Random Thought of the Day

[Nyctophilia]

There's a reason birth rates are an increasingly prominent feature in discourse and policymaking today. Population ageing and decline is one of the most powerful forces in the world, shaping everything from economics to politics and the environment.

But a weakness to the debate - perhaps even the term 'birth rates' itself - is that it implies the goal is the same today as it was in the past: finding ways to encourage couples to have more children. A closer look at the data suggests a whole new challenge.

Take the US as an example. Between 1960 and 1980, the average number of children born to a woman halved from almost four to two, even as the share of women in married couples edged only modestly lower. There were still plenty of couples in happy, stable relationships. They were just electing to have smaller families.

But in recent years most of the fall is coming not from the decisions made by couples, but from a marked fall in the number of couples. Had*US rates of marriage and cohabitation*remained constant over the past decade, America's total fertility rate would be higher today than it was then.

I'm surprised to hear this (and doubtful) because my understanding is that at least for women the number not having kids by the end of their reproductive life has remained stable (approx 20%) with only slight variation. I'm sure I saw some evidence genetically that this number goes back a long way too. Bleak if you want them or if it correlates with not finding a compatible partner but seemingly predictable.

The change is that women are having children later but still having them, so they have less children and smaller families. So in that sense the change is the smaller families.

Trying to get the 20% to have kids seems like it would be even more difficult because they/we never did (I assume I'm part of that group - too mentally ill and [BEEP] lol. Don't want to give birth, too many issues I think to be a good enough parent in the short reproductive window and hell life window we have on this planet. Too many to even try to get a relationship imo let alone a kid.) Might require technological revolution and acceptance/promotion of single parenting with support of robot helpers. I could see that encouraging people to have kids who cant find Human partners. Some of the percentage would just make bad parents though and we have to accept that and that there are probably pros and cons to population collapse. Depending on who reproduces.

The central demographic story of modern times is not just declining rates of childbearing but rising rates of singledom: a much more fundamental shift in the nature of modern societies.

Relationships are not just becoming less common, but increasingly fragile. In egalitarian Finland, it is now more*common for couples who move in together to split up*than to have a child, a sharp reversal of the historical norm.

When pictured as a rise in happily childless Dinks (dual income, no kids couples) with plenty of disposable income, the social trends accompanying falling birth rates seem benign.

I think people are [BEEP] scared of having a huge group of people wandering around with nothing to lose lol.

Meh they probably should be. A lot of people are very pissed off.

But the rise of singledom and relationship dissolution is a less rosy story, especially considering the drop in relationship formation is steepest among*the poorest. Of course, many people are happily single. The freedom to choose how to spend one?s life and who with (or without) is to be celebrated. But the wider data on*loneliness*and*dating frustrations*suggests not all is well.

The trend is global. From the US, Finland and South Korea to Turkey, Tunisia and Thailand,*falling birth rates*are increasingly downstream of a relationship recession among young adults.*Baby bonuses*put the cart before the horse when a growing share of people are without a partner. Even in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, similar trends may be under way.

Why an almost worldwide decline, and why now? The fact that this is happening almost everywhere all at once points more to broad changes acting across borders than country-specific factors.

The proliferation of smartphones and social media has been one such exogenous shock. Geographical differences in the rise of singledom broadly track mobile internet usage, particularly among women, whose calculus in weighing up potential partners is changing. This is consistent with*research*showing social media facilitates the spread of liberal values (notably only among women) and boosts female empowerment.

You don't need a smart phone but if you spend a lot of time online on even a desktop computer you'll see the worst people imaginable (right wing American men. Lol I mean thats most of who you'll find on twitter,) posting bs so it makes sense that you'd be cautious of taking the risk of getting into a relationship if your norm is so skewed.

I do think this is probably a lazy answer though at this point (hiding the problems of a hypercompetitive culture) and missing some stuff.

But apparently women who are in all female environment are less likely to focus on marriage and more on career (resource aquisition,) makes sense so you can artificially trigger that too via the internet I guess (but university too depending on what you study and since less men these fays go to uni. But this is ironic to me since almost everyone I hung out with when I was at uni was a guy. Many of them were quite picky and judgmental too let me tell you and more on that later in this post):

https://www.bps.org.uk/research-dige...s-career-focus

How does availability of men in the environment affect women's career focus?

There are at least two explanations for why this effect exists. One is that sex ratio shapes the labour market, fewer men entailing more employment opportunities for women. The second is that sex ratio shapes a mating market, making finding a partner harder and thus encouraging a different strategy for life security. To differentiate between these, another experiment replicated the previous one using a similar exposure technique and also asked the 58 participants to rate how difficult it would be to acquire a good job or to find a mate (phrased in terms of marriage and dating prospects). Those participants exposed to a high-female ratio were more likely to see mate-finding as tough, but their expectations for the ease of finding a job were similar to their counterparts. Pulling the data into a model, the researchers demonstrated that putting career first was mediated not by their expectations that good work would be easier to find, but that a good mate would be harder to find.

I think this must just apply to straight women.

I dislike how research ignores that people very clearly have multiple mating strategies.

Back to competition though there are a lot of people who think even making friends is pointless and treat it like networking. I saw a post about this yesterday (the relevant part is later in the quote just providing background context):

Lol my time has come. Not really though I'm non-binary so can't date lesbian women really (this post was on a lesbians over 25 subreddit) since I identify as a man partly and all that:

Shy traumatized dweebs who don't go outside, please touch grass so I can meet you


Seriously, please, I just want to talk to someone I relate with. Y'all don't need a reality check, but please just physically be in a location where I can at least make friends with you.


Everyone here who actually goes to big events is a hiking/sports (or business/travel) lesbian who has not touched a book that's not self-help in the past 10 years, doesn't do crafty or art stuff, only engages with very mass-market media, and has not played a video game other than maybe a vague memory of Pokemon when they were 6. They just roller derby, camp, go to soccer games, or somehow fly to other countries on a whim because they're way into stonks. I know, I was there, I asked them. They're lovely people but it's kind of hard to contribute to group conversations. I end up just talking with the chill married 50+ lesbians who are like 10/10 cool but not a dating pool ;_;


This is a cry for help, an SOS. I'm literally begging. We will never meet each other if you don't go outside. I hit shy dweeb escape velocity and now I'm a slightly-less-shy dweeb who goes outside. Just go to lesbian board game nights, arts and crafts body doubling, dweeby sci-fi sapphic reading groups, webcomic fangirl coffee shop meetups, anything, please.

You don't have to agonize about how to cold approach and flirt with random girls at the bar, it's like insanely unlikely to work and even worse if you don't just want to hook up anyway. Its best use is practicing being okay with rejection, not getting a girlfriend.

I dunno I was daydreaming I was another person where I could just not be an anxious mess and make out with someone at a bar or something. You know normal Human stuff.

That's how I found this I was curious if women ever hooked up in bars like straight couples do (or did, though even that was uncommon,) or if that's essentially impossible. A guy I hung out with in the early 2010s made out with a woman in a bar once.

With sex I mostly worry about stds though. Wish they didn't exist.

I find it so infinitely interesting that so many lesbians in these so called "welcoming cities" in countries that are supposed to be way more progressive in terms of LGBT matters have trouble finding [BEEP] friends.


I literally live in a conservative 3rd world country. We have ZERO laws that protect us here as gays, and yet the [BEEP] community is alive and kicking. I am 34 and I am still making new [BEEP] friends at least every other month.


I don't think this is a lesbian issue. I think it's a cultural issue. I used to live in the west for several years (US and Europe) and westerners are just so difficult to make friends with. Compared to southeast Asians, you guys are just so closed off and suspicious of people. I always felt like I had to prove my worth to be friends.

Yeah I agree and I think everyone in Western countries is very polarised now on top of the general coldness and the internet encourages that.


I've heard someone from the US on YT (a pronatalist guy actually with 4 kids so far so this is ironic) straight up argue he only talks to people who he can network with or who are influential basically because he doesn't see the point of friends because that's what his wife is for.


I've met many people (guys mostly) who clearly operated in a similar way but didn't say so. Which I assume is why men are lonely (and apparently most people with a close friend are friends with women) but the problems extend to everyone really.

The fall in coupling is deepest in extremely-online Europe, east Asia and Latin America, followed by the Middle East and then Africa. Singledom remains rare in south Asia, where*women?s web access is*more limited.

This is not to overstate the role of social media. Other cultural differences between countries and regions mediate both the spread of liberal ideals and people?s ability to act on them.*Caste and honour systems encourage high rates of marriage, irrespective of media access, and female education, income and employment differ markedly between regions.

Most people want to have kids under ideal circumstances but there's nothing more disgusting to a woman than having this framed as an obligation or the desperation of male conservatives.

Meanwhile lots of men do not want kids and in the past women sometimes forced them into it (still do, but I think at a lower rate,) and also people accidentally had kids they didn't want in the same way but the former thing - men being lied to about contraception etc - is not a conversation anyone wants to have.

Conservatives complain about abortion but don't question if some people might be better off not having kids because their kids won't thrive in the nightmare world.

I've seen this pointed out by many men but we do not have conversations about male ambivalence only female for some insane reason. A lot of men do not really care about having kids or relationships they are doing other stuff instead.

They're busy getting killed by gangs of men in columbia who are pissed off about sex tourism or finding a South East Asian woman to divorce them after getting a green card lol no. It's video games mostly.

Men and women want different things from a relationship. Men want submissive feminine women who boost their ego and talk about how masculine they are all day while doing all the housework, maybe have kids, and wear cat ears (cat girls) and women want submissive feminine men who boost their ego and do all the housework (maidboys,) wear cat ears (catboys,) and carry and give birth to children (omegaverse,) let them have strap on sex oh wait. They want the same things xD

Lol no shitposting is fun though. There is some truth to it always. Just not the whole picture.



Love the part where she's finished with one half of the BORING academic explanations/justifications and just plays the credits but then carries on.

I'm still not 100% satisfied with any analysis I've seen on this topic because it always has to portray women as victims to some degree. It's a denial of sadism to some extent.

Men engage in that more than anyone. 'It's just a revenge fantasy no women would really enjoy being sadistic... They're all submissive massochists, unlike men who are just monsters by nature.'

I always get that vibe.

I think it's wishful thinking.

MRAs do the complete opposite "all women are evil" it's better but still wrong.

"Despite all of the potential of omegaverse it is still, most often, a universe where cis white men experience misogyny and oppression. It's still about characters who look like the typical everyman who has always been the protagoist of media. Some have argued that the potential subversive power of slash and omegaverse will always be limited so long as they continue to centre white male bodies. Even if they're supposedly stand ins for marginalised bodies because is that not a way of erasing those actual marginalised identities?

As I said I haven't engaged with that universe much but I do enjoy some cis male misogyny/objectification in other similar stuff. I'm no better than most men.

I'm the most reasonable one. I just want a 1970s rock star with long hair.



I found this gif again while looking for the omegaverse video quote from a previous post I made lol.

I mean he can work in a library if he owns a pet rabbit I think. My standards for women actually seem to be much higher. *thinks about Sabrina Carpenter* Usually.. Unless they're trans. I can offend everyone I think. What a superpower.

I say 'can' but no you should be in a library ideally I think. Its like an urban forest. Because of all the paper. It's also kind of like a church which again works well from a corruption pov. Also like how Aella had sex with a woman on top of a church once. Taboo. I think most libraries are more like places you go to use computers or print stuff now which is unfortunate because its harder to eroticise. Not impossible but just different. I mean eroticising technology and robots isn't too hard but you know libraries and books go together better.

Unless you're Sabrina. I know this is controversial but I think she might be too hot for libraries to work for her in this way, but it's hard to say. I think she looks better being arrested on the beach and being kind of manic. Like she could play Loki or something that kind of vibe. She's not wearing glasses so that factors in too. I dunno there's much to consider about body language and vibe etc imo.

I mean Emma Watson played Hermione so.

I like older women sometimes if they're yelling (specific gif.) Or Lilith. I actually only like people in gifs and music videos or playing music live lol. Mostly guys. But there are less guys I stumble on these days unless they're a weird Nick Fuentes fan I guess. Not a musician just a long haired skinny guy. /shallow

Cause I don't meet people irl but even when I did it didn't work out with guys.

Not 100% sure on this but I think North East Asian people are a lot more cautious and that's why they have the lowest rates. They have lower rates of other impulsive behaviours I think too.

But while the specific mechanisms are up for debate, the proliferation of singledom and its role in cratering birth rates shows that while financial incentives and other policy tweaks*can nudge birth rates higher, they are labouring against much stronger sociocultural forces.

Policies aimed at facilitating relationship formation might be more effective than those aimed at helping couples have babies.

A world of rising singledom*is not necessarily any better or worse than one filled with couples and families, but it is fundamentally different to what has come before, with major*social, economic and*political*implications. We are faced with a conundrum: is this what people really want? If not, what needs to change?

Anything to stop the upper class having to do anything about the ever widening economic inequality eh?

It should be pointed out that, in this context, "single" means not "unmarried" but "neither married nor cohabitating". People aren't more reluctant to marry their partners but less likely to even have a partner to marry.

I appreciate the clarification. One thing I hate about these statistics is that they usually just mean whether someone is married. I'd also like to know how many people are truly single like not even dating someone and for how long and so on but finding this info is suspiciously hard a bit like how they obfuscate employment statistics.

It feels intentional sometimes especially with employment stuff if it comes from official sources. I don't know.

There's a big political divide between men and women. Men want conservative women and women want men that affirm their freedoms. This contributes

My ex literally said this to me "you're like my therapist and slave.”m" He tried to deny it but I heard it clear as day.

Edit: he confessed after driving me somewhere dark and secluded some of the most disgusting things to me including cheating on me while I was pregnant.

Jesus.

Also not the same commenter as above it is insane how many women I've seen talk about this next quote. Unfortunately it's because a bunch of women actually are into that but most women hate it and guys get the wrong idea:

I gave up on dating for a lot of reasons, but the big one was the last few guys I dated putting their hands around my neck when going for a FIRST kiss. Over it. It’s easier and safer to be alone.

Hearing this stuff also contributes obviously. There are articles about it too. Like just engaging in hardcore bdsm without conversation...

I'm trying to be vague here too as that comment isn't conveying the worst of it.

I didn't like being kissed without consent let alone this.

How is any guy this r*tarded? it blows my mind.

Obviously some guy's are predators but one woman said she freaked out when a guy did that and then when the guy realised 'oh this is a fucked up thing to do out of the blue' he broke down and started crying and apologising. I suppose you could cynically assume its an act but she didnt seem to think so. A lot of people are not OK.

Is already hard enough to find someone compatible, with no vices, healthy, humourous, good looking and a good cook, let alone a good [BEEP]!

Women can be all those things you described if they have enough incentives to. Men in the west do have it harder when it comes to providing those incentives.

No actually. Everyone has vices so that's unrealistic and its telling that they assumed that they were talking about women. Who doesn't want someone who can cook, is good looking and really humour is more attractive to women than men tbh so....

Let’s say that billionaires are decently confident that they will have radical life extension sometime in the next 20 years.

Let’s also say that they know they can’t keep it from the masses.

Wouldn’t you also try to engineer a society where the birth rate fell so low that we’re in no danger of people live 200, 300 years or longer?

Isn’t the easiest way to do this through the dating app hellscape, insanely high housing prices, low relative wages, since so many people feel like they need to “make it” before settling down…

As well as whatever the hell is going on with Gen Z and relationships.

Just food for thought…

No they know medical science is no where near achieving that. Elon who is the most tech-bro one afaik doesn't seem that into the idea either. Its mostly being pushed by wealthy transhumanist and Sillicon Valley folks who are wealthy but not billionaire level.

Elon only supports pronatalism to get more workers for Mars. He doesn't have the social skills to hide his intentions well. He literally posted that lol before he started posting about the topic regularly. He really only cares about his own ego and his personal projects (space exploration being the main one.)

Dating app hellscapes, high housing costs, and low wages have one simple thing in common... corporate greed

I always assume incompetence and self-interest over complicated long-term plans. The billionaires aren't as smart as everyone thinks

They look out for their own interests as much as everyone else. They just have the power and resources to have a bigger negative impact when they do so.

They have long term plans too they just don't all agree on those long term plans

The life insurance industry in the US is hands down the best example of corporate greed. So I'm not surprised by recent events given people's increasing desperation. It's an industry that maximises profits at basically all costs and the cost is literally Human lives in the most direct way. Most industries just passively kill people indirectly with what's the term 'plausible deniability' that's it. Those guys literally decide if people should live or die to make more money.

"We don't kill them. It's illegal for hospitals not to treat them. We just give them the choice between crippling debt and poverty (which we know leads to a lower life expectancy especially in the US and UK because its worse in countries with greater inequality between the richest and poorest,) instead of the service they've been paying for for years"

This is why CEOs with children get assassinated.

It's a problem with nationalised health care too. If they think something isn't economically viable they can avoid it which can lead to death again. Like in the UK with the chickenpox vaccine although thankfully the risk was very low.

Another issue is choosing not to fund health care in the first place. Or a lack of experts in the field leading to poor care.

Even then when you consider results and cost nationalised systems are cheaper for better results overall. But not perfect.

[Nyctophilia]

Also I am dictator of the world atm and I solved the problem of war globally and everyone gets free mermaid pillows with a celebrity of their choice's face on and 3 marshmallows each. Except vegetarians and vegans who get three tiny mushrooms or maybe vegan marshmallows but they probably still have to be mushroom flavoured. Mushroom burgers are really good so I feel like this logic must extend to all substitutions of this kind. Also mushroommallow sounds cute. Honestly the fact that nobody has proposed free universal marshmallows before. I mean it's disgusting. So I can give myself citizenship of three countries. As a treat. But Alien country only counts as one (it's just called Alien country now it's official,) since Japan and UK are just going to be one country anyway according to the real new world order.

You know it's funny because my brother decided to talk to me today about marshmallows and apparently there's a whole bunch of lore involving them. I was just being dumb with this post though. Like they used to be made of a plant called marshmallow but aren't anymore in their commercialised form and manafacturers replaced that with gelatin.

The word "marshmallow" comes from the mallow plant species (Althaea officinalis), a wetland weed native to parts of Europe, North Africa, and Asia that grows in marshes and other damp areas. The plant's stem and leaves are fleshy, and its white flower has five petals. It is not known exactly when marshmallows were invented, but their history goes back as early as 2000 BCE. Ancient Egyptians were said to be the first to make and use the root of the plant to soothe coughs and sore throats and to heal wounds. The first marshmallows were prepared by boiling pieces of root pulp with honey until thick. Once thickened, the mixture was strained, cooled, then used as intended.[3][4][5]

Whether used for candy or medicine, the manufacture of marshmallows was limited to a small scale. In the early to mid 19th century, the marshmallow had made its way to France, where confectioners augmented the plant's traditional medicinal value. Owners of small confectionary stores would whip the sap from the mallow root into a fluffy candy mold. This candy, called P?te de Guimauve, was a spongy-soft dessert made from whipping dried marshmallow roots with sugar, water, and egg whites.[6][7] It was sold in bar form as a lozenge. Drying and preparation of the marshmallow took one to two days before the final product was produced.[8] In the late 19th century, candy makers started looking for a new process and discovered the starch mogul system, in which trays of modified corn starch had a mold firmly pushed down in them to create cavities within the starch. The cavities were then filled with the whipped marshmallow sap mixture and allowed to cool or harden.[9] At the same time, candy makers began to replace the mallow root with gelatin, which created a stable form of marshmallow.[4]

My brother also said something else about them I've already forgotten and might not have been any of that info from wikipedia.

Anyway my post was mostly inspired by the fact that I like the word marshmallow and the fact that people often cite the Standford Marshmallow experiment when making grand claims about genetics, culture and Western civilisation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanfo...low_experiment

The Stanford marshmallow experiment was a study on delayed gratification in 1970 led by psychologist Walter Mischel, a professor at Stanford University.[1] In this study, a child was offered a choice between one small but immediate reward, or two small rewards if they waited for a period of time. During this time, the researcher left the child in a room with a single marshmallow for about 15 minutes and then returned. If they did not eat the marshmallow, the reward was either another marshmallow or pretzel stick, depending on the child's preference. In follow-up studies, the researchers found that children who were able to wait longer for the preferred rewards tended to have better life outcomes, as measured by SAT scores,[2] educational attainment,[3] body mass index (BMI),[4] and other life measures.[5] A replication attempt with a sample from a more diverse population, over 10 times larger than the original study, showed only half the effect of the original study. The replication suggested that economic background, rather than willpower, explained the other half.[6][7] The predictive power of the marshmallow test was challenged in a 2020 study.[8][9] Work done in 2018 and 2024 found that the Marshmallow Test "does not reliably predict adult functioning".[10]

My brother was like "I know something that just seems like fluffy pillows has this entire backstory. Now you are burderned with this knowledge too." Lol but I already was aware of another dimension unfortunately.

I just find the idea that something as simple and silly as marshmallows is involved in such dramatic, serious discussions kind of amusing.

But given their origin I guess it's kind of fitting. 🤔

[Nyctophilia]

My friend was talking about this video he saw that was on the 'Runescape housing crash' and he was like 'what's going on in Runescape that this video exists?' So I told him about the other similar videos I've come across in like Habbo etc and that it's sort of a genre then started talking about this one channel I'd stumbled on years ago that had a video on the number of employed people in Whiterun in Skyrim which I loved and then he brought up some of that guys more recent videos. (Also he has a bunch of the employment rate in different games.)

So it seems he now has a video of himself in the videos wearing tons of hairclips and has more videos along those lines. I really love this:



I asked my friend about the hairstyle in case he knew (since this isn't the only video where he has that hairstyle) but he said he's not sure if it's personal style or just the persona for the videos which is even better.

This is one I saw before that's great (he has a bunch more like this one too):



Kind of envy that I didn't come up with this random stuff myself.

Also my friend mentioned he has investigated certain things but cannot reveal his findings. We will all have to wait for this important news. I will try to remember this post later but will probably forget by that time lol.

[Nyctophilia]

Yeah aside from the healthcare issue in the US the increasing degradation of creative works has been the most bleak and ironic for me. Like even the stuff they exploit as distractions is just getting worse and worse in quality because of greed. The Sims 4 being a very obvious example. They're not going to create the sims 5 so you just get game breaking bugs that they don't fix since last summer that they're aware of and still haven't fixed for some reason (probably the endless focus on releasing new packs.)

A billionaire, a regular worker and an immigrant are sitting at a table. 100 Cookies get served. The billionaire takes 99 and says to the worker. Look the immigrant wants your cookie.

In the US some of the billionaires (I'd prefer another ideological term seeing as it's not just billionaires who use this ideology,) say that the immigrant is more skilled and Americans (or just white working class Americans,) are lazy:







You know Elon is probably actually doing this to distract from what he's doing to America since he has more control of the US government via Trump.

This is interesting (this is from the US I think but there are similar trends elsewhere):

Women's contact with the criminal justice system has trended upward over the last several decades, while comparable figures for men have trended downward.

This includes higher arrest rates for women (41% higher in 2019 than in 1980) and higher rates of jail incarceration for females (12% higher in 2019 than in 2010).

The share of female arrests is up in part due to trends in arrest rates for violent and drug crimes. In 2019, the women's arrest rate was 63% higher for violent crimes and 317% higher for drug crimes than in 1980.

The women's prison population is aging; 2022 imprisonment rates were 83% higher than in 2007 for older women (ages 60 to 64) and 62% lower for younger women (ages 20 to 24).

In 2016, 58% of the women in state and federal prisons were parents to minor children, compared to less than half of the men (47%).

Racial disparities in female imprisonment rates narrowed from 2000 to 2022. In 2022, the imprisonment rate was 69% lower for Black females, 18% lower for Hispanic females, and 18% higher for White females than in 2000.

Females released from state prison systems were less likely to recidivate than their male counterparts. By 2017, 63% of females released from 34 state prison systems in 2012 had been rearrested, compared to 72% of males.

(and apparently prison does more for women than men. Or they were just less criminally inclined in the first place. Can't really get a control group for that one lol. I mean it's a majority of both that reoffend anyway.)

I don't just mean the bolded part is interesting the whole quote is but I highlighted that to post the song.

[Nyctophilia]

Did Nietzsche resent his girlfriend for working everywhere while she was playing at home with her friends? Will he hate his ex-girlfriend and not pay attention to him? No one likes to play dress up in bed together😩

I don't think philosophers generally have partners or children.

This is all you need to know about Nietzsche:



That tweet made slightly more sense than the average tweet.

Nietszche would approve of my startup. It's to create a mercenary force of Dutch body builders to [redacted] migrants, and strip into a naked circle around your home interlocking into a ritual Magick seal, to trap demon in you in the void

I think you're getting Nietszche confused with Bronze Age Pervert.

There is no Elon musk in China
There is no Led Zeppelin in India
There is no Steve Jobs in Africa
There is no Christian Bale in Guatemala

What a bizarre mixture of people to put together.

I bet Led Zeppelin were in India at some point. Misleading.

I also feel like even as annoying as prog rock fans in general can be (stereotypically,) I'm not surprised this guy is a weird esoteric far right racist guy who likes long hair and elves and has tweeted several times about Led Zeppelin.

I mean it was never going to be Rush but it also can't be Rush cause.. You know... Twitter guy is anti-semitic too. Actually that was like 50/50 because of the weird niche/bubble he's in.

Also no one is ever gonna be like:

"There is no Steven Wilson in Malyasia."

Because they've never heard of him in the first place. Which is amazing for me. (This is more of an injoke than reality at this point haha although still lots of people haven't):



Not that amazing though:

The Overview will have its world exclusive premiere accompanied by a specially commissioned film at the BFI IMAX in London on Tuesday 25th February. Tickets go on sale tomorrow

Steven Wilson presents The Overview
+ Q&A

Steven Wilson launches his new album with the first ever spatial presentation of The Overview with this 360? audio event accompanied by a specially commissioned film created for the UK?s largest screen.
Tuesday 25 February 2025 18:00
BFI IMAX
Sold out!

I only heard about this now 2 days after those tickets went on sale so I knew it would be sold out already lol. There are only 500 seats. I couldn't even get decent seats to watch Dune 2 over a large period of time (I still haven't watched the first Dune film lol I was planning to before/if I went though.)

The first few rows of seats are sort of pointless generally too because of the size of the screen and how close they are (not sure why they exist,) though I would have bought them for this since it's music and better than nothing. It was easier from like 2013-2016~ to get tickets in a decent position for some reason and I'd even gone before when there weren't that many people around. But for Dune 2 when I was looking it didn't matter what time of day it was all the decent seats in the middle and far enough back were taken.

The only good thing is it doesn't operate according to general cinema showings so you can watch older films now and then when they decide to show them again. Or they do random stuff like a marathon of all the Indiana Jones films in one night etc.

Tbh though I wouldn't have asked any questions anyway because of anxiety lol.

But back to nonsense I guess:

My disgust for self-victimization is so great that I blame all matters of the world I deem unsatisfactory on myself. Inversely, my concietedness leads me to view everyone else as hapless animals devoid of accountability. I feel an immeasurable weight constantly upon me thereby.

I only (occasionally - hard to say percentage wise,) take responsibility for things my enemies accuse me of for fun and power.

Like this nonsense:

LA is undeniable proof that liberals will literally burn the world to the ground, if left unchecked.

The West is entering a forced form of speciation that could completely eradicate the pathological altruism that has been the bane in our side for years.

If your home being scorched to the ground in replacement of DEI/WOKE commissars cannot wake you up, then GG Darwin.

^ We need to find a way to utilise this to 'prank call' twitter posters. The medium doesn't tend to allow it to have the same impact though unfortunately.

Like that prank call person who would call into religous call lines, orders pizzas, tech support scammers, and banks using Elder Scrolls characters but just on twitter instead.



Should have played this:



I appreciate if you have no idea who these characters are this would prob be annoying or something but I can't help but think this is hilarious. Of course it would be a feature if it was annoying to far right twitter posters really.



I don't think the Sheogorath guy really figured it out - he recognised the sweet rolls because it's a famous Skyrim quote but I don't think he knew it was Sheogorath.

Also "Master Chief calls flood insurance XD"

[Nyctophilia]

OK this is just sad:





I always thought ghostwriting was weird and I feel like this is slightly more depressing. Since games are supposed to be fun...

"Hello fellow gamers."

I like how Hasan is surprised that it was this and not all the other crap that created such a big backlash for him haha. I mean sure but well, were you not here for gamergate?

edit: I dunno I think not noticing you're out of mana for 10 seconds if that was the actual time frame while attacking (and I've not played this game actually,) just seems incredibly slow for gaming in general. Even as a casual player really. It's very basic element of a lot of rpgs in general. I mean I guess he knew just very slow/not observing. Mm OK I looked at a timestamp someone made on reddit and it seems ridiculous to me. But you know it doesn't matter I do a lot of dumb stuff too while gaming + I would be rusty now if I was playing something like WoW due to not playing in a decade and also I only ever played casually.

Just be humble and say you like playing casually but you're not that great. How hard is it.

In WoW your character will tell you if you're doing something wrong or you've run out of mana etc. You can turn that off. It's funny for blood elves to say that cause they're supposed to be addicted to mana.

Elon's stream would have been a lot funnier with this in the background honestly:

"You can't sit with us!"

xD

I guess Nicki Minaj was right:

"I hold the control like the gamers"

Elon what's your Spyro speedrun record? xD

I think the world record for Spyro (the first ps1 game) for a 120% run (yes I know but yes 120%) is 1:20:23 according to speedrun.com but to get that you need to do lots of little exploits not just play the game normally and quickly. Like this except not this you probably want to do it near Town Square not from the start:



This is useless for a speedrun but cool. There is a mod if you play on emulator where the gems and stuff are randomly placed and one location they can appear on is those mountains that aren't meant to be reached:



Yeah this is the guy who has the world record in speedrunning playing that mod:



So the 2nd highest 120% speedrun time is 1:20:56 then the 3rd is 1:21:56 so it's all fairly close lol.

My record is probably like 3-5 hours lol and not really using any of the tricks others use, but I don't remember now because it's been years (I'm going to say 4-5 hours to be conservative. I will maybe try again soon and make a note. Oh nevermind I found an old post elsewhere 'about 3 hours' so yeah. That's better than I thought lol. I'm still going to try again at some point to compare.) I don't stream though so I'm not on that website. 3 hours starts at 329 and then goes down from there. It looks like it slips down to 4 hours at about 357 and then just 5 positions later (362) slips down dramaticaly from 4:38:58 to like 8 hours. Probably at the lower end lots of people have completed the game in a similar time but just haven't uploaded. Personally I don't think I'd bother streaming unless I was in the top 100 or something maybe. I was going to say 2 hours but honestly the top 200 are all under 2 hours. 2 hours is 205 on that leaderboard lol. I don't think I'd do 2 hours either tbh cause of the anxiety from streaming. xD requires a bigger incentive for me.

Streaming doing anything for 8 hours seems insane to me though. Though people do.

I feel like having an audience would be a large distraction too. I have played with my brother doing speedruns but the anxiety etc (I make gaming videos but it's different when you're live and even recording + uploading videos results in some anxiety.) I would probably not chat with them much.

Presumably at a certain point you also hit a limit that it's impossible to beat but the guy who is in first place I think is usually in first place and has been doing this for years with very slight improvements. I have mentioned in 2020 the world record was 1 hour 22 minutes and something.

Elon seems like someone who can't lose any competition. Someone needs to trick him into pretending to be an expert on Sims lore for my entertainment.

It would never happen because it's a 'girls thing' but it would crack me up.

Would have to include Knut Futa and Vidcund Curious somehow.

Elon do my customised version of the apocalypse challenge in the sims 3 where you start in perma winter and can only eat food from the neighbours and rummage through their garbage once a day (maybe not getting food.) You can't build walls (or anything from build mode) until you've completed the architecture career. You can only salvage furniture from a scrap yard but you can't go out when it's dark. You can't cook food without completing the culinary career and possibly others. If you're late for work once you have to quit and then can't work in that career track again (later generations can though.) All the other rules I can't remember off the top of my head. (It's partly from the original challenge and partly edited bits I came up with.) It's basically impossible lol.

The original wasn't that hard (I guess if you've never played The Sims before in your life it might be a bit difficult. Mostly the issue is remembering all the rules I think.) I almost completed it once but the thing is I tend to get bored before finishing stuff if it doesn't activate flow state or takes too long. Cause you're stopping and starting over long periods with a lot of these challenges obviously.

Elon how quickly can you eat a chocolate bar?

To be serious though the sad part is he obviously lied about being in the top 20 Diablo players in the world to be cool to kids so that they listen to him and his other ideological opinions since they're really into gaming. Well they have been for decades but especially gen z and younger were/are. It kind of took over music as well as teenagers favourite subcultural thing.

[Nyctophilia]

PSA: That's Just How Josh Segarra Talks!

I don't know if it's just Reddit's Al Gore Rhythm trying to get under my skin, but I've seen a lot of the "we can?t trust the new people" posts talking about how part of their distrust in Manny is how he speaks and emotes. Anyone who has seen him as the great and powerful good boi Lance Arroyo over on The Other Two (a great show in which he is the sole truly kind and empathetic character) or The Big Door Prize is gonna be aware of this, and I?m sure they?re probably just as bummed out about seeing so many people talking about how his way of speaking is a cause for concern.

So, this is just a post to say: that's just how the actor talks. It's not Quinta Brunson and Josh Segarra creating a character who talks some specific way to convey that you shouldn't trust him or something - he just sounds like that.

tbh i don?t understand why ppl don?t trust him he seems like he?s really trying 😭 maybe it's bc i?ve had friends who talk that way so i'm used to it and it doesn't seem sketchy or anything but manny seems so sweet

I was actually googling to see if he was deaf. I've never come across someone who speaks like that but it vaguely reminds me of some deaf people but more subtle. Or like some other cognitive thing.

I don't know what they're talking about lol. Probably just because Barbara said she didn't trust him/them before.

Anyway apparently not.



I feel like it's less obvious in this video than on the TV show though. But I don't want to end up watching spoilers. I'm only on episode 1 of season 3.

is it just me or does his accent sound like jason?s from the good place

I don't think so? I watched that years ago and don't remember questioning if he was deaf.

Also for some reason I thought he was on the TV show Single Parents. But that's Jake Choi. Wow.



It wasn't a perfect TV show but it's a shame it got cancelled since I liked a bunch of the characters.





They don't really look alike but I watched Single Parents years after watching The Good Place and don't think I thought about it much. The characters are kinda similar.

Also yeah I guess Manny does sound a bit like Josh Segarra?

His accent is fine, it's just that he talks slowly or weirdly spaced out sentences

yeah

Must be a Floridian himbo dialect

...

It's a comedic choice. He does the same thing in The Other Two and that?s probably why they cast him in the first place or even wrote the character with him in mind.

It's not a funny voice.

This has not been very informative and I think there is no answer lol. I was just curious anyway.

I should rewatch The Good Place one day lol:



"Did you bring the cocaine I asked for?"

"Catch that magic panda use her powers. Oh I'm guessing that was Jason?"

"That guy has no idea what's going on."

[Nyctophilia]

I found this old post on AO3 discussing some fandom thing people were apparently complaining about many years ago.

'Adding to canon is not the same thing as destroying canon'

It's about the series Star Trek Discovery I haven't watched. And the main character? Who apparently is Spoiler: Spock's adopted sister

So I'm actually tickled pink at the thought that Spoiler: Spock had an adoptive sister, not furious that they?re "corrupting" more than fifty years of canon. It would be tampering with canon to claim that Spock never existed, that Chekov was a flower child, or that*Starship Troopers*is actually some kind of prequel to Kirk and the starship*Enterprise,

Lol. There's a photoshopped image representing this too in the post.

Tbh the confusing part for me is that she's called Michael. It's almost always a male name and surprisingly pedestrian and English Burnham is an English surname) for Star Trek. So I was like is he one of the writers/directors for a while before I was like oh... His sister is called Michael Burnham lol?

But I don't know if its pronounced the same since I haven't watched the show. I'm just thinking of this song lol about a guy



And I know Star Trek likes to play with androgyny a lot so it wasn't weird in that way It just didn't sound like a character name.

You know Anne Rice was called Howard but she changed her name when she was 5. She was insecure about it:

Well, my birth name is Howard Allen because apparently my mother thought it was a good idea to name me Howard. My father's name was Howard, she wanted to name me after Howard, and she thought it was a very interesting thing to do. She was a bit of a*Bohemian, a bit of mad woman, a bit of a genius, and a great deal of a great teacher. And she had the idea that naming a woman Howard was going to give that woman an unusual advantage in the world.[19]

According to the authorized biography*Prism of the Night, by*Katherine Ramsland, Rice's father was the source of his daughter's birth name: "Thinking back to the days when his own name had been associated with girls, and perhaps in an effort to give it away, Howard named the little girl Howard Allen Frances O'Brien."[20]*Rice became "Anne" on her first day of school, when a nun asked her what her name was. She told the nun "Anne", which she considered a pretty name. Her mother, who was with her, let it go without correcting her, knowing how self-conscious her daughter was of her real name. From that day on, everyone she knew addressed her as "Anne",[21][22]*and her name was legally changed in 1947.[1]*Rice was confirmed in the Catholic Church when she was twelve years old and took the full name Howard Allen Frances Alphonsus Liguori O'Brien,[clarification needed]*adding the names of a saint and of an aunt, who was a nun. She said: "I was honored to have my aunt's name, but it was my burden and joy as a child to have strange names".[23]

Then in later life she said this:

The New York premiere of LESTAT was April 25th, 2006.

I?m overjoyed to report that I was there on opening night, stunned and amazed, and I?m eager to tell you just exactly what I saw.

But let me say this first:* I didn?t really create the character of Lestat de Lioncourt.* He lives and breathes in some nine different books that I wrote.* But how he came to be is truly something I can?t explain.

So if I write here about Lestat as if he was somebody else?s baby, there?s a reason for it.* He?s been out there on his own from the start.

Yes, he was based on my husband Stan -- on Stan?s vigor and beauty, on Stan?s will and Stan?s courage.* And* my son, Christopher, has grown up to be Lestat, and that?s a puzzle that commands respect.

Yet Lestat is my alter ego, lover, muse and the unabashed hero of my crippled, genderless soul.* I?m in love with the guy. I prowl the world looking through his eyes from time to time.* For decades, there was nothing I couldn?t express through Lestat?s voice.

"I've always been very much a champion of gay rights, and art produced by gay people," Rice said in the interview. "People told me*Interview with the Vampire*was a gay allegory, and I was very honored by that. I think I have a gay sensibility and I feel like I'm gay, because I've always transcended gender, and I've always seen love as transcending gender"

Rice added, "I get teased a lot by my gay friends because we have a rapport on things we find exciting or interesting. It?s very hard for me to remember that I have a gender..."

It's kind of ironic.

Kind of expected though? Her mum was very bohemian she said in the 1950s:

When Rice was fifteen years old, her mother died as a result of alcoholism.[10][24][25] Soon afterward, she and her sisters were placed by their father in St. Joseph Academy. Rice described St. Joseph's as "something out of Jane Eyre ... a dilapidated, awful, medieval type of place. I really hated it and wanted to leave. I felt betrayed by my father."[26]

She also has a gay son.

Her own writing is an exploration of typical genetics as well actually.

But she also changed her mind about fanfiction. She used to be quite against it and stopped people uploading stuff based on her work but later on changed her mind about it.

She also went through a born again Christian phase at one point. So she's a very controversial figure with a lot of people bit I also think a lot of the stories are exaggerated or false. That entire period was very mysterious unlike now where everyone just says stupid sgit on twitter. Which she notably didn't really engage with. So it led to lots of rumours not just about her but various fandom figures. Lots of folklore.

There was a controversial slash + BL writer (her style kind of mixed the two and she had worked on a BL fanfic once,) who was bipolar who went through a phase where she decided all her works/fans were evil during manic episodes and also had a subscription site but didn't really deliver so some people were annoyed about that. I never subscribed since I was underage then but read some of the previews she had posted around and one fanfic.

The stuff people say reminds me of this. Even though the other writer wasn't that famous at all outside niche online m/m fandom. It feels like they mixed the two stories because I don't think it was as dramatic

Rice publicly announced her disdain for the current state of Christianity on her Facebook page on July 28, 2010:

Today I quit being a Christian. ? I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being 'Christian' or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to 'belong' to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.[87][88]

Shortly thereafter, she clarified her statement:

My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.[89]

Rice returned to the Catholic Church in 1998 after decades of*atheism. She fell into a coma, later determined to be caused by*diabetic ketoacidosis*(DKA), on December 14, 1998, and nearly died.[63]*She was later diagnosed with*diabetes mellitus type 1, and was*insulin-dependent.[64][65][66]*Following the advice of her husband, Rice underwent*gastric bypass surgery*shortly after his death and shed 103 pounds in 2003.[67][68]

Rice nearly died again from an intestinal blockage or*bowel obstruction, a common complication of*gastric bypass surgery, in 2004. In 2005,*Newsweek*reported: "She came close to death last year, when she had surgery for an intestinal blockage, and also back in 1998, when she went into a sudden diabetic coma; that same year she returned to the Roman Catholic Church, which she'd left at 18."[69]*Her return did not come with a full embrace of the Church's stances on social issues; Rice remained a vocal supporter of equality for gay men and lesbians (including*marriage rights), as well as abortion rights and*birth control,[70]*writing extensively on such issues.[71]

While promoting her book*Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt*in October 2005, Rice announced in*Newsweek*that she would now use her life and talent of writing to glorify her belief in God, but she did not renounce her earlier works, citing a connection in her earlier work with the state of her spiritual life.[69]

In the Author's Note from*Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, Rice states:

I had experienced an old-fashioned, strict Roman Catholic childhood in the 1940s and 1950s ? we attended daily Mass and Communion in an enormous and magnificently decorated church. ? Stained-glass windows, the*Latin Mass, the detailed answers to complex questions on good and evil?these things were imprinted on my soul forever. ? I left this church at age 18. ? I wanted to know what was happening, why so many seemingly good people didn't believe in any organized religion yet cared passionately about their behavior and value of their lives.... I broke with the church. ? I wrote many novels without my being aware that they reflected my quest for meaning in a world without God.[72]

I think comments like this are as I say often exaggerated by people who were pissed off by her actions towards fanfic writers and no one has 'receipts' as the kids say:

She went through a heavy born again stage after her husband died and would reply to fan mail saying they would burn in hell for enjoying her works of blasphemy etc. She got over that eventually. She also held the books as very personal, she didn?t foster that sense of community that some other writers/fandoms do.

This is false. Her sin Christopher is gay. Always has been out and she turned her back in the church multiple times when a pope would denounce gays. An yes Anne was catholic. Idk how so many of these comments got off base when her opinion was very out in the open.

I'm sorry it isn't false, she just became very Christian for a short time then went back to normal.

It's kinda suspicious that there is no evidence when she supposedly said it in interviews and some people's entire life is devoted to trying to tear people down for saying things like that lol. It's also not generally hidden like Kanye, JK Rowling, Elon Musk etc.

This person claims there was an interview that they can't find:

I remember seeing an interview while she was in that phase where she basically renounced her old works and said the reason she made her vampires mostly gay-coded was because that was the most demonic thing she could imagine. a few years later I tried to find that interview and couldn't, but she was already out of that bubble at that time so maybe she had it removed.

Cause I remember some of this planning to only write about Jesus but not her saying anything about gay coded characters. I think they projected some stuff. I was reading her work in the 2000s myself.

I feel like this is the Mandella effect or something.

Almost like Armand in one of his religious fits haha

Her works were very heavily influenced by her life experiences and the significant people in her life, and I've always held that Armand was inspired by herself as a child.

Makes sense. I remember reading The Vampire Armand and I resonated with it a lot. I grew up in Romania(not Kievan Rus, but close enough heh) and was by monasteries a lot and lived there for a while, even painted icons, and always felt embarassed about that part of my past and envied people who grew up differently. But after reading this stuff, I feel so much less bad about it.. Goodness, representation matters a lot.

I think that is what Ethel Cain is trying to do:



These crosses all over my body
Remind me of who I used to be

I want to be clear before I go on she is not Catholic her background was Southern Baptist. She's addressed this before:

"I'm Southern fucking Baptist!" Ethel Cain proudly exclaims from a dingy motel in Hollywood. Christianity is central to the 23-year-old artist's life and work - Cain grew up in the Southern Baptist Church, moved into a church in the backwoods of Indiana, and recently draped herself on a cross for a photoshoot. Part of what makes Cain's work so compelling is her earnest infusion of themes usually felt*as taboo for [BEEP] artists - her fear of God, her love of the deep south, and her tongue-in-cheek depictions of hard drugs and violence. These subjects feel especially compelling coming from Cain, a trans woman.

CH: What you're doing seems very authentic.

EC: I will say, I've definitely had a lot of people talk about the comparisons to the Catholic Church to what I do, and I always tell them - I have nothing to do with the Catholic Church, I am Southern fucking Baptist!

I think she does have a song called Rosary though. Stumbled on the lyrics. That might have been released with her older work that she doesn't really want people sharing now though.

There's this clip from a livestream where she says this that's kinda funny but can't find it right now.



It's this livestream but I don't know if that part is included.

"Making out with women in the woods" LOL

Of course though.

Edit: yeah she does mention that in this video 9:38 minutes in.

Anyway I grew up with Catholic family members so even though I'm very edgy about it now, as a kid I felt left out because my dad didn't want me or my brother to be forced into that so didn't have a christening etc unlike my cousin. So I was actually crying about how Jesus wouldn't love me and stuff once round my grandma's house.

I'm also aware, and I think Anne Rice was too, of the kind of nihilistic cultural void that atheism represents. Especially for white people.

Some people also argue the opposite anecdotally. Someone quoted this to compare her to JK Rowling:

was entirely comfortable telling her I had, through my journey, discovered I was a trans woman. In typical Anne fashion, she thought it was fabulous. She told me at the time that she believed transgender people were sacred; That we possessed a unique gift of life experience that few ever would, which would allow us to see the world from "A view from the greatest height." She shared with me stories of trans figures in history that she had learned about in her own extensive studies. "The most fascinating figures in mythology were always transgender or genderless" she once told me. "And in so many cultures reaching back thousands of years, transgender and intersex people were deified, perceived as wise and powe

JK Rowling likes to use arguments about how her dad wanted a boy and how she probably would have been trans if she was young now as an argument to support her transphobia and I think its interesting to contrast these two writers.

It's not about the two writers for me it's about a schism I see within groups of mostly afab people that's been intriguing me for some time. There's a lot overlap too but like aesthetically and ideologically the Puritan feminist group which extends towards GNC fascism at the extreme (women should be more masculine,) and the 'slash/gay/BL erotica group' (men should be more feminine.)

Both these groups are androgynous just in different ways so 'more feminine/more masculine' at least if you're treating them as polarities doesn't actually make much sense but yeah. I don't like anyone else's occult based labels either so this will do for now. Order/chaos whatever. I was writing about this recently in another post like the female and feminist fascists in the UK.

One of the early Japanese BL writers was thought to be inspired by her dad (also an author's,) fear of being raped by men basically. Because at the time there was a weird media fixation on more feminine men being kidnapped by other men. Which I think he wrote about. I've posted about that before. It's kinda interesting historically. Also to contrast/compare with Western attitudes.

Though banned three weeks after its publication in 1909, Vita Sexualis is far more than a prurient erotic novel. The narrator, a professor of philosophy, wrestles with issues of sexual desire, sex education, and the proper place of sensuality. He tells the story of his own journey into sexual awareness, spanning fifteen years, from his first exposure to erotic woodcuts at the age of six, to his first physical response to a woman, and his eventual encounter with a professional courtesan. Beyond being a poignant account of one boy's coming of age, Vita Sexualis is also an important record of Japan's moral struggles during the cultural upheaval of the last years of the Meiji era.

In response to the publication of Vita Sexualis, Ogai Mori was reprimanded by Japan's vice-minister of war.

After the forcible opening of Japan to the West in 1868, Japanese views of nanshoku began to be influenced by Western psychomedical views of homosexuality. On the one hand, this led to the pathologization of both homosexual desire and (more slowly and erratically) of the bishounen himself, whom Western theory positioned as an abnormal, feminized figure who must be firmly redirected on the path of proper masculinity lest he become a permanently perverted "invert". On the other hand, the Western location of homosexual desire within the weak, effeminate passive who fruitlessly attempts to seduce the masculine heterosexual male failed utterly to mesh with the Japanese image of the active, adult man who courts pretty passive youths. Shudo texts had generally supposed that the chigo or wakashu had no sexual desire for their lovers and did not enjoy being penetrated (although Edo-region prints often show the boy partner with an erection, and some show the nenja masturbating him), so during Japan's brief criminalization of homosexual anal sex per se, authorities were confused as to what to do with cases of men who offered themselves to other men as "bottom" outside of prostitution, a turn of events that Japanese legal codes had never contemplated.

Aside from the newly-discovered specter of the "invert", popular understanding of homosexuality became increasingly relegated to the realm of adolescence. In Ogai Mori's semiautobiographical 1909 novel Vita Sexualis, the narrator separates the students at his boarding school into two types: the nanpa ("soft crowd") like himself, who are interested in fashion and women, and the koha ("rough crowd") who are sports fans, idolize military figures, and reject women as feminizing, instead pursuing pretty younger boys and terrorizing the other students in the process. Other Meiji writers describe similar phenomena under other names; the predatory gangs of older boys in the boarding-school dormitory, or the teenage juvenile delinquents who prowl the streets of Japan's cities, seeking out bishounen, preferably from upper-class families, to abduct and rape. Late 19th- and early 20th-century scandal-rags reported nearly weekly on sensationalized stories of attempted kidnappings, gang fights over the affections of boys, and other crimes laid at the feet of adolescent nanshoku-enthusiasts, whipping up a decades-long moral panic in the process. The koha, significantly, were always depicted as in their teens or early 20s; once a man hit adulthood he would naturally turn his attentions to women, as the more refined nanpa already did. And in this conceptualization, of course, the bishounen remains the blameless, socially approved and passive object of desire, as he was in former eras.

The koha panics faded by the 1920s, replaced in the minds of the moral guardians by crossdressed male prostitutes lurking in Tokyo's parks by night. The bishounen, at this point, is split: one part relegated to the "perverse press" and the red-light districts, one pure, virtuous and thoroughly disconnected from any taint of homosexuality.

In 1961 and ?62, Mari Mori (daughter of the Ogai Mori whose Vita Sexualis is mentioned above) wrote her three tanbi (?aesthetic?) novellas; A lover?s forest, I don?t go on Sundays, and Bed of fallen leaves. All three follow the same plot: an impossibly beautiful teenage boy is taken in by a wealthy and sophisticated (and much older) man, who keeps him in decadent luxury until the relationship is broken up by jealousy and violent death (murder, suicide, or both). Mari was noted for her lush prose, and she pours it all over her boys: their pale, transparent skin; their glossy hair; their luminous eyes, which ?seemed to emit pale lavender flames?; their full lips ?like fruit ripened by kisses?; their languorous movements and flirtatious glances. Their infatuated lovers surround them with exotic Western extravagances: custom-tailored suits, French soap, German cologne, imported cigarettes (that they wastefully stub out half-smoked), caviar, martinis, Rolls Royces and nightclubs. The boys address their lovers in feminine speech (but not in public), and the lovers, in turn, compare them to geisha and ?Parisian courtesan[s]?. Despite appearing beautiful and innocent ?like a cherub in a Raphael painting?, Mari?s boys are not entirely sympathetic; they are indolent, extravagant, wasteful, spoiled, childish, passive, persistently unintellectual (all the boys are dropouts, whereas all their lovers are highly educated), and not particularly concerned with morality. The other characters (and, one feels, Mari herself) are willing to overlook all their faults on account of their spectacular beauty and sexual desirability.

So his daughter wrote some of the earliest books that could be classified as BL (obviously similar ideas existed earlier though):

Mori Mari wrote that she always felt that her father was too good for this earth. There was something in his goodness that made him vulnerable, and she felt it her duty to protect him. In 1960 she wrote, "Once a nightmare disturbed me and woke me in a cold sweat; it was about some men approaching my father working at his desk and attacking him from behind.?⁴⁴ Any reader of Mori Ōgai (including most likely Mari herself) would be reminded by her dream of a passage in his 1909 novel Vita Sexualis. The protagonist of this ironically autobiographical novel (a text that is so sex-phobic that one of my students once called it Vita Asexualis) is terrified of homosexuals and takes a dagger with him to bed in his boarding school to defend himself against the older students who he believes are out to rape him.⁴⁵ In Mori Mari?s stories and the yaoi works they spawned, homosexuality may not be out and proud, but it is not nearly as scary and violent as it was in her father?s novel. Mari will take the place of that dagger to defend her father against attacks from the rear, but she will do so by making him queer. In the context of modern Japanese literature, where Ogai is a towering masculine presence, this is no mean feat.

Transgenerational trauma again.

It's not like I say that basic/clear cut though. Because people mix beliefs from both sides of that war. I think it became somewhat more clearly defined in the 70s though (the feminist sex wars.)

The feminist sex wars, also known as the lesbian sex wars, sex wars or porn wars, are collective debates amongst feminists regarding a number of issues broadly relating to sexuality and sexual activity. Differences of opinion on matters of sexuality deeply polarized the feminist movement, particularly leading feminist thinkers, in the late 1970s and early 1980s and continue to influence debate amongst feminists to this day.[1]

The sides were characterized by anti-porn feminist and sex-positive feminist groups with disagreements regarding sexuality, including pornography, erotica, prostitution, lesbian sexual practices, the role of transgender women in the lesbian community, sadomasochism and other sexual matters. The feminist movement was deeply divided as a result of these debates.[2][3][4][5][6] Many historians view the feminist sex wars as having been the end of the second-wave feminist era (which began c. 1963) as well as the herald of the third wave (which began in the early 1990s).[7]

I'd argue this schism probably started earlier and that not everyone involved probably called themselves feminists. So limiting it purely to the self use of that label sure maybe it started then. This is actually a very limited view on the history that is inspired by personality and sexuality differences though surely... Ideology is downstream of these things for the most part.

JK Rowling's casual biphobia and the biphobia of the people she was responding to at the time shows that groups dislike of a particular kind of personality.

Edit: I have to go back to a previous post in June (the first and third quote are JK Rowling):

"A male friend of mine asked a female friend of his what kind of woman would be OK cheering on the eradication of single sex rape shelters, changing rooms, women's sports etc. She thought for a moment, then said, 'you know the girl at the school party who'd snog another girl if the lads were watching? It's THAT girl."

In a different context, I once described them as the sort of girls at school who had tassels on the end of their pencils, & who'd make a big deal out of the act of writing while penning shit.

Now trying to remember if I ever has a tassel on my pencil

Oh for fucks sake just call the rest of us "pickmes"and get over with it.

I prefered 'handmaiden' and 'you're a psychopath and should kill yourself' etc (personally directed at me lol,)

[...]

Rowling you literally tweeted about how you were out with other GCs getting tipsy and how you might kiss each other...

Seems like she's projecting.

Also why a "school party"?????

Lol.

It's funny because people call JK Rowling a pick me too. Seeing as it's mostly men who are against trans people according to surveys.

I personally think we should create three groups of spaces - women, men and bisexuals. I think they'd stop complaining. No lol but food for thought.

I found this discussion just now:

JKR has always been eager to [BEEP] on any women who aren't women the way she feels they ought to be. Look at how she describes women and girls in her book like Fleur, Lavender, etc. Don't be too girly.... be like the boys. But don't do anything for male approval. Don't care about your appearance, but if you don't care enough you're slovenly and ugly. Most women grow up and grow out of this kind of judginess and cattiness, but I guess of you're rich and have people constantly kissing your butt, you don't have to.

I guess this aged well since just months later she started to comment on every non-white athlete who is highly androgynous but afab.

I had tassels on my pens 😂 Tassels and bobbles and those fluffy pom-poms and my favorite by far was a Koosh ball pen. They were cute without having any purpose beyond being cute which, I guess, when you despise unabashed girliness, is the greatest sin. How dare you adorn something just to adorn it.

When I was at school people just put gnomes on the top of pens/pencils and other things like that.

I think the tassels are a Clueless reference

Oh right I actually did watch that film for the first time recently lol. I spend a considerable amount of time during Christmas trying to find something that seemed watchable on Amazon prime video and my mum had pointed that out so in the end I was like 'meh OK' since people reference it a lot. It was OK. There really are a ton of quotable lines and gifs from that like even that one guy trying to climb out of a window I didn't realise was from that film.

My mum hadn't seen it either I think and she said early on in the film 'it's like they're taking the piss out of teenagers' which is true.



It's funny that that's considered insulting too. They're very masculine insults. It was though. Even in the 2000s.

Also that character was a virgin (who couldn't drive,) not sexually promiscuous. I don't think there were any 'bisexual moments.' (Well no bisexual female moments.) It's not Sarah Michelle Gellar in Cruel Intentions or...



Imagine outgaying Velma.

Like she took it as a challenge or something. 😂

Most of this sort of thing can be explained by 'men wrote/directed this.'

I don't think this is a 'type of person.' Anyway.

I like the skateboarder guy. I've forgotten his name already. Travis Birkenstock.





You can see the pen here actually lol.

Also this music video:



A lot of this era like Nicki Minaj was a backlash to the implications of a lot of that stuff and the way Britney etc were treated. Ultimately leading to the hatred of Barbie from conservatives you see today.

So much biphobia in what she said. SO MUCH. I am totally one of those women that got these sort of descriptions and judgements thrown at me in my 20s, and it was so infuriating because I didn't give a [BEEP] about the men around me because they were all gay! LOL. And I don't kiss women for other people's gratification (primarily). Have I ever put on a show? Hells yeah, and I defend any woman's right to do so cause it's FUN as hell!

But my status as a "feminist" doesn't hinge on my enthusiasm with kissing women publicly, and it certainly doesn't hinge on my bisexuality. [...]

I don't really care about exhibitionism because I'm voyeuristic. I think it takes a lot of self confidence that most people increasingly don't have in our culture so it inspires envy.

Anne Rice's dad was uncomfortable with his own femininity maybe if you believe what that biographer said about him giving his daughter his name Howard because at one point it had been a girls name.

The latter group is always being pulled into the former and that's where you get respectability politics.

People are discussing whether she's one of the greatest authors lol:

Why isn?t Anne Rice widely considered one of the greatest writers of all time?

I'm currently reading The Witching Hour and I keep returning to the above question. Her writing is just stunning and I don?t think she is taken seriously by literary critics. In my opinion, if she's not great, no one is. I mean Hemingway is often considered the greatest American writer and I just don't get it. And I'm an English professor btw. What are your thoughts on this topic?

Rice was aware of this herself in her own lifetime. She expected The Feast of All Saints and Cry To Heaven to help push her toward the mainstream but soon realized that even historical fiction is too ?genre? for most literary snobs. Her writing was always too queer, too genre, too florid and too unashamedly erotic to ever be accepted by the literary mainstream. I?m an English major so I have a lot of hot takes about [BEEP] like this lol

Well said. I think this pretty much encapsulates it. Her sensibilities were just out of step with the literary establishment and still are, really. Even her pair of historical novels - which for me may even transcend her vampires - were about subjects that were unusual, and were executed in such a way that guaranteed they would challenge the reader, sometimes in uncomfortable ways. Plus...she was a woman writing this way. Never underestimate sexism's grip.

I think her writing is often difficult to read. I found most of Memoch the devil boring besides one particular part haha. But I thought the same when I tried to read LoTR when I was 11/12 and gave up.

Conceptually it is usually very interesting and she also revolutionised how vampires are portrayed in fiction.

But I think the Mayfair witches books are more interesting because she created this really detailed fictional family history going back centuries. Plus a fictional species.

Probably underrated because people are more into vampires and they're more obviously [BEEP] coded so have wider appeal. Obviously both series take place in the same universe too.

Florid is a good way of putting it too. I can see why the mainstream were less into it mostly because of the very dark sexual stuff.

I think it will probably hold up when people discuss vampires and gothic fiction in the long term. A lot of British and Irish authors have written speculative fiction. Also 'isekai' works. Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, The Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of The Rings, Harry Potter, Wuthering Heights, Dracula, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus etc.

If I look up abstract of 100 writers and skim through I can't see her I see obvious figures like Tolkien, Hemmingway, JK Rowling and see tons of American authors I've never heard of. Do I think that's weird? Yeah.

Shakespeare wrote plays so bit weird to include him too. I also assume its in no order. You can get different results googling slightly different things as I just learnt. Since it switched from Tolkien as number one to Shakespeare.

I feel like Ursula K. Le Guin should be there somewhere even though I havent read her work, based on cultural influence (she isnt though.) So these lists are somewhat subjective and based on different criteria. There's a bias towards historical figures too most of the time for o virus reasons.

I think Anne Rice's Mayfair witches books are more controversial now then when she wrote them as things have gotten more puritanical since then. Skimming back through those books I can see all kinds of very messed up things. It's technically horror but ambiguous enough to become more intolerable to people who frown on these things.

They're censoring the TV show based on it from what I hear lol so. I have no idea how they're going to cover half of the plot points honestly lol. It really is an 18 rated series though I read it as a minor of course.

And I'm one of those who thought she kind of went off the rails with Memoch the Devil, which I found pretentious to the point of being unreadable.

[...]

Don't get me wrong. I think Rice was a very talented writer. She revived the conventions of Gothic fiction and set the stage for much of the surge in vampire books and TV shows over the last decades. Her writing can be great, but it can at times become almost a self-parody.

I hope I don't offend anyone. When Rice is good, she's really good. My problem is that it seemed difficult for her to sustain her best writing.

It's not even that haha. I loved the concept but I remember very little and it was too boring so I started skimming it instead. The bit where Lestat goes down on a woman who is on her period was great, otherwise I don't remember anything.

That makes sense but I think that is true for many writers who head up the literary canon and they seem to get more forgiveness and retain their perception of greatness.

Most fiction isn't really for me. Like I say I couldn't get through Lord of the Rings though I havent trued since but I really love the world. I like fanfiction a lot though. I like romance fiction too which is part ofvthat but I often like it to be set in universes with a lot of worldbuilding and speculative (not exclusively but preferentially throughout my life.) That's why I enjoy Star Trek fanfiction despite not being a huge fan of most of the canon.

Doctor Who is something I could never get into because it made me cringe way too much. Its too family friendly as well basically in a particular way.

One thing I like about Rachilde though she was problematic in her own right is in her first novel mostly she was like "nah I'm not coding anything. This is a woman who is masculinised and she treats this guy like her wife and feminises him and treating him/her as an object of worship. Also refers to him as a woman intermittently. Gender is fluid. And also here's all these other fucked up far things I'm 18th. Entry Europe!"

It was a simpler time but not in the way conservatives would appreciate The real fascists know they have to go back further and to niche bubbles because time isn't linear. The 50s wasn't eternal and its always there - lurking. The transmasculine vampire:

Whatever the circumstances in which it was written, the book was first released in 1884 by Belgian publisher*Auguste Brancart*with the dedication "We dedicate this book to physical beauty", and a warning that any woman might secretly harbor the same desires as the depraved heroine of*Monsieur V?nus. As was common at the time, the novel was serialized prior to its publication in one volume.[4][5]

xD

Explains the two year prison sentence she ran away from LOL. Oscar Wilde was also a fan.

[Nyctophilia]

Insane that he got him on his podcast (not podcast lol stream whatever):

Great to see Hasan collabing with a smaller streamer

😂

[Nyctophilia]

The irony of being a streamer and criticising women doing onlyfans.

He has serious health issues in his 30s because hot women aren't working at gamestop (never happened anyway I bet lol,) so he can't leave the house.

Game shops are dead anyway. It's not 2005.

He just can't go down this route because of who he is.

I call BS. Going to GameStop involves leaving your house.

Lol what I was saying. His issues are really on show and it's so insane that he thinks he can do this of all people.

Asmon the bills can't possibly be this high

😂

the irony is that he is doing exactly the male counterpart of onlyfans.
he is absolutely in the same parasocial market, the difference is he doesn't have to be hot.

Correct and it's hilarious that he thinks he's better than them.

Unfortunately he's basically a poor man's Penguinz0.

OK I'm done now.


The hoeflation guy half way through the video is a classic example of these guys thinking everything is about money. I call bs on this because I'm attracted to very few guys but make basically nothing. Almost any guy earns more than me and this fact hasn't made me attracted to more guys. Perhaps I'm different since I'm [BEEP] and non-binary but I doubt it. There are definitely women like me anyway. It's nonsense I think outside a small circle of golddiggers. In the past women got with men they didn't want out of social pressure, to have kids, and maybe in rare cases of abject poverty where their family couldn't support them for money. But I don't think it factors in for most women's attraction at all... If it did every guy would be attractive to me now.

More to the point it clearly isn't just me as Elon Musk can't keep a woman in his life. He's the richest guy on the planet and he tweets about not having sex for a 'long time.'

Napolean Dynamite had more understanding of women than these guys lol.


OK I'm not done Asmongold dates onlyfans models? What a hypocritical piece of [BEEP] like so many social media men. No wonder so many American women are misandric and think men are just fuckboys.

How is Candace Owens saying 'hoeflation' with a straight face and acting super serious. This is ridiculous.

[Nyctophilia]

If a women has short hair (few inches above shoulders or shorter) or a guy has long hair (shoulder length or longer but well taken care of) is it a deal breaker for you? How much of your decision on if you would date someone or not comes from their hair? I know it will be different for everyone, but I would like to see some opinions.

I was actually looking for a support group for people who are almost exclusively into long hair on men...

Sometimes guys start dating hot women and cut their hair and I'm like you were supposed to be the chosen one (hot women,) why would you do this to us peasants? Biphobia tbh. No lol.

I say sometimes I've seen that happen once lol and prob a coincidence.





😭

(The haircut had nothing to do with him lol. He just had great crying emoji hair.)

Also I have period cramps right now and more Human (soft) emotions which is weird (happens sometimes when I'm on my period.)

Definitely seems like you're one of the few that like that length of hair on a guy haha. I have long hair myself, and I definitely seem to get less attention than when I had shorter hair

Oh my god this guy bakes cookies too. Wait they look like brownies or something (I thought cookies were biscuits in the US,) they're rainbow coloured. That's so cute though.

Lol wtf this guy looks like the protagonist of a CW TV show or something (someone suggested Tom Welling) I don't think he has to worry about hair much.

The rules of this subreddit are both funny and weird....

No Sexualizing.

Sexualizing is not allowed and will result in a permanent ban.

No extreme simping

This subreddit is for advice, extreme simping is prohibited.

Edit: I'm technically sexualising from a distance. Na na na.

This is the weird part:

No posting if you're an under 18 female.

This is not meant to be a sexist rule. This rule is in place due to the nature of the internet. This rule applies only for females that are under 18.

Why only females who are under 18?

Anyway I think that guy is insecure about his appearence. Lots of posts looking for reassurence. which is kind of insane because he looks like some famous actor.

I guess I can't say I'm attracted to him physically though (he has cute interests) but he looks conventionally attractive. I just like guys with a less Hollywood vibe basically. He's also out of my league anyway haha. So doesn't matter what I think.

I think he's insecure partly because he's in his 20s and using online dating sites.

He had a post concerned about his plant too. It's so cute when people look after plants.

Let your beard grow for a few days and cut your hair. You have a good jawline and potential hunter eyes

This is terrible.

OK I'm going to stop looking now lol.

I was curious. It's so cute when guys bake though.

OK all the stuff that comes up when searching is just guys who are asking about their hair or hair length. Someone also said all the guys in his school with girlfriends had long hair which probably isn't true or an exaggeration.

I don't think I'm going to find the support group =P

[Nyctophilia]

We should talk about how a career is more important to men than women & maybe have a long hard think about what kind of retarded society we are creating by elevating mountains of female mediocrities to leadership roles & locking white men out of them. Is society better for it?

Depends-- better for whom?

CIA's been working on this Psyop since it sponsored Gloria Steinem back when Simpbone de Beauvoir was slinging catamites for Foucault.

You're the closest thing these fatherless boys have for a mother, [...]

I'm nobodies mother. FK is wonderful and reliable, but mfers need to stop looking for mom and dad in politics and start being the adults in the room.

Women who hang out on far right twitter don't exactly view themselves as women in most contexts, and don't want people to view them as mother figures.

She's also doing intrasexual competition here. Not trying to help you.



"*Her"

Edit: Thinking about this again LOL (this isn't who I'm quoting, and a slightly different bubble but same personality/agenda more or less):

A woman willing to be ostracised from other women & unable to get along with them, is likely to be a bad mom because her children will suffer from her refusal to be part of the group or at least fly under the radar. Being disagreeable is abnormal & often pathological for a woman.

She's talking to herself, which is funny because I'm pretty sure she knows she's doing it but her male followers don't.

I feel like a secret agent who has infilitrated the group. (That's part of why I do this obnoxious stuff yeah. It's 50% that and 50% addiction to anger obviously.)

I just don't think any woman who doesn't fit in with other women is a bad mother. In fact she is probably a better one than most

Nobody said "not fitting in makes you a bad mother", disagreeable to the point of ostracisarion from other women + a total inability to get along with them is what I said. I don't like most women but when I have kids I'll go along to get along, rather than pick arguments. Simple.

Doubtful. She described herself as a millenial too.

(The part where she magically starts getting along with people also seems doubtful.)

Most women I know have very few female friends. You don't have to be very disagreeable to not get along with other women.

With no respect whatsoever your entire model of women comes from WEIRD culture which impacts group dynamics (there are pros and cons to this culture though obviously. I go back and forth but I tend to think ultimately since I would never want to live in one of the other cultures there are more pros for me.)

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/sto...ird-societies/

Book argues these cultures make people more analytical, individualistic, impersonal

HENRICH: If you measure people?s psychology using the tools that psychologists and economists do, you?ll find substantial variation around the world. Societies that are Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic often anchor the extremes of these global distributions. Among the most prominent features that make people WEIRD is prioritizing impersonal pro-sociality over interpersonal relationships. Impersonal psychology includes inclinations to trust strangers or cooperating with anonymous others. Another big one is having high levels of individualism, meaning a focus on the self and one?s attributes. This is often accompanied by tendencies toward self-enhancement and overconfidence. WEIRD people also rely heavily on analytic thinking over more holistic approaches to problems. I?ll give you an example: Analytic thinking places people or objects into distinct categories and assigns them properties to account for their behavior. Here people get assigned preferences or personality. Particles and planets get assigned charge and gravity. On the other hand, holistic thinkers focus on relationships, context, and interaction. For example, if person A is yelling at person B, an analytical thinker might infer that person A is an angry person while a holistic thinker worries about the relationship between persons A and B. This patterning extends to mental states. WEIRD people tend to focus on people?s intentions, beliefs, and desires in judging them morally instead of emphasizing their actions. In many non-WEIRD societies, for example, the penalties for premeditated murders and accidental killings were the same while in many WEIRD societies they came to depend on the killer?s mental states, on his intentions and beliefs.

Outside WEIRD cultures women form groups of close female friends to co-parent and being ostracised from an ingroup of women is actually bad and then perhaps you won't have kids in the first place (in WEIRD cultures too,) due to instinct. Outside the West in some countries this alternative model of female groups (some related some not,) that co-parent and help each other more still exists.

It's sort of like how many men rely solely on their wives/girlfriends for companionship now and don't see the point of friendship and view relationships as transactional and to boost status. So they get lonely when they can't find a female partner. (Allegedly. I think men generally form more superficial relationships anyway for specific purposes, but I'm told this is a crisis, but I'm not sure it's as big a crisis as say the lack of decent hairstyles and aesthetics for men citation: me + Grimes twitter page. Nevertheless there aren't many 'purposes' anymore because a lot of stuff is automated.)

You think it's okay to treat children like a commodity produced to order, taken from their mothers at birth, and raised without a mother by their father and an unrelated man with whom he is sexually involved.

I think this is evil.

You know in a state of nature that child would have died because the mother abandoned it. If the child was a penguin, penguin males might adopt it though:

Gay male penguins steal lesbian couple's eggs at Dutch Zoo

The gay male African penguins, who made headlines last year when they stole an egg from a heterosexual couple, have now stolen a lesbian duo's nest.

Zookeeper Sander Drost told Dutch News that the gay couple is taking turns sitting on the eggs to keep them warm. But, Drost said, the eggs are likely unfertilized and will not hatch because they were laid by a lesbian penguin couple.

[...]

Another gay penguin couple at a Denmark zoo kidnapped a chick two years ago while its mother was swimming. The chick was later returned to its biological parents after the heterosexual penguins came looking for their chick.

I don't know if this is the same heterosexual penguin couple or not (from another article,) I guess not:

"Homosexuality is fairly common in penguins, but what makes this couple remarkable is that they have gotten hold of an egg," said their zookeeper, Marc Belt, at the time. The egg's original parents, he added, did not appear to be upset by the theft of their unborn baby and had already produced a replacement.

Are penguin males evil? It seems more instinctual really.

In Odense Zoo in Denmark, a pair of male king penguins adopted an egg that had been abandoned by a female, proceeding to incubate it and raise the chick.[57][58] Zoos in Japan and Germany have also documented homosexual male penguin couples.[59][60] The couples have been shown to build nests together and use a stone as a substitute for an egg. Researchers at Rikkyo University in Tokyo found 20 homosexual pairs at 16 major aquariums and zoos in Japan.

The Bremerhaven Zoo in Germany attempted to encourage reproduction of endangered Humboldt penguins by importing females from Sweden and separating three male pairs, but this was unsuccessful. The zoo's director said that the relationships were "too strong" between the homosexual pairs.[61] German gay groups protested at this attempt to break up the male-male pairs[62] but the zoo's director was reported as saying "We don't know whether the three male pairs are really homosexual or whether they have just bonded because of a shortage of females ... nobody here wants to forcibly separate homosexual couples."[63]

This is really illustrating just how obsessed many Humans are with encouraging reproduction in other people (or species.)

There are some samesex female penguins who do this too:

Same-sex penguin couple Electra and Viola adopted, incubated and raised an egg from another couple at one of Europe's largest aquariums. A female penguin couple have become parents to a newly hatched chick at one of Europe's largest aquariums.

Apparently it happens in the wild sometimes too:

Penguins have been observed to engage in homosexual behaviour since at least as early as 1911. George Murray Levick, who documented this behaviour in Ad?lie penguins at Cape Adare, described it as "depraved". The report was considered too shocking for public release at the time, and was suppressed. The only copies that were made available privately to researchers had the English text partly written in Greek letters, to prevent this knowledge becoming more widely known. The report was unearthed only a century later, and published in Polar Record in June 2012.[53][54]

Gay Human males recruit female volunteers or adopt unwanted children though. Otherwise they go to prison.

Also it's important that some gay men reproduce genetically I think. Only a minority choose to do that anyway. I don't think they should be forced to do this in a relationship with a woman if they're completely homosexual, especially since it's not necessary because of modern medicine.

It's not like situational bisexuality isn't self resolving:

A pair of male Magellanic penguins at the San Francisco Zoo shared a burrow for six years and raised a surrogate chick; the pair split when the male of a pair in the next burrow died and the female sought a new mate.[64]

I promise it's not your responsibility to do this.

Widow a wedge between zoo's male penguin pair

"People think we separated them on purpose," Edell said. "There's no explaining love."

This is biphobic. I feel bad for Pepper though.

Pepper ventured in their burrow a few times in the three weeks after the breakup, prompting a temporary monthlong trip to the Avian Conservation Center on zoo grounds to chill out. A few other bachelor penguins, which were also looking for love and causing trouble, were sent to the center to calm down. No sparks flew between Pepper and the exiled bachelors, but the vacation seemed to help get Harry out of his system.

Pepper is now back on the island, living next door to his ex and Linda. Everyone appears to be getting along. No one is throwing things, spreading gossip or threatening lawsuits, Edell said.

"We're all curious to see who Pepper turns his attention to next," Edell said. "We have more males than females on the island, so there's that possibility - and we also have some younger females who need to mature before he will find them interesting. We just don't know which way he's going to go."

This is from 2009 why can't I find an update!? I need to know what happened to Pepper.

Linda is a terrible name for a penguin btw. Harry isn't great either. Pepper works much better imo.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The blogosphere has been buzzing for days over the perky widow who stole the handsome gay guy from his longtime partner.

She's been called a "home wrecker" and the sobriquet that rhymes with witch, and lambasted as a wretch "who only lives for her own happiness, no matter who gets hurt."

Cherchez la femme notwithstanding, the saga of Linda and Harry and poor, cuckolded Pepper has ignited a fierce debate about whether homosexuality is a choice. Even People magazine has called for details.

So it goes on Penguin Island at the San Francisco Zoo, where the news recently broke that Harry ditched Pepper, his male burrowmate of six years, leaving zookeepers scrambling to explain what one described as "the big philosophical issues."

The love triangle has spurred a "nature-versus-nurture debate about whether animals or people are hard-wired to be heterosexual or homosexual," said Harrison Edell, curator of birds. "There are people who are trying to draw conclusions from our birds, and I'm not really sure whether that can be done."

One recent zoo guest posed the other big question about the avian antics: "Is this something that only happens in San Francisco?"

The answer to that one, thank goodness, is a lot simpler: No. At New York City's Central Park Zoo a few years back, Silo left Roy for Scrappy, a California girl who joined them via Sea World.

The blog Queerty.com floated another possibility: "Maybe," the writer posited, "Harry is actually bi?"

No, that's impossible. Everyone knows all bisexual women are straight, and all bisexual men are gay.

In a research comparison, published in the Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, women usually have a better hearing sensitivity than males, assumed by researchers as a genetic disposition connected to child bearing. Homosexual and bisexual women have been found to have a hypersensitivity to sound in comparison to heterosexual women, suggesting a genetic disposition to not tolerate high pitched tones. While heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual men have been found to exhibit similar patterns of hearing, there was a notable differential in a sub-group of males identified as hyperfeminized homosexual males who exhibited test results similar to heterosexual women.[67]

Van Wyk and Geist summarized several studies comparing bisexuals with hetero- or homosexuals that have indicated that bisexuals have higher rates of sexual activity, fantasy, or erotic interest. These studies found that male and female bisexuals had more heterosexual fantasy than heterosexuals or homosexuals; that bisexual men had more sexual activities with women than did heterosexual men, and that they masturbated more but had fewer happy marriages than heterosexuals; that bisexual women had more orgasms per week and they described them as stronger than those of hetero- or homosexual women; and that bisexual women became heterosexually active earlier, masturbated and enjoyed masturbation more, and were more experienced in different types of heterosexual contact.[48]

Research suggests that, for most women, high sex drive is associated with increased sexual attraction to both women and men. For men, however, high sex drive is associated with increased attraction to one sex or the other, but not to both, depending on sexual orientation.[69] Similarly for most bisexual women, high sex drive is associated with increased sexual attraction to both women and men; while for bisexual men, high sex drive is associated with increased attraction to one sex, and weakened attraction to the other.[62]

"There are now several replications showing that mostly heterosexual women are higher in trait psychopathy than other sexual orientation groups," Semenyna noted. "Psychopathy in this context just means being less concerned with other people's feelings, social expectations, and having lower impulse control. Mostly heterosexual women score more like heterosexual men on this trait, but it's not clear why. It could just be that these women are less concerned about what others think of them, and less constrained by social mores that would view same-sex attraction or behavior negatively."

interestingly, exclusively homosexual females did not exhibit the same increases in sociosexuality and sexual excitation, indicating that mostly heterosexual and bisexual females form distinct groups.

Among males, the findings were somewhat different. Mostly heterosexual males showed higher levels of sexual excitation compared to exclusively heterosexual males. However, there were no significant differences in sociosexuality or Dark Triad traits between homosexual and heterosexual males.

Homosexual males did exhibit higher levels of sexual inhibition, aligning more closely with female-typical patterns. This indicates that while mostly heterosexual and bisexual males may be more sexually excitable, exclusively homosexual males show increased caution and inhibition in sexual contexts.

Richard A. Lippa proposed that there exist two dimensions of sexual orientation: a gender typicality dimension, and a monosexuality dimension. With the gender typicality dimension being associated with the heterosexual-homosexual distinction, while the sociosexuality dimension has many behavioral effects. He proposes someone who would be at any point in the heterosexual-homosexual spectrum will become bisexual if they are high on the sociosexuality dimension. This dimension being associated with higher sociosexuality, higher neuroticism, lower agreeableness, lower honesty-humility, higher openness to experience, and a minor degree of gender nonconformity.[70] He proposes this as explaining phenomena such as increased juvenile delinquency among bisexuals,[71] increased mental health issues and substance use disorder among bisexuals,[72] and increased dark triad traits among bisexual women.[73] Critics of this theory have described elements observed as coming from experiences of biphobia,[70] but Lippa counters that these phenomena are present even among heterosexual identifying people with some same sex attraction, who would likely be heterosexual passing.[70][74]

"Everyone is exactly the same. The only difference is sex."

In their six years together, Pepper and Harry were foster fathers to a couple of abandoned eggs and hatched a chick named Norris.

They lived near Linda and her partner Fig, a kind of Penguin Island older statesman who controlled "not one but two burrows," said Edell, the bird curator. Fig died in January, and Linda kept them both.

"For penguins, real estate means a lot," Edell noted, so "as far as penguins go, she was a pretty attractive prospect."

Some have argued that Harry and Pepper hooked up because of supply and demand. And the truth is that there aren't enough females on the island -- 21 for the 29 males.

But if that were the only factor, Edell said, there would have been four same-sex pairings instead of just Harry and Pepper. Today, there are none.

"We'll be really interested in the next year or two to see if Pepper pairs up again, and with whom," Edell said. "Give me a call in March."

I don't think anyone did.

"males are more concerned with abstract rules than females are...boys have developed complex group games...and carry on debates about rules at an abstract level. In contrast, girls play less complex games, and if there is a dispute, the game ends abruptly and without resolution."

So you're suggesting that a majority of the women in this study haven't been socialised since not being able to play/negotiate with others is usually treated as a pathological trait, not a female trait. Interesting.

The study is about boys and girls - I don't think you can infer the same is true for adults (considering just the study itself).

Oh.

the groups need each other but i believe women need men more

'the groups' that's great. That's what I'm going to start calling genders. 'The groups.'

And that's why one can't have a democracy with women voting.

His conclusion is correct, but he's missing that the girls are playing a 2nd less visible game of social status/hierarchy, which is the actual ruleset. It's why "fairness" is such a successful attack vector, men don't even know the 2nd game is being played.

Men know. It just offends their more logical and moral sensibilities that women don't have

Honestly they (general) don't know - the point is they can't even see most of it because they're not able to recognise as it's happening. Or you'd have rules lawyered it into submission by now.

You're a mook. They're talking about female vs female games ending without resolution because females are retarded

Add this to the infinite pile of evidence that women shouldn't be in charge of anything important.

Weird way of saying men are smarter than women.

Look we get it. You all hate women but have often somehow managed to (citation needed 50% of the time,) reproduce regardless. I guess as Hasan suggested some women are stupid (because imagine reproducing with someone who hates you, seeing as this is more common these days it explains the falling birthrate.) Or you're a woman yourself in which case N/A but you definitely haven't reproduced most of the time (because women who hate women don't most of the time, not even with the ones who hate women. I thought that might be because men are suspicious of them and that's part of it like with the male feminists but I think it's also because instinctively they know they don't have support from other women + related to the finding that women find men who practice benevolent sexism more attractive. Women don't want to reproduce with hostile sexist men, even if they say they hate women themselves.)

Hostile sexism reflects overtly negative or misogynistic attitudes toward girls or women. More specifically, hostile sexism is manifested through dominative paternalism (men deserve greater power than women), competitive gender differentiation (only men are suitable for powerful positions), and heterosexual hostility (men maintain power through controlling women?s sexuality). The ambivalent sexism model focuses on hostile sexism primarily directed toward heterosexual women. However, hostile sexism is also aimed at other groups that challenge the status quo and legitimacy of male dominance in society (e.g., LGBQ and TGNB persons).

Operating in conjunction with hostile sexism, benevolent sexism is a set of patronizing attitudes that are seemingly positive yet reinforce women's subordinate status. Components of benevolent sexism include protective paternalism (chivalrous expectations that men provide safety for women), complementary gender differentiation (women and men have complementary traits and roles, yet those associated with women are generally lower in status and power [e.g., nurturing caregivers] than those associated with men [e.g., assertive leaders]), and heterosexual intimacy (women complete men in heterosexual relationships).

Also half the responses to this are along the lines of "this is why women don't like Magic The Gathering/Dungeons and Dragons" lol.

I like Magic The Gathering but still don't have an interest in playing games that don't interest me. Why do you think I'm non-binary? I thought your genders were dumb.

And video games:

Maybe this is why they seem to hate video games. Too many rules yiu can't just break.

Actually women make up a large percentage of video game players at this point (sort of like how they often watch films,) they just tend to play different games. They also come up with additional rules and challenges for games like The Sims. Also, there are cheat codes.

"But the women who do these things are atypical."

Oh yeah no maybe. But I'm not sure that women who don't play The Sims, or other video games, or read fanfiction, or are sapphic and/or trans, or are far right weirdos, exist anymore because they're not in my YouTube algorithm or on social media sites I use. Besides my mum. She doesn't read fanfiction afaik and doesn't like any video games. Not that into games in general.

Everyone else agrees with this too that's why they think that every teenage afab person is tumblr. It's because:



You're bored.

This is en expression of man's nature as Sky. Games and abstract concepts belong to Sky, while rules as social baton to enforce conformity and obedience is Earth. Women care deeply about rules when they enforce the status quo, but not in the context of games or abstractions.

That was painful to read.

This was even more painful to read:

Girls only understand Nature, Nature is the only king to females, and Nature has no rules. Might is Right in Nature, which is why women should never be allowed to rule. The Matriarchy is the jungle, the wild.

isn't "might is right" a rule
and aren't men more physically strong than women and thus, in a state of nature, would be the absolute lords of women

Dumbfuck there are no rules. Nothing is a rule, did you not just read what I wrote, Nature has no rules, except the Laws of Nature, which are things like maybe gravity. So NO, "might is right" is not a rule because there is no such thing as "right" in Nature.

It's "Physically stronger" not "more physically strong" you dumbass. Men are generally physically stronger than women, i dont understand your question. "Lords of" is an idea it's not a real thing. Stop watching anime and enter the real world you manchild scumbag.

women are not even good at obeying the natural laws; this is why they very rarely become engineers and mathematicians
still matriarchy is only possible under a system in which men are unable to bludgeon women to death for being annoying, i.e. not Hobbesian state of nature

[popular far right woman account] Can you help me deal with this why do his comments and stupidity/arrogance/ignorance trigger me so badly? - - NATURAL LAWS CANT BE DISOBEYED U DUMBFUCK. U CANT DISOBEY GRAVITY..... . my fucking god. READ WHAT I WROTE. WOMEN HAVE ONE RULER: MIGHT. Abound competition

"Maybe Gravity shall be the whole of the Law"

--Alice Crowley

LOL.

Maybe not though:



That would make a great t-shirt though.

Do you know a female philosopher or mathematician? Abstract thinking seems to be almost exclusive to men. Women minds are too practical for that.

If you think about it there's a lot of female philosophy now it just all gets called feminism even if it's in conflict with the other things called feminism for some reason and also men hate it.

Except Camille Paglia. Men like her. But even she's a feminist lmfao.

Why isn't Jordan Peterson a feminist if Camille Paglia is?

How do we know Jordan Peterson isn't a stealth trans man?

Lol they actually have some very different opinions on certain things like porn and sex work because Paglia isn't actually a conservative but it's just funny.

And that's when I realised 'feminist' just meant: "assumed to have XX chromosomes as there's no way for us to know without access to medical records/testing" and "wrote something about gender once"

Oh except [BEEP] theory. But conservatives tend to call that feminism too. It's also all communism somehow? Marx was so influential clearly that he absorbed everything conservatives dislike.

Also 80% of philosophy is [BEEP] theory because the writers were mostly [BEEP] men. It's actually called "what happens when you don't reproduce and are probably socially isolated too."

That's why incels have a philosophy even though they are heterosexual.

I noticed the same. Logical arguments dlarw worthless when debating women.

Only raw power convinces women. And they actually feel disgusted with a man who 'debates' and 'compromises' as they see it as a feminine trait, weakness. And therefore instinctually repulsive for them

Yes that explains why Spock is so unpopular with women. (This only applies to the fanfiction subgroup again.)

It is often worse when Human men do it though, that's true. See: Ben Shapiro.

But tbf:



I think I prefer being a "bisexual/mostly heterosexual psychopath" than whatever Ben is doing here lol.

I didn't realise this was a whole genre:



This song pissed a lot of people off.

Finally someone of power says something.

I've never liked that song because of the lyrics, even as a child, I knew that I wouldn't want to live in a world without Jesus.

I've just been informed by man on twitter that that's a very feminine thing for you to say.

"Only raw power convinces women."

I've never really listened to The Beatles. I've heard some of their songs though obviously but I've never conciously sat down and thought 'I'm going to listen to their music now.' It's never been a decision I've made. I did like the song Imagine though (which I first heard as a teenager,) but I was pretty neutral on the lyrics I think.

When I was a teenager I liked this song because it was edgy and angsty:



Lots of pop punk music in my late childhood/early teens, until I diversified that gradually over time.

I miss when men did this instead of tweeting:

This is why all divorce court judges should be male, and all divorce litigation should be done through de-identified pleadings. Ensures adherence to the rules and eliminates the pro-female bias.

*robots. Men are still too feminine and emotional don't you think?

[Nyctophilia]

Lol I thought this would be his take but it's true mixed race guys or light skinned black guys don't get as much screentime as darker guys. Probably for the same reason as the lack of Asian guys (in Hollywood I mean not in the world lol.) They're just kind of lazy and risk averse. ("Well we know black guys like this work from all the other films, and it counts as representation right?") It's the opposite with women though because in that case they fixate on physical appearence and beauty standards.

It's worth noting too since he brought up Prince that his popularity was also because of his androgyny (that's also where his sex appeal came from which in turn boosted his popularity.) Same reason a lot of East Asian musicians are popular now. Or the appeal of elves with long blond hair to the same kind of groups.

Starting in the 90s the focus of persona/aesthetic of musicians and to a lesser degree characters in film and TV in the US was hypermasculinity. He kind of made a video about that before though like the effect hip hop had on black masculinity.

But yeah as someone who is mostly attracted to androgyny myself I'm also not attracted to black guys really. Like there haven't been any black guys I've had significant attraction to with the exception of one famous musician who is mixed race and I thought was the hottest guy for like a decade but he looks almost entirely white. I didn't notice until he said he was mixed race at that point I could kind of see those features in some photos or whatever but they're incredibly subtle. There are a lot of British people (not ethnically mixed either unless with Irish,) with dark eyes like he has too. Catherine Zeta Jones etc. So he doesn't look non-white at all really.

I'm talking about this guy and he's dyed his hair a bunch of colours over the years but his natural hair colour is like reddish brown allegedly.



I'm so glad someone gifed this because I was looking for this interview because of that quote actually not long ago (but also he looks hot in that video) and it seemed to have been removed lol.

Content description: a man talking into a microphone with the words " and sometimes it 's about sex " written below him

"A man"

Yes who could it be lol. Just some rando.

Maybe this is his natural colour dunno (I wouldn't say this is reddish brown but he said in an interview his natural hair colour was reddish so):



He also has long hair most of the time and is physically androgynous looking but it's me so there was like a 90% chance lol.

I've been into multiple guys with red hair somehow in my life which is unusual (irl. I mean actually red hair not like IAMX/Chris lol.) People tend to find red haired women not men attractive (I seem to have some general aesthetic interest there though like I was always giving characters in games and drawings red hair.) I also went through a phase of being really into East Asian guys. Tbf though I've also found some Native American guys more attractive and they're stereotyped as more masculine I think, because I have a thing about long hair.

Part of this at least is because of the media association between hypermasculinity and black guys because I grew up in the 90s and 2000s (also just never knew a black guy irl I found attractive.) Obviously I was very exposed to US media though there were some very limited UK TV shows/films with black actors. Like in Red Dwarf I watched that a bit as a kid:



You can see Cat is kind of flamboyant (also one of the first catboys,) but that's like one guy in a sea of 50 cents (I watched tons of music videos of course, and that influenced my preferences a lot more than anything else,) so it's hardly balanced. So these ideas are very connected in people's minds.

I'm not even sure how you'd seperate the two as it's clearly easier to get people to find you attractive then to get people to think you're masculine. Those are two seperate things.

Also he's struggling to think of any light skinned black guys in US TV shows - I'm not surprised he doesn't know of this example haha (he's also Latino though,) but there is also that one guy who grew up in the UK (again lol but think he was American he was born in the US,) from Chilling Adventures of Sabrina:



Who I'm now just learning died last year wtf.

Perdomo died in a motorcycle crash at the age of 27.[1][22] It is believed the accident occurred late on 29 March or early 30 March 2024 while Perdomo was travelling through Upstate New York enroute to Toronto to begin filming for the second season of Gen V.[23] Out of respect for Perdomo, his character of Andre Anderson would not be recast and the second season would be recrafted from the original idea.[24]

Damn yeah. My aunt used to live with a guy who died in a motorbike crash. My dad crashed many times (injuring himself sometimes,) but never died. He stopped driving his by the time I was alive so it just sat in the garden and I'd sit on it haha.

Motorcycle Accident Statistics 2021 | MKP Law Group, LLP
In Great Britain, motorcyclists are involved in about 20% of all serious road accidents, despite making up less than 1% of traffic. Motorcyclists are also around 40 times more likely to be killed than car drivers.

Yeah that tracks.

I think he was the same age as Anton Yelchin when he died because his car crushed him. Sad:

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), the manufacturer of the Grand Cherokee, was aware of 2014 and 2015 models having a high rate of rollaway incidents due to a gearshift design that could make it difficult for the driver to determine whether the vehicle was in park or still in gear. FCA had already recalled all 2014-15 Grand Cherokees for this concern in April 2016, but the software patch to repair the vehicles did not reach dealers until the week of Yelchin's death. Following his death, FCA accelerated the recall campaign and took steps to get the affected Jeeps repaired more quickly than originally planned.[54]

In August 2016, Yelchin's parents announced through their attorney that they were planning to file a wrongful death lawsuit against Fiat Chrysler.[55] The dealership from which Yelchin purchased the vehicle stated that he was responsible for his own death, because he had allegedly "misused" and "modified" the vehicle, and asked to be removed from the lawsuit.[56] In March 2018, it was announced that Yelchin's family and Fiat Chrysler had confidentially settled out of court.[57]

While on this topic I'm not thrilled by the increasing popularity of SUVs in the UK:

They have higher emissions, hog roadspace and are more dangerous for other road users. Yet SUVs are selling better than ever. As calls for curbs increase, some people are taking matters into their own hands

It's midnight on the edge of Clapham Common in early September. The streets are eerily quiet as a shadowy figure in black shirt, shorts and baseball cap emerges from the common. He is wearing a red face mask, his features, except for some blond locks, hidden from view.

A university-educated professional, "Will", as I'll call him, is making one of his monthly late night rounds of various well-heeled London neighbourhoods. He is looking for cars, specifically big, high-end sports utility vehicles (SUVs) - not to steal or vandalise but to bring down in the world just a little.

While there is no strict definition of what constitutes an SUV, there is a general understanding about what sorts of cars are included in the description. They are bigger than standard cars, with a chunky, pumped-up look, as though a slightly smaller car had been placed on steroids. The larger ones can look like armoured vehicles (in the US, some SUVs are longer than the M4 Sherman tank which played a key role in the second world war).

A leaderless group of activists, the Tyre Extinguishers first emerged in March 2022. They claim to have a presence in a number of countries but it's in the UK where they have gained most attention, following a protest event in August this year when activists operating under the group's banner used power tools to puncture the tyres of 60 SUV vehicles at a car dealership in Exeter.

The attack was said to be in response to an incident in south-west London in which a Land Rover had crashed through a school fence and killed two eight-year-old girls. Will says that one of the reasons he became involved in the group was that a good friend of his was very badly injured after being hit by a large car.

Cars are getting too big for British roads, new research shows

New research from Transport & Environment (T&E) has found that cars in the UK are getting too big for British roads, exceeding the 180cm minimum for on-street parking. On average cars were found to be getting 1cm wider every two years.

What about pedestrians and cyclists?

Pedestrians are more likely to suffer fatal injuries in a collision with a large vehicle than a passenger car.

The design of these vehicles, particularly their higher front-ends, significantly elevates the risk. A mere 10 centimetre increase in front-end height can elevate the risk of pedestrian death by 22%, with impacts more likely occurring at critical injury points like the chest or head.

Studies have shown a correlation between the surge in larger vehicle sales, such as SUVs, and an increase in pedestrian fatalities in the United States between 2000 and 2019. Children are eight times more likely to die when struck by an SUV compared to lighter and smaller cars.

Stopping the vehicle arms race

With more and more drivers opting for larger vehicles under the guise of personal safety, they may inadvertently compromise the safety of pedestrians and other road users. For every fatal accident avoided by someone inside a large vehicle, there are at least 4.3 additional fatal accidents involving others.

Imo most people buy them for the same reason they buy certain infamous breeds of dog. You don't need an off road vehicle in most of the UK. Unless for some reason you're planning on moving a bunch of stuff somewhere you don't really need a vehicle period honestly to live in a town or city here day to day. Vehicles are only really useful to live in (because you can't afford a house,) if you're moving a bunch of stuff often like I said, if you're disabled and a wheelchair won't work, or if you're planning on travelling from one side of the UK to the other regularly. Also walking around the countryside is better ambience wise. You can also walk to areas which are hard to get to by foot if you're ambitious. I've done this with my brother before though of course it's not ideal. Because of the cars....

"Part of this is because SUV owners are more likely to be bad drivers. That's not just my opinion car companies paid millions of dollars for market research to find this out. People who gravitate towards SUVs tend to be less confident in their driving abilities and rely on the large size of the vehicle to keep them quote unquote safe at the expense of everyone else.
What made this even worse is that in the early days most SUV buyers were assholes. I'm not being flippant and suggesting that all SUV drivers were assholes but assoles were literally the primary target market when automakers wanted to make SUVs mainstream.

Auto industry research determined that the average light truck purchaser was:

obsessed with status
less likely to volunteer
no strong connection to their community
less giving
less oriented towards others
more afraid of crime
more likely to text and drive
more likely to take risks while driving"

10 years ago a babyfaced Mark [name I can't make out] put plastic animals on the side of the road to see which ones were most likely to get hit. He found that some drivers would purposefully swerve to run over the animals and 89% of those people who tried to murder animals were driving SUVs.

Yeah. I thought so. That's why I made the comparison to the infamous dogs.

When I moved to Los Angeles (from Europe) and needed to rent a car for a week, the renter was super excited to tell me that I got an upgrade and could have a bigger car than the one I ordered. To which I said absolutely not, I wanted the smaller car because we're in a city and I want to be able to park easily. Never saw someone so confused!

Lol.

(Think I've made my point.)

edit: I actually think this might be an example of what she's talking about here:



A "moloch trap"



^ I haven't watched the above video but I assume she talks about this. A lot of her videos are about this. This is about how it applies to beauty standards on social media:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fifVuhgvQQ8

https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/moloch-trap

The heart of her podcast is about the so-called "Moloch Trap". A Moloch Trap is, in simple terms, a zero-sum game. It explains a situation where participants compete for object or outcome X but make something else worse in the process. Everyone competes for X, but in doing so, everyone ends up worse off.

It explains the situations with externalities or the preference for short-term gains at the sacrifice of the long-term future.

The problem is that it's incredibly hard for any "player" to break the trap. If they do, they will lose out in the short term (and they might still be exposed to the downsides in the long term). Everyone is stuck in a "game" or "race" that they don't want to be in, but it's impossible to stop.

Almost every environmental problem is a Moloch Trap

In my podcast episode with Liv, we focused on the environment.

The Moloch Trap explains almost every one of the world?s environmental problems. I struggled to think of one that doesn?t fall into this camp.

The fact that there's less and less choice in the US market and people are now choosing to buy SUVs so they're safer because other people have them.

Maybe this term came from Scott Alexander initially? Edit: Yeah just rewatched the beauty video and she mentions this article at the end:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/3...ons-on-moloch/

From Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl.

8. Arms races. Large countries can spend anywhere from 5% to 30% of their budget on defense. In the absence of war - a condition which has mostly held for the past fifty years - all this does is sap money away from infrastructure, health, education, or economic growth. But any country that fails to spend enough money on defense risks being invaded by a neighboring country that did. Therefore, almost all countries try to spend some money on defense.

From a god's-eye-view, the best solution is world peace and no country having an army at all. From within the system, no country can unilaterally enforce that, so their best option is to keep on throwing their money into missiles that lie in silos unused.

I don't particularly like ideas I know come from, or are connected to, the lesswrong community lol (because the last decade has driven me to lowkey distrust certain groups of people,) but yeah. Basically I don't like NRx, I don't like people like Geoffrey Miller. I don't like Curtis Yarvin. I don't like how machiavellian and slimy they are. I don't like Elon Musk even (even more tangentially connected.) I don't like the elitism of some people.

A lot of what they talk about are things that they re-define with new language but aren't concepts they technically came up with too but I find some of his blog articles useful (like "I can tolerate anything except the outgroup,") but yeah.

Also since it is rationalist-adj most of the discussion and examples are related to AI and competition related to AI lol.

(back to other topic)

More women are into Asian guys because of kpop and Japanese media in recent decades (supposedly, well some Asian guys online seem to think so. Maybe they're just louder,) but those same women are going to write think pieces about the male gaze and masculinity not being great and so on (generally speaking.) "I like Loki more than Thor." You know the type. (Me basically ahaha.)

You'll find me arguing with these guys (second quote):

It's the confidence baby! Idc what six pack or big pecs you have, I want someone who values themselves as 👏🏻 they 👏🏻 should 👏🏻 wearing what they feel good in and embracing themselves, feminine, masculine, both or neither.

If Chris Hemsworth knocks at your door you won't say that

Or not because I decided talking to myself was a better use of time a few years ago. I used to get into arguments constantly lol.

I love that she was basically like 'I don't care either way.' And he still had an issue with that.

Well I do care.

That example I just found in some YT video comments is funny though because of my #1 political agenda:

You know Taylor Swift went pretty far with the catlady thing but the fujo thing goes harder.

Together I really do believe. We can bring back long hair.

I won't rest until a cute guy with long hair and glasses knocks on my door to misdeliver me someone else's pizza.

How many times am I going to repeat this? I dunno it will get old eventually.

Still hasn't xD

Chris Hemsworth had long hair as Thor until it was brutally shaved by Stan Lee. Basically a hate crime. He still wasn't my type though even then.



"And I will wait for you~"

I honestly think it's getting worse. The hair is getting longer somehow:



He still looks hot with this hair and in this gif though:



Like he says it is heteronormative as well the idea that some traits are more attractive. So you kind of have to decide what you want. Like you can't be popular with both audiences at least. I mean they overlap but they're distinct too the people who are looking for a degree of androgny or even just averagely masculine guys and the people who are into hypermasculinity.

On the other hand there are several famous black women I've found attractive. I don't get really strong crushes on women unlike men in the first place really but yeah.

Oh and I don't think the reason there are a bunch of Black British (British in general,) actors in Hollywood is just cause they're cheaper. There are a lot who are desperate to work there because the UK is [BEEP] with casting black actors and writing black characters so they can get more work there (and more interesting work generally.) Supply is good. Add to that there are more actors trained in theatre which gives them a slight edge over many American actors who don't have that opportunity unless they live in/near NYC or go to like Juilliard or something. The UK is small compared to whole of the US. Perhaps you live in a town miles away from London and can just travel in without having to live in the city and pay more or travel longer distances.

There's also this sometimes:



Accent doesn't work so well with hip hop or rap music in general lol:

It's the accent. I saw a meme once that said something like "When it's a fire beat and then you hear a British accent" and has that image of the dude throwing his head back with disappointment.

Hip-Hop has bravado and hardcore and tough at it's core, and the Bri'ish accent is just not that. There also a disconnect where I can't really rap along to their lyrics without feeling like I need the British accent to do so. The only British rapper I listen to is Lady Sovereign and for whatever reason, I rap along with her just fine. anyone else though, nah.

I feel like a lot of Americans who say things like this are less aware of stuff like this though:



You can kind of tell from the way people say 'British accent' like there's just one.

Lady Sovereign only had one good track lol:



This guy is just a lost cause though lol:

I understand that, but I also understand that that layer of thinking doesn't kick in when I hear it. I know the accent that sounds Caribbean is not the posh, but it still signals posh because it's still British at the end of the day. Unfortunately, I don't care enough to work through and appreciate British rap. The U.S. has enough dope [BEEP] that I will never have to venture outside of it.

I still think this is pretty good though lol:





Can't complain too much though. I feel like that's why we have/had more bands like this (even with black singers,) and I prefer rock music to hiphop personally:

[Nyctophilia]

Edit: Tangentially related but IDM (intelligent dance music,) has to be the most protentious music genre label of all time lol.

I seperated this into a different post because otherwise other post will get too long (I have a lot of opinions just imagining how cancelled I'd be in this and the last post alone lmfao):

They're talking about Kelli former lead singer of Sneaker Pimps:

Kelli is the reason we know about this band. And love this band. Period.

Kelli is the reason this band was on the verge of becoming huge, and firing her is the reason they didn't.

Honestly no lol. I'm just into Chris. Her singing isn't terrible but it's not amazing. I couldn't really ever see them becoming huge especially since the other guys were less motivated so Chris left to do solo work after a couple more albums anyway.

They came back to do an album 20 years on (not with Kelli again,) and I listened to a few tracks from it and couldn't get into it even though I liked a bunch of stuff from their first three albums (with Kelli and without.) A few people pointed out that it sounded like IAMX songs:

I have to concur. I was like "The [BEEP]?? this is IAMX in disguise, I am NEVER gonna like that shit", but, I don't know if it's my Sneaker Pimps bias or whatever, even though it doesn't feel like what we would expect from them, this is AN EVOLUTION OF SNEAKER PIMPS. We can't expect them to be the same, and, as long as their new songs manage to maintain the feeling that this song conveys in its lyrics and PERFORMANCE, I am all in!
Granted, I have to hear the whole album to see if it's just a couple of good singles but, after this and "fighter" I have HIGH HOPES. Remember how much of a perfectionist Corner is!

But most of those tracks don't and they sound worse lol. But given that's what Chris has been doing since then it makes sense that they'd sound closer than the original albums did.

I'd take this over most of what I was listening to:







I think he's probably very difficult to work with too.

That being said I like her vocals more than Kelli's personally:



Comparison:





Kelli's voice is OK like I said but you know what it is? On some tracks she's kind of like the female Tom Delonge. If you focus on her too much she sounds whiny and a bit grating:



Even he gets it.

Those kind of vocals work better in pop punk or a band like Jack off Jill I think because if you're not a strong singer it kind of goes with the ethos of the music (I can tell she had the personality/attitude for that too):





But I'm not sure about in trip hop. Because I think it sounds better with a huskier or more sophisticated sounding voice. Something that works better with the noir vibe...

I would get shot by someone on reddit etc for making this comparison. But obviously this album was inspired by trip hop a bit:



Or you know:





Chris did work with Imogen Heap later actually lol but with IAMX:



Or:






"If you leave I'll have to listen to those NYU kids with the Amstel Lights discuss Fiona Apple. I'm begging you."

Yes! Yes you will Steve. And I'll be drinking Rekorderlig maybe.



You know I didn't realise this YouTuber looks a bit like Dido until this moment. Soft butch Dido:



Or they're just both white I don't know either way.

They got it that's why they used this Dido song for their intro:



And that's very much the vibe you know like:



That's why that song is one of the biggest in the genre.

This too but it was used for the soundtrack of House (though that's kind of an argument in favour anyway, but the genre was cinematic in the first place so it sort of makes sense):



Something like this but with Fiona Apple or Dido etc:



I like Chris's vocals though.





Rachel Goswell maybe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ey4yAgLZlw

Ethereal sounding stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suZWmWjv6co

Oh damn I forgot how great David Tennant was in this role + the character just one of the best villains I've come across in years in that he was believable as a psychopath and actually unsettling and most really aren't in comic book films/TV shows (partly because there's more focus on the victims and the impact of the actions I think,) the ending of the first season is very satisfying. But also the vocals here:



Probably something like that.

Actual song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wylkSUS9Ofs

Kelli was very girlish - her voice, her persona, it's great for pop punk.

Having said that I think Bjork could do trip hop. But you know it's Bjork and her persona is like pixie alien more than girlish. And she's like what Kelli should be as a soprano in that genre I think. Also Of Monsters and Men are Icelandic too and I'm just realising the lead singer also kind of looks like Bjork a little in some photos lol.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp6tAcjq0N0

Also I forgot she was in a relationship with Tricky at one point lol.

Yeah:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVR6rKyxkwQ



Unfortunately pop punk never really took off in the UK so that wasn't an option for Kelli here.

A lot of people are singing in the wrong genre for their voice imo (but I get it if you really like a music genre.) Like (said this way too many times) Fergie was supposed to be a rock singer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X85UUDhZaCw

I still like what she brought to The Black Eyed Peas though but that still would have been the ideal for her voice and sometimes she was underutilised.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7HahVwYpwo

They experimented a lot more and incorporated more genres into their work than a lot of their contemporaries which was why they were interesting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtczBseiAac

I mean they're still making music but yeah. Obviously doesn't have the nostalgia factor among other things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWyGH5aAoMg

This is a very good track. Potentially I feel like it could have been great if they did more with Fergie somehow but then again she was just hit by a motorbike so you know:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUFsQ5lTo6g

Fergie. You are not a rapper so that's eh OK in small doses but not the entire track and then the autotune vocals no stop I know it's electronic and you're trying to do Daft Punk but at what cost and William stop trying to sing during that one part 3:52 as well it's better at 8:18 also proof that you don't need the autotune. Oh I'm not anti autotune at all but I don't think it works that well for me here.

Other than that it's a good track.

Amazing how easy it is for me to get derailed by music...

[Nyctophilia]

What Maddie talked about here really resonated with me. I am an afab agender person who was always extremely tomboyish and felt no connection to femininity at all. Now that I have gotten top surgery and totally changed my hairstyle from the super long curly hair I used to have, I look very androgynous and I'm often assumed to be male when I'm out and about. Now that that's the case, I find it more fun and sometimes even affirming to present a little bit femme. The new context of fully embracing my lack of gender and living it every day makes feminine stuff feel less gender dysphoric. It's really interesting

Yeah opposite and identical for me, basically as soon as I someone AMAB could be read more consistently as a woman I started to masculinize things like shorter haircut and binders and stuff. There is a threshold tho, like I do not ever want facial hair to be a part of that masculinization as it makes me feel dysphoric pretty consistently

I'm not saying this is the case in this case but I think there are a lot of people who just don't want breasts or are ambivalent about them. Using a binder long term isn't good health wise.

AMAB NB who wants to do HRT but does not want breasts, am I alone?

I (AMAB) basically want all of what HRT has to offer except for breast growth which I know is unavoidable. I'm definitely more than willing to get top surgery if that's what it takes to keep them off me, would this even work? Is there anyone else in a similar situation?

There's not much you can do about that (besides surgery,) if you're forced to go through female puberty at a young age due to being afab, but I think it would be interesting to work on localised hrt for amab people. I know there's already some stuff which is more experimental that sort of does that? Like SERMs?:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8253879/

Gender dysphoria describes the distress associated with having a gender identity that differs from one's birth-assigned sex. To relieve this distress, transgender, and gender diverse (henceforth, trans) individuals commonly undergo medical transition involving hormonal treatments. Current hormonal treatment guidelines cater almost exclusively for those who wish to transition from male to female or vice versa. In contrast, there is a dearth of hormonal options for those trans individuals who identify as non-binary and seek an androgynous appearance that is neither overtly male nor female. Though prolonged puberty suppression with gonadotrophin releasing hormone agonists (GnRHa) could in theory be gender-affirming by preventing the development of unwanted secondary sex characteristics, this treatment option would be limited to pre- or peri-pubertal adolescents and likely have harmful effects. Here, we discuss the theoretical use of Selective Estrogen Receptor Modulators (SERMs) for non-binary people assigned male at birth (AMAB) who are seeking an androgynous appearance through partial feminization without breast growth. Given their unique range of pharmacodynamic effects, SERMs may represent a potential gender-affirming treatment for this population, but there is a lack of knowledge regarding their use and potentially adverse effects in this context.

It's not exactly well researched atm.

Oh someone brought up they were trying this lol:

I take an experimental HRT since 2020. No breasts yet. I don't want to talk about my experience because i feel kinda uncomfortable but there's an article that speaks about non-breasts HRT for non-binary people. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34226826/

^ so that was posted in October 2023.

Edit: Wait was F1nn doing this at one point? Wasn't he doing something I forget.....

F1nn's estrogen levels made his doctor freak out

[some reddit video I found]

Not this...

sorry f1nn, "when I was on testosterone"?

The lesser known trans masc arc

lol. I think I've said I'm on estrogen before or used that term to refer to like anyone with an estrogen dominant hormone system but yeah technically not taking it.

Oh what is it called... raloxifene? I dunno. Oh no did they just take a t blocker and not go on e? Something dumb like that? She was doing something lol. I can't remember. I remember something dumb.

Lol my search history trying to find this video:

F1nn boobs, F1nn breasts. It's not for lude reasons actually! I know there's some video I watched with clips from his stream where he talked about something related to this. OK he talks about it in this video:



When I started here's what I did. I was Cyproterone acetate. (?) There wasn't a specific reason for that I'm just not super educated on that. I was also on something called raloxifene

Yes so he was.

It blocks breast growth receptors so you don't get boobs. Because I was fucking terrified of getting boobs. I wanted to do this thing it had a lot of benefits. But on the cons list was I don't know if I'll want this forever I was a little bit scared. It took me a long time to even figure out a label and then someone who was also on it told me they were pissing blood. And I went oh. OK. Let's maybe not do that - they got their dose wrong. What happened about then is I got very depressed. I basically just stopped. I was doing half the dose you're supposed to and every 4 or 5 days. You're supposed to do it daily. Bear in mind I have testosterone blocked so low t, low e,. That's nothing right. I did that up until I started dating Ashley.

Good lord. At least take the suggested amount. How is anyone supposed to get anything useful from this?

I think she's a subject of scientific research probably not for this though. I imagine it's an identity/sociological thing (although then again maybe not because telling people would surely mess that up somehow?):



^ So what you're saying is. If I start streaming become super famous and possibly doping I could get access to a decent quality therapist in the UK? Without jumping through 32525252 loopholes? I don't trust therapists though at this point lol.

I saw a psychiatrist through CAMHS back when I was under 18, wasn't very helpful. Saw a neurologist recently, and she really GOT ME. I was amazing! I went for physical symptoms, but everything made sense to her, mental and physical, first time my symptoms have made sense to anyone. First time someone's treated me as a whole person, not just focusing on one specific thing, too. Really amazing.

Typical cognative behavioral therapy doesnt really work with autistic folks. Its good to find a therapist who specializes in ASD and ADHD.

It didn't work with me either. Someone my dad once talked to who I guess is some kind of therapist suggested I get diagnosed for autism when he talked about me, but I would have to do so privately (the place they suggested is a specialist private place in the UK.) NHS was mostly useless for me everytime always recommending CBT. Also when I had bad generalised anxiety symptoms a couple of years ago. I never brought up the possibility that I could be autistic to them though, or my ADHD symptoms which I also have. I did mention CBT not working for me before but he was like 'that is the therapy' great... He meant well but it's all kind of useless when they focus on only one part of the problem.

I always figured the process would involve seeing a psychologist and them testing you for various things to diagnose the problem. But apparently that just never happens and they just refer you to cbt for symptoms of anxiety without investigating further. I didn't go into as much detail as I could have last time though because I wasn't really there to talk about that or prepared to, the walk in doctor brought it up in the first place as I was checking for issues with my heart due to the health anxiety and my pulse rate was high but there weren't any other issues found. I probably brought up that my (generalised) anxiety symptoms had been worse (since late 2021,) at some point before then. I don't have a diagnosis for that either but he suggested cbt for generalised anxiety before that I had it for social phobia it didn't work. But anyway it stopped being as big an issue in early 2023 though it's been a bit bad again in recent weeks. When my friend started to get higher anxiety along a similar time frame (I think covid messed up a lot of people but my lifestyle had already been very similar pre covid to post covid weirdly,) he had like blood tests etc done. They're really low effort round here.

Also (back to the other topic)

I'm afab. I have this weird thing where I can't get rid of them partly because I don't want surgery. Feels like an opportunity cost thing. Also because of a general fear of permanantly modifying the body (same reason I don't want to get tatoos,) and probably whatever psychological tendency causes hoarding. I'm kind of a sentimental person. Also 'what if I regret it?' So I have this part of my body that I hate being involved in anything sexual, and that I never really wanted in the first place, and that I actively try to avoid (thinking about, looking at.) So I just have to live with this low grade negative to avoid the other stuff.

It seems if I'd had the possibility to just not grow them in the first place I probably wouldn't have and then like just never would have considered that again. Obviously if you didn't somehow you could then choose to grow them later. I suppose I'd be in the opposite situation though if I was curious and didn't grow them. Then I'd think about that since you can't undo it if you make that decision and so I wouldn't have done that either.

I mean there are more issues too like my skeleton is quite small, I've looked quite young. It's just not a great mix.

The only option long term if you're afab though is to go on testosterone which has a lot of other side effects you don't necessarily want. Or surgery which causes scarring for most people unless you're lucky enough that they were really small in the first place. Sucks really.

Another thing would be finding ways to move the fat so they can be reduced in size. Because there are certain forms of surgery that result in minimal/no scarring but again only if they're small enough first. For some people that would prob be impossible though. Obviously losing weight in general can help.

A surgical fat transfer is cosmetic surgery to move fat from one part of the body to another. It's also known as a "fat graft" or "lipomodelling".

The aim is to remove unwanted fat from an area of the body, such as the tummy or thighs, and use it to smooth or increase the size of another area, such as the breasts or bottom. A surgical fat transfer involving the bottom is often known as a Brazilian butt lift (BBL).

Having a surgical fat transfer is a big decision. It can be expensive, the results cannot be guaranteed, and there are risks.

Ironically I'm curious about the opposite. Anyway from a quick search it seems this might end up looking weird in some cases and is better if you do it while younger because of skin elasticity. But apparently some women already get lipo only breast reduction to avoid scarring.

This reddit thread I found is from 2017 last edited in 2018 so might be out of date:

guide to e-blockers and hormones that aren't T!

Hey everyone! I'm nonbinary, and today I'm going to teach y'all about hormonal options that aren't testosterone! I noticed there's a disappointing lack of not-T options and so I decided to cobble together what I?ve learned over time.

Was originally posted on r/transdiy. Took out any mention of anything that even sounded DIY-ish, though the original post wasn't heavy on it either.

[...]

I'd like to add that though I'm a gender nerd, I am not a doctor and this is not meant to be medical advice. If you can double check behind me and ask your doctor about hormones and how they work, that would be fantastic.

Why antiestrogens aren't as effective as you might think

First off, I'm ashamed to say that anti-estrogens do diddly-squat about body-wide estrogen, despite the naming scheme.

Almost all anti-estrogens are SERMS, which (in current medical development) only block E in the breasts, and act like E in the bones-- they don't limit it body wide.

SERMs are honestly only useful if you have breast cancer, fibrocystic breasts, in the prevention of osteoporosis, or are AMAB and don't want breast growth.

The other category of anti-estrogens are aromatase blockers, which prevent T from being converted to E. While this sounds great, and while a fair amount of T is converted to E in the AFAB body, this is unhelpful for premenopausal people in breast cancer treatment if their gonads are not suppressed first.

I'm wondering if you're afab and just don't want breasts if that would essentially work instead of testosterone if you go on puberty blockers beforehand, then SERMs. Or if there's some other difference that only makes that an option for amab people.

Selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs) may be used by people assigned female at birth (AFAB) to reduce breast growth. SERMs are a type of hormonal therapy that can also help prevent breast cancer and treat osteoporosis.

Yeah I'm going to need something other than Google's AI thing here ideally lol.

I'm really just wondering if this is hypothetically possible. I sincerely doubt we're going to culturally be at a point anytime soon. They already banned hormone blockers in the UK for trans people (even binary trans people.) While they will continue to use them for cis people with precocious puberty because they hate trans people. 🙄

[AFAB Trans Boy] Is there any way to prevent breast growth after I stopped taking T?

[AFAB Trans Boy] Is there any way other than surgury to prevent breast growth after I stopped taking T? The most important reason I'm taking T is because I want to stop breast development but don't want to fully remove them. I researched surgical breast minimization methods but found out breats might develop again after reduction surgery. I know there are some medications to stop breast cancer development but I don't know if those will be precribed for a healthy individual or won't have harsh side effects like hair loss.

Why is this downvoted?

why do you want to stop taking T in the first place?

Why would a trans woman feel the need to ask this?

Everything I can find is just about AMAB people anyway. Oh wait:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10....20188231160405

In gender-affirming care for nonbinary individuals, SERMs may be beneficial for someone AMAB who desires estrogen-induced changes in skin and body fat redistribution, but does not desire any breast development. Raloxifene has estrogen agonist effects in skin and fat distribution and can be tried alone for these effects, but data are lacking on the degree of physical results that may occur.52 SERMs can also be in combination with estradiol for more effects on skin and fat distribution, with the antagonistic effect on breast tissue to theoretically decrease in breast development that would typically occur with estradiol. Again, there is no available research in the use of SERMs in this population, and potential risks (known and unknown) must be considered.

Another use of SERMs in gender-affirming care could be in nonbinary youth AFAB who do not desire effects of estrogen or testosterone. For someone who has begun treatment with a GnRHa and does not desire to discontinue treatment or start testosterone, the addition of an SERM may be a temporary solution to provide estrogen agonist effects on bones without leading to breast development.45,52 It is unclear whether SERMs alone would be sufficient to prevent breast development in a pubertal youth AFAB.52 Data on use of SERMs in this context are also lacking, and it is unclear the degree to which this would improve bone density and the length of time this may be a reasonable treatment option.

So I guess they're just suggesting it as a potential temporary solution for some reason. They've really not gone into detail though about why it hypothetically would work long term in amab people but not afab people. I used to talk to someone who supposedly had a background in biochemistry who went to uni 4 years early (most autistic person I've ever spoken to with no social awareness/skills,) that's how I found out about SERMs in the first place but you know, I don't have this background so...

Danazol: The Mysterious Benefactor

Danazol is a mild androgen, and a mild GnRH inhibitor-- it will lower E levels (least enough to stop your period, hip widening, etc) and may give you some of the effects of T. It's not a scheduled substance/as scheduled as T is, either. It activates both androgen and progesterone receptors. it's also shown to cause vocal changes over time as evidenced by a study from the 80s.

That being said, if you decide to go on it, get your liver enzymes checked after about 6 months or so (least a year). Danazol can be a bit hard on the liver, it's a pill.

I think this is a totally viable option for AFAB enbies on its own (slow changes, no lower growth), or even to binary guys before starting T, as it will likely stop periods too.

If you want to legally use it as a precursor to T and have access to a doc, I would recommend asking your doctor about it first, instead of going DIY or something.

Futhermore, danazol has been proven to slowly lower the voice over time and so danazol may be a viable option if you want really slow voice changes.

Interesting. 🤔

This is a case study though so kind of needs wider research:

https://www.researchgate.net/publica...h_a_case_study

Acoustic analysis was used to measure fundamental frequency (vocal pitch in cycles per second) in a woman before, during, and after danazol therapy for endometriosis. A moderate lowering of fundamental frequency occurred within the three months of therapy and progressively lowered throughout the 5.5-month course. There was some action toward pretreatment levels, but 12 months after therapy, lowering of fundamental frequency persisted. The acceptability of this side effect and the need for further research are discussed.

A note on tribulus: there's no definitive proof that tribulus actually works to raise T, especially not in AFAB people, though it may help to increase muscle strength

Well that could still be interesting.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/article...9/#__sec5title

TT is touted as a testosterone booster and remedy for impaired erectile function; therefore, it is targeted at physically active men, including male athletes. Based on the scientific literature describing the results of clinical trials, this review attempted to verify information on marketing TT with particular reference to the needs of athletes. It was found that there are few reliable data on the usefulness of TT in competitive sport.

The results of a few studies have showed that the combination of TT with other pharmacological components increases testosterone levels, but it was not discovered which components of the mixture contributed to that effect. TT contains several organic compounds including alkaloids and steroidal glycosides, of which pharmacological action in humans is not completely explained. One anti-doping study reported an incident with a TT supplement contaminated by a banned steroid. Toxicological studies regarding TT have been carried out on animals only, however, one accidental poisoning of a man was described. The Australian Institute of Sport does not recommend athletes? usage of TT. So far, the published data concerning TT do not provide strong evidence for either usefulness or safe usage in sport.

Hmm. God bless athletes lol.

I found this too:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4045980/

Our findings showed that Tribulus terrestris was effective in improving women's sex drive based on the questions of FSFI questionnaire. Since the basic findings of two groups were similar, the improved score of the Tribulus group can be attributed to libido boosting effects of the plant.

Tribulus terrestris may safely and effectively improve desire in women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder. Further investigation of Tribulus terrestris in women is warranted.

Seems to have some similar effects? This paper doesn't mention anything about strength. Maybe they didn't use the same quantity though.

Currently testosterone is the only approved drug for treatment of HSDD in menopausal women, particularly for those have surgically-induced menopause [21]. In one study on women with SSRI induced desire disorder, it was shown that Saffron was an effective herbal remedy which could improve desire [7]. Another study showed that Bupropion was effective in improving women?s desire [6]. However, Tribulus is the only drug which not only improves the sexual desire in women but also it does not have any unexpected side effects in patients.

Yeah someone on twitter recently was talking about her low dose testosterone therapy (she had low testosterone anyway,) and the positive effects it had psychologically for her. She wasn't menopausal though. Well she was 40. Hmm let me see:

have you experienced any physically masculinizing effects?

Just lower body fat (which means smaller boobs)

🤔

Grimes and Aella both responded to that in some way which is funny and predictable. I enjoy the discussion about this because it's on a platform where people routinely freak out about this (plus you're only allowed to talk about negatives generally online,) but it's coming from cis people in certain priveleged positions networking wise. Technically Aella said she's agender though.

Another thing is she can use the word cis without being censored for 'reasons' but most people would have their tweet hidden if they use that word.

Adding phytoestrogens to this list. Soy can somewhat inhibit ovarian function or LH/FSH, and phytoestrogens also work through decreasing gene expression of aromatase, inhibiting aromatase, or both. They include compounds like apigenin, coumestrol (strongest phytoestrogen, present in red clover), and genistein.

Lol soy is very funny to add to a trans masc list considering the conservative memes about it feminising men.

I've wondered about this historically too. We know (?) men's t levels have gone down but what if women's have gone down too? Couldn't find good data on this.

Never try to research anything in the female sex you will quickly become depressed when you realise the focus is majority on males always.

talk about taking intersexual sexual competition to the next level

I wonder is any pharma company working on a SARM(Selective Androgen Receptor Modulator) that only interacts with the brain. Cpuld cause all these affects but stronger without any masculization.

I'm wondering about SARMs in general as well.

I don't know if she wrote the blog post... I've been sidetracked now looking at this tweet she retweeted:

sort of miss the days when you'd tweet "I like pancakes" and a human would reply "oh, so you hate waffles" instead of twelve AI bots responding with "pancakes are an enjoyable food"

Women choose courtship, men pick wives.

Women are conservative with who they date, men are conservative with who they marry.

Women are picky when it comes to sex, men are picky when it comes to commitment.

To be a wife you have to be selected.

We need Fathers to teach this.

For yall that arent getting it, heres the ad he's referring to that actually popped up under here😭😭😭

It's a reference to an ad that was under every tweet. Surprised no one else here has seen it

I've somehow never seen it.

lol watch this

My metamask wallet was hacked, I lost my Instagram account, my Facebook account was hacked my meta wallet, crypto wallet was hacked. I lost my ETH and bitcoin. I need IPTV, I need my trust wallet, pay someone to write this essay.

xD yeah that'll get you a ton of bots (and it did.)

There's someone who posts a lot of art work and the only responses they get are from bots saying they want to buy their art work (it's not theirs. They're posting famous paintings lol.)

They should prob make it illegal (as Bill Burr said,) to make bots for the sake of arguing and scamming. It's too destructive and I'm sure there are enough people willing to argue without the bots.