Man you are wound up so tight
And too much of this world is painted with the same fucking brush, when that’s the worst possible thing that can be done.
Too many people taking too many cognitive shortcuts, refusing to dig deeper or acknowledge details and differences or even accept facts and evidence over their pet ideologies because it’s too hard for their pablum-fed goldfish brains to handle.
So I push back. Sometimes a slap in the face wakes people up when nothing else does.
personal insults
Oh, yes. Because criticizing someone’s lack of real-world experience - with context - is so very much like trying to shame a person into silence by attacking their character instead of their argument.
Like, apples and oranges are the same species, no?
Nuance, due. It exists. It’s a real thing.
Aside from the Rotary Un-Phone, there are pretty much no dumb phones anymore. Those that market themselves as dumb are just reskinned full-fat platforms.
Even almost all flip phones are smart phones with a dumb skin, as they run either Android or KaiOS.
The main reason why I would switch is for device security - a true dumb phone OS that operates purely out of the ROM and has no ability to install anything that could survive a reboot.
And for something that primitive, it would be a flip phone on par with the Motorola StarTac. Simple black-on-green screen, low-res display, with a calendar and address book as the only non-phone, non-SMS functionality.
I’ve seen women in their 30s and 40s engage in it.
It’s not restricted to higher ed or younger ages in the least.
I’m now in my fifth decade, and no longer care to be around that kind of drama anymore, so over the last decade and a bit I have taken pains to distance myself from those social circles that engage in it.
If you get mocked for rejecting a woman, you’re either still in school, or need to get some better friends. Because no sane, rational people would ever think less of you for who you do/don’t date.
Tell me you have never been next to an in-group of women when one of them have been turned down, without saying you have absolutely no clue about inter-female dynamics and discussions.
Like, holy flaming ignorance, Batman. Do you walk through life completely blind? Or have you never just observed women, especially when they don’t know (or don’t care) that another man is within earshot?
Yes, not all women, but holy hell certainly a fair majority of them.
Men reject women all the time, with no societal repercussions.
The only possible conclusion I can draw: you have never rejected a woman, nor seen a woman be rejected and - more importantly - witnessed the aftermath once the woman has returned to her in-group.
In my several decades of being an adult I’ve seen plenty of vicious whisper campaigns that targeted not only the man, but also any other woman he was even mildly friendly towards.
And it’s directly proportional to how high a social status the man has. So maybe you’ve not personally experienced it because you have an extremely low social status? Like, double-wide-trailer low? IDK, I’m just trying to understand how you’re missing trivially-observable real-world evidence.
People change all the time though.
…And? So what?
Actually, let me rephrase that: So fucking what??
Any decision made comes with consequences. The decision to close the metaphorical door to preserve self-respect and mental health comes with consequences. And conversely, passing someone over because you think you can do better also comes with consequences when you discover to have been unable to actually do better.
My problem is the prevailing societal sentiment that only women have the right to say “no”. That only women have the right to close and bolt the relationship door. That men have a duty to accept a woman’s attentions no matter what, and especially if she had rejected him previously. And that he becomes a social pariah, open to mockery and vicious reputational attacks if he says no or keeps that metaphorical door closed himself.
Sorry, that’s not how “equality” works in any way, shape, or form. That’s anti-male gender bigotry, plain and simple. There is just no other way to spin it.
Sometimes I see the gender wars between you two feels like the moden day equivalent of cointelpro.
And some people just read waaaayyyy too much into things. Then there are people like you, who read the entire room wrong.
Asshole behaviour and systemic gender bigotry deserves being called out. That’s all I did. Nothing more. There is only one person who lashed out here, and it wasn’t me.
There was an unspoken rule for Gen-X
I am of that generation… solidly middle GenX.
Where I believe I run afoul of Millenials and Gen-Z is where I remind folks we just didn’t have a lot of girls who were just friends… we considered this a fantasy or just waiting.
While even GenX had its fair share of these, the one thing I have seen in younger generations is an explosive increase in “Beta Orbiters”.
Unfortunately, this behaviour of giving attention, time, and resources - also known as simping - to a woman who has no intention of reciprocating in any fashion whatsoever, is likely screwing with several generations s of men, and is likely fuelling the rise of so-called “Incels”. Especially since the lack of reciprocity and fair play from what they provide is one of the fundamental “violations of trust” that men perceive. These young men need to learn how to shut metaphorical doors and ignore the women who have no interest in reciprocating and who will only string them along as “useful dancing monkeys”.
Incel behavior
Ah, there is that ad hominem I was expecting to crop up at some point, seeking to publicly shame me into silence.
And it’s a perfect example of intellectual bankruptcy, where someone is so bereft of a counterargument that the only tools left to them are those of shaming and ridicule. It’s feelings before facts, of a rage-consumed person so desperately intent on furthering their anti-male gender bigotry simply because that man exercises equal rights.
Because isn’t that what women have been fighting for over the last century? For the ability to say “thanks, but no thanks” and the ability to permanently close a metaphorical relationship door for whatever reason she deems personally appropriate?
Or is it “rights for me, but not for thee”? Is it that men simply do not have the right to say no, and do not have the right to permanently close that metaphorical door?
C’mon, this is the platform where you can let your anti-male gender bigotry shine! Don’t be shy! Be the flaming hypocrite you were meant to be!!
IMO anon’s statement about body count was badly phrased, but it makes sense for me under limited circumstances.
For the last few decades, my opinion has held firm on a simple philosophy:
If I never ask out a woman I’m interested in, and they date guy after guy, then I have nothing to complain about. They never knew about my interest, and so they were never given the chance to accept or reject my interest. There is no way in hell that I could hold their body count against them, and I have only myself to blame for not stepping up and asking them out when I had the chance.
But if I do ask a woman out, and they clearly and immediately reject me in favour of someone else, then I am obviously not an interest for them. They have clearly and unambiguously rejected me, so what standing do I have to not believe that? You can’t get a more sure sign. If they then rack up other relationships, each and every one of those is another nail in the coffin of any potential relationship. They have made an explicit statement that I am of far less desirability than other options, and that door closes permanently, and gets barred and locked for good measure.
Because if she comes sniffing around again, then it is screamingly obvious that I am not her second-best, third-best, or even n^th best option… I am her backup-backup-backup plan that she is “settling for” because all of her better options ran out.
And at that point… thanks but no thanks. That’s a path down which I have absolutely no desire to trod, because down that path lies doubt and second-guessing that can only poison me, my mental health, and my happiness. If she had no interest in me when I asked, then I will absolutely trust her for having told me the complete truth, and I will hold that truth as unchanging, unimpeachable gospel.
I kept reading about people having trouble during the restore process.
It is Duplicati, and IMHO restores work best if they aren’t restores-in-place. As in, dump the restores in a central location then drag-and-drop the data into place. Most of the issues I have heard of involve restoring data and settings back to where it originally was backed up from, and restoring directly back to those places - other than fully user-controlled directories, such as Documents or Photos - seems to be problematic.
Other than that, I have been using it for nearly a decade and have done a number of restores - after total drive deaths, so not just accidentally deleted files - to great success.
The downside is that tweaking backups from within the hidden C:\Users\[username]\AppData\ directory involves many days of whack-a-mole to exclude untouchable normally-in-use files so you don’t get scads of errors in the backup process. Plus, there are a fair number of entries in there that don’t really need backing up. But once you get that to settle down, it’s largely smooth it’s-set-so-forget-it sailing.
Sure, it takes a bit of effort. But if you replace your routers with ones that have open-source firmware or actual workstations acting as gateway routers and running business-class open-source software, you can create a personal VPN between everyone involved that shows only one exit point to world+dog.
The trick is with ensuring that all YouTube stuff gets properly and comprehensively funnelled through this exit node - VPNs can easily leak data if not configured properly, and sometimes do so despite good configs - and implementing this even on other devices that require individual VPN connectivity (roaming, like phones).
Plus, having a mobile device’s VPN auto-recognize when it’s connected to a known good network, and have it automatically disable itself in favour of the VPN on that network, is not something that’s easy to do.
Finally, doing so without a high-quality, high-speed ISP plan can easily lead to an unusably slow VPN. The “mothership” exit node, in particular, would have to be gigabit or better - and symmetrical as well, so fibre and not cable - because it has both the node and connections to other homes and devices. If everyone started suckling the YouTube teat at the same time, things would likely slow down pretty fast on anything significantly less than a symmetrical gigabit connection.
Awww… the new one was so much cleaner and nicer.
Abandon your monetarist goldbug worldview, the gold decoupling and subsequent floating of the international exchange rates are downstream of the actual policy decision that have emiserated the population.
I never said they were directly related, I just wanted to point out that they both occurred in the same year, in 1971.
This needs to be exactly reversed, the poorer you are, the easier it should be to acquire but the more you have the harder it gets. Up until a point where it becomes nearly impossible to go beyond the “capital horizon” some kind of equilibrium state where wealth can lo longer be acquired faster than you lose it.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Absolutely.
The 80s were already the second decade of the decline after the gold standard was revoked in 1971 and wages became decoupled from productivity. Everything was on a slowly accelerating slide downhill from there, although it took until the 90s for the first people to truly notice things were going sideways.
You want a real economic golden era? Try the 50s and the 60s, where a single wage earner could work a low-end service-level job (selling shoes, for example), and make enough to own a detached SFH, a car in the garage, support a SAH spouse and several children, go on modest vacations every year with at least one more ambitious one every few years, and still have enough left over to save generously for retirement.
Once again we see the Parasite Class playing unethically with the labour/wealth they have stolen from their employees.
“Microsoft Excel is testing a new AI-powered function that can automatically fill cells in your spreadsheets.”
Every year, Microsoft gives me more reasons to permanently leave their products.
Unfortunately, due to compatibility with financial and other Windows-only software I still need to run Windows, but I am down to two rigs and it might go down to one in the new year.
There is nothing you’ve said worthy of rebuttal.
Ah - a sour grapes response!
Don’t worry, I know you had absolutely nothing to counter with once I saw the ad hominem. That’s the problem with intellectual bankruptcy, after all - nothing to work with except rage and other emotions. No facts, only feelings. So out come the personal attacks like the ad hominems, because rage and shame are the only usable tools left.
Oh, please no. I so desperately want humanity (and the planet) to be rid of these people.