I don’t know why modern feminists do not see that it’s a very bad narrative that women are fragile, weak yet angelic creatures who can do no wrong and are basically children until they are 40. Meanwhile, they insist that men are worse than bears and that we only think about sex and are inherently, genetically evil.

How does this help anyone at all? That so many women wish to self-infantilize is completely mystifying to me. This defeats the entire animus and raison d’être of the previous 150+ years of feminism altogether.

The “smart” book I just stared reading: The Non-Fundamentality of Spacetime: General Relativity, Quantum Gravity, and Metaphysics by Kian Salimkhani.

This book puts the “fun” in “fundamental.” It’s really good. Hard, but good.

Men, what is your “reverse the genders” moment?

Good thread about the revocation of women’s “creep passes.” A man’s consent to anything at all remotely sexual is assumed because “men always want it.” Meanwhile, that’s horribly harmful and like many men, I am not attracted to 99.9999% of women so I don’t want a damn thing from any of them.

Nothing in my experience makes many women angrier than when they’re called out after doing some creepy-ass shit a man would never get away with in a trillion years. And if you resist or complain you get called a “fag” or something like that, or worse (they try to ruin your life).

Put this also in the “men only want sex!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1`1111111” category:

I’ve done shit like that half a dozen times in my life at least, and sometimes not realized it until years and years later….

This happened during the days when Craigslist still had personals and before I met my partner, but I was thinking about it in reference to the feminist “men only want sex” narrative.

I had posted on the “Dating” portion of Craigslist, not the “Strictly Platonic” area. Like most men, I didn’t get many responses. One or two a month, if that. But I got one from a woman who seemed interesting. Talked with her a little, she seemed ok. A little intense but normal. But then she wrote something in an email that seemed a little odd about sex so I responded with something like, “I’m interested in dating and all that entails. I’m not interested in a long-term platonic relationship or I would’ve posted in the ‘Strictly Platonic’ section.”

Then she proceeded to send me a multi-paragraph completely unhinged rant that mostly consisted of a jeremiad about how I was terrible because like all men, I only wanted sex, men are terrible beasts who can only think about sex, and that I was a horrible human because I wanted her to be my “sex doll.” I was like what the ever-livin’ fuck? I shouldn’t have even responded, but I smarmily replied that she seemed to be the one obsessed with sex and I hoped that she had some funds to get her obvious mental illness checked out. Then I blocked her.

The funny thing about that is the woman I dated just prior to her I had made anxious and worried because in her words I “hadn’t touched me or even tried to have sex with me after three dates. Are you not attracted to me?” I was plenty attracted to her. I just wanted to get to know her a bit more.

Men cannot fucking win. If we say we’re interested in sex, we’re horrible creeps who allegedly can only think about that. If we take our time to get to know a woman, we’re still horrible people making women anxious and feel unattractive. Which fucking one is it, huh? Which fucking one?

So glad I met my partner. All that shit was an absolute goddamn nightmare.

Why are so many people eager to defend smartphones, despite their obvious harm? I do think it has a bit to do with what I said about the heroin addict’s “I could quit anytime I like,” but there’s something deeper too. I think this more buried aspect is just a version of status quo bias, but more entrenched and so harder to root out. They can’t admit they’ve made such a huge mistake over such a long period and thus deny that there could possibly be anything wrong.

But there is. And deep inside, they obviously know it. In that way, it’s very similar to the increasingly-debunked Fat Acceptance movement.

I found a sign about me today:

Yeah, that covers it nicely.

If RTO (return to work) mandates are driving senior talent away, then where is that talent going and who is replacing them?

I am the senior, top talent. I work from home and will never go back to an office again. I told my immediate manager and anyone else who would listen that if there ever was an RTO mandate enforced on me, I’d quit immediately (like, sign off right that second and never log in again) with no handover. Nothing. That was well over a year ago and I’m still here (and paid 20% more than I was then), so it had no adverse impact on my career.

If RTO were ever enforced, I’d be able to find another remote role in a few weeks. That’s what having rare certifications, expertise in 7+ areas (most IT people have 1-2) and 20+ years of experience gets you. My manager said — accurately — that if I were to go, they’d need to hire several people to fill my role as I handle everything from difficult networking, design and architecture to regulatory compliance and security. I also meet with customers routinely and do very well at this. I can schmooze with customers and then solve problems other IT people have spent weeks failing to fix. This set of skills is very, very, very difficult to find in one IT person.

I’ve worked hard to get where no one can tell me what to do. And no one will about RTO or any damn thing else.

Scrabble world championship 2023: Breaking down a nail-biter.

I absolutely could get this good at Scrabble but have no interest in doing so because it doesn’t pay enough. If the prizes were millions of dollars, I’d be there and killin’ it.

Why do men catcall women in the streets but you never see women do the same to men?

Women do it as well — depends on the context and environment. I’ve been catcalled by women from cars before, when walking alone at night in the army (when I was also really fit). It’s rarer but it does in fact happen.

Women almost always catcall in drunk groups, in my experience. Men do it in groups or alone.

Peregrine Falcon attacks a mallard in real time.

That is riduckulous. (Obligatory “Damn, nature, you scary.”)

The first ten on today’s playlist:

If I had kids, I’d not allow them to have social media until 16 and a smartphone till either 14 or 16. Sure, they’d try to sneak around it but there’s still a lot you can do without going full authoritarian.

Smartphones and social media (including TikTok) are just too obviously harmful. This is just the same as that I’d attempt to keep my kids from developing a raging meth habit. There’s about the same level of potential harm there, so you must do what you can.

By the way, again, that Nature anti-Haidt piece is just such utter shit. It commits more argumentative and factual errors than Trump speaking off the cuff. There is so much money involved of course Facebook, Apple, et al. will be spewing propaganda from any outlet that will allow it. And Nature hasn’t been worth a damn in many years.

Yeah, only complete doofuses bought anything in that Facebook-sponsored Nature hit piece. Lord, what a pile of shit.

Before the pandemic and then the predictable RTO push, I don’t think I really understood just how much of many people’s social needs were being met by work and office contact and activities.

I did not realize this because zero percent of my social needs are met in an office and never have been. Nearly none of my friends come from any workplace of mine and I actively attempt not to make friends where I work (with a few rare exceptions). Because why would you do that?

Put simply, I had no idea just how important shitty workplace interactions and friendships were to otherwise-deprived people. And it makes me sad that now I do know this.