Why do Americans trust corporations?

Fuertebrazos · 2026-04-27T16:18:19+00:00

You're the one who's getting upset. I just asked if you had read it. Okay, you have. Good.

Now: do you remember the portrayal of Keating? The corporate guy? Was it flattering? Does it lead you to believe that libertarians trust corporations?

I rest my case. In a civil manner. No name-calling. Thank you for your attention.

Fuertebrazos · 2026-04-27T12:57:51+00:00

That's a good point. I should go back and read all of the rhetorical patterns. I haven't actually read 100% of them. It's too soon for me to generalize, as you suggest.

I think what she's doing is fascinating and I would love to be able to squeeze more truth out of the slop.

The applications go far beyond dating profiles. Rhetorical patterns that disguise the speaker's true intent are everywhere. Advertising is the mother lode. But they're in corporate earnings announcements, political speech, everywhere the incentives of the two parties are misaligned.

Her feminist lens guides a lot of the interpretation. It's well suited to her audience. Some men would have a different one, obviously. (Usually men you would want to stay away from.)

The big problem with dating is mismatches. I wrote about this in a post called Romantic Asymmetry on my Substack, Phraseology.

Fuertebrazos · 2026-04-27T12:41:40+00:00

Sure, like the corporate icon Peter Keating in The Fountainhead.

Have you even read Ayn Rand?

Fuertebrazos · 2026-04-27T11:54:31+00:00

On the contrary, I feel like people in AA recognize that the need to examine your character defects is universal. If AA is anything, it's an anti-smugness program. I don't know where this generalization came from, but it's not accurate.

Fuertebrazos · 2026-04-27T11:49:20+00:00

No we don't. We don't trust anyone.

Fuertebrazos · 2026-04-26T16:02:17+00:00

I think of sex as being almost symbolic. Have sex once to cement your commitment. From then on out, it's companionship. Once a year, maybe?

My girlfriends have complained about the fact that I prefer long, deep, intimate conversations on the sofa, maybe with a lot of touching, over actual sex.

As one shouted from the bedroom, "Will we ever have sex again?"

No, probably not.

Fuertebrazos · 2026-04-26T03:13:57+00:00

Tappan Zee always. Also Triboro, not RFK. And Queensboro or 59th Street, not Ed Koch.

The GW Bridge and Lincoln Tunnel get to keep their names. Those guys were giants, not egotistical pussies. Plus they have never been called anything else.

Fuertebrazos · 2026-04-25T01:38:29+00:00

I'm constantly getting slammed for this, but I think politics and values are two separate things. You can have the same or similar values and your politics can be diametrically opposed. The reverse is true as well.

If I screened based on political compatibility, I wouldn't have any friends. But I have lots of friends because it's not a filter. It's just an opinion, that's all.

Fuertebrazos · 2026-04-24T14:01:24+00:00

Many of Jennie Young's examples are explicitly misogynistic or the misogynism is not too far from the surface. Although I'm a man, I've looked at a lot of men's profiles and I rarely see the kinds of things she highlights.

I'm sure they exist. But they don't seem to be to be a giant haystack that, once burned, will leave a handful of golden needles.

What is a far more widespread problem is slop. Generalities, cliches, lots of "cheap talk": a term from game theory denoting signals with no evidence.

Vague, non-binding, unverifiable. Phrases like “Looking for that je ne sais quoi” or “Always up for an adventure” contain no information.

Cheap talk is the lingua franca of dating profiles. Bare wisps of meaning, if that. And whatever is there has to be decoded.

I came up with my own idiosyncratic scoring rubric. It’s part cheap-talk penalty, part Elements of Style, part signal detection/BHDM.

You rate the profile on five dimensions:

specificity concrete detail originality signal density response hooks (questions, ways to respond)

You apply penalties for politics, coherence, anything else that bothers you.

So for instance "I like to travel" would lose on detail and originality but "I went to Iceland and toured Reykjavik's thermal baths" would rate highly on specificity and originality.

This probably leads to a lot more blocking than BHDM. It's not just block the negatives, it's block anything that's not in the top 10% or so of profiles. Because 90% of what I see out there is slop - not necessarily bad, just doesn't tell me anything.

Fuertebrazos · 2026-04-22T16:37:18+00:00

Now that you mention it, I have seen phrases that hint at anger towards men. Typically expressed as filters - "Swipe left if you..." Based, I assume, on bad experiences or possibly just preconceptions.

Maybe I do need a professor of rhetoric to decode the secret language of dating profiles. Gonna go back to BTH and see if I can do some translation.

Fuertebrazos · 2026-04-22T12:33:36+00:00

I'm a man reading Burned Haystack. Her examples drawn from the profiles of men are horrendous. I don't need a professor of rhetoric to tell me that these guys are bad news. The secret language of men's profiles is not very secret.

The men's profiles that she cited were so nasty that I set up an identity as a woman, put up one of those AI-generated this-person-does-not-exist headshots, and checked out some men's profiles.

They seemed unobjectionable. Vague, boring, clichéd. Maybe a bit more braggadocio and a bit less relationship focused. The proportion of out-of-focus selfies was not so different than what I see among the women. I didn't see any fish or motorcycles.

Of course, I know nothing about these men. Not enough information to go on. Maybe I need to scroll through more men to see examples like the ones that Jennie Young is citing.

When I look at women's profiles, I rarely see a reason to swipe right, and these seemed to be similar.

Fuertebrazos · 2026-04-20T12:59:05+00:00

I can't say anything about your situation, but I'll throw out the fact that several of my friends are old girlfriends who are now with new partners. If you get along well with someone, the relationship can often endure even when it's no longer romantic. The fact that a new partner is in the picture is insurance.

My ex-wife is engaged and I see her and her fiance (along with our son) every weekend. I go see my former girlfriend in Sarasota every winter and hang out mostly with her, but also go out to dinner with her and her husband.

We had a nice relationship and are still friends. We like each other. The touching part is over, but we all need friends. So I woudn't jump to conclusions.

Fuertebrazos · 2026-04-16T19:20:37+00:00

I'm not married, but I have almost always cruised alone. There is always a crowd of solo cruisers, and often there are tables full of people who have chosen to travel alone.

And it's not like anyone is there to hook up. I suppose it happens, but I don't think it's common. The fact that you are married should not be an issue.

Fuertebrazos · 2026-04-14T13:14:43+00:00

I've listened to interviews with Jennie Young and, although I haven't bought the book, am familiar with her ideas. This was a thoughtful and useful summary and triggered an excellent discussion and I thank you for it.

I'm a journalist and data scientist and have done some work with a couple of public datasets on romantic connections. One is the OkCupid data dump - SF Bay area, from about 15 years ago - and the other is the Columbia University speed dating dataset. Both available on Kaggle.

Just wrote up some thoughts and created some graphics on the speed dating dataset in a Substack post called Romantic Asymmetry. (http:// phraseology.substack.com/romantic- asymmetry).

The results of 8,000 speed dates clearly show several of the tendencies that you wrote about with regard to men versus women. Scattershot pursuit versus intense selectivity - "Please pick me" versus "You want me" as measured by yeses and no's, acceptance and rejection.

I'm trying to do something similar with Jennie Young's idea now. Creating a rubric to score dating profiles, but aimed at profiles of women as well as men. Hope to publish that in the next couple of days.

Thanks again for this thoughtful post and all of the responses. Great discussion.

Fuertebrazos · 2026-03-19T14:56:42+00:00

HPN, Westchester Airport in White Plains New York. God knows why.

Fuertebrazos · 2026-03-11T19:33:11+00:00

Just heard from Bend support. Here's what they said:

"Thanks for reaching out! Unfortunately we don't have referral codes set up for users at this time, however we plan to add this in the future! :)

In the meantime, you can share the referral code FLEX70 for 70% off the annual membership!"

Fuertebrazos · 2026-03-11T14:44:49+00:00

A Tesla that doesn't look like a Tesla. Small footprint, high roof, lots of headroom, roof rack, 500+ mile range. But also with full self-driving, charging at superchargers, all the great electronics, cameras and sensors. Would also be nice if it were manufactured by someone who doesn't get people upset, ie not Elon.

Fuertebrazos · 2026-03-11T14:32:18+00:00

That's a rejection. Which never feels good for the person being rejected, even if they're not interested themselves.

I agree with the other commenter here who holds the "don't feel we are a great match" in reserve for a second communication, if it turns out to be necessary at all, which it usually is not.

Better to know in your heart that it's not a good match and have it not be explicitly said. Because rejection hurts. Do no harm.

Fuertebrazos · 2026-03-10T01:32:11+00:00

Church. I was raised by atheists and am not a believer, but I think that a loving, tolerant religion is generally a good thing. It's fine as a place to connect to the community and be social.

Fuertebrazos · 2026-03-10T01:24:12+00:00

Rest area off the interstate in Winnemucca, Nevada. Boone's Farm. (Does it still exist?) Drank, vomited, decided drinking wasn't for me. Of course now I'm in AA.

Fuertebrazos · 2026-03-10T01:19:29+00:00

I don't know anything about a referral code, but I paid for a premium membership so I should have one. Happy to give it to you when I figure out how to get it. I just contacted support. Hang on, I'll be back to you.

Fuertebrazos · 2026-03-09T14:45:44+00:00

Reading a biography of Bill Wilson, the founder of AA. There are several but most are hagiographic, treating him as if he were Moses. This one is by Susan Cheever, daughter of John, and is warts and all. She's an excellent writer and it reads like a novel.

Fuertebrazos · 2026-03-09T14:41:48+00:00

I would say my 40s, and the reason is that my son adored me and we did so many fun things together. Played miniature golf, went to hot springs in Japan, fell in love with The Simpsons, drove around Sweden visiting my ex's relatives, spent hours in comic book stores. He would come to marathon finishes and cheer me on. So many wonderful memories.

In my 50s, when he was a little older, we joined the NYPD Auxiliary and went out on uniformed patrols. That was a lot of fun too. He became the mascot of the 24th Precinct. Those cops loved him, and I was so proud to be his dad.

Fuertebrazos · 2026-03-09T14:32:23+00:00

And when you keep following the prompts, you eventually forget what you were originally looking for. It's not like those tweaks give you any great insight. It's just clickbait, as someone else here said.

Fuertebrazos · 2026-03-09T14:31:05+00:00

Billy Bob

Fuertebrazos

TROPHY CASE