Lurker > ElatedVenusaur

Caroline Rose - Jeannie Becomes A Mom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bx8QdYj0Pg

Such a banger.

Faye Webster - Johnny (Reprise)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mtv-kLmOxUs

Johnny is the 5th song on Atlanta Millionaires' Club, and this comes in at 10th. It opens with that instantly familiar motif, feels more like a poem than a song, and is all the more beautiful for being unexpected.

Faye Webster - Johnny
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXHtxctBwEM

I think this song really encapsulates her wittiness. In addition to being really heartfelt.

bjrk : sorrowful soil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMjlqSH3czw

Where Ancestress is Bjrk's account of her mother's passing, Sorrowful Soil is the eulogy.

That's 9 goddamned voices, by the way. The lady's insane.

NOVA ONE - if you were mine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWEOw9GdIf4

Not gonna lie, I love this enby and their "what if I did drag karaoke, but professionally" bit.

your girl - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbLVTZWRou8

When the girl you're dating sends you something like this, you know you're in a serious romantic relationship.

Kim Petras - If Jesus Was A Rockstar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjncAGqFgJ0

Zheana Erose - Windowpain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oECgKLblBU0

Freezepop - Step Into The Sunshine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ55iUCaaF4

More Christmas for Halloween! This video is brand-spanking new!

Freezepop - Babes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91R32Zig8uk

Christmas is still hot. And they're getting a lot of mileage out of her friend's old camcorder.

KainWind posted...

Link has gotten bosses into lava before to be fair

This is true, and for some reason Bowser can't resist the urge to fight his enemies near convenient pools of lava, bottomless pits, or free-floating aerial mines.

Bowser...may not be smart.

VampireCoyote posted...

Ganon has no protective shell, hes toast

It's this. Don't underestimate Mario. Or underestimate Bowser. Bowser is insanely durable and notably not weak to silver.

andel posted...

yes, the only hope they had was to decapitate the leadership early on which was impossible for a couple of reasons. some of the russians in occupied territory at the beginning of barbarossa could have potentially been sympathetic to the germans and switched sides had the germans not been intent on going full genocide on all slavic people. many of the people in the western soviet union hated the soviet leadership but weren't offered any alternative to stand and fight when they realized the germans were committing wholesale genocide. also hitlers fascination with stalingrad was dumb and he isolated entire armies that were trying to capture oil fields the germans desperately needed.

hitler taking personal command while being an awful military commander doomed the nazis even further but realistically germany never had a chance due to the way they chose the fight the war and the fact america was supplying the soviets with huge amounts of armaments and supplies.

Yeah, the first paragraph is an often overlooked aspect of the Nazi invasion: there was, initially, a lot of good will towards Nazi Germany, especially in areas that had suffered terribly due to Stalin's policies, such as Ukraine, but the Nazis couldn't help but, well....be Nazis and genocide their sympathizers at least as hard as Stalin had. A more sensible force would have harnessed anti-Soviet sentiment in Ukraine and the Baltic to supplement the Wehrmacht (or at least secure vital supply lines), but, well, again...fascists simply aren't capable of being sensible in most instances.

Listened to Fossora this morning with a cup of tea and some incense burning, and my first impression is that it's her best album in a while. Not that Bjork has ever released a bad album, just that Fossora feels really bold and inventive in its breadth and depth of sound and feeling.
Or maybe I just really fucking dig Bjork.

Chunky posted...

had stalin not been in office, whoever was might have surrendered (like most people did) because the odds of winning were unlikely. those who did surrender saw the writing on the wall, but stalin threw everything he possibly could, no matter how much it would cripple the country.

Yeah no, Stalin was an active detriment to the Soviet war effort and it was only after Zhukov went off on him and Stalin started butting out of military affairs more that the war turned decisively in their favor. Zhukov paid dearly for that post-war, of course.

But even so, the Nazis were also poorly-directed and switched objectives with the seasons, failing even to finish off so horribly stricken a city (and so vital a strategic objective) as Leningrad. Only a much more focused strategy and a much more thoroughly prepared force would have had any chance of success, but fascists are definitionally bad at all of those things. Nazi Germany never had much of shot at beating Soviet Russia, and it was mostly a product of Stalins (baseless) stubborn belief that Hitler would honor Molotov-Ribbentrop and the utter mess he made of the Red Army that the Nazis had any shot at all.

Im a woman dating a woman. Is it gay, or is she just being nice?

I actually had a really painful disagreement with my girlfriend about a month and a half ago: I had asserted that existing in the closet is incredibly painful and traumatic (especially for a trans person) and she got really reactive and negative and minimized that experience. I was so hurt I took some space from the relationship. She apologized the next day, but kind of seemed like she didn't really get it.

I did eventually resolve to forgive her, and we wound up having a long conversation about it in which she walked me through what she had been thinking and she had been coming from while emphasizing that she had been wrong and demonstrating she had educated herself.

And I bring it up not only because I can't help but talk about her constantly, but because I have never received a more thorough and thoughtful apology in my life. She could have easily dug in and further damaged or even killed our relationship, but instead she took responsibility for herself and wound up strengthening our relationship instead.

Okay, enough of that. I really think our reluctance to acknowledge fault - to acknowledge that we were wrong - is very much rooted in selfishness. It's rooted in an unwillingness to acknowledge that another had a better view or understanding of a given situation and/or topic, and it prevents us from learning and growing from our mistakes.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_n5TOgqQXowDRzPX5WcihjS15lftagtQy8
It's out!

AP3Brain posted...

The fuck you say? It's about all those things INCLUDING wages. General wages have been stagnant for decades despite record high production and profits.

Real wages have actually declined.

This is all because our economy has continued to grow, it's just more and more of the proceeds of that growth rest in the pockets of fewer and fewer people. It's the natural consequence of ever-widening economic inequality. Unless decisive steps are taken - and quickly - the standard of living for most Americans will continue to decline. I'm talking not only a drastic increase in the minimum wage, but also in taxes on the wealthy. And universal healthcare and decisive steps to control out-of-control price inflation in sectors like housing and education. Throw in anti-climate change effort and you have an agenda whose breadth hasn't been seen since LBJ's Great Society, but more likely since FDR's New Deal.

Eh, why not? I'm going to bump this for no reason. Some observations:

-My Courtney Barnett look-alike classmate seemed excited that I chose to sit next to her, which was just about the most wholesome thing. We talked for a few minutes before class: she likes walking outdoors, which is good to know. I must confess I find her extremely attractive...Duh. CB is a fox but she also seems like a chill human.
Also I was jealous of how nice her flats looked, so I ended up buying a pair for myself. I think I'm starting to appreciate the value of a varied footwear repetoire.

-A coworker, after listening to me tell her about me and my girlfriend and the fact that we've begun to speak of us being together in the far future (she's poly. Maybe I am too?) point-blank asked me if I was prepared to be a parent to my girlfriend's daughter....and, you know what? I like my GF's daughter, she's a good kid! I don't know that you can ever be ready for something like that, but I'm committed to this.

-Gas stations and convenience stores have the best junk food. Takis, Combos, Vanilla Coke.

I filled my tank at $3.26/gallon. Not bad!

Norman_Smiley posted...

No its not. Most religions spread peacefully then their get crazy people killing non-believers centuries later. Christianity spread in the old world peacefully (new world wasn't peaceful, but it was already a big religion before then). Buddhism never really had conquest as its spread technique. I can't find good info on Hinduism but it sounds like it was spread peacefully. Shintoism, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism weren't spread by force.

There was force involved in evicting Buddhism from India, and persecution of religious minorities was common in most places throughout history worldwide. Sassanid Persia, for example, considered Christians to be a kind of Roman fifth column and persecuted them mercilessly, for example, while playing to Judaic dreams of a return to the relatively light hand of Achaemenid rule after centuries of more direct and brutal rule by the Greeks and Romans. The latter, in turn, fueled Christian suspicions and persecution of Jews as definitionally Persophiles (this is all very funny from a modern view, what with Israel and Iran being bitter rivals.)

Tom_Joad posted...

WTF is this???

The Romans did not exist as an empire at the time of Mohammed.

There was the Byzantine Empire, it's successor.

Yes, the Eastern Roman Empire, which very much considered itself to be the Roman Empire. The book I read (War of the Three Gods, which covered both the final Romano-Sassanid War as well as the Arabic invasions of both empires) referred to them as Eastern Romans.

That final war was launched by Shahanshah Khosrau II, in response to a weak emperor and internal discord in the Eastern Roman Empire. In mere years, the Persians overran the Levant (the Jews opened the gates of Jerusalem to them too), Egypt, and Anatolia, but were prevented from crossing the Bosporus by the Roman navy. It was only after Emperor Heraclius led a daring campaign into the heart of the Persian Empire, overtaking its capital Ctesiphon, that the Persians were forced to accept the status quo ante. However, the war lasted 26 years, and Khosrau II was murdered for his failures, leaving the Eastern Roman Empire exhausted and the Sassanid Empire weak and unstable. The latter was quickly overrun, while Heraclius wisely abandoned the Levant and set up defenses along the passes through the Tarsos Mountains. His Governor of Egypt was a moron and blew a strong defensive position, however.

Warmaximus posted...

So, reading the court document further, the lawsuit these 6 states have brought is seeking to stop the entire rollout of student loan relief that's set to start early next month using all of this FFEL stuff as a basis for their argument.

This is most likely the Biden admin's (crappy) way to trying to negate that. Probably some argument like "Well we're not letting them get rid of FFEL loans, so your whole lawsuit has no ground to stand on." Still sucks though.

Pre-emptive surrender on putative ideological goals is the New Democrat way.

Bjrk - Fossora

Oh yeah! She's already released three tracks from it: Atopos, Ovule, and Ancestress and they're all unique and gorgeous. She's also been making her trademark weird posts on social media talking about them and the artists who helped her make them.

One of the best posters here.

Its also worth mentioning not all strains of Islam are iconoclastic. The tradition is old and may have partially been a reaction to Roman Orthodox Christianity, which was big on icons of saints being a prominent part of ceremonies (a tradition that survives in Orthodox Christianity in modern times). But many schools of Islam are fine with depictions of the Prophets. The Mughals were especially fond of depicting scenes from the lives of the Prophets, for example.

However, the Ottoman Empire tended to promote conservative schools that emphasized obedience to state authority and, of course, Wahhabism is infamously conservative (and utter shit) and the Saudis very actively promote it throughout the Muslim world, to the grief of all.

Norman_Smiley posted...

Islam was predominantly spread by conquest. So why did Muslims believe? Fear of being killed if they didnt convert, super high taxes as well for non-converters.

They didnt convert Jews or Christians by the sword, and the jizya was assessed in lieu of military service. Hell, it took centuries for Zoroastrianism to fade away! IIRC, the logic was that Muslims need not worry about dying, whereas the Koran kind of seems waffly on what happens to dhimmi. So only Muslims were supposed to be employed in Islamic armies.

In fact, the Jews opened the gates of Jerusalem to the Arabs, mostly because they hated the Romans, and the Muslims did typically treat Jews better than the Christians did.

Also Hindus probably became dhimmi primarily because Muslim sultans realized they could get rich off of taxing them. The jizya likely discouraged state efforts to convert people, but it did motivate non-Muslims to convert on their own to get out of paying it.

Bjork is releasing a new album very sooner, and all three tracks she's released so far have been incredible.
Not just that she's making music, but that she's still making such impressively creative and beautiful music in her mid-50s.

ForTheGlory posted...

This is an interesting take.

Especially since he was preaching about peace and charity, there was no reason to believe that he was intending to harm anyone.

I thought the whole deal was that he was exiled from Mecca for "preaching falsehood" and and he and his followers went to Medina and eventually returned with an army and took Mecca. Mohammad himself died before the Caliphate even spanned all of Arabia, IIRC. It was successors who invaded the Eastern Roman and Sassanid Empires (which had conveniently recently spent a few decades fighting a fruitless war with each other, meaning they were both severely weakened).

Interestingly, the Ka'aba already existed in pre-Islamic times: Mohammad simply repurposed it.

The origins of Islam are fascinating, because both Judaism and Christianity were well-represented in the Arabian peninsula and there was an Arabic kingdom called Himyar which made Judaism its state religion and began persecuting Christians, so Ethiopia invaded them, defeated them, and installed a Christian as king. Lots of shit was going on down there. In a sense, Islam is an Arabified synthesis of the two other Abrahamic faiths which incorporates traditional Arabic folklore with the mythoses of Judaism and Christianity.

Well, yeah, this design sucks. This is lazier than Plusle and Minun!

DrizztLink posted...

It's still a good thing to keep in mind.

It happens a fair bit to people in the trans community, a hyperfocus from outsiders on transitioning, specifically in surgical interventions.

Like it's the trans person's duty to reveal all their medical information because it's unusual, or the gatekeeping "you aren't really trans unless you go under the knife" stuff.

Yeah, let me put all my cards on the table: any and all trans people are valid, whether they are transitioning or not, no matter whether or not they (want to) take hormones or get this or that surgery.

The inverse of that position is known as "trans medicalism" - basically it holds that only trans people who transition via hormones and want to/have gotten surgeries such as breast enlargement/mastectomy, vaginoplasty/phalloplasty and facial feminization surgery are valid. This was a commonly-held belief both within the community and within the medical establishment years ago, but has since largely fallen by the wayside in favor of more patient-directed care.

There was quite a kerfuffle in the community when trans model and actress Hunter Schafer (best known for her role as Jules in Euphoria, one of my absolute favorite shows, by the way) liked and commented "!!!!!" on a post that, amongst other things, blamed non-binary people for Florida's ban on youth transition care by claiming them failing to seek transition care legitimized Florida's arguments against covering it (this is a very obvious falsehood).
Even Kim Petras weighed in (decisively against trans medicalism, for the record), and, of course, this is probably the first most of you have heard of the entire controversy.

https://twitter.com/RealLyndaCarter/status/1470833288780685313
Be like Wonder Woman, she owns.

Crimsoness posted...

How many times have you fallen for your straight friends?

I don't do that anymore, but some of the straight chicks I crushed on seemed confused to learn I was attracted to them when I was still presenting as a man. A few told me they weren't surprised to learn I was trans when I came out: I (apparently) had pretty noticeably feminine energy even deep in the closet.

DoDontTry posted...

Why are you one of the only reasonable progressives on this board? Why is it lonely being represented by people that want to rip your neck open and having to deal with fighting against chuds?

I can't be bothered to waste my time arguing on an internet forum, is all. I have better things to do in life, like organize a study group with my classmates so we can all do better in class and become social workers who will help disassemble white cisheteropatriarchy.

TULPAMANCER posted...

Thank you for the edification, and I apologize if my ignorance of the subject matter offended you, or if my question was worded coldly.

It's a bit forward to ask a stranger their future surgical plans. Just FYI.

Doesn't appear the electrician is coming today, so no cooktop until ???. It really sucks, because this has been really expensive for me at a time when I'm trying to go to school and can't work quite as much...

Just got done with my homework: I didn't actually have that much! So that's good. I've also ID'd potential Masters of Social Work programs to apply to: 3 primary options and 4 secondary options. Now to ID potential letters of recommendation and actually get the ball rolling on applying, LOL.

SergeantGander posted...

Since gender is a spectrum, how does one determine if they are trans? Where is the line between a person that was assigned male at birth being feminine vs being trans?

Would you say that is something that is simply up to the individual to decide for themselves?

Obviously. Nobody knows you better than yourself. There are no hard lines to any of this.
If we can't know ourselves and can't make our own decisions about our bodies, then we, definitionally, are not free.

Umbreon posted...

How do you flirt with women? In general.

A nice, casual way to do it is to comment positively on aspects of her outfit or makeup. I've done this with my Courtney Barnett look-alike classmate, and she's commented on my outfits and also my hair. Focus especially on things she did herself: hairstyle, makeup, clothes, noticeable muscle tone, etc. Of course, this runs the risk of not clearly communicating intent, but if you get reciprocity from her you've at least gotten somewhere.

You can be a bit spicier once you know some one's interested. It's also easier if you're a woman, of course, because women intrinsically trust other women (and that very much includes trans women).

But I wouldn't say I'm very good at flirting. I'm literally in my first ever serious relationship.
ZevLoveDOOM posted...

what are your hopes and dreams?

This is a big one. I hope my girlfriend's decrepit little body continues to heal and that some day I can actually make her dinner. I hope some day I no longer live in terror of getting her sick. I hope some day I'm free of debt and live in a country where my rights aren't grist for political debate. I dream of helping my community heal from its countless traumas and help it come together, and of society at-large healing and becoming kinder and more empathetic. I dream of being a published writer some day. I dream of having a cooktop again (later today, hopefully), I dream of traveling the world, sampling countless foreign cuisines, laughing it up with the gorgeous goofball I love all the way.

Morning doesn't seem like a great time for these things, so let me tell a little story.

I got super into Life Is Strange. I love that game. But it wasn't until after I had been out I realized why: you play as a girl, and you can get into a lesbian relationship that is pretty well-realized, and let me tell you, that resonated with me way better than any other video game romance ever did. Bae before Bay bitches, no regrets!

But, fun fact: my sexuality did shift a little. There's not really any hard evidence for this being a thing, to my knowledge, but lots of trans women who start progesterone report on the phenomenon. I've been listening to Courtney Barnett since before I started HRT, but it wasn't until I had been on progesterone for 5 months that I happened be watching a video of her performing, and I was like, "Oh my God, she's so fucking hot", and then, "Wait...was she always this hot? I was never attracted to her before..."
This is actually a lot less dramatic than some of them, who report going from being turned off by men to really, really liking men.
My girlfriend affirmed that Courtney Barnett is "smoking hot" LOL.

DarkRoast posted...

The problem with Putin, and Trump, and Bolnosaro, and everyone else in this "populist right wing" movement is that they fail at literally everything they do (if they even attempt to do it) but they have a deeply connected misinformation network that spreads enough misinformation that they (somewhat ironically) wind up making their opposition seem just as untrustworthy, even though they're not the ones spreading it.

Well, part of the problem is that their opposition generally doesn't do much to undercut their rhetoric. You can choose to try and prop up a system that every one can sense is falling apart, or you can choose to acknowledge it's fundamentally broken and blame it all on minorities and the woke left.

FigureOfSpeech posted...
I'll snip this, because it's long, but congratulations! It can take quite some time to figure out what's up with your gender (take it from me) but it's so rewarding to embrace and live your truth, especially when you start coming out to people and they affirm you. It's up to you to figure out what being non-binary means to you. I'm friends with four enbies and each of them is unique.

Anyways, good morning CE. Just going to be chilling at home today, doing my readings for class.

TULPAMANCER posted...

Have you gone under the knife for sex reassignment surgery? And if not, do you plan to?

This is a spicy question and a little invasive, and to answer it I would like to point out the results of a quick Googling, it costs about $25,600, on average, without insurance. Insurance is quite reluctant to cover it, because it's expensive and also because it makes no fiduciary sense for your insurance to actually pay for anything ever, so actually getting them to do so sounds like pulling teeth. Also, just to get it, there are generally requirements insofar needing to live as your gender for at least a year and getting letters from psychologists that certify that A) You're sane and B) You're actually trans and should receive this surgery.

B is especially problematic, because most psychologists don't work with trans people, and have very limited ideas of what being trans means. So, if you're non-binary and want bottom surgery, it behooves you to just lie about your gender expression, because many psychologists will just not write you the letter if you don't present as binary (not a problem in my case). Luckily, when I went looking for letters for laser hair removal, my clinic handed me a list of reputable Psych Ds to talk to.

If you manage to be able to afford it and get your ducks in a row, recovery is slow. However...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8099405/
The regret rate for these surgeries, according to this particular study from last year, regardless of which direction you're going in, is ~1%. No credible study has found a regret rate higher than the low single digits, to my knowledge.

Lastly, it's typically referred to as "Gender Confirmation Surgery", "Gender Affirmation Surgery", or colloquially as "bottom surgery". That's a really outdated term that you're using.

Anyway, I'm going to bed. Sleep is vital for growth breast and thigh growth, in my case. I would make a delicious roast.

FarmFox posted...

Play any instruments?

I don't have any musical ability whatsoever. I do try voice training on and off, and I've definitely drastically changed my inflection and adjusted my pitch some, but struggle with resonance, which is what actually makes a voice read as male or female "male" and 'female" voices actually have significant overlap in normal pitch and adjusting resonance actually mostly fixes your pitch anyway, so....yeah. Pitch isn't very important.

Naysaspace posted...

Do the Leafs have a shot at winning the cup this year? And if so, why?

I know nothing about hockey and even I know (via cultural osmosis) that they don't have snowball's chance in Hell because they're the Toronto fucking Maple Leafs.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

I was too slow for to catch it, but I edited in Sadoko and The Thousand Paper Cranes as well. I believe both that and Maniac McGee were 6th-grade for me too. The latter is a real tear-jerker.

Of course, I don't think I read a single book with so much as a gay character, let alone a trans one.
DrPrimemaster posted...

Did your attraction to women ever impede/hinder/delay or otherwise affect your journey towards accepting yourself as a trans woman?

Have you seen the contrapoints video talking about her experience with being a trans lesbian? What are your thoughts if you have seen it.

Yes, actually! You see, I kind of sort have known I was trans since I was very little (even though I didn't understand, of course), but society conditions us to believe that is bad the '90s was rich with shitty depictions of trans women and the few trans women I stumbled across in media (basically an article about Calpurnia Adams and then Kim Petras) happened to be straight(or at least straight-presenting), so it offered me a handy rationalization: I like girls, so I'm definitely a dude!

But that couldn't hold up once I started getting to know actual lesbians, because they just made, like...all of the sense! Also I crushed on like three of them even though I didn't have a chance with them at the time. I just vibed with them so well, you know?

AldousIsDead posted...

Did you get assigned Things Fall Apart?

If I did, I don't remember it.