volvoxvsmarla

I have neither a yard nor a car, what do I do on a Saturday

I have already invested more than I would into finding the performance (i.e. 5 mins), but all I find are videos talking about it. Do you have a link?

What’s up with that green person? I’m out of the loop

This sounds like a mini threat

Edit: holy macaroni the future is now

Should I be scared to google it?

I kind of fail to see how a life in which all my basic needs are secured as long as I agree for them to be secured for everyone else, thus freeing me from anxiously giving my life to the futile attempt to crawl above others, is “altruistic”. Working your ass off for nothing but your crude survival and the benefit of a handful of others doesn’t seem very selfish if you put it in this perspective.

In any case, whatever is going on right now - it’s… not good, to say the least. Wanting to fix the problem with the problem is horribly naive.

Anyway, nice meme.

Not gonna lie, no matter how gross the age difference is, I keep thinking about the couples from my high school (in Germany, where the age of consent is 14) where there were 12 and 13 year olds involved with 17-19 year olds. It was rare but it happened and the relationships often lasted quite a while, so it was kind of… consensual, for lack of a better term. And since I don’t know the girl or Van De Velde personally and I haven’t been there, I wanted to abstain from judging this other than on the legal basis.

But when I read that he gave her alcohol - a 12 year old - no way. Sorry but no matter how iN lOvE anyone was or whatever, you do not give a 12 year old alcohol, unless it’s a sip of your beer and she’s your kid (saying this as someone raised in Bavaria). But other than that, no alcohol. And when you end up fucking a 12 year old - which is awful to begin with, worse since they only met - and first intoxicating her, that is just the point at which you cannot argue any kind of maturity, love, attraction, age of consent crap or whatever anymore. You intoxicated and fucked a minor. Period.

The more details from the case are revealed the more I have to say fuck that guy. But at the same time - fuck the judges double and triple.

Is body dysmorphia out of someone’s control? Is mental illness? Is being raised in a toxic society and being manipulated to never feel good enough?

You allow yourself way too much grace if you think you can judge a person’s appearance on the fact whether a person is responsible for their appearance or not. Even with plastic surgery. At some point in their lives they felt like they wanted to change something about their look. For what reasons, you don’t know. Why they went as far as they did or whether something was botched, you also don’t know. Whether they are happy or not with the results, you also don’t know.

It’s her responsibility because she did this willingly and agreed to it is such a short sighted and black and white way of thinking. Even if she did, even if she likes the result and it is as intended, it is not your place to body shame her or anyone at all. The best case scenario is that you are just bashing someone’s aesthetic choices based on your preferences. More likely you are adding insecurity to a vulnerable person (because all of us are vulnerable if we’re being honest).

So maybe try to be kind the next time. If you think it looks awful, keep it to yourself. We have so much negativity and judginess going around already.

It’s 14 in Germany? Yuck.

Why tough. It’s not like you are a child mentally by age 17 years 11 months 29 days and then BOOM birthday happens and your mind becomes mature all of the sudden.

We assume that kids grow to adults in their teenage years. And we grant them our trust and support them to make decisions for themselves, more and more so.

To me, trying to criminalize sex for teenagers has about the same effect as outlawing abortion. It will still happen, it will just be much less safe.

I want my daughter to be able to come to me about questions and if she decides she’s ready to engage on sexual acts, and be able to do it at home where she’s safe and comfortable and not in a car or outside or a public toilet. I don’t want her to risk getting an STI because she is afraid of buying condoms or asking questions. Her feeling that she is “committing a crime” will not make her safe.

I also want to point out: rape, incest etc are obviously still illegal. And let’s be clear here - sexual assault in minors is awful, but/because it is assault. There is explicitly no consent there. These cases very often happen by grown ass adults that the children know - family members or close family friends. I doubt that a 14 year old will willingly agree to have sex with her dad or uncle - no matter whether this is legal or illegal.

That’s what I assumed. Probably the 12 year old “agreed” to everything.

I’ll be frank here, I remember being a teen in Germany. And let me tell you these were some horny times for some classmates. But at no point, also not looking back, would I have said any of these girls or boys who were sexually active at 14, 13 or even 12, have done so out of pressure or against their will. And judging from what I know of them today, all of them are in secure, healthy relationships and live happy, successful, and fulfilling lives. I’ll also point out that we have sex ed from early on (I remember in elementary), so at the age of consent everyone of us has put a condom on a banana in class at least once. Everyone knows where babies come from, we learn how cycles work, what different kinds of contraceptives there are. Also, just because the age of consent is 14 doesn’t mean you are required to lose your virginity at or by age 14.

Now, you still have to draw the line somewhere. I personally don’t think it should be 18 because it’s just unrealistic to assume that teenagers won’t have sex. Or that they will only have sex with other teenagers. “Gap laws” seem sensible to me. But that’s just my opinion, and it is very influenced by the open culture and a societal distinction between kids and youngsters.

And in this case, he is from a country where the age of consent was set to 16. In Britain it is also 16. So even if I can somehow imagine that it was “mutual”, 19 and 12 is in no way even close to legal in neither country. I don’t really know how this case has made it to court. As I said, I know quite a bunch of people who had sex before the age of consent, but they usually kept that, well, out of the courtroom.

I actually wholeheartedly believe in reintegration of convicted criminals in society. I also, maybe even more wholeheartedly, believe that pedophiles need to be open about it so that they can get the help to cope with their urges, and we should not be judgemental about it and stigmatize them ahead of time - the majority of SA offenders who attack minors are not pedophiles. You won’t prevent a pedophile from assaulting a minor by yelling at him for his preferences alone.

Now, that being said, fuck this guy. A misstep? If this happened in 2016 he should still be serving his sentence and definitely not be back on the Olympic team.

Ok, I looked it up: it happened in 2014, so he was 20 then. The age of consent in the Netherlands is surprisingly high (16), so you cannot even claim due diligence or anything. (I am from Germany and over here it is 14, and I have known a couple of 14-18+ relationships, and I could have seen a case where a German 18 year old guy has sexual relations with a British 15 year old and gets in trouble because of this.) He was sentenced to 4 years and served 1. One year for raping a 12 year old girl when he was 20. Wtf? The judges should be ashamed. And as for the Olympic team, shame on them too. This guy should not be representing your country.

Ok as someone not from the states, wtf are boneless chicken wings?

I just don’t want to be homeless when I am old. That’s all I want. Having food and housing. A two room apartment for me and my husband would be nice. If I can use the public transport on top of that, I’m all set. A three room apartment would be a luxury and being able to go out every once in a while would be absolutely astronomical.

(I also want to have healthcare but I am in Germany so I got that going for me which is nice. )

I was thinking about not donating to charity but buying stuff directly and asking them for support to ship it. Basically that makes you buy and not gift. If you buy 1 gigaton of rice for Ethiopia (I have no clue how many people a gigaton of rice would feed and I also have no clue whether Ethiopians need any rice) from Costco, well, then you have spent the money on it. Fuck it, maybe buy a boat. A ferry to ship it all directly. Buy land and don’t gift but let workers work there. For free. For eternity. Oh you happen to pay them 50 times the average salary of their country? Well you’re probably a bad businessman but you’re not gifting. Pay the lawyers to make a bulletproof testament where you explicitly state that these poor fellas will never own the land but will for eternity be able to use it for free until the sun explodes.

And then bribe. Bribe away the heartache, bribe away the pain. Bribe the SCOTUS to retire. Bribe Putin to stop the war and fuck off. Bribe Trump to fuck off. Bribe Musk to get a vasectomy and fuck off. I mean you’re basically just lobbying at that point but we all know that that’s bribing and not gifting.

Me neither. If someone here in Germany started saying Lisboa or Barcelona I would be thrown off and, very honestly, also find it a tiny bit pretentious.

I wouldn’t say it’s wrong if he pronounced it the German way in German speech. I mean I also don’t go around saying My grandma lives is Moskwa and I met my husband in Sankt Peterburg just to keep the native pronunciation. If he talks Hungarian and pronounces it wrong within a Hungarian sentence though…

How do you call that big sidewalk alongside a beach? That was awesome. Long walk just talking and listening.

Esplanade?

And yeah I agree just a long walk’n’talk where you don’t have to constantly look at the other person is kind of the best to get to know someone.

And ffs movies… I had one first date at the movies and this was really awful. Especially since afterwards we drove home (not together). Like, what was that even?

The only way it works is if you go have drinks afterwards and heatedly discuss the movie. But for this you have to meet a cinemaholic and the movie has to have been at least not neutral. Maybe still better on a second or third date than first.

Maybe I’ve never been to a restaurant because I effectively stopped dating at 24 and before that I just wasn’t in the age group that could afford restaurants?

Genuine question - do people seriously have dates in restaurants? I’m 32 and never have I ever been asked on a date in a restaurant. Cafe, sure. But a full on meal with a person? I literally don’t know anyone who went on a first/early date in a restaurant. I assumed that’s a 90s thing that was nowadays only taking place in movies and sitcoms.

Well that’s a great way to have a customer come exactly once to your place and order something small and cheap and then never return out of bad memories and embarrassment. It’s also a great way to make a name as “that restaurant where you’ll get ghosted” for yourself. For real, either the place would get a bad rep as a cursed place, or (more likely) they lose valuable potential customers because they will never go back to a place where they have been stood up.

It is not about being rich or super rich. It is about climbing the hierarchy being an exploitative act in itself. If you dream of creating your own business you will - you have to, basically by default - do this by exploiting other people on the way up. Your success and you becoming “mildly rich” is always built on the backs of others.

Edit: just to be clear, I am fully aware that in the greater scheme of things, a person earning 30k or even 300k is not the enemy of someone earning 25k. Obviously we need to get rid of pervertedly excessive wealth. Having 300k-30k-25k hating on each other distracts from the bigger problem.

But at the end of the day, and I say this with as little moral judgement as possible, as soon as one person controls another one’s salary and undercuts it for their own profit, we are in a system in which success is achieved via exploitation. And this is the case in 99.9% of work environments.