domain:savenshine.com
sodiummuffin
18m ago
He meant that, if you have 1 heterosexual and 2 bisexuals of the opposite sex, everyone can still sleep with everyone else. If there's nobody else of the same sex being heterosexual doesn't affect the number of combinations.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
32m ago
but I'm afraid you did this yourself a while back with your precise definition of tackiness. I realized that throughout the rest of that thread I was very careful to use alternate language whenever I was tempted to say tacky in a context that didn't fit your definition, which made me realize that, as fun as your definition was, it didn't really reflect how people talk in real life.
On the one hand I'm flattered anyone remembers my writing.
On the other, this comment really makes me step back, in that I had a lot of fun writing out an elaborate definition of tacky, and thought I was doing so in good fun towards an enlightening descriptive view of reality; when apparently an intelligent reader would interpret the comment as a proscriptive definition.
Raising the questions: Am I bad writer? Or are the people I think are using too elaborate definitions also just having fun and hanging out?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
39m ago
Also, I'm curious for your thoughts on the polyamory debate? I actually considered tagging you but didn't want to call you out hah.
Well, now that you're asking, my current opinion on Polyamory is very 2007:
Labels are for soup cans
Any attempt to create new rules for human sexuality seems to me to ultimately turn into an attempt to create opportunities to rules lawyer around human sexuality. A certain class of person tries to use the creation of a community or a movement around human sexuality to find opportunities to badger people into having sex with them even if they don't want to. Free love, polyamory, parts of the gay rights movement, much of the trans rights movement.
I never really had any interest in the community aspects of polyamory, or the whole lifestyle/polycule thing, for that reason. It mostly seemed like an elaborate way for people to take advantage of each other. There was a time in college I enjoyed reading stuff like Dan Savage or Sex at Dawn, and I don't think much of the theoretical case can be easily brushed aside, but I was never a true believer in the concept.
For me and my wife, bringing a girl home for a threesome occasionally was a lot of fun, but is now largely a hobby we no longer have time for, like golf or backpacking. Our adventures in bringing in an extra girl were fun, formed excellent memories and long lasting friendships, and lead to remarkably little drama. I highly recommend it if you get the chance, much like the Grand Canyon, it's one of the few things in life that doesn't disappoint.
I do have to laugh and think of Solon's advice to Croesus when I read these rose-tinted takes on the joys of lifelong monogamy in posts dunking on the plyggies.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
40m ago
In some ways yes, in others no.
I mean, yes, social media and all.
But there's other recompense. It's a lot socially easier and more common to be a single mother without a husband and simply offer no explanation for where the kids came from.
Shrike
42m ago
Interesting, thanks! Looks like Pakistan has mostly SRBMs and MRBMs and cruise missiles? Pakistan definitely doesn't have the strategic depth that the US/USSR have but I don't know enough about ABMs and in particular India's ballistic missile defense program to know if that gives India much of an edge there.
Definitely makes striking the launchers prior to launch easier though!
KingOfTheBailey
51m ago
It turned out that gender woo was way more memetically contagious than (it appeared|its advocates thought|its advocates were willing to say). I think poly will prove to be as contagious or worse; we just haven't seen the floodgates from legal recognition yet so it's still "a weird SF/alt-lifestyle thing". Poly requires new people to be poly with, once the people you were seeing have moved on, and that means evangelizing to normies. And if you believe that most people are not capable of practicing poly without causing xkcd#592, this boils down to going up to people and saying, "hey, have you tried this sweet new infohazard?"
I was once briefly involved with an attractive ENM girl who only wanted something casual, and while that might sound the start of a salacious story that'll makes the reader say "tfw", it was the most stifling period in my dating life. Anyone else I wanted to see, I would have to have the "poly conversation" with, and I couldn't bring myself to do that. It just felt too much like peddling bad memes to decent women, and after I missed out on a couple of relationships with decent girls that way, I decided it was better to be single than help worsen the modern dating world.
And once I broke things off, it turned out that even a relationship that casual couldn't go back to being a friendship. Either she was only keen to hang out as friends because of the possibility of adding a sexual element to the friendship, or breaking things off hurt too much to stay friends. Whichever was true, poly opened a branch of the decision tree which only had bad outcomes.
Rov_Scam
53m ago
I remember seeing, at the start of Trump's first term, a meme on Facebook with a picture of Trump walking on the beach with Christ and the caption "Obama kicked you out, but I brought you back in" or something similar, and there have been several preachers of standing unknown to me who have stood on stage with Trump and called him Christ's vessel here on earth. The first item was probably the work of redneck fringe Christians who don't bother going to church or leading lifestyles that could be described as anything approaching biblical, and the second is probably from the wackaloon end of actual practicing Christians, but these poles are far enough apart to suggest that there's a broader element among religious people who think that Trump is doing God's work in a way that they don't attribute to normal politicians. Even openly religious politicians like Mike Pence or Rick Santorum never seemed to receive the kind of awe that Trump does, probably because they're humble enough to realize that such adoration is kind of sacrilegious.
DiscourseMagnus
54m ago
Do you think they expect Pakistan's arsenal to get considerably stronger?
That is my assumption, yeah. At the moment, nuclear war between Pakistan and India wouldn't actually be an MAD scenario; Pakistan would be completely destroyed (and you can't get any more destroyed than that) while India would "merely" suffer the worst disaster in memory. Pakistan and India have similar-sized nuclear arsenals (in terms of number of bombs - India's bombs are much stronger), but India is of course much larger, and they also have much more sophisticated nuclear delivery systems; Pakistan's arsenal is dangerous but it's currently one of the easier nuclear powers in the world to foil an attack from. In the future they'll most likely be more evenly-matched and a nuclear war would actually spell the end of both India and Pakistan.
hydroacetylene
55m ago
Of you actually read the entire passage it’s from, that meaning seems like less of a stretch.
ApplePie
1hr ago
This is a better suggestion than GBRK's response implies, because most of the article was dedicated to the clear fact that some people prefer, well, dwarves to elves.
The trouble is A) the article was already quite long, and B) I'm not sure what women with less popular looks should do other than find people who like their look. But I'll think about this at least; there may be a follow-up article where I could include more speculative advice like this. Do you have any ideas of your own?
Shrike
1hr ago
Why would it be more favorable sooner? Do you think they expect Pakistan's arsenal to get considerably stronger? Wouldn't India's BMD benefit from more development and deployment time, or do you think it's already capable of meaningfully blunting a Pakistani attack?
I don't know much about India/Pakistan so I don't have a strong opinion, very curious!
Shrike
1hr ago
UPDATE Multiple Pakistani news outlets claim that Pakistan has shot down two Indian Rafael fighter jets.
Nuclear war between India and Pakistan, Thales Group hardest hit?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1hr ago
I do not long for these days, but there were times when my dad would have my brother or I pee in glass Coke bottles, presumably to save the time and keep driving. These bottles we would have to then balance carefully until he did pull over, at which point the pee-filled bottles he would have us place gingerly on the roadside, for some hapless cleaner-of-highway-shoulders to dispose of, I guess.
Ah, the 70s.
GBRK
1hr ago
In a post Sunday night on his Truth Social platform, Trump said he has authorized the Department of Commerce and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to slap a 100% tariff “on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.”
Well I was never going to pay for the anime I watch anyways lmao.
I remember saying something that if trump actually wanted us to re-industrialize he'd say something like, "china doesn't respect our IP, so we won't respect theirs." I said that not expecting it would ever actually happen because I don't like him, but this could escalate in a really hilarious way. Actually, you know what? I'll make that my official position. If trump gets rid of american respect for foreign IP I will start unironically liking the guy.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1hr ago
Secrets of that magnitude are somewhat more difficult to keep these days.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
1hr ago
conveniently forget that Jesus said that it's easier for a camel to thread the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven (how convenient that my new religion that is supposed to save me from the problems of modernity doesn't require me to give up the material trappings of that same system)
Nitpick since it's irrelevant to your main point. As I understand it, the church threaded this needle by differentiating between the not-intrinsically-evil state of merely "possessing material wealth" and the intrinsically evil state of "being possessed by ones material wealth," i.e. not being "poor in spirit."
GBRK
1hr ago
it's not about sexy new partners but a support system
That's it. That's the whole thing. Romantic involvement and religion are the only part of society modern technology and economics have yet to fully atomize. Polyamory offers both, in a way, to a certain kind of atheist. Polyamory forms a community and ideology at the same time. Of the rat/poly/atheist people I know IRL, two of them single mothers with apparently little to lose, and one of them actually tried Protestantism at an earlier point but couldn't manage to swing the "belief in god" part.
rockbier1218
1hr ago
If these two powers enter into a non-meme war I have to imagine the west will get completely drowned by a tidal wave of immigration. RIP my chill software engineer job
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1hr ago
Not sure, I suppose I’m a fool. Perhaps I just was naive or was willing to wave it away. Perhaps I have begun to focus more on Christ. Could be many reasons.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1hr ago
It is far from clear to me how all of the above lack something which happily married monogamous people have.
I don't think I'll be able to convince you then, but it's pretty obvious from where I sit, even though it's a subjective view rather than empirical.
I am sure that there are claims of the form "X couples can form a special bond in a way that people in other forms of relationship can not", which someone somewhere has made for X being "lesbian", "same-race", "dominant-submissive", "straight", "enlightened", "Christian", "black", "child-producing", and so on.
I have no issues with someone expressing such views. I'll disagree with them but I don't really have some ironclad way to knock down their ideas. I might share some of them, I definitely don't share all of them, but I think it is broadly fine to say that not all relationships are equal.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1hr ago
That's what I would have said about gender woo until it swiftly moved from just being left alone into conscripting everyone else into participating in it. If people want to do something I don't approve of with their own lives, sure, that's their call, whatever, but I am now leery of pushes for normalization.
three Pakistani army bases
From what I have seen (to be fair information is still hazy, but this much seems to be clear) India very deliberately did not hit actual Pakistani military targets. India claims to have only struck confirmed terrorist targets, and Pakistan claims they fired on civilian targets. The reported blackout in Muzaffarabad would imply at least some civilian infrastructure was fired upon but whether this was deliberate, or even if it is correct, is not yet clear.
All things considered the Indian retaliation here was quite restrained. Nine targets divided across three towns (showing ability and willingness to strike over a large geographical range, since not all the targets were near Kashmir); no actual Pakistani regular forces were targeted; and all missiles were fired from Indian territory or from aircraft which stayed within Indian airspace. To me it appears to be more of a demonstration of capability than actual intent to harm: “look, we have the ability to hit you but we’re choosing to hold our punches at this time.”
Essentially India is kicking the can back to Pakistan. They have retaliated for the terror attack but in a limited way, moving only very slightly up the escalation ladder. Pakistan now has the choice to back down or to escalate further. There are reports of artillery duels and skirmishes across the border kicking off shortly after the airstrikes but this doesn’t mean much given the baseline in the region. What might be more significant are the official statements of the Pakistani defense minister, claiming that the strikes were all targeting civilians and that “our response will be greater”, and of a Pakistan Army spokesman: “The temporary pleasure of India will be replaced by enduring grief.”
So, Pakistan will almost certainly retaliate for this retaliation. Their leadership, much like that of India, has put itself in a position where backing down looks like weakness rather than wisdom. The question now is, now that the ball is in their court, whether and how much they choose to escalate.
Edit to correct: I previously said all missiles were fired from Indian aircraft, in truth some appear to have been air-launched while others were surface-launched. The point that no Indian aircraft entered Pakistani airspace to conduct these strikes remains true.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
Not to beat a dead horse, but that is a less than convincing defense.
This essay is bad and I should feel bad.
I should feel bad because I made exactly the mistake I am trying to warn everyone else about, and it wasn’t until I was almost done that I noticed.
How virtuous, how noble I must be! Never stooping to engage in petty tribal conflict like that silly Red Tribe, but always nobly criticizing my own tribe and striving to make it better.
Yeah. Once I’ve written a ten thousand word essay savagely attacking the Blue Tribe, either I’m a very special person or they’re my outgroup. And I’m not that special.
Just as you can pull a fast one and look humbly self-critical if you make your audience assume there’s just one American culture, so maybe you can trick people by assuming there’s only one Blue Tribe.
Gotta love vintage Scott.
I think this works with one straight man and two bisexual women, but might not work with the average straight women and two gay men. I think jealousy is much more likely if your partner is having other sex to which, by definition, you're not invited - sex the very thought of which might enrage you. If you're all bisexuals, and your other two partners are doing nothing together that they haven't also done with you in the mix - who's counting? But a straight woman with no interest in watching Boyfriend One sodomize Boyfriend Two might get upset if they're spending too much time together instead of on her.
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