I'm actually really confused by this claim, as a person raised in a non-white immigrant household. I bought onto the idea of churches as community because my immigrant churches were full of apple picking, group meals in the church itself, thanksgivings at the pastor's house, etc. But someone recently told me in Catholic mass you don't even get a church-wide breakfast?? WTF? How the hell does community get formed if the actual worshipping actions isn't inherently a community building action? Someone told me the guy can bless you if you don't eat the bread, but you can't even ask for a specific blessing, like "my son needs an A, can I get the whole church to pray for him" style stuff.
I'm way more skeptical of the notion of church as a community now. If all the church community is via volunteer charity actions, just volunteer directly unaffiliated with a religion.
I don't know, let me know if this is slippery sloping or something, but I don't see why the issue is the state has too much power. You will always have a disenfranchised political minority unable to force the majority to follow whatever political position they want. There's conservatives in my city who feel disenfranchised about crime; does the city have too much power, then? What if I feel disenfranchised about no one believing me in an Among Us game?
> For example I've recently seen news about parts of eastern Oregon wanting to secede and join Idaho, and the primary reason for that is that you have a minority (rural eastern Oregonians) who are permanently disenfranchised with effectively zero agency over the laws and regulations that rule over them, as a result of them being a minority in Oregon.
Isn't this also the case of blue cities in red states? I believe e.g. there's a big hullabaloo in Virginia at the moment where the bluer school district close to DC is resisting anti-transgender top-down demands from the state. If we want to argue about rural people being disenfranchised, by number, way more people in cities are disenfranchised simply because cities are more populated.
This doesn't really address the concerns of the above-- that people will not make new games in Unity. Unlike IBM, which could arguably sell to large corps subpar product, Unity's consumer base are flighty and don't have upper managers that can be bribed with nice dinners.
I think a crucial thing in tabletop is not that it's objectively better/easier. Tabletop is also primarily a social activity. So network effects really matter. Getting a friend into tabletop is often D&D; you can write stuff for them and let them pick up on their own pace while they try out wacky fun stuff like be 2 feet tall and roll intimidate vs a dragon.
I don't doubt there are other, easier, more fun tabletop systems. But a system your friends are playing vs a system you'll have to make new friends in is a comparatively massive bar to entry.
It makes sense to me because the article says that they used fingers and clay to make the drawings. The Chauvet cave is regarded as fairly unique in that outlines were scratched out and the cave wall itself was cleared out before starting the artwork.
It's curious to me, that you're concerned she's extrapolated her experience to some set of men in Antarctica, and you've extrapolated her behavior to a crack in all of polite society in turn.
I mean, this is also obviously an anecdote. In her experience, she worked with mediocre men. I think we're all intelligent enough to recognize that she's obviously talking from her experience.
I think it's difficult to dissociate this from the "how much can a banana cost?" style harmful ignorance. It makes sense to me that a woman who feels like she experienced sexism at the workplace from men have a poor opinion of the men there. Should she not say as such to make an appearance of neutrality, when she didn't experience a neutral or egalitarian environment?
Oh okay, I thought this was a station that was hiring internationally or something like that. I guess I'd be curious then if the station was significantly whiter than the science population of the US. Again, this is trying to observe this in a good faith as a reasonable thing to say/do. I'm assuming this is a reasonably competent person, and I can definitely see in modern day it might be something worth commenting as noticeable to be in the company of almost exclusively white people.
I mean, let's view this charitably. It makes total sense for a woman, who feels like she received misogynistic comments from men at her workplace, to have a poor opinion of the men there. I also don't know if it's really good faith to dismiss a woman saying something was misogynistic as subjective. Of course being a bigot is kind of subjective-- the bigot just thinks their prejudice is normal/true. I wouldn't trust any of the male scientists to say "no of course misogynistic comments didn't happen"; they're guys and, speaking as a guy, it's a blindspot for most men when they make women uncomfortable.
I also charitably don't think there's anything wrong with being suspicious of a very obvious lacking in racial diversity. Globally, white people are a minority of people, and they're likely not the overwhelming majority of all scientists even. So it would obviously be a statistical anomaly if only white people were on a specific research trip. [edited to add: a commenter below clairified this particular station is operated by the US, which is majority white, and scientists even moreso. I was assuming stations are operated with international cooperation :) ]
In America, several protestors and advocates have been mysteriously disappeared by the justice system as well. Of course, we know what happened with the Black Panther Party but similar tactics are still happening in current day.
It's super weird to me to claim CFS is caused by psychological issues. Imagine all the people who were whining about COVID shutdowns and isolating for 14 days or whatever, with people frothing at the mouth about how depressing and how stunted their children are for not going to school. Okay, wow, looks like CFS forces you to do all that isolating/missing school/etc, maybe that causes mental illness the way it caused that for the broader population...
It's the difference between a woman with a worm in her head experiencing depression and brain fog (because, y'know, a parasitic worm was in her head) and claiming her depression had caused a parastic worm to appear in her head
I dunno, the most people I know with psychological distress over catching covid are people who would be greatest at risk of long covid. People with a history of weak hearts or lungs, athsmatics, people who have existing post-viral infection type diseases, people who are too poor to afford to take off work...
There's a massive difference from saying "yeah, this thing has keyword search already, we just didn't turn it on yet" during a software from giving a diabetic saline while claiming it's insulin. Holmes did the latter. People actually expended additional bloodwork and treatment due to the false testing.
NGL I'm shocked you never asked a wheelchair user about their experiences using a wheelchair. I'm quite surprised because, like, I have plenty of disabled friends and honest conversations on how to accommodate them are quite normal in my circles, especially when covid first started and even now as some friends are more vulnerable to covid than others. How do you accommodate your disabled friends if you never talk to them about what accommodations they need?
edited to add: I'm genuinely asking and have continued to behave in good faith. I have no idea what makes you think I'm not. You seem to be repeatedly misunderstanding my position which is weird: I'm shocked you have 1) interacted with disabled people in your life; 2) apparently never ask about their experiences or accommodations! I don't think that's at all in a "most people" camp.
I think it's actually more complicated, because a lot of the construction, etc. is caused by demand from the western countries. Also, western countries consume proportionately more flights, cars, electronics... pretty much all the actual major industry-sized consumption is disproportionately consumed by the west, even if a portion of individual westerners (certainly not all) are eco-conscious, no-waste, plastic-free vegans.
I'm not in Australian and I know Australia has a fairly unique ecosystem and this necessitates different laws than other countries. Similarly weird laws exist in every country. For example in my area it's specifically illegal not to provide heating of a specific quality to tenants, because we have a season called "winter" where temperatures drop enough to be deadly.
I don't buy that romantic companionship is disproportionately available to women, because evidently fake romance for women is in huge demand already. I don't understand why this particular kind of fake relationship is almost exclusively geared towards men, when Twilight & 50 Shades Of Grey were fake romance for women that made millions of dollars.
I'm not asking why most engineers are men. I'm asking why your engineering program is 95% men. And if your argument is that, well, all hot women aren't engineers so almost no women are engineers, I'm going to raise eyebrows.
But the whole relationship scenario exactly what you'd want an AI partner for, is my bafflement. If I want porn I have plenty of free stuff on PornHub et al. There's no reason to get an intelligent anything, artificial or not, if I actually just want generated fap material. It's obviously selling companionship as well as porn, which is definitely more what I see in erotica, which I already know is fairly formuliac as it is-- basically like porn. So I'm asking: why is it so skewed, because there's clearly a mix of both appeals here. If it was a40/60 or a 70/30 skew, okay because ads are primarily visual attractors. But this makes it sound more like 90/10 or 95/5, which makes no sense to me, I know that fake relationships with hot men is one of the few ways you can make a good income as a self published author.
So like... only a portion of women. How is this any different from men? Again, this doesn't at all explain why this is so heavily heterosexual male skewed. It's not like a significant portion of women are hot 20somethings-- if anything, the proportion is skewed older compared to men simply because women live longer. I bet grandma would spend hella social security to be doted on by a hot shirtless lawyer.
I'm asking why the demand is not as high for male AI partners, when other media which also simulates male romantic partnership has HUGE demand. Just look at how much erotica makes. How many weird fetish stories are posted on fanfiction sites where the reader is a character. How much money stupid things like Boyfriend Dungeon (a real thing! a dungeon crawler where you date your exclusively-male weapons!) makes! You'd think AI boyfriends fit way closer to this existing market.
I don't really understand-- maybe because I've never been a woman on a dating app, but wdym by this? Are there fake men profiles on dating apps or something, and no similar women profiles? The only thing I know about women experiences in dating apps is when my female friends complain about receiving creepy messages through them.
Well that's what I'm interested in, because obviously women actively consume primarily written media where you actively engage with a perfect (or "fixable") man-- romance books! Dating sim games! This seems way more suitable than AI girlfriend primarily porn, for which she doesn't need to be Intelligent to any real degree in comparison.
Your argument seems to be somewhat contradictory. You claim simultaneously that women can easily get the similar level of escapism attention from real men, but also Romance (an escapist fantasy that doesn't involve any real men, protection, resources/money, or status/social dominance) is a huge industry. How are both of these things true?
> Content and apps geared towards women, or gay men, are such a small piece of the pie by comparison that there's less incentive to look the other way.
Sorry, we're talking about Instagram, an app we know puts huge targets on women, especially young women! I have no idea what you're talking about here about nicheness. Fashion products alone are worth way more than the entire porn industry. Not including beauty, skincare, cosmetic surgery, wellness/cleansing, etc...
I don't think so, actually. Dealing with real men (through a dating app) means dealing with flawed humans beings in a way that simply doesn't happen in a romance book, same as dealing with real women vs OnlyFans. Men sleep, disagree, forget anniversaries and birthdays, negotiate compromises, and can fall out of love in a way an AI boyfriend wouldn't. Just like real women vs AI girlfriend. So I just don't know why only AI girlfriend ads are flooding social media apps, which we know (at least on Instagram) actually primarily target women/women's body issues.
Edited to add: not to mention a/s/l and dick pics! AI boyfriend would NEVER do that, while in a dating app your average woman would probably get that fairly regularly.