Month: January 2025

Dates Hates

Chill Amusing

This was in a sub-Reddit being made fun of, but I think that’s roughly accurate as to the dating experience for men?

For women I’d write:

If it’s a real slog to find a quality boyfriend, have met 2,000 guys who expect you to be a always-on-call bangmaid with no one who actually cares what you have to say or think, are infuriated by men who seem to only value how much you impress their friends by being hot or the “cool girl,” are appalled by all the guys who think spending $20 at Applebee’s means you are obligated to have (likely bad) sex with them, tired of the constant love-bombing, and saddened that men only reach out to you when they want something from you…

Now you understand what the dating market is like for the majority of women.

No RTO

Chill Annoying, Clowns, Evil

Most people who work at a computer aren't super excited about wasting a lot of time getting to and from the office, and when you force people to go back to that it makes them angry. The consequences of that should be pretty easy to predict and yet…

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— Evan Sutton (@evansutton.bsky.social) January 12, 2025 at 7:55 PM

Work from home has been responsible for probably 50-70% of the recent productivity gains in the US, so of course forcing people to return to the office is a lose-lose proposition. It generally makes life worse and is wildly unproductive for most.

Offices are absolutely terrible environments to get any work done.

Chill Links

The infinite scroll may go down in history as the most consequential invention of our time, which when integrated into the mobile phone and connected to the Internet meant that we could each consume user-generated media ad infinitum.

Reckless Driving Isn’t Just a Design Problem. Road-safety activists convinced themselves that law enforcement was unnecessary.

TSMC’s Arizona Fab 21 is already making 4nm chips.

China hacked phones and wants nuclear first-strike ability against US.

Why Taiwan Matters (Actually), Part I.

Self-imposed solitude might just be the most important social fact of the 21st century in America.

Individuality Is A Big Deal.

The US software industry is at great risk, and the government must implement penalties for offshoring ASAP. Mostly agreed.

Their Wealth Is in Their Homes. Their Homes Are Now Ash.

Bad news for young Americans struggling to find work.

Hit It

Chill Oof

Men of Reddit who have gotten in more than one physical fight, what are pros and cons about fighting?

A con is that it only takes one wrong punch or fall to kill you or someone else. It’s that easy. But I didn’t have much of a choice about fighting. I grew up in a violent place and was bullied constantly. As a result, I’ve been in 200+ fights serious enough where I was hurt or bleeding, or the other guy was. Of those I was an adult for maybe 10 of them. The rest happened in middle or high school.

The other con is that my nose is screwed up, I have scarring on the inside of my cheeks from getting hit so much, and all of it likely caused some cognitive damage too. A few other scars too but nothing major.

I suspect my infrequent migraines resulted from head hits, as they do not run in my family and I didn’t have them prior to getting struck in the head a lot, and hard.

So, yes, kids, avoid fights if you can. They result in nothing good, in the end. And if you can’t steer clear of them, get good at fighting. I was forced to the latter option by the bad luck of growing up in rural North Florida.

Chill Quote

To say that straight men are heterosexual is only to say that they engage in sex (fucking exclusively with the other sex, i.e., women). All or almost all of that which pertains to love, most straight men reserve exclusively for other men. The people whom they admire, respect, adore, revere, honor, whom they imitate, idolize, and form profound attachments to, whom they are willing to teach and from whom they are willing to learn, and whose respect, admiration, recognition, honor, reverence and love they desire… those are, overwhelmingly, other men. In their relations with women, what passes for respect is kindness, generosity or paternalism; what passes for honor is removal to the pedestal. From women they want devotion, service and sex. Heterosexual male culture is homoerotic; it is man-loving1.

–Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (1983)

  1. I think this is largely still true. If you ask the average man to name a woman he admires or who he thinks is really awesome, he can’t think of a single one who is not his own mother. Which is insane because there are tons of amazing women out there, including my partner.

Chill Links

Don’t let them lie to you, December was NOT a strong jobs report.

Greenland and the Coldest War.

USDA report finds Boar’s Head listeria outbreak was due to poor sanitation practices.

The Rise of the Supermarket.

Why Los Angeles, America’s most fire-ready city, became overwhelmed by flames.

A significant percentage of the data presented in my posts tells a story that is taboo in the Village of Happy People: everyday life is much harder now, and getting harder.

‘This is your Hurricane Katrina’: Assessing the long road ahead for L.A.

First, they lost their home insurance. Then, L.A. fires consumed their homes.

Fundud

Chill Annoying, Clowns

Correct. Nearly all of the claims of the conservatards about “useless” science are 100% wrong — both because it’s a fool’s errand predicting what will be useful in advance, and most science these days is only funded if there is some practical use in sight (which is a bad way to do it, to be clear).

In reality, we should fund much, much more “useless” science because it invariably ends up being the most useful of all.

Chuckle

Chill Amusing

I’m no Elon Musk supporter, as I’ve said before, but I do think it’s pretty goddamn funny how Musk keeps handily defeating those who insist how much smarter and better they are than him.

And then they all say something like, “But, how could Musk have won? I am the smartest and bestest boy/girl!”

It’s sad and it’s comical. I can’t help but laugh while shaking my head.

T-10

Chill Amusing

Bold choice, using American parachutes and American paratrooper kit on the cover of a book about Nazi intelligence failures. Those are T-10C chutes. I know because I jumped with that chute many times.