There actually is a statistical correlation between conservative, anti-trans political affiliation and a preference for transgender porn, and Texas leads the nation in searches for transgender porn.

Source

I have no more right to interfere in someone else’s life than they have to interfere in mine.

Avoid people who don’t share that view.

People are almost more susceptible to simpler charts with race and IQ than they are to the really complicated stuff

Ironically enough, that’s because they’re stupid.

I guarantee that the explanation for this would become very obvious if one were to simply, as the cliche has it, “follow the money.”

So the unspoken bit about RFK Jr. is that he’s a tweaker, right?

I mean, the details are all in the context of politically entitled progeny, but the underlying vibe I get from the stories about him is very reminiscent of the tweakers I’ve known over the years.

Israel is a rogue state.

“Doubts grow?”

Why would they even need to “grow?” This is just June and July all over again, with the only difference being that Hamas isn’t buying any of it this time around.

The Biden administration isn’t trying to negotiate anything. It’s just trying to strike a pose to dodge the entirely deserved condemnation it’s getting for enabling a genocide while continuing to enable a genocide.

“I think she’s beautiful — very beautiful! I find her very beautiful. I think she’s liberal. She probably doesn’t like Trump. I hear she’s very talented. I think she’s very beautiful, actually — unusually beautiful!"

I don’t think it’s with her popularity that the creepy old serial sex abuser is preoccupied…

And a billionaire singer who’s already such a common target for AI deepfakes that she’s quite likely the one person on the planet most ready, willing and able to sue someone’s ass off over them.

Wow - that was quite possibly the dumbest thing he’s done yet.

I’m regularly struck by the literal insanity of politics, but this whole deal with Israel is a particularly notable example.

The fact of the matter is that we have no idea what Harris’s actual opinion of the situation is. Regardless of what it might actually be, she has to support Israel, which at this point means supporting a government of literal murderous psychopaths who are simultaneously carrying out a genocide in Gaza and a violent incremental illegal land grab in the West Bank while also brazenly trying to provoke, and drag the US into, a war with Lebanon or Syria or Yemen or Iran. And why does she have to support all of that patent evil? Because if she doesn’t, AIPAC will spend millions and millions of dollars trying to destroy her, like they already destroyed Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, for daring to have principles.

And what’s the likely net result of that? To elect a Republican, which is to say, a member of the party of actual antisemites.

They accuse Democrats of being antisemites merely for calling genocide genocide, and meanwhile, the actual antisemites - the people who comtinue to hold to the notion of Jews as evil, money-grubbing vermin who are conspiring to take over the world, are Republicans, even including Republicans in high office, like “Jewish space lasers” Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Think about how insane that is - a politician has to publicly support a genocidal regime or face being called an antisemite and having an Israeli advocacy group spend millions and millions of dollars to destroy her and instead elect the candidate from the party of actual Jew-hating antisemites.

And as if that isn’t enough, we have Jill Stein in the middle of it all, who, with zero chance of actually winning, is free to take the position that any rational person should take, and the position that the majority of the Democratic base takes - that genocide is genocide and is rightly condemned. And that then introduces the risk that she’ll draw off enough Democratic voters, merely by taking the position held by the majority, so the position that the Democratic candidate should take, that it will hand the election to the Republican - the candidate of the party of actual antisemites.

The whole thing is bludgeoningly insane. I don’t think anyone could’ve created such a grotesquely dysfunctional and actuslly counter-productive system if they’d deliberately set out to do it.

And yet that’s the world we live in - the world we’re forced to live in - a world warped by the literal insanity of a wealthy and powerful few.

It boggles my mind.

Only “near” historic low?

Since we already have at least two overtly corrupt justices whose entire defense consists essentially of “nobody has the authority to do anything about it so fuck you,” and the highlights of their last session include ruling that bribery is entirely legal just so long as the check is postdated and that presidents are completely and totally immune from even being investigated over anything that is in any way connected to anything that might by any stretch of the most fevered imagination be considered an "official act " I have to wonder what it will take to actually hit rock bottom.

I have no doubt that, since they have no integrity, no ethics and no regard for either law or the well-being of the country, we’ll see.

Pure, unmitigated evil.

deleted by creator

Paper Mario

Jet Force Gemini

Majora’s Mask / Ocarina of Time

Blast Corps

Custom Robo

Mario Golf

Space Station Silicon Valley

Goemon’s Great Adventure

No - probably not.

Religion, just in and of itself, isn’t really the problem. It’s just the most notable example of the underlying problem, which is probably best summed up as aggressive tribalism.

People have a compulsive desire for self-affirmation - for assurance that they embody whatever qualities they consider the indicators of “good” people. And by far the easiest way for people to assure themselves of that is to associate those qualities with a label and self-apply that label. That gives them a fellowship of label-wearers who are invested in the same belief, which establishes a feedback loop in which they all assure each other of how [good/right/strong/smart/etc.] they are, and a ready-made set of outsiders they can individually and collectively condemn. And that last is the real problem - since few if any people truly embody the qualities they wish to believe they do, the easiest and most effective way to assure themselves they do is to focus on some designated set of others and on the assertion that they fail to possess those qualities. That allows people to assure themselves that they are at least more [good/right/strong/smart/etc.] than these other people over there.

That’s clearly a toxic and antagonistic dynamic that really just serves to divide people up into warring factions, and since it’s at least somewhat irrational yet crucial to people’s self-affirming self-images, it’s a thing that easily gets entrenched and, whenever possible, codified, so that it can be forcibly imposed.

Again, religion is certainly the most common and historically destructive vehicle for that, but it’s far from the only one. Most notably, it’s also the dynamic underlying virtually all ideology and a great deal of philosophy, not to mention a great many less significant distinctions, ranging from sexual preference to diet to sports fandom.

Now - in the first place, I would say that it would not have been possible to have a world without religion, since the practical purpose of religion is to provide answers to questions for which there’s insufficient evidence or knowledge to support nominally legitimate answers, and that lack of evidence and knowledge was an unavoidable part of our history. From the moment that somebody wondered what that big bright thing up in the sky was and somebody else made up an answer for them, religion was inevitable.

Beyond that though - if we were to imagine a world in which religion somehow never came to be, we’d just have had a world in which people would’ve focused that much more on the other ways in which they divide themselves against themselves, since that desire for self-affirmation exists anyway.

And truth be told, I actually think that’s part of the problem with our current world - that a great many people have just shifted from what would in the past been a self-affirming faith in a religion to a self-affirming faith in an ideology or philosophy or political affiliation or some other tribal distinction - that much of what we’re seeing today is the same toxicity just based on more secular divisions.

Not that religion has become less of a problem - what it’s lost in overall market share, it’s undeniably gained in the fervor and aggression of its remaining adherents, but it’s also been joined by a wide range of other divisions, each destructive in the same general ways, even if not necessarily to the same degree.

As always, all one needs to do is pretend that Trump is an unusually tall and bald five-year-old, and what he says and does makes perfect sense.

I hope so.

Yes - they’ve been attacking her pretty much from day one, but that was just to feed the base - to keep them on a steady diet of hatred.

It’s different now, and at this point, pretty much the dumbest thing the GOP could possibly do would be to try to attack Harris personally. It would appeal to the base, but they don’t need to appeal to the base, since the base is voting Trump no matter what. They need to appeal to the moderates and independents, and I don’t see any way personal attacks are going to do that. If they try it from a moral or legalistic stance, Harris clearly has the high ground, and will mop the floor with them. And if they try to do it in a personal level, it’s guaranteed that somebody, and likely the wannabe dictator himself, will say something overtly racist and/or sexist, and that will pretty much immediately hand Harris the victory right there.

This is the key, and it really is just that simple.

Their hateful and ignorant ideals simply don’t have enough support to win with any significant voter turnout.

They therefore have exactly two options - to modify their positions to appeal to more people, or to hold to their positions and try to manipulate and corrupt the system so that they can win in spite of the fact that a clear majority rightly find them to be noxious. And they’ve blatantly chosen the latter.

You’re arguing with a figment of your imagination.

If you have any interest in actually discussing/debating with me rather than the caricature in your mind, let me know.