College educated couples who got married after the age of 30 are exactly the sort to buy a house before having kids. They’ll also have locked-in friends and family who they can count-on, and likely owe them favors. Other than grandparents and single people, these ARE the society you want in your corner.

As someone who did it in the reverse order, I promise you, you’re gonna burn a friendship or familial relation or three out of need, ones that otherwise would have lasted generations, and know as its happenning you’ll be living with that regret the rest of your life. You may be able to pay them back, but almost certainly neither in-kind or in any way, or on any time-scale, that makes the relationship what it once was.

As you get older, relationships ossify - it takes life-changing events to have any chance to undo extinction events or straight “I’m burned-out on their shit”.

So yeah, I have a lot of people who know that I, and my kids know, our family owes them and I will do anything in my power to do whatever I can to help them should they ever ask. They even would likely still help with whatever I asked for, even non-sense(“we’re square”)…

… BUT, they stopped coming to fun “note-worthy” things we invite them to many years-ago. Any sharing in our modest successes(or just relief that x milestone was reached) is tainted by all the dirty-dirty of all the sausage they’ve helped us make to get to here.

Relying on society, when it works out, still usually leaves you with over-extended or strained relationships(especially with friends and family), and kids who will never understand just what was so important about their conceptions and births that couldn’t have waited until you were a little more ready and not constantly stressed to the breaking point - kids who are absolutely right.

Ask me how I know. If I look at it from the stand-point of the heart-attack that seems due any day now, maybe there was some urgency, but without trying to shoe-horn kids into a lifestyle that wasn’t ready for them and ultimately had to be abandoned in-favor of doing whatever it takes to keep them happy and healthy, external/internal consequences be damned, then my health outlook might not look so bleak.

All that, and have you seen divorce statistics? Jesus FUCK, have you SEEN divorce statistics? … and it’s somehow still okay to throw massive financial insecurity into the mix, the SINGLE GREATEST driver of divorce? Sure. Aim for the stars, kid. The world is your oyster and all that.

The first one isn’t misogyny. Minus the specifivity of the “$2 million” part, its the Jewish tradition of what is required for a man to be able to propose. “Having kids is too expensive” is just the straight-up truth for anyone who isn’t uncommonly comfortable relying on charity and/or society.

Like, are we going off the avatar, pretending a woman who says those things is crazy? Because she’s absolutely not, and neither are the men trying to live up to those items, at a minimum.

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“Encountered”? I was raised on that shit. I was bewildered the first time I encoundered a printed graphic sleeve, and learned that some people spent shelf space on tapes with only one movie each on them…

There’s no way she put-in little-enough thought to make her statements since sincere, except, probably, drugs, but in the modern narrative that was just another layer of something that “happened to” her. I don’t buy the “self-harm” angle either - that’s just another facet of ex-post-facto internalized shame, without which none of the mental gymnastics would be “necessary”.

As for the rest of your first paragraph, right there with you. I’m never intentionally looking up the one video, at least.

Nothing wrong with it until she decided, probably after the fact, that it was wrong all-along, and she should probably at least pretend to regret it, as if society and people like you would ever forgive her, or just as likely, an angle for her to seize the spotlight for another precious moment without really trying. Thankfully, there’s people like you she was able to wring another few precious pennies from.

I’m not here for anyone’s perscriptive “should she have done that?” agendas, and your double-speak on the matter is gross.

Dunno who that is, don’t care. Again, there’s plenty of other recent articles about it.

I can never discredit myself to the degree you have done yourself, attacking points and stances I never even came close to making or endorsing. Insincere, infantile and facetious from your first reply, and only escalating from there. Bye now.

No fucks given about the body-count. Not putting a stop to it at the point it becomes traumatizing AND leaning-in on the trauma in public quotes? I relive all the times I let myself almost-break for a dollar enough in therapy enough, without risking strangers asking me about it or calling me “brave”(as if THAT’S what would happen…) No mistake, good-on-her for following-through if she genuinely wanted to or deemed it that important, but from the sound of it…

… Oh, and let’s not pretend society(or even 95+% of women who despise OOP, rightly or otherwise…) would be cool with me being cool with that and still wanting to date Bonnie Blue this side of her-changing-career-paths and me magically having enough money to “fix” her, either. I’m not interested in increasing the number of judgy “I got mine”/aspiring prudes in this world, TYVM.

My source was one of many, and only makes the Empire’s failure to endure look even more pathetic if taken at face-value, but you get all butt-hurt about it as you like, I guess.

Dude, read the article, but I used quotes for just that reason, that being the evidence we have is some evenly-spaced holes in some walls with flechettes lodged in some.

Where you got the idea I was just fellating the old empire from all that is beyond me, but at least I don’t have to give a damn which part of “the Ayatolla appreciates your efforts!” offends you exactly in return…

Seriously, versus OOP, I’m here for the
A E S T H E T I C . . .
Can we set the Dick-measuring contests aside for like, a minute?

What an appropriate setting to play Empire versus all other concerns! This is why we can’t go to China to beg them to take away Trump’s Duplos, but you do you, Pooh Bear!

No shit, I came here to point this out. Like, wtf does the WESTERN Roman Empire part really have to do with anything? I want to see what kinds of Mechas the Byzantines and even various Caliphates could have eventually churned-out if their reigns hadn’t ended as much as I begin to give a damn what various stages of Rome, specifically, would have done.

Same goes for Egypt, Ghenghis Khan and all of the African empires that time(and disinterest) has ground to presently un-known dust and rumor. Even random Greek city-states’ offerings would at least be unique and not guided by OOP’s/our misunderstandings about Rome’s “super-marbled”/black-and-white-and-gold-and-red aesthetics.

Fuckers had “machine guns” in their day … the miracle is that anyone else got a chance to show us something cool in the times since.

I mean, given that its based on specific teachers, the opt-out or in is going to have to be allowing the child to stay with the teacher the school assigned the child to, or request a transfer … unless magically trusting the researchers to scrub students faces. The biggest problem I see is the school acting like that last option is something that parents should even seriously consider.

Those made 1000x more sense.

Oh God, they can’t even do prepping right any more.

No, they live off eating paper. Crunchy little rectangles with pictures of royalty on them.

cIvIliAn tArGeTs dOn’T CoUn’T!!!

Seriously, why won’t anybody play nice with us? It’s a mystery…

Depends where you sail, but I’ve made some edits to that comment since anyways.

A single-hull can be made self-righting, in case it flips in bad weather. A 35 foot catamaran? You’re not getting that back up-right with a crew of one - you basically hope and pray a bigger boat comes along at that point.