domain:pedestrianobservations.com
rae
23hr ago
I guess there’s a big difference between a bi guy who’s secure in his bisexuality and has had relationships with both men and women, and one that’s still figuring things out. The former seems to use “pansexual” or “queer” as a label more often I’ve found? I can totally see why bicurious guys would be a problem though, and I don’t think I’d want to date one.
I’d date a trans man for sure if we’re compatible. It’s not that I’d be more attracted to one, but it makes things easier when you have a shared experience over things like dysphoria and the other person just gets it. Plus you don’t have to worry about them transitioning to a woman (which is weirdly common among men willing to openly date trans women).
gattsuru
23hr ago
Maybe I'm just too sheltered, but I'm not quite sure what you're insinuating here.
I mean it pretty literally: an employee sat down, explained what I was doing wrong, what the expectations for that specific space was, what likely failure modes I'd encounter if I continued as I was doing, and some alternative approaches.
I dunno what the guy's specific job was, but one of the older employees sat down and gave a ten or fifteen minute spiel, starting with the simple stuff like explaining what someone buying you a drink meant (only strictly speaking requires a conversation, but impolite to accept if you aren't looking for something more, with expectations of reciprocity, and how the tab worked under those circumstances) and how to handle it if the drink was unacceptable but the company wasn't (tell the bartender or waiter when you order your first drink that you're a teetotaler, even if you're not), that customers purchasing less than two beers worth were going to unspecified issues (hint hint), normal don't leave drinks unattended and know your limits for alcohol when you do drink. Eventually, what I'd missed about the name (a marijuana reference), what event nights were active for 'mostly' social stuff (poker or betting on watch football) and which were much more heavy on either hookups or otherwise might be a little too ribald for me (here's a flier; yes several include drag and/or guys in glorified speedos), and other spaces that might be easier to get friends to go to the bar with (admittedly, not very helpful given three of the recs were explicitly political orgs).
I have no idea how many of those conventions were even common back then and I'm sure many aren't common now.
But my read is that the "I'm a femboy and I fuck better than your girlfriend" is a strikingly common fantasy.
Uh... yeah. One of my first crushes was on a straight guy, and it wasn't the only such crush, add in a general shortage of tops, and there's a lot of reasons it works as a fantasy. And while I've never pursued it, you only really need one or two closeted guys for it to feel like it could work.
That said, the "I'll just go gay/date a femboy/date trans women" thing seems to have a little purchase, but only in the way that Trump wanting to buy Greenland is. It's a memetic negotiation tactic, a way of asserting "I have power over you no matter what you do!"
Maybe? I dunno how much of it's kidding on the square. A lot of soccons have looked at the number of younger generations self-identifying as bi and then not doing anything about it, but there's other explanations for that behavior that could end up changing pretty fast.
But that may just be me assuming many other people share my interests, and there definitely are starting to be people who try to take that approach and get surprised to find out exactly how poorly it works in practice.
But also straight men need to be real careful lest they start assuming that twinky femboys are drama-free sex machines.
Hah! Fair point. Even 'always up for sex' isn't anywhere near realistic, and that's assuming a lot of frot that straight or 'straight' guys aren't probably gonna be feeling. And it's very much just a different sort of drama, and not even that different, rather than as overt a difference in quantity as a lot of straight guys expect.
Hell, some of the times you don't even avoid the shoe-explosion.
What's particularly strange is this seems to be the overall campaign for HIV prevention, treatment, and testing, but the banners I recall specifically were advertising PrEP.
Interesting. I'll have to put some feelers out; this seems like the sorta thing where everyone involved was sure they were just presenting the most palatable experience, but by the end of the game of telephone it's somewhere between useless (like dental dams, PrEP for lesbians is probably not a high impact field: I think there's been literally one case of cisF/cisF HIV transmission through oral sex documented) and actively counterproductive (expecting partners to use a drug they can't get and wouldn't be helped by).
Tractatus
1d ago
This seems plausible from a kitchen table evo psych point of view: in the ancestral environment, all things being equal, the man who jumped at a chance to have no-strings-attached sex had a greater inclusive genetic fitness than the man who did not.
If this counts as "plausible" according to evo-psych, then evo-psych is even more of a joke than I already thought (I did not hold the field in high esteem as-is). No, a casual fling would not have been an advantage in the ancestral environment, because one or both would have been killed by the rest of the tribe, and they sure as hell wouldn't have pitched in to raise the kid.
A wise man once warned of crafting just-so stories, never do we ask "What does the world look like if this is true?" We can also ask "So, does the world look like that?" Our ancestral environment was not one in which Single Female Lawyers could get knocked up, yet remain sexy and self reliant; it was one in which chid rearing was insanely hard, and required the support of the tribe, who had no incentive to aid someone who couldn't be bothered to stay loyal to tribal hierarchy. It was also one in which the sexes were segregated, meeting the needs of the tribe as their sex allowed. Opportunities for surreptious coupling would be few and far between; a man and woman - who the tribe did not already recognize as coupled - would have arroused suspicions.
All this talk of evo-psych as applied to modern (emphasis on "modern" as opposed to "traditional") mating practises sounds like nothing so much as the never-ending attempts to square the absurdly high rates of obligate homosexuality in humans with basic evolutionary theory; perfunctory just-so stories that fall apart under the slightest investigation (something something "reasoning from first principles doesn't work for human interaction"). We know what kind of animal selects for female preference, and it doesn't look anything like human social organization. Even more, if we evolved for female preference, then why the hell is it failing so badly on the one metric that counts, human reproduction?
It should be blindingly obvious that humans short-circuited mating by means of social mediation, much like our simian relatives. This is far from uncommon in the animal kingdom; on the one hand, I can click on a Youtube video and watch the larva of a parasitoid wasp that has evolved an insanely specific method of feeding that allows it, without anything that could justify being called intelligence, to carefully eat only the parts of its host to provide nourishment without killing the host as long as possible. Then I can click on my "recommended" list and see a cheetah mother trapping a helpless foal, and spend hours watching her dumb-as-shit cubs play with said foal, lacking even the basic instinct to hunt. They literally didn't evolve the basic senses necessary to get food, they have to learn it from observation and trial-and-error, is it really so hard to imagine that humans didn't evolve mate selection, it's just something that has been passed down from generation to generation (see also farming, which isn't an evolved instinct in any human observed)?
Smuggs
1d ago
I would say...why worry about it? There aren't even going to be standard humans around in 100 years. The amount of self indulgence and narcissistic focus putting this much of yourself into your personal sexuality and sexual history is astonishing. That is what i don't get about people. It is just sex. A warm hole and an orgasm.
SSCReader
1d ago
Associated with middle class striving, so probably skewed Protestant back in the day. My grandmother did keep the toaster in a cupboard. My mum doesn't.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
1d ago
Almost all Western nations have lifted blanket restrictions for MSM donating blood. Iceland just removed theirs at the beginning of July. I believe it's just Greece and Croatia left, which probably tells you something about the Greeks.
Based on some quick Googling, there didn't appear to be any significant changes in technology between 2011, when the rules started being relaxed, to what we see today. The retrovirals were available well before then. I take it back, I could probably have done a better job than these regulators, they seem too risk averse. At least they've moved on by now!
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
1d ago
· Edited 13hr ago
In the US, they're starting to push it to the point of having advertisements on bus stops and park benches in my local area... and I'm not in an especially gay or even urban space.
I pass a prep billboard on my daily commute and I spend at least a few minutes a week thinking about the demographic/regional dynamics involved and how deliberate it may or may not have been.
Edit: that was unnecessarily vague, I was hurrying.
The billboard is in the ambiguously industrial/lower-working-class/gentrifying border between a mid-size Southern city and one of its slowly-absorbed suburbs/satellites. A "neighborhood in transition," one might say. The area is poorer and blacker than the main city, and socially if not politically conservative on average. The sign features a black guy at the prettier end of handsome without crossing into effeminate, and some phrase about staying safe. Demographically correct but a bit socially off, perhaps in that way of ignoring any stigma by the sign being 'generic'?
Nobody I work with actually lives around here and I'm not going to ask one of the attendants at the nearby gas station or Asian market "hey, what do you think of that sign up there?" so on the ground reporting remains as yet untold.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
1d ago
no-gay-guy-would-wear-this setup
One of those "Federal Breast Inspector" T-shirts.
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
None of this is very concrete and side steps the entire risk-reward framework.
Does it? "Not having a fundamental moral right infringed upon" is a kind of reward, surely. You may as well ask why a traditionalist sexual mores shouldn't simply shoot all transgressors without a trial. I'm sure a practical argument could be constructed on why such a policy would be detrimental to society along some tangible metric, but that's not why any sensible person will immediately reject such a proposal with horror: it's because they feel that killing people is, all else being equal, morally wrong. This isn't "concrete" and it "side-steps the risk-reward framework", but all the same, you can't have a real conversation about the issue without bringing it up.
In the same way, as a true liberal, I feel it is, all else being equal, axiomatically, fairly wrong to prevent people from doing whatever the hell they want; and doubly wrong to force them to do things they don't want to do. Society naturally has to mandate a little bit of each to keep itself running, but that's a trade-off from the word go, and you should only add more restrictions and duties with the understanding that you are doing harm to your citizens with each new bylaw by infringing upon those basic rights, so the payoff had better be damn good. Traditional sexual norms include a fair bit of forcing women to do things they don't want to do, and positively enormous amounts of preventing people of both sexes from doing things they want to do. There's an enormous penalty in the "cons" column on that basis alone, and in a world where STDs and unwanted pregnancies are under control, the fuzzier benefits just don't have a snowball's chance in Hell of making up for it. It's like asking what kind of subtle improvement to demographic statistics would be worth mandating that people whack themselves in the knee with a hammer every morning.
That's true but Mauritius and the Chagos Islands are 1200 km from eachother, they were only in the same French administrative zone together because they're small islands in the Indian Ocean and the British kept the French organization. It makes little sense for Mauritius to have the islands when they never historically controlled them (the Maldives is at least closer and they fished around there) and there's no significant proximity.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Clearly you wouldn’t pass a CR ideological Turing test- literally, having a kid is seen as a blessing. Do you hate children or something? Evangelicals and Catholics don’t either.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
1d ago
A Pride flag plus a "Black Lives Matter" sign is pretty much obligatory for every business in a "hipster" neighborhood. Just means "We support $CURRENT_THING". Reminds me of Havel's greengrocer.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
1d ago
It's possible there are better tests, or better HIV suppression medicine these days that might change the math.
Or cultural changes more willing to suffer the consequences, and/or less willing to produce that particular kind of stigmatization.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
1d ago
Thank you. I guess I'll stick to the facts, and put my plans to join a Zizekian commune somewhere where the sun doesn't shine.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
1d ago
Sure. I'm just noting that the more qualified people did run the numbers, and even with screening tests denying donations from MSM was a good call - at least 10 years ago. It's possible there are better tests, or better HIV suppression medicine these days that might change the math.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
aren't indicators of anything in a place with a normal field of candidates
But it's an indicator New York is no longer normal. And it will be inevitably seen by Democratic leadership as a sign that non-normal candidates can win elections, and it's OK to nominate more of them. First we take Manhattan, then...
quiet_NaN
1d ago
I believe that the Christian right, which is the camp of most pro-lifers, see non-procreative sex as inherently sinful.
There are probably some people who really hate abortions but are fine with fucking around, and will get their daughter an IUD at age 12 so she is protected from pregnancy, while also being fine with her experimenting with her 14yo boyfriend.
But the modal pro-lifer would emphasize that abstinence until marriage is the only 100% effective birth control. (For perfect use. For hormone-laden teens who do not typically get married before 20, I think that the Pearl Index for abstinence would be rather abysmal.)
Take the official Catholic position (my emphasis):
Therefore We base Our words on the first principles of a human and Christian doctrine of marriage when We are obliged once more to declare that the direct interruption of the generative process already begun and, above all, all direct abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as lawful means of regulating the number of children. (14) Equally to be condemned, as the magisterium of the Church has affirmed on many occasions, is direct sterilization, whether of the man or of the woman, whether permanent or temporary. (15) Similarly excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means. (16)
So it is not that abortion is very bad and using a condom or getting a sterilization after your fourth kid is a little bad -- they are all similarly worthy of condemnation. At the end of the day, at least the pope cares little about unborn kids being killed and a whole lot about people having deliberately non-procreative sex.
I think from a Catholic theology point of view, abortion, sodomy, sex outside marriage, sex within marriage with contraceptives and masturbation are all mortal sins. If you commit any of them and are not cleansed by baptism or confession, you go to hell. Might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, and all that.
In conclusion, I think that the CR does not see single motherhood as a punishment for fornicating women, but simply as a natural consequence of her act which should be her cross to bear. But the underlying idea seems to be that during the heydays of Christianity -- in the good old days -- the choices of a woman were (1) marriage, (2) chastity (e.g. becoming a nun) or (3) being a fornicator, which meant to be an outcast of polite society. (Sure, gays and lesbians could always fuck around without biological consequences, but at least for men there were severe legal consequences instead.) Birth control and abortion have changed that equilibrium in a way which leads to a lot more sexual immorality especially from women (as men were probably always going to whorehouses). If birth control is illegal, then a woman are much less likely to engage in PIV sex outside marriage and will have their hands full with their kids instead of dyeing their hair green and studying feminism, or something -- I do not claim that I would pass the CR ideological Turing test.
Try explaining to an immigration officer that you're visiting America to... write blog posts... at a place run by... internet rationalists
Probably wouldn't be as bad as you think. They have heard much weirder stories, and yours, while a bit unusual, is easily verifiable and documented, and if it doesn't look like you are intending to become an illegal immigrant they won't spend too much time on you. They have a lot of cases to go through. One thing that could help is getting some kind of officially looking document (the more official looking, the better) that says in clear and official language what is it about and that it's just for a month and you are not going to work in the US, it's just educational or whatever. Talking to somebody that knows how it actually works - e.g. immigration lawyer - may be a good idea too. You may to have to pay a little (it shouldn't cost much, it's not a complicated case) but they probably would tell you which stupid things not to do. Usually problems in this area come from people doing some stupid thing (e.g. telling the immigration officer they'll be working while on tourist visa or something like that).
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
1d ago
· Edited 13hr ago
As I've bemoaned on multiple occasions, nobody is making the UK do this. The ICJ doesn't count, I've seen arthritic dogs ready to be ol' Yeller'd with a better bite:bark ratio. You can - if you are a sovereign state larger than Sealand - just ignore them. Mauritius? Why are they going to do, cancel Jet2 holidays and paddle over in their canoe?
Has anyone considered pitting one sacred cow against the other? Someone needs to tell Starmer that he could fund the NHS and pensions for another 3 weeks with the money.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1d ago
Is that really a thing?
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
1d ago
Thank you! I'm not getting paid by the piece, it's more that I'll quickly have to figure out a hotel if I don't keep producing them.
I intend to write back to Lightcone, but they've left me till the end of the month. I need to figure out exact dates and visa considerations, and I wanted to get the easy questions out of the way before pestering them.
phailyoor
1d ago
This is not true. AI search is not programmed to be critical of sources, so it becomes a pure garbage in garbage out situation.
On heavily SEOed queries, AI search is in fact much much worse than just asking the AI directly. In August 2025 I will not touch "grounded" AI with a 10 foot pole it's dogshit.
This guy asked AI for a "grounded" query and the AI happily cited a fake scam website front and center.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
1d ago
Gemini 2.5 Pro is the best free LLM, because Google lets you use a nigh unlimited amount on AI Studio. All the other models of comparable quality are paywalled, but G2.5P is up there as one of the best nonetheless.
I've heard credible claims that a version that was allowed to think longer/in-parallel won IMO Gold this year, in conjunction with more bespoke models. I might be misremembering, but some people claimed to have gotten golds using just the public version and a lot of prompting.
I agree that Malaysia walkability is generally awful, but I've been to about 60% of the country's major cities and have only seen pockets of what I'd consider proper Poverty. Even places like Sabah and Sarawak tend to have a floor of 'okay' housing, for a given value of okay. I've lived in Darwin and spent time in Broome & a few other parts of Northern Australia and I've seen a lot worse than the typical Malaysian dwellings in a similar climate.
Personally I'd consider KLCC a bit of a confusing dump. Petaling Jaya is where most of the best areas for livability are, partly due to demographic reasons and there's islands of gated communities practically everywhere in the greater Klang Valley. Also the vibes in Putrajaya where it's the government swinging around large amounts of oil money and still a bit of a ghost town are quite different to the affluent suburbs of PJ.
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