The majority of porn is created for straight men. North American men, where the majority of the commercial porn industry operates, are socialised to think that finding another man attractive = gay, and gay = emasculating/bad (I don't agree, that's just the messaging). So the fact that porn only shows a man's genitals serves 2 purposes: it helps maintain the "no homo" mentality, while also allowing the viewer to insert themselves into the scene. That's now their big, veiny penis and huge cum shot. It has nothing to do with the attractiveness of men (though the statement "men are ugly" is a part of the larger problem in how our societies are socialised around gender)

Beauty is a series of social expectations. By Eurocentric standards, in the 1800s a beautiful woman was fat. In the 2000s she was athletic, today, she is gaunt with a distinct lack of fat in her face. Nothing we see in photographs is "natural" beauty. Even this one - that woman is working. Her job is dependant on selling a sexual narrative to her customers. What you see isn't so much "herself" as a product she has assembled with makeup and clothing in order to do her job. You are fantasising about the opportunity to be the fantasy she is selling. Not to actually be her. We don't know what her real life is like.

The last sentence in my reply was "we don't know what her real life is like" you're parroting that back at me, but trying to speculate on what her life is like at the same time. We don't know. We can't know.

If you really want to know what it's like to be a woman, maybe ask a few to go for coffee and actually listen to what they have to say. They're not these mystical creatures you are making them out to be. If you are transfemme, or a CD, that's great. And it's still not OK to find your own gender by compounding the stereotypes.

Absolutely. Though I personally feel that if we're choosing to perpetuate the stereotype by adopting it, we need to take the time to educate ourselves on what power that stereotype has, not to mention unpacking why we're attracted to it: are we healing, or reopening a wound?

Opting in to a stereotype means we can opt out, and that also means we may not be fully burdened by the harm that stereotype can do. Depending on the stereotype, we can inadvertently distress or reproduce harmful scenarios for people who do not have the option to opt out.

I'm not responsible for where other people's toes are on a dance floor. I am responsible for whether I'm wearing sneakers or boots, and adjusting my step if I see toes where I'm about to dance.

(Edited to fix punctuation)

I've been learning CAD for printing. I really want to use FreeCAD, but every time I try to do anything, I sink 2 hours into reading wiki's and watching videos. When I apply what I've learned, I end up with a cube (sometimes a cylinder!) and a wall of errors. Then I hop into tinkerCAD/fusion360 and create what I need in 15 minutes.

I'm looking forward to the day that FreeCAD is intuitive enough for me to hop in and do what I need in 15 mins without feeling like I'm manually programming a lunar landing. It's not there yet, but I'm happy to see the update.

I appreciate your covert strategy to get people to play with your butt.

Friendly reminder that Home Hardware is also a Canadian owned hardware & building supply chain. Not as prevalent as the American Home Depot, Rona/Lowes choices, but they take care of their employees, and your money doesn't go into some MAGA Republican's coffers.

Bringing your voter information card with a driver's license or any other Canadian Gov't issued card with photo, name and address is like having a FastPass for voting.

Genuinely curious: Stoat's Community Guidelines list the legal jurisdiction for their Service Operator as the United Kingdom (sorry for the awkward sentence structure) I know that any online platform that provides "risky" content to the UK has to perform age checks, but I'm curious if the privacy impact increases when the service is hosted in the UK? Eg, would they be required to conduct age checks for all users, rather than just UK users?

Obtainium is a decent way to make using sites like apkPure, uptodown, etc. a little easier to handle.

I found the response humorous. I'd imagine if she felt this was actually important to address (rather than some idiot spouting BS) there would be a post from the Signal account, rather than her personal profile, and it would look very different.

There are other sports that penalise the offending fans' team for fan misbehaviour, delays to game, etc. Lacrosse, and soccer, do at least. It's an effective way to get fans to settle down when their actions cost their team possession, a penalty shot, etc. So maybe don't remove the team, but I don't see why they can't do something similar.

Agreed; it's not worth the rhetoric and actions. And while there's definitely merit in assessing trans athletes to try and keep things as fair as possible (though they never stopped Phelps from competing, so "fair" is kind of a joke), it's far more complex than a simple "there was testosterone so they have an advantage!"

For the "nonathletic" groups - think community-level sport - based on what data is available, there is effectively no statistical difference between cis and trans women's physical performance after 2+ years on hormone therapy.

When it comes to elite athletes, trans women outperformed cis women in Fat-free mass index, Absolute hand grip strength, and Absolute Vo2Max, but under-performed in Relative VO2Max to mass, Ratio of expiratory volume to vital lung capacity, and Absolute countermovement jump (lower body power). The lower Relative VO2Max, and Expiratory volume can lead to disadvantages in terms of speed, recovery and endurance.

While hand grip strength is considered an indicator of overall muscle strength, to quote the first article linked:

The correlations between hand grip strength and individual sports are reviewed comprehensively in Cronin et al. Though maximum hand grip strength has a strong relationship with maximum upper or body strength in some movement patterns such as in powerlifting strength, there are weaker relationships with other movement patterns. There is evidence that hand grip strength is a poor correlate of knee flexion or extension strength and is far more reliable as a marker of physical function if used together with lower limb strength. Hand grip strength is more relevant for some physical performance activities such as rotational movements that transfer force and torque to the hand (ie, ball throwing), but shows poor correlation to movement patterns that require technical ability, physical capacity, aerobic fitness or tactical ability (ie, tennis stroke placement or cricket fielding performance)

It will require a lot more information before any athletics group would be able to make a truly informed decision, and it's going to have to be sport by sport. Elite athletes are all outliers in their genetic makeup (Phelps, The average height of a WNBA player, etc). We know athletes have different hormone levels depending on the sport they play, but it's chicken vs. egg on whether the hormones or elite performance came first. So trying to decide what is an acceptable advantage re: "pro athlete genetics", vs. an unacceptable advantage re: "transgender genetics" is little more than opinions and politics at this point.

/info dump

The first KCD faced criticism for having exclusively white characters in it, and Vávra saying that was historically accurate (spoiler: people from Africa and Asia were in the Roman Empire at that time; generally as merchants or slaves). Vávra supported gamergate, and has always been vocally "anti woke".

There was a surge in purchases of KCD2 when Vávra claimed Dragon Age Veilguard failed solely because of involving "gender politics" in the game, which gives you a pretty good idea of a large portion of the gamerbase for the KCD games.

You've made a good choice in not supporting this dipshit.

Joke's on you. My password is Abcd1234!

The 2022 AB general election was 52.63% UCP, 44.05% NDP. The only reason they have a majority is the dumpster fire that is first past the post.

AB's about on par with ON, and it's 5% off from the difference between BC's two parties in their last election.

And in fact there are people taking steps to force a leadership change. I dont know why you don't know about it. Maybe you don't speak with anyone actually in Alberta, and just go off what you read in our right-owned media?

Personally, I'd rather have an effective politician, rather than an exciting one.

Either way, you apparently missed the AB NDPs electing Naheed Nenshi as their new leader. I'm not his biggest fan, but he's likely to be more "exciting" for you.

OK, sure. Is part of this governmental treatment path going to address the systemic drivers behind a large portion of substance abuse? Things like poverty, inaccessible mental health supports, insufficient resources to remove oneself from abuse, the BS support for disabilities and chronic pain, lack of support in finding incarcerated/people with records meaningful employment, etc.etc?

If not, it's just going to be a waste of money that doesn't help anyone.

Random factoid: Way back in the early PlayStation days, the O button was the default "accept/enter" buton, and the X was the "cancel/back" button, because that aligned with the national consensus of O = correct/confirm, and X = incorrect/cancel in Japan. But when the console was introduced in North America and Europe, they started remapping the X and O to align with other western consoles using X, like the Xbox. That said, I distinctly remember early PS1 games being a sort of wild west of which button would be confirm, so I suspect it was also done in response to western gamers struggling to adapt.

There is pearl clutching every time an article about an NCR determination is shared here, and it shows how much the average person doesn't know about our legal system. So here's an overview of Not Criminally Responsible:

The 6 months mentioned in this article was the time taken to assess them, ensure they're fit to stand trial, and the trial itself. It's not a standard time, these cases usually take forever.

Assuming the person is found fit to stand trial, the judge will remand them to the forensic psychiatry department where they will be assessed 24/7 by a team of senior psychiatric professionals. No one working here is fresh out of school; they all have years of experience, and have expertise in symptoms and treatments of mental health issues. They can dell the difference between a personality disorder and psychosis, and because there is always a team of professionals around, they figure out if someone is trying to fake an illness pretty damn quickly.

The unit staff are tasked with many things, including stabilising the individual prior to their court appointment whenever possible. More central to the main NCR conversation is them determining whether the person was aware of their actions, and the consequences of their actions at the time they committed the crime. If they were aware of both or either, they are not considered NCR. Once the assessment is complete, the lead psychiatrist will be summoned to court to present their findings and expert testimony. With that information, the judge will determine whether the individual is NCR or not.

Assuming they are found NCR, they are then under the purview of a board which consists of 5 people: the chair; who has a legal background (judge/lawyer), a medical doctor, a psychiatrist, a layperson, and one other individual who can be a second of any of the other 4 roles.

The board determines the requirements to keep the community safe, as well as what is needed to keep the individual healthy. This means the board decides where this person can live, who they must live with (someone responsible for them), where they can go, who they can see, what they can do, what they may purchase (if relevant to their charge), what they may own, what medications and treatments they must undergo, how often they must be in contact with forensic psychiatry supports, their lawyer, and the board. None of that is optional, and if they fail to comply, either by choice or illness, the police will bring them back to remand.

Unlike a guilty charge, there is no end date for being NCR. This will be this person's life for the foreseeable future, until the board determines that they have been mentally stable, compliant, and self-managing for a long enough time as to no longer be considered a risk. For anyone who has experience with the illnesses/conditions that tend to contribute to these situations (psychosis, dementia, certain types of brain damage, etc.), they can attest that these illnesses do not -do- stability. This means most people who are NCR have their lives controlled by a board for a very, very long time. Much longer than the jail term would have been, had they not been found NCR.

This isn't the "get out of jail free" card media has portrayed it to be. And if you made it to the bottom of this essay, congrats: you now know a crap tonne more about how our legal system works than the average Canadian.

Why not both? Mits for everyone!