no way NYT

I knew it! #calleditagain

there’s an nyt article out now about a 20-person polycule and it’s as exhausting as you’d expect

Wow you ain't kidding

are we gonna poll the polycule

I'm sorry, 20 people isn't a polycule or any sort of personal relationship network. That's a cult, a yoga studio, or a dorm room floor. They're not doing anything that someone needs to write an article about unless they all do something really kooky or violent to someone outside their circle

The editorial urge to table-set actual human behavior at this point is getting fascinating to behold

there’s an nyt article out now about a 20-person polycule and it’s as exhausting as you’d expect

I said elsewhere that "I'm happy for you, now shut up" should be a socially acceptable thing to say to people like this.

We learned a strategy from the Multiamory podcast called “agile scrum,” which was adapted from business-meeting models. We utilized that format. We did that for a year and a half, at least once a month, sometimes six to 10 hours of hard poly-processing.

hardcore relating

Ann I have one partner now with three kids. He is transmasc, and he’s radical about the way he raises them. They’re radically home-schooled. They’re 17 and nonbinary, 6 and 5. They know everything in age-appropriate ways. They’ve seen their mommy undergo the transmasc experience, seen their mom become who they really are.

I was up late last night with him in a hotel room, and the 17-year-old was in the room snoozing, so we just sat on the bathroom floor chatting about our relationship all night, and while that was happening my husband was texting to say, Oh, I got a last-minute match, so I’m going to meet this girl for a date. And then I get a text while we were still on the bathroom floor vibing, it was 4 in the morning, and he said, We had a great date, a great connection, she’s looking for friends with benefits, we had sex.

This entire setting here just strikes me as deeply awkward, happy for anyone who goes on their journey of finding their true selves but you know, seems weird to be at a hotel with one of the kids, they're sleeping in one room while you're vibing on the bathroom floor etc? I guess at least they probably didn't have much trouble finding babysitters for the five and six year old.

This article is like a conversation you desperately want to get away from.

The worst part of course is if you escape from one person you have to get through 19 more

Polycule: Final Boss - the Eurogamer review

are you a bad enough dude to steer the conversation away from polyamory?

Wait who was he floor vibing with?

The floor itself. It’s part of the polycule. Foundational, even.

let the polys hit the floor

er,idunno,they*, fr. But an article like this should just refer to everyone by name for every mention.

The floor is xe/xem

jfc pamela paul

^evergreen

speaking of which, this is good:
https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/columnists-and-their-lives-of-quiet

literally no one has anything interesting to say twice a week for years on end. all these positions should be limited

but she has really set the bar for having nothing to say from the very start

I feel like I should know what “transmasc” means but I don’t. Is that another way of saying a trans man?

jfc pamela paul

― mookieproof, Thursday, April 18, 2024 10:53 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

^evergreen

― jaymc, Thursday, April 18, 2024 11:32 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

very true, so much so that I thought mookie was reacting to the dumb-as-shit college roommates piece not the evil-as-shit I love free speech but it's good that cops arrested protesters I disagree with

xp trans men, masc leaning nonbinary/genderqueer/etc, some butches, a transness embodying or moving toward a masculinity of some kind

conversely transfeminine/transfem(me)

umbrella terms to include trans men and women and people who may be neither but whose relationship to gender generally leans masc or femme usually in spite of social expectations for their "assigned gender at birth" (an increasingly toxic concept but it will do for now)

David Brooks

The Courage to Follow the Evidence on Transgender Care

a real banner week

brooks is always tailing the most reactionary currents in american liberalism and is a great example of how upper crust liberals will repeatedly indulge the musings of most intellectually lazy and vacuous people in the world because they look the part and went to the same schools as them

it must get so hard to find any kind of right-wing voice to put on t.v. that isn't either completely nuts or completely stupid. or both. with david brooks i think its just "well, at least he's not drooling and he can do that kinder/gentler thing where he pretends to be a big-hearted softie so lets keep him on..." because what else do they have? just the people who escaped the asylum who work for msnbc now.

who are you going to trust, some hysterical blue haired kid who says you're being abusive or a sensible white man in a suit who sounds serious and thoughtful in a way that doesn't require any serious thought to follow and makes you feel like a hero for supporting child abuse?

I'm just assuming what the article is like I'm not reading that shit

did william f buckley have centrist liberal simps back in the 60s? he was harder edged and less cagey about his white supremacy but he must have seemed like such a nice boy next to all the scary radicals back then

people watched him all the time on PBS! his show was really popular. that show ran for fucking ever. ugh.

PBS has to live with giving him a platform for decades.

the McLaughlin Group ran for decades too. lots of choice Pat Buchanan for you on PBS. i watched it sometimes god help me. the libs always looked like weak sisters on that show. they set it up that way.

the McLaughlin group was basically in the horror genre

WRONG

This was great: https://prospect.org/politics/2024-04-17-an-implausible-mr-buckley/

I always assumed he was supposed to be kind of a heel but I guess that was wishful thinking. and wouldn't excuse it anyway. and I didn't know about buchanan who held the flame for nazism while it was temporarily uncool among mainsteam conservatives

the sort of automatic respect for and deference towards and constant platforming of any fool with right wing opinions who displays all the right class signifiers is something I associate much more with british media. but the NYT in particular has always had this slightly pompous transatlantic air to it anyway (presumably another class signifier) so it also makes sense that UK-flavoured secular liberal transphobia would be an attractive prospect esp for a paper that is clearly feeling its own senescence and needs to make waves again

I didn't know he was ex-CIA but it's setting off my conspiracy brain - so he purged john birchers and nazis many of whom were involved in some capacity in CIA backed right wing death squads - what does it all mean - probably nothing

except that the moderate right is one of the most enduring and dangerous liberal fantasies which demonstrates some unspoken sympathies and they seem to be becoming more and more spoken as the liberal wing of the establishment is feeling threatened from all sides

is ross douchehat supposed to be nu-david brooks or something. he's just as lousy. at the NYT.

Tbf Douthat is too much of a freak to be Brooks

He goes places Brooks would never go—like the Know Your Enemy podcast

I think Pamela Paul, David Brooks and Bret Stephens are the worst of the pack. Like truly evil

We learned a strategy from the Multiamory podcast called “agile scrum,” which was adapted from business-meeting models. We utilized that format. We did that for a year and a half, at least once a month, sometimes six to 10 hours of hard poly-processing.
― jmm, Thursday, April 18, 2024 10:01 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Is this for real?

Ann -- I’m 34, and I feel like I’ve been on and off nonmonogamous much of my life, even though I didn’t have the word. When I was 17, 18, I said free love. Around 2018, 2019, I swore off monogamy forevermore. I use the word “polyamorous,” though relationship anarchist is probably a more accurate representation.

My husband and I are very, very different, which is our strength. He’s a frat bro who loves sports, and I’m a radical alien witch academic nerd. In the beginning, we did all the typical stuff. Read the books on nonmonogamy, did the relationship check-ins. We’d sit down, take notes. We did every exercise in the books, listened to every podcast. We learned a strategy from the Multiamory podcast called “agile scrum,” which was adapted from business-meeting models. We utilized that format. We did that for a year and a half, at least once a month, sometimes six to 10 hours of hard poly-processing. That gave us great communication tactics.

Robert (Ann’s husband) -- We have this motto: Feelings are not facts. That gets us through the hard times.

At the start, I was going through some depression, and when we had sex I had so much stress. There were issues in the bedroom with her, and that happened many times, which caused more stress. She started seeing this dude who was an absolute stud, having sex with him and having a great-ass time, and I felt totally lame and inadequate.

That was really hard for me, for obvious reasons. I felt like, I’m a hundred percent replaceable. It took a lot of conversations. She was like, There’s nothing wrong with you, this is going to pass, therapy will help. Lots of tears were shed. But medication helped me, talk therapy helped me, changing the way we do things helped. That’s where feelings are not facts really mattered. Because I would ask her questions, and she would be like, No, I don’t feel that way; and I would be like, I know you like being with him more than me; and she would say, I’m not lying to you, it’s different, but it doesn’t make me love you less, you provide so much more to my life than just sex. I totally get it now. That was the first instance of feelings are not facts. They feel like it. But they ain’t facts.

He’s a frat bro who loves sports, and I’m a radical alien witch academic nerd.

i've seen this sitcom before

We learned a strategy from the Multiamory podcast called “agile scrum,” which was adapted from business-meeting models.

All of human culture was building toward this sentence.

Scrum is an agile team collaboration framework commonly used in software development and other industries.

Scrum prescribes for teams to break work into goals to be completed within time-boxed iterations, called sprints. Each sprint is no longer than one month and commonly lasts two weeks. The scrum team assesses progress in time-boxed, stand-up meetings of up to 15 minutes, called daily scrums. At the end of the sprint, the team holds two further meetings: one sprint review to demonstrate the work for stakeholders and solicit feedback, and one internal sprint retrospective. A person in charge of a scrum team is typically called a scrum master.

“They feel like it, but they ain’t facts”: Deep Polyamory In The Zoom Era