Tootfinder

How popular media gets love wrong
Okay, so what exactly are the details of the "engineered" model of love from my previous post? I'll try to summarize my thoughts and the experiences they're built on.
1. "Love" can be be thought of like a mechanism that's built by two (or more) people. In this case, no single person can build the thing alone, to work it needs contributions from multiple people (I suppose self-love might be an exception to that). In any case, the builders can intentionally choose how they build (and maintain) the mechanism, they can build it differently to suit their particular needs/wants, and they will need to maintain and repair it over time to keep it running. It may need winding, or fuel, or charging plus oil changes and bolt-tightening, etc.
2. Any two (or more) people can choose to start building love between them at any time. No need to "find your soulmate" or "wait for the right person." Now the caveat is that the mechanism is difficult to build and requires lots of cooperation, so there might indeed be "wrong people" to try to build love with. People in general might experience more failures than successes. The key component is slowly-escalating shared commitment to the project, which is negotiated between the partners so that neither one feels like they've been left to do all the work themselves. Since it's a big scary project though, it's very easy to decide it's too hard and give up, and so the builders need to encourage each other and pace themselves. The project can only succeed if there's mutual commitment, and that will certainly require compromise (sometimes even sacrifice, though not always). If the mechanism works well, the benefits (companionship; encouragement; praise; loving sex; hugs; etc.) will be well worth the compromises you make to build it, but this isn't always the case.
3. The mechanism is prone to falling apart if not maintained. In my view, the "fire" and "appeal" models of love don't adequately convey the need for this maintenance and lead to a lot of under-maintained relationships many of which fall apart. You'll need to do things together that make you happy, do things that make your partner happy (in some cases even if they annoy you, but never in a transactional or box-checking way), spend time with shared attention, spend time alone and/or apart, reassure each other through words (or deeds) of mutual beliefs (especially your continued commitment to the relationship), do things that comfort and/or excite each other physically (anywhere from hugs to hand-holding to sex) and probably other things I'm not thinking of. Not *every* relationship needs *all* of these maintenance techniques, but I think most will need most. Note especially that patriarchy teaches men that they don't need to bother with any of this, which harms primarily their romantic partners but secondarily them as their relationships fail due to their own (cultivated-by-patriarchy) incompetence. If a relationship evolves to a point where one person is doing all the maintenance (& improvement) work, it's been bent into a shape that no longer really qualifies as "love" in my book, and that's super unhealthy.
4. The key things to negotiate when trying to build a new love are first, how to work together in the first place, and how to be comfortable around each others' habits (or how to change those habits). Second, what level of commitment you have right now, and what how/when you want to increase that commitment. Additionally, I think it's worth checking in about what you're each putting into and getting out of the relationship, to ensure that it continues to be positive for all participants. To build a successful relationship, you need to be able to incrementally increase the level of commitment to one that you're both comfortable staying at long-term, while ensuring that for both partners, the relationship is both a net benefit and has manageable costs (those two things are not the same). Obviously it's not easy to actually have conversations about these things (congratulations if you can just talk about this stuff) because there's a huge fear of hearing an answer that you don't want to hear. I think the range of discouraging answers which actually spell doom for a relationship is smaller than people think and there's usually a reasonable "shoulder" you can fall into where things aren't on a good trajectory but could be brought back into one, but even so these conversations are scary. Still, I think only having honest conversations about these things when you're angry at each other is not a good plan. You can also try to communicate some of these things via non-conversational means, if that feels safer, and at least being aware that these are the objectives you're pursuing is probably helpful.
I'll post two more replies here about my own experiences that led me to this mental model and trying to distill this into advice, although it will take me a moment to get to those.
#relationships #love

First session of a new campaign and @… painted my HeroForge mini exactly correctly.
Meet Ned Gnoughuioche, first level lawful good cleric and all-around swell guy. He just wants to make sure you’re safe and have a hot tea.

Series B, Episode 02 - Shadow
BLAKE: [V.O.] Later, Cally, this is more important. We've made a deal but we need the rest of the money as a demonstration of good faith. They don't entirely trust us yet. Have...Zen collect it and bring in across.
CALLY: All the money? [Largo's quarters. Largo holds bracelet for Blake]
https://

i was put in charge of three grandchildren for a few hours yesterday so we headed straight to ben & jerry's to split a milkshake, then explored the state theater (and even sneaked into a movie but later got thrown out for horsing around on the escalator), then i gave a nickel tour of angell/mason/haven halls, then they chased squirrels on the diag which took longer than you might think, then we looked in all the windows in nickels arcade. it all went slowly and well.

Series A, Episode 04 - Time Squad
BLAKE: Our air is running out.
AVON: [V.O.] Yes, I was afraid of that. How long?
BLAKE: Minutes. Get Zen to manoeuvre the ship 'round and bring the entire projectile on board.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/104/143 B7B5

I have my share of issues with Parkrose Permaculture, but she has a lot of things I do strongly agree with. I can't stress enough that you never dehumanize your enemies. You can respond appropriately to violence. You can defend yourself from them by any means necessary. But you do not dehumanize them. You always limit your response to the minimum necessary to defend yourself.
There are a number of former Nazi skins who became antifascists after realizing they were wrong. Those folks tend to be some of the most dedicated because they feel a debt, and some of the most knowledgeable because they were there. Coming out of these types of cults, police included, is hard and takes time. A lot of us don't have the ability to work with them. But some do.
By repeatedly humanizing your opponent, you can break some of them. The #Seattle Police Department was not defunded but saw a massive reduction in numbers because their morale was destroyed. Some people will never change. Some people are broken and feel like they need the power. But if you change one person's mind, even give them something to think about, it's a crack. If even one cop quits, that's one less trained gun pointed at you in the future.
The 18 year old marines and federalized national guard troops out there are literally kids. A lot of them came from poor communities. They are being used in a way they haven't been trained to do, doing things they (should) have been told are not legal. They joined to get out of poverty, to go to college, or to "defend the American people" (regardless of how misguided that is). Few, if any, of them joined to abuse people. They will be especially open to persuasion.
Remind those troops that they are carrying out illegal orders, that they are being called on to violate their oath to protect the constitution, that they are suppressing the free speech of the fellow Americans they swore to defend. Remind them that the people they could be illegally arresting now are just like their parents, their neighbors, their families, the friends who didn't join. Remind them that this is the first step. They will be called on to kill Americans if they let this keep going.
Remind them ICE sleeps in hotels while they sleep on the ground. Remind them that their drunk and incompetent leadership thinks of them as disposable tools. Remind them that some of these people are out protesting *for them* against cuts to the VA and other services. Remind them that the people they're defending refuse to make college free so they can recruit from poor schools. Remind them that they will always be welcome when they're ready to join the side of freedom and justice.
When you dehumanize your enemies, you unify them. When you humanize your enemies, you can divide them. There is no weapon available to us right now so powerful as compassion.
https://youtu.be/YtWOYUDMsBw

Sometimes I'm silly. Noticed that a fire camera I was watching showed a clock over a minute ahead of my system time, assumed the problems was me. Installed Chrony (Linux Mint, recent Win convert so I'm hardly a power user) and spent the usual 20 minutes farting around with it. Couldn't seem to get it right.
Finally realized my clock IS within a handful of microseconds of the NTP server; it's the clock on the camera that's wrong. D'oh.

Happy Pride! Everyone deserves dignity and respect at every stage of their life - including end of life. Help your loved ones and community celebrate you properly and appropriately by doing all your advance planning now -just think of how hard you'll party when it's done 🎉🌈
Got questions? I'm here to help and I am an ally and safe space for everyone in the LGBTIQA community and the kink community.

Series C, Episode 09 - Sarcophagus
VILA: I've got a headache. Cally had the right idea. I think I'll get some rest. [Starts to leave then pauses.] As if a storm were coming.
TARRANT: Rather unlikely in here, don't you think? [Vila exits.]
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/309/177…

Series A, Episode 10 - Breakdown
RENOR: Sorry, professor. [to Cally] Hello! This place is full of pretty girls.
KAYN: Prepare for immediate surgery, please.
RENOR: Right.
JENNA: I'll get out of your way.
KAYN: Won't need you either, Cally.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/110/456