'd prefer to think about the object level.
I did a fun excercise once, where I tried to exploit the euphemism treadmill for humor or for trolling (not that I commend trolling). I just found the most out-there, unknown, transgressive, new-style, politically-correct term for something, then used it to say something deeply offensive about that thing:
"People of color should go back to where they came from."
"Birthing people should be forced to have at least one child a year." (This phrase is just dumb, I see why radfems hated it so much.)
"BIPOC are a major threat to the social fabric of the United States."
"The LGBTQIA2S+ community is made up entirely of groomers."
"Trans women of color are the worst people on the planet."
(For the record, I don't believe any of this. These are merely examples.)
Doesn't have the same valence as using a slur, does it? And yet these phrases communicate a pretty harsh claim. But stripped of opposing-tribe markers, the actual object-level claim emerges like Neo from the uterine vat of the Matrix, and can be discussed.
So I guess that's why I cringe at euphemistic avoidance of opposing-tribe terms: I'd rather make a harsh claim in a way that might get mistaken for an opposing-tribe claim than signal my in-group in a way that burdens my claim with its smell. It's not about claiming territory for me, it's about exploring ideas.
My girlfriend likes true crime — and it comes up even with the most vile, wicked people you can imagine. Lots of gesturing about how serial killers who raped women and or men and then tortured and killed them were that way because dad was an abusive drunk.
The idea that the abusive father and the killer son could have been that way because of their shared genetics and personality characteristics never seems to occur to anyone.
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