Sure and Santiago is a horrible example. I was just there a few months ago. It feels the most like boston of anywhere else in latin america. When I was in el salvador I thought I was gonna get robbed at the airport, where they pat you down at each departure gate.

The wages are livable, the neighborhoods are safe(mostly), the housing is affordable, the food is terrible (compared to lima anyway.) I couldn’t get enough of the mountains.

In lima I was getting cased by pickpockets, in santiago I didn’t ever feel that way. Lima’s traffic is on another level. Santiago’s rush hour is much more organized and you have way more street lights and better drivers. In lima as a pedestrian you have to RUN so they don’t hit you. In santiago they stop and let you cross - something nearly unheard of in a lot of other latin american nations.

Education quality is a tip of the iceberg.

Talk to someone who went to a public school in say the dominican republic. I’ve heard stories of years of kids just waiting around with next to no actual teaching involved from someone who was physically there in their childhood. If you don’t go to a private school odds are you aren’t going to get any real education or structure beyond what you pick up at home… and odds are your parents were in the same boat.

The US education system has been nothing like that, it is going to get like that in the south though. In remote low population areas it’s very possible to get bad - and clearly some teenage pregnancies disrupt things in the US, but in the DR it’s a lot worse.

You should see major cities in latin america if you think that’s bad. In many countries it’s like they don’t even care.

The US has no excuse though, we should be way, way better.

Yes, but it takes time for people here to realize the effects of that.

Less travel to the US? Well we’ll start seeing layoffs in holiday destinations… but probably not that hard, yet. As things continue to decline and prices increase it will get worse, and worse, and worse.

Most of this stuff takes time to ramp up is my point. We still haven’t seen the effects of deporting hundreds of thousands to millions of immigrants in legal status before being arbitrarily revoked, and that will absolutely cause some major issues in all kinds of places. They were paying tens of billions of dollars in taxes per year based on 2022 data and getting no benefits from it. Even the immigration process is not free, you pay for all the workers who touch your case with all the fees involved. I know, my wife is living that. We’re not talking about our lawyer either, literally the filing fees paid to the US.

tariffs can and will be the death knell if he comes back to those original rates.

No real effects from tariffs have happened yet across the board so the impact isn’t truely felt. Even chinese imports don’t have the tariffs yet because it’s only goods that were on boats after it took effect.

We won’t see the downstream impact of even 10% tariffs for months. It won’t be until sales slump that people start getting fired and then sales will get even worse…

I haven’t. Is it a function of willing able bodied men being lacking, or is it talking about a draft?

Back then I don’t know who could have picked up the reins and taken over.

Vance didn’t have the following he has now.

Ramaswamy wasn’t white enough (I don’t think it’s possible for the right or center to vote non-white-male for president.)

Nikki wouldn’t have worked either, she couldn’t be dumpy and she also didn’t have a penis.

So it’s hard to say. I think the magat mentality is here to stay regardless of if dumpy is around, but the absolute control of the party probably wouldn’t survive him.

When you’re talking military age, obesity is extremely lower than say anybody 30+

Young white men seem to be one of the biggest demographics for trump supporters. It’s not just the old.

The thing is if you’re going into the situation to date them you’re doing it wrong.

I’m literally saying go in and treat them like human beings, just like you’d treat anybody. The point is not to go in with the mentality of sleeping with them. The point is to go in making friends. Romance comes naturally just by interacting with single people in social settings.

This is the disconnect. I’m saying do not go in to sleep with them, and you are thinking it as the objective behind all of it. Sure, maybe, if it happens great, but that’s not the point. I went to meetups like that when I was single because they were fun and got me out from thinking about the problems of life, exes and work. It got me into all kinds of events I never would have gone to if I were not in those circles.

I can’t imagine going out with the objective of finding someone to date. That’s creepy and manipulative, just like you’re saying. This is why people lecture you, because you’re not trying to make friends - you’re just looking to fuck.

Games and manipulation? what the fuck are you talking about?

It’s about hanging out with people in a non dating scenario, getting to know them, then seeing if they are interested after you both know each other a bit. You don’t go in cold. You don’t try to “pick up” women this way, this is a way to meet all kinds of people in a neutral setting with no strings attached for anyone. It’s like a safe fucking space and if someone you find attractive gives you the eyes or invites you out on the side it can work. I know. I almost married a girl who invited me to her place for food 1:1 after a few board game meetups. I wasn’t going there for the fucking women, I went for friends and fun.

By being in a group social scenario everyone is expecting to socialize and meet new people. You’re sharing an interest, which means you’re likely to be friends anyway and at least compatible on a social level - and the non-sexual components of relationships are basically the only fucking ones that matter long term. Shared values and shared interests are what make relationships work. Sexual attraction doesn’t keep a marriage going when your 2 year old is up screaming at 2am because your 2 month old infant woke up for a feeding.

But anyway, keep spouting your weirdo white knight shit about how just talking to women like human beings is bad. The problem is you. It’s not normal to think about harassing women when you’re going in to simply meet and get to know people.

If you’re approaching strangers and asking them for a date and you aren’t an adonis, wealthy or otherwise instantly recognizable in a positive way, you’re gonna get some real negative responses. No one wants some rando just asking them out, but this is not new, this is why if you go to a bar you have a wing man - being solo looks creepy.

It’s true though that I wouldn’t have dated women who are 28 or younger (seems to be the oldest of gen Z.) I’m 40. Even though i’m of another generation it’s basically been a 10% chance or less to approach someone and ask them out… but again if you don’t try it never happens. Most people are in a relationship ALL the time… the best relationships i’ve found have been by making friends first in real world circumstances (board game meetups, parties, work functions/events, hiking meetups, running meetups… you name it…) and then being friendly and literally making friends with people. If you click with someone you can literally feel it, and if you like them enough then after you’re already at least friendly acquaintances you ask them to something.

If you can’t ever make friends at a meetup or event, especially one that invites strangers and often has newcomers, the problem is you.

If every individual you approach gives you a lecture you might want to check out not being around those people. Try something different.

I’ve never, ever gotten a lecture. I’ve been married for about four years, but before the pandemic I picked up 4 women in a year that led to relationships of months before I ended them when I realized there wasn’t enough there to keep me interested. Don’t get me wrong, i’ve been dumped plenty and rejected plenty. I just learned to move on from the rejection.

It’s like job hunting, it’s a numbers game and every time you try you have a chance. Every time you don’t try nothing changes.

I just can’t imagine being lectured just by approaching someone and saying hi, asking them a question that is pertinent to the scenario, and giving them a chance to speak.

So walk away from them, or handle it gracefully somehow. It’s the same as trying to make a friend. Doesn’t everyone make friends from time to time?

Interest + effort = relationship of any kind. Find the shared interest, make a little bit of effort… or don’t and the math doesn’t work. If romance doesn’t come, you’ve made a friend.

You’ve drank too much ideological koolaid. People aren’t what you read in the news or a great deal of the internet.

It’s actually really easy to get a date in person if you are not a total ogre and treat women like normal people.

Weirdo white knights can easily end up as incels. Neither of those groups tend to do very well in actual social situations.

I figured cloud streaming was an attempt to rent gaming PCs to people who couldn’t afford an up front purchase but could reliably come up with $30-$100/mo or some shit. They wanted to sell even non-gamers on the idea that for a very tiny upfront purchase of a thin client - or even just installing an app - would get them a console or desktop like experience.

Lack of consumer demand is the only reason why it isn’t being pushed anymore. They made a solid effort but streaming comes with loads of limitations. It’s hard to mod. It’s hard to get your saves and port them around. You never actually own anything. Probably the biggest thing of all is that you need a solid ISP just to try and play, then you throw in the fact that all these plebs are using wireless for everything and their wifi is hot garbage or they’re on DSL because they’re poor and live in the sticks and it’s effectively unplayable. You can forget about game streaming while traveling or on a cellular connection too, or even while at a hotel.

I think most people probably have a lifetime plex pass for their plex server, or they are using alternative servers.

Lifetime pass grants licenses to all clients, at least it used to unless this changes that.

My server has many users and nobody has paid anything aside from my original buy of $120 in 2019. So far that comes out to about $1.67/mo for unlimited users and unlimited updates.

I’m not saying I really like the updates though. I think they should have remained slim, but someone is trying to make more and more money by branching out into bullshit beyond private media serving. All that trash should be separate products that are divorced from the private media server / client product.

All this being said, check out Jellyfin, little reason to use plex over it for private media but it has some limitations if you need subtitles or cannot relocate file structures.

Jellyfin is absolute dogshit though.

Sauce: I just installed it on my media server that concurrently runs plex. I run the app on a fire tv cube to use it… and it crashes* constantly.

Edit: More stuff :)

-My media library when imported immediately showed seasons of shows as separate shows, it doesn’t intelligently automatically merge it like Plex would.

-Subtitle options are not consistent or robust. I MUST have subtitles due to having a multilingual family which is largely ESL, if they speak English at all. This is the problem I tried moving to jellyfin to fix.