Bro took 25 in agility and leg joint durability.

This is my favorite of Critical Role’s campaigns and the first episode of their animated show, based on the campaign, suggests it’s going to be much more serious and less comedic than The Legend of Vox Machina. It’s amazing. I heartily encourage people to watch it!

Abstract

Intelligence is correlated with a range of left-wing and liberal political beliefs. This may suggest intelligence directly alters our political views. Alternatively, the association may be confounded or mediated by socioeconomic and environmental factors. We studied the effect of intelligence within a sample of over 300 biological and adoptive families, using both measured IQ and polygenic scores for cognitive performance and educational attainment. We found both IQ and polygenic scores significantly predicted all six of our political scales. Polygenic scores predicted social liberalism and lower authoritarianism, within-families. Intelligence was able to significantly predict social liberalism and lower authoritarianism, within families, even after controlling for socioeconomic variables. Our findings may provide the strongest causal inference to date of intelligence directly affecting political beliefs.

I fled Reddit due to the authoritarian mod craziness, but Lemmy.world seems infested with too much Communist craziness. I'm leftist, but communism is idiocy. Is there an instance that leans more democratic socialist but refrains from going off the deep end?

I’m sure MAGA approves of where its tax dollars are going.

And what is the evidence for it being a Chinese spying platform? Is it owned by a Chinese company? Is there any hard evidence? Why is it so controversial?

Please, tell me again why we need the president to have the power to pardon as a check on our judicial system….

There's a version without the menu tiles too! https://nickbers.artstation.com/projects/xYXQ6Y

I'm a big fan of this guy's work. His previous films include The Witch, The Lighthouse, and The Northman.

If you skip the introduction and don't watch the Q&A afterwards, the presentation is just under an hour. A very good watch, IMO. Interested in what people think.

Four Republican backbencher candidates who failed to qualify for the first 2024 GOP presidential debate this week slammed the Republican National Committee over its rules, with multiple contenders calling them “rigged.”

Easily my favorite quote from Mallory Archer.

I just stumbled upon this video and it brought back a lot of childhood memories. The creator's channel features a bunch of other HD remakes of old games too.

Posting this because I think it's an interesting examination of the overlap (or lack thereof) between atheists and general skeptics. It's worth remembering that the term 'atheism' only means a rejection of theistic beliefs; non-theistic beliefs that are nonetheless irrational and unsupported by evidence are not relevant to the term. And yet one can easily see why there is an overlap between these two communities and why many atheists scoff at other atheists who profess belief in things like astrology, ghosts, reincarnation, etc.

I'm definitely one of those who doesn't believe in anything supernatural, but I've certainly met atheists who do. It's worth remembering the two groups aren't synonymous.

This is a series of videos I watched years ago in which an ex-Christian explains in detail his journey away from his faith. What I like about this series is that it illustrates how the deconversion process is gradual rather than revelatory and involves a ton of back-and-forth self-questioning, tribulation, anxiety, and even depression. It is not an easy process--something we would all do well to remember while we're posting about how irrational theistic beliefs are.