RenOS
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User ID: 2051
RenOS
something is wrong
14hr ago
Most important question is, how do you know this? Especially the exact standard procedure?
Update on my poker tournament from two weeks ago: We ended up being only 5 players, so decided on a two-winner (70/30 split) tournament mode. I'm not a great storyteller nor claim to remember it perfectly (especially not exact cards, as I noticed while writing, sadly), but I'll try to roughly give the outline of the evening. I hope it's interesting. Thanks for the help, in particular @FiveHourMarathon!
It was more fun and went better than I expected. At first I played very conservative and simple rules (fold pre-flop without a face card, only raise post-flop with at least double pair, get out if anyone is raising too much), allowing me to watch the table closely. We only had one guy at the table I didn't know, so I tried reading him in particular. Two of my friends (let's call them the host and finance bro) mostly played tight which was unsurprising because that's what they're like in general, and another one was a bit more loose (let's call him gym rat), which again wasn't surprising too me, either.
The newcomer turned out to start very aggressive, and I happened to sit right behind him. He constantly raised, often even pre-flop, though only ever the minimum, and collected a lot of blinds that way. I, on the other hand, was mostly bleeding money slowly. I got him once with decent cards staying in and raising a bit up to the reveal, not a super large amount but enough to be even again. Rinse and repeat a bit, but overall I'm losing more than winning. The host is doing even more poorly, also bleeding money at first due to conservative play, and then in addition even losing a high-stakes table to the newcomer. Shortly thereafter he loses another high-stakes table going all in to finance bro, both having a full house, which was perceived by the rest of the table as very lucky. I also don't think the host really played badly, he was very low on chips at that point, had already invested most of it, and full house was pretty much the best hand with those community cards. Just plain bad luck.
The general situation at the table was now finance bro in clear first, gym rat and newcomer pretty close, and me last. The newcomer plays increasingly aggressive pre-flop, and after calling pre-flop, post-flop I get into a similar situation as the host: Going all-in against the newcomer with a pair of some number in hand, and a third on the table, because my chips are getting too low and the community cards overall didn't seem too threatening. Fortunately, the newcomer only ends up having a double pair, and I get my big break. The host - now out of the game - notes my behaviour over time and comments that I'm a mathematician and probably playing better to the odds than him, but that I'm also quite predictable. The rest of the table immediately agrees, so at that point I started to realize that I need to change my behaviour a least a bit to capitalize on that impression, instead of being drowned by it. Ironically I don't think I was better, but it's of course the impression of the table that matters at the moment.
When I had a decent starting hand (I think it was jack+10 or so), I try a small experiment: I double the newcomer's raise pre-flop. If it got too much, I'd get out, but I wanted too gauge his behaviour. He stays in. Post-flop I get nothing, he raises, I immediately double his raise again anyway. He folds. At that point I feel a psychological edge. He gets less aggressive, and I continue to now bleed him instead with a mix of bluffing (being careful to eventually fold if possible to avoid people seeing my cards) and just plain good cards, and he also loses a high-stakes table to gym rat. In fact he's getting very low on chips (less than me) and plays even less aggressive, so I eventually play more conservative again. There is another event, where I call a lot of finance bro's raises with a good-but-not-great hand, which the host yet again comments on: Finance bro raises fast and confident, I call only after thinking a lot. Finance bro has not yet been shown to bluff, and is generally not the kind of person to do so. I agree, realize my mistake, and fold instantly. But it hurts, and it is another lesson to try and be less obvious to read, or to ideally even capitalize on it.
It's now the newcomer's turn to go all-in to finance bro, both show their cards and finance bro thinks he has lost with only a double pair or so ... until someone else at the table points out that by only using one card from his hand he can have a flush. Everyone else at the table gets pissed, but this cements his lead.
The state now is finance bro in near-unassailable lead, gym rat in second, me in last place again. Since we're all nerds, we openly talk a bit strategy, where finance bro admits that he plans to mostly play very conservative now since his stack is larger than mine and gym rats combined. He keeps true to his word, and I stay out of his way; He folds a lot, but if he does raise, I fold fast. Position-wise I'm behind gym rat now, which is to my benefit. In general the dynamic has changed substantially since the blinds are getting high and the low number of players increases the winning chances. Both me and gym rat play very similarly now, frequently staying in up to the reveal with some raises here and there, but rarely too much, and mostly treading water (this unfortunately also means that people also start to catch on that I do occasionally bluff now, especially pre-flop).
Unlike me, gym rat does get into some (bad) fights with finance bro, since he has some hopes to switch places. He's bleeding, but still has more chips than me. I finally get an amazing starting hand, while also sitting in last place: K+K. I raise only the minimum pre-flop, which at that point I had done regularly, even with bad cards, and gym rat calls without thinking twice. Flop is king, queen and a low number, gym rat raises after thinking for a moment. I pretend to also think a long time, and then call. Turn comes, it's another low number. Gym rat raises again. The pot is getting close to the size of my own chips. I think again for a while, but decide to go all-in, since neither straight nor flush are possible yet with those community cards, loudly commenting that my stack is getting too low. Gym rat thinks and is clearly somewhat unsure, but not terribly long, and calls. River is ... another queen. I show the full house, and gym rat complains how lucky I got, but elects to not show his cards. I'm pretty sure the full house was irrelevant, since there really aren't that many possibilities to even beat just the triple king with those community cards.
Now the placements are reversed, me in second, gym rat in last. He's bleeding blinds for a short while, especially since I continue playing rather aggressive pre-flop, and he's getting low on chips. He completely stops picking fights with finance bro as well, who still elects to mostly just give his blinds away anyway. But then gym rat suddenly reacts to one of my pre-flop raises with an all-in, almost taking no time to think. I have Q+9 and genuinely think a long time, since his stack is still large enough to reverse the roles yet again if I should lose. But I remember the last time, that pre-flop is sufficiently random - even against most starting pairs I'd have something like 1-in-3 chance to win I think? - and that I had been waiting for the chance to kick him out and secure second place, which is the best I can reach anyway. So I call. He reveals a surprising ... 9+7, commenting that at least he's going out with a stylish bluff. Pretty lucky for me, not only a bad hand but also the matching number means even less outs for him. I reveal my cards, and the table is surprised yet again, since despite my small early bluffs that got caught, they expected more. Gym rat probably also just thought he could scare me off.
The community cards come in, and reveal pretty much nothing except one queen.
So second place it is. I'm pretty happy, obviously with the place, but also with most of my game. I think it was smart to play it simple early, since it made it easier to read the table. I also had pretty terrible cards for a long while at first, and bluffing "blind" is really not my strong suit. The first all-in I'm somewhat unsure about, but it did get rewarded. It also opened up the possibility to exploit the newcomer, which worked pretty much exactly how I wanted it. But again, there was some luck involved in that I never got forced into actually revealing a bluff. Of course I was also often easy to read, and I really have to thank the host for pointing it out that second time against finance bro; I might have just lost then and there.
And I'm most proud about how the play went against gym rat. He probably also got tired and careless so I shouldn't attribute too much to myself, but I have the feeling that especially for the K+K hand it was my exact play that lured him in, and if I had done it differently he wouldn't have gone along. On calling his all-in I'm also feeling quite comfortable that I had decent odds overall, though I didn't expect such a hard bluff.
Overall poker is still not really my kind of game - even with decent play there is a lot of luck involved - but I held my own, and even made some money (though not much, the split sucked pretty hard).
RenOS
something is wrong
1d ago
As a scientist myself, who has been following this case for a while, and who has been a fan of data colada from before they got involved in this, I might be able to give some context.
The first is the defense of that even admitting that she did wrong, singling her out this way is wrong since everyone else did the same. But looking at the case, this is bullshit. She didn't just engage in bad statistics like everyone else. She is alleged to actually have falsified data. And I find data colada's evidence quite damning, even if it does not rise to the level of ironclad proof to demand damages from her in the court of law (not saying that it doesn't, I'm just not a lawyer so can't judge that), it should make her untrustworthy as a scientist, which effectively ends her career either way. Even the worst examples she and her defenders raise are completely different; Several are about sexual misconduct, which is firstly not about the quality of the research itself and secondly were based entirely on hearsay of the alleged victim. Her case is far, far stronger and directly concerns scientific integrity.
More similar are the cases concerning plagiarism, but again, even that is not nearly as bad as falsification (plagiarism is primarily an issue of status attribution, but generally doesn't erode trust in science itself). It's a lively discussion in itself, but there is a decent faction (which I agree with) that a large part of what we call plagiarism, mostly concerning boilerplate summaries or standard sentences included in many introductions and methods sections, should not be considered an issue at all, even if copied verbatim. Plagiarism accusation thus have among the widest range in science; On one end, you have philosophers copying the central arguments from another author and passing them off as their own, at the other end you hav, say, biomedical researchers paraphrasing the explanation of a toolset they used from a coauthor's paper in the supplemental. Both are technically plagiarism, but they are not even in the same ballpark of severity.
Btw, this also concerns Bill Ackman's creds as "major force behind the removal of ex-Harvard president Claudine Gay"; That removal was imo handled atrociously, even if I'm happy she is gone. She was effectively appointed from primarily political reasons, and she was removed for political reasons. Her plagiarism was a complete sham that nobody cared about, for good reason; For example, Gay used a description of the Voting Rights Act which closely mirrored a description in a 1999 book by David T. Canon. This is, in my experience, what literally everyone is doing when you need to summarize something for which there is already ample literature; You take what you consider the best summary, paraphrase it, maybe add (often even directly from others works, albeit again paraphrased) or remove some parts that you consider missing or unnecessary, respectively. Ironically if you try to do it "the right way", i.e. you read lots of summaries and then try to write a new one based on your own understanding, it can happen even easier to copy verbatim, because that is what's on your mind. So I'd be careful to consider Ackmann trustworthy in respect to upholding academic standards. He is a political actor.
Second, in opposition to @Pongalh and some others here, I think that singling her out for common, even if bad, behaviour, would actually be problematic if it were true. Low standards are bad; Selectively enforcing high standards only on people you have an issue with is worse. It's anarcho-tyranny, having written rules that you allow some people to flout and enforce on others, purely based on your own discretion, i.e. the written laws are in practice mostly irrelevant and it's really just discretion.
This is one of the primary vehicles how ideologies take over institutions in general, and how the left took over academia in particular. Deliberately, overtly organizing a takeover of an institution is difficult, obvious and too easy to thwart. On the other hand, simply engaging in a double standard for new applicants, especially under cover of vague gesturing towards safety and wellbeing, is easy and may only be noticed after it is too late. Again I want to contrast to simple low standards; You still let in plenty of incompetent people, but in addition to incompetence, they are also biased. That's worse, not better.
Sure. And they also complain about the opposite, men being pigs who will settle for anything as long as it has a suitable hole. And they also complain about men actively prefering worse partners since they would feel threatened otherwise.
Any survey, experiment or just demographic data I'm aware of on the topic shows a stark difference between the sexes. Women will openly admit to strong exclusion criteria in surveys, act on them in experiments, and live by them demographically.
Men have preferences to be sure, but will generally date whomever they can get. The actual problem with men is that they are more violent and generally willing to force themselves upon others to exert their will, i.e. the complete opposite of our current problem. And, to be clear, very good to be kept in check. It's just that women also have toxic tendencies that need to be checked, even if they are less dangerous.
If #2 works fabulously, then the next complaint would be (quite reasonably) that all good men are gone. Women don't want the desirable men to commit in general, they want the men to commit to them.
The problem is simple: Modern women - as a a group average, not literally everyone, to be clear - have standards above what the actually existing average men can offer. Worse, some of these are strictly relative (i.e. " he has to earn more than me"), so it's in direct conflict with other preferences such as feminism.
As a single man, you can't actually change much about the general issue, but you can improve your ranking to get a chance for yourself. So #1 it is.
The outcome is still that only a minority of women is really happy with their catch, a substantial number settling but with resentment since they're convinced they really deserve better, and another part looking at the latter and rather staying alone.
RenOS
something is wrong
10d ago
To be (maybe excessively) fair, people often don't know what they're getting into, even if they think they do. My wife is a city girl who used to go on "farms" with her family for vacation and thought that's what the countryside is like. Then when she visited my parent's place (not even a farm itself, just close to several), she was completely flabbergasted about how bad real pig farms smell, about manure being brought to the field right next to our house ( you can even smell it through certain drains in our house), etc.
RenOS
something is wrong
17d ago
Sounds like "amnesty for current immigrants, but then we will totally enforce the border, this time for real" to me, so forgetting it seems appropriate.
RenOS
something is wrong
24d ago
I agree with you insofar as, conditional on your story being true, you have little to directly feel bad about except the equivalent of gawking at a trainwreck.
However, I ultimately still come down on HereAndGone's side on practical terms. The secret to a good life is 90% avoiding bad people. A hot, unstable model with a (rightfully!) jealous fiance is someone that should get all your spidy senses tingling, screaming get out now.
There is so much potential here for things to go wrong, some of them even entirely out of your hand, and so little upside. It's not hard to imagine the fiance catching you two, coming to the wrong conclusion, and going after you. Maybe you have just one bad day, fall for the temptation, and get sucked in. Really, just keep your distance & find excuses not to meet until she gets the hint.
RenOS
something is wrong
25d ago
One extra variable buy-in, and then tournament with 3 winners.
Thanks for the help, that sounds reasonable. I don't need to go pro, just not like to feel like I threw the money away.
RenOS
something is wrong
25d ago
Yeah, that sounds like the games we had in the past. Though it's been a few years, so some could have levelled up in the meantime.
RenOS
something is wrong
25d ago
Some old school friends invited me to a poker table around christmas. It's a bit too much for me to just happily play the money away as I usually did, but not so much to say no just for that reason (losing it wouldn't make a noticeable dent in my finances at all, I'd just feel bad). Does anyone here happen to know a decent, short basic poker intro guide/video series or anything that I can watch over a few days?
RenOS
something is wrong
27d ago
Plus again, you have a very self-defeating definition of Pickup Artist. It seems to exclude any man who either starts or during his life gains status, wealth, social trickery or any other resource. What is your stance then? That "true" pickup artists are only losers who never start or end with money and status and who never get laid?
I guess that one large difference between us is that I actually had some contact with the people in the PUA scene, as it actually existed, though not enough to call myself a pickup artist (I was at a particular low point of my social university life and tagged along for a short while with some of them, but found their behaviour too unpleasant to really get into it). The great majority of them were literal nobodies, low or middling social status at best, no notable wealth, certainly no possibility of using physical power to get their way. Nothing. Just like me, that was in fact precisely what attracted them to the movement in the first place. They weren't even especially charismatic in a general sense, nor unusually intelligent. They employed a relatively rigid playbook of behaviour that works well on lone, ideally half- or fully drunken girls who already were receptive to liaisons. But that's the important part, it worked. And this is what PUAs were selling, an approach for getting women to sleep with you available to anyone, even the losers, in the span of a single night, or maybe just a few dates. That's the whole point. You don't have to be a loser to use it, but it works even if you're a loser.
And now take a look at Casanova again. He's in an entirely different ballpark. The average loser can't get people to finance their university degree, can't get a wealthy patron to enable them, can't trick people into believing they are medical experts, and especially not for months at a time. It just doesn't work. Casanova used a wide array of social trickery far beyond the small, formalized PUA playbook, and expertly switched it around to whatever was needed for whatever he wanted to do at the moment. This included seducing women, but was not limited to it, and even on this particular topic he generally was more versatile. He's a con artist.
So, in extra clear words on what is PUA, and who is a pickup artist: PUA is a limited playbook of behaviour aimed primarily at seducing receptive lone women over short spans of time that flat-out wouldn't have worked in the past due to social/male guarding. A pickup artist is someone who employs this kind of playbook to sexual success. Someone can also develop such a playbook, or teach other people how to use it, and become rich & famous as a result. This would enable them to seduce women in a different way, using their status & wealth, which was available to people in the past since it's a way to get past social guarding. They can also simply be con artists in addition to pickup artists. But most of them would still regularly employ PUA tactics instead anyway, because they were already used to it and it already worked for them. And in this way, they did stay pickup artists.
RenOS
something is wrong
27d ago
Anyways, the point is that PUA is nothing new. You discarded pirates, conquistatdors, minor nobles and other players as somehow unfairly using status and violence to bang hundreds of women in order to be "true" PUA artists. Now you discard Casanova and his ilk for applying social trickery and beguiling his victims from being the same. So what is PUA artist? Only those who fail in life or in seduction of women using their perceived status, money, power, social wit and any other trick? It does not make any sense.
I added my position in an edit since I didn't expect you to answer so fast, so sorry for that. But I think my position is pretty clear:
Edit: And to make my own position very clear: Solely beguiling women without also having access to some genuine advantages such as high social standing, wealth or power was near-impossible before the sexual revolution due to guarding behaviour by males in her social circles. You had to successfully trick those men as well to even just get access to the women. Casanova does not disprove this position in any way whatsoever; He had a genuinely high social standing, genuine wealth, genuine education, and then also tricked entire social circles.
After the sexual revolution, women would start to regularly go unattended to parties & festivities, which made (a percentage of) them easy prey for the first generations of tricksters in the hippy movement. Since women aren't stupid, this caused a backlash quite fast and they became more wary again, which necessitated the more elaborate trickery employed by PUA. However since it's a formalized movement it's easy to recognize once you know what you have to look for, so it died in the span of just a few years again. But more generally, there still just aren't as many safeguards nowadays; Obviously, tricking an entire social group, including both men and women, over long spans of time is much, much harder than tricking a (necessarily single-sex) lone individual over short spans of time. So the general style of social trickery as employed by PUA artists is still mostly viable, but was not in the past.
Now you're talking about someone entirely different than you did before, though. I was talking about the people you yourself mentioned: Aristocrats, soldiers, pirates etc.
Secondly, Casanova is someone with a high enough social standing & wealth that his family could afford to send him to study law at a university, at a time when such education was extremely rare. That tells you a lot more about his background than just saying his parents were "two actors". He also is a classic general-purpose con artist, as evidenced by the wikipedia entry you cite yourself. He not only regularly, successfully impersonated aristocracry, he also directly tricked aristocrats themselves. And he evidently was genuinely rich, even if it was ill-gotten & regularly frivolled away. Obviously, such a person can take advantage of a similar playbook as the actual aristocrats.
He didn't walk into a bar at night negging unaccompanied women until they sleep with him. He publicly displayed his wealth and status to the entire greater circle of people around the women, would woo the men around her as well, often played a long game over months that included ripping off entire social groups for money by claiming access to secret, useful knowledge. It's certainly more similar to PUA than the classic, far more common aristocrat, in that it includes social trickery aimed at women, but yet again structurally very different and far more complicated.
And also I have to mention again we're talking about the personal memoirs of a self-admitted con artist. That's really not something I'd take at face value.
Edit: And to make my own position very clear: Solely beguiling women without also having access to some genuine advantages such as high social standing, wealth or power was near-impossible before the sexual revolution due to guarding behaviour by males in her social circles. You had to successfully trick those men as well to even just get access to the women. Casanova does not disprove this position in any way whatsoever; He had a genuinely high social standing, genuine wealth, genuine education, and then also tricked entire social circles.
After the sexual revolution, women would start to regularly go unattended to parties & festivities, which made (a percentage of) them easy prey for the first generations of tricksters in the hippy movement. Since women aren't stupid, this caused a backlash quite fast and they became more wary again, which necessitated the more elaborate trickery employed by PUA. However since it's a formalized movement it's easy to recognize once you know what you have to look for, so it died in the span of just a few years again. But more generally, there still just aren't as many safeguards nowadays; Obviously, tricking an entire social group, including both men and women, over long spans of time is much, much harder than tricking a (necessarily single-sex) lone individual over short spans of time. So the general style of social trickery as employed by PUA artists is still mostly viable.
RenOS
something is wrong
27d ago
It still is structurally quite different. PUA is based on the idea of a stranger seducting women entirely with social trickery. This wouldn't have worked historically; Men in a social group generally guarded the women against strangers, and the women themselves were often even more wary of strangers. Inside a social group where everyone knows everyone else already, PUA falls apart as well.
The examples you cite have primarily two mechanisms they used: Actual status, and (the threat of) violence. As a peasant, you couldn't openly dismiss a noble unless he very blatantly broke with established rules, the way you would with a stranger. The social status itself also, of course, made the nobles more alluring for the women, and peasant men that would otherwise guard them also might try to curry favor with the noble instead. Not to mention that more critical literature of these individuals often strongly insinuates that their allegedly awesome powers of seduction was to a large part just plain prostitution. This is proven at least partially true by what frequently followed; A peasant women with an accepted noble bastard child would usually get an alimony that far outstrips any other stream of income usually available to her. But also for sex more generally, if a noble offers a women coin upfront, and the sexual encounter is revealed against their wish & expectation, both parties can save face by claiming that it actually just was a seduction. The women becomes a hapless victim, the men an awesome seductor. Much better than a whore & john.
For the soldiers/conquistadors/pirates etc. taking advantage of their physical power, almost everything above holds true as well, just that the arrangement is usually less voluntary in nature.
I agree on 70/80 rockstar/yuppie life. Male hippies, even if they have a different political connotation, behaved in practice quite similar as well. It's all imo quite evidently downstream of the sexual revolution. PUA simply couldn't exist without it.
RenOS
something is wrong
28d ago
Short version for the question is, in essence, no we generally do not need to treat actual people directly differently (especially for people where you don't know their ancestry beyond the visibly obvious, and even for those the variance per person is still usually larger than the population level genetic differences, though there are some notable excemptions), but we also simply shouldn't expect different groups to exhibit the same mean for many traits even given identical environments. The big problem here is especially affirmative action, which lifts people visibly beyond their competence levels into positions they're unsuited for.
There are multiple substacks that write a lot about topics in this space. One of my favorite HBDer is Razib Khan, who is writing almost exclusively about population genetics. There is also a community of heterodox scientists which frequently publish together on HBD and all run their own substacks: Emil Kirkegaard, Peter Frost, Seb Jensen, Meng Hu, Davide Piffer. Several also write in the hub Aporia, which also includes a good entry point.
RenOS
something is wrong
1mo ago
If you want a picture of the future, imagine being asked "Oi oi oi, you got a licence for that, chum?" - forever.
RenOS
something is wrong
1mo ago
Jesse Singal is pretty even-handed, even if he's vilified a lot by activists; His position is, as far as I understand it, that the evidence on the entire topic is far too unreliable to act on it the way the medical establishment is currently doing. Diagnostic standards are far to deferential and all the available treatments have muddy positive impacts; If anything, the negative impacts have far better evidence than the positive ones. Nevertheless, he still stresses that we should be tolerant, that most trans-people are perfectly fine, and that this is especially about protecting teens and children from haphazard decisions that will impact their entire life.
Andy Ngo really trashes crazy (violent) left extremism in general, which includes a trans-rate of seemingly >50%. Of course you can't call this representative of anything, but it still gives you a good view into a subgroup that nevertheless enjoys widespread support in media & academia.
Colin Wright (note that this substack also includes some other authors) lands somewhere in-between, generally also primarily highlighting the low evidentiary standards. But he also regularly makes a deliberate point about the primacy of biological sex, and is more openly dismissive of large parts of trans medical care.
RenOS
something is wrong
1mo ago
At no point did I claim that women have no agency. Quite the opposite; My view is that women happily pushed the movement forwards for as long as they thought it was good for them, and then changed course once they realised the issues with it. If anything, a point could be made that the women were the primary agents, while some men were passively enjoying the perks (which isn't even entirely wrong). Of course, all the later feminist waves are also introducing as many new problems as they are fixing.
RenOS
something is wrong
1mo ago
I think it was Deiseach who once pointed out that second-wave feminism was actually a really sweet deal for men and a poison pill for women, with all the "free love" turning out to be just fucking around without any responsibility, and all later feminism waves are just an attempt at fixing this giant screw-up without admitting to it. I'd nitpick that it only was a sweet deal for a particular kind of men, but otherwise agree.
RenOS
something is wrong
1mo ago
It seems rather logical to me. My parents had little choice in the jobs they did, and just stuck with them due to a mix of necessity and convenience. But they aren't "dream jobs" in any way, and nobody feels the need to portray it as such.
So they wanted something else for me. They supported me, they told me to do something I love. This has also been one of the core messages I grew up with in media: Explore your interests! Find the real you! Self-actualize! etc.
The thing is, work is generally work because it needs to be done, but nobody wants to do it. That's the reason you get paid. Otherwise it would be a hobby. Meanwhile, the few fields that at least sound appealing in theory all turn into such a fierce competition that they debase themselves into working for the absolute minimum survivable amount (see journalism). Sometimes below that, if there are enough nepo-babys who can coast on their trust fund anyway.
But wasn't this your dream job? You sacrificed so much just to get here! Your parents supported you so much! You told everyone that this is what you want to do! So there's two options: a) drop out (and often just rinse-repeat in a different field) or b) accept that yes, this is your dream, but you just have to FIGHT HARD and BE PASSIONATE until you prevail. Even if it wasn't your dream job specifically, people generally get much more choice in what they do, so if you end up hating it, it's your own fault for choosing stupid. That's much tougher to swallow than it was in the past; You didn't get a choice, so it wasn't your fault.
RenOS
something is wrong
1mo ago
I thought the same, but to be fair, it makes sense in the framing of the post it's a reply to. People who were tribal when the Europeans showed up were colonized by them, period. It's also true that tribals generally tend to get conquered/enslaved by anyone who shows up with a sufficiently high tech level compared to them, so this has little to do with Europeans in particular, though.
RenOS
something is wrong
1mo ago
Ha, I remember very well when I pirated DMC3 as a teenager and couldn't afford a controller. The difficulty and the over-the-top edgelord-ness meshed well with my mind-state at the time, so I pushed through despite the, as you put it, masochism of the endeavour.
It's appropriate to be cynical, and I 100% agree about the heat pump arrangement being effectively a mandatory ripp-off, but fortunately the Erbbaurecht is legally very restrictive and they have already made some unusual choices that they can't take back. First, setting the price of the plot so low now means that possible later price explosions are mostly irrelevant for the yearly payment, since that is instead entirely bound to the VPI, i.e. the general inflation index. The same goes for rate of 2%: Typical is between 3-5%, so this is not just at the lower end, it's even below. The rate is entirely fixed, by contract, for 99 years. This part is genuinely beneficial to us and they have little leeway to screw us over. There are even several clauses protecting us should we struggle to pay otherwise.
It makes sense however once you know more about the structures behind the scenes: The plots of lands themselves originally belonged to the church and they now want to use them to generate some alternative income stream. As I've talked about before, modern church employees tend to be very progressive and not very religious. So they were easily talked into extremely generous conditions under the excuse of social housing. The "public" utility company, on the other hand, is a private company that is merely owned by the city. So they are relatively free to re-distribute significant income to (usually high-ranking) employees, and any further profit goes to the state (I've just checked, they indeed have gotten a decent profit the last few years). And I don't think anybody will be surprised to hear that they, too, are very ideologically progressive.
So it's in practice a re-distribution scheme from old church assets towards one (large) part ideological progressive pet projects, one part towards well-off Bildungsbürgertum, and one part to the state.
For some reason that is not something that has happened to me, despite having studied/worked alongside gay guys, including going drinking with some (not a high barrier in the UK though). They'd maybe lightly flirt or joke about going with some guy to the toilet in a way that would be considered inappropriate for straights, but they never got explicit, let alone talked about specific casual meeting spots. But they also were more the turtleneck sweater and glasses kind of nerd gays, I guess. Gays in nightclubs are something else, of course, but then again, nobody is surprised about what happens there.
In any case, FtttG has answered already.
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