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PaperclipPerfector  22d ago (text post)   2975 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 26, 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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Does anyone have a good resource (or set of resources) for getting started using AI in coding that emphasizes building understanding? I've pretty much eschewed AI to this point, but it seems it's only getting more integrated and capable, so I might as well develop the skill. My experience is mostly in python in a data science context, with a little bit of C and the rare instances of assembly thrown in to run isolated or low-bandwidth sensors with extremely limited onboard compute. I have generally preferred VSCode, so bonus points if the resource integrates it.

I think the best guide for me is going to read something like, "A harness performs functions X, Y, and Z. Let's walk through setting up a basic harness so you can develop intuitions around what it's doing and how you might modify an existing harness to suit your future needs." Conversely, a terrible guide for me might read, "Download (someone else's) harness from (website); it's the best one for coding (no explanation as to why). Point your IDE at it and start typing your prompt (no elaboration on what makes a useful or effective prompt)."

axiomreason.com

I would explain your situation and the outlines of your personal knowledge to Claude, ask it to write you a CLAUDE.md based on that, and then keep asking that 'new' Claude questions about the basics as you go along. Hey Claude, what's a harness, should I be using one for my project, and what are the trade-offs?

It really is turtles all the way down, isn't it?

Claude in this regard is just a new name for an old thing. Reminds me of the people who used Dreamweaver back in the day.

If you need basic stuff, and are comfortable with paying whatever Antropic is charging (or somebody else pays it for you) just using Claude code would probably be enough for you, it'll take you 80% there. At least that's how it feels right now. There are plugins and skills you can use for the rest, those are highly dependent on your specific usage. Cursor is basically VSCode, that would work too. The rest is just optimization IMHO - i.e. you may squeeze another 10% of productivity by choosing optimized harnesses, and reduce costs by using all kinds of plugins that compress contexts and modify tools to be more LLM-friendly, but this is mostly marginal and TBH I am not 100% sure I know which works better even in my niche, let alone generally. It's too fluid right now to identify any clear winners.

If you are cost conscious or want to use open models or want to dig into highly specialized niche use case which is not covered by generic model, then it's more complicated. pi would probably work as generic harness, I heard decent reviews about it. And I heard people saying good things about Grok Code's free tier, but haven't used it myself yet.

My best understanding (which may be out of date) is that you'd be best served by subscribing to the $100-per-month Claude, opening it up, and asking it pretty much exactly what you just asked us. Any time you get to a step you don't understand how to perform, say, "I don't understand what this means, can you break it down more simply for me?"

In other words, I think the resource you're looking for is Claude. That's it. That's the whole list. Though probably you could do it with ChatGPT, too--I just haven't had much luck getting it to seriously drop both the sycophancy and the verbosity to focus on results. Claude seems better geared toward actual production of results.

I have tried similar things with lesser models, with worse (often, unusable) results. It will be interesting to see whether we are converging toward a single "roughly the best LLM we can create" that will eventually be baked into a chip and put in everyone's devices, and how that might impact the AI market landscape. I have a hard time shelling out even $20 per month for LLMs because I so rarely have any use for them, but in those instances where I have had a use, the most expensive models have been actually useful in ways that no other models seem to be.

What does the $100/month subscription get you that you couldn't get from paying for tokens on openrouter.ai or the like? Just wondering

Openrouter tokens are much more expensive.

For heavy use you might be right. I've never gotten close to spending $100 per month on openrouter though.

Simplicity, for starters. I've been using generative AI very lightly and I am not a coder; I still have absolutely no sense for approximating how many tokens any given task would or should actually consume.

A monthly subscription also comes with access to their "cutting edge" models; I assume you can also get that by buying tokens instead but I don't know for sure.

Thanks! I did briefly consider loading it up as a prompt. I have been allergic to shelling out for tokens for personal use, but maybe it's worth it in this case. I suppose under the theory that humans are LLMs on a biological substrate, I already asked an agentic swarm of LLMs. I'll try it on the lower-tier models, see where I get, and hopefully remember to respond.

Can anyone comment on the dangers of drinking low total dissolved solids (TDS) reverse osmosis water on general health, especially with a baby in the home? I recently installed a reverse osmosis filter and then discovered that low TDS water can potentially be dangerous because of a lack of minerals like calcium, magnesium, and phosphate. My RO filter doesn't have a remineralization add-on.

One reverse osmosis study from India

Assume that me and my baby otherwise have the very best foods and baby formula available. Some random reddit comments indicate that eating a high quality diet filled with meats, fish, and vegetables accounts for 97% of mineral intake, so there's no need to worry. Or is there? Is reverse osmosis water unusually leeching of minerals in some way?

I'm not that worried for myself because I add in keto salts for my water while fasting, so my water is already remineralized. But is it bad for a growing child? I'm not feeding my family the typical SAD diet, they get the best home cooked meals made with fresh groceries that we can afford.

Absolute nonsense. The amount of minerals in water is very minimal, and most of what is there is sodium, which people generally have too much of.

Calcium and Magnesium are the two you might miss, and see below for how jack shit nothing it'd take to replace that with food. The health crazies conflate that pure water leaches minerals out of things (true) with the amount being relevant (false). You have plenty of minerals to spare in your body.

Below stats are for typical tap water. Double them if you have hard water.

The target is just two numbers: 120 mg calcium and 47 mg magnesium. Everything else the water gives you is nutritionally negligible, so ignore it.

Best single food: chia seeds, 19 g (90 kcal) — 120 mg calcium, 64 mg magnesium. Overshoots magnesium slightly, hits calcium exactly. Sesame seeds do it in even less mass (12 g, 70 kcal) but come with a bioavailability problem, below.

Best two-food pairing: 10 g parmesan + 9 g pumpkin seeds (90 kcal, 19 g total). Splits the job cleanly — the cheese covers calcium at 118 mg, the seeds cover magnesium at ~47 mg.

Calorie-minimal: 100 g skim milk + 6 g wheat bran (46 kcal). Milk delivers the 120 mg calcium in 34 kcal with dairy-grade absorption; bran is the densest magnesium source that exists at 610 mg/100 g, so 6 g covers 37 mg and the milk supplies the remaining 11 mg.

So: roughly a tablespoon of seeds, or a splash of milk and a spoonful of bran. Under 100 kcal any way you slice it, often under 50.

Why are you doing reverse osmosis on your water? It sounds like an expensive way to treat it with no obvious benefit.

The intuition for why distilled water is bad, is that it will leech out minerals from your cells through osmosis. Obviously, there are no human trials to prove this, as is pointed out below (do note that the paper cited in that comment is not peer reviewed, and only "published " on researchgate, so take it with a grain of salt). It is entirely possible that this is a story made up by chemistry teachers to keep students from drinking it. This has historically not been studied, as distilled water is expensive and there is no obvious reason for drinking it instead of tap/bottled water.

I would say "ask your doctor", but frankly your dietary choices seem speculative enough that there won't be significant amount of research done on them, and so no real authoritative evidence in any direction.

I think you need to face that you are running a dietary experiment here. You are going to have to be the expert.

I've at least heard this claim uncited before. Isn't reverse osmosis filtering pretty ubiquitous on ships these days? I'm not aware of any literature suggesting major health impacts from this to sailors or long-term cruise passengers, for example. But maybe tossing in a multivitamin wouldn't be terrible.

ETA: I assume desalination plants like those in the news in the Middle East also use RO.

I got it from chemistry teachers and people working in labs. It might just be something they say to keep people from drinking it. Just like the story that the lab ethanol is treated with something that makes you puke, so that students won't steal it for their parties.

Just like the story that the lab ethanol is treated with something that makes you puke

But that's real. They add bitterants and sometimes toxic chemicals to lab ethanol. They purposefully contaminate it.

That seems counterproductive to doing experiments. You would want your solvents to be as uniform as possible, to ensure that your study conditions can be replicated and verified by others.

To be fair, lab ethanol probably will make you puke (eventually).

According to the research I remember it's more like "don't drink distilled water regularly" than "one glass and you suffer", and only the latter story would make sense as being made up so students don't drink lab-quantities of it.

As for technical ethanol, pretty sure they do treat it to taste foul at least.

"Ethanol" in a school chemistry lab is probably meths - the duty on drinkable pure alcohol is pretty high, even if not marketed for drinking. Adding 5-10% methanol makes the alcohol too toxic to drink and therefore unattractive to drinkers. We were all warned about this in no uncertain terms before doing an experiment with the stuff.

In the UK, they don't add anything additional to meths to make it unpalatable, so ocasionally tramps and suchlike posion themselves by drinking it. Meths sold to the general public as a fuel/cleaning product is died purple to discourage accidental drinking. But a school science lab is going to be using "industrial methylated spirits" - i.e. an ethanol/methanol mix with nothing else added to it that could affect the chemistry. (Of all the chemicals in my school lab, this was oddly the only one they needed a licence to buy).

I'm not sure about the situation in the US.

Most alcohol poisoning in the US is using homebrew that was messed up somehow. Sometimes this is a fungal contamination and sometimes it's making methanol instead of ethanol. Industrial alcohol contains something to render it undrinkable, but this is normally gasoline rather than methanol.

Industrial alcohol contains something to render it undrinkable, but this is normally gasoline rather than methanol.

I find that rather hard to believe considering in how many situations gasoline would be a problem, such as resulting in unwanted reactions, affecting rubber seals and all sorts of other issues that regular denaturants (or even methanol) avoid.

Wouldn't that cause a problem in the lab by making the "alcohol" immiscible with water?

For industrial uses? I’m not sure what they do in chemistry labs.

We are talking about replacing your daily water intake entirely. I agree that the claim seems unlikely when you consider it seriously though. The more relevant question is why would you want to distill your drinking water in the first place?

My local groundwater was contaminated and has been the focus of a regional cleanup effort over decades, with the cleanup pumps are still actively filtering the water. About half of my neighbors have both water softening and a undersink RO system for their families. It wasn't that expensive compared to buying bottled or delivered water either, about $300 for the RO system and ~$150 in yearly replacement filters.

At least some people are using distillation or reverse osmosis for desalination. I'd do that too if my only water supply was the ocean.

Im not a doctor and you are probably better off asking an AI. But I do know that the problem with distilled water is the leeching of minerals. It's not that water is supposed to provide a bunch of minerals, it doesn't.

The water that goes into you will balance with the water in your system. Which is why drinking salt water can dehydrate you. Or why Gatorade was designed to be an effective sports drink, it's supposed to mimic the balance of water in your body, to prevent the leeching of minerals or water to balance out what is being added.

If you are in the US tap water is safe and fine.

But I do know that the problem with distilled water is the leeching of minerals.

Which doesn't even happen in the first place.

I was rather surprised to see how outright hostile the sentiment was towards Americans, while attending a reasonably high profile comedy show in Edinburgh tonight. Even directed at the poor sods who responded when the MC/individual comedians asked if there were Americans in the crowd. Apparently "I didn't vote for him" is no defense.

I ran into a very nice gentleman from Washington state while sheltering from the rain under the alcove of his building, next to the venue. I told him that while the show was nice enough, he's better off pretending to be Canadian. He was a tad bit strange, since, as he explained and then demonstrated, he'd stepped out to get soaked in the rain in lieu of a shower. That is probably whimsy and not pathology, but I opted to stay dry.

To be fair, I was sampling from the most vocally leftist/progressive strata of Scottish society. The average Scot seems to be much less deranged, and outright welcoming of the odd American tourist. Anyone else notice such obvious hostility in other countries?

I am Jewish, so, you know... But in general, I find normal people very rarely have adverse reaction to admitting one is American, or even Jewish or Israeli. Obvious exception are obvious, but in general case if I feel there could be such a reaction, it probably means I am in a wrong place and need to minimize my presence there.

I’ve said this before, but I think there is something uniquely fake and soulless about contemporary American culture that makes many people from other places feel an aversion to America and Americans, even compared to people who are culturally and linguistically much further away.

It is difficult to describe without sounding unfair, but as an outsider you can sense it, it's like you can smell out a visiting American from across the street. Nothing feels entirely real. Not people’s identities, not their opinions, not their interests, and often not even their relationships. It feels like everyone is constantly at a trade show, promoting themselves and trying to make the right impression, even to themselves. Americans have become uniquely insincere, not necessarily because they are consciously lying, but because so much of ordinary social life has become a performance.

People increasingly behave like influencers even when they are not influencers, have never been influencers, and have no intention of becoming influencers. They present their tastes, relationships, politics and personal problems as though they are creating content or curating a brand. The imagined audience has become permanent, even when no real audience exists, or when it consists only of people with whom they would normally have been genuinely sincere. Even among friends, family and partners, people often seem to be managing how they come across rather than simply being present.

America has always been commercial and self-promotional, but it did not always feel this hollow. Regional cultures used to give the country more substance. Different places had their own accents, habits, loyalties and social types. They could be provincial or unpleasant, but they at least felt real. Over the last 20-30 years, much of that has eroded. People move around more, spend more of their lives online and increasingly speak in the same phrases, hold the same packaged opinions and consume the same national culture, paradoxically even more so than when there were fewer TV channels (and sources of entertainment), because that was at least limited to a fairly small part of people's lives.

Social media is obviously part of it, but I think the problem is broader. America now seems to be developing into a kind of anti-culture. It does not merely lack a strong common culture. It actively dissolves the conditions from which culture normally grows: continuity, inheritance, local attachment, privacy and a sense that some things should exist without being explained, displayed or monetized.

What replaces them is a culture of "self-invention", consumption and signaling. You are expected to construct an identity, advertise it and constantly update it. Nothing is simply inherited or taken for granted. Everything has to be chosen, announced and turned into a statement about who you are. This makes the culture exhausting and unpleasant to almost everyone outside it, and probably to many Americans themselves.

The recession of woke culture has not improved this, in many ways it has made things worse. Woke culture was extremely performative, but it at least provided a fairly clear set of approved signals, that people knew didn't necessarily mean anything. Now that its dominance has weakened, the habit of signaling remains, but the cultural landscape is more fragmented and competitive. People have to signal constantly and compete in their signaling.

Everyone now has to prove that they are more authentic, more radical, more normal, more masculine, more compassionate, more anti-establishment or less easily offended than everyone else. Even rejecting performative culture becomes another performance. The result is not greater sincerity but a louder and more desperate struggle to project a recognizable identity, rather than being something.  People often talk about wanting to see "the real" 'place' when they're going on vacation somewhere but in America it feels like the real place has disappeared.

Immigration may also play some role. Continuous demographic change makes social cohesion harder, especially in a country whose shared identity was already fairly thin. America no longer seems confident enough to assimilate people into anything substantial and the people immigrating seem less interested in integration. What America offers instead is consumerism, work, legal citizenship and the freedom to assemble a personal identity from whatever is available. It's not offering an attractive cultural value proposition, it's deconstructing their own and other people's culture into something empty. This isn't a new critique but it has become more true over time.

This may be why American culture feels increasingly alien. It is not simply foreign. Foreign cultures can still feel human because they are rooted in a place, history or shared way of life. For example, I intensely dislike Islam and to some extent Arab culture in general, but when I go to say Jordan, the culture at least feels real. I get the sense that contemporary American culture often feels rootless even to Americans. It is less a culture than a system for stripping existing cultures down, commercializing their most visible features and "selling" them back as lifestyle choices and branding. It's not just that there is increased hostility but that all human interactions feel less genuine and real.

Of course there are still genuine people and communities in America. But they increasingly seem like exceptions that survive in spite of the dominant (anti)culture. What outsiders encounter most often is something synthetic, restless and spiritually vacant. America feels like a preview of what happens when social life is completely absorbed by markets, media (legacy or social) and personal branding.

That is probably part of why the hostility is getting worse. People do not only resent American power or arrogance like they did during the early war on terror. They sense that American culture is becoming an anti-culture, one that makes everything more artificial wherever it spreads. They dislike it partly because it is unpleasant, and partly because they are afraid their own societies are heading in a similar direction, and to push back against that is to push back against americanism in a way.

Another thing I wanted to comment on:

promoting themselves and trying to make the right impression, even to themselves.

"even to themselves" - This is not unusual or controversial. The human mind has always done this, cultivating and presenting its 'avatar' to itself. The PR department of the mind does not just work in relation to the external world, but in relation to the internal world as well. This fiction, the self, is covering up a committee. It will lie constantly and produce a 'person' who is supposed to be competent and reliable and 'in control'. To be able to convincingly lie in this manner to the rest of the tribe, it must convince itself first.

I believe this is all complicated and put into overdrive by the internet life we are all now living, and by the mass surveillance state. People's minds construct an "always on", always watching, always judging, always performing world, because that is how the external world now exists. The most effective prison constructed by a surveillance state is the one built up and reinforced daily inside each human head.

It used to be just individuals with social anxiety, and in a more extreme form, schizophrenia (I'm not saying schizophrenia is simply extreme social anxiety, but this seems to be one part of the disorder), who constantly felt watched and judged due to an overly intense activation of this 'world inside the mind.' Now it's almost everyone. This is in part due to the extreme dominance by the left brain hemisphere in modern people. McGilchrist writes convincingly about this, at length, in his books.

What replaces them is a culture of "self-invention", consumption and signaling. You are expected to construct an identity, advertise it and constantly update it. Nothing is simply inherited or taken for granted. Everything has to be chosen, announced and turned into a statement about who you are. This makes the culture exhausting and unpleasant to almost everyone outside it, and probably to many Americans themselves.

Maybe this is, in part, due to how the labor market developed. We (I'm not American, but everything you describe is pretty similar in my country) are expected to offer up and advertise ourselves and all our real and ostensible qualities, to employers and others we need attention from. The societal group as a whole is not working towards any common improved future. It does not seek out the talent. The talent is supposed to discover itself, advertise itself, show up to each of the countless buyers of labor themselves. Most Americans are not unionized, which probably contributes to atomization and individualism. The self-invention and embroidered resumé culture fits into a mostly automated sorting mechanism for hiring.

I think Americans are less “real” in part because of history. America was born in the newspaper age, came of age in the radio age, matured in the TV age, and now the internet age. If you compare that to places like Britain or Germany or India or China or Japan, the reason seems pretty clear. The idea of being a Brit or a German or Indian includes lots of history and culture and folkways that existed hundreds or even thousands of years before printing presses to say nothing of the internet. Brits go to pubs and get drunk because that’s just what they do, they have for centuries. Japanese have their culture going back thousands of years.

America no longer seems confident enough to assimilate people

That's not about confidence, that's a deliberate act. Woke ideology rejects assimilation and considers it essentially soft genocide. Thus, saying "American no longer seems confident to assimilate" is like describing a mugging as "This guy no longer felt confident in keeping his wallet".

It's why I never understood the fuss about White Lotus -- I finally watched the first season awhile ago, after hearing real-life people going on about how great and profound it was -- and I was like, "American tourists are shallow and annoying, often selfish and high-maintenance too!" doesn't really seem that insightful to me... much less something I want to watch on TV!

Quality post, may Allah curse Universal Culture. However, I have become painfully aware that this process is happening almost everywhere, at different rates; America is just ground zero for postmodernity. America has lost much of its Americanness, but Britain has lost an awful lot of its Britishness, Turkey has lost some of its Turkishness, even Africa has lost a bit of its character. I look forward to revisiting Ukraine sometime, to see if the antidote to postmodernity is in fact brutal trench warfare.

I look forward to revisiting Ukraine sometime, to see if the antidote to postmodernity is in fact brutal trench warfare.

Spoiler: it is not.

I rather doubt it as well, given the effects of the original trench warfare, but given that it's a common talking point I'd like to disprove the theory for myself.

Britain has lost an awful lot of its Britishness

In Britain, raising a national flag is a subversive act. In the US, it is still largely not so, though in certain places it already is.

State repression of culture is not the same as the loss of culture. Imagine if in just about every place you find yourself in America, that isn't reserved to some newcoming minority or the hipsteriest of hipsters, there's still at least a drawlin' fella wearing a cowboy hat and spurs, a Southie with the broadest Bawston accent, and a Southern gentleman who says "huwhat" and "huwhy", and they all basically act as you expect. Britain's still got a fair bit of that.

I don't know about every place, but there are certainly places where you still can get that. Maybe not spurs, but otherwise I think it's still around.

You could visit the Balkans to check that right now.

I would say in my experience they are significantly less postmodernized, especially Albanians, though it's hard to connect that directly to the 1990s (I think the basic function is how rich a country is) and it's now been a long time since the war. Hungary is billed as reactionary, but it's actually well ahead of the rest of the Balkans in the process.

Hungary, thé one without the brutal civil war, checks out.

Also the focus of the tender embraces of its richest native son. One could also chart the rise of right-populism in Eastern Europe as a metric of the advances of a hostile postmodernity to which they're reacting.

Yes this exactly captures my discomfort with America (as a lifelong American, although with dual citizenship in the UK, I have always felt a little out of place). I just spent two weeks in the UK followed by a week in Germany, and both places felt just incredibly more real than America, even though they undoubtedly both have been infected by the consumerism and striving (especially. the UK). I think a lot of it has to do with the structure of cities, which are thousands of years old and build for people rather than cars, and also with a sense of belonging and place that definitionally cannot exist in the United States because we haven't been around for long enough and our national mythos is built on conquest, immigration, and progress, which makes it inherently unstable.

Interestingly enough, I feel like Europeans use social media way more than Americans. I post something on instagram maybe once a month, but my Italian lab partner for this course in Bath was posting constantly. This paradoxically actually seemed to make her social media use more authentic: she was just posting everything that came into her mind to share with her family/friends (I also noticed that these Europeans tended to have very few followers, maybe 100-200, within Dunbar number range) rather than curating to cultivate a certain image of oneself.

Pretty much everyone in my course (I was the only American) admitted that they had negative stereotypes of Americans and that I managed to break out of the mold by the end of the course. I've heard similar things from my sister, who moved to London in 2021 and had a rough first 6 months at her job where no one respected her. I find the reflexive dismissal of this stereotype by posters downthread to be a bit unhelpful. Pretty much all stereotypes have at least a kernel of truth to them, and rather than dismiss this one as Eurotrash bigotry, I think it is more helpful to examine why Europeans might feel this way. I think you capture that why incredibly well.

What you identify as "American" is really just modern globalized, atomized, urbanized, online culture. It's not just Americans who consume too much influencer content and monkey-see-monkey-do influencer behavior themselves. Germans, the French, Venezuelans, Chinese, whoever - if it lives in a city and consumes online content, it's suspectible to the same trends as our American trailblazers.

But I'm detecting it from Americans in real life, both in America and elsewhere, in a distinct way from other people, regardless of how online or cosmopolitan they are.

Are you tho?

Or are you being influenced by your own perceptions?

I’ve worked retail for 24 years - we’re all the same stupid cunts we’ve always been.

Honestly, people seem a tad smarter more than anything. Maybe a bit more histrionic.

There’s definitely been a shift post Covid of a kind that seems more lawless (tho I don’t literally mean law abiding) but the one you’re describing I only get a sense of online.

But also there’s now over 50 million more of us than when I started working so I don’t know - ask me in 19 years and 6 months when I retire I guess.

Yes?

Lots of people outside America don't like America and it's not about US strength or wealth, it's not envy but genuine distaste. They just do not like US culture or lifestyle or demeanour. They think that its weird to swear allegiance to the flag in schools, they think it's weird to have all these guns and fireworks and huge cars. They think Americans are crass and stupid and unwise. They go to America and find it really weird and hostile, all these drug adverts on TV, all these homeless people about, people actually approaching you and trying to make conversation on the street. Tipping. It's all weird. They aren't going to America again and will openly tell others not to go to America either. These are wealthy people who go to Europe just about every year on holidays, or boomers that go on cruises and tell me in detail how much they dislike Americans on cruises.

I was talking with a student from the US and I was trying to make the point (albeit in a more polite and appropriate way) that if it weren't for US power Australia would probably have been raped to death by Japan in WW2 so there are pluses as well as minuses about American militarism. But she was going on about how the pledge of allegiance was weird and just innately unacceptable. She was feeling the same kind of laboured 'you're obviously wrong, why do I even have to defend this' that I was feeling.

I make points in a separate conversation with an Australian professor about how the US economy is growing a lot faster than the Australian economy despite the US making a mess with tarriffs so they're doing some things right that we should emulate but even fairly sophisticated people like her say 'no, it's too unequal, there's too much extreme wealth and poverty and that's bad for democracy'. Or they regurgitate an Economist article about how the US is 'islands of affluence' in a sea of relative poverty. It's like saying that 'maybe we should build infrastructure in a more efficient way' and this reflexive answer pops up 'well China can only do that because they have slaves, there's probably a good reason that for HS2 they're building tunnels in open countryside.' Try saying anything positive about China to the average educated person in the West and they will probably refuse or deflect or mitigate. Well it's the same with America.

It's like the mirror image of Americans being super gung ho about America:

You're from the global military and economic hegemon that composes more than 60% of the world stock market cap.; no need to be embarrassed by it. Normies need a lesson in yes_chadding.

Normies overseas are no_chadding. No matter the GDP or the stock markets they don't give a damn, America sucks. Not to mention the wars and tariffs that keep dragging in or imposing costs on US allies. Americans could say 'We're so rich' and that wouldn't matter, it only confirms disgust that is rooted in culture, not wealth.

I make points in a separate conversation with an Australian professor about how the US economy is growing a lot faster than the Australian economy despite the US making a mess with tarriffs so they're doing some things right that we should emulate but even fairly sophisticated people like her say 'no, it's too unequal, there's too much extreme wealth and poverty and that's bad for democracy'.

There is nothing in human history that is more successful than hooking up the economy to the engine of personal self interest. It says something about the over-socialisation of Western children that they are unable to grok this by the time they reach the age of majority.

Arent the poor parts of America still a lot richer than their Australian equivalents?

The Economist article was cope I think, US median consumption is higher than Australia's. But Australians work less, live longer and have higher median wealth. There's not a significant difference I think.

work less, live longer and have higher median wealth.

Sounds pretty good to me actually.

It’s different. The homeless psycho monster problem in America is visible even in the richest parts of rich cities like NYC and Miami. Even in LA you’ll see it when you drive to work, to many stores, or if you live in neighborhoods plagued by it that are still very expensive like Venice beach, Santa Monica, much of Hollywood. There is an idyllic, peaceful, rich and safe American suburbia and unless you have American family you’ll probably never see it as a median foreign tourist from a rich country. Why would you?

I hear this all the time from rich Europeans I work with and know socially. I’ve heard it from wealthy Australians. You go to America on business or for tourism, stay in a $800 a night hotel in San Francisco or NYC or LA, and outside feels like the worst train station neighborhood ghettos of European countries. Sure, some corner of the Paris or Malmo banlieues might be worse, but no tourist or wealthy local is ever going there.

You need distance for this but the vibe in DTLA like 2 years ago was closer to like, Cape Town or Rio, than it was to big cities in other countries in the rich world. Constantly checking the streets, are there enough people walking around, can I dodge that group of addicts in tents, is this block still safe or is it the next one where things get real bad? Even NYC, while slightly improved from Covid nadir, is still very bad, and totally different from when I was a kid and teenager.

In Australia (kind of like Canada) the really dysfunctional poor are the small aboriginal minority who largely live deep in the bush and outback in towns that are like 30-90% indigenous and have huge issues, but your average rich person there will literally never encounter them unless they go out of their way to.

The homeless psycho monster problem in America is visible even in the richest parts of rich cities like NYC and Miami.

"Even"? The highly compactized urban congregations pretty much the only place where that problem existed. I mean, sure, you can be homeless in rural Idaho, if you really try. But I don't think you'll find an establishment like Skid Row there. Megapolises are "rich" because they are concentrated, and they have burgeoning homeless population because that's where the feeding grounds are (for every possible value of "feeding").

You go to America on business or for tourism, stay in a $800 a night hotel in San Francisco or NYC or LA,

That's a relatively recent phenomenon. 20 years ago SF was very tourist-friendly and NYC had Giuliani clean it up and LA was pretty decent too. Then the Long March came to its conclusion, the wokes took power and implemented their compassionate policies. Now there's literal shit on the streets. Sigh.

kind of like Canada

I haven't been to Australia since the 80s (very nice, very safe, very distinct un-American culture), but I can assure you that the major urban centres of Canada are pretty full of addicts in tents and other screaming maniacs. StatsCan will probably say that these are disproportionally Indians, but my feeling would be that it's a lot less disproportionate than it used to be -- many many skinny white crackheads, and significant numbers of chubby white schizos.

The real problem here is that it's bleeding into the (previously) nice 30-100k population centres -- people there are pissed.

When you get super-rural there's little homelessness but a fair amount of drug-associated petty crime -- probably a little worse than the past, but people do have guns so there's a bit of a disincentive. Actual remote reservations vary wildly -- some are pretty bad, others more or less have their shit together. This probably boils down to whether the individual leadership are actually good people, or are more interested in siphoning government/resource revenue off for themselves; both are common. To be fair there's a lot of pressure from band memberships to siphon the revenue directly to the entire population of that particular reserve -- which seems less corrupt but also doesn't usually work out particularly well.

I haven't been to Australia since the 80s (very nice, very safe, very distinct un-American culture), but I can assure you that the major urban centres of Canada are pretty full of addicts in tents and other screaming maniacs. StatsCan will probably say that these are disproportionally Indians, but my feeling would be that it's a lot less disproportionate than it used to be -- many many skinny white crackheads, and significant numbers of chubby white schizos.

The people hanging around the streets of Toronto or near Union station seem to be much less Indian than I'd have assumed. See a bunch of black and white schizos and druggies though.

You’re talking about Europeans.

I didn’t read past the first paragraph to post this but you specifically mean Europeans and South Americans who think they are.

These are wealthy people who go to Europe just about every year on holidays

I am not in fact talking about Europeans! I'm talking/thinking about Australians, an American student in Australia, a Canadian...

That’s on me - I in fact just forgot about those people haha

So it’s not just the facade of it all? Like Australia to America is surf, barbies, kangaroos, hot women, aborigines.

But America is literally everything. Beyoncé and the nfl, Jay z and Iraq, California and guns, progressiveness and Trump. Is it not just the all encompassing everything of it all?

No, America is a very small part of these people's lives (the rich old ones that is, different for students of course). All of those things that you mention are to be looked down on. Beyonce - awful. NFL - awful. Jay Z (and rap music generally) - awful. California - awful. Iraq - awful. Guns - awful. Progressiveness - awful, especially if its something serious like pronouns being used ungrammatically or shoddy academic writing about decolonization/progressive issues (but they would not dare say that in public). Trump and anyone associated with Trump with the exception of Pence - awful awful awful and they'll say it out in public. Coca Cola - awful. Microsoft - awful (but they have to use it anyway like anyone who wants to get things done). Israel - awful.

There was never much good about America with the possible exception of Harvard and whatever judges there are that stand up to Trump. Now the whole country is descending into fascism as far as they're concerned.

Classical FM. Opera. ABC News (the Australian ABC that is, the state broadcaster). British television (Yes Minister, Would I lie to you, Top Gear, Clarkson's Farm). British youtubers. The Sydney Morning Herald. The Guardian. The Conversation. The European Union. Florence. Venice. Rome. Paris. London. Cambridge. Oxford. The Times. The Economist. Fresh food. That's where it's at.

There was never much good about America with the possible exception of Harvard and whatever judges there are that stand up to Trump. Now the whole country is descending into fascism as far as they're concerned.

Well ok but they’re stupid.

Which is a different argument - most people are just normal right so your point maybe does track more than more.

You think (they think?) the nfl is stupid but it’s legitimately fantastic. It’s more popular than anything else in the country - is soccer retarded? Why is Jay Z bad because I have zero interest in it?

Venice Rome Paris and London are now fallen cities - they’re twenty years away from being non Western majority … it makes sense people from Australia might think it’s just the bees knees … until your daughters are being stoned.

So, sure.

But it seems your argument is kind of what I brought up earlier: things in the mainstream are bad, and America is the mainstream.

I dunno I just don’t see it - if you think football is to be looked down on but soccer isn’t, Jay z bad but opera good, London good but Miami bad? These are dumb thoughts from wannabes.

Judging public opinion based on standup might not be an unbiased estimate.

I noted that the average person is far more amiable. This was distilled exposure to the leftest of the left - comedians are known to be happy and well adjusted people after all.

Also the whole Comedy Festival loop is incredibly activist and will purge you for wrong think very happily. Atleast based on being into the Melbourne Comedy Festival scene for a couple years and knowing there's a high overlap with the Edinburgh talent pool. Melbourne famously renamed their 'best act of the show' award a couple years ago from Barry Humphries (Better known as Dame Edna) to a generic one due to him making fairly milquetoast anti-trans comments.

America is clearly exerting hard and soft power over a large part of the world and have done so for generations. Its not surprise that this generates resentment, even amongst closely aligned and vassal states.

Among Anglo states (think five eyes), America has always been its own thing. They are more individualist and unique compared to the rest of us which are more closely aligned to the (traditional) UK. This cultural difference leads to natural misunderstandings.

I remember traveling to the far corners of the Earth and having much more in common with European travelers than Americans, even though there was more of a language difference.

Not sure on the latter part but I do generally agree foreigners view American in a negative light because we are the hegemon so it’s a bit rebellious to speak badly of Americans even if they can’t really do anything about it. And a second reason Americans get looked down upon is because we dominate media and foreigners have a much about to view the American lower class versus their own.

To be fair, I was sampling from the most vocally leftist/progressive strata of Scottish society.

Mr. Human, our libtards are the same way. My only trip to Europe was during the height of Iraq War tensions. There were no issues, even when I was obviously culture shocked.

Idek but I travel all over the world and I find people who are openly hostile to me when I tell them I'm an American- and/or from a red state- is a huge red flag. This kind of bigotry is so inane and ubiquitous that I just seek out people who don't judge me no matter where I'm from. I've met people from all kinds of places that are openly hostile to Americans or the American empire and never would I consider judging them based on the country they're from rather than by the things they say or the actions they take. To treat someone poorly based on their nationality is always a bad sign no matter what part of the world you're in. (This pattern matches similarly to people in blue states who are begging to hear some trump denouncement/land acknowledgment from you as soon as you're identified as being from a red state. If you're someone who sees half of your countrymen with such contempt I'll just find somebody else to talk to rather than grovel) And this comment probably makes me sound like I am a rude person but I should specify that I am extremely polite when I sus out that someone is judging me and am tactful enough to disengage with them gracefully. I have had multiple instances where I was traveling abroad with other men- one a very liberal German, another a jew from NYC, and had locals harass and yell at them specifically while in the same breath were kind and apologetic to me. I think the defining factor is the level of respect you show toward others, which I make a habit of being conscious of, and others often are not.

We are costing other countries and their residents a lot of money with the whole Iran and tariff thing. Usually, even of Trump, the critique would be merely aesthetic. In 2026, it is in the pocketbook.

That's nonsense, Europeans sneered at Americans when Trump was a TV personality, sneer at Americans now and will sneer at Americans when only historians would remember who Trump was. That's just the way of things.

The initial comment gave me the impression that they had experienced a qualitative shift towards hostility, which I found plausible because my experiences abroad as an American have generally been fine, so I view the poster's bad experiences as something novel to explain. But maybe I just seem like a cool guy to people, you know?

I've been to Europe many times, and also regularly speak to Europeans and I haven't noticed any change to the hostility. Of course, people have different opinions about things going on in the US (just as Americans have opinions about things going on in Europe) but I didn't notice anything generalizable. That said, I try to associate with people who generally would not do such sort of thing (even among the left there are people who know how to behave properly), and if someone random hated me I probably didn't even notice it.

he's better off pretending to be Canadian

That used to be the advice for Americans travelling abroad: put a Canadian flag sticker on your luggage/backpack/laptop. This was, oh, mid-late 2000s? Early 2010s?

It's any time a Republican is President.

Even directed at the poor sods who responded when the MC/individual comedians asked if there were Americans in the crowd. Apparently "I didn't vote for him" is no defense.

If you play the "but I'm one of the good ones!" card in trying to suck up to lefty Europoors, I suppose you deserve the mockery that ensues. You're from the global military and economic hegemon that composes more than 60% of the world stock market cap.; no need to be embarrassed by it. Normies need a lesson in yes_chadding.

I don't exactly like so-called "ugly Americans" throwing their weight around, being crass and acting flabbergasted by anything that's the slightest bit different from back home (just yesterday evening I had to run over to a carload of them and politely tell them that we drive on the left here – thank Christ I noticed before they got themselves into an accident). But I will say this in their defense: at least they're being authentic. I find the "preemptively apologising for being American" oikophobia routine even more insufferable, and insincere in exactly the same way Scott described in "I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup" – you're not apologising for being American, you're "apologising" for things the Red Tribe did in your name. What I find most irritating about it is that, for all their talk of how embarrassed they are by their nationality and how much they admire the European way of doing things, these people usually seem exactly as ignorant about the world beyond the stars and stripes as their "ugly American" brethren.

One may resent a loud, obnoxious, crass person who is sure the whole world was created for them. But one surely would never respect a person who apologizes for their own identity and existence, and tries their best to pass as somebody they are not.

What happened to Neuralink? I recall them moving to human trials a few years back, but there have been no news since. Did it turn out to be harmful to the patients?

I mean, seems to me they're being pretty forward with all the stuff they're doing.

Fun aside; one of the technical issues they ran into is discovering that the brain actively twists and moves around in the skull, resulting in some of the contact threads they were using to get dislodged. Solution; go deeper so they don't get ripped out. Fun stuff.

I don't know, but what they wanted to do was split between the trite (interpret signals in the motor nerves for making prosthetics) and the ridiculous (interpret brain activity not related to the early sensory cortex or the motor cortex). So their achievements would either be fairly unobtrusive or impossible. The most likely outcome is a SpaceX-like commoditisation of prosthetics through making the technology cheaper to manufacture and easy to use, but that doesn't seem to have happened yet.

Just like how there was a massive moral panic about human cloning, and then the second it became possible there was sudden total radio silence. :^) I’m sure they aren’t doing anything in secret though.

There's not really that much use for human cloning. The result is a baby with specific genes, but there are still all the stochastic differences from growing from embryo to baby to adult.

It's possible that China has a secret lab full of Terance Tao clones to work on future government project but it's not clear if there would be any ROI from that.

Now, rich parents secretly / quietly using CRISPR to try to give advantages to their future children? Definitely happening.

Why would the Chinese bother when selective breeding with 145 IQ parents is so much easier?

I suppose some people believed that comic-book garbage about clones inheriting the memory and personality of the original.

rich parents secretly / quietly using CRISPR to try to give advantages to their future children? Definitely happening.

Is this an intuition or something you’ve seen? Would be very interesting if it were the latter but my impression is that the wealthy tend to be risk-averse.

It's just my intuition. I'm not saying it's widespread.

It just seems to me that given how long the technology has been around and the successes in plants & animals it'd be very surprising if there have been zero human births.

Probably just starts with removing a gene for a major risk like Huntington's then while they're in there make sure the kid doesn't get the alcoholism gene or a known low IQ gene.

Well, the lunatic fringe seem to be interested. Nutjob more money than sense Bryan Johnson is claiming he has a clone of himself for, basically, spare parts. I very much doubt this, though I am sure there are unscrupulous medical researchers perfectly happy to promise any Mr. Moneybags they'll get him whatever he wants, here's my bank account number, thank you.

Apparently it turns out that Mr. "I want to live forever" has a genuine medical problem of some nature, so of course he immediately leaps to "clone myself and use the resulting product as a guinea pig for treatments-cum-spare parts repository".

I am very nearly sorry for him, except that this is too damn much like all the classical Greek plays about hubris, plus at least he doesn't seem to actually be cloning a foetus, he's just having adult stem cells created:

The immortality influencer shared in an X update that he has a “baby” version of himself growing in a petri dish that he says will allow him to become his “own blood boy” — doesn’t he already have a son who does that for him? — and potentially even “grow organs for transplantation.”

“This may be scary to some people… a dystopian future,” Johnson wrote. “But, for others, they will see it as the inevitable future of health.”

In case this is all starting to sound like the grim sci-fi plot of a certain Michael Bay movie or Kazuo Ishiguro novel, it’s not a literal, living breathing clone. (Although by posting an infamous picture of himself edited to look like a baby, Johnson’s certainly playing into that impression.)

Instead, Johnson’s created his own pluripotent stem cells. These stem cells can self-renew and develop into any type of cell in the body, making them invaluable for repairing damaged tissue.

Where Johnson’s claims of cloning himself as a “newborn” come in is the fact that these highly versatile stem cells normally only exist when we’re still an embryo. But in recent decades scientists have developed techniques to reprogram regular adult cells into an embryonic pluripotent state, which are called induced pluripotent stem cells.

Johnson is confident that by having his own store of stem cells on hand he can “rebuild” his body, repairing everything from damaged lungs to eyesight.

“This technology gives us a path to reverse aging,” he declares.

If Johnson really was trying to grow a clone baby to full term, I think there's legal precedent with saviour babies where courts have permitted parents to implant embryos in order to obtain transplants for an already existing sick child. I don't like that, since the second child is explicitly only brought into being for spare parts (the parents didn't plan on having more children until their only child got sick) but it's legal. So Johnson probably could successfully argue he needs this saviour baby:

A savior baby, savior sibling, or donor baby is a child who is conceived in order to provide a stem cell, bone marrow, or other transplant to a sibling that is affected with a fatal disease, such as cancer or Fanconi anemia, that can best be treated by hematopoietic stem cell, or other transplant

If Johnson could get such a baby, would he be allowed to treat it as a guinea pig etc. or would he be obligated legally to only get the stem cell transplants and then raise the child as offspring (and not "Daddy needs a kidney, Daddy needs a lobe of your liver, Daddy needs your heart")?

And this, children, is why the Catholic Church is no-no on such tech because we hate progress and science and want everyone to suffer.

Meanwhile the biggest argument against the Catholic Church is why hasn't God smitten us all yet? It's inexplicable. Maybe we have just barely enough rosarys/day to keep it at bay for now.

It's inexplicable.

He promised not to. It's right there in the Bible.

Then God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying: “And as for Me, behold, I establish My covenant with you and with your [a]descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you: the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ark, every beast of the earth. Thus I establish My covenant with you: Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” And God said: “This is the sign of the covenant which I make between Me and you, and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth.

It rules out a flood. No comment on other means of destruction.

The promise of "I would not use a single one out of infinite possible ways of destroying you" is hardly worth anything, so I don't think that's what it meant. The people at that time may have lived in different societies from ours, but they weren't stupid.

It is pretty well accepted across most forms of Christianity that at some point this world will end. I'm not sure what tradition you are pulling from where God will not destroy the world as it exists today and make a new Heaven and new Earth.

at some point this world will end

The flood didn't end the world. It ended the sinners (presumably, though as we all know it didn't exactly work out that way). That's what the covenant promises not to do, and that's what the original question was about - why God didn't destroy "us all", presumably for our sins. That's exactly what happened in the story of Noah, and that's exactly what the abovementioned covenant was about. The Christian (and other religions') treatment of the Eschaton is substantially different from that. And there's no specific trigger condition for it.

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A quick wiki skim suggests 2008 as the first likely success in making cloned human embryos. Interest in human cloning has been pretty consistently declining for as long as there's data (since 2005) up until late 2025 and we are now at a ten year high.

The majority of people think cloning failed. Specifically, that Dolly died early from early-onset arthritis because the cloned DNA was 'old'. It's not true but it's very widely believed.

Source? I see a 2026 poll saying that people think cloning is immoral (64 percent for animals and 86 percent for humans), and a 2002 poll saying that people think cloning humans is possible (76 percent), but no poll saying that people think cloning is impossible or impractical due to accelerated aging.

None, sorry. Just an impression. I thought that until 25 or so, and I assumed that if I (knowing quite a lot about that sort of thing) took that long to get corrected, most people must still believe it.

For what it's worth, I was also under the impression that Dolly was a failure story.

So, what are you reading?

Going through Felix Cohen's The Legal Conscience, though I've skipped the first section for now. My interest was rekindled after reading a Tablet article which argued that "Israel is best understood not as an apartheid state, but as a protected tribal reserve." Not sure how coherent that argument is, and I don't know if Cohen would make it, but I feel that he is nevertheless someone who can't be ignored.

Two factors now, as then, are involved: a native [American Indian] population in possession of areas rich in natural resources but without the techniques, or without the incentives, needed for the full development of these resources, and, on the other hand, a population with the desire and techniques to exploit these material resources. The problem now, as then, is to preserve the rights and liberties of native groups while permitting the fullest development of the world's resources. In seeking a modus vivendi for racial groups of varying cultures, those who will build a better postwar world can well afford to ponder the legal relationship of American Indians to the Federal Government, which, after three centuries of experience and experimentation, often bitter, conforms more closely today than ever before to the humane legal ideals first formulated by the theological jurisprudence of sixteenth century Spain.

Also picking up Slezkine's The Jewish Century, which seems like an overdue read.

There was another book thread in the Fun Thread. Posting here because the Fun Thread has a no-culture-war rule.

Just finished Between Two Fires.

I’m not religious and have zero biblical knowledge - loved the entire book.

Like a buddy road trip book about a gay priest, a dishonored knight, and a 12 year old girl walking through plaque stricken Europe because angels are telling the girl to.

Several very fun fantastical depictions, a wonderful ending (with a full on dire description of Hell), a fun twist - awesome!

plaque stricken Europe

Okay. I get it. I have bad teeth.

:P

Still going through Reverend Insanity, about 15% of the way in. Starting to wonder if there are other worthwhile cultivation novels (or games for that matter) with better translations.

Western progression fantasy (Worm, Worth the Candle, Dungeon Crawler Carl) has not been quite as fun.

There's something in Western Fantasy where the love of power is undermined. In the Wheel of Time Rand spends so much time agonizing and waiting and only rarely does anything when he's insanely strong. Or in Worth The Candle it problematizes power, there's so much about being a good person and emotional maturity. The whole story is kind of therapeutic apologia for being a bit mean in a D&D session.

Taylor in Worm was pretty good and selfless all things considered and the Worm subreddit was going 'yeah she's problematic and an unreliable narrator and flawed.'

Meanwhile in RI it goes full-bore. Ritual sacrifice, realpolitik, betrayal, warlordism (real warlordism, not being a nice gangster like Taylor), mass-murder and a relentless pursuit of power. Emotional maturity is knowing how to bide time and endure humiliations while scheming, how to endure losses or avoid distraction - not therapy talk. Good and evil, freedom and destiny explored on a grand and fantastical scale, not a petty scale.

When even the Chinese Communist Party says, “whoah, there, you’re creepin’ a bit”, I’m not sure that this is an unsparing look at how life really is as opposed to the fantasy of a rather nasty person who likes the aesthetic of power.

It's not an unsparing look at how life really is, it's a look at how life could be in a deeply alien world. It explicitly says that 'this doesn't work on Earth because one man can't stand above many on pure power alone'. There's social commentary to an extent about the role of individuals and society but it's not Earth society. This is another world treated on its own terms, an extreme world because extremes are where things break down.

There are some universal thematic lessons but it's more stuff about persevering and treading one's path and not getting tied down by the expectations of others, desires for freedom.

Also, it didn't get banned for being excessively gruesome but because the author seemed to reference real political figures, which is a big no-no apparently. You certainly can't have anyone called Xi Xingping in your web serial. Truly inexplicable authorial decisions...

Fair, and I apologise for the mischaracterisation.

I wouldn't take the CCP's criticism as principled opposition to the values exhibited in the novel.

Now the thing with WtC is that it still has all those ruthless things and people, it's just that the protagonist has the cheat power to become stronger than everyone without resorting to doing things the hard and nasty way. It is also plainly stated in RY that Fang Yuan also tried to do things the nice way in his original life, it just didn't work out. I'd say both novels present their worlds and the way their dwellers react to those worlds consistently. It is also telling that, while Fang Yuan's antics are captivating for the pure number go up appeal, it's all the other major characters who are actually interesting people.

Pretty sure Worm isn't a progression fantasy and WtC is only a deconstruction of one. You might want to try Worm isekai/altpower fanfic for that number go up.

You’re right about Worm, and I somehow forgot Mother of Learning (which was great despite the time looping gimmick).

My uncle lent me Snowblind, a Nordic noir murder mystery set in Iceland. I'm about halfway through it. It's not exactly good writing, and the prose is rather clunkily expository (which I suspect is not only an artefact of the translation), but it's an easy read and passes the time.

This guy clearly doesn’t know much about the sordid history of American Indian reservations, or he wouldn’t be jumping to make this argument. Apartheid state might actually be better.

More of vent/advise post rather than a small question.

Background: I run a board game meetup, formally around the social deduction game Blood on the Clocktower (Think very involved werewolf/mafia but with a DM). Some of the regulars have become addicted to the game and spun off a separate discord to play more often, which is fine, because I joinws it and play I just don't want to have to run the game every weekend which is the occurrence they seem to want to play at.

The Problem: Somehow a minor infiltrated our group. The main group is public and meets a local game hall so its whatever, but this person seemingly got invited to the separate discord full of all the addicts. We just played at someone's house last night. This minor is now 18, an autistic woman. The average age of this group is early 30s, quantitatively 32. We do have some mid 20s and occasionally some folks in their 23-24 range show up and several folks in their 40s that come play but 18 is extremely young. Consequently (thankfully) everyone is very uncomfortable with this development.

Extra Tea: She needed a ride to our event last night, she doesn't really advertise her age, so a male member of the group picked her up because it was on his way and he's a helpful person. He immediately regretted offering to help when he saw her. People where discretely playing hot potato with who was going to drive her home. Her parents apparently don't care that she is attempting to hang out with a bunch of 30 year olds. They seem to be living out of a hotel for some reason (likely poverty), but it's unclear if this is a recent thing or not. She's very clearly autistic with a severely awkward demeanor and lacking the ability to at all process anything not spoken directly to her in the environment.

The Question: Is there any advice on how to boot this person from the group. Obviously it's going to happen but the question is how to handle it in such a way as to not scar this already likely friendless young adult. I currently lean on just ripping the band aid off, but technically since this is an offshoot group I am pushing towards making the moronic discord head who added her do it as penance for being a fucking retard and adding her in the first place.

If she can shoot My Third Gandband Orgy (anal edition) legally, she can totally hang out with you if she feels comfortable. If she was 50 years old cougar will you kick her out? It is still 20 years age gap.

This is not tea. This is progressive Kool Aid. If someone hits on her too hard - tell him to cool it off. If she hits on someone - ah whatever - envy and pity the poor bastard.

envy

Would you envy a person stepping on rakes in the rake factory. Shockingly, mentally unstable young women are a proverbial landmine in progressive social milieus. Vulnerable victims whose voice yet rings the loudest, judging all and held to no epistemic standards of evidence. A repudiation it seems from the good conservative milieu where young women are seen, not heard. We ever move in cycles, rejecting that which scarred our generation in its formative years

I can attest: (short version) a spergy self-identified-autistic 30something woman once flirted with me, we kissed several times with no objection from her, then she accepted a ride home from me, whereon I gave her a final kiss and hug before leaving. The next day she was "very upset" with me, being "So Tired of Straight Guys Assuming I'm not Asexual". A year later this had become Sexual Assault.

Now change her age to 18, talk about nightmare fuel as now there are thinly veiled pedo accusations and insinuations that you manipulated this fragile young mind with your degenerate cis-normative white heterosexuality.

Mentally unstable women with no outside social experience are prone to misinterpreting things. I have no desire to include landmines within a group of nerdy autistic adults.

As I said envy and pity.

Conservative venues may not have the same paranoia and fingerpointing, but this is not because young women are seen and not heard(they aren’t)- it’s because casual sex is frowned upon.

I guess I’ll be the weird one and say I understand your objection. I don’t think there’s inherently anything wrong with an 18 year old spending time with 30+ year olds, but it seems like the combination of gender, age, and general situation makes it uncomfortable to have her around.

Some of your other comments seem to suggest that women aren’t frequent attendees of this private group. The gay guy… going to the bathroom to talk about abilities? (Is this a common tabletop RPG thing?) with the sexual humor is an element I suspect would be difficult to sustain if you had a lot of female participants, it’s just not their kind of scene. For the record, I think it is entirely fair to be a male-only group, or “we only invite women if they’re chill with our vibe.”

It strikes me that you have a middle ground. There’s a public group and a private group. Tell her that this is a small public gathering of old friends, and while you enjoyed her company the transportation situation and private nature of the group means that you’d prefer she not join you in the future, and that you apologize but she wasn’t supposed to be invited to the private discord. You can make clear that she’s welcome at the public group and this isn’t a judgment of her character.

Anything that you say might be hurtful. But there’s no Konami cheat code out of saying hurtful, but true, things sometimes. Tact, and compassion, are important attributes, but ultimately you’re not responsible for how people feel about a situation if you’re honest and polite with them.

(Is this a common tabletop RPG thing?)

Yes. If the DM needs to communicate information to exactly one player, stepping into another room is the easiest way. We sometimes DM on Discord instead, if it's just a quick note.

I agree with @4bpp. The specifics kinda don't matter; kicking someone out of a group is always going to be painful and awkward. If you must kick her out (and for the record, I don't think you should, there's nothing wrong with an 18 year old hanging out with other adults if she wants), then best thing is to be kind but direct. "Hey $name, the group doesn't think that you fit in with the rest of us, we noticed that you don't always enjoy our sense of humor and because we are at a very different life stage than you are it's a bit hard to find common ground when we chat about stuff. I'm sorry, but I think it would be best if we went our separate ways". Something like that. It's really hard to not be mean while also being firm that no, we really are asking you to leave.

You asked how to do this without scarring this girl for life, and to be blunt I don't think you can. You are going to hurt her, no matter how hard you try, because it is intrinsically painful to be asked to not hang out with a group of friends any more. And if she really is lonely and doesn't have other friends, it's going to hurt even more. Them's the breaks.

Probably the most relevant response, thanks.

I don't think I have much to add to the "you are being weird for making it an age thing" near-consensus emerging in the responses, so perhaps instead a question to throw back at you: do you have a script in mind for solving the same problem ("most of the group wants this person out but we can't find a good socially acceptable excuse to kick them") if it were not an autistic 18-year-old woman newcomer, but, say, an autistic 30-year-old guy? If you do have one, what is stopping you from applying that script here? If not, think of one, because that's a problem you will probably have to deal with earlier or later either way.

an autistic 30-year-old guy?

There's plenty of them in the group, and I have a general rule around including them as long as they take advice on when they are being anti-social spergs that people don't want to hang out with. The script to kick anyone out these days is pretty much: "You are making people uncomfortable about some concrete things, and we've talked about about it and you seem pretty unrepentant and unwilling to change so I think the majority of other people don't want to hang out with you." Unfortunately thats hard to apply here because the things that are making people uncomfortable, ie being an awkward 18 year old in a group of 32 year olds isn't something they can change.

Realising I missed a nuance on first readthrough, you seem to assume that the 30-year-old guy script has to involve concrete things that you can confront them over, which they could fix to get accepted into the group. The more interesting question there, though, is what you would do with a 30-year-old guy where there is no such thing. I've seen plenty of instances where some guy is just unlikeable, through no fault of their own; nobody can do anything about it, but having to be around him actively causes the other members negative utility, to the point that if they are not forced to stay they would sooner just leave the group. How would you deal with that situation?

I suppose I have a hard time believing someone is just unlikeable for no reason. It's almost always a personality quirk and the overriding question is how much is that quirk load-bearing on their identity such that if it caused problems, and they were asked if they could change it or at least hide it, would they? After some thought I don't think I've never met someone that was just unlikeable for no reason at all.

Yeah, I think I have nothing much to say apart from +1ing @SubstantialFrivolity's comment. If you have a group consensus to make the policy essentially "no under-21s allowed", then it seems to be your job as the leader to own up to it and tell her. I should also say, though, that it seems possible to me that the consensus may not be as strong as you make it out to be, because you may have created social pressure to agree ("Are there any creeps in our midst who think it's not weird for us to hang out with this 18 year old child? No? Good").

Perhaps, if you need to justify it to yourself, you could think of it as a useful life lesson - a somewhat autistic girl I am friends with, though much older, does sometimes need to be persuaded (over her own stubborn objections) that 50 year old guys showering her with gifts and inviting her to go on vacation on them within hours of first meeting are not in fact just being unusually kind. Frame it as a lecture about social expectations in your circles and how all men are wolves; if you really want to drive it home, sacrifice some of your own and your group's good reputation and tell her that the boys can't control themselves around her and you don't like what it does to the group dynamic.

We're reaching a new frontier with age-gap discourse: board games.

She's young enough to be your younger sister or cousin, you sick fucks!

occasionally some folks in their 23-24 range show up

Scandalous! Their brains haven't even fully developed yet; how can they consent to playing the board game?

Her parents apparently don't care that she is attempting to hang out with a bunch of 30 year olds.

I mean... being amongst the company of boardgamers is probably one of the least likely environments for an 18-year-old daughter to engage in fatherless behavior when she goes out. Given her... different ableness... her parents might be glad someone's taking her off their hands for a few hours.

If she's not a good fit for the squad, you guys can just stop inviting her or picking her up. Freedom of association; you don't need to justify it via some age-gap related reason. Your meetup; your choice.

Scandalous! Their brains haven't even fully developed yet.

Bruh nobody thinks this. Absolute brainrot thought, touch grass already. 23-24 year olds are fine. They have a job/gradschool, can drink, pretty much not different than a proper adult of 30 years.

She's young enough to be your younger sister or cousin, you sick fucks!

Literally a month ago she was 17... So yes I guess if you like barely legal "age is just a number" mentalities then go off queen!

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23-24 year olds are fine. They [...] can drink, pretty much not different than a proper adult of 30 years.

So can 18 year olds?

Not in America

Which is a deficiency specific to American governing, not any sort of attribute of 18 year olds.

Regardless, it is a rite of passage in the traditional anthropological sense. Not having passed through the tribe’s rituals denotes one as unable to participate in groups with post ritual behavior. The divergence between when a tribe administers its rites is left to the tribe.

Eaglecrowing Schoolshooting Freespeechia notably doesn't legally allow drinking until 21, and many seem to obey.

Since when has that really stopped anyone much?

Many moons ago when I was 19 I visited an older friend I knew from IRC who lived in the Midwest. I ended up hanging out with a bunch of local 17-19 year olds there and while my friend's wife forbade him from buying us booze, the only thing limiting (but certainly not stopping) us getting alcohol was how much we could tolerate the company one rather annoying girl who was 21. I don't think I've ever drunk as much alcohol while traveling as on that trip.

The same way some of my friends here in Finland had no problem getting drunk when they were 15-16 even though the legal age is 18.

There's a big difference between "can't" and "many don't much want to".

That's the legal age to purchase, which is not the same as a ban on minors consuming alcohol - I am not familiar with any state with such a ban (although some states ban possession by minors), and many US states specifically permit minors to consume alcohol with parental sign-off.

I am not familiar with any state with such a ban

Welcome to Texas!

(I actually love some of the carve-outs there - immunity for the first minor to request medical assistance for another person's possible alcohol overdose is a level of considering-second-order-effects you don't see enough of in legal codes)

many US states specifically permit minors to consume alcohol with parental sign-off.

I first looked up the exact rules a few years ago, and thereby ended up being the kill-joy for my niece's (IIRC 20th?) birthday, where the plan was "parental sign-off for all her friends" but the legal exemption turned out to be something like "each kid's parent has to be the one to provide that kid's alcohol and be physically present when they drink it". I wasn't going to rat them out or anything - "sign-off" seems morally sufficient to me - but her mother wanted to know the law and didn't want to break it.

I try to make it up to her these days by mixing fancy cocktails at get-togethers, and the funny thing in hindsight is that her alcohol tolerance turns out to be roughly "split a drink, nothing too strong, with her boyfriend taking more than half". Just the bottle-of-soju-each they'd had planned for that birthday would have blindsided her.

Texas law is Like That, because the dominant party is dominated by Germans trying to regulate Mexicans and Scots-Irish, and has been for a long time.

Aha! I knew that Texas had the parental sign-off waiver, so I didn't realize that they latched on consumption rather than possession.

IIRC 20th

Yeah I do think that the age should be lowered to 18 (at least). Such a rule might make sense for minors, but it's a bit farcical for someone who may have graduated high school two or three years ago living halfway across the state with his own car and job to have to drink within arms-reach of his parents. With the trend of appellate courts killing under-21 handgun bans, I wouldn't be surprised if this is a future development.

In practice it's a ban on consumption, since it is also illegal to purchase alcohol for minors (outside of parents letting their kids drink).

I think practically speaking it's a ban on consumption outside the home.

True. I guess in the specific case of a gaming group, they could meet up at someone's house if they want everyone to be able to get their drink on (and not everyone is 21).

You may need to learn Slootspeak. I would bet he was being sarcastic in most of his comment until the last bits there.

So yes I guess if you like barely legal "age is just a number" mentalities

But that's the thing, though, right?

18 is 18. Uncle Sam has no problem getting her to sign papers that might lead to death in one direction or another. She can take out enough debt via auto-loans, college loans, and credit cards to destroy her life permanently. She can marry anyone in any state.

Either the age of majority has real, meaningful weight or it doesn't. "Yes, you're 18 now, but don't do 18 year old things for, you know, a little while longer" destroys the whole concept.

But this is all besides the point. If you're not comfortable with her being in the group, I would say something along the liens of "We're not comfortable with you being in our group."

I am a little lost as to why this is a problem. If it is her age... why is that a problem? She's an adult!

I suspect the real reason is you guys don't like her. Don't make me tap the sign (The Five Geek Social Fallacies). Just tell her it's not a good fit and cut her out, she'll survive

If it is her age

I guess I just find it weird. The age difference is just too wide. Something about pre-21 year olds when you are in your 30s. It's interesting what a bubble I exist in. My local friends also find it odd but here everyone thinks the reverse is odd.

While you’re definitely in a bubble, I don’t think it’s an uncommon one. I’m going to guess—and please correct me if I’m wrong—that the group members are (almost) all secular, college-educated urbanites, who spent their childhoods in age-segregated classrooms and extracurriculars, left home at 18, spent the next 4–6 years in the exclusive company of fellow 18–24 year olds, and continued to spend time exclusively with friends and coworkers their own age over the next decade. If I’m right about that, I think your discomfort with age-gap social groups is understandable, but only because you all have spent your lives in artificially constrained social circles.

In contrast, rural people, churchgoers, and those with thick multi-generational communities are pretty used to enjoying the company of people of all ages. It’s inevitable and expected for teenagers to spend time with people who are significantly older than them, and as you get older, it’s unremarkable for teenagers to want to spend time with you. Consider too that most churches’ young adult groups go from 18 to 30 or 35, since people those ages are usually in more or less the same stage of life. But again, if your life has always kept you in pretty narrowly age-segregated spaces, your discomfort shouldn’t be surprising.

In contrast, rural people, churchgoers, and those with thick multi-generational communities are pretty used to enjoying the company of people of all ages.

You don't even need to live in any sort of "conservative" environment. Just have some interests that aren't strictly age segregated or a part time job and you'll end up meeting and socially interacting with a bunch of people of different ages. Back in the 90s I attended a couple of BBS meetups when I was 16 and had no problem whatsoever having discussions with people ranging from my age to those in their 40s (all of who I only knew from online). By the age of 18 I had a summer and then part time job and ended up getting drunk with people ranging from 20s to their 40s. It really isn't awkward if you have enough social intelligence to find some commonality with people who aren't exactly like you.

Sure, teens don't usually want to hang out much with adults but that's because they think adults are "boring" or "out of touch", not because people are being weird about it.

Teens don’t want to hang out with their parents most of the time, but they’re usually pretty happy to hang out with 30 year olds and talk sports or whatever. There’s lots of thirty year old conversations they have no part in, obviously.

that the group members are (almost) all secular, college-educated urbanites, who spent their childhoods in age-segregated classrooms and extracurriculars, left home at 18, spent the next 4–6 years in the exclusive company of fellow 18–24 year olds, and continued to spend time exclusively with friends and coworkers their own age over the next decade.

90% correct, I think once you hit 26-30+ it starts being more common to interact and hangout with 40 and 50 year olds in your extended friend groups if they are at all based around hobbies. It notably never goes the other way as it has in this case.

The flipside also tracks with me as an understanding of the other bubble, one that might be more common among the conservative leaning folks here and why they find my bubble so weird.

How much heavy lifting is the autism doing? If she is just too lacking in social awareness to fit in with group dynamics, that is your problem and not "she's twelve or more years younger than the youngest of us".

But this is my point about age differences in the discussion about marriage etc. on the Culture War thread, where I've been assured that ten or more years age difference between men and women is fine and not a problem. Gotta get the gals at peak fertility and attractiveness to men (sixteen to twenty) before they age out into wizened hags of thirty, while the guys are only hitting their prime at thirty-five! 😁

on the Culture War thread, where I've been assured that ten or more years age difference between men and women is fine and not a problem

I think it's important to disambiguate "not a problem" here. I think a 30 year old should be allowed to date an 18 year old if he or she wishes. Not only in terms of legality, but also not ostracizing those 30 year olds purely due to the age gap (though we should still disapprove of people who are manipulating 18 year olds or pressuring them into a relationship they don't want, etc). I strongly believe that if an 18 year old is to be an adult, then that means we should treat them like an adult in all respects, including having a sexual relationship with another adult if they so choose. But would I have wanted to date an 18 year old when I was 30 (much less now)? Hell no. Young girls are pretty and all, but the gap in life experience is so wide that I would hate being in such a relationship. So in one sense (what we should allow in society) I think it's fine, but in another sense (what would actually be good to pursue) I don't think it's fine.

How much heavy lifting is the autism doing?

Not a ton, I'm on the spectrum, my GFs on the spectrum(it was her house) there are a couple of others on the spectrum there. Obviously there is a thing as too much autism, but if it plays any role its that it's cofounded with age in a way to makes it so that time and interaction with neurotypicals hasn't sanded off the worst tism impulses.

Gotta get the gals at peak fertility and attractiveness to men (sixteen to twenty) before they age out into wizened hags of thirty, while the guys are only hitting their prime at thirty-five!

I personally find this weird AF. Some age differences are fine, like 2-5 years but I'd draw the line there. People in different stages of their lives lead to risk and potentially tumultuous relationsips.

I was in a 20 - 60 book club at around that age. It seemed fine? This is the demographics of community college art classes as well, or even more: 16 - 70, because the 16 year olds go for high school, and the elders for entertainment. Also fine. Just don't have sex with her.

A book club just feels like a different sort of community that lends itself to cross generational community. Private game groups meeting at someone's house just feels closer to a local friend group.

Admittedly, I'm not familiar with the scene, but it seems pretty mean, that she can't even play games with people. Kind of the prototypical young person activity? Hence why Among Us got taken over by eight year old kids?

I think the response is that she absolutely can play games with people, but should probably keep doing so in public places in public groups. Hopefully with people her own age.

I guess. I do agree with others that since it's private you certainly can boot her out. Just realize that it's for your own preferences, not for her. It would be convenient you and negative for her.

Edit: to be clear, I think the stance that 18 year olds are basically children is bad. This is a much worse stance than to just say that you dislike her as a person. because she's annoying, because it's like trying to pretend that there's a moral stance there, and you're on the right side of it when it's not, you're absolutely just kicking her out because you don't like her being there. (I think there's a much stronger case for a policy of No Women, than "no women under 30")

Well, if they'd also kick out guys who were 18, then it's about age and bad culture fit, as it were. If it's only women under 30, okay a bit discriminatory. Mostly it sounds like a combination of younger than the youngest there, private friends group, and the 'tism is causing the problems.

(Maybe the parents are happy to have her go out and play social deduction game because it's like therapy to help her improve social awareness, as well as letting her do normal activities like "hang out with friends" and "engage in normal social interactions"? But you're a games group not group therapy so you didn't sign up for that).

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I'll lean in with the other posters: why must you boot her? I do not believe it is such a harmful experience for her to spend time with (gasp!) 30 year olds in a controlled environment. If you just don't want to be responsible for keeping the environment controlled then own it and boot her yourself. But I disagreee that it's "disturbing" in any way. Society should get over this "18 years old isn't a real adult" bullshit, evidently all it does is keep people from maturing.

I think the implication OP's worried about is: if she's 18 and hanging with the group now, then external people (including future potential players) will infer that she was intentionally courted to join the group before she turned 18. Or, that aside, given that she's so awkward, there's an element of "why can't she find friends her own age?" (a question that has many legitimate answers, I'm sure) and "are these older people taking advantage of a young woman who can't find friends her own age?". It's like the 40-year-old who never moved on from hanging around the college anime club: didn't you make friends while you were a student and shouldn't you be in a different phase of life?

You could build the group out to a less lopsided age distribution, which would make it feel better (and give her friends her own age to carpool with) but it seems like you're not interested in doing that. You're not morally required to do so, obviously, but if she's autistic and awkward you at least owe here an explanation. Especially since her situation doesn't seem the best.

Also: what is it about Blood on the Clocktower that seems to really suck in a certain kind of nerd? I see a fair amount of it these days.

Also: what is it about Blood on the Clocktower that seems to really suck in a certain kind of nerd? I see a fair amount of it these days.

Honestly the wider BotC community is pretty toxic and ass. Super oriented around parasocial relationships with streamers and minor celebrities. Half the people you see at Cons are the sort of weird af people who should be solved into lockers. I disagreed with that thread in the culture war section about stopping your kids from being weird, but then I remembered the other BotC people I meet at cons and I shuddered.

Why should we moderate our natural humor for an 18 year old? The storyteller(DM) last night was gay, he kept going into the bathroom for private chats with players for their abilities. We joked that we were all running train on him. Everyone laughed. 18 year old was uncomfortable. I don't feel like it is on us to change our group dynamic because of them. It's not a managed environment and I don't think anyone wants to step up and manage it that heavy handedly

Never got a formal diagnosis, but speaking as a former 18 year old young woman who was sheltered, probably on the spectrum, and very lacking in social skills - I too would have been uncomfortable because I wasn't accustomed to that kind of humour and didn't find it funny. Autistic people are very rules-oriented and "jokes about group sex/gay sex" don't fit into "this is the model of social behaviour as I understand it, also morals". Can you imagine a situation where making a joke about running a train on a gay guy would not be well-received in a particular group? And if she copies that behaviour learned from you elsewhere, it could get her into trouble?

I agree it's not your problem or responsibility, but for people who don't get subtle social mores, "wait I thought this wasn't allowed?" is very confusing.

How much of that was because you were "woman who was sheltered, probably on the spectrum and very lacking in social skills" and how much because you were "18 year old" hanging out with people older than you?

To me it seems that the problems complained about are specific to the individual and have next to nothing to do with being 18 in a group of older people.

If she's uncomfortable she can leave. I attended a nude drawing class at 17. Walked out the first time, then finished the class. it was fine, actually, just a bunch of nude 30 year old models.

Edit: to be clear, I was an extremely sheltered Christian homeschool girl 17 year old. It was still fine.

This is more of a woman thing than a 18-year-old thing; after all, teenaged boys are probably peak when it comes to crude humor. I assure you 30-year-old women are, on average, no more fond of crude, edgy humor than 18-year-old women—if anything, less so, as overtime they've spent increasing time in HR/Karen-approved spaces and less time with teenaged boys and young men in unmanaged settings.

Don't? being uncomfortable with edgy humor is not a function of her age, because there are plenty of teenagers who are very, very comfortable with edgy humor. Continue as you are and if she doesn't like it she can choose to leave. But she is an adult so it's nothing to do with that.

If she dislikes crude jokes, she can leave on her own, without needing others to remove her.

What's likely going to happen is that nobody wants to pick her up for events. I suppose that's a natural solution.

If you just don't want to be responsible for keeping the environment controlled then own it and boot her yourself.

Why should the environment even have to be controlled if all the participants want it to be uncontrolled? That is, more than with any other recent addition from a different background.

I do not understand what is wrong with an(I assume) high school senior participating in niche hobbies with full on adults? Let her go if someone's willing to drive her, it's just being nice. Doesn't seem like your group is going to take advantage of her or anything.

I just think that a high school senior wanting to hang out with 30 year olds and vice versa is disturbing. It adds a lot of risk to the group. Now newcomers need to be vetted to see if they are creeps around this 18 year old. It creates a vector for people to private message this vulnerable young adult and we are the ecosystem to let that happen. Non-adults hanging out with adults is just odd.

  • -12

I just think that a high school senior wanting to hang out with 30 year olds and vice versa is disturbing.

She doesn't want to hang out with 30 year olds. She wants to hang out with people playing this niche nerd game. Once when I was fifteen, I got into a car with a much older man that I had just met and allowed him to take me to a second location because the local game shop was closing and he offered us more D&D. I don't even remember the guy's name, but I remember the cleric I played.

Wouldn't you tell any creepy new comers to knock it off? Why should it matter if they're creepy towards person A vs person B?

I'm not running a group to police other people. But I imagine we'll cross that bridge when it comes up.

No young people could join Ham radio clubs if they adhered to your standards. Or become masons. I hear VFW halls also run really old. And DAR meetings!

Not my problem and not one I am trying to solve. Those groups can run their own standards and solve their own problems.

I don’t think this is as odd as you’re making it out to be. I regularly participate in multiple social groups whose members range in age from 18 to 35. Eighteen year olds are adults, so what you’re describing isn’t a case of non-adults hanging out with adults. Now, from what you’ve said, this young woman might be a bad fit for other reasons, but age doesn’t seem like it should be a factor.

It seems like a perfectly normal part of maturation? She's going to start hanging around thirty year olds at some point.

hopefully when she's 25-29 not at 18.

  • -14

Why? It's healthy for teenagers to hang around adults and see how they behave instead of going off of movies about frathouses. I remember when I was a teen and ran the grill when my dad's friends were watching football; nobody asked who drank the one mormon's share of the beer if it didn't get more than that.

You do know teenagers are supposed to become adults, right? Like that's the whole point.

It's healthy for teenagers to hang around adults

Is it? It sounds like a recipe for disaster and abuse.

see how they behave instead of going off of movies about frathouses.

I don't care how they learn to behave and frathouses that have 32 year olds in them are creepy. If a 17 year old wants to hang out with 21 years olds I think that is significantly less creepy than hanging out with 32 year olds.

I was a teen and ran the grill when my dad's friends were watching football

You were related to your father and it was his friends. Very different dynamic.

Is it? It sounds like a recipe for disaster and abuse.

Because all you hear about (especially in leftier circles with all their sexual disfunctions and neuroses) are the horror stories. Friendships and meaningful platonic relationships across much wider age gaps are normal and healthy. The thing where everyone spends their first 22 years dealing with peers within 10 months of their own age is an extreme historical oddity.

My best friend is five years older. The relationship has a certain parity now, but we met when I was fourteen and other friends used to joke that he was basically my dad. But it was really helpful to have someone a life stage ahead around to offer advice and buy booze. Two of my other friends had similar relationships with guys from his friend group. It was almost a bootleg Big Brothers program.

Half my actual dad's golf buddies are my age. He's mentored a double handful of men even younger through AA.

I'm not saying your concerns are baseless, but having the group collectively treat her as a kid sister is reasonable and healthy for everyone. And if you just don't want to deal with that, that's fine too. I refuse to let my similarly aged daughter come to D&D because I want to crack jokes with my friends without being in Dad Mode.

Yes, not everyone has a dad, I get it. Try to take care of bastards, learning how to be an adult from normie adults is the way to learn. Should she learn things from retarded woke ideology, instead?

Should she learn things from retarded woke ideology, instead?

She already has considering she goes by They/Them, uses a male name, has blue hair, dresses like a woman, and has two lesbian mothers as parents.

There's no saving that, and I'm not inclined to try.

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You could always hand her a stack of printed booklets warning her about the dangers of technically-legal-but-practically-danger-fraught romances with large age gaps. (This is approximately one-third a joke.)


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