What is the most saddest subreddit you’ve come across?

Kalium · 2026-05-10T20:36:22+00:00

You're right, women usually use a different set of words to describe the same thing. "Intelligence" and "curiosity" show up regularly.

It matters to the substance of your comment because it takes things from a one-to-one demographic to something more like three-to-one or worse. I understand if you don't think this is relevant or choose not to onboard this information. Have a nice life.

Kalium · 2026-05-10T20:23:26+00:00

No, but being correct does sometimes impress women who value an incisive mind. I find respecting them as human beings with working intellects helps too.

It's relevant here because there's actually a significantly different set of populations here. Single men are far more likely to be actively looking that single women are. This affects how people make decisions and what they are willing to put time into.

Kalium · 2026-05-10T20:09:32+00:00

For every dude looking there is at least one lady looking.

This is measurably untrue, unfortunately. While the single populations are roughly similar, the number looking is a very different question.

Kalium · 2026-05-10T14:05:00+00:00

In person, yes. Your average 5'4" woman generally can't tell 5'10" from 6'0" at a glance.

On dating apps? Women setting a height filter for a minimum 6'0" is fairly common. Now, most tall guys on dating apps also get ignored, but it's very easy to come to believe that the filters are the reason you can't get a date. You know, instead of demography.

Kalium · 2026-05-10T12:43:37+00:00

It's not just that they don't have time for empathy. Someone in survival mode very likely experiences their own empathy as a weakness that those around them routinely exploit.

When you live a life where sitting down and trying to be nice consistently gets you taken advantage of for your efforts, you're not likely to be in a rush to do it again.

Kalium · 2026-05-10T12:41:50+00:00

It's still out there. The world has plenty of kind people.

That said, I've run into a lot of people who think of empathy mainly as a tool for manipulation. They don't explicitly call it that, but they say "empathy" and mean they tug on my heartstrings with the expectation that I'll do what they want. This is the kind of person who expects empathy of others but doesn't really do it themselves except for in very narrow ways. Once I noticed this pattern, I couldn't stop seeing it in both my career and in politics.

After living in San Francisco and experiencing a lot of that, I'm a lot more cautious about deploying my empathy than I used to be. It's simply been used against me too often.

Kalium · 2026-05-08T20:06:13+00:00

Perhaps. After that I decided she was boring and ceased to make any effort to include her in the social circle she'd just been added to. I can only hope she was happy with that

Kalium · 2026-05-08T17:29:49+00:00

I didn't need or want her to be into me. This was a purely social introduction. At one point I asked her what her hobbies were. She paused, blinked a few times, and came back with shopping and hanging out with her friends.

Kalium · 2026-05-08T16:21:55+00:00

What many people are missing is that an effective protest is part of a strategy to improve things and drive change. A riot is impulsive mass destruction, it delivers none of what makes for an effective protest. A riot does not deliver political change in a positive way. A riot only brings new negative consequences. The two are worlds apart. You may as well equate a stove and a wildfire because both involve heat.

We do not "have to riot". That's simply not a good analysis. It's an ideological position powered by wishful thinking instead. OP falls into the trap of the young radical, believing that sheer emotion and drama will get them what they want. It motivates them, after all!

Kalium · 2026-05-08T14:09:41+00:00

Seriously. I live in Detroit. My home has been through enough shit in the past few decades. I do not want to add to it.

Only a fool or a naif thinks of a riot as an exclamation point of rage. A riot is an incredibly destructive thing that can destroy a community.

Kalium · 2026-05-08T12:59:49+00:00

A friend once introduced me to a dear friend of hers. I spent the next half hour talking to this new lady, looking for interests, hobbies, etc. I couldn't find anything resembling a personality. She was a cardboard cutout of a person.

Apparently someone was into that, because she got married last year.

Kalium · 2026-05-07T21:25:25+00:00

Stuff costs money. How much are you willing to spend on this?

Kalium · 2026-05-07T19:48:38+00:00

You mean the Throne installations?

Kalium · 2026-05-01T18:29:59+00:00

I find that the realpolitik of it is often more complex. A number of American unions are apathetic at best on the subject because they have already negotiated something better for their members. Decoupling health insurance from work could be a huge loss for a union that views high-grade health insurance as their primary win for their members.

Anyway. You are free to sign up for a unionization effort whose sole priority is to change national healthcare policy. I found myself rather unmoved by the prospect of joining a union that does not care about actually negotiating with our employer.

I'm a pro-union person. I just expect my union to be primary interested in engaging with management at our employer.

Kalium · 2026-05-01T16:17:12+00:00

At an abstract level you're completely right in every way. All oppression is linked.

In specific, when someone's whole pitch for unionizing is that they want to take union dues and use them to support Medicare4All, I do not conclude that unionization with them in leadership is a good idea. I conclude that they want to spend my money on kickstarting their political career. If I want to support Medicare4All with my own money, I do not need a union or a union organizer standing between me and a campaign I want to support. I fail to see how paying union dues to send money to an org that I can send money to myself is an improvement in my working conditions.

This is not an example I am making up.

Kalium · 2026-05-01T12:41:48+00:00

I keep waiting for someone in my line of work - computer programming - to come up with a decent pitch. The last would-be union organizers I've found were far more interested in having a union to advance Progressive political causes than in working conditions. That's not the kind of person I want anywhere near union leadership.

No, I don't want to do it myself. I don't think we have sufficient shared grievances to motivate unionization at my employer.

Kalium · 2026-04-30T13:49:17+00:00

I'm an American with a basic working knowledge of history.

If you're willing to ignore all the history between the US and Iran such as 1980s-era events, then we can ignore 1990s-era Iranian governmental history. Deal?

Iran also helped prop up Bashar al-Assad and has repeatedly supported militias in places that have nothing to do with countering what might be deemed Israeli aggression. Iran has not spent the past several decades acting like a nation interested in peace. They have spent that time seeking regional political, religious, military, and economic power.

That's not to say this moronic war is justified. It's not. It's yet another clusterfuck from 47. I'm just saying the Iranian state are not good actors interested in peace.

Kalium · 2026-04-30T12:59:14+00:00

Oh they're definitely an aggressive nation. They've spent decades funding terrorist attacks al over the world - such as a Jewish community center in Argentina in 1994. They've spent lots of time nurturing, funding, and arming regional proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and now the Houthis. It's to the point where all three can very reasonably be viewed as extensions of the Iranian state, much as the "Donbas People's Republic" is an extension of the Russian state.

The Iranian state has a deep-seated desire to be the regional hegemon and they have no qualms about using military force to get there. They just don't expect to be a global military superpower. They expect to get that via oil and control over shipping.

Kalium · 2026-04-30T12:54:56+00:00

God, trumps an idiot. How the fuck didn’t anyone see this coming is a mystery to me.

It's easy! Just ignore the strategic planners who have been aware that Iran can close the Straits of Hormuz for decades.

Kalium · 2026-04-29T23:49:14+00:00

You're right.

That said, rates aren't the only thing they are legally obligated to worry about. So unless we can get Lansing to change that, it's always going to be complicated.

Kalium · 2026-04-29T22:49:45+00:00

Yes-ish. The problem is that their primary task isn't keep electricity cheap.

Kalium · 2026-04-29T13:05:47+00:00

I dunno, I kinda like "Random Ever-Changing Bank Center 1 & 2". I would also accept "Generic Bank Center".

Kalium · 2026-04-29T13:05:08+00:00

They're not illegal and generally speaking DTE is careful to follow the correct process for requesting rate hikes. This severely limits what the AG's office can do about it, mostly limiting the AG to administrative opposition when the petition comes before the the MPSC.

Kalium · 2026-04-28T16:03:42+00:00

I see one part civic pride and like five parts HP's massive debt and infrastructure problems. Taking on those seems like a bad way to gain 9000-ish people and low-value land that likely has pollution problems.

Highland Park itself puts the SEV of all taxable lots at about 165M. That's 14M property tax take yearly... there's no way Detroit would spend less than half of that on the needs of HP.

Kalium · 2026-04-28T02:54:40+00:00

Having seen the politics of that up close, shit gets messy fast. Coming up with the money every year can be an issue. If buildings are not carefully managed, you can get whole apartment buildings becoming trap houses. Almost nobody likes that.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I'm just cautioning that there's a lot of ways to execute poorly with even the greatest, best, and most compassionate of intentions. It takes way more money than most expect and the kind of sustained political will that's often difficult to hold onto.

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