If we ever colonize an ice planet we’ll know exactly how to melt it!

I’ve been a Wayfarer-style lover for years, partially because they fit my face well, partially because they’re iconic ska/punk look like Converse or Chucks. But like Chucks and Docs, what they are now is a enshittified version clinging to nostalgia. It hurts, makes me sad, the old reality was a part of my youth and that’s tough to let go. I am still partial to my vintage tortoise shell Raybans I got my prescription installed in and a pair of 40yo Rayban aviator sunglasses. I also struggle with semi-rimless, to me those were the douchebag style 20yrs ago. sigh times change.

Ask McKinley how tariffs, imperialism, and abiding insurrection worked out for him.

🤔

I used to feel like that. When I was in middle school I had a friend who was equally depressed and we would take turns pointing in each others face and see how far the other could handle the trigger being squeezed. He killed himself a couple of years later. Slit a wrist in my early 20s, not really sure if I wanted to just hurt myself or really be over it but came pretty damn close to success because holy shit that razor was sharp. Still have grip issues and nerve damage from all the damage. Lost my home and business in the ‘08 collapse. Lost it all again in 2018 when my house burned down. After that I tried drinking myself to death. Almost drown in my own vomit once and there was one night I’m pretty sure I’d stopped breathing but my dog half roused me in a panic. Sobered up only to get struck by a distracted driver while walking through a crosswalk and suffered a TBI and busted hands/wrists. A few months later my best friend of 20yrs was murdered. Life is incredibly disappointing and there’s no grand purpose to it, but that also means we’re not here just to suffer, even if it feels like it at times. I’d like to say the high points of my life have outweighed or at least balanced the low ones but they have not (and I left out all the childhood trauma). But such is life. I hope you know you’re not alone and that while your life is unique to you, the disappointment, depression, and suck is not; I feel you and feel for you.

That’s exactly what I did. Bought a 1964 Shasta Astrodome in good shape for $400, currently gutting it for an upgrade/restore. Solar, composting toilet, updated insulation, modern appliances. It’s enough space for one person, two dogs, two cats, a tortoise, and some chickens outside. Most of what’s going into it is second hand materials from places like the Habitat restore and rv scrapyards. There’s also a lot of folks who buy brand new rvs and immediately strip the built in systems like AC that are inadequate for modern giant rvs but perfect for something this small and then sell them unused for cheap. I’ll probably be $5-$8k total by the end. The real cost is the land ($75-$100k for ~.75 acre in the mountains) and the well. Lots aren’t selling as fast as they used to and I’ve noticed more price drops over the last year.

I’m gonna stop you right there because you’re flirting dangerously close to Victorian prudishness with a modern spin. There is absolutely nothing new about non-reproductive sexual behavior and the practice is not limited to humans. We’ve found sexually explicit images in cave paintings, Mesopotamia, a lot in Greece & Rome (including homoerotica), and the Kama Sutra is about 2000yrs old. Humans, including adolescents, have been jerkin’ it for centuries before the invisible hand came along.

What has occurred is that the accessibility, volume, and content of pornography has expanded and changed. Where people might have previously spanked it and finished in a few minutes then gone on with their day, now they can delay gratification and spend hours gooning to a never ending supply of whatever form of visual stimulus they want, including content that was never even intended or attempted to be pornographic. The pornography itself is not addictive, the physiological and mental stimulation is. For some, there’s a need to explore and indulge riskier sexual behaviors and fetishes to achieve the rush they got previously. I was pretty excited when I saw my first nudie mag at 8, by the time I was 16 it wasn’t as exciting because by then internet porn had become accessible. But, had nudie mags remained my only option for such content, I would have continued to masturbate to nudie mags.

There’s also nothing inherently wrong with the idea of pornography, voyuerism, group play, sex toys, etc so long as all parties involved consent to the activity they’re engaging in. Humans like sex, they like masturbation, they like watching others perform it. Again, consent of all parties involved is the key factor. Truly understanding how to give and respect consent in what can be a high consequence interaction is why we set hard lines about age of consent and prohibit (or attempt to) minors from such activities, but also know that many are exploring and engaging in such behavior privately or with peers regardless. There’s a healthy, normal aspect to that because it’s human nature, and then there’s the dangerous side because porn of every sort lacks a lesson in consent, is often unrealistic/fantastical/deviant, and often treats the passive partner as an object for the pleasure of the active partner (typically women, but trans, “twink”, animals, and children are also depicted as such).

This is the danger of porn to malleable minds who are responding to the biology of sex drive but do not yet have the confidence/skill/capacity to build healthy relationships where they can build intimacy and eventually engage in sex with a willing, consenting partner. Some end up forgoing the effort to find a partner entirely and meet their need with porn, which is a sad and unhealthy avenue. Other take the lessons of objectification and violate the boundaries of other. And the worst make their most deviant, dangerous, and hurtful fantasies reality. Some would behave like that without having been exposed to porn, but I would argue that porn is having a strong influence on the spread and normalization of truly deviant fetishes, like beast/child/gore/rape.

The commodification of sex is older than capitalism, it was being bartered and traded since… since forever. What capitalism has done is make a normal human behavior a profitable vice. Adults embracing their sexuality, recording it, selling it for other adults to view is not problematic so long as everyone who made it consented to the acts recorded and consents to the recording being put out for consumption by strangers. The internet has created a platform where it’s impossible to tell if those criteria were met before the material became permanently available and globally distributed, as well is a bastion of anonymity that can be accessed by anyone of any age. You can try and put up guardrails but humans are just going to figure out a workaround if they are inclined to do so. Pandora’s box has been opened, and even if there is no money to be made people are going to view, share, and trade porn. If you shut the internet down people would revert to whatever media forms were available to do the same. Even if you magically erased all porn, people, including adolescents, would still masturbate. What might diminish is the frequency and amount of time they spend doing so as well as the cultivation of deviant fetishes and objectifying partners.

The people trying to create a “solution” aren’t doing so because they see that some forms of porn production and consumption is problematic, they see human sexuality as problematic. They’re not trying to steer how porn is produced and consumed into a healthy manner, they treat sexuality outside of their concept of divine purpose as deviant. Plus it’s a “rules for thee not me” attitude, especially when the people pushing it support one of the world’s most infamous and abusive deviants. The human need for sexual stimulation/release is like the human need to eat and drink. Capitalism didn’t invent it, it just exploits necessity.

What if we eat people? Diminishing food source, diminishing population, diminishing poop. Eventually the problem solves itself, though technically last person standing has to eat themselves.

Good point. Kids know too much and get addicted too early. Adult know too little and can’t tell the difference between lies and reality. Everybody consumes way too much porn. That’s it, everybody put their phones in the garbage. No more Internet, everyone gets a landline, rotary dial, call on the other end does’t disconnect if you don’t hang yours up.

But what is pegging if not an asshole putting in the effort to be something more?

What’s the body count have to be to solicit an unfavorable opinion? Like, can you abide a few? Gloss over a few dozen? Do you require evidence of each kill? How many people does a theocratic authoritarian government have to murder for you to be like “yeah, fuck your regime”? Don’t conflate “fuck the Ayatollah and the IRGC” with “go America”. It’s not difficult to be disgusted with two fundies leaving a trail of bodies in their wake as they argue over oil and which delivery boy made up a better version of God.

Well, when in Rome, do as the Vandals.

Sounds similar to my relationship. I have no clue where they reside now or if they’re even still alive, and would be disappointed to find out they were so I never look. Also on the Rush/QAnon train, and intensely evangelical to boot. Which is the great irony of the “Hollywood blood drinking pedo cult” conspiracy, since their God knocked up a teenager and they drink blood symbolically every weekend to celebrate his torture-kill. Every accusation is a confession.

Just try and make sure those ghost guns are in good hands before you do. Be a shame to waste perfectly good antiMAGA gear that MAGA wasted their time and money stockpiling.

Still haven’t abandoned that “dream” of nuclear family of four. Same dream, different venue. And if that’s your dream; great, you found your spot. But there’s no one dream.

Real question- is that volume or branding? Depending on where you are/what brand, that might be a 1.5-2 pack a day habit of higher quality smokes; not unheard of for a typical heavy smoker. If you’re spending that much on ass-end packs that cost you $6/ea, that’s pushing 4 packs a day, which is like legendary status few can achieve anymore.

If only Jesus would have been as explicit about his feelings on religious profiteering as he was about his attitude towards abortion, gays, and gun rights.

There’s a special kind of superiority for evangelicals like the people who raised me. There’s the hatred of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia- those are often easy to identify at first glance or figure out quickly. They want their white Christian America, and a substantial percentage of Mormons and Catholics are white and “Christian enough” when they need voter and public support. I think Catholics and Mormons have forgotten that the people they’ve been breaking bread with are the descendants of the people who terrorized the Irish and Italian immigrants and ran the Mormons out of New York, the Missouri, and tried to run them out of Idaho. Given time they’d probably turn on each other over Lutherans vs Baptists. They don’t actually want broad white evangelical supremacy, they want themselves alone to be supreme and to be able to tread on anyone else to have their way. They’ll always find an excuse to justify their personal “betterness”, but in fact are just empowering the oligarch class who will always reap the benefits of being above the law.

I realized as I got older how much of our history, the parts they have to acknowledge, are treated like they’re a singular moment in the past, resolved, and somehow could never resurface in a different form.

The push to frame the Civil Rights or Women’s Suffrage movements as the “correct” form of how American citizens call out inequality is also sanitized to the point it becomes toothless. We’re given a version where people just gather, speak out, sometimes get beaten to a pulp/jailed/killed but so long as they remain non-violent, eventually society will feel bad and someone with the power to change things will do so.

There are times where large scale protests are beneficial because it rallies and shows the scale of opposition. Sometimes witnessing the violence of the oppressors against peaceful people shocks and horrifies. But we’re at a point where watching cops, ICE, and Proud Boys brutalize others is fetish porn for MAGAts, and mass gatherings for the sake of showing up but not networking and continuing the movement during the weeks in-between is futile. They have no reason to see us as a threat if all we do is show up for a few hours one weekend every six weeks and hold signs.

And to my fellow dissatisfied leftists, if your aversion to anything more direct is rooted in the idea that previous protests were successful because they stayed “peaceful” and took their lumps, you’re protesting the way the machine wants you to. Just enough liberty to feel like you’re standing up to oppression but not doing anything that actually challenges the oppressor.