Hyper Light Drifter and Return of the Obra Dinn for different reasons.

I wonder if that’s part of the ulterior motive for NK here, getting troops with combat experience for an eventual attack on SK.

I’m sorry about whatever you’re going/have gone through. I don’t mean to dismiss what you’re going through, but from my point of view as a guy, women hold much more power than men in our society. Some of the things you talk about are traditional social stigmas and such, things that only matter if you care what other people think or about “traditional values”, but they’re essentially meaningless outside of that and likely aren’t as big an issue as what you’re making them out to be. You’re also generalizing alot of things about what men do, say, or think, things that probably only apply to a fraction of men, and likely to men that even other guys don’t particularly like either. And in many other cases, the people who are shaming women for their behavior aren’t men, it’s other women that are stigmatizing women’s behavior or putting pressure on what their expectations are.

In the dating world, women hold all the cards and basically have their pick of mates, whereas men are just happy to get any attention at all. In the court of law, where things hold much more weight, women hold much more advantages over men in issues related to divorce, child custody, child support, and are often given privileges by virtue of the fact that they’re women. Women can take half a man’s net worth just based on having been in a marriage contract with them, it doesn’t matter what kind of spouse they were.

Men are generally ignored for large periods of our lives by everybody and are more or less expendable, we just don’t matter at all. Men are seen as pieces of meat, just in a different light, we’re donkeys or pack mules in many cases. Our feelings are often ignored, depression or any other emotions are brushed aside and made fun of as often by women as by men. We’re seen as simple-minded and only concerned with sex, we’re degenerate pigs who will always be guilty of any depravity we’re accused of.

I think it happens all over and sometimes it really kind of depends on how long your argument is and the general impression people get from the first part of it. If you’re making a devil’s advocate argument in the first part, but then the twist comes later on, people are going to think your first devil’s advocate argument is the gist of it and downvote you based on that alone without getting into the nitty gritty. If people can form a knee-jerk reaction within the first few seconds of reading your post, they will, nuance gets lost.

Palestinian supporters are free to keep bringing the issue up and I think they should keep building momentum around it. It’s certainly relevant as the genocide is ongoing, nobody said they should “just shut up about it”, BUT given the current situation in American politics right now, it’s fighting for attention with everything else going on. At best, it’s noise that people can easily tune out because Americans are FLOODED with political messaging right now. At worst, some on the Left may even be somewhat dismissive because it’s assumed to be a disingenuous argument being made by bad-faith actors to divide the Left’s vote.

I realize how heartless this all sounds when people are literally dying by American weapons, but that’s where we’re at. After the election, the dynamic changes and you have less infighting within the Left around protesting about Israel and trying to split the vote and a much better chance of organizing around the issue. Don’t shut up about it, keep the pressure up, but the better time to turn up the heat is after the election.

You vote for the conditions of your protests. If Harris is elected, you have somebody much more likely to cave to sustained public pressure to withdraw support from Israel and who is less likely to violently crackdown on protests. If Harris gets elected, that’s when you ramp up pressure on the issue with sustained protests. It’s idiotic that Biden/Harris are still maintaining that support for Israel in the first place, but I suspect there’s some realpolitik bullshit and Biden’s traditional outlook on American foreign policy behind that support and maybe there’s a substantive shift after the election.

If Trump is elected, you’re creating easily a dozen or more other issues for yourself to deal with, on top of Israel and you risk fracturing any potential protests you try to do for the Palestinians. You’ll have an establishment that’s more aligned with Israel, who won’t cave to public pressure, and who will likely use increasingly heavy-handed tactics against protesters.

It’s little consolation for Palestinians, but it can always get much worse.

I just rewatched both Bladerunner movies with my son and, the first movie, while aesthetically it still looks beautiful and has some great individual scenes, the action and the dialogue get kind of non-sensical at times, it’s become the weaker of the two movies for me. 2049 feels just a lot more coherent and looks brilliant, it’s just an overall better movie that surpasses the original.

That sounds innocent enough that it could go either way. It could easily have been just an innocent thing to have another adult along to hang out with the kids, women tend to not think anything of inviting somebody out to do something like that and don’t necessarily have an ulterior motive. It could mean more though, but it doesn’t seem like a big enough data point to go off of.

According to one poll I saw, Harris was leading Trump among women by 50–43%, which honestly is alot worse than I would’ve expected. Maybe it’s enough to tip the balance and helps decide the election, but women can still be just as stupid as men.

That’s what they’ve done for like 8 years now, it’s the foundation of Whataboutism. No matter what you pin on Trump, they’ll jump on some other real or imagined wrong, no matter what it has to do with the conversation, and use that as justification for anything that Trump has done or will do. It’s just a way to sidestep or confuse the issue.

• “Trump is literally talking about becoming a fascist dictator.”
• “Yeah, but in the 12th century, Genghis Khan killed like 20–40 million people, that’s what we’re facing from Chi-na, they’re going to slaughter everyone if we don’t do anything about them and their takeover of China-store Kamala, she’s bought and paid for!”
• “WTF is wrong with you?”

That was one of the biggest things that took me out of that movie. They stage this huge operation at the Gotham Stock Exchange or wherever, everybody knows this giant crime is happening there, but woops, looks like Bruce Wayne has been magically bankrupted, there’s nothing we can do about it. It just took me out of it thinking, “I don’t think you can just bankrupt a billionaire like that.”

I think there’s a leap here that you’re not explaining or that I’m missing from the text. She sounds attractive and friendly, she’s apparently “available”, but what is prompting you to wonder about a course of action? What’s the trigger? Has she already behaved a certain way towards you that’s making you question if there might be something “there”, like she seems to be extra “nice” to you or whatever? Or are you just wondering in general, “Hey, there’s a person I’m attracted to and I want to see if she’s interested?” There just seems to be a disconnect in what you wrote and I’m not sure what prompted it to begin with.

To answer the question though, you can certainly try any of the things you talked about, or try to setup a meetup between your kids, but somehow include yourself and her in on the plans (go out to a movie together or some event) and see if she’d want to join you all. Personally, I wouldn’t try to force things too far and make it awkward, but if you’re trying to gauge interest, you should try to figure out ways to spend time around her or start finding reasons to text to ask about stuff. You also have the issue that should things progress between you two, do things get awkward between your kids anyways, even if you and her hit it off? It could potentially cause friction for them no matter what happens. Relationships are hard no matter what.

I mean, Biden has the power to do whatever he wants now and could potentially overturn the results in the interests of national security or whatever. He won’t, but it’s nice to think that he could do something to avert a fascist takeover. Democrats will take the high-road into letting democracy die.

“Shit, who was I voting for again? Harriet? Harold? Harburg? The other name started with a W or a V or something right? Oh wait, this guy’s name is Vance, that must be it. I’m voting for Trump & Vance, almost screwed that one up!”

You just got to wear them down enough, break their willpower. They can learn to love in time.

I find happiness getting lost in projects, projects being anything & everything from writing to designing to stuff around the house to whatever. Just something that gets me obsessed for at least a few days or weeks. I can’t predict when it will happen, it just has to be a sufficient problem for me to look at.

I also find happiness with some people, but that sort of happiness is unpredictable as well since people have their own lives going on and feelings can change over time. Getting too close to people though can just as easily make my life feel meaningless and make me depressed when things turn sour. I tend to crave affection and physical touch, so this is a hard one for me to just ignore this.

If a girl doesn’t like you, but you just keep pursuing her, everything will eventually work out and you’ll be happy together.

So about a week to a week-and-a-half’s worth of troops?

Our boss just took us out to lunch and gave us four hours off the rest of the day to go out and vote, which is probably the most encouragement to vote I think I’ve ever gotten from any boss before. I’m sure I was entitled to it this whole time, but it’s never been encouraged like this before with this boss at any of my other workplaces, if anything, previous bosses probably would’ve talked shit if I said that’s what I wanted to do with my time.

His campaign is a dumpster fire, seems fitting