No, but I also sincerely believe that dang is a lizard. Not because I have any reason to believe that dang is a lizard, but because my ethos obligates me to believe anyone is a lizard when I see an opportunity to do so.
That's interesting. Anecdotally, I'm a gay guy from a working class town, and I'm one of only a few gay guys that ended up getting any sort of degree. My cousin is gay and he went into the Air Force, the rest of the gay guys I know of from my old hometown (all people I learned were gay later, being openly gay was not a safe thing there when I was in high school, but became less of an issue in the decade afterwards), all work at places like Dollar General or Family Dollar stocking shelves. I'm also the only guy from my graduating class to have gone to college at all, as opposed to three girls from my graduating class and a fourth whose gone to college in the years after. I wonder if other people's anecdotal observations match our own?
I wouldn't believe that this is a reasonable hypothesis. The implication of this would be that straight men are spending _so much_ time trying to get laid that it hinders their level of education as a demographic, and this just seems to be absurd on its face.
What is the mechanism by which the average straight man is precluded from higher education via his pursuit of sex? He spends less time on homework and gets worse grades? He spends less time in class or lecture in favor of pursuing sex? He's so sex-driven that pursuing education just isn't even a thought to him? Other factors along these lines?
It just doesn't seem to seem plausible that the pursuit of sex would take up such disproportionately large amounts of time for straight men vs gay men that it would lead to this kind of a difference. It seems like straight men would have to be neglecting comically large portions of their lives in favor of the pursuit of sex for this to be plausible.
I suppose it's possible that straight men end up precluded from pursuing higher education due to it being easier for them to start an unplanned family, but I'm skeptical of that as well.
> I wouldn't believe that this is a reasonable hypothesis. The implication of this would be that straight men are spending _so much_ time trying to get laid that it hinders their level of education as a demographic, and this just seems to be absurd on its face.
As someone with quite a few gay friends and am straight - can say that my life would be 100x better if I was gay. All my gay male friends agree. Straight men have it incredibly difficult as far as dating investment goes. You can spend all your time in the gym, work, studying, improving personality, etc. and it can go entirely unrecognized by women for some minor reason like you’re not tall enough (not tall == short, mentality is very prevalent). On top of this - you’re gonna have a real bad time on dating apps whereas gay men will literally meet up with anyone who is at least in modestly good physical shape (even then - plenty of those who will meet up with you). After that, it’s up to you to figure out how to lock it down if that’s what you want. Whereas a straight man can receive nothing for years online - I mean I’ve never been on a date in my entire life from online interactions!
If I was gay, my life would’ve been much better. I spent so many hours out of my day doing things just for women for so long and still do. Whereas I would not have to do this for gay men because I would’ve been accepted from the start - and I could’ve gone on doing more while feeling good about being accepted instead of going on and doing these things feeling rejection the entire time.
I can say that at least from my gay friends - it seems like the community isn’t perfect but at least they accept you. And at least there’s a community - holy shit.
Gay men may have an easier time obtaining casual sex in areas where gay sexual practices aren't prohibited by law. But, I don't think this advantage necessarily translates to a higher probability of establishing long-term relationships. There are a lot of other considerations for successful long-term same-sex relationships that don't apply as much to casual sex, e.g. whether the families of both partners accept the relationship, whether the community the couple lives in is LGBT-friendly, and whether both partners are out in the first place.
Maintaining health/fitness, focusing on work/education, and developing a strong personality are all actions that have a high return on investment in areas of life outside of dating. Anyone would benefit from doing all of these things regardless of how necessary they are to obtain casual sex.
> But, I don't think this advantage necessarily translates to a higher probability of establishing long-term relationships.
At least in my circle - it does. The men who want to have long term relationships can and do. The men who don't - don't. At the very least - all parties can have their carnal desires satisfied at a moment's notice without any judgement.
> Maintaining health/fitness, focusing on work/education, and developing a strong personality are all actions that have a high return on investment in areas of life outside of dating. Anyone would benefit from doing all of these things regardless of how necessary they are to obtain casual sex.
I think to some extent they translate but I'd say that for most straight men - they really only do it because they want a partner. If they had the choice then they wouldn't bother. While some of these translate in other areas - they don't translate as strongly as in dating. Higher income/NW doesn't mean shit if you have to spend all your life alone. Health/fitness just means you live longer alone. For the overwhelming majority of men - they rather die than be alone (one of the reasons why the suicide rate among men is so much higher than for women). This is where they are very different from women who are completely content with dying alone.
LGBT suicide rates are significantly higher than those of heterosexual people:
> Gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men are at even greater risk for suicide attempts, especially before the age of 25. A study of youth in grades 7-12 found that lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth were more than twice as likely to have attempted suicide as their heterosexual peers. Some risk factors are linked to being gay or bisexual in a hostile environment and the effects that this has on mental health.
While there are gay men who have successful long-term relationships, there are also many gay men who encounter substantial cultural and legal obstacles that interfere with their day-to-day lives and their ability to establish long-term relationships. Not every gay man gets to enjoy the same positive outcomes as the ones in your social circle.
The Bay Area (mentioned in your HN profile description) is a very LGBT-friendly location, and the people in your circle show the potential of gay men in a more accepting environment. Your opinion seems more reasonable in that context. But, LGBT people in the Bay Area are not representative of the LGBT population at large, many of whom face challenges specific to their sexual orientation that decrease their quality of life, with ramifications much greater than casual sex.
Is this to mean "People aren't killing themselves, ergo everything must be pretty good for them generally"? Because, if that's what's meant here, I have to pretty vehemently disagree with that sentiment.
The self-preservation instinct and general human will to live is strong enough to keep you going even in the absence of "enough good things". But good things aren't the only thing that balances out bad things, as anyone who has seen authoritarianism first hand could tell you. Bad things squared can work just as well.
For example, most religions have a taboo on suicide. "Your life sucks? Well tough shit bucko, you choose the easy way out and you end up in hell where it's infinitely worse forever." Absurd as it may sound, people can live against their will, too.
Also the proportions. While (in the US at least) manufacturers are required to list their ingredients in the order of greatest proportion to least proportion, they are not required to disclose what those proportions are, which also adds some difficulty to reverse-engineering the recipe.
I think the biggest catch is being able to throw potentially thousands of different substances under the generic “natural flavorings.” Read the Coca Cola ingredients list and you certainly don’t see “coca leaf extract” on it.
Fascinatingly, quite the opposite! For example, the original Macintosh had only a small fraction of that to work with, at 128 Kilobytes![1]
Certainly a modern GUI a la KDE, Gnome and friends would be well outside of its abilities, but a functional GUI is possible on a shockingly small amount of memory!
And? People ran FVWM and rxvt on 4MB of RAM for i386. Slow, but with 8MB it was usable, and with 16MB FVWM ran much faster than CDE itself, not to mention rxvt vs dtterm or even xterm.
TinyCore (on the frontpage a while ago) fits an OS with a FLTK/FLWM desktop in 16 MB of storage⁰, but it requires a bare minimum of 46 MB of RAM to boot (regardless of swap space, which it recommends along with 128 MB of RAM).¹
OTOH KnightOS² (not Linux) has a rudimentary (obviously not Xorg) GUI that IIUC runs on TI-73 series graphing calculators with 25 KB of RAM.
I don't see why a modern gui should be impossible. It's not like flat design with rounded corners is amazingly complicated. One issue could be high-res assets, but with some codegolfed vector graphics I think you could get something nice looking.
Ok I should have clarified that, I meant available Linux GUI's in reference to OP and IRIX. You'd have to create something from scratch. I don't think you could cram a GUI on par with IRIX in 4mb.
