domain:aerosociety.com
VinoVeritas
1d ago
In the spirit of frank and open discussion, what is your political ideology?
Rov_Scam
1d ago
It isn't a feature of the current era, either, but an excuse guys who can't get dates use to justify why it isn't their fault. Dating apps are easy mode compared to how it used to be. Yeah, you may have a better chance of getting that cute girl to talk to you if you ask her in the real world rather than like her profile on a dating app, but in the real world chances are you aren't going to cross paths. In the real world there isn't a seemingly bottomless well of single women advertising their availability. In the real world you might get a prospect once every couple months maybe she'll go out with you if you ask. I doubt there are many people who had a ton of game pre-app and are now getting nothing but crickets.
We homeschool our kid but this might be fraying our nerves too much.
The public schools here are generally terrible, and the private schools are either religious or hippie-woo garbage that I don't want to waste time at.
There are a handful of Immersion schools, however. Spanish, Japanese and Chinese.
We're white but my thinking is
- Chinese Immersion School will be full of kids of more upwardly mobile Chinese immigrants
- Their children will be better behaved and not a toxic/criminal influence on my kids, the way median white kids in my community would be
- Their children will be smarter and be a positive influence on my kids
- The school will probably have better academics and not that much on the liberal arts/woo shit because of the Chinese parents
- The rest of the white kids there are sent there because their parents all know this too
- To the extent that learning foreign languages is useful, Chinese is probably the least useless one out of the rest of those
Yes this is racist. But also... accurate? Thoughts?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Playboy Was Never a Magazine, It Was a Breast Certification Organization
A Lot of Companies Aren’t What You Think They Are
Thesis: Playboy magazine has been iconic virtually from the first issue. But for almost all of its history, the Magazine was something between a loss-leader, a marketing expense, and a cherished tradition. While the magazine was occasionally profitable throughout its life, Playboy made most of its money from other ventures over the decades; running night clubs, casinos, television shows and networks, and selling branded retail merchandise. The iconic titty-mag was core to their branding, the product they were selling in the clubs, casinos, television shows was, in a sense, drawn from the imagination created by their magazine. The waitresses in the clubs were pretty young women who were implied to be hot enough to be in the magazine, even if the vast majority of them never appeared in the magazine, when you talked to them you were passing into the fantasy world of the centerfold, talking to a certified Playmate. Playboy magazine’s path to profit wasn’t selling subscriptions, it was setting the organization as a prestige knower of what made a hot woman hot, which it then as an organization certified and sold. The certification of a woman as Playmate Quality was irresistible to both male customers, and to female employees, and formed the basis for Playboy’s empire, and to the degenerate remnant of marketing that exists today.
My wife and I recently watched two separate docu-series on Hugh Hefner. [American Playboy], which was produced by Hef and his family as promotion for the company, and took a positive and mostly soft-focus view of the story of Hefner and Playboy; and Secrets of Playboy, a multi-part hit piece designed to undermine the Playboy legend and dredge up every grudge every woman has ever had against Playboy and Hefner from the first issue to last week. Neither was particularly journalistically rigorous, and our natural skepticism lead us both to come out of each series with the opposite of the directorial intent. After Hefner’s self-aggrandizing autobiopic, I found myself thinking that there was probably a lot of bad stuff he was sweeping under the rug, and that Bobbie Arnstein was probably smuggling drugs for Hef. When I turned to the angry-women’s-greatest-hits, I found myself defending Hef in my mind, because the charges leveled became increasingly absurd, I half expected to have girls talking about how Jimmy Hoffa got drunk at the mansion and that was the last time they ever saw him, or that Lee Harvey Oswald was often seen going upstairs with Hef. They threw the kitchen sink at him, but somehow never actually got Hef doing anything all that bad. He was always a step removed, someone else was asking on Hef’s behalf but Hef himself said no anyway, Hef was close friends with a guy who was a creep, bad things happened at a friend’s house that was built in imitation of the mansion. But anyway, this story isn’t about any of that, rather what fascinated me were all the things they agreed on about Playboy.
Growing up, I was aware of Playboy the magazine. I arrived just at the end of the golden age of magazines, and of porno mags in particular. A couple kids I knew had old Playboys, and they featured prominently in older media, but they were rapidly being outmoded by internet porn (and blogs, for everything other than the tits). Despite the decline of the magazine, Hugh Hefner remained a media icon in the early 2000s. The Girls Next Door was one of the early hit reality shows, my wife and many of her friends remember watching it when it aired. Sex and the City, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Entourage all featured Hef in prominent cameos during Playboy Mansion themed episodes where the gang all winds up at one of Hefner’s parties. He was a cultural eminence grise, one of those figures you were just aware was important, and had made all this money selling softcore porn magazines. Playboy magazine seemed iconic, the Playmates seemed hot, even though I never stole one or looked at one in earnest, only as a vintage curiosity more recently as a middle aged man.
I was vaguely aware that once there had been Playboy Clubs*, night clubs where the waitresses dressed up like bunnies, featured in Mad Men most recently. But what I never realized until watching the competing docu-series, was that the Clubs were the core of Playboy’s business almost from the start. Hefner was a marketing genius much moreso than he was an editorial genius. While he obsessively built his magazine, personally approving layouts and choices of material, he started expanding the brand nearly immediately. The magazine was launched as a mildly profitable periodical by the famous photos of Marilyn Monroe** in 1953, and by 1959 Hefner had moved to a late night variety show Playboy’s Penthouse featuring Hef and various guests and various beautiful women implied to be (and sometimes being) the women featured in the magazine (dressed, at the time). In 1960, the first Playboy Club would open in Chicago and rapidly chained across the nation and world. The Playboy Clubs were member’s only night clubs, where guests could enjoy drinks and entertainment (the first club opening featured a teenage Aretha Franklin), while being served by beautiful waitresses in the famous Playboy Bunny outfits.
What made the clubs so popular and profitable, was the slippery equivalence of the Playboy playmate (a woman who appeared in the magazine as a model) and the Playboy Club bunnies (the waitresses at the clubs), and Hef’s legendary Playboy Mansion with the Playboy Club itself. Playmates often appeared, and sometimes worked, at the clubs. And bunnies occasionally found their way up the ladder into the magazine. For the most part, the girls serving you drinks in the clubs were not the girls who appeared in the magazine. But, it felt that way. The bunnies were screened rigorously for appearance, and when Gloria Steinem went undercover as a bunny she reported that they had to maintain a certain weight and bust size or face termination. But of course breastaurants have come and gone throughout the past hundred years, what made the Playboy Clubs special was the idea that these weren’t just hot waitresses, they were waitresses hot enough to be employed by Playboy, they were waitresses who occupied the fantasy space of the centerfolds.
And in turn, the club itself became the mythical sexual Shangri-La of the Playboy Mansion, Hef’s playground for him and his famous and lascivious friends. Just as Playmates from the magazine occasionally found their way into the clubs, and waitresses occasionally worked their way into the magazine; the famous guests at the Mansion often hung out at the clubs, and big spenders at the clubs or especially the casinos might eventually earn an invite to the Mansion.
Tim Allen talks about this in an oddly poignant passage discussing the first time he saw a Playboy centerfold as a boomer child, which has stuck with me since reading his comedian memoir at the beach in 2004, where he talks about how he has never been the same age as the Centerfold Girl: first he was a young teen and the Centerfold was like his friend's older sister or a younger teacher, then suddenly one day they were the age of a younger sister or a new employee or eventually (gulp) a daughter. There was a never a moment where the fantasy crossed over into reality, where he felt like a direct peer to the Centerfold Girl.
What Playboy sold, at its peak of clubs and Casinos, was that liminality between Fantasy and Reality. Hooters and the Tilted Kilt, for all the endowments they had, never had that. A Playboy club, or a Playboy Reality Show, or Playboy merchandise, offered a thin place between fantasy and reality. A moment where you might just break through the veil, and enter your fantasy, if things went just right. When you could suddenly become a peer of the Playmates and of Hef, if only for a moment.
I realize this might be a complete piece of trivia, but it kind of fascinated me when I realized it.
*My dad, coincidentally, had a Playboy Club membership key card. My wife uses it to fold letters for her office, she says the metal card is the perfect tool for the job and she uses it every day.
**The provenance of this photograph is itself interesting: Marilyn didn’t pose for Playboy, she did a nude photoshoot for some calendar before she ever hit it big, which Hef then bought from the original publisher and splashed across the country.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1d ago
Ahh ok I see. Yeah thanks for this! I like to think I'm a good fit for marriage, but the tail risks definitely keep me awake at night. It sucks.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1d ago
overestimated the US mainly because I did not account for the immense capacity for self-sabotage.
I'll wager that if we're still here in 3-5 years, you'll be saying the same thing about underestimating the Chinese capacity for self-sabotage. The United States isn't going to collapse in the next 5-10 year timeframe, and if we lose to China, it will be a long and drawn-out process. Not some knockout punch engineered by whatever the CCP department of foreign affairs is called.
I think they have enough talented people to do this, it's just those people have lost in internal politics.
Did those talented people lose in the 2000s during the GWOT era? Or in the 90s when we let American companies migrate to China en masse? When have these Mycroftian prodigies ever won in internal politics, what decisions did they make with said influence and where's the golden era in American foreign and domestic policy mediated by these people?
Manipulating the world is made much easier when you own major causal factors of that world. It doesn't take 200 IQ, though intelligence helps not to manipulate yourself into the ditch. All of great power politics is such manipulation. Suppressing competitors, strengthening allies, capturing international institutions
Like what, the financial system that proved utterly incapable of regime change in Iran or hindering Russia's ability to wage war? Toothless institutions like the UN, WHO or WTO?
networks of high-agency people, not by vague sentiment of the electorate. Sorry, that's just what we can observe happening.
Sure, the electorate isn't writing policy, nor should they.
That being said, the ability of anyone to influence systems this complex is limited, and related to how well we actually understand them. We designed computers from the ground up, and you can drill all the way down to machine code and circuit diagrams if you like. Mastery over the system makes you a 10x software engineer, or whatever the 10x hardware engineer is called. Diagnosing and fixing problems in a car or aircraft is eminently doable because we designed and understand all the parts ourselves.
On the other hand, reading all the economics textbooks in the world won't give you mastery over the stock market any more than learning fluid dynamics will help you understand the weather well enough to predict it perfectly. Biology PhDs can't even make basic predictions about how the system they've studied their entire career will behave in response to a given perturbation. And this is only partially due to the fact that they aren't very bright or talented in general, but more due to how complex and inscrutable biology is - at least to humans as we are now.
You bring up Russia and Ukraine - in March 2022, was there anyone (including what we can guess the US state department thought at the time!) who confidently predicted the outcome would be >= 3 year grinding war with little movement on the front, dominated by drone warfare? I saw plenty of takes that Russia was about to curbstomp Ukraine, then after the initial offensive failed, plenty of takes that Russia was about to collapse due to American sanctions, all of which turned out to be bullshit. If you can't predict that, I don't believe you when you say that Russia was capable of winning the war if they had just done it rationally, or that you or anyone could have figured out what to do differently in the leadup to reach a significantly different outcome. The outcome hinged on decisions made by thousands, if not millions of people - their morale, equipment, education, talent, weather, luck. If some South African entrepreneur had listened to all the people telling him not to build a rocket company, and the Ukrainian military never had access to starlink, would we be looking at a vastly different map? If Obama had pushed NATO to seriously stockpile arms and could provide Ukraine the materiel (shells, tanks, drones, whatever) to prosecute the war properly, ditto?
Yes. It's a stupid trade war and it's highly likely that no Tsinghua graduate will be so stupid. That aside, China has an official policy of not pursuing global hegemony. This certainly has no teeth, but Americans don't even have an equivalent toothless commitment.
I hope we don't see the future that proves you wrong. If Americans were truly hegemonic and held that as their goal, the world would look very different.
I think there are situations where nationwide injunctions make sense, both legally and as a matter of judicial economy, and situations where they don't. Steve Vladeck has an article discussing this in the context of the Alien Enemies Act litigation. Whether you can sue as part of a class, what process is due, whether the proclamation is even valid, are questions that currently have a range of answers across several different circuits. What is the benefit of doing litigation like this, where lots of people are similarly situated with respect to the core legal issues? I think in cases where there is a facial challenge to a government policy it makes all the sense in the world for a nationwide injunction to be an available tool. If there is no set of circumstances where a policy would be constitutional, that shouldn't have to be litigated separately in 90+ cases spanning every district (or possible defendant) in the country. On the other hand, when challenges are more as-applied I think the question is trickier. That seems like a case more ripe for class certification and litigation, for similarly factually situated plaintiffs.
I guess I tend to agree more with Professor Frost that I'd rather err on the side of enjoining the government from carrying out a constitutional policy than permitting them to carry out an unconstitutional one.
ETA:
I'm working my way through the oral argument transcript from this morning and the government's position seems... incredible? It's their position that Article 3 and the Judiciary Act of 1789 do not give courts the power to issue nationwide injunctions, including the Supreme Court of the United States. Their view is any broad based relief must come via class action. Which brings me to kind of an odd question. Can persons not yet born be part of a class action? Otherwise it would seem the government's position is every new babe must file their own lawsuit (class or individual) to vindicate their rights or else risk the government being able to violate them.
the_others
1d ago
I predict that, contrary to the usual pattern, a dating app which vetted the applicants on basic questions(stable and full time employment, criminal record, etc) would have more women than men, at least if it wasn’t just a matchmaking service.
If true, this sounds like a business opportunity, and not a particularly obscure one at that. Dating apps are basically all trying to figure out ways to get more women to use them, but I can't think of any apps that have tried this kind of verification. The closest I can think of are things like "The League", which requires users to submit an application (which consists of your Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, apparently?) and have it approved by the company before they can use the app, which is much different in that presumably they're not evaluating "basic questions".
Corvos
1d ago
For sure it sounds like she could have dealt with it more gracefully. I doubt that Starbucks is getting the best and brightest.
I also think it's the case for whatever reason that Americans seem to be much accepting about paring all relationships back to pure economics. I'm not sure why. Possibly because it's worked well so far. But I'm reminded of the way that in Japan falling below a certain level of politeness is just totally unacceptable no matter what, as is stuff like raising prices beyond the socially accepted level.
It's also bizarre to suddenly give life advice in the middle of an argument with someone over the Internet. Clearly you told him to do that as part of the argument, not because you have a habit of giving random advice to strangers.
Direct question before anything else- are you confusing different posters and posts?
Are you confusing this sub-thread response to Pasha's perception of ethics courses to Pasha's top-level comment about cheating, where my only direct response was a non-sequitur that noted from the start I was merely going off of the same article that I'd been intended an effort-post on? This is a completely different thread-chain. That thread had no argument with Pasha, and Pasha did not even respond to my post on that. He did have a later reply over what 'modern' means in na different context that I did not respond to (because I felt it was fair and valid).
Or are you perhaps confusing the Dean quoted by Pasha here to be referring to me, the user who goes by Dean, and not the Dean of the AvocadoPanic's post that he was replying to, an academic title? I.E., the Dean of a school?
Like, I would be charmed if after all these years someone publicly guessed why I've had this username for nearly a decade. And if this is a general misunderstanding due to the nature of different subthreads, that would clarify a lot.
But if you are not confused about what response chain you are in, there are three problems with your claim of clarity.
First, I have not had an exchange with Pasha on the subject of ethics classes. I have not opined on the merits or demerits of Pasha's position on ethic classes. Pasha has not responded to my post on alternatives to ethic classes. The only exchanges on my recommendation have been with not-Pasha one, and not-Pasha two (that's you).
Second, there is no dispute/argument between Pasha's position that I quoted, and my response to it. I agree with Pasha's claim that he has "never been exposed to an ethics class that wasn’t total non-sense taught by dimwit professors." I certainly have no reason to doubt his account or perception.
Third, 'giving random advice to strangers' is what a substantial proportion of my posts on The Motte are. I am, if anything, notorious for unsolicited, loquacious, and sometimes unwanted advice on random subjects of debatable utility to the individual.
These are, admittedly, often advice on how to understand current events, history, or governmental affairs. But I have also been known to offer advice on things to listen to during workouts or car drives, family-friendly media recommendations, limits on the use of historical metaphors, and even writing advice that I don't follow enough myself.
Trying to cut down on loquaciousness is what ironically has led to this exchange. Giving examples of how studying ethics could be useful could itself be perceived as patronizing/implying that Pasha did not understand that utility argument.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1d ago
The courts should do their jobs and not do someone else's job. There's no contradiction here. It's not about the total magnitude of their power, as if there's some number that should be summed up over all the things they do and try to make sure the sums line up, it's about jurisdiction. The role of the judiciary is to interpret the law as written and intended, and apply it to individual cases, which are frequently weird and contain many facts and details that might make them edge cases or involve multiple laws that need to be combined together.
If the law doesn't say a thing and an activist judge pretends that it does by inventing new definitions for words that clearly were not what those words meant when the law was written, then they are legislating their own new laws, not actually judging. If judges go to some agency run by unelected non-judges and asks them to interpret the law for them, then those people are the judges, and the elected judges are not actually judging. They're supposed to judge, not legislate, not outsource.
VinoVeritas
1d ago
Then just smile and ask me if I'm planning to order something or not. Like don't go full NPC drone corpo 'I have nothing to say about that' and act inhuman. What happened to being neighborly. Perhaps I am old man yelling at clouds
Edit: But no I'm not. Just give me a cup of water. That's a new one for me, to be told they're not allowed to give out water.
Corvos
1d ago
But you are not their neighbor. That implies they know you already. You are a stranger. A potential customer. This is their place of work, not a place to make friends. As an ex customer service worker myself I really want to stress this. People suck to deal with. The workers generally don't want to make friends with you. They want you to engage in the transaction that they are being paid for, so they can earn their money and go home.
To be fair, this is not the case at all times and in all places. It generally corresponds with scale and culture, and is much more the case in a big-chain shop than it is the case in, say, a little tea shop in a small town.
VinoVeritas
1d ago
Oh my god dude she could have just said 'I'm not allowed to talk about it' or 'I'm really just here to do my job' but all your words words words don't erase the inhumanity of the fact that two 'normal' people can't talk anymore about current events because of...all the stuff you just said
Edit: I live down the street. I did put 'neighbor' in scare quotes because I anticipated pushback but this stung-out poor old gal works two or fewer miles away from my home. We're neighbors. Or at least we're 'supposed' to be.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1d ago
Wouldn't this predict that large companies with huge customer bases and large, skilled dev teams (e.g. apple, google) would ship high-quality, stable, working software?
SSCReader
1d ago
I was happy to buy a coffee and buy one for the employee, or one of her colleagues, for their candid take on current events. I am their neighbor, at least, on paper. This entire conversation is satanic.
Note that is not what you said in your OP! You never mentioned anything about telling her you were willing to offer anything in return.
"When I told her I wasn't necessarily interested in ordering anything, but was very much interested in her thoughts on the 'strike' et al she gave me a stare that made a cow look intelligent."
But you are not their neighbor. That implies they know you already. You are a stranger. A potential customer. This is their place of work, not a place to make friends. As an ex customer service worker myself I really want to stress this. People suck to deal with. The workers generally don't want to make friends with you. They want you to engage in the transaction that they are being paid for, so they can earn their money and go home. It is not their job to give you their take on current events about their business. Especially with the possibility their job is at risk.
If you want to reorganize society such that a Starbucks employee giving their honest opinion at work to a random customer, means they do not risk being fired for it, then go ahead and work on that, but note that still does not mean they have to engage with you on anything outside the service they are being paid to deliver to you. Your relationship is transactional. Nothing more. The barista is not your friend, she is not even an acquaintance. She sees hundreds of people every day. Some of whom are nice and some of whom are unpleasant. She likely just wants to get through her mind numbing shift as easily as possible.
If you want to talk to someone who is off duty and make that same offer, then you have a bit more leeway. They aren't on the clock, they are probably a bit more relaxed, not being measured by their productivity, not having other employees over their shoulder, so many customer service employees will be much more happy to give you the truth (though they may still be suspicious if you come across as a journalist in a situation where there is a national protest or something going on).
Corvos
1d ago
But it's also understandable that employers don't want to be undermined by having any one of their employees act as impromptu spokesman for any cause, anytime, anywhere. Even the striking employees as a whole don't necessarily want that - remember how antiwork was basically destroyed by one bad interview?
I think it helps to consider people as having rights and responsibilities linked to the roles they play. When you are wearing a uniform and you are dealing with a customer, you are (like it or not) visibly representing the company and you are expected to do and not-do certain things. After work, it's different.
VinoVeritas
1d ago
Yeah, I should have just gotten a small black coffee and asked absentmindedly. I didn't do that because I didn't want to give Starbucks money, but that's what I should've done. Thumbs up
VinoVeritas
1d ago
I don't necessarily reject any of your assertions prima facie but this is an absurd way to organize society. I was happy to buy a coffee and buy one for the employee, or one of her colleagues, for their candid take on current events. I am their neighbor, at least, on paper. This entire conversation is satanic.
TheDemonRazgriz
1d ago
You weren’t even a real customer, you didn’t buy anything! She could’ve told you to piss off and make space for paying customers. You could have been a journalist (honestly this is much more likely than the reality of you just being some guy who was curious), and if she was quoted or her store was mentioned in an article she could get in trouble with corporate. And who really wants to talk to a journalist at work anyway? Especially right at the start of a shift.
My opinion of the average current-year-plus-ten starbucks barista is not that high either, granted, but you were not helping yourself here. If you really wanted an answer, you should’ve ordered a small black coffee (or whatever) and asked your question while she was ringing you up.
SSCReader
1d ago
For asking a question that you should have known if she answered may have got her fired? Back in my customer service days I'd have just rolled my eyes and ignored you, and called for the next person, as you had already said you didn't want to buy anything. Perfect plausible deniability for me. Then bitched about you to a colleague once you left. You'd probably make the "Can you believe what this customer did?" list when winding down after work. You may not have been at the top of the list. There are a lot of customers who do unbelievable things after all, but you'd probably have been on it.
To recap you walked into a retail establishment, to ask a contentious question about a labor dispute to a basic barista out loud in the open, where anyone could hear, and apparently did not consider that the barista would have been gambling that you weren't a snitch or that anyone overheard her, and expected her to answer. That is probably not your finest hour to put it mildly.
I don't think you thought through the consequences of what might have happened from her point of view. And therefore you are entitled to her scorn. That she kept it professional is to her credit. You are entitled to be treated professionally when ordering a latte or asking where they source their soy milk from. When you ask questions, the answers to which might get someone fired, you are off that reservation, and out on your own. She is not paid to answer those questions. It was rude of you to ask. Therefore rudeness back should be your expectation.
BurdensomeCount
Messenger Status: Shot
1d ago
Rates were around £35 per hour back when I did supos. Admitted this was a few years ago.
No_one
1d ago
This made women choose men more for "love" than provisioning, which made us regress to our biological roots. Women all naturally want a high-value man and so they broadly chased after the same small percentage of guys (in other words, women's standards went up). These lucky few men got their pick of the lot and could treat women like barely-sentient fleshlights
This is only a feature of the mid to late dating app era, this was not the norm until dating apps because these unusually attractive men just could not be in enough places to create the pickiness.
There was a lot of hatred of men already appearing before dating apps really took off.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
‘The tail risks of marriage(abuse, divorce, infidelity) between reasonable and eligible people who are compatible and committed to making it work regardless of the cost are lower than commonly believed’.
could be wrong, but I seem to recall tagging that user as a darwin alt.
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