I did not know you could borrow for private primary and secondary school. That seems like a bad idea for many reasons. It's right up there was fake testicles.
I somehow can't even hate the couple. They just sound so, so, so incapable of taking care of themselves. They way they talk about managing their debt baffles me.
I'd like to think that the debtors may be less likely to go out in a fiery fugue of random gunshots, but that seems naive.
Is testicle diameter the new dick measuring contest?
Tom: "I'm good with bills math. Oh and I fucked up and don't realize I'd owe $20k in tax if I did something stupid."
We started using a financial planner this year and I found out about some more complicated things besides put as much as you can in tax deferred retirement and invest it in an index fund. Apparently permanent life insurance isn't just a scam for old people. Or maybe I'm now an old person who's being scammed. But I think the advice made sense and was stuff I wouldn't have figured out reading the internet, so even though I was skeptical it was probably worth it.
I fear them. They've turned themselves into a steady source of income for the worst sorts of lending businesses which will give those lenders income which they can turn into political power.
5: The newly plastic-surgeryized incels, I figure.
6: Is that what they call "whole life" insurance?
I only have term life insurance. If I die in the next 9 years and 5 months, my wife gets enough to pay off the house and not work for a couple of years so she can spend time building a shrine to my memory.
I do all the bills. I don't know how I ended up with it, but I'm pretty good at it.
This is an entirely new definition of "good at" that I'm unfamiliar with. They need help, not limited to financial help.
From one plastic surgeon in Indiana who's disingenuously surprised to learn that his young, male patients wanting square jaws and cheekbones that can cut glass are what one might call "psychologically abnormal."
I was surprised to come out of this article not really hating the surgeon. In some ways, I think that attests to the skill of the writer, who really does let the doctor have his say. But also, I might suffer from libertarian-oriented delusions: It's not for me (or the American Medical Association) to judge what people want to do with their bodies, right?
If his practice had a slogan, it would be "We don't care why you want it,'' he tells me. "And I suspect patients seek me out because they know I won't ask them. I don't see it as my job to cast a judgment."
Any judgment on Eppley is an implicit judgment on his patients -- the judgment that heebie g makes: body dysmorphia.
I mean, okay, seven-centimeter testicles seem a bit excessive. But then again, transgender surgeries (which he also performs) strike me as counter-intuitive. Who am I to judge?
Once you accept cosmetic surgery as legitimate, where do you draw the line?
So that card was full within, like, two months, and we cut it up.
These words make absolutely no sense for the amount of money they're making. "Filling up" credit cards is a hail mary desperation strategy for actual poverty.
[after getting $40k from their parents] We were in a good place. But then we did it all over again. We're in exactly the same place now. That's what bothers me the most.
They desperately need help.
I'm not sure you guys have an intuitive grasp on centimeters.
Mossy wants you to know that you're both ignorant of the metric system, and that he's well-testiculated.
17: See? Who am I to judge?
How on earth are the heavies not kicking in their door already? A formerly close friend got caught up in credit card debt, and was too embarrassed to tell anyone, including his partner. So he kept up their moderately affluent metropolitan lifestyle - he loved good food and wine, and entertaining friends - and it spiralled to the point that debt collectors were coming round and making threats. He started embezzling from his employer to pay them off, and the upshot was a six-month prison sentence, the loss of his house to pay off his creditors, and a broken relationship. And he didn't owe anything like as much as the couple in the OP.
I'm guessing that not embezzling is the main difference.
The embezzling was in response to terror of the heavies sent in by debt collectors. It's amazing to me that the couple in the OP have managed to juggle credit cards effectively enough to avoid that.
We got two rescue dogs, and everything was fine for a couple years, and then we had to put one down. We didn't have the money for it. So it ended up going on a card.
This is a fucking short story premise, this is not reality.
Admittedly, in the hellworld that is America today, that's the sort of thing that ends up going on GoFundMe all the time.
10- yes I think they're the same overall although there are variations like tacking on a form of disability insurance that may be specific to the different name.
People have to use credit to pay to euthanize dogs because John Wick killed everyone who kills dogs for the enjoyment.
I can't really throw stones at the debt couple, being bad about that as well. Not to that degree, but that's a matter of luck not virtue.
On the plastic surgery, what's really amazing is that this subculture has grown up where you'll have loads of strangers telling you that, yes, your problems with women really do stem from your jawline. And that micro adjustments are going to make the difference.
I'll have mentioned before that many years ago (20?) I was talking to a then-newish colleague about her previous job -- biglaw breast implant defense -- and her sense from deposing plaintiffs that for many of them there wasn't anything actually wrong with the implant, but the underlying issue was that the hoped-for life change hadn't taken place, or been lasting, and the physical symptoms they were experiencing were from depression etc related to that, and not some sort of reaction to the implant. OK, yes, that's a convenient attitude for a manufacturer's lawyer. On the other hand, it sounded plausible. (She thought the reconstructive folks were is a completely different boat).
23: Maybe we have better limits on debt collection? I remember my dad writing to debt collectors on behalf of some elderly people whose only income was Social Security. The gist of it was that debt was legal, but there was no income or assets to seize, no prospect of ever having any, and that the revenue-maximizing action for them to take was to fuck off because he advised them to stop paying.
On the plastic surgery, what's really amazing is that this subculture has grown up where you'll have loads of strangers telling you that, yes, your problems with women really do stem from your jawline.
I can't say I'm terribly amazed that there are men out there who seem to believe that they would be more romantically successful if they were more physically attractive.
30 That was my thought.
23 It's amazing, and an obvious failure of the system, that these people have any unused capacity to borrow, given their history.
It's not a failure. It's the success of a model of lending where banks can profit when (and because) the principal can't ever be paid back.
31 Yeah, but it's the micro-adjustment of it all. What's the marginal attractiveness gain from these surgeries? Why would they think that the gain from some particular surgery would make an actual difference?
"Have you tried not being a self-absorbed misogynist asshole?"
31: There's 'more physically attractive' and there's 'subtle adjustments to your jawline'. I read the article a little while ago, and there were pictures of some of these guys before and after being photoshopped into attractiveness, and not one of them looked bad before the photoshopping. The redhead needed a haircut, but they were all reasonably cute. If those guys were having problems dating, the problems were not due to their faces.
Here's a collection of before-and-afters of men's facial surgery for you to judge.
http://facialplastics.com/before-and-after-gallery/male-facial-procedures/
"Reasonably cute" cuts no glass.
This is reminding me of an Unfogged Classic thread, has to be over a decade old, about attractiveness, where I recall saying that it's not that physical attractiveness isn't important, but it's not important in a fine-grained kind of way. There's sort of three levels of attractiveness: actively repulsive, remarkably beautiful, and the vast mass of people inbetween. And while you could rank the people in the middle by how hot they are if you really wanted to, for most people looking for romantic partners anyone who falls somewhere in the middle is fine if you like the person. I get obsessing over your physical attractiveness if you're arguably ugly enough that it's holding you back, but a very small part of the population is that ugly.
33 Yeah, but there were some big write-downs, and really these people are going to discharge all that debt in bankruptcy at some point. I guess even with that it makes sense on a quarterly results basis.
I'm pretty sure the last loans were made knowing they were going to be discharged in bankruptcy.
It's almost as if capital has more capital than it knows what to do with.
"while you could rank the people in the middle by how hot they are if you really wanted to"
Someone should make a site where you can vote if random people are hot or not. Related, are we at the stage of the internet yet where old things can be recycled because enough people have forgotten about them?
46: I'm ready to make the next zombo.com. With some other accent, presumably, and HTML5 compatible.
I'm thinking about their car leasing. They pay >$200/month because they can't afford to pay $3k if the car breaks down. They need to get a true beater car. Something old and shitty and cheap, but relatively reliable. I spend much less than $2.4k/year in repairs, even taking into account getting into a car accident last year. They could set aside the savings for repairs and come out ahead. Why is this so hard?
42 goes against the observed behaviour of men and indeed women; they don't act, in general, as though minor changes in physical appearance are unimportant when you're trying to attract mates.
Look at the entire cosmetics industry. This isn't an industry that owes its immense size and wealth to a widespread belief that one colour of lipstick is very much the same as another, as long as you are neither radiantly beautiful or repellently ugly.
If those guys were having problems dating, the problems were not due to their faces.
Very probably true, for these guys.
Oh, sure, people fuss over attractiveness -- the argument I was making was knowingly contrarian, in that I think people fuss more over attractiveness than they get concrete benefits from the fussing. And I'd buy that subtle differences in attractiveness/fashionability do matter in how other people treat you generally, there are all of those studies about how tall and attractive people do better at work. But if you're specifically focused on "Will anyone consent to have sex with me", looking at the world around me, I think the idea that for anyone whose appearance isn't super extreme, personality is a bigger factor holds up.
All sex is local, so attractiveness is probably situationally dependent.
On the plastic surgery, initially I was thinking "this might be bad but at least better than the incel baseline", which per Natalie Wynn is a terrifying sea of collective catastrophizing and total-despair-as-ideology and people psyching each other up to commit shootings, but when I read the article I saw that the plastic surgery may in many cases just be part of that same cycle.
I'd agree with 49.last; but there are two points to make on that. First, even if personality is more important, appearance still has an effect, and every little helps, and second, it's a lot easier to change appearance than personality. We've all seen truly startling before-and-after photos that definitely represent a move from "person in between" to "stunningly beautiful" based on nothing more than a different haircut and some professionally applied makeup over the course of an hour or two.
Personalities don't change nearly so fast unless you administer a swift blow to the head to create a lesion on the frontal lobe, and that's risky and arguably unethical, and doesn't generally produce a nicer personality, just a different one.
It's really hard to change your personality, but not being a shit for long enough to get somebody to have sex with you seems very common.
My dear boy, have you tried a professional makeup artist and costume designer?
If I would have known about this doctor when I was in my twenties, I could have had surgery to make my testicles larger and oh, how many beautiful women I would have boned! How utterly irresistible I would have been! O, cruel fate, that allowed me to remain chained to these puny testicles!
54: Are you saying they are easy to fool?
We've all seen truly startling before-and-after photos that definitely represent a move from "person in between" to "stunningly beautiful" based on nothing more than a different haircut
Like in the old movies where a mousy, plain woman who is ignored by everyone immediately becomes sensationally attractive as soon as she takes off her glasses and lets her hair down.
Maybe someone should teach the incels that trick.
I think the key is to make sure everything you have is yours and not stolen.
Anyhow, wasn't this the whole premise behind Queer Eye For The Straight Guy?
Maybe they should bring back that show. "Wait! Before spending $20,000 on testicle enlargement surgery, try wearing a clean shirt!"
57: I have mentioned this in the past, but I tried exactly that as a lonely young Peace Corps volunteer attempting to entice a Kiwi teacher who worked at my school, and got nowhere. The movies lied to me.
Maybe they should bring back that show.
You do know that there's a current reboot? The hair guy is super popular among the youth, I say as the mother of a couple of youth.
Maybe he wanted to keep his glasses on?
That's the problem with seducing an Antipodean. To them, we look all upside down, they're very polite about it but they find it disconcerting.
60: My impression is that it works best if you're a librarian or a laboratory assistant.
49, et al: I think someone's personality is at least somewhat determined by their level of attractiveness. Good looking people tend to be more confident and have a general expectation of people liking them. And others tend to expect to like good looking, confident people. So I don't think you can seperate the two.
My parents raised me in a locked barn until I had developed confidence. Then let me learn I wasn't attractive.
they were all reasonably cute. If those guys were having problems dating, the problems were not due to their faces.
YES! I read that article last night, in the paper version. They looked fine! Were they charming in any way, they'd do fine.
I start out with an inclination to be sympathetic for incels (or maybe for the original impulse that started the original board). Back when I was single and I didn't want to be celibate, I really felt like it was bad and unhealthy for me. I knew I'd be so much healthier for touch and sex and I was so frustrated it was so hard to arrange. So I sympathize with their sense of wrongness and frustration. But then they take a wrong turn into fucked-up misogyny and get so vicious and then I don't want to have any points of understanding of them any more.
Counterpoint: Have you really considered misandry?
65: Well, sure. These guys have locked themselves into a bad feedback loop.
Do any of you remember years ago, when some dude who used to write here linked to an art project at a high school, where a (cute, prob popular) student filmed other students as she told them they were beautiful?
My takeaway was that the reactions were entirely unlinked to physical beauty. Basically the other high school kids who were doing anything with their looks (goth, expressive hair color, some fashion expression, anything) were pleased to take the complement. All the kids who were doing nothing interesting with their looks, they were mortified and tried to avoid the compliment. But the reactions had nothing to do with conventional attractiveness at all. Basically the kids who were confident enough to express anything through their looks were willing to be beautiful.
I would be mortified by that and I take the greatest care on selecting blue Oxford shirts to wear.
A lot of it is path dependency, too.
My first serious girlfriend very actively pursued me, and told me that she thought I was hot. The resulting benefits in self-confidence, and thus self-image and perceived attractiveness, have been life long. Even getting fat* and older, and starting to go bald, haven't shaken that. While I don't think the slide into misogynistic loner was ever actually a possibility, I've certainly known perfectly handsome non-woman-hating guys who didn't get girlfriends, and a lot of it was that at a certain key point in their life, they struggled and that set a pattern/path they went down.
* although I've lost 60 lbs since the start of the year, so that's looking like a more temporary condition.
Holy shit. That twice as much as my testicles weigh.
65 Outside the extremes, 'level of attractiveness' isn't remotely objective. The feedback loop in almost always completely contained in the person's head, without any true external validation, only confirmation bias.
although I've lost 60 lbs since the start of the year
Dude! That's lots.
When a girl walks up with something to prove, it is imperative to bust a move. Except when it's a podium presentation at a conference.
How does getting testicular enlargement actually help? What's the method? Do they think that big testicles are an automatic aphrodisiac that override other factors (a trump card)? Do they then wear very tight pants to advertise? Do they just let it all hang out (and get arrested)? Or are they brass and clank like a big buoy? I am baffled.
79 is asking the question I was trying to ask with 55.
79: I was guessing this was a dick pic strategy. So much wrongheadedness, but that's the only thing that kind of makes sense to me. I cannot say I have ever considered or noticed testicle diameter in potential partners.
Maybe there's some kind of ev-psych bollocks theory circulating in that community?
I'm sure there's one of those bogus ev-psyche theories for this.
But I had a balls joke, so more mediocre than you.
46.2: Yes, they make so many decisions like this that I find confounding. The car thing also neglects that I am pretty sure you need full insurance coverage on leased vehicles but owning a cheap, old car doesn't require much in the way of insurance costs, either. Funny story, it took me years to convince AJ that his parents sucked at the math on car ownership. They bought new and replaced every five years "because that's when repairs got expensive." I did the math for him on car payments vs repairs and insurance costs (you could replace a transmission every year for less than owning a new car!). He didn't believe me. A few years later, I heard him explaining exactly the same thing to a friend, so apparently he'd internalized the facts without conceding that I was right.
You incepted him. Most people think that's impossible.
But if you're specifically focused on "Will anyone consent to have sex with me", looking at the world around me, I think the idea that for anyone whose appearance isn't super extreme, personality is a bigger factor holds up.
This is very much not the incel question, though. Theirs is, "95% of women are worthless hags, and 5% are beautiful, and they will not consent to have sex with me." They are not sincerely interested in dating women. They are only sincerely interested in dating a narrow slice of women, those who are unusually conventionally attractive.
They bought new and replaced every five years "because that's when repairs got expensive." I did the math for him on car payments vs repairs and insurance costs (you could replace a transmission every year for less than owning a new car!).
I seem to remember the Car Talk guys saying that from a purely financial standpoint, you should drive the same car forever. At some point considerations of safety, convenience, (or maybe because your junky vehicle is limiting your ability to find someone willing to have sex with you) might lead you to give up on a car.
If everyone does that there won't be enough spares for the Mad Max future.
87: I was thinking about the insurance point too but forgot to mention it. I think our payment is $600-$650/year, which I gather is rather low. You're absolutely right about everything. The buy-new-and-sell strategy isn't economical, and should only be taken if you highly value the experience of having a new car. (And even then, maybe leasing is better? Probably not, but haven't looked into it.)
90: This is precisely my strategy, but you do have to update for technology occasionally; I'm beyond the tipping point but I'm dragging my feet. As has been said here many times, new regular cars of today are the luxury cars of five to ten years ago. So many great new safety and efficiency features, and the experience is better--new cars (in both senses of "new") are quieter. When I drive a rental it's so pleasant.
I want a new car for the built in rear view camera.
93: I do too, but visibility is one of the few things where cars have gotten worse (as a tradeoff for safety/aerodynamics). The pillars on my jalopy are much thinner than on modern cars. Which is awesome, so long as I don't flip the car over or have a piano fall on it.
You namby-pambies aren't gonna make it on the Fury Road, but your spares will. Shiny and chrome.
I seem to remember the Car Talk guys saying that from a purely financial standpoint, you should drive the same car forever.
I drove my Nissan Sentra for 23 years and it was still running fine when I finally got rid of it (decided being a pedestrian in the city was easier and more convenient than dealing with a car).
You should invest the saving in Cleveland real estate.
Cleveland was actually responsible for the only real money I had to put into the car. After being fine for over a decade, the whole undercarriage rusted out after a few winters in Cleveland and had to be replaced.
We junked a 17 year old vehicle rather than do that. I didn't do the math first.
On the debt article, I was struck by "You can't believe how many credit card and loan solicitations we get in the mail."
I keep little balance on my credit card and get maybe on average one solicitation in the mail a month. I wonder if (a) this couple sees that as a lot because they've internalized the idea that the offers are temptations they can't handle, and take up most of what they receive, or if (b) they are actually targeted by credit/loan companies as likely profit sources.
101: It's definitely (b). Do you own a house? As a homeowner with substantial credit card debt, I get tons of those solictations every day.
Oh, right, collateral. I wonder which is the bigger driver, though, the house or the debt level.
103: A big factor may be how hot the real estate market is in the area. There's all kinds of money to be made, when the valley of your house is significantly more than the mortgage.
We should have a thread where everybody tells their SAT scores, credit card balances and testicle diameter.
I think they know when you are likely to experience major, expensive life changes and send way more offers then.
Of course, those three categories wouldn't apply to everybody. Some people took the ACT.
re: 89
That's a really good point. It's not "a girlfriend" they want, it's "a super hot girlfriend." It's weirdly about competition with other men, and relative status.
The most useful thing I learned from the potential homeowners class we took when we decided to buy was that there's a website where you can opt out of getting credit card solicitations for several years. (You can also opt out permanently but it's more difficult; I think you have to mail something in.)
Also signing up for cards gets you more solicitations. I never carry a card balance, but I signed up for 6+ cards for signup bonuses and now get a lot of offers.
All the kids who were doing nothing interesting with their looks, they were mortified and tried to avoid the compliment.
This would be virtually all the male kids at my school. Except the ones who do nothing interesting but do work out -- they would like being complimented.
That's a nice piece of information actually. If you don't feel you deserve to be complimented because you didn't put any effort into it, you reject the compliment. Narcissism is not so wide spread.
But the reactions had nothing to do with conventional attractiveness at all. Basically the kids who were confident enough to express anything through their looks were willing to be beautiful.
I think most straight male kids wouldn't have even considered it an option to express anything through their looks. What you're born with, that's what you have. Unless you start working out.
This is the website. You can opt out online for five years or mail in a form to opt out permanently.
113: Thanks. I never thought there was such a thing.
I think most straight male kids wouldn't have even considered it an option to express anything through their looks. What you're born with, that's what you have. Unless you start working out.
I get the sense this isn't true anymore. The incels in this article are just an extreme example of that.
They go to great lengths to not promote it. Even most of the copy on the site itself is trying to persuade you not to use it. But they're legally required to allow people to opt out, so there it is.
67 I'll have to remove my glasses seductively at the next meet up and then you tell me.
73.last that's amazing. I've lost 10 kg since the beginning of the year but I'm spending my time back home putting a bit back on.
Quickie here to 101: I think the credit card offers are competing for the existing balances. If they can offer a temporary-low-rate balance transfer option (don't read the fine print!) then they can get a fixed chunk of existing debt and all the additional interest that accrues on it, as the hapless borrower pays off one credit card, runs up that card's balance, and then makes the minimum payments on both cards going forward.
Kate: We kept my youngest daughter, Elise, who was in sixth grade last year, in public school. We thought, well, she's fine there. But last year, she got to a place where she wasn't learning, she was afraid to go to school, and she got punched at one point. So we were like, that's it. So she's now going into private school next year; we're going to have three at the school. What we probably should've done is moved.
But what if she got punched once at private school?!
120: Well, that would be bad, but in that case at least she presumably wouldn't get poor-kid cooties.
120: that's different. It builds character.
" I've lost 60 lbs since the start of the year"
Are you ok? That seems like a lot, very quickly. (3lb a week!)
123: That was actually my thought. Any time I see someone accomplish something like that -- especially if I haven't seen them in a while -- my immediate reaction is: Wow, you look great! It's not cancer, is it?
(I once dropped about 40 pounds in three months. I looked bad; people were worried. But I felt great and kept it off for a decade.)
124: I kind of thought it was the parents who needed punching.
That said, I found it kind of sweet that they both seem to be on the same page regarding money, and weren't pointing fingers.
113: Thanks, teo. I'm out for five years!
I just read the second link, and wow. I was somewhat sympathetic until I got to the part about how the guy refuses to consider bankruptcy, and won't even see a financial adviser because he knows that's what they'd recommend.
And the wife almost divorced him over the bankruptcy thing, but can't afford to.
I wonder if he isn't right about not being able to get another job if he has a bankruptcy. Depends on the type of work he does, I think.
I was somewhat sympathetic until I got to the part about the guy listening to the Adam Carolla podcast.
His wife almost divorced him, until she realized he had the perfect circumference for his balls.
130: I suppose he'd have to rule out signals intelligence for the NSA.
For the record, they have at least $575k in debt. Their annual income is around $175k.
Needs to be mentioned that he didn't tell her that he decided to just keep the car after the lease was over, and it came out in the interview. I think he's the main problem in the relationship and he's pulling her down. She really needs to consider doing something with her law degree, though. (Like being her own divorce lawyer.)
Are you even allowed to go bankrupt with that ratio?
Maybe you can. It's going to make a shitty folk song though.
Putting in some not-necessarily-realistic interest rate numbers in (4% student loans, 5% mortgage, 25% credit card, enh, let's say 7% in mysterious "a loan"), we can do some back-of-the-envelope calculations to see how much they're bringing home. That's $39800(!) in interest per year, $30349 in federal taxes (not counting deductions), let's say $8925 in state taxes (they said northeast, Massachusetts has a 5.1% tax rate), $4500 in local property taxes (arbitrarily picked Waltham as an expensive suburb, maybe a little too expensive). That gives them a net income after taxes and interest of over $91000. Even with the $15000 tuition, isn't that enough to have a middle-class life, even with three kids? Sure, it'll take them, well, forever to put a real dent in their principal, but at least one of the kids is graduating soon.
I think most straight male kids wouldn't have even considered it an option to express anything through their looks.
Well, it was an artsy high school. But that's not true, even at regular high schools. There are goth dudes and gang-type dudes and future barista dudes and clean-cut dudes. There are lots of looks a straight male kid can adopt, and basically, if they were doing anything besides aggressively-neutral-please-no-one-look-at-me, they were able to receive a compliment with grace.
Which I suppose points to: if they had an identity, they had enough grace that they were unlikely to enter the poison feedback loop. Their actual looks were irrelevant.
This just reminds me of that degenerate gambler on the Sopranos.
That second link -- could that really be real? On the one hand, I feel terribly sorry for them. But when I got to the part where the Kate's elderly mother, who made about $30,000/year her whole career, lent them $20,000 out of their life savings and they immediately squandered it....oh my god. I really hope this is made up.
137: I'm not sure you have an intuitive grasp on the Midwest.
I have never once ever claimed to have an intuitive grasp on anything east of the Sierras.
but at least one of the kids is graduating soon.
I found myself thinking that -- if they keep spinning the plates a few more years, they will have raised three kids as securely upper middle class without the money to back it up. And once the kids are off on their own, their trajectories are set whether or not the parents blow up. Not that this makes anything about the situation a good idea, but it's going to be interesting for the kids if they make it to secure lives themselves, trying not to let their insane parents drag them under.
"I suppose he'd have to rule out signals intelligence for the NSA."
I suspect he might be excluded from that career anyway for a different reason.
Parents as Expendable Launch Vehicles: A Case Study
That's going to be an awkward conversation when the college financial aid form gets competed.
||
Earlier this year a woman from a strict white American Christian community in the state of Kentucky told the Thomson Reuters Foundation how she had undergone FGM as a child.|>
||
In the first three months of 2017, German police recorded 221 religiously motivated criminal offenses against Muslims, mosques, or Islamic community centers. By the first quarter of 2018, that number had dropped to 196 and then sank against to 132 in 2019. The full-year trends have also exhibited a downturn,from 960 incidents in 2017 to 824 in 2018.|>
@146 ISTR that has come to light before, and forms of it were performed as a medical procedure well into the 20th century, so I can see that it might linger on in fairly closeted communities in the US.
136. $4500 in local property taxes (arbitrarily picked Waltham as an expensive suburb, maybe a little too expensive)
If you think that's an expensive (Boston) suburb, I have some bad news for you...
149: relative to their stated house price, $360k.
Re: 118
Recalculating the weight thing, I think closer to 50lb than 60lb but in the low to mid 20s in terms of kilos lost: 51-52lbs. Progress slowed but ongoing. Put some muscle back on, too, in the process so I feel generally a lot healthier.
150: I actually wonder if they changed some numbers for the story, assuming it's true. A 4-bedroom house in a "super rich" neighborhood in a suburb of a significant East Coast city (I mean, insurance -- are they in CT?) that costs $360K seems implausible to me.
re: 123
I'm totally fine.
As per the previous comment, I recalculated, and it's more like 50lbs (was messing up the kgs to lbs in my head), and I really sort of started in mid December, and ramped up after that. I think it works out pretty close to 1kg a week, but it has been fairly consistent, although dipped a bit the last 3 or 4 weeks. I track weight and body composition, and track kcal intake -- thank you handy iPhone apps and wifi enabled scales -- and I'm not even restricting my calorie intake that much.
It's just a general commitment to being entirely consistent, taking my thyroid medication all the time, and exercising regularly. Although the exercise is low impact cardio -- lots of fast walking -- and some kettlebell and bodyweight stuff, nothing extreme. There's just of virtuous circle thing going on. My lean mass has barely changed,* but my body fat has dropped by quite a bit, and the lean mass moved around a bit (more on the shoulders/arms). Blood pressure also dropped a fair bit -- although it wasn't excessively high before, just a bit -- and my resting pulse is mostly in the high 60s, rather than where it was before.
It's at the stage now, though, where I've made the easy gains, and need to do more strength training, and probably eat slightly differently, to continue real progress.
* apparently, about 70kgs of lean muscle mass. Which, ironically, means that even if I kept that muscle mass, and got my body fat down really quite low, I'd still be "overweight".
152 cont'd: But there are so many oddities. Can you actually stay in student loan forbearance for decades? They filed for forbearance and then immediately bought a house? It's a frustrating piece: not "journalism," nothing verified, but thrown out there anyway for people to argue over, to attract fantasies and concern and judgment all over the place, for which there is clearly no point because who the hell knows what's really going on? "Tom" is a piece of work, though. His talents seem wasted in the straight world.
fantasies and concern and judgment all over the place
New mouseover text?
152: Good point about insurance. If it is Hartford, it's possible that they could get into a "super rich" suburb because the city is small enough. Most of the >$1.5 million houses for sale on Zillow are on or just off of a single road. It looks like there are a lot of houses in the $300-500k range in West Hartford, which is nearby and looks fairly tony. I think it's plausible. Median income for a household there is $80k (family, $106k).
Congrats on the health gains, ttaM! I need to exercise. I was playing tag last night with speedy 7-year-olds and thought: there is no excuse for me. My body isn't hard to move at all. I just have these ironclad habits of sedentarism.
I think I have hip arthritis, but I'm going to be in denial about it for about five years.
The wisdom that comes with age is my compensation.
136 That gives them a net income after taxes and interest of over $91000.
Yeah, I was doing a similar estimate. Their amount of dead really doesn't sound that problematic relative to their income, to me. I don't see why they aren't just steadily paying it down. Their house is not at all expensive, by northeast US city standards.
"Will you exercise our keyaki in her suit of iron, in her house of stone?"
I guess Pittsburgh isn't a northeastern city.
Are there a lot of NBA referees in Hartford?
Maybe they commute to Madison Square Garden by Amtrak, Joe Biden-style.
I was thinking of the real Joe Biden. The Onion Joe Biden would drive his Camaro.
I'm reading the first article linked in the OP and I have to say that I seriously underestimated the horror that is involved with having abnormally large testicles. For people more lazy than me: they cut open your sack, pull out your ball, put it inside the fake ball, and shove it back in.
Standing on your penis the whole time, probably.
Can't I just have my jaw broken apart and reassembled instead?
168: Not sure why that makes me more squeamish than descriptions I've heard of sexual reassignment surgery. Might just be novelty, but I think it's that it's operating within the cis-male framework I experience life through.
On the other hand, that's a great place to hide your spare set of keys.
Imagine a 7 cm silicon testicle crushing your non-silicon testicle forever.
Goddamn it, I still want to know how these people put their student loan in forbearance (submitting paperwork showing financial hardship making loan payments impossible), got a mortgage (submitting paperwork showing financial health, including the student loan info, making loan payments possible), bought a house, got two mortgages on a second more expensive house and a million other loans, and somehow never had the student loan company demand any payments on this six-figure debt for 20 years. "We've almost never paid my law school loans -- every year we ask them to put us in a financial hardship status so we don't have to pay." Am I misunderstanding this? It can't possibly be true the way I'm reading it.
Imagine a 7 cm silicon testicle crushing your student lender forever.
Guy has a white collar job making 90k, has 3 kids, and still has time, energy, and interest in bartending private parties a couple nights a week. I'm thinking the job/paycheck might end up being a lie he tells his wife and the banks he's getting credit cards from.
Kill his day job, and the whole thing starts to make a lot more sense.
168: Thanks for the breakfast time reading matter, Mobes. What do they do with the old testicle? Am I really reading this right, that the implant is a completely worthless neuticle that produces nothing at all? In which case, I have obviously missed my calling, because there is in that story a sermon on true masculinity that writes itself -- and which no man in the audience would ever forget.
I can see them now, filing out of church, all slightly hunched over and trying not to cup their hands too ostentatiously over their genitals.
I think what stands out about the incel plastic surgery is not that they think appearance makes a difference but that they go as far as plastic surgery to change it when for most people the cosmetic industry is enough. To them cosmetics must be just about how you look tonight, but plastic is forever.
The incel forums sound like the opposite of the protagonist's friends in Swingers: "You're so not money and you don't even know it."
Kate: OK, but that's not how you can live your life. You know? You can't just ignore this.
Tom: I can, and I have!
I laughed.
I think what stands out about the incel plastic surgery is not that they think appearance makes a difference but that they go as far as plastic surgery to change it when for most people the cosmetic industry is enough.
Around 16 million people a year in the US have medical cosmetic treatment of some kind that go way beyond just using make-up and hair dye. Injections, chemical peels, surgery, etc.
That is not "16 million people in the US have had cosmetic procedures"; that is "16 million people every year in the US have cosmetic procedures". Every year, one in 500 adult American women gets breast augmentation, for example.
Now obviously that doesn't mean that 160 million Americans have had some sort of medical cosmetic treatment in the last 10 years because a lot of people will have it multiple times. But, still: I don't think you can honestly say that cosmetic surgery is some kind of weird subculture thing that really makes incels stand out.
re: 181
The odd thing about that, and I don't know what the stats are in the UK,* is that to the best of my knowledge, I've only ever met two people who've had any cosmetic surgery. One who had their ears pinned back, and one who had a badly broken nose straightened (to look like it was before). Oh, and one person who everyone insisted had had breast augmentation, but who, apparently denied it (not a friend, just an acquaintance, so I was absolutely not in a position to either ask or know). And yet, presumably, I must have met quite a few, even if the stats are much lower in the UK.
* on preview, now I do, having googled and found:
https://baaps.org.uk/about/news/1535/cosmetic_surgery_stats_dad_bods_and_filter_jobs
So, 28000 procedures per year in the UK, for that year. So, erm, lower than the US.
Does that statistic count cosmetic surgery to repair an injury or after a mastectomy?
182: it's not just surgery though; I bet you know people who've had Botox for example.
The minimally invasive procedures you noted are the vast majority, though. In 2017, the total figure (ASPS) rose to 17.5 million, but the minimally invasive category was 15.7 million of that, including Botox 7.2m and chemical peels 1.4m.
I couldn't find statistics, but isn't it also common for people to visit the US for cosmetic surgery? Maybe that would bring up the UK numbers a bit if factored in.
I know so many people who are careless with canned food.
183: no. Reconstructive surgery is excluded. And the latest figure is actually 17.5m not 15m.
183: No, if I read the ASPS data summaries correctly, they don't use the word "cosmetic" for that, categorizing it separately as "reconstructive plastic surgery". That's 5.8 million procedures, although 4.5 million of those are "tumor removal" which I didn't think of as a plastic surgeon thing.
re: 184
Yeah, looking at some stats, it looks like for the US there's 18 million (give or take) procedures, which includes things like Botox, and one order of magnitude less for surgery.
I don't think I know anyone who has had it (Botox), but that might be because the people I know who do have it (whoever they might be), have it done in a fairly subtle way, so it's not something I can spot.
You also probably won't spot people who got testicle implants.
I bet there are those who botox their testicles.
That prevents them from expressing emotions.
4.5 million of those are "tumor removal" which I didn't think of as a plastic surgeon thing.
If it's melanomas, that would presumably be a plastic surgery thing.
I know lots of people who get those removed.
Is the elephant testicle in the room not the factor that these incels are adopting the very cosmetic surgery conventionally associated with the stereotyped shallow and insecure femininity they are so dedicated to hating?
Corpses look awful, therefore any surgery designed to avert death is cosmetic.
195 What strikes me here is not that incels, like lots of other people, are getting surgery to enhance their looks. It's the incels' obvious misdiagnosis. That an older woman might think that, given the toxic stew of ageism and mysogyny we've all been marinating in, she'd be taken more seriously in business if they botox away some wrinkles, doesn't in any way validate an incel's belief that his lack of success at dating hot women can be cured by a micro-adjustment to his jaw line. Or testicle implants! It's a comically bad misreading of their situation, which isn't something you'd say at all about a whole lot of other cosmetic surgeries.
re: 196.last
Absolutely.
Plus, I'm sure we all know guys with not square jaw lines, in not great shape, with, presumably, normal sized testicles, who have absolutely no problem meeting or attracting women.
176: I read it as Tom being a burnt out husk of a man. But he does appear to do most of the finances, to the extent that finances in their relationship can said to be done. It's plausible.
178: If I'm reading Moby correctly, the old testicle remains attached, but they add a lot of padding between it and the scrotum. So if all goes correctly, it still functions. Seems analogous to breast implants.
Seems analogous to breast implants.
Trickier to show off, obviously. Is the theory that news of the big balls will spread by word of mouth, and that eventually some hot hot woman will feel impelled -- by the unconscious lure of the obviously superior fertility of such massive balls -- to pair up with the guy?
195 reminds me of the Chesterton thing about criminals being bad men but conditional good men. Thieves respect property: they just want certain items of other people's property to become their property. Usurpers respect the Crown; they just disagree on who should be wearing it. Incels don't so much hate that sort of femininity per se, they just hate that they aren't benefitting from it.
Pair up with the guy, or pair up with the [sunglasses] pair?
It would be interesting to know what other subcultures there are like this with respect to plastic surgery. Those US numbers are way higher than I'd expect. Maybe no one's really looked at some other subcultures because they've stayed under the radar by not also being associated with mass murderers.
Those US numbers are way higher than I'd expect.
I didn't click through, but is actual surgery broken out from Botox and prescription skin care (like chemical peels and so on)? The dermatologist I go to for removal of my occasional bits of skin cancer ("we hatess the Sun, it burnss uss") appears to be doing a good business in beauty-related skin stuff, but she's not a surgeon and I wouldn't think of that sort of thing as the same as plastic surgery.
Do they do testicle reduction surgeries? Because I got to tell you, these 10cm balls I've got can get pretty uncomfortable.
204: Didn't Lyndon Johnson have that problem too? I believe that was why he needed to have his pants tailored.
297.last: Are you sure they don't have large testicles? Seems the only possible explanation if they clearly don't have a square jaw.
I'm sure many people have thought about this, but I've never seen a clear map of the process that takes someone from being frustrated by their lack of dating success and feeling sorry for themselves (not a great place to be, but normal) to buying into the whole deranged philosophy that the incel community is peddling.
The same thing goes for what takes someone from being annoyed by overzealous wokesters (raises hand) to reading Stormfront and getting heavy into holocaust denial.
Is it just a matter of exposure, or is there some extra factor that the ones who go over the cliff have in common?
Well, the hottest new culprit is the YouTube algorithm. In this case, dating guides => PUA => incel (who I think emerged from, or at least were greatly bolstered by, PUA burnouts).
the process that takes someone from being frustrated by their lack of dating success and feeling sorry for themselves (not a great place to be, but normal) to buying into the whole deranged philosophy that the incel community is peddling
Doesn't exist. Incels are starting from an abnormal level of social alienation and rejection. A "lack of dating success" is downplaying things.
||
"Compared to other countries, we have very many more qualities," the report argued. "First, they have no hay. Second, they have no grass. In other countries, they use hay in various other ways, not to feed cows."|>
211: So, other countries don't have hay, and they use it in various other ways. That's pretty good.
212: Maybe I'm misunderstanding. It's not saying that all other countries don't have hay. It's saying that some other countries don't have grass, some other countries don't have hay, and that some other countries that have hay don't use it to feed cows. This might even be true.
I guess I shouldn't be so quick to judge Pol Pot's rule.
Am I misunderstanding this? It can't possibly be true the way I'm reading it.
I think you're reading it correctly and also correct that it can't possibly be true. There's a lot about this situation as reported that doesn't really add up.
208, 210:
Isn't the map basically just 'stumbles into an ugly spot on the internet, is isolated from countervailing information, gets more extreme in order to belong'?
My interpretation of all the online radicalization is that these (mostly) men start off terribly lonely and aching for connection. A tiny bit of validation is the hook, and then they're off and running.
We doubt Mr Hick moves in our circles.
I'm pretty sure that my level of derangement has remained constant whatever my level of dating success.
209: I feel like I'm really missing out on the zeitgeist, the Youtube algorithm hasn't radicalized me at all. All it's done is give me increasingly detailed* videos showing how the political map of the world has changed over human history. And 10 hour versions of old video game music I like
* and wrong
Speaking of Youtube, should one be ashamed to admit that one enjoys ASMR videos? Asking for a friend.
@210 @216
The other factor at the sharp end is an increasingly and ever smaller (but still large on the internet) subset that self organizes and radicalizes as they get kicked off less extreme places. Where a constant background of cynicism ends up being fairly corrosive to the personalities of those involved - and who are often too immature to realise the need for self care from such things.
@219 I'd guess at this point if you watched a couple of Peterson videos and then stuck things on autoplay you get plenty of that, and ruin your recommendations for good.
Apparently if one uses youtube primarily to watch old music videos from the 80s, the danger of getting steered toward alt-right propaganda by their algorithm is minimal.
220: Nah. I think it's fine regardless of whether you enjoy either the experience itself or just the culture that's risen in trying to recreate it. No need to have your yum yucked. Not exactly my thing since none of the common stimuli work for me (although I have experienced it), but yay if your friend enjoys it.
It's now recommending me "The Soviet Union: Every Month," so guess I'm a commie now. Right next to a Beatles video, Good Place bloopers, and doing horrible things in Kerbal Space Program. Youtube is a weird place.
Youtube's algorithm mostly throws up guitar videos for me (as expected), and some fitness videos (although some of these are getting a bit dubious*), but recently, after I watched one old Craig Ferguson clip, I started getting links to dozens of similar things, and all kinds of celebrity related content.
* yoga videos, where the main purpose is clearly not about learning yoga.
209
Well, the hottest new culprit is the YouTube algorithm. In this case, dating guides => PUA => incel (who I think emerged from, or at least were greatly bolstered by, PUA burnouts).
Instead of dating advice, it could just as easily be water heater repair videos.
My favorite dubious video genre is "home improvement but it's unnecessarily sexy." I have an apparently uncommon kitchen faucet model; the only video that helped was one of these weird porny ones.
People searching YouTube for "divorce" or "alimony" reference are probably targeted like crazy.
Weird porny faucet repair is a genre? I shouldn't find anything surprising anymore, but I do.
People were always turned on by The Old House anyway.
227,229: Porny home repair was a well established genre even before youtube.
Maude: You can guess what happens next.
Dude: He fixes the cable?
Maude: Don't be fatuous, Jeffery.
For some reason, whenever I look at YouTube, I get videos of people building cabins in the woods.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=232LFz-aiz4
Grace Jones sings a beloved song on PeeWee's Playhouse. He dances in accompaniment.
222 I use it the same way (plus punk rock stuff from the 70s and other music) and I sometimes get recommendations for Ben Shapiro videos.
I now watch Contrapoints and a few other SJWs (although not full-on Breadtube*) and oddly I recently get recommended little but more from the same accounts I subscribe to, often videos I've already watched.
*I assumed this was about "bread and roses", but supposedly it's actually from The Conquest of Bread by Kropotkin.
I don't understand so much of that.
I've honestly never got a single politically dubious YouTube rec. My history is 80s British music, 90s hip hop, old pats games and kids videos. The worst thing I get is weird (automatically?) Chinese produced CGI baby videos.
As of a month or two ago, if I went to youtube on a computer where I wasn't logged in and had no browser history, and I watched a tech-related video, I was pretty much guaranteed to see some "owns the libs" or "[liberal politician] triggered" videos in the recommendations. Often about half of the videos in the autoplay queue were along those lines.
It might still be like that, but I try to avoid youtube as much as possible.
I occasionally get recommendations for something along the lines of "Shapiro DESTROYS SJW" - but politically the only things I've watched on YouTube swing to the left, I also watch tech videos though.
If I watch anything pop-culture related I get a few like 243. For anything on Youtube I try to use Duckgo's nocookie iframe thingy.
229: Rule 34.
(And at least one title of Rule 34 of federal civil procedure is "Production of ... Things and Entry Upon [another thing] for Inspection and Other Purposes.")
(I guess the laydeez at the end of the title is implicit.)
184: This is neither timely nor a serious answer but one of my daughters now has had several courses of Botox in her stomach after an endoscopy because that can make things relax (for 4 months or so) to let food pass through more gently and easily so she's not throwing up all the time. I had no idea this was a thing but it worked beautifully, though I'm reminded I need to make an appointment with her GI doctor to decide whether this will be every four months forever or if we'll keep waiting to see when she starts vomiting again or what. (There was a pain psychologist who was supposed to get her to try biofeedback too but she was entirely unwilling and noncompliant.)
I'll be honest, if someone took me to a biofeedback psychologist I'd be pretty suspicious too.
The title "pain psychologist" probably isn't helping. It sounds like someone to avoid unless you're John Yoo.
That's probably not the official title, just the shorthand the GI team uses. It's not as if she's much more forthcoming with her regular therapist. The pain specialist was good in that she's a black woman and so my daughter felt comfortable arguing that she shouldn't have to learn any more about slavery ("the s word") because she found it personally upsetting and thought her white classmates didn't understand the emotional impact, which is presumably true. The GI practice at the hospital screens all its patients for anxiety now, which is useful and pertinent for her. So now we're working on helping her learn to resolve that piece while also doing the Botox thing as needed because a genetic disorder means some physical things don't work the way they should and unlike my ex, I believe that means they're not going to be fixable through sheer willpower.
My stomach wasn't fixable by will power or better eating, though it turned out that better eating was necessary in addition to the medicine.
Contrary to what I learned from "Roadhouse," pain does hurt.
Also, it's great that chemical weapons made from food poisoning bacteria can help people stop vomiting.
Thanks for the appreciation.
254. Not fooled. We know that bulge is from plastic surgery, OBCoT.
I note the topic is timing out, but this may be apposite - at least part of it is based on an analysis of someone's entire personal youtube history: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/08/technology/youtube-radical.html