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Notes -
We Won
On Sunday Morning, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went on ABC's This Week and proclaimed, "Woke 1 was crazy". The immediate context was AOC defending Wisconsin DSA governor candidate Francesca Hong, and so a lot of people are clowning on her for handwaving away everything that happened in 2015-2022. To the extent that this is about who you should vote for in the Wisconsin governor's race, I agree with the criticism, but I want to take a step back and appreciate how far we've come.
Think back to remember how it felt in the dark days of 2020 and 2021. It was far from clear that the reign of terror would ever end. Every week another subreddit or Twitter poster was banned. Facebook was removing posts supporting Kyle Rittenhouse as a policy. "Abolish the Police" was treated as a serious (if aspirational) policy proposal. Above everything else, the worst part was the psychological damage, the feeling that the entire world was going insane; that it was just you and a few guys from a Harry Potter fanfiction forum spinoff who were capable of the miniscule amount of critical thinking required to know that removing Aunt Jemima's face from bottles of pancake syrup did absoutely nothing to help black people.
The fact that even the left-wing of the Democratic Party is campaigning on health care, tax policy, and Palestine instead of racial humiliation is a big deal. There is a temptation to equate "woke" (more specifically "woke 1") with generic liberal Democrat stuff, but that's not really true. Conversely, it becomes easy to overlook some of Trump's greatest accomplishments. Turning DEI and Critical Race Theory into curse words and ending affirmative action were huge. People said it couldn't be done, and then they were done so fast that everyone forgot by the midterms.
As an aside: I never understood the people calling AOC unattractive, and still don't. I find the "Zendaya is ugly" thing easier to understand (not that I consider her unattractive either).
AOC has crazy eyes and big teeth, so she's definitely not supermodel material, but she definitely looks better than Zendaya.
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AOC is an attractive woman even on a normal scale, not even the DC scale. But there are definitely pics of her not at her best. Zendaya is also attractive (though not a Hollywood-scale 10), but for some reason has top Hollywood talent uglying her up for movies.
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Zendaya to me looks like an actress who was discovered and elevated by some Hollywood pederast, because her body for sure is akin to that of a slender teenage boy who's someone's f*cktoy. As another commenter noted: lacking in femininity. And with a sort of meh face. It's not that she's ugly per se, it's that she doesn't match the beautiful starlets of yesteryear.
AOC seems to be somewhat of a butterface and usually has an expression of a crazy person. It's true though that she has good body shape.
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AOC is hot. She might even not be on the Latina that blimps up with age phenotype. If AOC was in Brickell no one would notice her, but in the general population she’s top 5-10% attractiveness.
One thing I asked myself is Bill Gates attractive? Honestly seems like a stupid question, but I was looking at his daughter Phoebe Gates who’s in the news for doing fraud. And she’s hot. I’d like marry her in a second even without the money. So Bill Gates can’t create that right?
I came up with 2 theories both which are likely partially true. Bill Gates is ugly for a famous person but attractive compared to the average person. Movie Stars etc who are in the news (or even politicians and executives) likely do have strong selection effect for attractiveness. So he’s ugly in that grouping, but within a random population distribution the top 10-20%.
Men are notoriously known for being ugly compared to women. The average female finds like 1-5% of the male population as hot while men find like 20-30% of the female population as hot.
And probably something something about having money so nicer clothes and personal trainers etc.
Phoebe is pretty hot. Passing resemblance to Ivana Miličević. Looks like she takes after her mum more than her dad.
You're right that famous people tend, to a greater or lesser extent, to be selected for their looks (obviously true of actors and models, less obviously true in the case of successful politicians). Bill Gates is unusual in being a genuine household name who became famous for reasons wholly unrelated to his physical appearance. In that regard he's more akin to a writer or a director, and I wouldn't say he's significantly less attractive than e.g. Stephen King or James Cameron.
Stephen King looks like a weird alien, James Cameron is a decent looking guy though.
As a young man, he could pass for Christopher Reeve's less attractive older brother.
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It's the same phenomenon as calling Elon Musk "stupid," which is basically dogma in some parts of the country, including where I live. People, even educated, intelligent people who went to academic institutions purportedly meant specifically to disabuse people of that notion, really love the idea that people they disagree with also have other negative characteristics that realistically ought to have minimal - if any - correlation with conformity to one's own personal set of ethics or ideals. So damn physical reality, since I don't like AOC/Musk, then s/he is unattractive/stupid. To be fair, the latter set of people often openly admit to rejecting empiricism as a tool of oppression by White Supremacists, so they're living up to their stated principles there.
As an aside, I'm apparently in a tiny minority in considering Zendaya not only attractive, but one of the most attractive women in Hollywood right now, but also I do find the "Zendaya is ugly" thing not hard to understand. She has bodily and facial features which are not what I'd consider screaming in femininity.
Elon Musk is clearly very smart and he's also such a retard. Both can be true at once lol.
My friends frequently describe me as the "stupidest smart person they know" , so I relate to this lol
I'm not humble bragging or comparing myself to Elon, I doubt I have his level of engineering IQ or grind, I just observe he says stupid shit that makes it harder for him to achieve his goals a lot
What has Musks actually done that is stupid? Twitter posting? A lot of us credit his Twitter posting and fixing Twitter for saving Western Society for atleast a few years.
I think this shows your bias much more than evidence of Musks stupid actions.
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Smart people can and do do very stupid things, sometimes quite often, to such an extent that they have a reputation for it. One could accurately say, e.g. Musk behaves very stupidly when it comes to certain things such as politics or ideology, and that he has a pattern of doing so. But to claim that he's stupid means something else, and it's to ignore all the other pieces of evidence around him. And, ironically, accurately noting his intelligence is a greater moral condemnation from anyone who confidently disagrees with his politics or ideals, because, unlike a stupid person, a smart person has no excuse for not reaching the correct conclusions.
Thank you for clarifying my frustration with Musk: it's annoyance at someone who I have colloquially called a "moron," but unlike a true idiot has plentiful cognitive capacity to know better - unless, of course, he likes the internet drama his braggart-persona creates and his apparent emotional investment in e.g. probably faked video game achievements is just another amusement for him; doesn't seem plausible to me, but I could be typical-minding as a wallflower.
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