domain:cafeamericainmag.com
Hieronymus
5m ago
Close the loopholes and make it harder for Dem presidents to not enforce the law. Have more of their executive orders get shredded in the courts like DAPA did during Obama's tenure, and like a lot of Trump's EOs always do.
I don't think this is possible, either in principle or in practice. The president has wide discretion not to enforce laws for a variety of reasons. And federal judges, who are routinely blue tribe even when right-leaning, will mostly be looking for reasons to allow a Democratic or neocon Republican president to skip out on his side of the bargain.
We've tried things like this before, and the pro-illegal-immigration factions have successfully defected at the first opportunity. I don't see any reason for optimism that the compromise will be honored in an even more divided country.
wayfarer
7m ago
OP characters are admittedly very common and that is short circuiting a lot of my recommendations.
it is not a strict blocker for me, just that some sort of conflict is needed (maybe it is foregone conclusion that OP character will win - but they want to achieve also secondary goals?)
cjet79
18m ago
No graphical sex depictions in arkendriyhthrist. More of a fade to black style. Arks has a lot of middle but also a lot of ending. Honestly they could have stopped before writing either of the last two books and it would have felt complete.
The world building is top notch in arks, autist levels of details and background. The story probably drags a bit too much because of the level of details provided. So that might be a plus or minus depending on your preferences.
The church of most of the gods are good. There is a god of magic that is a little crazy and not good.
Protagonist is not OP in the story for at least the first 5000-10000 pages.
Governments vary quite a bit. Some are basically third world shit hole tier levels of incompetent and evil. Others are highly competently run by millenia old metal life forms.
On mobile so I can't dig up the specific stories.
The Perfect Run has a time loop aspect, superheroes setting, main protagonist has a save point he can set. It's complete and doesn't faf around as much.
Millennial mage is filled with likeable characters and nice humans.
OP characters are admittedly very common and that is short circuiting a lot of my recommendations.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
28m ago
Reee, my outgroup is full of animals who would never compromise or act in good faith! This justifies me never acting in good faith either.
Except we did have a compromise that legalized 3 million illegal aliens and their progeny forever, which was the 4th time we had legalized illegal immigrants living in the US. So no I don't think that the other side of immigration is doing anything in good faith.
TIRM
32m ago
And eating junk food is no substitute for real meals cooked with healthy ingredients. Some people eat the junk.
HaroldWilson
38m ago
That's why I said 'even'. Anyway the thing is you have to actually understand the consensus to know why you're against it. People aren't avoiding the Economist because they have considered and rejected the sort of mainstream centre/centre-right arguments it advances about given issues, they just find the things it writes about boring.
low-mid-high IQ meme.
I would bet my house on the IQ of the average Economist reader being higher than that of the average consumer of almost any new media/social media outlet/person with a non-trivial following.
HaroldWilson
42m ago
Fine, but I simply don't believe anyone goes to social media because they think that's where the informed people are, they just can't be bothered to read. 95% of people wouldn't even have the basic knowledge with which to begin questioning something they read in the Economist.
Gaashk
47m ago
Yeah, most of the married people I know met their husband in a fairly small cohorts, such as a church or volunteer group (not rotating volunteers, a specific stable cohort), where that sort of thing is more likely to work out, and both parties will experience negative repercussions if they act badly.
TIRM
50m ago
behaving like a good christian or [insert religion] will surely lead to you finding and holding a partner
I was going to say that churchgoing women outnumber men, so yeah maybe. But, now that I google it, articles say young women are attending church at much lower rates than previous generations. So much lower that it flipped to more young men than young women who regularly attend church.
Sorry young guys, you missed the boat on that one.
quiet_NaN
51m ago
But if we don't care about occupying but are happy to just kneecap them if they try to build a nuke, or a missile stockpile, or bioweapons, there ain't much they can do but sponsor low level terrorism against our civilians.
It is not clear to me at all that Israeli conventional airstrikes will be able to permanently keep either the conventional or nuclear weapons program of Iran in check. For example, Russia likes to use Iranian military drones in Ukraine, so that is already one big power which might support them in their capabilities to produce conventional weapons despite your efforts to kneecap them. China probably sees Iran as an important counterweight to US-leaning regional powers like Israel or Saudi Arabia.
So far, Iran has for the very most part only sponsored deadly terror against Israel, not the West in general (Bin Laden was Saudi, after all). As someone who was around in the early 2000s, let me assure you that what was ultimately an act of "low level terrorism against our civilians" managed to shape US politics for the better part of a decade and let to the West going on a wild goose chase.
Now, if your model of the Ayatollah regime is that the probability of them nuking Israel within hours of gaining the ability to do so is close to one, and that they are willing to sacrifice most of their population centers to the inevitable Israeli retaliation, then yes, trying anything to keep them from getting nukes might be worth the costs.
Or your model of the Ayatollah regime might be that while they are rabid antisemites who are serious about destroying Israel, they are also hypocrites in that despite their public statements, they would not like their children to become martyrs. Then bombing the shit out of them to delay them from acquiring nukes might be actively counterproductive in that once they have nukes, they are much more likely to use them.
pigeonburger
51m ago
I've been in rooms full of serious mainstream journalists talking between colleagues about the crisises of their profession and there is no introspection happening. Their solution to the trust crisis is to debunk disinformation harder. There is no realisation that the rise of "disinformation" (of the "alternate perspective the journalist doesn't like", "someone made a mistake handling facts" and "random guy on the internet wrote outright falsehood" kinds) is purely an effect of their own actions.
Any other aspects of MOL you liked?
hmm, what I remember now, after reading it few years ago...
- worldbuilding that was not aggressive stupid (I have a high bar here)
- government etc as depicted in story was not bunch of incompetent clowns and story was written by someone not detached from reality
- various nuggets like magicians overclassifying their spells for prestige regions making them unavailable for beginners
- opponents that were not huffing idiot balls and were opponents not speed bumps. Unlike half of stories on RR ads where "OP protagonist" is mentioned like it would be a good thing
- Kirielle, Kael and others - and that time loop actually resulted in building relation with at least some (especially with his sister and brother)
- Xvim and Alanic were cool
- progression, going for example from "Zach simply erected an aegis – a freaking aegis!" to "It was just a simple force aegis, nothing fancy"
- time travel
- ending was well done
- nonevil church
- the spiders
I felt that part when Silverlake was very prominent was dragging on and if I would be editor I would trim it. Some parts felt repetitive in uninteresting ways, especially multiple webs. I would also drop entirety of dungeon delving. Felt a bit of serial story disease (they had Patreon, right?).
But I would love to read more a bit about what happened after exiting time loop. For many stories I feel they end too soon, and I would cut middle to get more of ending.
Main reason it might not be for you (or anyone really) is that the protagonist is bisexual.
I guess that depends on how it appears. If narration is going in detail over alluring penises/anuses then yes, it is likely going to be a blocker for me. If he is just having kind of relations that would make pope sad it is not a problem, if it is not taking over the story. Though yes, I have lower tolerance to homosexual romance as it is not sexy at all to me. For example if there would be MOL story about Zach using initial time loops to seduce various women in academy (there was a throwaway mention of this) then maybe I would read it.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
1hr ago
· Edited 1hr ago
The core problem seems to be that the assumption is that the man is trying to immediately sleep with the woman and dump her after. So a man who’s persistent isn’t expressing how inexhaustible his passion for this particular woman is, he’s trying to wear her down so he can pump her and dump her.
Or at least that’s the fear, which leads to feelings of disgust at persistence. All it takes are a few experiences of being used and discarded to make someone put up massive guardrails. Heck, men feel terrible at being rejected and it’s easy for that to become resentment and contempt. Men (not all of them!) are perfectly willing to lie to score, and that’s a kind of rejection, too. A woman I was in love with once offered a friends with benefits arrangement when I told her how I felt about her. I felt terrible.
Dating in the courtship model only works when people can trust each other; when they’re worthy of trust. That’s broken down.
SkoomaDentist
1hr ago
Just Midsummer 2025.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1hr ago
I modded him for wordily telling you to fuck off. I'm telling you to let mods handle it and do not respond in kind.
Hadad
1hr ago
I'll keep that in mind the next time Chris wordily tells me to fuck off, but no promises.
TIRM
1hr ago
My wife wants some fancy espresso machine and is opinionated about which sort is good.
She refuses to drink my AeroPress coffee.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1hr ago
This is not helping, and you aren't clever by adding a behind the back shot at him in reply to me.
To be abundantly clear, it is not your place to tell other people to hush.
TIRM
1hr ago
Agreed. My millenial coworkers are pretty much all in long term relationships. Married or with some long term partner. Some have kids. One guy lacks a stable partner and instead gets a new girlfriend every year or so. Which means he dates and pairs just fine.
The one guy at my last job who truly was a dateless unfortunate sort of person (decent guy, don't get me wrong). He is Indian and got a good looking wife in India. He showed me his wedding photos.
Dateless blackpilled men do not appear to be my coworkers. Maybe this is more of a zoomer thing. I'm not specifically clear on the relationship status of the few zoomers I know. Or maybe the typical professional worker reliably pairs up with some partner. Maybe burnouts and the chronically unemployed are the forever alone.
thejdizzler
1hr ago
It used to work when you could do this in the context of socially sanctioned courtship. The man knows he isn't being played too hard because no one is having sex with the woman. Women in turn get to get more exposure to a man and test his level of interest commitment. I think it's a W for both sides. Certainly women seem to still like it today (why is Pride and Prejudice still so popular).
Honestly, if they weren’t doing that, I don’t think you’d see the blowback. It’s easy to hate things that look and sound like stuff that happens in the movies. If you slam-tackle people in public, throw flashbangs into diners during dinner rush, and so on, you get blowback.
I’m not sure what the end goal actually is here. Is he going to go full president Joker? Very Smart People on the left say so. But then again, if that’s true, those same people are behaving very strangely. They’re attending rallies they pre-register for by giving their full name (50501 does this), filming the entire thing, posting symbols on social media, etc. they also show up in full cosplay — Gilead Girls, Leia, various anime characters. I just, if they’re thinking that Trump is going to mass arrest opposition, they’re not only doing everything possible to make sure they’re on the list, but fighting back in ways that simply don’t make any sense. You think Trump wants to arrest the opposition, so you register in advance, apply with the local police (which likely means giving contact information). When you get there, you stand on sidewalks with signs, dressed as children’s TV and movie characters? I can’t imagine anyone would have thought any of it in other states with the threat of authoritarian takeover. I’m sure the people who protested the Nazis did so for a couple of hours on weekends while dressed as characters from Wizard of Oz or Popeye. So either it’s true that Trump is going Joker and we just happen to have an opposition composed entirely of people who stopped maturing at like 8 years old (in which case, we’re going that way), or the whole thing is a combination of Oppression Fetishized, and being used to drum up support and donations.
As I said I don’t have any special insight into this sort of thing. If the end is to take over and disappear Americans, I don’t know what would look different. On the other hand if that’s not the end goal, it would look the same. I would say it’s maybe 30-40% it escalates.
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