even outside of the potential harassment, fewer men have the current capacity to project themselves on to young women vs young men. the "you remind me of younger me" phenomenon is also what inspires some mentorship

I got lucky and had some very kind older male mentors, but man, I was still always running the numbers on that and it sucked

young men benefit enormously from being taken up by older men as proteges in a way that is far riskier and less common for women

i am unsure *how much* weight i would assign this, but the fact that a a very large percentage of people who write words for other people to read have nightmarish answers to this question influences all of our perspectives

almost every person you follow through a blog or substack or even traditional media outlets has an answer to this that’s like “once every 18 months for the last ten years”, and how they perceive their personal economy will influence how they write about it

a Crumb-illustrated Hobbit would be *incredible*

listen, my friend was unaware that those businesses weren't in need of protection, and given all the tragic fires that happened to them soon after, you can see why

I was thinking about what the most unpopular possible government policy could be, and I think it would be that every person had to have a public database of whatever they ate every day

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the U.A.E., some of America’s best customers for weapons systems, now are looking to South Korea, the U.K. and Ukraine to restock defenses against Iranian drones.

Scientists have been working very hard and have finally achieved what many thought impossible: a Mail Online comments section defending a Labour MP.

This has so quickly become conventional wisdom that the NYT doesn't even feel the need to attribute it. The original article attributes it to "extensive interviews." Hmmph. And this article makes it sound like Vance made his concerns public, which of course he didn't. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/12/u...

A huge blackpill moment for me as a guy who straddles the Atlantic was when a whole group of Bernie 2020 people I am friends with earning ~$100k were aghast that *they* would have to pay a lot in extra tax to get Medicare for All

It’s incredibly bad that we have a generation of young men who think that you need $600k a year to be comfortable and the only way to get it is crypto and DraftKings

well, partially by influencers who are lying, and partially by a real lack of accountability!

Fun fact: the vibecession didn’t really start until Trump LEFT office. During his first term economic sentiment was extremely high

oh man, early 1990s crime was *so bad* across the West. (the peak is mid-1990s.). We lived in a nice, middle-class Mancunian neighborhood; we got broken into three times, our student lodger got stabbed on the street, I got mugged several times as a teenager.

One of the things floating around in my mind the past few months is how obvious it’s become that people’s expectations are being warped by ubiquitous Influencer Culture. Everyone’s comparing their finances to the Jones’ not realizing the Jones’ are either DEEP in debt or just fucking lying.

i mean, it sure is curious that this only started after it became abundantly clear that this is a catastrophe, isn't it?

the idea that vance is anti-war and was a skeptic seems really to come exclusively from vance and is not borne out by anything else in his record as vice president so far

Labour MP gets dragged publicly by a pub landlady for having the audacity to go into her pub, order food and spend money. Honestly no wonder decent people don’t want to go into public life. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...

There’s something in all of this that tracks like “when are people happy with modest means in a society”

This is why I say that extreme wealth inequality creates deficits in empathy *from both ends*. We talk a lot about wealth's impact on empathy, but by a similar token, when you see no legitimate way survive and thrive, removing your own empathy and scamming ppl is gonna be a choice some make

my parents' household income in 1984 - which was a particularly rough year for them - was £3,000, which is the equivalent of £12,500 today, or about $17,000, with two small children. Now, they were also helped considerably by having a far lower mortgage *and* living in a functioning welfare state.

I’ve heard people talk about the 1920s, 1930s, 1950s, 1970s, and 1980s as times in US history where everything was hunky-dory economically compared to today, and as best as I can tell they’re just referencing the cozy vibe of period-piece movies and TV they’ve seen

It is the hardest thing I have ever done, and I was 22 at the time of the trial. If you have not done this, if you have not been through it, you have NO RIGHT to question any other victim’s decision to not report and not come forward. It changed the entire trajectory of my life.

It was a closed courtroom and I was not allowed to have anyone in there with me who could also be a potential witness. I did it all alone. Everyone who says “why did they wait to come forward? why now?” — I’m going to tell you that I truly wouldn’t wish that process on anyone.

I was called a slut, crazy, a liar. I was asked about every person I had had sex with since the assault. The perp’s went so far as to have his lawyer move a water pitcher that was blocking my view of him so I could not avoid the terrifying looks he gave me the entire time I was on the stand.

Listen up: I am one of those rare sex assault victims who actually took the guy who did it to court. It was a local scandal that put my initials on the front page of the local paper (not my whole name because I was a minor). You have no idea what happens to women on the stand or in the press.

I mean, I have learned this to some extent with my pots about my survey and the mathematical literacy of not a few episcopal priests.

Seeing how people respond in great anger when people point out how economic data show we’re not as bad off as the vibes would indicate shows most people don’t really even have competency in elementary/middle school level statistical reasoning.

so far this year Iran is considerably ahead of the United States at murdering Iranians but Washington is really trying to catch up.

it's amazing to me that UK foxes have largely urbanized *within my lifetime.* It was very unusual to see a fox in the city in the 1990s!

wait how were these 'marathon peace talks?' it's been a day!

Come on, you're better than this vulgar bioessentialism It's not about where you're FROM; the MVA requires surgical removal of the ability to recognize red lights and lane demarcations as a precondition to issuing Maryland plates

I was assured that JD Vance did not support this war but was ready to negotiate to end it. can we not trust beat sweeteners in the NYT anymore?

just checking in on all the idiots who got angry about this, now that the scamming networks are even more obvious.

NEWS: Trans kids in Minnesota can access their gender-affirming care again. www.advocate.com/health/trans...

Multiple Israelis have pointed out that they were required to learn about the Bund in high school which makes the whole "the Zionists didn't want you to learn about the Bund" thing even more bizarre

its really wild that in the softest of soft ball puff pieces by a literal HS friend, Platner attacks people for caring about his Tattoo and again refuses to express any regret or concern for anyone's feelings and also says a slur goddamn is he not ready for prime time

Practically every academic department I have ever been in has had *at least* one professor widely known to be a huge creep, and whisper networks operating to keep young women like myself from finding ourselves in potentially dangerous positions with them.

People are understandably very mad about this, many of whom are academics that I think should look at whether there are perhaps people in their field or department operating similarly.

Do not give Molly Shah money. Do not give money to anyone Molly Shah suggests you give money to. Do not give any money to accounts "verified by Molly Shah" In fact if you see Molly Shah, hide your wallet.

Very thrown by the desire by a small cohort to circle the wagons around Eric Swalwell, a guy I would never expect to inspire such devotion.

it's sad that prejudice blinds people to how bad driving isn't a matter of ethnicity, but of being from Maryland.

reading (on @preachypreach.bsky.social's recommendation) Alan Booth's THE ROADS TO SATA and it's making me quite nostalgic for being in rural Japan in the mid-1990s, which honestly I didn't enjoy that much at the time.

At Thanksgiving in 2024 everybody in my liberal, Harris-voting extended family agreed that the restaurant we were at having trouble finding service workers was proof that young people were lazy and the economy was a disaster and that's when I decided we were basically all doomed.

The Cato Institute and Professor Ilya Somin have filed an amicus brief in the US Court of International Trade arguing that Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 cannot lawfully be used to impose tariffs under current circumstances. https://ow.ly/5nmP50YHf6h

My Mum did a back-end desk job in immigration for a while in the 70s, and said everyone knew that the real racists wanted to get front-line jobs as Immigration Officers. I doubt that's changed much (or maybe it did for a while, but not permanently if so).

seen a lot of this, and it smells more like meeting targets for rejection than mistakes, and generally putting in place the kind of incentive structure that attracts the kind of people happy to do what it takes to meet them.