Why is it socially acceptable for women to touch men without asking them?

I have never understood that either. It’s another double standard that should not exist but is quite pervasive.

Men do in fact do a lot of “mansplaining.” That is, they tell women how something works or should work. I’ve seen it myself and know it happens.

But women also frequently engage in “womainsplaining.” Their version of the above is to tell men how they should feel or emotionally react to something. Seen that a lot, too.

I guess both genders do it when they believe someone has encroached on a domain they “own.”

It’s amazing how much stuff you can know is untrue or extremely unlikely by understanding that there is no mechanism by which it could occur. That’s part of why certain conclusions (which I usually get right) seem so obvious to me while others miss them. To achieve this, I always ask myself, “What is the mechanism by which that could occur?”

If there is none, or a highly unlikely or speculative one, I can be fairly certain that what the person is claiming is untrue.

For instance, claims about Covid-19 destroying the immune system. I asked myself, “What is the mechanism by which that could occur in a normal human immune system?” I couldn’t think of one given how coronaviruses work (and Covid-19 is a fairly normal CV). Thus I concluded this claim was likely false. Of course it depends on having a good amount of background knowledge, but even without that my method can work fairly well.

When I see some claim I always ask, “What’s the possible mechanism in the world by which that could be the case?” If there isn’t one I either reject the claim or investigate it far more if I think I am missing something (sometimes that happens too).

The first ten on today’s playlist:

TIFU when I was trying to be a gentleman. But ended up in a situation that looks bad.

Stay far, far away from this person. She will fuck you over in the end. I’ve met people like this and it never ends well.

The intern I was mentoring a while ago got very drunk one night at a work event as she wasn’t used to drinking at all — and the drinks had more alcohol in them than usual. I kept some skeevy guy away from her, drove her to her home, carried her up the stairs and put her in bed. I took her shoes off and turned her on her side so she wouldn’t choke on vomit and then covered her up and left a note on the night table that said, “Mike took you home and put you in bed. You were totally passing out and incoherent. See you tomorrow if you feel well enough.”

Unlike the person above, she was thankful for me doing that and kept telling me how kind I was to treat her so well. Just seemed like basic human decency to me, though.

Americans are always surprised when they go to work in a civilized country and stuff like this happens:

It was a big shocker to a lot of my American co-workers when I was working at a German-owned corporation and their German colleagues were unreachable for an entire month is summer due to being on vacation.

Most people don’t realize how much the US is a hellscape in comparison to a lot of other places.