domain:academic.oup.com
WandererintheWilderness
29m ago
It depends on specifics, but in a lot of casting-couch cases I think the actress who's been offered the deal has a credible fear of retaliation if she says no - not just that she won't get the job, but that the spited producer will pull strings to get her blacklisted and ruin her career, leaving her much worse off than one who was never offered the deal in the first place. While you can still view giving in as the morally worse option, I think even an actress who gives in to that kind of ultimatum deserves a lot more sympathy than one who tries to sleep her way to a job of her own volition, with no expectation of actively negative consequences if she doesn't.
phailyoor
33m ago
There's nothing morally wrong with being a psychopath either but the stigma around that term isn't going away anytime soon either. Having a mental disorder may be morally neutral but the results are not for the vast majority of those afflicted, so I can't blame the public for having prejudice.
And yet lots of people keep covering such things up and not freaking out and leaking them out of moral outrage.
anti_dan
49m ago
Yeah, I don't think that sort of thinking is held by anything close to a majority of Americans.
Most of the replies I've seen are people like you who just want to tell me what a horrible person I am
I didn't say you were horrible person, because I never thought you were a horrible person. Naive, stubborn, sensitive, defensive, pussy-whipped, yes, but the former four traits could be a temporary status as the result of the last and not a permanent fixture of your personality.
Anyway she sent me photos of her at the hospital today, recovering from the abortion. So it wasn't a scam. (yeah yeah I hear you thinking "but what if the hospital photos were also fake!" she's not some expert photo editor or stage magician).
It's entirely possible she was at the hospital today recovering from aborting your fetus, but <Old Joe from Breaking Bad Voice>: How do you know the photo was from today? How do you know the hospital photo was from an abortion? Did you see a photo of her holding her medical records with the contents readable? Even if she was in the hospital for an abortion today, how do you know the fetus was yours? If you sent her money for the abortion or "abortion," how do you know you weren't the only John to do so?
Chicks in both poor and rich countries alike will reuse old photos (or videos) to invent excuses, create alibis, or provide "corroborating" evidence for themselves. This only increases for women of dubious backgrounds abroad and can include hospital photos, of which foreign chicks can have aplenty, as in many countries people use hospitals for general practice services (not only the ER/urgent/specialized care say, Americans, might associate with hospital visits).
As an example, a classic variant of the old photos scam is young women planning dates with Western (or even local) men and when the time comes, sending photos of her herself all dolled up, saying she's ready but just needs him to send money for cab fare. Where once the money is received, she'll then block him or make some excuse to flake/temporarily ghost in an attempt to keep the gravy train going. This scam can naturally be pulled with multiple men simultaneously. Albeit it's somewhat tougher for chicks to pull nowadays since genre-savvy men will say they'll just send an Uber via their credit card, but the counter-defense chicks have developed is to say they don't trust Ubers or rideshares for this or that security or some other reasons, and need cash to use a trusted personal driver.
Turns out I actually know more about my personal life than random people on the internet.
You might know more about your personal life than random people on the internet, but you may not know more about hers than random people on the internet. You may know less due to unwise inferences; this being your personal life and you being smitten with her is likely clouding your judgement. Hence the recommendation that people shouldn't represent themselves in court: "he who represents himself has a fool for a client."
It was a mistake for me to post this here, I know.
Hmm yeah, that was the biggest mistake with regard to creampie-ing and developing one-itis for a single-mother prostitute: posting about it and your e-acquaintances not being overly reassuring as to her Wonderfulness.
If you’re in California or a small handful of other states there are a few rules but otherwise it’s the Wild West. GDPR is the only real game in town in the EU. Your biggest challenges are cost and access (getting someone to sell to you is harder than closing the sale). It also really depends on what you mean by major country.
If you mean like, could China buy data on Americans from sketchy brokers and assemble it themselves? Yes almost certainly and they probably have. There is essentially no mechanism preventing them from doing so either. However, as I noted in my comment above, real-time and granular data from the biggest primary players is usually kept strictly in-house. They are also almost certainly keeping their capabilities in their pocket in case of major conflict.
In fact the CFPB was thinking about putting in nominal sale restrictions (really basic stuff) but the Trump admin tanked those plans. It’s my understanding that there are a few Executive Orders that attempt to fill the gap (eg prevent sale to China or Iran or Russia etc) but it’s unknown how much tooth or enforcement consistency they have (my guess: very little)
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1hr ago
Congratulations, that's a nice problem to have.
There are basically 3-5 types of players of note. The government, large stack tech providers, and data brokers are the most distinct and relevant ones.
The government is extremely capable but also doesn’t usually bother to assemble its data into a full-you, longitudinal picture unless it’s motivated to do so. Theoretically that requires a warrant or a high degree of suspicion but in practice it just requires a casual interest. I think regular citizens worry far too much about this and powerful citizens worry far too little about it.
There are only about 3 players in tech with large “stacks”. Google, Meta, and Amazon/AWS. Second tier players in terms of exposure or will to track include Apple, ByteDance, and Microsoft. Any other tech company relevant for an American only matters insofar as they integrate their stuff with the final group…
The “data brokers”. These guys assemble pictures of you based on what dregs they can buy from bigger players, smaller but more comprehensive deals with single or more focused services, and occasionally supplement with data leaks even if such is technically illegal I’m pretty sure they still do.
It’s important to keep these 4 groups distinguished (there’s a major gap between the top tier of tech and the second tier). The answers and usage of the data differ a lot. To some extent the top tier hold back from their full theoretical power.
I will add that there is probably a fifth group of relevance: ISPs and cell providers. These groups are theoretically high exposure but held back due to regulation or fear of lawsuits. The government teams up with them again in cases of suspicion but otherwise doesn’t usually bother. (Banks might count as a sixth group but AFAIK they are super regulated about what they do so don’t matter)
I’d say that the exact words and recordings usually aren’t a major worry. It receives too much attention if you ask me. Your location is far from granular but big picture is likely very knowable even by smaller players. The data brokers are a bit inconsistent but potentially the biggest store of info and also the least regulated. However that inconsistency also works somewhat in your “favor” as the knowledge they get is by nature very inconsistent. You’d be surprised at how hoarding some companies are about their own data and how reluctant the biggest players are to share the Crown Jewels even if they only sorta use it themselves. Your web activity is pretty patchy because the tech evolves so fast and there’s a major wax and waning of exposure. Sometimes they can track a ton and sometimes the noise is strong and it’s hard to assemble patches of data with reliability.
And again each of the 4 nongovernmental groups get different slices of the data so unless you’re asking specifically about the top tier it really depends.
quiet_NaN
1hr ago
People are still going to call them pedos.
Then people are wrong. I discussed this before.
Let me put it more plainly and provocatively. The problem with calling a 50yo who fucks a 16yo teen in a clearly coercive setting "pedophile" is that you are equating something which is deeply morally objectionable with something which is fine.
In case there is any doubt about which is which, yes, I am claiming that there is nothing morally wrong with being a pedophile, in the technically sense of the word.
Now obviously, it is a sexual orientation which sucks greatly for anyone with a remotely working moral compass (and will lead to behavior which is very wrong for those without one), and I thank my maker that I am into women with tits instead so I have access to ethically produced porn and ethical opportunities to have sex (even if being bi would be strictly preferable in that regard).
Sure, there is a large overlap between child-fuckers and pedophiles, but my problem is with child-fuckers as child-fuckers. If some asshole decides to sexually abuse a kid, I don't give a rats ass if they were into kids or watching MILF porn at the same time to keep aroused, they should go to prison either way.
Using pedos as a synonym for child abusers is bad. Expanding it to include creepy sex pest-ry targeting underage victims is even worse. I also do not think that the general vibe of "your sexual orientation makes you the likeliest group to be deported to death camps without anyone else saying a word in your defense" is actually very effective at keeping ethical pedos (who are not complicit in sexual abuse) ethical, probably a society which was meh about ethical pedos but very much against child abusers (which mostly describes western legal systems) would offer a better gradient.
I am not much of a linguistic prescriptionist, normally. I use to beg the question correctly, but it is not a hill I am willing to die on. Still, words matter, and I think that on this forum we should strive to use accurate terminology even if 85% of the general population is using it in a more diffuse manner, especially if it involves emotionally charged words which are intentionally repurposed for clear political goals.
As another example (without a strict 1:1 correspondence), consider a (perhaps hypothetical) attempt to redefine "rape" as "any sex act perpetrated by a man which involved a woman who either did not consent or regretted consenting subsequently". (It is not entirely divorced from common usage, people have sex under the influence of voluntarily consumed drugs which would inhibit their legal ability to consent all the time, and end up in situations where they can decide on the next day that they were raped (and then decide to report it or not) or retroactively grant consent. (Perhaps not legally, but practically. Legally, "last night when I was dead drunk, I urged my hot husband to fuck my brains out and he did" might still be rape, but unless she bring that up in divorce proceedings eventually, nobody cares.)) Still, I would definitely argue against anyone here who would try to push such a new definition, because it hopelessly muddies the water by using the same term for different things which are not remotely morally equivalent.
ControlsFreak
1hr ago
There is significant interpretive difference between individual rights recognized in the Bill of Rights, due to the background of natural/retained rights tradition, as compared to enumerated, limited powers of government. In fact, much jurisprudence actually roots rights WRT television in the free speech clause. Whether or not that is accurate, and whether there should be more of a revival of the free press clause, is above my pay grade (though I have thoughts). But the entire interpretive framework is significantly different from the first step.
The founders did seem to think that there was a meaningful difference between Armies and Navies, naming them separately rather than some unified term and including entirely separate clauses addressing particulars of each. I also agree that if we called the Navy the Floating Army, it probably wouldn't turn the Navy into an Army for purposes of the Constitution. So, I guess my first question is... is the Air Force a Flying Army or a Flying Navy? Because I'm not sure which Constitutional clauses apply to it.
Corvos
1hr ago
Those girls are damaged and they have already been steeped in a way of life that makes them cynical, mercenary, and not well suited for stable monogamous relationships. I am not even condemning them for it; it's a survival strategy for desperately poor women who have few other options.
I’m afraid I have to second this. I had a friend who married such a girl in another Asian country. He believed that she had retired and that since he was now providing for her she would not be tempted back into old habits that she clearly disliked.
It was not so. The habits of decades don’t fade so easily - she chafed at the lack of power she had as the demure receiver of her husband’s money and turned to prostitution to fund a secret drug habit and (I suspect) to get back some agency in her life. Then he lost his job and things blew up completely.
Have to agree with your conclusions, although I come at it from nearly the opposite valence. I want to own my phone on the hardware level, and NOT have it spying on me unless I choose to transmit certain info out.
I have all the extra Samsung AI features disabled on mine, and have yet to hear a single reason to turn them on.
If it is going to be spying on everything, it damn well better be able to figure out how to be a good little servant and satisfy my actual preferences.
This has been my ongoing annoyance with targeted advertising. I should never, ever be exposed to a digital ad that isn't at least somewhat enticing to me, or at least feels relevant to my interests. Yet 99% of the time, I'm simply nonplussed by the offerings that actual get served. Oh, I can see that they're taking educated guesses, they're not completely winging it, but whatever 'consumer profile' or equivalent they've got of me is laughably off base. I could see a me that was shorter on willpower and maybe 15-20 IQ points lower might be engaged with it.
Full disclosure though, I've also used the Firefox browser the entire time I've been on the internet, and I adblock every website by default, so it is just possible they can't get a good read on me.
After decades of data gathering, they aren't any better at predicting my preferences DESPITE ME BEING VERY CONSCIENTIOUS when feeding my preferences to them!
My end thought is "Look guys, if you want my hard-earned money you have to at least display things that are genuinely appealing at a price point I would be willing to consider. Otherwise, maybe leave me be." I can figure out what I want and how to buy it just fine on my own!
And that's kind of the meta-issue with AI products and their integration. "If you want me to opt-in to your digital surveillance panopticon, SHOW ME HOW IT WILL IMPROVE MY LIFE FROM BASELINE, I don't want parlor tricks and corporate marketing jargon, I want tangible improvements in the metrics that I care about with regards to my life quality. If you can't figure out how to do that, I literally do not trust you to run this system wisely."
EDIT: Although, I am waiting in trepidation/excitement for the day I log into one of my accounts and have a conversation with the AI and it becomes clear that the robot has me 100% pegged, it knows precisely what I want and it can offer a plausible plan on how to get those things/give them to me, and demonstrated capacity to assist in that goal. Then, I like to think that I'll have the willpower to put it down and think things over, and try to maintain enough sense of self that I do not just immediately empty my wallet and tell it to do whatever it takes to make my dreams come true.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2hr ago
The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, by Rashid Khalidi.
Unapologetic Palestinian perspective. Khalidi is highly educated and Westernized, so occasionally makes some obligatory noises about how terrorism is bad and it's unfortunate that Israeli civilians have been killed, but this is pretty clearly performative throat-clearing before getting into how everything is always Israel's fault (or the US's). That said, makes a good case for where Israel has gone wrong (and admits some of the areas where the Palestinians have). It won't change any minds but if you want the best-articulated Palestinian perspective you can get without academic faffing about "subaltern identities" and "Zionist colonial-settler projects" (e.g., Nur Masalha and Edward Said) this is probably it.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
2hr ago
Texans and Coloradans are annoyed by the influx of Commiefornians, is there a part of the country that actually likes its neighbors? Haha
MollieTheMare
2hr ago
I’m finally on ‘The Far Side of the World’
Give you joy on reaching the antipodal point on your circumnavigation of the series. I think The Far Side of the World is where O'Brian was at the height of his powers. The five novel sequence from The Thirteen-Gun Salute through the The Commodore is where I most like to get lost in though. One just flows into the the next.
junkie Maturin
To be fair to Maturin its clear he deals with chronic pain from his
It's quite clear his physical recovery was very slow from the bowling-green scene in The Commodore.
Even though the film could never live up to the novels, I have mixed feelings about a sequel. I think they still did a beautiful job, especially with the sound stage. I wish we could have had more of at least the same quality, but I'm afraid that any sequel moves would be a shameless cash grab at far lower quality.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
2hr ago
Don't we all regard those examples as moral failures though?
I've yet to see anybody seriously take the position that grooming gangs were okay, I've only seen shameful denial.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
Propane runs fine in a system designed for R-12. The issue with it is flammability.
While propane's flammability makes repairing systems using it more dangerous, it doesn't make much difference in running the system. It's a significantly better refrigerant than r-134a(the main thing it's replacing now) or r-410a(which, along with 404, it's likely to displace a lot of in the coming years) but a slightly worse one with similar drawbacks to r22(which has been banned/in phaseout for a while).
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
2hr ago
Rather, that we are not living up to much of our ideals.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
2hr ago
the fact that all movements have leaders makes those leaders by definition "elevated factions" renders the possibility of an "uprising of the masses" defnitionally impossible
This is correct. Masses are categorically incapable of mounting any deliberate action. All they can muster is panic and senseless violence. Any direction is given by leadership, which is incompatible with being a mass.
The elite do not enforce their will by their own hand; that is done by the security state, whose ranks are filled from the very masses whose necks they are stepping on
The necks of the baton wielders are not stepped on, or at least not enough as to make them ineffective. When that happens, they tend to turn the batons against their commanders in military coups, and become new elites; or break ranks and fail to defend their commanders against competitors.
No amount of in-group cohesion will save the ruling elite if [...] incompetence erodes the security apparatus' faith in the elite.
What you are describing is quite exactly the higher level of in-group cohesion of a counter-elite producing a circulation.
A gang of colonels decides they trust each other more than their commanders, and performs a military coup. A common story.
But a more common if less dramatic story is that the colonel is the friend of the general is the friend of the politician and that they all have more to lose by breaking ranks, so they all agree to preserve the system and keep their mouths shut.
I don't think that's true Bah on either account and I'm glad you posted it, I think many people here would deliver the same advice and tough love to a friend of theirs.
Have you ever had a friend who is smitten with someone and not thinking clearly? Every post I've seen in this thread comes off to me as people who are trying to knock a friend out of their lovestruck perception of reality. Some of them are a bit harsh, but mostly in response to you fighting being knocked out of this lovestruck state.
What would you tell a friend if they came to you with a question, "Hey, so I may have impregnated a single-mother Philippine prostitute I picked up at a strip-club and I'm thinking about moving there and starting a family with her"?
What would you say to your friend if you think the above decision was a really bad decision? Your responses in thread come off that you kinda want this fantasy to be true and that you found love and a family. If you choose not to do the above, I think you should spend a lot of your effort to find a woman in the US and start an American family. Something is clearly missing from your life you really desire and I want you to satisfy it, just not in a way which I think will lead you to disaster.
TowardsPanna
2hr ago
How difficult would it be to set up a company that actually buys the data on either a major country, anonymized, or specific smaller groups or individuals, not anonymized? What are the rules for who they are allowed to sell to, and in what form?
I don't necessarily believe this to be the case, but an amusing thought: What if the feminist hoe-maddening over IQ is not because they believe such a concept could be used to incorrectly characterize men as smarter than women, but because they already do (at least subconsciously) believe men are smarter than women. And where IQ research, or the IQ concept, is only further pouring fuel on the fire in legitimizing this belief and spreading awareness of it.
Three potential non-mutually exclusive drivers come to mind that could lead to the female belief that men are smarter than women:
- Lived ExperienceTM. Women—with their allegedly greater Empathy, Social Intelligence, and Emotional Intelligence that they love gassing themselves up about—have cultivated a sense of the Hanania-pill (posted below by @FtttG) through their lifetimes of interacting with men and women.
- A mild case of the Apex Fallacy. If when considering the distribution of men in some trait, women automatically focus on some top quantile of men. If one only mentally compares some top quantile of men against the same quantile of women in IQ—in the presence of greater male variability—one could conclude that men are smarter than women.
- A less mild case of the Apex Fallacy. Similar to 2), but greater male variability is no longer a necessary condition. If one only mentally compares some top quantile of men against a less restrictive quantile of women (such as women as a whole) in IQ, one could conclude that men are smarter than women.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
My impression is that Epstein's clients were not particularly requesting for underage, that was Epstein himself, and that he deliberately recruited teenaged girls who were vulnerable because they did not have great lives with bright futures ahead. 100% of these girls understood when getting on the plane that 'I need you to work a high end party' meant 'have sex with the guests'- especially because my impression is that, like most pimps, Epstein himself was having sex with them.
It seems likely to me that many of Epstein's guests were getting off on the taboo aspect of having sex with minors. I doubt that 'power differentials' are a big part of the explanation for the simple reason that his guests already have a very high power differential compared to the vast majority of possible partners. Epstein wasn't offering anything special enough there to make committing crimes appealing.
faceh
2hr ago
but I think as you say even if women make equally good or even better (as I think some research suggests) decisions, time is money, faster can be better, and sometimes forcefully imposing decisions on others can also be more effective than we give it credit for.
From an evolutionary standpoint, yeah. Men in a hunting band have to respond a lot quicker to a changing environment than women gathering berries, in general. Slow decisionmaking kills, or lets the prey escape, which is also bad.
So women might have a decent structure for reaching consensus on important matters (do these fruits look ripe? Are these berries poisonous? which section of the forest shall we forage in today?) It will necessarily be more slow and 'sensitive' to feedback from the group members, whereas for men, if the guy leading the hunt screams "GRUG! THROW SPEAR NOW!" better to not talk back and just DO IT.
It's almost never merely a survival strategy nor are they that desperate.
From their perspective, converting pussy to pesos (or whatever local currency) is just a path of lesser resistance and higher ROI than grinding away at some regular day job like a chump. A newish-model smartphone, a replenishing supply of makeup, and a recurring supply of new clothes aren't going to pay for themselves—which her stupid parents and/or an ordinary boyfriend/husband are/would be too stingy or poor to provide. Scamming foreign men is the cherry-on-top, whether playing the short- or long-game, as it's easier and more profitable—and even more fun—than picking up more shifts as a bargirl or tacking on an additional side-gig at a normal day job.
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