FtttG
User ID: 1175
FtttG
1hr ago
Month over month spending is slightly higher than last month, which is almost entirely due to gas and junk food when driving back and forth to my father's
Under the circumstances, I wouldn't even count this as an expenditure. You have enough to be dealing with without worrying about small stuff like this. I'm sorry for your troubles.
FtttG
4hr ago
Ed Gein, infamous for exhuming corpses from nearby graveyards so that he could fashion a "woman suit" resembling his deceased mother and literally crawl inside "her", was arrested in 1957. The case inspired Robert Bloch's 1959 novel Psycho (the film adaptation came out the following year) and Thomas Harris's 1988 novel The Silence of the Lambs. The latter novel bent over backwards to clarify that its villain, Jame Gumb, is not actually transgender (the 1991 film adaptation wasn't quite as emphatic, but still includes a line of dialogue in which Hannibal Lecter explicitly states that Gumb only thinks he's a transsexual, but isn't really).
This actually strikes me as a case which an American in the 1950s would have a much easier time comprehending than a modern American. A modern American hears about a cross-dressing man with breast implants and far-right opinions committing a horrendous act of violence and splutters "this is statistically rare, trans people are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators*, anyway how do we know he was really trans". An American in the 1950s would hear about a man committing a horrendous act of violence, read that he also enjoyed cross-dressing and had received breast implants, and would think "well, that checks out. The writing was on the wall."
*As pointed out by Freddie deBoer in the context of mental illness, this claim is true, but vacuously so: violent crimes are committed by such a small minority of individuals that "[demographic] is more likely to be the victim of violence than the perpetrator" is true of literally every demographic you care to mention: men, women, old people, young people, white people, black people, trans people, cis people.
I had some back-and-forth with @jake on this topic, and I think it ultimately comes down to knowing your audience. If you're writing a work intended as pure escapism, your readers will be a lot more forgiving of contrivances and illogical character decisions. If it's meant to be a work of ruthless psychological realism, your readers will expect the characters to act accordingly and make rational, believable decisions: if the characters just do whatever is most convenient for the author, they will feel cheated. You can also aim to strike a happy medium, having the characters make all the decisions you would expect a character in a work of that genre to do, but also include little details and in-universe justifications for "why didn't he just do X?", to reward readers who are reading more closely than the casual reader. (This is arguably the most difficult approach of the three: escapist genres are escapist for a reason, and they take quite a bit of work to make them seem grounded and psychologically realistic.)
There's also the Coen brothers' favoured approach, which is to have your characters make all the foolish decisions you would expect a character in a noir thriller to make, but establish that those characters are morons in-universe, so that their idiotic decisions seem in-character. Sometimes this can work, especially if the work is a black comedy (as many of the Coen brothers' films are); sometimes it just raises further questions. In Burn After Reading, it makes sense that two airheaded personal trainers have absolutely no idea what they're doing when they attempt to blackmail a former CIA analyst, and end up hopelessly out of their depth. It does not make sense that they are only marginally more moronic than the CIA analyst himself (his alcoholism and grandiosity notwithstanding), or another character who is a US Marshal. Inevitably the audience starts to wonder why such overtly blithering idiots weren't put out to pasture years prior. (All that being said, I did enjoy Burn After Reading, but it's a movie you have to switch your brain off while watching to properly enjoy it, which wasn't the case with Fargo or The Big Lebowski.)
FtttG
6hr ago
New year's resolutions check-in:
- Was moving last week, and so didn't manage to get to the gym until Thursday. I went again on Friday, and during my second deadlift set I managed to throw my back out. I'd mostly recovered by Sunday morning, and decided not to push myself too hard and just did some cardio instead. Went again last night and was sure to do some stretching before deadlifting: the first three sets were absolutely fine, but after the fourth set I started to feel a little twinge in my lower back, so decided to stop there. Can deadlift 1.8x my bodyweight for 4 reps, squat .98x for 8 reps and bench press .77x for 7 reps.
- Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st.
- Have completed 7/11 modules in the SQL course.
@thejdizzler, @birb_cromble and @oats_son: you're up.
FtttG
16hr ago
I recently read a book that started with "My mother was late to my birth".
What was the book?
The other day, I read this article from a literary agent-turned-novelist who made the point that a literary agent has to be hooked by a submission from the very first paragraph, and that, in her experience (and contrary to unpublished novelists' claims that their books "start slow, but get better later"), most books which didn't capture her interest from the first paragraph tended not to improve thereafter. She gave very specific instructions for how the first paragraph ought to grab the reader's attention: namely, surprises and discordances that provoke their curiosity, but without overwhelming them with weirdness.
It may seem like obvious advice, but for whatever reason, it prompted me to look at my novel with fresh eyes, and I think the opening needs to do more to grab the reader's attention. (Even if I didn't think that, no literary agent has yet requested the full thing, so I'll have to meet them halfway.) Fortunately, I came up with an idea for a new first paragraph to be inserted immediately before the old first paragraph, and the old first paragraph becomes the second paragraph, largely unchanged. Still need to finish editing the remainder of the manuscript to get it down to ~100k words.
I'd like to A/B test this to see if I'm on the right track, so if any of you would be interested in offering feedback on just the opening paragraph (without knowing if it's the old one or the new one), I'd really appreciate it. They're both no more than 300 words.
FtttG
22hr ago
I dislike the vast majority of discussions based around tribal politics (present company excluded)
I like to imagine that, at the best of times, we're one meta-level up, discussing the fact of tribal politics and why some topics or events acquire valence in the culture war while others don't. Whereas I assume most people asking you "are you a Democrat or a Republican?" just take it as read that their team is Good, the other team is Bad, and they want to know which team you're on.
it has to compete with writers like ARX-Han who are both more extremely online and willing to be actually edgy. I think Tulathiamutte is masterful in going right up to the limit of "safe edgy" that the uniformly-leftist literary scene will accept, and so he's able to scandalize without any unacceptable transgressions.
FtttG
23hr ago
I don't know about Fuentes in particular, but trans-identified males with far-right opinions are more common than you might think.
FtttG
1d ago
Is he "coded as a white elite" too?
They considered him a race traitor.
FtttG
1d ago
And it was great.
Out of curiosity – I assume you mean it was great for you? Presumably your girlfriend didn't remember it? Or did she?
I mean, yes. At the same time, the intros for 20th Century Fox, Universal, Columbia and Paramount are memorable in their own right, and people recognise them independently of any specific movie to which they are attached. If I start humming the 20th Century Fox fanfare (doo, doo-doo, dee-doo-dee-doo-dee doo, doo-doo...), I would expect most people in my vicinity to recognise it and be able to finish the melody. 20th Century Fox (among other film production companies) is a successful exercise in establishing a recognisable brand identity.
Asserting that people only go to see movies because of association with other movies/properties, and that the specific production and distribution company doesn't matter at all – well, is this how we talk about any other kind of commercial endeavour? If someone buys an iPhone and they've never owned an iPhone before, which of these more accurately describes their thought process before doing so?
- They developed a positive impression of iMacs, iPads, iPods completely independent of one another, and are buying an iPhone because it's "from the people who brought you iMacs, iPads, iPods", even though they couldn't name the specific company who made them.
- They have positive associations with Apple the company: the apple-with-a-bite-in-it logo (and its associated fonts, colour scheme etc.) essentially acts as a sort of seal of approval for any attached product.
Obviously buying a movie ticket isn't the same thing as buying a phone or a car: we put more stock in a "seal of quality" for expensive purchases than cheap ones, and I couldn't begin to tell you which production company produced some of my favourite movies. But in spite of that, when I see the 20th Century Fox intro before a movie, I expect a higher standard of quality and professionalism than I do when clicking on a YouTube video at random (in the same way that even a person who has never owned an Apple product before expects a higher standard of quality from an Apple product than the knockoff equivalent from Temu). The production and distribution companies responsible for a movie convey a nonzero amount of information to the consumer, audiences do not simply zone out before the opening credits start, and certain production and distribution companies have more cachet and status than others. A screenwriter who announced "I sold a script to 20th Century Fox" would attract more impressed looks than "I sold a script to Blumhouse", even if he sold it for the same sum.
Pretty rare to go see a movie because of a producer.
I would argue that the company which produces and/or distributes a movie acts as a sort of seal of approval: if a movie is preceded by the 20th Century Fox intro, people hold it to a higher standard than some video uploaded to YouTube. Many movies are in fact advertised based on who the production company and/or producer was, and quite a few were commercially successful:
- King Arthur was advertised as "From Jerry Bruckheimer, the producer of Pirates of the Caribbean" and made $200 million on a $120 million budget.
- The Darkest Minds was advertised as being "from the producers of Stranger Things and Arrival" and made $40 million on a $35 million budget.
- Violent Night was advertised as "from the producer of Nobody and Bullet Train" and made $76 million on a $20 million budget.
- Barbarian was advertised as "From a producer of It and the executive producer of The Grudge and The Ring" and made its money back ten times over.
- M3GAN was advertised as "From James Wan, producer of Annabelle, and Blumhouse, producer of The Black Phone" and made its money back fifteen times over.
And those examples are just "from the producer of": I didn't even touch on "from the studio that brought you".
I'm not claiming that people went to see these movies purely on the basis of the producer's name recognition, or because the producer had previously produced a film they enjoyed. Obviously the usual traits that make a movie a commercial success count too: star power, a compelling hook, a memorable trailer, good reviews, positive word of mouth, star power (although I think it's telling that quite a few of those movies had no memorable stars and directors I'd never heard of). But I think you're understating the extent to which attaching the names of an established producer and production company to a film can help to get bums in seats.
FtttG
1d ago
I spent literally hundreds of hours trying to beat the first game on Classic difficulty with Ironman enabled, and finally cracked it a few years ago, something that apparently only 2.2% of Steam players have done. (Some day I'd like to compile a nonstandard CV, featuring accomplishments that wouldn't impress any prospective employer but which I am inordinately proud of all the same.) The funny thing about XCOM is that the difficulty is very front-loaded: for the first ~20 hours you're in Early Game Hell and a single mistake can completely fuck you, but once you get past that, the endgame is a cakewalk and you can steamroll over the final boss without breaking a sweat.
I admit I may be skirting the edges of "Fun", but this story made me laugh:
Thai masseuse in Connemara stops taking male clients due to barrage of enquiries for sex services:
THE OWNER OF a Thai massage parlour in a small village in Connemara has stopped taking male clients due to the volume of enquiries seeking sexual services and “happy endings”.
Yosita Fitzpatrick, who is from Thailand, set up Connemara Thai Massage and Wellness in Letterfrack last November, but the certified massage therapist has since been shocked by the calls and messages she has received from men.
She has reported communications from several individuals to An Garda Síochána [Ireland's police service], and has posted screenshots of some offensive messages on social media in an effort to dissuade prospective callers.
However, Fitzpatrick continues to receive offensive enquiries asking for sexual services “pretty much daily”, and announced last week that she would only be taking female clients in future.
“I am fully aware that, in the eyes of the world, the phrase ‘Thai women’ evokes unfair and negative stereotypes – portraying us merely as objects of desire,” said the mother-of-two.
“The truth is far richer. Thailand has so much to offer, and Thai women possess value that cannot be confined to narrow, outdated perceptions.
“No one has a right to harass me simply because I am a Thai woman or because I own a massage business,” she said.
“I am a therapist. I heal people. This is what I love. It is my purpose, and I do not want to walk away from it.”
(Is it my imagination, or does the above quote sound suspiciously like something generated by an LLM?)
Fitzpatrick said it was a difficult decision to stop accepting male clients, as they comprise around 40% of her clientele, and there are “many respectful men” who will miss out because of the actions of a few.
She will continue to cater for her existing male clients.
Fitzpatrick claimed that other Thai massage therapists around the country are also subjected to the same harassment, but choose not to speak publicly about it.
She announced on her social media accounts last week that she would no longer be accepting male clients, and warned callers that inappropriate enquiries would be reported to gardaí and may be shared publicly.
Remarkably, however, she continues to receive calls and messages from men seeking sexual services on a daily basis.
On the one hand, legitimate massage therapists have every right to feel offended when they are mistaken for sex workers, and Fitzpatrick was right to report these men to the police. On the other hand, it's a simple factual statement that many massage therapists do provide the requested services, and that the ones that do are disproportionately likely to be of Thai or Filipino extraction. The bolded passage above ('there are “many respectful men” who will miss out because of the actions of a few') really illustrates how symmetrical the situation is: just as perfectly respectful men suffer because a minority are badly behaved, every massage therapist who offers sexual services negatively affects the reputation of the legitimate therapists who refuse to.
More than anything, though, I can't help but laugh at the hapless would-be punters/johns. A man who DMs a massage therapist directly requesting a happy ending is just asking to get arrested. Have these people learned nothing from the Epstein files? Never put anything incriminating in writing.
FtttG
1d ago
I finished XCOM 2: War of the Chosen last night (strongly considering playing the base game on Ironman mode). Would you say it scratches that kind of itch?
It's an example of a forced meme, in which someone tries to astroturf something into popularity rather than it becoming popular through genuine organic means. Specifically it's a reference to the film Mean Girls, in which the character Gretchen keeps using the word "fetch" in conversation (as an adjective meaning "cool") in hopes of making it catch on.
C'est
EDIT: in French, but not in Italian. Serves me right for being a know-it-all.
What is the difference? You just answered a question with a question (or rather, with a Russell conjugation). What is the difference between "discriminating" against people based on an inherent trait they have no control over, and drawing a "social distinction" between people based on an inherent trait they have no control over? I choose to give drunken male people a wide berth compared to drunken female people. No one forced me to do this, so it's not mandatory. Couldn't you therefore say that I'm not discriminating against male people, I'm just drawing a social distinction between male and female people?
That seems to be exactly what you're threatening, even if you're doing it on behalf of another group of which you are not a member.
Oh, so you mean that in reality you would come up with some pretext to preferentially hire a female babysitter over a male, but insist that it's just because the girl is more "experienced" than the boy and their sex has nothing to do with it. Just like a suspiciously large number of white anti-racists just so happen to live in gated communities which are 90%+ white. Try not to twist your arm from patting yourself so hard on the back.
Of course your child would: nine times out of ten, your child would feel safer being left alone with a female babysitter than a male, because "discrimination on the basis of sex" is instinctive, not learned. "I think it's wrong to discriminate on the basis of sex – but the female babysitter was more qualified than the male, and my kid liked the female babysitter better, so I hired the female babysitter. Complete coincidence that I ended up making exactly the same decision as every other parent who would never leave their child alone with a male teenager, I swear to God."
An extremely noisy and unreliable metric, given that male puberty imparts permanent changes to bone density and lung capacity.
Trans activists sometimes accuse TERFs of being perverts who want to subject everyone to mandatory genital inspections before they're allowed to get changed. Interesting to see the shoe on the other foot. Note that such a rule would prevent ~95% of trans-identified males from using female changing facilities: advocating for it might get you tarred as a TERF by your erstwhile fellow-travellers.
You realise what will happen, don't you? All of the male inmates who suddenly "realised" they had a female gender identity immediately after being convicted will be transferred to this shiny, comfortable facility. For a few months, all will be well in this facility. But eventually the number of "trans women" being transferred to this facility will reach the point at which the population density in this facility is the same as any other male prison, with all the opportunistic violence and rape that that implies, and "trans women" will be no safer in this facility than they would be in an ordinary men's facility. Actually, if you look at the prison population as a whole, the proportion of prisoners who've been convicted of at least one sex crime* includes a disproportionate number of trans women, and trans women are nearly three times more likely to have at least one sex crime conviction than ordinary men are: hence, it's entirely possible that trans women would be more at risk in the dedicated trans women facility than they would be in an ordinary men's facility. Meanwhile, the overrepresentation of sex offenders in the dedicated trans women facility would mean that, in the popular imagination, people would quite reasonably think of the trans women's prison as being "the prison where all the nonces are". As an advocate for trans rights, is this really the kind of connection you want to impart to the general public?
Perhaps you'll say that admission to the dedicated trans women facility would be made conditional on some kind of gatekeeping. Now would be an excellent opportunity to suggest what that might look like.
No need: convicted trans men are staying put in the women's prison because they know they're safer there. Per this article, of requests for trans people to be transferred to the opposite-sex facility, 96% came from male inmates. There are even examples in this article of trans men being incarcerated in the male facility, realising they weren't safe there (presumably shortly after learning that the sun rises in the morning and that water is wet) and requesting to be transferred to the women's prison. So much for their "male identity".
Yes, but doctors are gatekept and subject to safeguarding requirements. The only requirement for a patient to be admitted to a hospital is that they be sick. Hospitals cannot simply turn patients away because they are violent or prone to sexually assaulting other patients. There is simply no way that admitting male patients to women's wards does not greatly increase the rate of sexual assaults therein.
Incorrect.
*Before you ask: no, that does not include prostitution.
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