The other thing about age gaps is that most arguments against them rely on, and thus reify, existing prejudices.
“There must be something wrong with him if he can’t get women his own age.” Okay, let’s unpack what might be “wrong” with such a person. Maybe he doesn’t want to be a father and most women his age either want children or have them already. Maybe he prefers casual relationships and thus seeks women who aren’t ready to settle down. Maybe he has less money than other men his age, so his lifestyle meshes better with someone who’s living on a student budget. Maybe he’s involved in a hobby or subculture that skews younger. Maybe he’s developmentally disabled!
None of these things is wrong. All of them are mocked for not conforming to the “normal” trajectory of adult life. And yeah, maybe the thing that’s “wrong with him” is that he’s a tool and all the women his age are sick of his shit and know better. That does happen. But the way actual jackass behavior is so often conflated with things like “has a low-earning job” and “has stereotypically youthful hobbies” is rather telling. It’s not at all easy to divorce actual fears of predation from prejudice against adults who don’t adult “properly”. I wish we’d stop acting like bigotry never informs these things.
Also, “there’s something wrong with a person who can’t get a date” is an abhorrent appeal to the just world fallacy, and if I never hear it again it’ll be too soon.
black mambas probably have my least favorite faces because an animal that venomous should not be making a face like it’s thinking of a joke that it’s the only one in on
I had a dream last night that they made a new Bond movie, but they didn’t say who was playing Bond. Throughout the movie you have no idea which character is really Bond, because he’s undercover, duh. And every single character, no matter how minor, was played by somebody famous, so they could all conceivably be Bond. And at the end it turns out Bond was Leslie Jones.
We had friends from Australia staying with us for a month when the I-35 bridge collapsed. We were all in the van going somewhere, listening to the radio when they announced it.
And one of our friends looked at us and asked, “Is this a… normal occurrence, in America?”
Here’s a list of structurally deficient bridges, if you’re interested. But it’s not just bridges that are at risk, it’s every aspect of our aging infrastructure since we seem less and less keen on putting any money into it.
This is absolutely true but also.. kinda not.
The US is massively huge. Even people who live here forget that sometimes, and visitors from foreign lands don’t grasp it even while visiting. I’ve been asked by Norwegian visitors if we could “pop over to Chicago” for some authentic deep dish pizza.. which is 700 miles from Atlanta.
Which means yes, infrastructure is crumbling in some places. But not everywhere. It’s a very regional phenomenon, and entirely based on economic factors.
For instance, Georgia DOT is amazing.
Our roads are free of potholes, they’re constantly repaving and fixing stuff. At the county level, there’s a (voter approved) 1% tax entirely set aside for infrastructure improvements like new traffic lights, crosswalks, sidewalks, and roads.
The only bridge collapse in recent memory was due to a fire, set by arson. A portion of I85 collapsed in Atlanta in March 2017. By August 2017 – five months later – the entire 10-lane bridge had been replaced.
So yeah, there’s a lot of failing infrastructure in the United States. But it’s mostly in economically depressed regions.
Hey, that’s awesome to hear. I’ve lived in Virginia, Florida, New York, Illinois, Minnesota, Georgia, and Washington State – sure, city to city even, things are different.
Minneapolis/St. Paul is not an economically-depressed region, though. Neither is New York City, where no one is putting money needed into the subway system for basic maintenance. My point is we have infrastructure that is widely and generally failing, and a Federal government that seems less and less inclined to serve the states in doing anything about it.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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