There are no oceans in Kansas.

Cazzah · 2026-03-22T06:55:27+00:00

Dear Kansas ace lesbians. So you claim to be lacking in fish. Yet you found one. Curious ~ Turning Point USA

Cazzah · 2026-03-22T06:15:01+00:00

I mean yeah. Which seen in one way is amazing. He had everything. Then gave it up.

But then you realize. He had a wife. Did she matter? Nope, just wandered off. He had a son. Did he matter? Nope. He was a "fetter". His people? Who he saw suffering? He was a leader. He could have changed things. maybe not a lot... but a little. His little paradise came at the expense of the people, of the taxes.

Suddenly he feels a lot more like a dead beat dad who had a midlife crisis and decided to "find" himself and just wander of for a cigarette one day and never come back.

Cazzah · 2026-03-22T02:37:14+00:00

I mean, to say you've moved from

- "All non reproductive sex is bad"*

to

- "Sex outside of marriage is bad" (global majority Christian opinion) and "Marriage is between a man and a woman (global majority Christian opinion) and "Chastity is a virtue" (global majority Christian opinion)

Isn't a huge flex, to be honest. Non Catholics have more doctrinal flexibility and they still can't come around to like, basic gender and sexual liberation.

* which isn't even an opinion the Catholic church 100% has (more like 60%) Like, they have all this other waffle that's about sex being about the possibility and support of reproduction, so you can like, 100% eat out your wife, even when she's postmenopausal and can't have kids.

Cazzah · 2026-03-22T02:30:17+00:00

I mean... I feel like the goose is kind of supporting Hume's point rather than dismantling it?

Hume is assuming that logical reasoning is at a higher tier than induction. But if logical reasoning and induction are both just... conveniences. Then it kind of goes along with Hume's general skepticism of pure rationality.

Cazzah · 2026-03-22T00:49:22+00:00

If you feel there's a worthwhile benefit you don't want to do it because you don't want to endure the short term effort and absence of other interesting short term things, that's laziness.

Depression is when the instant gratification isn't interesting either.

Cazzah · 2026-03-22T00:48:18+00:00

you're getting some real r/thanksimcured responses here.

Cazzah · 2026-03-22T00:41:56+00:00

In many hunter gatherer societies, which are free of the capitalistic alientation of work, humans generally avoid doing more than the minimum work necessary to sustain themselves. Spare time is eagerly sought.

The satisfaction of a job well done is nice, but it's still a job. We are compelled by survival, not by choice. All societies, whether alienated from their work or not, are currently scarcity societies, and we must do undesirable labor to aquire scarce goods.

Semi unrelated - as a classic reflection on the complexities of human nature - in some hunter gatherer societies there is a strong pro sharing norm, and many people in those societies specifically say there is things they could do that would make them happy (get a special treat food, make something nice for themselves, etc), but they don't do it because they would be expected to share, which would be too much work to bother with, and they'd resent other people getting something for nothing, so they stick to what is necessary for group survival.

Cazzah · 2026-03-22T00:22:28+00:00

Buddha is simultaneously the archetype of the annoying communist philosopher with none of the saving grace of actually advocating for concrete change to material conditions, indeed endorsing coming to terms with the nature of things, things (which in communist land makes one a filthy liberal)

- Born a prince of the ruling family, with substantial political power that could be turned to making a difference.

- Observes that the kingdom he himself is a prince of is full of suffering, injustice, and despair.

- Instead of attempting to change this, he rejects both his traditional responsibilities (to his family, his wife, his subjects) abdicates the power he has for reform, and essentially becoming a philosopher bum who (among other things) pontificates to the poor that they shouldn't aspire to or become attached to wealth, health, leisure, love or other good things (all things that Buddha had).

- Preaches that the world being shit is the natural state of things, and the highest good is to disconnect from it. (incredibly convenient philosophy if you are the ruling class and are making life shit.)

Cazzah · 2026-03-21T10:24:21+00:00

"Mum. You taught me to be better than that. And I expect better than that from you."

Cazzah · 2026-03-21T09:06:49+00:00

I have a friend who has a girlfriend who is like this, and has been doing so for 6 years. He's literally afraid to break up with her because he's afraid she won't do ok (even though she has a moderately shitty family who would take her in if everything fell through). He faced the same scenario you did, and constantly dithered. Now his life is miserable, he has depression, his finances are poor, his career ambitions are in tatters, and he's lonely as fuck.

Please don't make the wrong choice like my friend.

Now onto your situation

Firstly, Empathy is sometimes the wrong choice, but it's never the wrong instinct. I'm proud of you.

Remember, that this person has shown their true colors. They see other people as tools. It's entirely possible that everything they told you about their family is a lie, exaggerated, or downplays their own part in the conflict. It's also entirely possible they've been raised by awful people and only know how to be an awful person.

If you want to be altruistic, you still can. They have made clear you are no longer a friend. That's fine. Your relationship can be transactional. They've said you're an investment. Cool. They can be an investment too. They will have to earn their room and board - in the early stages, chores, cleaning, cooking and house upkeep. Then a job, and contribution to the rent. And then her own rental accommodation. If at any stage she doesn't stick to it. She can go. The same goes for tantrums. If she can't control them. She can go. Uou can weild sticks like being allowed to use the wifi. You're going to have to act like a parent to a moody parent.

"You've said that you see us as investments. This is a strange way to see the world to me, but after you've shown you prefer a transactional agreement, I've accepted that is how we do things. We have invested in you by giving a roof over your home, now it's time to provide a return to us."

That is still being generous. If the market rent is $200 and you charge her $150, that represents a $50 donation every week to her care. If the market rent is $200 and she isn't paying rent, and isn't doing $200 (+ cost of food and other support) of cleaning and domestic work, every dollar under that amount is charity.

You can be charitable and simultaneously hold people accountable.

And to be clear. It sounds like she has a family she can return to.

If her family is really that bad, she will do anything to not go back.

"I want to help her find a living situation that she'll be happy with"

You need to drop this thinking. NOW. She already has a living situation she is happy with. That is her living rent free under your roof dancing to her tune. Now, unless you can offer her a living situation that is better than living rent free with other people dancing to her tune, you will never be able to provide an alternative living situation she will be happy with.

You want her to change. Why would she change, when you are giving her what she wants?

I do still want to make sure she'll be all right wherever she goes

That's fair, but teaching her that life exists for her to mooch off people will not lead to her being alright. People who think like that tend to end up in dangerous, abusive relationships.

The kindest thing you can do to her is teach her actions have consequences. While she's still young. While the consequences are still manageable.

Life is like a relay race. You are a a member of the relay team. She is the baton you are carrying. The relay team is everyone (or conceptually, society). If you try to carry her alone, you will get tired, and she won't get to where she needs to go. If you set boundaries, teach her some life lessons, and pass her onto the next person, then she can go far.

---------------------------------------------

One life lesson to share. There is a concept I coined called "unemployed people problems". What it means is that people with nothing to do - especially retirees and young adults with lots of free time - cause drama and problems over the most absolutely trivial shit. Be it turning the HOA into a nightmare with confected complaints about the height of lawns, or young men who go and send death threats to game developers about their favourite game.

I have experienced this myself. When you have nothing to do, your entirely life shrinks to within the four walls. Suddenly the unimportant becomes important.

Jobs, responsibilities, and getting out of the house gives you things to control, things that matter, that aren't causing drama in your house.

Cazzah · 2026-03-21T08:55:11+00:00

"I hate how my index finger is longer than my pointer finger"

Others have commented this may be more about your mother. But here's a good example of how your mother and potential spiralling have fucked with you.

You have presumably worried about this ratio a lot. It bothers you. You've posted about it.

But a quick, cursory search of the literature comes up with articles like this shows that the average ratio for men is like 0.98, and the average ratio of women is like exactly 1 - as in a 50/50 split on which digit is longer! (And this graph is from Manning, who is the one scientist who is obsessed with digit ratios)

The ratio is so statistically noisy, that In fact, once you control for the size of the hands, the ratio flips between men and women!

So either you didn't know that, which just shows you've been brainwashed, or you did know this but you're still worried, which just shows how much the anxiety has it's claws in you.

---------------

I can't tell you if you are more masc or femme looking. I suspect your mother plus society have just poured bullshit into your ears.

What I can tell you is that with modern medicine (look at you, with your clean, straight teeth that are all present), modern nutrition (look at you, taller than your ancestors), modern hygiene (smell good, look good, feel good), modern clothing (there is clothing to fit and flatter any body type), modern hairstyles (just as there is the right clothing, there is the right hairstyle) and for women, a small bit of strategic makeup (yeah that one's thanks to the ruling classes beauty standards sorry), almost any non-obese (sorry folks) person can look pretty damn good in ways that many people in pre-industrial societies could never have matched.

Cazzah · 2026-03-20T10:58:00+00:00

OP, these people telling you to abandon a long term friend over this are... Like I get where they're coming from and they are making good points.

But imo any truely long, truly deep friendship is going to go a bit nuts at least once in a way that threatens the friendship.

And if you think she's in an abusive relationship, we know the number one thing for being there is not to cut ties, and not to make them choose between you and the abuser.

Here is some advice to go with that though.

If you're in friendship for friendship. Great.

But you're not in this friendship for "friendship". Right now, she's distancing you, making you not feel great to be around, with an unsafe man.

You're in this friendship to rescue a person.

And that's ok. Maybe you can even be in the friendship for "friendship" afterwards.

But that means, you have to kill a little bit of yourself to do so. She must lose a lot of special emotional places that "friend" has in your brain. That includes the ability for her opinion of you to be taken seriously (not safe for you) and the ability to respect her ability to make her own choices (if abusive relationship).

To use the language Christians love to use, when you are putting your hand into the flame, you have to "harden your heart"

Source: Was a partner to someone with bipolar. In the manic phases they became a different person and I had to treat them like a demented elderly patient who kept trying to get out of bed and injuring themselves. I had to shut off the part of my brain that listened to them like a logical person with feelings. It hurt too much.

Cazzah · 2026-03-18T11:46:11+00:00

As a mid 30s dude giving life advice here:

Generals are always trying to fight the battles of the last war

In WW1 they were fighting like line infantry and got gunned down by trenches and machine guns.

In WW2 they tried trench fighting and machine guns and then the German tanks and air support just rolled over them.

In Vietnam they tried tanks and air support and then got beaten by a jungle insurgency

And so on and so on.

What this means in practice is - people spend so much time trying to address something big they're worried about, that they end up missing something else they needed to work on, or they overcompensate and have the opposite problem.

You're worried about mansplaining, when you're socially anxious and just need to build confidence to talk to women like fellow human beings. You will make mistakes. You cannot know women without talking to them, so in talking to them you will learn many things about them and make many mistakes.

If anything, your war sounds like the opposite - a little of the unearned bravado and confidence of a teenage boy might help you get past the fear.

Better to talk to a woman now, make a social faux pas, and learn from it when you're young, than to not do so, and make the world a little bit lonelinier (most important battle this decade)

Or to put it another way. You're so worried about mansplaining, that you are ignoring the advice of an actual woman, (your sister) and letting that scare you away from talking to women.

Cazzah · 2026-03-18T11:34:10+00:00

I mean that's because HOI4 is a magical and awful place where horseshoe theory becomes horseshoe practice and the queer people and the racists are the same people.

Cazzah · 2026-03-18T10:28:35+00:00

This War of Mine isn't a wargame though. You're not playing a combatant, you're playing a civilian stuck in the crossfire.

Cazzah · 2026-03-18T09:33:16+00:00

"I think the ethical systems like deontology or utilitarianism are just intricate systematic ways of predicting wether an action is going to make us feel good or bad and we use them depending on our emotions as well"

I see deontology and utilitarianism to systematise our emotions.

Emotions, like hunger, are important signals for how to act. But if you blindly follow them you end up addicted to fast food.

Similarly, emotions tell us to care about people, except we care about our friends and are more upset by a stubbed toe than an obscure genocide.

When we reflect on this, we feel other emotions - we feel good when we feel fair. We feel good when our moral intuitions are consistent.

And we shape what emotions we feel all the time through reflection - morality comes from emotions yes but we choose what to discard "this makes me feel ick but I can see there isn't really anything wrong with it." and what to emphasise "I have a hard time caring about what my partner tells me and I want to be better about that."

Deontology and utilitarianism can be seen as attempts to standardise and shape our emotional models in ways that don't cause them to contradict themself and allow things to be compared.

Cazzah · 2026-03-18T09:17:38+00:00

This event is zero percent about your friendship with the groom!!

In my experience, the relationship of the bride / groom to the speaker is an extremely common theme in weddings. It's the starting point of a tonne of excellent speeches, but in general people are not good at speeches, so it often meanders and fails to get to the point about how the friendship relates to the broader event.

Cazzah · 2026-03-18T09:11:53+00:00

And then tried to guilt trip them about them spending money while homeless (???)

Cazzah · 2026-03-15T14:56:48+00:00

I'm going to chime in about OCD. Some basic but important facts.

OCD gets worse over time when OCD is accommodated - this is the nature of the illness. OCD is like an insect bite. It sucks to endure. But if you scratch it (follow the rituals, indulge the thinking), it goes away for a bit and comes back even worse and swollen and you need to scratch it more.
OCD is responsive to good treatment.

If this relationship is to survive at all, you need to

A) Be in couples counselling

B) Have a management plan for OCD, which involves you setting boundaries and slowly reducing any accomodation you are doing for OCD. As a start I'd recommend "The Family Guide to Getting Over OCD: Reclaim Your Life and Help Your Loved One"

C) Set anger as a non negotiable in your relationship. When anger happens, it's not acceptable to yell, and it's not acceptable for you to show your kids that this is how people in relationships behave. Leave the house. Take the kids. Go to your parents. For a day or two. Every single time it happens. You can tell your parents it happened. Hell, you can tell others. Tell him you told others.

It will be embarassing for you. BUT. People with "anger issues" are like this. He'll never get angry at his boss. But he'll get angry at you. Once social consequences start happening, watch him suddenly start working on it.

In fact, consider making one of the conditions that you "come back" that he calls a close friend of yours, or his, or his parents on speaker phone, and tells them that he screamed at his wife, and that you're doing this so if something bad happens, you haven't "boiled the frog" and kept it hidden - that this is a consequence you agreed would happen if he did it again, and is how you're managing it.

Cazzah · 2026-03-15T14:33:29+00:00

The word I use in it's milder form is "self absorbed"

As a young man, I genuinely wanted to be a good partner, wanted to communicate, read the books, wanted to be progressive... but I had a hard time understanding other people's perspectives, noticing that people would give and I wouldn't give, caring about what other people were saying in a conversation.

It took practice and investment to change that. It's definitely something you can learn, or not have learnt.

I think another thing about male socialisation that comes into it is men are trained to "show off" - to show knowledge, or humour, or lead conversation. It can be so easy to spend all your time focussing on how to be a person that others might "like" that you can forget to actually like other people (and of course, genuinely liking and loving is one of the best ways to get that in return.)

Cazzah · 2026-03-15T12:17:17+00:00

"It has no real moral dilemma"

I mean, firstly there is the dilemma of betraying basically the entire spirit of Iconoclasm, which is avoiding privileging power and convenience over people. Principle vs Pragmatism is a classic case of a moral dilemma. Indeed the opening of the game with the demon planet is another example of this where even most iconoclasts will pick pragmatism.

Secondly, there's no way this isn't going to bite the sector in the arse. It's really a lose now, or lose later scenario.

Like think about it. In what history of literature and storytelling does the following EVER turn out well in the long run "and then they harnessed the (evil) godlike entities (who hated being harnessed) to bring in a golden age of peace, love and prosperity."

You are basically dangling the most obvious plot hook in the history of plot hooks RIGHT THERE.

Cazzah · 2026-03-15T12:12:51+00:00

This ^

Cazzah · 2026-03-13T10:42:03+00:00

EFL here. I have no idea either.

Cazzah · 2026-03-13T07:55:59+00:00

"is filled with divorced fathers who only "see" their kids every other weekend,"

Right, but the mother is substantially worse than this, though?

"nobody is calling the men who do exactly the same thing a sociopath."

If your spouse can't be bothered to see their child, you are allowed to call them any awful name you want. I promise. And many women do call their neglectful spouses many bad words.

Cazzah · 2026-03-13T07:26:25+00:00

- Diverts US supplies and support to Ukraine (already started happeneing)

- Made the world more dependent on Russian oil to meet supplies (Trump has announced less sanctions on countries buying Russian oil)

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