SSCReader
4d ago
Remember though your first child is the most stressful, it's common overreacting to stuff because you've not experienced it before. Second is easier and by the third you'll be almost leaving your kid with strangers (I exaggerate a little, but only a little!). Her overprotectiveness sounds pretty normal at this stage. Though the dog thing sounds pretty ok, dogs and babies is a risk I wouldn't take even now after raising 3 kids to adulthood. People routinely underestimate how unpredictable dogs can be with babies and kids in my direct experience.
But boundaries are not just for kids! It is ok if she wants to do x but that doesn't mean you have to. You have to agree on the big things but your day to day parenting can and maybe even should be different. You don't have to have the same reactions. Ferber is basically what we did and it worked fine, but the chances are whatever method you use won't have any long term impact on your baby. This is more for the parents. The baby will learn to sleep at some point regardless.
Negotiate you taking over the putting to sleep duties perhaps if she is finding it too difficult. Her relationship with your baby and her relationship with your baby are different. You taking different duties is entirely ok.
My top tip is starting to teach your baby sign language from pretty much right now. They can learn very basic signs pretty quickly and just knowing milk, more, done is very useful. For my three kids anecdotally they also seemed to be less stressed when they could communicate even very basic things. They won't be able to make the signs themselves probably for another couple of months but they will start to understand. So when you sign sleep or bed, after a month or two they will know what is happening, and my experience is that made things easier. That is probably the thing I was most skeptical about when one of my wife's friends suggested it, but was blown away by useful it was (and to be fair) how cute it is for your child to be able to make tiny hand signs and actually begin to communicate into the world before they can speak more than a few words.
But the ring in the OP's post is the entire federal government not just the deep state. I simply don't see Trump trying to destroy what lets him govern. Downsize it sure, target the bits that have been problematic for him, absolutely. Take a chainsaw to agencies and NGO's? Yes.
But taking the whole thing down? Shuttering every three letter agency? Getting rid of the military, national parks, ICE?
I really do not see Trump as wanting to be the President who essentially ended the United States of America by delegating every single power to the states, including his own, somehow. Does he really want New York or Portland having control of immigration in their state?
Draining the swamp still leaves you with the land under the swamp. If you didn't want that, you wouldn't have to drain the swamp at all, just blow the whole thing up. And I don't see evidence despite much outrage, that he wants to do that.
SSCReader
9d ago
I guess the analogy falls apart a bit here, I don't think they are actually trying to destroy the federal government, just size it down.
So I suppose the better analogy is the ring is at the jewellers getting resized. Which isn't really as dramatic. Unless the jewellers is Sauron's Discount Rings and Gems of course.
A reveal that Musk was part of the deep state all along would be a shocking twist worthy of Sauron deceiving Celebrimbor.
One DOGE to rule them all, one DOGE to find them, one DOGE to bring them all and in the Deep State bind them. In the Land of D.C. where the bureaucrats lie.
SSCReader
9d ago
Except Tolkien's point is that no-one had the strength of will to do that. Not even Elrond, not even Gandalf. The ring could only be destroyed by someone not trying to destroy it but to possess it and destroy it by accident (or by divine intervention).
"Tolkien wrote that no one could have willingly destroyed the Ring, no matter how good their intentions were. He also wrote that the Ring was "beyond the strength of any will to injure it, cast it away, or neglect it"
Elrond would have rationalized why he should not push Isildur because he would not have the will to destroy it. Indeed, that might exactly be why he didn't! (well in the book they don't even enter Mount Doom so even more effort would have been required). Note that Isildur in the book is in fact on his way to destroy the ring when it betrays him and falls off his finger so he can be killed. But Tolkien is clear when it came down to it, no-one on Middle Earth had the will to destroy the ring.
Everyone will be tempted. Everyone will succumb at the end. Even the wise, even the pure. If you think the federal government is like that, then logically your prediction should be that Trump/Elon will not destroy it, but instead take it for their own. Or that Isildonald, heir of Fred and Elond of Tesla will turn against each other and in fighting over it, one will fall into the volcano and be lost with the government.
Hopefully in this analogy the volcano is not one of nuclear fire!
SSCReader
10d ago
If we are bringing back higher standards of dress, a formal evening event at the White House should surely be White Tie?
Yees but we're talking about the entire male federal workforce here, we're already asking them to have 3 levels of fanciness. I'm not sure we can go with white tie as well. Maybe that's if they get invited to get the Medal of Freedom or whatever.
As for no brown in town. I repudiate them! A brown Oxford or Derby looks much better with a navy suit than black. And I wore brown in town all the time in my time in the City, and no-one ever assaulted me with an umbrella. A charcoal grey suit is a good choice though. But unless we are providing a fashion budget (re-allocate USAID funds to tailors for the Feds?), I am not sure how many suits we can expect them to have and keep well tailored.
SSCReader
11d ago
Yeah if everything went perfectly they might just be in profit. More importantly will be revenue through 2025 which unless they have to reveal figures when applying for more licenses we may or may not find out about.
SSCReader
11d ago
I don't think expenses will be down that much. Staffing costs in 2022 was about a billion. So assume that dropped by 80%, R and D was 1.5 billion lets say he cut that by 80% as well, and then sales and marketing was about another billion.
Even if he was as ruthless with all those he's cut maybe 2.5 billion. Which is a lot! But it doesn't look like most of the other fixed expenses could drop much. So it's more likely expenses are around 2.5 billion still at a minimum. And possibly with R and D particularly he might not have been able to cut so deeply but for sake of argument lets say he did.
Revenue was 3.5 billion in 2023. Looks to be about 2.9 - 3.1 billion for 2024 according to Twitter's own figures submitted as part of their applications for licensing for money transmission. But debt servicing costs are about 1.2 billion per year. So predicted loss of ~0.5-0.8 billion for the year would be more likely. It's going to take some growth before it is making multiple billions per year, just looking at the figures. Not impossible, but the debt servicing costs are off setting at least some of the savings Elon made, and self-reported revenue still has dropped from 2023 to 2024 so I can't see a way it is making multiple billions right now.
He has to find a way to arrest the decline in revenue if he wants to be making such a profit I should think.
SSCReader
11d ago
Just by numbers most people in government posts are people who deal with the public and just want a job. Your description really only applies at management layers and above. Remember only a third of federal employees even have a degree let alone one in communications or similar, and many of those are in the Medical field as part of the VA and the like. Entertainingly USAID is the best counter-example with two thirds of its workforce having an advanced degree or higher! But that is not the norm across the Federal bureaucracy.
Your social security local office people are dealing with being yelled at by people losing their welfare and the like, they are VERY familiar with the lower/underclass and all their foibles and are probably not true believers in ideology as much as they are average workers worrying about making ends meet. Their direct managers will be as well. The local DMV is staffed by people from or close to the ghetto in fact here, so that wouldn't apply even for a lot of local government jobs. Remember most government jobs just by numbers are front facing. It wasn't until I moved to the higher echelons in the Civil Service I found all the politics and classics degree types.
From the point of view of the Federal government that would probably be the Senior Executive Service, of which there are about 9,000. If I were wanting to re-organize the Federal bureaucracy I would start with those 9,000 because they manage large projects and departments (basically the steps below political appointees) But of the sheer scale of the government in the US the vast majority do not appear to match your description.
In other words, the person most likely to take a government post is a non-degree having, neo-customer service worker, who (if you have never worked a customer facing job like that) will be very clear about how the rubber meets the road. Your Ivory Tower idea really only applies to a small minority in the upper ends of the government (but they are of course much more influential.)
SSCReader
11d ago
Ah for the days of buying 10p mixes at the shop down the street with 1p coins I found on the street. Finding a pound in those days made one wealthy beyond measure!
SSCReader
11d ago
and black oxford shoes to work every day, NO exceptions,
Well now you've just lost me. Derby shoes are clearly the superior choice here because they fit a range of feet widths and sizes more appropriately. And are more appropriate to transition to a happy hour after work for that matter. Until the Ozempic has done its work forcing overweight people into Oxford shoes is I am sure against both the Geneva convention and general aesthetics! We should leave the torture for Guantanamo and/or whatever camp we have to open in Canada as the 51st state.
Plus you didn't specify the color of the suit and I will not be caught dead in black Oxford shoes with a navy blue suit! The youth of today are simply wrong on that front. And since pale skin looks better in a navy blue suit than a black suit, let us not discriminate against white people. Suit and tie is fine, allow either navy blue or black, perhaps even charcoal, but let's allow black or brown Oxford or Derby shoes. Let's at least leave some room for some sartorial elegance. We can leave the government Men in Black look behind behind us. No brogues though, I think we can agree on that.
More seriously black Oxfords with a black suit is very formal which means you have not much room (except a tuxedo) to dress up further for important meetings or events. So navy blue suits with a brown Derby shoe for day to day use, with a black suit and a black Oxford shoe for when you are meeting the President or pleading with DOGE or similar. Tuxedo with the Oxford (or perhaps even a wingtip if you are feeling like causing a scandal!) for when you make it to a White House gala. That gives you 3 specific "grades" of formality with distinct looks.
Luckily we do not need to consider what to wear to one of Diddy's White parties because a white suit is just gauche.
SSCReader
13d ago
The shift from RTwP to pure turn-based is huge,
It's a huge improvement and I say that as a massive fan of BG1 and 2. DnD (whether 5e, Basic or ADnD2e) was built for turn based play. Now I would certainly prefer if BG3 was either ADnD2e or 3.5E based (as 5e is definitely not...great) but it is definitely better off as turn based.
As for sex as a bear, well you have to remember Forgotten Realms was created by Ed Greenwood who is the very definition of a horny player. Canonically any NPC who does not have a defined sexuality is pansexual in the Forgotten Realms. And his self insert character basically gallivanted around banging powerful goddesses and avatars and what not including gender swapping. The bear sex part is very true to Forgotten Realms probably about as much as dead gods coming back to life (or Mystra's chosen being in relationships with her). It's part of it's "charm".
SSCReader
25d ago
Well that is because it hasn't yet. We'll get back to 1980's levels in about 15-20 years still.
"It confirms that 99% of ozone-depleting gases have been phased out. Projections from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) suggest the Antarctic ozone layer will recover to 1980 levels by around 2066, with recovery in the rest of the world between 2040 and 2045"
and
"A hole that opens annually in the ozone layer over Earth's southern pole was relatively small in 2024 compared to other years. Scientists with NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) project the ozone layer could fully recover by 2066"
It's just slow steady progress at the layer being restored a little every year is not really news beyond niche publications.
SSCReader
30d ago
Presumably, it had already been vandalized with the windows smashed out as mentioned in the linked article. Seems unlikely from the facts described they wouldn't know it was empty.
SSCReader
30d ago
As always Northern Ireland has beaten you to the culture war punch. It's Londonderry if you are Protestant/Unionist and Derry if you are Catholic/Nationalist so the both sides version is Derry/Londonderry (read "Derry stroke Londonderry") or Stroke City to make fun of the issue.
"A visible sign of the dispute to the visitor is in the road signs;[108] those pointing to the city from the Republic refer to it as Derry (and in Irish, Doire), whilst signs in Northern Ireland use Londonderry. It is not uncommon to see vandalised road signs—the "London" part of the name spray painted over on "Londonderry" road signs by nationalists,[108] or occasionally "London" added to "Derry" signs by unionists.[108]"
SSCReader
1mo ago
Just to point out the police car they molotoved was empty as your own link states in the first paragraph. Still bad but not murdering police officers bad.
SSCReader
1mo ago
To be fair the book the movie is based upon is much the same in this regard and is written by a white ex Marine, high school dropout from the Ozarks in Missouri. Whether it is accurate or not I do not know but those elements don't come from Hollywood. It's similar to Vance's Hillbilly Elegy in that regard, in that it is written about a group by someone from the group. Though a fictional story in this case.
SSCReader
1mo ago
Because the median example is of people not doing their jobs. We're talking about tens of thousands of police officers and case workers over some 30 years. There are examples of worse things (one police officer was a relative of an offender and may have actually raped some of the girls directly), and so on.
But for the vast, vast majority of people who should have helped these girls they simply didn't.
As for why is important, well you hit the nail on the head. Right now in England there are still thousands of working class and underclass girls at risk, because unfortunately the demand for the prostitution of underage girls never goes away. If we want to protect those girls and protect them in the future we MUST understand why cops and social workers failed them. The racial part is important but gets lots of publicity, and while Asian offenders are massively over-represented (they make up about 20%) they are still not the major ethnicity grooming and raping girls throughout England. Simply on numbers most offenders are white, and my concern is that by focussing so heavily on race and not the demographics of the victims and how that impacts their vulnerability and makes the system that is supposed to protect them fail, there will be more girls having their lives destroyed.
SSCReader
1mo ago
Eh, let's not go that far. We called the Netherlands Holland back in my day in the UK , so I sometimes use it even nowadays, same with the Ukraine. The Netherlands themselves only officially dropped support for using Holland in 2019.
There is no way that qualifies as being culpably ignorant. Likewise I have lost track of the number of people in the US who equate British with England (and indeed Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland). As Wikipedia itself says:
"Holland" is informally used in English and other languages, including sometimes the Dutch language itself, to mean the whole of the modern country of the Netherlands.[5] This example of pars pro toto or synecdoche is similar to the tendency to refer to the United Kingdom as "England",[9][10] and developed due to Holland's becoming the dominant province and thus having the majority of political and economic interactions with other countries.[11]
If the Dutch themselves sometimes still use Holland and only officially stopped using it with in the last 5 years, then I struggle to imagine that anyone outside of the country can be called culpably ignorant or malicious, for not keeping updated on that.
It's technically incorrect but it is entirely understandable in all of your examples. Especially for anyone over 30. And I am a Northern Irish Brit who quite often gets called either English or Irish depending. For most people outside of the UK, there just isn't any need to learn that that is technically incorrect. It has no impact on their lives at all.
SSCReader
1mo ago
Right, even the drunken guy on Anderson Cooper's New Years show (which was terrible by the way), called it the Ukraine while very definitely being on their side. And back in the 90's we certainly called it the Ukraine as well. Even nowadays I'll go back and forth without (as far as I can tell) being impacted by Russian propaganda.
SSCReader
1mo ago
I initially agreed with you back in the day, but I think in the end the change was for the better, if we are accepting the 40K universe is about more than just the tabletop game. If you want stories based in that universe, every single necron just being mindless is a problem. Like Tyranids, who struggle to be anything but almost a force of nature when written about in novels because there isn't a perspective in there that allows them to be protagonists in their own story.
And from the pov of the average guardsman all the basic infantry necrons are still mindless, remorseless, killing machines, it is only the higher echelons who have maintained sentience (Much like the Tomb Kings of course.)
SSCReader
1mo ago
What is your point? What does a deliberate action against the people of Britain mean beyond what i have said?.
It's deliberate certainly, the people involved are making decisions. They weren't accidently not doing their jobs. They were making awful callous choices.
The people affected are definitely primarily British ( though at least 15% of the victims were British Pakistanis, and some small number were Eastern European immigrants).
I guess i'm confused as to what you actually mean beyond that. I'm not arguing this was accident. I'm explaining why they did what they did. None of that suggests people should not be held responsible.
SSCReader
1mo ago
Then you're just wrong I am afraid. Just to point out, I am not endorsing these things as good, but I am telling you as someone who was there that this IS part of the explanation.
I worked closely with the police in adjacent areas in this time frame. This IS what they were like and why.
If you want to say they still should have done better, and that there should have been much better oversight, I agree!
But this is how a combination of systemic and personal biases and experience enable terrible acts. Moloch in action. Because the people doing them don't see them as evil. They see the 30th underclass drug addict they dealt with this month and their reserves of caring in the slightest are gone. They are jaded and developed emotional callousness to protect themselves. If some underage skank wants to trade drugs for sex, why bother stopping her when she'll just have another "boyfriend" or go back to this one tomorrow? Just stop whatever nonsense is going on right now the easiest way possible.
Read the case studies about 14yo girls who ran away from home to be with their older Pakistani "boyfriends", every time they were brought home, they ran back to them again even though they were abusing her, and pimping her. They reflect from an older age that they thought they were desperately in love, and would do anything to be with him. Thats what the grooming part gets you, you see.
So after you drag back the same girl 5 times, you start to wonder, is it worth it? She just goes back again. If she wants it why are you bothering wasting your time. You're already underfunded, you've got real crimes to deal with, not stupid sluts who run back everytime. If she wants to sell herself for drugs, why then why the fuck should you care? Why should anyone?
Its so easy to slide though that thinking. Hell we see it here where people call immigrants or Indian lower classes or whatever vermin or animals. Kulak talking about they aren't even people really. Its so insidious once you start thinking that way. They're scum, they don't matter, in fact you'd be better off, no, they'd be better off if they didn't exist. And most people here are not even dealing with those underclasses day in day out!
Let me put it this way 2rafa lives in England now and has for a number of years. I not only lived in England for decades I lived in the Midlands through the 80s and 90s, and worked for the local government, alongside with the police, not very far from Rochdale, Telford, and Rotherham. if we are both telling you, who doesn't live in England, that this is part of why this happened, then shouldn't that be some level of evidence?
The Jay report also makes the exact same points. How the police referred to these girls as undesirables and up until 2007 seemed to be not really bothered if girls were underage as long as they claimed it to be consensual. Have a look at page 75 where it gives a list of excuses the police would give for not taking action including, how the victim dressed, that they used alcohol or drugs and were therefore sexually available, that it was a relationship therefore a willing partner, that children can consent. Indeed she covers examples where detectives AT child safeguarding meetings argued that the 12yo girl did and could consent. You can read the case studies starting on page 38 for more examples.
Notably it was Kier Starmer who listed all these excuses that had actually historically been used in order to debunk them as part of his revamp of tackling CSE as Director of Public Prosecutions in 2013. You can also find more criticisms of the police on page 84 and beyond, again reiterating what I am telling you. ""Seen by the police as being deviant or promiscuous. The adult men with whom they were found were not questioned." "Some, especially the Police made personal judgements about the young women involved"
This combination of factors, alongside the racial factors that most of the perpetrators were Pakistani IS why these gangs got away with it for so long.
There are also other reasons, interagency squabbling, higher ranking police officers siding with their beat officers rather than detailed reports about the abuse and so on, then people trying to cover their own asses and the like, but attitudes towards the victims and attitudes towards the perpetrators are the two biggest.
The Jay report is very thorough and covers many of the contributing factors. But at 153 pages with some harrowing examples it is not exactly light reading I concede.
Again I want to point out i am not saying that these factors are good, or that officers and workers acted well or in the best interests of these children. Just that being aware of how this malpractice comes to pass is important in stopping it happening.
SSCReader
1mo ago
that still does not explain the police returning the girls into the custody of a known brothel.
Because they saw these girls as criminals not victims. Prostitutes, drug addicts, habitual liars. The police has a vast exposure to the underclass and most of that exposure is to put it mildly not positive. Add in sexism, classism and police simply did not have any empathy for these girls. In essence they were blaming the victim. It's just what girls like this do. Exchange money and drugs for sex. Terms used by cops about the victims included "undesirables", "druggies", "habitual liars" and that's in official notes! That they were sluts and whores was taken to be axiomatic. While solicitation, pimping and operating a brothel are technically illegal and prostitutions itself was not, the attitude of police to sex workers was, well not great. As an example this is them publicly talking about a serial killer(!) of prostitutes in the 80's in Yorkshire, the same county as Rotherham.
"has made it clear that he hates prostitutes. Many people do. We, as a police force, will continue to arrest prostitutes. But the Ripper is now killing innocent girls. That indicates your mental state and that you are in urgent need of medical attention. You have made your point. Give yourself up before another innocent woman dies."
"Some were prostitutes, but perhaps the saddest part of the case is that some were not. The last six attacks were on totally respectable women."
Some of his attacks were on victims as young as 14. Yet the only ones they cared about were "innocent girls" (i.e. not prostitutes).
Cops long exposure to underclass behavior (whether white, black or otherwise), makes them develop certain attitudes, and social workers are often no different. They may have 30 kids on their books, half of them run away, another half are sneaking out to go to night clubs at 13, some are addicts, some are thieves, some are having sex for drugs or money, and the idea this is all just normal behavior for these people is insidious. Social workers becoming jaded and burning out is ubiquitous. However it was also left wing social workers who were responsible for blowing the whistle. And many did in fact make reports to the police which were ignored.
Half of the issue was the race of the perps, but the other half is a combination of classism and sexism and the fact that for many of these girls were seen more as troublemakers and criminals than victims.
SSCReader
1mo ago
Wait, are you missing context here? The grooming gangs were grooming the girls into prostitution using the tried and tested "boyfriend" method. Some of Muslim men in question WERE their pimps, while some were "johns". The "boyfriends" would then sell access to them to other men for drugs and money. Which is how the police often came in contact with the girls, and wrote them off as drug addicted prostitutes, undesirables, and habitual liars.
So strong coordination by a pimp is exactly what we had here. The "boyfriend" model (for grooming) and the so called "party" model for groups of men with coerced girls is common throughout the world, unfortunately. From Epstein to Diddy probably.
About 20% of members of these gangs in England are Asian (which is a strong over-representation compared to demographics, just to be clear) but simply due to numbers most grooming and prostitution gangs in England are mostly white, largely with the exact same MO. The actual methods used are not unusual at all within the CSE playbook.
So there was coordination here, that is in fact the whole point. If there wasn't they wouldn't be grooming gangs. The pimp would bring a girl to one "party", then the next and so on.
That is indeed a believable explanation. My wife's grandmother did not trust banks and kept almost all she owned as cash at home. You have to remember there is a certain level of distrust towards white or governmental institutions particularly (and understandably) in black Americans of a certain age or that they inherited from their family members.
Now it may not be true in this case, but if so the reason he reached for that as a lie is precisely because it is indeed believable, it is an actual thing if you have exposure to black communities. My wife to this day keeps more cash at hand than I ever would (though in turn I keep more emergency supplies of food and water than she considers "normal").
Also why disliking taking the "government needle" of Covid vaccinations resulted in lower vaccination rates in black communities. It's certainly less common than it was, but it is still a thing.
As another coincidence between black and Ulster-Scots borderer behaviors MY farmer grandfather also kept large sums of cash in his house rather than in banks because he didn't trust them or the government, which led to us randomly finding money in bags with things like "8 cows to Smith" written on it after he had passed.
Perhaps not quite to Ron Swanson burying gold in the woods levels though.
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