I had a recent, somewhat amusing to me, dream that ties in with this.
I was in some kind of bondage "class" (in new-age-y kind of store in a strip mall?). Being the only man present, there was some assumption that I would have sex with the women.
Two of them in particular had tied their arms to their backs, and were acting as if I would have sex with them in the next segment, I think. This was no big deal for them, I guess, and they liked me?
They were self-assured and friendly.
And in the dream, I was thinking about if I wanted that, and if this was how I wanted to break my sexless "streak" / loose my virginity.
(This had a similar feel to another dream where I drank some alcohol on accident, and regretted "breaking the seal" on my "don't drink" habit.)
So was to find a way to politely walk back the assumption that I would sleep with the women, without appearing cowardly or necessarily revealing that I was a virgin.
I said that, actually, I might have to leave early. And the group took the hint and sort of backtracked and voiced that we probably he shouldn't just assume that people (subtext: "men") were was interested in having sex, without asking them.
Everyone was very nice about it.
In retrospect, I do regret not having dream-sex with them, a little.
I kind of liked their air of friendly feminist-independence.
And it was nice that they were into it without it having a lot of meaning for them beyond "this is an enjoyable thing to do."
They seemed like they were stable in themselves, such that I could take or leave mutually beneficial enjoyable experiences with other people.
I think this might be reflective of my shifting personal attitude to casual sex, at least in cases where it is possible to establish good enough emotional maturity and libertarian autonomy that everyone can be genuinely responsible for their experience.
[This has been a short digression into Eli's subconscious.
If you've thought enough about the spaceship design and nanotech, and the dynamics of war between advanced civilizations, every battle in Star Wars seems as absurdly stylized as the space ships in treasure planet.
Star Wars: Why do the ships have a clear top and bottom? And why do they all orient on the same plane so that they have the SAME top and bottom?
Why do the starfighters have living pilots? Why are there even starfighters?
Why are the war droids shaped like humanoid infantrymen?
Why even have field armies for ground combat at all, if you can bombard a planet from space?
From a military engineering perspective, none of those choices make sense.
When I was a teenager, I had absent minded daydreams ("fantasy" seems like too strong a word), about women, that my wife knew, gossiping about how I was such a good "catch" / partner.
Like, I wanted to be physically sexy / desirable, and also kind, caring, and devoted to her.
I wanted to be perfect and wonderful, so much so that other women were...not exactly jealous, but wondering how my wife got so lucky.
I wanted to be able to give that as a gift to my partner.
If I were to describe it today, I would say that I wanted to give her the benefits of a partner with a K-selection strategy (raw physical desirability) AND a partner with a r-selection strategy (commitment and intimacy).
But I do think that this points at an important question which, if we understood the true answer, to would shed light on some common questions of politics.
Why do the uber-rich care about this sort of thing?
Is he just conditioned to try and get richer? It's basically and addiction at this point?
I would guess that he's still mostly motivated by the idea of building Amazon bigger and better.
Noting that "what's his motivation?" is not a crux for me.
In general, I'm in favor of the likes of Jeff Bezos having "more power", because he's demonstrated an extremely rare ability to build machines that can do genuinely new things and create huge amounts of value.
I'm on a late schedule these days, so I was walking in a neighborhood in Berkeley. Three raccoons crept up, and I stopped to watch them for a bit. One of them appeared to be vigorously scratching an itch on his(?) back.
Then he sort of stuck out his leg and seemed lick it. (I tried to get pictures, but wasn't fast enough.)
Then, right in front of me, one of them mounted another, and started humping.