domain:asteriskmag.com
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
2d ago
The rich and powerful are expected to get away with some crimes. Sex trafficking children is not on that list.
In a civilized society, that kind of behavior gets you executed, and not because you know too much.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Feral dogs are mostly a problem in places that don’t have wild boar(Americas, Australia). Mustangs have not outcompeted native wild horses for the simple reason that America doesn’t have any. And coyotes and wolves both outcompete feral dogs.
Theres interesting things going on with the evolution of feral cats, but in Australia and deserted islands, not the USA(which has bobcats).
hydroacetylene
2d ago
These people will have South Korean tier fertility and they will not, actually, produce a race of super geniuses. They’ll produce photogenic phlegmatic types because that is what kids as luxury goods fill the need for. Docile and looks like a teddy bear.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
This isn’t an ‘act of desperation’, this is an act of smiting an enemy when you hold the rod. Thé DOJ likely has standing orders to go after any left winger they can.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
That has nothing to do with the Freon, that’s energy saving stuff.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Propane runs at normal Freon pressures. The government limits the amount that goes in a system for neurotic safety reasons(it’s flammable), which restricts its use to refrigerators and smaller air conditioners. But it works very well in those things.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Am HVAC tech. Modern refrigerants are generally ok mechanically. Your theory is widely believed in the field but R410 is a fine refrigerant- it’s high pressure so there’s more leaks but it works just fine when it isn’t leaking. Propane would be even better but neurotic safety regulations the manufacturers oppose means it’s a good while before it’s going to be legal to fill a whole unit with it.
The reason new A/C units suck is because of energy efficiency stuff thats sometimes government environmental regulations and sometimes the factories trying to make it more expensive. Lots of the time it’s bypassed in practice.
Don't know, don't want to know, and don't think its even the same league as the excellence that may only be provided in smaller amounts. Things like 4bpp's post on masculine restraint on the potential for violence, or WhiningCoil's post on the sort of envy/jealousy/loss of feeling 'raised wrong,' are all the better for being distinctly personal in ways I probably never will try to.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Finally, note that the inverse of that statement, "a system with five lazy layabouts who still get paid and one person who does the actual work", is an accurate characterization of unionized workplaces.
Unionized companies spend more on salaries and the like, but do you have evidence for a productivity difference between unionized and non union blue collar workplaces? While there’s surely a profitability difference actual productivity doesn’t seem to differ that much.
She's not like other bargirls, bro. You're definitely not just another John to her, bro. Plus, sex workers would never lie to their clients, bro.
You went all the way to the Philippines to spend your time with a single-mother prostitute? The Hock would sound like a better use of time to me.
And then you nutted inside her. Are you intentionally speed-running the cardinal list of "things not to do" as a Western man in Southeast Asia?
I understand the thought of having an out-of-wedlock child with a single-mother prostitute is rather unpalatable, to say the least. Especially a potential daughter, who would almost certainly follow in her mother's footsteps.
An expected value calculation is tough: while the severity might be high (she's pregnant and the baby is yours), the probability is low. Here are three possible avenues to consider:
- Do nothing, don't send her money. Ignore or block her. Chances are she's lying about being pregnant and if she isn't, it being yours. Even if she's pregnant and it's yours, there's no guarantee she'll abort instead of having the baby and sticking you with two decades of financial support for her, the baby, and her two others kids. Or if she's pregnant and it's not yours, pretending to you and her other Johns that it's each of yours, potentially earning up to two decades of financial support from each of you—a diversified portfolio of passive income from her scrotation.
- Send her the money for the abortion pills. Might be worth it for peace of mind. However, then be ready for escalations in the guilt-tripping and sob stories, saying how she loved you too much to go through with the abortion, and now needs even more money for pre-natal care and to make ends meet (especially since the pregnancy is or will soon be interfering with her job performance).
- Play a reverse uno card. Use her own spells against her. Love-bomb and smother her. Say you can't wait to be a family together, that you already quit your job in preparing to move to the Philippines so you, her, the baby, and her two kids can live happily ever after. You're stoked to be a dad to three; you wouldn't be a stepfather, but the one who stepped up. You knew it was destiny from the moment you saw her in that club. However, funds are tight now that you're out of work. Before she starts showing, can she pick-up some extra shifts at the club to help out with your plane ticket? You two can do a paternity test together after you move in with her, just a lame formality that your paranoid lawyer best friend insists upon while the fairytale continues. See if she breaks the sound barrier in getting an increased ick and blocking you from everywhere possible.
(edit... should I just move to the Philippines and raise a family there? the living there is really cheap so i could afford it. But there's really not much to do there except drink, fuck, and pray)
You're telling on yourself with that problematic remark about there being nothing to do in the Philippines except drink, fuck, and pray. It betrays a reductionist, colonialist attitude toward a country with a rich history, a diverse region with a stunning variety of cultural and geographical beauty. After all, what kind of sick fuck prays?
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Put the factory workers in the same union to demand the right to preassemble and hole drill. Make two wrongs make a right.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
MAGA is not particularly anti-market, though? It’s anti fiscal conservative which brings its own set of issues but MAGA slashes regulations when it can.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
where he leverages connections and money to get off with a slap on the wrist and the government not looking too closely
Nobody disputes this, though. Well connected billionaires getting away with stuff is Tuesday.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2d ago
But it’s a big deal if a group of Zionists, by way of Mega Group founder Les Wexner who seeded Epstein with 200-400 million dollars, was involved in blackmailing influential Americans to do Israel’s bidding as part of some insane fifth-gen lobbying campaign. It’s a very big deal that Jeffrey Epstein’s own brother says
In the 2016 election, we were talking about the election and Jeffrey told me that if he said what he knew about the candidates, they would have to cancel the election
(as I predicted in a comment weeks back). There’s a lot of evidence that this is what happened which I won’t rehash as I’ve commented on it enough recently.
If I intended to separate from her forever, which I'd be doing in a similar case, I'd cut contact before she could tell me whether she did or didn't do it.
As I understand it you feel like you are responsible for a child regardless of whether she had it solely to suck money from you or not. I can't help with that. My view on how much DNA matters in terms of creating a metaphysical link between father and child is dim. If she schemed to do it, she can have the whole damn responsibility for raising a third kid in the third world.
Lesson for the future I guess, wrap it up. Especially when fucking strippers. Especially in the third world.
BahRamYou
2d ago
alright. yeah, like you said it's personal. thanks for talking to me in this semi-anonymous way.
The law is fucked about this actually. Legally speaking, even if the woman intentionally lied about being on birth control or even outright forced you to have sex you could be held liable for child support as the father. The only thing that stops this from happening right now is that you are in the States (I assume) and she is in the Philippines.
What I've stated in my prior comment isn't a legal opinion, it's just my take. It's me just very systematically stating that for the above reasons, if you ask me personally I wouldn't feel obliged to provide support. This is of course assuming there is even a kid in the first place and that it is yours.
Ultimately though, this is a very personal question to ask and I can't answer it for you. In the end it's up to you to decide what you can live with; there isn't any way for me to absolve you of your moral code, no matter how much it might differ from mine. I would not do it though.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
Just approximating, I think it's about 30 dollars per taxpayer per year, (lazily 4.9 billion in 2024 / 161 million tax returns), for 20 million lives supported. A decent chunk less if you adjust for progressive taxation, though I'm too tired to actually estimate it. Just as a thought experiment scaling it up, would we burden every American taxpayer with 1-3,000 dollars per year to save 2 billion people? Maybe that's on the border, I think I'd lean yes. I don't think by itself PEPFAR counts too much as a slippery slope or anything because PEPFAR is kind of unique in terms of the cost efficiency or opportunity, there are no other PEPFARs. Disclaimer: not an EA type, don't know the nitty gritty, and happy to have someone correct me on the numbers if wrong.
BahRamYou
2d ago
that seems like a very legal response. Like, yeah, i Know i'm not legally responsable. But I still feel bad. What would you do? not asking for a legal opinion, just your opinion as a bro. let her raise the kid in poverty, give her money forever, or just assume she's a lying bitch?
No, I'm assuming that the situation is that she's actually pregnant and it's actually yours. Basically, if it's planned as "a more elaborate scam to get pregnant" like what you described.
Let's say you give her the 20 dollars and a child results anyway:
1: She told you she was on birth control, and if she is pregnant it is almost certainly the case that she was not. If she did so intentionally (note this is likely: she is a stripper who would have experience with this), that is extremely abusive behaviour.
2: You have provided her the finances necessary to buy the abortion pills she needs. She has not availed herself of this option.
It seems clear that any child resulting from this is entirely a consequence of her decisions and actions, and she chose to have it against your will. As such, you definitely do not need to participate.
BahRamYou
2d ago
Right, you're firmly committed to your prior that she's lying about everything and I'm a naive idiot. So in that case the correct choice of course is to give her nothing and walk away.
But since I'm actually in this situation, I have to think about other possibilities so...
If this is baby trapping and she lied about being on birth control, I would reiterate my assertion in my prior comment: This is something she's committed against you and as such you're not obliged to participate. But it ultimately depends on what you feel you can live with.
I think that pure altruism is only impossible under the one definition that also renders "selfless behaviour" trivially impossible. You choose your own actions, so you naturally choose the ones you like the best, even if what you like the best is something like "to mistreat myself for the sake of others".
But let's talk psychology: Our mental states exist in a high-dimensional space, and one of the dimensions seems to be poverty-abundance. This is easy to miss if you haven't experienced the extremes of both. Do you know insecure people who are like black holes for compliments, affection and reassurance? That's the minus pole. But the plus pole also exists - a state where it becomes uncomfortable not to give. You'll usually have to be on drugs or to spend years doing spiritual practices in order to reach this state, but it's very real and basically a pure altruistic mindset.
And I have a reason to think that this behaviour will not disappear: It benefits the invidual, even when they do not do it for the sake of benefits. Positive states of being are psychologically healthy for the same reason that negative states of being are associated with dying earlier. And while altruism seems dangerous in that it's reverse eugenics, you can only be altruistic by improving yourself to be more than self-sufficient, so it's a kind of inverse parasitism.
On a negative note: I think it's literally impossible to protect society against exploitation without ruining every pleasant part of it. What follows from this is scary: Rules are bad. They're literally symptoms of problems rather than solutions to them. You cannot fix every loophole - you can only get rid of the type of person who would exploit a loophole.
Actually, I just realized a series of things - The way we're trying to reduce suffering is destroying all human experience. The way we're trying to minimize crime will result in the minimization of human freeedom. The way we're trying to model everything is destroying all mystery and wonder. Our attempts of reducing mistakes to zero is reducing meaningful actions taken to zero. You cannot solve all problems without killing all innovation. You cannot destroy competition without destroying growth. Many things are rotting because we refuse to let them die. I believe these are in the category of 'Complementarity Principles'.
More options
Context Copy link