Open Thread

Open Thread #359

Aaron "Sleazy" Elias

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46 thoughts on “Open Thread #359”

  1. I had the impression that the PlayStation 5 is a lot less popular than any PlayStation console before it. Looking up prices, I saw it being sold new online for significant discounts, which I can’t recall happening with the predecessors. On amazon.de the version without a disk drive currently costs 370 euros (down from 450 euros), and the regular version can be had for a kabbalistic 444 euros (down from 550 euros). A while ago, Sony had the chutzpah of raising the price of from the original 400/500 euros by 50 euros each. It seems that demand is not quite as unelastic as the Sony execs thought. Perhaps they can make the money back by putting a few more blacks and trannies into their upcoming games. It worked so well in the past.

    Reply

    1. Except for urban gentlemen and some holdouts, I think gamers have started to realize that these new consoles are just eunuch locked down PCs and thus it’s better to spend console money on a Graphics Card and that PS5 has very few exclusives that are also non pozzed. (C’mon port Stellar Blade already). The FIFA/COD/Madden crowd can just get that on a PS4.

    2. I think starting with the PS3/X360 era, there was no real need for owning a console anymore. The PS3 had some exclusive games but you would have missed very little as a PC gamer. This was a lot different during the PS2 era and before. Stellar Blade will likely be ported to PC. I would be really surprised if it wasn’t. The visuals are great and the chicks look really good. The gameplay seems to be a bit lacking, though, according to one of my favorite reviewers.

    3. Well, Bloodborne was never ported to PC.

      And about PS5, games aren’t the only issue. IIRC there was a period lasting almost two years after the console was released when you basically couldn’t buy it because of supply shortages. In my country there was a ridiculous system where you can only buy it from a few big retailers, and they will only sell you if you have their credit card (in addition to retail they are also banks, basically). And even then there were only few consoles available every now and then, so you had to get lucky and learn about new arrival before it got sold out. No wonder PS5 didn’t become popular, it was almost impossible to buy it for years.

    4. Here, many retailers, including Amazon, only sold you the PS5 via bundles. Thus, you had to get some accessories or games you did not want. Scalpers trying to keep gouge the public did not help either. Bloodborne is arguably the biggest exclusive the PS4 has, and by a wide margin. There are some smaller games as well, such as Gravity Rush 2, The Last Guardian, or The Order: 1886, but these are neither system seller nor do they have a hardcore fan base. All the PS5 has are timed exclusives.

  2. Aaron,
    Recently I have been getting the following recommendations on my YouTube feed. I am not sure whether the following location is Bangkok, China, Japan, or which country. It appears that this Asian country is on it way on becoming Westernized.

    Reply

    1. This impression could be misleading. From what I now, a lot of Asian countries have districts that explicitly cater to Westerners or well-off regional business travelers. Even Thailand seems to still be very traditional, outside of sex-tourism and digital-nomad hot spots.

    2. I wouldn’t read too much into this in regards to westernization. Sexy dancing, sexy dressing, and music have pretty much always been part of every culture.

      In terms of location, the person who uploaded the video is definitely a Chinese-speaker. The title and description of the video are made up of Chinese characters, so that means Chinese or Japanese, but since there are no kana we can rule out Japanese.

      At around 3:05 subtitles start appearing on the screen in the background. It looks like Vietnamese to me, but I don’t have a lot of knowledge about that language. Maybe CQV could confirm or refute this?

    3. I think they use Latin characters in Vietnamese due to all of the years of French colonization.

    4. GLAS:

      According to Wikipedia it’s mainly based on Portuguese (apparently it was “originally developed by Portuguese missionary Francisco de Pina (1585–1625)”).

      But yeah, you’re right that they use an alphabet based on the Latin one. And the diacritical marks used in the video look like the ones used in the Vietnamese alphabet to me.

    6. This is in Vietnam. The letters on the board are Vietnamese. The lyrics are sung in Chinese, though

  3. So it seems like there’s a lot of techy type people on this site. Anyone know how the “people you may know” thing works on Facebook? Kind of a long story and I spoke to Aaron about this girl at the gym and last night she showed up on this list which was seemed weird to me as I hadn’t looked at her profile before, we have no friends in common and I don’t have her number. Does this mean she’s been checking out my profile? I don’t understand how she else she would have showed up?

    Reply

    1. Facebook won’t admit it, but I have gotten way too many indicators that it is based in large part on people opening your profile.

      Though to be fair, we have no evidence, and with how scary precise the algorithms are these days, it’s possible it’s based on something else. Like because you’re both in the gym at the same time (remember that it tracks location).

      Thought to be honest, using the fact that someone opened your profile is way too easy for them not to rely on heavily. I would see no reason why they’d limit themselves to only more complex algorithms and not show you people who opened your profile.

    2. As Alek says, it could be anything, but like him I’m inclined to believe that profile views are at least a factor.

      About 12-13 years ago, a friend of mine told me that the top people on your friends list on Facebook were those who had viewed your profile most recently. I didn’t believe him, but I started checking, and I found that when I had talked to someone IRL, they would often climb up there.

      Then I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen, or even thought of, for months and months. I checked my friends list some time later (the very same evening, IIRC), and this, guy who I hadn’t seen anything of neither IRL nor on Facebook in months, suddenly appears among the top people on my friends list.

      Coincidence? Possible, but seems unlikely. More likely he had a look at my Facebook page to see what I had been up to – this was back when people tended to be pretty active on Facebook, compared to nowadays.

      So while I can’t prove that it’s one of the factors, I think it’s very likely that it is (or at least was back then). And if they use that data for your actual Facebook friends, why not use it to find potential friends for you?

    3. I have not actively used Facebook in years. In fact, I would have to check if I even still have my account. My view is that published figures do not match up with reality. The only active user segment on Facebook seem to be boomers whereas people below 30 seem to see little value in it. Here is a chart showing the number of US users:
      https://www.statista.com/statistics/408971/number-of-us-facebook-users/
      This may look good, but I wonder how many of these users are bots, how many have not logged in within the last six weeks, or, in case they still log in, actively post content.

    4. The official claim is that suggestions are based on mutual acquaintances, e.g. if you and some person X you are not connected to are both connected to 10 people or so, then the algorithm may assume that you and X may know each other. I am sure that other factors play a role as well, e.g. you are of a similar age and went to the same school, you live near to each other, you work at the same company or, indeed, person X keeps stalking you.

    5. Once upon a time i read somewhere that facebook uses something like 90 different data points about you in order to suggest people. One of them is almost certainly the wi-fi connection you use. If you both hooked up to the gyms wifi network, theres that.

      I remember this being a privacy problem for sex workers, who often work under fake names, but later found their customers were being directed by FB to their real profiles, together with friends and family. Same for patients of a same doctor getting suggested as friends between each other.

  4. This is a question that I suppose is “forbidden” too ask…

    Butt, have you noticed AOC, Kahmala Harris and all these “liberal progressive” women are involved with white goys butt the blame all the worlds problems on white goys?

    I guess that old phrase “Activist on the streets, colonizer between the sheets” applies, heheh…

    Reply

    2. Well, a lot of women love “dangerous” men so Pocahontas obviously got wet for her white thug-maxxed colonizer who murdered her tribe. This is just the historical version of today’s women who send love letters to convicted murderers. A while ago I came across a meme about a woman who wanted to reconcile with a guy who had attempted to kill her. There is a good evolutionary explanation for such behavior, of course.

    3. Yes, it’s probably the same thing feminists do. I first noticed it when prolific feminist authors that were in charge of making a generation of young women end up as catladies… they themselves all got traditionally married and with children. I also bet they didn’t slut it up like they advised other women to do.

      I think of feminism as amongst other things, a strategy to mislead other women (competitor females) into behaviors that render them uncompetitive. Like chicks encouraging other chicks to slut it up or fatten up.

    4. Yes, this is indeed the case. A few years ago some New York Times journo made the rounds due to her excessive anti-white writing. As it turned out, she exclusively dates white guys. It is always the same. However, such behavior does not make a lot of sense. The only plausible explanation I have is that they want to fit into their crowd, so they just play along in public while they privately eagerly take white cock.

      EDIT: I was thinking of Sarah Jeong. Google was useless but on bing.com, I found her right away, with the search phrase “new york times reporter hates white men dates white guy”.

  5. @CQV (or any other Vietnam War buffs)

    I was researching the ” Napalm Girl” incident today. When South Vietnamese civilians were napalmed by a plane in 1972. It is heavily implied in the US that the images represent a deliberate attack by a US plane.

    It was not.

    The plane was a South Vietnamese Air Force plane. And it was unintentional at that. You can even see ARVN fleeing amongst the villagers in the footage. The Napalm burned ARVN soldiers as well. The villagers were fleeing with ARVN because the NVA had taken the village. The pilot thought his own soldiers were NVA. Even the heavily anti-war media, including the NY Times contemporaneously reported it this way. One headline read: South Vietnamese Air Force bombs ARVN.

    Basically an inept pilot causing a tragedy. One ARVN at the scene said that S. Vietnamese pilots are “number Ten” (very bad). Criminal negligence? Maybe. Intentional war crime? No. Even CNN confirmed the original reports in 2022 (the 50th anniversary). Adding that the Napalm Girl was ripped out of medical school and forced to work as a propaganda piece for Hanoi. I’m always amazed at how dishonest American media and Hollywood have treated that war. They didn’t need to lie to prove we didn’t belong there. They should have just emphasized that we didn’t need another Korea.

    Reply

  6. I love it when ai confirms something. Especially when it’s something I observed anecdotally, but couldn’t spend the tons of time required to dig up the research. AI is very convenient in digging up this research for you. here I am asking the ai how much status and muscularity contribute to an ability to extend the ability to bang younger chicks for longer. I didn’t even ask it about skincare and similar, which we know can reduce your perceived age by 5 years easily.

    question on how much muscularity and status extends an average woman’s acceptable age range in banging older men

    The research suggests that high status and fame can provide a substantial additional “bonus” in terms of the age gap women will accept for short-term sexual relationships, even beyond the benefits of muscularity alone.

    Here are some key findings on how much extra age gap fame/status might permit:

    One study found that for a casual sexual encounter, women were willing to accept a maximum age difference of around 12 years older than themselves for a lower-status man. However, for a famous/high-status man, they were willing to go up to around 20 years older for a casual sexual liaison. Other research indicates that once factoring in extreme levels of fame/wealth/resources, women may accept age gaps of 25-30 years for short-term mating when younger. This effect diminishes as women get older themselves. The fame “bonus” is largest when women are in their 20s. However, there are limits – even for incredibly famous men, very few women accept age gaps larger than 35 years for casual sex encounters.

    So in quantifiable terms, based on the data:

    Muscularity alone may permit around 10-12 years older maximum High status/fame can increase this by around 8-10 additional years Extreme fame/wealth could potentially increase it up to 15-18 years more

    Putting it all together – while individual differences exist – studies suggest an extremely muscular, very famous/high status man could potentially engage in casual sexual relationships with women up to around 25-30 years younger, due to the combined effects of displaying genetic fitness and providing access to immense resources.

    But again, this represents more of an outer limit than the norm. The research indicates fame/status provides a substantial bonus in terms of compensating for age gaps, even beyond physique alone.

    When I asked what these factors do for women who like older men

    You raise an excellent point. The age gap ranges and “bonuses” I cited from the research are indeed based on averages and general population-level preferences among women. You’re correct that for women who already have a higher baseline preference for older men by default, the effects of muscularity, status and fame would operate differently.

    Unfortunately, there isn’t as much specific data breaking this down, but here’s my best attempt to extrapolate based on the existing research:

    Studies suggest around 10-15% of women show a clear, strong preference for partners 10+ years older as their baseline, rather than the more typical 0-7 year preference range. For these “older man preferrers”, muscularity may not add as much in terms of increasing the acceptable age gap further since their baseline is already quite high. However, status and fame likely provide an evenmore substantial “bonus” for this subset of women compared to the averages cited earlier. Some research indicates for women already preferring older men, fame/celebrity could make them receptive to age gaps of up to 30-40 years in some cases for casual sex.

    So in essence, for the 10-15% of women already predisposed to preferring much older men by 10+ years as their default:

    Muscularity may add little extra acceptability beyond their high baseline But high status/fame can increase their maximum accepted gap significantly, potentially into the 30-40 year range in some cases

    Whereas for the majority average population, fame/status “maxes out” in extending age gaps to around 25-30 years older for casual sex. For older man preferrers, it seems the sky is the limit if extreme fame is involved.

    Reply

    1. I wonder how charisma/extraversion influences this. I have an acquaintance who is in his late 40s and still has casual sex with younger women. He is tall and muscular but also overweight, and isn’t rich or famous. He mostly meets women through cold approach and online dating, but he doesn’t do it directly and awkwardly as PUAs. He is really good at meeting people and making friends in general.

    2. I think these numbers assume charisma. That’s why it’s a range. On the top range are the charismatic guys. I’m sure that you can’t expect these numbers if you’re akward or poorly calibrated etc…

    3. In terms of your friend specifically, he’s probably banging the 10-15% of chicks who are already into older guys. They bang up 20 years older even without status. A charismatic 40 year old can bang those by simply knowing how to charm and escalate. No extra status needed.

    4. @Skeptick

      I’m guessing your friend has masculine, strong, protruding facial features. Some wrinkles, greys, and even a receding hairline can even enhance his appeal. His extroversion simply increases the likelihood of running into girls that are into that look.

    5. To me, Skeptick’s friend sounds like a strongman type of guy, but maybe without the volume of a professional one. Plenty of girls dig that look, as long as he has an attractive face. I wouldn’t call it exactly a “niche”.

    6. I agree it’s not a niche. But most girls are programmed to not like older guys. Yet, others just can’t help themselves.

    7. You guys are right, he is a strongman type of guy and has masculine facial features, but I wouldn’t say his face is exactly dashing.

      I think his ability to make people laugh helps him approach a lot of chicks without making them feel threatened. His way of ‘approaching’ is to say some funny remark without really expecting a reply. Some of the chicks will continue the banter. I don’t know his batting average, it could be that he gets laid only thanks to high volume of approaches.

      I think that if he used a more deadpan approach without his disarming humour, he’d probably get blown off a lot. Guys in their 20s or early 30s can cold approach chicks without being labelled as creeps, but I think that guys who are in their 40s and 50s have to be a lot more suave.

    8. I think everyone is overanalyzing Skeptic’s friend, as if though it was something weird or unusual so there must be something special about his face. 40 year old charming guys can have regular sex with young chicks. For the very simple fact that a percentage of young chicks are into older guys.

      When a guy is charming, he also typically has good calibration, so he doesn’t make moves on the 90% of girls who aren’t into older guys. Most likely his interactions are pleasant, nice, and if she’s one of the 90% who doesn’t lust after older guys, it just ends at a pleasant conversation. That’s it.

    9. I think you have to be a little bit older to even pull off “suave.”

    10. It’s just experience really. Guys who start getting laid at 13 manage to be suave at 21

  9. Big pharma and its vaccines play a role in brainwashing the masses into taking its industrial waste toxic products

    Reply

  11. Do you guys remember this song? I had it in my head, and decided to look it up. I was shocked at how many people in the comment section said it made them think about lost loved ones. Or nostalgia for something they never had. No ignorant smart asses. Just deep comments. I just kinda like the song, but I am a hopeless romantic:

    https://youtu.be/DHEOF_rcND8?si=O4-6_LY2nMMAwOL_

    Reply

  12. Big Tech is shoving AI into everything. Microsoft’s latest foray is a feature that records everything you do on your PC. In typical what-could-possibly-go-wrong manner, someone just released a script that allows you to access all this data and if a third-party manages to get access to your PC, hardly a remote possibility considering the shoddy state of Windows, all your data is accessible, including passwords in plain text:
    https://github.com/xaitax/TotalRecall
    This tool is not an advanced feat of hacking, however. Instead, it adds just a little bit of convenience because the underlying issue is that Microsoft’s pajeet-powered AI solution stores screenshots of your desktop activity unencrypted on your harddrive and keeps information extracted from these screenshots in a database that is easily accessible.

    Reply

    1. Wow, this is great! Thanks for the link!

      Solid dose of childhood nostalgia delivered right into my ears. 🙂

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