Locus Acknowledged

Creative Writing. Stream of consciousness fiction. All in one go.

[Locus Acknowledged @LocAcknowledged]

Intriguing...

[LOCus @LOCusBooks]

The Last Seed: Chapter 3

Victim's status: Deceased
Murder Weapon: Vegetable

The First Keeper wants answers.

The road south takes three of them. One of them is right about what’s waiting down there.

Would you get on that cart?

Coming Oct 25. DM for a free review copy.

[LOCus @LOCusBooks]

Chapter one of my debut grimdark fantasy. The animals talk. That’s not the good news. See profile or DM for a FREE review copy.
#thelastseed #booktok #grimdark #fantasybooktok #indieauthor

[Locus Acknowledged @LocAcknowledged]

This doesn't appear applicable to much if the third world. Marriage remains a veritable pathway to social mobility. For women...and for men.

[Stella @ubiquitousnewt]

Marriage is less appealing now because the material benefits it once offered women have largely collapsed. 100 years ago it was the dominant route to financial stability, social standing, protection and adult recognition. Today a woman can earn her own income, live independently and access most of the benefits that once required marriage. Her rising status came from economic and technological changes that aligned with female strengths, along with contraception, education and legal reforms. With those changes, marriage no longer looks like a significant upgrade. It looks like a risk with fewer guaranteed returns.

It has always been an absurdity to frame marriage as a happiness project. Historically, marriage was a practical institution for pair bonding, lineage, inheritance and the stable raising of children who are enormously costly emotionally and materially, and take a long time to become independent. Cultures enforced marriage through pressure, shame and obligation because that was how you secured cooperation between the sexes. Divine will was simply a justification for adaptive behaviour. Happiness inside marriage was a bonus; it was not the structural purpose.

Feelings of love themselves are ancient, but the expectation that marriage should be founded on those feelings is comparatively modern; the rule that love must be the basis for choosing a spouse. That expectation only gains real cultural traction in Western Europe from the 17th and 18th centuries onward. Once industrialisation began lifting populations out of constant survival pressure, humans could focus beyond subsistence and onto the broader palette of emotional human experience. By the 19th C the idea of a “love marriage” spread more widely, and only in the mid 20th c does it become the default assumption that marriage ought to be romantic. Assortative mating remained robust throughout; people fell in love largely within the boundaries set by class, status and compatibility. What changed was the cultural script, not the underlying biology.

Marriage was never designed for happiness; it was designed for stability. Only once its material function weakened did people begin to expect it to deliver emotional fulfilment instead.

And so here we are.

Women’s romantic feelings are evoked when she sees a man with an appropriate level of status. But if most men in her circle are on par with her or below her, then there are far fewer men able to impress her. Why bother? She no longer needs rescuing from poverty. She doesn’t need a husband for survival. If anything, she would like a partner who propels her further up the socioeconomic ladder and an increasing proportion of men can’t do that.

So what happens now?

When the old social norms around marriage weaken, marriage stops being a universal expectation and becomes a personality filter. The people least capable of stability, cooperation or long term planning simply do not marry at all and tend to have children with multiple partners. Those with slightly better traits may marry, but may not sustain it for life as intended.

In the end, marriage is not disappearing, it is becoming concentrated amongst the successful. It becomes almost like an aristocratic custom; rare, elite, stable, high-investment and deeply stratified. A marker of competence rather than a rite of passage. For everyone else the pattern is fluid relationships, low stability, weak pair-bonding and falling fertility. Marriage survives, but only among the successful.

I can’t say I would mourn the loss of marriage. If modernity is a selection event, then it simply reveals who can form and maintain long-term bonds under conditions of freedom. When the economic compulsion is removed, what remains are underlying dispositions: stability, foresight, self-control, reciprocity, emotional regulation. Those traits cluster unevenly.

Long live the genetically blessed.

In the end, marriage will not be saved by sentiment. It will be saved by selection.

[Locus Acknowledged @LocAcknowledged]

@invis4yo 😂😂😂Bubbles this mad??

[Locus Acknowledged @LocAcknowledged]

A lot of people talk smack about 9-5ers, but I wish there was more awareness on how much entrepreneurship weighs heavily on loved ones.

[Linda Chen @linderps]

dating founders is hard. really fking hard.

you come home to a messy apartment, to someone who’s still glued to their laptop. you’re exhausted from your own job, but you pour what’s left of you into his dream. you hold space for their stress, and stay calm when it all feels too heavy. you rejoice in their success, and you support them in their lows. and you hold optimism for them when no one else can.

this is the quiet resilience of a partner.

but for all the sleepless nights, the tears, the chaos, you get a man who is ambitious, magnetic, and genuinely believes he can change the world. and somehow, that makes you believe it too.

and if that's not the sexiest thing in the whole damn world, i don't know what is.

[Locus Acknowledged @LocAcknowledged]

I'm sure we can all agree she has a valid point.

[Instablog9ja @instablog9ja]

Drama unfolds as lady allegedly crashes ex-boyfriend’s wedding after 9 years of waiting

[Locus Acknowledged @LocAcknowledged]

@heyalexfriedman A willingness to do the work covers the entire spectrum. Most worrisome is when they find burdensome even the little things that matter to you.

[Locus Acknowledged @LocAcknowledged]

The sad part of modern society is not living together with aging parents anymore. Care to be different.

[BowTiedPhys @BowTiedPhys]

Call your mom today. Let her yap for 15 min without getting a word in.

A finite number of these left. And someday you'll wish you had just one more.

What Sundays are for.

[Locus Acknowledged @LocAcknowledged]

"That which hurts, instructs."

[Solyricon @Solyricon]

"That breakup saved you."

Nah, it didnt. It killed a version of me that was vulnerable and loving.

[Locus Acknowledged @LocAcknowledged]

Loneliness as a leading cause of death? Perhaps the sacrifices for all things great created in isolation are much graver than previously imagined.

[Jaynit @jaynitx]

Brian Chesky (CEO of Airbnb) on the hidden cost of success "Loneliness":

[Locus Acknowledged @LocAcknowledged]

@abalu_uthman The best part about buying and never selling is that you're unperturbed by market oscillation. The question was, is, and shall ever be: what do I buy next?

[Locus Acknowledged @LocAcknowledged]

@TheDamiForeign Performative love at its finest. The opium of our age.

[Locus Acknowledged @LocAcknowledged]

@tekbog If everything is getting AI automated, are we getting closer to a post-work utopia? Yes? Yes??

[Locus Acknowledged @LocAcknowledged]

@BerlunoJupiter Ah Budokai...The OG Analog stick killer.

[Locus Acknowledged @LocAcknowledged]

It would be off soon, no doubt. There was a snap, loud enough to scare away the birds and critters. But both collar and trunk stood firm. And Walky was still.

[Locus Acknowledged @LocAcknowledged]

Walky darted to the side of the road and stopped. The road was bare, save the random leaf fallen off a tree. Or the pebbles and twigs the night's breeze had scattered about. He flung a hind leg up to his collar, scratching as best he could to get it off.

[Locus Acknowledged @LocAcknowledged]

Where she had found him all those years ago. It's bark was as serrated as he remembered it, and from its trunk shot forth an outcropping he did not recognize. Long, sharp and low enough for his neck to reach. He leapt at it, neck first, hooking the collar on his very first try.

[Locus Acknowledged @LocAcknowledged]

It would be off soon, no doubt. There was a snap, loud enough to scare away the birds and critters. But both collar and trunk stood firm. And Walky was still.

[Locus Acknowledged @LocAcknowledged]

It did not budge, as if it has vowed to forever serve it's purpose. To name him. To bind him. To choke him to permanent submission when the time came. When that failed, he ran off to the side for what felt like a quarter mile. There it was at last. The tree where it all started.

[Locus Acknowledged @LocAcknowledged]

@48_quotes Always question the value of friends.