For the Boys… and Men

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

This last week, two articles came to my attention that made me think of how we’re treating males in our society.

One of the articles, and I can’t link it, because it was read to me, is so wrong it’s not even wrong. It would need to come several paces closer to reality to be MERELY wrong. My husband read it to me — he doesn’t have any care for my blood pressure, really — early morning a couple of days ago, and I never asked for the link.

Apparently there is some woman who is known as The Oracle of Wall Street. I protest her name should more properly be The Pythonese of Wall Street. She obviously is inhaling some kind of fumes, and throwing everything she can against the wall, in the hopes it will stick and she’ll be considered wise.

Her latest eructation, apparently, blames men for the lack of marriages, and the lack of marriages for the real estate slump.

Men, you see, are willfully not getting married because they’re in their parents’ basements playing computer games. This pythonese is such an amazing oracle that before this she said they weren’t getting married because they were obsessed with sports betting.

Now, there are a million reasons marriages aren’t happening to the extent they aren’t happening. Actually from where I stand, they are happening but just late, and often too late for children, or the young people never have the minimum security necessary to buy a house and have kids.

And that’s because real estate is not exactly in a slump. It is, if anything, ridiculously overvalued. Not because of any great pressure of population, but because, as in China, real estate is becoming the only SAFE vehicle of investment. This way lie ghost cities, falling apart as they are built, and existing only as notional value.

But there’s more to it, including the fact that we expect both men and women to work their tails off and go into debt to get fairly useless college degrees. And before you guys start the usual right-wing chest beating about doctorates in puppetry and “studies” — and yes, those exist, but that’s not the point of this — and how those degrees are useless… they’re all useless. More or less deliberately rendered so.

There are still good STEM degrees being offered, I hear. But this is like I hear about there still being good public schools, but almost every successful student out of any of our educational establishments practically had to beat the school into giving him/her an education and not just a diploma. And after obtaining the diploma (as well as managing, somehow, an education while getting the diploma) they also had to have a lot of luck, and an amazing amount of persistence to get jobs.

Because jobs, even ones you don’t expect, are mostly being given to people being brought over on work visas, because they can be paid less and also abused like rented mules. Which in turn means anyone who gets hired for a lot of high-requirements job can now be paid low and abused like a rented mule, because the competition can be. Which in turn–

Guys, my generation worked hard. Really hard. Until our forties, Dan sometimes worked 80 hour weeks, and had maybe half a day a week off. Which meant I was trying to break into writing while also coping with two small children, with no backup. Sometimes the whole thing felt like a high-wire act. The two years I had a corporate job in translation were fortunately before the kids, because they expected the same number of hours from me. In fact, part of the reason to leave that job was because we wanted to have children. Also because we were quite literally spending my salary on take out and new clothes — we didn’t have time to wash our clothes.

But the young people today manage to have more invidious work conditions, because on top of that kind of crazy schedule, they’re often contractors with no job security and/or they know they’re stuck at a “low/entry” level, and there is no pathway to advance at all. They see no future. And what they’re being paid, partly because of the over-valuation of real estate, partly because of regulations that make real-estate price insane, is not nearly enough to afford a house.

In fact, rents are crazy enough — partly because of the covidiocy and deferred maintenance — that the young people I know who are lucky enough to have what passes for good jobs in their fields (raging successes, in fact) are most of the time sharing a house with three or four people. Married couples will double up on a two bedroom house smaller than our starter home. Or they’ll share with two singles, one of whom will be sleeping in the living room.

And that’s the people who get married and have jobs, which are by and large already wildly successful and lucky.

I’ve talked about this in this space before, but our friends are much the same type of people we are. They’re strivers, who work very hard. And with a few exceptions (there’s always a permissive parent!) their children are the same type of people. And most of them — even if the boys started having difficulties in middle school. All of them, pretty much — finished college. Sometimes multiple degrees.

But I don’t know a single family who has managed to “launch” all their children. I particularly don’t know any family who has managed to “launch” both boys. (Well, us, I suppose, wobbles and all, but that makes us amazingly lucky, and incredibly grateful.) And keep in mind a lot of these “kids” are now in their forties.

It’s easy to blame the kids and to shake our fists about “kids these days” but it ignores the snarled mess of things that the left (mostly the left, though country club republicans and their addiction to cheap foreign labor don’t help) has made of the labor market and education and which have created REAL “systemic” obstacles to success for people under the age of 45. Those that are succeeding are either incredibly well connected or doing so DESPITE all opposition.

And then there’s the mess the left (and this is ALL the left) has created between men and women. And the weaponizing of society against men. And by men we mean anyone male in this case, starting at about age two or before.

You see, the people attracted to Marxist ideology are of a certain type. And the type is people who like “systems” and simple explanations. And Marxism is as simple as it comes. It posits a dualism to everything. There are good guys and bad guys, there are victims and oppressors. And the way to make the victims rise is to stomp on the oppressors.

The fact that this doesn’t work doesn’t mean it’s not beautifully simple and appeals to a mind that likes simple explanations and dualism.

So, you have… rich people and poor people, and they think — because wealth is a finite thing, that can’t be created, see? — if they take from the rich and give to the poor there is no more oppression and everyone will have “enough”. This delusion gave us 100 million dead, and mass starvation, and the craziness of communism in the 20th century. But for the left that didn’t disprove it. It just meant that they hadn’t got all the oppression out of society, and needed to stomp on more people.

So they identified people who, in their heads, did better, and without looking at any other factors, applied their dualism. We know what they’ve done to races, let alone to political oppression.

But probably their most deranged obsession has been with sex. You see, females had a different type of job (in general. Ignoring the outlier females who always had male jobs, in every era, is one of their bizarre oversights) from males. And in the leftist’s heads, less “glamorous” or “powerful” jobs.

This is also because they’re a bit strange, and don’t — at all — understand soft power. So they saw most rulers/battle leaders/politicians/financiers throughout history were male, and assumed this meant females were powerless. Thereby ignoring the women who raised, supported and often worked in very close association with these men. Except when they claimed some scientist was only successful because of his wife, for …. reasons. But never mind that. They’re nothing if not inconsistent.

Because they ignored soft power — and matriarchs often, in the shadows, controlling an entire clan of successful men (THE single most important thing for a man’s success are the women in his life) or that men and women are different, or that throughout most of history women spent most of their lives pregnant, and therefore for various reasons unable to hold high-stress jobs, or the fact that women in general prefer indoor, people oriented, “safe” jobs, probably due to evolutionary pressures, to be honest, or a million other factors — they decided because men had the more visible, public, and often physically difficult roles, women were being oppressed.

And because women were being oppressed, men must be stomped on so women could rise.

We are now in the third generation of women being berated and browbeaten into not even admitting they want to get married and have children. In my day, already, you were considered stupid for wanting that. Instead they’re told they should want to do STEM work that takes very long and difficult training, and doesn’t leave room for marriage and children. That’s bad enough. And the horrible trauma inflicted on women — my generation already went through this, and some of the generation before — often means they’re very unhappy and resent every male.

But it wasn’t working. In my generation, most of us got married and had children. So, since it wasn’t working, men must — OBVIOUSLY — be stomped on harder, because the only way to rise is to stomp on the “oppressor” don’t you see?

My friend Tom Knighton — a brilliant columnist who deserves much wider dispersal than he’s got so far — wrote a post about this, and the only thing I can say is that he doesn’t go nearly far enough, and he’s a little naively trusting about the whole thing.

He seems to think it’s a matter of girls just naturally being more inclined to academia, but oh, dear Lord, NO.

The entire school system from pre-school on, but more emphatically from middle-school on is designed to favor female achievement and to deter male achievement. It starts with no recess because you know, recess isn’t safe. And with the curtailing of most physical exercise. This hurts males more than females, because more males need to do physical stuff to be able to concentrate and sit still. Call it hypeactive, but it seems to be “just boy.” Now this of course exists on a spectrum, and younger son had much more trouble with this than older son. But even older son benefited from kindergarten teacher who was mother-of-boys and who told him to run around the classroom three times, when he was having trouble concentrating and staying on task.

But it doesn’t end there, oh, no. Already in my day they were pushing group work. Because most girls work better in a group. (I hated it, but I ain’t normal.) And there were a lot of points given for “presentation” again a female strength.

This has been ramped up to insane degrees. Being dutiful and counting buttons prettily now count for a lot more than actually knowing the material. I had a kid about to fail a class because he consistently forgot to turn in homework (He did it, just forgot to turn it in) even while he had straight As in every test. This is ridiculous and not in any sense sane. If you can do the work in a time, watched test, why should you be failed? Yes, sure, learning to complete boring tasks (and most homework is incredibly boring and counterproductive) is needed in the workplace, but so much of it? (Kids routinely had three hours of button counting and coloring the squares different colors, or equally stupid make-work after school.) And should it count for 80% of the grade? Why? Is your goal to teach material and skills, or to create mindless drones?

The point being that I personally knew girls in my boys’ classes, who couldn’t reason, couldn’t cypher, couldn’t write a sentence — anyone remember when my blog was “invaded” by son’s middle school classmates — but who had straight As in everything. I guess they did their homework dutifully, and colored those squares PRETTY colors.

These same girls four years later, and in the same state of smug mental disuse had scholarships for ivy leagues, and stellar resumes. And I’m sure they graduated, and found jobs where they mostly spend their time karening and screaming “discrimination” while someone else does their job.

This is not about my kids. They did well enough by learning outside the school, and by not giving up, and keeping up the striving. BUT others… well.

If you are always wrong, by motive of having a penis, if every history lesson is about how you are an oppressor for reason of having a penis, if anything you do at school will be misjudged and attacked, because you have a penis, if the very structure of the school is designed to make you appear stupid and fail, because you are a perfectly normal male, and if further, even when you succeed you’ll not being given credit or incentives, because the girls must be uplifted (and their mothers will scream bloody murder if they’re not given the lady’s A)… well, you’re going to give up.

I want to emphasize this is bad for the girls/women too. It’s horrible. They will enter STEM degrees with no idea of how ill prepared they are. And then often they won’t be failed, because the college is afraid of failing them. Most are still smart enough to run screaming into social sciences (all those “studies” degrees you love to rail about) but note that they do it convinced they were pushed out of STEM by “prejudice” and “discrimination” instead of being ill-prepared due to discrimination IN THEIR FAVOR. Those who go all the way to the end are often convinced they are discriminated against in their jobs, when they are often run up the ladder to a place they can do no damage. I’m convinced this is 90% of the glass ceiling, the other 10% being that even the competent women do suffer from discrimination, because everyone believes they are like the over-promoted ninnies.

But the boys and men. Oh, the boys and men. Our society is very hard on males. It always was.

The males are expected to succeed DESPITE ALL OBSTACLES. They’re not supposed to suffer from depression and despair. They’re not supposed to show weakness. And they are told from their youngest age that they are privileged, and society is designed for them to succeed.

So when the weight of factors — educational, social, physical — arrayed against them makes them fall, and they can’t get up, they know they, personally, must be defective.

And even the people who are supposed to be on the right, and understand that society has been broken by the leftists, will rage at boys and call them lazy, and say they play too many video games, and look what a disgrace they are. Why, when you were their age, you walked ten miles in snow, both ways, even in summer, thumping your chest all the way, and you had girls falling on your from above begging you to take them to your cave! If only these slackers applied themselves! If they had a little more gumption!

Stop kicking the boys and men. Stop piling on them. The left does it enough.

Walk a mile in their cement shoes.

The miracle is not that a good portion — probably 40%– of young men have given up, and are staying hidden and playing escapist games. The miracle is that more of them haven’t taken weapons and started making people pay. And for that we should be grateful.

Now we can’t fix the system itself. The system is a mess. But the system is made of individuals, and you are an individual.

Even if you don’t have kids, you probably know boys or young men. Figure out how to reach them. Most of all, enter into their interests. Make sure they know it’s not their fault. it’s the fault of crazy bureaucrats and theorists.

Women aren’t failing because of them, and the world is not designed to favor men. On the contrary. Everyone is failing, because the institutions are insane.

It’s not their fault. They’ve done nothing wrong. Telling them so, will be novel enough, in most cases, to capture their attention, to be fair.

And then figure out how to help. Teach, mentor, come up with some opportunity you can offer. Not handouts, but hands up.

Give boys and men a chance. A lot of them will fail. But if one in ten succeed, we’ll have managed something. We might have managed to salvage enough of the mess.

Don’t rail against the future. Go and build it.

You might only do a little, but you are not alone.

Be not afraid. Go work.

287 thoughts on “For the Boys… and Men”

  1. And if a bunch of girls “pick on” a boy, it’s the boy’s fault.

    1. That’s not exclusive to youth. If a wife beats her husband, the man is (according to pretty much every society and culture that has ever existed throughout all of human history) a weakling, and is beneath contempt. And, certain women will inform you, the beating is also probably justified because of something dumb that he did.

    3. Because they just wanted his attention and all. *snort* BTDT. 

      Women need proper role models just as much as men. Those girls ought to have been brought up short by their mothers and minders just as much as the boys that threw rocks at girls when I was five.

    4. Eh, schools, on the whole, would rather not do any substantive discipline. Much easier to bully the victims into silence.

    5. And he gets no sympathy from the girls or boys.

      If he complains about a male issue in society, girls will mock him and one will state “Girls have it hard, stop blaming girls. QUIT COPYING THE FEMINISTS“.

      So he goes back to keeping his mouth shut about male issues in mixed company and people wonder why the male suicide rate is high. Should have known better, discussion isn’t worth the risk.

      1. Well, when the “complaint about a male issue in society” takes the form of “all women are predatory whores”, you shouldn’t be surprised that someone tells you to stop acting like a feminist.

        And answer to that complaint is exactly the same as the answer to feminists complaints that “all men are rapists”, to wit: “Stop hanging out with [s]Democrats[/s] that kind of person.”

        1. But, in reality, you can’t even say that one single woman is a lying predatory whore. I was formerly married to a woman with an intimacy disorder on the sex-addiction-spectrum. During our divorce to get my sons away from me, I was falsely accused of being a sex-addict, and a danger to my sons. First, I was refused allowance to speak in court in my own defense because I didn’t have a lawyer present, then next I was not allowed to speak in court in my own defense because I did have a lawyer “to represent me”. My sons were taken away based upon obvious lies which I fully disproved, and yet I was still kept from my kids with court delay tactics. I eventually set up a website to publish my side of the story while my kids were being brainwashed against me and being told by their mother that “the police” were keeping them apart from me because “the police” were convinced I’d hurt them. It was entirely an evil ploy to get the maximum in child support. 

          In the end the court determined that every single accusation against me had no merit, but that because I had resorted to defending myself against their selfish mother’s publicly filed lies and the anti-male “family court’s” public violations of my civil rights, publicly, they declared that I was “not acting in the best interest of the children” by exposing their evil violations of my rights, and the children’s right to having a father, publicly.

          The fix was in from the start. I, as a man, got railroaded and the truth never meant a thing to those folks. I got zero compensation for the multitude of lies against myself that I disproved to the satisfaction of the court. I was repeatedly fraudulently billed for things, and when I proved it, nobody was held to account. I was repeatedly threatened with jail for my completely understandable contempt of their unjust proceedings. And I still have no custody of my sons who have grown up without a father.

          The fact of the matter is that 99% of women tacitly support what the system did to me and my sons. They fought to erect that very system. And how many of them are fighting to dismantle it? They still slander fathers like me for being absent from my sons’ lives. When it was in fact my effort to get back into their lives and to expose the evil system that steals men’s children that was twisted and used as justification to continue denying me access to my sons. And a huge but slowly dwindling portion of men also support that system. 

          Anyhow if you’re expecting chivalry from men like me, it’s gone for womankind. Only men deserve my help. Perhaps if a Muslim man is cutting women’s heads off and drops his knife, I’ll pick it up for him, hand it back, pat him on the back, and encourage him in his jihad. After all, women voted to support and enable him to be who he is here, rather than for me to be allowed to be a father to my own sons, and even if I don’t participate, my heart will be with him. Womankind stole my sons from me, and there is no possible means of appeasement for that. Women have nothing I want. They’re dead to me. And that’s the polite version of my testimony which I post publicly.

          1. It sucks that that happened to you, and you have my condolences on the loss of your sons.

            I hope, for your sake and hers, that you never have a relationship with a woman again.

  3. Amen!

    Thoughts:

    Academia needs a clean-out. Curricula are like wallets and purses – once in a while, you have to empty the thing and toss the trash. And the collegiate world has long had an overproduction problem, pumping out people with degrees in Useless Studies and hiring them back as administrators. Or to teach mandatory Useless Classes. They’ve larded curricula with courses not required to do the job…or even to be a good citizen.

    STEM isn’t for everybody. In particular, the hard sciences and engineering are brutally hard. As in 4.5 years of 70-80 hour weeks to graduate. It requires ability, and the deepest possible committment.

    Boys and young men need the old stories about heroes who had a rough climb to the top. I’ve thought for decades that we needed updated Horatio Alger stories – the original ones, where the hero goes from lower class to middle-class-with-upward-mobility. Not rags-to-riches fantasies, something more modest. And more believable.

    The current young adult decade group (a political “generation” is TEN years, not twenty) is very reminiscent of the Baby Busters (born ~1956-1965). They’ve been bushwhacked by the Second Great Inflation. Home ownership has become nearly a myth. A bit of understanding will go a long way.

    Part of the marriage/family issue comes from the loss of mobility associated with having a career. As your life progresses, the possible employers and places of employment diminish. This seriously affects the dating pool – there are places like NAS Patuxent River, MD, that are wonderful places for a woman to find a quality husband…but a wretched place for a man to find a wife. 

  5. My university was ahead of the curve: I (male) was told by a professor, in writing no less (comment on a paper I submitted) that I needed therapy because I liked traditionally masculine things. This was… not quite 15 years ago, I think.

    And you forgot to mention that the law has become explicitly rigged against men too, especially regarding divorce, parental rights and custody arrangements, and domestic violence. Doesn’t matter of the husband was the victim or (at worst) an innocent bystander: he’s almost guaranteed to be the one arrested, charged, and convicted. In talking with friends in law enforcement, many agencies and jurisdictions have policies that the male is to be arrested and charged regardless of the actual circumstances. Crazy wife/GF goes ballistic and stabs Hubby with a vegetable peeler? Doesn’t matter, hubby’s getting charged with DV. Wife cheats on husband and neglects the kids while he’s working three jobs to try to keep the family above water despite her maxing out all of the credit cards? Doesn’t matter: she’s still getting custody and taking hubby to the cleaners at the divorce.

    Lots of men are doing the math and deciding that pursuing a relationship, at any level – since paying a woman any sort of compliment can be considered sexual harassment – isn’t worth the risk. And then getting shamed, belittled, and chastised for it.

    1. Your summary of the law is incorrect for every state I have first hand knowledge of; for example, because of Oregon’s “equal protection” standards, my sister was not legally an abused wife because she left after being bounced off of walls, instead of sitting there and calling the cops.

      Because that isn’t going to get you murdered, right?

      In spite of multiple eyewitnesses, including his friends, testifying that he was physically abusive, her ex husband was given half custody of the child.

      Proceeded to steal the tax return, pay zero medical bills, and oh yes his child with his girlfriend was born about two months after the divorce was finalized.

      1. Yeah. My sister left her abuser, but because she left he got the house and split custody. Yes, also Oregon.

        Their daughter is I think 30 now, and she was 4 when they divorced.

        1. As best I can tell, most of the laws are set up to favor narcissists who will lie and destroy anyone to get what they want.

      2. As usual, Fox would like us to be stupid enough to believe that the law as written (by the most favorable construction possible) is in the same galaxy as what is actually enforced.

        de facto vs de jure.

        #BelieveAllWomen has entered the thread.

      3. Yes, but there are always cases like that. And my guess is her ex had an “in” in the law.
        The law is weaponized against decent human beings, when it comes to family law.
        HOWEVER I do know of husbands who were arrested for trying not to die, so….

        1. He didn’t.

          It’s just a variation on the “if you fight both get punished” rules in school, where “amazingly” the aggressor ends up not punished.

          If you’re willing to destroy everything to get what you want, it’s a lot easier to manipulate the law; think along the lines of Solomon and the disputed baby.

          However, since “everyone knows” that women always get child support, and alimony, and full custody, the fact that she didn’t get any of that stuff- and that in fact he took all the communal property and stole the tax returns– meant that she had to be an especially horrible person.
          Not, you know, that their information was inaccurate, and had been for quite some time.

          1. As I said, Dyce was based on someone I knew. She was so terrified her husband would use his resources to take the kid away entirely that she and the kid were subsisting on pancakes, and she was working three jobs.
            BUT the law is weaponized against decent human beings and a lot of women rre raised on “I’m the victim” and therefore don’t behave like decent human beings. I think you’d find that’s what’s driving the perception.
            Not all women, obviously, but say 60% are willing to be the psycho. And that…. you know…drives perception. Which is never right for INDIVIDUALS but it’s an aggregate perception. And could be wrong, like the perception of all young people as slackers.

            1. I think you’d find that’s what’s driving the perception.

              My guess would be that most decent people don’t hang out with hard core scumbags, so the only ones they NOTICE are the nice guys who are treated like crud.

              That’s besides where people don’t want to believe they didn’t notice abuse.

              1. I’d suggest it’s the same as with CPS: people don’t see or would applaud when they take the kids out of genuinely abusive situations but what sticks in their mind is what happens when people who don’t conform exactly to the rules or when petty vindictive folks abuse the system.

                The fact that domestic violence laws are called “Violence against Women” acts (and lobbying for them is usually used with that language as well) creates a perception of more abuse than is likely prevalent, however, which further creates an incentive for lawyers in divorce cases to use that as a wedge in negotiations. Not necessarily openly, like advocating false claims or anything like that, more just something in the back of their minds justifying aggressive tactics.

                I suspect it also creates a defensive mindset in many men, such that they may feel like they’re being punished for what other men elsewhere have done.

                This guy has some interesting stories about that sort of thing: Story #10 – Buying Peace as the Marriage Dissolves | Stimmel Law (stimmel-law.com)

                1. Or they only hear part of the story, especially reframed in order to make them really angry, and even 25 years later that’s what they go to.

                  Not helped because there actually ARE people trying very hard to make them angry so they don’t think.

                2. He laughed. “Which one?” He blew smoke in the air. “I think…I admit… I was the demander all the time, OK? You got me. But, anyway, there’s this fact of life…one gives the other takes. And when the time comes to divorce and the time comes to decide about property and custody, there is this tendency on the taker to assume the giver will keep giving…you know, giving way on any dispute as to property or whatever. And sometimes that happens. Sometimes it doesn’t…cause the world can change when you file the divorce papers. The world can turn upside down…” He smiled at his drink and paused a little…”…and you get two takers…or…and this is interesting, my boy..”

                  He leaned towards me. “The husband who used to demand now gives in. The husband who ran the marriage now wants to just run out the door and avoid the fight so much that he throws everything at the wife just to buy peace. Gives way on everything to get it behind him…just to get peace. And you know what?”

                  “What?”

                  “It seldom works…” He finished his drink. “It’s blood in the water, boy. It increases the fighting instinct, increases the distrust…doesn’t lessen it. Not always…but almost always. Makes that member of the eighty percent go to the ten percent who go to war.” He laughed and clapped his hands softly. “It’s human nature. Give way too easy and it encourages more fighting, not less. You have to speak loudly and carry a small stick…” He laughed at his own humor and ordered another drink.

                  https://www.stimmel-law.com/en/articles/story-10-buying-peace-marriage-dissolves

                  … gosh. Someone is wounded enough that they are willing to get divorced, because they’re married to someone who does nothing but take– and then, all of a sudden, the taker is willing to work with them.

                  To actually give an inch, something, rather than always taking.

                  Gee, I wonder why that would make someone upset. Must be blood in the water, couldn’t possibly be their nose being rubbed in how deeply they were betrayed, realizing that the person they gave everything to could have, at any time, reached over and given a bit back.

                  But no, not until it is over does the taker go, oh, hey, I am actually capable of doing something. If I think it will get me what I want.

                  Nope, must be that giving in is the problem.

                  And hey, look, a story of a taker who did hit hard through the entire thing, actually got resistance, and they acted like he was a taker who was setting things up to take again— why, how dare the one who kept on until they finally couldn’t carry everything by themselves ever do anything but fall down and give high praise that the person who was all through the marriage, and all through the divorce, hitting hard and taking everything, even consider trying to take as well?

                  Do they not realize how it is the duty of that “giver” to give everything to the “taker”? How DARE they?!?

                  Every step up to this point has been reenforcing that every action is to set the stage for the taker getting what they want– but how dare someone then act like, hey, this person that always takes is actually giving something, this is unusual and suspicious.

      4. There are horror stories on both sides, but one recent prime example that men will point to is that of Trevor Bauer.

        Falsely accused by a women who intentionally set him up before even meeting him, lost his job and about $200 million and still can’t get his job back after the hard facts came out. (She was dumb enough to text her girlfriend with the plan and the details came out in a counter-suit…)

        TANJ!

        If someone like that can’t get a modicum of justice with cold hard evidence in their favor, who wants to risk their reputation and livelihood with modern Western women, vicious packs of girlfriends, the press, and the legal system?

        Or you can look at all the false claims that the left uses to bash the right’s Supreme Courts picks. Or Trump.

        And the man-verse is full of these cautionary tales without even considering the additional crap that comes from the PUA and MGTOW losers.

        For young guys, it’s like playing the lottery.

        1. https://www.mlb.com/news/trevor-bauer-reinstated-after-suspension
          He was suspended, not fired, and the suspension he was given was reduced.

          In addition, the “hard facts” you’re citing are his lawyer’s claim about select messages shared after mutual lawsuits (no payout), based on the gal saying she was going for her next “victim,” in that she’s the kind of person who will drive to have rough sex with a freaking stranger because he’s famous. 

          The way to avoid being accused of rape by someone putting notches on their bedpost is NOT TO HAVE SEX WITH PEOPLE YOU DON’T KNOW VERY VERY WELL, MUCH LESS ROUGH SEX WITH SOME CRAZY WOMAN WHO HOPS INTO BED THE FIRST DAY YOU SEE HER.

          So, the “not a modicum of justice” was that he did something that was flatly insanely stupid, was not fired, was not charged, did not have to pay out, and as came up when I was doing basic checking of the story, he is being rumored for signing with various ball dudes.

          Or you can look at all the false claims that the left uses to bash the right’s Supreme Courts picks. Or Trump.

          How exactly are false claims for political gain going to make me less likely to object to inaccurate statements of fact?

            2. Apparently. He still lost an estimated $200 million and a MLB career. Plays baseball in Japan and Mexico.

              He played the modern woman lottery in modern society and lost. Should have waited for the sex till he got married. Then he could lose the money and job due to divorce. Maybe get accused of abusing children too.

          2. He was basically blackballed from MLB on a simple premeditated she-said set up job. No MLB team will touch him after suspension even though he was one of the tip-top talents in baseball.

            Pros aren’t saints, but besides recording their personal life 24/7 there’s no defense against this. The weaponized accusation is enough to destroy a life.

            So a guy has to be a saint and a monk. And even if a guy is a saint, but this ordure has happened more than once even without any physical contact between parties. A simple lie suffices.

            And this gets noticed by other guys and factors into their actions. It’s just another straw added to the pile of “Fnck this snit, let’s stay home and play video games”.

            1. Why, exactly, are you having this much trouble with “don’t stick in the crazy”?

              Some gal that you talk to on line, who then drives for how long to have “rough” sex with you, twice, is not a matter of “not being a saint.”

              It’s a matter of being an absolute IDIOT.
              For both of them, given the “sent text messages about having done this repeatedly.” (which aligns with her text message about him as her next target, since she doesn’t have a record of having filed multiple police reports for rape accusations)

              So a guy has to be a saint and a monk.

              Oh stop living down to all the nonsense the feminists like to spew about guys.

              There is no reasonable expectation of “women I don’t know will contact me for no-strings sex.”

              If a guy is going into life with the idea that such a thing is to be expected as a baseline, he is probably better off not being involved.
              Not as good off as he would be ignoring the crazies and paying attention to actual women, rather than feminists or the news, but better.

              1. It’s not just the Buck Cherry types that can be duplicitous.

                The same exact result could have happen if this was his girlfriend or spouse that did this to him instead of a one night stand. Plenty of examples of that in the real world. Probably would had lost his kids too if he had any…

                So the top guidelines still are, be a saint and record your life 24/7, just in case.

                1. Dude, if your taste in women is so bad that you are married to someone with identical morals and judgement as driving for hours to have no strings sex with a stranger, that is VERY MUCH a you problem.

                  Please do not project it on to anyone else.

                  It is not reasonable to draw conclusions from a guy being massively stupid and do things he KNEW he shouldn’t be doing.

                  1. Feel free to cast the first stone. We can make a rule and name it “The Church Lady” in your honor:

                    “Anybody that lays with a whore due to bad judgement deserves what they get.”

                    Which totally misses the point of the my argument and the man theme of the overall discussion, which is not some jock’s poor judgement in bed partner.

                    Which is:

                    A man, rich or poor, can be easily destroyed at anytime by false witness by any woman, regardless if they are: wife, girlfriend or random crazy.

                    This is why the democrats throw multiple accusers at Trump and USSC judges. It is a viable weapon, because it works on women and prudes.

                    1. So, to recap, we went from “look at this poor guy who was targeted, fired, and had his life absolutely destroyed, never even got his job back!”

                      to

                      “A guy in high profile public entertainment who hooked up for what even he described as rough sex with some random gal collecting notches, repeatedly, was accused of rape and suspended, then after investigation was not charged, counter-sued, both sides lost, but now he’s not as popular as he was before because nobody wants to fight to hire him, and thus any perfectly normal social interaction with females by young males is totally a crap-shoot.”

                      Seriously, QUIT COPYING THE FEMINISTS. 
                      They are stupid and obnoxious. You don’t want to be them.

                      Especially quit with the “how dare you say that getting blackout drunk in a bar where you went alone is a bad idea, you’re victim-blaming, and this is a sign that society is sexist!” variants.

              2. There is no reasonable expectation of “women I don’t know will contact me for no-strings sex.”

                Foxfier

                I have nearly had that happen to me exactly one time. Barely knew the girl. She got my number from a friend of a friend after one light conversation. 

                That was a no brainer hard NO. Even as a twentysomething at the time, it ticked all the crazy boxes. Treat the crazies like vampires: don’t invite them in, don’t let them get their fangs in you. 

                Heck, garlic and crosses might even work. Worth a shot, and garlic is tasty.

                2. Yes, I made some dubious choices as a young (mumble years ago) man, but I was smart enough to refrain from Teh Crazy.

                  (Ex 1: Roommate’s GF let in a stray jailbait, most likely pregnant. She wanted my body. Hard pass.)

                  (Ex 2: Walking around Kearney Nebraska after a looooooong day driving to visit family. Girls (unknown age, likely teens) called out “wanna fuck?”. I managed not to hear and kept on walking. Not the souvenir I wanted from Scenic Nebraska. Hell, I just wanted a frozen yogurt…)

                  Glad I never got those T-shirts.

                  1. Walking across the parking lot between the hotel and the restaurant in Platte City, MO (just across the river from Leavenworth), passed a white van and a voice calls, “Hey, come over here,” or similar. Since I actually had three brain cells to rub together, I picked up my pace. Glad I don’t have that t-shirt.

            1. Not sure the guy who seems to have gone civil rights activist because he was unlikely to be rehired is the best comparison.

        2. Going off of what just hit twitter, you might be confusing the woman who went in for medical treatment the day after her second sexual encounter with Bauer (Lindsey Hill) and then filed a police report, for which he was suspended, with the gal who is currently facing charges for attempted extortion after a sexual encounter with Bauer who paid her thousands for an abortion and to shut up. (Darcy Adanna Esemonus)

          There are two other women, who going off of the lack of names won their cases and took the hush money.

          This article says that some outlets inaccurately claimed that the woman being charged with fraud was the same one whose accusation got him suspended; that is not accurate.

        3. It feels like you’re playing the lottery. If you get unlucky, and are really targeted, it doesn’t matter how rich you are, I get that. It also doesn’t matter what the law is if you’re in a place where the law is not applied fairly. When laws against domestic violence are specifically called laws against Violence Against Women, it is perfectly reasonable to assume, a priori, prejudice against domestic violence against men.

          The point is, you’re going to have to make a choice, and opting out is one choice. Maybe it’s even the best choice for you.

          But one choice you don’t, and never will, have is the choice of complete safety. Even if you opt out.

          We’re bringing up options that have a chance at reducing the risk to reasonable levels.

          First, understand that in the case of predatory women, as in everything these days, the actual risk is grossly overstated. It’s there, it’s significant, but it’s not every woman. It isn’t even most women. It’s a psyop, designed to make us fear each other. And it’s working.

          Secondly, whether anyone likes it or not, free-for-all promiscuity is out, unless he or she is really into high risk activities. Part of the problem is not recognizing the inherent risk in the level of promiscuity we are supposed to accept.

          Yes, you can be targeted even if you avoid the crazy. Even if you avoid one-night stands. Heck, even if you remain virgin until marriage and marry a virgin. No guarantees. And I’m not telling anyone where to draw that line. And I’m sure not talking about what should or should not be legal. But certain actions are associated with certain risks, like going to the wrong neighborhood, or going into combat.

          And sure, there’s more that can be done. I’m not saying that’s everything.

          1. But one choice you don’t, and never will, have is the choice of complete safety. Even if you opt out.

            That doesn’t mean that all risks are equal. Some are greater than others. And the reward one hopes for from facing a particular risk can be greater or lesser as well.

            One has to manage risk vs. reward. Increased the perception (let alone the reality) of risk and reduce the perception (let alone the reality) of reward and it’s no surprise that fewer people take on that particular risk.

      5. Oregon is set up in such a way that custody cannot be changed unless drug abuse or criminal behavior can be proven. My sister’s ex tried to sue her for full custody with only supervised visitation and jacked up support payments, so she countered sued for full custody. The judge made it quite clear that if she could have given my sister the kids she would have, and she made the financial burden on the ex as heavy as the law allowed her to. We’re grateful for that, since it was less than 6 months later when he came crawling back and essentially sold the kids to us. Now that we have established custody, if he tries to sue again, we’re the custodial household and he can’t grab them back without proving drug use or criminal activity.

      6. In a lot of places whoever calls the cops first is presumed to be the victim and the other party is charged.
        This sounds reasonable enough – but abusers often know about that policy and use it to their advantage.

        1. If I remember correctly, the “if you leave the house and then call the cops, you can’t claim it was abuse” thing was to crack down on that tactic.

          There’s also the “if the cops are called, someone has to leave in cuffs” rules.

    2. Whether that summary of the law is objectively correct or not, I have seen lots of evidence that men believe it is. And if men, by and large, believe that the law is stacked against them going into marriage, meaning they need to find someone to marry who won’t ever decide to divorce them later, otherwise half their assets can be stolen from them at their wife’s whim… well, then, men are, by and large, going to be shy about marriage.

      And if they’re shy about marriage, then they’re going to spend their time doing other things. Including, yes, spending lots of time on video games.

      In other words, this “Oracle of Wall Street” woman has written an article getting cause and effect exactly backwards, a classic “wet streets cause rain” article. She said that men are delaying marriage because they’re spending their time playing video games, but the reality is that they are spending their time playing video games because they’re delaying marriage.

      Insert standard “broad generalizations, exceptions to every rule” statement here, of course.

      1. Should have kept reading the thread; Sarah already made basically the same point in her 4:00 PM comment when she said, “Not all women, obviously, but say 60% are willing to be the psycho. And that…. you know…drives perception.” I could have saved myself some typing and just emphasized the “wet streets cause rain” nature of this article getting cause and effect backwards.

      2. Even marriage doesn’t stop the video games. When niece got married to her (retired) navy husband, one of the registry gifts was sound dampening wall tiles for a small side room. Note, when they married it was an instant family. He has 1/2 custody of his son. Fast forward, now they have two more (ages 4, and 2 months), and a dog. With the third child, those wall tiles were uninstalled and sold.

  6. I’m trying. Bits and pieces, and I feel like Leia attempting to climb higher on the trash pile in the trash compacter in Star Wars more often than not, but I’m trying. Gotta keep climbing, one little hold at a time….

    1. I’m trying, too – for the sake of having been raised by a father who was brilliant, loving and a wonderful man (whom my mother has never gotten over losing!) and for the sake of an adored grandson, Wee Jamie, who is bright and affectionate and I HATE the thought that he could be harmed by manipulative, vicious harpies…

      I write stories for kids in order that they can learn good lessons – and stories for adults because I do appreciate manly, heroic, loving and caring men, who adore their significant others and would do anything at all for their children (girls and boys both.)

      I once was a feminist of the small ‘f’ kind, who wished only that women could have the same OPPORTUNITY for education, employment and a good credit rating of their own. Making all that into the most vicious kind of male-hatred … honestly, in my most bleak moments, I wonder where is the SMOD, when we most need it?

      1. I once was a feminist of the small ‘f’ kind, who wished only that women could have the same OPPORTUNITY for education, employment and a good credit rating of their own.

        This.

        The hilarious fallout is the credit rating system hasn’t evolved into also a team’s credit rating. In the ’60s, even into the ’70s, even though dad was on all the accounts, even though mom opened them, she had no problem making changes. Fast forward to when dad died (’09) getting her name transferred onto those accounts were a PIA. “Put him on the phone” as account holder (she put me on the phone), me “What part of he died don’t you understand? Do not make her cry!” Put her back on the phone, get whatever account changed, plus put “can talk to me” on the account.

        With our own stuff just as bad. “Who is the account holder?” “Damn if I know we’ve been married 45 years!” Granted, rather than actually talk to someone, these days I just use online. If I can’t, and he is the account holder, put him on, they get sworn at “I don’t deal with this crap, deal with her.” Yes, I know how this all came about and why. Just they don’t make it easy.

        1. Yep. That old canard drives me absolutely bugnuts. Family credit accounts meant women didn’t need individual ones. And credit cards didn’t come into widespread usage until about fifty years ago, with the proto-internet enabling communication between banks.

          Which ties back into what Sarah said above about the left creating discord between men and women and destroying the institution of the family-as-team. What’s funny is that the right gets accused of destructive individualism when it is leftist focus on self that causes the problems.

    2. You’re not alone in that. Chin up though, lass. The determination and unwillingness to fail you have is seen by others. The stubborn will to survive despite the world’s indifferent obstacles is an example that folks, especially younger folks, see.

      Being a good example is another weight upon anyone’s shoulders, as it should be. It is worth it, though. In little ways, here and there, good people make the world better. Sometimes just by showing up and observing that being good is even possible.

  7. “Which in turn means anyone who gets hired for a lot of high-requirements job can now be paid low and abused like a rented mule”

    And meanwhile, California has now boosted the minimum wage for a job that’s well-known to not require any prior skills, and was long considered a “starter job”, to the absurd sum of $20/hr. Additionally, all of the California Democratic Senate candidates endorsed a $20/hr overall minimum wage, and one of them – Barbara Lee, iirc – who fortunately did not survive the jungle primary endorsed a $50/hr minimum wage.

    If they had their way, we would end up like Cuba, where everyone makes the exact same wage.

    1. I recently have been wondering if the Cali minimum wage hike has been less about misguided attempts to ‘help the poor have a living wage’ and more about ‘more tax revenue’. An $8/hr minimum wage worker is in the no-taxes tax bracket (at least federally, I don’t know Cali state tax brackets) while a $20/hr worker is definitely paying taxes. So by mandating all those people getting a $20/hr ‘living wage’ they are raking in more tax dollars from people who previously weren’t paying taxes — it’s a tax hike without being a tax hike.

      PS. Not that I post all that often anyway, but I’m changing up my username since I’m looking for a new job and am concerned about people searching off my rather unique first name I’d used here previously.

        1. Added together with the AB5 initiative to funnel more people into unions, as well.

        2. Also since most union contracts have escalator clauses that automatically increases the wage scales in the contract in accordance with any minimum wage increase, it provides a backdoor raise to union members without any collectivize bargaining or choice of the businesses through government diktat. 

        3. Yep. The only place the unions have a hard lock is state and local employees, including teachers.

          And that means they are CALPERS.

          These anti-work efforts are all “milord I have a clever plan” from inside the union think tanks, to force unionization and union membership, passed at the union PAC’s bidding with the hammer of CALPERS massive money pile behind it all.

        4. If you want to see abject panic, start rumors about unionization at Apple or TehGoog or ZuckerBook any of the other tech giants.

          One thing the countryclub-Dem c-suites hate and fear is the thought of unions getting a toehold in their industry.

          1. If you’d like a nice helping of schadenfreude, a number of pro-Palestinian Google employees took over the CEO (president’s?) office last evening to demand Google stop “supporting the Gaza genocide.” Management did, eventually, call the cops.

            1. Someone should have called them in as a protest demanding unionization of all tehgoog employees. The Mountain View cops would have been breaking down the door and using flashbangs for their entry in minutes.

            2. Now I’m wondering just who (if anybody) is going to get into trouble over this. Choice A: the occupiers, Choice B: Whoever called the cops.
              Of course, they’ll blame Trump and MAGA supporters…

      2. California legislators probably aren’t bright enough to come up with an idea that complicated.

        Probably.

        Actually, based on what I’ve learned, the lobbyists are primarily the ones responsible for coming up with legislation. Additionally, the leadership of each committee has a very powerful role in ensuring legislation is voted on, or blocking it from ever getting a vote.

  8. “Because jobs, even ones you don’t expect, are mostly being given to people being brought over on work visas, because they can be paid less and also abused like rented mules. Which in turn means anyone who gets hired for a lot of high-requirements job can now be paid low and abused like a rented mule, because the competition can be. Which in turn–”

    I’m reliably informed by someone that any worries about competition, whether from AI or overseas, are “a weird way to say hypercharge the productivity of competent programmers while showing up the Javascript Studies Degree crowd for the frauds they are.”

    https://accordingtohoyt.com/2024/04/11/the-wrong-end-of-the-stick/#comment-969286

    Horseshit of the purest ray serene.

    I can’t compete on skill when I’m wearing a one ton weight of government regs designed to make me uncompetitive with people, here and overseas, who get to duck those weights because they aren’t citizens. I doubt Mr Bruene has ever in his life seen a project expense sheet with the billing rates between citizen and non-citizen IT personnel. I have.

    And I’ve been hearing this horseshit for over 20 years. The only reason we haven’t ALL been replaced is camouflage to stave off a revolt.

    1. They still have a year on their plan to replace or dispose of us if you bought into Deagel’s 2025 US population predictions… Might explain the desperation.

    2. AI isn’t the problem. If you think it is, you haven’t looked at what it actually can do. You’re falling into the sabot-droppers error.
      BUT bringing in people at slave wages IS a problem. For everyone, really.

      1. Sarah, you forget who I work for. I’ve had endless classes, lectures, and even certifications on what AI can do. Supposedly.

        1. Lots of people have classes. About lots of things. They sure don’t seem to teach a whole lot though.

          And if you want people to think you sound knowledgeable on anything computer related, for the love of whatever you hold sacred do not fucking brag about “certifications”.

          Unless you want people to think you are a useless code monkey who can in fact be effortlessly replaced by an Indian. Then be my guest.

          1. As Ian says, most of us who work in the trenches in the IT world don’t have fancy certifications and snicker at the ones who load their .sig lines with all those alphabetic acronyms. I for one have been in the job for 30 years and never bothered to get any certs, because my boss (who had been in IT longer than me and is more than likely smarter than snelson on a bad day) said, meh, nobody needs those things, they’re just a way to part you and your money.And over the years I have noticed that the worst IT people I’ve had to work with usually had one or more of those certs. And didn’t let you forget it, either.

            1. Beyond the second degree 4 year, CS (which other than my employer, ’85 – ’87, pushing for it, would not have gotten it) I have no certificates either. Not that I didn’t attend seminars on particular topics, but did not attend for the certification. Normally taking a seminar occurred when I had to do something, and whatever wasn’t coming together, and it was a topic a seminar was available (C++ controls for VB was one. I was close to figuring it out on my own, except the generation tool had a bug in it.)

              Two exceptions: ’96 one of the compensations (because timber company shutdown), was *retraining in another field, education (two year degree – yea, that was happening, not – already had an associate two year degree, and two 4 year degrees), or skills updating. Got two seminars out of them on the more popular programming tools at that time: Visual Basic and Java (paid for the seminar, lodging, and mileage). Being able to put Visual Basic on my resume, made the difference. Actually sent in a resume the weekend between the two seminars. Had an interview two weeks later, and a job within the next month. FYI, those same skills updating options were not available 6 years later, during the DOT COM bust, when a tech shop went bust.

              ((*)) A big one was chip manufacturing. Had 6 co-workers get trained for the new chip manufacturer that came into town. Then breezed out as soon as the tax advantage ended, 5 years later.

              1. The “we’ll stick around just as long as the tax advantage stays” hit F-Falls with New Corp. They left right quick. Asurion (the customer support/extended warranty outfit) got the same deal (same buildings, I think), but I haven’t followed the situation to see if they’re still around.

                My programming was in obscure languages for various integrated circuit testers, and I only had formal courses with one company. OTOH, that last bit got me a job when Agilent (formerly HP) bailed out of semiconductors, so I got a good paying job for 10 months, until the tester company went toes up in the Dot Com bubble burst, V1.0. Still, that paid enough to get the San Jose house ready to sell. I’m still waiting for the Silicon Valley housing market to crash and burn; places I lived in now cost 10X+ what I paid for them mumble years decades ago.

                1. I hear you. Inlaws got double their money from the house in San Diego, in the early ’70s, about $75k. Zillow/Redfin, we’ve seen it just under $1 million (haven’t looked lately). Not even Oregon is not immune. No way is inlaws place on the Little Dechutes anywhere near what they sold for in ’86 ($86k). What they bought the property for in ’60s, have no idea, nor what it cost for them to build in early ’70s. We talked about buying it, but we were never going to live there, ever. Then there is great-uncles property, last of the old homestead, 80 acres + house & barn, sold for $80k, early ’70s. Still intact. Have no idea what it would sell for now. No one in the extended family was in financial position to buy it back then (I was 14).

                  1. Keep in mind that from 1960s to now the SOBs devalued our currency by at least 90%. So an equivalent of $750k then to $1M now is understandable as increased demand over five decades.

            2. /As Ian says, most of us who work in the trenches in the IT world don’t have fancy certifications and snicker at the ones who load their .sig lines with all those alphabetic acronyms.

              In every field, be it education, manufacturing, health care, hospitality… any institution big enough to have an H.R. Department can decide what Certifications you “need”– not to do the job, but to keep the job.

              Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but the obvious is often overlooked. Especially when people get caught up in comment thread micturition matches.

              1. One of the “certificates” I got was “Leadership”. Not that it helped in the end when bankruptcy hits. Got continuing education credits when took Woodbadge through BSA. When already taking it? Why not? Processing fee. Besides difference between having to take vacation days and not. Company didn’t pay for it. But saving vacation days was worth it. Never know when certificate might be handy. I know people taking the BSA coarse who had to have regular continuing education credits took advantage. Way less expensive than most the hoops they had to jump through for credits.

      2. “BUT bringing in people at slave wages IS a problem. For everyone, really.”

        And that, Sarah, is something you should remember the history of.

        “It’s just a few people. You’re just a bigot who hates immigrants. And besides, we can’t find anyone with the skills here. Besides, look how much better the company stock performs now that we’ve reduced expenses.”

        Now its’ 30 years later, and we’re seeing all the actual results. We’ve gotten Americans of all ages who are training their replacements. We’ve gotten any number of managers who hire by ethnicity even here in the US.

        Now, the same arguments are being made WRT AI, and we’re just “sabot-droppers” if we actually look at the history that’s rhyming itself? OK.

        1. Now, the same arguments are being made WRT AI, and we’re just “sabot-droppers” if we actually look at the history that’s rhyming itself? OK.

          Your cluelessness about economics is not our problem.

        2. ”…30 years later…”

          The H1b-slave-labor scam was already fully formed and being fully exploited when I landed my first job in semiconductor cube-land in 1988, with several rounds of finally-escaped-indenture green card employees who had continued working there in the sw engineering groups some having moved up to management levels, and they were fully bought in to continuing things just as they were.

          And yes, it’s purely a country-club look-at-my-stock-price bottom line thing, throughout here there are no cc-Republicans out here, just cc-Dems across all the c-suites.

      1. Sarah, the relationship is this:

        Both of them are just methods to increase the pool of potential “competition”, and used to further stack the deck and lower the perceived value of entry level workers. Talk about chopping off the bottom rung…..

        1. I keep hearing this, but I see no evidence that AI can do much of anything, in practice. It certainly cannot write. It creates pretty sounding sentences that mean nothing and usually contain errors.

          I keep getting prompted by Microsoft products to install AI garbage. A recent Windows Update just did it for me. It’s brutally difficult to get rid of (although turning it off is easy enough). It doesn’t work any better than Clippy did, all those years ago.

          I agree that it is a potential problem, but not yet.

          Maybe I just work in a field specialized enough for it not to matter.

          For example, just an hour ago, I wrote this:

          We need a parser instance to send definitions to an idcache instance that caches them but does not send them downstream. This will require configuring parser instances and idcache instances differently than nominal deployment.

          This is not particularly difficult, but it is a change to how we operate. This document assumes this will be magically done. There are options:

          * A globally shared idcache (this may not work for technical reasons)

          * A special idcache per headend

          * A special idcache per headend per QP (this is how nominal idcaches are deployed)

          * A special idcache per parser release that requires this functionality

          This decision must be made, but it’s not part of this document.

          *TODO* Unless someone wants it to be.

          All that matters to this project is that the sqlite3 database be accessible. As a practical matter, we need to know where to get it from, but this document assumes we have it.

          Of course it seems nonsense jargon because it is specific to a particular part of a particular project. There is no way an AI is taking my writing job, which is the easy part of my job. I also need to make all the stuff I write about actually happen.

          1. And you’re right. Of course, if the last 20-50 years have taught us anything, it’s that by the time it’s seen as a threat, it’s too entrenched to actually do anything about it.

            There’s a lot of sales types who are snowing a lot of managers on the idea that it can do code, and they can reduce headcount because of it. Right now, what I’m seeing is that it can be used to generate use cases, and by extension test cases. It doesn’t seem to live up to the hype, though.

            However, there’s a second aspect, which may be a more immediate point for Sarah’s article about choking off opportunities. Lots of managers are also being sold on the idea that you can use AI for such things as “unbiased” recruiting, “unbiased” personnel review, etc. It’s just an extension of the idea that because we’re running everything past a formula, it’s unbiased.

            Now, overselling software capabilities is as old as software (and as Sarah knows, I work for one of the companies selling AI). But the “running it past a formula” is how we got wonderful policies like “zero tolerance” school discipline. How’d that work out for young boys?

            1. Ah, yes, ‘running it past a formula’.

              Have they checked the formula? Almost certainly not. Insane formulas make the A.I. look insane even if it’s not.

              It’s not even ‘garbage in, garbage out’ because the garbage is inside the black box.

              1. Well, what we’ve seen is “garbage in, garbage out, with a sewer in the middle.” The inputs AND the algorithms are biased.

            2. <I>by the time it’s seen as a threat, it’s too entrenched to actually do anything about it.</I>

              This is a very good point that got dropped in the follow-on comments.

              It’s not quite one of the slippery slopes, which we’ve been told over and over again will never happen, then does, but it’s close.

          2. Is the AI tool that Windows Update installed called Copilot? If so, it’s the same tool that they’ve offered to programmers via GitHub for a couple of years now. The Copilot instance on GitHub was trained on millions of software projects. I haven’t used it, but a colleague of mine says it actually is useful for some things, like speeding up the writing of boilerplate code. For example, you tell Copilot “write a unit test for method XYZ”. And voila, you get what is essentially a shell of a unit test, where you would fill in the key details that the AI tool would have no way of predicting correctly. My colleague, who’s an excellent programmer, says that it’s faster to go through the AI-generated code and correct the details than it would have been to type it all himself. So in the hands of someone who knows what he’s doing, it’s a useful tool and can increase your productivity.

            In the hands of someone who blindly trusts its output, of course, it’s a recipe for disaster.

            1. Robin, there are two key sentences from where I sit:

              “a colleague of mine says it actually is useful for some things, like speeding up the writing of boilerplate code.”

              and

              “In the hands of someone who blindly trusts its output, of course, it’s a recipe for disaster.”

              I can generate an awful lot of bad SQL, or HTML, or whatever, and have been able to for a while. It generally takes longer to build good code, and a lot of management types look at that generated code and as long as it compiles, it meets their requirements and their schedule.

              1. generate an awful lot of bad SQL, or HTML, or whatever, and have been able to for a while. It generally takes longer to build good code, and a lot of management types look at that generated code and as long as it compiles, it meets their requirements and their schedule.

                Until it doesn’t. Or doesn’t quite do exactly what they want. I spent years doing exactly that, taking what “almost worked” to turning it into something that not only worked but doing exactly what was wanted, or rather needed. Key is knowing why HTML and SQL generating tools can not pull the results wanted.

                1. “I spent years doing exactly that, taking what “almost worked” to turning it into something that not only worked but doing exactly what was wanted, or rather needed. Key is knowing why HTML and SQL generating tools can not pull the results wanted.”

                  Exactly. And #MeToo. The problem is that tweaking it into something that works takes time, and that’s something management doesn’t allow for in scheduling. Now enjoy explaining to PHB why he should care about “until it doesn’t” (especially if he doesn’t face any consequences), and why QA is not a cost center to be avoided, and, and, and.

                  It’s bad when it’s only accounting; it’s worse when it’s something directly involving lives. Something I’ve tried to avoid.

                  1. That sounds like a management issue, not an AI issue. Switching people’s jobs from “writing code” to “fixing code written by AI” will likely increase productivity without the massive job loss that some people fear and others hope for.

                    People being afraid of or misusing a tool doesn’t make the tool itself the problem. That applies to firearms, tax policies, and AI alike.

                    1. Again, exactly. There’s nothing a bad manager (private or government regulation or both) can’t make worse.

                      But a tool misused is often worse than not using it, because then you have to correct the misuse. When misuse is as easy to foresee as it is here, I’d much prefer to hit pause until we’ve worked out as many of the avenues for misuse as possible.

                  2. The old “can this be done?” Create a demo (pretty), but no back end. At end of demo, PTB say “Great! Release this!” Um. No. No back end. Even then the demo is highly likely not in the proper tool.

                    Then there is the time my boss shoved me on under to bus showing the district manager how easy it was for Excel to rotate data. Yes, but … 1) not using Excel. 2) Even if data exported to Excel and imported, then rotated, still not accurate. Because the data type changed from a date or date string, to boolean data, yes date there. Not accurate. Was suppose to be the date due. (Track the work safety training dates for individuals. An industry where when, not if, accidents happen proof of training was available. Or when a logging tower comes down, happened, and no one is even bruised, that isn’t a miracle, that is safety training. Okay, a small miracle.)

            2. Yep, Dan says it’s useful to speed up the writing of code, except that it’s always flawed and you need to be smart enough and experienced enough to fix it.
              The same way say cedar and I use AI art to speed up the making of covers, but you have to fix things. (Which I don’t bother fixing for illustrations of posts, as we’ve all seen.)
              And for writing AI is pathetic. Now that might change, but it will mostly be good for speeding up things.

              1. “you need to be smart enough and experienced enough to fix it.”

                Which seems like exact support for my contention that AI, like H1B before it, is going to chop the lower rungs off the employment ladder even harder.

        3. ‘Potential’ is a very important part of the argument here.

          There’s a sense where it doesn’t matter if AI can do the work – if enough people think it can, or will soon, it will affect investments, wages, choice of majors, and on down the line. Some of this can even be self-fulfilling – throw enough money at a problem and hope it’s solved before the problems surface.

          Sure, in the long run they may fail. But the market can easily stay irrational longer than you want to be unemployed.

    4. Seen the expense sheet? No. Been utterly fucked by the current market and also have friends who are intimately familiar with the shady practices? Yes.

      And your comment has nothing to do with the fact that the fool in the other thread was mouthing off at “but will Guam tip over?!” levels of economic ignorance.

      Projecting isn’t going to make us not smell what you are shoveling.

  9. The miracle is that more of them haven’t taken weapons and started making people pay.

    The FBI is working on that…

    But they recently switched to girls that cut off their breasts and downed hormones as their wind up toys to kill children and Christians.

    1. “Take up weapons and make people pay?” Sounds familiar. Like “just about every leftist mass shooter manifesto” familiar.

      It’s not something any man worth the name does to innocents, mind. Nigh most men have a very strong push towards PROTECT and DEFEND, not assault and destroy. We like building things. We like making safe, secure homes for those we love. We’d much prefer this desire not be f*cked with.

  10. And WP just ate my extensive comment…. :-(

    First, young people remind me of the Baby Bust (born ~1956-1965) decade group – both were bushwhacked by a Great Inflation. Owning a home will take capital that they will have a hard time to accumulate. It WILL get better, but it’s going to take time.

    Second, boys and young men need updated Horatio Alger stories. The old ones, where the hero goes from lower class to middle-class-with-upward-mobility by dint of solid middle-class virtues. Rags-to-riches fantasies are million-to-one shots – the young people need realistic examples.

    Third, the dating environment is affected by career narrowing issues. Every decision a young person makes improves earning power…at a price in potential employers and employment locations. Become an Aerospace Engineer, and your potential employers are limited to companies that make flying machines or major subcomponents. Specialize in Flight Test, and your employment locations are largely limited to the Mojave Desert and NAS Patuxent River, MD. Neither are terribly good dating sites if you’re a man (fantastic if you’re a woman, though). If you get a career going before marriage, some painful decisions will have to be made.

    1. I’m in the baby-bust generation (’56). Hubby might as well be (’52) given he an I started out post college at the same time. As mentioned before, we started together with nothing (’78). We’ve cringed with the inflation and high interest rates, and clawed ourselves into a home with low interest rates (did not start there).

      What I’ve seen of son’s generation, like Sarah stated, someone is renting, then sub-renting out the rooms. Or if they can, they are buying and renting out rooms. Even married couples. Those who are renting on their own are renting studios, at best. Others are living with parents, or on the sufferance of parents. Son lives at home. He has friends who also live at home, in multi-generational households with the parents, wife, and multiple children. None are from traditional thought of multi-generational households (at least for a 100+ years). FYI, I find it interesting that one of the newest HGTV home restoration shows makes a point to note that Hawaii has a lot of multi-generational houses, not duplex, multi-generational, that they restore to that point.

      1. I rented a room from my parents for three years after graduation. Then moved into a 1-bedroom condo with a whopping 600 square feet of space. (OTOH, I had it on a 15-year mortgage)

    2. “talking about my generation.”. The boys and men HAVE Horatio Alger — the real ones — stories. The problem is that the establishment is outright WEAPONIZED against them by crazy Marxists. So they feel guilty and think they’re not working enough. And feel worthless.
      Look up suicide rates of young men. This doesn’t help.

    3. Mike, 1959 baby here. I’ve done pretty well, but I was fortunate in two respects: (1) getting on board with the computer revolution in the 1970s, and (2) the Reagan prosperity era bailed a lot of us out. I was finally able to buy my first house at the age of 30. 

      As far as Horatio Alger stories, I’m trying to write some. I’m far from a professional author, but I’ve been studying Heinlein’s “juveniles”, and write some stuff like that. 

  11. “He seems to think it’s a matter of girls just naturally being more inclined to academia…”

    I do not observe this as generally being the case. Particularly in STEM, where women remain hugely outnumbered by men despite alllll the effort to shoehorn them in.

    We also notice this in other technical fields, like auto mechanic, steam fitters, welders and etc.

    I refuse at this point to add the boilerplate BS that “of course not all women” blah blah blah. Admiral Grace Hopper was a once-in-a-generation unicorn, okay? Most of the people in STEM are men because -most- women find it intolerably boring. (My heart goes out to those rare women who simply LOVE hacking network protocols and building stuff, they’re so rare it is like finding diamonds lying on a beach.)

    Men commonly do things like woodworking, metal machining, car tinkering, motorcycle racing, building electronic doodads. Or scholarship, they do that too. They do it on their own time, with their own money, for fun. They love it so much they want to stay home and do it all the time.

    And when I say “commonly” I mean most men not crippled by life in some profound way do things like that. Some better than others, certainly, but this is about what they want to do, not how well they do it. And by “most” I’m talking two sigmas +/- the mean.

    Women do not commonly do those things. Nor do they commonly pursue scholarship for its own sake. The past century has proven that they -can-, but it has also shown that left to their own devices, they won’t. Probably the same two sigmas +/- the female mean.

    I will say even Tom Knighton says stuff like that because the propaganda is very deeply infused. You are very not-allowed to say what I just said. But because I’m old, mean and don’t give a fructose, I said it anyway. >:D

    1. This is all correct. And notice that Grace Hopper was ABLE to do what she did. Without all the Affirmative Action stuff.

      1. I met her when she gave a speech at my college. A true force of nature with a collection of nanoseconds to be handed out.

    2. TRUST me I’m one of the “off” women. But most of us aren’t stupid. Most of us realize it’s not “the man keeping us down.” Most of the time it’s the other women trying to get us to fall in line. And we KNOW we’re outliers. We don’t need a bob in our direction.

      1. I do wonder some days, how much of that is the tendency to follow the crowd though? It’s not a purely female thing, guys form groups and do the same, just in a different direction most times. 

        Like general leftism, I think there’s an element of “everybody’s doing it” to this. Some grew up right, but end up passing along all unthinking the stuff the were indoctrinated with in college, not what they learned at the kitchen table. Often by the time they realize what they’ve raised, it is far too late to walk it back.

        There’s also the lazy element that infects all human beings (I’m the lazy one in my house). Marxism rewards laziness of thought and laziness of deed. If you can get the same resources with 10% of the effort, why would you go to the trouble?

        I’ve met those who think I’m foolish to be working at all, let alone the hours I work. Technically, I’m enough of a minority to get “free” stuff. ”Everybody” else is doing it.

        Back to the point, men and women need each other though. Men are doing the same thing women, burned by male foolishness, do and for much the same reasons. They’re disconnecting, because they’ve run into one too many of what they perceive as the same type.

        Women need a Jordan Peterson-esque type to tell them bluntly and honestly what the problems are, and how to fix them. The real way, the hard way. The way that comes with bruises, lack of sleep, and stress. Redemption is not, and should not be easy. The pain we go through to redeem ourselves is cathartic. 

        I’d like to see women reconnect with their mothers (or grandmothers in many cases), not just because family is important, but because torturing the opposite sex is no way to find happiness (shaddup, not talking about the consensual sexual stuff). 

        1. Jordan Peterson and similar evolutionary psychology stuff has been very helpful for me in starting my new search for love. 

          Specifically, I find thinking about what each side is looking for to be very helpful in deciding who I will look for and how I will act.

          So for men, we naturally are attracted to fertility. For me specifically, that will need to include fertility of mind, most likely evidenced by being a nerd. But general good health is also important.

          For women, at least of the sort I want to deal with, important qualities are loyalty and being able to provide. I can pull those off as long as I meet a girl with suitable lifestyle expectations. My pair-bonding instinct is quite strong, and I have a decent middle class job.

        2. I would love a Jordan Peterson type, but I have to tell you, some of us are disconnected from various relatives for very good reasons.

          It’s a heck of a note, to finally figure out enough about decent relationships to realize how bad your family screwed you up – and that they messed you up badly enough you can’t find safe relationships, because every time you try another cluster B swoops in. Argh.

      2. Some other regulars have commented now and again on how many female veterans there are among the regular commenters here on ATH … and that is … well, unusual. Odd. Considering what a small percentage of the American population that veterans are, and that female veterans are an even smaller sliver of that.

        I wonder if being a female veteran is a marker for “Odd.”

        1. I would not be surprised– part of why I went Navy is that I knew I didn’t want to deal with two, four, six or more years of school.

          But going Navy, I get a job, I get training, and I get my family off of my back. Plus, travel, and it’s a limited term.

        3. Likely. But weirdly enough, I see a combination of imagination and reality. Military is an area that REQUIRES reality. Or you die.

          On the other hand, military requires willingness to sacrifice, and can put you on the leading edge. Thus appealing to women who want to imagine, but also make something tangible. So maybe that’s a kind of odd?

          Other areas have that too, but without the “leading edge” part. Just spitballing.

        4. My college household consisted of women who were either ROTC, or one girl who later enlisted. I gave it a bit of thought, but not too seriously. Don’t know why. But I guess it makes me “veteran-adjacent.” (Aside from being married to a retired vet, I mean).

      3. You, like me, Sarah, are a high-side third-sigma on a few of those curves. Quite a few commenters on here are, male and female alike. There’s nothing “off” about it, we’re just third fricking sigma in a culture that demands we pretend everyone is the same.

        We see things that the Normies simply do not see. They can’t, they don’t have any goat in them. They spend all their time and energy fitting in with the other monkeys.

        Irritating, but there it is. 😡

    4. Based on my admittedly limited reading and experience with the matter, if a woman is the type to be genuinely interested in a STEM field, she’ll have shown signs of it when she was young. And it won’t be because Mommy and Daddy “encouraged” her to focus on it. It’ll be a natural interest in it.

      I should also add that the guys in those kinds of fields generally *love* women who are there because they want to be there. If a woman is genuinely enthusiastic about it, the guys who work in those fields can usually tell pretty quickly.

    5. One of my sisters-in-law (my wife has three sisters) is one of the rare women who got into programming because she enjoys it. She married another geek. It’s fun to go visit them.

      1. I did not go straight from forestry to programming. I’ve mentioned before that after my first programming class, required, I swore I’d have nothing to do with programming. Nothing. I can not state how much I loathed that class and the very concept. This was winter ’76. Fast forward, timber is crashing. I’d lost seniority, along with 110 others, and hubby had missed by one (as in the last one hired back). After two years I investigated my options at the local community college. Looking into accounting. If can’t do what I want, do what is easy. Accounting is easy for me (too easy, really). Advisor suggested programming (sure she was pushing women into programming, and?) Told her, nah, and why. She said “lets see, have to take the three basic accounting classes” (as expected flew thru those) “and intro to computers. Then get back to me.” That was summer ’83. Fall term I was enrolled in the computer programming program. I fell in love with programming (not so much the hardware, which I can do, easily, just not my thing). Programming is not as easy as accounting. Not even close. A lot more challenging. Programming is a whole lot more fun. Never thought I’d give it up. OTOH I am the type of programmer where a solution to a problem is the fun part. Digging into something just because, isn’t. Or “not a hacker”, just can’t be bothered to even consider trying.

    6. I’ve seen a bit of Women in STEM(tm) going on in extended family. SIL is $SPOUSE’s kid sister, and was an EE working for a small controls company in [redacted]. Not the best employer, but then they got bought by $LARGE_MEGACORP, at which point SIL (and eventually BIL, another EE) decided that early retirement was the best option.

      $NIECE got the engineering bug from her parents, got an MSME and worked for $LARGE_BUILDING_MATERIALS_CO. She was the go-to person, largely because she seemed to be the only one in her plant (rural location) who a) knew what she was doing and b) gave a damn. If you see the ingredients for major burn-out, you got it. She’s now the happy mother of two toddlers, living far away from her former location, while her hubby is earning the dollars.

      As a side note, she’s considering reentering the workforce when the kids start school (yikes!), as an accountant. I’m wondering how soon she’ll be homeschooling the kids…

      1. As an accountant she can work from home office and oversee the kids home based educations.

    7. Supporting evidence arrives today:

      https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/04/19/2024202/women-who-code-shuts-down-unexpectedly

      A) Nobody runs a thing called “Men Who Code” because it would be ridiculous.

      B) The thing called “Women Who Code” had 360,000 some odd subscribers, and it is folding due to lack of money. Otherwise known as lack of interest.

      Because women may code, but 99% of them are not into it and they only do it for work. Men, you have to drag them away from the computer and make them touch grass once a week.

      2. women may code, but 99% of them are not into it and they only do it for work.

        Might resemble that a bit. I enjoyed coding. I enjoyed solving the problem. But doing it for not pay, once I was past schooling? Um. No. Thought I’d go nuts in retirement. I’ve coded nothing since 1/29/2016 (last day of Jan 2016 was 31st). I do not miss it. Would I have coded (predetermined hourly rate) if asked because they were in a bind? Yes. Then. Wasn’t asked. Now? No.

        Note, when I was off, in 1996 for 6 months, and again Aug ’02 – Jan ’04, I did go a little nuts. No, doing my own thing wasn’t the answer. Not direct consultant material. I can work with clients directly, that isn’t the problem. In fact, I am very good at it. It is the other stuff that goes with it.

  12. Thought: Academia needs some old-fashioned trust-busting to knock prices down to earth.

    Rationale: Academia produces a surplus of Useless Studies majors. The colleges then rehire the Useless Studies majors, both as administrators and as instructors of Useless Classes…which have been made mandatory for the students. They are able to force this through the whole accreditation business – which is controlled by the colleges. The result is higher prices and a less useful education.

    Check on Rationale: When I went through the Aerospace & Ocean Engineering program at Virginia Tech, we needed 203 quarter-hour credits to graduate. About three-quarters were math/science/engineering classes. Nine credits in English and History, and about 30 non-technical electives. (FWIW, I concentrated and picked up a minor in History). Does this 75% technical curriculum hold true today?

    1. No. It’s more like 40% social stuff, because otherwise no one would sign up for those. Or not enough people. Both sons had to endure a lot of “women’s studies” for their STEM degrees.

      1. That’s not good. It’s why I think there’s some accreditation trust-busting needed.

        1. The colleges have crawled so far up their own assholes, I don’t see that happening. More likely is that folks on the outside will start treating those ‘accredited degrees’ like the worthless toilet paper they are.

          1. That’s already happening; it will only get more prevalent as more companies realize their “well-educated, fully credentialed” new hires can’t find their butts even with a flashlight and GPS instructions. Best course? IMHO, a return to the “apprentice, journeyman, master” system (guilds, maybe?), and a de-emphasis on college for almost all fields not involving original research.

            It’s been noted that skilled trades are becoming more popular. Good!

            1. Oh, come on, how much ‘original research’ is being done in colleges these days? The only thing they’re ‘researching’ is figuring out what the entities doling out the grants want to hear.

              Check out Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder’s take on today’s academia:

              <a href="http://<iframe width="1157" height="651" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LKiBlGDfRU8&quot; title="My dream died, and now I'm here" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen>http://<iframe width=”1157″ height=”651″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/LKiBlGDfRU8″ title=”My dream died, and now I'm here” frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen></iframe>

              1. For anything with political implications I generally agree. But for pure research in physics, cosmology or medicine there are still honest researchers and university programs; they just don’t get much in the way of Federal funding. (Which, IMHO, is a Good Thing [TM].)

          2. psssssst

            Already happening. Is part of what the tech layoffs are: they realized that most of their employees were completely useless.

    2. You could accomplish a correction of University prices solely by forbidding the government from offering loans to attend.

      University prices and course offerings have expanded to fill the available incoming money.

      1. And since that money comes with social, political, and behavioral mandates in order to keep it, getting rid of the money gets rid of the mandates.

        1. Remove the government from 99.999% of things they do now, and watch so many things suddenly, miraculously become better. 

    3. 203 hours is what I needed for Forest Management, ’74 – ’79. Helped by the fact my school could actually work for the summer in timber, not spending the summer attend forestry labs. (Actually required to have 6 months experience in the field. For most, that was USFS fire crews.) My last two terms was pretty much filler classes, and no they were not basket weaving, classes (Geology, Amerindian History). Although if I could had afforded it, would have taken English Horse riding, and even jumping, again.

      Actually do not remember, because I didn’t have to know, how many hours the Computer Science (’86 – ’89, 1 class/term for first 8 terms) degree required, because I came in with a 4 year degree. Other than the specific, 10 or so, Jr/Sr CS classes, and 8 terms of math (nope, with Forestry did not have enough math. Yes, some of it was a repeat, but “labeled wrong”. But had been 10 years by then, and despite Forestry and CS, not a mathematician. I can do it if I stick with it, otherwise, not so much beyond algebra.)

  13. Observation: Training curricula are like wallets and purses. They need to be emptied and cleaned of detritus on a regular basis.

  14. This hits pretty hard, since I am one of the young men that has had a rocky life. I am finally at a good point career wise, ten years after college and on my third career (grad school, then school teacher, now manufacturing). And while my last job search only took a couple months, I went through about a thousand applications to find it.

      1. Most likely, though I am the youngest of seven kids, so my parents are quite solidly Boomers. 😅

        To follow up on my first comment, now that I am off work and have more time, my attempts at relationships have been quite parallel to my career bouncing.

        My first ex I met in college, and we bonded over being intellectuals together, unfortunately she bought in hard to the feminist ideology and became quite career focused and anti-male. Which was a bad fit as I was maturing and starting to feel like I wanted a family.

        My second ex came with kids and seemed very loving, but ultimately could not get past my limited early-career income. Also, looking back, the speed she pushed for physical affection should have been a red flag…

        And now I am off on a new journey, but I have learned quite a lot, and back on topic a bit, I have joined the growing trend of looking for love by going places to meet new people in person. It is quite astounding how much better being around real women is than trying to scroll through pictures on dating apps. I think about how people through the ages have paired up and made lives with who they had a available, and I think that reality is much much better than imaginary lists or staged pictures.

      2. Sarah, my kids are roughly your kids ages, though I am much older. One (male) had a rough go of things early but is so good with both hands and mind as well as being incredibly personable that he is now making six figures with no degree, owns a house, owns two classic cars, but sadly no spousal unit. Is very hard to meet woman who actually appreciate a very skilled outdoorsy guy who is quite conservative. It is a complete nonstarter for him if they believe abortion is okay for instance. Says he could never trust them.

        Daughter just finished second degree as a BSRN and is working in an ER. Also has just signed contracts to do multiple marketing videos as she has 60 k followers. Both work their butts off, but have not found the significant other and decry the search. Their mom and I advise, go do the things you love to do and you will connect with the one. So far that has not worked.

        Is much tougher out there than even in our early years. Met my wife working PT at a restaurant while trying to launch one of my first businesses. Ultimately failed, but got a wonder wife! Just does not feel the same for my kids. The economy is not helping as you reference. I think, and you occasionally reference, there is something big coming, a great reset perhaps, just not the way the left thinks.

        1. go do the things you love to do and you will connect with the one. So far that has not worked.

          I met my husband at college. Not because we had classes together, he was at least 3 years ahead of me. But because we were both involved in the forestry club and hung out with the same people (seriously, it was J&P, a married couple in our group, fault). We were friends 4 years before we had our first date. Engaged 8 months later, married 3 months after that. Yes, my first job out of college, was the first same full time job hubby got too. He started 4 weeks before I did (I had to finish finals of my last term). We’d been married 4 months.

          Middle sister met her husband at the bar, at the same time a distant cousin met hers.

          Youngest sister met her husband at work. Both worked for HP in SF area.

  15. I’m a man (even was born that way), I play computer games; but I’m married, my parents are both dead therefore I can’t play in their basement, so instead I play in our library/computer room in the house we mostly own (still owe the bank about 80k.)

    “The miracle is that more of them haven’t taken weapons and started making people pay.” Not interested in making people pay. But I’m not all that adverse to removing evil people; and there are a large number of evil people in and around our government in this country. The “oh, they’re just misunderstood”, or “good but misguided”, or “they have good intentions”, just doesn’t cut it anymore. When someone does evil, it doesn’t matter if they are evil or not. They need to go before the rot spreads. And the rot is everywhere today, because it wasn’t cut out decades, to a hundred years or more ago.

    1. :snickers:

      My husband has a lot of fun with folks trying to pull the “you don’t even know what sex is, you’re still in college and live in your parent’s basement” on him.

      Identify what is wrong, specifically, and work to fix it.

      It’s… a lot of work, but that’s also why we have seven kids, and are homeschooling them.

      1. Sounds like the current outcry against the upcoming PS5 video game Stellar Blade. It’s by a Korean developer, and the protagonist is an attractive (cyborg) woman. The outcry from the gaming press against the game has been rather spectacular, with cries of “male gaze”, “body shaming”, and “the developers have never seen a real woman”.

        Cue the developers introducing the very real world woman who the protagonist is based off of, and who served as the mo-cap model for the protagonist’s in-game animation.

        It also helps that it looks like the game will be a lot of fun. A demo was released a few weeks ago that covers a tiny portion of the start of the game. Apparently some players have logged over 50 hours on it…

        Even the developers have been surprised by this.

  16. And for the love of bog, don’t tell them to start blaming the girls!

    This “change which face is stomped on” nonsense is evil! It doesn’t suddenly become OK because it flips pack and forth a few times.

      1. How about blaming the aholes actually doing it, instead of the other targets?

        Do you realize how utterly insane and evil the logic you’re pushing is?
        “Ah, it is bad that these people are abusing males. We should thus blame the entire sex. That’s sane and rational.”

        I have been trying to counter the jerks, since I was a teen. It’s freaking RICH to be still getting dumped on by people who were happy to have the easy route, and then found out that in the long run it has nasty costs.

        Get dumped on for doing the right thing, and then get dumped on for not managing to make THEM do the right thing.

        Doesn’t mean that one doesn’t have to still do the right thing.

          1. :nod:

            We’re a team.

            They need us to be isolated and weak.

            I can’t remember who said it, it was in a comment on my blog I think, pointed out that the great part of marriage is that you generally average out to at least one fully functional person at all times.

            So if you break? The other can catch you both.

            1. True, dat. And it probably, depending on the particular issue causing “non-functionality” at any given time, tends to be shared almost equally over time.

            2. We’re a team.

              100%

              This!

              This!

              This!

              Now that our (one and only) has his own life. We can relax. Yes he still has roommates. But he is a working adult. He comes and goes as he pleases. Am I little depressed he does not appear to be choosing a teammate? Yes. Won’t be the first generation to do so. More than a few, great-great, who never married. One great-uncle who never had his own children (raised a step son), although his siblings had lots, and one great-aunt, while married, who never had children (her one surviving sibling had children). OTOH his cousin, once removed, 10 years older than him, is married at 44. He and his wife are having their first this summer. He is 46, she is 34. Note, cousin has 2 great-nieces, and will have two great-nephews his son’s age (all 3 are due this year).

        2. I can tell this is a sore spot, but I’m going to poke it again, anyway, because I really don’t understand.

          The aholes actually doing it are a, possibly quite small, subset of women and what they’re doing is blaming all men.

          From where I sit, it appears that a large subset of women agree – or at least do not object.

          I will grant you that I sit in a strange (gay) and isolated (working from home) place. But, it seems that the overall culture has accepted what has been done. There may be only a few aholes that started it, but it has been accepted, if not embraced, by many, many more; functionally “everyone”.

          Do all women deserve blame? Of course not. However, when someone can say “teach men not to rape” and not be seen as insane, we’re not talking about a small number of people.

          Perhaps there is a huge backlash brewing among women, but I only see it brewing among men. That’s why I’m continuing this.

          Perhaps the same idea but on another topic would be helpful.

          The constant drumbeat of “white privilege” is not identifying a functional demographic block. White folk generally don’t define anything about themselves as “white” (which is arguably a sign of their privilege). What it is doing is creating a functional demographic block where white people are starting to define themselves, and their interests, as “white” due to the backlash.

          By hectoring all men, the same process is occurring: It’s creating exactly what it is complaining about. The opposition is the opposite: Instead of being the fault of all men, it’s the fault of all women. Is that accurate or fair? No.

          I would not call it “evil”, but rather “inevitable”, if not particularly useful. Painting with broad brush-strokes and lumping the innocent in with the guilty is what people do. See also, “kill them all and let God sort them out.”

          1. I can tell this is a sore spot, but I’m going to poke it again, anyway, because I really don’t understand.

            Good! Poking at stuff to try to understand is vital.

            From where I sit, it appears that a large subset of women agree – or at least do not object

            The aholes actually doing it are a, possibly quite small, subset of women and what they’re doing is blaming all men.
            From where I sit, it appears that a large subset of women agree – or at least do not object.

            The group that’s pushing it isn’t all women– quite likely isn’t even mostly women– it’s feminists, “on behalf of” women.

            Who do object, but don’t get reported as doing so.

            I’ve been lectured for my entire life, mostly by old liberal men, about how I “really” think this or that, and if I somehow fall short of what they insist I must “really” do, then I am either being mind controlled by men or I am not really a woman.

            Note how Sarah Palin not killing her son was treated, even though in polling women are far more pro-life than men. (I can point out a bunch of tricks used to mask this, including defining pro abortion so broadly that Catholics are pro-abort, due to treatment which can threaten the child’s life but will save the mother being allowed.)

            However, when someone can say “teach men not to rape” and not be seen as insane, we’re not talking about a small number of people.

            Where are you that they’re not recognized as insane?

            Watching TV?

            Listening to the radio?

            At various other captive audience locations?

            Because that stuff out in the wild tends to run into the same issues as the various Black Lives Matter reporters who actually talked to locals, and found out that they did not in fact like having their places burnt down by out of towners.

            But that wasn’t “valid,” the liberal activists that came in and declared they were speaking for the demographic were.

            I would not call it “evil”, but rather “inevitable”, if not particularly useful. Painting with broad brush-strokes and lumping the innocent in with the guilty is what people do. See also, “kill them all and let God sort them out.”

            :pushes glasses up nose:

            Last things first, that chosen quote is actually quite suitable. Because it only appeared long after the actual fight, by someone who wasn’t there, and countered all reports from the scene at the time.

            But it was super duper useful for expressing an emotional desire and appealing to a grand story of sorts.

            It didn’t actually happen, much less inevitably happen. Those who took up the idea and applied it chose to do that.

            Much like you are choosing to listen to those who declare they are speaking on behalf of a huge and varied group, and then taking what they say as a reason to go and do the very thing that they did which is why you’re upset.

            That is your choice.

            You get to make it.

            Others do, too– and you can either urge htem to make the choice that you have already established is a Bad Thing, or not do so, or even identify why so many people are listening to liars who claim to speak for everyone.

            Here’s a slightly less heated option– a guy on twitter, making a claim on behalf of all artists, plus their friends and family:

            Oh, wait, “only” on behalf of 99%…..

            (Spoiler, results I’ve seen are more “99% don’t care so long as the cover looks good.”)

        1. This is absolutely key. The war between men and women is mainly caused by Marxism as implemented by feminism. And both men and women are feminists. The advantage to recognizing this is to step back from men vs women so that men can recognize that no, women in general, are actually NOT against them. Which means that women have to say, OUT LOUD, that we see what is happening.

          This is similar to saying: No, people on the right are not actually any more likely to be racist than those on the left.

          And yes, in the near term, girls appear to gain. The obvious problems seem to hit the boys earlier, and if they survive (because they literally kill themselves, outright, or with drugs) they are more likely to make it. I think?

          With girls, they seem to make it pretty well for a while, but the payment is much later. They don’t get real skills, and they really do seem to live in constant fear. They’re both “unbeatable GRRRLs” and at the same time at the mercy of violent and untrustworthy men. The problem seems to no longer be seen as “bad men” but “men, who are by nature, bad.”

    3. Many girls don’t totally understand the current system, but they do take advantage of it. This usually causes problems later in life. Overall, it’s not fair to them either.

      1. Humans take advantage of what is there— same way that guys will take advantage of the “free sex” aspects pushed by feminism, for example, which is definitely big on the “usually causes problems later in life.”

  17. There have been too many generations where the parent wanted their children to have it better than they did. It’s led to entitlement (life is so unfair, I should be allowed to be me), laziness (Load the dishwasher?…I did that last week!), promiscuity (Just get an abortion. I don’t have a job, you don’t have a job, and I want to pursue a career) and apathy (It’s just too hard. Why try?) When you add the bizarre methods of current education, too many young adults are woefully unaware of what it takes to function and do not have a basic understanding of responsibility.

    1. You do realize most of what you said is bullshit, right?
      Yes, there are a lot of parents who spoil their kids, but the vast majority of kids out there are no worse than we were. And a lot are much better, in aggregate.
      For instance, recently the establishment has been losing its mind that kids aren’t sleeping around. You read that right AREN’T. And abortions are falling year over year.
      This is bullshit. The kids are all right. They just have everything from “laws” that don’t let them work, to schools that don’t teach, to– EVERYTHING turned against them.
      Kids these days are all right. Stop yelling at them and look why things are the way they are.

      1. Many kids are okay, and I have a strong admiration for those that are trying, but after decades of watching the changes, too many today are not prepared to take on the journey called life. It’s not their fault, but it is their fault to not pay attention, understand they can exceed, in spite of the ridiculous obstacles in their way, and become more awake to how they’ve been kicked around like footballs, while their parents, schools, and legislators experimented with things that don’t work. They’re smart, have resources I only dreamed of, and those that dig through the bullshit will find research data that will exonerate their efforts in making things for their favor. It will take work, and it will take time. Will it be enough? We’ll find out, if we’re here that long…..and I’m not yelling at them. As a construction supervisor, I found that doesn’t work, but I did find younger folks aren’t willing to accept everything thrown their way. Some understood, and contributed after they had time to see the results. Those that didn’t, found their job was over.

        1. Most of them are trying. Again, you should realize what you see in the news, etc, is the establishment justifying itself. If you look beneath, the kids are desperately trying to build/get back to sanity again. With everything against them.

          1. The biggest problem I see with younger folks is they had little help from their parents. Too many were raised in a single parent household, didn’t have enough supervision, and it all can be blamed on the ridiculous opinion that it isn’t good for one parent to stay at home, while the other one worked. That situation would have never happened if the government hadn’t inflated money, spent with a debt burden, and subverted the family.

            All I could ever do was try to help those that wanted help. No, construction isn’t for everyone, but the basic skills learned are priceless when it comes time to find a job.

            1. The most important job skills (which too many are sadly lacking) consist of:

              1. Show up for work
              2. Every day
              3. On time
              4. Sober
              5. Do the f*king job!

              Hey, WPDE does automatic numbered lists. One Attaboy for WPDE!

              1. This has applied for every single job I’ve had, from engineering to dishwashing and everything in between. What the employer pays you for is always their first priority, not whatever delusions you have running around like hamsters behind your eyeballs!

    2. But they don’t have a basic understanding of responsibility because the system has done its best to make that impossible.

      Children are wrapped in bubble wrap, not allowed to be children, not allowed to play-act adulthood as all young animals do.

      They are packed into a human CAFO with an entirely artificial way of life and diet “But at least they’re safe,” and expected to emerge as functional human beings.

      1. This is a big part of it, I think. Trying to remove all risk from childhood and especially teen years means that people do not have the chance to learn from small failures before they get thrown to adulthood and have big ways to fail.

        This is something that has made my early adulthood a struggle. I cruised through my childhood and teens, being the good kid. My parents were too worn out from my siblings to push me, and I was smart enough to learn from observation rather than experience.

        Even in college I mostly coasted through following all the rules. Dropping out of grad school was a big shock, and only now in my 30’s am I really getting a handle on accepting that it is ok to fail sometimes.

  18. And the nightmare scenario: with enough of the population have nothing to gain by not burning the civilization to the ground, and the possibility of gain of they do, eventually someone will light the match.

  19. A “solution” for H1B abuse that I’ve seen and really liked is, very short form, remove all the national origin requirements/proportions for immigration, and have H1B being a kind of trial for immigration.

    The work permit becomes “you have an offer for becoming an American resident without restriction.”

    This both means that we get immigrants of the sort that we really really want as a nation, and the “advantages” of the permits goes away.

    1. Other countries would howl with indignation. We’d be seducing away the best of their generation! *snort*

      I’d be happy to have the Hong Kong democracy protesters or any like them that have the skills and the drive to succeed. That’s a good foundation for great Americans right there.

      1. Other countries would howl with indignation. We’d be seducing away the best of their generation! snort

        I already like the idea, you don’t have to sell it to me!

      2. Or in other words, the exact same thing that they would attempt to do to us if they thought that they could get away with it…

      1. I don’t especially trust the government to manage identifying skills that really can’t be found– and if they can’t get the advantage of being able to illegally over-work the folks they bring in, the they’re not going to pay for doing the immigration paperwork unless they actually need the worker.

          1. I know, some 14 years ago I did a post where I dug around on some of the tricks, and I’ve poked around at other slight of hand stuff too.

            We’re not going to manage to make them stop doing that, or suddenly start enforcing the rules, so the logical next option is to try to reduce the value of cheating.

            As you point out, the value is in having workers that they can mistreat in a manner they could not do with Americans, since they’d quit.

            One of the solutions I’ve seen folks offer is “let people hire H1B workers away from the company that brought them in,” which might work, but I would also like to prevent the effect of keeping on having to look for outside workers at all, while at the same time getting immigrants who actually want to work. (And the screening is rather different, too, though it’d need to be toned down some.)

          2. You’re right, Sarah, they ARE traceable. But once again we get back to de facto vs de jure. The law says these are the rules, but no one is punished for breaking them.

            Well, except for apostates like Elon Musk, who’s getting hammered at Space X for not hiring enough non-citizens with green cards when the projects the other agencies are hiring Space X for don’t allow anyone but US citizens to work on them.

            Very much like voter fraud, now that I think about it. It’s obvious, but no one prosecutes it, or even investigates it.

      2. The advantage of this particular idea is that once the person becomes a citizen, the company can’t threaten him or her with loss of H1B status, and subsequent deportation. Once that stick is removed, a big chunk of the company’s power over the worker is removed, and the worker might feel more confident about pushing for things like raises.

        2. The Indenture period is over when they get their green card.

          The employer leverage is that the H1b clock resets if they manage to change jobs, back to zero. Once they are a “US Person” with a green card, they can go work pretty much where they want.

  20. <BLOCKQUOTE>”… spending my salary on take out and new clothes — we didn’t have time to wash our clothes.”</BLOCKQUOTE>

    Yes, the two-income model typically ignores the higher expenses that accompany it. Day care alone eats away at most of what the second parent owns (leave aside for the nonce the cost of estrangement from your child’s moral upbringing and the emotional harm done the child – those costs are not a reduction in current income.) The ability to cook fresh food is largely a lost art, and the “leisure” to garden for fresh vegetables and herbs is a lost luxury.

    There’s also the higher taxes paid on that second income as well as the overall reduction in salaries due to the larger pool of labor.

    But for G-d’s Sake! when you buy new clothes (with the exception of ‘Dry Clean Only” items, be sure to wash them before wearing them!!!! Do not make me explain, just give a moment’s thoughts to how many unwashed hands have handles those clothes before they reach you! Or search for all locales of known fecal contamination. Yechhhhh.

    ~

    Rgrds,

    RES

    1. Indeed. From my experience a single income household is very doable, even on a modest income–what really matters is spending, and the biggest expense by far is housing, especially if nice housing in a “good” neighborhood is insisted upon.

      1. Being young & stupid is no sin and is almost unavoidable* – but far too many proclaim it a lifestyle choice.

        And one of our political parties relies on keeping Americans immature and ignorant.

        *Those who read Heinlein noticeably diminish the latter condition.

        ~

        Rgrds,

        RES

  21. I am not disputing any of this, but before sinking too deeply into despair over how hard people have to work these days (and people DO work hard) let’s glance into the WayBack Machine to see how hard our ancestors worked.

    The 40-hour week is a recent innovation; our farmhold ancestors (and most of them were farmholders – historically over 90% of people were engaged in agriculture) worked from Can-See to Can’t-See and then put in a few hours daily after that. A 12-hour day was known as Sunday and vacations were a thing unknown.

    We live in a time of abundance, we have indoor plumbing, we have central heat & air, we have cooking tools which don’t involve chopping wood or collecting dung, we have antibiotics, we have the internet, smart phones, automobiles (for now) and we have supermarkets and refrigerator/freezers.

    This is not to deny too many must work too hard to meet basic expenses, it is merely to say we should not fail to be grateful for what we have for resenting what we lack.

    ~

    Rgrds,

    RES

      1. Fair is fair, indeed. Shit is quintessentially organic.

        So are salmonella, botulism, and trichinosis.

        !

        Rgrds,

        RES

        1. Remember Gwineth Paltrow’s ditzy pronouncement that ‘nothing natural will hurt you’?

          Gangrene is 100% natural, you dingbat. Stick to acting.

      2. That which you use for fuel you can not use to fertilize your crops.

        Yes, there are cultures in which this is a very hard trade-off.

    2. You might want to note that your “for now” applies to literally everything on your list, not solely to automobiles. And if Brandon & Co. have their way the “for now” will be short-term indeed. So seeing to it that they don’t have their way is Job One.

  22. The less children born, the more they go bankrupt. The more they are proved wrong.

  23. I have seen the hinky stuff that companies pull in the H-1B tech market for over 25 years now. The only people getting rich off it are the shareholders and C-suite types at places like Cognizant, Tata, Cap Gemini, etc.–the “body shops” that these visa workers work for. The companies pay the visaholders slave wages, mark them up considerably for the end company users (which is still cheaper than an employee) and then rake in the money. And if the end user doesn’t like them or they dare to talk back to their management because of the abusive conditions, or they can’t get the job done (which is VERY frequent)? Well, Prakash quietly disappears and Srikanta shows up in his place. One widget out, one widget in. Because if they’ve actually been brought to the US, they’re still making a ton more than they would be grinding away in a code factory in Hyderabad. Also, they’re smart and live frugally. Some companies will provide apartments for their workers (I saw this when I worked in RTP, NC) but they’ll stack four people in a two-bedroom just like in college. They drive bare-bones used economy cars when they drive at all. They make their crappy wages go very far indeed and they’re still sending half of it back home.

    Also, two other things. First, as a general rule, Indian management are probably the worst about “nepo” hires–in other words, they hire Indians. A white manager can’t do that nowadays because of DIE. But Indians, for example, or any other foreign worker, generally count as protected minorities and can be used to fluff up DIE numbers and make that ESG report to Blackrock and Vanguard look better. So once they hit middle management, well, now your full-time employees are basically slightly better versions of the H-1B hires, but making full-time money and benefits and settled down in the US.

    Second thing. My second-level manager, who is a bit of a weird guy but knows what he’s doing (even though I think he somehow has access to our “anonymous” employee surveys) once implied that the reason my department, software testing, was hiring 90%+ Indians was because the US had simply ceded software QA to them. There were no degree programs for it, I think he said there were maybe two total in North America. Whereas in India, the tech schools are cranking out thousands of software testers a year and flooding the market. I have no clue whether he’s right or not, I’m nearly forty years out of college.

    1. They won’t hire Americans for software QA jobs because Americans demand American salaries.

      The only way you could be a QA tester as an American is to either have an “in” at some point or work for a company that is required by law to have American citizens (defense contractors, I think).

      1. A friend had a software QA job working for one of the Indian contracting companies that was doing a software development job for GE Aviation. The onky reason he had it was the Indian staff weren’t cleared to see the test data.

      2. Things seemed to have changed; I’ve been out of software QA more than 20 years now, but in the 90s that’s what I did for 10 years or so, for Real American Salaries.

        1. Me too, that was how I got into the tech industry for the longest time, working contracts and trying to build up a resume to get an actual job with benefits.
          I had two interviews lined up before the 2000 Tech Crash and had to scramble for The Job on Craig’s List (I expected to be there for six months, a year at most. I was there for nearly twenty years…).
          Saw the writing on the wall when even an “entry level” QA job was requiring a CS degree.

    2. I would be very unsurprised if US degree programs were screwed up WRT QA.

      I know zero about Indian tertiary schools.

      I may have more info about US schools than you do, but if so would come with a massive caveat about sampling issues.

      I think US institutions may be less hungry, I think it would be hard to optimize a CS program for every single need of industry, and US schools have a monopoly on certain DoD research monies. Optimizing for research needs and completely neglecting a low margin industry need does not seem like it would be surprising in that context.

  24. Dad wants us to launch, or at least be in a good enough place when he does pass.

    Considering that the only people calling me back for jobs is the State of California (seriously, only people calling me back, despite applying everywhere else)(1) and while a job with a CalPERS pension wouldn’t break Dad’s heart, almost all of them are 30-40% more than what will probably be the new minimum wage of $20/hour at this rate.

    (Sister has a State job. No COLA and wimpy raises, and if she wants to get more money the State of California way, she’ll probably have to lateral to a different agency. And probably have to move either to Sac or SoCal until she retires. Where she doesn’t know anyone and the costs are insane and she still can’t afford to live there, even with the bump in pay.)

    I was able to live on my own for nearly twenty years, even with my somewhat crappy job, but that was due to sheer blind luck in getting a place before rents went insane in the Bay Area. All I needed was for the job to go bad (didn’t until after I lost the place and the Crow Flu) and I couldn’t find another one soon enough…

    My cars were hand-me-downs from my parents via paper transactions. I paid for my own insurance and bills and never missed rent, but a few times I needed help.

    And let’s not even talk about dating. I think I had every non-violent “bad relationship” you could have that didn’t involve pregnancy and/or a shotgun wedding. Including being banned from a convention for “sexual leering.”

    (I told her she was cute. Once. In pubic. At probably arm’s distance.)

    …and people wonder why I’m depressed.

    It’s been a rough decade. And it’s going to be very rough for a while, especially since this election cycle is going to see every form of crazy happen.

    (1-I technically have a job, part-time with a startup a friend is running, but it’s a startup. Far too many of them fail, especially in his field. And to maintain domestic harmony, Dad wants me to keep looking for “stable” jobs. Add his personal distrust of businesses…it’s been interesting.)

    1. I’ve had the stabby kind. The lying kind, the cheater, the narcissist, the cluster-B disaster in a dress, the controlling and needy kind, and a few more.

      I also know the good ones exist. The loyal, the kind, the steadfast, the nurturers, the brave and intelligent, the reliable, and the cuddlesome. They’re out there. They’ve got their own pasts, their own burned feelings, their own mistrust. None of us are perfect in every way.

      There’s a kind of strength in growing past those people. In not letting their issues infect you- and they will try and make sure they do. Reject such entreaties. They alone are the architects of 90% of their own problems, if not more.

      One thing I’ve learned about people, men and women both but women looking for relationships in particular, is there are a few things that are attractive to the right sort of woman almost universally.

      Confidence. The kind that comes with competence, with speaking the truth and following through on your promises. A steady, calm demeanor when trouble strikes is also good. Strength in all its positive forms: of character, of will, of arm, of purpose. 

      Positive attitude helps. A complainer is not attractive, to either sex. A good sense of humor, patience, and the indomitable will to see a thing through is also good.

      The right woman is not the one you’ll see on dating sites looking for the three sixes, declaiming about what she deserves and demanding unearned respect. The right one is willing to meet you halfway, and to share the burdens of life with you.

      That’s the one that will be just as fun grocery shopping as she is canoodling and kissing. You will have thousands more car trips than sexual caresses, dozens more dishes washed than romps in the sack and innumerable more moments shared in public than private ones- if you’re lucky. 

      A good woman will make any man a better one, and vice versa. They will want what is best for you, and for you to be the best version of yourself- and if she’s the right one, you will agree that that is the man you want to be. And vice versa- you don’t want her to be a mess of undirected emotion and dangerous mania anymore than she wants you to be a humorless drudge trudging towards the grave.

      It might just be that when you find yourself in a good place, she will be the one attracted to you first. The first step is putting in the work to be the man you want to be.

        1. It is not a bad thing to have seen what should be normal and good in the world. It just means you’re likely in a bad place, with bad people around.

          To be honest, there are probably more normal, good folks around than that. But the bad ones are more memorable. Chalk it up to the evolution of the human brain- that which might kill you stands out.

          Your perfect won’t be the same as theirs, though. You are your own person. Find your own stability, and refuse to be budged from it. 

  25. The current real estate slump is caused by high interest rates and a lack of homes for sale. According to National Association of Realtors stats single women are the second largest group of home buyers after married couples. Single guys are a distant third at 10%.

    1. Recent real estate boom was result of limited homes on the market, and low interest rates. Locally builders couldn’t build them fast enough. Existing homes weren’t selling because while could get high return, cost as much or more, and probably downsizing. Thus, why? Now everyone is entrenched in their homes not giving up the low interest rates unless forced. Nor are homeowners doing home improvement except by cash as HELOC%’s are high (we’ve seen them higher, but still, current market hasn’t).

      1. Are you suggesting a relationship between supply and demand? I am sorry, but you have proven yourself too intelligent for consideration as a member of the Biden* Regime. LOL

  26. Inflation affects housing prices, too. And like interest rates, it’s driven off government debt. I wouldn’t have a house if not for the VA loan deal. And because of the “peace dividend” we slashed the numbers in our military and took that avenue away from most young men and women.

    Still, I work with a variety of folks, many half my age or less, who make the same salary I do. And yes, getting married later is an issue they haven’t seen/recognized yet.

    Today’s a good day to find reasons to be thankful for the blessings we have today and let tomorrow worry about tomorrow’s issues.

  27. I’m old enough to remember the feminists yelling in the 70s that marriage was a patriarchal institution that had to be destroyed for women to be truly equal.

    Congrats ladies, you succeeded. Marriage today is vastly different than it was 60 years ago, it has become simply a legal status not any kind of lifelong commitment. I could argue all day about what marriage should be, but that doesn’t change what it is. Simply a legal status giving you certain rights, including accepting the law as the default pre-nup {which will change over time as the laws change} unless you and your spouse agree to a

    Been married and divorced. Kept the kids, bought the ex out of the house, we have a cordial relationship and can attend all the kids’ (and now grandkids’) events and celebrate holidays in one place.

    Would I get married today? Nope, legal marriage provides nothing of benefit to men, I’d rather be in a committed relationship.

    Marriage is dropping because women find 80% of men as unattractive, the top 5% they want have so many options many won’t marry or commit to one woman. The remainder are the guys women ‘settle’ for, marry and then divorce. A lot of young men have seen what their fathers, their fathers’ friends, and their friends’ fathers have gone through in divorce. Not eager to go through it themselves.

    1. I’d like to point out the Feminists who wanted to destroy marriage were a tiny minority. And the same for your last paragraph. It’s someone’s bad study pushed to make things seem dire.
      None of this is as dire as you think. There is a strong risk, yes, but there always was.
      Perhaps not listening to propaganda is something that would help both men nd women as well.

    2. At one point I got digging and recognize that first stat in the last paragraph, and another.

      Marriage is dropping because women find 80% of men as unattractive, the top 5% they want have so many options many won’t marry or commit to one woman.

      This is often cited as a “study,” to the effect that women rated 80 or 85% of men as below average in looks.

      It is actually from a humorous essay from dating site OK Cupid– archived here— which ignores two very important bits of information:

      1. Users don’t actually have to use the scale as designers intended
      2. If you rated someone as a 5, it sent them a signed note saying you found them attractive; if they were rated as a 2, they would not be shown again, and if each of you rated the other as a 1, it would send a signed nasty gram to each saying as much.

      With this in mind, it becomes obvious that very few actual females are going to rate a guy as a 5, and that the “don’t show me this” rating will be used for things like “He’s got a dog, I’m allergic.” 
      They aren’t rating by appearance, they’re rating by app experience.

      This maps with the messaging patterns of women, which are highest at… significantly below average, with better than ten percent being the “send them a note saying you’re ugly” rating.

      Guys used the scale to rate women by attractiveness, resulting in about 5% being Ugly or Tell Her She’s Pretty Right Now, messaging rounding-error of the Ugly, and their messages spiked at about four and a half on a five point scale.

       A gal rated as average was about as likely to get a message as a guy rated as ugly. Which is really not surprising once your correct for normal male and female behavior.

      The remainder are the guys women ‘settle’ for, marry and then divorce. A lot of young men have seen what their fathers, their fathers’ friends, and their friends’ fathers have gone through in divorce. Not eager to go through it themselves.

      Any divorce is bad, but tends to at least behave as if it is socially transmitted– different subgroups have radically different results– and the stats of raw numbers are trash. As best I can tell, divorces get recorded in all involved states, and can be performed for folks who didn’t get married in the country, and that is before issues like folks who have five or eight divorces come in.

      At one point I dove into the Community Survey from the census to look at their timing and duration of marriages, it would likely be for the 2011 release; they have stats for age and sex blocks, sorted by never married, ever married, and not currently married.

      It didn’t reach the infamous 50% of marriages ending in any demographic until it got up to gals in their 60s and 70s. That is, marriage ended due to death.

      When I was trying to find where the census had moved their data this time, I ran into an article on IFStudies dot org, from 2022, titled New Census Data: Key Takeaways on Divorce, Marriage, and Fertility in the U.S.; a search engine of your choice should find it.

      As for the gals divorcing… last time I looked at the stats, while 70% of the time the woman filed, that went back before no-fault divorce was an option. And the few times folks have dug down deeper, it turns out that if it’s a mutual agreement divorce, the gal is the one who usually does the filing. Presumably because she’s more likely to be able to go in to the office when the lawyer is there, without taking time off of work.

      1. Oh. And my impression that women are unusually predatory in divorce, I realized last night, came from ONE woman who has been married… either six or seven times and takes her husbands to the cleaners every time.
        And then I realized that while she sanitizes her past to the new victim, it can’t be hard to hire a detective to look into her past (Look, in the village they did this to anyone outside the village courting a girl) which would reveal her past.
        I mean…. who marries a woman who has gotten divorced that often? At best she’s an idiot who keeps marrying the wrong guys. At worst, she’s a predator.

        1. At the very least, who marries a woman divorced that many times without thinking about it, and looking kind of hard!

          One of our single-man-bump-up-the-divorce-stats guys kept marrying women he met at AA meetings. There were at least a half dozen, because the last marriage that failed I remember we were trying to figure out if it was seven or if there’d been seven divorces and noen of us wanted to ask.

          He has been remarried for over 15 years, now, though.
          …to his favorite ex wife, #3. And I’m STILL not sure if that’s three of seven or what.

          1. >to his favorite ex wife, #3. And I’m STILL not sure if that’s three of seven

            My favorite was seven of nine.

            Sorry, what were we talking about?

        2. BIL has been married 3x’s. First one barely counts. Married long enough for the infant to be born. Just has the one son. Yes, “had to” (BIL is 77.) Second marriage was 15 years. Third marriage is 33 years and counting as of this next August. His wife has been married 4 times.

          Cousin was married for 2 years. One child. What mama wanted was a baby daddy so she could milk him for every dime, without being married. Boy did she mess that up. Not sure how her mom talked her into marrying (which gave cousin fatherhood rights, and even better his parents, grandparents rights). But where she really failed? No money to milk. Not from him. Not from his parents. Not from either grandparents. Nothing. Oh she got some child support, but no spousal support. He lived with his parents to be able to afford it (paid minimal rent, to help them pay rent). Then at 18, because the child chose no college or vocational training, child support stopped. “But mom can’t survive without the child support payments.” “Tough. That money was paid to support you, not her.”

    3. legal marriage provides nothing of benefit to men, I’d rather be in a committed relationship.

      Then find yourself in a common law marriage if you are not careful. Do not cohabit.

          1. As the data shows, only 9 states plus DC recognize common-law marriage with no restrictions. (New Hampshire is interesting; only recognized for inheritance.)

  28. I Dunno. Whenever I see an article listing the “reasons” for lack of marriage and low birth rates I remember that people got married and had kids when they lived in dirt floor houses with in laws, sharing beds with multiple siblings. They got married and had kids through war and famine and plagues. It isn’t that we can’t afford to feed and house our families. It’s that we can’t afford it like we want to.

    It isn’t that life isn’t hard. But I think we’re accepting excuses everyone through history had but didn’t need. In the end people don’t get married and have kids because of lack of faith in the future and/or a self centered mentality that doesn’t leave room for doing with less for yourself so you can share it.

    1. MC88, you have a distinct point.

      Long ago, when I was working, I sometimes had co-workers bend my ear whining about their finances. Being one of THOSE women (“unfeminine”), I would suggest solutions.

      One oft-repeated plaint was the cost of cellphones. (MANY years ago, but it hasn’t improved.) I sported a prepaid flip-phone since you had to have a cell to work pretty much. When I suggested this economical alternative, you never heard such defensiveness. No, no, the whiny one HAD to have the expensive phone with the expensive data plan and the expensive contract. HAD to. But when I asked WHY this person HAD to have it, there was stammering and a distinct lack of answer.

      They stopped whining at me because I didn’t pat shoulders and croon “There, there,” I actively suggested solutions. But the idea of “settle for less, especially on a temporary basis” has completely vanished from SOME minds.

      Similarly, when I see one of those sob stories in the media about the cost of living correlated with minimum wage….no one cites studio apartments, roommates, or other bottom-bracket solutions. It’s always “two-bedroom apartment”.

      I am sure this plays into the issue on some level.

      1. What they were probably too embarrassed to say was that the “HAD to” was because the idea of not having the latest and greatest would mean that they were failing to “keep up” with the “best” people. And it applies to everything, from houses to socks. The old saw of “Use it up, wear it out; make it do or do without” is incomprehensible to them. I consider it to be their problem; not my circus, not my monkeys.

        1. But it’s not. I mean, some sure. This is the “All kids are spoiled! Argle Bargle!” argument, but just on income. Dan and I bought houses at 3x annual income starting out. Our kids can’t afford a starter house at that where they live, and they’re not in super-expensive regions OR poorly paid for their age/experience.
          Income has not kept pace with housing, which is a primary expense.
          And to answer the mud hut thing: your kids are not going to be helping you work at four. in fact, they’re all outlay and responsiblity for 18 years, at least, and more likely 25, due to laws and other stuff.
          AND you’re likely to live much longer so not unreasonably, you want to save for old age.
          This is not keeping up iwth the joneses. Other than gaming computers (and theirs are not specialty stuff) I don’t know kids that have anything we didn’t have. They in fact have less.
          AND we were not social climbers “keep up with the Joneses”. We drove beaters and usually lived in working-class neighborhoods or when renting student apartments.

          1. I wasn’t trying to label all kids as that sort, just noting a possible reason why the (supposed) adults Nancy was talking about acted the way they did. And I, and I’m sure you, have encountered them. They’re far from a majority, but like the current “activists” of one type or another, they’re noisy and annoying far more than their numbers would indicate.

            As for the difference in “have” between my generation and the current one, cellphones, computers and the Internet are all things we didn’t have until I was in my 40s. And freedom to roam and explore without hovering parents and draconian laws about “child abuse” (which frequently isn’t, but let your kid go to the park alone in his/her early teens? Stand by for a visit from CPS) were things we had and they don’t. It’s really no wonder so many are in therapy (if that’s not just hype from the fanatics at both ends of the political spectrum).

            1. All y’all do please reread my comment and how I said it PLAYS INTO the mess. It’s one factor in an issue that is likely as multifaceted as a brilliant cut.

              MC88 points out that small houses are scarce. I’m sure studio apartments are as well. I grew up in a small house with ONE bathroom, but realtors inform me that people want one bathroom per bedroom anymore. And it’s hard to cram extra bathrooms into 900 sq ft.

              Something I’ve noted also in my study of history is that things progress predictably from luxury to convenience to necessity. Running water, flush toilets, electricity, etc., were all luxuries when introduced. Twenty years ago, I found that having home Internet access was a necessity when doing jobsearch. It’s only gotten worse.

              1. Everything dealing with humans is complex. But no argument here; my initial response was just a WAG regarding a possible reason for a single aspect. And your point regarding the progression of “necessities” is, IMHO, well-taken.

              2. Heck, we found our sons needed a movie camera to do homework for French. We didn’t own one. This caused our older to become proficient in creating animation with the powerpoint suite that came with his computer, and then teaching his brother to do it.
                BUT our kids are unusually creative.
                By the time they hit college we had to get them smart phones, and I could explain why, but they were needed for school work is the short thing.
                As for bathrooms, we had a heck of time selling our meticulously remodeled Victorian, in 2003, because it had 3 bathrooms and seven bedrooms. So it’s not just what you want, but other people’s expectations, too.

                1. If that was for K-12, it’s interesting that the school could require you to spend hundreds to thousands of dollars for equipment. I wonder how they would have reacted to receipt of a bill for it?

                    1. High school. They ASSUMED everyone owned a movie camera.

                      HS, early ’00s, presumed everyone had a phone with video on it. We did not. No one in son’s group did (this was for Spanish). We did however have a video camera and the cable software combo to convert to digital. Set him up to covert his groups, then he helped other groups too (using commercial options meant the group was late turning in the project. Pretty sure the teacher was shocked about the lack.) I think there were two students in the class who someone in their family had video on their cell phones. Our son barely had gotten his own cell phone. He had the same type of phone we did.

            2. CPS has to find enough ‘child abuse’ to justify their existence, and hopefully enough to increase their budget and staff requirements every year.

              So it goes with every department the government establishes to solve some perceived problem. Even if the problem is as real and serious as it’s made out to be, the bureaucracy has no incentive to actually solve the problem, or even make it better. That would reduce or eliminate the need for the bureaucracy, leading to budget cuts and layoffs. Inconceivable!

              Instead, they have to hype up the problem. Their failure to make any sort of progress toward solving it just means they need MOAR MONEY!

              The government is in the business of enabling everything they claim to be working against.

          2. There are people in Silicon Valley who are homeless because they can’t afford apartments, let alone homes. More than a few live in RV’s. Or there was a reason the “lived at the office, for wink, wink, for work.” Or did before 2020 and the work from home. How many bolted for housing that they could afford? How many are now saying “Heck no, I am not going back into the office.”

            1. Where I used to work, one guy on the graveyard shift was effectively homeless. He slept on the beach during the day.

              See, the cops hassle you for sleeping on the beach at night, but not during the day.

      2. Yes, and it’s the same thing with starter homes. I acknowledge that there aren’t many small homes being built, but that’s because they don’t sell. I grew up in a 1200 sqft 3 bedroom home. Good luck finding a house that small that isn’t 50 years old or absolute custom. There are plenty of stories of families with 5 or 6 or more kids growing up with 2 or 3 bedrooms, up until this generation.

        None of this is to say “in my day…” But I see how people made due when they got married and always made room for one more baby. In fact if people got married earlier those larger apartments would be in reach. If you pick the right person then getting married earlier is an accelerant to getting ahead. Decline is a choice.

    2. Sigh. Sure, people did all that, because they had to. Because kids were needed to work, by the age of 4 and 5.
      Re-examine your assumptions. Unless you live in pre-history.

      1. Sarah, I’m unsure what you mean. The whole thing is complicated. I don’t think it’s as simple as kids were your retirement plan. But we seem to have some kind of weird death cult taking over the globe that has nothing to do with the cost of living or other crisis, because despair and fear aren’t new. Asia, Europe, North America and now even South America and Africa seem to be having some weird crisis where no culture is replacing themselves. It’s like some societal euthanasia where many just lay down and are ready to go.

        but if it’s “you had to have kids for your own future” then if we get rid of social security people will start having a buttload of kids.

        2. I agree with you that there is an anti-people cult spreading. Perhaps 40 years of telling everyone we were over-populated bore fruit.
          BUT absolutely there are other issues and a lot of them are economic.
          I didn’t say people had kids to help in their old age. Most people in the time you reference didn’t have an old age. I said people now have to save for a long non-productive old age.
          I don’t think anyone my age and younger expects social security to last.

          1. Sarah, thanks for the elaboration. I wasn’t trying to say that you don’t have a point, merely that I don’t think it adds up to societal suicide. I don’t think it’s this generation because I see a lot of the causes as going back to this generation’s grandparents. It just takes awhile for the cracks in the foundation to shift the frame of the house.

            I think birth control has had a more profound effect, not just in it’s availability and use, but in the demonic promises it whispers in our ears of what we could do (perpetual adolescence) and should do (wait until we’re “ready” and the time is perfect to have kids). It discourages us from marriage and paralyzes us with “options” that lead people to spend the decade that defines the cornerstone of our adult lives (our 20s) lost and lonely instead of building marriages and having babies. We’ve extended adolescence but only marginally extended fertility.

            After all, forget the kids for a sec. Historically many people got married because they couldn’t afford to live on their own. They needed two young working people to make a household function. The business of living (cooking, laundry, etc) took amazing labor on top of the money needed to spend on food and clothing. Having “your own place” wasn’t an option for young men or women until they got married (and sometimes not even then). And if economics were the determining factor then richer people would have more kids. But we don’t see that. In fact what we see is A LOT more single parenthood, which is the opposite of what you should see if economics is the driving factor.

  29. Son launched successfully with BSME. We saved up for his education, so no student debt. He took a mediocre job, but with OT was into 6 figures by his second year. Got fed up, started his own company, now has a house bigger than our starter home, but he was in at age 26, while we were not in until I was 32.

    Daughter with double BS, graduated last year, no debt, still living with us, would really love to be stay at home mom like her mom was, but can’t find anyone she likes other than guys who want to go military. Everyone else playing video games or drinking themselves into early graves. So, yeah, make sure you choose your parents well, but even if you do, you face a crapshoot to find someone else who chose well.

    Question for you coders out there. I’ve been out of that biz for like 30 years, but is there really any advantage to AI over just building up a library of code blocks and snippets like we used to do?

  30. And add on top that, to all those poor men and boys–look, far too many of them are living in utter TERROR of the female type that has been promoted above all: the manipulative bitch. I saw a youtube short the other day, where a woman had deliberately halved her portions, and then demanded to know why her husband hadn’t asked her why she was eating less. His response “Oh, I thought you were trying to lose weight or something” was, apparently, 1000% wrong. Not sure what the right answer was supposed to be–in fact, I’m fairly sure there WASN’T a right answer here. It was entirely designed to give her an excuse to dump on him for being a horrible, awful man. I commented that if he was smart, he’d run now–and someone replied to me that it was too late, they clearly already had at least one kid together.

    While I will fully acknowledge that at LEAST 85-90% of my single state is down to my being a pathological introvert (who, like my male counterparts, found too much solace in escapism, including, yes, games) and cripplingly shy (I can talk, sure, but), the other 10-15% is, at least in part, down to the fact that every young man I knew in college, etc was running scared. They didn’t want to get married, because they knew how very high the odds were of her then divorcing him a few years later (or many years later), taking him to the cleaners, denying him the right to parent his own children, and/or otherwise ruining his life. Hell, I *knew* men in my age group–and we are talking only mid to late twenties at that time!!–who had ALREADY BEEN THROUGH THAT. (And while on a personal level, I find someone immediately telling me about their psycho ex upon first acquaintance to be something of a red flag–I also don’t doubt that at least some of those men really DID have a psycho ex.) And my group had the added pressures of our religion: while there was less of the baby trap or similar nonsense happening (it still happened, but by and large–premarital shenanigans is a no-no amongst good Mormon kids, so it happened a *bit* less), there was also the “and if you’re not married before you are 25 you are worthless” attitude (that’s the culture, mind you, not the actual religion), and so you had terrified young women (some of whom fell under the manipulative bitch category) doing everything they could to coerce already-running-scared young men into marrying them…and I am sure that a sad number of those ended in divorce and confirmed the young man’s worst fears.

    At this point (now in my 40s)…I think I’m on board with the idea of bringing matchmakers and arranged marriages back into our overall culture. Let someone not blinded by hormones and with a vested interest in the younger parties have a chance to really evaluate the potential candidates by their characters and behavior somehow…

    1. Sarah, I am also in my forties and matchmakers sounds like a bloody terrible idea to me. Not for any of the usual reasons- I know at least one gal of my knowledge whose picker is broken (as in, can’t pick a guy that will treat her right) who would benefit from anybody else choosing for her- but because I have little faith in the sainthood of the common man. 

      A matchmaker has to have at least a little of that, I think. Oh sure enough, there’s loads of folks around that “just want to help.” The kind that should never be given the job, rather like politicians that way. 

      Have you ever seen friends trying to set up mutual friends? Haven’t seen that one work out yet, sadly, and that’s been with parties involved that know the two and have vested interest in seeing them work out.

      Considering the first thing out the mouth comments on psycho exes, my take has always been that the single most common denominator in all those failed relationships was them. I know guys like that, and a few women too. They are not happy people, for the most part.

      That’s one of the things men and women both want from a relationship, and look for in initial meetings. Happiness. Not just can we have fun together in a non-sexual way first? More the are they even capable of being happy question. 

      One of the loveliest women I know, the one who gets the majority of the male attention around, she is a tiny little brunette with the most adorable little giggle-laugh. First the high pitched peep, then she covers her mouth and turns a little pink. Then her shoulders start twitching as she tries to hold it in before the giggles come back again. Her husband loves that laugh to pieces. Most of the other guys around do too.

      I think it’s because she shows that she is happy- and can share the happiness with others. Shared joys are where it’s at. If you’re a bookish introvert gamer, you don’t necessarily have to date one just like that. Sometimes opposites attract. They have strengths you don’t, and vice versa.

      Unless they were people with superpowers, future sight, and no evil tendencies I cannot at this time recommend mortal matchmakers. Well, except cats/dogs. Those might work out. Maybe.

      I’m also totally not writing a matchmaking cat story. That one’s all on somebody else. Plot bunny, free to a good home!

      I wish you luck in your search, though. From what you’ve shared, you’re exactly what a lot of guys want: someone who can appreciate their interests. Just gotta find the one that’s right for you. Mind, like our host mentioned above, it might take a little work…

      1. “Sometimes opposites attract.”

        This is true. I remember reading a factoid about one particular British MP and famed orator. I think it was Disraeli. And apparently after each day in Parliament, where he often gave powerful speeches, he would come home, have a seat in the same room as his wife, and listen to her mindlessly chatter about the first things to cross her mind.

        And he loved it.

        So, you never know what’s going to work where matches are concerned.

        1. I can see that. But…in my observations one of the major things that make matches work is shared core values (not necessarily same religion, but compatible values). They might be completely different in hobbies/tastes/whatever–but I think there will always be certain Important Things (whatever that might be) that they either agree on or share compatible outlooks on, and these are often the kinds of things that aren’t going to change, so if they aren’t compatible from the start it’s not likely it’s going to work.

          And as far as matchmakers go, no, I don’t think a widespread professional service sort of matchmaker would really work at all. It would have to be more of a VERY small scale and very tailored to the individual, and so yeah, no don’t see how it could actually work, especially for Odds.

          Or maybe we just need a matchmaking service FOR Odds! 😀

          1. Well, it definitely wouldn’t be the craziest idea that turned out to work. I can imagine the interview questions…

            “How much government should there be?”

            A)less than there is now.

            2)A LOT less than there is now.

            iii)Just enough to have one.

            xxxx)Small enough to only have recently been theorized by scientists and the explanation still sounds dodgy as all get out.

            Shared values are a definite must. Not just “kids or nah?” Moral themes, approach to finances, argument style (I swear there are styles to couple arguments, I’ve seen at least six), relationship with existing family, and so on. 

            Religion can be a stumbling block for some, though. I’ve known Christians who couldn’t tolerate Christians of an even slightly different flavor, let alone other religions. Having something that one has faith in, though, that is a must for most faithful types.

            Back to the original though, an Odd matchmaker- or a matchmaker of Odds? If the former they might just snatch the two up and drop them somewhere in the forest with a few matches and a “good luck on your adventures!” I can see that going either way- either really good or absolutely terrible. But at least then you’d know!

              1. definitely 3.
                I do what I can when I see two things that go together. Right now the mental roladex has a lot of mismatches in age and religion.

            2. Definitely would have to be an Odd matchmaker OF Odds 😀 That’s the only way it could work!!lol, actually–and I am saying this as someone who is NOT an outdoorsy person in any way, shape, or form–that actually sounds a little bit fun (presuming, of course, that there was not a significant chance of death.)

    2. I’m now three generations in to women that Everyone Knew Would Never Marry– and I only can’t say further because I didn’t hear about how my great-grandmothers were.

      So I already know how matchmakers would place me, and my kids. We’d never exist.

      (also: e-hug)

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