I don’t know if the people with money can even tell if a person really loves them or not. And it’s not just rich men and young, attractive women; that goes both ways.

I think that, if I were a billionaire, I’d have a very, very hard time trusting that any person I met was genuinely interested in me, and not my money. Unless they were also independently wealthy.

They’re trying to make a transphobic “joke”, because that’s the only “humor” some people are capable of.

To further this, since I’ve known one or two sex workers - they want to know that you’re safe, and that if shit goes south on their end, you can be found again. Some workers will require references from other workers. You probably aren’t going to know their real name, etc., because, again, they want to be safe; they don’t want a client tracking them down in public and wrecking their life when they’re just trying to make a living.

do not expect the pictures to match reality

Interesting. Wouldn’t that lead to customers declining services? Or do you lose a deposit if you do that?

Sufficient amounts of money can buy something that’s a close enough facsimile that you couldn’t tell the difference from the inside.

I think that’s a problem that truly wealthy people have; you can never know if a person is interested in you, or it they’re after your money. For example, I think most people believe that Melania Trump is only with Donald because he has money, and she loses access to that money and power if she leaves. (Plus, she’s unlikely to find anyone with a similar amount of wealth and power at this point.) I’m fairly certain that I dated someone for a few months that believed that she treat me like a sugar daddy, and once she realized that I didn’t have as much money as she thought, she bailed.

But if you have a billion or more in wealth? Pretty sure that you’re not going to be lacking people aspiring to be your partner.

I dated someone who had a roommate that was a sex worker. She was a professional domme; I found her professional profile online along with a non-comprehensive list of services she offered, and it was definitely enough to identify her.

I very briefly dated someone that was a stripper, and I’m still irregularly in touch with her (she’s now an upper-level exec in advertising).

No, I’m not naming either of them, because it’s not my right to out them.

Why is it so hard to believe that someone might know sex workers IRL, and not as a client? Sex workers all have real lives outside of what they do for a living.

Asbestos is mostly bad to the people that work with it, or manufacture products with it. If you have asbestos in your house or building, 99+% of the time it’s fine, and you don’t need to do anything at all. All of the remediation that we did in the 90s and early 2000s did more harm than good. Like, floor tiles with asbestos; how are the chrystotile fibers embedded in the tile going to break out in enough volume to cause harm to people?

On the other hand, the people that manufactured and installed asbestos-based products were often entirely fucked over.

You can get around that by getting a phone number from a fairly distant location. Spoofed numbers will almost always use the same area code as your number. So if I were to get a phone number from, say, Presque Isle, ME, and started getting calls from the 207 area code, I’d know that I could safely ignore every one of them.

As far as I can tell, they don’t offer internet services to end-users. Or, if they do, it’s buried pretty deep in their site (which makes their site a poor design). OTOH, Starlink makes it very easy to see if you’re in an area that can get coverage, and to order service. I live in an area where Starlink would cost 50% more than my only other non-satellite option, and be double or triple the speed at their low end.

Can you explain that? With one fan pushing air in, and one fan pushing air out, you should be achieving higher airflow than you would with a single fan pushing air either in or out. Especially if you only have the one window open. I know that when I open windows on both sides of my house, I get better airflow than if I have windows on only one side open.

Huh. I thought that the new Quiet Place was really quite good, too. I wasn’t aware that people were being shitty about it because the lead character was black.

Lagavulin 12y, double, neat.

Laphroig or Ardbeg will do in a pinch.

If they don’t have any islay single malt whiskys, then usually cheap bourbon.

I would suggest that you reconsider TST in light of recent actions. At the very least, look into all of the people that have been summarily kicked out solely by Doug Mesner AKA Lucien Greaves, been stripped of their ministerial titles, and how many chapters/congregations have separated from the org. If you use Reddit at all, you can find some of it there. I’m friends on Facebook with some of the higher-up people that either left or were kicked out, and… It ain’t pretty.

The long and short of it is that Doug Mesner and Cevin Soling (AKA Malcom Jarry) entirely own all of the intellectual property that is The Satanic Temple, and so they have complete control over everything that goes on. It’s fundamentally authoritarian, even though they officially espouse more anarchistic, freedom-loving principles. The most recent schism is because Doug is exercising his authoritarian tendencies and throwing people out that disagree with him.

I’ve actually put a lot of thought into this lately, what with the most recent schism in The Satanic Temple.

The seven tenets are great. I’d keep those.

I would start with the understanding that it was an atheistic religion, and I would treat it as such. I would write a constitution, and a charter, and any group that agrees with and meets the requirements laid out in the constitution should be allowed to affiliate themselves. It should be organized as a non-profit.

I like the way that TST’s ministry program worked before Doug threw most of the ministers out. I’d steal that. I would amend the process slightly though; I’d say that any person with a diagnosed personality disorder would not be eligible for ministerial positions, as narcissists, people with borderline personality disorder, etc., should not ever be in leadership positions. I would say that any person that successfully completes the ministerial program should be eligible to be a leader of a congregation, and people that have not passed would not be.

I would propose that the congregations send representatives to a national (or international) convention where they decide what the organization’s position should be on issues–I believe that it takes two majority votes in the SBC over a period of four (?) years for major doctrinal changes, or changes to the constitution–and those representatives would also select board members, who would in turn select a president. (I’d have terms of board members be offset so that there was never a period where a large percentage of the board was turning over.) Fundamentally, the church should be run by the people, and should be serving the congregants, rather than the congregants serving the organization.

I believe that yes, members and congregations should be paying in to the national organization, but no person within the organization should be getting paid for their work. I don’t care if it’s a collection, a set amount per person per week, or what; operating a religion requires funding. That said, the only compensation to anyone within the org should be minimal travel expenses for people that need to travel for their position; otherwise, it should be entirely a lay ministry. (Yes, that would be a financial hardship for some ministers, but I’d rather see that than have people seeking leadership for the financial benefit.) Finances should be fully transparent, and visible to all members, so that everyone can see where money is coming in from, and where money is going.

I also like the Mormon model of fully engaging all members. As long as it’s not onerous, I think that this can help individuals feel seen and heard, and also keep them feeling like a part of community. I would do things like have each members selected in turn to deliver brief biweekly sermons, with sources, and then have members in each congregation engage in a roundtable discussion about the sermon. You would want to have the possibility of sub-groups within each congregation so that different needs of individual members could be taken care of.

I made some notes somewhere, but I’m not sure where they are right now.

EDITS:

Members should have to pay, because the operations of a religion cost money. You have to have a (stable) place to meet, you need to pay for power, and yes, you need to pay for attorneys and accountants. It should definitely be strictly a lay ministry though, with leaders only being compensated for their expenses, not time.

The issue with The Satanic Temple now is that Doug Mesner (aka Lucien Greaves) and Cevin Soling (aka Malcolm Jarry) outright own all the legal entities that make up TST. There is no process that can replace them; they can remove any person or group that they don’t like. They have the ultimate power to make all the rules, and they are entirely above them. That means that, despite TST claiming to believe in freedom from tyranny, it’s fundamentally an authoritarian organization rather than a democratic one. For all of it’s many, MANY other faults, the Southern Baptist Convention is democratic, and I think that’s a quality worth emulating.

The PUA-types and this alpha/beta/sigma nonsense really appeals to the incel crowd. They believe that they can somehow game relationships in order to get sex. Like, they do steps a, b, c–which is the kind of systems PUAs are/were pushing–and you get laid.

The whole thing is a constellation; I don’t think any of those groups exists in a vacuum, and there’s lots of points where they cross over.

My ex-wife wasn’t even conservative, so IDK.

I’m going to add a choice here:

In honor of the late, great Steve Albini, Kerosene, by his band Big Black. It’s been covered by a few bands, but no one has managed the harsh, nihilistic electro-punk feel of the original.

Erm, no, that was popularized by Millennial PUAs, who are all solidly middle aged now.

I use diceware and random number generators to create my user names.

Well. I was married to someone that thought it was disgusting, hated that I masturbated, and did her level best to shame me out of it. She also hated sex. (Well, with me; she suddenly liked sex once we were separated and she was dating.) And many fundamentalist religions do teach that no one should ever masturbate, and that women should always be sexually available to their husbands, no matter what. (Oh, and women don’t have sexual needs or desires of their own, they just exist to fulfill male needs.)