Consept

Sorry for the pain youve experienced my friend

Im not saying they attempt to pass themselves off as biologically female (some might but its probably a minority), but the statement of saying trans-women are women would need some more nuance around it (as you are attempting to add) as people just seeing that statement will probably go to the idea that trans-women are claiming they biological women. I would also say there a section of trans women or social justice warriors they will vehemently claim that there is no difference between trans-women and real women and that straight men should have no problem dating them and also lesbiens should have no problem with dating, which is very imposing and has caused problems. Again its probably a minority but im just pointing out the extreme view for context. Definitely shouldnt be cancelled or anything like that or even have to hide. I think where the friction stems from is people feeling like they are being forced to see the world from a trans pov which includes the view that trans-women are women without any context. I actually agree with you that trans-women can be put into a category of women, this would actually solve a lot of problems with sports etc and i think its a more honest and real view. Ultimately trans people want to be accepted and there humanity seen for what it is and of course everyone can empathise with that, however to bend categories and not recognise that there is some difference is asking for a deluded view, as in a reality that we dont agree on, to be integrated into the public consciousness and i think that is a lot to ask. Just for clarity im specifically talking about the view of trans-women being the same as biological women with natural conclusion that trans-women should compete with biological women in sports. Heres an example of what im talking about in which the singer Ginuwine was labelled trans-phobic for saying he wouldnt date a trans-woman, he received a lot of backlash for this view -

I think theres been some interesting talking points in this discussion as well the battle to 'win' the argument. @Etherial Cat's take on it is makes me think because it makes sense that the energies we all have are masculine and feminine and in the example of trans-women, in theory lets they have the same amount of feminine energy (however you quantify it), as a biological woman, then the only difference is the body they were born in. But then the only thing I would stop short at is calling them women, as you could for example have a strong feminine energy and still have a biological male body and even present as a woman. I'm not trans so obviously I cant speak for their experiences or how they feel but if you do get to the point where you have to get rid of (quite an important body part) wouldnt there be something to be said for accepting what you are? As in accepting that you are a trans-woman rather than trying to be a biological woman. It seems contradictory to want acceptance from others but then also want to change your body, this doesnt seem healthy mentally. Where I can relate and its by no means the same thing or even close, but growing up I always had a large chest which Ive just recently learnt is called Gynaecomastia, now it doesnt look too bad because Ive been weight training for years, but when i was younger and skinnier in my teen years it really stood out and I would be incredibly self conscious and had an ocd compulsion about it, I would hate when anyone noticed and i never took my top off even on holiday. Essentially it betrayed what i thought i was as a male, I basically had tities! So there was a point where i felt that the only way out was surgery, I even phoned up a place to see how much it would cost. But eventually I realised that the best way out was acceptance, this was me its a part of me and i have to find a way to accept it, it was not easy but i did manage to do it, now I rarely even think about it in a self conscious way and people even compliment me sometimes. All that to say, it seems with trans-people they want to be seen as exactly the same as biological-sexes and i just think fundamentally its not correct, they are different and that should be accepted by both themselves and the outside world. Thinking about it I think this is where a lot of the hate comes from, because youre asking people to buy into somewhat of a delusion. This comes to a head when you have womens sports because it just doesnt make sense for a trans person to be classified as a woman in this context.

There was Racheal Dolezal and she still hasnt said that im just white -

Thanks everyone for taking the time to reply, I am feeling a bit more positive about it. It is a challenge definitely but thats what life is about and im kinda looking forward to growing myself more which i can see now stagnated whilst in this relationship. I guess its a faulty belief just from being out of the game for so long, the quality thing is important as ultimately thats what im looking for but at the same time it doesnt help to look at the end goal and get overwhelmed, which i tend to do sometimes, just gotta take it step by step. Thanks for the kind words about the podcast and you're right, its just a matter of pushing myself out there and testing the waters. Yeah to be honest ive probably had the best growth coming off the back of break ups, so it does feel daunting but it will grow me and thats the main thing. It was more me that broke up with her as it just wasnt really working for me anymore and i felt like i was limiting myself. I was using a lot of energy to keep it going and i did feel a bit of relief when it ended, although i was still sad at the same time. Thanks man, its been a while since I was trying to attract 21 year olds lol. One thing with this relationship is that it has given me a certain clarity on what i want and I dont think thered be many 21 year olds that would fit into it, for a long term thing anyway. i think minimum would be 25. But yeah youre right theres a lot there to work on and not even for women but just to grow myself and become better. Yes youre right, I am sceptical about those thoughts, but these are just the thoughts that are coming up, I think it just feels like a massive task but also its the way that im thinking about it which makes it feel like that. Yes it comes from fear and maybe gives an excuse or a way out so its like a way of handling that fear, but in reality there is no way im going to give in to it, I can feel that thats the case hence why I even wrote the original post, i guess I just wanted some motivation and a bit of empathy. Its weird because Ive always done quite well with women but there has always been a fear there of not being able to attract them, it probably comes from some messed up stuff in my childhood but i see a therapist and have been working through this. The emotion thing is something i have been working on so i will continue with that, I can be really hard on myself and not accepting of certain emotions so this is a very important one. Love and thanks again to everyone

So last week I broke up with my girlfriend of 4 years. It was tough because I do love her but i think there were some major differences between us, eg she was a perfectionist and generally im more go with the flow. There was also quite a big culture difference im from the UK shes from South America, although she could speak english fine I found the communication quite tough, this could also be related to personality as well as she was quite serious but also could be immature when it came to disagreements (silent treatment etc). Generally though it felt that i was kind of limiting myself and personality to try and make it work, which is obviously not great and i was getting so many signs that this wasnt the one, even if she did have a lot of good qualities and I loved her. Anyway, when we broke up i did feel a sense of relief and freedom, however it does feel really daunting stepping out into the world and eventually trying to attract other potential relationships. Ive always done pretty well with women and had a little period where i got into pick up (not heavy) in which I was really confident, pushed out of my comfort zone and was quite successful. But now I dont feel that same confidence, Im 37 and for the first time Im feeling a bit insecure about my age, looks, hairline, weight etc, like can i still do it? kinda thing. Ive never really felt like I needed or wanted a relationship, they just kinda happen and im not even sure i want one now but I like to know that if i did want one I'd be able to get a quality woman. For whatever reason theres this fear that I'm just not going to be able to. A bit of a ramble there but yeah just feeling a bit weird after the break up, grateful for any advice

I'm not really an expert but as I understand it transsexuality is when internally you feel that you are a different gender than the sex you were born into. But where it makes more sense to me is someone who was born with a brain that is structurally more similar to the opposite sex, which there is some research regarding mri scans of transgender people. In this case it would make sense that gender dysphoria would occur, however I wouldn't say that a male with gender dysphoria is a woman, I think trans woman makes more sense as they've had completely different experiences in life, not to mention different bodies. Regarding the Mr. Girl quote, I don't know the full context but it does seem a bit harsh considering the brain structure stuff. It's difficult to label people that are otherwise fully functioning as sick especially if they're not hurting anyone, but where I'd agree with him is, that some of trans-women insist they are 'real women' and I think this is a delusion and can also be harmful when pushed on others. But yeah I don't know, what's your take?

How are you defining body dysphoria?

Yeah definitely not crypto ? I think for the investment, property is your best bet just because of the leverage, so if you have 100k you could put down a deposit and make income plus any rise in equity on an asset that is worth 400k while only paying a couple percent on the loan. If you compare that with investing in stock, you'll only get profit on what you directly have, so if you have 100k and it goes up 5% you got 105k but the property could go up the same and then you've got 420k plus rental income. But there are pros and cons, for example property is very illiquid, meaning its hard to get money out once it's in. Also it's not completely passive you have to look after tenants. (Airbnb could work a little better though). Stock market investment doesn't have these issues. My advice though would be to really research property investment, find out what a good deal would look like, look at locations, types of mortgages etc. Once you feel relatively confident you'll want to pull the trigger. The travelling is a great idea in general, I think it might be better to work out the investment situation before you travel though, just so you've got income that can cover it rather than just saving and spending that. Esp if youre family is willing to help you with it. Just to double up on the point - fo your research!

Just had to share this, this guy is amazing and i think the literal definition of flow state! Also notice how he directly feeds off the energy of the crowd, a great example of an exchange of positive energy between people

Well is funny because op said she got in trouble for tweeting about Kobe Bryant being a rapist after he died (which if i remeber correctly he was cleared of). Either the guy who called her our or the guy who retweeted the joke, defended her, so interesting that in that same situation they chose to be compassionate. But my guess is she's building up a lot of negative sentiment towards her from other people, the more her tweets of this nature get out there there'll be more that would want to see her downfall than her success. So envitably she's either going to go to far and get something disastrously wrong and offense or something will come out about something she's done wrong, either way when it happens, unfortunately for her the consequences will be so much worse than what they would've been. (Loss of career, public humiliation etc). On top of that it's interesting that someone with such an obvious bias can operate so freely in the mainstream. I would say she's anti-men in that she picks stories to specifically highlight how bad men are, there's little nuance or understanding attributed to these men, only negative judgement. Now imagine if a right wing commentator highlighted only stories where black people were the bad guys and showed the same lack of compassion, they'd rightly be considered an outright racist, race realists for example. There's no way they'd be able to operate in the mainstream, so it is highly hypocritical what she's doing and I hope for her she realises this before the karmic repercussions as you say catch up with her.

She strikes me as someone who is actively looking for conflict in regards to showing how sexist and bad men are. That's not say men can't be bad or sexist but something like calling him out on twitter really shows no compassion, it's an attempt to get him fired and set a mob on him. If she had gone to hr or her boss internally, the greivance would've been sorted out. For me this extra step can only come from an actual derision of either the person or of men in general. Looking at her past tweets she's in support of amber heard, even though it was proved in court that amber heard actively tried to ruin Johnny depps career. If there was ever a recording of a man shouting at a woman the way AH did to JD she would've been completely in support of the woman. So I think this is a level of hypocrisy in which her world view and bias overrides her relationship with truth, which is not good for an established reporter. Having said that, the male reporter probably shouldn't have posted that joke on his own account, but it shouldve been handled better.

Just some figures but for a full time stock trader on wall street 20%-30% on average is considered top level, Warren Buffet for example had an anual average of 22% from 1980-2003. If youre doing day trading potentially you could make more but the risk is a lot higher, so the average day trader would make 10% per year but this is heavily weighted in the top 1-5% making great returns while the bottom 95-99% lose money. Even the top 1% would be lucky to make 5% roi per month consistently, also keep in mind the time and losses it takes to build up the skill of day trading. I would guess from your post youve only really got into trading or investing in the last 2 years, in which case it has just been astronomical growth for the whole period. This is the problem ive been seeing from a lot of people thinking that its so easy to make money 'investing', its kinda like if you only started watching football when your football team was winning and then you say 'footballs easy, my team always wins'. So it gives a false confidence and people inflate the market only for it to pop and for there to be tons of losers, this has been the case with a lot of things recently but crypto was definitely the worst hit, luna dropping 99% and bitcoin dropping 50% in the last few months, these are massive real losses. The proof of any long term investing strategy is how it performs over a long period not over a couple years. I agree with @Yarco this is potentially very dangerous advice and its funny as you said dont go to this forum for financial advice and basically proved your initial point with your financial advice.

Consciousness is of course subjective but when someone provides information and presents it as "true" there has to be some criteria for that. For example if someone made the statement 'The election was fraudulently won', they would have to have sufficient proof to verify that claim. If there is sufficient proof that there was no fraud had taken place then there two subjective truths and the two viewpoints should not be weighted the same, one is an idea or a theory and the other is what can be verified as true. It might have been true that there was fraud and if theres evidence thats fine. Now you can have a subjective opinion or even speculate, thats fine but it cant be equated to something that is provably true. What we're seeing in recent times is that people are taking speculation and opinions and weighting them the same as if they were verified truth. This is potentially dangerous as we've seen with various incidents already including jan 6th. So I think the problem really is deception, if youre presenting something that is opinion or speculation and is demonstrably untrue and potentially dangerous, should that be allowed on public platforms?

I think the argument for free speech should be reframed, when you say free speech its too all encompassing so the argument should be made for why everyone should be allowed to share - misinformation, propaganda, baseless conspiracy theories, hate speech etc. For the most part people who are arguing against freedom of speech absolutist are cool with people saying whatever. So i would like to hear the argument for way potentially damaging speech should be allowed and not at least be labelled as false

This ones not great as i agree with pretty much everything the exec says and i think if people get over the gotcha part of it they probably would as well

Its framed as a kinda gotcha where the catch the exec on camera under false pretences but its interesting to hear an unfiltered inside perspective on free speech and Elon Musk. Its basically what i expected them to feel about it. Its also funny how aware he is of how people can get like how he did Thoughts? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZLdAgHj-zg

I really try and steelman the free speech absolutist but I just think they havent fully understood the implications of what complete free speech would actually be, a in it just just wouldnt work. What people tend to mean is that i want freedom to say what i want and i have the best intentions to respect others freedom, but that is until of course others say something theyre strongly against.

The below is not my post, its taken from a comment from /Bitcoin reddit, Ill put a link at the bottom. I've never really understand the use of NFTs and i think a lot of people could end up losing money with them, I know some personally that have, so you know be careful out there - "I'm going to take a moment to talk about NFTs since I see people in here talking and arguing about them. NFTs have some actual use cases, but what people are currently doing with them on altcoin platforms is not one of them. Below I will explain how the NFTs on altcoin platforms work on a technical level and I will explain why they probably wont even exist in 10 years. I will also explain why some of these NFTs are selling for such high prices. Many of those NFTs that were sold for crazy high prices were not actually sold to other people. The person who bought those expensive NFTs is often the same person who minted the NFT in the first place. I will explain how whales can easily own very expensive rare NFTs for very little cost. They can just mint an NFT and sell it to them self for $500,000 worth of etһ. They will only lose the small percentage that the NFT marketplace takes and now they own a super rare NFT worth $500k and they will still have most of their etһ because they sold the NFT to them self. And there is a small chance that they might be able to to sell that worthless NFT to some fool who believes that it is actually valuable. Doing this also entices more newbies to mint NFTs in the hopes of getting rich. Some people are now using flash loans to borrow large amounts of etһ so that they can purchase their own NFTs for extremely high prices and then they pay back the flash loan all in the same block. https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/122516/how-a-cunning-trick-made-it-look-like-a-cryptopunk-sold-for-532-million Here is another example that can be done. You can mint an NFT and sell it to yourself for $1000, then put it up for sale and buy it from yourself again for $1500, and sell it to yourself another time for $2200. Now you can put this appreciating NFT up for sale and try to sell it to some fool who sees it keeps getting sold for more and thinks that it must be valuable. Have you seen celebrities buying NFTs like jpegs of bored apes for hundreds of thousands of dollars? Platforms like MoonPay are paying those celebrities to claim that they bought those NFTs. Those celebrities didn't really pay anything for those NFTs. Those celebrities actually got paid for receiving those NFTs. You can often look at the blockchain and see that the etһ that was used to buy the NFT came directly from a platform like MoonPay, as is the case with the bored ape NFTs that Post Malone recently "bought for $700k+" The current NFTs are useful for something. These NFTs are a useful tool for laundering illegally acquired cryptocurrency. Criminals can shift around their ill gotten crypto between different tokens, mint an NFT, and purchase their own NFT with their dirty crypto. Now they've cleaned their dirty crypto and they also own a rare NFT that's supposedly worth a lot of money. I mean just look at how much it sold for! It costs anywhere from $100-$600+ to mint an NFT on etһereum depending on the current gas fees and where you mint it. So they're hyping shitcoiners/artists/anyone up and luring them into minting crap in the hopes of getting rich and NFTs are doing a great job of that at the moment. People are spending millions of dollars worth of etһereum minting NFTs hoping to hit the NFT lottery and get rich. All these NFT tokens being sold on etһereum right now either point to a URL on the internet, or an IPFS hash. In most circumstances they reference an IPFS gateway on the internet run by the same startup that sold the NFT. That URL also isn't the media. That URL is a JSON metadata file. The owners of the servers have no obligation to continue storing the media. Now let's take a look at a couple of real NFTs and see how they work on a technical level. https://niftygateway.com/itemdetail/primary/0x12f28e2106ce8fd8464885b80ea865e98b465149/1 This NFT token is for this JSON file hosted directly on Nifty's servers as shown below: https://api.niftygateway.com/beeple/100010001/ That file refers to the actual media that was "bought." Which in this case is hosted by Cloudinary CDN, which is served by Nifty's servers again. So if Nifty goes bust, this token is now worthless. It refers to nothing and this can't be changed. Now we'll take a look at the $69,346,250 Beeple, sold by Christies. It's so expensive. Surely it isn't centralized, right? Wrong, it's pointless: https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/beeple-first-5000-days/beeple-b-1981-1/112924 That NFT token refers directly to an IPFS hash. We can take that IPFS hash and fetch the JSON metadata using a public gateway: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmPAg1mjxcEQPPtqsLoEcauVedaeMH81WXDPvPx3VC5zUz So well done for referring to IPFS, it references the specific file rather than a URL that might break! But the metadata links to: https://ipfsgateway.makersplace.com/ipfs/QmXkxpwAHCtDXbbZHUwqtFucG1RMS6T87vi1CdvadfL7qA This is an IPFS gateway run by http://makersplace.com, the same NFT minting startup which will go bust one day. You might say "just refer to the IPFS hash in both places!" But IPFS only serves files as long as a node in the IPFS network intentionally keeps hosting it. Which means when the startup who sold you the NFT goes bust, the files will probably vanish from IPFS too. This is already happening. There are already NFTs with IPFS resources that are no longer hosted anywhere. And just pinning the file on your own IPFS node also wont work because the metadata file generally points to a specific HTTP IPFS gateway URL and not the IPFS hash. This means that when the gateway operator goes bust, I can buy the domain and start serving dick pics lol Right now NFT's are built on an absolute house of cards constructed by the people selling them, and it is likely that every NFT sold on etһereum so far will be broken within a decade. This creates a pretty solid exit plan for makertplace if they run into financial problems. The people who own the these useless NFTs "worth" millions of dollars are going to be pretty motivated to buy the site or fund it. Or someone can buy the bankrupt startup domains and start charging NFT owners to serve their files." https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/rqg0fh/forgive_me/

Wouldve posted Patrice, hes your favourite comedians favourite comedian and i dont think youll get a more honest comedian or person for that matter. This interview cracks me up, he rips the poor guy to shreds

Nah i dont think Brazil are the same as back in the day, too much reliance on Neymar at the moment and hes not really a great leader. I think Spain actually looked great in the Euros and were unlucky not to win it, so I'd say them and France are most likely the favourites, Benzemas playing the football of his life this season but he whole squads top level. Argentina might do something and then for an outside team im gonna go for Uruguay

Dodging bullets like Neo! Glad you got out unscathed, I would say in general investing doesnt have to be a waste of time and energy, for me personally i just have highly diversified funds and put money in every month on auto pilot, I am down a like 8% but not really putting much attention to it I get where youre coming from with some of your points, ultimately youre choosing to make this gamble and youre aware of the downside so that is up to you. Part of the reason I never really liked crypto is the volatility, I dont think i could sit comfortably knowing that at any moment half my investment could be wiped out and thats really enough to put me off. As @ZzzleepingBear said I think you are mis-defining what a pyramid scheme is, as humans we need trade so if I want petrol (as we say in the UK) in my car or food in my stomach, I have to do a deal with someone and what im paying for is not only the food but everything in that supply chain, so thats included in the price but then also, the market depends on what people are willing to pay for it. Either way they are getting something that they consider valuable and worth using what they worked for to pay for that. In a pyramid scheme the value is mainly based on speculation and the idea that you can sell whatever it is to someone else for a higher price. So in the example of bitcoin, it has no inherent value as in theres no use for it, everyone literally only wants it because they think they can sell it to someone else for more. What you described with the other commodities is just how markets work, yes theyre not perfect and companies will try and maximise their returns and there are many entities on the supply chain, but ultimately they are providing something use to people who need/want it. You could argue Gold functions similar to bitcoin which wouldnt be completely wrong, but the key difference is that gold is used in the world, in jewellery, wires etc. Also there is a history with gold that spans centuries, that doesnt necessarily mean it will always be worth something but the foundation it has would give me at least more confidence that its not just going to go to zero. So I would maintain that crypto is mostly a pyramid scheme in a way thats very different to other commodities.

Not posting to gloat, genuinely feel for anyone that lost money in the last week or so, the Luna drop was insane. But Im just curious where people are at with crypto now, have you given up? Are you going to put more money in and double down? Have any opinions changed?

The UK, where I'm from, does a lot of the things you mentioned, including giving free gym memberships. In fact here's a breakdown of what they do and the scale of the problem - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-matters-obesity-and-the-food-environment/health-matters-obesity-and-the-food-environment--2 Obesity is still a massive problem here, people actually protested when they reduced the sugar in soft drinks. Point is the government can only do so much to get people to make the right choices for themselves let alone others especially when disinformation is so prevalent. I'm not really for any mandates but I'm also not for disinformation and conspiracy theories actively clouding people's judgement. I can also understand why a work place might require their workers to get a vaccine if it affects the workplace.

Interesting video from Rebel Wisdom, one of the speakers talks about a test facebook group 'Monster Island' that had zero moderation. Quite relevant to a lot of the topics that pop up on this forum - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nNk7fvxiGM This is the original Monster Island article - https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2020/10/monster-island-free-speech-experiment/