On a completely unrelated note I stumbled onto Taylor Swift's "All Too Well" the other day and I'm obsessed.

— ADAM (@AdamSilvera) July 10, 2019

I hear you. That and “Sarah” by Kate Miller-Heidke are the best-written songs of the past decade, easily. I almost wish Swift had never composed “All Too Well” because of how shoddy it makes other songs look by comparison.

What’s particularly notable about the song is how she was able to universalize the feelings she’s discussing while not making the references cliché enough to by cloying or on the other hand too specific to be meaningful to anyone — now that is genius and is absurdly difficult to do. What’s even more amazing about the work is that not only is Swift citing specific incidents that sound like they really happened to her (Did they really? Who cares.) while also calling out archetypal memories and cultural touchstones — Jesus Christ, when I think about it I am in awe of her achievement.

Do people not realize when you see a PR photo or movie with some actor looking really buff, those shots are generally taken under these conditions (even assuming they’re not photoshopped):

• They are generally very dehydrated. An easy way to improve muscle definition is to not drink enough water the day or two before and to do things to intentionally dehydrate yourself.
• They have generally just worked out. This fills the muscles with blood and makes them look much larger and more defined.
• They probably fasted the week before. See above for the results.
• They are in favorable lighting. This matters a lot — far, far more than most people realize who’ve never photographed models.
• They are flexing. Flexing makes your muscles look much larger and is easy to do without it being obvious.

This is what I was reacting to, by the way. Here, Momoa is doing none of those things, so he looks fairly normal from a muscularity perspective:

Jason Mamoa is getting body shamed on the internet today for this picture of him on vacation bc he’s “fat now” and has a “dad bod”… and I’m officially never taking my shirt off ever again as long as I live. Not even in the shower. pic.twitter.com/pXABzgH0Yt

— Dusty Smith 🥤 (@cultofdusty1) July 10, 2019

I am muscular enough now that I could look pretty shredded if I did all the things above, but doing so is inimical to actually continuing to gain muscle, which is what I care about.

Wondering why men have increasing issues with body image? See that moronic Twitter thread for why.

When I say that modern liberals believe people should only meet by inhuman algorithmic match, I know a lot of you think that’s absurd. But they really do believe that:

BUT HOW are you supposed to meet girls? Sign on to a website where women have consented to contact with people who want to ask them out. Or join a meetup. Get a hobby. Leave random women in public alone; you're not supposed to meet them; they're not there to be met.

— Annalee (@LeeFlower) July 9, 2019

Sounds like a great world to me. Ok, not. Control sexuality and you control the world. I think libs understand this just fine but don’t want to believe they understand it, because that would be ceding too much power to biology — so this is their way to assert control over biology while pretending to have other, more noble interests at heart. This self-deception is necessary to preserve self-image and for proper assortative mating to be enforced, which is also something liberals pretend to not care about but do even more so than conservatives.

American Airlines Forces Doctor to Wrap Herself in Blanket Because They Thought Her Romper Was Inappropriate.

What’s weird is that all these outfits that airlines seem intent on being offended over seem really tame to me. I mean, I know we’re as prudish as we’ve been since the tail end of the 1950s, but it really does seem some people would prefer burqas and such for women.

I don’t think the transhumanists and singularitians are wrong, exactly. Mainly their timescale is. They believe their envisioned post-human reverie will arrive in a generation or two while I think it’ll be 5,000 to possibly even a million years hence.

Assuming humans survive that long at all, which right now I’d put at about 10%.

So in a way, I don’t believe in that future at all, because I doubt we’ll survive in any form.

But if we do survive, then I think it’s nearly-inevitable that we’ll change ourselves in now nigh-unimaginable ways, gain better control of matter and space, and expand out into the galaxy. Doesn’t violate the laws of physics and is within the realm of human understanding, so it’ll probably happen just as a random walk across complexity space.

Was reading this article about alerting domestic abuse survivors if their abuser attempts to buy a gun.

The gun in the article pictured is a CO2 pellet gun, not a firearm as such. Definitionally, firearms are weapons that produce their propulsive force chemically, not mechanically, thus this would be a type of air gun. Air guns would not be covered by such a method of background checking and alerting, so that weapon is not a good illustration for the piece, really.

I had a similar CO2 pistol as a kid that an uncle gave me, but I almost never used it because I couldn’t afford the CO2 cartridges for it.

Believe it is this one used in the article illustration.