I have no evidence for this. I am just guessing - given my priors that power dynamics are hot, most people are nice but will compromise social ethics for their own desires when given the opportunity, and that there are strong social biases against reporting positive experiences.

Interesting, this also leads to what is perhaps my most controversial opinion. In an ideal world, teen-adult sex wouldn’t be taboo, but would instead be commonplace and accepted.

Our current system for introducing people to the world of sex is to give them some vaguaries and say “okay, now get to it with other people who have no idea what they are doing. You may or may not be making Jesus cry.” This is the exact opposite of what we would do if we were to talk about an important part of an individual’s maturation into adulthood in the abstract. We would agree that they would benefit from guidence and instruction from someone who is experienced and knowledgeable, and who can council them through difficulties they encounter. Instead, if we actually had a sexually open culture, people with ample sexual experience (adults) would be the ones to introduce adolescents to sex - either directly or through explicit instruction. Of course now this is, once again, sounding like a porno… so I’ll just leave it at that

I’d venture a vast majority of times don’t end up like yours.

Really? I would bet the opposite. Sure, it is ethically questionable… but the fact is that power dynamics are sexy. Like, a sexually mature but inexperienced and ultra horny teen gets the opportunity to have sex with their teacher? Yes sir/ma’am! The porno almost writes itself!

And selection bias - you will almost always only hear about the teacher/student sex that goes wrong somehow. Every once in a while, someone like the above poster will talk about their positive experience, shrouded by anonymity. But you can see the downvotes they are getting. The whole subject is taboo, which means they will almost certainly never share their experience. And even if they did, publicly, no news source would ever report “teen has sex with teacher, says ‘This is awesome!!!’” There are strong cultural incentives against being public about healthy, enjoyable teacher/student sexual relationships that end amicably.

We are all very aware how easy it is for you to manage that.

I personally don’t think it is very likely that they are trying to poison Palestinians.

I find it completely unsurprising that someone is smuggling oxy in to make a quick buck.

“We have so far documented four testimonies from citizens who found these pills inside the flour bags,”

Best case - someone is smuggling oxy in to make a buck off of opioid addiction. But some think there might be oxy ground up in the flour so that Gazans gain a dependency, and might die from OD or withdrawal symptoms.

The potential pleasure is in speaking about it.

Congratulations. You successfully managed to both not engage with my point in any meaningful way, and also provided a solution I already deflated in the comment you are responding to.

I have to say, this is just such an in-the-weeds moral stance that it crosses the boundary of reasonableness. Honestly, it’s this sort of thing that drove me away from left wing styles of thinking a while ago.

The impact you make on the world in any of your possible actions with regard to Harry Potter is miniscule. Like, truly, utterly insignificant. Are you going to organize an anti-potter boycott? Participate in a protest? Harass the actors in an online trolling movement? Throw eggs at JK Rawling’s house? Great! Go do all those things! Actively participate in changing the world for the better! These actions might actually lead to real change.

But denying yourself pleasures in the name of moral purity accomplishes nothing. If all you do is sit at home and think to yourself “I wanna watch the new Harry Potter thing, but I can’t, because then I’m a bad person.” (or in this case, "I wanna talk to my friends about the new Harry Potter thing I pirated, but I can’t, because then I’m a bad person) then you are accomplishing literally nothing except making yourself miserable. Again, if you are going to actually do something, then go do it! But if you don’t have the time or energy or interest or social battery to actually do something, then shaming yourself or others into not doing things is actively counterproductive. Go take a road trip without calculating if the pleasure you will derive is worth the carbon footprint! Eat an ice cream cone without feeling bad about the the suffering of the factory farmed cow it came from! Get one of those good-paying jobs in oil and gas or defence and make some goddamned money! You are simply not important enough for any of these actions to have any actual real-world impact. The only thing that happens is that you convince yourself that if you ever enjoy anything, then you are a bad person. You train yourself to constantly be looking for the ways in which life’s simple pleasures are destroying the world, so you can feel bad about them.

Just stop it. Be happy. Do whatever you need to do to chill out and enjoy your life and gain some sense of contentedness and security. And then go out and make the world a better place by actually doing something. Hyper-anxious, shame-ridden, depressed know-it-alls rarely create effective social change because no one wants to hang out with them. No one see them and thinks “yeah, that’s what I want my life to look like.”

In order to lead by example you have to show a path to a better world. Not a cell.

That’s the problem. You’re hanging out with too many “MuH vIoLEnT RevOlUtiOn!!!” types. If you want the system to fail, of course you’re going to see every reason why it would fail.

I’m split. On one hand, thunderstorms in DC in the summer are so obvious and predictable that anyone doing any kind of organizing for an outdoor event would have considered them months in advance and would have contingencies. So “cancelled due to thunderstorms” is obviously a cover for “we’re getting too much pushbacka and don’t want to embarrass ourselves.”

Otoh, not realizing that there is a thunderstorm pretty much every single day in DC in the summer is exactly the level of competence I expect from the Trump admin.

Right. My point is that the Arab states lost to Israel because Israel was backed by the West. Without western support, a tiny Jewish state with almost no natural resources and a small population would be hard-pressed to stand its ground against a coalition of Arab states with a much larger population, oil money, and possible Russian backing. All the Arab states would need to do is keep taking pot shots at Israel while their superior military technology degrades and their stockpiles dwindle. A modern fighter jet relies on thousands of hyper-specific, high precision parts which can only be sources from western manufacturers. One part breaks and your whole plane is grounded. Even if the Arab states are not in great shape themselves, they win a war of attrition handily - especially once the average Israeli sees the inevitable and flees, depriving Israel of its soldiers and intellectual economy.

Otoh, your timeline argument is reasonable, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this wasn’t a coincidence in one way or another.

I hope Iran. I think they’ve got the best food of the options on offer. Plus, no cold winters!

Relevant

I’d argue that a nuclear Iran is not the only threat to Israel. Pretty much every other nation in the region hates their guts and wants them wiped off the map, and Israel has only stopped this from happening due to western support for their military. Iran nuking them is definitely a threat. But the other big threat Israel must contend with is losing Western support and munitions. Without that, a coalition of Arab states would overrun Israel in a conventional war.

My bet: Israel knows it is losing the war of public opinion in the West. So it is trying to start a war with Iran to get the West to support it again. Your ally committing genocide against an enemy that has almost no resources and no means of escape is a difficult stance to maintain. But supporting your ally in a war against your sworn enemy has a lot more public appeal - or so Israel hopes.

I mean, I’m honestly not surprised. I’ve been waiting for the billionaire class to rise up against Trump for a while now. If Trump were a competent autocrat, I’d be more worried, since they might all start competing for his favor in order to reap the benefits of crony capitalism. But the honeymoon is over, and Trump is very clearly extremely incompetent and toxic for business. He is scaring and deporting their low wage labor, tanking their stock prices and lowering profits with his tarrifs, and destabilizing potential international business deals with his erratic style of governing. Their increasing discontent with the current administration will drive cooperation rather than competition among them, and they will use their sizeable resources to neuter the administration.

A king can only rule so long as the court supports him.

Otoh, it also provides jobs for the community, either directly (cleaning, handyman work, management) or indirectly (additional tourist dollars in local establishments).

The reality is, in almost all places, short term rentals have an extremely negligible impact on the housing market. And in the few places where they have a measurable impact, we need to ask: why can’t that area just build more housing? And the answer, almost invariably, is restrictive zoning codes, coupled with land speculation. Solving the problem of lack of housing doesn’t require banning short term rentals, an action which would likely have a significant negative impact on local businesses who rely on the tourist dollars. Solving the problem involves liberalizing zoning ordinances to allow more housing to be built, and adopting Georgist Land Value Taxes which preclude investors’ ability to speculate on land value rather than only earning money via value they provide to other people.

Those are all things I typically wouldn’t buy, because they are too processed for me. I’d buy an uncooked ham, no bread from an American grocery store, apples, and plain natural unsweetened yogurt.

Your examples are weird.

I would like to petition /c/News to ban all PsyPost links, as they are universally clickbait garbage.

Most likely, statistical variance.

… yeah. That’s the “quitting” part. You aren’t doing your job, but you are quiet about it so you keep getting paid. That’s what this phrase means.