domain:alexepstein.substack.com
gattsuru
13m ago
... the language is "I want to flirt with your dad" and "I did your dad," both of which are like 5th-grade starter-pack level in the scale of "fucked your mom" jokes.
That, uh, says as much about what I'm willing to link (and what can be posted on youtube/twitch/yada) as much as it does about behaviors in certain social circles. I'll admit I haven't seen double-fisting specifically brought to offer, but neither does it stop at teabagging jokes.
While we're in this media sphere, another thing I've been genuinely curious about: what's the standard level of sexual violence theming in gay porn (of the sort actually made for gay men)?
I think aoiislove overstates the extent it shows up in all gay male sexuality, but it's definitely present, and pretty common. It's a little hard to calculate exactly, because there's a lot of stuff that's sexual violence to women and also has gay men lining up (sometimes literally) to receive. (and conversely, a few things that are more appalling to gay guys.)
Like, does popular gay porn do "dumb twink rammed until he CAN'T WALK STRAIGHT" or "Ten portly bears PUNISH this bratty man's BLEEDING ASSHOLE while he begs" style videos at the same rate as straight porn
Can't walk straight, definitely, along with a lot of similar stuff ('guts rearranged' is popular right now, 'wrecks hole' been along since before I knew I was bi, sometimes just 'dominates' or even just outright 'bullies'). Ten portly bears definitely, and while it's a little hard as a direct comparison because there's a lot of gay guys for whom that sounds like a great start to a Friday night, there's enough where it's not supposed to be attractive or appealing directly that is pretty comparable. Bleeding is a bit unusual: there's commercial restrictions for mainstream credit card sites that are more intended for actual knives-and-beatings BDSM edgeplay, but mainstream merchants still avoid it. The closest common gay male porn term would probably be some variant of 'gape'.
and are there similar levels of theming about men getting choked and hit,
Yeah. Not my thing, but slapping, choking (with hands or dick), hitting, spitting, markings, comically oversized sex toys, (usually fake) 'insufficient lube', that sort of rough sex has enough of a following you have to put some effort on mainstream sites to avoid it.
... getting stuck in tight places and begging for help, having guys cum on their face and chest...
These ones are hard to compare directly. The latter in particular is extremely common ('painting', straight-up bukkake), but it's... probably not something most people think about as sexual violence?
I'll point to Braeburned's Room 609 (llama guy puts himself in a hole in a door, gets eiffel tower'd by his roommate and whoever his roommate taps on an app to take the other side) comic as an example of the problem: it's easy to frame what's effectively a gay-male-variant of the 'free use' fantasy that in its het form is very much built around ignoring women's consent and physical integrity... but Braeburned and quite a large portion of the fans of the series are preferentially bottoms, and even in his other comics that have a guy getting a surprise train run on them (eg Gay For Play, where the main character gets roped into a football team prank that ends up... where you'd expect) can credibly make it seem consenting because it's pretty clear the author would love it. That's a furry example, but there are non-furry and conventional-porn ones, just harder to track down names and personalities involved.
That's not to say clearly eroticized sexual violence using these themes is unusual -- I'll point to NakedSav's "Marked Prey" as one that's very much presented from an mdom rather than msub perspective, and the msub side is about as degrading as the author's willing to go. It definitely shows up as a thing in certain types of gay-for-pay or masc4masc genre 'normal' porn. But it may not be useful as a metric, compared to other traits in the work.
Stuck in tight places is kinda a goofy 'plot', even by porn plot standards, and thus pretty rare, but it definitely shows up, including the begging (or at least pretense of it for a couple seconds). There's a mostly-gay-specific thing about (ruiadri just posted a great one today!) about making a sub paint themselves, but I dunno what the comparable het thing would be outside of pegging/pretty heavy femdom.
TIRM
20m ago
I listened to Pod Save America after the election and they were saying this election shows us that we need to get money out of politics. I immediately thought they were talking nonsense since they are the side that spends the most by far. These are smart, informed, experienced Democratic operatives mindlessly parroting "money in politics" talking points when the exact opposite is clearly true.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
22m ago
Hype can certainly help. Without some positive attention even the best product will sit on the shelf. On the other hand most people will be smart enough to notice when the sales pitch is overselling the actual product.
Kamala had a lot of negatives that were pretty obvious. She’s annoying and has a nervous laugh that’s obnoxious. She can’t give interviews, and when she does, her obvious non-answers are barely comprehensible. She cannot generate enthusiasm for her own ideas. Her rallies needed concerts just to get people to show up. At the end of the day, all the marketing in the world can’t make New Coke taste good.
sciuru
26m ago
I mean is it? Quantitative Realism doesn't exactly seem self evident.
Isn't Computational Complexity Theory supposed to tackle questions of this kind?
Scott Aaronson offered the following highly evocative metaphor:
The best definition of complexity theory I can think of is that it’s quantitative theology: the mathematical study of hypothetical superintelligent beings such as gods. Its concerns include:
- If a God or gods existed, how could they reveal themselves to mortals? (IP=PSPACE, or MIP=NEXP in the polytheistic case.)
- Which gods are mightier than which other gods? (PNP vs. PP, SZK vs. QMA, BQPNP vs. NPBQP, etc. etc.)
- Could a munificent God choose to bestow His omniscience on a mortal? (EXP vs. P/poly.)
- Can oracles be trusted? (Can oracles be trusted?)
And of course:
- Could mortals ever become godlike themselves? (P vs. NP, BQP vs. NP.)
Although I doubt such general questions and theories are that helpful in guiding our research: they provide boundaries for what is possible, but what is practical typically lies far away from those boundaries.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
30m ago
I think pure data is a directionally useful way of looking at the world, and useful for most problem-solving purposes. I am a theist so I think there’s more beyond just physical reality, but whether or not it’s true, I think that for most projects, reducing the universe to data is going to work just fine. Consciousness is produced in the brain, and definitely experienced there, so I think you can get something like a conscious AI simply by recreating a brain. Might be easier to start with a dog or something like that, but I think even though there’s a metaphysical aspect to consciousness, that doesn’t mean that there’s no point to studying it in brains.
Corvos
32m ago
I heard that Muslims consider Jesus a genuine prophet and messenger, just not the Son of God. (Whereas Jews believe he was a maniac). So Christians are directionally correct, they just need to learn how important Mohammed is.
edmund-nelson
Filthy Anime Memester
40m ago
You can easily imagine such forecasts
for example imagine this forecast
Trump wins every swing state but nothing else (30%) Trump wins Every swing state plus some extra (5%) trump wins split of swing states and wins election (15%)
Harris wins every swing state (25%) Harris wins split decision of swing states (20%) harris wins swing states + some extra (5%) (where swing is GA, NC, Mi, Wi, Penn, NV, AZ)
basically this forecast would be 50/50 and forecasts correlated polling error being a very strong effect.
sulla
51m ago
it has failed to live up the hype otherwise, like life extension, replacing workers, or treating disease, imho.
Tesla is all-in on reinforcement learning for their next generation of Optimus robots, but they only spun that team up this summer. When I heard this news the stock price was at like 180 and I bought some calls for 230/250/270 for next June. After some movement I pushed these up to 300. Yet this still looks way too pessimistic. I think some exposure to $500c by the end of next year might be warranted.
TequilaMockingbird
58m ago
If you believe that you've received this message in error, please contact your system administrator at t0.yahweh.root.
FeepingCreature
59m ago
I mean, that kind of sounds like you're saying it's provably not a 1:1 simulation of a human brain.
What you're describing is measurable evidence of new physics. Every physicist in the world would want to buy you a beer.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1hr ago
He hasn't been confirmed as gay, but screencaps of his gay porn browsing habits were accidentally released to the public and there are a lot of weird stories - I'm not going to explicitly detail the "Nick Fuentes: Cum Detective" story here for obvious reasons, but I give it a >90% chance that the guy who hates women, looks at shirtless images of athletic boys etc is gay.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1hr ago
This is explicitly the case - if you watch the video he put out about he goes on to say "I'm your republican congressman", a direct quote from those advertisements.
sulla
1hr ago
How do I know? I know because I know that my reasoning was solid and strongly supported by the available data.
How do you know that I know? You don’t. But I’m not really here to convince you. I’m here to make fun of Nate Silver for predicting nothing yet declaring victory.
TequilaMockingbird
1hr ago
I'm fascinated by these young women -- where are they? Why aren't we hearing more from them?
I touched upon this earlier, but annecdotally, the mothers of young children, and women in stable relationships hoping to become mothers broke overwhelmingly for Trump, and again annecdotally a good part of that break seems to have come from the perception that the Democrats are the party of queer Tumblr bullshit.
The Trump add about Kamala being "the candidate of they and them not you" that was running in my neck of the woods for about a month prior to the election appears to have struck a cord.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
1hr ago
It's winning by losing. among the biggest recipients of those trump tax cuts will be wealthy liberal elites and woke businesses anyway.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
1hr ago
This is better than lizzo, beyonce,
I don't think mr. beast is a democrat through and would refuse
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
1hr ago
but who? it becomes evident, when you look at it, the dems have such poor choices. They put all their eggs in the Hillary/Biden baskets . The GOP can always find populist Trump wannabes of the same sort of mold.
JarJarJedi
1hr ago
Is this the same Nate Silver, the mighty predictor? Or somebody impersonating him? https://x.com/RyanGirdusky/status/1855215191102750879/photo/1
More seriously, though, I just can't understand any meaningful way in which you can accurately predict Trump winning 312 electoral votes and then accurately predict his chances of winning the electoral college is a coin toss. These don't seem to be compatible in any sensible way. Maybe you can invent some statistical trick to make it sound good but on the plain common sense meaning it just makes zero sense.
Here
1hr ago
NYC is ending their voucher program, although it's not clear that Trump has anything to do with it. https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4980386-new-york-city-ending-migrant-debit-card-program/
Previously, illegal migrants were given ~$1k a month ($350 a weeks) for groceries via prepaid debit cards while they were staying in hotels. It started in part because the free food vendor previously used by the city wasn't cutting it, so it was viewed as more cost efficient to switch to the cards.
sulla
1hr ago
They try but fundamentally, IMO, it’s a good idea to separate data collection and model building.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
1hr ago
lol lizzo . even the marketplace agrees she is overrated
Sloot
1hr ago
Indeed, when in mixed company, men tend to refrain from raunchy or edgy jokes, risqué locker room-adjacent topics, or offering a glimpse of their actual opinion on a potentially controversial issue, just as one might around children or the Thought Police.
In addition, on a more subtle basis, men tend to code-switch from male-only company to when one or more woman is present, catering to women’s sensibilities. A lot of times this is subconscious; men might not even realize they’re doing it.
Around women, the average man deploys softer, more euphemistic language than he would use when in the company of just other men, lest he commit the mortal sin of offending a woman or hurting her feelings. For example, “fucking” or “banging” often becomes “hooking up with” or “sleeping with.” If in just the company of other men, one of my male friends unironically used the phrase “sleeping with” as a euphemism for sex, I’d be concerned that he recently suffered a concussion, is growing a brain tumor, is developing ultra-early dementia, or got body-snatched by an alien.
TequilaMockingbird
1hr ago
Control thread not found.
Where do you think she'll land? Unlike Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama she doesn't have her own political machine. So there's not really much to be gained for anyone to ingratiate themselves to her.
And speaking engagements will be thin. No one wants to hear from a loser, especially a midwit who is by all accounts a deeply unpleasant individual.
Clearly, she'll land somewhere. But the fall is going to be steep.
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