Whether such such trifling "transgressions" are bad or not really depends on the intent and the circumstances. If someone goes up to a female coworker every day and makes jokes about how women are stupid, then, yeah, that's pretty bad, and it needs to stop. The guy is being a jerk. It's not as bad as rape. It is bullying.

To me, it's not especially heinous because it's "sexual". It's on the level of going over to the system administrator's desk every day and making jokes about nerds playing sports poorly. It's harassment. It's bullying. There's something wrong with you if you're doing that to people, but no one is getting raped.

If it's people making jokes with each other because they're teasing each other because they're friends, then that's totally different and it's completely okay. But if someone doesn't like being teased, and makes that known, it will stop on its own in that case without outside intervention. But if it's really that horrible for you to be teased a little by someone with no ill intent toward you, you're extremely thin-skinned and there's something wrong with you (though not nearly as much as with the bullies in the previous paragraph).

So, basically, it all boils down to intent, and, for this stuff, in the case where something bad is going on, the "harassment" part is much more important than the "sexual" part. The only reason anyone cares about the sexual part at all is because lawyers and thin-skinned feminazis who want to be offended about something.

Now, for the more serious stuff: if people are getting raped in the workplace, then that's absurdly horrible, I can't imagine /HOW/ that's even happening because aren't there other people around?, and people need to go to jail. But I can't imagine people actually raping each other in the workplace often because in most workplaces I'm familiar with it would be pretty hard to have /consensual/ sex without getting caught and fired. But, I've never been on an archeological dig, so maybe I'm missing something.

Here's one way to get by without student loans: be a dental hygienist and save your money, then when you have enough, go to college. You'll need two years of community college and you'll need to take a licensing exam. You'll also need to put your hands in people's mouths eight hours a day, but you'll have gloves. There are other ways to bootstrap yourself; you just have to look.

http://www.ada.org/en/home-ada...

I stand by my statement that taking out student loans is an incredibly risky thing to do. Yeah, you can do it and have everything work out. It can also fuck up your financial future more than if you took out a mortgage, bought a house, set it on fire (accidentally) without having insurance, maxed out all your credit cards, and then wrecked your Tesla which you took out a car note to buy (and didn't have collision coverage for). Is "never" too strong? I don't think so.

"Completely and totally financially secure" was meant in a relative sense. Even the 1% aren't completely and totally financially secure, as the French Revolution demonstrated. What I meant to say was done with your education, settled into your career, in a marriage you expect to last, that type of thing.

Finally, in modern times, unless you're a subsistence farmer, children are, objectively, a burden. For some people, the burden is worth it because they enjoy having children. Pets are also a burden. Maintaining a boat is a burden. Owning and maintaining a house is a burden. Most things in life are optional, and the optional bits often come with costs of time and money. Those costs we can refer to as burdens. Just because something is a burden doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. It just means you should do a cost/benefit analysis beforehand.

Oh, and, yeah, cars suck. You're right on that.

I strongly disagree with this. Credit cards aren't scams. The problem is that people use them irresponsibly. The best way to treat credit cards is as charge cards: you pay the entire balance at the end of the month and only rarely and only for very good reason ever use the high-interest line of credit the cards give you. It's much better to use credit cards than debit cards as the credit cards offer stronger protection against liability for identity theft, and it's better to use credit cards than cash because cards are simply more convenient. As long as you pay off the balance every month, you don't get shafted. Now, if you don't have the self-control to do that, then, sure, don't get them, just like if you don't have the self-control not to get yourself shit-faced drunk every time you see a container of alcohol you shouldn't keep alcohol in your house. But, in both these cases, the first attempt at solving the problem should be gaining self-control rather than avoiding the underlying issue by treating the symptom.

Well, you missed Roth 401(k)s and traditional IRAs. Give those some love, too. It's usually only better to use Roth vehicles when you're young or, for whatever reason, not making much money, and, in that case, you should double down and use Roth everything. Regarding paying off your house, yes, sometimes it's best to hold onto a mortgage, but it's also sometimes not, so you need to learn how to do the calculations. Remember, any money paid past the minimum payment on a mortgage goes straight to the principal, and you'll never pay interest on that portion of the principal again. That's a pretty good reason to make extra payments, and the mortgage deduction is sometimes a red herring because you lose your entire standard deduction by taking "advantage" of it.

The last thing I'd like to mention is a really, really important thing I think you left out: never take out student loans. Again:

NEVER. TAKE. OUT. STUDENT. LOANS.

Taking out student loans is 50 times more risky than taking out a credit card. If you fuck yourself up with a credit card, you get to declare bankruptcy and erase the debt. If you fuck yourself up with a student loan, you're an indentured servant until you pay it back. It's that bad. I don't care how low the interest is. I don't care how much money you THINK you'll be making when you graduate. It's never worth the risk, and you should never do it, whoever you are and whatever your situation is. If you can't afford college, go to a community college, get an Associate's degree, and work in data entry or something until you can afford college. Taking Pell grants, or other grants, or scholarships is great, and you should try to do well in high school both to get some merit-based scholarships and to get AP credits that I know from personal experience can let you do a 4-year degree in 3 years. But never student loans. THOSE are scams.

Oh, and one last thing: don't fuck yourself up by having a kid until you are completely and totally financially secure. Just don't.

---linuxrocks123

It's not just health: auto insurance is the same way, probably to reduce people driving uninsured. Look up "assigned risk pools".

An argument like that, assuming it's not true, would be perjury and fraud. If mistaken licensing did occur, you can be fairly certain the company would publicize exactly what happened far and wide immediately after they found out the "rogue licensor" had acted. Saying nothing and then suing you and only telling you in court that the licensing was a mistake would not be looked on kindly.

You could represent yourself in a clear-cut case like this, where the files are obviously properly licensed. If you give them notice of the licensing in your counter-notice, and they still sue, they could get in trouble for filing a frivolous lawsuit, and you could recover damages.

You're wrong. Lawsuits cost money for anyone and companies don't "automatically" file them. There's such a thing as a frivolous lawsuit, and lawyers can get in trouble for filing them as well as the organizations paying the lawyers.

In such a clear-cut case as obviously GPL-licensed files, you could represent yourself and not pay a cent. You wouldn't lose: you'd get discovery from the Linux Foundation or whoever indicating the code was GPL-licensed. And you could probably retaliate and sue them for filing a frivolous lawsuit.

Evolutionary psychology is approximately the definition of soft science. And no I'm not going to make the argument here; look in my comment history if you care enough.

About 10% of the population has a reproductive strategy that will never succeed because they're doing it with the same gender. That alone should tell you that normal variation is going to outweigh differences in statistical averages. If that's not enough, consider that multiple times throughout history women have been able to join the military pretending to be men and not get found out for months or years.

Awww, MAN... You haven't LIVED!

For anyone reading this, I can confirm parent is full of shit. The Wikipedia article contains no references whatsoever to Roman court records verifying the existence of Jesus.

The TLDR was for you (or another reader), not for me. I DR.

Your comment is the first I've heard of Roman court records existing. That's neither in the Wikipedia article nor in anything I've come across. Where is your source for these records existing? If they exist and are genuine, the citation I gave would be intellectually dishonest for not dealing with them, and I'll have to revisit my conclusions.

Your argument that I should believe no one ever existed is a strawman; the evidence for Jesus's existence (assuming we don't have court records -- somebody should add that to the Wikipedia article; between us, you should do the honors) is about on par with other legendary figures. I'm skeptical that Jesus, King Arthur, Odysseus, or Aeneus ever existed. Pilate, on the other hand, we have direct archeological evidence for, so there was some guy named Pilate who administered Judaea. There was also a guy named Julius Caesar who became dictator of Rome and was then assassinated by some senators. There's lots of people in history we can be 99.9% sure existed. Jesus of Nazareth isn't one of them.

And you should learn to look past appeals to authority and study the actual subjects of your interest. The giant flaming box at the top of the wiki page saying, "The neutrality of this article is disputed" should have been your first clue to dig a little deeper:

http://rationalrevolution.net/...

TLDR version: We've got Tacitus incorrectly parroting the Christian myth saying that "Christus" was crucified. We know he was just parroting what Christians told him or the authorities, and did not actually verify the tale, because "Christus" was not a correct name for Jesus, so the Roman archives wouldn't have his crucifixion recorded under that name, so he couldn't have verified the story. We also have an obviously inauthentic passage by Josephus. It may be forged, as THE ORIGINAL PROTESTANTS THOUGHT THE CATHOLICS DID, or it may be a mistakenly inserted marginal/interlinear note, which was a common form of transcription corruption.

And that's it. That's all that ties Jesus to history. To me it's not much better than nothing. And there are also positive arguments, not just negative ones, against Jesus's historicity, which I won't get into here. But Tacitus and the (inauthentic, but apologists argue only partially inauthentic) Josephus passage are just enough that, if you're an apologist, you can scrape together a fig leaf from it that other apologists might believe. I guess they have to. After all, their imaginary friend has to have been real, right?

Some feminists do sometimes make absurd arguments any accusation of rape should be believed, but the standard in any court is still reasonable doubt. Almost certainly, a smart woman trying to make a rape accusation against a long-time partner stick would admit to the prior relationship because attempting to deny it would destroy all her credibility.

Then, it would come down to he said / she said. You'd probably want to introduce evidence indicating why all of a sudden your girlfriend is claiming you raped her. Evidence of any mental disorders she had would probably be admissible. Details of her prior sexual history would likely be admissible (see why many actual rapes might be unreported?). If you cheated on her and she found out, you'd want to introduce evidence of that. If you recently broke up with her, you'd want to introduce evidence of that. Anything that might give her a motivation to make a false accusation against you to hurt you.

If she all of a sudden, with no motivation whatsoever, claimed you raped her, then you might be in trouble, because why the hell would she do that? On the other hand, you might not be, because why the hell would you rape someone you routinely had consensual sex with anyway? The answer is that rape's not really sexual, it's more extreme bullying / wanting to dominate someone. So you'd want character witnesses that you're a nice guy and that she's a vindictive asshole.

Either way, in a trial like that, both your names would likely be dragged through the mud in public. It would be a nightmare for both of you. And, since he said / she said usually isn't enough for "beyond reasonable doubt", she'd probably lose. This is the basis for the claim that many rapes go unreported. It's probably true. Why would a rational, self-interested person want to drag her own name through the mud to hurt someone else? The only reasons for doing something like that would be to be vindictive -- "I don't care if I get hurt too as long as he does!" -- and altruistic -- "I want to stop him from hurting anyone else." For most people, both of these motivations are better for driving actions of minor consequence than actions of major consequence.

If you've been going out a while, you'll have probably been in a restaurant together more than once.

Anything can be faked. Nothing is 100%. But your position is ridiculous. People used to get married by living together and telling other people they were married, and after a while the state would agree they were married even though there was no official record of it. Courts look at evidence to determine facts, and there would be evidence of a prior relationship if it existed. Claims that you faked all the evidence and all the witnesses were lying would be discounted unless there was evidence that was the case.