Mewis
9mo ago
I mean, this isn't really that unusual. Horror movies are low-status even compared to schlock like Indiana Jones, but they always make very good box office returns for low budgets, which is why there are like ten Insidious movies.
It's not really obvious to me that the failure of this latest offering really has anything to do with Woke, either. Crystal Skull didn't flop, but it wasn't a smash hit and it burned a lot of the goodwill the series had. And now? Most young people don't know Indiana Jones or care about him.
Mewis
10mo ago
Why would I? The notion of having sex with women is totally repellent to me, and likely most women would find me equally repellent, since I lack any positive qualities. To be honest I don't really even like having sex with men, but I do find them very attractive.
Mewis
10mo ago
I didn't have gay sex for over five years, but I was still gay at the end of it.
Mewis
1mo ago
Again, the SHWs are a minority. But it's not clear what your point is. Weightlifting as a sport rewards and encourages people to get big and strong - and getting bigger, for a lot of people, will shorten their lifespan. That's the entire point. Having lots of muscle - as even the SHWs have - doesn't change that. The general trend isn't just that weightlifting is uniquely deleterious, but that all power sports are - cycling is nearly as bad, even though there are no SHW cyclists.
I simply don't really see any direct evidence that carrying lots of lean body mass, beyond a marker of general health and propensity to exercise, does anything for lifespan. Healthy men carry substantially more muscle mass than healthy women but live shorter lives. And if we take it as true that most people will maximise their lifespan by maintaining a BMI of about 18-23, well, it's pretty easy even for an amateur lifter to escape that range, and indeed it is encouraged by most people in the lifting community.
Mewis
1mo ago
Again, if you choose not to be interested in this, you could find any number of rationalisations. That he wrote Olympic bodybuilder instead of Olympia bodybuilder does not really seem important to me. It's not even the only typo in his post.
Mewis
1mo ago
I'm sure you could find any number of reasons to ignore anyone you feel like - why not a typo or minor terminological error?
Mewis
4mo ago
Well, I don't understand how if the consequence of any peace deal is that Putin will attack, that doesn't imply that war is inevitable. It's true that's not the exact words what you said, but it seems like a pretty direct implication. Unless I'm misunderstanding, in which case I invite you to clarify.
Mewis
10mo ago
Ukraine, and most Ukraine supporters, don't seem interested in the 2013 borders - the goal is to totally destroy Russia as an independent power capable of threatening Ukraine. This could mean destruction of the country or a large annexation of a buffer zone, but ideally they'd want both.
Mewis
11mo ago
Very few people play professional basketball. Finding a relationship is something considerably easier and something the majority of people can do - though it has become more difficult in recent years. In addition, professional sports are inherently competitive - there are a fixed number of slots on teams that people fight and compete for. Whereas the number of relationships is elastic.
I understand your frustrations. I frequently wonder if I will die alone. I believe that I am very unattractive, have an unattractive body (despite going to the gym), and have a repellent personality. On the other hand, other gay men, when I interact with them, often show interest in me and compliment me and often seem genuinely surprised at my lack of romantic success. Though I know my thoughts are irrational and it's wrong of me to have them, I've never been able to control them.
But people make durable judgments about us from still photos of us interacting with friends, or two seconds of video…
I don't think this is true. Do you judge others so quickly?
Mewis
1yr ago
It's also easy to find games which can be set to extremely high difficulty, but the difficulty is always purely artificial, because it doesn't rely on making the computer-controlled enemies better at the game or making the scenario more complex, it simply makes the enemies stronger (impossibly so, given the ostensible rules and the narrative) while handicapping the player's units.
I never really got this complaint. Depending on how the game mechanics are set up, it may not be reasonable for the AI to be 'improved', and it's not even always the case that good AI makes the game harder. In addition, many games presume or establish asymmetry between the player and the enemy to begin with. In most FPS titles, for example, the player is usually vastly outnumbered by the enemy, but enemies are individually weaker and usually only have a single gun to work with.
Or creating an RPG character that's a dog's breakfast of classes and features that could not possibly make sense narratively, but allows for all sort of insane synergies that are possible because the makers of the game couldn't possibly have tested all the combinations of 8 races and 30 classes, each with a dozen different abilities. And characters like that are the only way to beat some of the "optional bosses" that no party that would be legal in a table-top game could ever hope to defeat.
I think stuff like this is fun, though. Isn't the point of high difficulty to force the player out of cookie-cutter builds and force them to explore the wider space of different options and combinations? Isn't that a form of 'mastery' too?
Mewis
1yr ago
I think it's interesting that Poland sees Ukraine as a friend. Didn't Ukraine basically carve the western part of their country out of former Polish territory (killing the Poles that lived on it)? Or is this more of a conscious choice to ignore the various ethnic purification projects that formed the current map of Europe, because they know that it would be dangerous to reopen that topic?
Mewis
1mo ago
That seems like poor policy. Even a pretty aggressive procreator is going to struggle to reach 4 21+ GC at 65, and it would in turn strongly penalise the family if the 21 year old grand daughters are forced into work and taxpaying instead of procreating.
Mewis
1mo ago
Or he could just raise his leg and turn slightly, causing your underpowered hit to glance off the meatiest part of his body.
Mewis
1mo ago
Why not? People get guidance by taking LSD, consulting horoscopes and talking to God.
Mewis
2mo ago
Well, we've come around from 'seeking external help is always bad' to 'sometimes seeking external help is good and sometimes it's not'. I guess I can't argue with that.
Mewis
6mo ago
The polls were also wrong in 2012. In fact, the error was larger in 2012, it just didn't end up changing the result.
The point is not that the polls were right. The point is that if you want to know how people are going to vote in November of 2016, there's only so much you can determine by asking them in February of 2016. There's a limit to what polling can determine, to how accurate polls can be, and that accuracy will be better the day before the election rather than six months before. As to what the point of this kind of polling is - if you're reading it, it's for you. It fills newspapers and websites, which can then sell ads. The quality of such polls is not great - after all, you're getting it for free. There's good polling out there, but it's not being used to fill space between ads, people pay money for it so they can use it to guide campaign strategy, marketing decisions, etc.
Yes, it is in fact, very reasonable to say that there isn't enough evidence to commit to one side or another.
That's all unfalsifiable augury, because as long as there's any >0% odds of an outcome Silver """predicted""" it.
No offense, but if you don't understand statistics and probability, maybe you really shouldn't be reading Nate Silver. Statistics by it's own nature cannot give certain predictions of the future.
Mewis
10mo ago
Maybe. Most of Ukraine's soldiers were around the Donbass region at the time, and well dug in - it could be reasoned that it would be quicker and less bloody to try and cut them off, or even decapitate the government, and then negotiate for Donbass/Crimea from a position of strength. That seems pretty doubtful, though. Given Russia's actions and rhetoric at the time, it looked more like they planned on totally overrunning the country.
We can only really speculate, at this point, on what Putin would have done if he had won.
Mewis
10mo ago
Right, but doing little things like this don't require any thought at all. Very likely you are spending more thought here, arguing over these trivial rituals of etiquette, that it does to enact them.
Mewis
10mo ago
Well, 1k is still a pretty low score. I don't think it's anything to be proud about.
Mewis
1yr ago
I don't know anything about the primary rules - is there anything that stops Trump from running a proxy candidate that can simply throw all their delegates/support behind him at the 2024 convention?
Mewis
1yr ago
I'm not 'you guys', I'm gay as well though I'm not a very typical gay man. But it's my observation that the hoop jumping that straights engage in has value. Men should want to be tested and challenged.
I'm not sure how relevant it is that some people are making very good money off of HIV retrovirals. Whether or not homosexuality is healthy or not would, ultimately, be the result of some interaction with society and technology, just as with anything else. For those of us fortunate to live in developed western countries, many things are safe that would otherwise not be - like drinking tap water or sleeping without a mosquito net. That's true whether or not Big Mosquito Net is making a lot of money.
I mean, really, what percentage of women died in childbirth before modern medicine? Enough that we could say that pregnancy is unhealthy?
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