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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • Yeah, it looks like they were more into being quiet and non interactive.

    Generally, I would have said it differently because I’m an old fart and not afraid to say “hey, could you chill on the questions, I’m not up for it.” Not only am I fine with being direct, I also don’t feel the need to be snarky.

    So obviously, I’m also not likely to ever have to respond to such a statement as theirs.

    So, what I think would be the ideal response is different from how I would actually respond.

    In your place, I think something along the lines of “cool, no problem” would have been best. It lets them know you got the message, but doesn’t push back on a stranger for being a bit of a dick, which can be risky.


  • Alright, number one, you’re a fucking douche. I’m going to answer anyway, but grow the fuck up and stop being a walking pimple.

    I got interrupted a dozen times writing this, so don’t expect it to be smooth from paragraph to paragraph.

    First, attraction isn’t inherently drawn to youth, even when people are young. Youth can be attractive, but it isn’t universally so. So, your premise is flawed from the foundation. Attraction is complicated.

    One of the major components of it is how our brain looks for viable mates, on a primitive baby making level. That means part of what we look for is about fertility and probably viability for child rearing.

    That’s actually the reason some teenagers will be attractive to anyone and everyone; they simply look like they’re fertile and developed enough to be a parent in that primitive, animal level where common sense doesn’t exist.

    However, most teenagers don’t look attractive to most adults, and sometimes not even to other teenagers. Why? Because our brains expect a certain degree of development before it starts the arousal cascade. If you can’t impregnate the potential mate, they aren’t really a potential mate.

    For the female body, for women that are going to look fertile and viable as a parent, the body hits the range of looking right typically in the late teens to early twenties (using the Tanner scale as the basis), but extends well into middle age, even for the kind of woman-attracted people that are ageist. Why? Because people are really bad judges of age tbh. Even post-menopause, not every woman looks past fertility.

    Conversely, showing signs of aging doesn’t mean you’re past fertility. Ever run across someone that’s dealt with addiction, had a hard life, and you think they’re old? You can abuse your body hard enough to look old in twenties. I’m talking discolored, wrinkled skin, patchy hair going gray, all of the stereotypical crap that’s not only caused by actual aging.

    So, that’s part of it. People are attracted to things other than youth.

    I’m getting some meatspace interruptions, so this is a little scattered, but that’s the idea.


    Second, a lot of what we think of as pretty, or beautiful in terms of features and secondary characteristics is formed before puberty. It’s even fair to say that some aspects of it form way before, even before we form accessible memories.

    The faces and bodies we’re exposed to growing up don’t tend to be mostly teenagers. So our foundation of beauty preferences under normative development aren’t either.

    Third, you underestimate the power of being hot for teacher, or hot for Stacy’s mom (or Stiffler’s), or your friend’s mom.

    Horny kids, particularly horny teenage boys, they see that hot mom, teacher, grocery store clerk, nun, nurse, or whatever, they’re a giant pulsing cock. So every woman is a fantasy potentially. If/when they have positive interactions with these adult women, that builds a layer of positive associations in the brain saying “this type of look is good”, and that is very easy to link such sexual feelings.

    As we age, we also tend to be most exposed to age peers. So we date age peers more. Which means those layers of positive feedback age with us. That’s part of why teenagers will think someone is hot even when they’re covered in acne, smell like an axe body spray truck hit them, or maybe look like Tammy Faye Baker is their makeup artist, are underdeveloped and look like babies. That’s who they’re around, so they ignore the stuff that’s unattractive on average.

    So, an adult finding another adult attractive enough to masturbate to isn’t unusual at all.

    And then, it’s about sex too

    Tony young men know that young women are going to be unlikely to have sex with them. So do young women that are into women, but I kinda get the impression you’re a guy, so I’m leaning towards that in all this. So, when a young dude sees a MILF, the M in MILF becomes really important because, when it comes right down to it, if they’re a mom at all, there has been jizz inside her. Tracy that sits next to you in trig, or your 101 course at community college ain’t fucking you and may not be fucking anyone. But Tracy’ mom? She puts out! At least once.

    That may seem weird, but on a subconscious level it matters. And it keeps mattering. Even when you’re old and gray, and wanting a nice fap, who are you going to fantasize about? That damn near infant that can’t even buy a drink, or that fine-ass woman that has had a decade to learn what she wants and might be willing to tell you about it? I’m picking the one that is going to be more likely to be a good partner, though not every adult man would.

    And that’s also true. Plenty of guys my age think the way you do, that barely old enough to vote is somehow more desirable because the skin is more elastic.

    But here’s some truth for you. I’ve been fucking since I was 14, off and on. I’ve fucked some of the same women as adults that were girls when I fucked them as a teenager. Without fail, every single one was better with age. In my twenties, fucking women from the same age range you idealize, on up to a couple in their fifties, I can say that youth does not a good fuck equal.

    Oh, there’s more athleticism during the college years, yeah. But serious, making your toes curl good sex? That takes practice. I’ll trade the extra bounciness of youth for the ability to communicate in the bedroom every single time.

    Those “barely legal” age range models? Yeah they’re pretty. But not more pretty, just younger.

    Seriously here. You’re probably a guy. You need to reflect on yourself. You gotta grow the fuck up. If you don’t, then by the time you’re my age, you’ll be the creeper drooling over practical children compared to you, and still not getting laid. You don’t want to be that guy. Nobody likes that guy.


  • Well, yeah, there’s a difference “under the hood”, as in how the brain is processing things.

    But, on any practical level, dogs learn parts of human language.

    What’s really interesting is when you discover that dogs can tell the difference between “let’s go to” specifics. If you’re getting them to go for a walk, they start engaging in pre-walk behaviors. If you’re getting them to go to the car, they’ll engage in pre-car behaviors. Most dogs I’ve interacted with at that level, they can understand a ton of subordinate words like that.

    I used the above examples because my corgi had both of those combinations down (though I didn’t use let’s go), plus a few others. I’d tell her “time for a walk”, and she’d go get the leash, bring it to me, and wait for it to be put on.

    I’d tell her, “time for a ride”, and she’d go get her seat belt harness, then wait for it to be put on, just with less enthusiasm lol. Rides weren’t always to places she wanted to go

    But the cool thing is that I didn’t intentionally teach her any of that. I’d get the leash while telling her it was walk time, call her to me and have her sit while I knelt down. She drew the connections and started getting the leash before I could. The harness part came later, and I did teach her the word for that item, then to go get it, which led to her figuring out the rest.

    Dog vocabulary is limited. I can’t recall the numbers, but there are only so many words they can keep and reliably remember. Their grammar if human language is also limited in that they don’t “understand” that “let’s go” has a specific function as in that it’s saying “let us verb”. The “let’s go” is a word to them; you could say shit weird, like “walks gonna get” that makes no real sense in English, but they’d still learn what you meant by it and start getting ready to go for a walk.

    It comes down to complexity, tbh. You, as a human, could learn more than a handful of words in Spanish, and eventually speak in whole sentences with clear grammar. A dog can’t. There’s a limit to how much they learn a language vs learning that some human grunts mean something.

    See, dogs have language in the absence of humans. You see feral dog packs, and they’re communicating constantly. Tails, ears, body, scent, all of it combined with vocalizations form a language of its own. It just isn’t as complicated as human language. Even the most complicated animal languages that have been studied don’t come close to human. But language isn’t solely our gift.

    So the dogs are indeed like you with your grasp of Spanish currently. They understand a pidgin form of human, and we learn pidgin dog. Mind you, most of the time they’re better at human than we are at dog. Learning to understand tail movement, as an example, takes more time and exposure than people think. Did you know that the direction of wagging matters? It’s a thing!







  • Well, yeah, archive is the answer.

    Look dude, nobody owes you, or anyone else, the work of going through and copy/pasting random comments they made ten years ago. Why would you even think that’s a reasonable expectation?

    For one, reddit doesn’t even make it realistic because they limit how many comments you can actually go back through. The automated stuff has the same limit.

    Seriously, why the fuck does anyone think that they’re entitled to not only the answer, but to the person doing the extra work it would take to move it? That’s some next level narcissism right there.




  • Me?

    I’d go for the one that fit the “vibe” the best. If everyone can do the job itself equally, you step down to the people you think are going to mesh well with everyone else (and yourself). 10k a year is a small price to pay if picking the other one is less likely to result in a smooth workplace.

    After that, if those were as equal as guesswork can be, I’d look at things like proximity that might make one or other more reliable on a day-to-day basis, and if it was the higher pay request, try and negotiate. Again, that’s guesswork.

    But the point is that if you look at the qualifications for a job when considering pay, it can end up costing as much or more in hassles, or be a gain that exceeds the monetary price tag in other ways.

    Then again, I likely wouldn’t be in charge of hiring unless it was my own business. As an employee stuck in a hiring position, the choice would be based on policy, and a company big enough to hire and pay people to do hiring isn’t going to think the way I think.

    This isn’t an attempt to counter your position, it’s just an explanation of my priorities because it’s an interesting question.






  • So, self labels.

    External labels are bullshit. But self labels matter because they’re part of self discovery. We live in a cis-hetero world. We’re all raised with that at the default. Finding new words gives us all a new map in our brains, new ways of thinking as we’re exposed to the ideas those words represent. It’s easy to say “just like what you like”, and there’s truth behind that idea too.

    But, that’s an idea you reach as you grow and learn. Maybe some day there won’t be a default, though I suspect nobody currently alive will see that day since it takes generations for shifts that big to happen.

    So, labels have their place and use.

    As an example, imagine growing up fifty years ago. The idea of romantic attraction and sexual attraction being distinct, separate parts of a person’s makeup was not a thing people realized. Imagine being omniromantic, but heterosexual. Imagine loving a man, deeply enough that once gay marriage became legal, it was a real option.

    But, all that time, sexual incompatibility was an issue. One that led to strife and an eventual breakup.

    That’s the story of one of my cousins. It isn’t a hypothetical. He has said now, as has his ex partner, that if they had had the concept of omni/pan at all, it would have helped. And, if they had known that romantic and sexual attraction aren’t always linked, they might have found a way to stay together, or have broken up sooner and gone through less pain.

    Niche? Absolutely. But language is more than just a way to coordinate a hunt. As we learn, it lays down maps in our brain that we use to navigate everything. That includes our love lives.

    Language is also about communication though. It applies to dating, sex, and partnerships via communicating with the people we’re compatible with. If you’re looking for a man with a penis, it sure as heck helps to have words for men, and penises.

    Having a word that states “I am sexually attracted to any gender, but not to a specific gender presentation” really helps when someone is trying to see if you’re compatible. So, favoring having the word “pansexual” as shorthand is pretty damn useful. That would allow you and any person you’re talking to you know, from the beginning, that there will or won’t be a compatibility issue, and everyone can handle the situation like compassionate and friendly adults.

    All of that is to recognize that what you’re asking matters. It can’t be dismissed as “just be with who you want”. When you’re past the point where labels are useful to you, you’ll just be with who you like, and that’s it. But we all use labels. They’re useful. They have a role. So asking about them is perfectly valid and useful too.


    So, are you pan, omni, or bi?

    Bisexual may or may not include people that don’t present as distinct expressions of the binary, but usually has a preference for binary presentation to some degree or another.

    Pan and omni are two other sides to the multi-sided multi-attractive polyhedron of attraction. They’re essentially identical except for one aspect.

    Pan has no distinct connection to gender presentation at all. They’ll be attracted to any combination of gender, regardless of presentation or genitals/secondary sexual characteristics.

    Omni has connection to presentation. They don’t necessarily prefer any given presentation or gender combination, but they are attracted to presentation as part of the person rather than it being irrelevant. They also do care about secondary sexual characteristics, though only as part of the individual rather than as an exclusion.

    It’s a razor thin distinction, but it does exist. Knowing it about oneself can help figure out who you’re attracted to, why you are or aren’t attracted to an individual, and when looking for potential partners.

    Tbh, my grasp of all the pan/omni stuff is essentially second or third hand, since other than not excluding anyone as a matter of principle, I’ve never experienced sexual or romantic attraction to anyone that isn’t a woman. I’m hetero. I don’t reject the possibility of attraction to another man in theory, and I’ve definitely run into situations where a man that’s sufficiently able to present as a woman by heteronormative standards pinged on my radar as attractive, if not attractive to me.

    Which isn’t entirely tangential. It’s relevant to your situation because you have experienced a full attraction to a woman. You also state that your love wouldn’t disappear if a partner transitioned. So, as you said, you aren’t at the extreme hetero end of that binary. There’s no exclusivity.

    However, I do think that omni would fit your self labeling better than bi or pan. You do factor presentation into things, just not as the exclusionary or primary factor.

    Thing is, you’re also functionally hetero (the way you phrased things implies you’re a woman, this isn’t a blind assumption, but if I’m wrong, just switch terms out). You know you can be attract to women, but it isn’t something that’s going to be part of any active search for a partner. It would be something that if it happened, great, but you’d likely have to dismiss large numbers of women before you found someone that “sparked”. In practice, that amounts to being hetero for the purposes of dating apps and other “ISO” use cases.

    In day to day life, it makes sense to acknowledge the self label of pan/omni, and even discuss it. But if you’re being set up on dates, or using an app, or whatever, it has next to no use. It’s just a numbers thing.



  • Well, no, not really.

    Reflux is a definite no because that’s not “just” heartburn. Treating chronic reflux with something like tums or rolaids isn’t a great idea to begin with, and soap would cause even more problems.

    But, even “just” heartburn is a no.

    For one, the Ph is too high. You want to bring the acid to neutral, or close, in the esophagus; and the Ph of most soap is going to take it way past neutral and into alkaline.

    Most soaps? They’re bad for skin because the Ph is too high. It fucks up all kinds of stuff, and the more delicate the skin, the worse the effect. Like, your average soap is going to run around 9-10. Skin is around 5-6. The esophagus is going to hover around 7 normally, with it going to around 4 or below during chronic reflux (with occasional bouts staying a tad closer to 5 or 6). Most antacids would end up being around 8ish, at least the brand names.

    I’d have to run the math to figure out what exactly the results would be with a pure alkaline being swallowed in terms of end Ph, but it doesn’t really matter. Soap isn’t a pure alkaline. It’s a mix of things. Mind you, that’s all sketched out since I’m at the very limit of my chemistry here, but the general idea holds. Don’t try and use my numbers on a test or anything.

    And that mix, even though it won’t kill you or even put you in a hospital barring weird shit going on, ain’t going to settle your stomach. For one, the most common effect of swallowing soap is vomiting. Kids get into soap occasionally, and they puke it back up more often than not. Idiot adults sometimes get drunk and take bets, or dares, or whatever other stupidity is going on. They vomit it back up in any but the smallest amounts.

    What they don’t vomit up is going to come out the other end with some force. Some people used to use small amounts of soapy water as a laxative. And it works

    I don’t see a lot of vomiting followed by hours (potentially) of nausea being a good result to treat reflux.


  • I mean, if you want pizza that’s even shittier than chain deliveries, sure, you can do that.

    Let’s be real. A home oven and premade dough might be cheaper, but it ain’t good pizza.

    You can get a pizza stone (or steel), or do a cast iron pizza and end up fine, that’s for sure. But if you’re using that premade dough, even Caesar’s is going to be as good. That’s not mentioning that the sauces available in jars aren’t all created equal at all, or that it’s a dice roll if the cheese is okay or not.

    Even dominos and pizza hut are better than a cheap home made pie. You want a good home made pizza, you’re spending roughly the same, but now you have to learn how to hey it right. The learning curve isn’t horrible or anything, but it’s there.

    Most people that want a pizza want something decent, or they’d just throw in a digiorno’s or whatever. Mind you, calling most chain pizza decent is a stretch of the term, but that’s another issue entirely since a solid pizzeria isn’t exactly a guarantee outside of cities


  • Broken.

    That’s an interesting term for this.

    What you’re describing is a lack of empathy, to a degree that night be called narcissistic or sociopathic (though we’re talking colloquially here, so don’t be wasting time with formal usages of those terms).

    But, yeah, that would mean you diverge a good bit from what’s considered normative. That’s one usage of broken. If that was caused by an external event or events, even more so.

    The best definition of love I’ve come across is the feeling that another entity’s happiness and well being is central to your own happiness and well being.

    But that still doesn’t really get the job done.

    Love, when it’s washing thorough me, is a sense of rightness that the entity I love is in my life. A sense of completion and connection that goes beyond the practical. It’s also the feeling of recognizing that without that entity in my life, my life will be wrong.

    And I say entity because love isn’t limited to humans. There’s still holes inside me shaped like dogs and cats and rats that are no longer alive. There’s even a hamster shaped hole there too.

    You get enough of those holes, and there’s not enough left to be. You’re left a shredded and drifting thing, waiting for whatever final damage rends you into dust.

    That’s part of what love feels like, that feeling when it’s gone.

    Take that as you will.