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Cake day: March 29th, 2025

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  • Iirc, he was doing that up until about the moment that this photo was taken. He started soloing because he was too awkward to make friends at the crag. He gets really good at it, doing it purely out of an enjoyment of doing it - before this photo, he was living out of a van, basically jobless, no social media, just dedicated to climbing.

    Then the news of his solo ascent of half dome gets out, 60 Minutes does a piece on it, and gets this photo. Turns out a lot of people are captivated by the feat. Suddenly he has offers coming in from every direction to become a pro athlete, to endorse products, to do commercials, etc. So what does he do?

    He figures that if he was going to do the climb anyway, then he might as well have a camera pointed at him to get paid. This allows him to not have to work part time jobs, and climb full time. He starts really raking it in, and what does he do? He buys a slightly nicer van, then donates what he doesn’t spend on his still very modest lifestyle to efforts to alleviate global poverty.

    Speaking about the potential influence he could have on others, he has noted that free solo rock climbing is typically a self-limiting experience. A random 14 year old might think they want to go free soloing - but every human has a natural self-preservation instinct that will kick in after you are about a dozen feet off the ground, and said 14 year old will quickly realize that what they are doing is a terrible idea. It takes years of practice and mental exposure to get to the point where free soloing even very easy routes isn’t a completely paralyzing experience - at which point, we would say that such a person has sufficient experience to make their own decisions about the level of risk they are willing to take on. His point has been borne out - I have yet to hear about any people who have died soloing right after they watched Free Solo.




  • This is a very weird post.

    First of all, no, don’t “settle” for anyone. Relationships should be built on honesty and mutual respect. If you are settling, it means you don’t respect her. And since she would almost certainly break things off with you if you told her you are “settling”, you probably won’t tell her, which is dishonest.

    But based on your post, it doesnt seem like you find anything unsatisfactory about her personality. Instead, you are concerned that she is just after your money. Maybe she is. Maybe she isn’t. You find out by getting to know her. This takes more than 2 weeks. It takes years. Go spend 2 years with her to see who she actually is. That’s the point of dating. Seeing someone for 2 weeks and then thinking of marriage is crazy talk.

    Finally, if you marry her, just get a prenup. These exist for a reason. Then she can’t divorce you and take your money.


  • But you can start by assuming women mostly don’t bring things up unless they’re really bad, because they put themselves at risk by doing so.

    Ideally I wouldn’t assume anything based on such broad generalities. I would base my understanding on my understanding of the person making the claim. If the woman making the claim has shown tendencies in the past of lying and starting drama, I will likely do nothing, and will sort of quietly wander away to find another conversation because I don’t want to be involved in whatever shit she is starting now. Though I will also probably never be present for this conversation, since I probably would have removed this person from my life a long time ago and would actively avoid interacting with them, because it is an unpleasant experience. If I know the woman to generally be trustworthy and straightforward, I will say “wow, that sucks, let me know if I can do anything to help you feel better”.

    I’ve known several women who confessed to me that they’d been sexually assaulted in the past. My response, more or less, was “wow, I’m sorry that happened to you. Let me know if you want to talk about it more, or if there is anything I can do to help.” And that is the extent of what I can do, since I have no idea who the people who assaulted them are. It’s not like I can just bust down some random guy’s door and beat him up.

    And you can (continue to) shut down the more “minor” conversational shit that normalizes and perpetuates that mindset.

    Such as…? I honestly have no idea what you are talking about. I assume you are talking about the conversations where guys say things like “no means yes, yes means anal” - which, again, I have never, ever been involved in. Like, ever. I don’t know who these people are or where they hang out. I infer they exist based on second hand accounts if others. But they seem to not like me, and don’t invite me to their parties.

    When my male friends and I talk about women, our conversations usually go: ugh, why don’t girls like me?; ugh, my girlfriend is being distant and standoffish; ugh, my girlfriend broke up with me. I’ve never had a friend speak poorly of women in general, say they “deserve” anything as a group, or anything like that.

    So, again, this seems like a big case of “I can’t do anything about this, so I’m not going to worry about it.”





  • If men want to get rid of the collective suspicions they need to act to prevent their own sexism and misogyny and those of other men!

    I’m fine with the collective suspicion, since I know that (a) the suspicions are misplaced for me personally, and this will be obvious to anyone spending any time around me, and (b) because this is a dominant attitude only among women who are chronically online, who I wouldn’t want to spend time with anyway.

    So, sorry, your shame-blackmail won’t work on me. If you are going to other me, putting me on the other “side”, then please provide a reason for helping you that will benefit me personally. After all, why would I want to help someone who sees me as an enemy?


  • Right. As a guy, I’ve never received a nude pic of a girl from a friend. I’ve never had a friend tell me that he sends girls dick pics. I’ve never been in an online community where photos of women are traded like what is described above - I wouldn’t even know where to start looking for this. I’ve never heard about anyone I know having their pictures shared, or anyone I know sharing pictures of someone else in an unethical way. This is quite simply a social sphere that I am completely excluded from. The idea that I have any responsibility or capacity to police this kind of behavior is ludicrous - what am I supposed to do? Talk to my friends and say “So, look at any unethical porn lately, bro?” Or spend my time seeking out toxic communities so I can debate them/report them, instead of going outside and having a life?



  • Giving a shit about recycling is mentally taxing. One of the worst parts of being poor is the mental strain of uncertainty inherent in your life which makes long-term planning and delaying gratification increasingly difficult. Any ounce of willpower you have needs to be spent maintaining or improving your situation, not used up doing things that have literally no impact on your life.

    This is why veganism is typically seen by poor people as an extravagant virtue signal of wealthy people. Poor people may choose to eat fewer animal products because they are expensive - but few would turn down a free well cooked steak. Caring about animal rights or the environment is something only the wealthy have the mental bandwidth to do - telling a poor person that they should do these things only serves to alienate them.




  • Yeah, like, I think this is a bad move for Duolingo as a company, since their code quality will rapidly go downhill with the current state of AI generated code.

    But also, if you are a contract employee, you should be prepared to be let go at any moment. That’s sort of the whole point of being a contract employee - you are only employed for the contract. It isn’t unethical in anyway for a company to not rehire employees who knew up front that they might not be rehired.


  • If specific ingredients are a problem, we should study those ingredients. If specific combinations or characteristics are a problem, we should study those combinations. Don’t throw out the baby (healthy ultra processed foods) with the bathwater (unhealthy ultra processed foods).

    We’ve been doing that for years, and the result on public health has been fad diets and “superfoods”. Focusing on ultra processed foods specifically calls out the obvious problem - we were significantly healthier before these foods were invented, and are less healthy after. The categories for processed-ness are necessarily arbitrary, since we have to decide what constitutes “processed”, and so sometimes relatively healthier food ends up appearing “worse” than less healthy food. But the end result is the headline above, which can be pointed to the hundred billion times it must be pointed to, in order to convince people that they should not eat a diet consisting of Doritos, mountain dew, slim jims, and ice cream.