It seems like a lot of people are just not reading the article or the context of the quote:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2023/07/27/the-witcher-casting-director-says-yennefer-casting-was-to-challenge-beauty-standards-which-is-completely-insane/

Now, this is not Holland saying that Chalotra is ugly, or that they cast someone ugly to play the role of the most beautiful woman in the world. … Rather, Holland is saying that she is challenging the “standard of beauty” by casting a woman with slightly darker skin.

I do understand that traditional Western fantasy is predominantly white, but I disagree fundamentally with the notion that the “standard of beauty” for most people is being white. I don’t think anyone in the entire world outside of a tiny, tiny sliver of absolute racist scumbags would look at Anya Chalotra and think anything other than “This woman is jaw-droppingly gorgeous.” Casting Chalotra may challenge our perceptions of fantasy as white (a complicated discussion on its own) but it does nothing to challenge any standard of beauty.

Emphasis is mine.

You didn’t fact-check how many trans people there are in the U.S.¹

It looks to be between 0.5% and 1.6% of the total U.S. population (2 - 6 in 400).

References:

• https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Trans-Pop-Update-Jun-2022.pdf
• https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/06/07/about-5-of-young-adults-in-the-u-s-say-their-gender-is-different-from-their-sex-assigned-at-birth/

Semi-related, the number of intersex people (in the literature they talk about people with “disorders of sexual development”) have also been estimated to be around 1% of the population (4 in 400), source:

https://www.nature.com/articles/518288a

¹ yes, the U.S. isn’t mentioned in the OP, but your sources are looking at U.S. demographics and so I will continue with the U.S.-centrism already present.

Some Thoughts (oh boy):

There is a weird logic to pointing out how few trans people there are actually are in the OP. Even if there were many more trans people, (like if there really were 1 in 5 trans people as is commonly mis-perceived), would that make the GOP’s campaign of fear-mongering and animus any more justified? I don’t think this is what Shon (@gayblackvet) was going for, but it almost seems like a consequence of how the message was written.

Maybe I’m wrong here, but does it seem like way it is written implies that the problem is not that the trans panic is unjustified in its fear of trans people, but that it is merely blown out of proportion? Maybe the angle was that even if we assume trans people are a problem, it’s still so few people it’s not worth all this panic and legislation (there are >500 anti-trans bills in the U.S. right now, over 40 of them have already passed).

Rhetorically this perspective-taking might be effective in appealing to mildly transphobic centrists or moderate conservatives who are not entirely comfortable with trans people but who might not want to be perceived as transphobic and don’t want to be associated with the rabid and vocal transphobia of the GOP.

That wedge between a more moderate closeted transphobe and a more openly transphobic right-wing one is politically useful, so I am not necessarily complaining, but there is a concern here about whether tackling transphobia is really the goal here, and if so how we should best go about that.

Agreeing with everyone else, Potentilla indica seems likely. The fruits taste watery, not desirable but not toxic.

If you want to gain weight it helps to incorporate high-calorie foods that don’t stimulate the over-full feeling, so something high in sugar like soda or ice cream. Obviously eating enough of that can cause metabolic disorders, but over time eating these kinds of foods will be fattening, though it can take a bit of time as your basal metabolism will increase and burn up the extra calories at first. Just be moderate I guess, obviously these are unhealthy tips, lol.

I have the opposite problem though, I struggle with losing weight and not over-eating (even when I’m eating really healthy foods). Fasting has helped me lose weight, personally.

It’s probably not a healthy tip, but I think there were some studies that showed being overweight led to more breast growth. It sorta makes sense, the breasts are a place where excess fat is stored. That said, being overweight creates lots of other health risks, so it’s probably not good to target that as much as fat cycling where you shed and put on weight might be part of a strategy of transitioning.

Have you talked to your doctor about it?

Just reading briefly, it’s normal to have low prolactin levels (less than 25 ng/mL) for women who aren’t pregnant. If you were trying to prepare to breastfeed and your levels remained low that might be something to talk to your doctor about. However, I wouldn’t worry about it for normal breast growth.

The things you should focus on to promote good breath growth are things that keep you in good health generally, like

• eating a healthy and diverse diet (e.g. incorporate more salads with vegetables and nuts, choose less refined sources of carbs like whole wheat instead of white bread, etc.),
• staying hydrated (keep water by you all day and drink it regularly),
• avoiding drug use (especially tobacco and alcohol),
• keeping good sleep hygiene (helpful PDF),
• regularly exercising (both aerobic and strength training, aim for 1 - 2 hours of intense aerobic activity per week),
• reducing stress (including worrying about your prolactin levels, lol; meditation can help with stress reduction & helping to identify and redirect unhelpful thoughts; recommended reading: Judson Brewer’s Unwinding Anxiety, and for a meditation manual, The Mind Illuminated by John Yates).

they debunked the myth that caffeine causes pancreatic cancer:

https://www.nature.com/articles/bjc2015235

EDIT: Caffeine might make you more likely to have issues with your heart, and isn’t good for your blood pressure.

exactly; there will always be piracy as long as piracy is needed, a post-piracy world is a utopia, even in the worst dystopia people find ways to “pirate”

A direct example of the kind of harm Republican policies can cause.

It is Texas after all.

In 2017 Cory Bernardi, an Australian conservative politician, accidentally ended up in a photoshoot organized by the Labor party to promote voting yes to the question “Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?” in the same-sex marriage postal survey.

The survey had a turnout of 79.5% and the results were:

• yes: 61.6%
• no: 38.4%

As a result of the survey parliament was able to vote and legalize same-sex marriage. The survey results happened in November 2017 and same-sex marriage was legalized in December 2017.

See:

Bernardi accidentally walked through the marriage equality photo of Western Australia Labor politicians wearing rainbow “It’s Time” shirts in Parliament House on Monday night.

Bernardi is firmly against legalising same-sex marriage and is campaigning for the “no” camp in the same-sex marriage postal survey.

Source: BuzzFeed News

If you would like to traumatize yourself more, here’s a video about another dangerous water slide:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulIcekOTOqg

yeah, obvs the daughter

nice, thank you!

Nice, any thoughts about fertilizing fava beans in particular? I have heard that nitrogen fertilizers cause poor yields for legumes. Maybe it’s poor yields either way at this point, so I might as well try 😅

Harvested some asparagus and solomon’s seal shoots the other day, they were delicious. Dogwoods are leafing out and some early iris blooms are opening. Most daffodils have lost their petals. My fava beans don’t look so great, I think I planted them in too much woodchip mulch. They have flowers, though. I was debating fertilizing them with urine - any thoughts? I generally avoid fertilizing legumes, but the thick woodchip mulch might be an exception?

It certainly does benefit the right to some extent, but I wouldn’t ignore the strategy that the right uses of exploiting Christians, and that’s where contraception and abortion come in as issues (stemming from theological convictions).

Those words can mean those things, but communism is also used to describe a political system. After all, part of the definition of communism is statelessness which is entirely about the politics and not the economics (source).

Also, just as democracy might be used to describe a political system, it commonly taken to mean liberal democracy, and thus in most contemporary contexts implies an economic system of capitalism.

So I just think it depends on the context what people mean by these terms. Of course you can try to define communism only in economic terms, but since the term is so abused and “inflated” it’s hard to claim it has any singular or absolute meaning.

Depending on who you are talking to, communism has practically opposite meanings, for example, in public schools in the U.S. they teach that communism is when all economic activity is controlled by a centralized state, which is ironically the exact opposite of how Marx defined communism.

The same can be said of democracy.

So, back in 2001 the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) managed to get weapons inspectors into Iraq which pissed off the U.S. because it undermined their justification of the invasion.

In response John Bolton told the head of the OPCW:

You have 24 hours to leave the organization, and if you don’t comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to retaliate against you. … We know where your kids live. You have two sons in New York.

Here’s an article about it.

ah, I see what you mean - it’s an important distinction, and one that I think some existentialists looked at (not necessarily in terms of slavery, per se, but certainly in terms of freedom). Ultimately we can’t avoid constraints and in that sense there is always coercion from the environment. However, there is a big difference between those inescapable constraints and the immoral and unjustified hierarchies a tiny minority of humans have successfully imposed on the rest, and pointing that out is definitely worthwhile.

Thanks for the clarification!