Morning Ed: Relationships {2018.03.22.Th}
[Re1] I’m not surprised about alcohol vs pot here, though a little about alcohol vs ecstasy. I guess it’s a product of selection. If you’re open for doing ecstasy, you’re probably more open to having sex generally, whereas alcohol is a more general social drink.
[Re2] I can sort of understand this at the outset of a relationship, though if you’re still doing it after a year you might want to reassess.
[Re3] It turns out waving the Jolly Roger proudly has dating consequences.
[Re4] The modern difficulties of dating in the old school. (Or what 1930’s erotica can teach us about dating.)
[Re5] Read some 300-word love stories.
[Re6] Scott Stanley writes “advice to singles” if they want to avoid later divorce. It seems notable that people with these characteristics tend to marry other people who marry these characteristics.
[Re7] He swiped right, she swiped with a samurai sword.
[Re8] Divorce and religion make for complicated family law.
[Re9]
Sure. It was the cooking. (Chicago Tribune, June 10, 1916) pic.twitter.com/0yHdMMzQyt
— Christian Schneider (@Schneider_CM) February 20, 2018
Re1: My guess is that ecstasy is an upper rather than downer like alcohol.
Re3: Especially in a political and partisan town like DC. Don’t signal that you are part of the enemy camp when dating across battle lines.
Re4: One constant problem with dating advice across the ages is that all of its aspirational and based on behavior best suited for the most attractive, extroverted, and flirtatious people out there. The learn how to sext advice is an example of this. Even with practice, most people aren’t going to be that great at writing in general and erotic writing in particular, which stumbles even established authors. There is a reason why there is an award for bad sex writing and not good sex writing. Much of this advice might also come across a lot better on paper than in reality.
Re7: Romance certainly brings out the worst in humans at times. Its like alcohol in that regard, a source of great pleasure and massive pain.
Re9: The Court of Domestic Relations is a much cooler name for a court than Family Court. They used to give courts cooler names like Common Pleas, Exchequer, or Arches. Now they don’t.Report
There still is the Court of Common Pleas in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Other states as well, I would guess, but I don’t know. My favorite, though, is the Supreme Court of New York. If some New York lawyer tries to impress you by talking about his case before the Supreme Court, don’t be.Report
Also Ohio has a Court of Common Pleas. They are basically Superior Courts whose names never changed.
Delaware still has a Chancery Court that kind of functions like old Chancery Courts but Delaware is kind of unique in being the incorporating state of a lot of corporations.Report
I believe Illinois and Tennessee also maintain separate chancery courts.
Delaware still has the praecipe though.Report
I’m from New York. I’m well aware that the Supreme Court is the court of first instance for the most part and the Court of Appeals is the higher court.Report
Here in Maryland the supreme court is the Court of Appeals, while the intermediate appellate court is the Court of Special Appeals. Intuitive it isn’t.Report
Re3: Libertarianism as attempt to mate without having to change one’s belief systems.Report
Maybe you Colorado-ans (Coloradans? Midicholorodians?) can explain the inside joke from the article?
“We had a really nice time, but at the end of the date, he told me he didn’t believe in global warming,” she says. “I started laughing, because I’m from Colorado and didn’t realize people actually didn’t believe in global warming. But he was serious.”
I get everything but the explanation. I mean, I’m in Sales and the first thing we’re taught is to *always* follow-up on something that indicates motivation. You’d think journalism would too. There’s probably a great story about how Colorado does, well, something…Report
I don’t have any “oh, what she meant was” explanations, but, in the last decade or so, we’ve seen some weather changes (including less snowpack at ski resorts).
I have a handful of plausible explanations but no “oh, she was using shorthand… let me tell you the long version of what she was *REALLY* saying ones.Report
@marchmaine That stuck out to me too.
Thinking on it, the only people I’ve ever met here who don’t believe in global warming are older and strict evangelical Christians (and not even a majority of them!! mostly just the ones who buy word for word into whatever their pastor of choice thinks on any subject). Everyone else is like “yes, but…” if they voted for Trump. Yes but one thing or the other. “Yes, but we aren’t at fault. Yes, but we can change it through engineering. Yes, but I’m a lot more worried about thing X.” not literally “no, it’s not a thing.”
@michael-cain may have more insight into this than I do, he has a family member who works in weather.
When I say “Look, Western Republicans – even the Trump voters! – are just *different*” this is the sort of thing I mean… They vote Republican because they vote Republican, but they make up their own minds about all kinds of things.
Which, uh, is what I assume about most Republicans, tbh, but apparently not believing in global warming is actually a real thing that real people do?? Even Washington political operatives??? I’m from Canada, we don’t disbelieve in global warming there :D.
Less subjectively, she may just be a skiier:
https://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/2018/01/26/weather-and-climate-we-fearhow-climate-change-alter-skiing-colorado/1038318001/
The key points from that article for me were:
“We know mountain snowpack has decreased 20 to 60 percent at most monitoring sites in Colorado since the 1950s, according to an EPA analysis. We know Colorado’s average temperature has increased more than 2 degrees in the last 40 years.”
IE, we know it’s real because we can literally already see it happening in the data and feel it on our skins. Plus shorter skiing seasons.
Maybe that’s all she meant.
I’ve also seen plenty of people (IMO mistakenly) attribute our rash of wildfires and flooding to global warming (as opposed to ill-thought-out suppression schemes of yore, and lack of current funding for less ill-thought-out controlled burn schemes…).
So it coulda been that.
Good point that they should have inquired further, though. Maybe the reporter was from Colorado :P.Report
Thoughts in addition to Maribou’s…
A Coloradan who moved to the DC area much more likely than not moved from the Front Range, so urban/suburban. As a percentage, Colorado’s rural population is declining steadily. 2021 should be interesting if Colorado gets its eighth House seat as anticipated.
In many of the mountain areas, beetle kill like this. One of the contributing factors is that cold spells deep enough to kill the beetle larva* don’t happen as often. Beetle kill doesn’t necessarily translate into more or bigger fires, but it does result in hotter fires, which create different problems.
My friends who hunt remark that the mountain snows start later in the fall, so the elk move down to lower elevations later, and they have had to change which weeks or weekends they take off for elk season.
Personal impression only, but the spring snows down here on the flat are tending to be less in March and more in April. Many of the climate models predict cooler wetter springs in the northern part of the state. South of the Palmer Divide where Maribou and Jaybird live is a different deal.
The Republican mayor and city council in Fort Collins (pop 150K+ at the north end of the Front Range urban corridor) are actively working to reduce the city’s carbon footprint because “everyone knows global warming is real”.
Just as Maribou says “Western Republicans are… different…”, I have long said that Western Democrats are different (even in California). Some of that may be due to my looking at things through my peculiar regional filter.
* As the weather gets colder the grubs accumulate enough alcohol in their cells to act as anti-freeze. It typically takes multiple consecutive nights with lows below -20 °F to kill them.Report
Pfff.
I’m about as libertarian as can get–living in a deep blue state. I still got dates and such. Now I wasn’t dating in DC mind you..that’s a whole different world. Of course my bookshelf contains a lot more books on sci fi than politics.Report
There’s “Deep Blue” and there’s “Warshington DC”.Report
[Re6] You’re such a stealthy reactionary when it comes to romance; I approve. The Stanley piece -once you get past the semi-irrelevant correlation statistics – is actually a pretty decent (and secular) inventory of things to consider when you are “out there.”Report
Re3: I don’t see why this should be surprising. D.C. is a Democratic city and Trump is not the most popular person in the world nor are his staff and fans. I honestly don’t get why we fret about political and philosophical differences being dealbreakers for romantic relationships. These things are important to people and sometimes the stakes really are high. We also don’t seem to fret about dating sites where right-wingers can find other right-wingers. We only fret when it is “Oh noes, a Democrat doesn’t want to date a right-winger!!!”Report
For me, it’s not that it’s surprising. I mean, hey. It’s DC.
What percentage of folks there between the ages of… I don’t know what prime dating app usage would be… 19-35? Came there from somewhere else entirely? What percentage of those people did so because, on a scale of 1-10, politics were the most important thing in their lives?
That said, it’s always funny to read about the unintended consequences of putting a whole bunch of singles between the ages of 19-35 who, on a scale of 1-10, all care about ONE PARTICULAR THING more than they care about anything else.
In this case, it’s that conservatives (presumably men?) can’t find dates.
Surely the long-term effects of the seat of power not having any women who represent the political point of view of ~half the country won’t have any wacky outcomes.Report
I suspect that a lot of these guys aren’t going to be in D.C. forever and/or they will eventually find a mate. Lots of people go through a lot of rejection before finding a mate.
I don’t get you Jaybird. You seem to think that the burden here is on the left instead of on the right-wing guys, gamergaters, incelers, or whomever to reevaluate their choices, beliefs, and decisions. The implication I am getting from you is that you think all this rejection is going to lead to some kind of violent uprising or coup like the Handmaiden’s Tale or some other dystopia. But your reaction to this is that left-wing women seemingly need to coddle right-wing men.Report
“The implication I am getting from you is that you think all this rejection is going to lead to some kind of violent uprising or coup like the Handmaiden’s Tale or some other dystopia. But your reaction to this is that left-wing women seemingly need to coddle right-wing men.”
Please stop speculating negatively and at length what Jaybird thinks and believes so often. I mean, you can do it all you want, but keep it to yourself rather than commenting about it.
I’ve warned you about this before. More than once. Couching half your claims in “The implication I am getting from you” is a half-measure, not a fix.Report
You seem to think that the burden here is on the left instead of on the right-wing guys, gamergaters, incelers, or whomever to reevaluate their choices, beliefs, and decisions.
Wait, what?
I thought we were talking about conservative men being unable to find dates in Warshington DC.
If I had to guess, these guys were guys who do shit like “work 12 hour days” and “wear suits all the time” rather than, in the case of gamergaters/incels, wear tighty-whities on the couch while spending their NEETbux on video games and hentai.
The implication I am getting from you is that you think all this rejection is going to lead to some kind of violent uprising or coup like the Handmaiden’s Tale or some other dystopia. But your reaction to this is that left-wing women seemingly need to coddle right-wing men.
Your Tulpa of me is not calibrated correctly.
Here, let me help. I think that all of this rejection will, instead, result in these conservative guys in DC *ABANDON CONSERVATIVISM*.
Indeed, my joke at the top of this was this, here, let me cut and paste it:
Libertarianism as attempt to mate without having to change one’s belief systems.
It strikes me as far, far, far, *FAR* more likely that the guys in DC will domesticate themselves out of conservativism than institute the Handmaid’s Tale.
As for “some other dystopia”, dude. We’re already living in a dystopia.
Anyway, I see three things happening to these guys:
1. They’ll change
2. They won’t change and go back to their hometowns to find a suitable mate
3. They won’t change and will stay and live something close to a non-dating life (they might get lucky and meet someone on the rebound or they might utilize some of the sex workers who cater to conservatives in DC)
And this will have unintended consequences.
Though the unintended consequences that I was thinking of would be something like “people who have no experience with DC getting elected to represent the people who don’t have people like them in DC on, like, large scales and the people who have plenty of DC people representing them having no idea what happened or why” more than anything else.
I suppose we could argue over whether such a thing could ever happen, of course.Report
[Re2] So, what’s the difference exactly between a “back burner relationship” and a “friend for whom one also has romantic feelings”? I have a few friends I’m attracted to, and whether or not I think this attraction is requited I would not cut them off from friendship since they’re my friends and I value the friendship in its own right.
I mean, I’m not single but I’m also not monogamous so if the stars align right there’s nothing stopping me from dating such a friend. Monogamous or not, I’m not looking hard for someone to date; but if I broke up with my current partner, I might indeed put a bit more energy into exploring whether some of these friends might be viable romantic partners.
Are they “back burner relationships”? If so is that a problem?Report
Back burner implies more of a plan B if your current relationship doesn’t work out. Like a plan to immediately start dating them.Report
@dragonfrog I looked up some of the articles, eg https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01463373.2015.1039719?src=recsys , and as far as I can tell the authors are realizing it’s not necessarily any kind of problem, and that they might need to reconsider some things.
But they also seem to not really believe in the existence of non-monogamy (or at least if they’re screening for only theoretically serial-monogamous people, they don’t admit to it or acknowledge that aspect of their research in any way), so I find it hard to take them very seriously.Report
There seems to be an element of the canard that men and women can’t be friends, a la When Harry Met Sally. FWIW, my best friend is a woman. We started out dating, but were a terrible couple (as in standing in parking lots screaming at each other, which isn’t like either of us). So we broke up and ended up as best friends. She was my best, um…, person at my wedding, and is the godmother of my elder daughter. Her eventual husband realized early on in his relationship with her that I was part of the package as a de facto brother-in-law.Report
I’ve had numerous platonic friendships with women and zero romantic ones, so I find this strange to. It’s absoluely possible for men and women to be friends.Report
Re3:
I saw mentioned elsewhere that from 2014 to 2016 the support for Republicans among millennial men has actually increased slightly, while falling noticeably among millennial women.
I think some of this is the way Trump and Republicans speak to young men’s fears, but the larger picture is why those fears exist in the first place.
I see this fear as the result of broader seismic changes in the workplace where traditionally male skills like muscle strength and analytical skills are becoming irrelevant while people skills are becoming more valuable.
I’m cautious about overselling the hypothesis, but I remember how Michael Crawford spoke about “ghostly forms of work” where the actual output of work was so abstract and hard to discern that the real skill being practiced was networking and interpersonal relationships.
I saw this dramatized on an episode of “Shameless” where the big muscular guy Kevin decided he wanted to get a “real guy job” like welding or machinery, you know, real blue collar dad stuff. He ended up discouraged when the interviewer asked if he spoke Spanish, or had experience with computer driven machinery. Meanwhile on a parallel plotline, 16 year old single mom Debbie was getting her welding license.
I can easily imagine how disorienting and anxiety-ridden this new job world can be for a young man. Most people just roll with changes and adapt, but I can see the appeal of someone telling them that everything would be all right if only the Mexicans and women were not blocking their path.Report
Not to mention those same people telling them that also are constantly drawing their nets up out of twitter and the academia hothouses to display wriggling examples of far lefties shouting that cis white guys are the problem with everything and should be treated like dirt (I’m referring to the fringe left wing deplorables not all intersectionalists everywhere just to be clear).Report
Exactly. Any attempt to express your panic even using the most careful language possible will lead to a barrage of verbal abuse. There are certain sections of the Fringe Left ourfor blood against their perceived enemy. The world bring what it is, the most marginal members of the alleged oppressor cast get to be on the receiving end while the high status elite members avoid all punishment.Report
And the right wing media is always handing that fragment a huge media megaphone.Report
I wouldn’t say people with analytical skills are lacking for work. Many of the most prestigious jobs require high analytical skills. It’s just that the level of analysis is something people generally lack.Report
I’m thinking of the engineers and architects I am familiar with, who are seeing their skills relentlessly absorbed by technology. Its my contention that brain power is to the 21st century what muscle power was to the 20th.
The analytic work is increasingly just manipulating the toggles and switches on software which, while still requiring skill, requires it on a much lower level. Which of course is the entire purpose of making software.
So the one career advancement skill which is immune to software is knowing how to work on teams and navigate the treacherous waters of office relationships.Report
I’m not sure if computers are up there for creativity yet. They might be able to handle the grunt work of architecture and engineering but not produce grand looking buildings or innovative bridges. Much legal work seems relatively immune to software despite the effort of some computer companies. Courts and other government bodies seem unimpressed and you still need a flesh and blood lawyer to go into court for trials. Flesh and blood lawyers seem to better determine what type of legal work you need.Report
In the fields I am familiar with, the “creative” portion of work occupies about 2% of effort needed. Literally, about 2% of the billable hours are spent with anything resembling “creative” work.
The notion of an architect’s day being filled with sitting at a table doing beautiful sketches are like the notion that a lawyer spends his day giving thrilling Sam Watterston style courtroom speeches, or that a cop spends a typical day in high speed chases and gun battles.
The vast majority of effort is spent on mundane tedious scut work, that is, work which is eerily conducive to algorithmns and machine learning.Report
Re8: Yeah, right she regrets he wasn’t part of the baptism. She did it a day after being told not to. That’s waving a big fat middle finger to both the judge and the father. Hope those 7 days were worth it, along with the fact that the father now has a nice big hammer to smack her with every time she wants to renegotiate custody/visitation/support.Report
Saw this in a link on the page for Re8: CPS illegally removing kids from poverty homes.
It’s only one department in one county, but stories like this poison trust in the system everywhere.Report
Re3 : Actually, while it’s possibly largely a DC thing, this could be a wider culture shift –
https://i.imgur.com/4w2h5b0.png
Millenial Men lead Dem 49-41
Millenial Women lean Dem 70-23
That’s a gender gap of 21 points.
Among Gen X er’s, it’s only 5 points.Report
If you’ve been thinking about the Everyday Feminism site and wishing that you could take down one of their really, really dumb and risible columns but remembered “oh, yeah… talking about something they said over there is a good way to be told that Everyday Feminism is, effectively, a strawman position and bringing them up is effectively trolling”, well, I have good news for you!
There’s an Everyday Feminism level column up at the Warshington Post!
Here’s the title: I am tired of being a Jewish man’s rebellion
Enjoy!Report
https://forward.com/opinion/397998/how-dare-jewish-men-keep-breaking-up-with-me/
A good responseReport
I believe Seinfeld called this Shiksa-appeal. That is the most complete analysis of this idea.Report
https://hellogiggles.com/news/twitter-reacts-jewish-mans-rebellion/Report