George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
The things you lean on / are things that don't last
User ID: 107
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2d ago
Your blanket generalization of "third world people" is the kind of vague wording that could mean not quite anything, but is loaded and not in the spirit of "speaking clearly, saying what you mean." The term "natives" as well, though perhaps this is a code word for white Britons. Your post to me seemed to be a throwaway bitter, we-all-know-what-we-mean response of the type I used to see on reddit, rather than the type of meaningful contribution you are capable of (even if you were to make the same points) and I would like to think is the distinctive quality of this site.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2d ago
I was in the Peace Corps, yes. This was the very early 90s though, and the world --and the experience of the Peace Corps-- has changed considerably. It was, for me personally, a great experience that stretched me beyond what could have been possible had I stayed in the US. Mind you the Peace Corps has all kinds of members, motivated for all kinds of reasons.
The reference to being "barred from foreign service for five years" below was only true for intelligence services (eg the CIA or military intelligence), to my understanding.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
How is this not waging the culture war? Possibly I have misunderstood the ethos of this weekly thread.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
I'm sure this is a well-slogged swamp but fortunately I've not waded into it. If the Zionists are the chain yankers, how do you explain the mainstream/left now wailing for their blood?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
Was that the one where the guy's horse gets impaled on the staff holding the American flag or am I confusing it with the Simpsons parody?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
10d ago
I both buy and sell from secondhand shops in Japan. They're sometimes amazing. I got a vintage Schott's leather jacket for like 50 bucks that would normally have cost upward of 200 bucks US, or possibly far more (new ones are considerably more). Various other clothing. My one rule is I never buy electronics secondhand (or underwear, though I've never seen secondhand underwear.) Selling they rip you off--they buy by weight, and if there is a brand label they pay slightly more, but still a pittance. I don't mind so much with clothing, it's better than throwing it out, and I can't be bothered to sell online myself with all the intricate Japanese rules and finicky online buyers.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
10d ago
Or you could sell it at cost or below, for no reason other than human charity, to someone deserving.
I'll never be a millionaire.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
13d ago
Because to me it's a festive, rare event, important enough that it's televised worldwide. Plus it sounds fun, and even if the time is shitty it will be a memory to share, or recount, years from now.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
13d ago
I like soccer as far as it goes and I like seeing people enjoy sports. Plus I bet there will be beer.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
13d ago
I'd go and I feel like it's weird not to go. Clearly I'm in the minority here.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
13d ago
For ze record, I never accepted bought drinks at a bar, usually I was at someone's apartment, either before, during, or after some home party. I'm surprised mildly that you trust self-reported statistics of this sort; it seems to me that there would be a bunch of reasons to over- or under- report one's sexual stickers on the fuselage. But the alternative is believing my opinion based on what others have also self-reported to me, so you're probably fine.
You sort of lost me when you said straight male supermodel. I know of one, I think. But he's old now. Sorry about the LLM thing, but if you give the reply you wrote a while to get cold and go back and read it, you might see what I mean. Maybe you will. Possibly you won't.
The gay male promiscuity thing may indeed have to do with just being male, but being male following an ethos that has to some degree thrown off social mores regarding sex. Very few men who are straight (exclusively straight) have done that, at least in my experience. Once all is permitted, if the whole of the law were Do what thou wilt sexually, and if the gates were open to us to almost any woman, well it's hard (cough) to say. But that's a hypothetical. It does seem to me that gay men get around a lot more than straight men, though it's true in the finger-pointing there is probably some hypocrisy.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
13d ago
Normality is busy tying laces.
I know you'll be annoyed to read this.
Back, say, as little as three years ago, I might have read this short, evocative metaphor placed among longer sentences and thought it was an interesting image. Now--and I am not entirely sure why--it reminds me of LLM output. Which is not to say I'm pointing a finger at you. Rather, this is what flags (to me) writing as LLM these days. Something about it. Like the calibration "write with style and a touch of wry humor." I think that perhaps for some of us, if we are to write in the age of LLMs but distinguish our own writing from output, we are going to have to purposely start not writing like they do. I'd feel happier if you said this actually was an LLM tweak to your own original passage.
To your point: For about a decade due to circumstances somewhat outside my control I hung out socially almost completely with either gay men or lesbians or what we used to call fag hags (as far as I know this is a term coined by gay men.) I saw all types, I was youngish and a pretty boy, and I was often plied with booze and told, as you say you've been told, that I was really a bit gay myself, wasn't I?
I wasn't. Nor was I ever curious enough to test the waters, as it were. But it was a gay gay gay gay world, and mostly not pretty. I'm not even going to go into it. You know what I'm talking about. I would take issue with your comment in another reply actually, that straight men don't engage constantly in illicit sex because they can't. Yes, some would, and I know them. I wouldn't, could have (perhaps even still could) and haven't, and even for those who might say "yes you have" I'd counter not nearly to the same degree as the gay dudes I've known who have had triple or more digit partners. There's something else going on. I could be wrong of course.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
16d ago
MRIs and ultrasound are both imaging techniques that have pros and cons but don't use radiation (one of the pros). This reads as if it will have the functionality of a CT scan (3D, multiple images) without ionizing radiation. Pretty impressive if it works as described. Endoscopy is basically a "high tech camera" but is invasive and time-consuming. This sounds like getting in and out of water. Interested to see where this goes.
Times have changed. Growing up my dad did no work around the house on Sunday and forbade us from it, unless it was something dire requiring immediate address. Many stores were closed Sundays, and you certainly couldn't buy alcohol (even in our college town). We did regularly go out for Sunday lunch to some restaurant or other, and oddly nothing was ever said about the workers who made our meals and fed us.
Today everything operates as usual on Sundays in the same town, my parents are dead, and I'm not sure what churchgoers do or where they eat. Timeline wise this would have been the 70s/80s.
Back in the day my main was a Night Elf Druid, and I can still hear in my head the ambient music, which was best for Night Elves out of all the factions. Shadowglen -> Teldrassil-> Darnassus -> Ashenvale. Who could forget Moonfall? I mean despite it being parodied in South Park. I was never one of those players who put on death metal or whatever as the music; I always kept the game music, which set the mood. Horde music sucked, except maybe the Undead, which was dark, but eventually repetitive. The music in Stormwind and surrounding was way over-the-top "We are the pure ones" herald horns and brass. I'm sure all of it was done by one guy on a synthesizer but it was all very impressive. Dun Morogh in particular I liked.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
19d ago
Don't forget rake in lots of cash.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
19d ago
Were these different than the juggies?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
19d ago
I'm going to approach your question with a hypothetical. Let's say you can increase your wrist size moderately, with minimal affect on the rest of your body (remember there is nothing you can eat regularly/consume/inject that has zero downstream effects beyond the one thing you want it to do). Then what?
In reading your post--and I may be wrong here--it seems you're Steve Rogers looking to be Captain America, and fast. Why the frantic urgency?
There's a reason you see warnings that you should only proceed with xyz under supervision of a doctor. The body is a set of interrelated systems. If you have, say, kidney issues, increasing protein is not a great idea. And you may need reminding that acromegaly is a pathology, not just an interesting condition.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
23d ago
Hang around a while, here I mean, and you could probably get loads of respondents.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
26d ago
I've made my share of foolish choices, but I like to think one reason was that there was no one waving a red flag at me telling me not to make them. Consider me your waving red flag.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
26d ago
I wonder if we are all really gluttons for our own doom. Or if it's just you.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
27d ago
All maggots are technically flesh-eating. Just screw worms don't wait for the dying part. To answer, I'm living several thousand miles away.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
29d ago
I see. Not how I had read your post. Thanks for the clarification.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
29d ago
I can't imagine how people who actually bust their asses in physical labor and make less than me feel!
Here's how they feel: Integrity is its own reward, as is chastity. Hope those girls know how to save; their half-life is short. Also they better be exceptionally fine at fellating for those fees.
Someday this will all be written about. The courtesans of old Japan (花魁) had many ranks, all the way down to what today might be called lot lizards at truck stops. And all the way up to women rivalling (if perhaps not equalling) the geiko, who were technically not prostitutes but could play your emotions like a shamisen.
These gals in Silicon valley are carving out their own crass niche, if in what seems a disorganized fashion, which will ultimately probably be their undoing. Then again who knows. Anyway I feel like sausage and eggs for breakfast.
I often find myself nodding with your takes, but not this one. Mind you, I am one of those people who barely had heard Bourdain's name until he died, and have still never watched an episode of any of his shows nor really do I think I've ever heard his recorded voice, though I've read a good bit about him and I've seen his picture many times. Thus, perhaps you have more insight into him than I do if you were someone who followed his meanderings and respected his foodie-ness or whatever.
But from my perspective, as a man who has been rejected and burned many, many times (and the last I lingered on my image in the still forest pool I was not a narcissist) I never wanted to "show" anyone, even at my most desperate, not-quite-suicidal. As a kid I had the "if I got hit by a bus and died they'd really wish they had known me better" type thoughts, but not out of malice or one-upping. More straight self-pity feeling sorry for myself. And I don't know a lot of men who would off themselves to "get back at" someone.
You maybe be right that he did not want to move on (though I have no idea why, the Argento woman certainly does not seem magical in any way to me, but different strokes) but killing himself to spite her or earn a victory is not quite how I'd put it. More--"Now she knows how much I really cared about her." This may be a rephrasing of your point, but I think it's different enough to warrant mentioning.
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