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PaperclipPerfector  15d ago (text post)   1954 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 28, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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@gattsuru

I was curious about a gun related question, and you seem super knowledgeable.

Could the patent office be a distributor of 3d printed gun files?

Guns are patentable.

Patents are made publicly available.

Patent files can include PDFs. PDFs can contain enough information that a 3d printing file format is extractable.

States would have to sue the patent office to stop them from distributing the stuff.

Probably doesn't work.

The trivial issues are patent law ones, where I'll admit I'm not anywhere near an expert. The input patent files themselves could theoretically embed additional data (either as PDF or technically DOCX) at a format level, but the publicly published data is reformatted by the patent office, and even author and creation date metadata is scrubbed. There's explicit rules on this:

Content that cannot render (be viewed) directly or completely to a printed page, including: multimedia (e.g., sound, video, animations, slideshows), 3-dimensional models (e.g., CAD drawings), file attachments, multi-page objects (e.g., Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, multi-page TIFF images), and commenting/reviewing features (highlighting, annotations, comments, notes, and the like) are prohibited.

(Large embedded files or embedded javascript might also just be culled at input for security purposes, though I don't know if it happens there or during review after you paid cash.)

You could (and, indeed, would need) to provide precise drawings, but that's going to require manual conversion, and most 3d print designs are pretty advanced CAD work to re-implement. Figures and drawings require at least one number, but they can be rejected for being too 'dense' with information, too.

Technically speaking you can attach 'program code', but it only gets published if it's less than 300 lines, with each line under 72 characters. Which is not a lot of STL or GCODE, and you'd need either a very lax or very sympathetic patent examiner.

... patent examiners, lawyers, yada, don't have to be US Persons for EAR purposes. Giving them access to the files as part of the submission process is technically an EAR violation: do not pass go, lose a hundred thousand dollars, do not own a bank account. Unlikely, but a threat to keep in mind.

Even if you do get the file in a patent, it's not clear that actually helps much. Against an unsympathetic administration, there's actually a process for blocking the publication of patents. It's not meant to be used for stuff like this, but it's basically unreviewable for anything but monetary damages, and even that's iffy.

If you get lucky enough to avoid everything else, above, it's not clear it helps you a lot. Traditionally, published information is excluded from the EAR under 15 CFR 734.7, but that's the place that specifically excludes 3d printed guns (at least under current BIS interpretation, including STLs and design information). 15 CFR 734.10 decontrols patented technology, but that only covers the concept, not the file data, and that's assuming BIS doesn't get creative again and argue 734.7(c) is expansive. So the patent office could theoretically publish a file, but it would still be illegal for anyone to repost it.

Technically speaking you can attach 'program code', but it only gets published if it's less than 300 lines, with each line under 72 characters. Which is not a lot of STL or GCODE, and you'd need either a very lax or very sympathetic patent examiner.

You could maybe describe the gcode in structured natural language, such that a 'translator' could convert it back?

ie: "we claim an arrangements of parts as follows: 'bolt': a rectangular prism 8cm*2cm*2cm with 3mm longitudinal grooves at the midpoint" etc etc etc

pretty boring patent app, but I think such a description would contravene various ghost gun regulations, and seems to fall much more obviously under free speech than a gcode file?

GCODE specifically describes the (sequential commands controlling) motions of the machine, and a natural language description of even a trivial print would be huge, but from a technical perspective it would work. STLs (or SLDPRTs/IPTs/whatever) would be more practical.

I'd... be very skeptical that a patent like that would be accepted, but not a patent expert, so who knows.

That said, it still runs into the EAR problem. The translation convertor should give a level of protection from being 'readily' convertible, but it's not like STLs themselves were genuinely ready-to-print functional code, and BIS thought they were close enough for government work. And if BIS didn't think the natural language description counted, you could just publish it directly.

Presumably they would just refuse your patent, or tell you to knock it off.

I know it has "this one weird trick" vibes. But on some level it has to work. A 3d printable gun design is patentable. And there are legitimate reasons for wanting such a patent. It's just a question of how easy it is to take the patent details and convert it to 3d printable file.

The government must grant patents, which I wasn't sure was the case. So maybe this has merits. In practice I think you would struggle: the judgement of 'valid against prior art' is somewhat subjective and is also a high bar to clear even when you're getting a normal patent. I suspect the patent office would find it fairly easy to deny your claim. "Design" or 'Marketing' patents are much easier to get.

Something about this article in The New Yorker, The Billionaires Vagina Club really irks me. As far as I can tell, this doctor is doing God's work in focusing on an under-served area of women's sexual health and promoting the idea that women should be able to have orgasms more frequently and regularly and throughout their later years if they want to. This should be an uncontroversial good, especially if you are a reader of The New Yorker. But I sense the article smacks of condescension and how problematic this all is.

She serves wealthy clients, like the wives of Silicon Valley techbros. She has a concierge practice, because that's the only space doctors are allowed to actually innovate. Oh, she also might be friends with Peter Attia, an allegedly toxic masculinity influencer. Are we sure these are good people? Are we sure they're not doing malpractice? Is this just another way the rich are enhancing their lives somehow at the cost of the rest of us? Are we sure men aren't just demanding their wives continue being interested in sex for their own selfish needs, with good Dr Sally Greenwald as a facilitator for the patriarchy? Really, wouldn't women be happier as lesbians?

Am I hallucinating all of this? Are these widespread concerns held by a real audience? I'm left with the alienating sense this article is trying so hard to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

I won't even get into how unfair this article is to Peter Attia, who is cancelled as a toxic masculine Epstein adjacent guy even though he clearly champions women's health. He (e.g.) says repeatedly across many episodes that his favorite videos to watch are of old ladies getting back into shape and quickly working their way up to doing body weight deadlifts. He even had Sally on his podcast last November and she dropped an astonishing amount of women's sexual health knowledge for 2 solid hours, but that's all negated by Attia being surprised that Sally was encouraging even young women to use lubrication and Attia wondered if there wasn't also a risk in too much lubrication reducing men's pleasure. God forbid you ask the sexual health expert if she runs into that concern and how she balances that out. Okay I guess I got into it.

The DSA demands redistribution of orgasms!!

This should be an uncontroversial good, especially if you are a reader of The New Yorker. But I sense the article smacks of condescension and how problematic this all is.

It's simple: the author is mad such a service exists.

There's something weird going on in it. There's the obvious dislike of the financial side, from the title on down, but if that were the real story, Midi Health (and any other competitors? but I've heard of this sort of thing happening from normal general-practitioner work, just less sexual and less formalized) would be a top-line item, not a footnote, and the BVC would just be scamming the rich people out of what 'everyone' should have.

A lot of it seems like it's borrowing from anti-woo stuff, and there is legitimate history there: a lot of men's sexual health stuff has been snake oil, sometimes literally, and women's isn't much better. But the specific claims here are relatively well-supported in the evidence, and the stuff that isn't (eg, estrogen supplementation post-cancer) is on better ground than the summary suggests.

The Bulverist take is that the writer hates (especially rich) men, sees this as a way for wives of rich men to trade their health to stay sexually desirable to men, and couldn't actually come up with the information to support that position. But that's not very charitable.

There’s no alpha in being supportive.

Okay, fine, maybe there’s a niche. But the niche for outrage is bigger.

You don’t have to propagate it, though. Break the cycle!

This feels like a bizarro world a little bit. I'm used to discussions of women's orgasm being about the orgasm gap and how bad it is that men orgasm more frequently than women, so seeing a gynecologist who specializes in the subject being criticized by a woman author is... rather strange. Does this say something about the left's oppression stack? Are rich women's orgasms not considered feminist any more?

It could be a difference of male/female communication norms. The purpose of Orgasm Gap Discourse is to receive sympathy, not solutions to problems. This gynecologist is not "reading the room" as they say.

Dear Emily Poast,

As I got out of my car after loading my kid into the car seat, I was accosted from behind by a boomer who accused me of scratching her car, parked next to mine. Now, I did indeed have my door touching her car, since the spot is pretty tight and even my small car's door couldn't open to the first door check before it touched the car next to it, and it was basically impossible to get into the back seat with an infant while preventing the door from opening too much.

As it turned out there was no scratch on her car but we discoursed for a few minutes on the acceptability of touching other cars with your car door in the parking lot. In my view this is perfectly acceptable, and especially in parking lots with narrow spots if you have an SUV you shouldn't expect your car to be untouchable, though of course slamming doors into cars is unacceptable. Her view was that contact is never acceptable and she informed me that she raised two kids without ever touching another car with her door.

Seeing that we had reached an impasse, I informed her that I disagreed and drove off. My wife doesn't believe I did anything wrong, but she herself would never touch another car with her door.

What do you think, Emily? Is it acceptable to touch another car with your car door?

— Well-formed

Fun analogy:

  • Harming another person: Battery

  • Touching another person in a threatening manner: Assault

  • Touching another person in a nonthreatening but offensive manner: Harassment

  • Touching another person in a nonthreatening but offensive manner in a place where such touching is effectively unavoidable (e. g., in a crowded subway car): No crime(?)

To have a pleasant society, we should not be scratching things that belong to other people. You can literally buy a pool noodle from the store, cut it down to a few inches, cut a slit in it, and keep it in the door pocket. Or even simpler, a microfiber towel. If you are in a situation where someone has parked very close to you, slip it on the door so it props nicely against their car while you attend to your child.

we should not be scratching

He specifically said that he touched the other car without scratching it.

Cars typically sit on a suspension that allows movement as the weight of the vehicle shifts. If you're loading a child into a car seat, the vehicle is shifting and micro-scratches are occurring because heavy object is in contact with another heavy object. Having clayed my car several times in the past, they will accumulate.

Now is it significant? You're probably getting more scratches driving 10 miles down the highway and having sand and rocks hitting your car. But one is caused by nothing in particular (unless the highway is dirty and unmaintained beyond reasonable standards) while the other is directly caused by someone else.

I understand the inevitable scratches and dings that take place when driving in the city. But I certainly think as individuals, we should strive not to be one the ones causing them.

I scrupulously avoid parking in areas where there might not be clear open spots with no surrounding vehicles. I'll gladly walk an extra few hundred feet to avoid the hassle.

I've also been accused of scratching a vehicle when my daughter exited the vehicle. I pointedly looked at the car, looked at the person, looked back at the car. looked back at the person, took off my sunglasses, and said "we didn't touch your car, and there is nothing there". When they looked like they were about to say something in response. I put my sunglasses back on looked down at my daughter and said "come on [daughters name]" and then took her hand and walked away.

They might have said something to me as I left, I responded "no worries" as if they'd apologized for inconveniencing me and kept walking.

OK I'll be the asshole here - When I get my kids out of the car, I make sure to put my hand between the door and someone else's car. Two pieces of steel rubbing together doesn't feel like something we should be doing, on average.

It's another reason why the American obsession with SUVs for parents sucks so bad. The sliding doors on a minivan are far superior for this use case. But no, we have to pay $15-40k more for an equivalently-capable vehicle because mommy needs to be high up on the road AND see the hood, even though she's not very good at parking :(

I am sure you didn't scratch it and I'm taking it too seriously, but I just don't touch other people's cars and I don't like people touching mine.

I appreciate your dissenting opinion. My kid is young enough that he can't get out of the car on his own, so I have to carry him out, making it pretty much infeasible to spare a hand to save the other car. I can at least feel superior for not driving an SUV.

When I get my kids out of the car, I make sure to put my hand between the door and someone else's car. Two pieces of steel rubbing together doesn't feel like something we should be doing, on average… I just don't touch other people's cars and I don't like people touching mine

Yeah, I’m a bit surprised at the nonchalance toward stochastically scratching/dinging other people’s cars. I try when parking to leave as much space as possible, and if I suspect there’s any risk of contacting the other side’s car I’ll put a hand to cover when opening my door.

Yeah, I’m a bit surprised at the nonchalance toward stochastically scratching/dinging other people’s cars.

It depends on where you live...

Some malls cheap out and use narrower spots to pack in more spaces. Combine that with more rural areas with a lot of trucks and SUVs.

You get into a situation where dinging peoples doors is a matter of when rather than if. Also you probably have a few dings on your car that no one fessed up to, so a bad reaction from the other driver seems like an overreaction.

I try when parking to leave as much space as possible

Parking space is unfortunately a zero sum game and leaving more space on one side usually means less space on the other. I suppose I leave as much space as possible by virtue of driving a car that's narrower than average.

Fellas, is it gay to touch another car with your car door?

It's not gay if the truck balls don't touch.

Only if there's eye contact.

Oh, that’s good. I know better than to make eye contact with Texas drivers. Never know who’s packing.

It is perfectly acceptable to gently touch another car with your car's door. I try to avoid it, including choosing parking spaces strategically, but it happens sometimes and it's fine.

Sure, who gives a shit.

American insanity, this entire thread.

Cars are built to handle much, much worse abuse. As long as you don't smack the next car with your door, there will be zero visible changes from leaning a door against it. Touching other cars is normal and acceptable, just take a little care with it.

If the boomer insists, we can both take photos of the crime scene and she's free to call my liability insurance. Further discussion is unnecessary.

After, she can petition the store/city to widen all the parking spaces to better fit modern SUVs. They probably haven't done that since the 80s, when cars where half a foot slimmer. That will only take a little paint, and reduce the number of spots, but by less than 10%.

Until then, I will park in any and all spots I can physically squeeze my car into.

FWIW, germans are also ultra-careful with cars and get easily angered by even the tiniest scratch, which, in their view, needs to get removed ASAP and the guilty party has to pay for it no matter how disproportionate the cost/benefit ratio. It's just what you do.

That said, touching another car is I think considered merely careless and if no scratch results, there is no problem. But I wouldn't be terribly surprised that some boomers would start loudly complaining. Again, it's just what they do.

I have been known to stand with my kids in the parking lot while my husband pulls out, to avoid touching other people's cars with my car door, but if you're the only adult in the situation, it can't necessarily be helped. She was probably just making that up about never touching another car door herself, and did but forgot.

If your car's door must touch another car in order to let you in, there is not enough space there to park safely. Drive around until you find a better parking spot, ideally three empty ones in a row so that you can safely park in the middle. Parking spots are like urinals; you don't want to be next to anybody.

If you were already parked there and she is the one who parked her car so close to yours, then it is she who is at fault.

I disagree, if you are in a city you should just accept that this sort of thing will happen occasionally and that it’s not worth getting upset about absent deliberate malice

if you are in a city you should just accept that this sort of thing will happen occasionally and that it’s not worth getting upset about

This pattern matches to the type of rhetoric people deploy when it comes to getting your car windows smashed, stepping in hobo shit, or getting hustled and bustled by Michael Jackson impersonators—that it’s part and parcel of big city living.

I do not like this argument of “that’s just living in the city bro” either but to be fair, this specific issue really does appear to be a bit of an intractable problem when you live in high-density environments - which a city necessarily is. Other things that libs hand wave as just being part of Living In Da City are clearly and obviously avoidable and to a large extent concern how people behave; East Asian cities for example lack much of the issues with violence, theft and drug use that is pervasive in many North American and some European urban cores, but there isn’t really much you can do about a physical lack of space and the sardine-like parking conditions that results from it. It may be the one context where that argument is actually applicable.

East Asian cities for example lack much of the issues with violence

Or in other words, the larger/denser the city, the more authoritarian the populace must be for it to function, for the raw density of assholes per square mile is far higher in a megatropolis than it is anywhere else on Earth.

The US is relatively unique in that, because the country doesn't generally permit itself to be completely dominated by its cities, it can't pass the laws it needs to commit to/enable functional authoritarianism like this (re: Moldbug and the lust for monarchy).

I'd actually argue city residents in the US are among the most oppressed in the world from having the policies they want, and when those people handwave this as Living In Da City, they are stating their faith in their oppression being morally correct.

Epistemic status: Stream of consciousness ramblings written at work.

Or in other words, the larger/denser the city, the more authoritarian the populace must be for it to function, for the raw density of assholes per square mile is far higher in a megatropolis than it is anywhere else on Earth.

East Asia is weird in this regard, actually. Asian city-dwellers are extremely low in NIMBYism and you generally don’t see the same kind of hyperregulation that you find in the West when it comes to zoning laws, building height restrictions, street food regulations, etc. Even when they exist, enforcement is spotty to say the least (China is a great example of a country where there’s a huge and seemingly-contradictory gulf between “the rules on paper” and “what happens in practice”; in practice many supposed infractions aren’t strongly policed on the local level). Things like road rules are for the most part regarded as just a suggestion. The result is that Asian cities are much more bustling and loud, Chinese and Southeast Asian ones in particular, and you often have to negotiate your way through a city. Mixed-use spaces are the norm; in Malaysia, China, South Korea, Vietnam and so on it’s normal to find a historic temple, a large park, a street market and a major shopping centre all right beside each other. Traffic is pretty much always wild beyond belief and motorcycles/electric scooters will wind their way through streets clogged with vendors. Generally in practice there’s also less focus on enforcing banal aesthetic matters such as trying to make sure everyone’s lawns are trimmed to the Correct Height and so on, in this sense the vibe is in some ways less authoritarian and regulated than American cities.

The way in which they are more authoritarian is in their policing of crime, in particular drug-related offences, and as a result you don’t end up seeing dealers, junkies and other such seedy shit on the streets. Their power to investigate and punish these offences is much greater than it is in the West, and often policy-makers are very mindful of ghettoisation and take serious steps to prevent it from happening. China’s hukou system, which they used to control rural inflow into the cities so as to prevent the creation of large slums during their rapid modernisation, is probably the most radical solution to that, though that system has relaxed considerably as of late. All of this is reinforced by social attitudes as well - there’s more of a competitive, hard-nosed “get to work” attitude in Asia which very much relies on pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, not relying on handouts, and staying on the straight and narrow - if you take drugs you get ostracised socially. There’s just not the same kind of self-destructive, crabs-in-a-bucket inner-city mindset you find in many Western countries. This results in a general lack of crime and bad behaviour since you don’t really end up with a large, disenfranchised, heavily substance-dependent segment of the population that goes on to cause further issues. In America there is a political push to protect this class of citizen at the expense of others, an idea which your average Asian likely would find repellent if not outright incomprehensible.

In other words Asia is both more authoritarian and more laissez-faire at the same time. You don’t have to be uniformly more authoritarian on the whole to maintain a stable society, rather, you have to be authoritarian about the right things. I have to say that I generally agree with the Asian approach on what they have chosen to prioritise and police, I like night markets, I like mixed-use spaces and hate seeing hobos crawl onto a train just to piss all over the floor, but I grew up in Asia too so perhaps I’m biased. My family travelled from Malaysia to the UK recently and were generally just appalled at the level of dysfunction in London (from what I hear, within three days they witnessed two robberies, and saw beggars in many of the shopping streets); it’s a meme here that much of Asia is low-trust but frankly the “low-trust” Asians are often shocked at the state of many Western cities.

The protected classes are a result of some combination of white guilt, egaltarianism, socialism, feminism, and christian gullibility.

Western cities are a lost cause at this point, unless there are drastic undemocratic changes which break the status quo.

if you are in a city

Found the problem.

The second problem is that this is boring middle-class conflict, but one where it is socially acceptable for the Boomer to crash out, as opposed to being knifed and mugged by a naked, masturbating fent zombie, which they are culturally obligated to pretend is vibrant and exciting.

This is a fairly popular place, so you'll be waiting until closing time to find three adjacent spots.

If you were already parked there and she is the one who parked her car so close to yours, then it is she who is at fault.

I did indeed park before she did and with no car in the spot she later parked in, but both cars were in the middle of their respective spots, so I can't fault her for parking in an open space.

If it was Trader Joe's then this was their fault. Fuck the parking spots there.

You did nothing wrong. If anyone's at fault it's ordinances and laws that mandate minimum parking bay size in your area.

When I park in those sorts of 'squeeze into your seat' spots, I'm very careful to not bump my door into theirs. In the worst case I will manually place my door against theirs very carefully and then squeeze in. There shouldn't be a way to scratch doing this unless they have a shoddy paint job.

People are crazy in that they somehow believe our code of laws are somehow actual physical laws of the universe that can never be violated, instead of just words written by fallible humans that could not foresee all possible circumstances.

I think she is a liar. I would go so far as to say I doubt not only does she not choose parking spots so carefully as to never touch another door but, also, in the event she has previously found herself in a tight spot, or been provided no other clear option such as a major event, that I also accuse this woman as having never once backed out of a spot upon identifying it as a door-touching parking spot. I dare say, based upon your account, I believe this woman likely to be a most mendacious fabricator on the nature of her past behavior.

Now, on to the general matter of door touching. Door touching is ideally carried out as a covert act done under the shroud of secrecy, such that no man may perceive the act to accuse another of significant harm to their property whether by fault or misunderstanding. In the circumstances you have laid out, were you to consider confrontation unfortunate, perhaps you may have waited to extract your child after the goblin had ambled off to carry out her fiendish acts of greed. This, however, I do not see as a just act. For if you were already in the process of removing said noble heir fit would be most proper for another to await the tying of their steed until the completion of your deed, prior to encroachment on your space.

were you to consider confrontation unfortunate, perhaps you may have waited to extract your child after the goblin had ambled off to carry out her fiendish acts of greed. This, however, I do not see as a just act. For if you were already in the process of removing said noble heir fit would be most proper for another to await the tying of their steed until the completion of your deed, prior to encroachment on your space.

Ah, but in this case I was actually loading, not unloading, my heir. I did see that the boomer's daughter was sitting in the passenger seat as I reached my car, but the driver was nowhere in sight and the daughter was locked in (airpods in and phone on), so I figured I was good to go. Certainly if the car was about to leave I'd wait for them, especially because then I could just open the door as much as I liked.

Ah, my mistake. On reexamination this only strengthens your case. She is clearly responsible for door touching situation. Last in, large vehicle. You have a right to travel the king's road as any free man. What are you to do to avoid this contact? Announce your intent 3 times?

I recall there were some users here really into UFOs. Are they still on the forum? I’m ~80% sure that I saw “UFOS” the other day, which I assume is always just some weird government drone exercise. If they’re still here I’d like to upload the video somewhere to get their opinion.

I’m one of those users, but I’m in no way qualified to tell you what any kind of aerial phenomenona are.

I'm happy/would find it fun to look at videos, though as much as the Half-Life apocalypse sounds more fun than the AI apocalypse I'm pretty convinced at this point that no real UFOs have been sighted and we are doomed to be #foreveralone.

https://vimeo.com/1205617393

These things were moving incredibly fast in and out of clouds, very high in the air, maybe a mile up, and a mile or two in front of me. I suppose it could be a searchlight / spotlight plus strange atmospheric conditions, but it did not seem to be reflecting off of the clouds as much as passing through them, there was no beacon leading up to the light source, and it was changing its altitude consistently. The day before I took this a plane near me encountered a drone and then three days later a plane hit a drone. At the end of that video, when they stall in unison, that’s not an artifact of the video but just what they did. But maybe it really is just a searchlight and weird visual tricks because of overcast weather? I don’t know.

This sounds like a cat trying to talk about this red-dot-shaped bug that moved impossibly fast even for a bug, could not be caught with a paw, then vanished mysteriously.

It does really just remind me of those searchlights they used to have all the time in the German countryside to advertise disco nights, somewhat like this. You can get all sorts of weird cloud layerings that would result in them getting diffusely reflected off of a narrow volume.

I'm no expert either, but it strikes me as being 4 spotlights doing some kind of light show, and I'm assuming the shifting of the center point around in the frame is due to the camera moving around. It's hard to see the details you describe from that video, but I wouldn't be surprised if the cloud conditions as far as altitude and density made it reasonable for ordinary spotlights to look like that. I'd more wonder whether it seemed reasonable for there to be some event in an appropriate location to have a spotlight show like that.

There's also the obligatory nerdy gotcha that it stands for Unidentified Flying Object, so it is a UFO by definition if you don't know what it is, but that doesn't make it an actual alien spacecraft or anything.

Cool video, thanks for sharing it. I don't really have much to say about it and I'm not an expert at all, I'm mostly responding to boost engagement and hope someone with some good theories/explanations responds to your video.

To me it does look like a sort of four-pointed beam of light from a spotlight situation because otherwise I don't know how four "crafts" could so quickly move out from a central point like that. I have a hard time making out details in dark videos- did you splice together multiple clips, or is this the same clip slowed down/zoomed in several times? Was it over land or sea?

What do you think about couple’s therapy? I think that’s something that might enter my life soon unfortunately even though I am extremely therapy averse personally. So at least want to try to make best of it but no idea how to choose someone and how to approach it etc.

First, condolences/vibes. I hope it's not some awful triggering situation leading to it happening.

I'm also therapy averse, and doubly so for couples therapy, but I'm sure it's worked for someone. I just don't know anyone who's given it a raving review yet.

I've shortly talked about my experience with relationship counselling here. I'll agree with everyone that finding the correct person is by the most important, though I disagree somewhat on the gender. Most important is imo age (they should be older), personal life (they should be in a successful relationship with kids) and political leaning (specifically, as little noticeable as possible).

+1 for find a good therapist and shop around if you don't click with one.

I went through relationship counseling recently (by myself) and found it useful to identify what wasn't working for me in my relationship. Then when I approached my partner to see if she was interested to go together, she just wasn't. Soo....

Anyway. It can be helpful if its done right.

By far the most important thing is to find a good therapist. I’d recommend finding an older man that you like and could see yourself respecting.

The quote that sticks in my mind is this one: if both partners in the relationship want it to work, then nothing can stop them. If they don't, then nothing can save them.

I have too much experience here, from my first marriage, and can broadly agree. It takes two and if one isn't actually invested no amount of outside help will be enough.

That said I think we're a bit spoiled here in that most people on this board, and anyone we'd be married to, are likely intelligent and verbally-fluent enough to work through things together. Most people aren't, afaict. Actually, there's a whole lot of couples out there who sincerely want to do better together but frankly aren't smart enough, introspective enough, fluent enough to understand what's wrong and work together to improve the situation.

My aunt and uncle come to mind. They seem to care about each other but they argue all the time and, as a seasoned internet arguer, I'm always fascinated to observe how they talk completely past each other at every chance. They even try to meet each other halfway but all the potential high-fives are somehow missed.

Then again she's a licensed marriage and family therapist so... well, that does undermine my central thrust somewhat, but it works back around to what @ThomasdelVasto said, which is to find a good therapist. And yes, I recommend a man. I've known too many people who go to "couple's therapy" and for some reason pick a fat lesbian and within a few sessions there is zero hope of recovering anything of the relationship. Women seem to exhibit a sort of class solidarity that I don't find among men.

If you want an arbiter biased against you, go see a woman. If you want an impartial arbiter, see a man. If you want an arbiter biased in your favor, talk to GPT. (Please don't actually do that.)

I mean, I work in the mental health field, and I'll just say that when it comes to the therapeutic types, I've seen some real doozies myself, so when it comes to the part about finding a good therapist, that's a hard agree. I probably should have said that the quote in question was specifically about going to couples' counseling. And for bonus points, my wife is a therapist and that hasn't prevented or ameliorated deep fissures in our marriage, either, and when we went to couples' counseling, she honestly expected that it was going to be all about me and got resistant as soon as the therapist started looking at her side of the street. Turns out we're all subject to the funhouse mirror effect when looking at ourselves through the prism of our own minds, regardless of how objective we try to be.

Our (first marriage) therapist wanted to do a private session with each of us. To me she said, "So look, I've been doing this 25 years and we're trained to never, ever tell a couple that the problem is entirely with one person and the other is blameless... but, in your case..."

Her recommendation was that I start thinking about how to move on. Difficult with the baby and all but it did work out and I'm very happy now. Much younger, much prettier wife who adores me and gets pissed off when I suggest we take breaks between pregnancies.

Oof, I feel that. My wife actually ragequit our couples' counseling a few times in, and both that experience and subsequent work has reminded me that I'm not the problem. That said, I'm codependent autistically loyal and stubborn as hell so we've persisted, though during our second separation, I actually started letting go and moving on, though perhaps not so coincidentally, my wife ultimately reconsidered. In the meantime, I'm trying to build my own identity up outside of my job and my marriage so that I have enough of my own life to be balanced, with or without her.

Yeah I went through that. It's many years later now and to this day I still can't decide whether I regret going down with the ship as it were.

Repeatedly doubling down on what's clearly a losing bet; wagering more and more of my soul each time and seeing it swept off the table, did much more lasting damage than I could appreciate at the time, and it's taken years to heal. On some level it was correct to do. On another level I wonder if I was just stubbornly trying to prove some sort of point -- if it was vanity instead of love. In which case whom can I blame but myself?

I was surprised when my (Orthodox) priest told me to get divorced. They're not prone to that, you know? I objected, "But, as a Christian husband, isn't it my job to die on the cross for my wife?" He said "Yes, and you've done that, and now it's time to do something else."

Still didn't believe him until I went to a monastery and the hieromonk there (even more hardcore than a priest) said the same thing, and also that it wasn't about me, it was about my child, and that my new mission in life was to find a better mom for said child. That got through to me. I was only once I was doing it for someone else that the path became clear.

Repeatedly doubling down on what's clearly a losing bet; wagering more and more of my soul each time and seeing it swept off the table, did much more lasting damage than I could appreciate at the time, and it's taken years to heal. On some level it was correct to do. On another level I wonder if I was just stubbornly trying to prove some sort of point -- if it was vanity instead of love. In which case whom can I blame but myself?

Yeah I haven't responded to this yet because Things are Happening and this particular line hits home, because it's so true for me. I was trying to prove a point to my wife: that she was lovable for who she was. And as much as I'd like to think that I kinda sorta got through on some level, I think there's Way Too Much Going On for me to ever be able to truly help, and in fact she's explicitly told me that she doesn't want to deal with her own obvious and glaring issues that she is, in fact, aware of. As much as I hate being the Identified Perpetrator in a relationship, I'm pretty clear at this point that being in this role at least some of the time is non-negotiable, and between that and my previous sentence, I feel like that old Chinese military guy whose soldiers are late to the battlefield.

I was surprised when my (Orthodox) priest told me to get divorced. They're not prone to that, you know? I objected, "But, as a Christian husband, isn't it my job to die on the cross for my wife?" He said "Yes, and you've done that, and now it's time to do something else."

Still didn't believe him until I went to a monastery and the hieromonk there (even more hardcore than a priest) said the same thing, and also that it wasn't about me, it was about my child, and that my new mission in life was to find a better mom for said child. That got through to me. I was only once I was doing it for someone else that the path became clear.

Only cats in my case, but I've otherwise received pretty consistently similar feedback in the sense that it isn't on me and trying harder is just going to burn me out worse. And after four and a half years of being on and off the rocks, I think I'm as ready as I'm going to be to take the L and move on.

Based and wedding vow-pilled.

And I suppose you're going to tell me your lobster is too buttery as well.

I could complain about some minor details but she's much closer to perfection than is frankly plausible, yes.

Probably the closest thing to irritating about her is that she's extremely fastidious about food and it's borderline impossible for us to eat out, but that has a lot of upsides too, and I like knowing my kids are coming out of such a healthy woman. Anyway when not pregnant she'll make exceptions for very high-end dining. So in practice we're paying $1,000+ to go out to dinner, or don't go at all. I don't really mind.

I have my brother coming over for two weeks next month. It's somewhere between a much needed vacation for the poor sod (he's just finished his internship and is about to discover that life as a doctor is no fun) and a welfare check. I definitely need the vacation myself.

So I'd appreciate travel advice. The current rough concept of a plan:

  1. Spend 2-4 days in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Take him to the ridiculous gay pubs, bars and clubs I've seen to expand his horizons. Too late for Pride, and too early for Fringe, but that saves us money anyway.
  2. A day or two in the Highlands. Hitting up distilleries, swatting away midges, and pissing in Loch Ness. I see little point in showing him Aberdeen, Dundee or Inverness.
  3. Towards the end, we need to be Good Indian Boys and spend a few days with miscellaneous relatives in Manchester and London. As little time as we can get away with, since I do need to show him London.
  4. Heading down to Dover for a day. I loved the cliffs.

We're not particularly outdoorsy, or touristy, for the matter - we're not looking to go for scenic hikes or to see every tiny castle around. I'm focusing on nightlife as well as a quick visit at the Greatest Hits. The typical day involves some walking, sightseeing, drinking and nice meals - followed by more drinking. We will probably rent cars where it's reasonable to do so (not London or Edinburgh).

Any suggestions?

If you do end up going to Dover - I’d recommend going to the castle. There’s a real slice of history from a Roman Lighthouse all the way through to quite a lot of WW2 stuff.

I’m not far away and it’d be a privilege to buy you a drink or help you out with driving/logistics.

If you recommend it that strongly, I'll take a look! And thank you, I am easily bribed with alcohol, and I'm always happy to meet other Mottizens. I'll DM you if I'm in the area 👌

I recommend popping through Milroy's when you're down in London, if you want advice for future distillery trips. May seem ridiculous to send someone down from Scotland to London for scotch, but those guys really are some of the best in the business. And right in Soho so easy to get out for proper pints after.

May have already recommended this to you before, but Sir John Soane's museum in London is a great alternative to the big ones if you want a very quick, very quirky, very cool little museum.

I have consumed plenty of Scotch in places that aren't Scotland, so no objections here. I'll see if we can fit it into the schedule. And I'll look up that museum, it sounds like the polar opposite of the Tate, and that can only be a good thing. Thanks!

  1. Unless you are interested in industrial heritage or Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Glasgow is a day-trip from Edinburgh at best.
  2. Good idea - the Highlands are beautiful and unique. Personally I think Loch Ness is overrated, and Glen Coe is the best bit of the Highlands. Doing both from Edinburgh or Glasgow gives you about 8 hours of driving time, so doing the loop in 2 days is a bit hard-core. If whisky is the main attraction, you could stop short of Inverness and hit up Aviemore (for Glen Coe and the Cairngorms) and Grantown-on-Spey (for the Speyside distilleries). If you are passing through Inverness (and you will be if you go to Loch Ness) it is worth a brief stop to buy Highland-themed tourist tat. Or if you are in Glasgow at the start of the trip, you could do Glen Coe and Oban. You will need a car in the Highlands unless you are on an organised coach tour.
  3. If you can spare the time, York and Bath are probably the best tourist spots in England outside London. If you are driving Scotland-Manchester-London, both are manageable detours. If you are taking the train, only York makes sense. But if you have four or less non-relative days in England, I would spend all of them in London (possibly including a day-trip to e.g. Windsor). Once in London, you may want to consider the Wellcome Museum or the Old Operating Theatre as a historical medical museum.
  4. If you are there for the cliffs more than the castle, the Seven Sisters (between Seaford and Eastbourne) are better than the White Cliffs. See this post.

I can probably offer more specific recommendations if you let me know what your brother is interested in.

Glasgow has excellent nightlife! I've already seen someone nick a traffic cone and carry it off proudly beneath their armpit, and I can only describe the experience as akin to accidentally walking into a fairy tale. It turns out I actually like the city, and not just because it seems like a promising place to be a senior shrink.

I have no specific interest in Loch Ness, so if you think Glen Coe is better or less of a tourist trap, I'll prioritize it instead.

If you are there for the cliffs more than the castle

The best part of the castle was ignoring it, or at least the argument about medieval laws around monogamy that I won

A castle loomed over the harbor like a very large, very literal metaphor about who was in charge of what. My friend and I debated whether owning a castle in medieval England gave you street cred or just a crowded calendar. This prompted a brief, speculative argument on medieval sexual economics. He posited that the local lord must have had a hundred wives. I countered that, as a Christian noble, he was likely constrained to one official wife for appearances, and ninety-nine plausible deniabilities, likely undocumented liaisons with the wives of the local fishermen. We failed to resolve this.

I've been to York, but haven't really explored it. I'll put a pin in that and Bath, though I'd prefer a shower. Appreciate the suggestions!

Honestly speaking, my brother is a homebody, just like me. As long as we see scenic places and drink plenty of booze, we'll be content. All the more so if we can do both at the same time.

I mean maybe sticking to the UK is the point but as an American with a distorted sense of scale the idea of not nipping over to Ireland or France or Netherlands or something in a two week period seems odd to me, it’s not like those are that far

That would be doable, but it would involve applying for a Schengen visa. Downside of having a meh passport. I've been too caught up to do that, and it's even more of a headache for my brother with the little notice that he has. Something for the future.

There's still more than enough to do in the UK to eat up a fortnight. It's small but dense with history and architecture.

You don't need a Schengen visa for Ireland - despite being an EU member it remains part of the Common Travel Area with the UK. Indians are one of the nationalities that can visit Ireland on a UK visa and vice versa.

That said, I think two weeks to do Scotland and England doesn't leave enough time to make crossing over to Ireland worth it.

Huh. That's very good to know, I'll look into seeing if we can just about squeeze it into our schedule. Thanks!

You could nip over to Northern Ireland, do Giant's Causeway and the North Coast and so on. Either a car ferry from Cairnryan or a 30 minute flight. Also you could take your brother shooting if you liked. Handguns are legal in Northern Ireland, so at somewhere like https://www.nitargetsports.com/ you can pay for range time and fire pistols, shotguns and rimfire .22 "mini-rifles" on an AR frame most likely. Might give your practice for scaling up if you ever go to the US.

I think you have to sign up as a member but should be doable.

Edit: Could also do tasting at Bushmills distillery which is excellent. If so hit up Tartine for Sunday dinner. They do amazing lamb.

These are excellent recommendations. You're right that trying to fit in a tour of NI in that time frame would be difficult, but I'll see what we can manage. Thanks a lot!

No problem, if you do decide to go, you can always ping me if you want advice or anything else to do.

Adding to the above, my fiancée was underwhelmed by the Causeway but substantially more impressed terrified by the rope bridge. I've also been meaning to return to the puffin sanctuary on Rathlin Island for years, and was far more impressed by Belfast's Titanic museum than I expected to be.

The rope bridge is great, as is the Titanic museum.

I bought my wife a Titanic t-shirt with a bit of Northern Irish dark humor (Sure it was fine when it left here!) and the first time she wore it home in America she got told off for making fun of a disaster.

Too soon still apparently.

Yanks gonna Yank.

Something for the future.

If you do come to Dublin, I'll show you around.

Very kind of you to offer, and I'll let you know if I ever head that way. Always wanted to see what was up with the [REDACTED] Car Bombs.

So, what are you reading?

I'm picking up Taylor's Hegel, a topic which seems long overdue.

I'm reading Hornblower with the same gusto as a child facing a plate of brussel sprouts.

Started on Reverend Insanity. The translation I found is horrible (is there a preferred one?), but I’m glued to it anyway.

Edit: if there is an adequate Russian translation, that would also work.

They're all absolutely terrible. The one I had got about 20% better after a few hundred chapters, but still very close to unreadable. I've read fanfic by 7th graders with better prose.

You kind of get used to it.

Someone should burn a couple of hundred million tokens and have a frontier LLM do a fresh translation or an extremely liberal English rewrite. Especially pretty much all original dialog needs to go. The problem is you probably need to supervise it, to keep all foreshadowing intact and all world building elements consistently named. That part of the translation was actually decent, the factions, Gu, ect. have passable or even good names.

While we're at it, liberally cutting all the superfluous explanations would probably help. Doing the absolute opposite of show-don't-tell got really annoying after the first million times he did it.

Finished Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay during the week, the third book in the Neapolitan quartet. It's the first one I can really say I enjoyed without reservation, the pacing was on point and Ferrante managed to compel empathy for certain secondary characters in a way she hadn't in previous volumes. When I started reading it I observed that, in retrospect, the first two volumes probably should have been compressed into one, an opinion that hadn't changed when I got to the end. Genuinely looking forward to reading the next one, which I can't say I felt after reading either of the first two.

On the recommendation of Rob Henderson and Theodore Dalrymple, I'm reading François de la Rochefoucald's collection of maxims. One I read this morning that I liked (I'm paraphrasing):

It is possible to find a woman who has never been in a love affair, but rare to find one who has only been in one.

It occurs to me that I know multiple femcels (either in person or people who post here), but am struggling to think of any women I know who've only been in exactly one relationship, my own mother excepted.

Rereading A Wizard of Earthsea and the rest of the novels. There's a reason LeGuin is legendary. She's an incredible storyteller and writer.

The Penultimate Truth by Philip K Dick.

How did the Boriswave happen? Did the government not realize the new immigration policy would increase immigration? Did they not notice the increase as it was happening? Did they not realize the increase would be politically unpopular? The last one seems particularly unlikely. Johnson is a skilled politician – he did win a general election, after all – so he surely wouldn't make such a mistake.

What about Truss and Sunak? I guess the former didn't have much time to implement policy changes, but the latter had two years, so all the same questions apply to him.

This explanation focuses on the culture of Conservative MPs. The author focuses on why the Tories ignored the obvious flaws with the 'invite the entire third world' policy, but I think the trigger was something more short term. The government panicked that cutting off the supply of cheap EU labour would cause inflation as demand came roaring back post-COVID. Combine that with regular old incompetence from the Home Office who simply didn't think consider allowing unlimited numbers of low-skilled migrants from the third world to bring unlimited numbers of dependents with no requirements might have quite a large take-up.

Whatever happened to the Catalonian independence movement?

All 12 members were killed in a vicious ambush set by the Free Wales Army.

With no particular knowledge, I’d guess the same thing that’s been happening for the last couple centuries. It had a whole subplot in the Spanish Civil War. It was a recurring theme in the Napoleonic wars, too. I can only assume it comes and goes with the capability of the Spanish state…

A bunch of things:

  • Demographics: Dilution due to immigration, and revolution is a young man's game, and Catalonia (like the rest of Spain) is increasingly old.
  • The EU sided with Spain
  • Economic constraints: as a consequence of secession risk (well, that and left wing anti-business governments), lots of corporate headquarters and business are moving from Barcelona to Madrid.

Now, I think there is a chance it comes back due to couple of factors:

There is a generational gap, older Catalonians are more independentist, as are the really young, there is a large cohort of youngish/middle aged people who don't really care that much, but as the younger generation comes to power, they might move the issue back into play. Immigrants are not loyal to Catalonia, but they're not loyal to Spain either, and Catalonia is expending effort into integrating them: free Catalan lessons, education primarily in Catalan, etc.. If the EU falters (not that unlikely), you might find yourself with a population that is once again pro-independence, without the guardrails that prevented it last time.

TFW Catalonia achieves independence as an Islamic state.

What a world.

Immigrants are primarily economic immigrants, and I would expect that people trying to establish themselves inna new country would try to veer as far away from politically sensitive topics as possible, unless they were promised economic gain.

Also with a regional TFR of ~1.08 Catalonia may find itself having drastic cultural change in short order, losing the impetus for independence.

I don't think there's any impetus right now. And if I had to bet even odds, I'd bet very strongly against independence ever happening, I'm thinking more of a pathway to it possibly reigniting, from the younger natives and naturalized children of immigrants.

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