domain:noahpinion.blog
HereAndGone
1d ago
It does seem like poor planning if the project is sixty years down the line and nobody figured out "how do we fund this?" though to be fair, it does sound like the usual local government "kick the can down the road" methodology.
faceh
1d ago
It actually sounds like it would be a viable business model for a side hustle.
It looks like Gucci scarfs can sell for $60-$150(!) on ebay. Spend two hours hotel hopping and that's a pretty good return if you find some good ones.
The native elite live off natural resources and imported labor rather than their own ingenuity and effort.
I always see this line of thinking being bandied about, often about Dubai in particular, but it just isn't my experience.
I see an elite that's desperately trying everything they can to not rely on oil revenue, making massive bordering on insane investments in technology and infrastructure.
You could say this line about the Saudis, but the Emiratis? They've purposely build the most diversified economy of the region. They've been reaching for literally every single trick they can use to not rely on oil, from banking, to gaming, to diplomacy, to even colonization.
Oil is still a fourth of the GDP at the end of the day (down from a third in 06), but man I wish my elites were lazy like that.
Jiro
1d ago
If you steal something from someone and he doesn't notice and he doesn't need it, is it still stealing?
This only sounds plausible because we don't have a good intuition about how it works. Taking the scarf is going to affect things on the margin. There's some probability that someone will come looking for the scarf and not find it. If you steal it they won't be able to. But since this is only a probability, it's easy to say "they probably won't return for the scarf" and mentally round the probablity to zero.
Likewise, if you stole a hotel towel, that's going to marginally use up the hotel towels and slightly push forward when the hotel needs to buy towels--even if nobody points at the particular towel and notices its absence, and even if the advance in when the hotel runs out of towels is within the normal variation in towel wear.
So yes, if nobody notices it, it's still stealing. It can affect people on a statistical level, in a way which averages out to the harm in being one item poorer, even if nobody actually notices the effect.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
1d ago
I love those old fashioned lemon drops! (Hard candy that's lemon flavored) They're my favorite treat when going to a movie. I always confuse them with lemonheads in the theater concessions (a lemon flavored jelly bean with a thick shell) and am disappointed in the latter once the shell dissolves.
HereAndGone
1d ago
A girl who casually lies and steals for immediate time preference satisfaction (even (maybe espectally) if charitably done by proxy to near empathetic aquaintances) is bad news.
Yeah. For those thinking this is not so bad because she's doing it for his benefit, it was only on a second date. Suppose someone who is a close friend or family member of hers needs something? If she's willing to deceive strangers to get benefit for guy she barely knows, she's equally likely to be willing to deceive guy she barely knows for someone much closer to her. 'Look, that spare two grand was just sitting there in your bank account, you weren't doing anything with it, my sister needed to pay rent after she broke up with her boyfriend so what's the big deal? I should have asked you first? Yeah well you would have given it to me anyway, right? So why did I need to ask?' followed by 'What do you mean you mightn't have given it to me, I'm your girlfriend' argument.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
1d ago
This is far from my experience of the place and I used to live there and do business locally for many years. But I believe you saw what you saw and I can explain it.
The UAE is a two tier system (well three if we count Emiratis, but i mean for guests).
You have the pleasant world of premium stuff for rich people, where you get your money's worth and then some and the people are nice, competent and helpful to the highest standards in the world.
And then you have the world of discount or cheap anything which operates on margins so thin that you're borderline getting scammed if not actually getting scammed all the time.
One good example that set the tone for me was getting a visa. When I did the discount one for poor people, I had to wait a long time, weeks longer than advertised, drive around a whole lot and pay people some money to enter information into a website that's purposely designed so I can't do it myself to maintain their racket. When I did the rich people option, it took a day and I was immediately done with it, and spent more time getting free refreshments in the air conditioned waiting room than doing the whole process.
And everything's like this. Want to get around? Either you take the official taxis where everything is regulated and the credit card machine always works, or you take a chance on the apps and the guy will try to scam you out of some cash and may or may not take you to your destination.
The one thing that is true for both sides and not compromised on is violence. You won't see much of it or of the related crimes because people are immediately kicked out or severely punished for that sort of thing. So petty crime is non-violent and takes the form of scams.
But this is all to say that there are plenty of generous, kind and helpful people in that country. but as befits an aristocratic society, they just don't hang around with the help.
HereAndGone
1d ago
What next, dumpster diving if she’s or I’m hungry?
More dine and dash, I'd say. Or some kind of food delivery fraud:
First-party fraud
Also known as friendly fraud, this involves a customer using their own details to pay for an order and then claiming the charge was unauthorized after delivery is made. Nearly 1 in 4 (23%) consumers who have filed chargebacks admit the claim was fraudulent.
Promo abuse
Some customers may create fake accounts to exploit special offers, discounts, or free trials multiple times. They can also receive rewards for referrals to fake accounts. Another method of promo abuse involves customers using counterfeit vouchers or working out how to generate promo codes, costing businesses money and blocking trusted customers from using genuine codes.
The fake hotel claim does sound in the general area of "shoplifting is not a crime, businesses expect this kind of stealing, insurance pays for it all" thinking and does indicate a willingness to cheat/scam. Which may be confined to small things, or may lead to more serious crime, or at least scamming/lying in the relationship. "Oh, your mom's antique vase went missing? Gosh, I hope she finds it, I wonder what happened?" checks eBay to see if any buyer has bid yet
HereAndGone
1d ago
There's the bro wisdom of "if she'd cheat with you she'll cheat on you"
For me, the distaff version of this is all the "other women" and mistresses lamenting that the married guy cheating with them is, in fact, lying about getting that divorce and marrying them because his marriage is a sham and in name only while his wife doesn't understand him and is cold and they're only staying together for the sake of the children.
Wow, you mean someone who has demonstrated he will happily lie and deceive close family in the cause of getting his dick wet is also lying to you in the cause of getting his dick wet? How can this be?
Some of them at least realise how things are and are open-eyed about the affair being an affair and that it'll never be more than that, but a surprising number can't get over "it's been five years, he still isn't divorced, am I wasting my time?"
TitaniumButterfly
1d ago
the Armenian genocide is at least as reprehensible as, to pick one example, Belgian conduct in the Congo
Could you elaborate on this? I've been seeing a lot of arguments lately to the effect that the Belgians weren't nearly as bad as they're made out to be, e.g. those "hands chopped off" pictures are something the natives did to each other and the Belgians actually tried to stop. So far when I look such things up I first find that the official story is everywhere, but when digging deeper it falls apart. At this point I don't know what to believe.
On the other hand (jeez no pun intended) I can very easily believe that it's massively overblown for to cast colonialism in the worst possible light.
HereAndGone
1d ago
Maybe there's a small net benefit in the world where that scarf helps bolster a relationship.
Oh my darling velvet hippo may bite other dogs and people, but they'd never turn on me!
Next thing the owner is in the news about how their sweet cuddlebug chewed their face off. Someone shows you who they are by their actions, believe them.
Its surely less bad than something like going around to all the hotels in the area and collecting nice scarfs to resell on Ebay, since she can at least claim altruistic motives.
Now you're making me wonder, because if I believe the account as-is, that sounds a bit too confident and practiced for something she just thought up on the spur of the moment. Maybe she does make a habit of false claims about lost-and-found property like this, and uses it or resells it on!
Tree
1d ago
How would you go about justifying those ?
Because it’s not just AI on the opposite side, there’s that study about enhanced strippers making more money, porn actresses, insta models, why is page 3 for a nice chest such an institution, size of the breast enhancement industry, etc.
I don’t think you could find as many arguments in favour of your thesis as the blog’s, but assuming you did, and you wrote it all down, it would still be considered rude and ‘creepy’ to write such a long blog on sexual preferences. It would be ‘marginalizing’ to non-preferred women no matter what the preference ends up being, like ranking women 1 to 10 is controversial independently of the scale used. So some guy would inevitably show up to defend women and say it's all wrong and call the writer of this alternate thesis a nerd and a loser.
Now if you tell me this consideration consideration has nothing to do with your opinion, then I’ll grant the possibility that the blog is only applicable to ‘tit men’ (they'd still be a majority though).
HereAndGone
1d ago
What if it wasn't a $20 scarf but a Hermès scarf? There would indeed be consequences for hotel staff handing over something that easily to a stranger.
TowardsPanna
1d ago
Interesting. How much time have you spent there? Any good stories to share?
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
1d ago
Lax morals are not a good thing. Trying to feel good to paper over what is right gives people a sense that small transgressions aren't really that important, but that same perverse toleration simply leads to larger transgressions.
Sure, wallowing in resentment isn't useful, but rationalizing you getting fucked over is learned helplessness. That guy should get appropriately mad and adjust his local politics to give greater consideration to the maintenance of public order. And if he doesn't, he's just on a merry journey to his town becoming a crime den because he's too nice to get upset when he is wronged.
Bike cuck is chanelling the spirit of the Last Man.
sulla
1d ago
I agree that it is fundamentally just a lazy attempt to apply a negative label to people the users of the term don’t like. It’s like “the left are the real racists.” It’s supposed to be a “gotcha” but it doesn’t really work in practice.
I know this is going far afield based on one instance, but do we know that the girlfriend feels the same way about OP as he does about her? She might be in a relationship with him because it's currently beneficial for her but she is not in love with him or deeply attached, and would dump him if a better opportunity came along. And possibly empty out his bank account on the way out the door, to boot (well after all she needs to be recompensed for all the time she wasted on him).
Someone who demonstrates on a first second date that they have no problems lying and stealing is not someone indicating long-term trustworthiness.
HereAndGone
1d ago
The second sentence doesn't strictly follow the first.
I have to disagree. "One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much." She has demonstrated that she has no problem taking advantage of third parties, so if a situation arises where it benefits her to take things from him, why should I believe she will hesitate to do so out of outmoded scruples about trust and intimacy?
HereAndGone
1d ago
One has to wonder if he was hoping she'd offer to warm him up by cuddling. Instead she got him a free scarf. 😀
HereAndGone
1d ago
The Blue Cross, G.K. Chesterton:
"The other priest raised his austere face to the spangled sky and said:
"Yet who knows if in that infinite universe—?"
"Only infinite physically," said the little priest, turning sharply in his seat, "not infinite in the sense of escaping from the laws of truth."
Valentin behind his tree was tearing his fingernails with silent fury. He seemed almost to hear the sniggers of the English detectives whom he had brought so far on a fantastic guess only to listen to the metaphysical gossip of two mild old parsons. In his impatience he lost the equally elaborate answer of the tall cleric, and when he listened again it was again Father Brown who was speaking:
"Reason and justice grip the remotest and the loneliest star. Look at those stars. Don't they look as if they were single diamonds and sapphires? Well, you can imagine any mad botany or geology you please. Think of forests of adamant with leaves of brilliants. Think the moon is a blue moon, a single elephantine sapphire. But don't fancy that all that frantic astronomy would make the smallest difference to the reason and justice of conduct. On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still find a notice-board, 'Thou shalt not steal.'"
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1d ago
Maybe I'm so over-educated I can't recognize a simple, boring, innocuous truth when it stares me in the face.
The trouble with simple, boring, innocuous truths is that they tend to contradict each other.
--
One of the more blackpilling realizations of 2020 was that a large swathe of my fellow citizens were pro-police brutality. Previously I had operated under the naive assumption that it was simply a problem of extending law enforcement too much benefit of the doubt. However, it rapidly became undeniable that at best they were operating under the Tango and Cash theory of criminal justice, wherein civil liberties are a weapon criminals use against police. Many were quite open about saying to my face that the job of the police was to brutalize the underclass into submission and if they occasionally murdered someone, well, lowlifes don't really deserve rights.
It's true that you're probably going to have to let people make judgment calls that maybe aren't going to adhere to a strict reading of legal rights, but if that's going to be your system you have to be willing to hold those people accountable when they abuse or misuse their judgment. You can't just say "Oops, this job is really hard" when they make a bad call.
HereAndGone
1d ago
I mean, it's clever, I can't deny that. But it's also very much a confidence trick kind of move, and I have to wonder if she has a vibrant career in social engineering to part fools and their money?
She could slickly lie to his face and be cheating on him and get away with it. Not saying she is or would do so, but that's someone who is not afraid to seize the day, as it were.
HereAndGone
1d ago
One instance is not enough to go by, but I certainly hope he's keeping their finances separate. That's a woman who operates by "what's yours is mine and what's mine is my own", and one morning he may wake up with his bank account emptied (and maybe a kidney sold, as well) if she decides "now we're a couple, your money is my money and I need this money for my dream" 😁
For what it's worth, I'm a woman so I'm not going off "Women Are Wonderful" here.
HereAndGone
1d ago
It's also wrong to say that people who don't experience X the way other people do are non-functional.
I can be perfectly functional doing my job where I have to take needs and wants into account, without having the desire to fuck the clients (in this particular job, that would be Extremely Problematic if I did, given the age-ranges involved).
"People who don't experience sexual desire are non-functional" is not the smackdown argument you present it as, given the steaming mess that sexual desire leads a lot of "normal, functional, non-cripple" people into. Maybe dialling down the instinct to "me horny me gotta fuck" might, in fact, be a benefit for society? If it stops teachers sexually assaulting eleven year olds, for one instance?
"I shat my pants recently. I was pretty bummed about it. But after reflecting I realised that the need to buy a tub of White'n'Brite Max Stain Remover provided an infinitesimal benefit to the institutional shareholders of Big Chem Industrial Synthesis Corp, and by losing control of my bowels I'd helped contribute to a faceless pension fund supporting wealthy retirees and their fund managers. The total happiness in the world increased, so whatever!"
"I have a tiny excuse for a penis and I get off by pressuring my wife into having unprotected sex with other men, but even I wouldn't violate by proxy the sanctity of a hotel's lost property cupboard. What if that scarf belonged to a real man with a raging trouser truncheon? OP should have waited until half a dozen virile rugby players could watch him shivering outside his own bedroom window, begging them to let him rent his date's panties to wear as a comically ineffective neck warmer. It's pathetic."
"My ADHD made me so late that I ended up taking a bike I'd found dumped in the canal because keeping my date waiting was giving me unmedicated anxiousness. When I arrived he'd been waiting for me outside getting cold so quick as a flash I went into a hotel reception and pretended to be the purse inspector. When I came out to give him the £400 I'd conned out of some woman's husband he was gone, and so was my bike! Twitter, AITA?"
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