When we’re talking about the form of a character that we can see, then I feel like the most relevant sense of “body type” is one that includes the whole picture of both the underlying bone structure/musculature, and how fat is distributed on the body.

Linking things back to the original image, I personally find it absurd that even the body type described as “full figured” still has a thigh gap. Even people who are slender rarely have a thigh gap, so this depiction is ridiculous. I would interpret “full figured” as describing someone who is on the larger side of the healthy range (or is a bit overweight) but is not obese, so this image is silly even without getting into discussions about whether obesity constitutes a body type (though I would argue it does, for the purpose of a drawing guide that is showing the difference between how different body types are drawn. A better drawing guide might even have included references for characters who are overweight and/or obese — after all, obese people are people who exist in the world, and thus I would expect them to appear in fiction also.

For better or for worse, her name and her connection to RFK junior gives her a platform. She is leveraging this, in combination with her terminal cancer diagnosis, to criticise someone who is actively undermining public health. I think that’s a pretty admirable thing to do, and as long as there are assholes like RFK jr fucking things up, criticism of them is important, whatever the source.

Aha, this worked for me. Thank you. I legitimately have a disproportionate amount of appreciation for you and the person a couple comments above you who also posted a diagram — although theirs didn’t help me, I am glad that I was able to find people who had attempted to make diagrams (else I would’ve felt compelled to try make one myself, because it’d drive me mad otherwise)

This was a really useful trick, thank you.

It sort of worked for me. As I was turning my phone, I was able to see it in the alternative mode, but as soon as my phone reached the 180 degree position, it was like something clicked into place and I saw the cube in the same way I originally did. The clicking reminded me of when you see textures load in on a video game — it feels really trippy.

Even if a benevolent dictator was able to somehow be both effective and ethical (doubtful if that’s even possible for the reasons you describe, but let’s pretend it is possible for the moment), things inevitably fall to shit after that dictator dies.

We need only look to the Roman Empire to see how that plays out. Augustus Caesar was far from what I’d call ethical, but he was pretty effective. However, the empire suffered a heckton of instability whenever the emperor was an asshole and/or a nutter. This is most apparent in how Emperor Nero being overthrown in 68AD led to the Year of the Four Emperors

TL;DR: even if a benevolent dictator were possible, it’s still not a sustainable model for running society due to it being a tremendously brittle system that has a single point of failure (the dictator).

It helps that Mamdani is hella charismatic too. I remember being astounded by this when I first saw him talking about his policies in a campaign video (I had read a lot about him, and already was rooting for him, but not seen him speak up before then).

I’d ask you what in this gives you the impression that it’s an AI answer, but I don’t see there as being any point because the comment you’re replying to is patently obviously writing that themselves — you’re just not willing to meaningfully engage in a conversation.

I would really encourage you to go back and reread the comment you replied to, because I think that person wrote something that was quite thoughtful and insightful. If you disagree with their points, then that’s your prerogative, but maybe that could lead to some productive discussion.

I get why your instinct was to disregard the comment — there’s so much AI slop around nowadays clamouring for our attention that it’s easy to become guarded against the potential of wasting our time reading something that no-one even bothered to write. It’s an inevitable (and unfortunately often necessary) defense mechanism in our current information ecosystem. In this case though, I am confident that this is a false positive, and that the comment you’re replying to isn’t AI. I’m writing this because I would find it a shame if someone spent the time to write a thoughtful reply to you and you didn’t spend the time to actually try to hear what they’re saying.

You’ve eloquently captured why I, a random chick who is on the other side of the world, is super excited by Mamdani’s win. It might not end up amounting to much, but there’s real cause for hope.

In my country (the UK), Labour (the largest party by far) keep pandering to the right in a manner that is just yielding more of the discursive battleground to the right wing bigotry of the Reform party, and it drives me mad to see them shoot themselves in the foot like this. It reminds me of how in the 2010 election, Labour presented themselves as pro-austerity, but not as severely as the Tories. By accepting the Tories’ premise that austerity was good and necessary for reducing the deficit (and that eliminating the deficit was necessary for the UK’s economic wellness), Labour simultaneously disappointed people who wanted an alternative to austerity, and weren’t appealing to people who were pro austerity (why vote for Tory-lite, when you can just vote Tory instead?). Now they’re doing the same with immigration rhetoric instead of investing in our systems. Most people aren’t actually pissed off at immigrants, but at the fact that it’s increasingly difficult for normal people to afford basic living costs. The best antidote to fascism are policies that speak to the way that people are suffering.

Mamdani’s campaign (and his subsequent victory) showed that he understands this, and it could set a precedent for places far beyond the US. I’m tentatively hopeful.

I’m pretty open about the fact that I have autism, and there have been a few times when I have used the strategy in these tweets, but adding the invocation of my autism.

When I ask them to explain why it’s funny, they will often try to deflect the conversation at first, because they’re uncomfortable at being challenged. I can then double down on asking them to explain the joke, being all apologetic and saying that jokes often go over my head because I’m autistic. That makes it much harder to deflect, especially because I’m super good at appearing earnest when I’m asking this, so it manoeuvres the joke-teller into a no-win situation, where they either explain the joke, and look like an asshole, or they don’t explain it, and they still look like an asshole.

Then when they do eventually explain it, I am good at making my face fall in disappointment, before saying “oh, that’s not a very funny joke”. It gives me a great deal of satisfaction because there are many people who believe that autistic people are incapable of lying or acting, when in fact, being autistic means I’ve spent my entire life learning how to put on a performance for the outer world.

Tbf, I’d rather appear dumb than a condescending asshole. Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely times when condescension is an effective approach to challenging assholes in conversation, but if the person using condescension was the same person who made an offensive joke, then I feel like that would just be digging themselves deeper.

Like, if someone is open about being slow to understanding stuff, and says something like “yes, I often do ask people to explain things when I don’t understand them. It usually doesn’t pose a problem”, then that negates a bunch of the power of the condescension

That’s a cool way of thinking about it.

It reminds me of a discussion I had with a friend the other day. I was trying to ascertain whether other people experience mild, easily dismissable intrusive thoughts, as I do. It feels weird to call them intrusive thoughts if they’re easily dismissed — I feel like that phrase better describes thoughts that stick around and cause distress due to not going away. What I experience is fairly frequent thoughts that are like “imagine if you did [awful thing]”, and then I mentally reply “yes, that would indeed be awful, which is why I have no interest in doing that”, and then I’m fine.

I like your framing of it as self check diagnostics. I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, but that feels like an accurate description of what goes on internally for me.

Not all memory foams are equal. I’ve found that quality makes a huge difference. Unfortunately, the good stuff can get pretty pricey. It sounds like you’re talking about memory foam insoles, and I know that a lot of those tend to be the rubbish kind

That’s so funny. I feel ridiculous enough owning one (the reason I own it was because I went to a weird university where fancy white-tie events were common and most students probably went to at least one of those in their time there. )

“Any attempt to quantitative measure intelligence is pro eugenics.”

Oh definitely, I’m with you on that, 100%. Regardless, it’s not productive to just accuse people of being eugenicists when it’s infinitely more likely that they weren’t aware of how problematic it is to frame intelligence in the way they did.

I’m firmly of the belief that far more important than any seemingly innate intelligence is the support and opportunities for learning that we have access to. It sounds like this is in line with what you think also. That in mind, I hope you can see why your initial comment wasn’t helpful towards anyone learning.

IQ is borne out of an ideology in which there is a class of special people, who should do all the thinking, and everyone else, who should just be mindless drones. Rejecting that ideology means reckoning with the fact that our thinking and reasoning capacities depend massively on our circumstances — and our ability to grow is limited by not knowing what we don’t know. For me, recognising that we’re all equal in all the ways that count means that I feel a duty to facilitate people having access to opportunities to learn and grow. I’m not saying that you should feel obligated to explain complex topics to people who you don’t know will even be receptive, but I am saying that the least you could do is avoid lowering the quality of the discourse.

I initially took the time to reply to you because although your comment was hostile and unnecessary, I have enough background knowledge on the topic to guess that you’re someone who is well-informed and principled. Indeed, it sounds like your views here are quite similar to my own. You could’ve written a comment that might’ve usefully challenged the person you replied to, and it’s a shame we didn’t get to see that.

I really like this framing. Personally, my health and general wellbeing is poor enough that I don’t end up at many protests (or do much useful, activism wise), but my rage at the injustice of everything is one of the things that keeps me alive on my lowest days. It sucks to be someone whose very existence is politicised, but at the very least, it means that merely existing is an act of rebellion against the system.

In light of this, my news consumption strategy is effectively a battle between the green guilt and the blue despair, except my goal is to balance the two so that neither of them get so large that they crowd out the red.

That’s overly harsh and a not very good faith comment to make. I agree that mentions of IQ is often a red flag due to its association with the eugenics movement, and even if we try to extricate it from that, it’s not even a particularly effective measure of intelligence. However, the regrettable fact is that IQ has become so embedded within pop culture that it’s not reasonable to assume a random commenter is a eugenicist for referencing it.

If you wanted to highlight these pernicious aspects of IQ, and how using it in common parlance like this perpetuates eugenicist ideas (even if we don’t mean to), then I’d be jazzed to see that kind of perspective. Alas, your comment as it is now isn’t really adding to the conversation.

Yeah, I think you’re right. Trump is a dumbass in almost all respects, but he is pretty good at reading and playing to a crowd.

If anyone, like me, is curious about what BIFF means, it stands for “brief, informative, friendly, firm”

It tends to mean something akin to “you don’t even need to transition to be a woman, because your masculinity is already so corrupted that you effectively already are one”.

This logic isn’t in contradiction with their transphobia, but in fact synergises with it. Trans men are seen as having no right to intrude upon the privileged position of masculinity, and trans women are seen as even more horrifying due to the fact that they willingly eschew their masculinity — something that’s incomprehensible to someone whose personal identity is 90% whatever hegemonic masculinity tells them to be.

A friend remarked to me once that one of the reasons she found transition liberating was because she had been bullied all her life for being too effeminate, so coming out as trans felt like shouting “you can’t fire me, I quit!”

These images don’t show the impossibly adorable little shoes, so let me fix that