domain:rifters.com
I also gave you the elaboration paragraph, which you did and still ignore.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
The way Texas politics works if this was going to be stopped it would've been stopped in the house.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
I keep rooting for a nuclear salt water rocket. In space no one can hear your environmental impact statement.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
2d ago
Normie liberals don't tend to talk a lot about politics, especially not in public. Most of them are hanging out under real names, and their social circles include social justice warriors willing to cut them off for heresy. They're afraid to get thrown out into the Wilderness if they speak their minds.
(I'm legitimately unsure if @WandererintheWilderness's username references that article, because yeah, theMotte as a community has been cast out into the Wilderness even if doesn't fully have the "Wilderness nature".)
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
2d ago
· Edited 2d ago
I don't think her lack of virginity was an issue, he wasn't quite that hypocritical. She'd told him about her previous partners (but probably not me). That was her worrying about the potential next guy.
Even in India?
India is a big country!
We have:
- Extremely conservative rural enclaves where premarital sex might get you disowned, or in the worst case, killed. Leans poor.
- More moderate areas, where people are allowed to date in college or after, but with the clear expectation that such dating is serious. You meet a good boyfriend/girlfriend in college, get engaged after graduation, and marry afterwards. If you don't, no shame in that, arranged marriages are the default. Maybe 300-500 million people might count.
- The liberal elite or UMC. The part I, and this girl, live in. Norms around sex aren't quite as liberal as in the West, at least for women. Nobody would really care that I have a double digit number of partners. For a woman? That's a big deal, and something to hide or deny. You are allowed or expected to have a few partners in college, uni or after. Your parents would be very happy if you were serious about it, but they're mostly accommodating. If you make it to your late 20s without that happening, arranged marriages are the BATNA. Nobody will look down on you for having one, but they might think that you just couldn't hack it. Perhaps a hundred million, maybe two hundred million.
- This is a spectrum, of course. On one end, I know people who know people who are in swinger clubs. That is very much not normal, and would be broadly condemned if news got out. I won't even go into the finer details of North vs South, East vs West, or the norms in big cities versus podunk nowhere.
In our semi-shared social milieu, her behavior is excusable, even if it's a negative. People aspire to have a virginal, unblemished wife, but usually cave in and settle for something more realistic. However, she's an ethnic Punjabi, and they're usually rather hypocritical (more than most) when it comes to this. Men are encouraged to sow their wild oats, their moms might tut, but won't do anything. Women? Uh..
She's had maybe 3-5 sexual partners, and most of that happened during longterm relationships. It's not that big a deal to a liberal man, but his family might raise objections. My dad called me later that day, and I told him the whole story to general merriment. I also, half-jokingly, asked if he'd be okay with me marrying her, to which he replied that he hoped I could do better than "second hand goods".
You can see my reply to sun_the_second for a more exhaustive take on why she's right to be concerned. If it weren't for her other issues, I personally couldn't care less about it.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
2d ago
Because the legislature refused to do it and voters pushed it through via the ballot measure.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Texas BBQ, country music, craft beer are all Having A Moment and all are very German influenced.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Normiecons do not think every Quantavius and Latisha is evil. They think that they are mostly decent people shaped by a bad culture(which was ruined by liberals because they hate families). 'The good ones' are doing their part to fix that- by assimilating into the red tribe and hopefully leading their fellows to do the same.
C'mon, these community activists aren't doing shit to benefit the average Shaniqua and Tyrone either, don't be stupid. The main difference is that the red tribe is just willing to openly point to 'bad culture' as a major part of their bad circumstances whereas blues only hint at it and use euphemisms.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
To be clear, said legislatures are allowed to vest that power in an independent committee, right? Why was a ballot initiative even on the table?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
Wonderful. Another norm for the shredder. At least this time it’s closer to a tenuous gentleman’s agreement than settled law, right? Right?
From my perspective, gerrymandered districts are an insult to the idea of representative democracy. I hope CA fails in its shenanigans. I hope we Texans find a spine. Failing that, it would be nice if our leadership could pander to anyone other than Trump.
But I know how much those hopes are worth.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
It checks out- everyone already knows in the back of their mind that the Chinese have no standards for what they feed their shrimp and crawfish before exporting the things.
ThisIsSin
Liberty has an anti-privilege bias
2d ago
Well, all organizations that aren't explicitly progress-minded/right-wing eventually gain a parasitic load right at the border between stability and collapse/become left-wing, after all.
Or not saying it but acting in the same way
Which was the '60s-'90s compromise. It's actually kind of interesting that the balance between [what everyone else typifies as] left-wing and right-wing takes on the character of a marriage between the statistically-mean man and the statistically-mean woman.
KingOfTheBailey
2d ago
metal-listeners would generally turn out to be more successful for reasons that I had a whole teenage pop psychology theory for that these margins are too small to contain
Don't tease us like that. I, for one, would love to have my musical tastes flattered when you have the time.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
on the other hand, put this way I would not want to roll the dice on child genetic makeup either, girls are cutest when they're almost retarded but I imagine it hits differently when you're the father.
I mean her parents and brother aren't retarded, right? Won't she just revert to the mean with her genetic contributions most like?
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
2d ago
Combine it with red states not being dumb enough to establish independent redistricting commissions
Well, one formerly red state did. It turns out that "the Legislature" and "the People" in the U.S. Constitution mean the same thing (or so 5 Supreme Court justices thought).
It's worth reading Roberts' dissent if you enjoy that kind of thing. (starting at 2678 by the pagination on the left side).
Just over a century ago, Arizona became the second State in the Union to ratify the Seventeenth Amendment. That Amendment transferred power to choose United States Senators from "the Legislature" of each State, Art. I, § 3, to "the people thereof." The Amendment resulted from an arduous, decades-long campaign in which reformers across the country worked hard to garner approval from Congress and three-quarters of the States.
What chumps! Didn't they realize that all they had to do was interpret the constitutional term "the Legislature" to mean "the people"? The Court today performs just such a magic trick with the Elections Clause. Art. I, § 4. That Clause vests congressional redistricting authority in "the Legislature" of each State. An Arizona ballot initiative transferred that authority from "the Legislature" to an "Independent Redistricting Commission." The majority approves this deliberate constitutional evasion by doing what the proponents of the Seventeenth Amendment dared not: revising "the Legislature" to mean "the people."
hydroacetylene
2d ago
It makes sense to me; he needs someone to marry his daughter so she stops her bad habits(after all, it sounds like it's mostly her getting taken advantage of) and take care of her and someone to take over his successful business. Win-win. It's a scenario that would strike me as plausible but not exactly common- sort of like winning the lottery- in the modern US, let alone India.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
So he wasn't willing to marry a non-virgin he apparently liked well enough to date in exchange for a large dowry? Am I hearing that right?
she even usually only slept with the men who had already lied about marrying her, which in a way is practically Victorian by modern standards
Even in India?
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Redistricting fight
It's been in the news that Trump is pushing for mid-decade redistricting. Yesterday, the Texas house approved a new map(https://www.texastribune.org/2025/08/20/texas-house-vote-congressional-map-redistricting-democrats-trump/) which nets the GOP five seats- while not a done deal de jure, in Texas politics when something the republican party wants passes the house, it's as good as done. Texas has only in-person filibustering(that is, a filibuster in the Senate needs to talk the entire time), so democrats can't delay the map for weeks in the upper chamber.
Separately, Gavin Newsom is pushing for redistricting California to gain more seats for democrats(https://apnews.com/article/california-texas-redistricting-congressional-map-4c22e21d5d4022d33a257045693b6fd4). One problem: California law doesn't allow the legislature to unilaterally do this. They need voter approval to override their independent redistricting commission. As gerrymandering tends to be unpopular with actual voters, their odds are a lot worse than Texas'. Other solidly blue states like Colorado have the same issue that they can't actually gerrymander on short notice due to their 'independent' redistricting commissions.
Trump is going beyond Texas as he tries to ensure Republicans maintain their House majority. He’s pushed Republican leaders in states such as Indiana and Missouri to pursue redistricting. Ohio Republicans were already revising their map before Texas moved. Democrats, meanwhile, are mulling reopening Maryland’s and New York’s maps.
The other problem for democrats in an all out gerrymandering war is that they simply have fewer seats to eek out. The most gerrymandered states in the union are all blue; red states going tit for tat isn't actually something they can escalate that much against. Combine it with red states not being dumb enough to establish independent redistricting commissions and it's pretty clear that democrats will lose in an all-out war of redistricting.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
2d ago
I don't know for sure, but that's a likely reason.
She's late 20s, same age as me. That is slightly long in the tooth by Indian standards. Not the end of the world by any means, but it'll only get harder once she hits her 30s. She was fretting about this during our video call.
It's also bad from the perspective of being a trophy wife, with little to offer except looks and decent familial wealth. Her family are well off, but not ridiculously so. If she was a working professional, she could probably delay till her early 30s before things got really bad.
The arranged marriage market in India is quite brutal. I would flourish in it, because I'm a qualified guy (age is far less of a factor). Her family is quite liberal in mostly turning a blind eye to her romances, but if I had to guess, largely because she seems serious about locking a guy down and it saves them a lot of hassle. Love is a great lubricant, and at least cuts down on dowry demands.
To the modal, conservative leaning potential marriage partner:
- She's getting close to too old.
- She's a model, which is scandalous. The looks are a positive, the career a negative. Her parents wanted her to do something else, but she talked them into this. Most families would prefer a housewife or career woman, and not this.
- She has had multiple previous sexual partners. This is a big deal, it would be easier to suppress this than to talk it through.
She has no end of guys down to fuck. I remember, on one of our dates, she showed me her Bumble matches. So many the counter broke. But how many would want to put a ring on it? Most would be like me, in for a ride but not willing to take the car out of the dealership for good.
To an extent, her anxiety is well founded. She only has a few years before it becomes an uphill struggle, even if it won't be literally impossible to find a good partner. Ed creds and a good job would have sweetened the deal, but she's not there, and she's not a supermodel either.
This guy was:
- Relatively serious about marriage
- A semi-compatible background
- Apparently honest and entrepreneurial
- Decently handsome
To a family that has wealth but concerns about the continuity of said wealth, she could do worse. I presume her family would have loved me, but we never got to the stage of introductions. I made it clear I was leaving soon, and it would be a good while before there was a chance I'd be back.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
2d ago
This explains so much. When I said "We've had the same issue with Hlynka", I should have focused on this thought instead of getting triggered by the usual Hlynka rhetorics. In a sense, it's impressive how he did basically nothing to obfuscate his identity, exactly the same cocksure loquacity glossing over substantial flaws, and could rely on good faith alone.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
2d ago
Ahahaha, this explains so much. I was worried we've got another LLM skeptic with the exact same mix of bad takes.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
2d ago
· Edited 2d ago
A cute girl who is retarded can usually make it work. There are plenty of men thinking with their dicks who would snap that up and be very happy about it. I'd be concerned about a son who came out a himbo, sure, that's not the end of the world, but I personally aspire for better.
She did write me an apology later, wanted to stay friends and promised to internalize things and change, but ngl I'm not holding my breath.
My condolences. She clearly means well, but I share your suspicion that she lacks the ability to actually enact her wishes. Not everyone can be above average in terms of intelligence or common sense, if only because that's logically and statistically impossible.
I can only stress how hard they're bending over backwards to accommodate this guy.
Why though? Just because he's so much better for her than the usual fare she gets around her?
Fang Yuan would have put a baby in her, then refined them both into Gu.
I highly doubt the Gu of Cute but Retarded would be of more use to him than securing the favor of a wealthy righteous clan.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
2d ago
You know, I was just browsing the RI sub, mourning the fact that I had finished the novel again.. Fang Yuan would have put a baby in her, then refined them both into Gu.
Anyway. Her dad didn't frame it as a precondition, it was a genuine offer. He's getting on in years, and he'd love to have someone take over the business. His son is busy doing something that makes too much money in an MNC abroad to bother, his daughter? She couldn't run a Nestlé distributor during a drought. So the only real options are to sell, or to look for a SIL who can handle things.
I can only stress how hard they're bending over backwards to accommodate this guy. Indian families tend to be very class/wealth conscious, she's marrying down in that sense. Different ethnic group, different religion. This is incredibly rare, and the boyfriend really thinks too highly of himself for his own good but that's his prerogative.
Why not 'neither is quality?'
The question of a reason is neither answered or addressed by pointing to a boo group. Even if we were to agree that the boo group is not [good quality], it does not imply that the alternative is thus [good quality]. They can both be [bad quality].
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