I agree. I mean, why not explore the possibility at least? If her personal experiences made her interested, this isn’t crazy, and it’s mean to just rip on this young woman for trying to better her lot.

OKCupid doesn’t work. I’ve been working on that front for years because I work nights and am kind of an introverted hermit, but the first dates never go anywhere. You can’t tell through a profile if you’ll have any chemistry at all. Knowing they like the same movie or band as you doesn’t tell you anything. At best the…

This is a bit of a tangent, but as far as religious beliefs go, the virgin birth thing is actually pretty reasonable. Parthenogenesis happens in reptiles all the time. Not typically a mammal thing, but it’s still not entirely clear that it can’t be induced artificially in mammals. Once in two thousand years naturally?…

We have a pretty good idea what this guy’s background is! It’s not racist to suggest that a cab driver named Mohammed Dahbi might be Middle Eastern and/or Muslim, it’s basic inductive reasoning. I’m making assumptions, sure, but they are extremely sound assumptions. And yeah, I know we’ve got plenty of bad cultural…

That’s a copout, a “why are you so intolerant of intolerance” argument. Bill Maher’s obviously an asshole, but he’s absolutely right that the left shouldn’t ignore Muslims doing things that we’d readily call out right wing Christians for. If he was a white Christian fundy we’d be up in arms. That’s hypocritical. Our…

Words to live by.

It’s possible that it can, though. Stupid question: Do cabs have anything analogous to a aircraft cockpit voice recorder? Like, if there are records of how he’s treated heterosexual makeouts, those could be relevant.

The assumption that he wasn’t is a generous one. Culture shock is something people are willing to give the benefit of the doubt about, a lot o the time. If he’s born in the West, then he REALLY has no case for our sympathy.

There’s a limit to what I’m willing to countenance based on culture. He’s not going to be truly unaware this is considered acceptable and defensible in Western societies; the Middle East isn’t so isolated that LGBT acceptance in New York should be a total surprise. So he knows he’s going to encounter it and be…

I think there’s something to be said for this, especially as a dude. Rejection is useful because sometimes out there in the social world, you really can’t win, it’s the Kobayashi Maru and you aren’t Kirk. She just ain’t feelin it and that’s only a problem for you; you’re just going to have to deal with it. Maybe your…

Why should she say that? There’s no reason for the Iranians to negotiate if they don’t think force is on the table. Moreover, I suspect we’re going to make nice with Iran in the next few years one way or another simply because our interests are so aligned. They’re basically just a Shiite (read: way less sympathetic to…

The way you’d “make her act like an actual progressive candidate” is have an actual primary. I’m more concerned that no one is challenging her at that level than I am that she’s running; even is she survived a tough primary, I think her candidacy would be stronger for it. There’s no downside.

You can argue she’s a monster, but at least she’s our monster.

I’m not sure I buy that. If it was a closed, private funeral, sure, but they let a lot of people fucking know about it. At that point, the personal is political, you know?

>Alaska Airlines employee

Oh, now that’s interesting. I work in the airlines, and I can tell you, pilots and flight attendants being away from home all the time put a lot of strain on both ends of a marriage. There are a lot of jokes about Airline Induced Divorce Syndrome. The lonely partner at home reaching out for…

Didn’t Thatcher say something about that?

“Check your privilege cis scum” is a memetic parody of Tumblr activism common on 4chan. Probably where the dude’s from. It’s to a large extent parroting rather than comprehension.

That’s horseshit, dude. As much as it’s a hot fantasy, if that had actually happened to me, even in my hormonally maximal teenage boy days, it’d have fucked me up pretty good in the long game.

Eh, an all-female school might let it slide.

She’s right about nonrev, though. The cultural norm is that when you fly standby nonrev, you’re cargo and no one cares how you feel. Nonrevs are typically industry employees; they assume we know the game and if we wanted to be comfortable, we’d have bought a ticket.