Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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PaperclipPerfector
1mo ago
(text post)
1699 thread views
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Notes -
Serendipity!!! So maybe ten years ago or more, I heard a song on the local college radio station (they highlight new/local artists and announce the artist and song title), but I misheard the artist name and it was a really common song title. Some of the lyrics stuck with me, but searching with those was no help. I've searched for it a few times over the last decade, but never had any luck. Staying back at my parents house, I tuned back into that college radio station when I'm driving around, and I heard an artist's name that was basically the same name I thought I heard ten years ago, but starting with a different consonant. Looking up that artist today and found song I missed with the lyrics I remember. Happy New Year all!
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Have you ever played Cadavre Exquis (Exquisite Corpse)?
It's a drawing game played by artists, both the Surrealists and inspired schoolchildren. Someone folds a sheet of paper into thirds, as one would when preparing to mail a letter, and the first artist draws on the top third the head of a character, monster, person, etc. He makes sure to extend the lines of the neck briefly into the middle third, and passes the paper to the second artist. The second artist, without viewing the top third, draws a torso, extends the connecting lines of the waist into the bottom third and gives it to the third artist to draw the pelvis and legs.
Someone at Adult Swim (formerly Cartoon Network) had the grand idea of having three or four of their most famous cartoon producers create an Cadavre Exquis, animated by different production companies, with none of the three knowing what the others would be creating. Pendleton Ward (Adventure Time), a duo of Rebecca Sugar (Steven Universe) & Ian Jones-Quartey (OK, K.O!), and Patrick McHale (Over the Garden Wall) collaborated blindly.
The result is neither disjointed nor meaningless.
As a lifelong fan of cartoons and other forms of animation, I found it a fascinating and compelling half-hour of artistry. You can watch the entire thing if you have a cable TV provider, a satellite dish subscription, or an HBO Max account. The documentary is freely available on YouTube, but I highly recommend watching the actual show both before and after you see the documentary, first to prevent spoilers and later to find themes and symbols you missed on the first watch.
What I found interesting on my second watch was how politically tribal it is. I don't mean in the culture war sense! (Except that a character named Donald wields a gun at one point, but that's expected CW claptrap at this point.) I mean that the shared language of symbols shared by the artsy blue tribe at the pinnacle of the corporate art-making world became obvious on my second viewing. This, more than anything, is what makes it feel like a single piece planned collaboratively from the start.
All three segments share a focus on identity, since the main characters of each are directly based on Exquisite Corpses drawn by these three famed animators. There are elements of body horror and bodily integrity throughout, and an undercurrent of the expectation that being embodied includes the fragility of death.
All three segments share oppression as the primary physical threat to the main character: antagonists, the alienation of fame, and one's own existence are each, in turn, seen as oppressive.
This "tribal hive mind" aspect is why it feels like a unified whole instead of the disaster that was the Star Wars sequel trilogy, which is itself considered a Cadavre Exquis by some reviewers. This is the tribe that communicates asynchronously what the media story of the day and The Latest Discourse will be, acting separately and alone but toward a shared goal, surviving as a group mind by winnowing out and excommunicating members who don't get the memo.
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Court opinion:
A ski resort has been in operation since year 1969. It includes a mountain face that bears not only several ski slopes, but also part of a gravel municipal road that runs across the slopes. The resort has with the municipality an agreement providing that, during the ski season (from November 15 to April 1), the municipality will close the part of the road that intersects the resort.
In year 2008, a person buys a large lot on the gravel road, adjacent to the resort, but still accessible by car during ski season if you drive on the part of the road that does not intersect the resort. He builds a vacation home, and subdivides the land into several lots, which he intends to market as "ski-in, ski-out" properties. In 2013, he tries to sell the house, but receives no offers. In 2014, he asks the resort about developing an alternative road leading through the resort to his properties, but the resort is not interested.
In 2015, the person sues the resort and the municipality to force them to keep the intersecting portion of the road open during the ski season. This would close the intersecting ski slopes (which seem to constitute around one-third of the resort), and might force the ski resort to cease operations entirely. The judicial proceedings end in 2022, with the intersecting portion of the road "vacated" by the municipality and ceded to the resort.
In 2021, the ski resort sues the person, alleging that his previous lawsuit was an abuse of judicial process intended to pressure the resort into developing the aforementioned alternative road. The trial judge grants summary judgment regarding liability, since the person literally admitted this under oath during the previous lawsuit. A jury grants damages of 600 k$ (400 compensatory and 200 punitive). In 2025, the appeals panel affirms.
Court opinion:
How would you rewrite these "two sentences"?
Survey: The proportion of USAians who "display decorations with a religious meaning, such as a Nativity scene", for Christmas is 54 percent, down from 68 percent in 2010. Presumably, this number can be taken as an indicator of how many people consider Christmas a religious holiday as opposed to a secular one.
Tagging @fmac, @Mantergeistmann, and @JarJarJedi since they've expressed interest in this.
I'm actually familiar with this area as I've been a passholder at the resort for the past 20 years and while I was unaware of the exact situation, maybe I can shed some light on it. The resort is divided into the Front Face, which faces the main lodge and the main parking lot, and the North Face, which faces woods on the opposing mountain. The Front Face was the original part of the resort until it expanded onto the North Face in the 70s and 80s. The North Face is smaller acreage-wise (by a little) but has longer, steeper runs. When I ski here, which is often, we spend most of our time on the North side. This is the opinion of most of the more serious skiers and regulars.
The property in question is at the farthest end of the North Face. You can see the house the guy built from the bend on Lost Girl trail where it starts to head downhill. There's a sketchy shot through the trees you can take to get to the front of the house. We used to take this if there was enough snow because there's a hillside in front that's loaded with powder that nobody ever skis. There's some kind of road we'd ski on or near before heading into the woods. If you kept skiing in the direction of the resort it would pop out in an officially marked glade that would take you back to the lift. I haven't skied this in a while, and they have since put up Keep Out signs. It's a decent little woods shot but usually not worth it.
For the past decade plus we were under two assumptions that are now apparently incorrect. The first was that the house was owned by Pirates owner Bob N?Nutting, who also owned the resort until a few years ago and still owns a lot of nearby real estate and related properties (he still owns the golf course, for example). We were also under the impression that the flat area we skied down to was for parking and the road we were skiing on was the driveway, but apparently this isn't true either, because the photos show the driveway and garage on the uphill side of the house. The upshot of all of this is that the entire area is criss-crossed by roads of varying quality. The road we were skiing was probably an old logging road that isn't maintained by anyone. The road at issue here, Neals Run Rd., is about a lane wide and gravel, and has conspicuous "No Winter Maintenance" signs at the Indian Head terminus.
This surfeit of dirt roads means that my friends and I have spent considerable time riding our gravel bikes in the area. You can ride the entire 70 mile length of Laurel Mountain from Ohiopyle to Johnstown practically without leaving gravel. I few years ago I was toying with the idea of putting a biking guide together for the area and rating gravel roads based on the following criteria:
A roads are hard-packed gravel roads that are well-traveled and are suitable for passenger vehicles. They are kept clear of brush and maintained regularly. They may be kept clear in the winter. Riding on these is similar to riding on crushed limestone rail trails.
B roads receive considerably less traffic and may be gated. These are usually traversable by passenger vehicles, though some sections may be tricky or even impassible. High-clearance vehicles will have no problem. They are narrow and are subject to blowdowns and washouts that may take some time to repair. Gravel may be loose. These may include steep sections that have grades in excess of typical standards. Riding on these should not pose problems for gravel bikes, but be prepared to walk some sections. Winter maintenance is unlikely.
C roads are unmaintained and are always gated. Blowdown is almost never cleared. Some of these roads are marked as hiking trails. They are often overgrown, swampy, eroded, or excessively steep. If maintained in winter, it is as snowmobile or cross-country ski trails. They may be passable to high-clearance 4WD vehicles, though some spots may be tricky even for them. Gravel bikes may find these roads problematic, at least in sections.
D roads may appear on old maps but are not on current maps and are not gated as they are not formally recognized as passages, though parts of some may have been repurposed into hiking trails. No maintenance is done whatsoever and hiking or biking these is more comparable to cross-country travel than to hiking or gravel riding. Attempting to bike these is not recommended.
I have not personally traveled the length of Neals Run Rd., so I can't be entirely sure of its condition, but based on parts I've seen and the description of it it rates as a B, though the part through the resort would rate as an A since it is maintained for summer access (I have extensive experience with this part). There is a rail trail in Indian Head and a really good gravel network in the vicinity of the resort. Some friends of mine decided to take Neals Run Rd. up the mountain from Indian Head and cut through the resort to access those roads. I wasn't with them, but they told me if I wanted to experience it I'd have to do it by myself because they would not be riding it again. One of these friends is an absolute beast who invites me to ride the kind of thing I've already done and have no desire to ride again, and I'm not averse to doing huge mountain climbs, so for him to come to the conclusion that that ride sucked means something. Needless to say I haven't been eager to see firsthand what he was talking about, though I guess I could ride up a different way and ride it down.
That road is the only legal access to these properties. There are some A roads in the area with no winter maintenance and occasionally cars will get stuck and have to be dug out. I once came across a FedEx truck stuck in a ditch in the absolute middle of nowhere on a road I was XC skiing on because the numbnuts driver blindly followed his GPS. As I went further towards the pavement, I came across the tow truck he called to get him out, which was also stuck. I can only imagine how bad it gets on a B road in winter. It's about 4 road miles and a thousand feet of elevation gain between Indian Head and Seven Springs, and while that isn't out of line for roads in the area, it looks like the ones I've done gain elevation at a more or less consistent rate by climbing the slope, while Neals Run follows the creek into the slope before cutting up and gaining a huge chunk all at once. I'm thinking out load here, so I beg your pardon, but based on the maps it seems like this would be even more treacherous than a typical gravel road in the area.
If you look straight down the hill, though, the lots are only about 1500 feet from Trout Run Rd. This is also a township road that may or may not be subject to an agreement giving the resort exclusive use, but it provides access to the lower lift stations on the North Face and continues for some ways beyond them, and as such is kept clear in the winter. My guess is that the old logging road we skied on, or another nearby road, goes down to Trout Run Rd. across undeveloped resort property and he had the idea that they would let him develop and use this road for accessing the properties. Regardless of whether Trout Run is open to public traffic or not (and it wouldn't surprise me if it were, since there are a few odd lots you can park at if you know how to get to them, and during the summer you can damn near drive all over the resort [when they had a downhill bike park I would park directly under the main lift in what is normally the middle of a ski run]), I doubt they want additional traffic on what is essentially a private access road. Furthermore, I can all but guarantee you that the resort does all the maintenance on this road, and they're loathe to do it for the benefit of third parties.
There's also the additional wrinkle that running ski resorts is expensive, seasonal, and weather-dependent, and in a bid to even out their revenue streams, resorts have increasingly looked towards related businesses. Using the resorts as bike parks in the summer is one example, but the big one is real estate. When Bob Nutting sold 7 Springs to Vail resorts he only sold the ski operations and wisely held on to all the real estate surrounding the resort. Whether Nutting or Vail is in charge, though, neither wants some rich doofus marketing ski-in properties on what is rightfully their land, land that isn't even near the area they've targeted for investment and that they'd prefer to keep in a more natural state. It's also worth mentioning that these would only be ski-in in the loosest definition of the term, as there's no formal access, it may not be open early or late season, and half of the North Face closes at 4 pm year round, limiting its appeal to those who like night skiing. Aside from the few ski-in condos that are formally available on land developed by the resort, there are other resort-developed (they are privately owned but were sold as part of an official development plan) condos that have free shuttle buses for access. There are, of course, totally private vacation homes in the area that are the equivalent of off-campus university housing, but like off-campus housing you have to get to the resort yourself, and this is expected. Advertising these as ski-in is problematic in that it creates the impression that access is greater than it really is, where anyone renting these places would quickly find out that for how close they are to the slopes, much of the time those renting them would have to drive to the resort and park in the lot anyway.
So he sued for abandonment, thinking that if he got a ruling that forced the resort to keep their part of the road open he could use that as leverage to get them to grant him an easement. The traditional argument would be that the resorts control over the road rendered his property landlocked and since there was an existing public road he would be entitled to a right of way. The problem was that his property wasn't landlocked, his access was just inconvenient. The bigger problem is that if the resort shut down, or even closed the North Face, his property would be worth even less than it already was. So it was painfully obvious to the court that he didn't actually want the relief he was seeking, and he had to compensate the resort for the inconvenience.
There is one postscript to this, though, that I feel needs to be mentioned: He got his easement. And in some sense, his plan worked, because the suit essentially forced Seven Springs to grant him one, though he may gotten lucky because of the sale. So it's 2023, and Bob Nutting has sold 7 Springs to Vail Resorts. The suit against Hudock has been decided, and he has to pay $600,000, either in damages or as an appeal bond. The problem is that Hudock doesn't have that kind of cash; the only assets he has are the properties. Now the resort is in a bind because in order to show that they were serious about wanting to collect the damages they have to actually try to collect, lest the tables be turned on them, and they obviously have the means to pay a cash settlement if Hudock sues them for the same thing they just sued him for.
One option would be for them to just put judgment liens against the properties and foreclose if necessary. Unfortunately the properties aren't worth all that much on their own, given that they they were just the subject of litigation concerning how worthless they are without access. The resort can develop the properties themselves and grant access, but now they have to pay for that and also make the necessary improvements, and probably formalize a shuttle/ski-in/better access then telling guests to drive to the public lots. Furthermore, when Nutting sold to Vail he reserved all the real estate development rights for himself and would have no problem suing if Vail started acquiring properties to compete with him. So in 2023, they granted Hudock an easement. He was able to sell the house he built for 1.1 million, which would presumably net him enough money to put up an appeal bond, and in the future he'd be able to sell his lots. The downside is he can no longer enjoy the house for himself, but from a business perspective, it's not a horrible outcome.
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I'm perpetually amazed at people who show up (or buy in) to a clearly established dynamic and then, much like a toddler, start stamping their feet and demanding the situation be reshaped to their specific wants and desires.
People who buy houses near military jet bases or farms and then complain about the noise/smell is... far, far too high.
To be (maybe excessively) fair, people often don't know what they're getting into, even if they think they do. My wife is a city girl who used to go on "farms" with her family for vacation and thought that's what the countryside is like. Then when she visited my parent's place (not even a farm itself, just close to several), she was completely flabbergasted about how bad real pig farms smell, about manure being brought to the field right next to our house ( you can even smell it through certain drains in our house), etc.
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There's a train yard in a city near me. There's a plan to build a bunch of housing beside it. The train company is viciously fighting against the development because they KNOW (and they're right) that the people who buy those houses, with the full knowledge the house is beside a train yard, will get mad about the train yard operations and cause a headache.
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Well, in this case it's clearly not genuine - the guy just used the lawsuit as a pressure tactics to get freebees from the resort. What is astonishing here he actually admitted it on record - and still went for jury trial instead of settling (and then spent money on appealing it). Looks like a person with much more money than sense.
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This is neither fun nor necessarily limited to Friday, but I wanted to add something to this conversation, lest I be perceived as the resident apologist for libertinism and infidelity.
I met my wife when I was 32 years old. She was young then—we both were—we had an odd courtship which had pauses, hiccups, and what threatened to be an end, but she finally moved in with me, we cohabitated for about three years, moved to the US where we stayed with my family for about 6 months, and eventually wed there officially. We had a Hawaii wedding a year later (She is Japanese, after all.)
My wife and children are to me the most precious part of my life. Without them, I cannot imagine myself. Sometimes when I am alone in the house (as I am right now) I reflect on how fortunate I have been, and how fragile it all is.
I have a folder on my computer titled simply “remember” in which I’ve added 20 or 30 old potato photos taken with ancient phones, of my wife in her younger days—taking naps, at a pub eating a fish eye, in a hammock on one jaunt we took to a large park, at Santa Monica beach, and on and on. I keep this folder so that I can focus my attention laser-like on the her of yesteryear, the girl who loved me (and you always know, gentlemen, when a girl loves you, or likes you, or fancies you. It isn’t hard to know when it happens, though the signals may seem strange and unfamiliar to those who’ve never noticed them.) She does not always love me the same way now. We’ve been married now 21 years. That’s not as long as some, but it’s long enough that we’ve had our share of issues.
Why do I write this? Because I might not have the perfect marriage of my own parents (my father told my mother he loved her at least once pretty much every day I can remember) but I do have a marriage, a good one, one that I would not trade for all the single-man-getting-laid years you could throw at me. In the words of Jordan Peterson: I will never leave her, ever. And, also, I’ve been through the wringer with enough young beautiful women who would sidetrack me to realize that Mike Pence was not as far off as some would have it: Any man in the wrong circumstances is capable of cheating. The trick is to stay the hell away from those circumstances. Many, many close calls. In a way I feel fortunate to have been a rake earlier in life. Out of my system, as it were. More or less.
So why the apologist for cheating? Because I live here, in a culture where the norms are different, where one can be completely faithful to societal and even religious expectations and still bang a callgirl on a Tuesday afternoon after seminar. It’s a different world. I will never be used to it, and only understand through a glass darkly. The Harlot's cry from Street to Street may weave old England’s winding sheet, but I am not convinced it will do the same to Japan. At least not yet.
Would I pass @2rafa’s sniff test? Well at one point I would have, but in those days I was a beardless boy, didn’t know my ass from a hole in the ground, and was completely blinded by a singular obsession with my beloved. (Which is as it should be, which is what I would have all men be in that stage.) Time has hardened me (that is not a pun. Well it is. And isn’t.)
My wife’s birthday is in December. The day she received her gift, I went to the gym and when I returned our sons were upstairs and she beckoned me over saying we needed to talk. I sat down, and she told me that if I had a girlfriend I needed to end it. Baffled, I asked her what she was talking about. Apparently she had seen a receipt for a fairly expensive gift for a woman and that had not been her birthday present. She assumed I was buying for my mistress. Because? She’s Japanese. This is what happens. What are we in Love, Actually?
The receipt was for her Christmas gift, still hidden in our tatami room closet, and I made the decision that confessing this was probably more helpful than keeping the surprise. I suggested she could go look if she liked. She wept, hugged me, then pulled away and regained her Japanese composure. I was amused, but I loved her more at that moment than I could remember in years, simply because I had a glimpse of the girl who didn’t daily complain that I did xyz incorrectly. Have I told you that my wife is beautiful? She is. Unimaginably. She could have been a model, but thank God she never was.
Who was it, @oats_son, who complained about revealing personal shit online? He’s probably right. I don't cheat. But the world is big, more things in this world than dreamt of your philosophy, if I may mangle Shakespeare.
Ayo you're probably too classy a guy to know this, but if you have a Japanese wife you're technically nobility among weebs. Not the modern bullshit kind, either, but more like the awesome Braveheart kind. Like I know you don't want to associate with the peasants, but if you happen to see a kid in a Naruto shirt, you can slap him in the mouth and take his wallet and legally he can't do shit.
A superpower I'll try to wield responsibly
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I keep hearing online about Japan's cheating culture; is it true?
You had the opportunity to do the funniest thing (rent-a-girlfriend and try to keep the charade going until the 25th).
I wouldn't want to generalize but I'd suggest it is not a complete myth. Assumptions can be made simply from the number of entertainment districts (in Kitashinchi alone there are probably a hundred or more hostess clubs and Kitashinchi is one small area of Osaka) and call girl services (harder to count but a simple search online for so-called 'delivery health' will find many, many shops, with as many girls employed), to say nothing of the more hidden places such as soaplands (I associate these with the truly depraved), image clubs, girl's bars, deai sites, and all the other categories I am too naive to even know exist.
The trick of course is that the true sin is to open the barn door. It's in a way like 和. Like Fight Club. The ultimate misstep is to talk about it. It's the water trade (水商売), fuzoku (風俗, which actually means public morals but is used for prostitution), what they used to call the floating world (浮世, but this is a very very old term.)
Note that all of these are so-called pay-for-play, with varying degrees of actual intimacy--hostess clubs, for example, might have regulars, and not involve sex (but might.) More traditional affairs where one is cheating with the secretary are I would imagine more rare, if simply because the legal repercussions would be extreme. A wife can sue the mistress into oblivion--notably, even if she does not divorce the husband. The catch is that if it's a business relationship, that (the chance to sue for compensation) all goes out the window because it is not considered an emotional betrayal. Or something .
An effortpost on all of this would be interesting to write, but I don't know if I want to be known as the guy who writes about Japanese prostitution.
Not to push you into becoming the Japanese sex industry guy, but I noticed you referred to hostess clubs and girl's bars as two separate categories. I was previously under the impression that these were the same thing; any chance you could quickly elaborate on the distinction?
No problem.
A hostess club, or スナック (snack bar) in small-scale, consists of you paying a set fee (typically 50-60 bucks USD) to gain entrance to a place where drinks will be served to you for a certain period of time. During this time various females in balldresses or whatever will approach you, you will find yourself suddenly sitting beside them, and you can buy them a drink or ignore them as you would. Typically you buy them a cocktail, which will be added to your bill. If you want a cigarette someone will be sent to fetch you a pack. If you want to sing a song on the karaoke machine this will be immediately arranged, and if you sing you will feel, for at least a few seconds, as if you are really finally hitting the notes. General vibe: Women sitting beside you in sexy dresses, pouring your cocktails and lighting your smokes, and you leave with a big bill.
Girl's bars, which seem now fewer than in the past, may or may not have a table charge but a girl's bar designation simply means only 19-25 or so yr old girls will be behind the bar, primed to chat with you. The drink system (you buying them one) is roughly the same.
Thanks for indulging my curiosity!
Not at all.
In all cases, as in the ultimate indulgence of going to a Gion teahouse to liaise with a geiko (or geisha to use the popular term, and yes they still exist) the ability to speak, or, more importantly understand Japanese is at least partially the key to appreciating the interaction. A girl at a girl's bar will be--well, a girl. She will be young and will probably know how to be a listener and ask questions, but any interviewer or, now, LLM, can do that. She probably won't speak much or indeed any English, and her charms will be the usual sublunary, earthy charms such as a plunging neckline or flittery eyelashes. A hostess will be, depending on the quality of the establishment, so skilled in chattily manipulating you that you'll feel you're actually an interesting person. If you understand her.
A geiko will be able to do all of the above easily but will also be skilled at playing shamisen or koto, will know and be able to recite poetry, will be savvy to current events should you wish to have a Mottelike sounding board, will even argue with you if you seem like the arguing type, and will leave you feeling both challenged, entertained, and more intelligent than when you went in. And again, you'll feel interesting. But if you can't speak or understand Japanese or do not have the cultural knowledge to appreciate said sweet nothings, these wiles of course are limited in their charm.
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My understanding is that 90%+ of this world is not open to foreigners, and even less if you don't speak Japanese, so I would think you could do so without undue suspicion.
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Revealing personal shit online is not what I was complaining about. I've revealed tons of personal shit myself. My complaint was more that self_made_human had just made an absolute monster of a relationship post, and then not a week later giving a play-by-play of a hot date that he was smitten by, in pretty excruciating detail from what I could tell. If I had a great night with someone, I'm not going to go spend an hour typing up my best attempt to tell everyone in the world about it. On the other hand, I like this post and I feel like I have learned something new from it, though I disagree with the Japanese way of handling marriages.
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I've become very strict on the Pence Rule lately. A friend of mine had a business trip, big conference kind of deal, and a bunch of people on the trip made plans to go to a local bar. Well my friend shows up and everyone bailed except him and a girl who was a friend/plus-one of one of the other women on the trip. Well, they disappear, no one can get a hold of them all night, or the next morning, and everyone figures they have hooked up. Which rather upsets his wife, who is also on the trip.
My friend woke up the next morning on a bare mattress on the floor of a flophouse apartment two hours from his hotel, with no memory of anything after the first beer, and no wallet or phone, having to find his way back to the hotel on the kindness of strangers in a bad part of a town he's not from. He thinks he was drugged, while I love him I'm always skeptical of Mickey Finn Cocktail stories as there's almost no confirmed cases and it's typically just too much alcohol. Regardless of how it happened, I don't think it was intentional to get that fucked up. But the circumstances made it all so damaging: he disappeared last seen in the company of a young woman.
I always avoided situations where I was alone with a woman. But I think the utility of the rule stretches way past just what you might do, but to all the strange unlikely occurrences that might happen to you and leave you with a lot of 'splainin to do.
I mean, is there any evidence that his narrative is true and not ass covering?
I've seen plenty of people engage in absolute nonsense to put a veil of plausible deniability over "we didn't sleep together."
I've known him since we were literal children, and frankly in our lives we've done worse things together, so I trust him when he tells me this, if he had cheated he'd tell me knowing I'd do my best to help him and I'd never tell another soul and I'd hold the line to his boss and his wife. I'm skeptical of the "I only had one beer and the bartender slipped me a mickey Finn" part of the story, but not of the "I didn't cheat on my wife" part.
I realize he's not your friend and hence the story lacks that element for you, but I don't really have a way to fix that.
Fair enough!
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Couldn't you just avoid that by, you know, not drinking? I'm a pretty big fan of that. Alcohol just makes people act like idiots, and being a teetotaler seems to me like a much smaller imposition than never being alone with a woman who is not your girlfriend/wife/family.
-- The vast majority of men throughout European history would disagree with you that drinking is less important than avoiding loose women.
-- Drinking was the problem in this case, but it is far from the only unlikely occurrence that can put you in a bad situation.
-- You say alcohol causes people to act like idiots. I say there are many people who need to act like idiots a little more often.
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This is why I buy gifts for my wife from my personal slush fund.
I did! Alas, they still gave me a receipt.
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For what it's worth, I didn't perceive you as trying to do apologetics for infidelity (let alone that you were cheating on your wife yourself). I took it as you offering up the perspective that Japanese culture has (one that most people here wouldn't know about), with perhaps a light dose of devil's advocate for the sake of an interesting discussion about what is right or wrong.
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Beautiful story thanks. Also we watched love actually on Christmas Eve again and wow I had forgotten how messed up it is. Terrible movie.
Seriously, it's like such a "classic" in that it's referenced all the time in pop culture, but it's actually, so bad
And yet: Beautiful people in a simple storyline is something apparently beyond the ability of Hollywood to produce nowadays.
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Ha, my wife and I used to watch that every year and I still enjoy it. Pretty messed up from a certain perspective but I find so are many things I enjoy.
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Adorable story, but I have to say, I find it a bit odd that your wife found a receipt for an expensive woman's gift and her mind immediately went to "it's for his mistress" rather than "it's a gift for me, because Christmas is right around the corner".
My wife's assumption in the past has been "did someone steal access to our credit card?" but neither one of us is known for extravagant purchases (and sometimes things show up weirdly on the credit card statement...)
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That would have been the preferred reaction, yes. There is another story there that may answer you but I'll save that one for some other occasion.
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Quite a sweet story, Love Actually indeed (it’s interesting that there isn’t a comma in the actual movie, maybe because both “love, actually, is all around us” and “love actually is all around us” are grammatically correct? I’m no English lecturer).
Anybody is capable of cheating in the right circumstances, and so the first duty of the maritally faithful is to avoid those situations. But just like the propensity to get drunk various from person to person, with people who can have have four or five drinks and cut themselves off without a second thought and people who cannot have a sip of alcohol without a one hundred percent chance of blacking out, propensity to cheat varies too, especially in middle ground situations that are neither “my spouse is the only non-geriatric adult of the opposite sex I interact with in any real capacity, ever” nor “I regularly get drunk and do MDMA with a group of hot beautiful people I’m attracted to who all want to have sex with me”.
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I just got severely downvoted with a lot of angry replies in a (specific small European language’s) language learning subreddit for suggesting chatgpt as a useful tool to explain weird grammar constructs and help with reading and study in general. This is just insane to me but also darkly amusing. I honestly haven’t realised or taken seriously the extent of reaction to this technology before. And after all the responses I am not even sure what these people are actually objecting to. I am tempted to ask chatgpt
A lot of people (especially among the Reddit demographic) see this technology as fundamentally anti-human. I'm not sure if I've seen a comprehensive treatment of the issue in any one place, but this is a common opinion especially around leftist spaces. It is worth taking a moment to contemplate the assumption we all grew up with that all generated content corresponds to some sort of human experience. What happens when this assumption dissapears? Is there any meaning at all from digital content anymore?
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Chatgpt in my experience isn't very good at my specific small European language. I've used it for studying a few times, and it's been very hit or a miss, which when you're learning and don't know what's a miss is pretty bad, so I've stopped using it.
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"chatgpt" is has the strongest association with all the things about the LLMs normies are conditioned to dislike - slop, lies about muh water energy use, threats to the labor theory of art/music, and so much more. That are right to hate chatgpt, for wrong reasons. Suggest qwen/kimi/deepseek for reference, or even just gemini, the reaction may be a lot different.
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The tone-setters in the sub might be teachers and translators, fearing for their livelihood?
This is indeed possible, "correctness" was one of the only openly voiced objections. Although I have never come across chatgpt using language wrongly, and it explains things much better than native speakers.
I have. It's much more likely to screw up in smaller languages than English, and especially with slang or idioms in those lesser known languages. It'll pretend to know them and hallucinate the most ludicrous explanations.
But overall I agree that LLMs are pretty great at language tasks.
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