Religion, politics, sex .. and other taboo subjects

But does it really signal danger? As a non-predator surrounded by women who think all men are predators, I have to convince someone I'm harmless. That is, if I go that route.
I really don't know.
In some cases? Yes.
I don't actually think that all men are predators. I know a lot of very decent guys.

But it's behavior without a clear enough intention that makes me alert.
Someone is a tad too nice to me? What do they want? (I have that with women too.)
Someone wants to pay for me? Is this just courtesy, or are they trying to put me in debt? Something else?
Or even... I can see you find me attractive, but what is it you want? Sex or relationship? Will you accept if I don't want either and I just want to hang out?

I guess it's also a bit of social anxiety.
 
I don't actually think that all men are predators.
I'd say that almost all are upstanding human beings, almost all of the time.

It's those lapses that worry me. Even a saint can have a bad day; others shouldn't have to suffer.
what is it you want? Sex or relationship? Will you accept if I don't want either and I just want to hang out?
I've launched a few such conversations: "I find you very attractive, but my life is so busy now I don't know I can offer you a proper relationship" (only to be told she actually wanted to enjoy just hanging out & maybe sometimes get in a few hours of hot sex :eek:), or to admit to a definite but still-vague attraction & get "friend zoned," which I find liberating because then I know how I stand & where to put my energy.
 
Elle was someone I initially met as a friend. I did develop an attraction for her. She seemed to be attracted to me. I asked her if we could step things up. She said no, because I was married. I told I hoped we could still hang out as friends then.

So, we did hang out as friends. I was fine with that and never pressured her to escalate. Eventually she confessed that she did want more than a friendship. She cited that one of the reasons was that I "kept coming back". Not in a relentless pursuit kind of way. More in a I wasn't going to get laid and still wanted to hang out kind of way.

Now contrast this with a lot of posts I've been seeing all over the internet: If you ask a girl out and she declines, leave her alone. Don't speak to her again.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm just not going to worry about it.
 
Elle was someone I initially met as a friend. I did develop an attraction for her. She seemed to be attracted to me. I asked her if we could step things up. She said no, because I was married. I told I hoped we could still hang out as friends then.

So, we did hang out as friends. I was fine with that and never pressured her to escalate. Eventually she confessed that she did want more than a friendship. She cited that one of the reasons was that I "kept coming back". Not in a relentless pursuit kind of way. More in a I wasn't going to get laid and still wanted to hang out kind of way.

Now contrast this with a lot of posts I've been seeing all over the internet: If you ask a girl out and she declines, leave her alone. Don't speak to her again.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm just not going to worry about it.

That quote you refer to...it is NOT FOR YOU.

It's for the angry men who want sex or a committed relationship (they want a woman to be their fuck or their property) and "friendship" with women is not a concept they are even interested in because they don't really see us as people anyways. They see us as the very inconvenient keepers of a commodity they want that they are being denied. And they're kind of pissed off about it.

Those guys? WHEN most women tell them no, we really do want them to go away and not talk to us again. Rather than, you know, cussing us out for rejecting a nice guy such as themselves or maybe even running us over with a vehicle in a rage. Or whatever. Those dudes need to please fuck right off.

A man who sees women as like...PEOPLE...people that you can be respectful, non-boundary-pushing friends with, without an AGENDA that, if it doesn't play out, you get all mad, like if you really can be totally ok with being a legit actual friend, then yeah! By all means! Do that! And sure, the energy might shift one day, who the hell knows.

The problem is that we have too many men who SAY that they can do that, but then in their mind the only reason is they figure if they hang about doing "friend" things long enough, the woman will come around and decide to date them, and they focus an obsessive amount of attention on her and then get angry when eventually they realize they have "wasted their time" when they chose not to look for any other options really. They blame her, because she was nice to them instead of telling them to fuck off, they gave the guy false hope.

I've been reading and responding and trying (*sigh*) to sneak some rationality and sense into, the minds of these MRA/MGTOW/incel/red pill/etc guys for literally like 8 years or so. I mean, it's been a while. I'm familiar with most of the arguments, their grievances, their anger and their weird and twisted theories. I'm kind of laughing right now that so many of my social media friends are just now hearing about these guys. It's not new.

But I cannot see anyone who has any kind of real experience with polyamory, being anywhere close to this kooky mindset. Just please try to understand that a LOT of the "advice" you might see out there, can be more aimed at people who are lower on the curve than you are. I really think that you guys are people-savvy enough that you really should not be too damn paranoid that the "MeToo" movement and similar things are going to bite you in the ass.

The only thing I'd throw down as advice in addition to "don't rape, molest, or harass people, respect consent and you'll be fine" is also actually to try and avoid the messy drama types. I would really advise to watch people socially, read their writing, try to scope them out a smidge before getting intimate, because the only people I have seen going too far in accusing people wrongly of things lately, have been those that you SHOULD be able to see a mile off, because they've got some kind of attention demanding crisis like every 30 seconds. Stay the hell away from them, no matter how hot they are. If I were a guy, that's what I'd be doing anyhow.
 
Friendship works if you're not secretly planning to pull a "posters" scene from Love Actually or a "boombox" scene from Say Anything...
 
Oh, gods, the continued decline of political discourse. When I feel it's near zero, it somehow gets stupider. Mind, though, it's hardly just the United States: nativism & xenophobia are flourshing all around the planet, particularly Europe.

Lately I've been hearing a lot of GOPster quacking about immigration, particularly of dark-skinned Spanish-speaking people of limited means. Of the moment's Top Ten at debunkers Snopes.com, seven are in that category.

I suppose that I can tolerate being lied to by Big Orange. After all, the easiest way to tell that a politician is lying is to see if his lips are moving -- or, in this instance, his thumbs.

What bothers me is the number of people who appear to be of moderate intelligence & sanity, yet accept obvious lies as absolute Truth -- & any readily verifiable facts as "fake news." As a former student of world religion, I'd say that such blind fanaticism has been rare among Euro-blood people for possibly centuries.

With the exception of personality cults that led to murder or suicide. That is where I worry things are heading.

Let's turn to one pernicious meme that keeps getting trotted out by Reds that I encounter locally:
Separating families at the Border is the fault of bad legislation passed by the Democrats. Border Security laws should be changed but the Dems can’t get their act together! Started the Wall.

6:58 AM - Jun 5, 2018
Jeff Sessions made comments in April that breaking family groups into separate individuals was in fact part of a NEW border-control initiative; Snopes has a video clip from May 7 where Sessions lays this out.

The situation gets murkier because Reds have become notorious for being unable to hold onto any two thoughts simultaneously, & therefore have massive difficulty comparing two things. (They are often quite proud of being "single minded." :rolleyes:) They get hold of the meme that "Obama took more children!" which is actually based on kids arriving at the border without an adult ("unaccompanied minors"), NOT separating kids from present guardians (something very rare under Obama).

After some predictable fumfuh & random arm-waving (similar to that accompanying tertiary-stage syphilis), the GOPsters manage to point to "a 1997 law" -- a-hah, it's those damned Clintons again!!

Well... or not -- see, under the so-called Flores settlement,
DHS could detain unaccompanied children captured at the border for only 20 days before releasing them to foster families, shelters or sponsors, pending resolution of their immigration cases.

The settlement was later expanded through other court rulings to include both unaccompanied and accompanied children.
That is, kids can't be held in custody for more than 20 days, period. It in no way mandates separating kids from family.

"Oops, busted, DAMN that Fake News!!" :eek:

Soon enough, the Reds were pointing excitedly at Public Law 107-296. (Remember the early 2001: A Space Odyssey scene where the monkeys are pointing excitedly at the monolith? Yeah, kinda like that. :D) It was "passed by Democratsin 2002!!"

Well... no.
One versions of that rumor was shared by the Facebook page Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children on 19 June 2018 ... captioned: “HERE IT IS. PASSED BY THE DEMOCRATS. ENOUGH OF THE LIES, DECEIT, & FAKE NEWS[.]”

On the date of Public Law 107-296’s passage (25 November 2002), Senate.gov provided its majority as Republican, not Democrat.

The bill’s sponsor was Rep. Richard Armey of Texas (a Republican). The bill had 118 co-sponsors, of whom 114 were Republicans and four were Democrats.
So not only an expression of post-9/11 Rightist hysteria, but almost entirely a Republican steamroller.

As for mandating the crime of stealing children to feed the foster/adoption industry:
This did not mandate that children be separated from their families, but instead, created a legal classification for children with no parent or guardian present or for whom no parent or legal guardian was available to provide care and custody.
Sorted, then: no law to create de facto orphans, no law (even vaguely connected) "passed by Democrats."
________________

The problem, of course, is the uphill logic battle of attempting to prove a negative. Gingrich & Fox News have been planting these mustard seeds for 30+ years; now, if you tell a Red that "no such law exists!" they will soon demand "prove it!!

:confused:

If they see angels walking around amongst us -- a distressing number actually do :eek: & haven't yet been treated for it -- how can you possibly "prove" those spirits ARE NOT there?

Faith won't stop a bullet, but logic helps keep you from getting shot at in the first place. The "faithful" see themselves as righteous heroes, stalwart in their "faith based" campaign against the poor "reality based" people -- yes, they actually do use that term. They will face up to the bullet of Fact rather than put down their cardboard shield of Faith.
________________

Suddenly, after endless tweets about how weak & powerless he is -- "weh, weh, mommy!! They're blamin' ME but all I was doin' was following the law!!" Embarrassing, man. :eek: -- our Orange Ghandi (as Gutfeld calls him) takes a moment between pieces of KFC to sign an Executive Order that might solve the whole quagmire (which he created) without involving Congress.

Gotta leave Congress out, because the "separation" crisis -- which, again, Trump created -- is hammering at deep rifts in the GOP that existed before The Donald & have only got worse. There are Reds who are now much more in danger than they were a month ago of being unseated in 2018, & suddenly don't know whether "I love Donald!" is salvation or poison.

I say "drain the swamp." Kill the Republican Party, then go after the Democratic Party. Put the Libertarian Party on notice they could be next if they don't straighten out their policies & get rid of the pernicious influences of the Koch Brothers & the John Birch Society & various fascisms (like Pelley & Rockwell) & Ayn Rand (& definitely of people who crow about Rand yet have read nothing but a handful of pithy quotations). The political system is a 19th century "solution" to problems of 2018 & beyond, a GREAT way of making wood-spoke wheels. (For a prescient alternative, read Spinrad's A World Between (1979 :)) & note how the hyperconnected Pacifica handles it.)
________________

Strangely, the Trump separation policy backfired in a way you are probably unaware of. See, if a family is detained, they can be investigated as a unit &, if not meeting criteria for immigration or refugee status, can be "fast tracked" back over the border as a unit.

Problem is, having ripped children away & thus given them "unaccompanied minor" status, children BY LAW CANNOT be "fast tracked," & therefore become de facto abandoned/orphaned children, & put into the U.S. foster care system, meantime being cared for at exorbitant taxpayer expense (rather than simply having been left with their detained family).

Rather than be done in a few weeks, this can happily be dragged out for YEARS, adding to the already overburdened court system (in general) & the absolutely crushed immigration courts (in particular).

(Yes, I poke at Reds for this egregious waste, being extended years into the future yet, & demand to know when "drain the swamp" is going to begin rather than be further expanded by yet another lying GOP administration. :p)
 
It makes me want to beat my head against a wall.

I watched that whole thing bloom and spread like some sort of noxious weed.

Trump is easy to figure out. What I can't figure out is why his followers are not only okay with being lied to, but have no qualms about passing on those lies.
 
One can divide political issues and topics up into various useful categories. You got your little and small issues / topics. You got your big ones. You got your "This sucks, but it won't kill everyone off if we don't fix it soon" issues. And you got your "If we don't handle this soon, there's not going to be much of a world here in the future." And when I think about all of that I end up waking up every morning with a silent yet screeching alarm bell going off in my body ... an alarm bell that only a small minority of us seem to be noticing much.

You see, one day (probably sooner than later) Donald Trump will join the dust bin of history and the biggest mark he will have left on the world is that he managed for a little while to prevent any forward momentum on The World's Biggest Most Central Political Issue / Topic. Which also happens to be The One Most Everyone Is Putting Nearly Last On Their List of Priorities.

I utterly despise the whole laundry list of injustices and harms people are doing to one another, and the ongoing economic exploitation ... and so on and so forth. But all of this can be fixed in the long haul, if we keep trying. Time will not run out on our opportunity to create a better, more just and fair world for all people ... unless ... unless we don't very soon get a handle on the The World's Biggest Most Central Political Issue / Topic. And what is that? You guessed it! It's Anthropogenic Climate Disruption (ACD). (Calling it Climate Change makes it sound too hum-drum.) Catastrophe is more like it!

We could--and should--have started the process of addressing ACD twenty or thirty years ago, and would not therefore have to address it in a great big rush -- or full blown emergency mode. Now, if we fail to address it in emergency mode we will do too little too late. That means we have a Really Big Choice to make. We can diddle around and pretend like we're doing something or we can radically transform our entire culture / society very, very quickly. That's our choice. Failure to adequately respond will mean the extinction of most humans on the planet AND more than half of the species with which we are sharing this planet. You'd think we'd all be collectively taking this seriously, then, but we are not. You'd think it would be treated as a priority, but it is not.

We are living today in what was not so long ago a science fiction world. Now it is science fact. Time is short.

Oh, and guess where the Democratic Party of the USA will place Climate Politics on its list of priorities in the next election cycle? Probably near the bottom, right? I mention the Democrats only because there's no point in mentioning the Republicans in this context. We know they don't give a shit about the future of Earth. That's a given.
 
The world is hot, on fire, and flooding. Climate change is here.
By Eric Holthaus on Jul 24, 2018
https://grist.org/article/the-world-is-hot-on-fire-and-flooding-climate-change-is-here/
 
I believe I'd like to see that movie.
 
I believe I'd like to see that movie.

Me too! I have it on hold at the local video rental spot. I'll probably pick it up tomorrow. Let me know if and when you've seen it so we can discuss it. :)
 
I just finished watching Merchants of Doubt.

Again.

Funny thing about getting older ... and having 'consumed' a very big chunk of books, articles, essays, films... is that some part of it starts to bleed together and you begin to lose track of it all. Have I seen this? Did I read that?

While watching, I realized I must have rented that video before (I didn't see it in the theatre)... or was it on NetFlicks? Or...? I knew I'd be familar with the general thrust of the story and would know most of the info in it. That was true... and then I realize, oh, yeah, I've seen this before a few years back. The film was released in 2014, just before my memory started to melt a bit -- like the polar ice caps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt_(film)

I certainly knew I was familiar with the content -- but I had gotten it from so many sources, already.

Anyway, if we are taking a short view on things, there are more important matters, such as what the Kardashians are up to this week. Don't ask me to look up the spelling of Kardashians. I'm sure I don't give a fig.

Is it worth watching? Heck yeah! If you haven't seen this be sure and wind up your VCR, LOL. :p
 
I just finished watching Merchants of Doubt.

Again.

Funny thing about getting older ... and having 'consumed' a very big chunk of books, articles, essays, films... is that some part of it starts to bleed together and you begin to lose track of it all. Have I seen this? Did I read that?

While watching, I realized I must have rented that video before (I didn't see it in the theatre)... or was it on NetFlicks? Or...? I knew I'd be familar with the general thrust of the story and would know most of the info in it. That was true... and then I realize, oh, yeah, I've seen this before a few years back. The film was released in 2014, just before my memory started to melt a bit -- like the polar ice caps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt_(film) .

I certainly knew I was familiar with the content -- but I had gotten it from so many sources, already.

Anyway, if we are taking a short view on things, there are more important matters, such as what the Kardashians are up to this week. Don't ask me to look up the spelling of Kardashians. I'm sure I don't give a fig.

Is it worth watching? Heck yeah! If you haven't seen this be sure and wind up your VCR, LOL. :p


OMFG! No, like, really! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4GoS0-R9Sg
 
Last edited:
Resident Trump's proposed border wall is making the news again, as The Donald pressures congress to get going on that absurd project.

There are dozens of reasons to despise the very notion of such a wall, but the ecological havoc of it is the one which worries me the most.

US border wall would wreak environmental havoc
https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/us-border-wall-would-wreak-environmental-havoc

This wall must not be built! It may require some non-violent direct action to stop it, though.
 
Last edited:
There are still local video rental places out there?

In some places there are, still. There are probably many reasons for this. Nostalgia, no credit cards, or fear of using credit cards online (malware)..., even just the force of habit for older folks. And "customer service" -- like face-to-face "what's good?"

And vinyl records are making a comeback, too.

My local video rental place is locally owned, not a corporate chain. Are any corporate chains still offering this stuff?

On the vinyl revival:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_revival

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN6hOHk1pw0
 
Back
Top