barsoap

("The mayor announces that beer will be brewed on Wednesday, therefore beginning Tuesday people are not to shit in the brook")

Frisian and Low Saxon should be practically the same to English speakers, Frisian being more closely related to English is more of a technical thing than a practical one: In practice English uses a gigantic amount of Romance words and is not mutually intelligible with either, while Low Saxon and Frisian do have a decent amount of mutual intelligibility... you can always cherrypick something mutually intelligible, of course, but knowing Low Saxon Frisian is easy to wrap your head around once you decode the accent. Difference like RP vs. Scots I'd say.

Here’s the video; it’s pretty entertaining if you’re into languages.

Bujen? I don't speak West Frisian but dictionaries spit out keapje. Kuupe for North Frisian (mainland), in Low Saxon it's kö­pen or kopen. Half of the difference there is spelling the other half the exact vowels/dipthongs. The Low Saxon ones are actually diphthongs they just get analysed as long vowels.

The "buy" root seems to be extinct in all other Germanic languages, everyone uses the root for cheap, instead.

English does seem to drift the semantics of its Germanic roots like a motherfucker. People snicker about place names like "Quickborn" but if you weren't English-brained it'd just mean "lively spring" to you. Speaking of fuck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AFZdFrfXoA

You said, verbatim:

Childcare should ideally be 30% men and 70% women

and then went on to justify it with

because women are natual caretakers and excell at emotional and social tasks.

implying that more men would mean worse results "because women are so much better at it": If the ideal is 70:30 then everything else is worse, no? And you were also being very essentialist, saying that "women provide one thing, men another".

The trouble with childcare in Germany wasn't absence of men as such -- it was absence of male insight into childcare. Doing things in way that make a lot of sense but women aren't as prone to do instinctively, but are very capable of doing. As long as there's a baseline level of diversity such that both approaches are present, things are just fine. There's no ideal ratio, there's a wide span of equally good ratios that ensure that everything is covered.

And btw you don't teach emotional resilience by being authoritarian. You teach it by being there, hold watch, while the kid figures out how to control their emotions, maybe some gently encouraging words. Shouting at them might shock them into silence but it's not going to teach them anything about actual emotional regulation. The very presence of the word "authority", on top of that "strict authority", in what you say betrays your ignorance about childcare. If you have kids I feel sorry for them.

The code section in particular is gold and exactly the type of online content we need. A big reason why chuds like Tate are successful is because they provide a code ("compass, outlets, who you're with, how it feels"), which before the internet was something everyone built for themselves, actively picking and choosing, while nowadays the algorithms do the picking+choosing for us. Or, well, before the algorithmic internet boomers largely got that stuff from old institutions (be that church or the party), Gen X from rebellion, then come us sweet-spot millennials seeing the boomer/X conflict and having access to previously unheard of amounts of information to actively choose from, and then Gen Y and younger getting fed by the outrage machine.

So what we need is algorithm-compatible content that challenges the whippersnappers to build their own code, in an active manner. Give guidelines, give examples, but don't decide for them (that makes you no better than the algorithm or for that matter Gen X and boomers) and definitely don't make it a list of don'ts: They're in the process of adapting instincts to currentyear, good living requires finding a configuration that denies none, our task is to help them not being maladaptive, steering away from both neurosis (denial of instinct) as well as asocial BS (exploiting in/outgroup instincts for power plays, oxytocin can be vile). To do that you need to point out the various fundamental drives, validate all of them, make that shit resonate as deeply as possible so they spot the drives themselves instead of some social construct painting over it, enable them to draw a map of their needs, then give examples, plural, of how it can all be integrated in a coherent fashion.

I was pointing at a pattern, cultural at that, and all patterns are reductive. If you can't see the pattern I alluded to you have my condolences, and if it hit you like a brick then you also have my condolences.

The only thing I won't stand for here is saying is "pointing at patterns is bad". These kinds of conversations need to be had if issues are to be understood. And they need to be understood, assumptions have to be questioned, before anything can change for the better.

And if you just don't care about the issue, which is perfectly fine, then FFS don't womensplain the male perception of "men are simple creatures" to men. You came out swinging, remember.

Because more women than men want to be in daycare it’s unrealistic to expect the same amount of men want to be in daycase as women.

I don't expect it. It is you who is insisting for no discernible reason that 70:30 is, and I quote, "ideal". It is you who is saying "guys get some other job I don't care how much you want the job and how good you'd be at it, we already have a quota of 30%".

Let's try this again: If, as you say "women do empathy, men do resilience", then why should childcare be 70:30? Why not 50:50 so the kids get taught empathy and resilience in equal measure? Also, how can you even be empathetic if you lack in the resilience department.

It would've been smarter of those companies to replace the bosses with AI.

You are completely overthinking it. I readily acknowledged it is reductive. And my example was an example, a vibe. I do not, in fact, fish. Nor consider desert dwellers to be less masculine or something.

A typical male experience in a hetero relationship is that women are overly fussy over many things, I think most of it is culture (a generalised fear of a catty mother in law not considering you good enough for her son causing a fear of losing your partner because he might listen to her instead of you) so when we hear "men are simple" we don't hear "men are stupid" but "finally, someone who understands the pointlessness of having seasonal napkins". If you wanted to say "men are stupid" you'd have said "men are primitive", it's not hard to tell apart. We do, in fact, have social and contextual awareness, I freely admit that we use obliviousness as a conscious strategy.

Are there men who are totally into decorative towels? Sure, but if we hedge everything with "but not everyone does that", "of course, all people are unique and different" then communication becomes a chore. It's like hearing "sunscreen is important" and insisting "of course, if it's winter that's a different issue, we wouldn't want to essentialise weather to be carcinogenic". Come on.

And our interaction here, ironically, falls into a similar pattern. "No, really, it's fine that we don't have decorative towels" -- "There must be a deeper meaning behind this, a social force, someone pulling his strings, why would anyone not want to have complex things like decorative towels, what is the meaning of this, am I on top of the situation"... no. He meant what he said, exactly that, and nothing more: My hands are dry, the towels didn't make them dirty again, that's all I need from a towel. I want my pants to have pockets so I buy them with pockets instead of worrying whether they ruin the silhouette and agonising over compromises. There's a lot of freedom in simplicity. That inner mother in law, though? Of course everything is complicated, how else would she be able to drive you crazy.

I've got a song for you.

“men are simple creatures”, “keep your belly fully and balls empty and we’re happy” ect, like, is that not demeaning to men?

Personally, not inherently, no. And definitely not in context, context here being the existence of "men are primitive" and "men only want one thing and it's disgusting". Is it reductive, yes, but that doesn't mean it's wrong.

Catch some fish, chop some wood, smoke the critters, unclog the sink so that stubbles will actually flush instead of cling to the rim, annoying the wife (for incomprehensible reasons, but a well-functioning drain is its own reward), be a rollercoaster for the kids, kick back on the sofa, get your balls emptied, if that's not a satisfying day then you have issues.

Complexity is not a good in itself. Be only as complex as is necessary to stay simple.

No argument from me there but when I bought that 1500W kettle Amazon was still a book shop. I'm not saying that 15 Euro were a good price but it's what I think REWE (as in the supermarket, do they still use that brand for physical stores?) sold it to me for because I couldn't be arsed to make a trek into the city to visit a proper appliance store.