VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
19hr ago
I know a Jewish family that has carefully acquired and maintained multiple passports across generations rather openly based on the lived experience of their parents (and grandparents, and great grandparents) during WWII. The cynics would say "rootless cosmopolitans" here (and maybe there is an element of that), but having heard their Holocaust stories second-hand, I see why they care so much.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
19hr ago
Moose bites can be pretty nasti
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
19hr ago
Just three? I was there for several hours, and if the blurb was accurate, the damn thing looped every 17 minutes.
Rest assured I quickly stopped paying much attention.
TIRM
19hr ago
My school teachers are not trusted to make good judgments. They'd screw up corporal punishment. In a better world we'd have reliable teachers who could correctly determine who needs a paddling. We don't live in that world.
Arnaud
19hr ago
Unless I've been reading maps really wrong up to this point, North Koreas main adversary is immediately to its south and connected by a land border.
Corvos
19hr ago
Remember that one culture-war flashpoint is the fact that the vast majority of asylum seekers are getting sent to the places that are too poor and too lacking in political power to refuse them. People are pissed. If there's one thing the English still believe in, it's in everyone doing their part.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
19hr ago
The 'charitable' explanation seems to be utter bureaucratic incompetence. The cynical one would be that said bureaucrats are trying to prove a point, getting one over the financiers too big for their britches.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
19hr ago
Just give police their nightsticks back. A poke in the back or a tap on the shins is enough to motivate most people to move along while discouraging the impulse to fight back.
celluloid_dream
19hr ago
We observed the strange outcome of a government policy decision: an attempt to convert a luxury hotel in the heart of the Wharf into a center for asylum seekers. Leaving aside the political firestorm, the pure economic logic is baffling. It seems like an attempt to solve a problem using the most expensive possible tool, a phenomenon I've noticed governments are particularly prone to.
To tug on this particular culture war thread, I also don't understand why anyone would agree to this. Even if your only allegiance were to the asylum seekers, you could house more asylum seekers with the same funding in cheaper real-estate on the outskirts of the city. See also: homeless shelters, rehab centers, halfway houses, etc.
Throwaway05
20hr ago
The UK was doing well, or at least okay, until the middle 2000s.
Auspicious timing, I just started watching Top Gear from the beginning and early in the second series (which would be 2003?) they have a bit on the Humber Bridge and the decline of British efficacy, engineering, and manufacturing.
It sounded like the kinda thing you'd see in the news in the US or Uk today but over 20 years ago.
I think someone on the left might point to that and indicate that the fears are overblown but I'm more concerned about how far we've fallen and how much further we may yet fall.
FtttG
20hr ago
The OP uses the Hannibal directive as an example of how Jews are very unsafe
Even saying "very unsafe" is an example of exactly the kind of thing I'm complaining about. In an actuarial table of how Israelis met their ends since the founding of the state, would "being intentionally killed by the IDF to prevent them from being taken hostage by groups hostile to Israel" even crack the top hundred most common causes of death? The top five hundred? The top thousand? No, obviously not. And yet critics of Israel have this obsessive fixation on the Hannibal directive as evidence of how uniquely barbarous the nation is - when in reality, a counterfactual world in which the Hannibal directive didn't exist would only mean a tiny handful of Israelis would still be alive.
Let me put this in terms that you might find more agreeable: being shot dead by a police officer is a live possibility for black Americans in a way it isn't for black Britons, or indeed black citizens of just about any European country. But if you were investigating the causes of the reduced life expectancy among black Americans relative to other ethnic groups, "risk of being shot dead by police officers" shouldn't even enter into the equation. It's evidence of a mindset warped by political partisanship.
Throwaway05
20hr ago
Would mod notes allow this, wouldn't otherwise need anything technical?
"Informed user they were on thin ice and needed to stay out of the culture war thread until 9/1, if caught posting in CW thread give a 6 month ban."
Person would need to remember not to post, but if they do and it leads to mod action....off with their head. If they forget and post in the CW thread and nobody notices, well not the end of the world anyway.
Corvos
20hr ago
It's not something I make a habit of. I felt the information was broadly public knowledge.
quiet_NaN
20hr ago
Jeffrey Epstein
I am of the opinion that as far as securing the US support for Israel, Epstein is not even in the top ten, and possibly not in the top 100.
Most politicians have a thing were they accept campaign donations from special interest groups in exchange of political consideration. Some US Jews are very rich. At the risk of sounding like an antisemitic conspiracy nut, I think political donations are the main way that the US position towards Israel is influenced. (For the record, there is also Christian Zionism to consider, as well as the fact that Israel sometimes just is a good ally to the US.)
Nor is it only Jews who can lobby. United Fruits certainly influenced US policy, for example.
By contrast, blackmailing politicians with videos of them fucking underage girls is much riskier. If such an operation was traced back to Mossad, it would create an existential threat for Israel. And even then, a politician bound to your will through blackmail will likely resent you and try to undermine your cause, while a politician who sees you as a big donor will proactively try to keep you happy.
When Epstein was active, few people cared really about Palestinians. "No political donation could convince me to send bombs to Israel, but faced with the threat of the blackmail material being revealed, I am willing to kill a few Palestinian kids" was very much not the stance.
And even if Mossad had wanted to blackmail senators, having a single "Pedophile (sic!) Island" seems a strange way to go about it. Once you reveal the first bit of footage and the first senator 'fesses up, the cat is out of the bag and Epstein is implicated. What you would want to do instead is to target the politicians independently, so you can reveal any slice of evidence without compromising your whole operation.
but marrying the rich guy is generally how we define winning for a woman.
I think the "peasant girl catches the princes' eye" has been a fairy tale for eons... for a reason. So yes.
But the 'winning' move that is more attainable is generally to pick a guy early who becomes rich and successful, thanks to concerted efforts between the two of you. The blatant stereotype is that women don't chase guys, they wait at the finish line to bang the winner, of course.
But for women who have good guidance and play their cards right they can get that guy locked down before he hits his jackpot.
The problems that arise from that came up in last week's discussion on divorce laws.
That said, when you talk about "soft harems" I think we're mixing up what the data here is about.
I mean, when I say "soft" harem, I usually mean girls who are willing to be on 'rotation' as a booty call, maybe they occasionally get a ride in the sports car or boat, or a nice dinner, but they're really just occupying the spot in the vain hope that he DOES settle for them.
So the physical capital outlay is minimal, he's not keeping her in a fancy apartment or buying her lavish gifts regularly, that'd defeat the point.
I strongly suspect even the ultra wealthy would rather not spring for a real harem, its a more complex operation that you can really justify. Its like, why pay for a personal motor pool when Uber provides approximately the same level of service for 1/3 the price.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
20hr ago
That’s a lot of words for saying “I don’t like the people who mention bad thing so I will make up an imaginary argument in my head and win it”. Congratulations I guess.
The OP uses the Hannibal directive as an example of how Jews are very unsafe in modern Israel in a way they aren’t in pretty much any other modern country. This is trivially true no matter how much you foam about the true intentions of the people who mention this uncomfortable fact.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
20hr ago
Indeed. I suppose I'm just averse to talking behind backs, as it were. A lesson learned the hard way, along with "do what you say you're going to do." (Which is irrelevant here but a lesson I learned nonetheless.)
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
20hr ago
I don't disagree, but at some level...call me old fashioned, but marrying the rich guy is generally how we define winning for a woman. No one is disputing that rich men can find poor women attractive, but if they aren't marrying them, then it's sort of irrelevant to the outcome of the match.
Saying that rich men are really attracted to something other than what they're marrying is just kind of a misunderstanding of terms in my mind. Like saying that the team that is losing baseball games is better at baseball than the team that is winning baseball games. Or, to mix sports metaphors, it brings to mind the classic Sampaoli quote on possession in soccer:
“One night, I went to a bar; I was with a woman. We talked all night. We laughed, we flirted, I paid for several drinks of hers. At around 5 am, a guy came in, grabbed her by the arm and took her to the bathroom. He made love to her and she left with him. That doesn’t matter, because I had most of the possession on that night.”
For a woman trying to net a rich husband, it doesn't really matter if he stares at the big-titted waitress at the bar, it barely matters if he bangs her on occasion. It matters who he marries, who he supports financially, who has the children he raises and supports. Those are the goals, the sex is just passing the ball(s) around.
((That said, when you talk about "soft harems" I think we're mixing up what the data here is about. The granularity on income stops at percentile. The top 1% of income is "only" about $400k/yr. While I suppose, with some cleverness, you could manage to squirrel enough away to spend enough to keep a glamour girl on the side off that, you're not keeping a harem. DiCaprio or Trump, ultra wealthy celebrities, are in another stratosphere from the data on record here.))
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
20hr ago
Manner Wafferl are dangerous indeed. Im not sure the average cops waistline can take it.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
20hr ago
Beats me. I have no real sense of how far away more remote locations that are reachable by subway are.
Maybe ten handegg fields per minute?
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
20hr ago
Israel's relationship to the West Bank is that of a military occupier. Gaza is largely occupied now, but from 2005 until 10/7 was not occupied. A blockade is not occupation.
srid
20hr ago
Is anyone familiar with Rands Leadership Slack? Is there a better community that this, for tech leadership discussions? Preferably not political (Rands is still kinda woke).
birb_cromble
20hr ago
They want peers who can fit in with their social and work circle and who will advance alongside them.
Don't marry her unless she can secure an alliance with the Burgundians.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
20hr ago
· Edited 20hr ago
"What fraction of men would dick another guy if there was a non-gay way of doing it?" I would bet that the real number is in the 3-10% range.
Well, "date" is different from "dick", and the chief complaint from trans women is that men are willing to have sex with them but not be seen in public.
I recall there was a survey (probably not a great one, but whatever) that something like 1/3 of men had had a sexual fantasy about a transgender partner. There's also a stat that the "trans" section of PornHub is one of the top categories. So you're correct that the level of sexual interest in trans women is higher than is accounted for in the 3%.
But the fact remains that we're still talking about less than one percent of the population, which already regards men being interested in them as highly suspect precisely because of the gulf between that 33% and the 3%. Statistically, any given man that expresses interest in them is around ten times more likely to be looking for an exotic sexual experience than a relationship, and the majority are uninterested in that -- not least because being transgender implies a certain discomfort with one's genitals, around which the sex fantasies often orbit. The minority that is interested in being an exotic sex fantasy is highly likely to be swamped by offers and choosy the same way cis women are.
But also, "having a sexual experience" is only one of the many reasons a man might desire the companionship of a woman. "Being seen as a man who has been chosen by a woman" is also a huge factor -- and it's one that the hypothetical about AI girlfriends doesn't take into account.
I don't disagree that some men on the margins are exploring alternative sexual experiences with gay men or trans women or whatever, but this just isn't a big enough segment of the population to have much of an effect on what straight people are doing.
I feel like this is missing some obvious "thirteenth tribe" joke, maybe in reference to the great Mormon work of literature Battlestar Galactica.
More options
Context Copy link