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Okay, I'm going to preface this entry with saying that this one is quite personal and embarrassing. It's a little more graphic than the other entries, but for the most part you all have been very supportive of my adventure and I use this space as a place to get stuff that is on my mind out. This place is also 99% men, so I feel that this place is like a brotherhood. Please be nice.

So I've been on a bit of a roll with regards to dating lately. The last entry I mentioned a girl that I had seen that I was on the fence about. I ended up deciding not to see her again. About a week later, I was able to line up another date with a raging feminist. She has green hair, and is very smart and very cute. She has been on again off again working towards a degree in women's history and feminism for the last quite a few years. I quite like her, and as of this entry, we have had 2 dinner/drink dates that have gone quite well. On the second date, we went for dinner and then walked around the part of the city where she lived. I have lived in my city my entire life, but had never visited the area where she lived. It was a very warm night with heavy smoke in the air from the forest fires burning in BC. The streets were oddly quiet, and it felt almost magical to me. She took me to a lookout with a view of downtown and we smoked a little weed and made out for a bit.

The next day, I tried to line up a third date, and she said that she will be busy for the next couple weeks with a course that is pretty intense that she is enrolled in. It makes me a little nervous to have such a long break at the beginning of a relationship because it's too frequnt that things just drift apart before they even get going. Anyways, we'll see what comes of it.

I was also able to line up a date last night with another girl. The plan was to go mini golfing and then come back to my place and order dinner and drink some wine. Cute girl, and we got along pretty well. We came back to my place and talked for a bit. She was basically looking for a fuck buddy. That works for me, and it's been a very long time since I've had proper sex. She didn't want to have sex last night because she wasn't on birth control (I always use condoms anyways, but it doesn't hurt to be extra safe). We started making out and moved to the bedroom and got undressed.

Sorry, this is about to get graphic, but I feel it's necessary to set the scene...

I love small tits. Love them. Her tits were great. Probably a large A cup with nice nipples. We make out some more and after a while I start going down on one of the sweetest pussies that I have ever had the pleasure of sticking my tongue in. Absolutely delicious. I'm doing my thing and she's making encouraging sounds, and then I changed the rhythm and lost it. I continued licking away for another 6-7 minutes, but the orgasm had got away. All the while I'm with this woman, my dick was dead. It would not wake up at all. It was just limp and lame. I felt humiliated. Even though we weren't going to have sex, I wanted to leave her with the memory of my hard cock, but instead I'm sure I'll be remembered as the guy that ruined her orgasm and couldn't get it up. Fuck. My. Life.

After that, she asked what time it was (just before 9:00) and then she said that she had to go because she had an early morning spin class. She got dressed and was gone within 5 minutes.

That was my far the most humiliating sexual experience I have ever had. I had even cut back on jerking off to try avoid a situation like that, but yet my body let be down. It's unfortunately not the first time I've had problems with a new partner. My nerves get the best of me sometimes, and the problem goes away once I'm more comfortable with the woman. I guess this one hit me extra hard because she was looking for one thing -- a fuck buddy -- and I couldn't deliver on that one thing.

So all last night and today I've been mentally beating myself up. I feel like a total pathetic loser. I'm pretty damn sure I'll never hear from her again.

I don't know what to do at this point. I don't want to humiliate myself like that again. In hindsight, I should have made less of a deal over my own shortcomings and just focused on pleasuring her. I think I made things more awkward then they could have been.

I'm tempted to just take a bit of a break from searching for dates to take some time to build my confidence back up again. I still might have a third date with the other girl, so I'll go with whatever that brings, but I'm not sure I want to try find anyone new at the moment. Since the birth of our baby, my wife and I still haven't really been able to have good sex. I think I should focus on getting that area of my life back on track and maybe once I feel confident with my wife again, some of that confidence will overflow to my other relationships.

Fuck me.

-- Snow

Admins should probably take a hands-off approach when it comes to moderation. Especially, if they are regularly posting highly opinionated comments in the same forum.

No matter what, SOMEONE will question the fairness of any given decision.

The problem with the SPAM mod is that it's a -10 moderation. That causes 2 issue:
    1: Mods can never fully revert it if we think it's in error since we can only ever make a post +5
    2: Because it's a super-mod, now the Admins are forced to manage it. It wouldn't be such a problem if the standard was objective (e.g. only commercial). But, since it's a subjective standard there will always be disagreements.

Is this a solution in search of a problem?

We really don't see much commercial Spam. Why isn't -1 Troll sufficient for the non-commercial "Spam?" Sure, it'll slow the descent into the karma hole a bit but how quickly do we really need to demote people?

The Saga continues. I submitted a lot of very fine articles on Charlottesville, and its aftermath. Many of these were disallowed, which is fine. But that all of them were seemed a bit of a bias on the part of the editors. So I started a brief campaign where I posted "No Comment" to new articles. This got me spam-mod-bombed (hey, a new Soylent word!), and my karma fell to depths I did not know were possible. So far, so good.

          So, I made fuss, or a journal entry, explaining the situation, and calling all good solylentils to come to the aid of their site. And come you all did. Some actually said they would mod me up, for no reason, which while nice, seemed a bit irrational. Appreciated, nonetheless. And so my karma has recovered. Some of this might be due to admins revoking the spam mods that were place on me. But they give no notification, and if the post in question has fallen off my "info" list, I really have no way of checking.

    And then there is the question of punishment. If someone spam modded me, and it was not a fair spam mod (and I assure my fellow soylentils that I would never spam you, in any pure and simple sense), then they should have been put on probation, having their moderation privileges revoked for a month. This has probably happened to us all, it happened to me, when I accidentally spam modded something, was banned, and made the case the the "spam" mod was too close to the "troll" mod, and so was restored. But this leads us to the topic at hand: what the heck is a spam-mod?

    So, as the drama about the spam-modding of yours truly was being played out, the Celestial (sorry, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 just hit Redbox) The Mighty Buzzard took it upon himself to adminsplain what constitutes a spam mod-able post. Yes, crass commercialism is spam. Rushstatus https://soylentnews.org/~kapilsingh/journal/ is spam. We all have no problem with this. But the other part of the guidelines for what is spam is decidedly subjective.

Spam can come in many forms, but it differs from a troll comment in that it will have absolutely no substance, is completely undesired, are detrimental to the site, or worse.

The Mighty Buzzard kept suggesting that my protest posts fit this category, so I had no choice but to mod his assertion of this as spam, since it had "absolutely no substance, was completely undesired, and was detrimental to the site, and worse". So I spam modded The Mighty Buzzard. He had it coming.

      Wait a sec, and think about this. I spam modded one of the admins of the site. I am a lowly soylentil. I barely can remember my password for the site. And I spam mod the person who seems to be, by his own admission, responsible for rescinding spam mods? Is this anything but a symbolic action? To TMB's credit, he asserted he would not do so, but left it to the editors. https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=21277&page=1&cid=559394#commentwrap Nice reclusal, but only in the confidence of the exact same outcome. And his confidence was confirmed.

    So now the Mineorgy Bacculumard has succeeded in having me mod-banned. As I said, my karma is restored, and perhaps higher than ever (another thing admins never let us see), but I am banned from moderation for a month, just when TMB, in a typically random attempt to fix the moderation system, upped the daily mod points to 10! And even worse, both Eth and Runaway made posts that, for almost the first time, I would have modded up! Oh, the irony! So where do we go from here?

    The suggest path is that I email admin, and explain how my spam mod was all a mistake, which admittedly does happen. But it did not in this case. TMB was repeating the basis for suppressing certain viewpoints on this forum, and I must maintain that this does constitute a post of "absolutely no substance, was completely undesired, and was detrimental to the site, and worse". We pretend to be a site that values free speech above all. But when TMB can make his own subjective determination as the the value of another soylentil's post? He needs to be spam-modded.

    So I am non-violent philosophically, long existence on earth will kind of make that point to you, but if anyone else feels like living dangerously, you could spam mod The Mighty Buzzard, just to make the point. Would not have any effect on his ability to do the wonderful coding he does to keep us all up and foaming at the mouth, but it might make the point that we, the few, the proud, the Soylentils, came here because we wanted a site controlled by its members, not some corporate entity or administrative elite. I, for one, do not want to think our volunteer editors have become exactly what we fled when we left the other site.

    Welcome your comments, but I will not be able to mod them up, so take that as a given, if I could.

Yours,
aristarchus of Samos

Islam is no more inherently violent than Christianity, BUT..

If anyone has a basis to say otherwise it's probably Charlie Fucking Hebdo!

Which they didn't actually say, for the record.

Space travel is dangerous. We all know it. How did the old joke go? NASA == Need Another Seven Astronauts.

One of the big issues that space agencies have with manned space flight is getting folks to the target, perform whatever tasks (e.g., search for evidence of life on Mars, explore the oceans of Europa, build a temporary moon base on the surface and survey for lava tubes, water ice and other resources for a permanent base, perform geological surveys of asteroids, etc., etc., etc.) are required and returning those same folks safely back to Earth.

But what if we took a different angle and weren't so concerned about returning people safely? We could send older folks, those with terminal diseases, those with spinal cord injuries (who needs to walk in micro-gravity?) and those who just want the glory and adventure of advancing human knowledge and helping to make humans a space-faring race.

I'm 50 and in relatively good health. I don't want to die, nor do I want to throw away my life, but I'd jump at the chance to go to Mars, the moon, the asteroid belt or the Jovian satellites, even knowing it was a one-way trip.

Given that even Martian gravity is just 38% that of Earth and anywhere else we might go is much less than that, physical strength isn't so important. A space-farer would just need to be healthy enough to survive the acceleration (~3Gs) to get into orbit. After that, acceleration to reach other points in the solar system (given current technologies) would be much, much less.

So I'm going to set up a straw man for argument's sake and ask if you soylentils feel as I do, or are you just cowardly pussies who care nothing for adventure and advancing the knowledge and reach of the human race?

I, for one, would welcome the opportunity to die doing so.

In case anyone has not been paying attention, the events in Charlottesville have revealed the true nature of SoylentNews. SN sides with the Nazis. Now, like the TMB, this is done under the cover of "free speech", so that, I guess, Nazis can express their side of the violence they do against Jews, homosexuals, Roma, Communists, the developmentally disabled, and jmorris.

Aristarchus has been extraordinarily targeted. After submitting a HUGE number of submissions, I have been pilloried, and subject to at least four unjustified spam mods, and now my karma is so low that I cannot even come back as Runaway1955! Truly a sad state of affairs! And, I also did not realize that after a certain level of karma, one can no longer mod negatively, only positively, and certainly not spam mod in retaliation. Neat system. To suppress free speech!!!

Well, I said long ago that if we did not control the alt-right influence, the promise that was SoylentNews would be lost. Now, I am quite convinced that it is. I have started a "no comment" campaign, so that when the editors fed us stories that do not reflect the true interests of Soylentils, we can register our objection by making note of the fact that we will not comment. And comments are what could have made this site. And I said, I will not leave, but, I also will no longer comment.

Not sure what this all means, but we have gone from BuckFeta to SuckOylent, for sure.

Socialist Juggalos gear up to fight pro-Trump ‘Nazis,’ and the internet is loving it

The Juggalo March on Washington, a protest against the government’s classification of Juggalos as a gang, will take place at the National Mall on Sept. 16, the same day as the pro-Trump “Mother of All Rallies.” There’s no love lost between the two sides.

It's hard to believe that my daughter (it still feels weird saying that) is 7 months old now.

When I wrote my last entry, I'm pretty sure I had paternal postpartum depression. It's relatively rare (I think single digit %, although it's likely it's under reported), but it really hit me hard. Everyone knows that becoming a parent is a life changing experience, but until it happens to you, you just can't know what it actually means.

I had a real tough time for the first five-ish months. The baby was, for the most part, pretty unpleasant. You know how they play soundtracks of babies crying as a torture tactic? I was acutely aware of this, and I felt like I was in my own little part of hell. Both of us were exhausted. It felt like every day we were just surviving. We were just trying to make it to the next day. I felt dead on the inside. Some days I would sit in the car wishing I could cry just to release some of the sadness that I felt inside.

Also at that time, I hadn't had sex in months. I had assumed that because my wife had had a c-section, that she would be good to go pretty soon after the baby came. That was not the case. We tried to have sex after 6 weeks. The doctor said that the incision had healed well, and we could try sex when my wife felt up for it. We tried, and she did not enjoy it. She said it was like she was a virgin again, but worse. Things were super tight down there, and burned badly. Turns out, painful sex after c-section is quite common. Who knew? Anyways, between having almost no free time, no sex, little sleep, and really nothing to look forward to, I was pretty depressed.

Until I had my own baby, I never cared about babies. At all. Over the last several months, my daughter has transformed from an infant to a baby. What used to be an annoying, crying, pooping, needy, blob, is now a tiny little person. She can sit on her own. She can manipulate objects. She likes some food and dislikes other foods. She likes to play with my beard. When I come home, she gets excited. She could crawl for the first time any day.

Over the last couple months, my depression has passed. Now that my girl is older, I get more reward from her. Little things like when I pick her up, she holds on to me or when I talk to her, I see her little lips move slightly as she tries to figure out the mouth movements. She watches everything I do. I now feel like I can actually make a difference, and I think that has helped. I am also sleeping better at night, which again helps, and we are also forming new routines which helps set the new 'normal'.

I'm still not getting sex often. Maybe once per month. Last time we tried, it was the best we have had since the c-section. I was able to get maybe 1/2 way inside her, which was a big improvement from previous attempts. Things are slowly getting better on that front, but I think that the breastfeeding is messing with her hormones. I'm not a doctor, but it makes sense that her body is telling her to hold off on having another baby.

I've started dating again. I started looking again maybe 4 months ago. I got a date a couple weeks ago with a really attractive woman I met on Bumble. She was a PhD candidate too, so really smart. I really liked her, so naturally, it didn't work out (just my luck). I had another date just last night with another girl I met on Tinder. We had a good date, but I'm kinda on the fence about her. I wasn't all that attracted to her, although we got along well.

When I have a date like that, I'm never sure what to do. Should I have a second date to see if a spark develops, or do I move on? There have definitely been people that I was not attracted to until I got to know them better, and then I would form a crush on them. I also put in a lot of effort to even get a date, so it's tempting to see someone again just to make sure there is nothing there.

So, all in all, things are coming along. I'm still adjusting to my new life, but I no longer feel depressed. For me, that is a major win.

-- Snow

A variety of quotes from the Hypocrite-In-Chief:

        "Don't take vacations. What's the point? If you're not enjoying your work, you're in the wrong job." -- Think Like A Billionaire

        Pres. Obama is about to embark on a 17 day vacation in his ‘native’ Hawaii, putting Secret Service away from families on Christmas. Aloha!

        When will Obama next go on vacation if he wins the election? The day after.

        President Obama has a major meeting on the N.Y.C. Ebola outbreak, with people flying in from all over the country, but decided to play golf!

        Can you believe that,with all of the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf.Worse than Carter

        The Obama's Spain vacation cost taxpayers over $476K http://bit.ly/JtGxxy They love to spend money.

        We pay for Obama's travel so he can fundraise millions so Democrats can run on lies. Then we pay for his golf.

Well it's official! Trump's Taken More Vacation Days To Date Than Obama During Presidency

A few weeks ago I received a mysterious letter in the snail mail purporting to be from a certain PC Plod of Her Majesty's Constabulary informing me in somewhat stilted and ungrammatical English (Mrs Turgid teaches English at a secondary school and was highly amused) that he would like to speak to me regarding a inappropriate comment made on a UK web forum from an IP address apparently registered in my name. The method of communication requested was quite strange. PC Plod wanted to know my phone number so that he could speak to me in person. PC Plod managed to find my snail mail address, so this was a bit fishy, to say the least.

Smelling a rat, I decided to proceed with caution and to entertain the possibility that this may have been some kind of hoax.

Being a bit of a commie I'm a member of a trade union and have access to free lawyers, so I contacted them. I was granted a telephone conversation with a lawyer who was both very helpful and knowledgeable. I am not a lawyer, and what follows in not legal advice. I am paraphrasing from a conversation that happened many weeks ago.

The lawyer agreed that the wording of the letter was very strange. I made the point that I was quite distressed by it since I am not in the habit of intentionally stirring up trouble, certainly not of a violent kind and certainly nothing that would attract the attention of the police. She conjectured that if it wasn't a hoax, perhaps the police had imagined that someone using my network may have said something contravening the Malicious Communications Act. We both discussed that fact that a lot of subjectivity is involved when trying to argue that something is in breach of the Act and that this has implications for Free Speech. To put it a bit more bluntly, just because PC Plod takes issue with something that doesn't mean that a Court of Law would. It would be expensive and time-consuming for them to prove so. And we are still innocent until proven guilty in England and Wales.

She discussed the circumstances under which a police officer may speak to a member of the public. If a police officer has reason to speak to you regarding a suspected crime or such, you should be interviewed under caution and have the right to legal representation. What you discuss will be written down and signed. If the police officer wishes to speak to you in connection with a civil matter, they have no business doing so. They should not be investigating. Lawyers deal directly with that sort of thing. Finally, apparently, a police officer may wish to speak to you unofficially to offer "a few friendly words of advice." Communicating with the police by phone is a bad idea since you have no idea who you are really speaking to at the other end. You also have no idea whether the call is being recorded, whether there are other people listening in, or whether it is being transcribed.

So a letter was written back to this mysterious PC Plod expressing surprise, concern and asking for more information.

Eventually came the reply. PC Plod glibly and arrogantly stated that a message posted from somewhere behind my router broke Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act but that he had no idea who posted it. Upon looking at the pseudonym under which the message was posted, I suspected satire. The name suggested a certain amount of reactionary bad temper and perhaps a degree of non-conformity perhaps relating to ethnicity, the sort of thing that your typical alt-wrong snowflake would have difficulty with. Looking at the actual message and the discussion under which it was posted, it was patently obvious that it was satire, highly condensed, but in the spirit of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal. The problem is, apart from the fact that PC Plod is poorly educated, not particularly familiar with the political culture of his own country, has no concept of context, but this particular forum has a major design flaw in that moderators may remove comments, thereby removing any context in which other comments may have been made.

PC Plod did indeed offer some friendly advice on Internet security and signed of with a thinly-veiled threat.

Let me just finish by pointing out that this "grossly offensive" comment was pretty tame compared with the stuff EthanolFueled and TheMightyBuzzard and even Runaway1956 post sometimes around here.