wsgy
17hr ago
I'd be more concerned about this particular aspect if the two of them weren't doing as well as they are, financially speaking. Like I said though, lawyers will be involved if we proceed, possibly even good ones.
wsgy
18hr ago
I did not make any jokes during the exchange after realizing they were serious; the scenario in which I do joke about missionary with the lights off didn't happen irl. The whole situation is awkward as hell and I default to jokes in those conditions. Sorry.
I think I'm going to leave this to my wife like you suggest. They're more her friends anyway and if we never interact with them again it's probably a reasonable sacrifice on the altar of "a stable marriage".
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This puts me in a mood and has since I was like 16.
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The theme from Halo or something idk
wsgy
19hr ago
I'm not in the habit of asking the internet for advice but my wife and I have stumbled into something that has put us way out of our element and quite frankly the nature of the question severely limits even the number of people in our lives we can solicit advice from so You get to weigh in.
For whatever reason, my wife is a magnet for LGBTQ+ people. Roughly half of her friends fall into this category. I have theories as to why this is the case but they are unimportant. One such couple is a married lesbian/bisexual pair who we have been good friends with since college. There's a running joke about us having a threesome with the bisexual, who is really quite fetching. It works as a joke for us because my public stance on group sex is "Dear Lord spare me from that awful group sex. All that commotion."
Well it looks like the chickens have come home to roost. They invited us to dinner last night, which they hardly ever do, and asked us if we would be cool with me fathering a child with the bisexual. My wife choked on her drink and I made a joke that I'd only agree if we did it the old-fashioned way rather than IVF which didn't land because that was, in fact, their plan. My wife understandably rejected that idea outright and couldn't even be mollified by a promise that it only be missionary with the lights off and I'd try super-hard to think of her, so now the question is do I contribute genetic material into a plastic cup some time in the near future.
I'm willing (and kinda want) to do this. We have a gaggle of kids of our own so it's not like I'm going to run off to play dad. We also have come to the conclusion that lawyers are going to be heavily involved beforehand to keep us free of financial obligation and limit any parental rights my wife and I may have claim with the possible exception of the couples' untimely death.
But even so, this seems like a big ask from them, and kind of risky w/r/t our marriage. The couple is pretty enthusiastic about my involvement though, so my wife is quite concerned that a "no" from us will damage the friendship irreparably. Why me specifically? I'm well-liked, have a family history of longevity, I'm smart and conscientious enough to be a physician (at least by training), and (perhaps somewhat cynically) a 6'4" formerly muscle-bound football player. Like Sydney Sweeny I've got good genes even if I'm a 4/10 in the face with abnormally long alien limbs. Plus we live in the same area so we'd have the chance to be involved at least somewhat. We see these two semi-regularly. That may be a downside though! We do have a plausible out that could spare us in that I'm over the age of 40, which I think is when most sperm banks won't take donations.
Thoughts? It hasn't even been 24 hours since we've been thinking about potential problems so I'm sure you guys could come up with new ones to think about. We're kinda Christian but this kinda stretches the whole "love thy neighbor" thing a bit.
wsgy
14d ago
I guess I'll do the same even though nobody asked:
Less Than Zero by Ellis - Quite a read, really dark. I whipped through it though, it's kind of gripping. It felt very 80s so no surprise it was released in 1985. I would recommend this book to skinny women age 18-25 with an occasional coke habit.
Lucky Jim by Amis Kingsley - Pretty funny and possibly the most British thing I've ever read. It's about an early career English history professor in a provincial university and his struggles. It might have done lasting psychic damage to me when I was a freshman in college and a massive misanthrope with a superiority complex. I'd recommend it to grad students and adjunct professors who can't seem to get a tenure track.
The Case Against Education by Caplan - I was convinced by the arguments that education is mainly signaling. I also can get behind his proposal to massively increase spending on vocational schooling.
The Twilight of the American Enlightenment by Marsden - After WWII we looked to the liberal intellectual elites to help us forge a new national identity, and they failed which caused the rise of the Christian Right. I was more fascinated by how it was considered perfectly normal for everyone to call themselves a liberal at the time. I thought it was OK but kinda boring.
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie - I read the whole trilogy which has a name I forget. It's sci-fi about a spaceship's AI that gets trapped in a repurposed human body. I don't usually like female sci-fi/fantasy writers but this was decent enough. The treatment of gender is weird. The protagonist calls everyone "she" and acknowledges that some cultures get very offended if you call the wrong person "she". I figured a super smart AI ought to be able to tell the difference between a man and a woman but what do I know, I'm a chud after all.
Apropos of Nothing by Woody Allen - This is his autobiography. A lot of the first part of the book reads like a string of standup comedy bits, which it probably was. If you watch Radio Days it could have been yanked right out of this book. Then it gets a bit boring where he talks about his failed first marriage and career ups and downs. But there's a significant part of this book that is him defending himself against the molestation allegations, attacking Mia Farrow, and defending his relationship with his now wife. I was happy to read his account of these things, since nobody seems to care about his say on the matter. Only read this if you're a fan of his, obviously.
How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker - This was my only DNF this year. I wasn't learning anything I didn't already know and Pinker is very longwinded. I think in the future, I'm only going to read his books that are more recent than 30 years old, on subjects I know very little about. It felt like reading Ancient Greek philosophers trying to do science because of how dated the research was.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Adams - I figured I should have gotten around to this at some point and I'm glad I read it because I was missing a lot of nerd jokes on the internet for the past 25 years and I now know where it's from. I didn't particularly like it but it would have been 15 year old me's favorite book of all time. There's a reason it's in the YA section.
City by Simak - Having developed superior methods of transportation, humans all retreat into the countryside as cities are no longer necessary. Simak's version of the end of the world isn't destruction, it's isolation, which seems kind of relevant today. Very inventive book told from the perspective of a dog civilization in the far future that is somewhat skeptical that "humans" are a real thing and not something made-up.
Hyperion by Simmons - Awesome. Really appreciated all the different perspectives and stories. My favorite book this year.
The Fifth Season by Jemisin - I read all three of the Broken Earth trilogy. Very mediocre fantasy. I wrote about it in one of these threads before. I'd recommend it to women who still think the Hugo Award is a mark of quality.
On the Marble Cliffs by Junger - I also read this and loved it. Make sure to read the Stuart Hood translation. I took a page out of an the ACX review of it from last(?) year and made my wife read it to me while I was high. Had a similar experience to the reviewer in that I found the descriptions too intense at one point and made her stop. Second favorite book this year.
A Fire Upon the Deep by Vinge - A bit of a slow starter but it was worth it. It's about a runaway AI trying to destroy the universe and the one weapon that can stop it exists on a planet of medieval-era dogs that operate as individual packs rather than solo beings using special organs to communicate. If you're into more male oriented sci-fi it will work for you.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow by Zevin - I was surprised by this one. A GenX woman writing a story about a video game company could have been a disaster for me, but it was great. A bit sentimental and melodramatic. It was probably my third favorite fiction book this year, as evidenced by the fact I read the 600-page tome in 2 days.
Looking back, I think I'm going to read more nonfiction next year. I've been hesitating to tackle Nixonland by Perlstein so maybe that's what's next.
wsgy
20d ago
OK thanks for this because I was convinced they were listening to me after an incident. My friend is a whiskey snob and wanted to try this one specific whiskey, but only one bar in town was serving it and it was too much money to justify buying a whole bottle. So he took me there and we mentioned the brand a bunch and the next day I got ads for it. I was absolutely paranoid about it because I had never heard of this alcohol before and couldn't think of any way the algorithm would have decided to target me beyond listening to my phone. My friend looking it up and facebook making a connection makes way more sense.
wsgy
20d ago
I always kinda thought the Dubai Chocolate meme was a way to cover up the whole "instagram whores getting shit on by Arabs in Dubai" thing. That people had started calling poop "Dubai chocolate" at some point and their government or whoever stepped in and made the campaign to drown out search results. I have 0 evidence of this it's all vibes.
wsgy
1mo ago
If we're setting the standard to "easily accomplished by basically any family that cares to show up"... what is even the point? Is that sort of lowering of standards actually expanding numbers? Or is that why they're still dropping?
I had a fairly outdoorsy upbringing through the 90s. I built my first fire when I was 5, shot a .22 when I was 8, did archery somewhere in between, and spent a lot of time outside sleeping in a tent. There was no point (in my mind) to joining the Cub Scouts. "Oh those nerds making macaroni pictures for their moms? Pass." So at least for me, that is definitely why I never got involved in scouting.
wsgy
1mo ago
The HRC Foundation is an explicit advocacy group for LGBTQ+ people. Of course one would expect them to take the broadest definition possible when tabulating hate crimes against their advocacy group. The SPLC routinely does this manner of thing as well, to the point where even the ADL thinks there's half as many Klansmen in the US than the SPLC seems to think. If the ADL thinks you've lost the plot that's really saying something. And does anybody really think a prisoner getting stabbed over drugs is "right-wing violence" just because the perpetrator has Nazi tattoos?
I don't think people who parrot these types of statistics are truth-seekers. They're 'arguments as soldiers' types. The point is to win and to use those wins as political leverage to get extra protections for their group. Confront them with the more salient facts and what would you expect to get as a response? "Gee I guess hate crimes against trans folks isn't as big of a problem as I previously thought" or "The only reason someone like you would even question these statistics in the first place is because you're transphobic, and I'm not having a conversation with a bigot"? The percentage of people who might be moved one way or another by this kind of digging into the data is small, perhaps very small.
wsgy
1mo ago
I have a genetics problem I don't know if my math/analysis is right because I haven't had to do math or Punnett squares in approximately 20 years and I was always kinda shit at statistics. I nerd baited myself I guess because I've been thinking about this for a week:
My wife has blue eyes. I have brown eyes as did both my parents, but both my grandmothers had blue eyes. So I know my parents were both carriers for blue eyes. The chances of me also being a carrier is 2/3 then, so the chances of my first child having blue eyes is 1/3. Our oldest came out with blue eyes so now the chances of having a kid with blue eyes is 1/2 because that confirms I'm a carrier. But what if my oldest came out with brown eyes? What would be the chances for every subsequent child to have blue eyes if all their older siblings had brown eyes?
My initial guess was 2/3s of whatever the last probability was. So kid #2 would be 2/9, then #3 would be 4/27, but that seems to drop off way too quickly. Doesn't pass the smell test.
I thought maybe I have to evaluate the probability that I'm a carrier before bringing the wife into it. So that would mean if I had a brown eyed first born, my chances of being a carrier are the chances I had a blue eyed kid for #1 [without knowing my status yet], divided by the chances that I had a blue eyed kid for #1 [without knowing my status yet] plus the chances that I had a brown eyed kid [in the event that I'm not a carrier, which is 1/3 atm]. I reasoned this because having a brown eyed kid will lower the chances of subsequent blue eyed kids so it goes in the denominator. That way, it still maintains the possibility while making it subsequently less likely.
This would be (2/3 x 1/2)/[(2/3 x 1/2)+(1/3)] which is (1/3)/(2/3) which is 1/2, making the chances of us having a blue eyed kid for #2 now 1/4. Kids number 3 and then 4 would be 1/6 and 1/10 respectively. This seems way more reasonable, but my equations are just going on vibes here. I have no idea if its right so can any math people clue me in?
wsgy
1mo ago
Friend, I don't like the sound of this at all.
I'm reading a whole lot of you offering compromises and trying to make this work, up to and including possibly sending yourself to the hospital from mental distress, and a big fat goose egg nothing on her end. This whole thing is completely lopsided. When you find some reasonable solution to her objections to moving to your town, she comes up with a new reason/excuse why she can't move to you. This sounds like she's stringing you along. You say you're terrified of losing her, and I believe you, but does she echo the same feelings? I doubt it. It doesn't sound like she cares about you enough to overcome any obstacles to more permanent physical proximity.
I don't like to say it, but I've seen this behavior before. It sounds like there are irreconcilable differences, but really I think she's stonewalling you, stringing you along in case something better falls in her lap. It's also much more common for women to be the ones pushing for more commitment and it sounds like your constant attempts to fix the situation is actually pushing her away. She should be wanting to have these conversations, not ending them with her latest excuse and letting you stew about it. I'm wondering what your friends' takes are on this. It's hard to see these things from the inside.
wsgy
1mo ago
I just finished the last book in the Broken Earth Trilogy by N K Jemisin and feel compelled to ramble about it. The reason why I picked it up in the first place was I have been completely divorced from the state of modern sci fi/fantasy and was still under the impression that a Hugo award is a mark of quality. Each book in the trilogy won a Hugo, which is a first, so I was looking forward to it, and I checked all three from the library before going on a trip I knew would include a lot of downtime I'd rather not spend doomscrolling. It's very mediocre, not bad just kinda whatever, and had I done any digging at all into it or the state of the Hugos I should have known. From Wikipedia:
Jemisin's novel The Fifth Season was published in 2015, the first of the Broken Earth trilogy. The novel was inspired in part from a dream Jemisin had and the protests in Ferguson, Missouri about the death of Michael Brown.[27][28] The Fifth Season won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, making Jemisin the first African-American writer to win a Hugo award in that category.
So a black woman wrote a fantasy book about racism and quite literally black girl magic, and was rewarded handsomely for it by the Hugos (and had it optioned by Sony for 7 figures). In it, some people are gifted in orogeny, allowing them to manipulate the earth, and stop things like volcanoes and earthquakes. Someone who is skilled in this is really quite useful, but also obviously dangerous. As such, there's a class of people called Guardians who find new orogenes, and train them at Hogwarts in order to control them. If they try and run away or can't be controlled, they are killed. Normal people, by and large, hate them, and will try and kill them if discovered even if they have literally saved their communities in one way or another, and even if they are firmly under the yoke of the Guardians. They've even got their own slur. It's a bit... on the nose. Also a lot of characters are bisexual for some reason.
Again it wasn't a bad read. I'm not much of an anti-woke crusader myself; I find it mildly annoying when I realize what is going on, that's about it. But I was shocked it won a Hugo, and apparently they've been like this since like 2010?
Anyway I'm looking to read some dumb male-oriented sci fi if you guys have recommendations.
wsgy
1mo ago
The short answer is probably the biological model of species distinction as "they can breed and make fertile offspring" is out of fashion. There are a few things to consider. For instance jackals and coyotes would never encounter each other in the wild so they don't hybridize. The animals also have pretty different patterns of behavior and ecological niches, at least wolves compared to the other two. Polar bears and Grizzlies can mate and make fertile offspring too, but they also rarely encounter each other in the wild to the point that we didn't know if they even could interbreed until someone saw a weird bear 20 years ago and tested its DNA. There's a bit of "the Categories were made for Man not Man for the Categories" going on here too. If I called a coyote a wolf I'd get called a dumbass in turn; they're obviously very different even just morphologically.
Actually now that I think a bit more about it it's a lot more of a historical inertia kind of thing. We gave them different names hundreds of years ago because they looked different and by the time we figured out they could make babies the names were entrenched.
wsgy
2mo ago
Jew is a slur or the proper terminology depending on how much stank is put on it. So it's one of those things that's a lot easier to parse the meaning of when spoken, less so over text. I'm completely unsurprised young people who primarily communicate via text rather than speech would be uncomfortable with Jew as a term
wsgy
2mo ago
I mostly lurk because I don't feel like I have much to contribute and everyone around here seems to know what they're talking about, or at least is good enough at rhetoric to fool me. And then I have this really bad habit of needing social approval in a way that downvotes cause me mental distress, even if I am positive I'm right. I'm kind of a coward online like that in a way that I am not irl.
And my study habits were probably unhealthy. I had a few friends in med school and was generally very well liked by people who knew me, but I had more than a few people say to me at some point in our 4th year "damn wsgy why weren't we better friends? You're a great hang!". I had kind of partied way too much in university and overcorrected. My (now) wife even mentioned what it was like to date me those first two years at our wedding. The rule was she could have me for an evening and overnight either Friday or Saturday and had a blanket invitation to stay over at my place on other days but I wasn't going to talk to her until 8pm and we had to be in bed by 10:30. Like she'd be hanging out on my couch watching TV while I ignored her with earplugs in my head. It got a laugh, appropriately.
I'm not actually too worried about the kids in the grand scheme of things. But it's like having one of your vital organs removed from your body and giving it a mind of its own. You can't help but get at least a bit neurotic about it getting damaged.
wsgy
2mo ago
When I was a first year in med school, staring at the sheer amount of knowledge I was supposed to cram into my brain, I would get too anxious and stressed out to even concentrate enough to study. So my girlfriend suggested I take some of her Xanax, which calmed me down enough that I could hit the books. The next day though I would have forgotten everything because as you know (and I had not yet learned at the time) benzos fuck with your hippocampus and it's harder to form memories. I did this three times before I recognized the pattern enough to bother googling it. So uh, don't do that.
What ended up working out for me was getting plenty of daily exercise. I was basically trying to study for 14 hours a day, then I'd watch a movie to unwind, then go to bed. Cutting that back to 13 hours of trying to study and one hour of exercise in the morning made me a lot less stressed out. And of course commiserating with people in the same boat as me. The worst thing you can do is not talk to your friends and colleagues about this.
Now, the thing that tends to stress me out the most is parenting. I am fully confident at times that I am fucking up my kids and they're going to need a lot of therapy in their mid-20s when they realize how much damaged my wife and I caused. But, and maybe this makes me look silly, I find the sycophantic nature of ChatGPT as well as its always available-ness is perfect for stopping me from spiraling.
Anyway: physician, heal thyself and so forth.
wsgy
5mo ago
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5 miles
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2 miles
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1/2 mile, corn, but it was in the news that they're getting bought by a housing developer
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5 miles
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1/2 mile
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I think like 50 miles. The regional airport flies direct to all the big international hubs though (10 miles)
wsgy
7mo ago
"In the interest of justice" is an idiomatic "term of art" in the US legal system. When you see it, the best way to think of it is dropping the case would create the most just outcome for all parties involved, including the wider population, but what exactly that means could be just about anything, including "prosecuting this may lead to right-wing racism against Somalian immigrants". It's my understanding that was more or less the idea with Rotherham, but we don't know if anything like that occurred here
wsgy
8mo ago
Yeah, counter-revolutionary also applies in France ~1800. Heretic was a big one in Europe, "secret Catholic" in England at one point, "witch" practically everywhere, communist, terrorist, enemy of the state, enemy of the people, monarchist... I'm pretty sure humans are hard wired to do this crap to each other
wsgy
8mo ago
Good question because I'm really racking my brain and can't think of anything good. I'm assuming you're asking about xenophobia in particular having moral weight attached to it instead of any kind of morality language being used to shut down discussion or malign enemies because examples of the the latter numbers in the thousands. The only example I can think of doesn't feel the same even if it's in the same ballpark. "Misobarbaros" was an ancient Greek word for someone who hated foreigners too much. But this was more a "stop making fun of the savages, they don't know any better like us superior Greeks" kind of a way, and even then it doesn't seem to have the same moral weight as 'racist' does today. And it wasn't so much about race as it was about culture, customs, and language, which presumably can be changed
That seems to be the pattern through history, that admonishment for anything approaching race-hatred would be like being critical of someone who hates children in a more modern setting, and even people who hate kids these days still get to keep their jobs
It's better than calling things Black [day of the week]
I mean look at this shit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday
Who knows what someone is talking about when they say Black Monday?
wsgy
10mo ago
So it's useful to ask what's the difference between those nameless Chicago politicians he's not going to pardon and Blago. Blago was on the Celebrity Apprentice and personally knows Trump, and declared himself a supporter. Would that be enough for you to pardon him? Maybe not, but Trump is easy to flatter and isn't going to take any hits politically for this action. It's a guy doing a solid for someone that was on his TV show that said he likes him, I don't think you need to go much beyond that
wsgy
10mo ago
“It was a sort of a terrible injustice,” Trump said. “They just were after him. They go after a lot of people. These are bad people, the other side.”
Sounds to me like Trump feels like Blago is a kindred spirit unjustly persecuted by his political enemies. I don't think it goes much beyond that but you could make the argument that he's sending a message about lawfare. Blago has said in the past that he's a "Trumpocrat" so he's a supporter
wsgy
10mo ago
my own brand of scrawl that's so bad even my own signatures don't look alike
Yeah that seems like it would be a problem. Here in the US when you vote they compare your signature on your ID with the one you put down on record at the ballot place. If it's insufficiently similar I assume that means they can tell you to take a hike or something
This whole comment is pretty much where I am at. I think my wife should have the biggest say, I'd rather like to spread my genes around generally even given the risks, and I also agree it's less weird than a rando donor. Melissa Ethridge and her partner had David Crosby, ugly motherfucker as he is, act as donor for one of their kids.
I guess I'm leaning towards "there's too much that could go wrong over right" here. We're not on a time-crunch at least so we can carefully consider the matter.
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