domain:alakasa.substack.com
HereAndGone
7hr ago
presumably is a far cry from the situation in the metropolises of Melbourne and Brisbane.
Possibly. This was years back and I'm nowhere near familiar enough with how legal prostitution works. But the impression I carried away was that brothels will nickel and dime the prostitutes, because it's a business and it's all about making the maximum profit for the owners (same with strip clubs where the dancers are encouraged to get the marks to buy overpriced watered-down alcohol and to spend on buying lap dances etc. because if you're not turning over as much money for the owners as possible, you're out and a new dancer gets her chance).
I have never understood why some women go on about how sex work is empowering for women. The real money and profit and power accrue to the owners and operators of such businesses, who generally are men not women. Sure, the strippers and prostitutes get to manipulate the johns for money, but the pimps/madams/owners get to manipulate the prostitutes.
HereAndGone
7hr ago
Some of them do. I think the very online types we see are the ones who pass the worst, which is a whole other kettle of fish. I think some/many/a lot of the 'ordinary' MtF may not pass 100% but since they're not trying to look like an anime waif or an OnlyFans model, it's close enough to let pass without comment for the sake of peace and politeness.
The rather unfortunate case of the "It's Ma'am" person, which did blow up, or the person who deliberately goes around to restaurants and cafés so they can be misgendered by the ESL waitstaff and then make little TikToks about how this was a dagger through their heart are the ones who don't pass and who make the big deal out of it.
yunyun333
7hr ago
So Trump and Vance whine for the past year about how sending over weapons is too expensive and we need to stop, but 4 'slightly bigger' mineral deposits of questionable economic value will serve as a casus belli for dropping in American soldiers?
Hell, he's apparently gotten Ukraine actually paying for U.S. weapons now
Isn't Ukraine mega bankrupt? They'll be effectively paying America with America's own aid.
TheLoser
7hr ago
But it is a requirement for ruling China. The communist party knows that its mandate comes from being able to "Keep everyone at a reasonable standard of living" ; in fact, the mandate for anyone ruling China, communist or not, is to fulfill that need.
If they can't guarentee reasonable standards of living, then revolution and uprisings are on the table.
HereAndGone
7hr ago
hypermasculine alpha nerds
Asking for a friend, can you steer me towards any pictures of these hot chad nerds? Because the photos* of real life guys in that scene I've seen, I'm sure they have lovely personalities 😁
*Such as the ones attached to dating docs, quite a few of which have made me draw in my breath and go "Oh dear, why did you pick this photo?"
HereAndGone
7hr ago
Demisexuality should really be confined to those instances where the usual sexual attraction/arousal/hormonal impulses are lacking or very muted, and only arise after the emotional bond is formed. Unlike the general run of sexuality for both men and women, where libido, desire and arousal are independent of being attached to any one particular individual and can be experienced before any attraction to a particular person is experienced (e.g. going out on the pull which both men and women engage in).
HereAndGone
7hr ago
I'd point out that a belief that "all women want sex, they just act coy about it" is going to get you straight into the old path of "no doesn't mean no, it just means she wants you to push harder to make her say yes" which will get you, and any young men you teach about 'what women really want', into trouble.
There are women who act coy about it. There are also women who genuinely don't want sex, or not casual sex, or who don't experience "oh my god I'm so horny right now I need to jump on the first guy I see" at all. Asexuality is a genuine thing for both men and woman. Agreed, not everybody who claims the label, but we can say that about autism and ADHD and the rest of such self-diagnoses, which does not mean that autism is not a real condition.
we should expect mothers to ...sabotage their sons romantically by failing to explicitly point out how and why female sexuality works.
Well, when you figure that one out, tell me because I've been a woman all my life and I'm damned if I can work out why some women do what they do when it comes to men. If you mean the simplistic model of "women want meat, men want sex, swap one for the other" good luck there honey. "Your meat is not good enough" - harsh truth or women just being bitches?
HereAndGone
7hr ago
Before everything had to be broken down into sixty-seven degrees of "this is the label for my set of special circumstances that fits me and only me", I think 'demisexual' was a useful term. There are asexuals who have no sexual attraction or arousal at all. There are those who generally are not interested in sex but who are interested in romance, and if they are in a romantic relationship may engage in sex (mostly as part of what you do to keep a relationship going, and to make their partner happy, and they may even enjoy it but not necessarily want sex or initiate it otherwise) once they have that close emotional bond and only after that close emotional bond is established.
Then like all somewhat useful terms it got over-used and flogged to death and now means "yeah I have sex like ordinary people but being straight isn't cool enough, you have to be some variety of queer nowadays, so labelling myself demisexual works for me".
(The irony being that I remember the fights over "are asexuals queer enough, or indeed queer at all? if you're not also trans or gay, you can go to hell straight invader of queer safe spaces" in the early days. Apparently we're all queer now, Father).
Pynewacket
7hr ago
How are Christians being "limp wristed" because they're taking a stance about helping the poor?
a refugee is someone in danger in their home country, not someone that is poor, isn't he? where are you taking this conflation of refugee with poor from?
e.g. the parable of the good samaritan, Matthew 19:21:
Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”
No, it's totally on-brand and correct for anyone that follows the teachings of Jesus to care about the poor.
Here the Episcopal church is taking a stand against the refugee resettlement program (resources allocated for the poor) being perverted to help those that are actually not in need (Afrikaners are generally not very poor); to the detriment of refugees actually in need:
Isn't that referring to your neighbors and people like you?. And that tidbit about "resources allocated for the poor" should be "to the persecuted". I think, your whole line of argumentation falls apart when we take that into consideration.
You're just using "based Crusade Christianity" as a political tool to bash your enemies with, without any regard for the teachings of Jesus.
In fairness, this comment is itself arguing against my political opponents with Christianity, but at least I actually respect its teachings.
2 Corinthians 6:14 "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?"
sun_the_second
8hr ago
If you want to take the argument towards this direction, killing one person is worse than killing multiple people because one person was the only representative of their specific genotype.
It falls apart because no one cares about one person's specific genotype except possibly that person. A few more people care about a tiny no-name village's distinction. A lot more people care about the Jews as an ethnicity and culture.
These ideas are destructive to communism, which is a collectivist ideology. Christians are saying that you should love each other, and that people are all, each, valuable individuals—communism says you should love each other insofar as it serves the emergent gestalt that sits on top of it.
I think a communist would say that the opposite is true. To that extent the dichotomy of individualism and collectivism is just wordplay.
Every communist values the individual. That's why they want communism. More freedom. More liberty. More happiness. They see the individuals freedom impeded by capitalism and, outside of catholic communists, religion. If love for our fellow men were elevated above love for money or our preferred rendition of Abrahamic religion, then we could much sooner get together and work towards a global change for the betterment of humanity.
Instead we get Christians with proclamations of moral supremacy, because they believe in abstract logical concepts. Or capitalists with proclamations of factual supremacy, since they can allege to best predict the outcomes of society. Neglecting to mention that these outcomes are derived from material conditions born from the very system they support.
How are Christians being "limp wristed" because they're taking a stance about helping the poor? Jesus's teachings are very often about helping the poor and dispossessed: e.g. the parable of the good samaritan, Matthew 19:21:
Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”
No, it's totally on-brand and correct for anyone that follows the teachings of Jesus to care about the poor.
Here the Episcopal church is taking a stand against the refugee resettlement program (resources allocated for the poor) being perverted to help those that are actually not in need (Afrikaners are generally not very poor); to the detriment of refugees actually in need:
It has been painful to watch one group of refugees, selected in a highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years. I am saddened and ashamed that many of the refugees who are being denied entrance to the United States are brave people who worked alongside our military in Iraq and Afghanistan and now face danger at home because of their service to our country. I also grieve that victims of religious persecution, including Christians, have not been granted refuge in recent months.
You're just using "based Crusade Christianity" as a political tool to bash your enemies with, without any regard for the teachings of Jesus.
In fairness, this comment is itself arguing against my political opponents with Christianity, but at least I actually respect its teachings.
erwgv3g34
8hr ago
I've used AI to write cover letters on job applications. One of those applications got me a teaching job which paid $20,000 more than what I was doing before, so if the cover letter made any difference ChatGPT Plus has more than paid for itself.
On the same job, I used it to generate a slogan which the administrators liked, and some images including the school mascot which had a very positive reception.
Sadly, it didn't save me from getting fired at the end of the year for failing to control the kids.
oats_son
8hr ago
That first link goes to the 2nd page of your most recent posts. Is that what you intended? It will mean that if the post you wanted users to look at was there, it won't be there later as you make more posts.
VIM
8hr ago
So if some tiny isolated but culturally/ethnically distinct village catches smallpox before being wiped out in a raid by another tribe is that worse than the Holocaust? By this logic America is guilty of countless Holocausts and isn't in a position to lecture Hitler, a man who ultimately didn't even succeed in wiping out his targets.
VIM
9hr ago
Alternatively, Hitler slowly escalated in a way that let at least some Jews escape before things got dire whereas Stalin went straight from business as usual to mass starvation. Not at all clear that slowly escalating is any worse than going full hog from the get go
PokerPirate
9hr ago
You're claim that liberation theology and the social gospel movement "remove the supernatural elements from Christianity" is straightforwardly wrong. These are not evangelical theologies---and it's fine to dislike them for that reason---but they obviously incorporate the supernatural.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
9hr ago
Why the snipe against anthropologists (the 'neurotic janitors'?) I get that many have lost all faith in academia but that seems like throwing out the bathwater, the baby, the soap, and the tub itself.
I think to design this study or studies you'd need to first sort out what you mean by "Asian." That may sound eggheaded but you would want as much precision and as little noise as possible, or you'd risk losing any statistical rigor and thus your conclusions would be suspect. Depending on how well you designed the study (accounting for as many other variables as possible besides however you operationalize the term 'culture') you'd still require replication, and replication across and into different cultures, to have any definitiveness in your conclusion.
There's a term 帰国子女 in Japanese referring to children who are taken abroad by their parents when very young, and who then must return to Japan when dad gets transferred back home, or whatever. There's an entire system of schooling set up both in Japan and abroad to cater to these children, because of the impact of cultural norms and how the kids get thrown out of whack (as it's perceived here) in that process. The changes in behavior and attitude from before and after are often dramatic. This is individual level, however, not longitudinal across generations.
Throwaway05
9hr ago
I noticed the water-to-flour ratio has changed, so I had it explain why,
I would love to hear more.
phailyoor
9hr ago
He got to 30 and people are calling it a good thing. If he started at this number people would shriek at it. If de minimis nuking is still there in the background overshadowed by all the other stuff, then he also got to kill shein and temu and aliexpress
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
9hr ago
So... Trump blinked? These are the tariff numbers we would have if Trump had just imposed the flat 10% rate on China he did on every other country. What benefit did the United States get out of this pause on trade with China? I guess Trump and his inner circle probably made a killing on insider trading this announcement.
Actually, I think the nuance is lost. Social justice warriors weren’t simply inspired by Christianity. They don’t have similarities by coincidence. They are a direct evolutionary branch of mainline Protestantism. There is path dependency.
ArmedTooHeavily
9hr ago
I think phrasing it as "Progressivism is atheistic puritanical christianity" captures some nuance that "it came from protestantism" doesn't.
I'm fine with separation but only if we become a part of the USA. A landlocked province would be disastrous, no?
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