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Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
19hr ago
Agree on LGBT, but for mental illness, it might be too lax, actually
We can't easily filter for "a total bitch who will drive you insane if you will have the misfortune to put a ring on her", so the next best thing is diagnosed mental illness. These categories heavily overlap, but the bitch category is almost certainly larger.
hydroacetylene
19hr ago
he people with shorter previous relationships are propably less likely to get married in the first place
IDK about this. People could be more likely to get married because they don't spend as much time dithering about it.
hydroacetylene
19hr ago
Again, I suspect that if you go to the nearest fundamentalist church you will find at least a few women who are virgins well into their twenties. They may have other problems, but if you wanted to join a filter bubble where you could get a virgin bride those exist.
My guess is that you- like most guys complaining about this- do not actually want the fundy tradeoff set. You don't want to be sole breadwinner, to have to give up porn, etc. But that's what the old-school marriage contract that you say you want looked like. Those are the conditions for having a submissive virgin wife.
rokmonster
Lives under a rok.
19hr ago
Very interesting post. I'm not entirely convinced, but let me turn it practical: where was the safest place to live when Rome turned from a Republic into an Empire, and where is the best place to live now? I've been worried that the Pax Americana is coming to an end, our Republic's core can no longer maintain its security, and that the international shipping lanes are seeing a lot more instability than before. But if Trump is to be our Caesar, then we will lose our Republic well before the point when our Pax Americana breaks down.
My focus right now is in settling and raising a large family, so where to settle in Roman times? I think "in Rome" proper is out: the city saw numerous riots and insurrections during the political chaos at the end of the Republic, and one does not want one's family caught in the chaos. However, the benefits of being a citizen of Rome were vast, with increased legal rights, commercial rights, and freedom of movement, so one probably wanted to raise one's children within the Empire (Saint Paul as a citizen of Rome was able to walk all around Modern Turkey unaccosted.) One also wants the benefits of industrial civilization (toilets!), so life outside the Empire is also not recommended.
What about the provinces? It depends a lot on the province. Some of them were subject to regular warfare and raids. The marker of these was that they were highly militarized and the risk of invasion was known. The provinces in the "middle ring" of the Empire were probably the safest place to be.
The other major dangers of industrial civilization are subfertility and industrial contaminants. The cities of Rome had poorer sanitation (more plague), high poverty, and greater rates of lead poisioning. Fertility among the elites was also much reduced in Rome due to later age at marriage and smaller family size. The provincial fertility rates were so much higher that the elite became more provincial toward the time of the Late Empire.
So, what would this mean in the modern day? Avoid the core cities due to low safety and low fertility: New York, London, DC, SF. Avoid the threatened periphery due to risk of invasion: Taiwain, Poland, Korea, and states with lots of military infrastructure like Nevada and the Great Plains states (Map of Nulear complexes 1 Maps of silos and predicted fallout patterns). It looks like the winning strategy is to settle the prosperous provinces: the eastern Midwest, Southern canada, Southern France, or Scandinavia.
hydroacetylene
19hr ago
I'll throw out an alternative answer- western courtship lengths are too long, and a couple of long term relationships that didn't work out could easily lead there.
hydroacetylene
19hr ago
In the case of McKenzie Bezos, she was functionally his business partner at the founding of Amazon and it simply hadn't been structured that way because they were married. This seems like a reasonable thing for the courts to decide in the event of divorce.
More to your point, being a good wife and mother is not, actually, easy. It isn't a super g-loaded task but housewives should be recognized for their valuable role and marital property in the event of a divorce seems fair. Neither Gates nor Bezos are poor after their divorces(which, again, were easily avoidable by those men).
TitaniumButterfly
19hr ago
Also if they had their own kids to worry about instead of foreigners.
Instead, new mexico is ruled by a party that
- Put the Taliban in power in Afghanistan
- Tried to ban all guns on a whim one day
- Deliberately invited in the largest wave of illegal aliens in US history
- Is stubbornly tolerant of public drug use on city sidewalks and parks
- Mandates lgbt exposure in school for 5 year old children.
- Imposes racial and sexual quotas
- Opposes the deportation of any and all illegal aliens
- Requires their legislators put lgbt flags on each of their desks (in some states, idk about new mexico)
Etc
I would rather have the Taliban start a legit civil war than let the enemy turn the US into a whole new thing.
stolen_brawnze
I am the way Sia says "batteries" in that one song.
19hr ago
Godspeed son.
hydroacetylene
19hr ago
Because it wasn't about corruption as such. They just didn't want Caesar (or, early on in his career, his allies Pompey and Crassus) to win
You'll forgive me if I find this to be more of a similarity between Caesar and the optimates/Trump and the establishment than a difference.
remzem
19hr ago
Never really liked him as a populist since he's basically open borders. He seems to lack a basic understanding of humans. It's become especially grating now though since he's basically this term's Romney/McCain/Cheney. Being held up by all the left wing posters as a conservative with morals and principals, aka beliefs that align more with their own.
phailyoor
19hr ago
"highly advanced AI chips"
Ooooh so scary. It's true that Nvidia is ahead right now and nobody who can get their hands on Nvidia will even consider anything else. But the fact is that AI accelerator chips aren't that hard to make, especially for a state level actor. As long as mainland firms have access to TSMC fabs for their blackbox designs, China won't be lacking in compute.
Also to say that UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, countries that can print money for decades with oil, are going to turn around and steal these AI chips for a quick buck is borderline absurd. Especially since UAE has already shown that they're willing to blow tons of money on half assed AI research in the name of getting some prestige for their universities and whatever.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ, Υἱέ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἐλέησόν με τὸν ἁμαρτωλόν
19hr ago
Has anyone else here played Clair Obscure: Expedition 33? I'm finding it incredible so far.
TIRM
19hr ago
So strange. I click it now and also see nice hat.
It was this when I copied it over, but on reddit rather than twitter.
Direct reddit image links are not persistent?
It was not really a dispute about whether corruption was acceptable or unacceptable. I would argue that the Optimates' desire to sweep it all under the rug was actually a step in the wrong direction. Caesar talked about corruption openly, and having a problem out in the open is the first step to solving it.
Because it wasn't about corruption as such. They just didn't want Caesar (or, early on in his career, his allies Pompey and Crassus) to win
You can't really map it unto America by making it all about corruption in the shady business deal sense. You can't really explain anyone's behavior here (though arguably some Optimates seem crazy or reckless either way) without the civil war that preceded Caesar and what it did to the Roman psyche.
America isn't really there.
Now that Donald Trump is openly messing with US tax policy for personal gain with his combination of tariffs and insider trading, maybe that will be the catalyst to finally pass laws against using secret government intelligence to make money trading stocks.
I mean, if we're going to compare to the Roman Republic, it should be noted that many attempts were made to pass laws to fix the problems caused by corrupt people. Including, sometimes, by those very people!
It didn't work, and the after-effects of their corruption and norm-breaking outweighed their good intentions.
The Republic, once it became so "corrupt" that it lost the ability to promise its citizens safety in the pursuit of politics, could no more legislate that back into existence than it could control the weather or enforce a positive economic sentiment.
You can't always get it back. You can't always write something that outweighs your lack of virtue. Sometimes you just break things.
ResoluteRaven
19hr ago
I think your LGBT and mental illness criteria are too strict, as they would exclude many young women who identify as bisexual or mentally ill due to peer pressure/social contagion and not because they belong in those categories as traditionally defined. For most of them it's just a phase they will grow out of, just as being an online edgelord with political opinions it would be unwise to discuss in polite company is for most of the young men here (no offense intended, I count myself among you).
Tree
20hr ago
Men have no reason to dislike sluts, on the contrary. It’s women. Like OP, women want the sexually promiscuous of their own sex, and I quote, ‘culled’. So that now perhaps, their dream partner, deprived of rival options, will turn to them, on their terms.
The women and their priest (religion, and Christianity in particular, being a woman’s game, with women’s ethics) always rail against the town bike. But most men secretly love the slut, as you recognize. And no wonder, because how can one love someone who gives seldom, and grudgingly? Men’s tragedy is there aren’t enough bikes to go around.
The fallen woman who pays the ultimate price? Yeah it’s common, but it’s part of the silly trope where the writer really wants to tell a mundane story that happened to him, he’s two-third done and fears he has nothing left to say, so to make it seem more important, give it some oomph and end it with a bang, Mr. or Mrs. Smith dies at the end for some ill-explained reason. It’s death out of a machine. And look at that, it's the end, and there's a death, just like in real life, death is the end. They all sit back and wait for the nobel after that flash of genius.
PyotrVerkhovensky
20hr ago
It's interesting that so many of the replies here seem to be "yes, but the other side is worse" or "yes, we need to take the bad with the good" or even "yes Chad".
I'm a Trump fan but I abhor corruption and wouldn't want to turn a blind eye to it. That said...only two of your examples (if true) would count as corruption?
- Melania doing a film. Actresses do typically get paid (directly!) for being in movies.
- Trump meme coin is cringe and low class but not corruption.
- I would need to look more into the Sun story as I hadn't heard of it. But it seems like there would be less obvious ways of paying off Trump than buying Trump coin? And why would Trump care about 40 million?
- The jumbo jet is a gift to the USA, not to Trump. It is a token of goodwill and a sign of respect. Trump is famously more open to deals after being shown respect, so it is possible that it helped grease the wheels but it is not corruption. It is interesting you cite Zvi. I read Zvi religiously, and he has been extremely critical of Trump's policies. Zvi was comparatively subdued in his criticism of the Middle Eastern AI deals, being merely skeptical. I updated in favor of the UAE/KSA/Qatar deal after reading his overview.
- Is Kushner even still in the inner circle? I thought he and Trump were on the outs. Regardless, if true, this would certainly be corruption and while Trump is not directly involved, he would have to know it was happening. That said, it does seem an odd grift for children of a billionaire to play.
- Previous presidents weren't billionaires; divestment wouldn't have had the same impact on their net worth. Retaining business holdings isn't inherently corruption, and could actually align incentives: if the American economy does well, so does Trump. Proof of Stake/Principal-Agent.
phailyoor
20hr ago
Maybe incel isn't the correct word stricly speaking. It's just coded in the sphere of ideologies such as red pill, mgtow, mra, pua, etc.
The fact is that OP claims he could be successful with women, but is still single, has been looking for years, and feels that worthy women are rare.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
20hr ago
My wife started significantly more liberal than me, but is now radically more conservative than I am, she was vehemently anti-religion, and is now an extremely devout Catholic who prays the rosary multiple times a day, wants endless deep conversations about religious philosophy, and would happily go to church with me every day if we could handle it with the number of kids we have.
Much of this problem exists because religious conservatives alienated young women with the abortion issue. At least from my perspective it doesn't look like they've taken any responsibility for that.
This is one reason I'm hesitant on pronatalism. A culture that is excessively pronatal will wind up empowering bad actors among both genders, as they can use it as a "get-out-of-jail-free card." "You prefer to remain single instead of marrying me because of I did X and Y, whadabout the fertility crisis, you wouldn't want to be a genetic dead end would you?"
anti_dan
20hr ago
I worked in a hard science engineering lab for most of my time in undergrad. The people work incredibly hard as Ph.D candidates and post docs, but so much of it is dedicated to grant writing, only a small bit of the work is working on the projects those grants are for. It seemed a lot like (frankly) college admissions. You have to apply to a dozen schools to get into one, and its not really clear why you got into that one instead of the others.
hydroacetylene
20hr ago
If you want to marry a virgin I’m quite confident there are a number of fundamentalist sects within driving distance of you that accept converts. Most of them will have desperate women at them. If you don’t you don’t, curable VD’s don’t seem any worse than anything else that comes from fornicating- indeed, unlike the emotional baggage, they can be fixed.
hydroacetylene
20hr ago
IIRC the USA got there, briefly, in the fifties, but men have typically been older than that at marriage- by world historical standards the typical marriage age would be around thirty for men.
hydroacetylene
21hr ago
Thé difference is that, although Trump may not personally be much more socially conservative than Matt Yglesias(emphasis on may- I could easily be persuaded to lean either way on this question. I don’t think either of them are wedded to their views on trans and abortion anyways), he is much more credibly committed to protecting the rights of social conservatives to be socially conservative. Even centrist inoffensive democrats would be happy to leave masterpiece cake shop to die.
Yes, and if they had homes to be arranging instead of trying to arrange society, and if they would spend more time talking to God and less to their therapists, and if....
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