Yesterday I finished a long listen of the audio book "The Raise and Fall of the Third Reich" by William Shirer (on audible, 60 hours). He frequently quotes "Mein Kampf". I am not sure one can stomach the whole thing but it's interesting to read quotes of it in context.
I am paying 19 Euros for Netflix and 85 Euros (give or take for prime). This is getting ridiculous. Some time ago I have read an article on heise.de about privacy picking up again. This is why.
I love this. You can say what you want with everyone wearing airpods all the time but I think there is a lot less stigma with wearing them as opposed to hearing aids.
Plus hearing loss is a major risk factor for dementia. So this is big!
The American
Alien(s) 1,2 and 3
Limitless
The Bourne movies
Heat
Leon
It's not about the movies themselves but for example with Bourne or the American, it's certain scenes that get me in a mood. A single professional or group doing his / its thing, it's kind of calming.
That's a topic close to my heart as well. I found two books helpful:
- No Self, No Problem (Chris Niebauer)
- Solve For Happy (Mow Gawdat)
> Events around a romantic interest recently also made me to rethink on how to effectively control emotions and feelings. The other person can do nothing wrong, but my mind can still feel tormented by their simple actions and events that unfold.
I struggle with this as well and in addition to the two books above I suggest you look into the works of Albert Ellis.
The second part could also be the other way round. If there is easy access to CSAM maybe there will be less abuse. I could see either case be true, or that the availability of such material does not change incidence of abuse st all.
But having to train models on real materials is a major moral issue.
> The second part could also be the other way round. If there is easy access to CSAM maybe there will be less abuse. I could see either case be true, or that the availability of such material does not change incidence of abuse st all.
This is actually my opinion but I have no hard data on this. Is it feasible to apply the same logic as with video games where realistic killing is depicted and the argument is that this doesn't make people killers in real life?
One could argue that if we are smart enough to make this work, we could be smart enough to have the machines take over as well but I am not holding my breath :)
I am in the process of a breakup (scare) right now and realizing how much of my social support system is gone when it's attached to your spouse and obviously loyal. Not totally on topic but I have learned my lesson to actively pursue friendships from now on and cultivate them - and the place where you live obviously affects this in a great way.
I (M) once got into a relationship with someone (F) who was oddly unfond of my friendships, esp female friends. She in a way isolated me from close friends. When we broke up, it was because she accepted a marriage proposal from her 'friend' whom I kept asking her about.
Anyways, it took me time to mend some friendships, some never recovered.
> Not totally on topic but I have learned my lesson to actively pursue friendships from now on and cultivate them
Yes, spousal relationships can sometimes drain us of other friends because of the exclusivity it comes with.
We sometimes have to be very deliberate in keeping that balance. That includes taking on new interests, getting to know our kids' parents, etc.
I encourage my wife to meet new people, as she relocated across our country, doesn't have a lot of friends around, and stopped working shortly before kids.
I call this the Mike Pence rule. Because as I recall at one point he was in the news due to his alleged behavior of not meeting with other women without his wife present.
I don't adhere to it, but I'm not judging or downvoting you and don't know why others are. I'm surprised other commenters are surprised to be honest.
Surely I'm not the only one who has been subjected to a seemingly endless stream of rom-coms where the protag ditches their SO for their good/best/work friend my entire life? So it shouldn't be surprising that some people are wary after being subjected to such propaganda.
It can be an issue when one person in the relationship has way more opposite sex friends than the other. It's hard for some to admit their insecurities in that situation, so they silently accept it instead of having a fight over it (which probably would have been healthier).
> Surely I'm not the only one who has been subjected to a seemingly endless stream of rom-coms where the protag ditches their SO for their good/best/work friend my entire life?
No, you aren't, nor are you the only one to give inappropriate weight to common tropes of some genre of fiction that exist because it is a convenient narrative framework given the genre in deciding how to deal with real life.
Not being alone in that does not, however, make it a good idea.
>No, you aren't, nor are you the only one to give inappropriate weight to common tropes of some genre of fiction
I'm not the one giving it weight as I don't adhere to the rule in question. However, like I said elsewhere, if you aren't aware that occasionally life imitates art and art imitates life, and some people actually try to idiotically mimic the romcoms they watch, well you haven't been out much these days I guess.
Not to mention the person they were replying to literally had this happen to them.
> I'm surprised other commenters are surprised to be honest.
I'm surprised because I've never met anybody like this, and while I've heard about Mike Pence I'm not sure I really believed it. Thinking about it more, since I don't hang out in any male-only spaces (where would I find such a thing?), almost by definition I'm never going to meet anybody socially who follows this rule.
Also, as other commenters have pointed out, this philosophy completely falls apart unless you genuinely believe that everyone is heterosexual, or you refuse to be friends with anyone who is not.
> Thinking about it more, since I don't hang out in any male-only spaces (where would I find such a thing?)
Going for coffee or having a beer with your male friend?
From your comment it seems you are mixing up friends and acquaintances. A friend is somebody that you spend time with one-on-one and for most people in the world it is unacceptable that you do that with a friend of the opposite sex if you are in a relationship.
Yes but how did I make that male friend? I've met every single one of my friends in a mixed-gender context (college, rec league sports, work, friend's party, D&D group, etc.). I'm a man, I'm in a long-term committed relationship with a woman, and I have plenty of good friends who are women. I've hung out with all of them either one-on-one or with other women besides my partner, otherwise I wouldn't consider them good friends.
I've never heard anyone express surprise about this, I've never had anyone decline an invitation because they aren't "allowed" to hang out with men, I've never had a second thought about any of this.
> if you are in a relationship
I still disagree even with this qualifier, but fyi this is moving the goalposts a bit. The original commenter suggested that mixed-gender friendships don't ever make sense.
> I've met every single one of my friends in a mixed-gender context (college, rec league sports, work, friend's party, D&D group, etc.).
They were acquaintances when you met them there, and later became friends.
> I've hung out with all of them either one-on-one or with other women besides my partner, otherwise I wouldn't consider them good friends.
I'm kind of surprised by that. Do you mean that you are spending time alone with other women in their houses or in your house, and your spouse is fine with that?
Maybe people are far less sexual in different places in the world, but where I live everybody will assume that when a man and a woman spend time together alone, they are having sex. I assume that too. Of course discounting for relatives.
All my women friends completely understood that I couldn't see them outside of in a group setting when I got into a relationship.
> Do you mean that you are spending time alone with other women in their houses or in your house, and your spouse is fine with that?
Yes that is what I mean. I guess more often in public or at some event, but sometimes at one of our homes.
> where I live everybody will assume that when a man and a woman spend time together alone, they are having sex
Here's what I don't understand: if you can't trust your partner to not instantly have sex when you aren't around, then why would you trust them to never be alone with other people in the first place? Does that make sense? In other words:
"You can go hang out with that guy, but don't have sex with him" - impossible, she'd never be able to resist the urge
"I'm going out of town for a couple days, don't go see any male acquaintances while I'm gone" - I trust her completely, of course she'll do as I say
How can you believe both of these things? You either trust her or you don't.
> Here's what I don't understand: if you can't trust your partner to not instantly have sex when you aren't around
It's not really about that. When people are grown up, there's really no reason for people to be one-on-one with the opposite sex unless it is for intimate reasons. And I think people are more sexual here (or people where you live are un-sexual), because most women and men here don't really want to have intimate friendship with people of the opposite sex, unless there is a sexual spark.
This might sound weird to you, but if somebody is so repulsive that you don't want to have sex with them, why would you want to be intimate friends with such a repulsive person? And the opposite: If somebody is so repulsed by you etc.
That doesn't mean people are horn-dogs that are trying for sex all the time. It's just a law of nature that when a man and a woman are together alone, they will sleep together. After all, that's what we were born to do.
But the relationship isn't relevant, this is a philosophy for how to treat everyone outside the relationship. Many of those people are the same gender as you but might still be attracted to you (oh no!), or a different gender but have no interest in you so there's no potential for mixed signals. So the rule a) does not protect you from accidentally leading someone on, and b) does cut off a bunch of potential friends for no reason.
>But the relationship isn't relevant, this is a philosophy for how to treat everyone outside the relationship.
I think the relationship is very relevant. For example, the comment would not make any sense either if you don't assume they're talking about about a strictly monogamous relationship. Worrying about giving "mixed signals" to people when you're in an open relationship would be way less of an issue understandably.
From the context of their post and the post they were replying to, the comment is about how to interact with people you may potentially be attracted to given the right circumstances (or who may be attracted to you) when you are in a strictly monogamous relationship.
> Surely I'm not the only one who has been subjected to a seemingly endless stream of rom-coms where the protag ditches their SO for their good/best/work friend my entire life? So it shouldn't be surprising that some people are wary after being subjected to such propaganda.
this exists of course, but surely we can tell the difference between fact and fiction? I just watched Midsommar last year but I am not afraid of Swedish people or the countryside.
One would hope that having a modicum of life experience would be enough to counter such propaganda, and I don't think it's surprising that people are surprised to encounter this viewpoint in real life.
>this exists of course, but surely we can tell the difference between fact and fiction?
I'm not sure we can? From what I understand, the person was responding to someone who literally had this happen to them after all. Life mimics art. Art mimics life. When you're told you're being left for someone that is a friend they have been frequently hanging out with one-on-one with your full knowledge, it takes a considerable amount of willpower to not introduce distrust to your psyche in your future relationships.
Like you, such a rule would be a dealbreaker for me. But I know people who requested this rule because they didn't either trust themselves or trust their friends for not misinterperting the situation. Why is it ok to say you're tempted by alcohol but not ok to say you may be tempted by the people you may be normally attracted to given enough time, the right circumstances, interactions, conversations etc.?
It's ok to say that about yourself, but it's not ok to force that requirement on a partner ("My wife would never allow me to hang out with another woman solo"). It's also not reasonable to say that since it works for you, it's the most "sensible" thing for everyone.
Huh? It’s perfectly okay. My wife and I have the same rules, and neither of us feel hampered by it. We don’t seek out opposite sex friends, and most events are by sex anyway (sports, board game groups, book clubs, etc.)
Even at the gym, men hang with men and women with women. It’s just how it goes.
I have genuinely never heard of a gender-segregated board game group or book club, and I've attended a lot of both. Sports, sure, but I find that usually only the more competitive leagues are gender-separated. When I join a recreational ultimate frisbee or soccer league, which I've done many times, it's always been mixed.
I believe you, I just want to communicate that what you're describing is definitely not even close to universal. One or both of us (probably both) are living in a cultural bubble.
We must live in very different areas. Most of my friends are either from sports (soccer watching, ultimate frisbee playing, running club, hiking club, etc.) or board game groups, and none of the ones I've ever attended are segregated.
I have seen book clubs for men and book clubs for women advertised, but (especially those for men) seem to use gender segregation as a selling point—which would mean most of them aren't.
that's an extremely poor judgment right off the bat, so i am not surprised by the downvotes. The second paragraph then sounds like they would rather sit in silence with another woman than have the chance of an interaction being interpreted incorrectly
At first I was gonna say "I don't think this is normal," but I'm not straight and so may not be the best judge of what is or isn't normal in heterosexual marriages.
Yeah, queer existence blows all kind of holes in the basic premise behind the logic.
There's a lot that's fundamentally problematic about it, not least of which is the implication that everyone except your spouse should be kept at arm's length, and this is the morally correct thing to do.
I'm straight, I definitely don't think this is at all healthy. If you don't trust your spouse to live their life as best they can with your best interests at heart, let alone just not cheat on you, why are they your spouse?
The problem of potential mixed messages and confusion is two-sided, so if the rule made sense at all, it would require avoiding both people who were either known to be attracted to your gender or of a gender you were attracted to.
The universal heterosexuality assumption makes those two equivalent which is convenient because it makes the rule seem marginally workable
I think the downvotes you're receiving are misjudged. It's a personal opinion to have, and as long as you're not harming or forcing that opinion onto others, i respect it.
I don't share it though. And it's interesting to think what assumptions lie beneath it. If you were bi, would your wife not allow you to hang out with men too? And if she were bi, what would you think of her having woman friends? Do you think this arrangement would also be "the most sensible thing to do" for a non-monogamous person, or for someone who's monogamous and completely at peace with their partner?
Gender isn't the only aspect of someone's 'type'. What if she has an inflexible sexual preference for men over 6ft? Is she then allowed short male friends?
"Safest", I'll grant. But "sensible " to me means actual trust between partners that such friendships are purely platonic - unless of course there's hard evidence that they aren't. It's admittedly rare to see (assuming all involved are heterosexual) but it can and does work.
I take umbrage with the idea that just because it wasn't a nice affirmation or multi-sentence deconstruction of their position that it was a "personal attack".
My comment was a) a genuine human emotional response followed by b) a factual observation that such a mindset is clearly derived from a lack of trust.
Of course I believe you—but you're referring to internal state that the rest of us don't have access to and which you didn't encode in your comment. Intent doesn't communicate itself—especially not in this medium, where all we have access to are tiny globs of text—so it has to be made explicit. The burden is on the commenter to disambiguate this: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
Since your comment didn't do that, I read it as more of a putdown than it sounds like you intended to convey. Commenting on someone else's intimate relationships and psychological state is exceedingly personal territory. Internet users often, unfortunately, step into that as a way of being snide to others (it's even a bit of a trope, though I'm not saying your comment went this far: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a...). And this becomes much more likely when the context is an ideological battlefield, which gender issues are.
You're right and that's why hackers are down voting you and protesting against your comment. Part of respect between spouses is that you don't spend solo time with people of the opposite sex.
Also:
– Soccer players aren''t allowed to touch the ball with their hands.
Bisexual people can't have friends at all; gay people can't have same-gender gay friends, but they can't have same-gender straight friends either (because you might be attracted to them!), nor can they have opposite-gender straight friends (because they might be attracted to you!).
It's a little ridiculous. If you don't trust your partner to behave themselves around someone of their preferred gender(s), there's larger problems at play.
> but they can't have same-gender straight friends either (because you might be attracted to them!)
This actually can become a major issue with friendships. Obviously you can't act on the attraction and it can become very frustrating very quickly. I know from experience and I wish I didn't.
A lot of people have very unhealthy mindsets about sex and general emotional closeness. Most people in modern Western society never really unpack their feelings around jealousy, nor do they endeavor to understand their own emotional needs and figure out how to fulfill them in healthy ways.
But gay people can have opposite gender gay friends, but this only works for dyads not friend groups, because X is friends with Y and X is friends with Z implies Y cannot be friends with Z.
Edit: you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines in other places too. We've already asked you more than once to stop that. If you keep this up, we're going to have to ban you. I don't want to ban you, so please fix this.
I've been taught that lesson many times. But it's just too easy for an introvert to be in a relationship and not have to socialise any more.
Over years I've given up on trying to be a social person and I just need to be honest about it: I hate socialising and will only do it when there's a clear and direct reason for doing so. The biggest reason is sex. Once that's not needed the reasons for doing so are very few and far between.
If you are only into sex, I guess it will be way easier to just pay for it, or go to places (online or offline) where casual sex is common. Otherwise friendship is about way more for most people. And if you cannot stand the ordinary (awkward) socialising, which I can relate to, I recommend finding a group that is more to your liking. Then socialising might be fun.. Usually when it is not about socialising, but the activities.
I didn't read it as only being in a relationship for sex, but that it's a motivator for socialization if you don't have it. Once you have a relationship and a sexual partner, there's not much motivation for additional friendships/casual socialization, if you're an introvert.
Oh, no, I can't do casual sex. I require a monogamous relationship. I get much more out of my relationship than just sex (like love, for a start) but the sex has to be there. It doesn't make sense, but that's just the way it is.
"It doesn't make sense, but that's just the way it is."
It makes sense in a way and you are the way you are .. but I think you might benefit from trying to open yourself to new experiences, unless you want to repeat the cycle again and again. (Oh and I don't mean casual sex. Rather something like interacting with people in a way you have not before, which is easiest by going somewhere you have not been before.)
Another way to approach it rather than trying to socialize or make friends directly is to find one or two weekly activities you enjoy that involve a group or collaboration of some kind. Sports, exercise, and boardgames are common ones but it could be anything.
People tend to make friends naturally this way over time, but even if you don’t, at least you are doing something fun and developing a life independent of your partner.
Tried that. I can never be consistent with it; my mind resists it every time. One reason is my natural schedule never seems to align with society. For example, I like cycling, but I'm never going to make it to a Sunday ride at 9am. Another reason is I don't necessarily like the kind of people who are into geeky stuff. I find board game nerds and computer geeks tiresome and annoying. It's better to communicate with them over the internet, at home. I don't think one should have to force themselves to do something they don't want to do several times a week. Nobody else does that.
Instead of friends I rely on my mental health, my skills and the financial system for insurance. It would be a big mistake for me to let my health deteriorate, get married or quit my job, for example.
“Another reason is I don't necessarily like the kind of people who are into geeky stuff. I find board game nerds and computer geeks tiresome and annoying.”
Well my point is to find something you enjoy doing and not worry about liking or socializing with the other people there. You can find the others annoying and they can find you quiet and unfriendly at first, but if you keep going regularly there’s a decent chance you’ll click with some people eventually, even if it takes a year or more.
I get the motivation and timing issues though. There is definitely a hump to get over in establishing a new habit.
I can relate with this. I only socialize for sex and/or money (e.g. networking). I have zero interest in anything else.
From my point of view everyone does the same, but can't deal with the isolating nature of it all and need to decorate it with friendships and similar unwritten rules and then act surprised when they don't work
"can't deal with the isolating nature" sounds like other people do feel a different need/reason to socialise no? People can pretend to socialise for one reason when really it's another, but people need to be interested in meeting this third need at least occasionally for the pretense to be worth trying.
Kind of, but most human relationships are somewhat regulated (marriage, parenthood, etc) so everyone has a framework on what to expect, do's and dont's.
Friendship is when everyone comes with a random set of expectations, all of them differing from person to person, and get disappointed when it doesn't translates to reality.
That's a remarkably sad, pathetic outlook, and one strangely contorted by Capitalism: Why do you want money?
That's the key here. Most people want money because, contrary to the old adage, money buys happiness. People want friends for the same reason: friends are the people who you are happy to spend time with. Pretty much any activity can be made more enjoyable when done with people you enjoy spending time with.
I see this happening again and again, sometimes repeatedly to the same persons. A friend of mine is currently going through this, but his solution to the problem is immediately trying to go into the next relationship, as fast as possible. I am very much looking forward to the next breakup. Another friend of mine just never got in touch with me after her new relationship, funnily we got to know each other from the last relationship to a friend of mine where I know she neglected her older friends to favour her new circle.
To be honest, I am not interested in being friends with a person when I get sidelined the moment someone goes into the next relationship. I have better things to do than to revolve around someone else life. I have my own friends. It's a very frustrating experience because you try to stay in touch and you don't know what's going on. It's not your fault.
I try to balance my relationship and my own, personal life. Breakups happened and rougher times in a relationship happen and it's essential to have your own friends. It is very important to me to not give up my identity and my social life. But it has to be said I also don't really accept too much inference into my own life and I don't think I could be in a relationship where each one doesn't have their own space. I know relationship that wouldn't really work for me because you have to negotiate stuff that is not negotiable for me.
