Mottizen
11mo ago
7 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling. This was where the series peaked, the next three books suffered from mistakes made here, but this was her best world-building and swashbuckling.
Back when I was dating I used to frequently use 'do you prefer the first half or second half of the Harry Potter series' as a conversation piece, and I found it very interesting that men seem to be very inclined towards the first half and women very inclined towards the second half. Over a good sample of educated women who felt very passionately about Harry Potter, plus general social occasions for men to chime in. Personally feel the whole enterprise goes off a cliff as the word counts expand and the magic contracts from Phoenix onwards, but also potentially a good indicator of women preferring a more emotionally-driven story.
Mottizen
11mo ago
Trump shooting really should have been Biden's deliverance. If they're still pressuring despite that, hard to see him clinging on.
Mottizen
11mo ago
It seems like nobody was aware of her being XY until the genetic test took place. I'd be very surprised if Algeria was just cool with her having gone through their entire womens' sport pathway if she'd been packing masculine equipment the entire time.
She undoubtedly gets a bit of an advantage from her hormonal profile compared to 'average woman', but practically everybody in the Olympics is going to have some degree of that going on. She's had a good-but-not-great amateur boxing career to this point with years in the ring, and the Italian woman quitting instantly to a woman with a 11% KO rate just doesn't seem at all logical unless there's literal hysteria going around here. I agree that trans athletes shouldn't be able to compete with women, but in this case I believe she's largely unaware of her own intersex status and the contest seems reasonably fair.
Mottizen
11mo ago
Don't get why people assuming this is a positive Trump moment. Obviously gonna pivot to Gun Control chat & Trump's base already loves him
Mottizen
11mo ago
I feel the continuing push from the party has to be indicative of somebody thinking there's a vulnerability there.
Mottizen
11mo ago
The point of COVID was the noticing more than it having any insane outlier effectiveness as a disease
Mottizen
11mo ago
That pivot has to have some correlation with perceived likelihood of him dropping out, though? There were whispers, they quietened a bit, and now they're back in action so I think there must be some sort of potential weakness displayed by Biden.
Mottizen
11mo ago
If I were going to debut a new advance in ad blocking workarounds I'd probably try and debut it a month or two before the election in order to maximally benefit from the proverbial firehoses of money that are going to be coursing through, personally.
Mottizen
11mo ago
I want to agree with @johnfabian that (mainstream) Democrats are going to get less strident. There's no angle, no way to try blaming the victim here. Not without a much more radical brand.
Gun control yaddayaddayadda gun control. Can easily work on that angle and Trump can't really condemn either side.
Mottizen
11mo ago
Could somebody give me a summary of Project 2025?
My very loose understanding is that it's a large, ambitious pile of conservative coded objectives by a Right Wing thinktank with some potential links (albeit not strong ones) to Trump's potential administration, some of which align with Trump's objectives and some of which don't?
Mottizen
11mo ago
Betting/prediction markets look slightly up for Trump, like +6%-7% or so.
I just don't really see which extra votes this is getting for them. Biden's probably the biggest beneficiary directly as he's moved out of the media focus now.
Mottizen
11mo ago
I don't really see who it galvanizes to back Trump. The hollowing out of the middle means that I don't think that there's a huge bed of people who are gonna be additional votes for him as a result.
Mottizen
10mo ago
Appealing to random niche cultural sex-worker and/or designated eunuch roles to establish historical precedent seems to be the most common.
Honestly surprising nobody's tried to recast the Catholic Priesthood as a third gender.
Mottizen
10mo ago
Yeah I'm 6 months into fatherhood (and whilst there's a bunch of schooling etc. fees that I'm obviously not paying yet). My partner and I are reasonably frugal/happy to procure second-hand things from marketplace and I'd be surprised if my daughter has cost us more than a thousand or two so far. We've probably come out far ahead considering savings on stuff we'd normally be spending.
Mottizen
11mo ago
It is crazy how across the West that in the last decade or two it's just become increasingly normalized to have RPG Random Encounters with the insane/drugged.
Mottizen
11mo ago
Isn't this the forever-issue with importing votes as a left-wing party. Essentially everywhere outside the anglosphere is built on identity politics and culture that is far right compared to the prevailing Western Democracy. Any successful immigrant project will tend to pivot over time from 'I vote Democrat since they facilitate my immigration' to 'Got mine, now I'm culturally conservative'
Mottizen
5mo ago
I think a lot of this stuff is difficult to parse in terms of masculine notions of consent and sexuality. It's a lot more binary and individual agency driven.
I've dated a lot, I've got a bunch of close girl friends who date a lot and a lot of women just have this desire to be 'swept along' in the tide of relationships plus intense binary bipolar takes on previous relationships. Guys don't 'ick' like women do, for the most part, negative information discovered will be more filed under 'she is a 7 with an asterisks due to XYZ' whilst most heterosexual women are very 100-0 in how they see men.
Also add weird cultural norms on top of that. I've had girlfriends who simply refuse to discuss/initiate sex in any sort of an agency-driven way. The closest they'll come is acting in a way that 'makes them exposed to being acted upon'. This is due to a combination of weird shame-driven consciousness around it, plus ego. Women don't deal well with outright rejection as a rule of thumb, since their conception of sex is 'I am the gatekeeper and at any time the rapacious male presence will go through there'. If they open the proverbial gate and the rapacious hordes shrug and defer from entering, egodeath ensues.
Mottizen
8mo ago
It has done well but it hasn't exactly been 'belly button lint in exchange for untold riches' if you've jumped on board any time since like 2016.
Mottizen
8mo ago
1/2 means you get half of your stake as winnings if you win, meaning it's roughly 66% to happen after the bookmaker's margin. Trump is currently the favorite to win the election.
Harris is favorite to win the popular vote but due to the US electoral system that is not the sole qualifier.
Mottizen
10mo ago
I don't think this is the entire picture, since there's also an incentive on the part of a man who 'knows how to play the game' to pose as a viable longterm prospect and then dip and/or incompatibilities are found during the trial period and it's donezo. I've seen in my friendgroup both men and women in their late twenties join dating apps with 0 meaningful relationship experience prior.
For most men the immediate response is crickets and zero interest (assuming introverted nerdy type) which then requires considerable personal development to grind through. For the women, the result tends to be getting played a few times and then pivoting hard to PVP mode or just opting out.
Mottizen
11mo ago
Had the most aggressive attribution modelling, the highest population of US citizens, incredibly fallow grounds in terms of the vulnerable (More obese, elderly, immunocompromised exist today than at any other point in human history). It was the biggest in a while (though I do think if the same laxitude of attribution was extended to other historic bad flus it'd likely be very similar), but was hardly an outlier.
If you actually watch the interview Trump's claim was 'Harris chooses whether to emphasize her Indian heritage or African heritage depending on however the IdPol winds are blowing' not that she's literally not Black.
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