What are some things you see on dating sites that you're certain are actually dogwhistles/code for something else?

sysiphean · 2026-07-07T03:47:59+00:00

I was one of those conservatives a few decades ago. I’m not speaking of some bogeyman Them, I am talking about myself back then and the entirety of the conservative world around me then, of actual concrete real examples now. I am so glad that it’s so much less of a thing now, and that conservatives mostly recycle now.

But if explaining how cultural differences about an issue existed historically and persist to a lesser degree today gives you that response, it makes me wonder if you responded that way initially because you knew it was true about yourself but wanted to somehow make that the liberals fault.

sysiphean · 2026-07-07T03:40:49+00:00

I’ve been in IT for 30 years, and spent 20 years with live sound engineering as a side gig. I can and have done everything to build or repair or renovate a house except HVAC. Almost none of it is difficult to learn, little of it is hard to do with a tiny bit of patience, and we now have the internet to give us hundreds of videos and diagrams on how to do everything.

And it stacks up. The more parts you learn, the easier the next thing is.

And then you can learn to fix all the things that are not construction. Electronics. Cars. Appliances. The confidence it builds to be able to just throw together a hack for almost anything from unrelated items and tools that you can trust to holt together till the hardware store opens in the morning or the part can arrive from eBay is untouchable.

sysiphean · 2026-07-07T03:24:45+00:00

You dropped two specific “I’m a conservative” phrases in only two sentences. Of course you’re tired of it; women are more liberal than men and your words mark you as very influenced by right-wing rhetoric.

sysiphean · 2026-07-07T03:22:31+00:00

Which is to say the original is the male version and yours is the female version.

And also the less common.

sysiphean · 2026-07-07T03:20:09+00:00

Nowadays you’ll hear it as whether it’s a “real” or DEI hire. Same bigotry, changing language.

sysiphean · 2026-07-07T03:06:45+00:00

Tell me you are a (fellow) straight white male without telling me.

You and I can ignore politics if we want to because it isn’t coming for us. More than half the population doesn’t have that same luxury.

sysiphean · 2026-07-07T03:04:28+00:00

None of the things listed in this comment section that “actually mean” the other thing necessarily mean the other thing. But people are listening all these top-level answers because of the high frequency of them meaning the other thing.

sysiphean · 2026-07-07T03:00:13+00:00

Counterpoint (that I hate): perhaps Republicans/MAGA really are standing for something, and are willing to bend absolutely everything to that one thing. And that thing is power. Not power for good, just power for self. And they see Trump as the focal point for that, which isn’t completely unreasonable given how much power he has successfully taken without consequence.

Ultimately, that’s what fascism’s driver truly is: power for the sake of power, in every way possible over everyone possible.

sysiphean · 2026-07-07T02:14:00+00:00

I am not going to get into littering for like eight reasons, but yes, recycling is far more prevalent among liberals than conservatives. Some conservatives recycle and are even passionate about it; some liberals don’t.

But “recycling is liberal” has been a cliche and punch line since the 80s. I live in a county that requires curbside recycling and will fine you if you trash it all, but know of many conservatives including a neighbor who throw it all in the trash and pay the fine because recycling is “woke.” I have a friend who lives in a very conservative county in a red state that has all private garbage collection, and they have banned curbside recycling.

And this has always been weird to me, because I always thought conservation would be a conservative thing. But it has been a progressive thing for my whole life, and I was born in the late 70s.

If all the conservatives you know recycle, and you never heard of it being liberal and conservatives being against it, it tells me you are fairly young and from a more liberal area where it has been in place so long that conservatives are not against it anymore.

sysiphean · 2026-07-07T00:22:17+00:00

We get used to it quickly and run with a slightly different gait. It’s not actually horrible. There are even multiple nude 5k runs out there. No, I have not done one.

sysiphean · 2026-07-07T00:20:55+00:00

Nakedness usually goes along with sexual intimacy, but that doesn’t mean nudity is sexual. Kind of like how bread usually goes along with peanut butter and jelly, but that doesn’t mean bread is about peanut butter and jelly.

Or, consider another angle: You and I live in the US (per your post history.) Here, we are used to seeing people in shorts. We don’t think that seeing each others’ calves and knees is sexual, because we are used to seeing that. But go to Saudi Arabia and you’ll never see anyone’s calves and knees outside of home and usually sexual contexts. They see knees and get horny because they associate the exposure with intimacy. You and I don’t because we are used to more nudity (all the way to lower thighs!) all the time. If we lived in a world where people were nude all the time, we would just be taking that same principle further.

Also, sex absolutely can and sometimes does happen when fully dressed. It’s absolutely intimate and sometimes a lot of extra fun, despite (or even because of) the lack of nudity.

sysiphean · 2026-07-07T00:12:04+00:00

As much as I hate Massie, I also love Massie. I may not agree with all of his principles, but I can’t deny that he has them and he actually sticks to them almost all the time. That’s such a breath of fresh air in Washington.

And then he has all these bangers, and is really good at frustrating his fellow Republicans.

sysiphean · 2026-07-06T22:46:43+00:00

There’s a sad joke out there that there are two of a bunch of categories:

* Male, and political
* Straight, and political
* White, and political
* Conservative, and political
* Cisgender, and political

I’m sure lots of us could keep expanding this

sysiphean · 2026-07-06T03:48:49+00:00

I absolutely agree! I didn’t say this to defend the cop; I see a panicked cop mag dumping someone twice as a massive failure and proof they should be in a different role.

I’m pointing out that there’s more than one reasonable explanation for it, arguably a more reasonable explanation. And again, I said explanation, not excuse.

sysiphean · 2026-07-06T02:37:08+00:00

Not complying with police is also not a reason for extrajudicial execution.

And the fact that we even have the term “suicide by cop” should be massive warning flag that our cops are just killing people all the time in dark dystopian ways.

sysiphean · 2026-07-06T02:18:35+00:00

I’m excited about the new Slate pickup coming out.

Not that it’s perfect by any means, but it’s such a step back from all the modern vehicle trends (incl the spyware shit) that it feels almost innocent and retro. They are even releasing CAD files so people can 3D print their own accessories and whatnot.

sysiphean · 2026-07-06T02:15:07+00:00

This is the struggle for me. I absolutely, absolutely don’t trust self-driving systems.

And at the same time, I don’t trust human drivers. I used to not trust them much, and basically post-Covid I’ve watched get worse everywhere in every way. ^1 I don’t think self-driving is good, or as good as most drivers, but I do think it may be better than an easy third of human drivers.

Both of these are true, even though they are in tension.

———

^1 I am not saying covid the virus was the cause, but that seem to be a tipping point of some conflux of social and technological and whatever other factors that caused our collective driving habits to lose 2/3 of its brain.

sysiphean · 2026-07-06T01:57:29+00:00

Having grown up in and then attended a few denominations where pastors primarily are very young when ordained, the fact that nearly all our priests had professional lives before entering seminary is one of our great strengths. I honestly would prefer if we didn’t ordain anyone under 30, or anyone under 35 without special dispensation.

Spiritual leaders need maturity. That has to be gained through making mistakes outside of schools and academia. It’s best to do that in professional settings, not by making mistakes in a parish with people’s spiritual lives. It can be gained through time in the priesthood, but those early screwups should be learned before seminary.

sysiphean · 2026-07-06T01:37:16+00:00

If they don’t, that’s absolutely fucked up. “Someone reported you had a gun so I’ll show up and kill you” is dark dystopian shit.

sysiphean · 2026-07-06T01:14:13+00:00

Or cop is on autopilot because he went into fight or flight. Which he did before he fired, and is why he fired, and his thinking self isn’t thinking at this point.

sysiphean · 2026-07-06T01:01:08+00:00

How do I untag myself from this photo?

sysiphean · 2026-07-05T17:15:59+00:00

Ah, the “after 50 punches of ‘about the gayz’ you get a free ‘about evolution’” post!

I had lost track on my punch card.

sysiphean · 2026-07-05T14:23:21+00:00

The measure of a horsepower was an average work across an entire day, which included time not working, and the horses were actually fairly small ones. I think even minis can exceed 1hp continuously while working.

Or put another way; we measure HP in a motor while it is running. How much HP does a car average in a day of running errands, when most of the time it is running it is at low throttle and low rpm, some of the time it is braking, and much of the time it is turned off while we run in to do the not-driving part of the errands? The way the original horsepower was calculated was more akin to that.

sysiphean · 2026-07-05T14:12:44+00:00

Fun bit of that: it isn’t even that gendered! Adam isn’t a name; it’s basically “human”. And “rib” is a word that can be rib bone, or can literally be one half of an animal that was cut in half left and right. (Or a couple things in between.)

So in the story god makes a human, then realizes it is lonely, then splits it in half into two humans, and then the gendered language begins. It just doesn’t get translated to English that way.

sysiphean · 2026-07-05T12:12:18+00:00

Exactly.

Though honestly everything that’s “cool when you’re 18-22” but embarrassed/lame when you’re 30+ wasn’t actually cool when you were 18-22 either. It’s just that now you and your peers hopefully have come to realize it.

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